How Digital PR and SEO Work Together to Improve Results

How do Digital PR and SEO Work Together?

In 2023, if your target audience can’t easily find you online, you might as well not exist.

Web presence is vital to business success. However, just having a “good” website isn’t enough to outrank and outpace your competition.

While we don’t know everything Google takes into consideration when ranking websites in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), we do understand that page relevancy, authority, and quality are of key importance. Inbound links are arguably the most important ranking factor because it indicates other websites trust your content and brand.

We’re big fans of using digital PR to secure high-quality, inbound links to amplify the result of any SEO strategy.

The importance of digital PR

Digital PR involves the creation and promotion of content to relevant digital publications, with the hopes of securing inbound coverage and brand mentions. This type of online PR can help accomplish two key goals: brand mentions and inbound links.

It’s a little over-simplified to say that inbound links are of the highest importance when establishing digital trust in a website. The web has become a complex ecosystem where trust and relationships are expressed not only through links, but also through unlinked brand mentions. While it’s hard to calculate, there’s increasing evidence to suggest that unlinked brand mentions (secured by digital PR tactics) can positively influence a website’s visibility in search. 

At its core, Digital PR aims to get your company’s name and personnel talked about; whether it’s expert quotes in a relevant industry publication, or a cited mention of a piece of content you produced in an article published online. Unlike traditional PR tactics, digital PR places added emphasis on link building. 

Digital PR works hand in hand with SEO efforts by securing and directing credible and authoritative publications and domains to your website via inbound links. I like to say that digital PR and SEO are best friends, different and effective independently, but much more dynamic when they’re together.

5 ways digital PR can help your SEO:

Like a good best friend, digital PR is there to make SEO shine. The importance of digital PR for SEO can range from boosting a website’s visibility with a robust backlink profile to directing referral traffic to a specific webpage for additional page views. 

So, what is the main SEO benefit of digital PR? There are some huge perks when these complementary strategies work together.

1. Expand your website’s backlink profile
2. Increase your domain authority
3. Build brand awareness and reputation
4. Strengthen keyword rankings & keyword optimization
5. Increase traffic

Let’s take some time exploring how digital PR can help SEO in each of the aforementioned ways. 

#1. Digital PR Can Grow Your Backlink Profile

Effective PR in the digital age does more than just earn brand mentions. Digital PR campaigns are a great way to earn media coverage online and on social media — because, let’s face it, everyone gets their content online. 

Media coverage earned via digital PR outreach tactics has an even greater SEO benefit when it is accompanied by an inbound link. One of the most important metrics we track for each of our clients’ campaigns is the number of linking media mentions earned. 

[Click to read more about some of our most successful digital PR campaign examples]

Having a robust backlink profile can be a game-changer. We use digital PR to earn high-authority links for our clients, which signals to Google that the website is reputable. More backlinks from these a-list news outlets also mean the website is more visible.

Take for instance a niche B2B company that helps businesses purchase and sell used machines. The company came to us to improve its digital footprint. Three of our digital PR campaigns led to nearly 600 placements, increasing the company’s backlink profile significantly. In just 11 months, the company saw a 15% increase in organic impressions.

#2. Digital PR Can Improve your Domain Authority (DA)

Domain Authority (DA) is a 1-100 point logarithmic scale, created by Moz, which can predict a website’s visibility in search. It’s influenced by a number of factors including the total number of linking root domains to a website and total number of inbound links.

The higher your website’s domain authority, the more likely you are to rank better and appear higher in search engine results.

Top-tier publications like the Wall Street Journal, NBC News, and CNN have DAs in the 90s. Any referral links found on such high-DA websites serve as a sign of trust and reputability. To say it simply, your website is considered more trustworthy as it receives more links from news outlets with these higher rankings.

This is why producing digital PR campaigns that earn and secure top-tier media coverage is an excellent way to improve a website’s own domain authority. 

The results speak for themselves. A series of data-driven campaigns we created earned more than 200 high-end links for a healthcare IT and data management company. Our work, along with ongoing technical work by our SEO team, led to a 76% increase in domain authority in 24 months.

#3. Digital PR Builds Brand Awareness & Digital Visibility

Digital PR can take many different forms. One of our favorite methods is original research which is designed to be cited and published on high-authority websites. 

