There have been many debates and speculations when it comes to what contributes to a site's ability to rank high in Google and drive organic traffic. Google itself claims there are 200 different ranking signals - but, helpfully, won’t disclose what they are.
Links, on the other hand, are at the top of the list for climbing search engines, something Google’s Andrey Lipattsev finally confirmed in 2016.
The challenges of link building
Producing well-written and high-quality content
However much you might want them to, journalists are not going to hand out links in a story just because you've asked them nicely - and nor should they if the link adds no other value.
Earning a link in a news story is not easy - if anything it's getting harder - but producing content that journalists want to link to, or that adds extra information to a reader will greatly increase your chances of success.
A journalist is far more likely to link to an informative eBook or interesting market research report on your website than a 'contact us' form or product page.
Securing high quality links on regular basis
Historically there has always been ways to get a high number of links. Buying links on sites like Fiverr, building up links with tools like GSA or Private Blog Networks (PBS), but it is not 2010 anymore and Google is a lot smarter now.
Paying for links or using these tools will only mean that new links have no added value to your users, and if you want to get penalised, this is a sure way to do it.
The challenge here is having an ability to secure high quality and high domain authority links, which goes back to building those journalist and publisher relationships and using PR tactics to build your SEO strategy.
Scalability
To keep improving your rankings and link profile, you will need to be constantly increasing the quality of links and the number of the links you get. Which is doable at first in a low competition industry and a low starting position, but becomes incrementally more difficult with time.
How PR and content can improve link building campaigns
Content creation
PR professionals make their living creating a wide range of content - news articles, features, research reports, whitepapers - so considering that much of successful link building is creating content that can earn links, it makes sense that PRs should be able to achieve good results.
Relationships
While much of SEO is still moving towards a Paid Media model, link building and PR still depends heavily on having relationships with journalists and publications. Developing these relationships takes time and effort - which SEO professionals don't have when it comes to media relations - but PRs talk to journalists everyday so know what they want and what they are more likely to link to.
Inbound PR
While PR is a valuable asset to SEO, SEO has become an increasingly vital part of PR - especially when it comes to reporting and proving value and ROI. Many SEO agencies do not have the relationships and content skills to do link building, but as PR becomes more digital and agencies get to grips with the need for SEO, PR is going to become a big part of successful link building campaigns.
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