Content & Digital PR · Service
Digital PR & Authority Building
Earned links and mentions from assets worth citing, pitched editor by editor, never bought.
SEO Evaluate approaches digital PR as the off-site half of an SEO programme: we help you build something publications have a reason to cite, then pitch it to relevant editors one by one. As a digital PR agency we work within Google Search Central's spam policies, so we do not buy links, rent networks or promise coverage. We offer a method: asset ideas, outreach, link-quality review and measurement in Turkish, English, Arabic and Persian.
How we work
/01 · Definition
What is digital PR?
Digital PR is the practice of earning links and brand mentions on other websites by giving journalists, editors and creators something genuinely worth covering: original data, expert commentary, a useful tool or a clear visual explanation. It is the earned side of off-site SEO. Unlike link buying or exchanges, the publisher independently decides whether to cover the story and whether to link, which is what makes the signal credible to search engines, readers and AI systems.
It sits on top of the rest of SEO rather than replacing it. A site that cannot be crawled, or that has nothing worth linking to, will not turn coverage into lasting value. That is why we usually start digital PR after the technical and content foundations are in place, and why we say so when they are not.
/02 · Who it is for
Who digital PR is for
Brands with solid content but little off-site authority
Your pages answer questions well, yet competitors with more editorial links and mentions outrank you. The gap is authority, not quality.
Clinics and health-tourism providers
Clinician commentary, approved by your own qualified people, gives health and travel editors something accurate to quote in several languages.
SaaS and B2B companies with proprietary data
Anonymised product data, usage benchmarks or a well-run industry survey are the raw material of data-led campaigns.
Businesses that were burned by paid links
If a previous provider sold you link packages, you need a cleaner approach and an honest review of what already points at your site.
/03 · Problems we solve
Problems digital PR addresses
Nobody links to you unless asked
Commercial pages rarely attract links on their own. Without an asset worth citing, outreach turns into begging.
A link profile built on shortcuts
Directory blasts, unqualified sponsored posts and private networks leave a fragile profile and, at worst, a manual action.
Press releases that go nowhere
Wire distribution produces syndicated copies on low-value sites, rarely a story a journalist writes.
No visibility in AI answers
AI assistants summarise what trusted sources say. If no independent source mentions your brand, there is little for them to draw on.
/04 · Comparison
Digital PR, link building, press releases and paid links compared
| Approach | How links or mentions arise | Position under Google's spam policies | Where it fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital PR | An editor chooses to cover an asset or quote an expert | Editorially given links are legitimate | Core of earned authority |
| Manual link building (resource pages, broken-link replacement) | A site owner agrees the link improves their page | Acceptable when editorially justified, not traded | Supporting tactic |
| Press release distribution | Wire services republish your text | Optimised anchor-text links in distributed releases are listed as link spam | Real announcements, not link acquisition |
| Sponsored or paid placements | Payment buys an article or link | Must carry rel=sponsored or nofollow | Labelled brand awareness only |
| Link exchanges and private networks | Sites trade links or exist to pass ranking signals | Named as link schemes | Not offered |
Newsworthy assets: what journalists actually use
Coverage starts with an asset that answers a question a journalist already has: an original data study built from your anonymised data or public datasets, a survey with a transparent sample and method, expert commentary on a current issue, a small free tool such as a calculator, or a visual explainer of a complex topic.
Each idea passes three tests before production. Does it contain a new fact or a credible point of view? Would the target publications' readers care? Can you defend the method if an editor asks? Ideas that fail are dropped early; outreach cannot rescue an asset nobody needs.
The asset lives on your site, near the related commercial cluster planned in content SEO, so earned authority flows to pages that matter through internal links. Method notes, sources and dates are published with it, because editors and AI systems that quote figures check them.
Reactive PR, expert commentary and outreach etiquette
Not every campaign needs a big asset. Reactive PR, often called newsjacking, means offering an informed comment while a story is still developing, such as a regulation change or a widely shared report. Commenting where you have no real expertise weakens credibility, so we stay selective.
Expert sourcing platforms and journalist request services list questions from writers looking for sources. We monitor relevant requests, draft answers with your named expert and submit only where the fit is genuine. Your expert approves every quote; in health or finance, your own qualified people approve the wording.
