These days, the lines between search marketing and public relations are blurring. Sure, the PR world will always rule the traditional media because of long standing journalistic relationships, but online is becoming more and more important. Any PR agency that denies that simply has its head in the sand.
This leaves us with a big question, “Who should handle online brand reputation management, crisis management and press release distribution – SEO professionals or PR consultants?”
The two worlds are certainly separate but they are treading increasingly common ground. The catalyst for this seems to be link building. In order for any site to rank in a competitive market it needs to have a large amount of external one-way links pointing to it. This is becoming harder and more expensive to do each day as site owners realise the power and value their site holds and start charging to place links to other companies. Search marketing agencies are constantly trying to invent new ways of building links, such as online press release distribution.
This was probably the first area that SEO agencies stumbled into PR territory. An ambitious and well informed PR agency should be managing this kind of event, but from my experience 90% of PR consultants are technology phobic. There is also a kind of arrogance that surrounds most PR agencies: they know what they know, its been working for centuries, why would they change now! Well thats the fast track to ruin in my opinion, as the dinosaurs found out!
Numerous times, I’ve opened dialogue with PR agencies to build a joint service offering that could put us both firmly ahead of our competition – they all paid it lip service but when it came to the crunch they felt safer doing what they do and the talks fizzled out.
Thats where SEO’ers are different; we constantly have to re-invent ourselves, its the nature of the online game, it excites us rather than repelling us and that is why it is so frustrating trying to work with most PR agencies. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not attacking PR companies, I want them to listen to this and react. We need to work with a high profile agency and put together a killer service that eats competitors but I need them to listen and listen hard!
The reason press releases are so great for SEO is that, with the right influence from a good SEO agency, they can be incredibly powerful tools that not only influence opinion of a product or brand but also drive traffic to a site and boost search engine rankings.
Since the advent of the online press release, there are many other areas that have mushroomed in popularity like blogging, social networks and online crisis management.
Blogs are here, they’re big and more often than not their content is read as gospel. Its a strange phenomenon, but the average blog reader will value a frank posting or comment much higher than a professional piece of spin. Blog marketing sits alongside SEO quite nicely – they share a lot of the principles for getting blogs to rank highly in search results, but there is also another element to blogging and that is the social side. Blogs are about content, readers and community. If you can write compelling content and understand how to get your blog noticed, you can build a community.
This leads to huge amounts of traffic around your articles and clearly this has benefits in the PR world. In terms of content writing and opinion shifting, I would hold my hands up and say that PR consultants are better placed to handle things but without SEO influence, the content they are pushing will not get read and will therefore be worthless. This is an area where the two industries need to combine resources and offer joint services.
Social networks are another area that PR needs to get heavily involved with. Sure we hear a lot in the press about MySpace, YouTube and FaceBook but what is it that makes them so popular? Its the same thing that makes them so valuable to an SEO firm and that is content and community.
Google loves content, and the hardest thing to do when trying to get high search rankings is to build content quickly without spending a small fortune. Original content created by users free of charge that is constantly building and reflecting the latest trends or news is absolutely invaluable for two reasons. Firstly, search engines love it, people love it, and they both keep coming back to get more. Secondly, the more readily you’re creating content, the more often readers and Google will visit your site, increasing your chances of exposing your views and opinions to a wider audience.
So who is better placed to manage and promote these communities – PR or SEO firms? The PR consultant should be better equipped to understand how the written word can influence opinion and which section of people need to be fed which message, but is that so important when the content is open, honest and user generated? Sure, commenting upon what is published is key and from a corporate point of view, a measure of a company’s values, but if the community is not there in the first place, its all wasted effort.
That’s where the SEO professional is better equipped to manage the process – building the community, readership and search rankings and then engaging with PR consultancies to promote the corporate view.
Crisis management is another interesting area where SEO agencies are being increasingly consulted. In the online world, 80% of all websites are found through search engines and the Internet is the most consumed medium in the work place. So very often, breaking news will be found or researched within the likes of Google. So when crisis breaks, its not enough to publish a statement in an online press area because everybody is forming opinions way before they ever reach a corporate site or press area.
If you search for a company name in Google, you will see (in Google’s eyes) the most important 10 search listings for that company. If 5 out of the 10 are bad press, what can be done? Well a traditional PR answer would probably be, post comment in the press area or make a statement of your site, but that does not solve the problem.
