Digital PR link building is about creating relevant and credible relationships between your website and other authoritative websites. Think about it like networking — it’s about the quality of your connections more than quantity.
Just like its traditional counterpart, digital PR is often misunderstood. It isn’t about amassing links or manipulating your audience. Coming from a traditional PR background, I can say both are fundamentally about building relationships and establishing credibility. This is where link building plays a crucial role.
Learn all about using digital PR for link building, what it is, how to do it, and examples of it in action.
- The Dynamic Duo of Digital PR and Link Building
- How To Leverage Digital PR for Link Building
- 4 Examples of Product and Data-Driven PR for High-Quality Link Building Campaigns
- Elevating Content Marketing With Digital PR
The Dynamic Duo of Digital PR and Link Building
When done correctly, digital PR and link building can bolster the efficacy of the other. Think of peanut butter and jelly: separate ingredients that taste great but are better when combined!
Digital PR vs. Link Building
Digital PR and link building aren’t the same but do overlap in some key areas. Both involve creating content and driving links, but digital PR has a wider scope.
Link building
- Overview: The process of acquiring high-quality links from other websites to boost your search engine rankings.
- Primary goal: At its core, the goal of link building is to earn links from a variety of sites to build a natural-looking backlink profile. This can help boost rankings and establish your website as an authoritative source with Google.
- Common metrics: Referring domains, DA, web traffic, links
Digital PR
- Overview: The strategic approach to curating your brand’s digital reputation by generating high-authority links and brand mentions from reputable media outlets.
- Primary goal: The primary focus is earning coverage in media outlets to build brand credibility (think E-E-A-T). In addition to getting media features, other sites may organically link to a piece created for digital PR.
- Common metrics: Brand mentions, social engagement, web traffic, links
Digital PR’s broader approach often overlaps with link building results, but has unique advantages.
Focuses | Digital PR | Link Building |
---|---|---|
Create content focused on linkability (aka shareability) | ✓ | ✓ |
Earn referring domains with great quality and quantity | ✓ | ✓ |
Increase SERP visibility and domain authority via backlinks | ✓ | ✓ |
Produce compelling newsworthy stories | ✓ | |
Boost brand reputation and visibility specifically via media coverage | ✓ | |
Build ongoing relationships with media outlets | ✓ |
How Digital PR Can Propel Link Building Efforts
Digital PR can boost link building efforts by:
- Giving people a more compelling reason to link to your content
- Building stronger relationships with media outlets
- Improving your website’s reputation to attract organic link opportunities
Digital PR creates brand awareness and sets you up as an authoritative source in your space. Credible sources are more likely to receive organic links, and it improves your chances of securing earned link opportunities.
In my experience, most successful digital PR campaigns are built on high-quality, linkable content. You need to give people a reason to link to your content, and for journalists, this is usually something data-focused.
As an 18-year veteran of the TV news industry, Siege’s Digital PR Specialist Laura Kutch confirms this thought process:
“Journalists are always on the lookout for unique data points that can either inspire or support a new story. If you can get them to link to your data, you instantly build credibility and authority on the topic. Then organic links will follow.”
At Siege, we focus on product-led digital PR. This means creating data-focused content that can be repurposed throughout your site, from product pages to SEO-focused blog posts. Data is valuable, so reusing it is cost-effective and strategic.
How To Leverage Digital PR for Link Building
If you want to leverage digital PR for your business, here’s an eight-step breakdown of the process and some tips based on my experience.
1. Establish Your Goals
To develop digital PR goals, tie them to specific business goals. Digital PR is a powerful tool for achieving those goals, which will differ depending on how established your brand is.
For new brands:
- Establish yourself as an expert in your field
- Improve site domain authority (DA)
- Develop a relationship with your target audience
- Establish brand identity
For existing brands:
- Increase awareness for a new product or service
- Drive traffic to your landing pages
- Maintain ongoing relationships with your target audience
- Differentiate yourself from competitors
Successful digital PR campaigns are built on three key pillars:
- Quality over quantity: More isn’t better if it doesn’t move the needle with Google or your audience. Google is consistently releasing updates aimed at removing spammy, low-quality sites. While the number of referring domains does impact Google rankings, site quality is more important.
- Relevance: Would you trust a phone review from National Geographic or Tom’s Guide? High-authority (generally 50+ DA) placements are great, but not at the cost of relevancy. Target ranges for authority differ by brand, but you can pursue opportunities below your minimum if a site is relevant and growing.
- Consistency: Digital PR is like gardening. You plant your content and nurture it with engagement (links), and over time your efforts will lead to continued organic growth. Similar to growing a garden, cultivating a hearty link profile won’t happen overnight.
