Digital PR and earned coverage
Links you earn from coverage, not links you rent from a network.
Digital PR gives a journalist a reason to cover you, and the link comes with it. Data they want, an expert view they need, a story their readers care about. It is slower than buying placements and it costs more per link, and it is the only version that still counts in three years when the network selling the cheap ones has been deindexed.
Straight answer
Two ways to get a link, and only one of them ages well.
Most agencies are quietly doing the second and describing it as the first. It is worth knowing which you are paying for, because they cost different amounts and one of them puts your domain at risk.
Rented links
- A placement bought on a site that sells them to anyone
- A guest post traded on a network built for the purpose
- A private blog network dressed up as real publications
- A monthly link quota with no view of where they land
- Fine until the network is deindexed and the links vanish with it
Earned coverage
- A story a real publication wants to run for its readers
- Data or a point of view the company already owns
- An expert comment a journalist was already looking for
- Coverage that builds the brand as well as the link
- Authority from a domain Google already trusts, and it lasts
Said plainly
We do not buy links, we do not use PBNs, and we do not touch link farms. We have identified paid link and PBN networks and told clients to decline them. If a supplier is promising you a fixed number of DR 50 links a month, ask where they come from, because the honest answer is usually a network you do not want your domain associated with.
Scope
What a digital PR programme covers.
The campaign is built from something you already own. Most companies are sitting on a story they have not noticed, and the job is finding it, packaging it, and putting it in front of the people who will run it.
Data led campaigns
A story built from numbers a journalist can cite. Your own transaction data, a survey run cheaply, a public dataset read a way nobody else has, or a seasonal angle only you have the figures for. Data is the most linkable asset there is, because it gives the writer something to quote.
Expert commentary and reactive PR
Getting your founder or specialist quoted in stories that are already being written. Journalists need expert voices on deadline, and being the one who replies fast and usefully earns coverage on strong publications without needing a full campaign behind it.
Manual outreach
Real people contacted with a reason to care, not a blast to a bought list. The targeting is where campaigns are won or lost: the right journalist on the right beat at the right publication, with a pitch built for them rather than copy pasted.
Digital PR for SEO
Coverage aimed at the pages and topics that need the authority, not just the homepage. A link to a page that already ranks well does little; a link that lifts a competitive page you are stuck on the second page for is the one worth earning.
Backlink audit and disavow
Before earning new links, we check the ones you have. If a previous scheme left toxic links behind, that is an audit and a disavow call first, so the new coverage builds on clean ground rather than dragging a penalty behind it.
Reporting on outcomes
Coverage landed, the links that came with it, and the movement in your own metrics. DR is a third party number and a useful proxy, but the thing that matters is whether the pages you care about move, so we report on both.
Boundaries
What we will not sell you.
Digital PR attracts more bad practice than any other part of SEO. Here is where we draw the line, so you know what you are not getting.
No bought links
No paid placements, no link networks, no PBNs, no link farms. If a link would only exist because money changed hands for it, we do not do it, and we will tell you if a competitor's profile is built on them.
No guaranteed numbers
We will not promise a fixed count of links a month, because earned coverage cannot be guaranteed and anyone promising it is counting something that will not last. We promise real outreach and honest reporting instead.
No invented stunts
If there is no genuine angle and no data behind a campaign, we say so rather than fabricate a hook. A weak story lands nowhere and wastes the budget, and a fake one ages into an embarrassment.
Cost
What it costs.
Digital PR is billed at the same £90 to £110 an hour as the rest of the work, because it is labour rather than a product. A campaign is scoped once we know the angle and the target list. Minimum engagement is 4 hours.
Backlink audit
From £900
A read of your existing profile, the toxic links flagged, and a disavow file if you need one. The right first step if a previous scheme left damage behind, or before a new campaign.
Campaign
Scoped
A defined campaign from angle to outreach to coverage, built around data or an expert view you already own. Scope and cost agreed in writing once we have found the story worth telling.
Retained
Monthly
Ongoing reactive PR and outreach for companies that generate stories regularly and want a steady presence rather than a one off push. A set number of hours a month against a plan.
Time is logged as it is spent and the ledger is open to you, including anything scrapped or reverted. Full breakdown on the rates page.
FAQ
Questions clients actually ask
What is the difference between digital PR and link building?
Digital PR is one way to build links, and it is the way that lasts. Instead of buying a placement or trading a guest post, you give a journalist or an editor a reason to cover you: data they want, an expert view they need, or a story their readers care about. The link comes as a consequence of the coverage.
Traditional link building chases the link directly. Digital PR earns the coverage and the link falls out of it, which is why the results still count in three years when the networks selling cheap links have been deindexed. Both live on the link building page; this page is the earned, PR led half.
Do you guarantee a number of links?
No, and anyone who does is either buying them or counting things that will not last. Earned coverage depends on whether the story is genuinely interesting to a publication and its readers, which is not something a supplier can promise in advance. What we can promise is that the outreach is real, the targets are relevant, and nothing is bought.
We report on coverage landed and on the links that came with it, plus the movement in your own metrics. DR growth is reported as an outcome of the work, not sold as a number up front.
We do not have a data team. Can you still run a campaign?
Usually, because most companies are sitting on a story they have not noticed. Your own transaction data, a survey you could run cheaply, a point of view your founder holds that the industry disagrees with, or a seasonal angle only you have the numbers for. The campaign is built from what you already own rather than a fabricated stunt.
If there is genuinely no angle and no data, we will say so rather than invent one, because a weak hook wastes your budget and the outreach lands nowhere.
Is this safe? We have been burned by link schemes before.
It is the opposite of a scheme. We do not buy links, we do not use private blog networks, and we do not touch link farms. We have identified paid link and PBN networks in the wild and told clients to walk away from them, and published the log of 130 that approached this site in a single week. Earned coverage on real publications is the version of link building that Google is trying to reward, not penalise.
If your site is carrying the damage from a previous scheme, that is a backlink audit and a disavow job first, which we also do.
How does digital PR help rankings, not just brand awareness?
Two ways. The links from earned coverage carry authority from publications Google already trusts, which is the kind of signal that moves competitive pages. And the coverage itself builds the brand and entity signals that increasingly decide whether you show up at all. It is worth saying plainly that for some sites links are not the constraint. We have seen a strong domain rank for nothing because of an on page problem, where a link campaign would have been money spent on the wrong thing. We check that first.
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Tell us what story you might be sitting on.
A dataset, a survey you could run, or a view your founder holds that the industry disagrees with. Send it over and we will tell you whether there is a campaign in it, honestly, before you commit a budget.