A well informed SEO agency can launch articles, blogs, comments and forum postings in key areas that could push those rankings onto the second or third page of Google, minimising exposure to this bad press. A PR agency alone could not do this; in fact 80% of SEO agencies could not do this. So the key is to find Search Marketers with great rankings i.e. they can get results and then to get them to work with PR functions to ensure the right message is read first.
To sum up, the whole question of SEO vs PR is about maximising online visibilty. With the right message and no visibility, there is no value. The key is getting the right message in front of as much of the online world as possible.
So, you want my opinion on who wins the battle? Well, the advantages SEO companies have over PR companies are results and return on investment. We can easily demonstrate how much we charge and the return we give and we are also well suited to adapt to a rapidly changing market place, but I won’t even presume that I can learn the PR trade overnight. We need to join forces with like-minded PR agencies but I think the SEO company is better equipped to lead the online side of the campaign. SEO is so technically complex that most SEO agencies can’t do it well! So its not even practical to expect PR consultants to add it to their repertoire, you have to live and breathe it.
Interesting Online PR resources:
This is what I think: the charlatans and snake-oil salesmen of today aren’t to be found in public relations. They’re to be found in SEO.
I do accept that the most important media company in the world today is Google. Since Google doesn’t employ a single journalist (to the best of my knowledge), then media relations is clearly no longer the only game in town. But SEO will become a part of public relations rather than vice versa.
Thank you for including me in this article. I think you bring up some incredible points, that will only continue to stir controversy, and more importantly, change, in order to improve the business and the results in general.
It’s clear to me that Social Media will force a new breed of marketing professionals that will engage with PR and SEO.
I’m only calling all of this out to help the industry wake up – or at the very least, inspire the promising stars to rise up and succeed on their own.
You’re article right on. Most companies think that because their releases show up in Google or Yahoo, that their SEO is effective. But it’s not about finding your company online when you search by company name, it’s about showing up at the top of the list when searching other key words.
I honestly believe that most PR doesn’t truly understand SEO and most SEO’ers don’t understand markets, pain points, and benefits in order to accurately construct a compelling press release (but then again, most PR pros don’t either.) Perhaps the two should work together…
Hi Richard, I think you’re right about the un-desirables being resident within the SEO community but there are some great companies out there delivering excellent results.
As for PR engulfing SEO, I think that will come down to profit. If search marketing makes more money then the acquisitions will be driven by them.
Its going to be an interesting one.
Brian, thanks for contributing such great insights. I hadn’t thought about a new breed of marketeer. A hybrid with the schooling of PR and the tech savvy agility of SEM.
That would be a heck of a skill set…
Pr is about people, good Pr Companies understand their clients. Where are they? What are their aspirations? How close are we to our client? Apply the “Murphy” principle. i.e. if it can happen it will happen!
The problem with most PR outfits is simple, “this is an account, “not a collection of individuals, no indepth analysis of the personalities within the organisation.
I.E. A people business.
I have witnessed many PR disasters where it is apparent that the account manager is simply counting the bottom line with no account of the people involved.
Get close, learn.
Geoff Wilding
Merevale Media Ltd. (A minnow in the business, but we still understand the “people” basis of PR.)
It amuses me when people start throwing around derogatory names about things they clearly don’t understand.
I do agree that SEO is not as strategic as PR and I doubt that SEO will absorb PR. Yet they both have synergistic qualities.
I also agree with Brian that PR and SEO need to work together. As an owner of both types of agencies, I can assure you the results are formidable.
For a basic example, search Google for “pr agency” “pr firm” “public relations firm” “public relations agency” and so forth. Our PR firm (M&O) is in the top ten for all and many more. That’s the start of SEO and PR working together.
Hi Geoff, thanks for your comments. Wise words and closely aligned with are own client philosophy. As a PR man, how often do you come across SEO treading on your toes and how educated are your customers about online PR?
Lee, would you agree with my comments about SEO being more dynamic than PR as a trade in terms of willingness to change and evolve?
What you have to do is pick apart the term “public relations” and the term “search engine optimization”. One refers to how the relationships between people is what’s at issue. And isn’t that what the search engines do? Connect people? (aside from the new Freebase initiative) The other shows how details of a database index are what’s important. And the primary mission of any company is to get and keep customers. Therefore, relationships between people (PR) is more fundamental and trumps database details (SEO).
It’s set science. Are all dogs mammals? Yes. Are all mammals dogs? No.
Is all SEO PR? Yes. Is all PR SEO? No.
Therefore, people with the human relationship skills who also master information science have broadened their human relationship skills, and are better positioned to help companies in their mission to get and keep customers.
