Confidence and credibility are traits that everyone strives to gain in life.
In SEO, backlinks are an essential part of getting these coveted features.
But many people overcomplicate how easy it is to generate backlinks.
No need to beg site owners with a digital tin cup asking for favors or shelling out thousands of dollars to pay for links.
Buying links is considered spam, which lowers your brand’s trust and credibility and potentially exposes you to a manual penalty from Google.
There are simply many more effective ways to generate backlinks and create an effective digital PR strategy.
Also, it is well known that backlinks are an important part of SEO, but they also have the same impact on other parts of your business.
It comes down to one key aspect: third-party social proof.
When backlinking efforts are combined with high-quality PR, these tactics drive more traffic to your site, increase quality inbound leads, and ultimately generate more revenue to grow your business.
What is the difference between digital PR and link building?
This is how I would define them from a basic conceptual perspective:
PR: Use media coverage to draw attention to your brand.
Link Building: Tactics that encourage other websites to link to yours.
Both are considered very effective marketing tactics. Although technically different at the root, they should be used interchangeably to support your overall business goals.
The best success I’ve seen has come from building earned links. The most effective brands have something unique to say through thought leadership that encourages other sites to associate with your brand.
For example, using data and success stories to create engaging content are the best ways to gain trust and credibility.
This is especially true when you provide this information through media such as a guest article, podcast, or webinar, where you get a backlink because the platform owner has to cite who you are.
So if you focus your link building efforts to complement what you’re already doing for digital PR, you’re killing two birds with one stone and reaping the benefits of both efforts.
The benefits of using digital PR for link building
If you’re still on the fence about combining digital PR with your link building efforts, here are the top benefits of doing so:
Build brand authority based on thought leadership
When you repeatedly showcase your expertise on third-party platforms relevant to your audience, your audience begins to trust your advice.
This is what makes you an authoritative brand within your industry.
Third-party social proof generates inbound leads and conversions
When other sites recognize your brand as a trusted expert, they’ll start sharing your content with their own audiences and followers.
As these people see more of your own content, they will feel motivated to contact you and learn more about how you can help them.
It reduces hesitation and speeds up the sales cycle
By the time you’ve earned that authority, demonstrated your leadership, and increased your organic inbound traffic flow, more than half of your sales cycle is already complete.
Once an inbound prospect requests a conversation, they’ve shown active intent and placed their trust in your brand. This is an important step in closing a new sale for your business.
Create a digital PR flyer
Over time, you will become known as an expert, so much so that you will no longer need to submit links.
Other brands will voluntarily contact you to collaborate, in which you automatically get backlinks for it.
This creates “the PR digital flywheel”, i.e. a system that is constantly feeding with less input required on your end.
Grow a highly targeted network
As the digital PR bandwagon gains enough momentum to consistently create new PR link building opportunities, you’ve created an effective mechanism for expanding your network and your following.
The industry now identifies you as an authority figure in your niche space. Other players in the game will regularly involve you in their own promotional activities.
Generate backlinks without asking or paying
If you’ve been following along closely, you’ll notice that none of these link building processes involve cold outreach or payment, and when implemented correctly, all backlinks come from reputable sites.
As the results pay off, cold outreach and paying for links from your PR or SEO teams becomes a completely inefficient use of time and resources.
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The 5 key steps to building backlinks and growing your business with digital PR
Here are five of the key steps you can use to fuel your backlink strategy, establish trust and credibility, and grow your business successfully.
Step 1: Identify the top sites your audience uses to learn and get advice
Like any good business strategy, the first step to getting quality PR backlinks is to do the right research.
Look at the places where you know your target audience spends their time voluntarily. You can do this by identifying resources such as:
SparkToro is a great tool for doing audience research. It lists relevant platforms backed by search data and organized by audience type, interests and other variables. Use a tool like SparkToro as a starting point to do your own research, then build it.
As you do your research, include a mix of large and niche publications that you can target for your digital PR strategy; both are important for an organic growth strategy.
Smaller publications are relatively easy to appear, resulting in more quantitative coverage within this niche.
Bigger publications are also important because everyone recognizes the authority of their name.
Any links you can get on these sites translate into instant credibility for your brand, both with Google and your audience.
Step 2: Submit topics that you are an expert on and that are relevant to your audience
Since the best way to get links is to play to your strengths, reach out to the manager of the sites you are targeting and provide ideas on topics that you are an absolute expert on.
You’re much more likely to be approved when you have evidence, such as flagged content and event recordings.
The topics you submit should be relevant to both the platform and your target audience. Don’t be fooled by product promotions; instead, focus on being useful to your target audience.
Here’s an example of how you can pitch a podcast:
If your data or experience tells a compelling story, you’re much more likely to create something that stands out and guarantees backlinks from highly valuable sources.
Step 3: Start generating high-quality inbound leads, conversions, and backlinks
Repeatedly showcasing your expertise on third-party platforms is how you build those valuable traits of trust and credibility with your audience. This makes you an authorized brand.
Because your audience sees you as a trusted expert, people will voluntarily contact you when they need help solving a basic problem. This is precisely how digital PR generates high quality inbound leads.
Depending on your business and the relative ease of your sales cycle, this approach can even translate to direct purchases that grow your business.
Plus, events, posts, and anything that gets publicity automatically generates high-quality backlinks. This is the the most effective way to build links to support SEO and grow your business.
Remember that Google says it clearly that buying or selling links can be considered spam.
Not only are these tactics unnecessary (especially when you’re using the tactics I’ve described), they can do more harm than good to the rest of your business.
Step 4: The digital PR flyer begins to build
Follow the steps above, over and over again, to create your digital PR flyer – other brands voluntarily contact you to collaborate, so you don’t need to introduce yourself anymore.
In 2021, John Mueller of Google, one of the leading figures in digital PR, SEO and organic marketing, gave his own stamp of approval to digital PR link building.
He encouraged brand-builders to ignore the misinformation that digital PR link building is part of an outdated spam tactic by redoubling efforts to create your own digital PR flyer.
Step 5: Show everywhere that you trust multiple reputable platforms
Include links within your own content to anything you’ve created in collaboration with other brands, such as:
Events you’ve organized with another brand. Guest articles you have contributed. Podcasts you’ve participated in.
These backlinks become your social proof because you have been cited as an endorsement of a third party site.
Think of it as gaining “peer review” for scientific journals.
Once you’ve been cited by a highly authoritative brand in the industry, you’ve earned these traits of trust and credibility for your brand that make all the difference in helping you grow your business.
This is again how to generate more inbound leads and direct conversions directly. People come to you because they trust what you have to say. You are now selling to a warm audience, not a cold one.
Post, rinse and repeat this strategy to generate more backlinks and increase business income
Please remember that disclosure and/or purchase links are not only unnecessary, but also a completely efficient use of resources.
You can do more harm than good by reverting to tactics that Google and other search engines have deemed spam. Don’t reduce your efforts to gain trust and credibility by falling into the trap of buying links.
In general, your PR and link building strategies should work hand in hand – link building shouldn’t just be for SEO, and when combined with PR, it has a deeper impact on ‘brand authority.
A highly strategic and fully aligned digital PR and link building strategy results in long-term benefits.
Invest your time and resources in creating highly valuable content that has something valuable to offer to give other sites a quality reason to associate their brands with yours.
Once the digital PR flywheel is running on its own steam, you’re well on your way to scalable growth!
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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