The initials PR once stood for something important to businesses and it wasn’t ‘PageRank.’ It’s almost too long ago to remember, true, but the old business standby of public relations is still hanging around. What’s more, it can help with your site’s SEO.

Public relations have been around for a long, long time. The techniques used by public relations pros have had a long time to be fine-tuned. The best aspect, and the most devious aspect, of public relations is that it works behind the scenes. Public relations techniques are designed to make people do what you want them to without them knowing it.

The most detectable workings of public relations are in the media. Quite a lot of ‘news’ stories are sourced from material provided by PR firms. Interest items, such as the equation for the perfect dunking time of a biscuit in tea, are the product of a savvy public relations firm. These stories are valuable to the companies that hire PR firms because they slip under most people’s radar. In a time of ever-increasing cynicism toward marketing techniques, slipping a marketing message into seemingly harmless content is a much-needed skill.

So how does PR come into the picture with SEO? Traditionally, PR aimed to spread a brand name. PR for SEO has a much more specific goal. PR with a search engine optimisation focus takes brand awareness one step further by driving links back to the company’s website.

Most SEO PR is based in the creation of press releases (also, confusingly, referred to as ‘PRs’ on the acronym-loving net). This is possibly a misleading name for what these articles should do. Online press releases should take a slightly different angle to their real-world counterparts, as it’s hard to disguise the marketing focus of a traditional press release. PR articles for SEO should have the look and feel of a genuine news article, with the only difference being that your business controls the angle instead of a media conglomerate.

Skilful PR campaigns present marketing material inside genuine news stories. The equation example above is a good example of this. In fact, the ‘perfect equation’ idea was so successful it sparked a trend which is feeding a whole sub-industry of mathematics used in marketing. Most SEO PR campaigns don’t aim quite so high, remaining satisfied with a story that’s interesting enough to be picked up by media outlets, bloggers, and everyday internet users.

When incorporating PR into your SEO strategy, it’s important to keep your site’s SEO basics in mind. Online press releases work in the same way as any other online content, so your keywords, links and other search engine optimisation techniques should be set within the content. The quality of a PR article is vital to its success, and it is often worthwhile consulting your SEO firm for assistance with the creation of SEO PR material. If you want your business to benefit from a PR angle in your search engine optimisation, talk to us at SEO Consult.

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