This was inspired by a Twitter conversation I had with Andrew Smith from escherman and Steve Earl from Speed Communications and relates to warnings I made in an online PR whitepaper over three years ago that still appear to be relevant.
True to his usual style of taking a scientific perspective to online PR Andrew Smith found that 63 per cent of PR agencies in PRWeek's top 150 listing do not have the term 'PR' in their website homepage title, and 85 per cent do not have the term 'public relations' there.
Now, page titles are quite important - one of the many little things you need to get right to ensure your website can be found when people are searching. Many of the top 150 PR agencies tout their digital or online PR credentials, so they ought to be getting little things right like relevant keywords in their own homepage title tag. Thus my response on Twitter: "The gulf between PR and search is still wide - some PRs saying 'we do digital' but actually lack basic SEO knowledge."
Steve Earl responded by suggesting PRWeek should do a 'short test in digital for agency MDs'. What a great idea, I thought. There is clearly more to online PR than this, but here's a go at ten questions every digital-savvy PR agency boss should be able to answer in the right way:
1. Can you describe to a client the full benefits of an inbound link to their website?
2. Are you familiar with Google Page Rank and its use as a rough measure of a site's influence?
3. Do you have access to your clients' website analytics?
4. Are you aware of which of your clients have search marketing (SEO) agencies?
5. Of your clients that have search marketing agencies, do you have direct lines of communication with any of those agencies?
6. Can you be certain your team have set up at least basic online monitoring for all of your clients?
7. Do you have a separate team handling online PR or is it deliverable by everyone in your organisation?
8. Are you able to explain to a client the advantages of online coverage by a 'small' but influential blogger over that of traditional media coverage?
9. Are you personally active on social media, including your own blog?
10. Are you worried your team are wasting time on Twitter or are you proud of their online networking prowess?
How did you score?
