01
Abstract
Digital public relations, often shortened to digital PR, is all about showcasing your expertise, trust, and authority to Google by creating relevant news, stories, and information that the media will cover which in turn, improves your online presence and visibility.
But exactly what makes it such a crucial part of your overall strategy? Well, we’re here to tell you why your brand should be investing in digital PR and help answer any potential questions you may have!
In this guide, we will be covering:
- What is digital PR?
- What are the benefits of digital PR?
- How digital PR supports SEO and drives online presence
- The future of digital PR
02
What is Digital PR?
Whilst it tends to be mostly associated with ‘link building’, digital PR is so much more than that. Yes, sending outreach and gaining links to improve a website’s authority still plays a role, but that’s just one part of a bigger strategy.
Unlike link building alone, digital PR utilises many tools and tactics to prove to Google that your brand is authoritative and trustworthy. Below are some examples of the types of tactics that digital PR specialists use:
- Pulling together relevant PR campaigns (we go into further detail about the different types of PR activity in our guide on how to create a digital PR strategy)
- Creating and sending out press releases and data
- Building relationships with online journalists and bloggers
- Organising interviews, influencer partnerships, and other collaborations
- Crisis communications
- Setting up publicity stunts to grab attention
Digital PR vs Traditional PR
To sum it up, traditional and digital PR strategies are both all about improving and sustaining a brand’s reputation.
However, when it comes to specific strategies, traditional PR often focuses on crisis and reputation management and promotes brand awareness through stories or events that gain social media, print, and online coverage, as well as other disciplines that will showcase brands in a positive light.
Meanwhile, digital PR strategies are informed by SEO recommendations and goals, with the focus being on gaining online coverage (links) from relevant, authoritative sources. This, in turn, increases online brand awareness and supports further SEO goals such as bringing traffic to a website, improving visibility, and ultimately, driving leads and conversions.
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What are the benefits of Digital PR?
Maybe you’re wondering how digital PR could benefit you and your business? Well, when used effectively, some of the benefits of digital PR to your brand can include:
Enhancing your SEO efforts:
Backlinks, which are inbound links coming from another website, are an important ranking factor for search engines like Google. Therefore, the more high-quality backlinks you have pointing to your brand’s website, the more likely it is that you’re going to rank higher for relevant search terms. We’ll touch more on how digital supports SEO in the next section.
Stronger brand reputation:
Securing positive media coverage will help to position your brand as an authority. Not only that but getting your name out there and mentioned in a variety of sources will raise brand awareness and ultimately build trust with potential customers.
Driving traffic to the website:
Whether people end up on your website by clicking a link in an article elsewhere or discover your site thanks to ranking higher in the SERPs, digital PR can boost website traffic and help get you noticed. Of course, the best part is that increased website traffic will in turn lead to increased leads and conversions.
So, as you can see, if you’re a brand hoping to grow your online presence, you should be running digital PR activity as part of your organic and marketing strategies.
In fact, according to a recent blog post, various experts in the industry believe that link building is the third most important ranking factor when it comes to SEO. Back in 2021, Google’s very own John Mueller also acknowledged the importance of this when he said, “[digital PR is] just as critical as tech SEO, probably more so in many cases.”
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How digital PR supports SEO and drives online performance
Building links is like acquiring social proof, with digital PR helping to boost wider SEO performance. But why is this?
Well, when search engines crawl a website, having strong, authoritative backlinks pointing to your domain is a great signal that you’re trustworthy and know what you’re talking about. It’s also one of the factors that allows you to rank higher on Google when people search for relevant terms associated with your brand.
Other key benefits that PR can have on SEO performance include increased site visibility, traffic, leads, and improved keyword rankings. Through digital PR tactics, you’re also able to feature your internal experts and products, which boosts brand awareness, loyalty, and credibility.
So, whilst both on-site SEO and PR are separate practices, the benefits of marrying the two together is obvious! For more information, be sure to check out our blog on why PR and SEO are better connected.
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Examples of digital PR
Here at connective3, our digital PR experts have extensive experience creating and executing digital PR strategies for a range of brands across different sectors. Working collaboratively with the organic team, we’ve delivered results that have driven clear business growth.
If you’re interested in even more examples of digital PR that have proven results, be sure to check out our case studies.
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The future of digital PR
Given the ever-changing digital marketing landscape, it’s obvious that the world of digital PR is going to continue to evolve and change over time. But what exactly does this mean for you and your business?
Below are some thoughts we’ve gathered from our expert PR team here at connective3.
Creative campaigns will continue to thrive
A lot of brands that have specific products to push or want to get in front of their audience will run more large-scale, creative campaigns/stunts that’ll deliver both offline and online results that support PR, organic, and social. However, to cut through, these tactics will need to be relevant, have a strong key message, and entice audiences to take action.
If you’re curious about how we bring creative campaigns to life, we’ve got a whole case study on launching an Avon fragrance with the help of our c360 services.
The rise of reactive PR
Reactive PR will continue to increase in popularity, especially for sectors with quicker news cycles such as finance, travel, and fashion. This strategy continues to build impressive results, and we’ve seen huge successes across our c3 newsroom team for this.
Brands need to utilise their internal expertise on these strategies to showcase themselves as authoritative leaders in order to build trust among their audience. The content you produce also needs to be helpful; answering the questions we know audiences are seeking advice on.
This is especially important considering Google’s ‘Helpful Content Update’ which aims to promote informational content with the user in mind rather than that which has been written to rank well in the SERPs. There has actually been a number of updates to the algorithm that claim to boost helpful information and reduce the appearance of low-quality or unoriginal content.
Focusing on technical link building
As the world of digital PR becomes more competitive, it only makes sense that more and more brands are running PR strategies. However, this does mean that finding niche ways to build results to support overall SEO objectives has never been more crucial.
From link reclamation and partnerships to broken backlinks and employer news, there are a number of ways to achieve this, and we expect that there’s going to be a huge focus on this type of technical link building in the future. If you’re wanting to get ahead but not sure where to start, we’ve got a whole guide to technical link reclamation that goes through some of the different tactics you might want to employ.
Relevancy remains key
The biggest factor which remains is relevancy. Basically, you need to ensure that all your PR content is relevant to your brand and audience/interests, relevant to keywords you want to rank for, and relevant to your target media and the general news agenda.
PR strategies should be guided by organic insights, so it’s important that you speak with your SEO teams to determine where you should be directing your backlinks on your site to have the biggest growth impact.
If you’re interested in finding out more about what our team get up to, and how we can enhance your brand’s online presence and reputation, be sure to check out all of the digital PR services we offer.
