Digital PR
Digital PR is the part of SEO that cannot be done at a desk with a keyword tool. It is finding the thing your business knows that nobody else is saying, and getting a journalist to care about it. Most of what is sold as digital PR is a press release about a rebrand sent to two hundred inboxes, and it earns exactly what it deserves.
Content and PR are quoted on the work rather than sold as a package, because a monthly article count is a vanity metric and we would rather not sell you one. Tell us what the campaign has to achieve and we will price the work that does it.
See what everything costsWhere this fits in your marketing
Nobody searches for digital PR until they have already tried the cheap version. The usual trigger is a year of buying links that did nothing, or a competitor turning up in a national paper and the phone going quiet.
A link from coverage outranks a link you bought
Editorial links from real publications are the ones that still work, because they are the ones Google cannot easily detect as bought. They are also the only kind that bring referral traffic and customers alongside the ranking.
The story has to be true and specific
Journalists ignore press releases and answer emails with a fact in them. If your business does not have data, we find the angle in what you see every day that outsiders find surprising.
What digital PR actually is, once you strip the jargon
It is earning coverage in publications your customers read, in a way that also earns a link back to your site. That is the whole thing. The digital part just means the coverage lives online and therefore carries an SEO benefit alongside the reputational one.
It matters because links remain one of the strongest ranking signals there is, and the routes to getting them have narrowed. Directory submissions stopped working a decade ago. Guest posts on sites that exist only to sell guest posts are now detected and discounted, and increasingly penalised. Buying links from a broker is a risk you are taking with your own domain.
What has not stopped working is a real publication choosing to write about you and linking because linking is what a citation is. That is harder, slower and more expensive than the alternatives, which is exactly why it still counts.
Why most PR campaigns produce nothing
We see the same four failures, and they are all upstream of the outreach.
- 01
The story is about the company, not the world
A new website, a new hire, a rebrand, an anniversary. These are interesting to you and to nobody else. A journalist needs something their readers want to know, and your milestone is not it.
- 02
There is no evidence
"Businesses are struggling with X" is an opinion. "We analysed 1,400 quotes and found the average is 38% higher than last year" is a story. The second one gets covered because the journalist can build a headline on it.
- 03
The pitch goes to everyone
A press release blasted to a bought media list is the digital equivalent of a leaflet drop, and it is treated the same way. Ten well-chosen journalists who cover exactly this beat will outperform four hundred addresses.
- 04
Nobody checked whether the link would survive
Plenty of publications nofollow every outbound link, or strip them entirely in syndication. That coverage still has value, but if the campaign was sold on links you should know before it runs, not after.
Where the story usually comes from
Almost every business we work with is sitting on something publishable and does not recognise it, because familiarity makes it feel ordinary.
- 01
Your own data
Quotes, jobs, bookings, enquiries, failure rates, seasonal patterns. A plumbing firm knows which month boilers actually fail. A letting agent knows what rents really did, not what the index says. Anonymised and aggregated, that is a regional news story every time.
- 02
What you fix that people did wrong
The mistake you correct forty times a year is a consumer warning piece. Trade titles run these constantly and they are cheap to produce because the expertise already exists.
- 03
A defensible ranking or comparison
Best and worst places for something, based on data you can actually stand behind. These travel further than anything else and they are also the easiest to do badly, so the method has to survive being questioned.
- 04
Genuine expert comment, fast
When something happens in your sector, a specific quote from a named person within a few hours beats a considered one next week. This is the cheapest route to coverage and it requires you to be reachable.
How we run a campaign
Three to four months is a realistic first campaign, and the first month is nearly all preparation.
It starts with what you know: a call to find the angle, then whatever research is needed to make it stand up. If the campaign rests on data, we would rather spend a fortnight getting it right than pitch something a journalist can pull apart in one question. Then a short, specific list of publications and writers who actually cover this, built by reading what they have published rather than buying a database.
Outreach is individual, and it is honest about what the story is. We do not send follow-ups that pretend to be replies, and we do not offer money for coverage. If a publication wants payment, that is advertising, and it should be labelled and priced as advertising.
Then we report what it earned: the coverage, the links, whether they were followed, the referral traffic, and the movement in rankings for the pages that were linked. Some campaigns land three pieces and move nothing. We tell you that too.
PR, links and the thing people actually want
Most enquiries that arrive asking for digital PR are really asking for links, and it is worth being straight about the relationship between the two.
Coverage in a national with a followed link is genuinely valuable and genuinely hard. Coverage in a regional paper is easier, still worth having, and often better for a local business because the readership is the customer base. Coverage in a trade title reaches buyers and rarely reaches anyone else, which for a wholesaler or a B2B firm is the point.
