“Brands and marketers need a link building wake-up call and this report delivers it. You need a process that’s not just a rigid checklist, but a living, breathing strategy that can dance with unpredictable shifts. I’ve seen too many teams treat their link building like a static spreadsheet—and spoiler alert: that’s why they’re stuck at the bottom of the results page.

The Link Building Trends Report dropped a truth bomb: only 29% of teams are actually crushing their link building efforts. Why? Because they’re trapped between two deadly extremes—total chaos or complete stagnation. I think the best link building teams strive to find a balance between scalable processes and flexibility. “

“Having a documented process definitely helps with training a team and ensuring consistency, but it shouldn’t ever be so tight that it limits creativity.

I often think of these as frameworks, rather than tight processes. Something that a team can work within yet still have the flexibility to adjust things to the campaign being worked on.

For example, repeatable processes are a must for end-to-end campaign production, in terms of the steps that should be followed.

Yet ideation, for example, should be more a case of strong guidance, in my opinion. No two people ideate the same, so here having a strict process will limit the output. You absolutely do need to have frameworks here though; guidance on different ways to ideate.

It’s all about striking a balance between creativity and processes, but about keeping things flexible enough to deviate from the ‘norm’ as and when it is needed.

And a lot of the time, how much these robust processes should be adhered to depends on the seniority of the person working on the campaign; for juniors, they’re a lot more useful to follow almost step-by-step, than an experienced marketer who knows when (and why) to deviate and pivot.”

“This strategy is nuanced, so my quote represents the depth of the challenge and potential solutions: When earning links from authoritative sources, journalists and publishers prioritize content that educates, entertains, or provides “breaking news” in the form of fresh, relevant, and actionable data their audience values — think original data studies, interactive tools, expert commentary on trending news, or thought leadership addressing industry FAQs.

Ultimately, earning links and brand coverage is about creating content worth citing.

Unfortunately, most teams struggle to earn high-quality links to sales-focused pages because those pages rarely offer significant value beyond the brand’s conversion goal. Few reputable sites will link to an advertorial page without payment.

However, there are ways to improve your odds of earning links to these “money pages,” such as incorporating robust FAQs featuring subject matter experts, proprietary industry research, and other strategies that enhance the perceived value of the page. When done right, this style of conversion-focused content can increase your chances of earning links from relevant mid-tier publishers in your niche, as well as from .edu and .gov resource pages.

Still, SEOs often (and understandably) prioritize UX and conversion optimization over earned media enhancements on key money pages. But you don’t always need to kill two birds with one stone.

We’ve repeatedly seen that earning links to top-funnel or mid-funnel assets — like newsworthy data journalism campaigns or robust evergreen guides — naturally attracts and scales backlinks from authoritative publishers.

This strengthens a brand’s citations, trust signals, and Domain Authority, lifting rankings across the entire site, while preserving the unique intent of these two distinct strategies.”

“Sometimes it can be hard for a link builder – in whatever shape that looks like – to properly communicate value.

Impact on revenue is always the goal. It has to be. But there are two sides to impacting revenue when it comes to link building programs; direct and indirect conversions.

Direct conversions are more straight forward to measure, but typically the links capable of driving direct conversions are a small part of a link profile. Here we’re talking having your product or service featured in a ‘top 10’ or ‘best x’ list from sites dominating informational search or a platform people use to find products or services in your industry. Building and then maintaining relationships with those who write and update these lists is key, and measuring the impact of your link is extremely straight forward with any basic traffic analytics tool.

Indirect conversions are where 80%+ of a link builders focus will be, and this sits firmly within the realms of SEO. Therefore, the primary goal becomes rankings-based, which can be at a domain-wide level or if can be more specific to individual pages.

Links, along with other trust and authority based metrics, are and will continue to be a huge element of any search based algorithm. However, the value of a link is hard to measure especially as a site can suffer from technical SEO issues or content quality management that is often out of your control.

My recommendation would be to focus both at a domain-level for tracking keyword performance, and also on a group of key pages you’re buildings link to directly or funnelling equity towards. This should ideally be a few pages – not one. Otherwise you’re value proposition is at risk from any tech SEO hiccups or product teams redesigning the key page in way search engines don’t like.

Measure rankings and other sources of traffic before your link building program starts. Do so continuously throughout your link building efforts, and a final wrap up towards the end. You want to measure the change in traffic to the page and, most importantly, the change in transactional value overall.

We did this years ago for a global travel client and through tracking 5 key pages and using our tracked keyword performance and conversion values in GA, we could communicate our impact as an increase equalling a 2,160% ROI from the 6 figure sum they’d invested in us – over £2m in increased revenue directly to those 5 pages.”

“Every single link-building team goes through struggles. Why? Because at the end of the day, humans are placing the links.

Whether you’re asking for it, paying for it, or creating some bad-ass linkable asset or PR campaign, an editor is making the call on whether that link lands.

This human aspect brings unpredictability and a lack of control to the table.

Ask any link builder if they’ve ever struggled, and they’ll buy you a beer and cry on your shoulder. But this? This is exactly what separates the winners from the losers.

The teams that win aren’t the ones who never screw up—they’re the ones who screw up, learn from it, and adapt. They take the hit, tweak the strategy, and try again. They just. keep. going.

So bear that in mind, next time your campaign sucks. :)”

“I think that a boost in rankings for the target page is the simplest and fastest way to see the impact of a single backlink.

For me, relying on domain-wide signals like domain authority just isn’t realistic for a single backlink.

If your target page is a product page or specific article rather than the homepage, you can easily narrow it down and see if that page has grown in visibility from your link-building efforts.
In the following few weeks, I’d also check for an increase in traffic to that page.

Growth in organic traffic (from the improved rankings) and referral traffic (users arriving directly via that link) is usually the next step in the success of a link-building campaign.”

“As an agency, we always emphasize that the value of link building can’t be measured by any one metric. The KPIs we monitor depend on the client’s goals, but a few always indicate a meaningful impact.

First, we look at growth in organic traffic to the pages we’re building links to. It’s one of the clearest indicators that links are doing their job and driving visibility where we want it. Keyword rank gains—especially for commercial or bottom-of-funnel terms—are another significant indicator we track. They help confirm the value of the links to SEO over the long term.

We also closely monitor referring domain quality and relevance over quantity. A few high-authority, well-placed links are better dozens of spammy ones. And if they’re also driving engagement-referral traffic, that’s all the better—proof that the link adds value beyond search engines.

Where possible, we also consider the conversions or revenue generated by the target pages. Making those connections is not always straightforward, but assigning links to business outcomes is how we maintain stakeholders’ trust.

One metric I don’t see teams leveraging as much as they could is benchmarking. Comparing performance between unlinked and linked pages is one of the most effective ways to show impact—however, as the report shows, only a quarter of organizations are leveraging it.

