Using SEO as
a PR Metric
Greg Jarboe
President and co-founder of SEO-PR
Measurement Base Camp 2021
February 9, 2021

Most communications professionals still use a
model of communication developed back in 1939
• Harold Lasswell developed this model
at the beginning of World War II.
• As Chief of the Experimental Division for
the Study of War Time Communications
at the Library of Congress, Lasswell
analyzed German propaganda films.
• Lasswell said five elements impacted
the effectiveness of communication:
• Who said it?
• What was said?
• In which channel was it said?
• To whom was it said?
• What effect did it have?
Source: Greg Jarboe, YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day, Second Edition, November 2011

PR textbooks adopted Lasswell’s model, but used
outputs instead of outtakes or outcomes as metrics
You can hand your CEO a pile
of clippings and estimated reach
counts, but at the end of the day,
proven sales are what matters.
Outputs
(clippings)
Outtakes
(surveys)
Inputs
(message)
Outcomes
(anecdotes)

I was one of the first to realize that Google News
had reversed the classic model of communication
• Who: Identify your target audiences.
• Seeks what: Find 2 or 3 relevant search terms
that your target audiences are likely to use.
• In which channel: Target news sources and
use one of the press release distribution
services crawled by Google News.
• From whom: Edit your press release -
particularly the headline and first few
sentences - and make sure that it actually
includes your target terms.
• With what effect: Add links intended to help
people find interesting, related content, when
applicable, and measure your results.
Source: Greg Jarboe, YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day, Second Edition, November 2011

More importantly, I also realized that an optimized
press release can generate traffic, leads, and sales
Outputs
(traffic)
Outtakes
(leads)
Outcomes
(sales)
Inputs
(keywords)
While press and analyst influence
remain important, lead generation
and sales are the new metrics of
marketing performance.

For example, a series of 4 optimized press releases
generated over $2.5 million for Southwest Airlines
• First, I conducted keyword research to
find relevant news search terms.
• Then, I included those search terms in
the headlines and lead paragraphs of
a series of four press releases.
• Next, I embedded a unique URL in
each release that offered further
information to consumers and linked
them to the point-of-sale.
• This enabled Southwest Airlines to
track $2.5 million in ticket sales back
to our 4 optimized press releases.
Source: Institute for Public Relations, “You Are Now Free To Link PR and Sales,” Golden Ruler Award
for Excellence in Public Relations Measurement presented to Southwest Airlines and SEO-PR, 2005

I’ve used SEO metrics to measure the results of PR
campaigns for a wide variety of other organizations
• This includes:
• 5 B2B leads worth $200 million for
Symmetricom’s chip-scale atomic clocks.
• 450,000 unique visitors in 24 hours to
The Christian Science Monitor’s website.
• 36% increase in brand searches for the
Better Homes and Gardens website.
• 129,155 entries to the annual cover
photo contest for Parents magazine.
• Double-digit increases in delegates and
exhibitors for SES Conference & Expo.
• 27% of the leads for a new online
Master’s program at Rutgers University.
Source: SEO-PR’s Digital Marketing Case Studies

I’ve tested press releases with a video, a photo, and
without multimedia for 3 New Orleans merchants
• In early 2013, the first news release
for Jazzy Nola, which included a video,
had 5,059 release views and 230 link
clicks, according to Business Wire’s
NewsTrak Reports.
• The second release for Orleans
Grapevine, which included a photo,
had 3,406 release views and 181 link
clicks.
• The third release for Glam 504, which
included no multimedia, had 3,255
release views and 169 link clicks.
Source: SEO-PR, “Get City Dealz, SEO-PR, and Business Wire Win SNCR Award,” November 11, 2013

I’ve tested an unoptimized press release with a
video and an optimized press release with a video
• The unoptimized press release with a
video generated 26 new users to the
Rutgers Business School Executive
Education (RBSEE) website, but no
registrations for the new course.
• The optimized press release with a
video generated 70 new users to
RBSEE’s website, and 6 registrations.
• At $4,995 per registration, that’s
$29,970 in incremental revenue, or
12.9X times more than the cost of the
optimized press release with a video.
Source: Greg Jarboe, The Measurement Advisor, “Measuring the Effectivness of News Releases – a Case Study,” Feb. 17, 2016

If your only target audience is journalists, then your
media relations staff should be cut by about 23%
• From 2008 to 2019, overall newsroom
employment in the U.S. dropped by
23%, according to Pew’s analysis.
• In 2008, there were about 114,000
newsroom employees – reporters,
editors, photographers and
videographers – in 5 industries that
produce news: newspaper, radio,
broadcast TV, cable and digital-native
news publishers.
• By 2019, that number had declined to
88,000, a loss of about 27,000 jobs.
Source: Pew Research Center, “U.S. newspapers have shed half of their newsroom employees since 2008,” April 20, 2020

SparkToro found a large audience of 4,170 people
who frequently talk about European Patent Office
11
Source: SparkToro, Audience Intelligence, January 23, 2021

57.1% of these people are located in the U.S., 20%
in the U.K., 10.6% in London, and 5.4% in New York
12
Source: SparkToro, Audience Intelligence, January 23, 2021

EPO’s audience engages with/shares Left-Center
news websites with mostly-high factual reporting
Source: SparkToro, Audience Intelligence, January 27, 2021

Think about the words users would type to find
your release and then conduct keyword research
• Google’s webmaster guidelines say:
“Think about the words users would
type to find your pages, and make
sure that your site actually includes
those words within it.”
• Like consumer research, keyword
research can help you find out what
people think about your kind of
product, what language they use
when they search for the topic, what
attributes are important to them, and
what promise would be most likely to
make them buy your brand.
Source: Google, Webmaster Guidelines

