SEO Training for PR People: What You Need to Learn in 2026

I first wrote this post in 2015, when SEO firms were poaching PR graduates for their link-building teams. Eleven years later, the question has flipped completely.

Yes, PR people need SEO training in 2026, and more than they did ten years ago. Google and AI assistants such as ChatGPT now decide which brands to recommend largely from what trusted publications say about them, which is exactly the work PR people do. Good SEO training for PR covers how search engines rank pages, how coverage earns links and brand mentions, how to research the questions your audience types, and how to measure the results.

I first published this post in May 2015 under a much grumpier headline: “Is SEO hurting your PR career?” Back then I was worried about SEO agencies hiring our graduates to churn out stories for links. I have kept the original argument below, because it is part of the story, but most of this page is new. The question PR people ask me now is the opposite one: how do I learn enough SEO to stay useful?

If you want the short version first, we covered most of this live at our free GEO and AI search webinars, and our free training materials and templates are a good place to start.

2015: SEO firms were hiring our graduates

In 2015 Prohibition had ten staff. I was also teaching digital PR at Leeds Beckett University, and I told my students that SEO was harming the PR industry in the north. Several SEO firms with more than 100 people in fancy open-plan offices were hiring PR executives on big salaries, and a couple tried to poach my own team.

Some of those firms had clients paying up to £45,000 a month, mostly for outreach and links. My complaint was about the work, rather than the money. Stories were being created purely to earn a link, with no real connection to the brand, and graduates were being asked to “chase the short-term Google rainbow”, as I put it at the time.

I finished that post by asking whether the SEO companies would keep rebranding themselves from link-building factories into PR agencies. That turned out to be the most accurate thing I wrote all year.

Then digital PR swallowed link building

Over the next few years “digital PR” became the name for most link building in the UK. SEO agencies hired journalists and PR people, built data-led stories and pitched them to national newsrooms, and PR agencies like mine started reporting links and domain authority alongside coverage.

Some of that work was brilliant, and plenty of it was still the content factory I had complained about. The problem I raised in 2015 never fully went away. A link from a story nobody associates with your brand does very little for your reputation, even when it helps a ranking for a while.

Then Google started telling us links mattered less. Speaking at a conference in Bulgaria in April 2024, Google’s Gary Illyes said, as Search Engine Journal reported, that “we need very few links to rank pages” and that Google had made links less important over the years. He later said he should not have said it, which is nothing short of hilarious, but the direction was clear.

AI search made earned media the real prize

AI answers have changed what SEO is for. When Google shows an AI Overview, fewer people click through to any website at all. An Ahrefs study of 300,000 keywords, re-run with December 2025 data, found that the top-ranking page got a 58% lower click-through rate when an AI Overview appeared above it.

What gets a brand into those AI answers looks a lot like PR. Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found that branded web mentions had a correlation of 0.664 with visibility in AI Overviews, against just 0.218 for backlinks. Muck Rack’s May 2026 “What Is AI Reading?” report, based on more than 25 million links, found that earned media accounts for 84% of AI citations across ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.

We felt this shift ourselves at Prohibition. On Embracing Marketing Mistakes Will and I recorded an episode about how Prohibition turned a traffic drop into a GEO strategy, and my opening line was that your rankings did not tank, your clicks did. I said on that episode that trusted sources talking about you, proper decent sites, were what would win the day. I still think exactly that today.

Val Riley, VP of marketing at Unbounce, put it even more bluntly when she came on the podcast. She said AI visibility is now about “people talking to you about you on Reddit, it’s about your latest PR clip or media clip, it’s about what’s going on on review sites.” Her team commissions research, has its PR firm pitch it, usually lands a couple of media mentions, and then reuses the piece everywhere else. The full episode with Val is well worth three quarters of an hour.

So the 2015 worry has turned inside out. SEO people now need PR skills to earn mentions, and PR people need SEO skills to make sure those mentions actually count.

What should SEO training for PR people cover?

SEO training for PR people should cover six things: how search engines and AI assistants choose sources, question and keyword research, writing pages and releases that answer questions clearly, earning links and mentions through coverage, measuring the results, and using AI tools responsibly. Here is what I would expect each part to include.

