Digital public relations services, bought on published evidence

Agencies with a verified published price

How to buy digital PR without buying noise

1. Decide what the coverage is for. Reputation, demand or search authority are three different briefs. A placement that flatters the founder and a placement that earns a followed link from a publication your buyers read are rarely the same placement, and the price differs.
2. Ask what the retainer buys in units. Pitches sent, stories developed, data studies produced, spokespeople media trained. Vague retainers described as ongoing outreach are impossible to hold anyone to. Get the monthly unit count and the seniority of the person doing the pitching.
3. Refuse guaranteed placement on paid sites. Google's spam policies treat buying links for ranking purposes as a violation, and paid placements are supposed to be marked sponsored or nofollow, which removes the ranking benefit being sold. Guaranteed do-follow placements are the clearest red flag in this category.
4. Check the disclosure hygiene. Where money, product or affiliate arrangements change hands, the Federal Trade Commission expects a clear and conspicuous disclosure of the connection. Ask how the agency handles that with creators and reviewers before a campaign, not after a complaint.

What moves the price

Three things move a digital PR fee more than anything else. The first is the tier of publication in the brief: trade press with a narrow, relevant audience is reachable with consistent pitching, while national consumer titles require relationships, timing and usually a genuine story asset. The second is whether original research is included. A survey or a data study costs real money to design, field and write up, and it is also the thing that most reliably earns coverage, so agencies that include it price above those that pitch existing company news. The third is the number of spokespeople and how available they are, because reactive commentary lives or dies on a two-hour response window.

Sector adds a premium of its own. Regulated categories such as health, finance and legal require review before a claim goes out, and the agency carries the cost of that slower cycle. If your category is regulated, ask directly who signs off copy and how long the loop takes; a firm that has never worked through compliance review will quote an optimistic timeline it cannot hit.

How to verify a digital PR agency before you sign

Ask for coverage from the last quarter, not the last five years, and check the bylines: the agency should be able to name the client, the story angle and the outlet, and the page should still exist. Ask what proportion of the placements included a link and whether those links were followed, since that answer separates search-oriented digital PR from pure communications work. Ask how the agency measures a campaign that produces excellent coverage and no pipeline, because that is the outcome you are most likely to be arguing about in month six.

Then check the claims the agency makes about itself. The Federal Trade Commission requires objective advertising claims to be truthful and substantiated, and an agency that publishes results claims about client campaigns is advertising. A firm that can produce the underlying reporting for one case study in a week is a firm whose numbers you can rely on; one that offers screenshots without context is not. Our index records who publishes prices, minimums and named clients, with the date each was checked, so the shortlist starts from what firms have committed to in public.

Questions people actually ask

Is digital PR just link building with a better name?

There is real overlap, but the mechanism differs. Link building buys or negotiates placements directly; digital PR pitches a story an editor chooses to publish, and the link is a by-product. The distinction matters because Google's spam policies prohibit buying links for ranking purposes, while earned editorial coverage is not affected.

Can an agency guarantee coverage in a named publication?

Not through editorial channels, because the editor decides. A guarantee usually means a paid placement, which should be marked as sponsored and carries no ranking benefit once it is. If a guarantee is offered, ask in writing whether the placement is paid and how it will be labelled.

How long is a fair minimum term for a digital PR retainer?

Most firms ask for three to six months because relationship building and story development take time to produce a first placement. Push for a shorter initial term with a defined review point, and agree what evidence at that review would justify continuing.

What should a monthly digital PR report contain?

Pitches sent and to whom, stories placed with live links, link attributes, referral traffic from placements, and any branded search movement. Coverage volume alone tells you the agency was busy, not that the campaign worked.

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