SEO Battles : SEO vs Direct

Quotes

• “The biggest difference there for me is that SEO and PR possess very different skills and if you find someone with both skills, that is really great because if they understand the power of PR and the effect it has on organic search, youre on a winner there. In trying to do well in SEO, you need PR. ” -Lillian

• “I think where the battle is, is the cult of personality. Our SEO community is data-driven, technical, were really trying to think scientifically. As opposed to PR where it is more like a fluffy channel, leveraging relationships, and trying to get placements in places where it hasnt been historically data-driven. Its selling your story to someone else so they write content for you.” -Ben

• “There are different types of PR. There is the influencer, generalist relations, and finding a story that they are actually interested in. Then you call the other elements of PR roots and its more of the current work where you are really to produce the collateral that goes with the stories.” -Lillian

• “With the SEO getting results in the search engines they will find that collateral is a big part of it. Youve got people who know how to tell stories, this is certainly a way to get organic traffic. I also cant talk about PR without talking about links. So if youre working with PR, make sure they get a link.” -Lillian

• “I think you hit the nail on the head where SEO and PR are both actively trying to produce content and the value of the content when youre not writing it is whether you get that internal link or Google is just ingesting more content about your brand and that impacts your domain authority. PR can be your best friend because it shows that you have enough credibility that other people are willing to write about you and Google takes those signals in.” -Ben

• “Working with PR is about understanding each others skills and modality. If SEO takes time to understand PR and understand what they do everyday and vice versa, value will come after knowledge of this and all disagreements comes from ignorance.” -Lillian

• “From knowledge of what the other is doing you can start to think if you can make joint plans, can you make editorial calendar that makes sense for both and can you stay ahead of the curve. If you let the other in early on enough, they can support with collateral benefits or optimization of the collateral from the campaigns.” -Lillian

• “If you can identify that generally you have the same goals, this is where peace can begin.” -Lillian

• “I think its also understanding the KPIs for PR. There are metrics that the PR team is looking at number of placements, the amount of outreach, impressions that are being driven from a given page. Your metrics are overlapping.” -Ben

• “At the end of the day, despite the personality differences between your PR and the SEO team, we are all on the content production team and optimizing that content is not only something that you do on your site but also something that you could do on your PR team to make sure that they understand the value of the links that they could be driving, working together to produce great content, about your brand.” -Ben