What’s the Difference Between Digital PR and Link Building?

Most businesses nowadays know that having a proper marketing strategy is a must if they want to ensure that their site is visible. Currently, most companies opt for agencies that employ different techniques, with digital PR and link building being the most commonly used.

Choosing one over the other is not just a simple decision: both are very different, although most people often think they are the same. Therefore, it’s very important to explain in detail what these methods are and how they can help you choose the right one.

Understanding What is Link Building

Defining what link building is should be the first step in addressing both methods and knowing their uses. Link building is defined as the activity carried out within an SEO strategy, aiming to build a network of varied external links.

Constructing a network of these links is highly useful and beneficial for making a site more visible. Hyperlinks have plenty of advantages, and one of the main reasons to use them is that Google ranking factors place significant emphasis on these links.

For a while now, backlinks that your page receives from others are no longer rewarded based on quantity, but quality. This means that having a few (but reputable and trustworthy ones) is much more important than being linked from many low-quality sites.

Addressing the importance of having high-quality links is vital to increase the site’s rankings, leading to more traffic. This also opens new possibilities, such as more customers, ways to generate more revenue, and other similar commercial purposes.

Maintaining constant link-building activity is vital, not only from external sites but also within internal ones. Directing users from one page to another within your site can make the site complete and enhance user experience, moving readers fluidly between different categories.

Types of Links for Link Building

Experts who decide to create a link-building strategy know that there are different types of links, with each one being useful for different situations:

• Natural links: it’s considered a natural link when it happens organically. It means that it’s not paid or sponsored by third-party sites, but as a reference to a website, content or similar.
• Manual links: the result of reaching to other sites or blogs to ask for a link is considered as a manual link. This often involves creating content that promotes such a site, and that they want to publish.
• Acquired links: as the term itself says, an acquired link is one that was purchased to be added. This is considered a black hat technique and must be done very carefully to avoid using link farms that can harm the website rankings.
• Non-editorial links: also known as created links, these links are actually negative; since they don’t add real value. Most can be found in forums and embedded widgets, and will be removed if Google notices it, since it’s considered a dishonest practice.

All of these links are useful in link-building strategies that can be adapted to your business website, ensuring that visibility and rankings improve over time.

Defining Digital PR

After addressing link building, it’s important to understand what digital PR is to know the differences between the two. This is a technique used by many experts to increase the visibility of brands and websites.

The process of digital PR has existed for many years now, simply known as Public Relations. However, with the digitalization of many activities and the rise of the Internet, it has taken this new name.

One of the pillars of digital PR is focused on promoting brand notoriety over the web, with a very large scope. Most of its activities involve publishing articles, building relationships with journalists, using influencers, press releases, or creative campaigns.

Experts know that to follow a correct digital PR strategy, they must tailor their approach for each business. Having a sharp eye and checking every detail is vital to identify what’s more suitable for each company.

Can Digital PR Use Link Building?

Digital public relations techniques don’t usually involve the use of link building, although it’s possible to earn them through data, expert commentary, and stories. For example, journalists writing a story or global news may need a link for a source.

In these cases, digital PR can collect that information and share a story about why such data matters: a record of what’s happening, bringing data into the users’ lives and understanding the world. Such links usually get traffic immediately, quickly hitting the news.

What’s the Difference Between Digital PR and Link Building?

Having clarified what each method does, it’s time to analyze their similarities and differences to determine which is most suitable for the company.

Between the two, the biggest difference lies in their purpose. Digital PR’s main aim is to increase the visibility and popularity of the brand, making products trusted by journalists, bloggers, and influencers, resulting in attracting more customers.

Link building, on the other hand, aims to build an entire network of high-quality hyperlinks that can improve positioning within search engines (this differs greatly from digital PR, as that method doesn’t necessarily involve the presence of links, as previously mentioned).

Additionally, link building must follow certain guidelines, complying with requirements that digital PR doesn’t demand, such as the notorious dofollow.

What Should You Choose?

Our experts at Kala provide businesses with many strategies based on link building, as it’s more efficient for SEO and can be far more beneficial in the long term. Why? Because link building can be one of the most important pillars of successful SEO.

It plays a crucial role, providing not only authority and relevance to your rankings but also helping your users navigate your website smoothly.

Additionally, the criteria of Google’s algorithms for searches are aligned with the key benefits of link building: increased traffic and trust, organic traffic, lower bounce rates, more visibility and customer opportunities, higher metrics, and loyal followers.

Note that link building is also heavily influenced by the technical aspects of website growth, unlike digital PR. This is effective in boosting your position in search engines, increasing domain authority, and positioning your brand as an authoritative one.

Authority Building: Another Metric You Should Care About

While choosing between digital PR and link building is important for developing a strategy, there’s another metric that is often forgotten: building authority. A domain’s authority is a very powerful website metric that has a direct impact on organic traffic from Google.

This metric considers many factors, but its main focus is on the number of quality backlinks the site has. The more links from reputable sites your page has, the higher the domain authority will be.

To increase domain authority, experts often conduct backlink audits, ensuring that all of the links where your page is linked are of high quality. This also opens up the opportunity to sort through them and identify which ones are not working. This knowledge is vital.

Last but not least, the biggest benefit of increasing authority comes with earning even more backlinks from authoritative sites; meaning that a successful SEO and backlink strategy, along with attention to domain authority, can do wonders.

Conclusion

The main difference between digital PR and link building lies in their approach. While they share the common goal of improving a website’s online visibility and authority, they differ significantly in their methods and scope of application.

Digital PR focuses on creating engaging content, building relationships with journalists, and gaining high-quality media coverage that enhances a brand’s reputation and generates backlinks naturally.

Link building, on the other hand, is highly focused on acquiring links from other websites to improve search engine rankings, often using strategies like guest posting or directory submissions.

It’s highly recommended to hire a marketing agency like Kala that can provide you with the necessary tools and expertise to ensure your page grows at a non-stop rate in the long-term. This way, your page will see an increase of authority, revenue, clicks and awareness.