Public relations is an essential cog in the SEO wheel. It influences how people perceive your brand, which is integral to building your online presence and reputation. 

But how do you integrate PR in SEO so they work together and not as separate digital strategies?

This article covers everything you need to know about PR in SEO, including a simplified guide for implementing a digital PR strategy and common pitfalls to avoid.

Let’s get started!

Are you only looking to enhance your brand’s online presence and trust through SEO? Work with an agency.

At Profit Engine, we provide results-focused link-building strategies to help your brand get featured in high-authority websites and media outlets. We can also streamline your media outreach to get journalists interested in your PR content.

Schedule a free consultation so we can help you create a winning digital marketing PR campaign for your business!

Why PR Matters for SEO Success?

Below are the key advantages of PR for SEO success:

• Enhanced Online Visibility: Mentions in media publications and other high-authority websites help broadcast your company to a wider audience, attracting more attention to your brand.
• Brand Credibility: Securing brand mentions in high-authority websites shows that you are a respected brand in your niche. This establishes your credibility and trustworthiness, which encourages visitors to follow the links to your website.
• Higher SERP Ranking: Backlinks from high-PR domains act as votes of confidence and help boost your visibility and ranking on SERPs.
• Increased Referral Traffic: Backlinks from high-authority domains increase referral traffic to your website, signaling search engines that your website contains helpful information.
• Social Media Visibility: Media outlets often feature their articles on their social media pages, which helps place your brand in front of more high-intent audiences, who will likely follow the outbound links to your pages.

How to Build a Digital PR Strategy That Supports SEO

Ready to integrate PR into your SEO strategy?

Use our simple guide to implement a seamless digital PR strategy:

1. Outline Clear PR Goals

Set clear, measurable goals for your digital PR strategy to guide your campaign. Each objective you choose should include focused strategies and metrics to help you monitor performance.

We recommend the SMART model (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) to make your goals concise and easy to understand.

2. Define Your Target Audience

Who is your ideal consumer? This question should help you describe your ideal audience. Also, consider your audience’s pain points and the solutions they need.

Lastly, find out where your audience gets its information. For instance, which publications does your audience read? This information lets you personalize your digital PR strategy to align with your audience’s interests and information needs.

3. Competitor Analysis

Check how your competitors implement their digital marketing PR strategies to find opportunities for your campaign. For example, you should monitor which media outlets and journalists feature their brand stories.

Next, analyze the type of stories they share to secure the features. Is it expert commentary or original study reports?

Also, check how the public or target audience responds to the PR stories and pick the most promising ones.

4. Outline Your Content Ideas

List newsworthy content ideas that you could cover to attract media interest.

For example, are there gaps in the existing data that you could address through original research? Or are you planning a new product or feature rollout that aligns with trending topics in your niche?

5. Curate Content for Your Audience

Here are some tips to remember when drafting engaging content for your readers:

• Leverage audience engagement techniques, such as storytelling and thought-provoking statements, to keep them engaged.
• Make your content easily scannable and incorporate visuals to grab readers’ attention.
• Include relevant keywords so your content ranks in related searches.

6. Pitch to Journalists and Media Outlets

Once everything is ready, it’s time to convince journalists to cover your story in major publications. Your email pitch should be straightforward and showcase mutual benefits for your brand as well as the journalist.

Like your content, your email pitch should start with an attention grabber, such as statistics from your study and the underlying implications.

Find this process complex? Get expert help.

At Profit Engine, we have over a decade of experience helping clients integrate PR into their SEO campaigns. Our HARO link building services include media outreach to get your brand stories featured in reputable publications and earn backlinks for your website.

What to Include in a Digital Marketing Public Relations Plan

Below are the core components of a good digital marketing PR plan:

• Insightful Content: High-quality content is the backbone of digital marketing PR. It focuses on providing value to readers, encouraging them to reshare the content, and allowing high-authority websites to link to your pages.
• On-Page Optimization: Implement SEO practices like keyword insertion and optimized tags and titles to help your PR releases appear in relevant searches.
• Technical SEO: These are behind-the-scenes improvements that boost your website’s performance and deliver a consistent user experience. For example, an optimized information architecture enhances crawlability and indexing, ensuring your PR content appears in related searches.
• Competitor Analysis: Your digital marketing PR plan should include evaluating your competitors’ PR strategies to see what works for other industry players.
• Link Building Strategy: A good PR plan includes a link building campaign to convert brand mentions in high-authority websites into backlinks.
• Press Coverage: Create a plan to get your brand featured in reputable publications. This can help you reach a broader audience and build social proof for your business. You could also convert the press coverage into HARO link-building opportunities, securing high-PR backlinks for your website.

Best Digital PR Strategies for SEO Growth

Here are proven methods for running a seamless digital marketing PR campaign:

• Newsjacking: This technique involves monitoring breaking news and then reacting humorously to place your brand at the heart of a trending topic. It could be through memes or posters with your brand image placed strategically to enhance your online presence.
• Organize Creative Campaigns: Encourage your audience to share self-recorded videos and include branded, keyword-focused hashtags to enhance the content’s discoverability.
• Publish Data-Driven Studies: Journalists and media outlets prioritize original studies that provide unique insights on public-interest topics. If you create such content, they will likely feature your article and add organic backlinks, which could help boost your website’s domain authority.
• Invite Journalists to Your Press Releases: Are you planning a product launch? Or did you just win an award? Invite journalists to cover the news. They’ll likely link to your website, earning you a high-PR backlink.
• Thought Leadership: Provide expert commentary or a unique perspective that would interest media outlets. Alternatively, you could comment on industry trends and pitch the idea to journalists to see if they’ll feature it in their news roundups with a backlink to your website.

