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Within the public relations industry, there is a growing demand for online PR. However, we have started to see a cross over of industries as SEO companies and PR agencies fight for the lucrative online sector. Can there really be only one winner?
What is SEO?

SEO is search engine optimisation. Most simply put, it involves tweaking websites to make them easily seen by Google, which will then in turn place the website higher in search results for the keywords you have done work towards. Google wants to return the most relevant results for key terms so the point is to help Google see how much more relevant your site is over your competitors.

SEO is made up of two parts: on-page and off-page SEO.

Clearly, on-page SEO consists of writing Google-friendly content, including the most relevant key terms, which will also appear in your meta information etc. Of course, your website should also have been built so virtual spiders can crawl and extract information easily. Without FPT access, the public relations professional would not normally have a role to play in this aspect.

Off-page SEO is mainly link generation with the best links having a dofollow attributes which includes your key terms in the anchor text. This is where PR people can have a substantial impact. To get your client’s story in a national newspaper is great for traditional PR but for SEO, the aim is to get a link to the client’s website from the newspaper’s website and you will have hit the SEO jackpot. Afterall, the Telegraph’s website has a page rank of 8, the Guardian boasts a page rank of 9 and The Sun has a very respectable page rank of 7. It is well known that links from website with high page rank are more valuable than those from sites with low or no page rank. A persuasive public relations person can get the links that SEO people dream of.

What is online PR?

Again, simply put, online PR is managing a company’s reputation online. This can be done best with social media as companies can create a meeting place for customers who like a brand to discuss products/promotions etc in a social environment that the customer views as their territory e.g. platforms such as Facebook. The great thing about this for brands is that customers let down their guard in this arena, they have time to browse and are relaxed enough to make impulse buys.

SEOs often jump on this task, as it is easy, right? You set up the Facebook page, put a button on the website and let customers come forth and gush about how much they love the client’s brand and we’ll drop in occasionally and use it as a free broadcasting channel. Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy.

Some SEOs get it right and they’re the ones who understand about how social media works and encourage discussion and interaction. Those who get it wrong waste an opportunity for businesses to connect with customers and clients at best. At worst, they create a public relations nightmare that spills off the Internet into a calamity in the traditional media.

The trouble is that not every public relations agency has embraced the Internet. Amazingly, some prefer to stay out and wish not to adapt to the changing times. Unfortunately, this is not a strategy to adopt if you wish to be operating in 5-10 years time.

Separately, SEO and PR have a huge amount to offer clients looking to expand their businesses online. Is the middle ground of online PR a space to be fought over or an opportunity to work together? Part of the battle is that anyone can say they are a ‘Social Media Guru’ and all that will be achieved is a bit of messing around on Twitter with the client losing out. Weeding out the charlatans is the first challenge! Reputation is everything in PR.

Public relations agency Tank PR works with Nzime on several online projects. Based in Nottingham, the two companies work together to ensure that clients get the best deal – amazing websites that are well optimized for search engines backed up with amazing PR.