The search engines, especially Google, are a major way that people search for information online and discover their news. But are public relations agencies tackling that front? In a post written on the Nashville PR firm where I work, I go into this question in a little more detail but here is the basic idea. Backlinks are the currency of the web when it comes to high rankings in the search engines. The more you have, the higher you rank. So search engine optimizers are always working hard to increase the amount of backlinks that point to their client's website. Therefore, SEO is all about securing content and backlinks on somebody else's property (blogs, websites, articles, etc). Now here is something that PR experts are already good at, although they are not looking to secure backlinks so much as their client's information in the story.
So if you work in PR, you are probably already an expert at getting information onto major news websites and blogs where SEO experts would love to secure backlinks. You need to ensure, as all public relations firms do, you at least know the basics of SEO so that you are taking advantage of keywords, backlinks, and anchor texting in order to not only increase awareness of your client in the news, but also get them a boost in the search results.
