If your PR agency doesn’t practice SEO on its own site, can you trust them to help you with yours?
That’s the point of a recent post from Daryl Willcox (chairman of the media database and wire services) which highlights a study indicating that a large chunk of top UK PR agencies don’t appear to be using basic SEO principles on their own web sites – even though many claim to be able to help clients with search engine optimisation.
As a small tech PR company that tries to integrate SEO basics into our PR offering, we know we’d be held to account (and rightly so) if we didn’t practice what we preach. So at the start of March I embarked on my own in-house SEO initiative to see if we could improve our visibility on the search engines, specifically Google.
The approach focused on well known SEO tactics: ensure that page titles and meta tags are optimised with key words and phrases; push out a link-building campaign using keyword rich press releases and submissions to online directories and article sites; and keep a good flow of relevant fresh content posted on the site via the blog.
These are the basics of SEO, but we’ve managed to demonstrate that, with a little effort, they can make a difference. Because within a single quarter, the CloudNine PR site was listed on the second page of Google for our chosen key phrases, including ‘tech PR agencies’ and ‘technology PR agency’ (from virtually nowhere – as the site only went live in February).
The extra visibility is starting to have an effect, because we’re getting inbound inquiries and attention from the web site. So if you’re still wondering about SEO on your web site and are not sure about splashing out on one of those ‘all-knowing’ SEO consultancies, perhaps your PR agency can help with some of the basics. Just check they’re actually practising it themselves though!