This arti­cle explores the evolv­ing rela­tion­ship between SEO and PR – a rela­tion­ship that brands are pay­ing more atten­tion to. Jade Larkin from ExtraMile explores two cam­paigns that epit­o­mise the syn­er­gy between the two fields and bring to life how the chan­nels can work togeth­er. This piece will be of inter­est to SEO or PR pro­fes­sion­als devel­op­ing inte­grat­ed cam­paigns with SEO and PR at the core.

Where is the evolving relationship between SEO and PR heading?

Not so long ago, PR was like SEO’s cool­er cousin. At fam­i­ly par­ties, PR took all of the glo­ry, telling your Grand­ma about hol­i­day­ing in Italy and gain­ing entry to that cov­et­ed film pre­miere. Mean­while, SEO sat qui­et­ly in the cor­ner – a bor­der­line geek, but with an “impor­tant job” that caused eyes to glaze over at the men­tion of “search engine.” After­wards, PR and SEO would chat awk­ward­ly through the night.

How­ev­er, the blend­ing of the offline and online world has caused PR and SEO to bond, tru­ly bring­ing the geek out of the cor­ner.

Now, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing is just mar­ket­ing and online cov­er­age is just cov­er­age, high­light­ing the syn­er­gy between two fields that were once just dis­tant cousins.

But where is this evolving relationship going?

First, let’s explore some fan­tas­tic cam­paigns that epit­o­mise the inte­gra­tion between the two fields and that are tru­ly for­ward think­ing in their approach to SEO-PR.

Expedia’s Accent Map of the British Isles

Expe­dia launched a cre­ative cam­paign ear­li­er this year with the aim of achiev­ing “edi­to­ri­al­ly valid links” ful­fill­ing some of the pri­ma­ry aims of PR and SEO – to achieve cov­er­age and build cred­i­ble links.

The inter­ac­tive map, built on a sub­do­main of expedia.co.uk, allowed users to “explore 15 accents from across Britain and Ire­land and the dif­fer­ent regions they hail from.” It was an impres­sive con­cept and some­thing that the press would be inter­est­ed in cov­er­ing as some light-heart­ed con­tent — and also as some­thing that we can all relate to as our accents are part of our iden­ti­ty.

Links to the map were shared on: The Tele­graph; Mash­able; Dai­ly Mail; The Sun; The Inde­pen­dent; Vis­it Britain; BT; Belfast Tele­graph; and the BBC.

The link build­ing results across a range of sites meant an increase in organ­ic search per­for­mance and earned cov­er­age in the media (includ­ing radio) was wide­spread. Media skills, SEO strat­e­gy and tech­ni­cal know-how com­bined to form great con­tent, ful­fill­ing both PR and SEO objec­tives.

Aquascutum

Aquas­cu­tum, the icon­ic British fash­ion label, launched an inte­grat­ed cam­paign with the objec­tive of “posi­tion­ing Aquas­cu­tum as a for­ward think­ing brand that cel­e­brates Lon­don design and British her­itage.” The cam­paign involved a focus on SEO which then shift­ed towards social and PR.

A new, tech­ni­cal­ly sound web­site was launched and Aquascutum’s unique “vin­tage archive” was used to inspire the online fash­ion blog­ging com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing out­reach strate­gies. Blog­gers with a high pro­file were also invit­ed to attend a store open­ing event.

The blend of a healthy, opti­mised site and engage­ment with well-known blog­gers result­ed in impres­sive results – sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment in the back­link pro­file (as well as the domain trust) and organ­ic search growth.

What do these campaigns tell us?

The Expe­dia and Aquas­cu­tum cam­paigns give us a glimpse of where the future of both PR and SEO is head­ing – two things con­sid­ered as core ele­ments of the same strat­e­gy.

It’s an excit­ing time for both fields, and both skills com­pli­ment each oth­er well. For exam­ple, explain­ing what can be achieved from PR efforts to stake­hold­ers can be dif­fi­cult, but the tan­gi­ble results that SEO pro­vides (key­word rank­ings, organ­ic search etc.) make this expla­na­tion eas­i­er. To tell your CEO that your com­pa­ny web­site is rank­ing well for high-vol­ume key­words after a link build­ing PR cam­paign is the dream.

SEO’s romance with PR will last too. SEO demands con­tent and PR pro­vides that con­tent along with the skills need­ed to build cred­i­ble links – arguably the most dif­fi­cult and most impor­tant rank­ing fac­tor.

So the rela­tion­ship between PR and SEO is one with a great deal of longevi­ty. So much so, that in the not too dis­tant future, an SEO-PR hybrid role may well become “a thing” in all mar­ket­ing teams. But I think a catch­i­er title is need­ed…

Any ideas?