Online PR refers to the communication activities carried out in the digital field through search engines, news sites, social media channels, websites, blogs, and forums.
The primary purpose of these studies is to increase brand awareness and search. In an environment of the crisis caused by the coronavirus outbreak, brands must invest more in online PR studies.
Many SEO professionals and SEO tool developer companies claim that backlinks are still important. I recommend you look at the explanations of the SEO professionals who make a living by selling backlinks or developing online-offline backlink analysis tools and offering them for a fee. A few days ago, there was a debate on the SEMrush YouTube channel as to whether backlinks are losing their importance:
Endless Discussion: Are Backlinks Still Important?
There are many analyzes based on the backlink – Google rankings relationship. However, let me clarify my perspective by saying that the subject we spend the least time in the SEO projects we have been conducting for the last few years is backlinks. In some niche and competitive sectors, having a better backlink profile than competitors may still provide a slight advantage in the rankings. However, an increasingly important fact in the annual rankings is how the website and its contents can meet user expectations. Instead of spending your precious time getting backlinks to rise in rankings, you can spend your website continually improving and improving to meet potential customer expectations. In this way, you can get a ranking increase as fast as you would expect. Another factor that has started to determine Google rankings in the last few years is whether it belongs to a company that has managed to become a brand in the website sector. The companies that have worked to become brands and are mentioned in many digital channels have the advantage of ranking websites.
Online PR studies and brand awareness are very important for Google. So much so that Gary Illyes, one of the Google engineers, had an interview at the Pubcon 2017 conference stating that the frequent presence of a brand name on popular news sites affects the Google algorithm positively and contributes positively to the brand’s website rankings:
1. Increasing Brand Awareness
When managed regularly and professionally, online PR studies contribute to brand awareness. The trick is to meet the target audience of the media or website with content that meets their needs and expectations. Online PR is most commonly used on popular news sites to publish news that includes your brand and website. However, only advertising your brand while doing this may be annoying to the readers of the media, and after a while, these contents may lose their news quality. For example, suppose you are a brand with a website selling insurance online. When you regularly publish consumer-friendly information and statistics about the insurance industry on important news sites;
Only those benefits will spend time and backlinks, providing you with a much more favorable return from cash.
Let’s say you have a translation company targeting corporate clients instead of individual customers. In such a scenario, online PR services can help you attract the attention of your target audience and significantly increase your brand awareness.
2 . Searching for Brand Names and Triggering Google Algorithm
By ensuring that your brand name regularly faces hundreds of thousands of consumers on popular news sites, you are also enabling these consumers to search on Google with your brand name. This does not go unnoticed by the Google algorithm. In most cases, I witnessed that the Google rankings of the brand’s website were positively affected after such releases. The trick is; you need to do such news periodically. It may be monthly, but it is best to publish at least two news monthly.
3 . Getting Backlinks
I know that it is a bit ironic to mention that the backlinks have become insignificant above. I again suggested the backlink purchase as a positive reflection of the online PR activities. “I am not saying that you do not buy backlinks. I recommend you buy them as naturally as possible without spending extra time.” As a natural reflection of our online PR studies, we see that the brand site’s backlink purchase has also accelerated. Naturally, when you come across hundreds of thousands of people, some become website owners or bloggers, and they can discover your brand’s website and give backlinks to your pages. Better than that, apricot in Damascus!
4. Utilizing the Traffic of News Sites Explosing After the Crisis
The news sites’ traffic has increased abnormally after the coronavirus epidemic. People regularly visit news sites to read the news about the plague. Therefore, it is possible for the content you will publish on your news sites for your brand to be read and interacted with by more people than a few weeks ago.
As Stradiji, instead of carrying out backlinks for the brands, we work with, we recommend investing in online PR and brand awareness studies, which Google is increasingly giving importance to. Thus, we increase your brand awareness by making your brand name appear on popular news sites, and we also provide your website an advantage in Google rankings by enabling more people to search for your brand name on Google. Thanks to our cooperation with our partner B2Press, we prepare your SEO-compatible press releases and serve them in more than 30 countries. We manage your special news studies and interviews. We follow and report your news. If you want to do online PR work in Turkey or abroad with the cooperation of Stradiji and B2Press, you can apply to our Online PR Management page by choosing the package that suits your budget and target.
Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly SEO insights, join the discussion in our community, or engage with professionals on our Twitter group.
