When it comes to digital marketing, SEO and PR teams are like bread and butter. In this blog, we explore how these two teams can work together to benefit each other and the business as a whole.
1. On-page copy
Before publishing anything on the website, the PR and SEO teams need to work together to define the SEO on-page strategy for each page. Every page has its own look and feel, hence needs to be optimized according to basic SEO metrics such as title tags, meta description, content, signature tags, links etc.
Find out the keywords which the website copy should be targeting and the content is being optimized for, how images are being ‘alt-tagged’ and what internal links need to be added.
The PR team should be doing this by default before adding or changing anything on the site to ensure it fits with the overall business SEO goals.
2. Off-page copy
The PR team needs to ensure they keep SEO in mind when publishing something on any 3rd party publisher site, such as a press release or a guest blog. Also they need to keep in mind proper tagging in form of UTM tags while getting this content published, to be able track the incoming traffic from these sources.
Backlinks are a key part of any SEO strategy, so make sure you ask the SEO team what anchor text should be used and what pages to link back to.
3. Social media channels
If the need arises, PR team is accorded management of their client’s social media channels. One needs to know that social media if used efficiently can generate strong social signals.
As social signals become more important to SEO, the PR team needs to ensure they are promoting and linking to the correct pages when posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and Google Plus.
4. Make the most of your contact book
SEO is focused on building a good number of backlinks from other websites and blogs; getting these really valuable links from sites with high domain-authority and page-authority should be the key directive.
Gaining exposure from key influencer blogs and media pages to automatically earn these high-quality links should really be core agenda for any good PR team.
5. Quality content
While the technical side of SEO – such as site architecture, anchor text, backlinks, etc. – is important, equally important is creating quality content. It has even become even more important following Google’s recent algorithm updates in 2016.
This is another area that both PR and SEO teams must collaborate on, – listing hot topics, building good quality articles, videos or infographics that will also help generate shares and backlinks.
6. Analytics
PR is essentially generating awareness of a brand, which should ultimately lead to more visits to their website as people go online to find out more about them.
It is important for the PR team to have access to their Google Analytics so they can track the impact of their activities /engagements on the website.
It is likely that the SEO team will have direct access to this information, so talk to them about getting access. If you can’t get access to the Google Analytics then request a weekly report of key metrics.
7. Balance is important
There needs to be a balance between what works and what doesn’t for improving search rankings and ensuring you are delivering a good user experience to your users. Doing so will help create great engagement on your online pages.
Optimizing content for Google crawlers is a different art to creating content that people actually would want to read. This is where the PR team with their copywriting skills will complement the SEO strategy, creating a win-win situation and driving quality audience to your website.
Do connect with us and let us know if these worked well to support your digital strategy.