Gone are the days of using Digital PR as purely a link building tactic. Following several recent developments to Google’s algorithm, Digital PR has evolved significantly and the SEO benefits have expanded beyond just links. The main evolution brands should consider is not just gaining links but ensuring they are relevant and feature on sites where your customers are actually consuming content.
What is link building?
In its essence, link building is an SEO tactic to gain mass links to help improve the way Google sees your site. It is used to convince Google that your site is trustworthy and of value to users thereby improving your domain authority and improving your search rankings.
However, building those mass links unfortunately doesn’t convince your actual users and customers that land on your site that you are trust worthy or useful. Often these links don’t even get clicked on and aren’t on sites that your target customers are engaging with. This is where relevancy and Digital PR comes in.
The Importance of Relevancy
Creating Digital PR campaigns that your target audience are actually going to interact with is the only way to create something engaging and valuable.
Campaigns like this can gain you high authority links, and due to their relevancy, the links will be clicked on, site traffic will improve, they will drive higher branded search, there will be a greater engagement with the brand and ultimately this is going to lead to sales and increased revenue for your brand. Digital PR has become much more sophisticated than purely a game of numbers so anybody telling you otherwise is offering a drastically limited perspective.
Audience tools and profiling is a great way to better understand who your audience is and where they consume their content online. This insight should be used to inform your media targeting. In conjunction with that, using tools such as Search Metrics, Google Trends and BuzzSumo help to understand what people are searching for and the type of content that is most popular. All of this insight can ensure your strategy for a Digital PR campaign is creative and, as relevant as possible. This gives you the best chance to gain coverage and those all-important links.
It is important to remember though, gaining those authoritative links is the product of an amazing idea and even more amazing content. That content needs to be useful, unique, resourceful, relevant and engaging.
The end result of those links and content is improved organic rankings. Google will learn you are a site to be trusted and the more links you get, the more Google will trust you. But they have to be quality links, not just links for the sake of it. If the relevancy is weak, or the content is poor or if the site is struggling from a technical perspective, your organic rankings won’t benefit at all.
This is where Digital PR, technically solid SEO and fabulous on-site content can increase your search visibility for non branded key words too. If you have a great site and amazing things to say, both Google and your customers are going to believe it.
That’s the only way to build your brand awareness, trust, authority and love to new and existing audiences.
If you’d be interested in discussing how a Digital PR strategy could benefit your business get in touch with our team today.