Digital PR not only helps businesses gain exposure from some of the largest online publications and media channels but also serves an integral role in establishing the high levels of credibility necessary to achieve top SEO results in competitive niches. In this article, we’ll explain what it is, how it’s accomplished, and why it could be the key to exponentially expanding your business’s online visibility, organic traffic, and sales.
Introduction To Digital PR
Digital PR is a rapidly evolving marketing tactic that uses media exposure from trusted online channels to positively influence a brand’s online visibility, reputation, and overall digital footprint. Like traditional PR, it aims to increase brand awareness and establish direct, meaningful connections with target audiences—but the scope of digital PR goes far beyond that.
In addition to building trust with human consumers, a winning digital PR strategy also builds trust and authority with Google. High-quality digital content that gets picked up and distributed by popular, relevant media channels can earn valuable links, powerfully enhance EEAT signals, and effectively rocket your brand to the top of organic search results.
In combination with SEO, digital PR is an invaluable tool for brands seeking to leverage the power of digital media and distinguish themselves in a crowded marketplace. Some of its key benefits include:
- Improved brand awareness, reputation, and authority
- Higher search engine rankings and an increase in organic website traffic
- Improved social following and engagement
- An increase in the generation of earned media links
- Enhanced lead generation, sales, and revenue
Core Components Of Digital PR
While every campaign is unique in terms of its target audience, scope, and objectives, digital PR fundamentally revolves around the creation and strategic distribution of high-quality, engaging content. When picked up and amplified by popular, trusted digital media outlets, such content can effectively position your business as an authoritative voice in its niche/industry and lead to higher rankings and tangible increases in lead generation, sales, and revenue.
Some of the core components of any effective digital PR campaign include the following:
- Content Creation – In the world of digital PR, engaging, high-quality content is your business’s primary currency. The types of content that pique relevant media interest will vary depending on your industry and target audience but may encompass thought leadership articles, data-driven content, interactive content, and much more.
- Publishing Online Content – Gaining widespread digital media exposure for your brand/business may be the ultimate goal of your digital PR campaign, but publishing content yourself can help lay the groundwork. A published body of engaging, optimized content helps establish your brand’s trustworthiness and authority with the general public and search engines alike.
- Media Outreach – Once you’ve created high-quality content you believe is ready to be shared, it’s time to reach out to digital media sources. The process of building relationships and opportunities for collaboration with online journalists, bloggers, and influencers often requires a significant investment of time and energy and may include the distribution of press releases, interviews, the creation of guest content, and much more.
- Securing Backlinks – Digital PR encompasses more than link building although accumulating high-quality organic backlinks remains a core goal and benefit of this marketing strategy. It’s essential to ensure that every piece of content you pitch to digital media outlets is optimized with at least one relevant link to your brand’s website.
Types Of Digital PR Campaigns
An effective digital PR campaign will be strategically tailored to your business’s specific industry, audience, and marketing goals. Some common types of PR campaigns include:
- Brand Awareness Campaign – Building brand recognition and trust with your target audience as well as Google’s algorithm.
- Launch Campaign – Generating buzz around a new business, brand, product, service, location, event, etc.
- Content Marketing Campaign – Getting high-quality, optimized content in front of a wider audience.
- Thought Leadership Campaign – Positioning your brand/business as an authoritative voice to take notice of in its industry.
- Newsjacking and Reactive PR Campaigns – Leveraging current events or trends to promote your brand/business.
To discuss your marketing goals and objectives and explore what type of digital PR campaign may be the most impactful for your business, contact our expert team at First Rank SEO today!
Digital PR Vs. Other Marketing Strategies
Digital PR doesn’t function within a vacuum. Rather, the most effective digital PR campaigns are bolstered and supported by a healthy ecosystem of mutually beneficial digital marketing strategies which may include content marketing (the creation and sharing of relevant digital content to stimulate interest in your brand), social media marketing (the use of social media platforms to build your brand, connect with your target audience, and drive website traffic), influencer marketing (collaborations between your brand and popular influencers), paid advertising (PPC, Google Ads, social media ads), and more.
Search engine optimization (SEO) and digital PR, in particular, are fundamentally linked (pun intended). Let’s take a closer look:
Digital PR And SEO: How They Work Together
Digital PR can provide incredible opportunities to get your business/brand featured in major digital media outlets and increase its online exposure and visibility. That being said, all digital roads ultimately lead back to your brand’s website, and unless that website is optimized for search engines, the Google algorithm is going to notice an inconsistency.
Even with relevant, engaging, high-quality PR content and an exceptional digital public relations campaign driving traffic and backlinks to your website, your brand still isn’t going to capture top SERP spots in a competitive niche without a properly optimized website. Issues such as technical struggles, poor user experience (UX), low-quality content, and more will decrease your website’s rankings and organic traffic, ultimately preventing it from reaching its full potential and dominating competitor sites.
At First Rank, our SEO and digital marketing expertise allow us to harness the combined power of industry-leading search engine optimization and digital PR strategies and put them to work for your brand. Consider this:
- A website with a strong SEO foundation will lend legitimacy to your business’s digital PR campaigns—both in the eyes of Google and your target audience.
- A well-executed digital PR campaign will benefit your website’s SEO by generating high-quality backlinks, increasing organic traffic, and improving brand visibility on search engines.
SEO and digital PR are two digital marketing strategies that truly go hand-in-hand. Get in touch with First Rank today to learn more about how a robust digital PR campaign could dramatically boost your business’s SEO results and overall competitiveness in its niche!
