Digital PR is an integrated strategy for brands to shape their overall web presence and digital footprint. By converging SEO, social media, sponsored search, and website design, brands can leverage the individual components of Digital PR to manage every aspect of their brand online.
Traditional PR evolved due to the need for companies to promote their brand and control their brand image on traditional media outlets. News, radio, magazines… this is where society consumed information about brands. Things have certainly changed since then! We no longer rely on television, magazine subscriptions, and radio stations to receive news about brands and their offerings. We have Google, Facebook, YouTube, and a multitude of other online platforms to consume information about products, services, and brands offering them.
In the peak of the digital era, there is a need for brands to move away from traditional public relations and into managing their organic digital presence with Digital PR.
Digital PR is a powerful approach to improving a brand’s online presence and visibility utilizing online strategies. Through the use of internet tactics like search engine optimization (SEO), social media management, sponsored search, website design, and influencer outreach, Digital PR allows you to control the conversation around your brand and speak directly to your target audience just about any time of day or night.
Types of Digital PR Tactics to Improve Search Rankings
When it comes to promoting your brand online, the possibilities are endless. Digital PR agencies combine public relations with the new trends in content marketing, social media marketing, and website optimization in a variety of ways including:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
What is SEO anyway?
SEO is the process of optimizing your website to get organic, unpaid traffic from the search engine results page. Whether someone is searching your brand name or your target industry keywords, you want your website to appear on page one of Google and you want your brand mentions to be positive.
One of the core tactics used in Digital PR is search engine optimization to boost website rankings and control how your brand mentions appear in the search results.
As your website is optimized and your content is exposed to high-authority websites that link to your website, your rankings in Google will improve for your target keywords and as your rankings are boosted, you improve website traffic, leads, and conversions. It’s like a beautiful digital ecosystem working together to promote your brand!
Although SEO is ever-evolving in response to innovative trends and Google algorithm changes, some SEO tactics include:
- Content marketing – Creating quality content that provides valuable information to boost rankings in search results and gain premium backlinks **Note- Must be up to Google’s content standards of being E-A-T (Expert, Authoritative, Trustworthy)
- Structured data – Using schema markup to help crawlers better understand what is on your page and qualify for rich snippets and voice search
- Optimizing meta data to include keywords and improve click-through rate (CTR)
- Ensure every page has header tags (h1s for key topic of the page, h2s for sub-topics, and so on)
- Adding internal linking to improve user’s ability to navigate your website and spread link juice to other web pages
- Technical audits – Ensuring a website doesn’t have broken links, images, or scripts
- Backlink audits – Auditing backlink profile to ensure no toxic websites are linking to your domain
- Alt tags – Optimizing images so bots can understand what the image displays (**Note – This also helps images appear in Google Image Search)
- Site Structure Optimization – Designing a menu structure to improve user experience and funnel users to what they are looking for
Link Building
What is Link Building?
In the field of SEO, link building describes actions aimed at increasing the number and quality of inbound links to a webpage with the goal of increasing the search engine rankings of that page or website, according to Wikipedia.
What are link building tactics?
- Digital Press Releases – syndicating press releases on the wire
- Blog Posts – creating HIGH-QUALITY content that users want to utilize on their own website with a backlink to your website
- Social Media – Sharing blog posts, articles, images, infographics and other content from your website with the intent of users utilizing this information with a link to your website
- Infographic submission – Sharing and submitting useful infographics created around website content to websites across the internet
- Directory listings – Creating, claiming, and online optimizing business directory listings
- And many others!
By securing more backlinks to your website from bloggers, news sites, directories, and other websites, you in-turn increase your Domain Authority (DA), a scoring method coined by Moz to predict how well a website will rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Since Google has thousands of factors that go into how your website is ranked, the SEO world cannot rely solely on DA, but it is a good way to “benchmark” where your website is at and how your website ranks in the SERPs.