And finally, as AI continues to advance, we’re starting to try and check if content we’re pointing to is being quoted in AI-powered results. It’s a new KPI, but I believe it will become more and more important in the future.”

“1. Website tech spend: One metric to get additional insights about a link is the website’s tech spend.

Builtwith tells you approximately how much a site is spending on its technology stack.

We can use website tech spend as a proxy for how much money they are spending on their site’s content and links.

2. Website traffic value: I like to report about the site’s Traffic value (Both aHrefs and Semrush report this metric)

A Link from a site with a higher STV is better than a site with a lower STV (Considering DR and monthly traffic are the same for both the sites).

3. Majestic’s Topical Trust flow: Majestic looks at a website’s entire link profile and categorizes each link according to the industry/niche it belongs to.

You might think getting a link from a site with decent DR, traffic and niche relevance is enough but sometimes under the hood, the site itself mostly has links from non relevant industries.

4. Fake DR: I report if the link opportunity has a manipulated DR or not.

5. Fake Traffic: Some webmasters are using bots to search for their Site’s brand name and clicking on the results.

SEO tools like aHrefs and semrush pick up these clicks (unbeknownst to the fact that these are not real clicks) and report it in their traffic metric.

So I also like to report if a site has fake traffic or not.”

Garrett and the team found that benchmarking is often missing from many reports to help show the clear impact of links on pages, so we asked directly in the next question.

“We choose what sites to get links from by looking at these 4 factors:

1. Is the link indexed?
2. Is it followed?
3. Can you manipulate the anchor text?
4. How many pages rank on Google on the site you’re getting a link from?

As far as how we measure the impact the links have, we isolate link building from other SEO work and do it in stages so that it’s easier to tell what is actually impacting ranking.”

“Personally I walk through this with a few steps:

1. First establishing their goals and budget for an engagement. We’re usually working as a general SEO / SEM vendor, so the client’s goals are typically driving more qualified leads and sales at an acceptable ROI.

2. From there, we’ll map the deliverables to the budget and give them a general sense of expected growth (and returns). This can vary significantly as a new site needs something completely different than a larger site, etc.

3. If there’s a gap at this point between the budget and the desired / expected results, I find showing specific metrics can be helpful. For example: here are the volume and quality of links your competitors – direct company competitors or broader SERP competitors – have versus what you have.

For visuals a quick comparison chart(s) can be great here, or even a call / Loom where you walk through the search results, use a tool like Ahrefs or SEM Rush, and really show them the difference between the sites they’re competing with and their site.

Increasingly, for companies showing an interest, we’ll also communicate the benefit of outreach, citations, and link building in getting higher visibility in LLMs as well.”

“I think more resources should be allocated to link building in 2025.

But I also think we need a major shift in how we’re thinking about links.

More resources should be deployed building links from sites with overlapping audiences.

We should prioritize links that generate business.

We should prioritize links that generate relevant traffic.

Generally speaking, we should ignore traditional link metrics (i.e. DA, nofollow, etc).

We need new metrics to measure link quality.”

“Definitely increase. We already know links help with search, but right now brands are focused on LLMs.

I think companies are waking up and realizing that they need to be part of all the conversations if they want to be in the output of LLMs.

Web mentions (sometimes linked), stats from studies shared through digital PR, quotes in blogs, social media mentions, and more all influence what is included in the output of LLMs.”

“I do! It’s not just about net-new linking domains though.. it’s about citable elements on sales pages: first-party data, frameworks, quotable insights, answers to frequently UNASKED questions, expert-backed breakdowns.

Links – and us folks who build them – are how brands win distribution for those elements. Link Building’s how you get your content into the training data, and how you start showing up across the network of resources that LLMs reference most often.

With our LLM Growth services we’re targeting LLM-cited resources (the publishers, pages, and formats that show up in actual AI-generated answers). Then we work to earn mentions, citations, and links from those sources.

So yes links impact generative results… But it’s where you earn them – and how – that’s evolving at a dizzying pace.”

“Definitely. The AI models have knowledge cut-off dates, so they rely heavily on real-time web search to stay current and accurate. Given that authoritative links have remained a huge search ranking factor for 20+ years, I can’t see a future where they won’t play a big role in AI answers.

Other factors may grow in importance (e.g., structured data, semantic relevance), but links will continue to be essential for brands aiming to show up in AI-generated results.”

“I strongly believe that links and brand mentions will become must-have assets for AI results. This applies to both Google and AI agent results.

We can already see that LLM models rely heavily on the quality of sites and the context where your brand is mentioned.

Also, it’s crucial to ensure that your brand is listed in listicle posts recommending the top or best options.”

“We’ve been playing around with increasing visibility for clients on LLMs for over a year and have developed some tactics that work very well. At the core of our approach is a concept we call “Context Wrapping”, ensuring that every mention of a brand, whether on its own site or in external publications, is wrapped with the sentiment we want LLMs to recognise.

For example, if your brand is Shai’s Pizzas, you’d want it associated with words like tasty, great, authentic, fresh ingredients. A well-crafted mention helps reinforce this perception in LLMs, a bit like this: “This great pizza tip was supplied by the authentic Italian pizza restaurant, Shai’s Pizzas, who use only the freshest ingredients”.

And the best way to achieve this? Digital PR with a slight difference. We basically take our learnings from the above and use it to slightly modify the way we write or press releases where we gently include some of the sentiment we want LLMs to consume. We call this AiPR.”

Digital PR has evolved as a term, but it still really lacks a definition.

It’s an emergence of historical needs for newsworthy content and links, with newer and increasingly important signals like brand awareness, trust, social media noise, and so on – all of which can directly impact demand for your product whilst indirectly impacting SEO too. Think: impact on branded search.

I’ve written numerous guides on link building tactics over 15 years, but the data is clear that older forms of link building are less prominent – and frankly – they’re less important. Here we’re talking link reclamation, broken link building, and so on.

We now know the importance of source traffic when it comes to the amount of link equity being passed, even from articles that appear on the same domain. As I’ve said before, the DR, TF, DA, etc. could all be the same, but why would converting an unlinked brand mention in an article from 2016 logically pass the same equity as a new article on the same domain that is a trending news story today? It shouldn’t and it doesn’t.

The answer and logic is clear, and that thinking is why data-led content or providing commentary to journalists are the most popular tactics – because they have the ability to pass the most equity.

SEO may change by incorporating other signals. Reputation management has long been a grey area for digital PR but not aligned with many SEO centered goals. If that changes – and it makes sense that a brand or product being viewed positively should gain more organic search traffic too – then that may be a future tactic to keep an eye on within this space.

For a long time now, I’ve seen digital PR as somewhat of an umbrella term to encompass a number of different tactics, and these results showcase that perfectly.

As we move into 2025, the most effective tactics for most brands are hero campaigns (often data-led, but not always) and both proactive and reactive expert commentary.

