performance PR secrets that will boost your search visibility

The challenge of ranking for highly competitive keywords is well known to most SEOs.

Google’s Page 1 often features content from major publishers, such as bylines or listicles that highlight the best products on the “keyword” market.

You cannot expect to be able to compete with Conde Nast Wirecutter CNET et. al.

How can you leverage their power to give your brand a high-powered presence and third-party credibilty?

This article will give you some performance PR tips to help you land big placements, and gain revenue and discovery benefits.

1. Media partners love keyword intelligence that is competitive

Don’t be shy about sharing data on trends with your media publisher network. This will help you to get placements.

Our team conducts extensive research to identify emerging trends that can be used by our media partners and also create opportunities for our brands.

In the early days, we were able to get some great placements for a fitness brand by informing our media partners that we had seen a spike in “at-home exercise equipment” and other keywords.

We work with our brands and our SEO team to create a list of keywords that are in focus every quarter.

We pass those on to our top media and suggest relevant product placements.

Those recommendations are often helpful in getting our brands featured.

Media publishing is a competitive industry. You’ll reap the rewards of providing your partners with information that will help them gain an edge.

2. Performance PR is dominated by evergreen content, except for the latest trends.

Performance PR is not all about trend recognition. While it can be a valuable tool for both brands and publishers, you won’t get the best results by focusing on this aspect.

Our publisher partners typically share editorial calendars for six months centered on seasonality as well as key holidays (e.g. best Memorial Day grill deals, most romantic Valentine’s Day gifts).

These articles are evergreen and long-term anchors for SEO, which means that the title, boilerplate copy, etc., remain unchanged. These articles are updated annually, with the same brands and offers.

The bar is set extremely high for inclusion. A successful placement can last many years.

If you want to be included, make sure you put your best foot forward. This includes top-selling SKUs, highly relevant products, and commission structures that are aggressive.

Themes can be incorporated into holiday content along with the evergreen content.

The content of COVID’s Valentine’s Day reflected the current trends, such as home cooking, cocktails and meal kits.

As trends change, it’s possible to make other adjustments.

We recently found that festival and concert attire (such as Coachella, Taylor Swift concerts etc.) was on trend. Trending. Our brand catalogs were a great place to find fun, glittery SKUs that fit the trend.

The combination of trend data and relevant SKUs combined with proactive commission structures resulted in placements like those below (notice the original Pinterest inspiration).

3. Media partners benefit from more ways to buy.

There are some conflicts of interest between brands and publishers.

Brands often prefer that publishers only provide options to purchase on their own sites, whereas publishers offer multiple options to purchase.

It’s not recommended to list a brand’s Amazon listing alongside their website.

We’ve heard from publishers directly that Google prefers articles with multiple paths for purchase.

We always advise our brands to go with the flow if the choice is between multiple listings and no listing.

4. The SERP is not the only place to look for placements

SEO is often thought of as a vacuum. But consumers are also engaged with media platforms beyond keyword searches.

Performance PR can access more placements with social media repurposing, such as featuring your brand in Reels and Stories. Make sure your team understands their options.

You’ll pay a commission on any sales generated by these listings. Even the best SEO teams will not be able deliver the organic impact that holistic performance PR campaigns can.

Performance PR can be used to increase brand awareness and discovery

The combination of volume, audience and third-party credibility can create a huge opportunity to discover brands/products and generate instant revenue.

If you can build relationships to open doors to content, then performance PR is a powerful tool to help your brand achieve aggressive growth goals.

The article 4 performance-based PR secrets to boost search visibility first appeared on Search Engine Land.