Although Link Building and Digital PR are both among the most utilized techniques to boost a website’s popularity, there are, in fact, substantial differences between Link Building and Digital PR. Unfortunately, people often confuse these two techniques, believing them to be the same. In this article, therefore, we will try to explain the differences between Link Building and Digital PR, and how you can adopt these strategies to increase the reputation of your brand and, ergo, to achieve potential growth.

To understand the differences, however, it is important to know, before anything else, what Link Building and Digital PR are.

What Link Building is and Why It’s Important

Let’s start with defining Link Building. Link Building is one of the activities carried out within an SEO Strategy and aims to Build – hence the name “Link Building” – a network of Links, both internally and externally relative to our website.

The construction of a network of Hyperlinks presents numerous advantages. One of the main reasons why Link Building activity and SEO Work are crucial lies in the ranking factors which Google uses to place websites in the context of search engines. If a page on our website is “linked” by a very respected Website, Google will think that the content within offers great quality and usefulness and, because of this, it will reward said Website. This is reflected, of course, in increased search engine visibility.

Backlinks – that is, the links we receive from a trusted page towards our website – are no longer rewarded based on quantity, like in the past, but are increasingly based on the quality of their source and content.

In light of this, it is easy to understand how Link Building is an activity that can increase our ranking and, therefore, traffic to our website as well. Of course, this creates an even greater possibility of selling our products, should we wish to use Link Building for commercial purposes.

Link building activity, however, can also concern a website’s internal, i.e., the ones which do not come from the outside but, rather, direct the user from one page to another, sill within the site. Internal links are important because, first of all, they make reading our web page an even more complete and useful experience for the user. The reader experience becomes fluid and can move from one category to the other inside the website with a simple click on a hyperlink, i.e., the anchor text.

A complete link building activity is, therefore, not only about working on backlinks received from the outside, but also about the structure of internal links within our site.

Now that we understand what Link Building is and why it is important for SEO work, let’s try to define the meaning of Digital PR and what the differences with Link Building are.

What Digital PR is and what it is used for

We begin this section, too, with a definition of Digital PR. Digital PR is a technique used to increase the visibility of brands and websites as well. Digital PR activities have always existed, in the form of so-called Public Relations; obviously, however, with the advent of the digital space, they have moved to the internet, and have therefore taken on the name of Digital PR.

In summary, we can say that Digital PR includes those communication activities aimed at promoting our brand and its notoriety of it on the web. The scope of Digital PR activities is quite large and can include:

• Publishing articles or guest posts on external websites to gain visibility
• Building relationships with journalists, influencers, or bloggers
• “Use” the popularity of an influencer to sponsor our brand
• Creative campaigns to increase brand popularity
• Press releases

The correct strategy to follow is not always the same for every type of business. Because of this, we must have a keen eye and be attentive in identifying the one which suits our business best.

Now that we have clarified its goal and what Digital PR is for, here is a list of its benefits: increasing the popularity of our website, increasing the visibility of our brand, building a trusted relationship and interaction with our customers, positioning our brand as an expert in the industry in which we operate.

The difference between Digital PR and Link Building

Now that we have clarified what they are and what they consist of, we can analyze the similarities and differences between Link Building and Digital PR even better.

• The main difference between Digital PR and Link Building lies primarily in the ultimate purpose of these two activities. Digital PRs aims to increase the visibility and popularity of our brand and, therefore, of our products by building a trusted relationship with journalists, bloggers, and influencers first, and with customers as a result. Link Building, on the other hand, aims to build a network of quality hyperlinks toward our website to improve our digital positioning and position within search engines.
• Digital PR does not necessarily imply the presence of links to our site.
• In the selection process of a site to establish contact with, while in Digital PR it is important how famous a site is, in link building the SEO authority of that website is what’s important.
•  Links that we publish in link building activities must comply with requirements that digital PR does not demand (e.g., the notorious dofollow)

If you only wish to improve the popularity of your brand, and you just want to carry out a PR activity, we apologize, but we can’t help you. If you need to improve the backlink profile of your site and carry out a link building activity within your SEO strategy, you are in the right place, and you can contact us starting from here.