Hi there, and welcome to the third issue of the Outranked SEO newsletter.
I've been loving all the feedback I've had since launching the newsletter last week... so many replies from people saying they've found the content really useful. That's why I'm doing it, so this means a lot.
In this issue, I’m breaking down why digital PR is more important than ever in 2025, and why it's something more brands should be doubling down on, but measure it in a way that looks at more than just links. In 2025, digital PR is about so much more than this.
You’ll learn:
- Why digital PR is one tactic that should be getting more investment right now, not less
- Why it's not just about earning links, and how it helps to build brand signals (and why these are so important right now)
- How the tactic's going to help you win in the long-term as we move into the new era of AI-powered search
Let’s get into it.
Why digital PR deserves more budget in 2025.
In a landscape of AI Overviews and LLMs taking clicks away from top of the funnel search, alongside the uncertainty that this new era is driving, one thing has become clear:
Brands with strong reputations and clear authority in their space are better protected.
Even before the introduction of AIOs, the rise in LLMs and AI Mode, we’ve seen this play out over the past few Core Updates.
Sites with a weak brand behind them have taken hits. Meanwhile, those that are known, cited, and trusted tend to hold strong.
Yes, they're still losing some of their top of funnel traffic to AI, everyone is, but looking at organic through a commercial lens, they're the ones who keep winning.
This isn't going to change, even when where the searches happen shifts.
See where I'm going with this? It's not just about using digital PR as a way to earn links. It's about using digital PR as a way to drive brand demand, reputation and authority.
Digital PR is one of the most scalable ways to build these things right now, all at the same time.
Yet when budgets get cut, digital PR is often seen as a “nice to have.”
And this is a big mistake and the wrong way to look at it.
Because right now, it’s one of the few tactics that drives compounding SEO success and brand value through every algorithm update or change.
Of course, that's when it's done right. I'm not talking about digital PR that just earns links for the sake of it.
Nor am I talking about publishing press releases via a newswire service.
It’s not just about links (and never should have been)...
Digital PR has long been positioned as a link-building tactic.
And yes, links still matter. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
The right links still drive SEO success, and that's not going to change anytime soon.
In a document that came out of Google's DOJ trial last month, following a call with Google Engineer HJ Kim, we see confirmation that links are one of three main signals used to calculate topicality ... Google's determination of how a document (web page) is relevant to a search query.
There we go ... links still matter. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, so long as they're relevant and authoritative and not intended to try and manipulate rankings (those type of links have been worthless for years).
But the real value in digital PR should always have been seen as something bigger than that.
The problem is that so much digital PR in the last five years has been set up to earn links for the sake of it, based on outdated mindsets that assumes more links = more success.
Here’s what great digital PR actually builds:
- Brand signals - More brand awareness. This means more people searching for your brand and more associations between you and your category.
- Topicality signals - Your brand being mentioned alongside key topics that topicality.
- Trust - Users (and search engines) see consistent, high-quality third-party validation - something no amount of content on your own site can replicate.
- Referral traffic - Earned links from the press drive referral traffic that can turn into sales and leads (yes, even affiliate and nofollow links... who'd have thought).
- Reputation - This is the big one. Everything digital PR delivers rolls up into building your reputation. Your online reputation is what Google calls E-E-A-T.
When done right, digital PR builds brand demand. More people searching for you. More people clicking when they see you. More visibility for non-brand terms.
It's like a brand demand flywheel.
Where the mindset that 'links don't matter anymore' comes from...
People will say links don't matter anymore because they're earning (let's stop saying building, yeah?) the wrong links.
Ones that aren't relevant. Ones which Google ignores. Ones that assume a link is a link and that Google values volume over quality.
Roll out a well thought out strategy that is based on the fundamentals of what Google actually rewards right now, and there's no questioning whether links still have an influence on SEO success...
They 100% do.
Digital PR’s role in the AI search era...
It’s not just about earning signals that drive growth in traditional search.
Branded mentions have a stronger correlation with appearing in AI Overviews than anything else, according to Ahrefs' recent study of ~75k brands.
