What Do You Mean I Have To Pay For It?

If your SEO expert has not yet discussed paid social media advertising with you, hang on to your hat: the latest trend is to spend at least a portion of your advertising budget on social media channels rather than the old “pay-per-click” and targeted content aspects of paid marketing. Google now even says that the links you obtain from these sites are among the most valuable to your business in terms of driving traffic to your website. So, the current hot topic is: should I pay for social media advertising such as press releases?

The Oldest Profession: Press Releases and Paid SEO

Firms have been paying for press releases for some time, so let us start with this familiar context. In the past, your content writer wrote a press release with keyword anchor text that lead to your website, you paid to release the PR on a service and that was that.

Now, however, Google has nixed the simple concept that press release links will give you good SERP results. This does not mean that press releases are not valuable; it simply means you cannot get the same link juice from old-fashioned press release topics such as “Company XYZ Offers Great Products.” Now, the press release has to be truly newsworthy such as a product launch or other news item. This means that it is very difficult to get true value from a press release because Google is looking for a way to evaluate every PR for its potential as an actual news item.

How to combat this problem? Enter paid social media.

Paid Social Media: The Bridge Between PR and Google Ranking

If you want to rank higher in Google with your PR material, there is a way to do it: pay to advertise in social media, raise your rank with Google, and the PR link juice will flow by default. This often a much easier and, in the end, more cost effective use of your PR time and talents than trying to tweak your PRs to fit new newswire standards. It certainly beats spending months of analysis trying to determine if your PRs are actually giving your firm any benefit.

If you want to get immediate results from your hard work with social media, consider paid social advertising as one way to give yourself a boost and make your hard-earned advertising budget go farther.