SEO professionals spend a lot of time talking with each other because they take a fairly analytical view of the world, testing, debating, discussing. So the best of the SEO world are dedicated professionals who understand and attempt to translate some very complex search algorithms.

Those folk we perceive as “the noisy ones” on Twitter and Facebook and comment boxes on websites aren’t always responsible for some of the scummy things that happen online any more than we, as PR people, are responsible for some of the worst excesses of the organisations we work for.

It’s time for PR to acknowledge that there are very few areas where PR and SEO don’t meet. Almost every activity we undertake has an SEO implication, whether overt or implied, and it’s our duty to understand how this works if we want to get best value from our activities for our clients.

Conversely, what the SEO teams are doing has a huge potential implication for PR. How would you feel about someone approaching a journalist or blogger who you’ve placed a story with to demand a link from specific wording? (Does the word “spiked” spring to mind?) How would you feel about the SEO team putting out articles in the company name on a controversial political topic? Or with typos on it? Or breaching stock exchange rules?

The drummed-in rules to which we adhere as PR professionals are not, currently, ingrained in most SEO practices. All of the above examples, incidentally, are genuine.

Working with SEO isn’t – or shouldn’t be – about ownership: it’s about two-way education; about breaking down silos and taking PR back to its relationship roots. It’s somewhat ironic that many PR companies find it hard to play nice with other marketing companies and disciplines, but SEO, more than any other marketing discipline, needs to enter our consciousness if we are to deliver value to the organisations we serve.

PR people need to sit up and pay attention to SEO from both a learning and a reputational perspective. With Google taking ever more notice of social preferences and sharing, for companies and organisations – which inevitably have genuine in-depth knowledge of their subject areas – there’s everything to gain in SEO terms from PR activities, simply by fine tuning what we already do. (If you’re not convinced yet of the benefits of “online”, Bazaarvoice has compiled some compelling user statistics).

So here’s a challenge for every PR person reading this – answer the following three questions:

1. For each of your clients, what SEO arrangements do they have in place?

2. How does each activity that you undertake in a day impact in SEO terms?

3. When was the last time you mutually discussed your work and objectives with the SEO team?

If you struggle with any of these, it’s time to pick up the phone and get things moving. Do what PR people do best – relationships. This one could prove particularly rewarding.

Claire Thompson is an independent PR consultant (Waves PR) and co-founder of SEO PR Training (www.seoprtraining.co.uk)