The trend we see here is relevance; creating and promoting content that amplifies a brand and its people around the topics they want to be known (and rank) for.

Tactics like turning brand mentions into links go hand-in-hand with these, given that not all efforts will result in a link, but with the right strategy in place, these can often be converted.

I do think Digital PR focuses on building links from high authority publications, with an emphasis on the word publications. However there is a gap we’re missing here for functional link building, this is link reclamations, broken link building, an emerging trend I believe will be popular in 2025.

Things are changing and many traditional PR teams spend a lot of their time pitching out to secure online coverage, whilst old-school digital PR tactics which perhaps don’t focus too much on relevance or brand signals, are becoming less effective.

To me, what we’re going to see going forwards is PR (let’s ditch the traditional and digital monikers) that’s done to build brand signals, yet executed in a way that earns links. It’s a win-win for everyone and stops there being the need for two teams (who often crossover) and the like.

The lines are getting more blurred, but in my opinion, Digital PR is just PR; our activity needs to be brand-relevant but also culturally relevant whilst being closely tied to business objectives.

There’s no ignoring the fact that digital PR is still primarily used as a way to earn authoritative links, and that’s not going to change.

Whilst SEOs need to earn links as part of their strategies, most will be leveraging digital PR as the primary way to achieve this.

And this means working closely with digital PRs to advise on the priority topics (to ensure relevant links are earned), that priority pages earn links and that there’s a general alignment between the two channels to maximise success and impact.

Most Digital PR agencies work closely with the SEO team but the actual trick and need here is to work just as close with SEO as Brand & PR, we need to be the glue that helps pull all these teams together. This is when magic really starts to happen.

I don’t see this changing in 2025, given that relevant and authoritative links remain a key part of SEO success.

A considered Digital PR strategy should be the first place to start before deciding how much budget to allocate to it. This should help you understand what your competitors are doing and how it’s helping them compete in the SERPs.

It’s certainly possible to do Digital PR for under $5k per month because some tactics are less expensive and time-consuming to do (case in point: I’ve worked with brands whose monthly budgets are closer to $1k and earned highly relevant and authoritative coverage).

But what you need to be realistic about is what’s achievable within that budget. Suppose you need to run a couple of monthly PR campaigns to compete.

In that case, it’s practically impossible to find a specialist or agency team who can deliver that for less (unless you’re happy to spread a project over a very long timeline).

Brands should be spending whatever they feel comfortable with, so long as they’re willing to spend it consistently. The reality is that digital PR campaigns aren’t always cheap, nor are they especially predictable in the short term.

Some brands will test out DPR, have a campaign or two underperform, and scrap the investment as a loss, when in reality they should be prepared for a longer-term trial to get an adequate sample of results.

In terms of attribution, brands get too caught up in assigning digital PR investment into either “PR” or “SEO” budgets, without realizing the value returned is going to be in both.

This creates some problems in figuring out the ROI of digital PR efforts, because in both cases, the value returned isn’t typically immediate (or immediately measurable).

Brands should approach digital PR budgets with clarity and purpose. Not every brand needs digital PR, but for those that do, the first step is defining clear goals. From there, choose an agency partner that aligns with those goals and prioritizes efficiency over complexity.

Avoid agencies that oversell long-term contracts or inflate budgets with unnecessary communication and over-ambitious campaigns. Successful digital PR is about strategy and efficiency, not complexity and waste.

A well-structured budget should reflect that mindset.

I’d think that cost would be the major limiting datapoint preventing DPR’s from knowing their CPL. You might have some idea of survey costs or monthly subscriptions, but unless you’re a decision-maker, a lot of people are in the dark about salaries, operating costs, etc. that all go into DPR campaigns. More people will have some idea of the cost to a client, but not necessarily what the margin on campaigns is vs. what you’re bringing in.

In my honest opinion, ‘cost per link’ is a useless and reductive metric. I can understand why some brands are hoping for it – they want to know how much coverage they can expect from their investment. But it’s not as black and white as that. I’d much rather pour my energy into earning great quality coverage for my clients within the budget available, than spend it on going down a reporting rabbit hole to determine a ‘cost per link’, which undoubtedly varies massively from brand to brand. It’s not about what each link costs to earn. It’s about how they contribute to improving your organic performance, and the benefits that come from that. That’s something worth measuring.

Cost per link is attractive because it’s simple and understandable. It also is a good directional indicator of campaign success, but obviously doesn’t tell the whole story. Of course you’d rather have 3 DR 90 links vs. 10 junk links, so while we use CPL as a metric, any time we look at it we’re also positioning alongside other data that might tell a more honest story about campaign success.

Cost per link has been a popular industry standard because it provides a straightforward way to quantify campaign performance and budget efficiency. However, I tell our clients to prioritize KPIs that focus on relevant, high-quality links rather than relying solely on a cost per link formula.

Cost per link can vary widely depending on the nature of the campaign and the target publications, and optimizing for a low cost per link often incentivizes quantity over quality. I’d much rather secure authoritative, contextually relevant links that drive real results for the brand than generate hundreds of low-quality or irrelevant links just to hit a low cost per link target.

It may look impressive on a spreadsheet, but it doesn’t deliver much in terms of meaningful value.

Our latest Digital PR study found that 42% of articles in media outlets across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia include data—far more than other Digital PR tactics like expert commentary.

It makes sense as data adds credibility, helping brands position themselves as trusted voices in their industry. Journalists love it too, as it gives them unique insights that aren’t available elsewhere or they can’t collect themselves.

That said, some people worry that data-led stories might be boring or less newsworthy, but that’s not the case at all. When done right, data and creativity go hand in hand. At Reboot, our PhD-level data scientists always look for ways to turn numbers into newsworthy stories that give journalists exactly what they need.

Data-led content is often considered the gold standard in digital PR because journalists are highly receptive to new research, especially when the data is statistically significant and provides fresh, relevant insights for their readers. Journalists want credible, ready-to-publish material that can add value to their reporting, and this tactic aligns closely with this need.

Additionally, data-led content is easier for agencies to implement compared to other strategies like expert commentary or interviews. Agencies can fully own the process—from content production to independent outreach—without needing to coordinate with external experts or manage additional layers of collaboration.

Journalists aim to create quality content that resonates with readers and stands out for the publications they represent. Data provides unique insights, particularly when it’s original or effectively collated to present new or original ideas.

This approach not only resonates with readers but also drives clicks and shares, which are key metrics for publications and editorial teams.

Ultimately, it’s about telling a powerful story that drives readership and presents compelling concepts that engage a broad audience.

Data-led executions are so popular because journalists love to use reliable and credible data in their stories to back up a trend or feature. Quite often journalists don’t have the time to find, analyse or aggregate data themselves, which means you’re more likely to get pick up from a well-researched data piece than for something a journalist could easily do themselves.

