Digital PR can help your business to obtain more organic visitors from Google. This means that when you gain backlinks from other businesses with a high DA score, this can then pass link juice through to your domain.

There are multiple ways of achieving this, for example charity fundraising events.

The businesses that tend to ranked say number 1 on Google therefore, when you check in say Moz Pro, these companies tend to have very strong backlink profiles.

That’s to say multiple backlinks with DA scores above 90. Sometimes businesses will have thousands of these quality links!

For example, let’s say a solicitor’s practice does PR work and then runs a large charity event. This could generate a lot of publicity and more links because of this event. It can also improve visibility on LLM search platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude, as well as other well-known AI platforms like Perplexity. The event will be discussed, say local newspapers, by industry publications, and by other websites, such as the charity that is obtaining the donation. This can generate new backlinks.

It also helps you rank high on Google. It’s also widely thought that most LLMs get their information and facts from search engines such as Google; therefore, by ranking high in organic results, you can be cited more often by LLMs.

Digital PR work is important because of something called “semantic SEO”. Basically, more brand mentions and high-quality links can help improve organic search engine optimisation. It can also improve organic traffic. Because of Googlebot constantly “crawling and indexing” pages, they can spot a new links that’s just been built very quickly. This means the outbound link could then pass link juice to that domain name.

Google’s Knowledge Graph works by placing businesses higher organically and in the local SERP’s if the brand has strong authority (DA score). Therefore, because of Google’s E-E-A-T, the authoritativeness aspect is important. To improve this, you need backlinks, this is where digital PR helps generate links that are relevant and can be high quality as well.

For example, a dental practice ranked number 1 in a busy and major city normally has the best backlinks (A wide selection of links above 90 DA score). This helps improve organic traffic; therefore, gaining mentions and links is super important.

We have helped businesses gain stronger backlink profiles. We have helped businesses gain better backlinks, rank higher within Google’s SERP’s, and gain more mentions on LLMs such as ChatGPT.

When implementing a successful organic or local SEO campaign, backlinks need to be built.

Its not just large e-commerce businesses that need backlinks, local companies need them to.

Often the businesses that rank number 1 locally, for example, just in one city, they also will have strong links. They will have links built by their agency, often carrying out PR work to generate more backlinks and brand mentions in that area.

With strong backlinks, your company is much more likely to rank higher in traditional search results.

This means you could appear for main keywords and longer-tail keywords, because those pages have strong links leading to them. These links improve brand authority. Improving authority is a key part of Google EEAT.

LLMs often also use RAG, which stands for “retrieval-augmented generation”. This means businesses with much stronger backlink profiles are more likely to be read by LLMs. This means more citations; therefore, because more pages rank higher organically, they’re more likely to be used by LLMs and cited in AI search.

This stands to reason, as the right back backlinks help to improve SEO. This improves brand visibility, which then means that the LLMs they will then take more notice of that written work. Which then means its more likely to be cited by the LLM’s when people ask questions regarding the services that products that you offer.

The best digital marketing companies know journalists look for thought leaders and leading companies to cite. Whether that’s market research or, for example, an expert’s thoughts and opinions.

This is especially important when something newsworthy happens. For example, someone with expertise in AI might speak and offer their opinion on the “AI bubble” right now. A journalist might then use their opinion and cite it in an article.

Another way leading SEO companies gain links for their clients, and brand mentions, is by compiling market research at the right time.

So, what we mean by that is, just when journalists from right across the world are writing about a certain newsworthy topic, there might not be much market research on that topic at the moment.

However, a business working closely with its SEO company can create market research.

They can create market research, which they could illustrate, for example, in a bar graph or pie chart. This infographic might include stats that a journalist would want to use in their own article. Because the company may be established and have a strong reputation, journalists may incorporate that research into an article.

So you often find that leading SEO agencies compile market research on a newsworthy topic and then pitch it to journalists to see whether they want to cite those statistics, in return for a brand mention or a backlink.

When a company publishes a really good piece of content marketing that ranks #1 on Google, that piece may be mentioned and linked to by hundreds of different companies.

The reason is that answer is often perceived as the most trusted. The reason is simple, if Google ranks that answer number 1 more people click it. Then when other companies are needing advice, they often read that page, then may internally link to it. Its these links, plus the anchor text that then Googlebot reads.

Let’s give you a quick example: let’s say that you are a family law practice. Let’s say you write a series of high-quality guides offering helpful advice that are ranked number 1 in the UK. Let’s say that each of these articles gains hundreds of thousand of visitors per month.

Then other publications, such as charities or organisations offering advice they may cite your advice as you are seen as the best law practice offering advice on that topic. This generates backlinks.

Businesses also want to link to the work to help readers find useful pages where they can gain more knowledge on that subject. For example, a bike retailer may link to a bike tyre manufacturer. The bike company may not retail tyres, but they link to the bike tyre company because that’s the tyre they recommend as a replacement. These links matter to the bike tyre company, as they have come from a quality and relevant website.

