There’s often a blurring of the lines between traditional PR, digital PR, and SEO (site engine optimisation). So here’s a quick guide to help you understand the differences (and similarities) and how they might benefit your business.
Traditional PR
Always considered a bit of a ‘dark art’, public relations does exactly what it says on the tin – builds relations with those who talk directly to your ‘public’ (or target audience).
The work involves media pitching (selling a story idea to a magazine), writing and placing articles in different publications – the very words you are reading here are the result of a relationship between the Vision editorial team and VAST PR, with the understanding that we create interesting and relevant content that will be of interest to the Vision readership.
A proactive PR campaign will seek out existing opportunities and create bespoke opportunities for your company to appear in a range of different media. This is not to get confused with social media. You ‘own’ your social media channels and control what goes onto them and when. With third party media outlets, you create what we call ‘earned’ media – you don’t necessarily pay for it, but the publication controls when and how (and if) it gets published.
Digital PR
Most publications today have an online version – even if they still appear in print. It is tempting to lump digital PR into an online version of traditional PR, but it is slightly more complex than that. Online PR can be strategically executed to supercharge your online presence and drive traffic to your business from a much wider catchment area.
The clever use of important keywords within your digital articles will help drive your company website up the internet search rankings. Making sure you weave in search friendly terms related to a publication’s audience, relating to trending issues that are currently being input into search engines, will massively increase the chances of your story rising up through the ranks.
This is the play off between the personal touch of traditional PR, and the algorithmic touch of search engines. A good PR strategist will find a balance between the two.
SEO – Search Engine Optimisation
There is a blurring of the edges between SEO and digital PR, as both are essential for building backlinks – crucial for website authority and improving your position on search engine pages (the aim is always to be on page one!).
Pure SEO is an art form on its own, consisting of technical jargon that involves meta titles, H1/2/3 headings, backlinks and XML sitemaps. As a wordsmith and PR purist, my challenge is always to find a turn of phrase that satisfies my own high standards, and that falls in line with the trending keywords that will ultimately drive traffic to the page I am writing.
Over the years I have written for some shockingly poor websites which exist purely to build backlinks. Professionally, it pains me to write an article which will not even be read. This is the difference between digital PR and SEO. Digital PR is there to be read, to inform, to educate. The writing is considered and relevant, taking the reader on a journey of discovery towards a favourable impression of the subject matter relating to your company. It still fulfils the rules required to build digital authority, without compromising on the editorial quality.
Of course today, SEO is further enhanced by the need to write for AI. And the challenge for digital marketeers today is to ensure content is featured in AI prompts. There is a whole new school of tactics evolving which seems to change as soon as I have understood it. There are better (younger) people than I that I can call on to help me with this – the VAST focus is always to ensure high levels of quality are maintained within the content – quality that reflects brand position and tone of voice to help companies stand out from the competition.
