Friday, August 11, 2006

Increasing SEO rankings through PR

PR articles have always had an important role as part of the marketing communication and services mix. Not only because of their pull because of the believability factor, but also because of their use in an editorial environment. This environment is encountered not only in the trade magazines but in the web through E-zines.

Marketing communication practitioners, both consultants and clients alike, are well aware of the pull that that press release articles can achieve. But they may not be aware of what these articles can do in improving search engine rankings of their web sites.

This is done in two ways, first of all linking back to a website, through information on the press release article. Contact details of the article’s author should have the URL of the client’s website.

The other way is through the inclusion of keywords in the article. In the Web 2.0 world, placing keywords in client’s website Meta tags is not enough. The web crawlers of today search web content, on page, but also off page looking for keywords in the many news items found on the web.

With the enormous database management capabilities of today’s search engine, picking up these keywords is a much easier task than it was in the web’s early days (Web 1.0).

Hence, optimising links and use of keywords in PR articles help improve search engine rankings, because search engines list sites with the most backlinks and keywords in the top of each keyword listing.

Recognising that the Web 2.0 world paradigm may be a tad confusing for most communication practitioners, we, at JG Marketing Services, include SEO (search engine optimisation) considerations as part and parcel of the PR preparation services offered, at no added cost.

While we are not always involved in the preparation or updating of our clients’ websites, we take the attitude that we should assist our clients’ overall communication needs, whatever part of the marketing communication mix we are involved in.

Since we began offering marketing services in 1980, we have been continually looking at ways to improve and add value with the different aspects of marketing communication we have been involved in.