Because your PR team are probably doing something right now that could be more valuable.
Honestly, everytime I read an article on link building techniques or a link buidling tutorial I can’t help but think about the last time I spoke with our PR guru. He’s a talented and animated chap with an excellent eye for a scoop, angle or generally a reason for people to talk about us.
Broadly, link-building for SEO is the same principal. The methods by which one ensures a company has a positive footprint in the broader world, map almost precisely onto the best ways to ensure a website has the same.
From Marc Cowlin’s PR101 post:
Merriam-Webster Definition: the business of inducing the public to have understanding for and goodwill toward a person, firm, or institution; also: the degree of understanding and goodwill achieved.
Certified Institute of Public Relations: Public Relations practice is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its products or services.
Marc’s article also includes the following list:
- Free Placement
- Journalistic Slant – a journalist can write what they want – no matter how you position your story
- Usually only runs one or two times per story (there are exceptions)
- Create Credibility
- Viewed as a third party endorsement
- Time consuming, not easy, no guarantees
See the links (pardon the pun) already?
Before we go any further I have to concede; many of the ground-level link building techniques are things you’d never catch a PR doing. But I think it’s fair to say these manual, time-consuming methods are often better outsourced to agencies like the excellent ContentNow article and link service and aren’t the best use of your time in-house.
Lots of linkbuilding 101 posts include the bigger hitting tactics and they broadly boil down to a few categories:
- Targeted link requests: Requesting links from authoritative, relevant sources.
- Contribute to your communities: Writing, reviewing and generally adding value to the content on the web
- Creating something to link to: Creating, syndicating and making it easy to link to great content
These are all areas that your PR dept. can help with
Get the most SEO benefit from PR activities
So how can you put your PR people in the driving seat when it comes to SEO? Hopefully the follwing tips will help them really help them to squeeze the last drop of link love from their work.
Keyword targets
Both existing easy-wins and higher-competition future keyword targets are a fantastic discussion point. Great ideas crop up for even the most competitive key terms. It’s really important to ensure your PR team are furnished regularly with the terms and themes that will have the greatest impact for your business.
Indirectly, you’ll also see more useful links in your press releases as they’ll already be in the front of the author’s mind
Existing PR activity
Is there a piece of destination content or functionality that you can use to leverage an existing rush of visitors? This is often difficult to coordinate with the tight timescales but almost always worth it to get some longevity from the rush. Easy sharing or fun functionality will help an already intrigued audience enjoy and share your content.
Receptive Partners
Your PR department already maintains a mind-boggling number of relationships with people who are far more receptive to a link or content sharing than a stranger. Usually these contacts reside in companies and publicationswith high-authority domains and valuable, authoritative content themselves.
You’ll also find other PRs in their fold who are actively looking for angles to hook up and share some limelight with mutually beneficial community activity.
In Summary
So, how do you build links? Buy your PR a coffee :o)