Worth reading or viewing
Occasionally, we at perini & associates will recommend a news article, book, blog post, research or a short video clip to view relating to public relations, marketing, organizational communication and business development. This “eperini Readview” references a article from PR Newswire relating to brand mentions as part of its patented search algorithm, validating PR’s impact on search results–mbp
QUOTE:
May 5, 2014
In a patent for search engine ranking methods that was granted on March 25, Google codified the role earned media plays in search rank. The patent describes how the search engine values “implied links,” which it describes as a reference to a target resource [i.e. a web site or web page] such as a citation, but does not include an express link to the resource, as part of its process for determining the search rank of a web page.
What are these implied links? In a nutshell, they are relevant earned mentions, and run the gamut from media pick up to references on blog posts to mentions in discussion groups.
“What does all this mean? It means that once a connection is made by someone typing in a brand name or other search query and then clicking on a site it creates a connection in Google’s eyes,” SEO expert Simon Penson explained in a Moz.com post about brand mentions. “The search engine can then store that info and use it in the context of unlinked mentions around the web in order to help weight rankings of particular sites.”
The implications for public relations are significant. The mentions your PR campaigns create in turn generate audience activity, which Google watches in the aggregate and uses to inform search results.
In an excellent blog post on this topic titled, “Google Validates that PR is SEO in Patent Filing,” Christopher Penn of Shift Communications concludes:
“Google is publicly acknowledging that every time your brand gets a mention in a story, that counts as an implied link that affects your SEO, that affects how many links there are to your website, which in turn affects how well your site shows up when someone is searching for your brand. In short, PR is SEO (or part of it). It singlehandedly validates all of the PR that you’ve generated for your brand, all of the mentions and citations that you’ve accrued through hard work, great products and reputation, and effective public relations, even if you didn’t necessarily get an explicit link in the coverage.”