Working for a PR, social media and SEO agency I create and execute integrated strategies across these three disciplines, ensuring that my clients are visible in the media, on social networks and in organic search engine listings. We recently achieved some fantastic results for one particular client so I wanted to share the approach and findings of this SEO PR project my clients site is ranking on the first page of google.co.uk for six strategic terms, which have a total traffic volume of over 25,000. I hope to illustrate how a little joined up thinking can put you where you want to be in the results pages in a relatively short amount of time, as it did for this particular client (all rankings are correct at the time of writing).
Backlinks from trustworthy websites are highly desirable when it comes to search engines (such as Google) positioning your website high up in the rankings, meaning businesses can no longer rely on only having an on-site SEO perspective. Of course, to obtain quality links you need to put in some hard work and provide great content - unless youre going to pay for them, which I would never recommend and the likelihood of them being quality is slim at best! Using PR tactics and creating news angles not only increases brand visibility and can position a business or spokesperson as an industry leader, they are also successful ways of encouraging backlinks; online sources that are publishing your story will often link to your site and if they dont initially, using those all-important PR skills can often persuade them to. Nevertheless, on-site work also continues to be crucial if the best results are to be achieved and this is why integrated should be your campaigns buzz word.
On-site Preparation
The client firstly wanted a new website so working closely with the partnered creative agency I was able to ensure the correct elements were implemented on-site. As long as your web development team has the capability of creating new landing pages, there should be no need to start from scratch. Ideally you will want your page URL, title, H1 or H2, copy text, meta keywords, meta description, image title and image ALT attribute all to contain your chosen keywords. Due to the timescale of my clients project we chose to concentrate on six keywords, all of which we created bespoke landing pages for.
Keyword Research
We investigated 175 potential keywords that were applicable to the London trading firm, particularly those relevant to its fully funded trading course, which is an element of the business that it wanted to promote as a priority. 32 of these terms had between 590 and 201,000 people searching for them monthly in Google.co.uk (approximate figures taken from Google Adwords Keyword Tool) so we looked at the trends of these searches; the sites which were positioned in the rankings at the time, that is the competition, were also explored and their backlinks considered so we could decide on six strategically significant terms. They were, graduate programme, graduate training, trading jobs, become a trader, graduate training scheme and training traders, and the company was not ranking for any of these keyphrases.
Thought Leadership Articles And Press Releases
Creating press releases and articles that offer a unique perspective are two age old PR activities. However, the targets are not your traditional print publications, instead, you should target online sources and especially ones that are happy to provide links. 24 custom-made pieces of content were created and sold-in to the media via a number of established methods, which then appeared across the web; they included our keyword anchor links, which were rotated to ensure all six were used evenly, as well as links to the top level domain. All 24 press releases and articles have been distributed and I hope the results below speak for themselves.
Results
Within just seven weeks, all six terms are organically ranking on the first page of Google.co.uk, which is where Im sure youd all like to be for a number of terms that are valuable to your business bottom line. For my client, this integrated campaign has meant that its website, trader training program and other services are now visible to an extra 25,000 (approximate) people each month. Thats 300,000 people a year who are searching for something that they can offer and thats a lot of potential new website visitors who may never have known that the firm existed if the integrated SEO PR< activity hadnt been executed.
Whether youre just starting out or have an established business that you would like to be more visible in organic search engine rankings, using an integrated approach can help you to achieve results. Some terms are extremely sought after so depending on your industry you may wish to tier your keywords, ensuring your SERP KPIs are reasonable and aligned with how competitive the terms are. There is unfortunately no rule that can be applied to find out how quickly your website should rank on the first page for a particular term and it may not appear there at all; it all depends on how many pieces of content you create, how desirable the content is and what the competition for each term is. Nevertheless, by seeing the results of this particular case study I hope you see the huge benefit that can be had by taking an integrated approach to SEO and PR.
