Move over PR, SEO is in town

It’s like a robot wars battle ground, sponsored by Big Insurance Company Inc. The bright young Chinese kid with a degree in robotics before he reached the tender age of 10 is wheeling in his SEO machine. In the other corner, the old gent with a grey moustache and book of old school contacts is wheeling in his PR robot. They both believe they have the most destructive weapon which makes it stronger than the other and they also place a different emphasis on each and every component of themselves and their opponent.

Historically, PR and propoganda ruled the world. To be fair, it more than ruled the world, it changed the world. Look at me using the past tense – it still does. However, every single method of communication requires an outlet – a network of distribution.

For PR specialists, this used to simply mean opening up your book of contacts at the personal finance and insurance page, picking up the phone or dare I say it, sending a fax. But there’s a new distribution network in town. Scrap that, there’s a new town in town. It’s the internet. Where SEO is king. Especially when it comes to insurance.

So, who rules? Who wins the battle? The line of seperation is blurring between the two but who carries more weight?

The two worlds are certainly still seperate. PR is a notoriously technophobic arena which uses old school techniques and networks of contacts to get things said in the right places at the right time. The SEO arena is much more dynamic and attracts a completely different sort of person – one who is comforable with adapting to a constantly changing playing field. Neither has a particular affiliation to insurance but, then again, who does!!

PR needs SEO

…in order to achieve the distribution of their message. We now live in a world of blogs and testimonials where the average consumer is swayed in their judgement by their peers far more easily than by the marketing speak they’re subjected to from the moment they’re born. This creates hubs, traffic, communities, sharing of information and ideas. This is where PR wants to be but they simply can’t find it in their little book of contacts.

SEO requires PR

…because it cannot create the message, the buzz or the hook all by itself – that’s not what it’s good at. It’ll look at PR. It’ll index PR. It’ll organise and categorise PR. The SEO professionals can build the traffic, the links, the community and the functionality. But they cannot create PR which customers buy into. This is vitally important when it comes to an insurance related topic. People simply aren’t that interested to start with.

It is fairly obvious where you would be if you only had one side. If PR ruled the world, you’d end up with loads of results in Google listed under the company name. If the SEO professionals ruled the world, you’d end up with loads of content, produced by one company, scattered across a wide variety of domains, appearing under a range of keywords but nobody would want to read it. They wouldn’t get beyond the first three words of the headline.

The utopian combination

SEO is so technically complicated, unexplored, unmapped and unknown that most SEO agencies can’t understand it – let alone PR agencies. Likewise, you can’t expect an SEO agency to learn everything about the PR trade overnight. The utopian result would involve the ability to plug in your SEO expertise into a PR team which is willing to listen, learn and become enthusiastic about the online world in which the rest of us spend hours a day within. Unfortunately, too many PR agencies are arrogant and too many SEO companies don’t know what they’re doing and resort to using smoke screens and mirrors to hide their lack of knowledge (a very cynical view of both worlds!).

What if PR could work efficiently with SEO? What if each understoond that the other can bring something to the table that they can’t and rely on their guidance? …wouldn’t that create something which could destroy the house robots? Move over Matilda, SEO and PR just got a cut ‘n’ shut job!