What none of it does is produce a predictable number of links per month. Anyone quoting you a monthly link quota is either buying them or running a placement network, and both of those are the risk you were trying to avoid. If a fixed number matters more to you than where the links come from, we are the wrong agency and it is cheaper for both of us to find that out now.
If your problem is the opposite, an inherited profile full of links somebody bought, that is a different job and it is covered on our link audit page.
Where PR sits next to the rest of the campaign
Digital PR is the slowest and least predictable thing we sell, and it works best bolted onto something that is already sound.
There is no point earning a link to a page that does not convert, or building authority for a site with a technical problem stopping half of it being indexed. The order is usually fix the foundations, get the pages right, then spend on authority. Agencies that sell PR first do it because PR is easy to sell, not because it is the right first move.
It pairs particularly well with content marketing, because a campaign that earns coverage also produces an asset worth linking to internally, and with national SEO, where authority is usually the constraint rather than on-page work.
What it costs, and why there is no monthly price
Digital PR is quoted per campaign rather than sold as a retainer, because the honest unit is a campaign and the honest measure is what it earned.
A monthly PR retainer with a coverage target attached creates exactly the wrong incentive: it pays the agency to hit a number, and the cheapest way to hit a number is low-quality placements on sites nobody reads. We would rather quote you for a piece of work with a defined output and be judged on it.
Tell us what the campaign has to achieve and we will price the work that does it. Everything else we charge for is on the pricing page, published, including the lines we quote rather than band.
Earned, not published and forgotten
Publishing is the easy half. The work that decides whether any of it pays is what happens before and after.
- Step 1Angle and evidence
What you know that nobody else is saying, and what you can prove. A story without evidence does not get picked up, and an article without a reason to exist does not get read.
- Step 2Production
Written properly, by someone who asked you questions first. Specific to your business rather than assembled from what already ranks.
- Step 3Distribution
Pitched where your customers actually are, and linked from the pages it should feed. Content with no route into a commercial page ranks and sells nothing.
- Step 4Measurement
What it earned: coverage, links, rankings, enquiries. Reported monthly whether the answer flatters us or not.
Per project
Priced on the campaign rather than sold as a monthly retainer with a coverage target attached.
Coverage counts are the easiest metric in marketing to hit and the least useful to own. Tell us what the campaign has to achieve and we will price the work that does it.
Straight answers to the usual questions
What is digital PR, in plain terms?
Earning coverage in publications your customers read, in a way that also earns a link to your website. The link helps your rankings, the coverage helps your reputation, and unlike most link building it is something you can show people without embarrassment. It is the same craft as traditional PR with the added requirement that the coverage lives online and links back.
How is this different from link building?
Digital PR earns links as a by-product of coverage somebody chose to publish. Link building, as usually sold, acquires links directly through placements, exchanges or payment. The first is slower, more expensive and durable. The second is faster, cheaper and carries the risk that Google discounts or penalises it later. We do the first, and we audit the damage from the second.
How long before a campaign produces anything?
Three to four months for a first campaign, with most of month one spent finding and standing up the story rather than pitching. Reactive comment can land in days when something happens in your sector and you are quick. Anyone promising coverage in week one is either sending a press release nobody will run or paying for placement.
Can you guarantee coverage or a number of links?
No, and treat anyone who does with suspicion. Guaranteeing coverage means either paying for it, which is advertising and should be labelled as such, or using a placement network, which is the exact risk digital PR exists to avoid. What we can tell you before we start is what we think the story is worth and which publications are realistic.
Our business is not interesting. Is there a story in it?
Almost always, and the fact that it feels ordinary to you is usually the reason it works. What you see every week is new information to everyone outside your trade. Your own anonymised data, the mistakes you fix repeatedly, and the seasonal patterns you take for granted are all publishable. The uninteresting story is the one about your company.
Do you write press releases?
Rarely, because the press release is the least effective part of modern PR. A specific, individual email to a journalist who covers exactly this beat outperforms a release sent to hundreds by a distance. Where a release genuinely helps, usually for a launch that trade titles will pick up as listings, we write one. It is not the default.
The other services we run
- Content MarketingBuying guides and comparisons · Service and landing page copy · Blog and editorial programmes
- Conversion Rate OptimisationEnquiry and quote forms · Landing pages for paid traffic · Checkout and basket flows
- PPC ManagementGoogle Ads search campaigns · Local Services Ads · Google Shopping
- AI Search OptimisationEntity and schema modelling · Content written to be quoted · llms.txt and entity files
- Branding & Graphic DesignLogo design · Brand identity systems · Brand guidelines your printer can follow
- Web Design & DevelopmentBrochure and service sites · Booking and member sites · E-commerce builds
Ready when you are
Tell us what you are trying to rank for and we will look at the site and the search results before we reply. You get a straight answer, including if SEO is not the right spend for you yet.