What drives mentions on authoritative sites?
Yep ... digital PR.
"The top 3 correlations are all off-site factors: brand web mentions (0.664), brand anchors (0.527), and brand search volume (0.392)."
All three of these things comes about as a result of doing digital PR.
And whilst this is just looking at AI Overviews, the importance of mentions stacks up with LLMs like ChatGPT, too.
That's before we even talk about the fact that news articles (product roundups, as an example) are one of the primary sources used in ChatGPT et al to make product recommendations.
I recently asked ChatGPT on recommendations for a bean-to-cup coffee machine, and here's the sources it referenced:
Four of these recommendations come from news publications, one from a specialist blog.
This is just one example, but I'm seeing The Guardian and The Sun used as sources for SO many product recommendations right now, more than anything else.
These will change, but the point I'm trying to make is that it's PR that will see you included in these roundups. And, as a result of that, recommended in LLMs.
But back to the wider topic of the role of digital PR in the future of search.
What we’re seeing now is a curated web; where being included depends on being trusted, known, and relevant.
So ask yourself:
“If my brand doesn’t get mentioned in any reputable third-party content, why would a search engine or LLM trust me enough to surface me in an AI-generated answer?”
Digital PR increases the chances that you’re part of the conversation.
It helps you get cited in the right places, associated with the right topics, and earns the kind of brand coverage that trains AI to know you're credible.
If you want to make sure you're cited and recommended by AI, PR isn't optional. It's a total non-negotiable and something that you should be doubling down on straight away.
We'll get to the point, maybe a year from now, maybe sooner, when so many brands will wish they'd invested more seriously into digital PR sooner.
It's not a case of if this will happen, but when.
The brands who take digital PR seriously today, and work with partners who understand how to leverage this to make sure they're cited in AI, will be the ones who win long-term.
We're still early in AI ...invest now and stay the right side of the curve. Don't be the brand that falls behind because your competitors invested properly in PR to drive visibility here before you did.
So… how should we be measuring digital PR?
If you're measuring the success of digital PR based on cost-per-link, you’re not capturing the full picture.
In fact, you're totally missing the point.
Even raw link numbers fits into this.
Here’s what I’d recommend measuring instead:
- Growth in branded search volume
- The impact on rankings for keyword groups you're actively targeting
- The impact on traffic, isolated out to look at the pages you've earned links or topical mentions for (directly or indirectly), compared against the sitewide average over the same period
- The impact on revenue, measured the same way.
- Visibility in LLMs.
👉 We’ve even been using vector embeddings and cosine similarity to measure link relevance to the topics we're trying to build authority for. More on that in a future issue (I spoke about this in detail at SMX Advanced in Boston last week).
Bottom line; you need to measure outcomes, not outputs.
The takeaway…
Digital PR is one of the most powerful investments you can make right now; not just as an SEO tactic (it definitely helps, but there's more to it than that), but as a driver of brand demand.
Whatever changes we see on the SERPs, brand will always win.
Always.
And if you've set digital PR up in the right way, based around stories that put your brand in the heart of the right conversations on the right topics, this is what it does.
It builds brand demand.
And, done properly, builds this in a way that few other tactics can match.
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If you learned something from this issue or it’s made you think about digital PR a little differently, please consider forwarding it to someone else on your team.
I’m on a mission to make sure more SEO (and digital PR) investment actually has an impact on real business metrics.
Appreciate you making it to the end; same time next week?
- James Brockbank
P.S. If you ever need expert support with SEO or digital PR and want to drive results that actually matter, I’d love to chat. Let’s talk.
✍️ From the Loft...
Fresh from our side of the web; here’s a few things me or other Lofties put out into the world this week.
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📌 This week’s bookmarks:
If I could only send three links to a fellow marketer this week, it’d be these…
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👋 Hi, I'm James...
Managing Director & Founder at Digitaloft.
I've spent the last 10 years building an agency that's perfectly positioned to help ambitious brands to drive real business growth from SEO and digital PR.
You might have seen me speaking at events like BrightonSEO, SMX and the International Search Summit.
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