What is Digital PR and Why is it Important?

As the demand for brands to have strong online visibility and a competitive edge is constantly growing, digital PR is something that’s being talked about more and more in marketing. But what actually is digital PR? And why all the fuss? 

Let’s start with the definition.

Digital PR Definition

Digital PR is a tactic used to increase brands’ online presence. Linked to traditional PR in many ways, digital PR focuses on online coverage only and aims to put brands in front of their target audience. Its purpose is to increase brand awareness, website traffic and backlinks, which help improve search rankings.

How does digital PR support SEO?

A backlink is a link from your site to another website and is a major ranking factor in SEO. Each backlink counts as a ‘vote of confidence’ for brands from Google. They are a signal to search engines that others vouch for your content, so the more quality links you have, the higher your brand will appear.

Digital PR isn’t just about link building 

Though crucial to SEO, digital PR isn’t just about building links. It also helps brands build awareness, trust and love. It’s a chance for brands to stand out online and position themselves as a thought leader in their industry. It also creates great content that excites target audiences – and people love sharing great content!

High quality coverage is the key to good digital PR 

To get audiences to trust and appreciate a digital PR campaign, landing in reputable, relevant publications is a must. If you’re a fashion brand with a campaign about the biggest style icons, appearing on a spammy website about gaming isn’t going to give a good impression. What’s more, a bad quality link could harm your site’s SEO.

What is a good quality link in digital PR?

A good quality link is a link from a site that brands can be proud of. The site must be trustworthy with a high domain authority (a search engine ranking score that predicts a site’s rankability). By trustworthy we mean that lots of people visit it and it has good content – yes, that means that certain tabloid publications are considered trustworthy by search engines.

There are three types of links used in digital PR coverage: 

1. Dofollow backlinks – These are the most valuable to SEO as they pass on authority from one website to another. 
2. Nofollow backlinks – Nofollow links don’t pass on authority so don’t directly contribute to page ranking. However, these are still useful as they can make a brand’s link profile appear natural and varied, which Google likes.
3. Non-linking – This is when an article mentions the brand but doesn’t include a link. Again, these are still valuable because it gets the brand’s name in front of a large audience.

How to get digital PR coverage 

To get digital PR coverage, you need to convince journalists to publish content that involves your brand. The main way to do this is to create a data-led or expert campaign with a news hook that will interest the target publication’s readers. Once the campaign is put together, the story will need to be pitched to journalists through a press release. 

To find out more about how to get coverage, read our guide on creating a digital PR strategy. Alternatively, you can see some examples of campaigns by NORTH by viewing our work.