Outreach follows simple etiquette: research what the writer covers, put the story in the first lines of a short personal pitch, offer data or a quote rather than a link request, follow up once at most, and respect embargoes and a polite no. Nobody is contacted in bulk.
Link quality: what we count and what we ignore
A link is worth having when the linking page is topically relevant to yours, the link sits in editorial content a writer chose to include, and the site has a real audience. Third-party authority scores help with sorting but do not replace looking at the page.
We also check qualification. Google Search Central documents three rel attributes: sponsored for paid or affiliate links, ugc for user-generated content and nofollow as a general hint. A qualified link from a well-read publication still brings readers and brand searches, so we report it.
Not counted as wins: site-wide footer links, pages that exist to sell links, scraped copies and links with clearly negotiated anchor text.
Google's spam policies and the lines we do not cross
Google Search Central's spam policies describe link spam as links intended to manipulate rankings: buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, excessive link exchanges, automated link creation, large-scale guest posting with keyword-rich anchors, and optimised anchor-text links in articles or press releases distributed elsewhere. Google may ignore such links or take manual action.
Our practice follows from that. We do not buy links, build or rent private blog networks, arrange link exchanges, sell link packages, or promise placements in named publications before an editor has decided. Coverage is pursued case by case, and some campaigns will not land.
On cleanup, Google's guidance is that most sites never need the disavow tool; it is meant for a manual action or many unnatural links you or a provider created. We review your profile but recommend a disavow file only in that situation.
Brand mentions, unlinked mentions and AI search
Not every mention carries a link, and an unlinked mention is not worthless. It puts your brand in front of real readers, can lead to branded searches, and adds to the body of independent text that describes who you are and what you do.
Where a publication mentioned you without a link and a link would genuinely help its readers, for example to the study it quoted, we ask politely once. Where it would not, we leave it.
Mentions also matter for AI search. Assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity compose answers from sources they retrieve, and AI Overviews draw on pages Google indexes. Accurate descriptions of your brand on independent sites give them something to cite; we treat this as a contributing factor, not a lever.
Multilingual PR across Turkish, English, Arabic and Persian
A story that works for Turkish business media rarely works unchanged for English trade press or Arabic and Persian-language outlets. Each market has its own agenda and pitching conventions, so angles are chosen per market rather than translated.
Pitches, asset summaries and expert quotes are produced natively with reviewer approval in each language, with right-to-left layout checked for Arabic and Persian materials. Persian-language outreach targets Persian-speaking audiences and publications worldwide. On your site, each language version of the asset is set up with hreflang through international SEO, so earned links reach the right page for each audience.
/11 · Deliverables
What a digital PR engagement delivers
- 01Authority gap analysis: your referring domains and mentions against the sites that outrank you, by topic.
- 02Linkable asset concepts with angle, data source, audience and production effort.
- 03Story angles and pitch drafts per market, produced natively with reviewer approval.
- 04A reactive commentary routine with monitored topics and approval steps.
- 05Link-quality review of every earned link and mention, including rel qualification.
- 06Existing link profile review, with a disavow recommendation only when warranted.
- 07Monthly report on mentions, links, referral traffic and branded search.
/12 · Method and process
How a digital PR engagement runs
Six steps, repeated per campaign once the first cycle is complete.
- 01
Readiness and authority audit
We confirm the site is crawlable and indexable, review existing links and mentions, and compare them with the sites competing for your priority topics. If the foundations are not ready, we say so and recommend technical or content work first.
- 02
Asset and angle discovery
We look at data you already hold, questions your audience asks and stories running in each market, then score asset concepts on newsworthiness, credibility of method, relevance to your commercial pages and production effort.
- 03
Asset production on your site
The chosen asset is researched, written and published on your site with its method, sources and date visible, and linked internally to the relevant cluster so earned authority reaches the pages that convert.
- 04
Targeting and pitching
We build a short, relevant list of writers per market, draft personal pitches and send them with your approval. Follow-up is limited to one message; reactive opportunities run in parallel.
- 05
Review and reclamation
Every mention is checked for relevance, editorial placement, audience and link qualification. A polite link request for an unlinked mention is sent only where it serves the publication's readers.
- 06
Measurement and next campaign
We report what the campaign produced and what it did not, record which angles editors responded to, and choose the next asset accordingly, planned as a calendar alongside the content programme.
