I’ve been debating for the last three-months or so whether the PR industry has missed an opportunity in search engine optimisation (SEO). The rise of a multi-million pound industry alongside the PR industry indicates that this is almost certainly the case.

In the guest post that follows Kelvin Newman, SiteVisibility’s Creative Director, makes the case that SEO offers a revenue opportunity for the PR industry. He’s also the editor of the UK’s most listened to Marketing Podcast (according to iTunes).

Speed has pitched an integrated search and PR planning proposition with SiteVisibility to a handful of prospects. Its early days but the results are promising. As Newman says PR and SEO will almost become the same discipline in the future. PRs take note.

Here’s Kevin.

I’ve got a confession to make; I’ve been a bit of a man on a mission recently, after Stephen invited me along to the CIPR Social media event about PR and SEO, I’ve been blogging over at econsultancy about Whether The PR Industry has Missed the SEO Boat and if  PRs Make Better Link Builders than SEOs.

I genuinely think in the coming years link building and PR are going to overlap so much that it will be hard to distinguish between the two. Though it’s inevitable; it’s not happening quick enough for my liking, hence my recent crusade.

And that’s how we came to this post, I wanted to start a conversation with the PR industry about just how easily they could be making money from link building, and the tiny steps they’d need to make to make huge progress.

Forget press release syndication
Ask some PR people about SEO and they’ll tell you with a smile on their face that they include keywords and links in their press releases with a smug expression because how they’ve mastered Google algorithms.

I hate to burst the bubble but press release syndication never has, and never will, be an essential element to an SEO link building campaign. Optimising them is about low hanging fruit. If they are going online, you’re mad not to be giving them the once over for keywords, but I doubt many link builders would be to distraught if they lost the ability to syndicate press releases.

Where you an add value with press releases is by putting together an amazing story that people can’t help but cover, online or off. Time spent refining that pitch is going to have a much bigger impact on the SEO value than dropping the odd keyword and link.

Your contacts are more important than ever
I like to think of myself as a pretty good link builder who’s helped a number of journalists come up with some tasty online editorial, but like most search marketers I just don’t have the contact book and relationships of a PR pro. The long-lunch may be a long dead myth but you should appreciate that your connections built over years has a huge value.

You understand what pitches work with which journalists, use that experience and get some high quality links pointing at a client site. If they are interested in SEO they’ll quickly appreciate how these links are adding significantly to their link equity and suddenly it’ll become a big part of your brief.

Measure links as well as mentions even if the client isn’t interested in SEO
What if you’re clients are only interested in mentions and don’t care about links? Maybe SEO comes from their I.T budget so links aren’t considered their problem? Doesn’t matter, still report on the natural links your achieving. Clients are coming round to natural search and you have an ongoing record of achieving links you’ll stand a good chance of getting any work as and when it does come to pitch.

Trusted partner
You might not have the need for someone in your team who has search marketing experience at the moment but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have someone to turn to who knows what they are talking about. There’s search conferences and events a few times a month, get yourself along, see who sounds like they know what they are talking about and has a similar approach to your agency. Buy them a beer afterwards and you’ll have someone to bounce ideas off in the future.