Good public relations are as important to brick and mortar companies as these are to those found online. The reason why companies need to ensure that their public relations arm handles their end the right way is because one mistake can snowball into an irreparable avalanche. This is why care should be practiced when PR work is being done for your company.
In terms of SEO, public relations can help your site by way of creating high quality backlinks from third-party sites. Third party validation can help your company earn its credibility online by showing people who visit these other sites that you know what you are talking about. Aside from this, you also earn credibility in terms of Google’s ranking standards since quality backlinks from these sites show that you are indeed a legitimate and trustworthy company online.
Aside from the backlinks and validation, you also create some buzz about your company by way of the content that you send to these third party sites that you consider your public relations partners. PR efforts, like reaching out to online writers and journalists to cover your company’s breakthroughs and products also help to get your story and your name out to others.
PR work may take a bit of doing, and even more so if you are aiming to do it right. The results however outweighs the efforts since you not only get to increase the number of people who find out about your company and your website, but you also get the kind of quality backlinks that are not really that easy to get. Search engines value these quality backlinks more than they do numerous low quality ones, so your SEO will benefit greatly from excellent PR work when you bag such links from reputable third parties.
Public relations for online companies has indeed evolved to be something more than just trying to get the word out to people about updates, products, and news regarding your company. It has now become a helping hand in terms of getting your site to rank better in organic searches. It is not secret that the better your ranks online, the easier your target market can see you, and the more people will see you as an authority in your field. Never mind the fact that being on the first page of search engine results pages will bring in more traffic than being on the fifth or tenth pages of SERPs.
Also worth noting is that bad PR can also affect your site as much as good PR does. Any bad reviews, bad write-ups, and not-so-flattering information about your company can also affect your SEO. Since these will carry your company name, and even your website link, you may find yourself faced with bad publicity about your site mixed in with some of the good things that have been written about you when search engine results pop up. This can be easily avoided if you handle your PR with finesse and aplomb, and create relationships with your third-party partners instead of just using them for your PR needs