Digital Press Releases
By syndicating digital press releases with relevant links to your website, you receive many benefits:
- Increased brand exposure and brand mentions across the web
- Increased website traffic – Readers who are looking for more information can click-through to your website, ultimately driving traffic to your website
- Securing high-quality backlinks from many online publications, which helps boost your website’s search rankings (every backlink to your website acts as a “vote of confidence” for your brand)
As explained earlier, by obtaining main backlinks through digital press release syndication, your brand is strategically increasing their DA and will likely see rankings boosted in the SERPs.
It’s important to syndicate newsworthy content to earn press features when publishing press releases.
Press Release Topic Ideas:
- Community Involvement (Sponsorships, Volunteering, Charities, etc.)
- Event Attendance and/or Participation
- New Products/Services
- New Hires
- Company news
- Industry News
Social Media
If you have a product or service, there is a market for it on social media. In today’s digital age, everyone is on social media, even in developing countries! In fact, according to Pew Research Center, when it comes to social media use, people in emerging and developing markets are fast approaching levels seen in more advanced economies.
Nevertheless, if people in developing countries are active on Facebook, there’s no excuse for your brand to be absent on social media.
Anywhere your target market is, your brand should be. It’s that simple.
In order to control the conversation around your brand, your brand should be:
- Active on the social media platforms your target market is spending time
- Posting relevant, trending content to establish a brand personality and/or expert opinion
- Interacting with followers to form relationships and loyal customers
What are some of the social media platforms you can find your target market?
- YouTube
- Snap Chat
- Tik Tok
Directory Management & Citation Marketing
Outside of social media, there are thousands of directory websites of all types. Ranging from local directories to industry-specific directories for every niche, it’s important to control your brand everywhere that is relevant to your company. Also referred to as NAP, these directories are usually citations of your Name, Address, and Phone number (at the bare minimum).
Benefits of Directories Management & Citation Marketing:
- Consistent NAP. Making sure you’re providing the same information across each directory. This helps boost your brand’s credibility and trustworthiness in Google’s eyes.
- Controlling your brand presence on directories to ensure listings are fully optimized with all relevant information so users have access to correct information
- Directories are a great way of building high-quality backlinks from trusted domains
- Drive traffic to your website
- Boost local SEO
- A credible place for users to leave reviews and read others’ reviews
Common Directory Websites:
- Google My Business (The #1 directory listing you want to be on)
- Yelp
- Yellow Pages
- Bing Places
- Super Pages
- Better Business Bureau (BBB)
- Apple Maps
Why Your Business Needs Digital PR
Traditional PR and Digital PR have the same goal of improving your brand’s online reputation, which includes enhancing brand awareness for your target audience. The difference is the expansive reach of Digital PR over traditional PR methods, and the tools used to achieve the goal. Digital PR utilizes an ever-evolving arsenal of digital tools to increase your brand visibility, and help you stay atop your competition.
With Digital PR, your potential audience is nearly limitless, allowing you to develop your brand, communicate to the masses, and set yourself apart from the competition.
With Digital PR, you can reach target audiences, providing solutions to their needs in a variety of ways.
Data-Driven Results
Additionally, data-driven tactics and analytics allows brands to see how successful their Digital PR campaign actually is. Here’s how:
- Using Google Analytics, we can measure organic traffic and website conversions to ensure your Digital PR campaign is positively affecting your search rankings (we can also measure referral traffic from backlinks, social traffic from social media platforms, and many other areas of your website)
- Backlink benchmarking and monitoring of how your Digital PR campaign is growing links to your website
- SERP analysis – Benchmark rankings at the start of Digital PR campaigns and utilize tools such as SEMrush or WebCEO to track how assets are ranking over time (Pro tip: Utilize a VPN to change your IP address to be in other areas of the country)
- Tracking social media shares, followers, and engagements is another great way to gauge campaign success
Who’s Controlling the Conversation Around Your Brand?
If you’re not controlling the conversation around your brand, someone else is. Digital PR creates a genuine story that builds trustworthy relationships with the public. Start building your “digital trust” today!