When I get asked this question, the obvious top-level answer is that it help build brand-awareness online. But there is so much to Digital PR and it can do wonders for your brand and your site visibility. And ultimately, people need to know you, trust you, love you and be able to find you in order to purchase from you.
How did Digital PR start?
In recent years, Digital PR has undergone quite the transformation. When I first started out (many moons ago) as a fresh PR executive, Digital PR was part of the SEO team. It consisted of painful mass link-building and paid for guest posting to increase the amount of backlinks to our client’s site. These links were totally irrelevant, there was no strategy behind it, and often no one would even click on them. But it was an SEO tactic to drive that ‘Link Juice’, or the less icky term ‘Link Equity’.
But 2012 is where everything changed. Google rolled out its Penguin Update and it rocked the SEO and PR landscape. Sites and brands were penalised globally and all that work went down the drain. The links were disavowed and we had to start building brands online from scratch again. But this is when the new era of Digital PR was formed.
So, where is it now?
Digital PR now is a marketing tactic whereby a clear strategy is created to drive your brand awareness, improve traffic to your site and organic rankings and will boost your overall authority and visibility online, which in turn will positively impact your sales.
Is it not link-building, that is an SEO tactic and there is a clear difference between link-building and Digital PR. However, when its done right then it can drive those relevant links to your site and improve your organic rankings.
How? We create relationships between brand and customers. This is done through relevancy. Gone (hopefully) are the days where brands would create any old infographic or content about something SO unrelated to them just to get the links. We do creative, but relevant, storytelling. Stories backed by a solid content marketing strategy and a technically sound site. Stories that journalists and the media want to cover because its interesting, original and resourceful. Stories that make your potential and existing customers notice and trust your brand. Stories that build your brand love.
How does it work?
A successful Digital PR strategy is underpinned by data and insights. It’s the best way to make sure the campaign can be as relevant and impactful as possible.
These include audience and competitor insights, SEO recommendations, and original data or research. There is a wealth of tools we use to gather this insight. From GWI and searchmetrics, to Google Analytics, BuzzSumo and SEMrush, we can understand who you want to target and how we can build a strategy and creative campaign and content to target them.
These tools (and others) help us measure how impactful the campaign was and some of the key metrics we look at when reporting are:
- Organic traffic to site
- Number of backlinks
- Average time on site
- Domain authority
- Unique site visitors
- Keyword ranking movement
- Total page views
- Items of coverage
- Share of voice
- Brand sentiment
…to name a few!
Why should you be doing Digital PR?
Having Google believe that your brand is authoritative and trustworthy isn’t enough. You need customers to believe it. That can only be done through Digital PR.
Digital PR campaigns are invaluable to your brand and your website. Putting your brand in front of people who are more likely to engage with it means high quality traffic will be driven to your site, and most importantly they are more likely to convert.
I’ve seen the evolution first hand, and now more than ever brands and their customers are benefitting from the new era of digital PR. An era where SEO, content strategy and Digital PR are working together to build those long-lasting relationships between you and your customers.
If you’re interested in finding out more about our Digital PR offering, get in touch today to find out more.