What is Digital PR and why does your business need it?

Most professionals will have heard of PR (public relations) before, but digital PR is a relatively new buzzword that’s gained popularity within the performance marketing industry in recent years. Those that have worked in SEO previously may be more familiar with the term ‘link building’, which is the tactic that digital public relations originated from, but what actually is digital PR, and why does your business need it?

What is Digital PR?

Digital PR is a hybrid of traditional public relations and an SEO tactic called “link building”. It fuses the creative and relationship-building side of PR with the technicalities of SEO, so links can be built to a website through high-quality media coverage. This is done because the more high-quality and relevant links a website has, the more likely that website will be to rank for keywords in Google. This, therefore, helps to increase organic traffic and revenue over time.

A Digital PR (someone who works within the digital PR sector) will also use SEO to inform their strategy. For example, we’ll often do keyword research and a competitor backlink analysis’ to discover what we want our client’s website to rank for and what websites they need links from. We will then use this knowledge to create written content on relevant topics, on behalf of the brand, and send this out as a pitch to a targeted list of key press contacts who work at the websites we are targeting.

What is the difference between PR and Digital PR?

Public relations, or “brand PR”, has a priority of increasing brand awareness. Brand PRs will have great relationships with the media and use those relationships to encourage journalists to feature their brand in an article. These articles will almost always be brand related, such as a founder's story or a new product launch piece.

In digital PR, securing a link is a key priority and brand awareness is the secondary priority. Digital PRs will use the same technique as brand PRs, pitching to journalists they have good relationships with to secure coverage that lands a link to their brand’s website. These articles, however, will tend to be more informative so the journalist is encouraged to link to the brand as an informative source. This will include tactics like expert commentary, exclusive data reveals and digital PR campaigns. According to the Digital Marketing Institute, “Digital PR agencies combine the best of traditional PR with a focus on new trends in content marketing, social media marketing and more”. 

Digital PR also tends to be seen as a performance marketing channel, as links can be directly connected with SEO metrics, such as keyword uplifts and organic traffic increases. In comparison, it is harder to measure the success of Brand PR and it relies on more traditional metrics including reach, share of voice, and advertising value equivalency.

What is the difference between Link Building and Digital PR?

Link building is a tactic usually used by SEO teams and agencies to build links to websites. Where this differs from digital PR is that the methods used to build these links are less creative and tend to target smaller blogs and niche websites. For example, link builders will often do intense research into other website’s in their brand or client’s niche, and reach out to those website owners for a link. They may also use tools like HARO to respond to ad-hoc requests from website owners on topics relevant to their niche. 

A few years ago, there was a huge shift from link building to digital PR, as many link builders started to revert back to utilising “black-hat” tactics, such as paying for backlinks or being involved in link exchanges. These are largely frowned upon by Digital PRs as we pride ourselves on creating good quality content that journalists, bloggers and website owners want to link to, rather than manipulating the system for links.

Why does your business need a Digital PR agency?

Digital PR is essential for any business that has a website. Having high-quality and relevant links pointing to your website is one of the key factors that allows it to rank in Google and therefore have a high amount of organic traffic. 

Links are also one of the main ways that Google understands what your website is about, allowing it to rank for relevant keywords. For example, if you are a homeware brand, you’ll want links to your website from home and interiors related websites so that you can rank for relevant terms, such as “homeware” or “home decor”’. But, if your brand has links from websites about finance, this will confuse Google and you’ll start ranking for irrelevant financial-related keywords, rather than the ones you’re targeting in your niche.

An ongoing digital PR strategy is also key to ensuring that your backlink profile doesn’t lose its value. The older links get, the less relevant Google sees them, so it’s important to consistently build links to your website to keep a strong level of organic traffic. 

As a start-up or SME, digital PR will be key to growing your backlink profile and increasing organic and referral traffic to your website, all whilst supporting in growing your brand awareness. Links in relevant publications will not only boost your website’s authority in Google, but will allow your business to build up brand trust with an audience who are seeing you featured in reputable publications. 

For more established organisations that already have a large amount of links pointing to their website, digital PR is key to ensuring that your backlink profile has a strong balance of high quality links against the thousands of links popular websites receive from discount code and spam websites. Striking a balance here is extremely important, as the more spam links outweigh your high quality links, the less you’ll rank for relevant key terms and the lower organic traffic you’ll receive, allowing your competitors to surpass you. 

For a high-quality digital PR strategy, we recommend outsourcing to an expert or agency (like Unearth PR). To find out more on this, read our blog on why you should outsource digital PR services.

How do you find the right Digital PR service for your business?

You’re going to want to look for a digital PR agency that has strong knowledge of how to build links using a multitude of tactics, all being “white-hat”. At most agencies, these will include digital PR campaigns, reactive PR, expert commentary, and utilising journalist requests. To find a digital PR service that really stands out, the service should be able to offer all of this alongside a strategic element and technical tactics. This should include comprehensive backlink profile analysis of both your business and competitors, an analysis of your niche and the opportunities it holds online, alongside effective reporting on traffic and keywords.

If you’re looking for a digital PR service that has all of the above, alongside a team holding over 10+ years of experience across brand PR, digital PR, SEO and digital marketing - why not get in touch? We look forward to hearing from you!