Link Building and Digital PR

Why authority decides close calls

When several pages answer a query equally well, the site that other reputable sites reference tends to win. For a newer site this is usually the limiting factor, and it is the slowest to change. It is also the one most agencies fake, which is why Google's spam policies name paid links, link exchanges and private blog networks explicitly.

In 2026 there is a second reason to care. Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands found that unlinked brand mentions correlate with being cited in AI answers about three times as strongly as backlinks do. Digital PR that earns mentions on sites and channels the assistants already trust now serves both Google and AI search.

How we earn links and mentions

• Original data. Surveys, analyses of public data, or your own anonymised numbers that journalists and industry writers can cite.
• Expert commentary. Your people quoted in articles on topics they know, pitched to writers who are already covering the subject.
• Useful tools and resources that others link to because they help: calculators, checklists, reference pages.
• Partners, suppliers and associations who should already link to you and do not.
• Unlinked mentions of your brand turned into links with a polite request.
• Directories and profiles that matter in your sector, with consistent details, because assistants read them too.

A campaign, step by step

1. Authority audit. Your link profile against three to five competitors: referring domains, the pages that earned them, and any links that look paid or spammy.
2. Find the story. What do you know, or what data could you gather, that a writer in your sector would want to cite? Most businesses have one or two of these and do not know it.
3. Build the asset. A study, a dataset, a tool or an expert explainer, published on your site with a clear method and a date.
4. Pitch. A short list of relevant writers and publications, contacted individually by a person with a specific angle. No mass outreach.
5. Follow through. Interviews, extra data cuts and quotes supplied quickly while the story is live.
6. Report. Every link and mention with source, date and context, plus what did not land and why.

What we need from you

• Someone willing to be quoted: a founder, a specialist, a practitioner. Named experts get coverage; anonymous companies do not.
• Data you can share: anonymised job records, pricing, timings, survey access to your customers. Original numbers are the most reliable link asset there is.
• A list of partners, suppliers, associations and memberships, so obvious links can be requested first.
• Sign-off on the asset before it is pitched, within a week, so the story is still timely.
• Disclosure of any links bought in the past, so we can assess the risk before we build on the profile.

What link building can and cannot achieve

It can raise the site's authority so that good pages start winning close calls, earn brand mentions that make AI assistants more likely to cite you, and bring referral traffic from the coverage itself. Over several quarters it is what turns a technically sound site with good content into one that ranks for competitive queries.

It cannot rescue a site with thin content or unresolved technical problems, and it cannot be rushed. A strong data story can bring many links in a month; an ordinary month brings a handful. We do not quote a number of links per month, because a number you can guarantee is a number you are buying.

How it is measured

• Referring domains gained and lost, with the page they point to and whether the link is followed.
• Brand mentions, linked and unlinked, tracked by monitoring tools and checked by hand.
• Referral sessions and leads from coverage, in GA4.
• Rankings and clicks on the pages the links point to, in Search Console, read over months rather than weeks.
• AI citation share on the prompt panel, since mentions feed it.

Common failure modes

• Buying links with a different name. Sponsored posts, guest posts on sites that exist to sell them, and link packages. The risk falls on you, not the vendor.
• A story nobody wants. A company announcement dressed up as research. Writers cite findings, not press releases.
• Pitching by volume. Thousands of automated emails, a reputation for spam, and no coverage.
• Counting the wrong things. Links from irrelevant sites, links to the home page only, or links the client earned themselves.
• Disavowing in a panic. Google ignores most spam links. A disavow file is for manual actions and a real history of paid links, not for every odd domain in a report.

What we do not do

Paid links, private blog networks, link exchanges at scale, automated outreach to thousands of sites, or guest posts on sites that exist to sell them. These are against Google's spam policies and the risk falls on you, not the vendor who sold them. Earned links are slow and lumpy, and we report every one with where it came from. We do not count links we did not earn.

Deliverables

How it runs

1. AuditWhere you stand against competitors and what is risky.
2. Find the storyData or expertise worth citing.
3. PitchTo relevant publications, individually, by people.
4. ReportEvery link and mention, honestly counted.

Which plan includes it

Compare all plans →

Questions

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