The Althea Labs PR Plus Methodology.
Modern discovery is interconnected. A buyer might read a trade story, search Google, ask ChatGPT, and check a Reddit thread before they ever visit your site. PR Plus runs four components together, so each one makes the others more findable. PR for SEO covers the press side, What is AI visibility? covers how the engines choose, and the founders’ guide covers where to start.
Traditional PR
Earned media placements build the third-party credibility that tells buyers and AI systems your brand is a legitimate option. AI engines lean heavily on earned coverage when they choose what to cite, so a real media footprint matters more than it used to. This is how you build one.
SEO + Schema
We fix the foundations that search engines and AI crawlers depend on: crawler access, page titles and descriptions, clear page structure, speed, and accurate structured data. Google's guide says its AI features draw on the same index and ranking systems as Search and need no special markup or AI text file, which is exactly why the basics matter. Great PR that points to a site AI crawlers can't read is a missed opportunity.
Community
Reddit was the largest single external source AI engines cited in Foundation's 2026 study of 50 B2B brands: 21% of top external citations, rising to 31% on unbranded discovery queries. We build an authentic presence where your customers actually talk, through genuine participation that adds to the human signal AI engines draw on.
Content
Journalist-crafted blog posts, videos, and FAQs feed LLMs the context they need to recommend you accurately while answering human questions directly. Content is what connects your PR authority to your community presence and makes both of them more findable.
✦ AI Visibility:
The natural output of the right inputs working together
Why integrated visibility beats any single channel.
When someone asks an AI assistant to recommend tools in your category, the answer draws on many sources at once: media coverage, community discussions, reference sites, and your own site content all feed the same output.
A brand with great PR but a site crawlers can't read gives AI systems less to work with. A brand with great content but no community presence lacks the human signal AI engines draw on. PR Plus is designed so that every part of the system reinforces every other part.
21%
of top external AI citations for 50 B2B brands came from Reddit (Foundation, 2026)
82%
of articles cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity are human-written (Graphite, 2025)
84%
of AI citations point to earned media (Muck Rack, May 2026)
✦ The Methodology
Five steps. One compounding system.
01
Audit
Every engagement starts here. Before we touch anything, we need to know exactly where you stand. We audit your SEO content, technical SEO, PR footprint, AI visibility, and community presence across the platforms that matter for your category. Most clients are surprised by what they find, both the gaps and the untapped assets they already have.
02
ICP + Messaging
Everything downstream depends on this. If you have a strong ICP and messaging framework already, we sharpen it. If you don't, we build it from scratch. It's practical work: it shapes which channels we target, which publications we pitch, which prompts we track, and what every piece of content is written to do.
03
Visibility Tracking
We set up Gauge, the AI visibility measurement platform we use with clients, and baseline your AI visibility and SEO performance across 300 to 500 prompts specific to your business, pulled from real conversations online and from your own customer interactions. After the baseline, we re-run a tracked set every month, so you're measuring what your buyers actually ask and watching how it moves.
04
Strategy
With the audit done, ICP defined, and tracking in place, we build the plan. This is an editorial calendar that spans content, PR, and community. Every piece of work is tied to a specific visibility goal and a specific company goal. Nothing goes on the calendar unless we can explain why it is there and what it is supposed to do.
05
Execution
We handle the work: writing, PR pitching, social media, paid opportunities, speaking submissions, and award nominations, every month, with a journalist's instinct for what will land and a strategist's eye on the visibility goals. We don't publish AI content slop, chase algorithms, or use black-box tactics, and you have full access to everything we're doing and why.
What you are building toward.
PR Plus is built to compound: what you build this month makes next month's work more effective. Here's what that looks like when it's working.
A top-of-funnel moat
Visibility that is not dependent on any single channel, platform, or relationship. You are present wherever your buyer looks, and that presence compounds over time.
Visibility you can measure
Measured in AI citation rates, SEO movement, and prompt tracking across the questions your buyers actually ask.
A brand that can weather any shift
Algorithms will change. Platforms will come and go. What does not change is a brand with a clear sense of itself and the ability to tell its story well. Good storytelling and a strong point of view are what let you adapt quickly rather than start over.
Common questions.
The ideas behind every decision we make.
How is PR Plus different from traditional PR?
Traditional PR focuses on earned media placements as the end goal. PR Plus treats earned media as one input in a larger system. A placement in a relevant publication is valuable, but it is significantly more valuable when it is supported by strong SEO on your site, reinforced by community presence, and tracked against whether it is actually moving your AI visibility. PR Plus connects those dots.
How long before we see results?
In our experience, early signs such as a cleaner site, first placements, and a growing community presence show up within 60 to 90 days of consistent work, and movement in AI answers builds on those inputs over the months that follow. You see your baseline in the first month. The work compounds from there: month one makes month three more effective, and month six more effective still.
Do we need to have our messaging figured out before we start?
No. Step two of PR Plus is ICP and messaging development. If you have it, we sharpen it. If you do not, we build it. Many clients come in knowing their product well but not having articulated their buyer, their POV, or their channel strategy clearly. That is exactly what this step is for.
What does the day-to-day relationship look like?
You have full access to our data, insights, and workflow, integrated into Notion, Slack, Asana, or whichever tools your team already uses. The day-to-day contact is typically the head of marketing or PR. We do need founder buy-in on the strategy, but the execution runs through your marketing lead. There's no black box: everything we do, and why, is visible to you.
What types of companies does Althea Labs work with?
Althea Labs works best with Series A and B B2B companies in developer tools, fintech, adtech, martech, and B2B SaaS that have funding, a marketing lead as the day-to-day contact, and a founder who understands that visibility is infrastructure, not a nice-to-have. If you're pre-product-market fit or mainly consumer-focused, we're probably not the right fit yet.
Ready to build something that compounds?
Every Althea Labs engagement starts with an audit. We will show you exactly where your brand stands in search, in AI, and in the communities where your buyers actually are.