If you’ve dismissed digital PR as nothing more than link building, then your business is missing out.
Digital PR is, in our opinion, just as important as technical SEO. In some cases, more so. The impact of digital PR done correctly is huge. In this blog, we’ll define exactly what digital PR, why it matters and how it should be applied.
Defining digital PR – what exactly is it?
Digital PR is part of a successful marketing strategy. It’s a promotional strategy used by savvy marketers to boost their brand’s online visibility.
But it’s not ephemeral and wishy washy. It’s a measurable, tangible way to increase your company or your brand’s online presence to achieve a number of goals.
These range from increasing online traffic to your website, driving brand awareness into far more online spheres than would otherwise have been reached, boosting organic rankings, increasing sales, bumping up your social following and making engagement meaningful for your bottom line.
And while digital PR was borne out of SEO, it’s far more than link building.
PR uses the tenets of traditional PR online
In fact, it’s best to think of digital PR as part of your overall marketing strategy. It should work alongside SEO, but it isn’t part of it.
Content marketing is about utilising digital PR to ensure content reaches millions of people. Whether it’s to get products in front of the people who are most likely to buy them, or hyping a brand name as a sector leader, digital PR is about positioning you as the expert.
Digital PR is widely used by content creators, whether thought leadership pieces in high valued media outlets, or video content that goes viral on social media. A winning digital PR strategy takes the principles upon which traditional PR was founded and uses them to promote online.
It’s about standing out from the crowd in an authentic and trustworthy way. It’s far more than pushing out hastily cobbled together content or badly written blogs, effective digital PR builds on traditional forms of outreach and brings them into the online sphere.
Defining public relations – what the dictionary says
So, let’s define traditional PR or public relations. According to the Oxford Dictionary, PR is: “… the business of giving the public information about a particular organisation or person in order to create a good impression.”
PR is about building successful relationships between the public and the brand or organisation. To do this, successful relationships must also be built with relevant press contacts, media outlets and thought leaders.
In the same way, digital PR is about building relationships with the public and with media outlets. It’s about creating an online presence that is authentic, trustworthy and authoritative. And then it’s about building on that online presence in a strategically controlled way to get the outcome you want.
By creating the kind of content that users respond to, and by distributing it to the correct online channels, then you can build up the two-way communication with online users. Through this digital PR, they will come to know your brand, trust what you say, think that you’re right and, ultimately, spend their money.
At Igniyte, we’ve found the best results for our clients through a mix of strategic digital PR and SEO content marketing. If you get the balance right, then these tactics can work together brilliantly to boost your online presence in a positive and useful way.
Why digital PR grew from SEO link building and what it means now
Ongoing, professional and strategic digital PR will get you links that are highly engaged with and extremely authoritative. In other words, it gets the marketing links that really matter online.
You want to drive as much traffic as possible to your website or online presence through high quality, trusted content. The goal, of course, is to drive sales. And the kind of links that can be produced through excellent digital PR will do just that.
For this to work, created content must be original, useful, something different from the norm, very engaging and resourceful. This then drives organic rankings, and Google sees high quality links as a sign of trust and authority for your content.
So, the more authoritative links you can achieve through effective digital PR and content marketing, the more trusted your brand name will be with Google. It’s about quantity – but far more important is the quality of content.
Getting the perfect mix of digital PR and content marketing is a skill
The Igniyte team uses gains made from digital PR strategies along with high-quality on-site content and expert technical SEO to increase the visibility of client brands in a positive light. Whether it’s building a brand presence from scratch or using digital PR and content marketing to drive down negative results and boost positive links, in our experience the best strategies include a mix of all of the above.
In the simplest terms, your business or brand needs a visually pleasing website with a simple CX, and it needs authoritative, trusted content. And by that, we mean trusted by Google and other major search engines (although Google is King when it comes to content) and by the Internet users.
Digital PR can also result in links that increase online visibility for non-branded keywords and search terms as well. This is what will result in traffic increases to your website and, ultimately, more sales or a more positive online reputation.
For this to work, however, links must be relevant and high quality. The website must be technically rock solid, and all content produced must be original, targeted, relevant and impressive. When all of these elements are in place, you are in the best position to boost your brand across the board.
Professional tactics get your brand where it needs to be
Digital PR has evolved out of the mass link building tactics taken prior to 2012, when Google cracked down on these practices. Since then, the only way – and the best way – to get the brand awareness you deserve online is to produce high quality content and push it out to the right places.
Over the last few years, digital PR has really come into its own. Driving organic rankings through the tactics we’ve discussed in this blog is the ideal way to get your brand to where it should be. We start by building brand awareness, pushing out amazing content, ensuring data is totally unique and useful and then utilise digital PR tactics to make sure everyone relevant sees it. And believes it.
Contact the Igniyte digital PR team here for more information.