What is Digital PR SEO?
In today's competitive digital landscape, achieving strong online visibility is essential for businesses. While SEO has long been recognised as a pivotal strategy to improve a website's rankings, the role of Digital PR SEO is becoming increasingly vital.
So, what is Digital PR SEO?
Digital PR SEO is a powerful fusion of Digital Public Relations (PR) and Search Engine Optimization. It's a dynamic approach that combines traditional PR tactics with modern SEO techniques to enhance a website's visibility, credibility, and ultimately, its search engine rankings. In essence, it's about leveraging PR strategies to not only get featured in trusted media outlets but also to acquire high-quality backlinks, improve brand reputation, and drive organic traffic from search engines.
This blog will dive deeper into the realm of Digital PR SEO, exploring how it works, the benefits it offers, and strategies to effectively integrate it into your digital marketing efforts. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just starting to explore the world of Digital PR SEO, this blog will provide valuable insights and practical tips to help you harness this powerful approach.
How does Digital PR help with SEO?
Digital PR plays a pivotal role in enhancing SEO. The practice involves getting content featured in highly trusted media outlets like newspapers and industry-specific resources, not just mainstream media sources. With more visibility from ideal audiences, this outreach helps build valuable backlinks, which are a fundamental aspect of SEO.
Digital PR widens the scope for acquiring high-quality backlinks from diverse sources, ultimately boosting your website's authority and SEO ranking.
Can Digital PR be used to build backlinks?
Digital PR is a potent strategy for building backlinks. By creating compelling and relevant content that appeals to trusted media outlets, Digital PR can absolutely contribute to backlink acquisition. Here’s a deeper dive into Digital PR’s potential for building backlinks and successful results:
Newsjacking and Expert Commentary
One effective approach is to capitalise on trending news topics or industry events. By providing expert commentary or crafting content related to these events, you can position your brand as a reputable source of information. When journalists or media outlets seek insights on these subjects, your brand's commentary can lead to valuable backlinks from their articles.
Linkable Assets
Creating content that serves as a "linkable asset" is another robust strategy. This involves producing in-depth, data-driven research studies or informative resources. By offering unique and valuable insights into your content, you attract the attention of journalists and industry professionals. Once featured in articles or publications, these assets result in numerous high-quality backlinks to your website.
Industry Resource Backlinks
Digital PR extends to securing backlinks from authoritative industry resources, relevant to your niche. This not only enhances your website's authority but also contributes to improved SEO. Being featured in industry-specific websites or publications showcases your brand's expertise and authority within your sector.
Where can you source Digital PR backlinks?
As mentioned above, one valuable method is providing expert commentary on topics that are highly relevant to your field. This involves keeping a close watch on current events and ensuring your brand's voice and insights are consistent and readily available to journalists seeking expert opinions.
The strategy of creating content related to events and developments will help you to align with people in your industry or related sectors. By producing content that falls in line with current trends, you position your brand as a knowledgeable resource, making it more likely for journalists to turn to you for quotes and insights. Additionally, this will help to create a reputable image in the eyes of your desired audience.
When it comes to creating linkable assets on your own website, this strategy may require significant upfront effort. With that said, the results can be well worth it.
For example, if you're in a niche such as online gambling, where backlink acquisition can be challenging due to industry sensitivity, you can take a creative approach that involves another industry. By offering unique, valuable, and shareable content, you increase your chances of earning backlinks from authoritative sources while also casting a wider net.
The key is to tailor your digital PR strategy to your industry and audience while providing valuable and engaging content that encourages backlinks from various reputable sources.
Generating backlinks through newsjacking with Digital PR
One of the most powerful strategies employed in the Digital PR realm is newsjacking. This approach involves capitalizing on trending news or events relevant to your industry by creating content that resonates with both your website and the information source you aim to be featured on.
Essentially, you’ll stay top of mind with your desired audience when you keep up with their current interests. By leveraging current events, trending topics, or breaking news, you enhance your brand’s relevance and visibility. Identify what’s making waves, and align your business with that wave. Whether it’s a major news story, natural disaster, global issue, or a significant day, you can use that momentum to your advantage.
For example, if there's a current hot topic or a significant event related to your field, you can offer insights, expert commentary, or unique perspectives. By doing so, you make your brand and website relevant in the context of that news, creating a bridge between your site and authoritative information sources like trusted newspapers or industry resources.
To execute newsjacking effectively, make sure to stay consistent with these steps:
Spot Trends: Keep a watchful eye on the latest developments and trends in your industry and the broader world. This could include breaking news, social phenomena, or viral trends that capture public attention.
Create Synergy: Once you identify a pertinent topic, the magic lies in finding the connection between that subject and your brand or website. You need to craft content that seamlessly links the trending topic with your area of expertise, creating a bridge between the two.
Content Generation: Develop content that responds to or comments on the current event. This content can take various forms, such as blog posts, social media updates, videos, infographics, or any medium that suits your target audience and platform.
Timely Sharing: Speed is of the essence. Share your content promptly, ideally as soon as the news or trend starts gaining traction. This ensures your brand becomes part of the ongoing dialogue.
Engagement and Promotion: Actively engage with your audience and promote your content across multiple channels, including social media, email marketing, and your website. Encourage conversations and interaction around the trending topic.
Maintain Ethics: While newsjacking can be a potent strategy, it's critical to uphold ethical standards and show respect. Avoid exploiting sensitive or tragic events for marketing purposes.
When done well, newsjacking can lead to increased website traffic, social media engagement, and brand recognition as you align your brand with the current pulse of events.
Digital PR for taboo websites
Generating digital assets in taboo industries like gambling, adult content, or healthcare can be challenging due to the strict scrutiny and hesitancy to link to such websites. A clever strategy known as "bait and switch" can help navigate these obstacles effectively.
To implement the bait-and-switch tactic, start by creating a linkable asset hosted on a separate domain, which is unrelated to the taboo industry. For instance, if you own a gambling website with a focus on sports betting, you might compile data on football players in the Premier League who have been injured over the past year. Calculate how much they've been paid while sidelined and create a league table highlighting this information. Ensure that this league table is published on a different domain, keeping it disconnected from your gambling site.
Since the content is not directly associated with the taboo industry, newspapers and other media outlets are more likely to accept and feature it. Once the asset gains media coverage and acquires backlinks, it's time to execute the switch. Move the content to a designated page on your main website and set up a 301 redirect. This redirect will channel the link equity to your original domain, whether it's a gambling site or any other. By applying this strategy, you can leverage digital PR effectively and overcome the challenges associated with taboo industries while gaining valuable backlinks and media exposure.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Digital PR is a multifaceted strategy that goes beyond traditional digital marketing. When harnessed effectively, it becomes a powerful tool for building SEO, brand credibility, and ultimately driving revenue.
This dynamic method creates both visibility and valuable backlinks. It aligns the goals of PR with the SEO needs of a website, making it a win-win strategy for businesses aiming to boost their online presence and search engine rankings.
With the help of Quirky Digital and Digital PR SEO, you can improve your online presence through a well-rounded and effective marketing structure that benefits your brand in multiple ways.
Contact us today to learn more about the strategies within this cutting-edge approach.