What Every SEO Specialist Should Know About PR
The goal for every SEO specialist is to get their client’s website ranked on relevant, high-trafficked keywords. You can dive into the data, spend hours in Moz and SEM Rush, and optimize all your content day after day, but if you don’t have those precious backlinks, your effort will hardly make a difference.
We all know it. Backlinks matter.
Backlinks are the most challenging part of the SEO specialist’s job. It’s out of your control and has barely anything to do with data.
But if you’re a publicist, backlinks are simply a byproduct of getting regular media placements.
The goal for any publicist is to get the media to talk about your business and backlinks are organically baked into that process.
Think about what that means. If you’re a savvy SEO specialist, with some PR skills too, you’ve just solved the hardest part of the job.
Here are 4 Things Every SEO Specialist Should Know About PR:
#1 You don’t have to hire a publicist to do PR
PR isn’t hard. It basically comes down to writing emails to the media. Sure, there’s some insider’s strategy that will make you more successful, but you don’t have to have a degree in public relations to get the job done.
You can learn how to be a publicist just because you want to increase your own value as a SEO specialist. And in my experience, it doesn’t take very long to get the hang of it either.
(Pssst….I can teach you how to be your own publicist!)
#2 Getting media attention is a marathon
Everything about SEO is a marathon and PR fits the bill too. To get results, you have to consistently work on it at least every week. It’s definitely not a “one and done” kind of task.
Even if you get results right away, you know that Google wants to see more and fresh backlinks all the time. I recommend scheduling a solid hour every week dedicated just to reach out to the media.
#3 You need to rethink evergreen
You know that evergreen content is the best, but the media works on trends. You can try to pitch your evergreen stories, but if it doesn’t have any urgency, it’s harder to get the media contact to care about it.
Rather than focusing only on evergreen stories, think about the trends that repeat like seasons or holidays and build your story from there. That way, you can get hits every time that topic is popular again.
#4 Plan in advance
Most of the time, the media contact is working on some sort of lead time. You can think of lead time as the deadline the media contact needs to submit their article by in order for it to be published. Knowing the right lead time will make or break your success.
For example, in the middle of summer, it’s okay to pitch a story about Christmas. Two weeks before Christmas, your options are going to be really limited.
#5 Good PR hits the keywords your customers use
Unlike the carefully crafted list of keywords you want to rank on, most journalists are going to use whatever words they want. It’s out of your hands.
But don’t panic, the words they choose are probably going to be more reflective of what your customers use than anything a keyword research tool will tell you. And in any case, Google is getting smarter every day and will probably pick up on the context of the article.
You’re the SEO expert here, so you know how this works.