Public Relations and SEO in 2012
-
With all the stress on inbound marketing and focusing on links for traffic and not just SEO, it would seem to me that going forward the best skilled people for the job of link building are public relations consultants (at least for startups). PR folks have the contacts and training to get publicity on the big authority sites and really drive big traffic as well as strong links. What am I missing? For link building, why should we hire an SEO firm and not a PR firm?
Secondly, I've been contacting a few agencies to get some idea of what they charge and most seem to start at about $5k pm whereas we only have a budget of around $1k for link building. Am I wasting my time thinking I may get any benefit at this low of a budget?
I'd love to hear from anyone with any experience using PR firms/consultants and if you have any recommendations that would be great also.
-
From my experience as a publisher... Most PR firms are spammers who wear a suit to work.
-
My two cents? I spent 12yrs in the PR field (and transitioned into SEO/social media) and I'd be very careful to ask the right questions to determine what PR agency to work with. I know - and worked with - few who knew how to properly optimize a release. And, while they did have media contacts, PR Newswire did a lot of the leg work. Pitching a story to a reporter or blogger was really the value the PR person brought to the table. And, link building was never something that was regularly brought up. In the past two months, the majority of the PR pros I network with like to tell me "SEO is dead" which tells me everything I need to know about their understanding of SEO.
Again, I am sure there are plenty of seasoned PR people who have an understanding - there's also lots of agencies who like to sell their services even if they don't have the depth of knowledge. Like any business endeavor, it's just a matter of due diligence to find the right fit.
Freelancers have way better prices because they don't have the same overhead costs as agencies, so that could be a more affordable route.
-
Dear meterdei,
You're right on the part that PR Folks have the right contact allthough my thoughts on why hire a SEO for instead of a PR marketeer are very simliar. I think a good SEO does not only provide you with the right links but also makes sure those links stay good and stay online (monitoring) and also a SEO should (i'm not saying all do or all don't do but they should) also analyse what the links do for your website.
PR agencies charge from 5K and more? I think if you do find a good SEO to do a lot of quality linkbuilding you should put some agreements in a contract. Lets say you want at least 5 .gov links and 10 .edu links to you new project togetheer with lots of other links offcourse the should then provide a list of websites where they had put the links on. That way you can monitor what you get and what they had done. I think for all of this including monitoring what these links did for your website the cost will be anywhere from 2K to 4K depanding on the exact amount of linkbuilding.
If you sell yourself short by going for a cheaper solution you might regret it in the end.
I do have experience with some linkbuilding firms but they have not continued their work. As for PR firms, i would not know what they can provice next to the right SEO.
-
There are two approaches we use:
- The client hires a PR agency. We teach the PR agency how to do SEO press release and give them our manual. Than - and this part is important - before the PR agency sends the press reales, they have to send it to our agency to check it and optimize. After we check the press release it can be send to the media. The point is the links are not important for PR folks. So the most you can demand from them is to put an URL or your home page at the beginning of the press release (sometimes they even don't mention it). But it is just the beginnig. Different online media handle the links in the press releases differenty and you have to know, how make and hypertext from them, how to do a deep-links and how to handle with keywords in the press releases. This is not typical PR work.
- Because we provide the PR services, we write and optimize press releases. We do the PR even off-line. But not all PR agencies provide this kind of service.
Press releases are good sources of links, but it is just a part of link-building. But very valuable.
Another point is that sometimes (manytimes?) is it more valuable to get a link from specialized, but not so known website (e. g. a blog) or discussion board, than from generally oriented huge website/media.
I am not so familiar with the prices on US market but e. g. 600 USD/per month per link-building is a minimum by our agency here in Central Europe. But is someone wants just link-building for 600 USD/month, we have to reject it. If an account manager has to be able to deliver results, he or she has to spend a lot of time with his or her team to work on a project. And many times link-building is not enough. So it needs o lot of time. I cannot imagine a serious project, where you spend less than 20 hours per month doing SEO - and this is really just a minimum. E. g. 20 hours by our Central-European agency is 1 750 USD.
If you want a reputable US agency, you have to prepare to pay higher prices.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Changed the trailing slashes - how it effect SEO?
Hi, I'm doing a project called https://www.machinerygate.com/ Due to trailing slashes issues, our developer requests to remove the trailing slashes from the URLs. However, the homepage with and without trailing slashes the same effect right. How about the inner pages affect SEO. Because we just started to do SEO and not even one single link of Inner pages done with the process. However, for example, the URL for https://www.machinerygate.com/machinery/cranes/ is before with trailing slashes and it is on google indexed with trailing slashes. Due to some bug, google inspection tool has been not functioning nowadays and I'm finding hard to index the new URL without trailing slashes https://www.machinerygate.com/machinery/cranes to index on Google. If this gets indexed, how the URL with trailing slashes will be, does it automatically redirect to URL without trailing slashes or not? Please share your thought about this concern.
Branding | | Navya1241 -
What is the best SEO friendly way to combine two websites.
