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When someone links to your website, Google wants to know what value you can provide the user, i.e. why someone gave you a backlink. This is where digital public relations (digital PR) comes into play.
Compared to manual link building, digital PR focuses on teaching search engines your expertise, which is reaffirmed by other publications linking to your content.
How search engines like Google have evolved, how digital PR works, and why it’s best used in conjunction with manual link building efforts to keep your website relevant. Let’s take a closer look.
Google has gotten smarter
Google is traditionally all about links, and the more links inserted, the better. However, it has grown into a smart semantic search engine. Rather than just looking at links, we try to understand the context of the site, including information about the site, what it offers, and similar details.
Google is shifting its focus to valuable sites that provide useful content and strong experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (EEAT) signals. In other words, the quality of links is more important than the quantity.
For example, a website with high traffic but limited authority focuses on establishing topical relevance. They are basically making Google believe that they are experts in a particular topic or niche. And this is one of the deciding factors between digital PR and manual link building.
Related: Increase your website’s visibility and get an edge over your competition with these powerful techniques
Understanding digital PR
Digital PR is very similar to traditional public relations, except it focuses on the digital space. Use online channels to manage your brand reputation and build positive relationships with your target audience.
When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), digital PR can help you:
- Attract visitors to your website.
- Linking back to your website from other websites increases your website’s authority and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).
There is no one way to perform digital PR outreach. However, a common and effective strategy involves content creation efforts. In other words, you need to create valuable assets that include enough reports, infographics, whitepapers, statistics, and other content for other publications to organically link to your work.
Digital PR generates quality backlinks, but it takes time
Organic backlinks (voluntary links to content) are considered higher quality links than links that you build manually (through guest posts or affiliate links). Digital PR is a powerful tool for acquiring these high-quality backlinks. However, achieving good results requires effort and patience, and is a long game. Here’s why:
Building relationships
You need to consistently demonstrate your brand value and expertise before your target audience will recommend or link to your content.
Create valuable content
Researching a topic, providing commentary, and launching a campaign doesn’t happen all at once. It requires a significant investment of time and resources.
Get organic coverage
Journalists are constantly being marketed to, so to gain attention and secure coverage, your content needs to be truly newsworthy and relevant to your audience. You may also need a strategic outreach plan to pitch your content to the right journalists and publications.
Related: Why a good digital PR strategy is so important
Manual link building remains an effective SEO strategy
While digital PR is a great way to increase authority, manual link building is still effective in maintaining your website’s visibility and relevance. The only difference is that you actively obtain backlinks to your website instead of having journalists link to you voluntarily.
Still, given the current changing landscape, you should focus your link building efforts on acquiring attractive links instead of spamming them. Below are some manual link building strategies that may yield good results.
Guest post
Write quality articles for other related websites in your field. Then, be sure to include a link to your own website within your content.
Building broken links
Find the broken link on the relevant website and contact the website owner to suggest alternative content.
Pitching Help a Reporter Out (HARO)
There are certain platforms where journalists post questions about topics that are too niche. If you give great answers to their questions, you could potentially earn backlinks on your published articles.
Networking and relationship building
Connecting with influencers and leaders in your field is always a good strategy. As you build relationships for business, you may also find opportunities for natural connections.
Related: 5 Guest Posting Tips to Rank High on Search Engines
Risk penalty for manual link building
Manual link building is considered a way to replicate digital PR link acquisition (which can take a long time). While it can be faster, it also comes with the risk of penalizing your website if you do it incorrectly. Here are some cases where this may occur:
Unnatural link profile
Search engines such as Google analyze link patterns to identify websites that engage in manipulative link building. An example of this would be if your website suddenly exploded with links that looked unnatural, such as links to his website of low quality, identical anchor text, or a private blog network.
Manipulative link building techniques
Engaging in certain behaviors can directly flag you as manipulative and result in penalties. Examples include link buying, excessive link exchange, comment spamming, etc.
A two-pronged approach is best for link building
The truth is, today’s search engines tend to rely more on topical relevance than on human link work. In other words, digital PR is becoming a trend and you should jump on board.
However, combining both approaches can help your business create a more effective strategy for building high-quality links. Digital PR in particular helps you gain natural and trustworthy links from trusted sources. meanwhile, manual link building You can target and control the quality of your links.
Digital PR can be resource intensive compared to manual link building. If your team isn’t yet ready to focus on creating high-quality content, manually building links is still a great option.