These PR Best Practices Will Earn You Links and Boost Your SEO

It’s every small business owner’s dream to receive media coverage.  This type of publicity can do wonders for your business—it can establish your credibility, attract business partners and more importantly, draw in customers.

In addition to obtaining coverage, receiving that coveted editorial link can bring good fortunes to your SEO strategy. A good editorial link can draw traffic to your site and increase your online visibility—which business owner does not want this?

Here are some useful steps to earn a natural editorial link every time your story is covered:

Have a clear target audience for your story

You’ve heard it before: newsworthy content is what authority sites are looking for. However, there is more to newsworthiness than just a juicy story—your story needs to have an audience that will benefit from reading it. Are you looking to inspire stay at home moms?  Does your story target small business owners in the hospitality industry?

Defining your audience offers two advantages: First, it will help you identify relevant publications and authority sites that may be interested in covering your story. Additionally, narrowing down your target readership allows you to develop a story that is likely to get a lot of attention because it addresses the sentiments of a predefined audience.

Establish a list of journalists, writers and sites

Perhaps the most important and sometimes most difficult part of getting coverage for your business and the subsequent editorial link is finding a journalist or site that would be interested in your story in the first place.

If this is your first online PR initiative, you want to start building a database of authority sites and publications that would fit in well with your particular news story.

Media databases such as Cision.com, MarRuck.com and Vocus.com are paid resources. However, they can be extremely useful in helping you identify journalists, their areas of specialization, contact information and relevant publications.

It often takes a while to zero in on a couple of publications and writers whom you can proceed to build a relationship with. Nevertheless, this step is important; your PR campaign would be futile if you did not have the right people or the right platforms to publish your story.

Build relationships early

Here’s the truth: Editorial links do not come by easily.  Unlike guest-blogging where the link comes almost automatically and effortlessly, not all publications will link back to your website. At the same time, most journalists will frown upon anyone who demands a link and they may fail to publish your story.

How do you make it easy to politely ask for a link or at least win the journalist’s favor? Build genuine relationships way before you reach out to them with your story.

Once you have a list of journalists, influencers or publications, get in their radar by interacting with them on social media—share their articles, leave comments, and participate in their conversations on social media.

Use tools such as Crowdbooster or Klout for recommendations on influencers in your niche who are worth following. At the end of the day, whether you receive coverage and an accompanying editorial link depends on the relationships you form with the people who can get you the outcome you want.

Expand ‘your story’ on your website

The best home for your story is your own website. Just because your story will be published elsewhere does not mean you should neglect publishing it on your own site.

Media publications may not always be in a position to publish all the details in a story, especially if it is a long one. Providing additional resources related to the story on your site will encourage the publication to point readers to your site for more information.

Some useful additional resources include infographics, surveys, a video and graphical timeline etc. These are attractive pieces of information that readers would be interested in.

Simplify the publication’s work to receive a link in return

No journalist or publication wants to publish a story that will not attract any readers. One way to earn an editorial link is to let the publication know if you have high website traffic or social media following that you can share the article with. This can be very influential.

Another proactive approach is offering as much insider information on the press release as possible.

The more exclusive and pertinent the information you offer, the more they will be inclined to provide a link back to your site.

It is all about providing as much value as you can to receive what you want (an editorial link) in return.

What successful strategies have you tried to gain press coverage?