When content is newsworthy, it’s more likely to earn links and syndication. As a result, websites see bolstered backlink profiles, higher DA’s and improved visibility for keywords. 

Google typically rewards websites whose backlink profiles grow and expand naturally, and whose content is relevant, valuable, and earns high-quality links. 

Digital PR can also establish a brand authority. If a brand produces relevant, newsworthy content, or offers authoritative quotes and commentary, it’s likely to be cited and referenced in other places. When high DA sites reference your research, employees or brand, as a source of authority, Google takes notice. Between unlinked brand mentions, and inbound referral links, you’re bound to see a boost in visibility.

On one occasion, our team created a travel-related digital PR campaign for a real estate financing company. The company’s website saw a 48 percent increase in traffic within the first 90 days of the campaign going live. The piece ended up receiving nearly 30,000 engagements on social media sites from Reddit to Twitter. 

When consumers see your name it boosts brand awareness. More often than not, consumers assign credibility to brands and companies when they see authoritative and reputable websites and publications referring to them. 

#4. Digital PR Strengthens Keyword Visibility

Successful content needs to be optimized for keywords. If not, no one will find it. We make sure to leverage SEO best practices to ensure each page we create is optimized for keywords and formatted in a way that Google’s bots can easily understand.

The importance of keyword optimizing your digital PR campaigns

To get the most out of your digital PR coverage, you need to make sure it finds your target audience. To do that, it’s critical that your content be keyword optimized. When a page identifies targeted keywords, and optimizes on-page text and headlines for those words and phrases, it has a much greater chance of being found (and being successful).

Take, for example, our client’s consumer survey about package theft. The research identified the frequency with which Americans shop online, have packages delivered, and subsequently, have those packages stolen. 

To assure that journalists and the public could find our content, we asked ourselves the question: How do people search for research and reports about this topic? Most people would search for key phrases like “package theft statistics” and “package theft report,” so we optimized the content accordingly.

The digital PR campaign earned more than 350 media placements with an average domain authority of 70. More than one-quarter of the total placements were earned after active media outreach wrapped up. The page started ranking in positions 1-10 in the SERPs for highly competitive keywords surrounding package theft. 

Integrating a keyword strategy to your digital PR campaigns can not only help a wider audience find your content in search, it can help achieve your SEO goals for the website. This is part of what makes digital PR and SEO complementary strategies that work together at the benefit of your website. 

The importance of audience targeting digital PR campaigns

It’s also important to keep in mind the location of your audience when targeting a digital PR campaign. 

If your business targets a national audience, then earning inbound coverage in the likes of USA Today or Bustle (depending on target demographic) have greater value than a placement from a regional publication like the Miami Times. 

However, if the business is locally-focused, then links, mentions and write ups in local newspapers, television and radio stations, blogs, and industry websites carry extra SEO benefits. 

While we try to secure as many high-authority links across a mixture of trustworthy national and local news outlets, we understand the potency of matching your client’s most pressing SEO goals when promoting a campaign. 

#5. Digital PR Increases Website Traffic

While it is hard to say what the main SEO benefit of digital PR, a significant advantage is the increased website traffic it can bring to your page.

We know that successful digital PR campaigns earn a lot of inbound links from trustworthy websites. We know that inbound links from reputable sites are an excellent indicator to Google’s bots that your website is also trustworthy. 

We also know that when Google starts evaluating your site favorably, your rankings appear higher in search engine results. Greater visibility in search engine results ultimately leads to increased traffic to your website.

See, the chain is complete!

Don’t believe us? The proof is in the pudding: After a series of digital PR campaigns for a marketing research client, they saw a 103% increase in organic traffic, year-over-year, and a 121% increase in website impressions. In this case, the digital PR campaigns were accompanied by technical on-site work, but the two strategies, when employed together, dramatically amplified the client’s results.

Why Digital PR & SEO are Best Friends

At the end of the day, the importance of digital PR for SEO is clear. is only here to help your SEO. By targeting inbound media coverage and linking brand mentions, you’re inevitably going to improve your website’s digital visibility. Digital PR and SEO are mutually beneficial but work differently to achieve the same goal: improve your website and brand.

Remember to keep the strategies in mind to make sure you’re maximizing your results. Lest we forget, Google’s John Mueller called digital PR “just as important as tech[nical] SEO” in 2021. 

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