I got to meet with the PR firm Ruder Finn today in downtown San Francisco and our talk focused on how similiar the PR and online link building industries are. Let's examine the two side by side:
Public Relations:
- Build a contact list of reporters, writers, press folks, etc.
- Target a piece of client activity - a launch, a re-launch, an event, a new product, a new company, etc.
- Target the people on the contact list most likely to be receptive to covering the activity
- Pitch the activity of the client to the press folks in creative ways that will make them take notice
- Measure success based on articles, stories and coverage
Organic Link Building:
- Target a site and set of keywords/phrases or generic area of focus
- Through competitive analysis and search, establish a list of the important link sources and potential link sources.
- Send emails, make phone calls, send packages to folks to engage their interest and get them to provide links back to the content
- Measure success via links and coverage online
SEO and Public Relations - two peas in a pod. Do you see opportunities for crossover here? I think that what the PR industry currently calls EPR (electronic) is a direct correlation. I wonder if we'll see Publicis snap up WeBuildPages or Fortune Interactive acquire Edelman (OK, so the former's more likely than the latter, but you get the gist).
New big business is seo but customer wants generally foolish as do be first in mp3 keyword for 200$.
Yes, PR is better than traditional link exchange.
We use SEO PR service of ePressReleases.org and got satisfactory result.
ePressReleases.org post PR on its site as well as blog and it helps to get TWO one way links with PR submission.
Social media sites are good for creaging one way links and it also helps to interested group on net.
We used linkedin.com for dong one way link building - SEO Israel
The PR people I've worked with are more than eager to see how they can squeeze as much value out of every press release that they can.
SEO and Public Relations all go along with other . If it is not well done no matter how you did .
Good observation.
SEO and Public Relations - oh yeah. Been writing about that for a few years now.
We cross train our PR reps that do all of the media relations and pitching on link building and blog relations as well.
Tagging, blogs, optimized releases, pitching, optimization and even social networking all work together very nicely.
We've won PR contracts against some of the largest PR firms in the country because of our expertise with both offline/online PR and SEO.
Shhhh don't tell anybody.
One of my SEO clients is a high tech pr firm, which may seem to raise the question why don't they do in-house their SEO efforts. It's actually a lot more efficient for them to spend all their time on public relations and outsource the non overlap SEO tasks. I imagine at some point in the near future most of the pr firms will buy / bring in house SEO related tasks.
The problem currently is a lot of what falls under the term "SEO" involves changing the client's website and giving content creation ideas, setting up a blog w/th a blogging strategy, promoting content on social media sites, using analytics and increasing the CTA, as well as lots of other general consulting tasks. These may not overlap with what pr firm customers expect of them.
I can't imagine most pr firms wanting to have a discussion like "ok before we get into the CNN interview section lets talk about changing the code on some of the pages of your website, the analytic data we've looked at so far and how to increase your call to action." They are similar and are moving closer and closer together, but aren't there yet.
I should add that I do believe pr firms will do a lot of the link building and have general knowledge about SEO in the future, but a lot of the tasks that "higher end" (what word would you use?) SEO's do for their clients (including creating link bait which may involve web development, community building, and monitoring analytic information / trends and using that info to increase conversion ratio, etc) is still outside the reach / desire of most PR firms to provide to their clients.
Wow... there is an embarrassing amount of similarity.
I sure am glad that my efforts can focus on linkbuilding... I don't have to smile and kiss up as much. And, if they don't like my face, I might still get the link. :-)
Nice ideas about link building. I have tried a few but have a success of only about 2%.
Good rule of thumb when qualifying clients - how active, friendly and involved is their PR firm.
Working hand and hand is much better than ideas getting lost down the line or big PR campaign being launched and no one telling the SEO people who can give a "use anchor text instead of 'click here'" tip (unless it's Adobe's PR agency).
BTW, TopRank's Lee Odden is a PR firm partner and does SEO.