What a digital PR link is
A digital PR link is the citation a journalist includes when they write about a story our team provided on your behalf: a data study, a comment, a product they chose to feature. It sits inside editorial content, on a title people know, placed by someone with no stake in your rankings. That's what makes it hard for a competitor to copy.
It isn't a sponsored post, a guest article on a site built to sell links, or a directory listing. Those are placements you rent. A digital PR link comes from coverage that was earned, and it usually stays live for years with no invoice keeping it there. Our guide to digital PR backlinks covers the different types in more depth.
How we earn them, in five stages
Every batch runs through the same method, and you don't need to supply stories or data. Insight: we research your business, your market and public data, including FOI requests, for a story, and plan the pages that need authority. Angle: we shape it for a news desk, usually by sharpening one finding and dropping three. Asset: we write the data piece, release or expert comment to a standard a journalist can lift from. Pitch: named reporters at national, regional and trade titles, approached individually, with one useful follow-up. Coverage: each placement verified live and logged with the publication, URL, link attribute and target page.
The formats that earn the most digital PR links are data-led stories, reactive commentary and, for consumer brands, product features. A good batch mixes them, because no single format survives every news cycle.
Defined batches of placements
Each package defines the outcome. Growth is a ten-placement batch at £4,500 a month and Scale is twenty at £7,500. Each batch is targeted for completion within 30 to 45 days of starting. If publisher delays leave a shortfall, it carries forward, and we keep developing stories until the agreed number is live.
What the batch doesn't fix is which mastheads run the story. Journalists decide that, and a promise of a named title usually describes a paid arrangement. What you get is a minimum you can plan around and a publication standard that stays the same in busy months.
What you choose when you buy PR links
Buying PR links from us means buying a managed campaign with a defined output, instead of a link picked from a price list. The package pays for the research, writing, pitching, checking and reporting behind each placement. You choose a few things at the start:
- Target pages. The pages you want to strengthen, usually a homepage, a category hub or a guide. If a page is unlikely to attract editorial links, we'll suggest a linkable asset instead.
- Anchor preference. Brand, URL or a natural phrase, kept natural enough for editorial use.
- Market. UK by default; US, EU or multi-market batches are scoped as bespoke programmes.
- Formats. Data-led stories, reactive commentary, product features or a mix. We recommend the mix, and you can change any of it.
Nothing else is needed from you. We research the angles, write the material, pitch the journalists and check each placement, and you receive the report as the batch fills.
The publication standard
Every placement in a batch has to clear three tests. Readership: the publication has an audience, measured by traffic and by whether anyone would recognise the name. Editorial standards: a journalist or editor decided to run the piece, and it reads like the rest of the site. Relevance: the story sits on a desk your customers read, whether that's the money pages of a national, a regional title covering your city, or the trade press for your sector.
Third-party metrics such as DA are only a rough filter. A regional daily with a loyal readership is worth more than a high-metric site nobody visits. You can see examples of coverage our campaigns have earned, including the Daily Express, Daily Mail and The Sun, on the Coverage page.
Anchors, target pages and the SEO reality
You choose the target page and the anchor preference. We keep the anchor natural enough for editorial use, which in practice means brand names, bare URLs and phrases like "according to new research". News desks don't link with commercial keywords, and a profile dominated by branded anchors is what an authoritative site tends to look like.
Journalists also link to homepages, research pages and guides far more readily than to product or category pages. We design around it, building the linkable asset to merit coverage and sit inside your site's structure, so the authority can flow to commercial pages through internal links. Our PR for SEO page explains how that works.
PR links compared with guest posts and niche edits
Guest posts and niche edits are faster and cheaper per link because the sites exist to sell them, and Google's spam policies treat unlabelled paid links as link spam. A PR link costs more because it's earned inside journalism and carries a natural anchor. If your budget only covers a handful of links a year, a focused, relevant batch is usually better value than a thin spread across sites nobody reads. The digital PR vs link building guide sets out the trade-offs.
How ordering works
- Brief. Send us your website, the pages you want to strengthen and your market, and pick a package or ask us to recommend one.
- Scope. A consultant replies within one working day with the angles we'd pitch first, a recommended tier and a start date.
- Plan. We set the batch: formats, target pages, anchor approach and the desks we'll pitch, and send you the plan for information.
- Deliver. The batch runs through Insight, Angle, Asset, Pitch and Coverage, with reactive commentary alongside from Growth upwards.
- Report. Each placement is logged as it goes live with the publication, URL, link attribute and target page, plus a plain monthly summary.
What you see as the batch progresses
Each placement is logged as it goes live: publication, URL, link attribute (followed or nofollow, exactly as published), anchor and target page. Alongside it you get a plain monthly summary of what was pitched, what ran, what's still in play and what we'd change next cycle. Syndicated copies of a story, when a national piece travels through regional stablemates or Yahoo and MSN, are reported separately so the batch count stays accurate.
If you want a feel for what a report looks like before you commit, send us a brief and we'll show you one.