<i>Online Extra</i> SEOs, Meet Your New BFF, the PR Professional

So, how should today's SEO specialist approach the challenge obtaining top results?

The PR Professional

Enter the public relations professional. At the core of public relations, as its name implies, is building relationships ' with journalists, bloggers, and other key influencers ' to help increase a company or individual's visibility in the media and, consequently, on the internet. On the opposite end of the continuum, SEO used to be seen primarily as a tactical approach to achieving similar results with many SEO specialists focused on building a high-volume of low-quality 'relationships' to get a company's name to appear in search engine results. Now, SEO strategists need to start thinking more like PR professionals. Rather than 'manufacturing' and 'building' links, the SEO process should be more about the cultivation of key human relationships, and reacting effectively to real-time PR opportunities.

What Can We Learn?
Content is, and always will be, king.
It's not just about refreshing your blog to be perceived as 'fresh' and 'new' any more. The quality has to be there and public relations people are quality content experts. This should come as no surprise since content has been one of the fundamental pillars of public relations for years. If you create content that is topical, timely, and can spark interest in your target audience, it will get picked up, commented on, shared and promoted. PR pros know how to generate high-quality content and package news stories that are transferable to content marketing and SEO. The techniques that PR professionals use to generate positive press are numerous and diverse.

News-generation techniques like surveys, research, thought leadership pieces, produce shareable content. That said, there are three key areas of crossover that, when mastered, will improve a company's search engine results.

So, what types of content can you use to create opportunities for positive public relations, and what SEO value do they have? Certainly, slideshows, videos, images, and blog articles, provide outreach to target audiences. However, the key factor when you are planning and producing your content is to think about the PR opportunities it might be able to create.

For example, if you are writing a reaction piece to a blog you've recently read on an industry leading site, don't just start with 'I read this article the other day.' Use the author's name, link to the article, and ' once the article is live on your website ' tag the author in a tweet and post your article link in the comments of the original article.

If you alert the author to your reaction, he or she is likely to engage in return. He might also retweet your article, comment on your website, or even 'react' to your reaction. At the very least, writing your blog article with your PR hat on is going to ensure that you show up on another industry leading professional's radar. From a PR, SEO, and link-building perspective, you've just earned all three.

The Art of the Pitch

The webspam team at Google will continue to find ways to improve how the value of a link is determined. As algorithms change, your challenge will be to generate links that make it past human gatekeepers. In most cases, these gatekeepers will be editors and journalists, the very people that PR pros make it their business to know. More than knowing them, PR pros know their beat and how to present content in a way that will attract their interest. So, it doesn't matter whether you're writing a guest blogging pitch, a press release, or an e-mail to media. How you present your proposal is crucial to generating positive PR and links.

Rule number one: Avoid mentioning links. Though it's likely the person you are pitching is aware that it's links you're after, you will be perceived as 'spammy' if you explicitly mentioning them in your pitch. In fact, the best way to build valuable and hard-to-find links is to forget about links altogether. Focus on the opportunity to boost your profile, drive referral traffic, and deliver value to your readers by delivering quality content. Do these things well and links will follow.

Make it as easy as possible to those 'gatekeepers' to say yes. If you are submitting an idea for a guest post, be flexible. Provide three ideas as options and make it clear that you know exactly what they need to make the process run smoothly. If you have only one option, make sure it is polished and ready for publication. Above all, make sure that you can SEO your content, i.e., develop content with the target audience in mind and not try to game the search engines by trying to create content for SEO.

This same process can be applied to writing your press release. By crafting a relevant headline, attaching images, and showing that you understand what a journalist needs to run your story, you'll drastically improve your chances of success. Genuine earned media appearances are currently the most powerful form of SEO and help to substantiate and amplify the messages in PPC ads.

Optimize!

Now that you've written a great press release or guest blogging introduction using the same language as your online communications, how can you give your pitch the best possible chance of success?

