What's the difference between digital PR and link building?
The method and the result. Link building is outreach aimed at getting a link: you find relevant sites and ask them to link to a page on yours. Digital PR is getting journalists to cover your business, and links come as a side effect of the coverage.
That changes what you get back. A good link building campaign gives you a steady set of relevant links, often to the exact pages you want to rank. A good digital PR campaign gives you fewer, bigger wins: national or trade coverage, mentions of your brand, and people who actually read about you.
How does link building work?
It's research and polite asking. You find sites that already write about your subject and give them a reason to link to you.
- Resource pages: sites that list useful tools or guides in your field.
- Broken links: pages linking to something that no longer exists, where your page would be a good replacement.
- Unlinked mentions: sites that already mention your business but don't link to it.
- Guest articles: writing a genuinely useful piece for a relevant site.
- Partners and suppliers: businesses you already work with, who can list you.
How does digital PR earn links?
With a story a journalist wants to run. That might be original findings from your own data, a strong expert view on a live news story, a useful tool or a human story about your customers. When the piece goes online, the publication often links to your site, and even when it doesn't, your brand is named on a site people trust.
Our guide to what digital PR is covers the method in full.
What do Google's rules say about links?
Google's spam policies count buying or selling links that pass ranking credit as link spam, along with excessive link swaps and automated link schemes. Paid or sponsored links should be marked with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".
That applies to both approaches. A link building campaign built on paid guest posts or link networks risks the site. So does "PR" that's really paid placement dressed up as coverage. Earned links, from real sites, for real reasons, are what both should be aiming for.
Which should you choose?
It depends on where your site is now. Work through these questions in order.
- Is the site technically sound and are the key pages good? If not, fix that first, or links will be wasted.
- Do you lack the basics: listings, partner links, mentions in your industry? Start with link building.
- Do specific pages need links to rank, such as a service or a guide? Use targeted link building.
- Do you have stories: data, opinions, launches, customers worth talking about? Add digital PR.
- Are competitors named in the press and in AI answers where you aren't? Digital PR closes that gap.
- Measure both on what matters: rankings for the pages you care about, referral visits and enquiries.
Do links from press coverage matter if they're nofollow?
Yes, more than most people think. Google treats nofollow as a hint, not a strict rule, and the coverage still sends readers and names your brand on a trusted site. Brand mentions on sites people trust also shape how AI assistants describe and recommend businesses, which is a growing reason to do digital PR at all.
How do digital PR and link building work together?
Digital PR builds the authority of the whole site. Link building points relevant links at the pages that need them. Run together, PR lifts the domain and link building makes sure the money pages get their share.
In practice, the same team can do both: every story that lands creates follow-up chances, such as unlinked mentions to convert and trade sites that want a version of the story.