Most link building tactics work one link at a time.
You find a broken link. You pitch a resource page. You pitch a guest post. One email, one outcome, repeat.
Digital PR works differently.
You create something genuinely newsworthy. A journalist covers it. That coverage gets picked up by other outlets. You end up with 20, 50, or 100 links from a single campaign — from publications you could never have pitched individually.
That's the upside. The downside is that it takes real work to get right. And most "digital PR campaigns" fail because they're not actually newsworthy.
This guide covers what works, what doesn't, and how to approach it correctly.
Digital PR is the practice of creating content, data, or stories that journalists want to cover — and distributing them in a way that earns press coverage and backlinks.
It borrows from traditional PR (building relationships with journalists, pitching stories) and content marketing (creating assets worth publishing) and combines them with link building intent.
The key word is earned. You're not paying for coverage. You're not submitting to press release directories and hoping. You're creating something genuinely interesting and making it easy for journalists to cover it.
Traditional PR typically focuses on:
Digital PR focuses specifically on creating content that earns online coverage with a link back to your site.
That specific orientation changes the strategy. You're not just looking for any coverage. You're looking for coverage that includes a link, ideally to a page with strategic value for your SEO.
Traditional PR would be thrilled with a brand mention in Forbes.
Digital PR wants that mention AND a dofollow link to a target page.
Not everything qualifies as a digital PR asset. Here's what actually earns coverage.
Journalists love original data. If you can tell them something nobody else knows — and back it up with data — you have a story.
This doesn't mean you need a $50,000 research budget. You can:
The insight matters more than the sample size. "We surveyed 500 HR managers and found that 67% have hired a candidate they initially rejected based on a LinkedIn profile" is a story. "We surveyed 10 people and found that people like working from home" is not.
A recurring study or index gives journalists something to cover annually and creates a consistent link magnet.
Examples that earn consistent links:
The ranking format — where you can say "New York ranks #1 for X, followed by Los Angeles and Chicago" — gives journalists a ready-made story structure.
Newsjacking is the practice of attaching your expert commentary to a breaking news story.
A major company announces layoffs. You're an employment law expert. You have 30 minutes to get quotes out to journalists covering the story before they finish their articles.
Speed is everything in newsjacking. The window is short. But when it works, you get quoted in articles that are going to get significant coverage because they're about a trending topic.
This is closely related to HARO link building — HARO is a formalised version of the same principle.
A well-designed map, chart, or interactive tool can earn links purely because it's useful and visually interesting.
"A visualisation of every airport in the US colour-coded by on-time performance rating" will get linked to by travel publications, aviation blogs, and data journalism sites.
These take more investment to build. But strong visual assets earn passive links long after the initial campaign — people discover them, embed them, and link to them months or years later.
For smaller campaigns, a strong original opinion from a recognised expert can earn coverage.
This works best when:
It doesn't work for generic "5 tips for productivity" thought leadership. That gets ignored.
This is where most digital PR campaigns die.
People create something and call it a "study" or a "report" without asking the fundamental question: why would a journalist care?
Journalists care about stories that are:
Ask yourself: if I pitched this to a journalist at a major publication, would they immediately understand why their readers would care?
If the answer requires two paragraphs of context, it's probably not news.
You can't do digital PR without a media list. A media list is a curated database of journalists, writers, and editors who cover your niche.
Start with publications, then find journalists.
Identify the 20–50 publications most relevant to your niche. Not just the biggest ones — also trade publications, niche blogs, and industry newsletters.
For each publication, find the journalists or editors who cover relevant topics. Look at their bylines. Check their author pages. Look at what specific types of stories they've covered.
Use LinkedIn and Twitter.
Most journalists are active on at least one. Follow them. Observe what they cover. Many journalists post about what they're working on — that's intelligence.
Use tools.
For each journalist in your list:
The pitch is the most important part of digital PR execution.
A great campaign with a bad pitch gets ignored. A decent campaign with a great pitch gets covered.
One paragraph max to explain the story. What is the finding? Why does it matter? What's the headline?
Lead with the most surprising or interesting finding. Not context. Not background. The news.
Keep the full email under 200 words. If you can't explain why this is interesting in 200 words, you don't understand the story well enough yet.
Attach or link to the data. Make it easy for them to verify. Don't make them ask for it.
Offer exclusivity selectively. Offering a major publication 24–48 hours of exclusivity before you pitch more broadly can significantly increase your chance of landing a top-tier placement. But use this sparingly — you can only offer it to one outlet.
Subject: Data: UK remote workers are 2.4x more likely to live outside major cities than pre-pandemic
Hi Sarah,
We surveyed 800 UK remote workers and found that 64% have moved outside a major city since 2020 — compared to 27% in 2019.
The biggest movers: mid-career professionals aged 30–45 in tech and finance, most of whom cited cost of living and outdoor access as primary drivers, not career reasons.
I've attached the full data breakdown. Happy to do a quick call if you'd find it useful.
[Your name and title] [Your URL]
That pitch is 75 words. It leads with a specific finding, provides context in one sentence, mentions the source, and makes next steps easy.
Digital PR is not a guaranteed output machine.
A well-run campaign with genuinely interesting data, properly targeted pitching, and a good journalist list might generate:
For every campaign that earns 50 links, there are five that earn 3–5. That's the reality.
Improving your hit rate requires understanding why things don't land: was the story not interesting enough? Was the list poorly targeted? Was the pitch unclear? Each campaign gives you data to improve the next one.
Digital PR is most effective when you're not starting from scratch on every campaign.
The journalists who have covered you once are far more likely to cover you again. They know you produce reliable data. They know you respond quickly. They know your content is worth opening.
Maintain a relationship:
A handful of warm journalist relationships can be worth more than a media list of 200 cold contacts.
| Tactic | Links per campaign | Effort | Link quality |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital PR | 10–100+ | Very high | Exceptional |
| HARO | 1–5 per pitch round | Low | Very high |
| Guest posting | 1 per post | High | High |
| Broken link building | 5–20 | Medium | High |
| Resource page outreach | 3–15 | Medium | Medium-high |
Digital PR has the highest ceiling of any link building tactic. It also has the highest floor of effort required.
It pairs naturally with HARO link building — digital PR for big campaigns, HARO for ongoing media presence. Together they build consistent press link acquisition as part of a broader link building strategy.
If you want help running digital PR campaigns, take a look at our link building services.