GlossarySEO
What is digital PR?
Also called: online PR, link-building PR, PR for SEO
Definition
Digital PR is earning coverage, mentions and links from online publications by giving journalists something worth covering, such as a story, original data, a useful tool or expert commentary.
Digital PR, explained
Traditional PR aimed for coverage and brand awareness. Digital PR aims for the same coverage, but online, where each article can also carry a link and a brand mention that search engines and AI systems notice. For SEO, one editorial link from a respected publication can outweigh many links from small sites.
The common formats: data stories built on original research or product data; reactive commentary, where you offer a quick, expert take on news in your field; journalist request platforms, where reporters post questions and look for sources; launches and milestones pitched to the trade press that covers your niche; and tools or visual assets journalists want to embed or reference.
What makes it work is relevance and timing. A journalist covering small-business finance needs a source now, with a specific, quotable view and credentials. A generic press release about your seed round rarely gets picked up. A dataset showing something new about your users' behavior often does.
Be realistic about links. Many publications add nofollow to outbound links, and some don't link at all. That's fine: the mention itself builds brand and entity signals, and the audience is real. Paying for coverage, or for links inside "sponsored" articles without disclosure, crosses into Google's link spam policy.
For a small team, start narrow: the five to ten publications and newsletters your buyers actually read, one strong data story or angle per quarter, and a habit of answering relevant journalist requests quickly.
Why it matters for founders
A few pieces of real coverage give a young startup links, mentions and credibility that are hard to get any other way. They also shape how AI assistants describe your company.
Example
A budgeting app publishes aggregated, anonymized data on how freelancers' income varies by month. Two personal finance sites and a newsletter cover it, with links to the report and quotes from the founder.
Common mistakes
- Mass-emailing a generic press release.
- Paying for "guaranteed" placements with undisclosed links.
- Pitching stories with no data, angle or expertise behind them.
Sources
Checked
Related terms
- Original researchOriginal research is content built on information you produced yourself, such as survey results, product data, experiments, benchmarks or first-hand tests, rather than summarizing what others have already published.
- HARO and journalist requestsHARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a service that sends journalists' requests for expert sources to subscribers, who pitch answers. Similar platforms like Qwoted and Featured do the same job. Chosen answers can earn quotes, mentions and links.
- Link buildingLink building is the work of getting other websites to link to yours. Links help search engines discover pages and judge their importance, which is why link quality and how links were earned both matter.
- Brand mentionA brand mention is any place your company or product name appears on the web, in articles, forums, reviews, directories or AI answers, whether or not it links to your site.
- Linkable assetA linkable asset is a page created to be genuinely worth referencing, such as a free tool, original dataset, template, calculator or definitive reference, so other sites link to it without being paid or traded.