PR and SEO have long been treated like distant cousins in marketing, but they’re strongest when they share the same strategy. Learn how integrating public relations with SEO improves visibility, credibility and trust with your audience, search engines and LLMs for better PR campaign performance.
- Understanding the Unique Roles of SEO & PR
- How PR & SEO Help Each Other
- Integrated SEO & PR Case Studies
- Tips for Aligning PR & SEO in Your Brand Strategy
Understanding the Unique Roles of SEO & PR
PR and SEO use different tactics to reach the same goals—brand visibility and trust. Here’s how they work on their own before they work together.
Search Engine Optimization
Goal: Improve search visibility and drive organic traffic
Key SEO Services:
- Keyword research
- On-page and off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
Benefits:
- Increases visibility in organic results from search engines and LLMs when people type relevant queries
- Drives high-quality organic traffic through strategically optimized content and purposeful linking
- Strengthens user experience and SERP rankings via technical improvements
- Provides data-driven insights to inform overall marketing strategy
Public Relations
Goal: Build trust, awareness and a positive public image
Key PR Services:
- Media outreach and news releases
- Brand reputation management
- Crisis communication management
- Event management
- Media training
Benefits:
- Builds credibility and trust through earned media
- Expands awareness beyond owned channels
- Shapes brand narrative, reputation and cultural relevance
- Encourages authentic engagement with target audiences
How PR & SEO Help Each Other
PR makes people care about your brand, and SEO makes sure they can find you. When used together, PR and SEO magnify each other for compounding results and a cycle of visibility, credibility and engagement that no single channel can achieve alone.
How PR Strengthens SEO
Public relations gets people talking about your business through media coverage. These efforts strengthen brand recognition and credibility—signals that search engines use to determine rankings in organic search results.
- Builds Backlinks: PR gets high-quality inbound links from reputable media outlets, showing that your website is trustworthy and relevant to third parties, which can improve rankings in search results.
- Drives Clicks & Conversions: PR strengthens brand recognition, and familiar brands have higher click-through rates on SERPs and better conversion rates.
- Creates Fresh Content: News releases, thought leadership articles and other earned media give search engines new pages and links to crawl, helping your website stay visible for relevant searches.
- Improves Local Visibility: Mentions in regional publications signal local relevance to search engines, helping your brand show up in more local search results.
How SEO Strengthens PR
Even the best PR story won’t matter if no one sees it—SEO makes sure your earned media reaches the right people when and where they’re looking. With SEO, your PR is more discoverable and measurable.
- Boosts Visibility: On-page and technical SEO tactics make earned media more discoverable in AI and search engine results. SEO also extends the lifespan of short-term media coverage.
- Finds Relevant Stories: Keyword research and competitor analysis help PR teams see gaps in content and pursue topics aligned with audience interests.
- Refines Messaging: SEO insights show which topics, angles and language resonate with your audience.
- Measures Performance: Track visibility, traffic, backlinks and conversions to evaluate the success of PR campaigns, prove ROI and fine-tune future efforts.
Integrated SEO & PR Case Studies
Here are examples of successful brands combining SEO and public relations strategies to maximize impact.
Lectric eBikes: Used Media Outreach to Drive SEO Growth
Lectric eBikes grew monthly organic clicks from 37,000 to 210,000 by aligning their SEO and PR strategies. While optimizing their content with keywords, they executed a digital PR link-building strategy that secured credible media placements. This helped the brand improve their topical authority, drove more organic traffic and achieved top rankings in target queries—demonstrating how integrated public relations and SEO efforts can help you stay ahead in competitive markets.
Spotify: Turned Data into a Cultural Moment
Spotify Wrapped is a prime example of PR-driven storytelling that’s supported by strong SEO efforts. Each year, the Spotify team generates a personalized, year-in-review experience for its users that earns consistent coverage from top media brands—like TIME, NBC News and USA Today—and results in a significant surge in branded searches. To support this massive PR campaign and prepare for the seasonal uptick, the platform prioritizes its technical SEO efforts to ensure a smooth user experience under peak traffic. The result is a self-sustaining cycle of coverage, searches and engagement that reinforces the brand’s authority and cultural relevance.
Tips for Aligning PR & SEO in Your Brand Strategy
To maximize brand visibility, authority and organic traffic, here are some ways to effectively integrate your SEO and public relations for greater impact.
- Use Keyword Research for Media Pitching: Find stories and angles your audience actively searches for to appear in both headlines and search engine results.
- Turn Timely Topics into Thought Leadership: Stay on top of trends and breaking stories and add expert commentary supported by original data. Then make those insights shareable assets—like infographics, reports or tools—that attract backlinks, strengthen news releases and build credibility with LLMs, search engines and people.
- Optimize & Repurpose PR Wins: Include keywords, structured headings and links in press releases, newsroom content and case studies. Repurpose media coverage into blog posts, social content or videos to keep your wins visible long-term.
- Spread Credible Data: Share useful data with journalists and use PR tools like HARO to earn trusted media mentions and backlinks that boost SEO.
- Build Community Relationships: Partner with local media, nonprofits, influencers and events to earn coverage that boosts local search visibility.
- Measure Performance & Refine: Use tools like Ahrefs or Google Analytics to track performance and adjust the timing, messaging or focus of your SEO and PR efforts to maximize impact.
Combine Earned Media & Marketing in Your Next Campaign
PR doesn’t just boost SEO—it strengthens any marketing channel, from paid ads to social media. Let Lukas Partners create integrated marketing and PR strategies that work together, not in isolation, to amplify results for your brand. Get award-winning PR and comprehensive SEO services from the experts at Lukas Partners and Hurrdat. Let’s talk!