I have two websites, eg: widgets.com - sells expensive widgets as gifts everydaywidgets.com - sells cheap widgets for everyday use. I would like to combine them both under the widgets.com domain name, because its easier to run the SEO campaign for one rather than two. But i still want two different product collections, and two different sites. widgets.com is by far the larger of the two sites so my current thought is to have that the main landing site, and have a button at the top to take the user to widgets.com/everydaywidgets where they have a similar but different site, and different products. I can set this all up no problem with the correct 301 redirects from everydaywidgets.com, but is it SEO friendly? Does anyone know of a real world example of a business doing this? Cheers
Branding | | SEOhmygod0 -
My 40 year old, well established business has a brand name that I think is hurting my SEO. Need advice please.
Our business brand name has words in it which when we were using it as our domain name, was a) bad for our SEO and b) got our emails marked as spam in our client's inboxes. This was not a problem when we first got online, years ago. It eventually became problematic, but we didn't realize it for some time. When we realized the issue, we simply changed our domain name to something more SEO friendly, using exact match keywords. This was fine for a while, but eventually, algorithms changed again, and now with Google putting an emphasis on Brand Names and not looking as kindly on exact match keyword type domains, we are again at a place where we don't know what to do. We can't change our brand name. I don't want to post our real name or business here, but I will give an example. Brand Name: Living Free Travel The Issue: "Free Travel" gets blocked by spam filters, gets us useless traffic from people looking for free travel (which makes out bounce rates very high), gets our domain blacklisted. The Solution: travel2europe.com is the website of Living Free Travel The New Issue: travel2europe.com is not our brand, and probably doesn't look like one to Google, especially since on our site, travel2europe.com is never really mentioned because it is only our domain, not our brand. "Living Free Travel" is generally the anchor text for travel2europe.com wherever we are linked to. We assume this mismatch is problematic for us in ways we don't even know. Are we screwed? Need advice, please. THANK YOU.
Branding | | benenjerry0 -
Looking to hire an SEO/Reputation manager
We are looking to hire an SEO/reputation manager or firm to complement our existing marketing efforts. The goal is to take up the front page of Google on 3 branded keywords. We will create the content but need someone to come up with the strategy on what content to create, where to post it and how to link to get it moved to the front page of Google. We went through MOZ's recommended list of service providers but would rather work with an individual freelancer than a large SEO company. Please advice where we can find such consultant or email vitaly@newpeakmedia.com to apply. Include your experience and some samples of projects you have worked on. ################## UPDATE ################# Here's the keywords' difficulty based on MOZ's serp analysis tool and top 10 ranking pages for the first term http://i.imgur.com/zqktjuU.jpg http://i.imgur.com/LB7i4yz.jpg
Branding | | vmotuz0 -
Is .com.sg or .sg a better for SEO?
Hi all, Is .com.sg or .sg a better option?
Branding | | chanel27
And also which can have a better advantage in terms of SEO ranking?0 -
Law Practice SEO with Multiple Lawyers
I am working with a friend of mine who is a lawyer. He has one partner and a couple of other lawyers at the firm. The attorneys each have their own Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin ,Youtube and other social media accounts. I am trying to create one brand, which is the name of the law firm. Question 1: It would make sense to me to create all social media accounts under the law firm name. Would you agree on this? I'm worried that users wouldn't use the company facebook page if they are used to communicating to the attorney through their personal accounts. Maybe I should put the social media links for the firm on the home page only and then put the individual social media links next to the attorney profile page? Question 2: The firm has been posting Youtube videos but under one of the attorney's names. I have 16 new videos they want posted and they asked me if they should be posted to a new company name channel (yet to be created) or post them under one of the attorneys accounts? I think that most attorneys might look out for themselves ahead of the Firm. If they ever change jobs, they don't have a built up social profile if everything is listed under the firm name. Maybe the way to go would be to help optimize both the attorneys personal profiles and then the firm? Thoughts?
Branding | | Czubmeister0 -
List Quick and Dirty places to seo-tag images/content for new brands
I'm helping a new brand (service industry) to try to dominate the first page for their own name. They have a name that also exists in another state AND a negative Yelp review which (shows up #4, whilst they show up #1 on google unpersonalized search). Aside from Linkedin/Facebook/twitter, what are good places to Tag Images and have them show up under the search for this company's name. This is a picture/heavy industry (jewelry) and I'm looking to create profiles on several sites that would immediately show up if I tag the content properly. Are quora/pinterest good choices? I need to grab-bag as many properties as possible. Secondary question: would these properties on quora etc, respond well to exact-match anchor text links to shoot them past the negative yelp rating that is showing up #4 for their brand?
Branding | | ilyaelbert0 -
Benefit of Historical PDF Press Articles for SEO
Hello Is there SEO benefit to keep PDF news articles from 2/3 years ago live on our website? We have a page displaying positive press/pr articles to our visitors. Some of the articles are now from 2009 and I am unsure if these should remain for SEO benefit or should they be taken down or archived? Are they good content? Are they read by Search Engines? If they are old do the count against us with Search Engines? Look forward to some advice Gary McDonald
Branding | | DonaldRussell0