Digital PR vs. Traditional Link Building for a Modern SEO Strategy

At a Glance

• Digital PR is the process of pitching stories to online media outlets, like online magazines, blogs, podcasts, influencers, and more.
• Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to yours, through a variety of methods, including reaching out to website owners who have mentioned your brand. 

Key Takeaway:

Both options are valuable in their own way, but they each require different time investments for uncertain payoffs, and digital PR offers greater potential for both building brand awareness and generating links.

Digital PR and Traditional Link-Building 

While traditional link-building has long been part of a cohesive SEO strategy to build backlinks to your website and improve brand reputation, digital PR is increasing in popularity as a more well-rounded approach. Backlinks are links that direct back to your website from around the web, helping build authority for your domain and improve your search performance.

Both link building and digital PR are viable SEO strategies that will help you increase the number of backlinks to your website and build brand authority, but they have unique places in a marketing strategy. In short, digital PR has a larger time investment but a potentially larger payoff if you have the resources to invest in it. However, if you are a smaller brand, link-building can still be well worth it. 

This guide highlights how digital PR and traditional link-building compare, how you should consider adapting your strategy based on your SEO goals, and where I stand on the value of these two approaches.

What is Traditional Link Building?

Traditional link building is the process of increasing the number of links back to your brand across the web through methods like requesting that existing brand mentions be linked with strong anchor text, creating guest posts, and submitting your site to directories. These are direct and tangible strategies that focus especially on gaining backlinks to your site.

It’s important to note that link building should be well-thought-out and authentic to be worthwhile and get the most payoff. Sites should want to post links to your site because they find the information on your site useful or find value in your product. 

Paying for links has long been considered a reckless SEO practice that Google penalizes, so how you build links matters. The more value you provide on your site, the easier it is to build links.

Goals

The ultimate goal of link-building is to increase your SERP position, ranking potential, and brand presence across the web, which is achieved through all of these outcomes:

• Outranking competitors on specific keywords through ties to strong anchor text
• Raising brand authority over competitors through links back to your website
• Improving your reputation in the eyes of search engines (as some think about it, links act as votes in favor of your brand for recognition and ranking potential)
• Building your reputation in relation to specific anchor text

Examples

Common examples of traditional link building include:

• Searching for already existing brand mentions and reaching out to the companies mentioning your brand to ask for a link to your site
• Seeking out requests for quotes from reporters and responding with your insights
• Finding opportunities for guest blogs and responding with strong content
• Pitching your content and demonstrating authority to sites that link to your competitors

Metrics

Key metrics and KPIs for gauging the effectiveness of link-building are rather straightforward. The more links on your site, the better. Clear metrics to follow include:

• Number of backlinks – At the most basic level, an increased number of backlinks across the web is a key metric for success.
• SERP position – Rises in your search position may demonstrate increases in your brand’s reputation through a greater number of links.
• Domain rating/domain authority – These are third-party metrics created by SEO sites like Ahrefs and SEMrush. While not a specific ranking signal for Google, they can be a helpful reference for understanding how your site might be perceived by Google, which does consider link profiles and backlinks.

Pros 

By expanding your overall presence across the web through backlinks, you may accomplish some of the following benefits:

• Improving reputation for search engines while remaining relatively cost-effective
• Boosting brand authority and improving your search ranking potential for your site and your content
• Building topical authority to support ranking in related topic areas outside of just your primary focus

Cons

Link building may be considered tedious by some, offering some of these drawbacks and limitations:

• The primary focus of link-building is building authority among search engines, rather than general brand awareness amongst your audience
• Link-building can be time-consuming and a drain on resources, depending on how much time you are dedicating to it
• It can be risky if you are not careful about building your links through reputable sources
• Success can be a mixed bag, depending on how receptive other sources are to the idea of linking to your site

The main consideration for link building is whether the cost is worth the output. If you are able to keep it as a low-risk, high-reward strategy that drives tangible returns without taking away from other tasks, it’s often worthwhile.

What is Digital PR?

Digital PR, digital public relations, is the process of pitching stories to online platforms to achieve more recognition for your brand. The primary focus of digital PR that distinguishes it from traditional link-building is that it is about building your reputation. Building your reputation for search engines and AI models is a byproduct, rather than the main priority.

Digital PR focuses on creating strong opportunities for brand mentions through earned media, whether it’s a “Best of” list that mentions your product or a social media post about your product from an influencer. The priority behind digital PR is making your brand worth talking about and earning media coverage by creating compelling stories and engaging products or services.

Goals 

Goals of digital PR center on strengthening your brand reputation through earned media, which is accomplished by:

• Building brand awareness and equity
• Demonstrating thought leadership in areas your brand specializes in
• Increasing brand mentions and engagement through earned media
• Earning high-quality backlinks

Digital PR is particularly beneficial for building brand awareness for people first. By earning a trusted reputation throughout the web, you’re able to build a stronger footprint and greater authority for search engines and AI tools as well. 

Examples

Examples of digital PR focus on reaching out to digital media outlets and earning organic media coverage to gain more visibility in front of people researching your brand.

