In today’s ever-evolving digital landscape, understanding the intricacies of communication and online visibility is essential. You may have come across the term “Digital PR” and wondered, “What is Digital PR?” and “Why is Digital PR important?”
Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just starting to explore the realm of digital marketing, here we’ll delve into this activity stream and shed some light on Digital PR’s crucial role in shaping a brand’s online presence and reputation.
What is Digital PR?
Digital PR is a strategic communication approach that blends Traditional PR techniques with SEO link building strategies. The activity stream centres around creating compelling brand stories through Digital PR campaigns and then distributing these to the key media titles to earn coverage and backlinks to a brand’s website. These links are then seen as a signal of credibility and relevance to Google (and other search engines), resulting in increased organic visibility in search engine results pages.
The practice of Digital PR focuses on building high-quality, relevant links on third-party websites and press outlets by generating creative, on-brand, and engaging content. These backlinks effectively vouch for a website’s trustworthiness in Google’s algorithm, significantly influencing its search result rankings. Additionally, the coverage obtained, which is both brand-centric and engaging, enhances brand recognition and genuinely engages the target audience. By combining storytelling, genuine outreach, and link earning, Digital PR shapes a strong online presence and fosters meaningful connections between brands and consumers.
What is a Digital PR campaign?
A Digital PR campaign is a strategy-led approach to promote a brand, company, product, or service through earned media tactics. It’s essentially a proprietary asset or news story crafted on behalf of a brand and strategically distributed to media publications. The primary aim is to secure valuable backlinks and media coverage that point back to a brand’s website, elevating its search engine rankings and aiming to bolster sales or conversions.
These campaigns encompass a range of tactics, such as weaving captivating brand narratives, promoting products, conducting data-driven studies or research projects, and crafting innovative tools or resources. By crafting engaging and shareable content that captures the attention of journalists and their audiences, Digital PR campaigns foster natural sharing and backlink acquisition, ultimately strengthening a brand’s online presence and overall visibility.
What is Digital PR important for brands?
Simply put, Digital PR enhances your brand’s online presence and organic performance. One of the key components of Digital PR is acquiring high authority and relevant backlinks to your website. These links are earned through strategic press outreach to reputable publications, influencers, and industry experts.
Backlinks are pivotal signals to search engines, particularly Google, signifying the trustworthiness and authority of a brand within a specific industry. Essentially, the more high-quality backlinks a website achieves, the higher a website’s rankings will climb in organic search engine results pages (SERPs).
As a website secures improved organic rankings, it gains enhanced visibility and exposure to its intended audience. This upward trajectory in SERPs leads to a significant uptick in organic traffic, presenting increased opportunities for engagement and conversions.
Ultimately, Digital PR’s ability to drive relevant and increased traffic can directly contribute to a brand’s revenue or lead generation growth.
How does Digital PR differ from Traditional PR?
Digital and Traditional PR should be treated as individual activity streams with different objectives and goals as part of the full marketing mix. While experienced Digital PR teams can collaborate with in-house traditional PR teams and agencies to maximise outcomes, it’s crucial to acknowledge their differing purposes.
Traditional PR practitioners primarily concentrate on bolstering brand awareness, expanding share of voice, broadening reach, and shaping public perception of a brand or company. Whereas Digital PR’s primary mission is to secure authoritative and high-quality backlinks directing traffic to a brand’s priority web pages, pivotal in elevating a website’s organic search rankings.
Although both activity streams may employ similar tactics to achieve media coverage and backlinks, their core distinctions are their objectives, the nature of the content promoted, and the metrics for evaluation.
How do you measure success in Digital PR?
Measuring success in Digital PR will vary from campaign to campaign. Everything is dependent on the objectives of the campaign. Some common metrics used in Digital PR reporting include:
- Links built to a brand’s homepage or priority pages
- Press coverage and brand mentions
- Social media shares and engagement
- Website traffic
- Keyword rankings
- Website referrals
- Goal conversions – e.g. revenue and sales tracked through Google Analytics
- Website authority and trust
Summary
Digital PR is an essential activity stream for brands to maintain a strong online presence. It not only introduces companies to new audiences but also improves SEO rankings, drives traffic to the website, supports lead generation, helps to improve sales, and builds a strong brand voice.
Find out more about our Digital PR work for our clients here. If you’re interested in exploring Digital PR for your business, contact us today or book a 30-minute introductory call with Katrina Cliffe to see how we can support you.