How Paylocity reached 100k readers in 3 months by bridging PR and SEO in the age of AI

The Challenge

For Michael Farr, SEO at Paylocity isn’t just about technical tweaks to beat the search algorithm. It’s about building authentic, long-term brand awareness and trust, especially as AI search becomes a dominant factor in how brands are discovered and evaluated. However, he found himself in a unique spot: While placements in leading outlets remained a priority, Paylocity also recognized the opportunity to expand visibility through a broader mix of reputable publications, amplifying both brand recognition and SEO performance.

“Brand safety and credibility are core values for Paylocity’s PR, Brand and Comms teams,” said Michael. “By aligning these priorities with SEO opportunities, the teams collaborated to build an approach that maintained brand integrity while unlocking new digital visibility.”

The Solution

Stacker’s earned media distribution platform offered Paylocity a seamless way to bridge the gap between PR and SEO. Michael worked closely with the Stacker editorial team to develop and optimize content that was not just engaging, but also strategically crafted to impact mentions in AI search and build real brand equity.

“Stacker’s approach clicked with me right away,” said Michael, who has a background in journalism. “The platform is easy to use and the process of uploading and syndicating content is straightforward. Plus, the Stacker team was always quick to respond and adapt to our brand’s needs, which made the whole experience smooth and collaborative.”

With Stacker, Paylocity was able to take existing data and survey-driven stories—content that might otherwise sit quietly on their blog—and amplify it to new audiences nationwide. This shift from siloed blog posts to broad-based syndication meant that every piece of content had a much longer shelf life and much bigger impact.

How It Works

Stacker combines an innovative earned distribution platform with human editorial expertise, helping brands like Paylocity create, refine, and syndicate engaging stories to a network of local and national news outlets.

Paylocity selected Stacker's Connect product, which takes ready-to-publish editorial content and distributes it to thousands of publishers on the Stacker Newswire. Stacker's editorial team ensures that each story meets journalistic standards, is optimized for maximum reach, and is timed to generate the best results. Once the stories are live, Paylocity receives detailed, real-time insights via Stacker’s self-serve reporting dashboard, making it easy to track the true impact of every story.

With Stacker, Paylocity was able to distribute stories like How to help employees adapt to AI in the workforce, which earned 354 placements in partner publications. many of which had never featured Paylocity before. This helped build brand recognition across a wide swath of regional and niche publications that directly contribute to digital brand-building.

The Results

In just three months, Paylocity achieved impressive results that went far beyond traditional PR metrics:
✅ 1,015 total pickups across high-authority sites
✅ Nearly 100,000 readers reached
✅ Significant SEO impact, including strategic keywords jumping to the #1 position overnight

For Michael, these numbers are more than just data points. They represent a fundamental shift in how Paylocity’s brand is seen across the digital landscape.

“We used to think getting one or two high-profile mentions in a quarter was a big win,” he said. “Now we’re seeing hundreds of mentions in places we’d never even considered before. It’s a whole new level of brand presence.”

This newfound visibility didn’t just create buzz, it directly boosted Paylocity’s search rankings and site traffic. Pages that had previously struggled to break out of the second or third page of search results for certain keywords moved to the top spots almost overnight. This wasn’t something Michael expected to see so quickly, and it made the internal case for investing in content distribution much easier. Stacker’s performance data and transparent reporting also helped Michael build stronger buy-in from other teams.

“The fact that I could go back to the corporate marketing and PR teams and show them real numbers—300 pickups here, 400 pickups there—was huge,” he explained. “It was no longer about trying to convince people to ‘trust me.’ The results spoke for themselves.”

The success of these campaigns sparked new conversations about the role of research-driven content in Paylocity’s marketing strategy.

“Stacker has really helped us close the gap between PR and SEO,” he said. “It’s shown everyone that brand mentions matter more than ever today—more than backlinks—especially with AI tools now reading and indexing this kind of content.”

Conclusion

Today, Paylocity is rethinking how they produce and leverage research-driven content. They’re working to build stronger relationships with their internal data teams and exploring how to make this type of syndication a predictable, repeatable part of their ongoing SEO and brand-building strategy. And they’re just getting started—having only launched this new approach three months ago, Michael and his team know there is still so much more to explore and achieve.

“Stacker really feels like a cheat code,” said Michael. “It’s changed the conversation internally and helped us get on the same page about what digital brand building looks like in 2025.”