How To Combine PR, Content Marketing and SEO

You can't always rely on performance marketing for all your sales to build a great company. Eventually, you will have to move into more brand-building efforts. So what should you do if want to build trust with your audience and increase brand awareness? Is it time to increase your PR budget, jump into SEO or would content marketing be a better investment? The answer is all 3.

These channels are often seen competing with one another for budget and resources, however, these marketing practices should not be done in isolation if you really want to get the most out of it. SEO, PR and content marketing work best when they’re working together.

Because the terms “public relations”, "search engine optimisation" and “content marketing” can drum up about 100 different definitions and opinions on the tactics they involve. Especially with when it comes to speaking to marketers, often they specialise in 1 of the 3 and have a bias towards their speciality.

So what exactly does each of these marketing channels do? Before we go further, let’s quickly define what we’re discussing.

Channel responsibilities

Public relations is the practice of getting others to write about your company, your leaders, or your products and services in a positive light.

Content marketing is the practice of producing content (written, visual, video, audio, etc.) coming from experts within your company that educates and engages a specific audience and distributing that content to that audience.

SEO is the practice of on-sight and off-site technical, content and website performance optimisation with the aim of improving Google rankings for relevant search terms in a bid to ultimately increase traffic.

Why are channels neglected

Unfortunately, too many marketers focus on one over the other—frequently SEO, or PR or content marketing. Reasons vary, but often it’s because content marketing is much more time-intensive and requires more ongoing involvement from various team members. Any company can hire a PR firm to land it a few quotes or features here and there but are you getting the maximum benefit.

Any company can have a writer generate a content marketing strategy that includes consistent guest posts, on-site blog content, product page, long-form content but will it get the right amount of exposure or attract the correct audience.

Any company can hire an SEO but its no point having the most optimised site technically but you're not generating regular content or continuing to build links and relationships with other sites. Now that you can see the shortcomings of each channel how do you get them to work together?

SEO builds a platform for Content marketing

If you want to be serious about content marketing you simply must lay down the foundation in SEO. Your website should be free from any technical hindrances, make sure your site makes use of optimisation techniques and that you've done your keyword research so you're well informed on what your potential customers are searching and incorporate this into your content strategy and creation.

Content generates press coverage, which fuels content

When an expert at your company consistently publishes content showcasing their (and, therefore, your company’s) expertise, people notice. Some of those people are journalists and contributors who can use your content as a jumping-off point to write about you or your company or quote you as an expert in their pieces.

Press coverage can multiply the effects of your terrific site content because it leads more people to it. For example, when your company earns a mention on a list of leaders in your industry—such as this one for content marketing companies —it can attract visitors.

Incorporating content marketing and PR

An effective communications strategy incorporates both PR and content marketing—if you want to increase awareness and build trust with your target audience, you need different types of content that validate your company and educate your audience.

You need validation. PR offers the validation of someone speaking positively about your company. That’s what PR is, right? Someone—a journalist, a reporter, or another contributor—believes your brand is cool enough to feature in some way. Maybe it’s on a top 10 list, or maybe it’s an interview with your CEO. Whatever form it takes, it’s someone outside your organization saying, “Hey, look at this company.”

Content marketing—specifically guest posting—provides the validation that your ideas are notable, too. Getting published in external publications your audience is reading demonstrates to your audience that an editor who’s not in charge of your own company blog thinks your ideas are worth sharing. This type of validation is incredibly important when you’re trying to build trust with your audience.

Your audience needs education. PR informs your audience about you and your company, which is key; you can’t start a conversation with people if they aren’t aware you exist. Pairing this PR with content marketing enables you to educate your audience members and help them solve their problems. Consistent content allows you to go into more depth on these topics and teach your audience members how to address pain points—and even explain how a company like yours might help them.

You’ll find that your own content is seen by more people who find it from the press you’re garnering, and you’ll start to notice journalists reach out for quotes and insights about topics you’ve written about in your content because they know you as an industry expert. Your company will start to be revered as the industry leader it is because your audience will hear great things about you—and valuable things from you. It’s the best of both worlds.

PR improves SEO

When PR is done effectively it reaches the eyes of an audience you would not normally be able to reach, you're leveraging off other publications audience and getting your name out there.

If you're doing digital PR you're also able to build high-quality links from publication websites, bloggers, forums, and additional social media mentions. All these citations will help build your link profile and improve your sites ability to rank for more competitive keywords.

Bringing it all together

Having a holistic strategy and bringing together a range of expertise can unearth a host of amazing opportunities for brand building, traffic and of course sales. If you can sort out the technical kinks, set up the correct targeting, generate high-quality content regularly and syndicate it across the web and offline you'll have guaranteed success in your digital marketing efforts.

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Tags: Content Marketing, public relations, SEO