Greg Jarboe's presentation on "Using SEO as a PR Metric" at Paine Publishing's Measurement Base Camp on July 25, 2023.

1. Using SEO as a PR Metric
Greg Jarboe
President and co-founder, SEO-PR
Measurement Base Camp Summer 2023
Tuesday, July 25, 2023

2. Publishers and news sites are using SEO metrics,
and you should be using SEO as a PR metric, too
• The New York Times, CNN, and other
major news sites use SEO metrics.
• When they started using SEO back in
2006, there was initial pushback from
journalists.
• But 5-25% of a news site’s search traffic
now comes from Google News, according
to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
• You can use SEO as a PR metric, too.
• SEO-PR started using SEO metrics back in
2003 and we’ve taught SEO best practices
to a variety of organizations – including
publishers and news sites.
• Today, I’ll share the latest tips and
strategies with you.

3. Incorporate
SEO into your
measurement
program

4. Most communications professionals learned about
Lasswell’s model of communications back in college
• Professor Harold Lasswell’s model of
communication was developed in
1939 and published in 1948.
• As the Chief of the Experimental
Division for the Study of War Time
Communications during World War II,
he had analyzed German propaganda
and found five elements impacted the
effectiveness of communication via
mass media:
• Who: The sender.
• Says what: The message.
• In which channel: The medium.
• To whom: The receiver.
• With what effect: The outcome.

5. Lasswell’s model of communication was one of the
first and most influential models of communication
• In 1939, it was conceived specifically
to analyze German propaganda via
newspapers, magazines, posters, radio
broadcasts, newsreels, and rallies.
• After the model was declassified in
1948, it was used by many marketing
and communication textbooks as a
general model of communication.
• Most communications professionals
have focused on measuring outputs
(clippings) instead of outtakes
(surveys) and outcomes (anecdotes).

6. 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 relevant keywords
your target audience is likely to use.
• In which channel: Use one of the
press release distribution services
crawled by Google News.
• From whom: Make sure your press
release headline actually includes
your target keywords.
• With what effect: Add links to related
website content and measure results.

7. Katie Paine said back in 2003: “What a concept:
Totally measurable results from your PR agency!”
• This counter-intuitive model of
communication combines SEO and PR
to generate traffic, leads, or sales, as
well as publicity.
• This counter-intuitive model has also
enabled my boutique agency and a
wide variety of clients to get credit for
our contribution to the bottom line.
• I’ve been teaching this class at Market
Motive since 2007, in the Rutgers
Mini-MBA Program since 2010, and at
Measurement Base Camp since 2020.

8. Optimize your
press releases

9. Think about the words users would type to find
your release and then conduct keyword research
• Like consumer research, keyword
research can help communications
professionals discover what words
that people would use to look for
their content.
• Google Search Essentials say: “Use
words that people would use to look
for your content, and place those
words in prominent locations on the
page, such as the title and main
heading of a page, and other
descriptive locations such as alt text
and link text.”
Source: Google Search Essentials (formerly Webmaster Guidelines)

10. Here’s a list of a few places to find keywords and
some tools for conducting ad hoc keyword research
• Places to find keywords:
• Google Trends.
• Autocomplete in Google News.
• Autocomplete in Google.
• “People also ask…” boxes in Google.
• Related searches boxes in Google.
• Keyword research tools:
• Answer the Public.
• Keyword Tool.io.
• Moz Keyword Explorer.
• SEMRush Keyword Magic Tool.
• SpyFu.
Source: Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR, “What is the best keyword research tool for SEO? (It’s your brain!),” Sept. 25, 2019

11. Enter your brand name and up to 4 competitors
into Google Trends to see your share of search
• By default, Google Trends shows you
the web search trends for the past 12
months.
• Now, click on the Web Search tab and
select News Search.
• This shows you the news search
interest in these terms.
• Now, click on the Past 12 months tab
and select the past 7 days.
• Now, scroll down and look at the
related queries for these terms.
Source: https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US

12. The engineers who developed the Google News
algorithm seem to have used the inverted pyramid
• The headline is the most important
news 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.
• Include keywords that relate to your
subject in the first few sentences.
• Google’s systems analyze the content to
assess whether it contains information
that might be relevant and helpful.

13. Google’s news algorithms are now designed to help
users find timely, trustworthy news and information
• Does your headline provide a
descriptive, helpful summary of the
content?
• Does your content provide original
information, reporting, research, or
analysis?
• Does your content provide a
substantial, complete, or
comprehensive description of the
topic?
• Does your content provide insightful
analysis or interesting information
that is beyond the obvious?

