What is Digital PR?

Digital PR is a tactic used to increase a brand’s online presence by securing media placements and backlinks on authoritative and relevant websites. These placements contribute to a high-quality backlink profile while strengthening organic visibility in the eyes of search engines and AI systems. 

An effective digital PR strategy not only improves organic rankings but also increases brand awareness, drives website traffic, grows social engagement and establishes your brand as a trusted authority in your industry. 

SEO and digital PR work together, not in isolation; therefore, businesses must adopt an aligned strategy to create content that not only ranks well in search engine results but also earns authoritative media coverage and high-quality backlinks. By applying SEO principles to digital PR campaigns, each campaign supports organic performance and brand awareness, reinforcing the wider objectives of organic search. 

AI systems increasingly draw on third-party sources and earned media to understand a brand, and in 2026, this highlights how digital PR is now more important than ever. PR Week highlights that earned and owned media coverage are a major driver of how AI systems understand brands and what they surface in AI responses, with Muck Rack stating that 84% of citations come from earned media, in a study of over 25 million links. 

As more brands compete over how they appear in AI-generated search results, it’s becoming increasingly important for brands to be consistently mentioned in credible third-party publications and industry websites. Not only does this create a broader web of information around a brand, but it increases the chances of being cited in AI-overviews.  

While digital PR’s impact on AI-search is explored in greater detail later in this guide, it’s worthwhile highlighting here, as the influence of SEO strategies on AI search is becoming an increasingly important topic.  

Digital PR is a foundation of good organic search performance. There are three key pillars to abide by: technical, content and authority (digital PR), and all must be prioritised alongside each other.  

• Firstly, technical SEO is known as the foundation layer, and relates to factors such as site speed, structure, indexing and how crawlable a site is by search engines. 
• Secondly is on-site/content SEO. A brand must ensure that a website’s content is relevant and optimised for what prospective customers are searching for, including keyword targeting, internal linking and ensuring page structure is fully optimised. 
• Thirdly, off-site SEO, where digital PR plays a key role, is the third key pillar for organic performance. It’s essential that, while optimising on-site features, a brand ensures earned backlinks and mentions are generated, building on third-party authority signals. 

This is something that many brands miss out on, as adopting all three pillars is essential for organic search success. Optimised content on a technically broken site won’t rank, and a technically excellent site with no external authority signals will lose out against competitors that have them. At the same time, digital PR is the channel that builds pillar three. 

An effective digital PR strategy delivers far more than high-quality backlinks, and as AI search continues to evolve, its benefits are becoming increasingly valuable. 

• Creates long-term value through a compounding effect  

Digital PR isn’t a short-term solution. The benefits of digital PR continue far after a campaign has ended. High-quality media placements, whether linked or unlinked, can deliver ongoing traffic, strengthen a brand’s domain authority, and support SEO performance for years, if not decades.   

• Builds authority and trust 

When respected publications cite a brand, it positions the brand as a credible source within its industry. Whether coverage includes a backlink or a brand mention, repeated exposure across high-authority press helps build trust with potential customers and search engines. Consistent coverage across trusted publications reinforces a brand’s credibility, giving audiences and search engines more signals that the brand is reputable, knowledgeable and established within its industry. 

• Improves organic visibility 

While rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) depend on various factors, authoritative links remain a crucial signal that supports stronger organic performance over time. Digital PR supports this by earning high-quality backlinks from trusted publications, strengthening a website’s backlink profile and improving a site’s authority. 

• Increases AI discoverability 

As large language models (LLMs) become more prominent, digital PR plays an increasingly important role in helping brands appear in AI-generated responses. Securing high-authority media coverage consistently, provides strong trust signals to AI systems, improving the likelihood of your brand being referenced in an answer. 

While traditional PR and digital PR both share overlapping values, they have very different primary goals. Traditional PR focuses on building brand visibility and reputation through media coverage. In contrast, digital PR combines these objectives with SEO goals, helping brands build website authority, strengthen credibility and improve visibility across search engines and AI systems. 

Despite these differences, the two channels share similarities and can often be mistaken for one another. Both channels rely on securing coverage in relevant media publications and building relationships with journalists, and brands can then amplify this coverage across owned channels, helping to extend its reach. 

The key difference lies in how each channel measures success. Whereas traditional PR typically focuses on metrics such as media exposure, audience reach, and brand reputation, digital PR also considers SEO-focused outcomes, including high-quality backlinks, organic visibility, referral traffic, and brand mentions. 

Another misconception about digital PR is that it’s often referred to as link building because it shares a focus on earning backlinks from websites. Despite a shared focus, both have entirely different objectives.  

Whilst link building is primarily focused on generating links to improve a website’s search engine rankings, digital PR takes a much creative and tactical approach by producing newsworthy campaigns audiences actually want to read. Although backlinks are a valuable outcome of digital PR activity, the benefit extends far beyond the link itself, with successful campaigns often generating brand mentions, social media coverage, engagement with target audiences all while strengthening brand perception. 

Over the past few years, we’ve seen digital PR strategies change drastically. Despite marketers viewing the channel primarily as a link-building tactic, digital PR is now known as a strategic brand-building discipline centred around creative campaigns, authentic storytelling, and data-led insights. A successful digital PR strategy relies on various stages, each contributing to meaningful results. 

