Does PR have a place in today’s Search Marketing?

Hitting the first pages in the search engines is the holy grail of online marketing for the vast majority of businesses, but with the seemingly complex features of Web 2.0 and near infinite array of initialisms and acronyms including SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), PPC (Pay Per Click) and now SMO (Social Media Optimisation), marketing traditionalists would be forgiven for finding the whole ordeal a little daunting.

Interestingly, a significant proportion of search engine ranking shares more than you might think with traditional roots – public relations. Indeed a number of SEO agencies are offering online PR as part of their remit, not least because it is an integral aspect of their SEO work anyway.

But why? At its simplest form, off-site SEO (work that occurs outside the client site’s domain) consists of linking relevant content back to the client’s site, thereby building their site’s relevance and authority on the web. And in many instances that is achieved by submitting press releases to third party sites and embedding links back to the client’s own portal, thereby building its authority in the search engines.

However, with the rapid expansion of social networks such as Facebook and YouTube, the demands for further developing new and exciting online publicity activities have been heightened, and it seems simple press releases, aside from the obvious benefit of back links, are not quite going to have the requisite effect on brand or development. Seemingly everyone is now wondering whether if they don’t make a hysterical video post on YouTube, their online business activity will surely collapse. But the truth is that if your company makes, for example, carpet-tiles, are you really going to benefit from trying to positively influence potential customers by posting a 3 minute video on a forum or trying to generate more than 30 friends on MySpace by releasing a cheesy jingle? Quite possibly not.

I see both opportunities and pitfalls in Social Media and PR relating to Search - Like so many forms of marketing, the key is looking at the company and their core offering, then creating a service to match. Results are going to be much harder to achieve if you shoe-horn a company campaign into a marketing strategy for which it quite simply doesn’t suit. Understanding a client’s business and marrying it to the best online activity can be tricky, and businesses shouldn’t be drawn into engaging in something simply because of hype.

The facts to bear in mind are, as always, traffic and target audiences when looking at online activity. By cleverly structuring online PR in line with these requirements, companies should be able to benefit massively from online exposure (particularly when looking at recent improvements such as the ubiquitous Google and their Universal Search) and make the most of Social Media and Web 2.0 – ensuring it is targeted, relevant and generates the most profitable level of traffic – traffic specific to them.



Does PR have a place in today’s Search Marketing? - To learn more about this author, visit Elliot Jones's Website.

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