From the emails we have received so far it seems to me it is both marketing and SEO. Some seem to have a focus on content for something specific; almost all of them do want the links though, so in that sense you are absolutely right, Robert.
To me PR is a somewhat different animal and, even though I had good and bad experiences here, the approach is different - as Andrew and OldParn point out. PR want to develop relationships with you and convince you/influence you; obviously, they want your links too. SEO people don't care at all about you, they just want the link. If this is handled badly, it can actually backfire on bloggers as Google and other search engines punish websites that obviously sell out their links. So there is more than one reason to be very careful here.
The reason why I did not restrict myself to SEO here is that there are several approaches to doing SEO. Bloggers exchange blog roll links. Some companies buy text adds with links relating to the same keywords. Both are plain approaches that everyone should be able to understand. And then there is the "genuine content" approach that actually pretends to be something it is not. Interestingly, I found that most content that was offered to us was about topics like "hot wine trends of 2011". After receiving yet another of these I was no longer surprised why so many generic postings of this type show up all over the internet.
In reply to It is isn't PR, its SEO by Robert McIntos…
PR, marketing and SEO
From the emails we have received so far it seems to me it is both marketing and SEO. Some seem to have a focus on content for something specific; almost all of them do want the links though, so in that sense you are absolutely right, Robert.
To me PR is a somewhat different animal and, even though I had good and bad experiences here, the approach is different - as Andrew and OldParn point out. PR want to develop relationships with you and convince you/influence you; obviously, they want your links too. SEO people don't care at all about you, they just want the link. If this is handled badly, it can actually backfire on bloggers as Google and other search engines punish websites that obviously sell out their links. So there is more than one reason to be very careful here.
The reason why I did not restrict myself to SEO here is that there are several approaches to doing SEO. Bloggers exchange blog roll links. Some companies buy text adds with links relating to the same keywords. Both are plain approaches that everyone should be able to understand. And then there is the "genuine content" approach that actually pretends to be something it is not. Interestingly, I found that most content that was offered to us was about topics like "hot wine trends of 2011". After receiving yet another of these I was no longer surprised why so many generic postings of this type show up all over the internet.