March 24th, 2025
The PR for SEO Monday Morning Challenge
This week, Catapult PR is setting its LinkedIn connections a PR-for-SEO Monday morning challenge. Few will realise that fact, because only a fraction of SME businesses and our typical customers, such as visitor attractions, heritage attractions and hotels, will have even considered PR for SEO. And we won’t couch it like that, as people would instantly turn off. We’re going to try to coax them into humouring us and then try to convey why that matters. Catapult PR is fundamentally going to be asking its contacts to do what many businesses fail to do and actually visit their own website news area.
Some will fall at the first hurdle. Why? Because they have no website news or blog area at which to post content. They won’t even have considered that the majority of their customers are not ready-to-buy in the here and now. Over 90% won’t be. Most are orbiting at present, with no current intention to buy, but may be sounding things out. They may have an inkling that they want to know something or want to buy something in future. So, they are hovering. They are there to be attracted, but they need the right magnet.
Why we think many will fail our PR for SEO Challenge
Most businesses will be poles apart from this behaviour. They won’t have realised that their website news area could be that magnet, attracting these non-current-buyers in and starting to build a relationship with them. It will most probably be a slow-burn. After all, we all like to suss people out from afar, don’t we. We only make quick decisions when fate leads us to want something fast. Most times, we are considering things. Mulling things over. Working out which brands might serve us well at a future time.
Other of the businesses we are inviting to take our challenge will fail (or should we continue the ‘stumbling at hurdle’ theme, as we are approaching the Grand National) because they will not have considered that they need to be ‘useful’ in their blog articles. They won’t even have considered PR for SEO. They will have seen any article as something that should be all about them. They like to broadcast rather than share knowledge. And whilst there’s nothing wrong with making achievements known, there has to be a balance. You need to be a giver, not just a taker, and make content available that solves an issue or query.
Reasons businesses fail to use their website blog/news area strategically
Some who take the challenge will have thought differently. They may have viewed their news area as a chance for a nice cosy chat, but with no strategic element to the way they frame their words at all. In other words, it’s all very lovely but of little benefit in terms of ticking the search engine box.
I’ve long held the belief that all of this type of marketing has been held back because ‘blogs’ were too associated with yummy mummy diary-style content and not seen as part of the marketing mix. Too few businesses have moved on from that thought process. Far too few understand the OWNED part of what we call the PESO model.
The PESO model
What is this? Well, it’s basically the online content that you control. It’s any content that you have on your website and elsewhere. It technically includes your content on social media but be careful, because you don’t own that channel. It’s not yours. You simply rent it from social media companies.
But OWNED is such a poor relation within the PESO model when it comes to website content. It’s rare to find a client who gives it a second thought. Everyone is too busy jumping on social media, because everyone else is there. Even if they generate no engagement at all, it doesn’t seem to matter to them, because their lemming instincts have been satisfied. They’ve all jumped off the social media posting cliff, even if their content is drowning in mediocrity. They see social media as the thing that will be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Too few view it as just part of a jigsaw puzzle that should include other pieces as well.
Our own PR for SEO case study
I’m not going to lie to you here. It’s not that I’ve been converted into thinking that website content matters. I always knew it but I spent far too much time trying to boost clients’ online presences and neglected Catapult PR’s. It’s only in the last 6 months that I’ve seriously given myself a ticking off and focused on this. It has been a case of physician heal thyself and I have. By focusing on my OWNED content on our website, I have taken Catapult PR from virtually nowhere for its most important key words, to page one of Google for all the keywords for which we set out to rank. Not a penny has been spent on advertising.
There’s more to this than meets the eye and it’s been a case of showing up everywhere but that’s the strategy I can deliver to others, because I’ve lived and breathed it myself. We outrank major competitors for some of these keywords, because I put the hard yards in. PR for SEO has been alive and breathing at Catapult PR and delivering amazing results. We can now utilise that for the benefit of those for whom we handle PR and content, whether that is in travel and tourism PR, insurance PR, professional services PR, veterinary and pet sector PR, heritage marketing, construction, retail or something else.