Wearing your PR pro hat, figure out how you can leverage your existing relationships to help your pitch succeed. Utilize PR's media and social media lists to generate an outreach strategy. Using existing connections across multiple channels, such as Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, see if you have any shared connections with persons of interest. If you can't find common ground, first develop a relationship before you make your pitch. If you are able to thoughtfully engage with their content at least a few times before making your pitch, there's a higher likelihood that they'll pay attention when you approach them with your request.

Go one step further and create an editorial guideline document that both PR and SEO teams share:'Ensure that the document gives a unique angle, or tells an old story in a new or different way, or shares new information. Take a tip from Hollywood and make sure your story has a strong introduction, body, and conclusion. Provide a solution to a perceived or real problem. Ideally, the document should be newsworthy, preferably tied to a current event. Back up your pitch with research. Another Hollywood tip: Have a clear audience in mind; know the demographic you are writing for by demonstrating who the topic affects and why it's important.'

The most common mistake that SEO strategists make is to presume that traditional PR and digital marketing are different just because they use different mediums. PR professionals have been building relationships and creating exciting opportunities for years through targeted phone calls, e-mails, and face-to-face meetings.

Conclusion

We've never been more connected than we are now. Social media allows us to target our communications and bypass traditional barriers to success. To improve your company's SEO, we must embrace the skills and techniques that PR professionals have been using for years. In the future, those that succeed will be those who can learn the fastest.

Nicholas Gaffney, a lawyer and former journalist, is a founding partner of Infinite PR. and a member of this newsletter's Board of Editors. Reach him at [email protected] or 415-732-7801.

It's not so long ago that the 'Basic Tips' to boost a website's rank in search engine results were about tracking page rank, using keywords, and creating internal links, with content ranking low on the totem pole. Well, guess what? That's changed and, as Google ' the most popular search engine ' becomes the arbiter of quality in determining what your eyeballs see, it will continue to evolve.

The fact is, there's just too much information out there, so Google changed its algorithm. It's not the only Internet titan to do so; Facebook has done the same thing, both in an effort to ensure that users see quality, not mere quantity. Facebook aims to outrank Google as a search engine, but that's another story.

Last September, Google launched Hummingbird, named for the speed and accuracy of the tiny bird, with the aim of understanding the intent behind a search and thus provide a better user experience through semantically relevant search results, rather than just key words. Remember, the purpose of a search engine is to provide useful information in a timely fashion. Google also stopped providing page rank data, the classic measure of a website's popularity, which translated to meaning its relevance.

So, how should today's SEO specialist approach the challenge obtaining top results?

The PR Professional

Enter the public relations professional. At the core of public relations, as its name implies, is building relationships ' with journalists, bloggers, and other key influencers ' to help increase a company or individual's visibility in the media and, consequently, on the internet. On the opposite end of the continuum, SEO used to be seen primarily as a tactical approach to achieving similar results with many SEO specialists focused on building a high-volume of low-quality 'relationships' to get a company's name to appear in search engine results. Now, SEO strategists need to start thinking more like PR professionals. Rather than 'manufacturing' and 'building' links, the SEO process should be more about the cultivation of key human relationships, and reacting effectively to real-time PR opportunities.

What Can We Learn?
Content is, and always will be, king.
It's not just about refreshing your blog to be perceived as 'fresh' and 'new' any more. The quality has to be there and public relations people are quality content experts. This should come as no surprise since content has been one of the fundamental pillars of public relations for years. If you create content that is topical, timely, and can spark interest in your target audience, it will get picked up, commented on, shared and promoted. PR pros know how to generate high-quality content and package news stories that are transferable to content marketing and SEO. The techniques that PR professionals use to generate positive press are numerous and diverse.

News-generation techniques like surveys, research, thought leadership pieces, produce shareable content. That said, there are three key areas of crossover that, when mastered, will improve a company's search engine results.

