Public Relations and Search Engine Optimization Combine

With the launch of the HitTail premium service by a New York public relations firm, there is increasing question as to "what is PR?" and "what is SEO?" Are either of them still relevant in the face of growing social networking technology? Or do they all get mixed together and blended into something new?

The answer is yes. They all get mixed together and blended into something new.

But within this new space, there are silos of expertise that look very similar to the old disciplines. Skilled communicators are still in the business of influencing the influencers. Something like yesterday's PR professionals still must reach out to carefully chosen individuals so that a message can be efficiently amplified, without having to astroturf every blog in that space. Human relationships, and the artful skill of pitching a story are still important.

But in this new landscape, there are also blogs run by the client, turning the client INTO part of the media. At Connors Communications, our clients are regularly solicited by publications such as The New York Times to provide quotes for THEIR stories. When a company publishes its own authoritative blog in a market, it becomes reverse pervasive and persistent pitching.

Yet, this still is not enough for the new breed of combined PR and SEO.

There is the quick fix to websites who are not leveraging their database assets to their fullest extent. It takes technical skill and special projects to do this. It's different from what most of the marketing world thinks of as search engine optimization. Rearranging title tags and making the URLs search friendly are just sort of background projects these days, that should be assumed. Leveraging a website usually concerns making it 10 to 100 times larger than it was in terms of actual pages. Each new page is perfectly justified and works within the context of the site. It makes the site maybe 10 to 100 times more effective in natural search. It's a sustainable, long-term cross-engine strategy. And it's about releasing and making visible as much potential website content that was previously un-leveraged.

But that's still not all.

Public relations is often concerned with strategic communications, helping to change and reposition the very companies they serve, putting them in the path of the best customers and the most opportunities. But on the SEO side, there are analogies, especially with the alleged demise of print media. It is possible to revisit the very theory of long-established businesses, with an eye towards the great game of grabbing eyeballs, no matter the media. With that perspective, it's easy to imagine how SEO is really a much broader field of "media attention optimization". There is print media, TV, radio, social media websites, and a host more.

Could it be that search engine optimization combines with public relations to form a discipline of "general public compliance?"

Yep, that's it.

If you're interested in being a client of a company that not only thinks this way, but creates applications like HitTail merely to demonstrate its competence, then start a discussion with us today.