A practical plan and third-party tool recommendations for SEO for public relations

1. SEO for public relations
in 15 steps
Stephen Waddington
@wadds

2. SEO missed opportunity for public
relations
Public relations missed out on the search engine
optimisation (SEO) market. But it has a second
chance thanks to changes to Google’s algorithm.
My recent blog post The State of SEO and Public
Relations spotlights the opportunity.

3. Practical how-to
This deck results from collaboration between myself,
Escherman’s Andrew Smith and We Need A
Resolution’s Gary Preston and Stella Bayles.
Between us we’ve developed this practical 15 point
plan for public relations and SEO.

4. #1 Health and wellbeing
Use Google Webmaster tools to characterise your
site. It will provide you with basic information about
your site’s performance, security issues, how users
are finding the site via search and the keywords that
they’re using. It’s a good place to start.

5. #2 Site audit
Onsite audits are typically the domain of technical
teams but it's a straightforward task to undertake a
site audit using tools such as Google Webmaster
Tools or Screaming Frog and identify any issues that
may be sub-optimal. Site speed, site map, broken
links and poor Meta data are all common issues.
Addressing these may result in an immediate
performance boost.

6. #3 Goals
Define your goal but be realistic. If you want to get to the
top page of a Google search for a fiercely competitive
term, recognise that you've got a big challenge. Think
about the markets you operate in, who your prospects and
customers are, and consider the topics and issues that are
relevant to them.
However, also appreciate that some brands have big
budget pots available to defend their existing high positions
as well as challenge for them in the right markets.

7. #4 Planning
Tools such as AnswerthePublic will help you explore what
people are looking for and the types of questions that are
being put into Google every day.
Google AdWords Keyword Planner provides a vast amount of
data for free that informs how people search for the market
related to your organisation.
Use this to prioritise based on the biggest search volumes and
align keywords with your organisation and its market.

8. #5 Natural language
A burgeoning tool market has emerged to support
campaign planning across fragmented forms of
media and devices. Think hard about your workflow
and how you can best integrate tools to deliver
against your campaign objectives. Challenge
vendors to demonstrate how their tools can help
you deliver the outcomes that you need.

9. #6 Keyword strategy
If your keyword terms are popular terms such as 'car
insurance', ‘family holiday’ or 'London' you're going to have a
tough job.
Use Google without personalised settings, opening an
incognito browser use search and tools such Google AdWords
Keyword Planner or UberSuggest to evaluate your
competition, see what content currently occupies the top slot
for a search term and your chance of outranking incumbents.
A long-tail strategy focused on less popular keywords maybe
a smarter approach. You need to be realistic and balance
opportunity with investment.

10. #7 Devices
Check out which devices people are using to access
your website. The chances are that they are
increasingly mobile.
The content on your website should be responsive and
optimised for each device. Increasingly content
management systems provide this functionality.
The mobile usability reports in Google's Webmaster can
really help understand consumer behaviour, and
Google has created a Mobile Usability Tool to help test
the basic mobile usability of a site.

11. #8 Earn links through public relations
engagement (1/2)
It's highly likely that your planning exercise will have
thrown up examples of media sites that you can target
for earned media coverage. Earning editorial content is
a fundamental of good public relations practice.
You’ll find that many pieces of coverage already
include links to your client’s website.

12. #8 Earn links through public relations
engagement (2/2)
This all helps increase their general visibility. However to gain
increases for particular keywords you should focus your
online public relations activity to one area of the site. Targeted
links to one category or page will help amplify that content
within Google search.
Domain Authority and Page Authority (the potential of a domain
or site to ranks for search) is the currency of this market. Use tools
such as Moz or Majestic to identify related sites with a high trust
and authority where you can pitch content. You need to build
enough valuable links to outperform your competitive set.

13. #9 Content
Develop an editorial or content calendar. My personal mantra
for 2015 that I tell anyone that'll listen is stop posting shit on the
Internet. The Searchmetrics 2014 SEO Report showed that
Google appears to favour long form content, which will always
win over limp copy. Frequency is important but never at the
sacrifice of relevance. The simple fact is that content that
doesn’t resonate turns visitors off and is highly unlikely to earn
links.
When you successfully secure online coverage ask for a link
back to your site or the web page that you wish to build Google
authority for.

