Why this matters

Digital PR is rated #1 link building tactic by 48.6% of SEOs (practitioner survey, 518 SEO professionals).
90%+ of top digital PR campaigns use original data or expert commentary as the hook.
Google's John Mueller: "Digital PR can be more impactful for SEO than technical optimization."
Top-ranking pages earn 3.8x more links than other page-one results — backlinks remain a strong ranking correlation.
Brands are 6.5x more likely to be cited via third-party sources than their own domains in AI answers (vendor research, Oct 2025). Earned media is as important for AEO as it is for classic SEO.
Earned media distribution boosts AI citations up to 325% vs. publishing only on-site (syndication research, Dec 2025).
Average cost per quality editorial link: ~$750. Teams spend $3K-$12K/month on average on link building.

Process

Backlink profile baseline. Audit the existing link profile: total referring domains, DR distribution, topical relevance, and any toxic patterns. You can't improve what you haven't measured.
Identify linkable assets. What can you actually point to when pitching? Original research, tools/calculators, comprehensive guides, proprietary data, or expert commentary.
Design data-driven PR campaigns. The 90%+ winning pattern: original research → press release → coordinated outreach.
Execute unlinked mention reclamation. Fastest wins in the entire discipline — find places where your brand is already mentioned without a link, and ask for the link.
Run outreach. Quality over quantity. Personalized pitches to real journalists on real beats. Never buy, never mass-spray.
Monitor and report. Track earned placements, referring domains gained, and AI citation impact over quarters.
Build brand mentions for AI visibility. YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, publisher mentions — the 6.5x AI citation multiplier lives here.