SEO and PR have become closely integrated, with PR techniques now playing an important role in SEO. Creating high-quality content and building relationships with journalists, bloggers and influencers helps improve a website's authority and generates natural links and signals that search engines like Google use to determine rankings. A focus on optimizing content for users by addressing their intent and goals, as well as creating content that can be widely shared, has become more important to SEO success than outdated techniques like keyword stuffing or hidden text.

1. SEO & PR

2. Why we want to be

3. Over half of all organic traffic goes through the first link

4. Less than 5% of organic search traffic goes through the 5th link

5. 87% of UK search
traffic goes through
Google
The closest
competitor is Yahoo
with around 3%

6. The alternative, paid
search, is expensive.
It works well for new
brands and sites

7. Traffic Source Bounce Rate Pages/Visit Avg Duration
Paid 48% 3.2 2m 10s
Organic 38% 4.4 2m 36s

8. A brief history of search

9. The spiders take over!
SEO’s can now
manipulate search
results based on
research and testing

10. Google Page Rank
released in 1998
Starts a long history
between SEO and links
Meta tags, descriptions
and optimised landing
pages become
important
PR toolbar released in
2000

11. Many brands still aren’t
optimising for search
People with knowledge
of SEO are able to rank
well for a wide range
of terms

13. Keyword stuffing: Packing long lists of keywords on your site.
Invisible text: This is putting lists of keywords in white text on a white
background in hopes of attracting more search engine spiders.
Doorway Pages: Essentially a fake page that the user will never see. It
is purely for search engine spiders
Duplicate content – Scraping content from other sites and optimising
the pages to appear higher in rankings
Poor quality content – Content that draws people in but provides little
or no quality
Hidden content – showing search engine spiders content that’s not seen
by the user
Link farming – creating websites for the purpose of sharing links within
that group

14. What does an SEO do?
1. Keyword research - Identifying the least expensive and
competitive but most powerful and profitable keywords
for client sites.
2. Builds sitemaps, reviews site architecture, writes
optimised headlines and header tags, HTML and CSS
coding.
3. Looks for opportunities to exploit the search market
using a range of technical approaches.

15. Google finally starts to
penalise keyword
stuffing and over
optimisation of
homepages with an
update called ‘Florida’.

16. 2009 – Enter social
Search engines can
now find fresher, better
content from social
networks

17. A new algorithm
update called ‘Caffeine’
means Google can now
index the web more
often, providing more
up to date search
results
This is shortly followed
by real time search
which now includes
results from sites like
Twitter

18. Google CEO says the
internet is becoming a
cesspool of false
information
He suggests that
brands are the best
way to solve the
problem
Google releases ‘Vince’
algorithm update

19. PANDA TIME!
New algorithm update
prevents sites with low
quality content getting
good rankings
Now SEO’s have to
focus on GOOD
CONTENT
Lot’s more SEO is
dead blog posts

20. Another update called
‘Penguin’ starts to
punish sites that build
low quality links
Blog networks and link
directories are hit hard
Duplicate content is
also penalised

21. SEO changes (a lot)
People start marketing to people again
Publishing the right content in the right
place at the right time becomes the key
Content must be helpful, fulfil intent and not
be interruptive
Content that people want to share

22. Jimmy McCann, head of SEO,
Search Laboratory
Brad Miller, Director of
Business Development,
Fathom
SEO is now about
creating a good
website that users like
and then doing proper
marketing and PR so
you maximise the
digital signals of
quality and relevance.
To improve your company’s SEO, you
must embrace the skills and techniques that PR
professionals have been using for years.
You’re Dead… If You
Don’t Integrate Social
Media & PR Into Your
Local SEO Strategy.
Trond Lyngbø, Senior SEO
Strategist, Metronet Norge

23. What does an SEO do?
1. Builds relationships and trust with journalists, bloggers
and key opinion leaders
2. Creates stories for clients and looks for opportunities to
build a story around trends and other news
3. Sells in stories, infographics, videos and other content
4. Delivers technical SEO advice & reporting/evaluation

24. SEO is significantly more
powerful when integrated
with PR activity because we
can enhance the value of
content and use it to build
the authority and reputation
of a website

25. CONTENT
+
BRANDING
=
GENUINE LINKS
&
AUTHORITY

26. Optimising Content
1.Goals and objectives
2.Timing
3.Technical Optimisation
4.Conversion

27. What is content?

28. 1. Goals and Objectives
When thinking about the purpose of your
news, press releases, blog posts or
educational pieces ask yourself:
1. What are your goals with the content?
2. How do they tie in with our online
objectives?
3. How will we measure success?

29. 2. Timing
• How long will this content remain
relevant?
• Is it an educational piece that will always
be useful?
• Is it a news item that will always be
interesting?
All three determine where content should go, how it should be optimised
and how it should be used

30. 3. Technical Optimisation
• Title - use keywords, put them at the front and be
natural
• Content – Should be unique, frequently updated
and generally longer (500+ words)
• Keywords – Ensure they are included but also
focus on a natural flow
• Linking – Only link to relevant content, link to
internal pages, link naturally

31. • We also want to create content that
converts
• Driving targeted traffic is good, but
consider the call to action and make sure
that is included in your content
4. Conversion

32. Don’t apply a one-size-
fits-all method to your
optimisation.

33. • Links are still really important in
building authority
• Don’t pay for links
• Linking from multiple places is
very beneficial (social,
websites, microsites etc)
• The best links will naturally
come from your best coverage
• We can track the direct impact
of your online coverage

34. product page
product page
using keywords

35. We can observe what people do,
by looking at the words and
phrases they used to find
information.
When aggregated, you get a nice
view of the words people most
often use when thinking about and
searching for a certain topic.

36. Longtail of search

37. Sharing

38. SEO has become about producing
compelling content that other people want
to share and promote
Good, shared content gets linked and
promoted which increases trust and builds
authority for websites, helping them gain
better visibility in search

39. 1. Use the power of social media to gain
exposure for content, which results in
natural links and other signals of quality
and relevance.
2. Focus on enhancing the natural authority
of websites, pages, and individual writers,
which creates industry influence and trust
with Google.
Using social

40. • Search engines can still be gamed to some extent,
but the goals of search engines are similar to
those of general marketing and they are getting
very good at finding brands who break the rules
and tend to punish them accordingly.
• Creating compelling content and beneficial
relationships are link attraction strategies that
won’t get you banned or penalised. You’re also
achieving your overall goals of engaging and
entertaining users, driving them to your website
and converting them into customers.
Final Thoughts