A quarter (25%) of sales were completed online in April. The pandemic accelerated this trend of online shopping, with 37.8% of all sales in the UK being online in January 2021. As a result, it's more important than ever to ensure that customers can find your website online.
Digital PR is an essential component of driving your website to the top of search results. Backlinks and brand mentions signal to search engines that your website is a trusted source and should be featured in top search results. However, if you're buying links or featuring on poor-quality websites, it won't improve your SEO, it could even damage your site. Search algorithms are becoming increasingly more intelligent, and PR will continue to play a fundamental role in improving the quality of your backlinks.
And remember that links aren’t everything. Brand mentions also contribute to your SEO. Google includes them in its algorithm to avoid spam methods of securing links affecting their search rankings.
Google Knows That You’re Buying Links
In recent years, there have been several Google algorithm updates that allow them to identify paid-for links. This means that PR is the best way to secure backlinks and brand mentions.
🐼Panda lowers the rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites", in particular, "content farms", and return, higher-quality sites near the top of the search results and also means that brand mentions are valued even when there is no link to counteract the impact of spam links.
🐧Penguin takes into account the link profile as a whole, and the volume of high-quality, natural links versus the number of spammy links.
💥Spambrain launched last December. It is a machine learning-based spam-prevention system which detects and neutralises paid-for or spam links.
Businesses have seen their websites suddenly fall down in search engine rankings, losing them millions of pounds in potential revenue. As algorithms continue to develop, we predict Google and other search engines will be introducing more intelligent algorithms to prevent unreliable and false search rankings.
It can seem easy to skip the hard work and go the easy but more expensive route. But to continue to improve SEO without risk of penalisation you need to craft creative stories that give journalists a reason to link to your website.
Your content isn’t built with SEO in mind
As SEO is now such a significant part of PR, a good PR agency should be building campaigns with link-building in mind. It’s getting more and more difficult to secure links in titles so you need to give a reason for journalists to link to your website. Rather than focusing on which websites are more likely to provide a link, give them a reason to.
We advise our clients to host additional valuable content on their websites. This can be in the form of additional data, tools or features on the website that add value to a publication’s readers.
You're not being featured in high-quality titles
Link building is beneficial to your SEO because high-ranking and well-respected websites have linked to your content. This showcases that your website should be featured high in search results.
Search algorithms determine the quality of a website using its domain authority (DA) and page authority (PA). If you’re featuring on poor-quality websites it won’t be supporting your improved SEO. Furthermore, for a link to be impactful it needs to be a do-follow link. This tells search engines that it should include your website.
You need expert help
If you’re not sure why your website is appearing low in search results, you can book a free PR Strategy Audit with us. We’ll analyse where your current strategy may need some tweaking to help you improve your SEO.
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