PR, SEO and P2P... The big debate.

[Jamie Burke]

Apologies everyone for the radio silence since the glory of the 1st P2PR meet. The work load of the last few weeks has got the better of me. Anyway I'm back at least for now. Before I start this post I just want to say thanks for all the support and involvement in making the event happen. We did take some video and pictures but decided to not put it up here as you all looked awful! Joke.

Now onto business.

I got involved in a pretty interesting debate last night on Twitter with @timhoang @andismit @wadds @stedavies @jazcummins @timhoang @lewiswebb when I really should have been in bed around the relationship between SEO and PR. I think the debate, although its hard to tell when its so fragmented, was along the lines of 'Do PR folk or SEO folk get better quality / quantity of SE back-links?' The PR person would argue they write better content and if they master outreach build better relationships having done it with journos for a long time. The SEO folk would say they have been doing 'outreach' AKA link-building with webmasters / bloggers for years and online content generation too. My opinion having worked both sides is that if you just want links for some SEO value then a PR company can now quite capably come up with nice stories, do loads of online press releases and get the links without any SEO expertise. Unless those links are really relevant to your clients service /product offering they are just doorways to your destination page and don't really give relationships or any real value other than positioning in Google. Which leads me to the next point..

The second point, which is where I butted in totally deprived of sleep was; when the search engine becomes redundant what does SEO matter anyway. Sure this won't be happening tomorrow or the day after but for some subject matter I use my network on Twitter or Delicious as a search / information finding tool over Google already. The reason is because my network has filtered out all the SEO spam and the relationships are built on degrees of trust. I no longer trust Google's results. This isn't because of suspicion but time spent invested into info hunting. I prefer P2P recommendation rather than corrupted Google recommendation.

So should PR companies leave the SEO type stuff, other than the humble online press release, to the specialists and focus on pioneering relationship building strategy in P2P?

[Mauricio J. Samayoa]

I actually should have also been asleep but instead happen to catch the debate - live!

Good stuff, and know that you beat me to sharing it on the network J!

Anyhow, I think your second point resonates lots.

I usually (since not very long ago) only use my networks/twitter/delicious as search and info finding tools. If my network or community doesn't come up with an answer, then I use google search. I in fact find a lot of what I need using the search on gmail - why? because it helps me find emails with relevant info that were emailed by none other than someone in my network (P2P) and therefore, more relevant to me than simply (maybe even corrupted) search. Of course most people (older people I'd suspect) will continue to google search for some time. However, in support of your second point, it is only a matter of time for when the tables turn towards P2P given that it will as you say ‘filter out all the SEO spam because the network relationships are built on degrees of trust’. How much time? Well, I think the important thing to focus on is for us (PR/social media) to be sure to ride out the trend, and in the process determine the right mix of PR + SEO given the specifics of the product and audience. Leaving the SEO all together, cold turkey, I believe is too black and white, while doing your homework to figure out the correct combination of PR + SEO is more in the middle and doable.