Gone are the days when public relations broadly meant getting featured in newspapers, sending articles, chasing journalists, hoping for front-page magazine coverage, etc.
Fast forward, digital PR has evolved into a dynamic tool for increasing awareness, launching new products or initiatives, and boosting brand reputation.
On the SEO front, digital PR offers a strategic approach, extending its influence over search rankings, web traffic, click-through rates, etc.
But is it the best form of ‘white-hat SEO’? And what strategies can you follow to get featured, along with the challenges you need to tackle?
Below, I’ve listed down a few tips, benefits, and pointers to help you understand it better.
Before that, let’s understand what it is exactly.
What is Digital PR?
Digital PR is a Marketing Strategy that involves securing online coverage for a brand through news articles, guest posts, influencer collaborations, and high-authority backlinks.
The goal is to improve brand reputation, drive website traffic, and boost search engine rankings.
Unlike traditional PR, which focuses on print media, TV, and radio, Digital PR operates in the online ecosystem.
It involves:
- Publishing thought leadership articles on industry websites.
- Earning backlinks from reputable sources to improve SEO.
- Leveraging social media for brand storytelling and engagement.
- Collaborating with influencers, bloggers, and online journalists.
With search engines like Google placing immense value on quality backlinks and authoritative mentions, Digital PR has become an essential component of modern marketing strategies.
Difference between Digital PR & Traditional PR
Media Focus – Digital PR focuses on online publications, blogs, and social media, whereas traditional PR targets print media, TV, and radio.
Primary Goal – Digital PR aims to improve SEO, website traffic, and online brand visibility, while traditional PR focuses on shaping public perception and credibility.
Content Format – Digital PR uses online articles, guest posts, and digital press mentions, whereas traditional PR relies on press releases, interviews, and event coverage.
Outreach Strategy – Digital PR engages with influencers, bloggers, and online journalists, while traditional PR works with print journalists and TV reporters.
Measurability – Digital PR success is tracked through website traffic, backlinks, and social shares, while traditional PR is measured by media impressions and audience reach.
Difference between Digital PR & Link Building
Objective – Digital PR builds brand authority and online reputation, while link building primarily focuses on improving SEO rankings through backlinks.
Tactics Used – Digital PR involves news articles, influencer collaborations, and thought leadership content, whereas link building relies on guest posts, directory submissions, and backlink outreach campaigns.
Link Quality – Digital PR earns high-quality editorial links from trusted websites, whereas link building can sometimes include lower-quality links from directories.
Brand Exposure – Digital PR boosts brand awareness and search visibility, whereas link building is more SEO-driven, focusing less on branding.
5 Digital PR Strategies To Earn High DA Links
Many digital PR campaigns have gained limelight due to their excellent execution and the results they generated for their concerned websites.
These campaigns are usually driven by a specific narrative, which is a mix of traditional PR and SEO, digital PR includes elements such as link-building and PR campaigns earned or covered through website publications, social channels, media, etc.
Check out below some key digital PR strategies that earned massive organic results + brand visibility:
1. Thought Leadership & Personal Branding
This includes publishing impactful articles or opinions of leaders on authoritative websites. The idea here is to position key organizational executives as experts using interviews or podcasts.
Example: Ahrefs’ CMO, Tim Soulo’s podcast feature on BrightIdeas.
2. Reactive PR and Newsjacking
This involves providing expert opinions on trending topics with valuable insights through platforms like HARO [Help A Reporter Out] using quotes.
For brands, this is a great opportunity they can leverage to inject their opinion for short-term media coverage.
Example: During the pandemic, Uber capitalized on the “staying at home” norm by launching a video titled – “Thank You for not riding”.
3. Media Outreach and Press Releases
Includes pitching stories to journalists, reporters, executive editors, bloggers, or influencers to announce company updates, product launch stories, etc.
