We teamed up with two all-star members of our SEO team, Antonio and Nicole, to play a game with them during our coffee chat and hear what they really think about the integration of the public relations and SEO channels.
For the first question, I asked:
What is the most top of the funnel channel?
Antonio’s pick was… SEO! He mentioned that this channel captures a ton of free traffic and that off-page SEO or link building efforts really grab a lot of first touch visitors and add them to the funnel.
When I asked Nicole, she mentioned that PR was the channel she thought was the most first touch. Similar to Antonio who discussed off-page SEO, PR is a channel that reaches a broad audience and introduces brands to many visitors for the first time. She also mentioned that paid social is a channel she also beleive is top of the funnel because of it’s ability to promote blog articles and generate cold traffic interest for brands.
Next Question: Where in Google Analytics can you find the success of PR placements?
Antonio hit the buzzer first and mentioned that you can find links to PR placements in the Referral channel in Google Analytics under the acquisition category.
Nicole took it a step further and discussed that there are ways to utilize Google Analytics to not only see the number of conversions and traffic, but also see the full customer journey and where in that journey a consumer may have landed on a PR placement that might have affected their buying decisions.
The last question was: How do PR and SEO best work together?
Both Antonio and Nicole agreed that the more you are leveraging and fostering relationships the PR team has built, the better off the SEO campaign will be. For example, the PR team brings opportunities to the table and the SEO team helps identify how to best take advantage of those opportunities. The SEO team helps identify spammy outlets, the perfect anchor texts and also link destinations to really elevate their efforts.
It’s undeniable that SEO and PR work hand in hard to lift overall performance. Keeping a pulse on each channel’s strategy is critical to seeing speedy and effective results.
