Public Relations & SEO: A New Skill for New PR Practitioners

Story: David Peveto
Jan. 17, 2014

I recently read an article on PR Daily entitled 7 Underrated Skills for any PR Newbie. The author, Jessica Malnik, described a few skills that might be overlooked by new or recent college graduates seeking a career in public relations. Malnik suggested that the following skills could help set job candidates obtain their dream job in PR: basic HTML knowledge, video editing, Microsoft Excel, proper grammar, basic math, social media familiarity, and search engine optimization.

While most media & communication majors should have a grasp on most things in that list, one seemed most unfamiliar to me: search engine optimization. Because of this, I decided to delve into learning all about SEO and how it can benefit my future career.

My first step to learning about SEO was to look up what resources were available online to gather a solid background on the topic. An excellent resource that I found was a website called searchengineland.com, which has everything from how-to guides to informational videos about the history of SEO, as well as background information regarding how SEO influences how consumers search the web.

Simply speaking, SEO is best thought of as the tips and tricks that web designers and marketers can utilize to make web-based content easily accessible for those searching for it. For example, if a company like Zappos.com, an online shoe retailer wanted users to easily find them online, they need to tailor their content and the source code of their website so that search engines like Google and Bing are more likely to pull their content to the top of a related search. Certain things are within your control, such as placing important and descriptive terms in specific places within the HTML code, called metadata which can help strengthen the back end of a website. Using terms in Zappos’ code like “shoes,” “store,” “sale,” “Nike,” and other terms that people might be utilizing when looking to buy shoes will help show search engines that the website is relevant when those terms are entered by consumers during an online search. The strength and relevance of links going to Zappos, the history of the website, amount of traffic, and how people share their content on social media all go into the algorithms that search engines use to rank content.

After my initial online search for information, I reached out to SEO guru Lin Humphrey, a doctoral student and instructor in the Rawls College of Business Administration. He agreed to sit down with me to offer his insight as to why SEO is such an important skill to learn.

Humphrey worked with targeted SEO when he was employed with MeplusYou, formerly IMCSquared, where he managed their Omni Hotels, Samsung Mobile and Norwegian Cruise accounts. Humphrey said utilizing SEO is important for every communication effort because people are finding new brands and companies by searching online for them.

“Today we complain about getting phone books,” Humphrey said, “we don’t want to see that paper laying around out there. So the way a connected consumer is finding new products and companies is through search.”

Humphrey said the biggest mistake he sees inexperienced people make is not integrating SEO during the early planning stages of a project. He suggested that you plan into the back end of every online project time to make the sites appetizing to the SEO algorithms. Though these steps can add hours of work on a site, it will pay off by making the projects more successful. Additionally, he suggested how social media sites, such as Twitter, can prove beneficial in learning how professionals in the industry utilize their SEO.

“Twitter is every student’s secret weapon,” Humphrey said, “That is the number one resource I can offer to anyone: follow the thought leaders in digital production and see who is sharing that kind of content.”

Along with Twitter, Humphrey suggested reading blogs about SEO like searchengineland.com or searchenginewatch.com, as well as also identifying companies and agencies that offer SEO services and reading their case studies.

SEO can be a challenging skill for PR newbies to develop simply because the vernacular is constantly changing. Also, each major search engine uses a different algorithm, which regularly changes. However, having a basic understanding of how to utilize that system for your client’s needs can really improve the end results of a campaign.

After all of these experiences and research, the main conclusion I can gather is one that humbleness and a willingness to learn will push you further. SEO is a forever changing entity; on any day search engines can optimize and completely restructure the way content is aggregated there is no way you can learn everything as a student. But know that you can learn something, and be willing to learn more. This willingness to learn will set you apart not only as a PR person, but as an employee.