Coverage you earn. Authority no one can buy.
We find the story in your business and get it covered by real journalists at real publications. The high-authority links that follow are the byproduct, and they are the kind Google rewards and AI engines actually read.
One side of the line, only.
Digital PR is not link building in the transactional sense. Google's spam updates stripped ranking value from bought and networked links and push offending domains toward penalties, while authentic editorial coverage gained weight. A bought link is a liability on your domain. Earned coverage is an asset that compounds.
Stories journalists choose to cover.
- Proprietary data stories reporters cannot get anywhere else
- Expert commentary placed where journalists are already asking for it
- Personalized pitches to the reporters who actually cover your beat
Anything a link seller offers.
- Guest-post marketplaces and paid placements
- Private blog networks and niche edits
- Any link that can be bought
The link is step five.
Journalists do not cover businesses. They cover stories. The work is finding yours, building it into something worth citing, and putting it in front of the right reporters. Everything else follows.
We mine your business, your data, and your expertise for an angle that connects to what journalists in a target beat already cover. The scarce skill is finding the story, not describing the business. Two formats carry most campaigns: a proprietary data story, and prepared commentary timed to news you can see coming.
The angle becomes a research piece that lives on your own site: the data, the findings, the visuals. Every article that covers the story links back to it, which is why one strong asset keeps earning links for months as journalists discover it.
A list of the journalists who actually cover this ground, often a hundred or more per story, each researched by what they write. Not a purchased media list blasted blind.
Personalized pitches that reference a reporter's recent work, then weeks of managing replies and supplying whatever a story needs: quotes, data cuts, context. You pitch many to earn few. That is the honest arithmetic of earned media, and it is why bought shortcuts exist and why they fail.
A real article on a real publication: a link inside editorial coverage, a brand mention in the press AI engines read, and authority a competitor cannot order from a marketplace.
AI answers are built from earned coverage.
When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI who to hire or what to buy, the answer is assembled from sources the engine trusts. The current data is unambiguous about what those sources are: editorial and earned coverage, almost to the exclusion of everything brands pay for.
of all AI citations come from earned media. Paid and advertorial content accounts for 0.3%.
Brand mentions on the web correlate roughly three times more strongly with AI visibility than backlink counts.
The same content was cited by AI four times more often after it was covered by third-party news outlets.
Want to know what AI already says when a customer asks about your market? Run the free AI Answer Check and see the verbatim answers in about a minute. Digital PR is the press lane of our AI visibility work; the audio lane is podcast booking.
Coverage decays. Authority is maintained.
Over half of the journalism AI engines cite was published within the past twelve months, and citation volume drops sharply six months after a piece runs. Visibility is not a trophy you win once, it is a position you hold. That is why this runs as a program, not a project: a steady rhythm of stories, commentary, and coverage that keeps your business inside the sources engines and buyers are reading right now.
Authority in your category.
For the founder-led business competing beyond its zip code: proprietary data campaigns and expert commentary aimed at the trade press and national outlets your buyers, and the AI engines they ask, already trust.
Authority in your market.
For the business whose market is a city, not a country: local news, regional business press, and state-of-the-market data angles that make you the name your market's coverage keeps mentioning.
Asked and answered.
What is digital PR?
Earning media coverage, brand mentions, and editorial backlinks by creating genuinely newsworthy content and getting real journalists to cover it. The backlink is the byproduct of real coverage, not something bought or placed. That distinction is what makes it safe and what makes it work.
How is this different from link building?
Transactional link building buys placements: guest posts, niche edits, private blog networks. Google's spam updates stripped ranking value from those links and push offending domains toward penalties. Digital PR earns links inside real articles by giving journalists a story worth covering. Same goal, authority, reached by the only road that still holds.
Do backlinks still matter for AI search?
The coverage matters even more than the link. Muck Rack's May 2026 study of 25 million AI citations found 84% come from earned media and 0.3% from paid content, and Ahrefs found brand mentions correlate roughly three times more strongly with AI visibility than backlink counts. Earned coverage is how a brand enters the answers AI gives.
Why isn't my business showing up in ChatGPT answers?
AI engines assemble answers from sources they trust, and they overwhelmingly trust earned editorial coverage. If outlets AI reads have never covered your business, there is little for it to cite. In controlled testing, the same content went from an 8% to a 34% citation rate after third-party news coverage. See what AI says about your business now.
How long does a campaign take?
A full data-story campaign typically runs about twelve weeks from angle to coverage report. Reactive commentary can land faster. And because coverage value decays after publication, durable authority comes from an ongoing program, not a single push.
Do you buy links or guest posts?
No. Ever. Bought links are a liability on your domain under Google's current spam policies, and paid placements are close to invisible to AI engines. Every link we pursue arrives inside a real article a journalist chose to write. If a link can be bought, it is not worth having.
See if there's a story in your business.
Most businesses have one. Bring yours to a free twenty-five-minute call and we'll tell you, straight, whether digital PR fits and what it would take. If it doesn't fit, we'll say that too.