14. 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

15. You need to use a press release distribution service
or have a newsroom that’s indexed by Google News
• Several press release distribution
services are indexed by Google News,
including:
• BusinessWire.com.
• PRNewswire.com.
• GlobeNewswire.com.
• If you primarily publish press releases
on your site or within a particular
section URL of your domain, then it
may be crawled if your site is popular.
• For an example, take a look at the Kodak
Press Center.
Source: https://www.kodak.com/lk/en/corp/press_center/default.htm#

16. Measure what matters

17. Launch of the Rutgers Online Professional Master’s
in Human Resource Management program in 2019
• In January 2019, SEO-PR helped the
Rutgers School of Management and
Labor Relations (SMLR) to launch an
Online Professional Master’s in
Human Resource Management
program.
• Our objective was to generate 30
applications by Aug. 1, 2019.
• Students could complete the 12-course
Master’s program in as few as 18 months
and as long as 5 years.
• Tuition was $3,174 per 3-credit course, or
$38,016 for 12 courses.

18. Although keyword research told us what people
were searching for, we used surveys to find out why
• Our survey found target audiences
included personnel, staffing &
recruiting, and talent acquisition as
well as human resources supervisors,
managers, and professionals.
• Respondents with 4 or more years of
HR experience said the follow factors
were important when selecting a
university:
• “No GRE/GMAT required”,
• “Top-ranked university”,
• “Fully 100% online program”.

19. We included these three important factors in the
subhead of our optimized multimedia press release

20. We used the Google Campaign URL Builder tool to
add campaign parameters to URLs in our release
• We used Google’s free Campaign URL
Builder tool to add campaign
parameters to the URLs in our press
release to track our Custom Campaign
in Google Analytics.
• This enabled us to track the number
of users, new users, sessions, bounce
rate, pages/session, average session
duration, conversion rate,
conversions, and goal value generated
by our press release, which was
distributed in five countries.

21. A copy of our press release without multimedia
was posted in the news section of SMLR’s website

22. We shared our press release with Emily Bader of
ROI-NJ and David Hutter of NJBIZ under embargo

23. On Google News, our press release ranked #1 for
online masters in human resource management

24. In first 2 hours, news release got 1,429 total
views, 69 link clicks, and 61 multimedia views

25. Google does good job of choosing which version of
duplicate content to show in search engine results
• Doug Lederman, the editor of Inside
Higher Ed, wrote a roundup story on Feb.
20, 2019, which included a high-quality,
relevant link to the copy of the press
release posted in the news section of the
Rutgers website.
• Although the optimized multimedia
release was distributed to 271 news sites,
Google only showed the one without
multimedia on the Rutgers site in its
search engine results page (SERP), not the
“duplicate content” on the 271 other
sites.

26. The campaign parameters let us track acquisition,
behavior, and conversions from our press release

27. Campaign increased familiarity with and likelihood
to recommend Rutgers to a friend or colleague
• We used a post-campaign survey to
measure the impact of our campaign.
• Our second survey asked the same
questions as the pre-campaign survey,
enabling us to measure brand lift.
• The percentage of respondents who said
they were “familiar with” Rutgers
University had increased from 13.8% pre-
launch to 18.5% post-launch.
• The percentage of respondents who said
they were “very likely” to recommend
Rutgers to a friend or colleague had
increased from 16.7% pre-launch to
19.0% post-launch.

28. Campaign drove 8,337 new users to our landing
page and generated 38 completed applications
• Our campaign drove 8,337 new users to the Rutgers Online Professional Master’s
in Human Resource Management landing page.
• The landing page generated 694 soft leads (people either clicked on the Apply
Now button on the page or the Apply tab in the website’s navigation).
• We also evaluated the source/medium of the new users and soft leads in Google
Analytics:
• Optimized multimedia release generated only 1% of the new users, but 8% of the soft leads.
• Google organic search generated only 3% of the new users, but 19% of the soft leads.
• Google Ads generated 11% of the new users, and 18% of the soft leads.
• LinkedIn ads generated 81% of the new users, but only 37% of the soft leads.
• More importantly, the launch campaign generated 38 completed applications,
worth up to $1,444,608 in tuition over the next 18 months to 5 years.

29. We won 2019 US Search Award for Best Use of PR
in a Search Campaign by measuring what matters
• Our case study won in the Best Use of
PR in a Search Campaign category for
demonstrating that an optimized
multimedia press release, duplicate
content in the news section of SMLR’s
website, and an optimized landing
page had generated only 4% of the
traffic, but 27% of the leads.
• And measuring PR and SEO using the
same set of metrics and KPIs used for
Digital Advertising – including pay-per-
click (PPC) advertising – is a game
changer.
• It means that we no longer need to treat
PR and SEO as “faith-based initiatives”.

30. In today’s economy, you’ll want to know how to use
GA4 to show your contribution to the bottom line
• Today, I told you why adding campaign
parameters to URLs can help you
measure PR campaigns in UA.
• Thankfully, this works in GA4 as well.
• In 2 weeks, I’ll cover 6 more important
things you need to lean about GA4:
• Who needs an editor’s role?
• What does Google mean by “events”?
• Where do you create conversions?
• When should you build PR audiences?
• Why is data-driven attribution better?
• How do you analyze GA4’s reports?