Link-building is indispensable for any business looking to build a strong online presence. Acquiring links from reputable websites can skyrocket your website’s visibility and search rankings.
Digital PR is one of the most effective link-building strategies? Besides building your brand reputation, an excellent digital PR campaign can earn you backlinks to support your SEO strategies.
Read on to learn about digital PR and PR link-building.
What is digital PR?
Digital PR is the practice of leveraging online channels to enhance a brand’s online presence and reputation. This involves various activities, including pitching and distributing news-worthy content to journalists and news sites. The primary goal of digital public relations is to create buzz, earn online coverage and maintain a positive brand reputation. But that’s not all. Digital PR can also help you build valuable backlinks.
Benefits of link-building through digital PR
But why should you leverage PR link-building? Simple. PR link-building:
Increases website traffic
Backlinks are one of the strongest ranking factors. For search engines, an authority site’s high-quality links to your website content represent that site’s vote of confidence for your content. As a result, search engines rank you higher in search results. You, therefore, get a boost in your SEO efforts with the resulting search traffic.
Note that the top three search results get over 60% of all clicks.
Digital PR link-building boosts your website traffic by helping you secure high-quality relevant links from authoritative websites.
It also increases your referral traffic. As you distribute content about your brand on other platforms, readers from those platforms can follow the links to learn more about your company.
Enhances brand authority
Link-building through digital PR can enhance your credibility. When reputable websites feature your brand, they also lend their authority to your brand.
Boosts social proof
Digital PR helps you generate social proof. Digital PR can help you get featured on a reputable site like the Wall Street Journal. This can be instrumental in helping you win the trust of your target audience.
4 PR tips for successful link building
So, here are four PR tips to help you build quality backlinks.
- Post newsworthy content on your site
Want to get your content featured on major media outlets? Post newsworthy content media organizations are likely to link to on your site. Publish content on topics that grab people’s attention and have a real impact on their lives. Or, you can come up with statements on prevailing issues and events.
L’Oréal is an example of a company that posts newsworthy content that can be linked to on its website.
It has an entire section dedicated to research:
It also comes up with its own take on a wide range of issues:
Just make sure when you post something new on your site, you promote it across your marketing channels like social media platforms. You can also disseminate this newsworthy content using press releases. This brings us to our next point.
2. Write press releases and distribute them
A press release is a piece of content with information a company wants key stakeholders to know. Unlike a statement that’s written from the company’s perspective, a press release is written from an outsider’s perspective. It’s written just like news stories.
A Cision report found that press releases are one of the most reliable sources of information for journalists. That means press releases can be a powerful tool for securing authoritative backlinks.
You can write press releases on a variety of topics. Why not write one highlighting the findings of your recently-concluded study, for instance, or your company statement?
Use a captivating headline and include quotes wherever possible. Don’t forget to include your backlink/s. So, when authority websites publish your press release, they might just include it.
See how Business Wire retained Cheniere backlinks when it published the company’s release on its recent Corporate Social Responsibility report findings:
If you want to increase the chances of your press release being picked up by authority sites, avoid buzzwords and focus on providing facts and evidence instead. Use concise language as well. Incorporate the 5Ws and 1H in your content.
When it comes to dissemination of your press release, consider submitting it to online distribution services, which can reach a broad audience of journalists and websites. Alternatively, reach out directly to industry-specific media outlets, bloggers, and journalists. Distributing press releases can be hard if you don’t have a good network. This is where companies providing professional PR services can help you. They already have good connections so they can greatly enhance your PR link building efforts.
3. Build good relationships with journalists and other authority figures
We’ve seen the vital role journalists and other authority websites play in your PR link building efforts. If you don’t get their attention, they’re not likely to link to your content.
That’s why it always pays to build good relationships with them even if you’re not looking to get backlinks at the moment. If you remain top of mind with these personalities, the next time you come up with relevant content, they’re likely to link to you.
Use social media to interact with these personalities. A simple like of their posts, for instance, can go a long way. You can also leave comments on their posts. Just make sure you leave insightful comments.
If you interact with these personalities consistently, the next time you pitch your content for valuable links, they’ll likely oblige. Just make sure you come up with high-quality content, of course.
4. Write guest posts
Guest blogging is a cost-effective way to showcase your expertise and increase brand exposure. It can also help you build backlinks.
Ideally, you should contribute to sites with a domain authority above 60 and monthly traffic of over 15k.
To nail your guest posts, conduct keyword research first to identify relevant search terms. Then, incorporate these into your informative content.
You also want to write content that aligns with the site’s content and highlights your expertise. For example, my PR agency Prohibition PR contributed the following piece to a marketing website called MarketingProfs.
Because the topic falls well within my expertise and the topic aligns with the site’s choice of topics, the content was easily published on the reputable site.
When incorporating backlinks into the post, don’t go overboard and appear spammy. This can harm your credibility and marketing efforts.
After your post is live, reach out to the site again. Express gratitude for the opportunity. This helps cultivate long-term relationships, opening doors to more guest posting opportunities.
In closing
Successful PR link-building requires strategic planning and persistent efforts. You learned four PR tips that can help you secure these quality backlinks.
Post newsworthy content on your site, write press releases and distribute them, and craft guest posts. Also, build good relationships with authority figures to enhance your PR link building efforts.
Do this and you’ll reap excellent PR link building results. Good luck!
By Chris Norton, Founder of award-winning B2B specialist PR agency Prohibition, social media podcaster, former University lecturer, author of “Share This Too” and his social media training blog which is listed in the UK’s top 10 PR and social media strategy blogs. For tons of digital PR tips, you can follow Chris here @chris_norton.