The Case for a Balanced Approach to SEO and Public Relations

SEO and Public Relations are rarely mentioned in the same breath. SEO requires rigorous technical scaffolding and maintenance, whereas public relations as a practice demands fluidity and spontaneity. A recent article describes the need to tend to both to maximize their complementary benefits.

Make no mistake – SEO effectiveness can make or break a business’s success. At the same time, some of the requirements that SEO puts on content creation are at odds with good PR. For instance, SEO-boosting content will lean on keywords and backlinks; however, if you’re trying to write an opinion piece or account for ambiguity in your storytelling, you don’t want to cram your PR with keywords or backlinks. It is perhaps not surprising that SEO is highly measurable, while PR’s impact can be a bit hazy. By quantifying direct searches, conversions, and campaign performance, you can get a clear, almost instantaneous picture of how well your SEO strategy is working for you. PR, on the other hand, has the capacity to gently affect your external presence. While you can track the social media response to an article, it is difficult to plan for specific outcomes or assure yourself that your public relations will drive a particular type of success.

Customers’ perceptions and views of your brand have many dimensions. As long as you’re willing to accept the dimensionality of your target audience, it is worth allocating marketing resources to SEO and public relations, knowing that while the rules that govern each discipline are vastly different, both can ladder up to the same sweeping goal. The team at ASTRALCOM can help you strike the right balance and achieve strategic SEO goals while relating to your audience on a human level.