When others link to your website, Google wants to learn what value you can provide to users – the very reason someone gave you a backlink. Here it is Digital Public Relations (Digital PR) comes to.

Compared to manual link building, digital PR focuses on teaching a search engine about your expertise, which is reaffirmed by other publications related to your content.

Let's take a deeper look at how search engines like Google have evolved, how digital PR works, and why using it alongside manual link building efforts is considered the best way to keep your site relevant.

Google has gotten smart

Google has traditionally been all about links – the more links the better. However, it has grown into a smart semantic search engine. Instead of just looking at links, it tries to understand the context, including the site's information, what it offers, and similar details.

Google's focus is shifting to valuable pages that provide useful and strong content Experience, Expertise, Authority and Credibility (EEAT) signals. In other words, link quality will be more important than quantity.

For example, websites with limited authority, regardless high traffic, are focused on creating actual relevance. They are essentially convincing Google that they are experts in a certain topic or niche. And this is one of the defining factors between digital PR and manual link building.

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Understanding digital PR

Digital PR is a lot like traditional public relations, except it's focused on the digital space. It's using online channels to manage your brand reputation and build positive relationships with your target audience.

When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO)Digital PR helps to:

• Attracting visitors to your website.
• Getting other websites to link to yours, which improves your website's authority and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).

There is no single way to conduct digital PR outreach. However, a common but effective strategy involves content creation efforts. In other words, you need to create valuable assets, including reports, infographics, white papers, statistics, and other content that is good enough for other publications to organically link to your work.

Digital PR creates quality connections, but it takes time

Organic backlinks — Voluntary links to your content — are considered higher quality links than those you build manually (either by guest posting or affiliate linking). Digital PR is a powerful tool for getting such high quality links. However, it is a long shot that requires effort and patience to yield good results. That is why.

Building relationships

You must consistently demonstrate your brand's value and expertise before members of your target audience will become willing to recommend or link to your content.

Creating valuable content

Researching topics, providing feedback or launching campaigns are not done in one session. You have to invest a significant amount of time and resources.

Gaining organic coverage

Journalists are constantly advertising, so your content needs to be truly newsworthy and relevant to their audience to stand out and get coverage. Sometimes, you also need to have a strategic outreach plan to pitch your content to the right journalists and publications.

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Manual link building remains an effective SEO strategy

While digital PR is a great way to increase authority, manual link building remains effective in maintaining your website's visibility and relevance. The only difference is that you are proactively getting backlinks to your website instead of letting journalists volunteer to do the linking.

However, given the change in the current landscape, you should focus your link building efforts on earning juicy links instead of spamming them. Here are some manual link building strategies that can still yield good results:

Guest posting

Write high quality articles for other relevant websites in your niche. Then, be sure to include a link to your website within the content.

Building the broken link

Find broken links on relevant websites and contact the website owners, suggesting your content as a replacement.

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) submission.

There are several platforms where journalists post their questions about topics that can be very specific. Answer their questions with great answers, you can potentially earn a backlink to the published article.

Networking and relationship building

Connecting with influencers and leaders in your country is always a good tactic. As you build relationships for your business, you may also find natural networking opportunities.

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Risk penalties for building manual links

Manual link building is seen as a method to repeatedly earn digital PR links (which can take a lot of time). While it may be faster, it also carries the risk of your website being penalized when done incorrectly. Here are some cases when this can happen:

Unnatural connection profile

Search engines like Google analyze link patterns to identify websites that engage in manipulative link building. An example of this is when your website has a sudden increase in links that look unnatural, including those from low-quality websites, identical anchor texts, or links to private blog networks.

Manipulative link building techniques

Engaging in specific practices can be flagged directly as manipulative and lead to penalties. Examples include buying links, excessive link exchanges, and comment spamming.

A two-pronged approach to link building is best

Truth be told, search engines tend to rely more on topic relevance than human-driven linking efforts today. In other words, digital PR is becoming a trend – and you should get on board with it too.

However, combining both approaches can help your business build a more effective strategy for building high-quality links. In particular, digital PR will help you get natural and authoritative links from reputable sources. Meanwhile, manual link building allows you to target and control the quality of the connection.

Digital PR can be resource intensive compared to manual link building. If your team isn't yet ready to focus on creating high-quality content, manual link building remains a great route to take.