I read two great features which for me underline the importance of the PR department to the wider search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy of an organisation.
First up, SEOMoz search legend Rand Fishkin shares his “best SEO secret” – and it’s all about creating links to your content from authoritative sources, such as media and blogs. This is where online PR gets to work, creating news stories to build links back from high-ranking news sources and blogs.
“Think about the value to a select group of users who own websites and can create links – bloggers, small business owners, press + media, etc. If you can’t make an incentive for this ‘link-likely’ audience, you’ll lose out to competitors who do,” Fishkin writes.
Secondly, Paratus Communications’ Adam Vincenzini highlights the importance of ‘evergreen content’ – content with long-term relevance that rarely goes of date – in his latest blog post. I agree with Vincenzini’s notion that “creating ‘news only’ content is not only limiting but its lifespan is getting shorter and shorter”.
PRs now have to strike a balance: get the authoritative links back from influencers (news) but also look long-term to evergreen content so that PR can truly complement search marketing efforts. If your PR and search teams aren’t already talking to each other – get to it!
