Digital PR is used to describe two different things and the confusion is expensive. In the SEO industry it means earning links from publications to improve search rankings — outreach measured in domain authority and referring domains. In the communications industry it means ordinary public relations conducted online. Both are legitimate. They have different objectives, different tactics and different definitions of success, and an agency that will not tell you which one it does is worth avoiding.
The two definitions
Digital PR as link building. Objective: acquire links from high-authority domains to improve organic rankings. Tactics: data studies designed for linkability, expert commentary, resource pages, sometimes reactive newsjacking at volume. Measured in links, referring domains and rankings.
Digital PR as earned media online. Objective: credibility and awareness with buyers. Tactics: the same media relations that has always existed, aimed at online publications. Measured in coverage quality, message accuracy and business outcomes.
The overlap is genuine — a placement in a respected publication earns both a link and credibility. The divergence is in what gets chased when they conflict. Link-focused work will accept a mediocre publication for a good link. Credibility-focused work will not.
Ask which one you are buying. If the pitch talks about domain authority, referring domains and link velocity, it is SEO. If it talks about beats, relationships and message, it is PR. Neither is wrong; they are different purchases.
What changed, and it is significant
The link-building version of digital PR was built on an assumption that is now weaker: that ranking first produces traffic.
Our own tracking covers 180 keywords, 146 of which carry an AI Overview. Click-through on the AI Overview queries runs about 10% lower — 0.83% against 0.92% — which is a far smaller gap than the headline numbers circulating, and our two groups sit at different average positions, so we will not present it as like-for-like. Ahrefs puts the penalty on the top organic result at around 58%.
So a link that moves you from position eight to position three delivers materially less than it did three years ago. The link still helps ranking. Ranking just converts worse.
What gained value instead: being cited. A peer-reviewed study of generative-engine optimisation (KDD 2024) found that adding direct quotations, statistics and cited sources measurably improved how often a page was surfaced in generative answers — by up to 40% on the authors' benchmark, with the size of the effect varying by subject area.
The practical shift: coverage in a publication an AI system trusts is now worth more than a link from a domain with a high authority score, and those are not the same list.
What still works
Original data, published properly. The strongest asset in either version of digital PR. It earns links because people cite it, and it earns AI citations for the same reason. The method statement matters as much as the number.
Expert commentary from a named person. Quotable, attributable, and the format generative systems most readily lift.
Genuine reactive speed. Being useful within hours of a development. Works for links and for relationships simultaneously.
Relationships with journalists who cover your category. The unglamorous constant. Between December 2025 and August 2026, 63% of graded replies to our direct outreach were a yes.
"When a reporter does reply, 63% of the time it's a yes. The hard part was never convincing them. It's getting read at all."
Justin Mauldin, Founder, Salient PR
What works less well than it used to
Volume outreach for links. Mass-sending a data study to hundreds of journalists produces a low hit rate and burns sender reputation. It also trains recipients to ignore you, which costs you the pitch you actually cared about.
"Volume doesn't fix a bad list. Sending 200 pitches to people who don't cover you gets you the same result as sending 20, except now you're on more block lists."
Kayla Haines, Media Relations, Salient PR
Surveys commissioned purely to be linkable. Journalists recognise the format. A survey of 1,000 people about something nobody wondered about earns diminishing coverage each year.
Guest posting at scale. Increasingly treated as a link scheme rather than editorial.
Chasing domain authority scores. A third-party metric, not a Google signal, and optimising for it produces placements in publications your buyers do not read.
How to judge a digital PR agency
Ask which definition they mean. The answer should be immediate and specific.
Ask what they measure. Links and rankings, or coverage and message? Both are valid answers; evasion is not.
Ask which publications they placed in the last six months, by name. Then look at whether your buyers read any of them.
Ask how they handle AI Overviews. If they have not thought about it, they are selling a 2021 product.
Ask for reply rates. Any outreach programme worth buying is measured.
"Ask for the last 20 pitches they sent in your category and what came back. Not case studies, not a logo wall. The actual sends. If they can't produce that, they aren't measuring, and you'll find out in month four."
Justin Mauldin, Founder, Salient PR
One offer, two disciplines
Be sceptical of a combined offer at the price of one. The two disciplines need different people.
How Salient engages
We ask for a six-month commitment to start, because the first two months are relationship building and judging the work before then tells you nothing. After that there is a 30-day exit, no questions asked, either side. If it is not working we would both rather know.
The short version
- Digital PR means two different things. Ask which one you are buying.
- Link building improves rankings; rankings now convert worse. About 10% lower click-through with an AI Overview present, on our own 180-keyword tracking — a real but modest gap, not the collapse often quoted.
- Being cited by AI answers gained value as clicking lost it.
- Original data with a stated method works for both objectives. It is the one thing that does.
- Volume outreach, linkable surveys and domain-authority chasing all work less well than they did.
- Ask which publications, by name, and whether your buyers read them.
Salient PR runs earned media programmes for technology companies. Outreach figures come from our own database covering December 2025 to August 2026; AI Overview figures from our own tracking of 180 keywords (146 carrying an AI Overview), August 2026.
Sources
- Salient PR outreach database, Dec 2025 – Aug 2026
- Salient PR / Google Search Console + Ahrefs, 180-keyword AI Overview analysis, Aug 2026
- Ahrefs, AI Overviews reduce clicks, 2026
- Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, KDD
If you want this run by people who do it every day — Salient PR is a technology PR agency working with technology companies. See how we work or start a conversation.
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About Salient PR
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What digital PR actually is, how the link-building version differs from earned media, and what changed when AI answers started replacing clicks.