As a business, it’s important to write content marketing that shows you are thought leaders and experts on that topic. This is now incredibly important because of the EEAT update.

The EEAT update by Google means that businesses that show they are the experts on that product or service simply rank higher. Therefore, PR work could centre around showing that you are the best in the business, by conducting for example market research. This market research shows that you better understand your market, that you care about your customers thoughts.

Its also likely to provide valuable insights into your business sector. For example, it could be statistics on how much the average new car costs, this could then get cited by hundreds of car dealers, generating a lot of do-follow links, with diversified anchor text. The link juice generated by conducting that market research, could be enough to move some businesses into the number 1 position organically on Google.

Therefore, the best SEO businesses look at the questions customers regularly ask the clients business and generate an answer. Also, in-depth articles, normally contain market research, which again gets cited by other companies, which can generate links.

Leading companies know that to rank at the top of Google, they need the strongest, best backlinks.

The long and short of it is, businesses that gain the most organic traffic and rank highest in Google normally have the best backlinks. We as an agency for example have conducted our own PR work to move our agency up Google’s ranks.

For example, we wrote work offering SEO advice, this actually got mentioned by Search Engine Land, a leading publication This then cemented us in the number 1 position and one of the reasons our agency ranks so highly.

This means, let’s say that the business ranks 1st for a highly competitive keyword; normally, that business will have a lot of quality backlinks. One backlink alone can make a difference if it comes from a leading brand. However, more often than not, a lot of backlinks will be needed from different sources.

When you check a company’s backlinks in, say, Ahrefs, you’ll usually see hundreds of quality backlinks.

Often, these brands earn these links by writing quality content.
Another way is for businesses to do PR work, where, for example, journalists may mention the business.

Building backlinks, well, that’s massively time-consuming task when conducting “competitor backlink research”. Basically means, checking your competitors backlinks, then looking to replicate some of the links.

Many businesses prefer to invest in PR work, as an event, such as charity event, could generate a lot of links in one go.
For example, there could be companies that sponsor the event, they may link to the main company putting on the event. Then there’s the amount raised for charities; this could be cited by local newspapers, which again could generate more links.

For example, a business with hundreds of quality links might have taken hundreds of hours to build.

For example, each piece of content marketing- let’s say an evergreen piece of content marketing could take 2 days to write.

Then it’s only when that work ranks high on Google that it will obtain organic visitors. Then this is when other businesses could potentially link to that piece of work.

However, gaining backlinks this way can often be a very slow process.

This is why businesses use digital PR; for example, you could run a business expedition, complete a charity event, or launch a product and invite journalists.

Then, through this work, you could gain a lot of backlinks, and that’s without writing and publishing content marketing.

Therefore, digital PR work helps improve a business’s semantic SEO. For example, a solicitor’s practice could complete charity work. Local newspapers could mention this work.

This generates brand mentions and links.

The LLM’s read and learn from pages already published on the internet.

They therefore read pages which are ranked on the 1st page of Google’s results.

This is why some of the best SEO companies around the world give us the same advice. Focus first on improving your organic search engine optimisation; then you’ll rank higher on Google. Then businesses will be read by LLMs and are more likely to be cited by ChatGPT or Perplexity.

However, we can also advise that part of the process of improving AEO, GEO and SEO is to build quality links.

Why do businesses with the strongest backlink profiles rank at the top of Google?
Google’s algorithm has always placed businesses with the strongest backlinks on the first page. Since the days when Google used PageRank, the company rewarded businesses with more links.

However, fast forward to today, it’s not just about gaining backlinks. The backlinks must also be quality. You should have a mix of do-follow and no-follow links, and the anchor text should be written in a white-hat way.

There are many ways to earn backlinks, for example through content marketing, which can attract inbound links. Another way is working with journalists to offer expert opinions in return for a backlink. However, many businesses also look for ways to run events or do something to help their company stand out. This often gets the business mentioned in the media, which earns backlinks.

Are brand mentions as valuable as gaining backlinks?

You should aim to get a mixture of brand mentions and backlinks. Googlebot is now so clever that it doesn’t just follow hyperlinks. It can also read the text, so when your brand name is mentioned, Googlebot can pick it up.

This means that if your business gets cited on websites, Googlebot will read this. For example, if a solicitors’ practice gets mentioned on Solicitors Journal, Google’s algorithm will know it. Therefore, leading SEO experts know that it’s also a good idea to get backlinks and brand mentions.

No, some are super high quality; for example, they have very high DA domain authority scores. These quality links will nudge your business up Google’s ranks.

Low-quality backlinks are often referred to by marketing consultants as spam links. Spam links can damage your company’s backlink profile. They can mean that the backlink profile is low quality.

It’s important for the marketing agency you hire to audit your company’s backlinks regularly. The reason is twofold.

First, you don’t want too many spam backlinks in your backlink profile.

The second reason is because of something called negative SEO. What this means is that sometimes a direct competitor could build spam links against you. That is to damage your rankings. Therefore, SEO agencies need to audit the backlink profile and look for spam links.

If there are spam links, there often needs to be action taken