I presume data-led content leads the way for a few a reasons, there’s likely less client dependency, so it’s a format that can be completely owned and ran by the agency. There’s less resource risk as we know data will tell a story and offer a lot of angles to pitch out to press.

With bigger creatives, there’s more of a gamble given it often uses more resource and might flop. However, having said all of that, I don’t think data-led, creative hero and expert commentary are all mutually exclusive tactics. Solid data and findings can exist independently to earn links, but they also tell a story and often highlight a challenge.

Strategy-wise, this means that data provides the solid foundation, creative can then be used to enhance, feed in the brand and build the campaign into something much bigger.

Supplement all of this with expert commentary and you have something that fulfils the top three tactics at once – this would always be our intention when building a Digital PR campaign.

A lot of PRs probably assume press releases need to go out on a newswire to be effective, but that’s not really the case. Press releases can be a great tool for pitching as long as they’re tailored to the journalist you’re contacting.

Instead of treating them as a one-size-fits-all announcement, consider press releases a flexible way to package news that fits a journalist’s beat. When done right, they can be just as valuable as a personalized pitch and make it easier to land those media mentions. It’s about rethinking how press releases fit into a digital PR strategy.

Press releases often fail to perform well unless they are highly relevant to the current news cycle and resonate with a broad readership. Standard press releases that simply announce company news without engaging content are less interesting and perform poorly.

Effective digital PR tactics, like expert commentary, hero content, or data-led stories, tend to resonate better and are more successful in capturing audience attention. Press releases can be effective, but they need to be crafted in a way that makes them interesting and relevant to a wider audience.

I’m surprised that only 68% of digital PRs are pitching with press releases as they are an efficient and easy way of presenting press materials, data, and quotes in an easy-to-digest way.

This being said, depending on the story, a perfectly crafted pitch email can still contain all the information a journalist could need!

I’m not sure, my advice would be to always pitch a press release to press when launching a campaign. Your press release should detail and map out the story you’re pitching to journalists in the way you expect it to be told.

By not pitching a press release alongside your campaign to press you naturally place more barriers to coverage, the journalist has to do more work and dig among data to find the story.

This is perhaps fine for some journalists, but we know the industry is time pressed and so we should remove as many barriers to coverage as possible, and supplying a clear story in a press release is one way of doing that.

From an SEO perspective, there is absolutely no reason for digital PRs to start paying for link placements.

The essence of digital PR is to earn media coverage by editorially pitching to media outlets and journalists. Paying for links diminishes their value significantly, as Google can recognize paid content and downgrades its impact algorithmically.

From a branding perspective, paid content also performs worse because it lacks an organic feel, is often marked as sponsored, and is presented differently in publications.

Thus, paying for links is not a direction the industry should or will likely head toward.

This is dependent on a few things I think 1) the client goals and objectives 2) what the benefit to the paid coverage is, e.g. is it going to be filled with key brand messaging.

We don’t pay for placements and to date, we never have, however, if a client desperately wanted coverage in a leading industry publication but didn’t want to do it via a campaign in order to earn the link and wanted their brand and key sales messaging to take the focus, then we may need to reassess.

With this in mind, we could see an outcome where coverage is paid for, where we veer into paid-for advertising. This is fine if the link is attributed in the correct way for Google.

I think it’s likely as the more niche/trade publications continue to be faced by revenue challenges that we could see movements like this increase as a means to land brand-centred coverage in important and engaged publications.”

We use Google Sheets as it’s super convenient and means we can use a range of formulas together on our sheet to make our life a lot easier! It also helps us to bring everything together in one place and then we can create easy summaries which we can import into Looker Studio from a reporting perspective so overall as a tool it’s very effective and can update in real-time in line with our Google Sheets.

Siege is unique in that our prospecting process focuses on finding relevant bloggers and journalists in real-time, versus relying on established media lists. While we’ve built relationships with thousands of contacts over the years, by sending pitches in real-time we’re able to focus on finding hyper-relevant prospects for each project.

This approach allows our team to prioritize ensuring brands we work with are building high-quality, diverse, and highly relevant placements.

Our essential tools include: Google Sheets, Buzzstream, Roxhill – we find that these tools combine really well to improve efficiency and also tie in with our reporting to allow everything to be quite seamless and in real-time.

The biggest reason that teams skip the verification process is time constraints and a focus on quantity of pitches over quality. In the early days at Siege, we focused on email volume as our most important metric for promotion success.

Today we know that quality, customized pitches to the right journalist, at the right time are more important than ever.

We’ve since shifted our approach to focus on deeply vetting journalists on the front-end and have found that the time spent researching upfront leads to better results — even if fewer emails are sent.

Clean-up your media lists as you outreach rather than making verification a huge separate task. Every time you outreach something, make a note of any bounce-backs and immediately look that journalist up.

They might have shared a recent job move on social media that you simply missed. Then, update your personal media list with the new info.

This makes verification a simple, easy process that becomes a part of an outreach routine as opposed to something you need to spend hours on at once.

While I don’t think there’s anything specific to speed it up, the way we have found to keep on top of this is by ensuring we are updating as we go – so when we have responses from journalists or OOO notes from those that have left we will make an update to our internal sheets to ensure we are keeping on top of it.

In many cases these steps get skipped because of time – often we are outreaching a number of releases at any given time and checking through the journalists each time is just time that we don’t have. That said, we do have periodical checks in place to ensure that journalists are still live and do update our internal sheets and databases accordingly.

Redundancies are rife in the media industry and journalists now have to work across multiple sectors which may not actually be their “beat”, making it difficult for PRs who haven’t worked in the industry for long to differentiate what stories are actually relevant to which journalists.

A news journalist might now be helping out on product articles for Black Friday, and a fashion journalist may now be covering ad-hoc travel news, and this is the new norm.

Because there are less of them

I also think that journalists are more thinly spread now than they have ever been before, so in the past you would have journalists that would focus very specifically on niches, but now by contrast we have journalists who are spread across a number of different areas and therefore it can be slightly harder to find them.

“I rely on social media profiles more than author pages or media databases to really confirm relevance, and I think this will become much more common in 2025.

Many journalists use their social media as a portfolio and will only share links to the work they’re most proud of and that’s relevant to their beat.

In comparison, their author pages directly on publication’s websites might be full of random articles they’ve had to lend a hand on because of a co-worker redundancy, or product round-ups to support a now smaller team with Black Friday content – so it’s no longer truly representative of what they really cover and the stories that will peak their interest.”

Keeping internal notes of active journalists has definitely become more important in 2024 and I think this will continue to be even more important into 2025. Additionally, the use of social media platforms such as X or BlueSky where you can find journalists has been another key way that we have researched journalists this year and will continue moving forwards.

At Embryo, we love to take a personalised and targeted approach to outreach as we find this approach successful in securing coverage and placements.

To do this, we first make sure our media lists have been built bespoke for each campaign to ensure each journalist being targeted is relevant to the piece we’re outreaching.