So, what types of content can you use to create opportunities for positive public relations, and what SEO value do they have? Certainly, slideshows, videos, images, and blog articles, provide outreach to target audiences. However, the key factor when you are planning and producing your content is to think about the PR opportunities it might be able to create.

For example, if you are writing a reaction piece to a blog you've recently read on an industry leading site, don't just start with 'I read this article the other day.' Use the author's name, link to the article, and ' once the article is live on your website ' tag the author in a tweet and post your article link in the comments of the original article.

If you alert the author to your reaction, he or she is likely to engage in return. He might also retweet your article, comment on your website, or even 'react' to your reaction. At the very least, writing your blog article with your PR hat on is going to ensure that you show up on another industry leading professional's radar. From a PR, SEO, and link-building perspective, you've just earned all three.

The Art of the Pitch

The webspam team at Google will continue to find ways to improve how the value of a link is determined. As algorithms change, your challenge will be to generate links that make it past human gatekeepers. In most cases, these gatekeepers will be editors and journalists, the very people that PR pros make it their business to know. More than knowing them, PR pros know their beat and how to present content in a way that will attract their interest. So, it doesn't matter whether you're writing a guest blogging pitch, a press release, or an e-mail to media. How you present your proposal is crucial to generating positive PR and links.

Rule number one: Avoid mentioning links. Though it's likely the person you are pitching is aware that it's links you're after, you will be perceived as 'spammy' if you explicitly mentioning them in your pitch. In fact, the best way to build valuable and hard-to-find links is to forget about links altogether. Focus on the opportunity to boost your profile, drive referral traffic, and deliver value to your readers by delivering quality content. Do these things well and links will follow.

Make it as easy as possible to those 'gatekeepers' to say yes. If you are submitting an idea for a guest post, be flexible. Provide three ideas as options and make it clear that you know exactly what they need to make the process run smoothly. If you have only one option, make sure it is polished and ready for publication. Above all, make sure that you can SEO your content, i.e., develop content with the target audience in mind and not try to game the search engines by trying to create content for SEO.

This same process can be applied to writing your press release. By crafting a relevant headline, attaching images, and showing that you understand what a journalist needs to run your story, you'll drastically improve your chances of success. Genuine earned media appearances are currently the most powerful form of SEO and help to substantiate and amplify the messages in PPC ads.

Optimize!

Now that you've written a great press release or guest blogging introduction using the same language as your online communications, how can you give your pitch the best possible chance of success?

Wearing your PR pro hat, figure out how you can leverage your existing relationships to help your pitch succeed. Utilize PR's media and social media lists to generate an outreach strategy. Using existing connections across multiple channels, such as Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, see if you have any shared connections with persons of interest. If you can't find common ground, first develop a relationship before you make your pitch. If you are able to thoughtfully engage with their content at least a few times before making your pitch, there's a higher likelihood that they'll pay attention when you approach them with your request.

Go one step further and create an editorial guideline document that both PR and SEO teams share:'Ensure that the document gives a unique angle, or tells an old story in a new or different way, or shares new information. Take a tip from Hollywood and make sure your story has a strong introduction, body, and conclusion. Provide a solution to a perceived or real problem. Ideally, the document should be newsworthy, preferably tied to a current event. Back up your pitch with research. Another Hollywood tip: Have a clear audience in mind; know the demographic you are writing for by demonstrating who the topic affects and why it's important.'

The most common mistake that SEO strategists make is to presume that traditional PR and digital marketing are different just because they use different mediums. PR professionals have been building relationships and creating exciting opportunities for years through targeted phone calls, e-mails, and face-to-face meetings.

Conclusion

We've never been more connected than we are now. Social media allows us to target our communications and bypass traditional barriers to success. To improve your company's SEO, we must embrace the skills and techniques that PR professionals have been using for years. In the future, those that succeed will be those who can learn the fastest.

Nicholas Gaffney, a lawyer and former journalist, is a founding partner of Infinite PR. and a member of this newsletter's Board of Editors. Reach him at [email protected] or 415-732-7801.