Public Relations as an SEO Strategy

Public relations can yield great results for your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts through cultivating back links.

Public relations is an important component of business development. Getting your company publicity is a great way to connect with new customers and increase brand awareness. But, many businesses fail to realize its importance for search engine optimization (SEO).

Distributing press releases that includes links back to your website can help create back links, one of the most crucial components of how Google and other search engines rank your website in search results. The quality, quantity and relevance of sites linking to your website (called back links) help determine your own site’s authority in the eyes of Google and other major search engines.

News websites tend to have a lot of authority in the eyes of Google. A link to your website from an article on a major news website could give your SEO efforts a big boost. For example, if you’re a vacation rental business and you manage to score a mention in an article in USA Today’s Travel section, the back link you receive from the article would be rated highly by Google in terms of both authority and relevance.

But, getting into major newspapers is not easy. It requires great news judgment, solid news monitoring and the formation of working relationships with journalists. The good news is that you can start doing all of this for free, and get back links in the process.

Step 1: Write the Release

First, you’ll want to learn how to draft a news release (it’s becoming the preferred nomenclature for press release). Publicity Insider offers some great advice on writing a press release.  In addition to their advice, you’ll want to get a working knowledge of Associated Press Style (AP Style) – the specific style news articles are written in. Writing in AP Style will make it a lot easier for writers and editors to reuse content from your release.

But the single most important thing you can do to make your release successful is to highlight the news-worthiness of what you’re writing about. This requires you to have sound news judgment – that is, know what is news and what isn’t news. And, as you’ll see in the next section, news-worthiness will vary by the journalist and the news outlet.

Step 2: Distribute the Release

Links to your site from other sites, called back links, are important to search engines because they view these links as a vote of confidence in your website.

Next, you’ll want to create a list of journalists who write about topics related to your business. You can do this through monitoring news coverage and doing some quick searches online. Once you have their e-mail address, you can begin to send them releases.

A word of advice: Don’t send releases to reporters that don’t pertain to their topic areas, or beats as they are referred to in the journalism industry. For example, if the reporter just covers travel in Idaho’s Treasure Valley, don’t send him or her a press release announcing the hiring of the new sales manager at your vacation rental company in Florida. The one exception might be if the manager used to work for a prominent travel business in the Treasure Valley.

For even better results, if you have a story idea specifically targeted to an individual journalist, send him or her a brief note with your pitch. But, keep it brief; reporters tend to get a lot of e-mails.

Paying close attention to which journalists you send releases to will help you build relationships with journalists. Show them that you’ve done your research on what they cover, and let them know that you’re there to help make their jobs easier. There are plenty of public relations professionals that fail to recognize the importance of this, and they quickly lose their credibility with journalists.

Step 3: Post it Online

In addition to e-mailing journalists, there are plenty of ways to distribute a press release online. You can pay to have your release distributed on news wires like PR Newswire, PRWeb, MarketWire, etc. These services are generally pretty spendy, so exercise sound judgment in utilizing them.

Alternatively, there are plenty of websites that allow you to post press releases for free. And, if you do your homework, there are probably other news sites in your industry that let you post your own news stories. You’ll have to investigate which of these sites allows you to put live links in your release. Remember, you’re looking for back links to your website.

HINT: Reserve your less news-worthy press releases for free online sites. This will keep you from harming your relationships with journalists by sending them “junk,” but at the same time make a public announcement that can be pulled up directly by the consumer in searches – and maybe even reposted. And again, you’ll also develop back links.

Results

You never know what will happen when you write and distribute a news release. Be prepared to accept calls from journalists and be ready to answer their questions. They may ask you to provide them with more material, like in-depth statistics or images. And remember, when talking with a journalist, don’t say anything that you wouldn’t want publicized, even if you think it’s “off the record.”

If done correctly, your public relations efforts will win you coverage eventually, but don’t expect to get a story from every release you send out. Chances are that many of your releases will not get picked up by the media at all. That’s normal, especially for small businesses. If you judge your public relations efforts purely on news placements, you’re bound to be disappointed. Remember, public relations is about building relationships – both with your target consumers and with the key influencers of those consumers. Work on building these relationships by releasing consistent news about your business and respecting the role of journalists, and you'll be on the path to public relations success. And, along the way, you’ll get plenty of back links, too.