How Is Outreach Different To Digital PR?
Outreach and digital PR have similar objectives including link acquisition, improving DA, increasing brand awareness and driving website traffic.
These two tactics go hand in hand, working with each other to strengthen your SEO strategy. Yet, the processes behind each tactic are different. As a digital marketing agency, we often hear of confusion between the two.
In this blog, we cover the difference between outreach and digital PR and how they work together. Firstly, let’s start with what links are.
What are links?
Links are an important element of your organic strategy. As part of Google’s algorithm that ranks your website, the search engine uses links as trust signals.
Good links can help you achieve higher organic ranking positions in the SERPs by highlighting your site’s authority. If you can rank higher organically, this will allow you to reduce your investment in paid media.
“Links should be part of any SEO strategy as Google considers them to be a trust signal. You also get rewarded for high quality links. Much like you get rewarded for a website that’s well optimised and has great content, links are part of a Google’s algorithm that ranks your website and gauges how well served it is to meet the demands of searchers.” – Cheryl Crossley, Head of Digital PR, Ingenuity Digital
There are a few ways to obtain links. If you’re a well-known brand, it’s possible to gain natural links through people and other brands linking to your business across the internet. However, more commonly, digital PR and outreach are used to proactively build links.
What is the difference between outreach and digital PR?
Outreach
The objective of outreach is to build links that power your website by targeting industry-specific websites. This involves gathering links on sites that are targeted to your brand’s niche such as bloggers, councils, tourist boards or universities.
Although these sites don’t always have high domain authorities (DAs), they will be relevant to your brand. This makes them powerful element for supporting your organic strategy.
Digital PR
On the other hand, digital PR seeks opportunities for your brand to gain exposure. Obtaining links through this tactic centres around relevant media news outlets and higher domain authority sites. Examples could include The Guardian, The Daily Mail and The Telegraph.
Due to the high DA of these sites, driving links from them will lead to substantial SEO rewards such as increased traffic and brand exposure, having an overall effect on your site’s ranking and DA.
Joining wider conversations in the media, digital PR involves thinking creatively. This will help you generate ideas that publishers will want to link back to.
How do outreach and digital PR work together?
There are simply too many websites out there for one team to work on alone. As a link building agency, we use digital PR and outreach collaboratively to drive high quality, high volume links. Vickie Bailey, Head of Outreach at Ingenuity Digital reinforced the need to see outreach and digital PR as a dual approach:
“Businesses need to stop thinking of digital PR and outreach separately, they need to be considered them a conjoined effort because they really do complement and strengthen each other when used together.”
Our specialist teams work to understand your position in the market compared to where you want to be. Deploying in-house developed tools, we conduct DA bandgap analysis, link gap analysis, competitor analysis and keyword research. This allows us to identify opportunities to improve your organic performance.
Taking this approach also allows us to earn a mixture of links across a variety of websites. Having this range of links, sites and DAs creates a varied backlink profile that Google deems more trustworthy.
The power of outreach and digital PR
SEO is a fast-changing world that’s constantly developing. Building high-quality links gives you a better chance of boosting your DA, ranking higher in the SERPs and driving traffic to your website.
If your competitors are constantly enhancing their SEO strategy, obtaining links and making continuous website improvements, you will soon get left behind. Moreover, building links can even help you maintain your current position so you can continue driving more sales and traffic than your competition.
Link building through outreach and digital PR should form a crucial part of your SEO strategy. We’ve supported Gallagher, Been Let Down, Boyes Turner Claims, LoyaltyLion and CitizenM with their organic strategies to achieve impressive results. If you want to find out more about these tactics, our in-house experts can share their insight into how effective link building tactics can improve your digital performance. Contact us to learn more.