PR is the little thought of power-house tool for driving traffic to your website. Surely, we hear you say, working with the press can’t bring you website visitors and, God forbid, new customers? Handled correctly, it can. 

Good PR will create brand awareness and naturally lead more people to seek out your site and services. But these six top tips explain how PR can help strengthen your site’s online visibility by adding good quality backlinks….

• The great press release – the backbone of PR activity. Got a story, write a press release and send it out. Job done. Well, not quite. Always include a URL – preferably early in the copy – back to your website or a landing page.  Your media targets might ignore your URL but some will publish it and, hey presto, you’ve got a good quality back link. 
• The press release come blog piece – you’ve written your press release. Sent it out. Maybe got one or two backlinks, if you’ve followed the advice above. Now it’s time to tweak the story into a blog format. Add the blog to your site, optimise it and share appropriately and there will be a chance someone will come across your story and link back to it from their site.
• News via the newswires – if you send your release out using a newswire (budget permitting), you can generate multiple links as many sites are set up to accept newswire stories with no edits. Be a little careful here, however, as some of the sites that will host your release will be low quality so your link might be considered low quality or even spam
• Create an infographic – Infographics are a great way to bring your story to life. Send one with your press release – the press love great images so it might get published giving your story a coverage boost. As a double-whammy, you can share your infographic via social media channels and, if it’s good, you might get a couple of backlinks from it as well.
• Viva la video! – much like an infographic, video puts a new-world spin on traditional PR. Embedding a film in your press release can get you more coverage. Double the use of the video by posting it on the likes of YouTube.  And then treble its use by hosting the video on your site – which will naturally improve yours SERPS. Embed sharing widgets and your video can be shared with multiple social networks in just a few clicks.

Top tip – don’t put keyword hyper-links in your release. That’s old-style search engine optimisation and can lead to your site being penalised.