How to Build a Winning PR and GEO Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide
The relationship between PR and GEO runs deeper than most people realise. Historically, PR complemented SEO by earning high-value, organic backlinks, securing brand mentions, and building credibility through media placements. But in 2025, this partnership has evolved into something far more sophisticated.
Here’s how to build a PR and GEO strategy that earns citations in AI answers and grows real demand, step by step.
Before PR Starts:
Anchor the strategy to outcomes and entities
Start with clear outcomes. Do you want journalists to cite your research. Do you want AI summaries to use your brand definition. Translate those goals into entities that you can own across the web. Map the queries and questions you want to be found for, then define the single source of truth for each. In practice that means an Answer Page on your site for every priority topic, with evidence and expert signals that align with Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (E E A T). Google’s own documentation stresses people first content and rigorous evaluation of helpfulness, and its quality rater material explains how E E A T is assessed for usefulness and trust, even though rater feedback itself does not change rankings.Get your house in order with structure and clarity
Make it effortless for crawlers to find and understand your sources - classic SEO rules here still apply. Keep the URL structure simple and human readable, add a sitemap in Search Console, and make internal links descriptive. Use Organisation structured data and connect your brand to authoritative profiles to reduce ambiguity for knowledge graphs and AI systems. These basics help machines join the dots between your pages, your brand, and your proofs.Build Answer Pages that AI can cite
AI Overviews now reach more than a billion users each month and surface links inside the AI summary itself. Treat each Answer Page like a mini white paper. Lead with a short, direct answer, then add primary data, expert quotes, clear citations, and a media kit block that makes your evidence easy to reuse. The aim is simple. When AI synthesises an answer, you want your page among the sources it can anchor to. Google has stated it has increased the prominence of links inside AI Overviews to help people discover publishers, which means strong sources get rewarded.
Let the Public Relations Experts Get To Work:
Earn third party proof with targeted PR
AI systems and classic search both use signals beyond your site. Links and mentions help discovery and inform relevance, while PageRank and related systems still evaluate how the web votes with its links. Your PR plan should therefore create publishable proof. Commission data, place informed commentary, and pitch explainers that journalists want to link to. Industry research continues to find that earned media contributes to outcomes, while trust studies like the Edelman Trust Barometer show people lean into credible sources. Favour quality over volume and avoid link schemes.Amplify entity clarity across the open web
Help AI systems reconcile your brand by making consistent, verifiable references across high quality profiles and registries. Where appropriate, cite or reference Wikidata or other authoritative IDs in your knowledge materials, and make sure your About pages and bios connect to those identifiers. Academic and industry work shows that entity linking improves retrieval and disambiguation in information systems, which is precisely the challenge AI answers face.Measure the right things and iterate
Track impressions and queries in Search Console for your Answer Pages, and watch the results panel to see what the web says about your source. Check whether AI Overviews are pulling from you on key questions, then fill gaps with better evidence. Look for increases in branded search and navigate demand from publisher coverage and expert mentions. Google’s help material explains how About this result surfaces what other sites say about a source, and its own literacy guides note that link text from other sites is considered when assessing relevance. That is a clear prompt to keep earning citations in places that matter.
Why the mix works
A modern GEO strategy blends on site clarity, structured data, and off site proof. Google’s ranking systems guide confirms link analysis remains part of core systems, while its helpful content guidance and rater materials keep pushing us toward evidence, expertise and original reporting. On the market side, Nielsen’s 2024 global report cautions that a narrow focus on short term performance can hurt long term ROI. That is another reason to invest in authoritative assets and earned coverage that compound over time.
How we run this with you
Inside our GEO PR Mini Strategy Workshop we map your priority entities and questions, design two to three clusters and prompts, and shape a focused PR task list that targets the right experts and outlets. You leave with the first sources AI can cite, a list of proof points to pitch, and a task list of what to do right now.
The Future is Integrated
Incorporating SEO into your public relations strategy is no longer optional, it's essential. By ensuring your PR efforts are optimised for search engines, you can boost brand visibility, drive traffic, and improve your overall online presence.
The brands that succeed in 2025 and beyond will be those that stop thinking of PR and GEO as separate disciplines and start treating them as two sides of the same strategic coin. When done right, this integrated approach doesn't just double your impact—it multiplies it.
Ready to develop a PR and GEO strategy that actually works for your brand?
Our GEO PR Mini-Workshop gives you the frameworks, tools, and hands-on guidance to build an integrated approach that drives real results. Because in today's competitive landscape, good enough simply isn't good enough anymore.
