Public relations became a link discipline because coverage produces citations, and citations still count. The distinction that matters is whether the link is a consequence of something worth publishing or the purpose of a transaction. The first is durable and the second is the practice search engines name in their own policies.
The asset comes before the outreach
Original research, a dataset, an expert who can say something specific, or a genuinely newsworthy event. Journalists link to things they need. Outreach without an asset asks a stranger for a favour, which converts poorly and drifts toward paying, and paying for a link intended to pass ranking signals is what the published spam policies prohibit.
Relevance beats authority scores
A citation from a publication your buyers read, on a page about your subject, is worth more than a higher scored link from an unrelated site. Suppliers optimising for a third party authority metric tend to end up on sites that exist to host links, which carries risk and delivers no readers.
Brief it like PR, not like an SEO task
Give the team the data, the expert and the angle, and let them find the story. A brief specifying target anchor text and a monthly link quota produces outreach that reads as outreach, and journalists have become very good at recognising it. The anchor is the least important variable and the one most often over-specified.
Measure coverage, links and effect separately
Pieces published, links earned to pages that matter commercially, referral traffic quality, and movement in the visibility of the target pages. Reporting only links hides whether the coverage reached anyone, and reporting only coverage hides whether the search purpose was served.
Questions people ask about pr link building
Is digital PR just link building with a better name?
Done well it is public relations that happens to earn links. Done badly it is outreach with a press release attached. The test is whether the material would be published on its own merits.
What about paid placements in publications?
They are advertising and should be marked so they do not pass ranking signals. That is a legitimate purchase for reach; it simply is not earned coverage and should not be counted as such.
How many links should a campaign produce?
It varies with the asset and the sector, and quoting a guaranteed number is a signal that placements are being bought. Judge a campaign on the quality of the coverage and whether the asset can be reused.
Can small companies do this?
Yes, and often better, because a small company with genuine proprietary data or a real expert has something a large brand's committee cannot approve quickly. The constraint is having something to say, not budget.