SEO and PR Strategy: Using Awards

One of the things any good marketer needs to do these days is to keep up with all the changes in the field. This includes learning from those who specialize in particular parts of a field.

Brian Dean is one of them. His blog, Backlinko, is a must-read for anyone serious about SEO. Having purchased his Advanced Link Building Course, I found it to be well worth the price. I hear he’s creating a revised version with new material, so make sure to keep your eyes peeled.

One of the strategies he espoused was one involving creating an award, notifying the winning websites and reaping the benefits of those who end up linking to you.

For example, if you create an award of the Top 100 Websites in some field, and 10% link to you, that’s 10 quality backlinks.

Beyond just the SEO backlink benefit, there’s a definite PR benefit here as well.

Creating an award gives you instant credibility in the eyes of your reader, especially if it’s well thought out with a nice award logo.

You can also use it to reach out to bloggers in that field and see if they won’t link to it.

The Award Strategy is an example of how the lines between PR and SEO continue to blur.

This can be a definite advantage to those who know how to leverage the ins and outs of each to gain the benefits.

Here’s an example of an award page we created for a client: http://www.canineinc.com/pages/top-95-dog-websites/

Along with a nice logo page they could use to show off: http://www.canineinc.com/pages/top-95-dog-websites-award

You can tell this is on the labor-intensive side of things as it requires research and writing descriptions.

Then it involves a lot of manual outreach and follow up.

But the potential benefits can be enormous.

If you spent the time to properly research good websites, then the website owners who are listed will be more than happy to show off their new award.

People researching on the Internet may come across this list looking for top dog websites and spend a lot of time reading the content (high “Time on Site” makes you look good in the eyes of Google).

As I said, bloggers on dogs or pets may link to this if it’s well done.

It’s truly a win-win-win.

What’s the takeaway from this?

As the fields of PR and SEO change and the lines between them blur, keep looking for innovative ways to get results.

Firecracker PR does just this as we continually find ways to get our clients results through some serious outside- the-box thinking. Contact us today if you’d like to chat.

Edward Yang | Firecracker
“Igniting Ideas”
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