10 Yetis Insight Blog - How A Digital PR Agency Can Work Alongside Your In-House SEO Team

A digital PR agency and an in-house SEO team can be a match made in heaven... a link building force to be reckoned with... a digital dream team. I could keep going, but I think you catch my drift.

If a company with a web presence hires a digital PR agency, the chances are they just want the activity they pay for to generate as many high quality links back to their site as possible.

If a company with a web presence hires a search engine optimisation (SEO) company or some SEO pros to work in-house, the chances are they just want the activity to improve their rankings, perhaps clean up some murky mistakes they'd made in the past and also generate as many decent, clean links back to the site as possible.

More and more SEO companies and teams are having a stab at this whole digital PR game now, as their clients begin to require more than just the technical side of the complex art that is trying to work out Google's algorithms and how to - legitimately - play them like a tuneful piano.

There's no denying that honest, high quality links from authoritative websites are great for SEO and that digital PR campaigns are perfect for generating these links. So, it makes sense that digital PR agencies and in-house SEO teams can work well together; after all, their goals are ultimately the very same.

If you have an in-house SEO team, but think that you may need just a little more link love, here are just a few ways that outsourcing some elements of your overall SEO goal to a digital PR agency and working together on projects can work...

Creative Input

A PR team will usually be made up of creative types, which - I'd hope - means that they have pretty awesome ideas floating around in those heads of theirs. In-house SEO teams can use this creative flare to work with a digital PR agency to come up with content-driven ideas that will generate links.

Of course, in-house SEO teams will have great ideas of their own, but a digital PR agency could take the pressure off and handle the creative side of things, leaving just the technical side to worry about.

Communicate Properly

It's important that in-house SEO teams and digital PR agencies communicate properly, and regularly, when working together. Honesty is key and you need to both be singing from the same hymn sheet rather than competing with one another.

Contacts

A digital PR agency will have good relationships with online editors - the exact people in-house SEO teams might want to get their content in front of to try and get links from it. If the in-house SEO team has already created something like an infographic or microsite, the digital PR agency can pick up the selling in side of things and run the ideas past their media contacts to try and get results. It's better to handle it this way than for the SEO teams to randomly email journalists that won't know who they are, as they won't be as receptive to this kind of approach.

Collaborate, Don't Crossover

This one is up there with communicating properly. It's important to ensure there's no crossover when in-house SEO teams and digital PR agencies work together. If the PR team is contacting journalists and pitching ideas that will hopefully help with links, it's no good if the SEO team has also been doing the same without telling them. Journalists will get annoyed if they're getting hassled from too many different directions, even if the ideas are good. Share your strategies and planned activity to eliminate the chance of crossover and duplication.

We have a lot of experience working alongside in-house SEO teams and it's something we love to do. Shared knowledge and different strengths can make for even better and more successful campaigns. Even if in-house SEO teams just use digital PR agencies as a sounding board for their ideas and to get some insight or direction from, it's definitely worth thinking about and a relationship that should be explored!