PR professionals need to up their game in 2017 says Mrunmaiy Abroal, director of communications, at Opera Software

 12th January 2017    Opinion 

Most of us start the New Year by setting personal goals aka resolutions. Weight loss, more exercise, quality time with family, traveling are classic chart toppers. 

But, if you are looking for effective ways of enhancing your career in 2017 and bringing in more value to your workplace, then you’ll be sure to find some of useful pointers below.

1] Make your writing search friendly

Before purchasing a new car or smartphone we usually read online reviews and articles about it. It is the same when planning for a holiday. We don’t just go to one specialist website that writes articles only about cars or smartphones or holiday destination. We start our research by typing in keywords on Google search or Yahoo. Everyone prefers to form an opinion after browsing through a universe of information. 

As communicators and creators of content, it is our responsibility to leverage this search-habit. Whenever you write a press release, blog or contributory article for a publication make sure to use the keywords that are associated with your product service. Also use keywords that you would like to be associated with it. This will not only bring your content up in Google searches, but also drive more search traffic to the website and help in building your brand online - organically.

For example, using a combination of Google search trends and BrightEdge Data Cube, we were able to figure out that a lot of people search for 'best Android browser' and 'how to increase internet speed’. These search keywords don’t mention any Opera product directly, but the topics are what Opera’s prospective users care about. We developed blogs with these keywords and the second one was also successfully placed in mainline publications. Even publications care about getting maximum search traffic