Do you know the term “digital PR”?
Since the beginning of 2022, it has become a hot topic in the SEO industry, but many people may not know about it.
Digital PR is an activity that straddles both the PR and SEO realms.
By creating excellent content and “proposing” it along with the benefits to website owners and media editors who might find it valuable, you can get it featured and get links.
As a result, not only engagement and awareness of your company but also your SEO rating will increase.
This is the basic idea of “digital PR.”
The idea is to view backlink building not in the context of “SEO” but in the context of “PR/public relations.”
Digital PR is completely different in nature from traditional backlink sales, which involves sending out backlink request emails all at once using templates.
Therefore, this time, we will explain in detail the concept, importance, and specific methods of “digital PR” that will be necessary for future SEO.
Table of contents
First of all, what is PR?
In order to better understand digital PR, let’s first confirm the meaning of “PR”.
PR is an abbreviation for Public Relations.
Since “Public = public” and “Relations = relationship”, “PR” refers to activities that build and maintain good relationships with the public.
Public relations is a way of thinking and acting to create desirable relationships between an organization and the people (individuals and groups) surrounding it.
Quote source:What is public relations? – Japan Public Relations Association
“Organizations and the people surrounding them” include, for example, consumers, business partners, media, and government agencies.
The goal of PR is to get people to know about your company’s business and build good relationships through communication with people involved in your company.
In order to achieve this goal, PR staff performs all kinds of tasks, such as distributing press releases, responding to interviews, operating owned media and SNS, and organizing events.
Although “PR” and “public relations” are sometimes used interchangeably, PR often refers to two-way communication and public relations refers to one-way communication.
What is digital PR?
So what does digital PR mean?
Digital PR is a PR activity that uses online media as its main battlefield.
In traditional PR activities, one strategy was to increase exposure in old media such as newspapers and television.
However, in recent years, as the influence of online media such as websites and SNS has increased, the concept of “digital PR” has emerged.
In English-speaking countries, digital PR and SEO are often talked about as a set, and digital PR is also recognized as a backlink acquisition strategy.
As I briefly mentioned at the beginning, the process of acquiring backlinks through digital PR is as follows.
- Create high-quality content that is beneficial to the other party (that they would want to feature on web media)
- We will make suggestions to relevant media and people in charge, such as website owners, editors, bloggers, influencers, journalists, etc., so that they will want to feature your work. Build relationships.
- Connect to exposure of company information and acquisition of backlinks
The synergy between SEO and PR is high.
Today, the synergy between SEO and PR is increasing.
SEO and PR have long overlapped, but with the evolution of Google, they have become even more closely related.
Focusing on PR has a positive effect on SEO, and focusing on SEO has a positive effect on PR.
- SEO effect of PR: By getting media coverage, backlinks, citations, and named searches increase. As a result, it leads to improved expertise, authority, and reliability.
- PR effect of SEO: You can deliver information about your company’s products and services to search users. It will catch the attention of the media and lead to interviews.
However, it is a bit unreasonable for an SEO person to work on digital PR and sell backlinks alone.
That’s why SEO and PR teams are increasingly merging in English-speaking countries.
According to the results of a survey on SEO and PR integration conducted in 2021 by Kevin Carney, CEO of OrganicGrowth, 132 out of 184 respondents said they have an “integrated SEO and PR team.” I answered.
reference:Research: The integration of SEO and PR – Search Engine Watch
This corresponds to 71% of all respondents.
If the SEO team and PR team have a cooperative system, there will be great benefits in addition to backlinks, such as the ability to distribute press releases with SEO in mind.
Why digital PR strategies are becoming more important in SEO
There are two reasons why digital PR strategies are becoming more important in SEO in 2022.
I will explain each.
1. Expertise, authority, and reliability are required.
Which of the following information would you like to use as a reference?
- Article written by an unknown person
- Articles written by experts in the field and compiled by companies you know well
I think many people will choose the second option.
It is often said that “content is important” in SEO these days, but Google’s ranking is not determined solely by the content of the page.
“Who is writing it” has become extremely important.
Google is now looking for “expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T)” from senders and websites.
This tendency is especially strong in genres that can have a significant impact on searchers’ lives, such as health and finance.
Content author information, site operator information, and even the reputation of companies, products, and services can affect SEO.
Returning to digital PR, digital PR is not just an activity to increase backlinks.
Since it is essentially a brand-building activity, it is also a work to build expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
If you get your links published in the media, your company becomes a hot topic on the web, and your brand name is searched more often, this will benefit your SEO.
Although it is quite a tedious task, there is a very high possibility that SEO will be successful in the long term by increasing your expertise, authority, and credibility through PR activities.
2. Recommended by Google’s John Mueller
In fact, starting in 2021, backlink building through “digital PR” is once again attracting attention in Europe and the United States.
The background to this is a statement by Google’s John Mueller.
