As the gap between public relations and technology continues to shrink, many Search Engine Optimization and PR firms are finding ways to work together to meet the needs of their clients. Integrating talents not only brings expanded capabilities to each party, but allows for innovation, collaboration and ultimately, better results. Search Engine Optimization Public Relations (SEO PR) has become a common practice when creating press releases, web sites or other online materials. SEO PR is simply maximizing traditional public relations by combining the best practices of technology, linguistics and PR tactics to create prominent search engine visibility. In other words SEO PR not only helps promote your company’s key messages, but it also incorporates search engine-friendly communication through techniques such as optimizing copy in press releases, articles, social media sites, blogs, RSS feeds, and websites. The ultimate goal is to make sure your company is a priority amongst all the noise that exists on the web.

A strong SEO PR campaign focuses on choosing the right keywords to create a balance between words that most accurately describe the company and those that are “search engine friendly,” that is, they have low competition in search queries. By optimizing and distributing press releases online and using RSS feeds and other forms of social media, the press release has the ability to grow behind just print media and have a longer life online. The release will often be picked up and archived by a multitude of sites that pull relevant news feeds, which means that the press release’s message gets instant online visibility, and if the content is something people want to read it will naturally spread through social bookmarking sites such as Digg or social networking sites like Twitter.

SEO efforts can be further strengthened by having the keywords included in the release’s copy link back to your website. Besides increased visibility, this can be very powerful as the sites that are likely to pick up your online release are usually relevant to the content being distributed, which helps increase your rankings. Remember to use relevant keywords as anchor text for your links, too, and avoid anchor text like “click here”. But don’t go overboard:  putting too many links in a press release, article or blog entry can actually negatively impact your rankings, so just choose the most relevant key words to highlight. Lastly, when you create a press release, make sure it’s newsworthy and relevant to your target audience to maximize exposure..

Besides optimizing your written online content, other PR strategies to help build SEO include:

• Posting commentary on relevant industry blogs, forums or open source “wikis” with links back to your website can help boost visibility online.  Commentary should add value to readers, so it helps to keep blatantly self promotional language to a minimum.

• Social networking sites like Facebook and Linkedin are a no-brainer for companies looking to building web awareness. These sites have very high SEO visibility, are inexpensive and offer a relatively easy and instantaneous way to communicate company news, distribute video, post photos or start a discussion with target audiences. They are also much less expensive and time consuming than updating your own web site

• Registering your company in online directories (such as Philly Ad Club) is another cost effective way to increase rankings. Potential clients may be searching these organizations for new potential partners, and if you’re not listed, you won’t be on their short list of targets.

Like traditional PR, Clients are still extremely focused on immediate, demonstrable ROI rather than longer-term metrics such as branding, site stickiness, or correlating search behavior to other marketing/pr programs. Forms of measurable results therefore can be found in increased traffic to your web site, an increase in your keyword footprint, search engine rankings, online press release pickup and traffic generated from the release.

SEO PR is evolving every day with the addition of new social networks, web sites and online tracking devices. While there is no one-size-fits-all formula for SEO PR, there is almost always a unique mix that is right for your company. Smart use of PR and SEO provides a cost-effective way to harness the power of the web to help meet your marketing and business goals.