Other common tactics we use to personalise outreach include mimicking a particular journalist’s headline style, using common phrases or key language they use in our pitch and subject line or referencing a recent article of theirs, demonstrating how our content could help to form a secondary angle to their story.

My media lists are grouped into two or three sections and personalize to varying degrees based on each grouping.

The first section are my “dream” targets, usually 20-30 contacts, and they get the most personalization — name, personalized intro paragraph referencing their work, their beat, and why this pitch applies to them specifically.

Section two and three are usually larger media lists so they get less personalization — name and reference to their beat.

Prior to writing email lists, my team and I do several audits of the media lists to prune irrelevant or outdated contacts upfront.

I personalise for several reasons, but those reasons all come back to increasing my chances of securing coverage.

I generally avoid referencing a journalist’s previous work or details from their bio as it can carry risks, it may come across as either brown nosing where it seems like you’re only saying it to get something in return, or as overly familiar bordering on online stalking. That said, it really depends on the context. If you choose to do it, it should feel authentic and genuine. For instance, I might email a journalist who shares my name and say, “Hey Mark (nice name).” but in general it’s something I don’t do.

If a story has multiple regional angles, I tailor the subject line to each journalist’s location. A journalist in New York might receive a subject line like “New York ranked one of the best X,” while one in Texas sees “Texas ranked the worst for X.”

This is a strong signal to the journalist that the story is relevant for them, and it should increase the chances of them opening it and gaining coverage as compared to a general subject line that doesn’t reference their locality.

Contrary to the spray and pray approach, I like to know WHY I’m sending it to a certain journalist. This helps me to diagnose potential issues. If I blanket send a story to lots of journalists and it fails, I’m kind of leaving things to chance. I don’t know whether it failed because of the idea, the press release, or because of who it was sent to.

If I know who I’ve sent it to and why, I know that the problem is likely with the idea or the press release, and I can make adjustments, perhaps by reangling the story/idea, or rewriting the press release. There’s more of a strategy behind it.

The management and centralisation of the outreach process are key advantages of paid tools. As an agency, when there are multiple digital PR projects ongoing at once across our client base, it’s really important to maintain visibility across the team.

This helps us manage contacts within the team and ensures we’re not overloading a journalist’s inbox.

Paid tools are absolutely worth it if you’re running consistent, large-scale campaigns.

Paid tools keep you organized and consistent, ensure you’re following the best email sending practices to avoid spam, help with hiring and onboarding, and enable you to move quickly and efficiently with outreach.

It’s easy to lose track of who you’ve pitched, when, and how often if you use your personal inbox only.

I think a paid tool for outreach is a must, especially something like Buzzstream which on the most basic plan is very affordable.

I can’t see a reason why someone who frequently pitches journalists wouldn’t use one, it makes your life easier by saving you time, and it helps you to make informed decisions.

Personally, I like to see when my email has been opened. It gives me reassurance that my emails are being delivered, seeing when they were opened lets me know when the journalist is active (so I can decide to pitch them or follow up at later or earlier times), and multiple opens gives me a good indication that the story is about to be covered.

We typically follow up 2-3 times but always making sure each follow up email is adding more value, rather than a generic follow up. For example, could you pull out an alternative angle to the one originally pitched, tie the story to a new trending news article or even add in refreshed data to create a new hook.

Showing the journalist the variety of angles they could use to cover the story is key when following up – as well as making sure you’re highlighting why the story is still relevant.

Typically we don’t follow up if a contact hasn’t opened the email at all. If this is the case, we send a brand new email and subject line to the contact.

I always recommend at least one follow-up, but I usually schedule two follow-ups. The first is brief and serves to bump the email to the top of the journalist’s inbox.

The second provides new details or angles and often includes additional assets.

A follow-up is not pushy if it enhances the original pitch, is tailored to the journalist, and genuinely provides added value.

In general I’ll tend to only send one follow up. However, that may change if for example a journalist was out of office or something on the first day that I sent it.

In that case, I may resend the first email when they are back in the office, along with a follow up on another day. So in total they’ll have got 3 emails, although I have to say it’s rare that I’ll do that.

I think 2 follow ups is excessive on most occasions.

In my experience, newswires never really trended in for digital PR!

Newswires have always felt like they remove the ability to build rapport through conversations with editors and journalists. Then there’s also the factor of having less control over formats compared to an email, and of course, the all-important link inputs.

Another aspect we’ve noted is a difference between the UK and USA press landscape — newswires are typically less commonly used in the UK, in my experience.

I wouldn’t totally write them off for different markets, though. We’ve experimented with newswires in the US with success. I think it comes down to using all the tools available to get results, and adapting the approach depending on the story we’re promoting.

While newswires remain a traditional PR staple, I use them sparingly, reserving them for business updates or product announcements to build credibility and enhance brand legitimacy. I seldom use them for digital PR campaigns as a way to earn coverage.

Absolutely. While digital PR is traditionally valued for its ability to build brand awareness, boost organic rankings, and earn quality backlinks, there’s a growing need to connect these efforts to tangible business outcomes like lead generation and sales.

By focusing more on down-funnel metrics, PR teams can demonstrate their impact in terms that resonate with leadership and justify budgets.

To achieve this, digital PRs can work with tools like CRM systems and UTM tracking to follow the customer journey, ensuring that PR-driven traffic is tracked through to conversions.

Collaborating more closely with sales and performance marketing teams can also provide a clearer picture of how PR contributes to overall business growth.

This disconnect often comes down to organisational structure. Digital PR is frequently viewed as an extension of SEO, with a primary focus on earning high-authority backlinks to improve rankings. Brand teams, on the other hand, traditionally focus on creative storytelling and messaging, which can feel separate from the measurable, data-driven outcomes of SEO-focused PR.

However, this division can limit the full potential of digital PR.

Strong collaboration between PR and brand teams could lead to more cohesive campaigns that enhance both brand recognition and measurable outcomes like traffic or leads.

Breaking down these silos would allow digital PR to function as a strategic partner, amplifying brand campaigns while still fulfilling SEO objectives.

Yes, I agree. The Helpful Content updates by Google in 2023 likely played a significant role in making digital PR more effective. These updates prioritize high-quality, authoritative content that meets user intent, which aligns perfectly with the strengths of digital PR creating shareable, engaging content and securing high-authority backlinks from reputable sources.

Additionally, as the algorithm increasingly rewards relevance and quality over outdated tactics, digital PR efforts have a clearer impact on organic performance.

For brands that focus on delivering valuable insights and building authentic relationships with journalists, the updates have created an environment where well-executed PR campaigns can thrive.

Even if someone doesn’t agree, the perception of increased effectiveness could stem from evolving metrics or greater awareness of digital PR’s potential. Many businesses are now better at measuring the downstream impact of PR efforts such as traffic, engagement, and even conversions due to improved analytics tools and tracking methods.

