Mastering Digital PR for Link Building Success

You were probably told in college to be aware of what you put out on the internet. That’s because your image on social media and other digital platforms really matters when you want to be taken seriously. It’s the same for your company. 

Digital public relations (PR) is how your brand is presented online and the professional maintenance you do to appear trustworthy and reliable. It focuses on making a great first impression to potential customers — whether people find you on your website, Instagram or through influencer marketing. 

Understanding Digital PR and Its Impact on SEO

The goal of public relations is to control how people view your brand. With that said, digital PR refers to strategies and tactics that can be used to improve your company’s online presence. It involves leveraging various platforms, digital content and social media to create brand awareness.

A critical element of digital PR is creating shareable content, gaining backlinks and improving SEO. Other factors include:

• Content marketing: Creating high-quality, engaging content like blog posts, infographics and videos that can be shared online.
• SEO strategy: Enhancing the brand’s visibility on search engines through keyword optimization, SEO link building and improving website performance. 
• Social media: Using platforms to engage with audience members, share content and build a brand community.
• Digital PR outreach: Partnering with influences, bloggers and online personalities to promote the brand and its products or services.
• Online reviews: Managing and encouraging positive reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp and industry-specific review sites.
• Digital press coverage: Securing online mentions and features in digital publications, blogs and news websites. 

On the other hand, traditional PR focuses on offline strategies to maintain a brand’s image and reputation. This could include media relations, press releases, event planning and community engagement. 

Digital PR and Link Building: The Dynamic Duo 

Think about effective link building as a friend giving you ideas on where to eat. You could easily do your own research, but you’re more likely to trust a place someone you know recommends. 

Effective PR link building — getting hyperlinks from other websites to your own — is a crucial strategy for digital marketing teams aiming to improve their SEO and brand visibility. When reputable websites link to your content, it signals to search engines that your site is trustworthy and authoritative. This can significantly boost your site’s credibility. Quality backlinks also help improve your website’s domain authority, a metric search engines use to rank websites. 

Links from sites within your industry or niche indicate to search engines that your content is relevant to specific search queries. The text used in a backlink — referred to as anchor text — helps search engines understand the context of your content, further enhancing the usefulness of your website. 

Ultimately, modern marketers need backlinks to drive site traffic. However, this doesn’t mean any links will work. You should focus on high-quality backlinks over sheer quantity. This is because just a few great backlinks from reputable sources can be more impactful for your rankings than lots of low-quality links. 

What Are the Advantages of Digital PR and Link Building Success?

Yes, a digital PR strategy helps with SEO, but it also offers several other advantages for your organization, including:

• Enhanced brand awareness: A digital PR campaign and strategic link-building strategy increase your brand’s visibility across different online platforms. Getting featured on popular, trusted sites and mentioned by influencers helps establish your company in consumers’ minds. 
• Increased web traffic: High-quality backlinks from popular websites drive direct referral traffic to your site. Visitors who click these links are often already interested in your content, products or services. 
• Boosted credibility and trust: Digital PR helps manage and improve your brand’s online reputation by promoting positive content creation and mitigating negative mentions. When authoritative websites link to your content, it signals to users that your information is trustworthy.
• Expanded reach and audience: Link-building and PR efforts help you reach a wider audience beyond your immediate followers. Being featured on various platforms exposes your brand to new potential customers.
• Improved content value: When high-quality sites link to your content, it validates your information’s relevance. This can encourage other sites to use your content, creating a positive feedback loop. Regular mentions and links from authoritative sources enhance the perceived value of your content, establishing you as an industry expert.
• Competitive advantage: Effective digital PR and link building help you stand out from competitors. A high search engine ranking and widespread online presence make your brand more prominent. Also, consistent visibility and credibility position your brand as a leader in your industry, attracting more customers and opportunities.
• Higher engagement rates: A digital PR campaign can generate buzz and social media mentions to create social proof, encouraging more people to engage with your brand. When a linkable asset you’ve created gets media coverage from authoritative websites, it can increase lead generation and get more people introduced to your quality content. 

A Step-by-Step Guide to Generating Backlinks Through Digital PR

So, how can you create backlinks from digital PR practices to enjoy all the associated benefits? We were hoping you’d ask that! Take a closer look at the steps you can follow to generate quality backlinks and start improving your digital image:

Step 1: Create Original Research

You might think every topic and statistic has been created, analyzed and shared with the world already — but think again. Google and other search engines place a higher value on content that doesn’t just summarize what other people have written but actually adds new information to the web. Original research helps your company put out content that doesn’t exist anywhere else. 

To create original research, first brainstorm topics your readers will be interested in. Look at timeliness, trends and the potential value of the data you’ll gain. Then, create a plan for a survey that can help you hear directly from people you’re interested in learning more about. Figure out how you’re going to reach them and what you’re going to ask them for the best results. 

You’ve probably heard the cliché, “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.” Well, the same goes for survey results. Set clear KPI-focused digital marketing goals for your campaign so you know how to measure success and get the types of responses you desire. 

Step 2: Create the Content 

Once the survey’s been sent out and you’ve received the responses, you can start creating content based on the results. Evaluate the responses and look for any patterns, surprising results or other information you believe readers will find interesting. Then, determine what narrative the data is telling and create content to tell that story to your audience. This could include compelling articles, infographics or videos that portray the points you want to share. 

Step 3: Distribution

After receiving the original research results, you’ll be ready to create a press release with your findings to a built-out email list of beneficial contacts. Outside of writing and distributing a press release, you should use other methods to get your original content in front of the right people. This could include:

• Social media: Use organic and paid social media to show off your original research. You could also create gated eBooks and white papers that paid social posts could draw attention to.
• Content repurposing: The data you collect from your original research can be used to build other types of content, like blogs, infographics and videos. Always reference your insights as often as possible using different mediums to get the most eyes on the data. 
• PPC: Paid search and display ads can deliver your content right to the most qualified audiences using targeting and re-targeting methods.
• Email marketing: Pique people’s interests by sharing valuable content via email, putting you on everyone’s must-open list. 

Step 4: Measure Success

Once your original research is out in the wild, it’s time to analyze how often the insights get backlinks — and by which sites. This can help your team understand what stats are the most relevant and important to people and can identify areas for further research down the road. 

Tips and Tricks To Boost Your Digital PR Link-Building Strategies

Even with the best digital PR strategy in place, marketers may struggle with picking up traction and gaining results. Here are some helpful hints to keep in mind along the way for the best performance:

• Conduct thorough research to identify and target an email list that’s relevant to your niche. Don’t pitch your research to audiences that can lead to extensive rejection or non-response. 
• Use strategies for effective digital PR like building relationships with journalists and influencers and using social media tools to grow your community. 
• Don’t be afraid to reach out if you don’t receive a response about original data use. A polite follow-up can often lead to positive results. 

It’s Time To Embrace Digital PR for Quality Link Building 

When done correctly, digital PR for link building can be the difference between creating original thought leadership content and unuseful, paraphrased copy. You don’t have to be the next data creation and distribution hub — just start where you’re at by using your audience to glean useful insights and elevate your link-building PR efforts moving forward.