The lines between modern SEO and traditional PR are becoming increasingly blurred. Indeed some of the best link builders these days have backgrounds in PR.
Traditional PR is defined as...
“the practice of managing the spread of information between an individual
or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a
nonprofit organization) and the public.”
...which is in many ways the goal of white hat link building/content marketing – to manage a company/website's online reputation (and pick up some juicy links along the way).
Here are some white hat link building tactics you can utilise, which would fit under the umbrella of PR.
Getting Quoted
Whether you are a one man band link building for your personal site, or are representing a multi-national company, getting quoted is one of the best ways to both:-
a) establish your expertise in an industry
b) manage your website's online reputation.
Of course, wherever your name is mentioned, you'll generally get a link (if not see 'Link Reclamation), and these are the kind of high quality editorial links that Google simply loves.
So how do you go about getting your words of wisdom featured on other sites?
Full Interviews
Lots of websites publish full interviews with experts in their industry. Look for opportunities, and reach out to the websites asking them if they would like to interview you.
If you are new, it will be harder to secure opportunities, but as the ball starts rolling you will find it becomes easier, and eventually you will find other sites approach you directly.
As Rand Fishkin of Moz says: -
'Interviews also, perhaps oddly, beget more interviews, especially if the
answers you provide are robust, useful, interesting, and shareable.'
The takeaway from Rand's advice is to make sure your answers are both interesting, and will resonate with the website's audience.
Expert Roundups
If sites in your niche publish expert roundup posts (these are particularly popular in marketing), then you want to try and make sure that your name is included regularly as one of those experts.
Again, getting the ball rolling is the hardest part, so if you find a newly published expert roundup you might want to simply reach out and ask if you can add a tip/quote (I would recommend including the quote in the outreach email).
Additionally, Ann Smarty has a great service called MyBlogU (link in tools), which al ows you to browse opportunities for quotes (i.e. sites publishing expert round ups) and submit your tip directly.
HARO
HARO (Help A Reporter Out) is a free service, which will send you a daily list of websites and publications looking for quotes from experts.
The site covers a wide range of topics, and you will generally find good opportunities for most niches.
Note: The first two tactics (full interviews and roundups) can be flipped round and hosted on your own site – see 'Part 12: Link Bait'.
Press Releases
When used correctly, press releases are still a great way to secure valuable coverage for your business.
I caveat the above with 'correctly' as, the tactic of simply submitting a low quality press release to dozens of free press release to pick up cheap backlinks, is one that you should avoid. Indeed it is very likely to get your site penalised.
While higher quality press release services such as PrWeb are still useful to an extent (for example getting your release into Google news), to get the most out of your releases, you should take the time to build a prospect list of journalists and bloggers who have a history of covering your topic.
Most newspapers have readily available contact emails for their journalists/editorial teams, and when not available you can often reverse engineer them by looking at email addresses that are published.
For example, if you find other email addresses at the publication are in the format firstname.lastname@thenewspaper.com, then normally you can just follow the same format with the name of the journalist you wish to contact.
If all else fails, when targeting newspapers, you can always pick up the phone and ask for contact details for a particular journalist.
Once you have your prospect list in place, you should send a personalised introductory email to each contact, along with your press release.
Keep your prospect list in a spreadsheet, for later use.
Further Reading
Recommended Tools