Measuring The Success Of Digital PR
Unlike traditional PR campaigns, digital PR campaigns are highly trackable and their success can be measured and evaluated according to a variety of different metrics, including:
- Organic Traffic Levels
- Referral Traffic (from media websites and/or social networks)
- Earned links
- Social Media Shares and Followers
- Brand Searches
- Leads Generated and Sales
These metrics, and many others, can be tracked and analyzed using Google Analytics, Google Search Console, social media tracking software, and/or a variety of other SEO tools to help you determine strategic next steps.
Building Relationships With Journalists And Influencers
Building relationships with journalists and influencers is a vital component of digital PR that can involve:
- Pitching content ideas through press releases, emails, or other forms of direct outreach
- Organizing opportunities for interviews
- Seeking opportunities for the creation of guest content for relevant digital news outlets
- Getting mentions on influential social media accounts or blogs
Journalists and influencers receive a large volume of pitches on a daily basis, so it’s important to be aware that establishing and nurturing valuable media connections often takes substantial time and determination. To help your pitches stand out from the crowd, be sure that they are concise and professional while clearly communicating what your content is about, why it matters, and how it could benefit the media outlet you are contacting (connections to recently published content, popular themes and topics, content that will engage or help their target audience, etc.).
Once you’ve established a working connection with a journalist, blogger, or media outlet, be sure to invest time in actively maintaining the relationship and working toward future collaborations and content creation opportunities.
Content Types For Digital PR
Creating newsworthy content for your digital PR campaign is all about finding fresh, engaging ways to answer relevant questions, present data in new ways, and/or contribute new perspectives within your industry. The type of content that will work best for your campaign will depend on a variety of factors including your campaign objectives, your business’s specific industry or niche, and current events and trends.
It’s essential to note that, in many cases, the content created for your digital PR campaign may not be directly about your business, but will still link back to your brand as an industry authority. The list below offers a sample of some of the content types that are commonly used in digital PR campaigns:
- Thought Leadership (articles, interviews, opinion pieces)
- Data-Driven Content (surveys and reports, infographics)
- Case Studies
- Community Panels
- Creative Content (videos, graphics)
- Interactive Content (polls, maps, calculators, tours, games)
- Seasonal Campaigns (holidays, seasonal trends)
- Reactive PR/Newsjacking (leveraging viral/trending topics to promote your business)
Examples Of Successful Digital PR Campaigns
There are countless examples of successful digital PR campaigns, but the team at First Rank has selected a few of our favourites to underscore the power of compelling digital content for businesses in a broad spectrum of different industries. In no particular order, here they are:
- Shutterfly, a well-known photography products company, developed this interactive Baby Name Generator that allows expecting parents to generate custom-tailored baby names in a fun and engaging way.
- Dental Phobia, a British organization that offers support for patients and dentists around the topic of dental anxiety, created this map showing how much is spent on the Tooth Fairy in every county in England.
- Best Western, one of the world’s largest hotel brands, surveyed more than 2,000 people about their New Year’s resolutions in 2024. The survey and its results, which were picked up by a variety of media outlets, also had a seasonal component.
- CleverTap, a customer engagement platform, published an emoji data study that compared marketing metrics in campaigns that did and did not include emojis.
- The Zebra, a car insurance quote comparison platform, developed this Car Affordability Calculator to help consumers determine what vehicle they can afford based on their income and other factors.
Challenges And Risks In Digital PR
There’s tremendous potential in digital PR, but plenty of risks and pitfalls can also arise. A successful digital PR campaign must successfully navigate challenges such as:
- A saturated news and digital information landscape
- The fast-paced reality of digital trends
- Negative online reviews, comments, and feedback
- Data privacy concerns
At First Rank, our expert team is here to help your business thrive in the world of digital PR and come out on top. Contact us directly to learn more!
Creating A Digital PR Strategy
A digital PR campaign can completely revolutionize your business’s online presence, but the pieces won’t fall into place by chance. Behind every successful digital PR campaign, there’s a great deal of strategic planning, careful execution, and ongoing measurement and evaluation.
At First Rank, our industry expertise enables us to do the heavy lifting that will ensure your business’s digital PR campaign results in high-quality backlinks, improved rankings, and increased online visibility. Our proven strategy has been built around the following four steps, which are tailored to the specific goals of each individual client:
- Ideation – Gaining an in-depth understanding of your business’s industry, audience, and competition lays the groundwork for a targeted and successful digital PR campaign.
- Content Creation – Next, our talented team develops high-quality press releases, articles, and other types of digital content.
- Strategic Outreach – We’ll use our extensive industry connections to build strategic relationships and secure valuable media placements that align with the goals of your campaign.
- Results – We won’t stop until your campaign link targets have been achieved and will pivot to implement additional strategies along the way, as needed.
Does it really work?
You bet!
We’re incredibly proud to have achieved an average domain rating (DR) of 63 across our last 50 digital PR campaigns, which has translated into a tremendous amount of authority, exposure, and increased traffic for our clients. We’ll work tirelessly to help spotlight your business on the digital stage and won’t consider our work complete until your digital PR campaign has hit our guaranteed 10-link minimum.
Ready to revolutionize your business’s visibility, traffic and sales? So are we. Contact First Rank today to learn more!
Conclusion
To conclude, digital PR is a cutting-edge digital marketing tactic that can dovetail seamlessly with SEO to help businesses increase their online visibility and achieve top SEO results in competitive niches. Depending on the size of your business and your unique digital marketing goals, a comprehensive digital PR strategy may well be something to explore in more depth with our SEO experts.
Contact the team at First Rank directly to learn more about SEO, digital PR, and other digital marketing techniques that can enhance your business’s online exposure, organic traffic, and sales. We look forward to working with you!
Jacob Kettner is the owner and CEO of First Rank Inc., a digital marketing agency based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He currently sits on Manitoba Chamber of Commerce Small Business Advisor Council which assists people grow their small businesses in Manitoba.