Making your goals S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) helps with campaign measurement. For example:
- Increase domain authority by five points within six months.
- Secure 10 media placements for a data study within three months.
- Increase brand awareness by 20% within four months.
2. Identify Your Audience
In digital PR, knowing who you want to reach helps you figure out how to reach them. Your target audience is typically your ideal customer, but expanding your reach to related audiences can be helpful. Good questions to keep in mind when identifying audiences are:
- Location: What platforms and media outlets does your audience use?
- Size: Is your audience large (e.g., football fans) or niche (e.g., ultimate frisbee fans)?
- Needs: What is your audience looking for? How can your content help them?
- Linkable market: Are pieces of content in this topic or space garnering substantial links (30 or higher depending on the vertical)?
If you’re new to a market or want to expand your audience, analyzing your competitors is a good way to get a lay of the land. To do this use Ahrefs and check “Best by links.” You can also check the “backlinks” tab on Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool.
3. Ideate an Effective Content Plan
Ideally, your digital PR campaign should be a comprehensive strategy that spans a year, broken into monthly and quarterly sections. Here’s what to keep in mind for each.
- Yearly: Define your long-term goals and objectives and you come up with topic themes to focus on for the year or quarter.
- Quarterly: Plan out your seasonal content per quarter, sprinkling in related and relevant evergreen content.
- Monthly: Adapt your monthly content plan based on current trends, and include quick wins or timely content that pops up.
Not all content is effective year-round. Content can be split into (at least) three different categories:
- Seasonal content: This content is related to specific times of the year (holidays or seasons). Typically, you want these prepared one to two months before the holiday or season, so it’ll publish at the right time to reach audiences.
- Evergreen content: This content will be relevant for audiences year-round (how-to guides, what is X?).
- Timely content: This content is related to relevant current events or news (industry trends, breaking news, recent events).
You may have additional categories depending on your goals and industry. Survey posts and data studies, for example, can fall into any of these categories, depending on the topic you pick.
DPR content production should be fairly consistent but there may be times of the year when you’ll want to ramp up efforts to align with peak seasons, specific holidays, etc. Similarly, there may be seasons where you’ll want to avoid DPR due to news saturation, like election cycles.
4. Produce Linkable Content
Digital PR and content marketing go hand in hand. Ideating linkable content starts with understanding your audience’s pain points or finding a way to provide value.
Sharable content needs to:
- Solve a problem: Provide a solution to your audience’s pain points.
- Contain great visuals: Include high-quality photos or infographics.
- Tell a compelling story: Use emotion to connect with your audience.
- Be scannable: Incorporate images, bullet points, and short paragraphs.
If you aren’t sure what these are, do some Google searches around industry-specific keywords and see what topics pop up. I like to think of topics that solve issues for multiple outreach markets to expand my outreach potential.
Once you have a concept, make the final product shareable and linkable. Think about your unique angle and how to tell an engaging story. Most successful digital PR campaigns are data-focused or include an interactive element. Typically, data studies or surveys are the most appealing because journalists need data to tell engaging stories.
Google consistently tweaks and updates its algorithm, but there have been even greater efforts to crack down on poor content quality in the past few years. Their March 2024 update specifically stated their goal to weed out spammy, unoriginal, low-quality content.
To shine on the SERP create original, high-quality content and focus on building up your site’s authority.
5. Develop an Outreach List
To develop an outreach list, leverage your initial research to target journalists or online outlets within your industry. Focusing on relevant sources that write about related topics increases your chances of securing coverage.
Think about what makes sense to target based on your content type and your current brand authority.
Most outreach can be split into:
- News outlets: General or niche-specific; can also be national or local outlets
- Industry-specific outlet: Provide insights, news, and analysis for professionals
- Blogs and websites: Niche-specific blogs and brand websites
Use Google and Ahrefs to search for outreach opportunities.
Google: Keywords and search operators will help you narrow your search.
Operator | Description | Example |
---|---|---|
inurl: | Specifies a word or phrase in the URL | Inurl: blog |
allintext: | Specific words or phrases that must be in the text | Allintext: digital PR |
intitle: | Specifies words or phrases that must be in the title | Intitle: marketing tips |
site: | Specifies a website or domain | Site: siegemedia.com |
OR | Searches for either keyword | Digital PR OR public relations |
AND | Searches for multiple keywords | Digital PR AND link building |
related:URL | Finds websites similar to the specified URL | related:moz.com DA |
-[input] | Excludes certain keywords or sites from results | digital PR -semrush.com |
Ahrefs:
- Keyword research: Search for ranking content based on a keyword and look through the page’s referring domains.