How to Measure the Success of SEO and Public Relations Campaigns

We recommend tracking essential performance metrics to streamline your digital marketing PR strategy. Otherwise, you could spend thousands of dollars every month without any visible change in your brand’s online presence or SEO performance. 

But first, you must set up an evaluation framework as follows:

1. Outline Your Digital Marketing PR Goals: First, ensure your SEO and public relations goals align with your business objectives. Then, determine which campaigns or strategies make the most contribution to your strategic goals.
2. Identify Relevant Metrics: The goals in Step 1 should help you determine the metrics to monitor and evaluate your PR campaign’s success. We’ll discuss some essential vanity metrics in the next section.
3. Track Essential Metrics: Use Google Analytics and other third-party tools to measure your campaign’s success and calculate the expected ROI. For example, you could use link-building tools to monitor brand mentions, newly acquired backlinks, and changes in keyword performance and domain rating.

Next, let’s discuss the most essential metrics to track the success of your SEO and public relations campaigns:

• Organic Traffic: Track your traffic by source to determine where your visitors are coming from. This helps you determine websites that have the most potential for referral traffic so you can pursue more backlinking opportunities.
• Keyword Ranking: Monitor how your website and pages rank for targeted keywords. This provides insight into how well your PR content is optimized.
• Backlinks Profile: Track new backlinks earned from your PR articles and assess the linking domains’ authority. Also, you can compare your backlink profile to your competitors to find new link-building opportunities.
• Dwell Time: Check how long visitors stay on your website to determine whether your PR content is relevant to your target audience and matches their search intent. Also, monitor their user journey while they are on your website to refine your internal linking strategy and increase engagement.
• Brand Mentions: Track your linked and unlinked mentions to see how often media outlets and other high-authority websites talk about your brand. Analyze whether the brand mentions are positive or negative and whether the PR content is tied to the sentiments.
• Domain Authority: Use link building tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush to monitor changes in your website’s domain authority. This includes monitoring how the acquired backlinks have influenced your domain authority to help you streamline your link-building strategy.
• Social Shares: Monitor your social media activity to see how your digital marketing PR campaign has influenced audience engagement. Essential social media indicators include likes, comments, impressions, and follower growth.

Common Mistakes in SEO and PR Integration

Below are common pitfalls to avoid when implementing PR in SEO:

• Poor Keyword Strategy: Focusing on storytelling without integrating related keywords results in missed opportunities for optimizing the content to rank in SERPs. On the other hand, keyword stuffing can reduce visitor engagement with your content and increase bounce rates, which could harm your website’s authority.
• Low-Quality Link Building: Backlink placements in spammy sites and private blog networks could signal search engines that your website also contains spammy content, hurting its perceived relevance and authority.
• Generic Content: Blog posts that do not offer value to readers or match their search intent increase your website’s bounce rate, which sends negative signals to search engines.
• Neglecting Technical SEO: Issues like mobile unresponsiveness and a negative UX discourage visitors from dwelling on your site. Also, potential PR sites might be skeptical about your brand’s credibility if your website looks sketchy and unprofessional.
• Not Tracking Your Metrics: Failing to track your performance metrics results in missed opportunities for streamlining the PR in your SEO strategy to enhance your online visibility and reputation.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Here are some common questions about using PR for SEO:

What Is the Difference Between PR and SEO?

PR entails managing how you disseminate information to the public to influence their perception of your brand. It aims to portray your brand positively, including during adverse situations, to minimize public fallout. 

On the other hand, SEO focuses on publishing keyword-focused content to help your website rank in SERPs.

Can Online PR Replace Traditional Link Building? 

No. Online PR cannot replace traditional link building. In fact, they should not be considered substitutes, as they complement each other to propel your brand’s online presence and reputation.

What Tools Can Be Used to Track PR Impact on SEO?

Below are essential tools to help you track your PR impact on SEO:

• Ahrefs: Track keyword performance and new backlinks from PR sites.
• Google Analytics: Monitor spikes in organic and referral traffic to your website.
• SEMrush: Monitor your branded search growth before, during, and after PR campaigns.
• Moz: Check changes in your website’s authority and domain rating.
• BuzzSumo: Track your PR performance across social media platforms.

Conclusion

The steps outlined in this article should help you secure brand mentions in reputable publications and other high-authority websites. You should track performance metrics to measure how your PR digital marketing contributes to your overall SEO strategy.

However, you could outsource to a link-building agency if you find this process hectic or time-consuming. They have systems in place to streamline the link-building process and secure high-quality backlinks from reputable domains.  

At Profit Engine, we offer SEO-focused PR strategies tailored to business needs. Our team incorporates AI and SEO tools where possible to streamline your PR campaigns, resulting in faster turnaround times.

Turn your brand into a digital PR powerhouse — contact us today!