Enhance Your Digital PR Measurement Program with These 12 Essential SEO Metrics
In today’s digital landscape, PR and communication professionals need to adapt their measurement strategies to keep up with the changing times. Integrating SEO metrics into their programs is a great way to enhance their understanding of their audience and improve reach. This article will outline 12 essential SEO metrics that can be incorporated into a digital PR measurement program, starting from audience and keyword research, all the way to advanced analytics and user engagement strategies.
1. Start with audience research
Understanding your audience is key to any successful PR campaign. Audience research can provide valuable insights into who your customers are, what they search for, and where to reach them. Tools like SparkToro V2 can help you discover important information about your target audience, such as the websites they visit, the keywords they use, and their demographics.
2. Conduct keyword research
Once you have a clear understanding of your audience, it’s important to conduct keyword research to measure search interest in a particular topic or search term. Google Trends is a useful tool for PR professionals and SEOs alike, as it provides data on search terms people are searching for. This data can help gauge search interest in a specific topic before creating relevant content.
3. Monitor share of search
Share of search has become a key PR metric as it correlates to a greater share of website traffic. Google Trends allows you to compare the share of search for different topics or terms, giving you insights into how your brand or competitors are performing.
4. Compare release views
PR professionals should question how many “release views” they are getting and whether they are coming from bots or actual users. Tools like SparkToro’s audience research tool can provide estimates on the number of people visiting different websites each month, giving you a better understanding of the reach of your press releases.
5. Count link clicks
Tracking link clicks is another important metric to measure the effectiveness of your press releases. Google’s Campaign URL Builder can help you track link clicks to a landing page by adding campaign parameters to your URLs. This allows you to see how many users are clicking on your links and visiting your website.
6. Track events
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can be used to track specific behavioral interactions on your website, known as “events.” These events provide insights into user engagement and can help PR professionals understand how users are interacting with their content.
7. Measure key events
In GA4, conversions have been renamed “key events,” which are the most important interactions on your website. PR professionals can define key events based on their goals, whether it’s scrolling to a certain percentage of a blog post, completing a tutorial, or making a purchase.
8. Increase website traffic
While SEO managers and agencies use “organic search traffic” as a metric, PR professionals can use “referral traffic” and “organic social traffic” as PR metrics. Referral traffic measures users who arrive at your website through editorial links on other websites, while organic social traffic measures users who arrive through non-ad links on social sites.
9. Improve user engagement
User engagement is a crucial metric for both PR professionals and SEOs. GA4’s “user engagement” and “engagement time” provide insights into how users are interacting with your website, replacing the old metrics of bounce rate and time on site. By focusing on engagement rate, you can measure the percentage of sessions that last longer than 10 seconds, have at least two pageviews, or include a key event.
10. Raise brand awareness
GA4’s Business objectives collection is a valuable tool for PR professionals looking to raise brand awareness. The Demographic details report provides key characteristics about the people who use your website or app, while the Pages and screens report shows data about the pages and screens users visit, helping you understand where people are going across different platforms.
11. Generate leads
For PR professionals focused on generating leads, GA4’s Business objectives collection offers useful features. The Landing page report helps you understand how visitors interact with your website, indicating the number of visitors landing on each page. This information can help identify which landing pages are performing well and which ones need improvement.
12. Drive online sales
Finally, if your goal is to drive online sales, GA4’s Business objectives collection provides valuable reports. The Ecommerce purchases report shows which products or services are being sold, while the Purchase journey report details how many users drop off at each step in the sales funnel. The Checkout journey report provides insights into the number and percentage of users who initiated and completed each step in the sales funnel.
Incorporating these 12 SEO metrics into your PR measurement program can greatly enhance your understanding of your audience, improve user engagement, and ultimately drive better results. By bridging the gap between SEO and PR, communication professionals can adapt to the digital landscape and stay ahead of the competition.
