DIGITAL PR AND SEO IN THE AGE OF AI

DIGITAL PR WILL BE THE GO-TO DISCIPLINE FOR SAVVY AI SEARCH MARKETING

PR and SEO may have grown up as marketing siblings but in recent years, agencies in both disciplines have grabbed projects that perhaps they should have “left to the experts”.

It is true that whilst PR and SEO are separate channels, they need to work hand-in-hand to deliver the very best impact for client marketers. PR captures attention and then grows authority and interest over time. SEO builds that interest into traffic, so it’s only natural that this land grab has occurred.

The rapid expansion of AI has thrust the overlap of SEO and PR further into the spotlight. Visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini is less about ranking pages and more about being repeatedly referenced, cited and trusted across the web. By bringing PR and SEO together, marketers can significantly increase the opportunity to be featured in AI search results.

As a digital PR agency, we focus on placing earned media coverage across digital media platforms, creating stories that attract top tier media coverage and delivering the right messages for our clients, but we also consider backlinks, domain authority, referral traffic and trust signals, all of which are imperative for good search. It’s no surprise therefore that increasingly we are asked by clients to help them “show-up” in AI searches.

What is good digital PR?

What started out as PR simply evolving to target multi-channel media brands, has today become a sector in its own right. The interest from search agencies is down to Google’s EEAT framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). It’s this change in Google’s algorithm which has thrust digital PR into the search spotlight.

PRs have great relationships with leading journalists who contribute to many of the world’s greatest media brands. It’s these relationships and the understanding of what makes a good story that secures that all important top tier coverage. It’s that media coverage that Google sees as an important gauge of reputation and therefore if you feature in tier one media then you are showing up to these increasingly sophisticated algorithms.

And when that story links back to a dedicated page on the client site or a product for sale from an ecommerce business then “bang”, it supercharges your site’s importance when it comes to that search engine.

In a nutshell, that’s why digital PR has become one of the safest and most sustainable search optimisation methods compared to manipulative link schemes.

How does PR directly support SEO?

The reality is that SEO without brand authority struggles, particularly in industries where search ranking is competitive. It’s why so many search marketing teams are using PR techniques to boost performance.

Let’s look at the basics of how PR supports SEO.

PR campaigns earn editorial backlinks naturally, and this organic linking is significantly more valuable than purchased links. One strong link from a major media site can outweigh tens of weak links.

Articles in respected media outlets strengthen domain authority, particularly when focused around topic clusters.

Editorial discretion holds weight with search engines. If a respected media outlet says good things about you, then you’re a good brand to “show up” in a search.

That’s not accounting for the fact that nowadays, many journalists are influential in their own right. They’re referenced by other media outlets so being mentioned by them individually also holds weight.

Get mentioned by influential journalists and media outlets and your brand becomes better known. As awareness grows, more people search for your brand and click on your website, and as more people search for your brand, it becomes more visible for Google, simple.

How do I improve my AI visibility using PR?

This is down to improving your site’s authority and trust signals.

Let’s face it, there’s nothing that is going to improve your street cred more than an article in the FT, but trust is increasingly central to both Google and LLM quality criteria. Featuring in a top tier media outlet like the FT strengthens your brand’s expertise as perceived by AI search. GEO like SEO relies on authority and trust to make its content recommendations to users, so turning up in AI searches needs good PR not clever tech.

When asked by clients how they can appear in AI searches, we tell them to align their SEO and PR teams more closely because that is where the strategic magic starts to happen.

How does SEO support digital PR?

The magic of bringing SEO to PR is all in the data.

SEO data can help PR teams find more impactful stories. Good search data can reveal what audiences online are searching for, in other words, what they care about. Understanding and looking for trends in keyword data can help a good digital PR team shape their media relations campaigns. As a digital PR team, we use a suite of tools designed to track search terms, trends and emerging social conversations. We use these terms to inform our campaign ideas and in some cases we benchmark where our clients show up at the beginning during and at the end of our PR projects.

This is because search demand is effectively real-time audience research, a live and evolving indication of trending topics, interest areas, pain points and opportunities to insert clients into moments that are shaping behaviour. Good SEO data reduces some of the creative guesswork in PR campaigns.

The wonders of deep and rich content

SEO also supports PR by focusing on deep and rich content.

It’s no surprise that brands have lots of quite in-depth content about their sector, product or service on their website and social channels. Then, with the addition of a good news hook or trending story, PR can take the content from these “owned channels” and begin to place it across other sites, referencing the source brand in the process. This content will stay and keep working hard for the authority and relevance of that brand, far longer than any paid media.

Digital media coverage is powerful because it builds naturally over time. It’s why we always encourage clients to view PR as a long-term commitment, not a one-off project. It’s like a good marriage!

SEO agencies create amazing assets and campaigns for owned channels but they miss out on the AI search opportunity because they don’t consider how to turn this content into news on influential media sites. This limits the campaign’s potential because PR and SEO teams haven’t worked together to create something shareable as well as clickable. By working together, PR takes the content, distributes it and grows associations and links with the brand, which over time improves search authority and builds traffic.

The kind of content that you may be producing for your SEO but can translate really well into great PR includes:

• Industry statistics
• Consumer surveys
• Market reports
• Interactive tools and calculators
• Live data and benchmark studies

These are sources of original data, provide expert insights, include visual assets and are from credible sources, all of which journalists and AI really value.

The proof is in the traffic

There is no point in investing in PR or any marketing tactic if your site’s technical SEO needs work. All of the interest that is generated won’t convert if the site performs poorly, is written badly, has broken links or simply isn’t optimised to be crawled properly.

Focusing on elements such as page speed, mobile performance, UX, conversion journeys are all vital to ensure that once that interested party hits your site, it’s ready to convert them into a customer.

That is particularly true of a good campaign landing page. A well designed, easily navigable and quick to convert landing page helps turn PR driven visitors into paying customers.

The business impact of bringing PR and SEO together

So often, clients look to SEO for direct search performance but with the advent of AI, blending SEO and PR will begin to impact AI search performance in a more subtle and organic way than traditional performance methods.

In a world where most customers interact with a brand multiple times before converting, old performance methods seem out of date and a new blended approach will mean better AI search, improved conversion and even brand loyalty over time.

That doesn’t mean metrics are out of date. Considering media reach, influence, share of voice, sentiment are important to track alongside referral and organic traffic, domain authority and click-through rate of course. However, for true blended campaigns marketers can also consider branded search growth, assisted conversions and share of search to give a truly robust picture of performance.

Businesses that integrate both PR and SEO effectively will create stronger brands, increase AI search visibility and in the long term, create a sustainable customer base. It just needs visionary marketers to make it happen.