What is digital PR and how does it help your SEO?
Digital PR (digital public relations) is the practice of earning online visibility through news stories, data-led research, expert commentary and partnerships. Unlike traditional PR, which targets print and broadcast coverage, digital PR focuses on getting your brand mentioned on websites, in news articles and by influencers -- and those mentions come with clickable links that help your SEO.
The short version is that digital PR builds your site's authority the way Google prefers: through earned links, not paid ones. When a reputable site links to you because you have provided something useful (a statistic, a quote, an original piece of research), that link signals to Google that your site is worth ranking. It is the safest and most sustainable way to build backlinks, and it can transform a business that does it well.
## What makes digital PR different from traditional PR
Traditional PR targets journalists at newspapers, radio stations and TV channels. The coverage might be a quote in a print article or an interview on local radio. You cannot click a radio interview. You cannot follow a link in a printed newspaper.
Digital PR targets the same journalists, but also online news sites, blogs, industry publications and content creators. Every piece of coverage that appears on a website can include a hyperlink back to your site. That link is both a referral traffic source and a ranking signal. Digital PR also uses formats that do not exist in traditional PR: data visualisations, interactive tools, surveys and co-marketed research reports.
## How digital PR helps your SEO
Digital PR supports SEO in three specific ways:
Earned backlinks. When a journalist or blogger uses your data or quotes you as an expert, they usually link to your site. These links are the most valuable type of backlink because they are editorial -- Google sees them as a genuine recommendation rather than something you bought or built yourself.
Brand visibility and branded search. When people see your brand mentioned in a news article or industry round-up, some of them will search for your name directly. Google tracks branded search volume as a relevance signal. A rise in branded searches tells Google that real humans are interested in your business.
Referral traffic. A well-placed digital PR hit can send thousands of relevant visitors to your site in a single day. Those visitors might not convert immediately, but they build your remarketing audience and increase the pool of people who recognise your name when they see it in search results.
For a concrete example, look at our work with TrustATrader. Through a digital PR and content marketing programme that earned authoritative links to their site, we helped them achieve a +400% increase in organic traffic. That is the kind of result that consistent, link-earning digital PR can deliver.
## How to get started with digital PR
You do not need a big budget or a PR agency to begin. The same principles apply at any scale:
Publish something newsworthy. Original data is the most reliable angle. Survey your customers, run an industry poll or analyse a public dataset. A single surprising statistic can be the hook a journalist needs.
Pitch with precision. Do not send a generic press release to every news desk. Find the journalists who cover your industry and send them a personalised email that explains why your data matters to their readers. Keep it short, include the key number and offer to share the full data set.
Make it easy to link. Host the full research on your own site, include a clear methodology section and provide ready-to-use charts or images. Journalists are time-pressed. The easier you make their job, the more likely they are to cover your story and link to your site.
Build relationships over time. One-off pitches can work, but the real returns come from being a reliable expert source that journalists return to again and again. Reply quickly, be quotable and never pitch something that is not genuinely useful to their audience.
If you want to see how digital PR fits into a full SEO programme, including the link-building and content work that supports it, see our SEO packages and pricing at https://victory.digital/seo-packages. For a deeper look at the link-building side, head over to https://victory.digital/link-building.
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