/13 · Measurement and KPIs
How digital PR is measured
No count of links or placements is promised. We measure quality and direction, and say plainly when a campaign did not land.
- Links
Quality of new referring domains
Each new linking site is assessed on relevance, editorial placement and real audience, using Search Console's links report and a third-party link index, rather than simply counted.
- Mentions
Brand mentions, linked and unlinked
Mention monitoring plus manual review, split by market and language, noting context and tone.
- Referrals
Referral traffic from coverage
Sessions and key events from linking pages in GA4, separating coverage that sends readers from coverage that does not.
- Branded
Branded search demand
Branded queries in Search Console over time, read against campaign dates.
- AI answers
Brand presence in AI answers
A fixed prompt set checked periodically in major assistants, noting whether the brand appears and which sources are cited.
/14 · Common challenges
Common challenges in digital PR
Results are uneven
One asset may be picked up widely and the next not at all. That is normal for editorial work, so campaigns are planned as a series.
Approval speed
Reactive commentary only works while a story is live. Slow sign-off, especially in regulated sectors, closes the window; we agree an approval route in advance.
Long time to show in rankings
Authority builds slowly, and links are only one of many ranking factors. Referral traffic and mentions are usually visible before any change in search performance.
/15 · Strategic considerations
When digital PR is premature
The site has technical problems
If important pages are not indexed or render poorly, earned links lose much of their value. Fix the foundation first.
There is nothing worth linking to yet
With thin pages and no data, tool or point of view, outreach has nothing to offer. Build the pages and assets first.
You need a quick, fixed number of links
If the goal is a set link count by a set date, this is not the right service. Editorial coverage cannot be scheduled that way.
You are unsure where authority is the bottleneck
An SEO audit shows whether authority, content or technical issues hold rankings back before you invest in PR.
/16 · Frequently asked questions
Digital PR: frequently asked questions
What is the difference between digital PR and link building?
Link building is any effort to gain links, including tactics like resource-page outreach or broken-link replacement. Digital PR is a subset driven by stories: the aim is coverage and mentions, and links follow when editors find the asset useful. Both are legitimate when links are editorially given; neither includes buying or trading links.
Why don't you buy links?
Google Search Central's spam policies list buying or selling links that pass ranking credit as link spam, and Google may ignore such links or take manual action. Paid placements also tend to sit on sites that exist to sell links, with little real audience. Earned coverage is slower but does not leave a liability to clean up later.
Do press releases help SEO?
Rarely as a link source. Google's spam policies name optimised anchor-text links in distributed press releases as link spam, and wire copies usually land on low-value sites. A press release is still useful for genuine announcements sent to relevant journalists, where the value comes from a writer choosing to cover the news.
Are unlinked brand mentions worth anything?
Yes. A mention in a relevant publication reaches real readers, can prompt branded searches and adds to the independent text that describes your brand, which AI assistants also draw on. Where a link would genuinely help the publication's readers, for example to a study it quoted, we ask once; otherwise we leave the mention as it is.
Does digital PR improve visibility in AI search?
It can contribute. AI assistants and AI Overviews build answers from sources they retrieve, so consistent mentions on trusted independent sites give them material about your brand. It is one factor alongside your own content and technical accessibility, and no one can promise that a specific assistant will cite you.
Can you promise coverage in specific publications?
No. Editors decide what they cover, and a promise of placement in a named publication usually means the placement is paid. We choose relevant targets, prepare a strong story and pitch it carefully, then report honestly on what was picked up and what was not.
How long before digital PR shows results?
Mentions and referral traffic can appear within weeks of a campaign that lands. Ranking effects take longer and depend on how far authority, rather than content or technical issues, is the limiting factor. We plan a series of campaigns and review direction monthly instead of judging a single one.
/17 · Supporting resources
Related services and next steps
- Content marketing and SEO content (family overview)The content programme that produces the assets digital PR promotes.
- SEO servicesThe wider SEO programme that off-site authority feeds into.
- AI search visibilityHow brand mentions and citations connect to AI answers.
- International SEOhreflang and language versions so multilingual coverage reaches the right page.
- Analytics and dataReferral and branded-search tracking that makes PR measurable.
- ContactTell us about your site and data; we will say whether digital PR is the right next step.
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