Most link building is asking strangers for favours. Digital PR is different. You make something journalists want to write about, they cover it, and the links come with the coverage. Higher authority, lower risk, and it scales.
What is digital PR?
Digital PR is earning editorial links and brand mentions by creating newsworthy content and pitching it to journalists and publications. The link is a natural citation inside a story, not a placement you negotiated.
The formats that earn coverage
Original research is the most reliable: survey your audience or analyse a public dataset, and one strong statistic gets cited for years. Data journalism works the same way when you rank, map or index something people argue about, like prices by city or salaries by role. Newsjacking, a fast and quotable expert comment when a relevant story breaks, earns lighter but quicker coverage. And a genuinely definitive free tool, a calculator or checker other sites link to as the reference, keeps earning links long after you build it.
The test that predicts a campaign: would a journalist cover this if you removed the link entirely? If yes, the links will come. If no, you are doing outreach, not PR.
Digital PR checklist
- The asset is genuinely newsworthy on its own, link aside
- It has a clear hook: a number, a ranking, a surprise, a timely angle
- The pitch is short, personalised and sent to the right beat
- The landing page is fast, citable and easy to quote
- Coverage without a link is followed up for a link where reasonable
By the numbers
Milon Khan · Link Building & Digital PR Lead
Lead the pitch with the finding, not the company. "Renters in these five cities now pay more than a mortgage" gets opened. "We have published a new report" does not.
Illustrative example
A fintech startup
No press coverage, flat link profile. You survey a thousand-odd users, turn the results into a short report with three shareable stats and one clean chart, and pitch it to finance and business journalists.
One solid data study can earn a dozen or more pieces of coverage in a few weeks, many with a follow link from high-authority domains, and the report page keeps attracting links for a year or more.