Online PR or PPC

Searching for the best bit of PR on Google

Advertising you pay for, but PR you pray for – or so the old saying goes. An ad will gain a consumer’s attention, but a story will gain their trust. At least that’s how consumers view it. Why? Because when advertisers tell us how good they are we feel like we’re being sold something. And while consumers do like to buy, they don’t like to be sold.

Consumers prefer to read about someone they know and trust doing the praising, particularly if it’s a journalist.
The public knows advertising’s agenda is to try to sell them something while they believe that editorial comment or a story about a product doesn’t have an agenda but is more truthful and credible.

That’s why businesses work so hard to convince journalists there’s really a story in their product whether there is or not. The advertiser knows how the public thinks. That’s why PR is so much more persuasive and powerful than advertising.

So what does that mean for the Internet? We actually have the same choices – either advertising or PR. Instead of the journalist however, we must convince the Search Engine Optimiser (SEO) that our content is worth putting near the top of the Google search where consumers will trust it.

So if newspaper PR is mostly about getting the media to mention your company in their stories and columns then Search Engine Optimisation is about getting Google to consider your content relevant and getting bloggers to link to it so it moves to a trusted position as well.

There are more similarities between Internet PR and Internet content, but there’s a surprising difference as well. In the paper most people recognize an ad.

However, not everyone seems to know of course that advertisers can pay to have a link at the top of Google. A sponsored link on Google has a yellow highlighted background to set it apart from the links that got to the top because they have good content and SEO.

In the UK this yellow highlighting screams advertising and 80 percent of us ignore it and go for the non-ad link below it. Perhaps we’re more cynical than consumers in the US or advertising is different in the states because US citizens actually prefer the sponsored links. Or perhaps they’re just not aware that those are ads.

You must spend time getting a reporter to consider your product worthy of a story and some PR instead of just placing an ad. It also requires a little more expertise and time to get a search engine to take notice of you. You must make your content search SEO friendly by spending more time, perhaps 70 percent of your time, getting the prerequisite links from other sites.

There are more similarities. SEO may take as long or longer than PR to boost your company in the public’s eye, but once you’re on the map, it usually isn’t too hard to stay there.

Like PR, good natural search results are take time to achieve and often require the hiring of a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) expert. With all the time involved in doing all that, you could theorize that there is no such thing as a free link.

While being at the top of the ‘free’ listings is the best place to be in the UK, there are advantages to paid search (PPC). It’s out-and-out advertising to be sure, but brands have more control of their destiny as well.
They can specify the time, position, place and message that is viewed and even the geographical location of the viewers they want to target. But its biggest advantage is that it can generate results fast – particularly when you want them.