Go to Answer the Public, enter a topic, brand, or
product to discover what people are asking about
Source: Answer the Public: https://answerthepublic.com/

EPO.org shows up for 15,000 different keywords
and should be getting 44,000 clicks per month
Source: SpyFu, SEO Recon Files for EPO.org, Jan. 15, 2021

SpyFu identifies 50 keywords that get 81 million
searches per month that EPO.org isn’t ranked on
• EPO.org and its competitors often
show up in the same search results –
that’s why they are competitors.
• But, sometimes they are showing up
and EPO.org is not.
• Right now, there are about 81 million
searches per month where EPO.org is
not contesting its competitors.
• Look at keywords like patentability
searches, patenting ideas, and patents
for inventions, and decide whether it
makes sense to counter them.
Source: SpyFu, SEO Recon Files for EPO.org, Jan. 15, 2021

The public also uses Google to find information
concerning subjects of value and interest to them
• One woman’s car-buying journey
included over 900 digital touchpoints
in a 3-month period.
• 88% of people who conduct a local
search on their smartphone visit a
related store within a week.
• 90% of B2B researchers who are
online use search specifically to
research business purchases.
• On average, B2B researchers do 12
searches prior to engaging on a
specific brand’s site.
Source: Lisa Gevelber, Think with Google, “The Car-Buying Process: One Consumer's 900+ Digital Interactions,” March 2016

SparkToro identifies the press accounts that heavily
engage those interested in European Patent Office
• The Press tab in SparkToro uses
behavior data from website and social
sharing, engagement, and following.
• The sources cover thousands of
publications across numerous
segments of media.
• Sometimes, a search will pull back
mostly mainstream media at the top,
as in these results for the people that
talk about the European Patent Office.
• Other times, you’ll see more niche
specific publications.
Source: SparkToro, Audience Intelligence, January 27, 2021

SparkToro also identifies the websites and social
accounts that most heavily engage EPO’s audience
20
Source: SparkToro, Audience Intelligence, January 23, 2021

EPO’s audience watches, subscribes, listens-to, and
engages-with these YouTube channels and podcasts
21
Source: SparkToro, Audience Intelligence, January 23, 2021

The engineers who developed the Google News
algorithm seem to have used the inverted pyramid
• The headline is the most important
SEO factor.
• Headlines should be clear, concise and
more than 2 and less than 22 words long.
• Subheads are weighed slightly more
heavily than body copy.
• Subheads must stay true to the story,
may contain relevant synonyms, and can
be from 50 to 160 characters long.
• The lead paragraph is weighed more
heavily than later paragraphs.
• Write press releases primarily for
readers, not for search engines.

In addition to optimizing press release headlines
and subheads, optimize the lead paragraphs, too
• Search experts say the natural-
language processing algorithms scan
at least the first hundred words or so
of news articles.
• They say journalists would be wise to
include two or three of the most-
searched keywords that relate to their
subject in the first few sentences.
• “That’s not something they teach in
journalism schools,” said Danny
Sullivan, a journalist and analyst. “But
in the future, they should.”
Source: Steve Lohr, The New York Times, “IDEAS & TRENDS; This Boring Headline Is Written for Google,” April 9, 2006

European Patent Office could have optimized this
press release for the term, patents for inventions
Source: EPO.org, Press release, “New EPO study: European patents preferred tool for the commercialisation
of inventions developed by Europe's universities and public research organisations,” Nov. 24, 2020

EPO could optimize a blog post and YouTube video
entitled, How do you do a patentability search?
Sources: European Patent Office, YouTube channel, “Solving the paradox of patent searching,” June 21, 2019,
and Greg Jarboe, Search Engine Journal, “YouTube Algorithm: 7 Key Findings You Must Know,” March 13, 2019

Add links to help people find interesting, related
content on your site and measure your results
• The primary reason to add links to a
press release is to help people find
interesting, related content on your
site, when it’s available.
• But, you can also use Google’s free
Campaign URL Builder tool to help you
measure your results.
• This tool allows you to easily add
campaign parameters to your URLs so
you can track Custom Campaigns in
Google Analytics.
• You also have the option of converting
the long tracking URL to a short link.
Source: Google Analytics Demos & Tools, Campaign URL Builder

Google Tag Manager provides simple, reliable,
easily integrated tag management solutions for free
• Google Tag Manager gives you the
ability to add and update your own
tags for conversion tracking, site
analytics, remarketing, and more.
• There are nearly endless ways to track
activity across your sites, and the
intuitive design lets you change tags
whenever you want.
• You can learn the basics of Google Tag
Manager as well as strategies and
techniques to optimize your tag
implementations by taking a free Tag
Manager Fundamentals course.
Source: Google Analytics YouTube channel, “Google Tag Manager Overview,” Nov. 6, 2018

European Patent Office can use Google Analytics
and goal conversions to measure its SEO and PR
Source: Greg Jarboe, Search Engine Journal, “3 Strategic SEO Insights & Tactical Advice for 2021,” Oct. 21, 2020

European Patent Office can also use Google Search
Console to track clicks for top 5,000 search queries
Source: Greg Jarboe, Search Engine Journal, “3 Strategic SEO Insights & Tactical Advice for 2021,” Oct. 21, 2020

You’ve learned why search reverses the model of
communication and how to use SEO as a PR metric
• Some communications professionals
may be reluctant to use SEO as a PR
metric because they can be evaluated
by their deeds, instead of their words.
• But, according to Indeed:
• The average salary for a PR manager is
$59,698 per year in the United States.
• The average salary for an SEO manager is
$80,342 per year in the United States.
• So, being able to show your
contribution to the bottom line can
boost your salary by 34.6%.