By Eileen Pegg – Account manager
Have you heard the phrase ‘digital PR’ but have no idea what it means? If you’ve ever achieved online press coverage that included a link back to your brand’s website, then you’ve technically done some digital PR – but there’s so much more you could do to gain better results that make a real impact on your business.
On a basic level like this, digital PR isn’t new but in recent years it’s become more sophisticated as knowledge has grown, tactics have matured and the need for businesses to build a better online profile has seen growing demand in this part of the industry. Search volumes for ‘digital PR’ have increased by 14% and in this blog, we’ll explain what this powerful digital marketing tactic is, and how it can help towards several different goals.
1. How digital PR compares to traditional PR and SEO
In 2024, it’s difficult to find a business that doesn’t have a website, whether it’s a hard-working e-commerce page for a D2C retail product, or a hub of specialist information with guides and demos for a B2B brand. As a marketeer or brand owner you’ll know how cluttered the online space can be, yet it’s more important than ever to ensure that your customers are finding your website through the masses of online content.
This is where digital PR comes in. It’s an effective way to build links to your website, often through gaining targeted media coverage. When an online publication includes a link back to your website, some of that online trust, or ‘equity’ is then passed down to your website, boosting it on Google’s page rankings. If you’re familiar with SEO, then digital PR is a fantastic way to ramp up your off-page SEO link-building strategy.
It can also act as a springboard for making creative content, increase organic brand awareness, build online trust and authority and drive traffic to your social pages and website. That will ultimately lead to conversions – and all of this can be tracked.
To be a success, digital PR teams must work closely with SEO specialists to create a strategy that ensures the right keywords and links are used, so that each campaign is relevant to your brand and your digital goals. It also helps to work with a team that has strong foundations in traditional PR, as many of the tactics require similar skills such as the ability to identify a story, writing great copy, understanding the ever-changing media landscape and knowing what’s right for your brand’s reputation.
2. Why creative content is key – but it must always be relevant
Almost every brand will want to raise awareness of the product or service it sells. While traditional PR might work with journalists to encourage them to share their thoughts in a publication, boosting awareness and creating a positive reputation, digital PR will first identify what words and phrases your audience is using to search for your product online. The campaign will be built around that, to ensure more of those online searches result in a click on your website, whether through the link being placed in the perfect publication, or by boosting a strategic keyword’s ranking.
This opens up a world of creativity as digital PR teams can come up with ways to create content that is engaging, solves problems, and shares your brand’s insight. And the best part is, your business probably already has lots of data, insights and authoritative content available that can be used to help with this.
It’s a common misconception that digital PR ‘only cares about links’ and where they’re placed doesn’t matter, but this is very outdated. Campaigns that are packed with creativity but have nothing to do with your brand won’t give Google the trust signals it needs, according to the E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) framework that it uses to assess online content. Not to mention, it will have no benefit to your organic brand reputation whatsoever and any leads generated won’t be qualified.
3. Digital PR tactics
Several digital PR tactics can be used to help share your authority and secure a link placement in relevant online publications, and you might already be using some of these in your traditional PR activities. To get the most out of each one, a digital PR team will ensure every touchpoint is optimised to get the best SEO benefit, rather than missing out on a great digital opportunity, such as:
- Newsjacking and reactive comments
- Thought leadership articles
- Seasonal advice pieces
- Data-led ‘hero’ campaigns
- Whitepapers and reports
4. The essential things you need to launch a digital PR campaign
To get started, here are some of the elements you need:
- SEO specialists – to create a strong keyword strategy to base your activity around and monitor the results
- Great content – encapsulating the keywords, phrases and topics that matter to your brand, your audience and the online publications they read
- Targeted media list – relevancy is key
- Report metrics that matter to you – digital PR is highly trackable. Every good digital PR agency relationship will begin by identifying what you want to improve, so our activity can do just that, and we can show you how it’s working.
5: Talk to our digital PR experts
Get in touch with us today for a no-obligation digital PR audit, and find out how digital PR can raise your online visibility to the next level.
Find out more by contacting us here, and we will be in touch in no time.