Moreover, the rise of content saturation has made PR placements in authoritative publications stand out more as a trustworthy source of exposure, which can create the impression of heightened effectiveness, even if the methods themselves haven’t drastically changed.

If, we are, for example, looking at results such as links earned for our campaign, it can take longer to see such results if our campaign is affected by outside elements.

And there are plenty of them.

We could launch a campaign, only to find out someone else launched similar content a few days before us. Anything can take over the news.

Things change really quickly and our topic can be ‘sensitive’ or ‘irrelevant’ overnight. Or, simply said, it was not a good time to launch the campaign, it could be launched too early or too late (think Christmas campaigns).

You may be just looking for the right outreach angle longer than you thought you would, the right subject line, and the right pitch to grab the attention of your target journalists.

There are a lot of reasons why a campaign may take longer to see results, and that’s why tracking the success of your campaign daily is so important.

If you can see open rates what are they? If you can see how many times journalists open your emails, how often is it? You need to figure out really quickly if it’s the subject line that needs editing, the pitch email, or the whole piece needs additional information to hit the mark.

Tracking, pivoting, and acting quickly are key tactics to ensure you see the results of your campaign.

In link building, you can often snag a few wins in the first month. But with digital PR, it’s a whole different ball game.

Whether you’re running outbound or inbound campaigns, it typically takes 3-5 months to see real results.

Why?

First, winning a pitch takes time.

And even after you’ve won, some publications might sit on your pitch for weeks (or even months) before publishing. If your campaign includes specific content, be prepared to wait even longer while everyone—clients included—provides their approvals at every stage.

Digital PR isn’t about quick wins—it’s about building momentum.

Over time, you’re not just earning links; you’re gaining social shares, forging connections with journalists and niche experts, and boosting your brand’s visibility in ways that create a snowball effect.

Success in digital PR is challenging to define because its impact spans multiple areas—SEO, brand awareness, and traffic—each with its own metrics. The expectations and goals for digital PR vary widely between businesses, making a universal standard difficult to establish.

For example, some campaigns focus on securing high-quality backlinks to boost search rankings, while others aim for broad media coverage to raise brand awareness.

Additionally, the attribution of PR success to specific outcomes, such as sales or lead generation, can be complex.

The role of PR in a customer’s journey is often indirect, making it harder to draw a clear line between PR efforts and revenue.

With so many touchpoints in marketing, isolating the impact of PR from other channels can further complicate measurement.

Success is difficult to define in digital PR because it’s such a hard industry for everyone to agree on. It’s constantly evolving, and with changes in journalism, tactics, and how the world operates, success benchmarks will always shift.

I think success metrics will change in 2025, especially as things like brand mentions are starting to show their value.

Yes, success metrics for digital PR are likely to evolve in 2025. With increasing scrutiny on marketing ROI, there may be a stronger focus on down-funnel metrics, such as leads, conversions, and direct revenue impact.

Brands will likely invest in better tools and analytics to track the journey from PR-driven traffic to measurable business outcomes.

At the same time, traditional metrics like backlinks and organic traffic will remain essential as search engines continue to value high-quality links in ranking algorithms.

However, emerging trends like AI-generated content and stricter Google updates may push PR teams to emphasize content quality and relevance even more.

The growing use of unlinked mentions and their impact on brand authority could also lead to shifts in how PR success is measured.

Overall, success metrics in 2025 are likely to reflect a balance between short-term SEO gains and long-term brand-building impact.

The fashion industry is particularly challenging for link-building due to its highly competitive and saturated market. Many fashion brands already have strong PR teams and established media relationships, making it harder for smaller or newer players to break through.

Additionally, publications in the fashion space often favour well-known names or require sponsorships and advertising partnerships, which limits opportunities for organic link-building.

Moreover, the nature of fashion content tends to focus on visuals and trends rather than data-driven stories or evergreen topics, which are typically more link-worthy in digital PR campaigns.

Unless a brand can offer unique insights, compelling research, or standout creative campaigns, earning quality backlinks in this space can be an uphill battle.

Fashion isn’t necessarily difficult to get links in – it’s difficult to get the right links.

The industry is so oversaturated, and many links are affiliate-based, making it harder to be unique and secure editorial links.

An industry becomes difficult when it has high competition, limited unique angles, or fewer publications covering that niche.

For example, industries like education or health/wellness can be challenging because the topics are either heavily regulated, overly technical, or restricted by what’s deemed newsworthy.

Additionally, if an industry relies heavily on affiliate links, paid partnerships, or has saturated media coverage, securing high-quality editorial links becomes even harder.

Travel is an easy industry because it’s universally aspirational – stories about destinations, trends, or experiences resonate with audiences worldwide, and campaigns can easily be localised or scaled globally.

The industry also has a high volume of dedicated travel publications and journalists.

An easy industry is one where there’s consistent demand for content, a wide range of topics to explore, and flexibility to adapt campaigns for different audiences and outlets.

An industry is “easy” when it has broad appeal, diverse topics, and an abundance of relevant publications to pitch to.

For example, travel is often easier because it taps into universal interests, with audiences always seeking inspiration or trends, and publications frequently needing fresh travel content.

Industries with a lot of flexibility in campaign angles and a strong demand for evergreen stories tend to have fewer barriers to securing quality links.

Clients ultimately care about revenue, in most circumstances they’re not as bothered as Digital PR’s about how many links you’ve achieved or its reach.

Working as part of an internal organic search team for the last couple of years, the senior stakeholders love to see the brand name in nationals but we grab the attention far more when we combine SEO metrics such as search traffic increases, keyword rankings and brand searches (which admittedly can fluctuate without Digital PR input), measured against key Digital PR activity taking place.

The key is to look for ways for working closely with the client, to show willingness to help them on improving conversions, better conversion rates and increasing traffic, especially to targeted money-driving pages and how this impacts on revenue.

Although it’s not always easy, getting the client to buy in to sharing MoM and YoY financial data is hugely beneficial for Digital PR strategy, and you need to make a client realise the benefit, is crucial to unlocking how to measure impact and keeping clients happy.

It can be really overwhelming sometimes to know what metrics to analyse and communicate to clients, especially when different agencies do things differently but it’s important to ignore external distraction and instead remind yourself exactly what the goals of your client are.

For example, if their primary goal is to directly sell more products through Digital PR, then spend your time reporting on conversions and referrals.

If it’s brand awareness, then analysing organic traffic and keyword rankings is much more relevant.

The importance of quality ideation cannot be understated. Having a killer idea is more than half the battle in digital PR. It’s the foundation of the story you have to offer and can absolutely be the difference between a campaign that gets 5 links to a campaign that generates 100+.

