SEO gets your business found; PR gets your business talked about. And in today’s ever-changing online landscape, you need both for optimal reach.
I recently became Lumen’s PR Specialist after several months of experimenting with and improving our PR function. Then, and even now, I hear the same question: ‘What’s digital PR, and how does it affect SEO?’. SEO, PR, and even AI are becoming more and more intertwined; so, yes, PR does have an impact on SEO.
Let’s take a closer look at how digital PR and SEO can work together to improve brand visibility and earn your business a spot in the all-important AI overview on Google.
What is Digital PR in SEO?
So, what exactly is digital PR? Well, digital PR focuses on online platforms to boost website traffic and increase brand awareness. This differs from traditional PR, which utilises offline platforms, such as print, TV and radio. Despite the different media channels, digital and traditional PR have the same aim; they diverge again when it comes to measuring.
Digital PR can be measured using several metrics depending on what’s important to your business, such as:
- Backlinks
- Mentions
- Organic search rankings
- Referral traffic
- Leads and conversions
- Sentiment analysis
- AI visibility
Does Digital PR Help SEO?
It certainly does! Once your business starts gaining backlinks on trusted, high-authority online publications, you will start to see a positive impact on your SEO results. But how does this work?
How Does Digital PR Affect SEO?
Authoritative Backlinks
When you’re featured in an article, the journalist will most likely link to your website, product or service. What makes an authoritative backlink is when it comes from a credible source.
Top Tip: We all want to get featured in Forbes or the Financial Times, as they’re some of the most trusted publications, but we often need to build our own credibility and authority first. So, look for opportunities that fit your current standing, and increase expectations as your brand awareness grows.
Brand Mentions
Although a backlink is the most desired outcome from an online feature, unlinked mentions still count as a valuable trust signal, especially when coming from high-authority websites, such as the BBC.
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness) is an essential part of SEO as it’s a key framework Google uses to assess content’s quality and credibility. Press coverage builds third-party proof of expertise, helping to build E-E-A-T
Branded Search Demand
Press coverage improves brand awareness; as a result, this drives prospective customers or clients to search for you by name. Therefore, the more you invest in digital PR, the more your branded search demand increases.
Referral Traffic
Search demand isn’t the only thing digital PR improves; it also increases your referral traffic. This is the visitors arriving directly from the article your business has been featured in to your website.
How to Combine SEO & PR for AI Visibility
Now for the question everyone’s been asking: ‘How can SEO and digital PR get my business featured in AI overviews?’. LLMs (large language models) lean on trusted sources to extract information. So, being featured in highly trusted publications, as well as gaining repeated brand mentions across multiple publications and online platforms, helps AI tools determine if you can be trusted.
Combined with consistent spokespeople and brand messaging, AI will be more likely to link to your website, whether that’s on Google’s AI overview or within the tools themselves, such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Getting cited by AI is becoming increasingly important; a study from Ahrefs found that branded web mentions are actually three times more influential than backlinks when they are picked up by LLMs.
How Do SEO & Digital PR Work Together?
At Lumen, we utilise the ‘SEO x Digital PR Flywheel’, which looks like this:
The premise is as follows:
- Earn quality, authoritative coverage from a trusted publication
- Brand search and backlinks increase as a result
- This improves our Google rankings
- We start to gain more enquiries and client wins
- We can then turn these wins into a case study, highlighting our expertise
- This earns us more quality features, and the flywheel begins again
Seems simple enough, right? PR is often fast-paced, meaning results such as branded search, backlinks and referral traffic are seen first. Whereas SEO can take weeks, or even months, for rankings to follow after a successful press run.
What does this mean for businesses? It means digital PR and SEO are a long-term investment which needs nurturing with an effective strategy. Here’s our own example of how digital PR and SEO can drive results.
Digital PR in Practice: Our Coverage
Back in early 2025, we went a bit viral for our 32-hour week story; it was picked up by the Financial Times, Wales Online and HR Grapevine after Aled made a LinkedIn post announcing the switch. As you can expect, during this period, we saw a massive increase in our mentions and backlinks, but our most successful month in terms of brand search actually came in October that year.
October 2025 saw 74% of the whole year’s branded clicks land; but why, especially 5-6 months after the viral story? Well, we weren’t relying on one story; we had several PR angles working at once:
- We launched our new parental leave policy, which was picked up by a number of publications
- Aled was in Austin, Texas, for a conference and spoke candidly on social media channels about his goals for expansion into the US, which is a big deal for a Cardiff agency
- Aled was also promoting attending a CIPD conference to discuss the 32-hour week model
- We also announced a new vacancy for a Junior Account Executive
The 32-hour work week story increased our brand awareness, and our continued digital PR efforts, i.e. press releases, social media and events, reinforced our expertise, trust and credibility over time.
Need An Agency that Does Both SEO & Digital PR?
As we can see, SEO and digital PR go hand-in-hand, helping to increase brand awareness, AI visibility and drive website traffic. If you’re looking for an agency that does both SEO and digital PR, we can help ensure your marketing efforts work in harmony and not in silos.
To find out more about our PR services, I’d be happy to answer any questions at lois@lumenseo.co.uk or on 07709689444. And if you’d like a FREE website audit, the team can review your entire SEO strategy.
