Expert articles on the website and in the media are an effective promotion tool. However, with the emphasis on creating quality content, many business owners and PR people do not think about optimizing content for search engines.
In this article I will explain what semantics and links give PR articles, and how to use them in the most natural way.
SEO Opportunities in Expert Content
I often see marketers in the habit of differentiating between articles for search and for people. There is still a popular belief that SEO articles should comply with the principles of search engine ranking, and expert materials should be useful and enjoyable to read. If high-quality combined materials are already appearing on their own websites, then when it comes to PR articles on third-party sites, SEO is often not taken into account.
What tasks does SEO do in expert content? There are three global ones:
- Improve the effectiveness of a single article.
- Increase traffic to the company’s website.
- Improve your online reputation.
Below we will analyze them in more detail, but at the start it is important to remember: compared to classic SEO articles, in our case, the possibilities are limited. Expert content is focused on demonstrating the author’s competencies, benefits for the audience, and media requirements.
If SEO is used head-on, it can jeopardize your reputation and alienate the reader.
Injection of semantics and links should be natural and almost invisible. The main principle is not to harm.
We increase the effectiveness of a PR article
The effectiveness of PR articles is most often measured by reach, engagement and referrals to the company’s website. With the help of SEO, you can attract more targeted readers, i.e. increase the reach and quality of traffic.
Using semantics
No matter how professionally you write an article, if it does not include search queries, the reach will be less possible. This is especially true for sites that are poorly ranked by search engines, and blogs with a small audience.
To increase the visibility of the material in the search and facilitate conversions, it is important to analyze competitive articles, identify keywords, add them to the title, subheadings and in the text itself closer to the beginning.
TOP-3 articles in Yandex on the request “site design”
Structure and visual design
Search engines prefer articles not only with well-developed content, but also easy to read. Therefore, it is important to pay special attention to the layout: check if the text is correctly divided into paragraphs with headings, diversify formats (lists, tables), add visual elements (images, infographics). Focus on making the information easy and comfortable for the reader.
Media choice
When deciding on the edition for the publication of an article, pay attention to the age of the domain, traffic, indexing, ICS and position in the search results. You can view them on various SEO services, for example Be1. Other things being equal, it is better to choose sites with higher SEO indicators.
Example of evaluating the site Habr.ru
External links
Online publications, like all sites, constantly compete with each other in search. As in the case of promoting a company’s website, the ranking of PR articles in the SERP depends, among other things, on external links.
To give the article additional weight, you can post links to it on other resources: blog posts, social networks, thematic groups and forums, article digests. To do this, you can use just headlines, short announcements or rewriting articles. Just do not duplicate the original text, so that the article does not lose its uniqueness.
Digest of articles on Digital with links to media
We increase traffic to the company’s website
Unique articles on the site
Your own blog on the site is not only a confirmation of the company’s expertise, but also a source of search traffic. Write unique articles, add keywords, correct layout, description and meta tags – and easily get more visitors.
Important: do not duplicate texts. Even if you copy your own media article to your blog, search engines will reduce the weight of your site for non-original content. This can be done only by closing the page from indexing.
Links to the site
High traffic media are usually trusted by search engines. If you publish an article on such a resource and add a link to the site in it, then you will increase its rating. This is how you can realize the dream of any SEO specialist – to build high-quality link mass on your site without any risks.
We manage your online reputation
Articles in the media and other highly indexed resources have a positive effect on search results for a brand query (company name). They allow you to create a reputation on the network from scratch and form search results, give the company additional weight in the eyes of potential customers, push irrelevant pages or negativity out of the TOP.
For such an article to get to the TOP, it must comply with the SEO principles outlined above. Even just mentioning the company in the headline greatly increases the chances.
Media in the TOP-10 of Yandex by the brand request of the startup Educate Online
What NOT to do
Finally, I will give a few common mistakes and tips on what to avoid:
- Duplicate content… You should not copy any other people’s articles, or your own from other sources, so that the search engine does not lower the site’s rating. It is better to render the material with high quality. The uniqueness of the material should be at least 90%, for highly specialized articles with terminology – at least 80%.
- Sacrifice the quality of the texts… In the case of expert articles, avoid overusing keywords and dehumanizing the text: if you can’t organically add the right amount of SEO words, leave less. It is better to miss some of the potential traffic than to ruin the author’s reputation and lose the current loyal audience.
- Abuse links in text… If you wrote an article for the media, carefully study its requirements for publications: the ability to add links and their allowed number. Situations are not uncommon when authors by hook or by crook try to include advertising links to sites and products in their text. If you post material yourself, you run the risk of running into a ban, while interacting with the editorial office, you risk ruining your relationship.
Promotion with expert content is a skillful combination of content marketing, PR and SEO. Together, they are able to multiply the efficiency: demonstrate the company’s expertise to a larger number of potential customers and bring them to the site.