How Google and AI assistants choose sources

Start with the basics of crawling, indexing and ranking, then move quickly to how AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity pick which pages to quote. PR people do not need to become technical SEOs. They need to understand why a mention in a trusted trade title can matter more than ten links from blogs nobody reads.

Researching the questions people actually ask

Learn to use Google Search Console, Google Trends and the “People also ask” boxes to find the questions your audience types. That research should shape story angles, spokesperson lines and the FAQs on your client’s website, so coverage and owned content answer the same questions.

Writing pages that answer questions first

AI assistants tend to lift short, self-contained answers that sit near the top of a page or straight under a question heading. Training should show PR writers how to structure a newsroom page, a press release or a thought leadership piece so the answer comes first and the detail follows.

Earning links and mentions that build a brand

This is where PR people already have an advantage. Good training covers how to plan a digital PR story that earns coverage and links, but also how to make sure the brand is named clearly and accurately, because mentions now count for so much in AI search.

Measuring what coverage does for search

You should leave able to read Search Console and GA4, track branded searches and referral traffic from coverage, and check how often AI assistants mention your brand. Measure AI mentions over a few weeks rather than once, because the answers change from day to day.

Using AI tools without wrecking trust

Google updated its guidance in October 2026 to say it is “critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content”, according to its page on using generative AI content. PR teams using AI for drafts, titles or press releases need a review step before anything goes live.

Our SEO and AI search training is built around exactly these six areas, and our PR training covers the media relations side for teams who are newer to coverage.

Where can PR people learn SEO in the UK?

You can learn the basics free, then add practical training once you know where the gaps are. Google’s own SEO Starter Guide is the best free introduction, and Google Search Console is free to set up on any site you look after.

Free material will teach you the theory, but it will not show you how SEO and PR fit together on a real campaign. That is why most PR teams we train want something practical, built around their own clients and coverage. We run SEO and AI search training as one-to-one coaching, group sessions and in-house workshops, and the formats and prices page sets out the options.

One honest note: if you want to become a technical SEO, fixing site speed, crawl budgets and code, our course is not the right one. It is built for PR and comms people who want to make their coverage count in search.

Is SEO still a good career move for PR graduates?

Yes, as long as it is the kind of SEO that builds brands rather than the kind that only builds links. In 2015 I worried that graduates in content factories would never get the broad experience that makes a good PR person. That risk still exists in agencies that sell links by the hundred.

The better news is that the skills now overlap almost completely. A graduate who can find a story, land it in a trusted publication, and then show what it did for search and AI visibility is exactly who I would want to hire at Prohibition today.

My view on this, eleven years later

I was right to be cross in 2015, but I was wrong about where it would end. SEO did not hollow out PR. Search caught up with what good PR people have always done, which is getting trusted people to say good things about a brand in public.

The PR people who will struggle are the ones who still think SEO is somebody else’s job. Learn enough to have the conversation, measure what your coverage does, and you will be more valuable than ever. I would never have predicted that in 2015, and I am quite pleased to be proved wrong.

Frequently asked questions about SEO for PR

Do PR professionals need to learn SEO?

Yes, because Google and AI assistants now lean heavily on earned media and brand mentions when choosing what to show. PR professionals do not need technical SEO skills, but they do need to understand research, links, mentions and measurement.

What is the difference between digital PR and SEO?

SEO is the wider work of making a site visible in search, from technical fixes to content. Digital PR is the part that earns coverage, links and mentions from other websites, which is why the two teams now work so closely together.

How long does it take a PR person to learn SEO?

Most PR people can learn the essentials in a day of practical training, then build confidence over a few months of applying it to real campaigns. Becoming a technical SEO specialist takes much longer and is a different career.

Does PR coverage help Google rankings?

Coverage can help rankings through links, and it increasingly helps through brand mentions that AI search tools rely on. The effect is strongest when the coverage is in trusted, relevant publications and names the brand clearly.

Can you learn SEO for free?

You can learn the basics free from Google’s SEO Starter Guide and Search Console help pages. Practical training helps most when you want to apply SEO to your own campaigns and clients.

Want your PR team to make coverage count?

If your team is landing great coverage but nobody can show what it does for search or AI visibility, that is the gap our SEO and AI search training is designed to close. Get in touch and I will send over the options.