I recently read this article on how Google is asking online newspapers to remove the links to the websites they refer to in their online articles. This is because Google will give more importance to a site that is linked from a reputable source than to a site that is not. So if the BBC website links out to my website in an article on digital consulting, my SERP will increase significantly, exponentially accelerating the rise of my site to the Google page 1 stratosphere. I honestly doubt that Google would go asking the online news sites to do this because it could simply include an exclusion in its algorithm or simply minimize the importance of these links from jumbo sites like NYT or BBC.
However what this story tells me is that there is room for a new form or PR – something less traditional than the traditional PR that sends out press releases and pray for them to be published and hope for a link.
This something is called content – original, copious, keyword-rich and well-written content. After all it is definitely a good thing if my website is mentioned and linked from bbc.co.uk, but it is still better if dozens or hundreds of people are talking about me and linking to me from good articles in their websites.
PR agencies are going to have to face the fact that sending out press releases won’t be enough. The landscape of digital information is changing and more people now trust independent sources like blogs than they trust the traditional media websites. As a result, PR agencies are going to have to change and adapt their strategies considerably in order to establish relationships with bloggers who are gradually taking more and more space on Google’s search results and in the digital media scene.