The most common examples of digital PR include:

• Reaching out to a PR agency to pitch a story or company update
• Developing quality content that gets picked up by reporters and featured in articles
• Compiling a proprietary industry report that is frequently cited by other sources
• Creating an event or release that creates buzz on social media
• Implementing Schema markup and structured data to make your content more visible for reference in review content and listicles

Metrics

Measuring the success of digital PR efforts relies on reviewing metrics;

• Content shares and engagement – Shares of content created for digital PR and signs of engagement, such as likes, comments, and bookmarks, are the easiest signs of impact for your brand.
• Media mentions – A higher number of mentions of your site across media formats indicates that your brand is gaining more recognition and your outreach efforts are paying off.
• Campaign-driven traffic – Identifying traffic that originates from campaigns or specific outlets can show whether your efforts are demonstrating actual success.
• Branded search volume – An increase in the number of people searching for your brand shows a heightened awareness, which is often a direct result of successful digital PR.
  

Pros 

The biggest benefit of digital PR is its comprehensive nature, delivering many benefits with a single strategy, beyond just SEO. Some of the benefits of digital PR include: 

• Increased brand visibility
• Heightened brand trust and credibility among wider audiences
• An effective way to get backlinks while also achieving other benefits
• Builds brand authority in addition to domain authority
• Backlinks are high-quality and naturally earned

These benefits ultimately add up to influence search engine optimization (SEO), answer engine optimization (AEO), and generative engine optimization (GEO) tools to weigh your site’s brand with more authority and authenticity. Digital PR and earned media establish your site as an authority to LLMs and AI search tools by positioning your site as a trusted source to cite when providing information. 

Your larger footprint gives your brand increased visibility to search engines and LLMs, giving them reason to trust your brand’s credibility for answering questions in search engines and LLM chats.

Cons

While there are many benefits to digital PR, it’s important to consider these drawbacks before leaning into this strategy:

• Backlinks are a byproduct of a digital PR strategy, not exactly the main focus, if that’s your primary goal. 
• Digital PR can be a significant time investment with the effort that goes into creating content to be shared, connecting with other outlets, and facilitating outreach.
• Success can be uncertain, as it depends on who is willing to broadcast your site.

The biggest drawback of digital PR is the time investment, but it also offers significant potential, so it’s important to weigh both. Ask yourself, based on the resources you have, whether the investment is worth the potential output for your team.

Digital PR vs. Traditional Link Building

Area	Digital PR	Link-Building
Primary Goal	Building brand awareness, thought leadership, and brand mentions from earned media	Gaining backlinks to your site to improve search rankings
Tactics	• Pitching compelling stories to publications and PR outlets • Developing industry reports that get cited by other sites • Sharing business updates or product launches that earn media attention organically • Structuring content for appearance in listicles or reviews	• Reaching out to sites already mentioning your brand and requesting links with strong anchor text • Responding to requests for insights • Finding opportunities for guest blogs
Scope	Building brand awareness and site authority through a strategy that combines SEO, branding, and public outreach	Building site authority and increasing your number of backlinks as an SEO specific strategy
Backlinks	A byproduct of increased brand awareness, crafted through natural mentions of your brand that result in high-quality and natural backlinks.	The priority focus through methods like reaching out for backlinks, earning media, or responding to media requests
Value	• Increases brand awareness for people who may not be familiar with your brand • Signals to LLMs and AI search tools that your site is worth referencing as a source • Naturally increases the number of backlinks to your site	• Increases brand authority and the number of links • Demonstrates authority to search engines, LLMs, and AI tools
Best For	Large, national brands with the resources and presence to create content and earn media	Small businesses looking to slowly increase their site authority and online presence

Our Take on Link-Building at collystring

At collystring, we support both digital PR and traditional link-building as part of an effective SEO strategy, as both are consistently valuable for brands. However, we have recently started to see more value in digital PR as a strategy, as it often includes inclusion in listicles and review content that LLMs are increasingly using to surface answers. 

Digital PR is historically more beneficial for brands with a national presence, particularly in the SaaS, eCommerce, and higher education spaces, but is less beneficial for local businesses, where link-building would be more effective. Because organic rankings still play a role in LLM visibility, traditional link-building can still help here as well.

Ultimately, both are valuable for actively building out links and increasing mentions of your brand, depending on your position. If you have the resources, digital PR is worthwhile and something we’re expanding further into.

Which is Better?

As with any marketing strategy, the better approach depends on your business, your goals, and the resources you have available. For large national brands, such as SaaS and eCommerce brands, digital PR is a great strategy for publicizing brand announcements, new product launches, and unique value offerings to an already established audience. 

Larger brands typically have the resources to create press release content, develop industry reports, generate hype for their products, and identify opportunities for earned media.

Meanwhile, smaller brands may benefit more from traditional link-building. While the returns from link-building may be lower, so is the investment. For small businesses with fewer resources, link building is still a helpful tool for increasing your site authority and obtaining backlinks without as significant a time commitment.

Quick Answer: If you have the resources, digital PR is a great 2-for-1 strategy to improve your visibility in search while also building a stronger, authentic reputation amongst your target audience. If you do not, link building can still supplement your current SEO strategy without overextending your team.

Build Real Brand Awareness with collystring

Ultimately, both digital PR and link-building still have value, but experts are increasingly leaning towards digital PR as the approach with the highest potential payoff for building your brand reputation. If you have the resources, digital PR is a great multi-faceted approach to growing your reputation, but link-building is still a valuable strategy if you are a small, local business. 

At collystring, we have experience with both digital PR and link building as strategies for expanding our clients’ digital footprints. By investing in these approaches as well as refining your technical SEO, improving the quality of content on your site, strengthening your site’s keyword usage, and more, we can help you build your online presence. Through a detailed SEO audit, we’ll help you identify gaps on your site and opportunities for scaling your business through meaningful organic traffic.

Schedule a call with us to discuss a free SEO audit for your site and discuss all the ways we can help you build your digital footprint.