What is Digital PR & press release link building?
Digital PR is a company’s use of online platforms to manage and grow its reputation and increase brand awareness. PR professionals now focus on a combined approach that includes traditional PR and digital PR to achieve higher readership on online content.
There are many benefits to digital PR. It allows a company to build exposure among its target audience, establish itself as an authority within its niche, increase referral traffic, boost its SEO, grow its digital footprint, and improve its brand image. By getting quality content published on high-authority websites, a company can establish itself as a thought leader. Being recognized by quality sites also boosts SEO, which is one of the most fundamental ranking factors for Google.
Ultimately, link building and backlinks play a significant role in a company’s ability to earn media coverage.
How to do press release link building
Link building can be both external and internal to a company’s content. It can include the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites and content. Likewise, it can include inbound links when distributing owned media. Press release link building is an effective way to repurpose content that your company has already created for traditional PR and distribute it digitally.
For companies and individuals with experience in link building and SEO, the most challenging part of press release link building is creating engaging PR content that will be liked and read by their target audience. Understanding digital trends is important, but it all boils down to content. You need to start with quality content that is newsworthy. It needs to be fresh and new to generate interest among journalists, media outlets, as well as your target audience.
How PR professionals can help
Some companies already have someone to do their press releases in-house. However, those that do not can hire PR professionals to do it for them. PR agencies, like Pressfarm, not only have experience in link building and SEO, but they will also help you create quality content for an effective PR strategy. The team of experts at Pressfarm craft branded content including an email pitch, a press release, and a press kit. With this content, they help companies optimize their content for SEO. Finally, they provide access to a PR database of over 1 million journalists, influencers, and bloggers. When combined with custom media lists, this database is designed to help you connect with the best journalists in your niche.
Once you’ve gone through the process of creating a press release, it is time to optimize it for the web. When going through this process, you should do the following:
1) Make sure there are headings and sub-headings
2) Use bullet points to make information clear
3) Always include contact information and links to owned media
4) Use popular keywords which people use
Distributing the press release
The next step would be to launch and distribute the press release. You should distribute your press release to other media outlets, websites, and networks that already have similar content about your industry. Distributing a press release to media outlets needs to be the first step for startups and entrepreneurs because they have little to no media exposure yet. If you already have a decent amount of exposure, you can launch your press release on your owned media first, whether on your website, social media platforms, or newsletters.
To distribute the press release effectively, you need to find journalists and media outlets that fit your industry and specialty. This means that you need to put in the time and effort to compile a media list of target journalists. Companies that decide to outsource this usually rely on media databases that PR agencies such as Pressfarm provide. These databases are a valuable source of contact information for reporters, journalists, and other publishers that would be interested in your brand’s story. Once you have built a media list, you should begin your relationship with the journalist by sending an initial email pitch that is concise but also contains essential details and information.
Using social media sites
Another way to distribute news content is through social media sites. It is essential that the news you’re sharing offers distinct value. Distributing on these platforms can work well. However, you will need to tailor it to the social community. This is because this audience is usually suspicious of formal marketing communications. On the other hand, these people respond well to creative, alternative ways of communicating.
This part of the process is essential to earn links back to your company website and content. If a journalist or media outlet chooses to take on the story, they will either copy the press release to their website or create original content using the information provided. Every website, publication, and other media outlet that publishes content about your company gives you a higher chance of ranking high in search engines.
Some mainstream news publications do not accept outbound links, but some do. It doesn’t hurt to ask. If a journalist uses your story, then you should ask if the journalist can link back to your website.
Analyzing your metrics
Another step that to take with link building is analyzing its analyzing the metrics. Metrics help you to judge the value of a potential link, assess whether you should continue with it or use different keywords. Studying your metrics also helps you to decide how many resources you should put in. Online press releases can be hard to track effectively. Even so, as long as you are consistent in how you report, you will have a better idea of your performance.
The main Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are; inbound links from quality sites, social bookmark links, and visits/sign-ups and sales. Some metrics to analyze include; domain strength, page strength, anchor text, number of links, linking roots domains, the relevance of the linking page, and position of links on the page.
It’s important to remember that even a well-written press release may get little to no coverage. That is not your fault. Instead of losing hope, you can find ways to adapt your press release and use unique story angles to get media attention. You can carry on this process multiple times in different ways until you achieve great results.
Conclusion
Digital PR has changed the way that PR professionals and brands obtain media attention. It’s true that the original content of a press release has generally remained the same. Nevertheless, the platforms have switched from traditional media like television, newspaper, and magazines to blogs, websites, and other online platforms. Link building offers an opportunity for you to optimize your existing content, boost your search engine optimization (SEO), and reach a larger target audience.
Some brands know how to do link building for SEO but find it time-consuming to compile all the necessary information into an effective press release. If this is the case for you, then you can reach out to a PR agency to help. A good agency will help you create quality content, optimize this content for SEO and distribute this content to put it in front of the right eyes. A worthwhile agency will also provide you with a media database to help with further media outreach and distribution.