Thanks for your comments on the subject Mike. I agree that the term public relations in its purest form encompasses SEO but I suppose my real question is – are SEO agencies going to evolve into PR consultancies or will they always be separate, more technical entities?
I agree with the main thrust of your argument Shane – your thoughts echo many of my concerns.
I’m a bit worried by the thread of comments to this posting though. There is no real purpose in discussing ‘who will win – PR or SEO?’ or have a debate about the semantics of these terms.
It is true that the PR sector, on the whole, is being slow to appreciate the value of online media. It is also true that SEO agencies, while very innovative, are often short on content creation skills.
What we should be doing everything we can to encourage is an open dialogue between these two disciplines. As many have said, when PR and SEO is combined the result is a towering force.
One quick comment on mergers and aquisitions in this sector – you must remember the biggest SEO agencies are about 50 people and that the biggest PR agencies can be ten times this size and often part of much bigger media groups. My prediction is that when these groups realise the synergy beteen SEO and other disiplines like PR they will start waving their cheque books around with some enthusiasm.
Hi Daryl, thanks for stopping by to comment. I think your points are valid but I still struggle as the owner of an SEM agency to find a PR partner that “gets it”…
Can you recommend anyone we could approach to work with?
The sad fact of the matter is that only a tiny proportion of PR agencies ‘get it’. About three quarters of my 1,600+ customers are PR agencies (the rest are in-house PR departments) and I could only vouch for a handfull of these as being online-savvy. And the ones that do get it are often at the lower-end of the size scale – one- or two-man bands usually.
I can’t really recommend any as it might upset my other customers!
Have you thought of hiring one or two PR people? I know of at least one big SEO agency which has done this. They could at least handle creation and optimisation of press releases and online submission (to my press release wire for example).
I can’t speak for the other PR firms out there, but you know that it actually is a New York boutique PR agency that created HitTail? It’s the same PR firm that launched Amazon, Priceline and several other Web 1.0 companies. But significantly, it’s also the PR firm that started with GoTo, ushering in the entire pay-per-click industry and blurring the church & state issues that separated search results from paid advertising.
Public relations by nature lives in the grey area between orthodox and unorthodox techniques for garnering publicity. And yes, many PR companies have got it wrong, such as limiting their domain to optimization of press releases or through “invisible hand” blogging (flogs, sock puppets and astroturfing). The worst cases blow up in the corporate sponsors’ faces, which makes the mainstream blogosphere color the entire PR industry in that color.
But Connors, for example, is capable of auditing a company’s information assets and determining what percentage is still not being used to bring in new customers through search. After completing that audit, we go in with alternative presentation layers to their content management system, and fortify their website–sometimes all-out replacing what they had. This is the equivalent of brain surgery to a website, changing everything the client took for granted about web publishing.
Usually within a few months, the Web becomes their new #1 lead generation source. Or their initial referrers and page views gets boosted dramatically. And it might be a matter of semantics. But we don’t consider ourselves primarily an SEO company. But neither can we purely call ourselves public relations, because of our counterparts who “don’t get it”. We’re looking for some other term to call what we do. But in the end, it’s about connecting people who turn to the Internet (or any other media, for that matter) to get their information.
Shane, I strongly agree with you in that the key advantage SEO has over PR is results in ROI. However, ROI is not necesarily the number one objective within a PR campaign. Yes, at the end of the day clients want to maximise profits but by definition PR is about reputation.
“Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.” – Thanks to the CIPR!
I agree that PR professionals need to educate themselves about the online aspect of PR as the Internet is probably now the most influential information outlet. It is essential that a clients reputation is managed well online, as well as offline, as news and information travel fast particularly in times of crisis!
This is where I personally feel PR would win over SEO. Could an SEM agency really cope with 20 odd news thirsty journalists constantly calling at all hours of the day???
With this in mind I don’t think the argument should be one versus the other. Like others have commented, it should be about working together to achieve maximum results for the client.
Will be interesting to see what the future has in store!
Hi Sophie, its good to see the grass roots of PR being so switched on to new directions and ideas… I agree that ROI is not the beginning and end of any campaign but it gets the deal closed!
If I can help you with any of your work, please let me know.
Ken Mcgaffin of word tracker adds to the debate here:
E-consultancy Blog
[...] I was also able to latch onto another post on the same theme by SEO consultant Shane Quigley. In ‘PR is Dead, Long Live SEO!’, Shane spells out how misunderstanding is creating an impending war between the PR dinosaurs and [...]