What digital PR actually means
Digital PR is the practice of earning coverage, links and brand mentions on websites, online publications and social platforms. The goal is usually twofold: get a brand talked about by the right audience, and build the kind of authoritative links that help a site rank in Google.
That second part is what separates it from the PR your parents might recognise. A traditional press office measures success in column inches and broadcast slots. A digital PR team measures it in linking domains, referral traffic and movement in search rankings.
It is a young discipline. The term started appearing in agency job ads around 2010, when SEO teams realised the link-building tactics they relied on were being penalised by Google, and that genuine editorial coverage was a safer way to earn links.
How digital PR differs from traditional PR
Plenty of skills carry over. Both jobs rely on relationships with journalists, and both reward writing that a busy editor will actually run.
The real differences are in the targets and the measurement.
Traditional PR often chases print and broadcast: a feature in the trade press, a quote in a national, a slot on regional radio. A clipping in a magazine is the prize, even if that magazine has no website worth linking from.
Digital PR cares about the online footprint of that coverage. A mention in a print edition that never goes online is close to worthless to a digital PR team, while a link from a mid-tier news site with strong domain authority can justify a whole campaign.
A simple example shows the gap. Say a recruitment brand wants coverage. The traditional route might announce a new office and hope the local business press runs it. The digital PR route would commission a survey of 2,000 UK workers on something like burnout or pay expectations, package the findings under a clear headline, and pitch it to national lifestyle and business desks. The second approach is built specifically to earn links, where the first only hopes for a mention.
Why links put digital PR at the centre of SEO
Google has been clear for years that links remain one of its strongest ranking signals. In 2016, Google's Andrey Lipattsev named links and content as the top two factors the algorithm weighs. Not much has changed since.
The catch is that you cannot manufacture good links without risk. Google's guidelines treat paid and manipulative links as spam, and sites caught buying them can lose visibility overnight. The safest links are the ones a journalist or editor chooses to include because the story is worth citing.
That is exactly what digital PR produces. When a national newspaper links to a client's research, or a respected industry blog cites their data, the link arrives with editorial trust attached. It is the kind of link SEO teams struggle to earn any other way, which is why digital PR and SEO budgets are increasingly run together.
If you want to see how closely the two sit, look at where agencies place the roles. Many list digital PR vacancies right alongside their SEO jobs, and a good number expect their digital PR hires to understand keyword targeting and link metrics.
Why agencies are hiring for digital PR right now
Demand has grown for a few concrete reasons.
First, link building got harder. The tactics that worked a decade ago, such as directory submissions and paid guest-post networks, now carry penalties or simply do not move rankings. Earned coverage is one of the few link sources Google still rewards, so agencies need people who can earn it.
Second, content marketing matured. Brands now produce more research, tools and data than ever, and that material needs distribution. A data study sitting on a company blog does nothing on its own. A digital PR team turns it into coverage.
Third, clients started asking for it by name. SEO retainers that once covered only on-page work and technical fixes now routinely include a digital PR line, because clients have learned that rankings for competitive terms rarely improve without authoritative links.
The PRCA, the UK's main PR trade body, has tracked this shift in its PR and Communications Census, reporting year on year that digital and social work makes up a growing share of agency activity and budgets. Recruitment tends to follow the budget.
It is worth saying that agencies are not the only ones recruiting. Plenty of larger brands now run digital PR in-house. But agencies still do most of the hiring and most of the training, which makes them the usual entry point for anyone starting out.
What a digital PR role looks like day to day
The job is more varied than the title suggests. A typical week might include:
- Coming up with campaign ideas a journalist would actually want to cover
- Pulling together survey data or analysing a public dataset to find a story angle
- Writing press releases, pitches and expert comments
- Building and keeping media lists of relevant journalists up to date
- Sending pitches and following up without becoming a nuisance
- Tracking coverage, links and the metrics that prove a campaign worked
Reactive PR is a big part of it too. When a news story breaks that touches a client's sector, a digital PR specialist can draft expert commentary within the hour and place it with journalists writing that day. Speed matters more here than polish.
How agencies measure success
Coverage alone no longer cuts it. The metrics reported back to clients now centre on links: how many linking domains a campaign earned, the authority of those domains, and whether they point to a page that matters for rankings rather than the homepage by default.
Referral traffic and brand search lift get tracked too. A campaign that lands a feature in a national should show up as a bump in people searching the brand by name, and good teams watch for that. Weaker agencies still count total pieces of coverage and hope nobody asks what those links were actually worth.
This is where digital PR people earn their keep at review time. Being able to tie a campaign to ranking movement, or to a sale, is what turns a retainer renewal into an easy conversation.
The skills that get you hired
Writing comes first. If you cannot write a pitch an editor reads past the first line, none of the rest matters. Agencies test for this constantly, often with a short writing task at interview.
Data literacy is climbing the list. The best campaigns are built on numbers, so being able to handle a spreadsheet, spot a pattern and turn it into a headline is a genuine advantage. You do not need to be a statistician, but you should be comfortable around data.
Then there is the part that cannot be taught in a week: news sense. Knowing what makes a story, what a journalist on a given desk cares about this week, and what is just a brand talking about itself. People who read the news for pleasure tend to be better at this than people who do not.
One underrated trait is resilience. Most pitches get ignored. A campaign you spent weeks on can land nothing, and the next throwaway idea can earn fifty links. People who take silence personally tend not to last; people who treat it as a numbers game do well.
Familiarity with SEO finishes the set. You do not need to run technical audits, but understanding why a link from one site is worth more than a link from another will make you far more useful to the wider team. If your background leans technical, it is worth seeing how agencies blend these skills across their digital PR jobs.
Salaries and career progression
Pay varies by city and agency size, but the shape of the ladder is consistent.
Junior roles such as Digital PR Executive commonly advertise in the low-to-mid twenty-thousands outside London, with a few thousand more in the capital. PRWeek runs an annual salary survey worth checking for current figures, since pay has moved quickly in recent years.
Above that sit Senior Executive, Account Manager and Account Director roles, with Heads of Digital PR and agency directors at the top. Many people also move sideways into content, SEO or wider campaign strategy, because the skill set travels well.
How to break into digital PR
You do not need a PR degree. Plenty of strong digital PR people come from journalism, marketing, English, history or no relevant degree at all. What agencies look for is evidence you can do the work.
A few things help. Build a small portfolio: pitch a story to a local paper, get a byline somewhere, or write up a piece of analysis on your own blog. Learn the free tools the job uses, such as a basic media database and Google Sheets, and get familiar with a link checker like Ahrefs or Majestic if you can. Read the trade press so you can talk about recent campaigns at interview.
Apply widely, but apply with specifics. A pitch-style covering letter that proposes an actual campaign idea for the agency's client will beat a generic application every time. It also doubles as proof you can do the core task.
Where digital PR is heading
Digital PR is no longer a bolt-on to SEO. It has become the engine that earns the links and coverage modern search visibility depends on, and agencies are staffing it accordingly. For anyone who can write well and has a feel for what makes a story, it is one of the more open doors into agency work at the moment.
You can see what is currently being advertised on our digital PR jobs page.