I was chatting with a friend of mine last night who is PR (public relations - not PageRank) grunt, and she was telling me some of the ways in which she does PR. She gets relevant blogs to post her articles She gives things away Creates a "press kit" Hounds the local or relevant news sources Some of the tactics she employs are downright terrible, and most SEOs would never think to do because they breach lines of etiquette. The thing that really stuck out was that she hounds bloggers - HOUNDS them. So basically, she gets all these incredible links from really relevant sources, (what is so funny is that she has no idea that the links she is attaining have TREMENDOUS search engine value.) I'm wondering, does anyone else do link building like this? Because I think we should be.
PR is usually better for more of a short term legacy. Link building is better for long time workings, but still isn't to effective. When you do these together your is branding and is more than one aspect of life. I go with both being done at the same time.
I just don't hound people. My way of doing things is just getting involved in the community and building links by gradually getting to know people. Blogging etiquette has never really accepted phone calls, and lots of emails - its like invading on personal blog space, you know? I mean, I love free shit as much as the next guy, but I don't want someone annoying me every week. But maybe i'm old fashioned here. Are people doing this all the time now? Should I get on the trolly? Maybe the better thread is, how do you get bloggers to blog about/link to you.
Depends on your niche, sometimes its hard to get relevant links so hounding might be the only effective method. Id call it persistent. Reminds me of sales people. If you don’t push it, you wont make sales.
bloggers are being more open to direct contact .. i see Meeboo widgets and Skype buttons in a lotta blogs. No reason not to contact them if you have something rellevant to promote.
I contact bloggers all the time and have been pretty successful. Many will not respond, but if you have a site/product that is newsworthy, some will bite.
I'm pretty shy and with most of the pages I've done, I don't like to hound people, or try and bug people to post. I seem to think like I'm bothering people. Heh. Years ago when I was younger I used to generic email a bunch of related sites with a php script, putting in their own email and a string that sounded more "personal" about them. So I could let 200 sites know about my article, have their name and something like "how's life in XXXX" if I knew that information. It seemed to work good.
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You're telling me that you don't want traffic from relevant links? You don't want local branding? prweb.com is pretty poor when it comes to pr for two reasons. 1.) When was the last time you had a press release picked up by your local paper or authority local news blogger by submitting to prweb. 2.) Not to say the above result is impossible, but if you want that kind of result from PR web, you have to pay for it.
IMO, that is the best way to build good backlinks. Even link exchange from authoritive sites could work via email invitation. I have done it few times to get PR5 for my inner pages, invited many to link to my site via over 300 emails. It took only 3 weeks to get PR5, took few months to get top 10 in Yahoo! and Google SERPs. But as your friend has suggested, you want to give away something for free to attract them.
What she's doing is normal in PR (coming from both a site owner and a PR professional), although it sounds like she's being a bit excessive. PR can definitely be better though. I talk about it here all the time, just when people ask about press releases. PR is NOT short term either, as someone here suggested. PR is about building exposure and the image you want your audience to associate with your branding efforts. PR efforts are what make people trust you, especially if somehow you screw up and need to get them back. PR is also excellent for link-building, although it's a side effect and not a primary objective. For example: 1. If you write a press release, you can pay to post it to PRweb or something, and get that backlink plus a lot of backlinks from scraper sites and such. Those links aren't all permanent, nor are most "relevant." If instead, you target even 1-10 highly relevant online niche publications, and get even one pickup, you're likely getting a permanent link on a very relevant authority site (and w/o paying those distribution site fees). When an authority outlet picks up a story, others tend to follow suit, and you get a trickle down effect of even more relevant permanent one-way links from niche publications, site, blogs, etc. Even getting picked up in your local paper helps, b/c they often post stories online, it's easier to get picked up with a local angle, and you're often published in a relevant section. To top it off, the PR efforts also help to brand you personally as an expert or thought-leader in your niche... if you do it properly, which eventually makes you a go-to source when outlets want quotes on related issues (meaning more opportunities to have your name mentioned, as well as your site, b/c that's what lends your credibility in the industry). 2. Here's another example of how PR efforts can be much more effective that webmasters' traditional link-building: I work with a content network as a technology editor. One of my writers was test driving and reviewing car models. She wrote a top picks piece, and then contacted the PR people for Saab (whose model placed first on that particular list). They were so happy about being named a top pick that they not only requested to be able to use a quote from her review, and her URL, in a future advertising campaign, but they actually paid her for the right to do it! You're not going to get that kind of coverage for your URL from such an authority source by submitting to directories, article directories, forum signatures, or more traditional methods. PR is definitely more effective. Most people just don't know how to do it right, so they honestly can't make the comparison. Jenn
And that is my point exactly. Perhaps we should all be trying to get jobs with PR firms, teaching them how to make the most of their press releases in terms of search engines. Because while PR will get you noticed, Search engines will get you sales. Basically, SEO puts a measurable monetary ROI where there once was little to none.
Any good PR person already knows how to do both. They just won't make SEO the primary focus or let it replace PR value, which still outweighs SEO value, simply because of the lingering effects that improve SEO just as a by-product.
While i agree with you on EVERYTHING else that you have said, I don't know that most "good PR" people know SEO. SEO people are being bought up at a fast pace right now by major media companies, including full service conglomerates. Companies in the major makrets are paying upwards of $100,000/yr for SEOs with only 4 or 5 years of experience. If you were a hiring manager at a PR firm, would you pay $100,000 for an employee when another department already knew everthing about what he/she did?