14. #10 Onsite optimisation
Follow best practice for on site content optimisation. Most
content management systems take care of this for you.
Resist any temptation to game content. You'll be penalised
in the future if not immediately.
Images are a good example. By all means use a descriptive
filename rather than a string of letters or numbers but don't
pack the ALT tag with keywords. It’s intended to help blind
and partially sighted users navigate a websites and has no
value as a mechanism for gaming search.

15. #11 Spam
Google penalises spam and syndicated content. If
you're distributing content via a newswire that is
likely to be posted onto several other sites make sure
that you use no follow links. Other tactics such as
commenting on a blog and adding a link are simply
daft. Avoid spam.

16. #12 Social
There's limited evidence to suggest that sharing content on
social networks has an impact on how it ranks for search in
Google. In crude terms view social as a channel to distribute
content that'll earn you links.
Google wants to provide the most relevant and fresh content
to its user’s queries. If it can see a piece of relevant content
has been recommended by influencers and it has a peak of
activity on Twitter it often increases the visibility of that content
quicker than usual.

17. #13 Measurement
Life is far more complex than last click attribution.
Use an analytics tool such as Google Analytics to
understand your customer journey. Track a few
metrics that are tied to your efforts and the business
or organisations outcomes that you are seeking to
address.

18. #14 Customer journey
There's a related pointed. Delivering traffic to a website
is typically only the start of a process. In sales terms it's
the start of the funnel. Think about what other means of
engagement you need to undertake to deliver a
desired outcome or behavioural change.
Google has a tool called Google Consumer Barometer
that enables you to explore the customer journey for
many markets.

19. #15 Fail fast
Agile management teaches us to test lots of ideas and
rapidly iterate. Get comfortable with measuring the
outcome of every effort. Interpreting data from
analytics tools such as Google Analytics is a critical skill.
The culture of celebrating and learning is
commonplace in the SEO community but is
uncomfortable for public relations. It's another area
where we could do much better.

20. Search and public relations #PRstack
1. AnswerthePublic – find out what questions and queries your consumers have by
getting a free report of what they're searching for in Google and YouTube.
2. Google AdWords Keyword Planner – tool that helps you build search
campaigns by finding keyword ideas and estimating how they may perform.
3. Google Analytics – tool to help understand how people are finding and
navigating your web site.
4. Google Consumer Barometer – tool from Google to help you understand how
people use the Internet across the world.
5. Google Mobile-Friendly Test – analyses a websites and reports if it has a mobile-
friendly design and its impact on search.

21. Search and public relations #PRstack
6. Google Webmaster Tools – suite of tools to check the health of a website.
7. Majestic - link intelligence tools to help characterise website search
performance.
8. Market Samurai – link intelligence tools to help characterise website search
performance.
9. Moz - link intelligence tools to help characterise website search performance.
10. Screaming Frog – on site audit tool to ensure a site is optimised for search
marketing.
11. UberSuggest – generate keyword ideas with Übersuggest the free keyword
suggestion tool that makes good use of different suggestion services.

22. What have we missed?
I am genuinely envious of the spirit of cooperation
that exists in other industries such as SEO and
notable exceptions aside, recognise it as missing in
the public relations sector. Help change that today
by suggesting areas that I may have missed or your
own tips for SEO for public relations.

23. Further reading and thank-you
CIPR Best Practice Guide by Andrew Smith
Developing PR in the age of Google by Stella Bayles
We Need A Resolution
With thanks to Andrew Smith, Escherman and Gary
Preston and Stella Bayles of We Need A Resolution.

24. Stephen Waddington is Chief Engagement Officer
at Ketchum and Visiting Professor of Practice in
Public Relations at the University of Newcastle.
If you’d like to discuss any of the issues raised in this
deck please contact Stephen at
Stephen.Waddington@ketchum.com