When digital PR improves SEO rankings: the Doctors Without Borders case study
How can you boost a brand’s online visibility and improve its search engine rankings on the web? With digital PR and link building structured for SEO.
Building a network of valuable relationships around a brand is a fundamental step in growing awareness of the values and profile of any company, association or professional online. Businesses, in fact, thrive on relationships: with customers, with suppliers, with the public. If Public Relations once existed as a discipline of their own, today relational activities are concentrated above all online. It is therefore right to speak of digital PR. Collaborating with the web’s opinion leaders allows a company to increase its visibility and its standing online.
And not only in the eyes of the public! When carried out with an SEO focus, and therefore paired with a link building effort, digital PR is also able to improve a site’s web rankings.
To better understand this combination of digital PR and link building, of brand awareness and SEO optimization, let’s take the case of Doctors Without Borders. The communication strategy designed and implemented by ARvis.it offers a concrete example for analyzing the matter.
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What digital PR is for
The online world is today the main touch point companies have for connecting and communicating with their audiences. At the same time, however, the web is layered and diversified. Not only are there numerous platforms and hundreds of thousands of sites, but also a great many very different browsing habits. That is why digital PR is fundamental: it allows a company to connect with different audiences in an always fresh and appropriate way, meeting its target audience each time with the right tone of voice.
This is why it is important for communication agencies to have digital PR specialists on their team. Their job is to identify the best web opinion leaders depending on the situation and the needs at hand. These may be bloggers, influencers or streamers: each figure speaks to a different audience, or to the same audience but in a different language. The company thus connects with its target in many forms, increasing its visibility and building its reputation.
Digital PR and link building: the winning SEO combo!
When it comes to digital PR, one of the objections and criticisms heard most often is that of its ephemeral nature. Content on the web, and on social media in particular, follows one item after another very quickly and tends to be forgotten just as fast. This is why digital PR must be set up in a strategic and continuous way, so as to build a solid, lasting brand reputation.
One way to make this happen is to approach digital PR with an SEO focus.
In this case the goal will not only be to give the brand immediate visibility through influencer marketing initiatives, but rather to offer valuable content that can stand the test of time. This will also increase the authority of the company’s domain. By involving well-ranked bloggers in guest blogging activities, a network of backlinks to the brand’s site is created that increases its authority and reliability in the eyes of search engines.
The charity initiative with Doctors Without Borders
The combination of digital PR and link building was the path ARvis.it chose for Doctors Without Borders. Since this is an internationally renowned nonprofit, its brand reputation was already well established and strong. Why, then, invest in digital PR? The strategic choice was to set up the activity with an SEO focus, pairing it precisely with link building.
Our digital PR specialists identified the figures best suited to conveying the values of Doctors Without Borders: access to care, solidarity, peace, and concern for others.
Among the various campaigns carried out in support of the work of Doctors Without Borders, a particularly demanding one focused on charitable Christmas gifts. The idea of making the holiday season truly a time of sharing is easy to convey, but during such important festive periods both bloggers and influencers are literally besieged by companies willing to invest even large sums to secure sponsorships. The campaigns ARvis created for MSF necessarily had to be charitable in nature, and entering such a crowded competitive arena took no small amount of effort and powers of persuasion. Fortunately, the empathy and goodwill of the chosen blog and social media professionals were remarkable too… and greatly appreciated!
The coordinated work of the operational business units for digital PR and SEO consulting made it possible to select bloggers and influencers who, each with their own audience and style, could talk about Doctors Without Borders and promote its charitable Christmas gifts as a new habit for making a concrete contribution to the common good. The content on their blogs, with links to the Doctors Without Borders Charity Shop, boosted the domain reputation of MSF’s charitable gifts in Google’s eyes, as well as telling users about this wonderful opportunity. The stories and posts on social channels brought a heartwarming trend of solidarity to the platforms.
Related service: discover Digital PR by ARvis — the agency that scales with you.
