What digital PR link building is
Link building through digital PR reverses the usual order. Instead of finding sites willing to host a link and filling them with content, we research a story in your business or market, shape it for a news desk, and the links arrive as journalists cite the source. The output is what SEO has always wanted, authoritative and relevant links, earned in the way Google's guidelines describe as editorial. Our plain-English guide to digital PR covers the discipline; this page covers the link building process end to end.
The process, end to end
- Research. We look at your market, public data and FOI sources for story angles, alongside the pages you want to strengthen.
- Target pages and assets. We agree which pages need links and, where journalists are unlikely to link to them directly, the linkable asset that will carry authority to them internally.
- Story development. Angles from public data, FOI responses and your market, chosen for the desks your customers read. You don't need to supply data.
- Assets. Data pieces, releases and expert comment written to a standard a journalist can lift from.
- Outreach. Named journalists, individually pitched, one useful follow-up, no mass blasts. The craft is described on our media relations page.
- Further stories. If a story stalls, we develop new angles and keep pitching until the agreed placement number is live.
- Verification and reporting. Every placement checked live and logged with the publication, URL, anchor, link attribute and target page.
Formats that earn links
Three formats do most of the work. Data-led stories earn the most durable links, because an index or study keeps getting cited long after publication. Reactive commentary earns the fastest, often in the nationals, and compounds as journalists return to a reliable source. Product features earn the most commercially direct links for consumer brands. A batch mixes them according to your sector and the news calendar, because no single format survives every news cycle.
How it fits with other link building
Digital PR link building compounds a healthy site; it can't rescue a broken one. Fix crawlability, thin pages and internal linking first, or the authority you earn has nowhere to go. It also sits well alongside partnerships, resource links and the occasional relevant guest contribution on an established industry title. What it replaces is the paid-placement layer: guest posts on sites built to sell them, niche edits and link networks, which carry risk under Google's spam policies. The comparison guide sets out when each still makes sense.
Timelines and volume
Reactive comment can publish the same day. A planned data story takes four to eight weeks from agreed idea to coverage. Our batches, ten or twenty editorial placements, are targeted for completion within 30 to 45 days of the brief, with any publisher-delayed shortfall carried forward. Authority builds as coverage accumulates, and rankings respond on Google's schedule; the fair review point is the end of the first quarter, judged on coverage quality and pipeline, with search movement weighed fairly from month four.
KPIs and packages
We report the numbers a board would recognise: placements earned against the batch, new referring domains filtered for relevance, linked versus unlinked coverage, brand search movement and organic visibility on the supported pages. Advertising value equivalents and padded reach figures are left out on purpose. Packages run month to month at £4,500 or £7,500 for ten or twenty placements, and bespoke programmes are scoped for multi-market or regulated briefs. Send a brief and a consultant replies within one working day.