- Competitor link analysis: Find opportunities based on who linked to them previously.
- Link reclamation: Look for resource pages or recurring seasonal stories that fit your content and offer it as a replacement for broken links or outdated data.
6. Draft Compelling Pitches
Making a strong first impression is important when sending outreach. Compelling pitches are:
- Concise: Follow the inverted pyramid structure and lead with important information. Make the subject line engaging, and include a strong initial hook. I like to A/B test subject lines to see what gets more responses. At the end, make sure there is a clear ask.
- Story-driven: Why should the journalist care about your pitch? What story does your content or data tell? Does it tie into the six news values?
- Timeliness
- Impact
- Prominence
- Proximity
- Conflict
- Human interest
- Personalized: Small, personalized touches go a long way with journalists. Include their name in the pitch, reference relevant work, and avoid generic, templated language.
7. Establish and Maintain Relationships With Journalists
Outreach responses can be positive or negative. It’s important to tailor your message accordingly.
Positive response: Do you need to provide additional information such as quotes or blog copy? Always ask if they’d be interested in collaborating in the future.
Negative response (including no response): Do you have planned follow-ups that expand on your initial pitch in different ways?
Regardless of their response, keep a positive and helpful tone — remember, your communication is a reflection of your brand.
Finally, be proactive in establishing relationships with journalists. Here are some tools that can help you establish brand credibility and receive high DA links through collaborations:
- Qwoted
- Connectively (formerly HARO)
8. Measure and Analyze Campaign Performance
When a digital PR campaign ends, measuring campaign performance can help you improve future outreach. Important metrics to keep in mind include:
- Number of links
- DR/DA changes
- Organic traffic increases
You can measure these using Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush, or Google Search Console.
Another important but harder-to-measure metric is brand awareness. You can use a social listening tool to monitor it, like:
- Brandwatch
- Hootsuite
Googling your brand name for mentions is a free and easy alternative. You can also set up Google alerts for brand mentions or branded terms.
Regardless of whether your campaign was successful, you can learn from the experience and improve future campaigns. Continue doing what worked well and try tweaking what didn’t. I would start by adjusting the targeting, pitch, or content.
4 Examples of Product and Data-Driven PR for High-Quality Link Building Campaigns
Here are four examples of successful digital PR campaigns across different verticals, using data-driven PR tactics to drive link building.
1. Health Survey and Data Study
Asbestos.com conducted a combo survey and animated data study for the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
It currently has 87 links, including two high-authority placements on Scientific American (DR 81) and Yahoo (DR 95). It is still cited by news outlets as of 2024.
This study was successful because the topic was impactful and is still part of an ongoing discussion. The focus on creating animated infographics brings an extra level of shareability to the data, making it a compelling linkable asset.
2. SaaS Data Study
Vena leveraged external and internal data to create an impressive data study about 74 SaaS statistics, trends, and benchmarks.
It earned links from multiple high-authority websites, like MarketingProfs, PayPro Global, and Insivia. Additionally, it increased clicks by 113% and impressions by 48%.
Data is a source of credibility for journalists, especially in finance and tech spaces. Including first-party data sets this study apart from the competition and adds credibility to the Vena brand.
Another pro tip from Laura Kutch: Revisit data studies annually to update the statistics with fresh data. This helps extend the life of your content by keeping it relevant and current.
3. Fintech Survey
Hippo developed the Preparedness Pulse Report, a study on homeowner preparedness.
This survey saw rapid success, earning six media placements in two months from reputable organizations like Yahoo Finance, Benzinga, GOBankingRates, and MSN.
Hippo’s study succeeded because they asked a mix questions on evergreen (DIY, unexpected repairs) and timely (climate-related damage concerns, inflation) topics. This gives journalists a lot of interesting and varied data to choose from.
4. E-commerce Survey and City Study
Angi combined a survey and city study for a post on the most expensive states for home maintenance.
This post is currently ranking on Page One position two for the keyword “most expensive states for home repair.” It has 115 links and is used as a source in the AI page overview.
If you look at the SERP for the study’s ranking keyword, most results are city studies. The addition of survey questions adds interesting context to the city-related data. News outlets in those areas are more likely to use the data in their articles, increasing linkability.
Elevating Content Marketing With Digital PR
As you can see from the examples above, using digital PR leads to impressive results in brand awareness and driving organic links to your website.
Developing data-driven, high-quality content is at the heart of digital PR link building strategies. It requires careful planning and a thoughtful approach to outreach.
Interested in improving your link building with digital PR but don’t know where to start? Check out our digital PR services for expert insights.