Example: Burger King’s $1M Whopper Creation Content [Source]
4. Influencer & Blogger Collaborations
Involves striking collaborations or barter deals with niche influencers to promote your brand’s product or services.
This technique often leverages user-generated content and testimonials citing product usage.
5. Data-Driven Reports or Statistics
Creating unique, high-value content such as industry reports, expert guides, etc., will attract backlinks and media attention.
Journalists, especially, are always on the hunt for insightful pieces to enhance their reports or interview publications.
Here’s a striking example of how Fery and his agency ran a PR campaign for their client that earned them links from top-level domain sites with a 90 domain rating:
They created a detailed press release breaking down the findings of each state with actionable statistics and later pitched them to journalists, bloggers, editors, etc.
Preparing data-heavy campaigns might seem a comprehensive task, but once they begin gaining traction, backlinks automatically follow.
What are the benefits of Digital PR?
Planning and effectively executing a Digital PR campaign can fetch measurable results and boost authority in Google’s eyes.
Here are some digital PR benefits that you can capitalize on:
1. Increased Referral Traffic
As your site generates more mentions across platforms and authoritative websites through news coverages, search engines pick up these signals, thus boosting your website’s visibility.
With these backlinks from high-quality sites, your site’s visibility on target keywords will automatically begin attracting quality traffic.
2. Increased Inbound Leads
Subsequent referral traffic will open doors for new potential leads from your target market through content distribution on various platforms.
Considering the enhanced visibility, digital PR will also amplify your brand’s voice, boosting the chances of cross-organization collaborations.
3. Enhanced Brand Credibility
Getting your site mentioned on reputable platforms goes a long way in building digital credibility on the web.
As a result, these positive words can influence your brand’s potential customers and strengthen your identity in their minds.
4. Strengthened Brand Authority
A backlink from an authoritative website to your site mentioning your product, leadership, or services – how powerful is that!
This exposure makes your brand more recognizable among your target market, reinforces customer trust, and positions you as an industry leader.
5 Tips For Using Social Media For PR
Social media PR is leveraging social media platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, Reddit, etc., to develop a brand’s identity and generate visibility.
However, while executing a PR campaign on social media, it’s important to ensure the message is effectively conveyed with the desired goal being completed by the viewers or target audience.
Here are a few tips to make the most out of your PR campaigns:
1. Understand the Platform & Set Objectives
Every social media platform serves its purpose. For instance, Facebook & Instagram for staying in touch with your friends and following celebrities, brands, etc.
Or LinkedIn, for staying close to your future hiring manager, your industry, colleagues, target companies, etc.
So before you begin strategizing your PR campaign on social media, research & analyze which platform will deliver you the highest ROI.
Also, define your objectives. Get your marketing manager in on what you want your target audience to know or feel about after viewing your posts. This will help you set measurable KPIs and analyze results better.
2. Get the Content Calendar ready
This is as important as it can ever get. Prepare a PR calendar that keeps you on track.
Define post concepts, headings, and related materials to always stay alert about the content being posted from your brand A/c.
Another important item here is to identify global trends, festivals, events, etc., happening in your target market. Brands have time and again taken advantage of such activities and either launched their new products or raised awareness to garner mass visibility.
Check out Dove’s “Courage is Beautiful” campaign, where they leveraged the COVID-19 pandemic to raise awareness about front-line workers, assistants, and medical staff for their dedication toward public safety.
Results? Dove stood out as a customer-centric, authentic brand generating billions of views across YouTube and X.
3. Integrate PR & Traditional SEO
While preparing material for your campaign, insert your brand keywords in your headings and descriptions.
This will push your visibility chances in front of your target audience and open doors for global reach.
Apart from keywords, add campaign-specific hashtags to offer your target audience a broader view of your campaign.
Apple’s 2019 #shotoniphone campaign is an excellent example to understand how it brought impressive visibility to its new lens design and macro-photography feature in terms of website traffic, revenue, and brand identity.
