Over the next 10 business days I will be posting a series of SEO tips focused mostly on how to employ search engine optimization tactics for online PR benefit. This Top Ten SEO Tactics for PR Professionals series is centered around a presentation I am giving at the PRSA Digital Impact conference. If you’re attending that event, you’ll get the best of both worlds by reading this series as a complement to the in-person presentation.
Driven by customers and the consequences of not doing so, the public relations industry has warmed in recent years to the power of search engine optimization for growing the impact of pull based PR efforts.
Now more than ever, journalists, bloggers and industry influentials use search engines to find subject matter experts, research companies, locate past media coverage and to track topical trends. In fact, a recent survey on journalists’ use of search by TopRank reports that 91% of those journalists, reporters and editors surveyed use search engines to do their jobs.
Traditionally, search engine optimization efforts have been managed by corporate marketing departments – either in-house or through an outside agency. However, will all the opportunities to create value in the form of increased online brand visibility, reputation management and internet based media coverage, public relations deserves a seat at the corporate SEO table.
To achieve that, it’s important that PR professionals understand the foundation of SEO tactics as well as the business benefits for PR efforts as well as to the larger organization. The upcoming series of posts will outline SEO and PR tactics with the most impact, how to choose the best keywords, on page SEO and link building best practices as well as measuring the value of SEO to public relations efforts. It will also cover when PPC is a better fit than SEO, how to combine SEO and social media promotions and the finer points of selling the benefits of SEO to decision makers.
Corporate web site optimization projects require an equal measure of search engine knowledge, understanding of corporate messaging and ability to appreciate and acquire links from credible sources. By learning the fundamentals of SEO and the possible impact on public relations effectiveness, PR departments can demonstrate their competitive advantage.
To that end, here is the schedule of SEO for Public Relations posts that I’ll be doing in the coming weeks:
- SEO tactics – if I could only do one thing…
- PR tactics that affect SEO
- When is PPC better than SEO for PR?
- How to choose the best keywords
- Do’s & Don’ts of on-page SEO for News Content
- Essential Press Release Optimization Tips
- Pull PR and Newsroom Optimization Tactics
- Link building fundamentals for news content
- Making News Content SEO and Social Media Friendly
- Measuring the Value of Optimized Public Relations
Keep in mind that while these explanations and examples will be centered around PR and news content, many of the SEO and social media marketing tactics can be applied to any kind of content whether it be job listings, FAQ/Knowledge Base info or products/services. As each article is posted, I’ll link to it from the list above.
Here is the PowerPoint Presentation:
Great Blog…. you have covered almost everything that is related SEO’s. your article is definitely very helpful.
First, let me just say I have been following your posts quite often lately. I wanted to ask whether it is true that the EU just agreed to have all websites ask for the agreement of the visitor when a cookie is being passed through the browser. I think that would be very difficult to manage for us, the not-native internet users…. Do you know anything about this? Supposedly this would turn all websites more complicated, including blogs? What are cookies and why are they dangerous? Are cookies from your blog safe?
Thank you and very interested in your reply,
Mary,
Lee, thanks for your fantastic presentation today at PRSA Digital Impact. I can’t wait for the rest of this blog series to round out my learnings from today.
Thank you Lara, I really appreciate that. I’ll be posting the next in the series of 10 posts on SEO Basics for PR Practitioners shortly.
This is a really great post with lots of great SEO tips. I am looking forward to reading your other posts over the next couple of days.
A good friend told me that only 20% of SEO is on-page stuff. Thoughts?
Raza Imam
“a die-hard Blackberry user with a soft spot for the Palm Pre”
It has been a great blog series so far and will continue to watch for the posts.
Thanks, I appreciate that.
Great blog and very helpful SEO presentation and very timely! Thanks for sharing, have now bookmarked this as well!
Warm regards
Kincavel
Thanks, Lee, very helpful.
I found you blog recently from onr marketing article to the next, you know how that goes.
But I subscribe to yours becuse you have the most solid marketing blog around, always very good content, and not as granular as ClickZ, who are also great if you like granular, very detailed treatments of marketing topics.
Since marketing is only part of my business, I appreciate your Big Picture view how all the parts fit.
Very well done on this series as well.
I stumbled upon your site, learnt a lot of the basics about how to approach and link Social Networks/PR strategies, and wanted to thank you.
Great Tutorial in few minutes ,only the major thinks, n Congratulations
Great Tutorial in few minutes ,only the major thinks,
Congratulations