Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an essential piece of the digital and online puzzle, and is a critical element in all PR and marketing campaigns. Simply put, SEO is the process of improving the quality and quantity of traffic to a website through various techniques which help elevate a website’s rankings with top search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Everyday there are more than 4.7 billion searches conducted on Google – online is the place to find, research, and look up information. All companies, B2C and B2B alike, need to optimize any and all content pushed out online to ensure they can be easily found by people searching for similar products or services. If your content isn’t optimized with links and relevant keywords, your message may become lost among competitors, putting sales and market share at risk.

Because of the widespread technological advances which make content readily available online, it’s important for B2B companies to utilize the web for content distribution using relevant SEO terms to maximize visibility. The same is true for SEOing company websites as well as social media pages in order to increase search engine ranking and therefore being more easily found by target audiences.

Content and Link Building
SEO utilizes a number of techniques to increase a company’s search engine rankings – two of the most important factors being content distribution and “link building,” which refers to the act of including pertinent links within your content that link back to your website, social media platforms, company blog, or even to other reputable sources, experts etc. This is imperative for SEOing your content as well as establishing your company/client as a thought leader within a certain space. Link building encourages others to do the same and ‘link back’ to you, providing you with greater online visibility.

PR professionals are skilled at creating compelling content—this is a critical element of our job. Now, we spend time researching and selecting the right keywords to maximize the visibility of this content, and linking this content to relevant pages of the website, company social media pages, blogs, etc.

While SEO is important, content should never be written solely for search engine optimization –content should be written with a purpose and with your audience in mind. After it’s completed, then you can go back, review the content, and optimize it with keywords where you feel it’s warranted.

SEO & Social Media

Another component of our job as PR professionals is to find the right mixture of all these different pieces—SEO, link building, social media, blogs, etc—and marry them in a way that creates a dynamic, content-rich online/digital footprint for clients. It’s vital to blend content marketing, SEO and social media to develop a maximum visibility for clients and their core audience(s).

In 2010, Facebook was the most popular Google search term with almost 25 billion searches. Bing, another top search engine, actually incorporates Facebook “likes” into its search results which demonstrates the importance of having your content disseminated across various online channels to achieve the highest visibility. Since Facebook “likes” affect your search engine rankings on Bing, you want more people to “like” your website pages, blogs, etc. to increase your search engine results.

To that same point, Google uses your Twitter bio content as an overall/generalized description of your profile on search results – so it’s important that your Twitter profile, as well as your tweets, are keyword-rich in order to elevate positioning in search engine ranking. A good tip: align your Twitter and Facebook bios with the ‘About Us’ messaging on your website for continuity across all platforms.

If you’re in healthcare, insurance, technology or other professional services industries, and need help with public relations, marketing or crisis communications, contact Scott Public Relations.

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