How can PR support your SEO strategy?

More and more, small businesses and startups are focusing on SEO, and have a tendency to relegate PR to a position of secondary importance. Yet, PR and SEO can work perfectly together as they have a lot in common. Here are some tips to integrate PR into your SEO strategy.

SEO and PR, what do they have in common?

We can define search engine optimisation (SEO) as a set of techniques and strategies aiming at improving your website authority online and your ranking on search engines. On the other hand, public relations is aimed at maintaining and promoting a positive brand image and at communicating the company's messages to its different audiences.

Although at first, it is difficult to see what SEO and PR have in common, they actually have a similar approach. They are both all about building authority and recognition around your brand.

When you create your SEO strategy, you first think about the type of content you're going produce for your target audience. It generally needs to be useful and authoritative. You want the readers to see that you know what you're talking about. You also want your website to become a source of reliable and relevant content in your industry. 

In the same way, PR helps you build trust and authority through third parties such as journalists, bloggers, influencers and online news outlets. 

Link-building strategy

Link building is a very important part of SEO. Some would even say that it's the most important thing you should focus on. Yet, it's not always easy as it can be really time and resource-consuming. For this reason, integrating your SEO and PR strategies is an excellent solution. Not only do you develop your online presence but you also build your brand profile. Here are three things that you can do to get backlinks: 

Press releases about your business

Are you organising an event? Launching a new product? Operating an important change in your business? It’s time to send a press release to the media that could be interested. If your story is relevant enough, journalists and bloggers will pick it up and write an article about it. Most of the time, the journalist or the blogger will include a link to your website. If not, you can still ask them when thanking them. This is an efficient and simple way to get backlinks, not forgetting that you also increase your brand awareness and trust.

Editorial requests

You can also monitor media requests using a media inquiry service or the hashtag #journorequest. Journalists are often looking for comments or case studies for their articles, so if a request is relevant to you or your business, it's an easy way to get a backlink. 

Build relationships with bloggers and influencers

PR is the art of developing relationships. Relationships with journalists, bloggers, influencers and the news. By collaborating with the right people, you'll be able to place some content and some links on their websites and on social media. This is great for your SEO and for growing your brand recognition. 

When the first page on Google is unachievable, PR is your best option

SEO can be really difficult for companies that don't have an army of experts working on it. The competition is tough and some markets are saturated. Sometimes it's almost pointless to try to rank a page for certain keywords because your competitors are 100km ahead of you. 

That's where PR becomes handy. What if, instead of trying to improve the ranking of your product page, you were trying to get an authoritative website to talk about this product? 

Let's say that I want to buy a single-speed bike. The first thing I do is search for it on Google. As expected, most of the results I get are from bike brands promoting their single-speed models. But there are also some articles listing the 'best single-speed bikes' published by authoritative cycling publications. 

At this stage, I am still prospecting, so I might click on one of them to learn about the different options on the market instead of clicking directly on a brand website. 

So now, if your business is selling single-speed bikes, you better appear in these articles. And PR can help achieve this kind of coverage.

The best way to get your brand mentioned in these types of articles is to approach the relevant journalists or bloggers directly by email or on social media.