If you’re playing in the big leagues, and you hire a PR company to help you with visibility and they mention SEO to you, run, run far. It’s a fools game to think that the future of PR is in SEO and show’s a lack of understanding and regard for online risk management.
Jeremy Pepper however, get’s it right in my opinion, when he says that It’s not about SEO, it’s about PR
But, it’s not about SEO, it’s never been about SEO, and it shouldn’t be about SEO. The reason PR is growing is because it is about the expanding media universe and how to reach that universe in a smart, strategic way, while at the same time reaching the older, more established yet shrinking media universe. It’s two sides of the same coin, where PR is best suited to do the work.
There is a place for SEO, a good and sensible one. Largely with Ecom sites, but it is NOT with PR. That’s just silly, the two things are seperate, with separate experts to handle both.