1. Identify goals 

As with any marketing campaign, marketers should map out campaign objectives during the early stages. Whether the aim is to boost traffic to a homepage or drive visibility to a particular product category while earning high-quality media coverage, each objective should align with SEO goals. 

2. Research 

Thorough research helps validate a campaign idea before they are pitched to a client. The research involves checking the availability of data and reviewing whether similar campaigns have recently gained media coverage. Taking this time to research properly reduces the risk of pursuing ideas that lack originality and newsworthiness. 

3. Ideation 

Once the team establishes campaign objectives, it’s essential to invest time and resources into the ideation phase of the digital PR strategy to develop creative, newsworthy campaign concepts. According to Muck Rack’s The State of Journalism 2026 survey, almost half (47%) of journalists said that PR pitches are not relevant to their work. This research highlights the importance of creating campaigns that can cut through the noise, while ensuring that they remain original, relevant and valuable to target publications. 

In addition to developing the core campaign idea, teams should check the feasibility of potential data sources, assess the campaign’s viability and ensure the research is credible.  

4. Content creation 

Once your campaign ideas have been finalised and campaign and data feasibility have been checked, it’s then time to begin the content creation stage. Whilst this can vary depending on campaign type, this stage involves everything from gathering client commentary, writing up and assisting with press releases, to producing on-page content and creating visuals.  

For data-led campaigns, this is also when data collection and analysis begins. Teams gather and analyse the data to assess the strongest findings, trends and campaign angles, which then shape the campaign assets and provide journalists with compelling reasons to cover a story. Every asset of a campaign should strongly align with the campaign objectives while making the stories as newsworthy as possible for journalists.  

5. Activation 

Activating a campaign is one of the most critical parts of a strong digital PR strategy, as even the strongest campaign can struggle without an effective activation plan and prospecting list. It’s important to build targeted media lists, analyse different campaign spins, and create tailored journalist pitches, as each, alongside timely activation, maximise relevance and help secure high-quality coverage and backlinks. 

6. Measurement and reporting 

Monitoring campaign performance through activation provides valuable insights that can inform the campaign. Given this, it’s important to track backlinks and media coverage as key metrics, while also measuring the wider impact of each campaign, such as an increase in rankings, more organic traffic or social engagement. Reporting on these metrics not only helps to demonstrate the value of digital PR but also provides stakeholders with clear evidence of how campaigns contribute to organic search, other marketing channels and business objectives. 

Digital PR campaigns take many forms but are largely proactive or reactive. Reactive digital PR campaigns involve responding to the media as soon as a story first emerges by providing expert commentary, insights or advice while a topic remains relevant, inserting the brand as part of the story. Since these campaigns have a shorter lifespan (typically journalists need to be contacted within an hour of the story breaking), they often require a very quick turnaround to secure media coverage before audience interest declines. Reactive digital PR campaigns often rely on expert opinions and commentary to provide additional value to journalists. 

In contrast, proactive digital PR campaigns have a much longer lifespan and can be planned much further in advance. This type of campaign can take various forms, including advice-led campaigns centred around a brand’s expertise, built around seasonal awareness days or consumer trends, as well as data-led campaigns that use original research to generate newsworthy stories. 

Both campaign types are effective for generating media interest, as they provide journalists with unique insights that can help inform a wider story. 

A few examples of campaigns executed by Bonded’s digital PR team can be found here:  

• Making Moves – The UK’s Favourite Meal Deals  
• Making Moves – The UK’s Family Friendly Index 
• Darts Corner – Truffle the Psychic Pig  

While digital PR has always helped brands build authority and improve organic visibility, the rise of AI search is adding another layer to the channel. In addition to improving organic visibility through search engine results, digital PR now has a secondary purpose: helping brands appear in within answers from large language models (LLMs). 

To achieve AI visibility, brands need to earn consistent coverage across trusted, reputable publications. A mix of linked and unlinked mentions on authoritative websites is becoming an increasingly valuable trust signal, helping AI models and search engines identify a brand’s credibility and authority. Muck Rack’s recent study, which analyses over 25 million links cited by AI come from non-paid sources, with journalist accounting for about 27% of all citations.  

As AI continues to evolve, an effective digital PR strategy should focus on generating a mix of high-quality backlinks and mentions across authoritative and relevant publications. A mix of both ensures that traditional SEO performance is strengthened, whilst increasing the likelihood of appearing in AI overviews and LLM responses. With Gartner predicting that PR budgets will double because of AI search by 2027, digital PR is becoming increasingly important for brands looking to remain visible online. 

Digital PR has evolved far beyond earning backlinks. While high-quality backlinks remain an important outcome, the most successful digital PR campaigns in 2026 focus on creating authentic, newsworthy stories that strengthen visibility, build trust, and improve a brand’s presence across organic search and AI-powered experiences. 

Brands that consistently earn coverage from trusted publications will be better positioned to increase organic performance, strengthen their online reputation and improve chances of appearing in AI-generated search results. Digital PR is no longer a standalone marketing tactic; it’s a fundamental part of a modern SEO strategy, which is only becoming more apparent in the age of AI search. 

Whether you’re looking to improve search visibility, prepare for the future of AI search or build long-term brand authority, investing in a strategic digital PR approach will help ensure your brand remains visible in an increasingly complex digital landscape.