At Root we view ideation akin to problem solving. You’re looking for opportunities to answer a question people care about. These aren’t necessarily questions people are actively asking, but ones that many people will care about if you have something to reveal or confirm in a headline – something the grabs their attention and makes them want to find out more.

As with any problem-solving task, it’s something you can train yourself in, but it isn’t natural to everyone. The starting point is being aware – daily – of what’s happening in the news. And I don’t mean the news in relation to your client or industry. I mean the news in general. You’ll see and learn what makes a good headline. What grabs you? What stories are the most popular? What stories are being shared on socials, or generating the most comments?

This is why digital PR is an industry agnostic skill. Once you have a sense of the news, how headlines work, what journalists need and how their audience respond, you can reverse-engineer a story for any industry.

The process of ideation should never stop and it should never fall on a select few, that’s a key message I always share with the team. Ideas come from everywhere and as Digital PRs we can probably agree it’s more than a vocation, it encroaches into nearly everything we see and hear, and quite frankly, can feel like a curse.

First and foremost the most crucial is accessing the news, and not just industry news for your client, along with being aware of general trends in the territory where you’re active is vital. The amount of creative ideas that flowed from Bridgerton or whichever new film/series or seasonal trend has been a huge part of Digital PR’s successes in recent years.

You don’t have to be the first to tap into that zeitgeist idea but you always need a ‘why’ for the reason you’re doing it.

Digital PRs always need to be on the lookout and having a live doc to add in new ideas, no matter how rough or vague they are initially, to discuss the ideas initially once they’re found and then setting time aside to go through those uncovered gems as a team.

As well as the usual Digital PR newsletters, find it useful having a look around a publication’s website when you’ve got recent coverage on there to get an idea of what they’re covering, the format and themes, which as someone in the industry you can spot fellow Digital PR ideas that work and, as an added bonus, keep an eye on the competition.

Put yourself in a new environment. Go on a walk, have a shower, sit in a coffee shop. It’s really hard to be creative in an environment that you are familiar with. Also, write down everything you hear, see, or talk about that’s interesting. You never know when little facts or musings will come in handy!

Strategy is about compromise and a good overarching organic strategy accepts that there are elements that tech SEO, content and Digital PR can’t achieve everything on their own.

Within our current strategy our main focus has overall remained the same: focusing our Digital PR efforts to improve the visibility of key converting pages and relevant keywords.

Our strategy has meant that we have had to pivot to adopt different Digital PR activities, which have been impacted by changing business focuses or planned activity utilising internal teams falling through, but in advance, we ensured the strategy had a mix of reactive, planned and activities of differing levels of resource required.

The major changes I have seen have been that in the UK PR landscape success has continued to be based more around reactive and smaller activity, like interviews, and the US continues to be more successful for more evergreen planned campaigns.

Fewer journalists with less time on their hands makes it much more difficult to consistently get results all the time and feedback from journalists is becoming rarer, so it falls on experience and intuition a lot more to know how to be more efficient.

This makes the theory around Digital PR activities and research ahead of our own work being launched take on huge importance to ensure we’re able to get results consistently.

However, there is an opportunity for good Digital PRs to continue to make life easier for journalists, as they become further stretched, for it to be even more mutually beneficial.

Campaigns are much less likely to go ‘viral’ in today’s media landscape and most PR campaigns get significantly less links than they used to. However, it can be hard to explain this to clients, and how less, but more relevant, links will actually have more benefit on their website.

It can be challenging to manage their expectations and educate them on the changing landscape, while also trying to get the coverage that your campaign deserves!

After many years of sometimes banging heads against a brick wall, Digital PR is starting to get the recognition it deserves from business owners, heads of marketing and decision makers in companies that it had been in short supply of.

I think the combination of brand PR and integrating more with SEO, thanks to SEOs being more willing to bang the drum for Digital PR, has helped break down a number of barriers and help get more buy-in as the evidence of its impact becomes easier to report on.

I would also say that based on our results that the exhausting era of undermining the value of No Follow links is coming to an end, which can only be a good thing for account managers sharing results with clients.

DR, TF, DA, follow/nofollow, canonicalised, indexed, etc. are all important to varying degrees as they give people something to benchmark and communicate on a level playing field.

But in 2024 the Google API leak confirmed something most people aren’t yet adjusting for – traffic.

The leaked information confirmed that Google pass increased amounts of equity for links on pages and domains that generate higher volumes of traffic. And it makes complete sense.

If you have a link on a page that ranks in first position for ‘best tv’s’ that is a great signal because loads of people will be coming to that page and gaining a ton of value from seeing the link to you. The same goes for articles on The Guardian (for example) in a top trending article – loads of value being passed because people are finding value in the page.

Now consider this. If we were to reclaim an unlinked brand mention in a Guardian article from 2016 into a link to our website – should that pass the same equity? The DR, TF and DA are all the same. It might be a follow link on a unique self-canonicalised and indexed page. All the factors could be the same as the above scenario, but should this page pass the same amount of equity? No.

It still holds value because of the editorial integrity and values of the domain (it’s The Guardian!), but the traffic to the page is key in maximising the value being passed. Therefore traffic – alongside the other metrics – need to be a factor for evaluating quality.

At Fractl, we ask 40 questions to ensure we’re aligning our strategies with our client’s goals, oftentimes assessing feedback from several different department stakeholders (SEO, PR, brand, growth), each with unique goals and perspectives around brand content and link quality.

Of course, we’ll always default to the authority of a publisher, the syndication potential of each outlet, the specific journalist with the highest engagement on our topic, the overall traffic and engagement of each site, and ultimately, its potential to reach our client’s target market while also building domain trust signals and brand engagement.

Gone are the days when link quality was judged solely on a single metric like Domain Rating (DR) or Domain Authority (DA). At Reboot, we take a more comprehensive approach, evaluating multiple factors to ensure links contribute to our clients’ SEO goals effectively.

We consider factors such as link type (follow/nofollow/syndicated), anchor text relevance, organic traffic, and whether the linking domain is new to the client’s profile. Competitor benchmarking also plays a role in identifying gaps and opportunities. However, the most critical factor is relevance, ensuring the publication aligns with the client’s industry, SEO objectives, and target audience. By prioritising both authority and contextual fit, we secure links that drive long-term SEO value.

We utilise a sophisticated points-based system to evaluate the success of our efforts, focusing on the quality of links rather than simply counting quantity.

This approach considers key metrics such as Domain Rating (DR), follow/nofollow status, publication relevance, anchor text, and other critical factors.

This allows us to demonstrate to our clients that we’re not only striving to achieve links in place relevant to them but also how valuable some links can be.

The quality and the relevancy of the domain are the primary metrics we use to evaluate the impact of a link, as an organic high quality, relevant link is going to make the most immediate impact on a site.

We also take into account how the link fits into the client’s unique goals since the same link can mean something different to 2 sites — i.e. is it a new domain for them?

