Optimizing websites for PR

Websites can play a role in an organization's PR campaign, likewise a brand website can be optimized for PR efforts. This short-list will help enterprises with a few best-practices for enhancing their websites to strengthen media relations.

• Make information easy for journalists: Journalists must to be able to find information on your website quickly and without struggle. Journalists use the websites for a couple of purposes--as background on a story, to measure legitimacy and to understand how a brand may fit into the context of a story--among the reasons.
• Have an accessible and clear press section: Back to point one, have a clear and accessible press section on your brand website. The website footer is fine. However, some website footers are cluttered and contain an overwhelming number of links and call-outs. Try to keep this press section link visible and clearly labeled.
• Have the right information. Some companies mistakenly create obstacles to press coverage that result in wasted opportunities. Involve your enterprise's PR team in the press section. Ensure your press section contains the right information. Poor design and the missing information can inhibit journalists, bloggers and influencers from including your brand in an evolving story.
• Website design. The design of a website can aid brand story-telling and media relationships or design can inhibit. A website needs more than a link to a press section. A site should be easy to scan for useful information, links and a company vision. The design of a website is a major trust factor. Poorly designed websites can be a tremendous burden to visitors--whether customers or journalists. Web design should help tell the story of a brand.
• Press releases should be SEO-friendly web pages with unique URLs. Don't just provide a list of PDFs. Ensure that date and contact information are contained in all standard press release formats on the website. Journalists do not always want to download an annual report PDF. Forcing them to download a PDF can be frustrating. Make the information more accessible in a web page format--as HTML content. Also, provide basic information that they need... Don't make them dig through lots of useless stats and numbers to get a top-level earnings report, for example.
• Don't think of your homepage as the only front door. For many enterprises and brands, the website homepage is not the exclusive entrance to the website. Blog content, news articles and whitepaper landing pages (for example) can generate traffic for first-time users. Consider your website experience as it will begin from other landing pages, not just a homepage.
• Enterprise blogs. Blogging and content creation is a fantastic way to weave story-telling into a brand. Blogs give an enterprise or brand freedom to explore new content ideas and build search engine traffic. Here are 5 reasons businesses should blog
• Brand representation on Twitter.  Twitter is a fantastic platform for PR campaigns. Twitter can be used to share important company updates and provide links to new blog content, interesting reports, press releases and story material. Additionally, companies and employees can follow reporters and bloggers to better understand their work. Tweets can also be framed within blog posts, as quotes or references to blog content. They embed beautifully in most website blogs.
• Social media. Social media should be part of an organization's digital PR effort. Social media from a PR perspective is ceasing to be a specialization in PR and is quickly becoming part of an organization's core PR (and marketing / communications) routine for enterprises. Social media offers the ability to have faster and less expensive contact with the media, influencers and bloggers. Appropriate social platforms may include (but not be limited to): Twitter, Linkedin, bookmarking/sharing sites, Google+ and Facebook.
• Customer engagement through the website. Two-way communication can be a gold mine for companies who know how to use it. This dialogue can be appropriate for both journalists/influencer to enterprises and customer interactions. Enabling such communications can happen using social channels, commenting, web forms with human responses, chat tools and portal websites. Such engagement is not limited to the method of communication, but also what an enterprise does with an inquiry, feedback or data.