The importance of the “link authority” in the past
As we know, link building has been a cornerstone of SEO for a long time. No one can deny this and those of us who have been doing SEO for a long time. The more links you could acquire, especially from sites with high mathematical authority (DR, DA, TF etc,) the better your search rankings would be.
If we go back even further in time, when Pagerank could be displayed quantitatively in a bar that we could install in the browser, the business of buying/selling became part of any SEO’s job.
Personally, I think that Google (with that little bar) that showed the Pagerank of any page publicly, was one of the culprits, unintentionally, that this business proliferated so much. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you. I put a couple of links in case you need to expand your knowledge about Pagerank.
This bar was called “Google toolbar” and was displayed like this in the browser.
Google's algorithms are now more sophisticated.
You may have heard in recent times how Google representatives such as “Gary Illes” or “Jhon Mueller” have stated that links do not have the same importance as in the past. I quite agree with these statements, as Google is now able to detect new signals that it could not process before and mathematical values were almost its only support. With the implementation of BERT or MUM, Google is able or trying to understand the authority of a site by its reputation just as a human would. From this arises a compelling need to approach SEO from a broader and more strategic perspective.
In this video, Jhon Mueller is asked about the importance of links and he basically says that links will always be important but the more the search engine is able to understand the context of the content, the less weight they will have. Here is the video in case you want to hear it from him.
Although some people are very skeptical about Google’s comments about links (I’m the first one), they do at least show their intentions. How many years it will take to achieve it or if they will achieve it is another matter but knowing their goals, it is much easier to work thinking about the future.
To improve search rankings today, you need a strategy that demonstrates credibility, targets key points in the buyer’s journey, creates compelling stories with data, and gains influence through reputation and recognition. That’s where digital PR for SEO comes in.
Digital PR for SEO
As Kevin Rowe says in this Search engine land article, PR for SEO is an alternative to traditional link building and is not limited to just getting links.
Public relations will help us to improve the reputation of a brand, product, service and even the people behind it. To do this, you must forget about the link itself.
I have even heard in presentations at important online marketing events how someone was talking about online reputation and digital public relations when they were really talking about classic and obsolete link building based on the purchase of authority links. Here is an image from Search Engine Land where they clearly explain what is PR for SEO and what is not.
Convergence between Pr digital and SEO
Once upon a time (not so long ago) digital PR departments almost completely ignored SEO and in turn SEOs have worked with their backs to Digital PR. It has always struck me that companies take the utmost care in the message that is transmitted to the Internet through the communication and Digital PR departments but allow their SEO teams or online marketing agencies to publish any kind of message on a website without any control except that of the DR of the media where the link has been placed or its organic traffic. If you think about it you will see that it doesn’t make much sense. It really doesn’t.
With the entry of A.I. in Google’s algorithms to evaluate the reputation of a brand, both disciplines must understand that they cannot or should not work without each other. An SEO who does not care about brand reputation and the credibility of the messages being published will not get very far in the rankings. Let’s remember that link for link’s sake is NOT what it used to be.
At the same time, a digital public relations department, with very little effort, can make a great advantage to improve positioning through its actions.
“It uses the power of strategically distributed stories and case studies to capture the attention of both the media and search engines” José B. Moreno Suárez
“Digital PR for SEO is a step further where we don’t just work on getting links” David Ayala
What is digital public relations for SEO?
As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, it is not about obsessing about links. Of course they will be welcome.
The presentation to journalists, bloggers or any other content creator, providing truthful data with demonstrable experience, will be key. Remember that these content creators are capable of creating a great article on any topic with GPT or writing it manually. What will differentiate you from the rest is only that experience that they do not have in your field. Your proposals will be welcome because they will help them differentiate themselves.
Think that E-E-A-T is not exclusive to SEO.
Create market studies, look for trends in your sector and provide that value based on your knowledge and experience. Regardless of the sector, there are always news and trends on which you can support your Digital PR campaigns.
There are tools to receive requests for collaboration with media according to their needs at any given time. You must be prepared to react to these requests by providing a differential value. It is the age of A.I., but that is exactly why it is the best time to differentiate yourself from A:I.
Reactive collaborations
Tools like “HARO” now “HERO”, Source Bottle can help you to receive this kind of requests. In Link Affinity you also have several functionalities to receive collaboration proposals. In addition, with our affinity calculation, you can be sure that the collaborations you receive will be from media that are semantically interesting to you. In addition, from Link Affinity you will be able to chat with the applicant without intermediaries to provide them with your phone number, send them documentation or anything else they need. You will be able to rate the collaborations and as it is a direct chat, you will avoid the A.I. Spam that has given so many problems to systems like “HARO”.
Proactive collaborations
Find media that are thematically related to send your contributions as an expert. Open the collaboration to be interviewed, to provide additional data, even to collaborate in the writing. Here are some tips to make your strategy work:
– Don’t spam
– Research people well (it is important to think that they are people like you), before contacting them.
– Make a clear proposal, without beating around the bush and providing value from the first contact.
– Make sure you propose value for your audience.
– Forget the link
– Don’t select the media by its DR, DA or similar.
– Don’t select the media by its organic traffic
– Forget about keywords. With a classic SEO mentality, your strategies will not work.
To make a final summary, digital PR for SEO is an evolution of digital PR that leverages its potential in improving search engine visibility. And in turn, SEO evolves towards improving brand reputation, because search engines are oriented towards understanding reputation as a human would, no longer taking into account only a mathematical value that is transmitted through links.