Is it a link that their competitors have they didn’t? Is it one that helps them reach their target audience? There are a lot of things to think about when evaluating the quality of a link, it’s important to consider from every angle.

For me, link quality includes: Domain Rank/Authority, No-follow/not no-follow, anchor text, website relevancy (for the linking page), and sometimes even other factors like Spam Score and website location (a .uk or .au link versus a .com link).

Unfortunately we don’t have a tool (yet) that factors all these in, for the quickest and easiest way to measure link quality in my reporting, I use mostly no-follow/do-follow and Domain Rank.

I think DR coming in #1 is more a reflection of Moz losing market share to Ahrefs in recent years and less about the unique value of these two metrics for Digital PR.

While DR focuses solely on the quantity and quality of a domain’s backlinks, DA factors in total backlinks, unique linking domains, and machine learning models to predict domain rankings, which, IMO, is a more holistic measure of a site’s authority.

Also, because of this, DR tends to be higher than DA, which some PR teams might prefer to highlight. At Fractl, we feature both DA and DR in various client reports, but we’ve invested in a more comprehensive tech stack to support strategy development and reporting.

Domain Rating (DR) has become a widely recognised and understood metric across the industry, understood by clients and teams outside of SEO.

Its prominence in PR, particularly as SEO and PR teams collaborate more closely means PR’s understand the benefit of high DR but we should be moving past the days where this is the only metric being reported on for evaluating link quality.

Effective reporting should consider a variety of factors, as DR alone does not provide the full picture.

DR is a quantitative metric directly based on a site’s backlink profile, making it a helpful metric to use as a baseline to measure link quality. We cross reference DA & DR as neither are absolute metrics, but these are the most reliable across sites of various sizes and industries.

These metrics typically resonate with clients as they often use them internally, and they serve as concrete benchmarks to work towards.

In my opinion, DR is the one metric that can accurately convey the quality of a linking website the clearest. While not the only factor in link quality, it’s a metric that’s easy to find and shows as much of the picture as possible in just one metric.

At Reboot, we always used to discount syndicated links. Coming from an SEO background, I was a firm believer that syndicated and nofollow links are far less “valuable”. Come to think of it now, it was never something that I saw any evidence for. It was always something that the community felt so strongly about. It almost felt like a given, so naturally, you erred on the side of caution.

However, recently an accidental case study fell into our lap when a Digital PR client wanted to pivot away from their main domain to a dormant “office clearance London” domain they hadn’t touched in years. The domain had mid-50 rankings.

We carried out a single Digital PR campaign to get links to the dormant domain. It hit two syndicated networks and achieved 180+ syndicated and nofollow links.

The site steadily climbed the rankings to the top 3 of most of their main keywords. Something that, knowing that industry well, I know could not have been achieved if all those links were only counted as 1 or 2 syndicated links.

The belief is that since Google has changed its guidelines to state that a nofollow link is now treated as a hint, the way the algorithms determine this is based on site authority and trust signals. So, in effect, we now strongly believe that all *real* sites with real traffic and good authority should be treated as follows and not syndicated.

This is a good case where real data has changed my mind and something I point my clients to study and reach their own conclusions.

Syndication occurs when a piece of content published on one website is republished across multiple other sites, often part of the same publishing group. For instance, Reach PLC, one of the UK’s largest newspaper groups, operates over 120 regional and national titles.

If you earn a link on one of their sites, such as Manchester Evening News or MyLondon, it’s likely that the same content will be syndicated across all the other regional Reach PLC titles.

From an SEO perspective, syndication works in a way where only the original – or “organic” – link is likely to carry the most SEO benefit.

However, the additional syndicated links offer tremendous value for brand awareness and audience reach.

They can amplify the visibility of your content across multiple regions and audiences, which is a win for brand-building.

Many digital PRs and SEOs choose to report syndicated links separately for transparency and clarity.

Reporting them individually allows clients to identify which links are driving measurable SEO benefits versus those contributing primarily to reach.

This distinction can also help clients better understand the relationship between SEO and PR performance metrics, ensuring more informed decision-making.

We report on syndicated links separately as it has been common practice that these ‘canonical’ digital duplicates combine all the search values into one URL.

Although Google has been quoted in an ‘it depends’ nuanced way, that meta ‘no-index’ tags should be applied by publishers to ensure ranking signals.

So by reporting on them separately, we can still showcase coverage whilst keeping an eye on URL performance.

On the flip side, grouping syndicated links into the total link count can simplify reporting for clients who find detailed breakdowns overwhelming. Digital PRs and SEOs can often involve complex metrics like: differentiating between do-follow, no-follow, and sponsored links, as well as evaluating anchor text, and overall link quality with metrics like DR/DA.

For some clients, these nuances can feel overly complicated.

Grouping all links, including syndicated ones, into a single count can make reporting more digestible and emphasise the overall success of the campaign in terms of reach and coverage.

I don’t believe that Google views links included within syndicated articles as unique links, and it’s unclear how (or indeed if) Google treats these types of links as signals of authority or relevance.

However, we don’t just do PR for SEO purposes, we do PR in order to put the brands we’re working for in front of people who might be interested in their products or services.

As such, I believe strongly that syndicated articles have PR value even if their SEO value is hard to determine.

Looking at canonical content syndication, or ‘no-index’ the value should go to one URL, but can we ever truly know with every update or lack of definition?

Interestingly, we are seeing an increasing trend in journalists, slightly tweaking their content to create ‘unique’ pieces across partnering sites, linking back to the original article, all with unique URLs.

I wonder if this is a new strategy to increase content production and utilise AI without limiting themselves to duplication. It would be interesting to know if publishers are thinking about the search impact around this.

We report on these mentions, supported with an action of reclamation work. Just because it isn’t a link doesn’t mean it isn’t supporting awareness and brand, and possibly a link in the future.

In terms of search impact, Google states it does not align the same impact of a link to an unlinked mention. But although both signify brand authority and Google may still value a mention, there is no definitive around this.

I think it depends on both the context of the unlinked mention, and the site which the unlinked mention appears on.

There are a range of high authority sites out there which either don’t include external links in their articles, and/or only rarely include them.

This presents something of a problem for Google, as in the past, they have relied on the linking behaviour of sites like these for authority and trust signals.

As such, I think it’s likely that Google treats some unlinked mentions (particularly those on high authority news sites, for example) as a signal of authority and relevance, and, therefore they may have an impact on search rankings.

Much like unlinked mentions, I think the extent to which Google values nofollow links likely depends on the context of the nofollow link, and the site which the nofollow link appears on. There are a range of high authority sites which now nofollow all external links.

This presents a problem for Google, because if they “ignored” all of the links from these sites they’d lose a bunch of valuable authority and trust signals.

As such, I think it’s likely that Google treats some nofollow links (particularly those on high authority news sites, for example) as a signal of authority and relevance, and therefore, these types of links probably do have an impact on search rankings.