4. Collaborate with Journalists & Influencers
While using social media for PR, coordinate your PR campaign strategies and activities with relevant influencers and journalists.
Keep them in the loop about your events to increase the chances of media coverage, brand mentions, and link-building while your campaign is live.
5. Go LIVE on Social Platforms
Brands like Zomato, Netflix, Redbull, Mercedez, etc., have been globally known by marketers and customers for their prompt replies and activities on platforms like Instagram & X.
So when your campaign is up & running, stay Live to engage existing and potential customers in your activities. This will help build a positive and energetic brand identity, thus reinforcing credibility and trust.
Let’s understand why digital PR in SEO is an important element in generating long-term results.
What is digital PR for SEO?
Digital PR in SEO is an inclusive process that aims to increase a website’s authority and visibility through various strategies such as building thought leadership, content marketing, targeted link building, etc.
It relates to building accessible and authoritative brand touchpoints for the audience around the brand. The integration of PR and SEO today has become important as Google considers multiple factors to evaluate published content and a site’s reputation.
At the end of the day, your goal while doing digital PR with SEO should be to build a reputable brand for the search engine as well as the audience.
Why is Digital Public Relations essential in Modern SEO?
1. Supports Content Marketing and Social Sharing
Digital PR enhances and complements content marketing efforts by amplifying your content’s reach, driving additional engagement.
On top of it, press mentions in top-tier publications and platforms often get shared, distributed, and referenced by websites on social media platforms.
From a broader perspective, this contributes to awareness and referral traffic, making it an important element of any brand’s holistic SEO strategy.
Andrew Holland’s Push & Pull framework aptly highlights the concept here.
Andrew stresses the Pull & Push strategic approach to attract users to your website.
Where Pull focuses on bringing users from SEO to relevant pages and Push, focuses on bringing users through distributed content shared through social media, PR, email marketing, etc.
Given this balance, it offers a measurable perspective and an executable way for marketers aiming to generate long-term brand visibility in their target market.
2. Aligns with Google’s Algorithm Updates
Google proactively took action on link spamming activities with its December 2022 Link Spam update.
Since digital PR aligns with Google’s evolving algorithms prioritizing authenticity and user experience today, brands focusing on earning links naturally will win in the long run.
Now this can be made possible through sharing natural and compelling stories, expert opinions, market insights, etc., or getting them covered through publications.
3. Builds a Diverse and Natural Link Profile
For a long period now, search engines have emphasized a diverse link profile identity that carries a blend of authoritative and intent-rich backlinks.
As the essence of digital PR lies in earning natural links, marketers should focus on building a profile that offers versatility.
Because this diversity will signal search engines that your website is credible and doesn’t house any spammy links or is associated with manipulative link-building strategies.
4. Improves Local and Global SEO
If you are targeting specific geographical regions, a digital public relations strategy can largely enhance your local SEO efforts.
By securing featured updates, product launch news, etc., in local news, websites, directories, listings, or industry-specific platforms, you can attract quality referral traffic and boost lead generation chances.
Or if you’re targeting aiming for international reach, they can acquire links from global publications or websites to boost visibility in multiple markets and improve search rankings.
5. Enhances Long-Term SEO Benefits
Unlike paid ads that stop delivering value once stopped, digital PR continues to drive long-term results and enhance long-term ROI on SEO.
Given the longevity of brand mentions, media coverages, and link insertions, digital PR continues to attract web traffic and improve brand awareness.
And if you compare it to traditional SEO, digital PR comes out as a more cost-effective and unmatched tool to generate results.
Conclusion
Standing out from the competition requires a strong mix of SEO & Digital PR strategies to achieve market dominance.
Now that I’ve walked you in-and-out of what digital PR is and how it benefits brands, it’s time to plan your next campaign and generate visibility.
At MotionGility, we offer result-focused marketing services that help you scale your website traffic and communicate your product effectively.
Get in touch with our expert today over a Free 30-minute Call to discuss your requirements.
