PR agencies can be the new SEO agencies of the 2016 digital revolution

Long gone are the days when companies would put Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) consultants on large retainers to increase both their website hits and Google presence.

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Google has made such drastic changes to their algorithms over the past few years that the recommendations that SEO consultants made to increase website visibility, now negatively affects website SEO. These methods have become known as black-hat techniques. The topic titled 'SEO is dead' is a common forum discussion topic found on the web that has now been replaced with white-hat SEO techniques.

So what are white-hat SEO techniques for 2016?

These techniques are what we, as a media company, do every day. We create quality content and build relationships with influential press to get the content published. Have you heard of the Skyscraper SEO technique? Well it's basically PR (content creation) with a digital spin:

• First you research top content being shared on a specific topic
  
• Second you see who's publishing the content by using a variety of tools
  
• Third you write an article on the desired topic but take a different angle by adding a local spin or more up-to-date facts or interesting points.
  
• Fourth you send the article to the publisher website (such as a news service) explaining the content.
  
• Most times, if the content is published, it will be back-linked to your website. This is gold!

Companies that are able to embrace this technique will have a long future in the digital age by sending traffic to their clients’ website and getting their clients’ sites ranked on search engines. Good content is truly king. But not all social media companies are able to write good content. They find it difficult to do the work of a good journalist.

The three most important SEO factors are:

• Content published on high-ranking news media websites
  
• Your own website content shared on social media platforms
  
• Backlinks.

PR can be a huge help in getting this right.

Don't think PR is dying, PR is evolving and it's an exciting time to be in PR, but only with the necessary knowledge of what Google requires and good-quality journalism.