In an exchange on Twitter with a digital PR representative, Mueller said:
I love some of the things I see from digital pr, it's a shame it often gets bucketed with the spammy kind of link building. It's just as critical as tech SEO, probably more so in many cases.
— I am John – ⭐ Say no to cookies – biscuits only ⭐ (@JohnMu) January 23, 2021
To break it down a bit, Mueller has publicly stated that “links acquired through digital PR” do not constitute spammy link building, which is prohibited by Google.
Furthermore, it suggests that digital PR may be more important than technical SEO measures.
Digital PR is an activity to make your company’s “good content” known.
The decision to post a link rests with the other party, and the link can only be acquired if the link is perceived as “good”, so it can be said that this is the natural way to acquire links.
How to get backlinks with digital PR
So, what kind of specific approach is needed to acquire backlinks through digital PR?
Follow these three steps:
I will explain each.
1. Research and create content that is easy to link to
The basic premise is that building backlinks through digital PR cannot begin without useful content.
If you have really good content that makes you feel “useful”, “interesting”, and “thankful”, there is a possibility that the other party will favorably cover your content in the media.
The key is to look for content that is easy to link to and unique content that your company can create.
First, let’s take a look at your competitors’ sites and find out what their content tends to be linked to.
The important thing at this time is to look at the source of the backlinks and think “why did that content get the backlinks?”
We also recommend exploring your needs in the following ways:
You should be able to understand what kind of needs there are from the comments, such as “It was helpful when I was there!”, “I liked the article’s section”, and “I wish I had the information on the article”.
However, you won’t get backlinks by creating generic content that imitates your competitors.
- What topics can you utilize your company’s expertise in?
- What unique value can you provide?
- What benefits does the person receiving the link get?
It is important to carefully consider this before creating content.
In Western SEO, generally,
- Survey data/statistics information
- Infographic
- Long-form content that summarizes information about a certain topic
These are often used as they are easy to be cited and get backlinks.
2. Creating a proposal list
Next, compile your proposals in a spreadsheet or Excel.
Look for site owners, editors, bloggers, industry influencers, and related companies and organizations who might find value in your content.
Business partners and existing customers are no exception.
Here, we will show you how to search for suggestions by referring to the backlink sources of competing sites (using ahrefs).
- Search for keywords you want to rank high on.
- Enter the URL of the top site using ahrefs’ “Link intersect” function. (You can also check “Site Explorer” → “Backlink profile” → “Backlinks”. By using “Link intersect”, you can check all links that are not on your own site but are common to competing sites. You can check.)
- You’ll see the domains where your competitors are getting links.
- Check the source of links from your competitors’ sites (if your competitors’ sites are getting links, there’s a good chance they’ll be interested in your content as well).
- Pick up link sources that are likely to post links. Also include your contact information.
We recommend that the contacts you pick up at this time are personal SNS accounts and email addresses of editors, writers, etc.
This is because contact forms and company representative contacts receive a large number of messages every day, so they can get lost or ignored.
Contact information for editors and writers is often listed in the author information section of the article, so be sure to check it.
You also don’t have an unlimited amount of time to suggest links, so it’s important to prioritize your suggestions.
Check these points as well to determine the probability of getting links and the priority order.
3. Building relationships and promoting link posting
It is common to encourage links to be published using email or SNS DM.
However, if you suddenly receive an email from someone you don’t know asking for a link, most people probably won’t respond.
On the other hand, if it’s a request from someone close to you, you might want to accept it.
Therefore, it is important to first build good relationships with related companies, media, and site owners on a daily basis.
Increased connections and familiarity with your brand will lead to better responses.
After building a relationship, make a proposal that is beneficial to the other person.
For example, on the other party’s website
- The research cited in the article is outdated.
- There is information missing in the article
In that case.
If you can suggest that your content can solve those problems, they will be happy to post a link.
The above benefits are just examples.
Try to think about what kind of proposal would be beneficial to the other party and how you can get them to post a link without putting a burden on them.
However, please note the following two points.
If Google considers your site to be a link program, you will be penalized, so be sure to check the guidelines.
Link Program | Google Search Central
[Summary] The synergy between SEO and digital PR is high! Increase your chances of long-term SEO success with brand building awareness
We explained the concept of “digital PR” in SEO.
Digital PR not only increases your company’s presence on the Internet, but is also an effective strategy for acquiring backlinks.
Rather than gathering temporarily valid backlinks using black hat methods, building your brand through digital PR will increase your chances of achieving SEO and business success in the long term.
If you are in charge of SEO, please consider future measures based on the concept of “digital PR” introduced here.
Our company, Xscore, also provides external policy agency services and content production agency services.
We also have a track record of actually acquiring backlinks through our “digital PR strategy.”
If you are interested, please feel free to contact us.
Inquiries can be sent using the “Inquiry” button in the box below.