And guess what. PR for SEO also draws on external PR and leverages that for the benefit of the website, utilising valuable earned backlinks that can feed traffic into your website and deliver authority. That’s why your PR agency should be your greatest ally, because they can pull all the strings.
PR for SEO is quite a holistic approach but it is absolutely the approach of a PR specialist and copywriting wordsmith. It draws on all the core skills of a PR agency and adds in so much more – the online strategies that make organic search such a powerful ally.
Why businesses should invest in PR for SEO
We’ve worked so hard at this and seen the pay-off. The challenge is to now to encourage others to see the possibilities. And that includes clients. So many are happy to waste thousands of pounds on non-productive social media posts and design agency charges. They are keen to make their website look pretty but won’t put their hand in their pocket to make it work. There’s something wrong there.
Convincing them that they are placing their spend in the wrong places is hard. It’s not new of course. Advertising agency and design agency voices have always been louder than the PR conversation that comes out of the mouths of reputation builders. Google adwords is the new newspaper or magazine advert for those who have built their businesses on agency commissions and ad fees. The façade of a nicely designed website can earn big bucks and hide a multitude of sins behind the scenes. Then there is the mysterious art of traditional SEO, which can again be a big money earner but frequently deliver nothing.
Affordable PR for SEO
People only seem to appreciate those things on which they spend a heap of money, which is really not the case with PR for SEO. Therein lies part of the problem. If you don’t have to throw a heap of cash at it, how can it be productive? Here, you need to keep the faith and look at my own example. It just is.
The other issue is that it’s not an overnight fix. But what is? Usually things that cost a lot have no longevity or long-term benefit. When you use PR for SEO, on the other hand, it’s pretty much a case that every word, every initiative, every external backlink and every carefully crafted article that is building your authority counts. And, once you’ve built an online credibility bank, it’s a case of nurturing it, updating it and ensuring that everything is optimised. It takes time and patience but it’s a must-do, if you really want to drive website visits.
Summing up my PR for SEO thoughts
We know that most businesses will fail our Monday morning challenge, if they take it. The number of websites we visit, which have had no articles contributed, sometimes for years, is incredible. The number of businesses that waste that online resource by posting meaningless content, or one-line headlines and a couple of lines alone, is staggering. Yet, we also know that many will still not see what’s wrong with this, if they do take our challenge. You can lead a horse to water but you can only make it drink, if it wants to hear how much more of a workhorse its website could be.
Photo by Tai’s Captures on Unsplash
Be a gent’s outfitter to get your PR for SEO right!
UK is still a ‘push’ marketing society, in my view. We still have too many businesses that want to shout – through advertising and social media – rather than building reputation and trust and conveying authority in a more subtle and believable way. We need to learn the art of ‘pull’ marketing. We need, in a way, to put a 21st century spin on Britain being Napoleon’s ‘nation of shopkeepers’. We need to put our wares on show in a different way. However, we don’t just need to have an online shop but have all of the in-person expertise that a good shopkeeper would offer to their customers, albeit conveyed in a different mode. Think of this as the gentleman’s outfitter, offering advice as to the cut of the cloth, the fabric, the colour, the exact inside leg measurement and the right fitted waistband of a man’s suit. Your website area should be offering all of this type of expertise, however that is translated into your sector. If you are not conveying that level of care and knowledge, something is amiss.
Start to think of your website news area as your way to be that gentleman’s outfitter, with your tape measure around your neck, pins between your teeth and sewing chalk in your hand. If you do, you might just be able to turn your website into your most powerful marketing tool – one which conveys the quality of your offering, your expertise, your opinions, your points of difference over the competition, your personality, your ethos and what you and your brand really stand for.
Sadly so few do. PR for SEO is the tactic that only the very wise have embraced. But therein lies your opportunity. Contact me today on tellmemore@catapultpr.co.uk
Author bio:
This article was written by Jane Hunt, managing director of Catapult PR. Jane is head of the most award-winning PR consultancy of its size in the UK and is a two-time winner of the Outstanding PR Practitioner title at the CIPR Excellence Awards. She has currently led Catapult PR to an amazing 67 awards in total. She has worked both in-house and in agency and founded Catapult PR in 1998.
