NisonCo is the first cannabis-specific PR firm in the United States. Founded 2013 by Evan Nison in New York, the firm built its early reputation representing operators as the industry’s regulatory foundations were still being drawn. In early 2020, NisonCo launched a dedicated SEO practice, positioning the firm as one of the first integrated PR-and-search shops in the cannabis vertical. The SEO practice grew to a four-person team specializing in organic visibility for cannabis operators, ancillary businesses, and adjacent regulated categories.
What NisonCo Does
NisonCo runs an integrated PR-plus-SEO model for cannabis brands, dispensaries, cultivators, technology providers, and legal-industry clients working in cannabis. The firm’s two core service lines — media relations and search-engine optimization — are structured to reinforce each other: earned media placements drive domain authority; higher search rank drives credibility with reporters; both compound over time.
The firm’s specialty position matters. Cannabis operates under a patchwork of state regulations that keep most national PR firms out of the category. NisonCo’s decade-plus of continuous work in the space produces media relationships, regulatory literacy, and a compliance instinct that generalist firms cannot easily replicate.
The Positioning: PR and SEO as One Discipline
NisonCo’s operating thesis is that public relations and search-engine optimization are structurally complementary services, not adjacent ones. Earned media coverage produces backlinks that lift domain authority. Higher search rank improves the credibility signal to reporters who Google a source before returning the call. Blog content backfills both. As Generative Engine Optimization becomes the dominant discovery layer, the same integration extends: earned media is the leading input into AI-engine citations, and structured content is what makes the entity legible.
Q&A with the NisonCo Team
What makes a successful SEO team?
A successful SEO team needs to be able to constantly learn, experiment, and adapt processes based on what they learn. If you simply follow ‘best practices’ you can find online, you’ll never be the best SEO agency. To be the best requires outside-the-box thinking, which is sometimes hard to do while also building a scalable company with systems and processes. Having a great SEO team also requires great employees who have a good working relationship. Although some of the work required for SEO can be repetitive, it should be fun too. Happy people who love what they do perform better as individuals and as a team.
Has SEO become essential to PR?
It can be easily argued that SEO, PR, and blogging are all nearly essential to each other. One can be done without the other, but they all help amplify the others and can create a cumulative exponential effect. For instance, links from SEO help your domain authority and rank, your rank helps your credibility with reporters, and blogs add fuel to that fire. There is also no better way to improve your domain authority and rank on Google than being an authority in real life. Establishing your expertise and legitimacy through the news media is the way to do that.
— Evan Nison, Founder, NisonCo
Why do PR and SEO services complement one another?
PR and SEO services go so well together because that’s how they’re designed. PR is public-facing — you work to get companies recognized throughout the media, forging relationships with journalists and inspiring people to want to know more about your company’s mission. SEO, on the other hand, isn’t as public-facing. It requires putting in work on the back end to ensure that viewership is enhanced naturally, tuning your business into key audiences that would otherwise be seeking out what your company does.
— Kelly Ebbert, SEO Specialist and Pitching Coordinator, NisonCo
How do you envision the future of SEO?
The future of SEO is exciting. As more companies come online, we will see them try to find a niche where they can really thrive. They will focus their SEO efforts on the things they are proud of — a specific product or service they provide. SEO will provide these companies an outlet to really highlight and promote themselves to their target audiences.
How will the SEO landscape change as more cannabis companies come online?
The current SEO landscape will see some changes but nothing too drastic as more companies come online. At the moment there are many diverse companies with their own place in the landscape. As the cannabis industry continues to grow and more states legalize, I am excited to see what newer companies do to stand out. One can obviously be successful taking a traditional approach, but there will be companies that come and blow us out of the water with their original ideas. As competition grows, innovation is what will set the good from the great.
— Tony Ham, SEO Manager, NisonCo
What advice do you have for those who want to be successful in SEO?
Never stop learning about SEO. Keep pushing yourself forward until you get to where you want to be, whatever your goals are. Don’t just sit there and read everything — do that and then apply it in the real world. You have to take action if you want to get anywhere.
What’s one key takeaway that’s helped you thrive in SEO?
Knowing there is always more than one way to go about things. You want to continually keep testing new ideas to find out what’s working.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
