Sequoia Capital Recommends SEO in an Economic Downturn

Apparently Sequoia Capital had a meeting with its portfolio companies this week where they gave them some grim advice for how to weather the bad economy.  One of the talking points that stood out for me from this report of the meeting:

In a downturn, aggressive PR and Communications strategy is key.

To continue on my self-serving post series, I interpret this as a strong recommendation to focus on high ROI marketing efforts like SEO.  If their is huge uncertainty in the market, customers are going to look a lot harder before they buy, and trust is going to become an increasingly important factor in the decision process.  Ranking high in Google for key terms is definitely an indicator of trust for many consumers.