Digital PR Derby
Digital PR is how your business gets talked about by the publications, journalists and websites your customers already trust — earning links that help search engines take your site more seriously along the way. Webgenix runs Digital PR campaigns for Derby businesses and throughout the UK, built around a story that's genuinely worth telling.
The Online Version of Public Relations
Rather than pitching a story to a newspaper or local radio station, Digital PR means pitching it to journalists writing for websites, trade newsletters and the niche publications your customers actually read. A business creates something worth writing about — a piece of original research, a strong opinion on something happening in its industry, or an interesting set of data nobody has looked at before. A PR specialist works out which journalists will care, and pitches the story with an angle that fits their publication.
If a journalist runs it, there's typically a link back to your website, or at least a mention of your brand. That's where the SEO connection comes in: a link from a site your industry already trusts signals to search engines that people are willing to vouch for your content. It isn't the only ranking factor, and it won't fix a site with larger technical issues, but it plays a genuine part in a wider SEO strategy — see our SEO agency Derby services for the rest of that picture.
- Campaigns built around a genuine story, not a generic press release
- Derby-based, with experience across manufacturing, engineering, professional services and retail
- No single agency template — the approach fits what you're trying to achieve
- Straight talk about what Digital PR can and can't do for your rankings
Coverage
Links and mentions from sites your customers trust
Real stories
Every campaign starts with something worth writing about
Derby & UK
Local knowledge, national media reach
Part of SEO
Works alongside technical SEO and content, not instead of it
Digital PR Services in Derby
There's no such thing as a universal campaign — the right approach depends on budget, timescale and what kind of story you actually have to tell.
Digital PR Campaigns
A campaign built around one main idea — a survey result, an original data study, a strong claim — timed and pitched correctly rather than left to chance. Usually the right approach around a launch, an anniversary or a seasonal moment.
Creative PR Campaigns
Some stories work better as a visual or interactive piece — a tool, an infographic, a striking piece of design around your data. More time-consuming to plan and often more expensive to produce, but with a broader audience among lifestyle and feature titles.
Media & Journalist Outreach
The part that actually gets your story in front of a publisher — finding and pitching the right journalist for the story, not just a big-name title, with individual pitches rather than one email blasted to two hundred inboxes.
Reactive Digital PR
Responding to the news, trending topics or journalist requests as they happen, providing expert comment from someone in your business. This is about speed — a journalist on a same-day deadline won't wait three days for a quote.
Digital PR Link Building
Here the aim isn't maximum brand exposure but quality links — coverage on sites relevant to your industry rather than a scattergun approach. Five placements your customers actually read can do more than thirty that have nothing to do with your business.
Content-Led PR
Built around something more substantial — an original report, an in-depth guide, a proper piece of research — that gets cited well beyond launch week. This works particularly well for technical or B2B businesses.
What Digital PR Can Actually Do for SEO
Digital PR can support SEO, but it's worth being clear about what that means — this gets over-sold by some agencies. A good backlink can help search engines understand your site's authority on a subject, but one link from a random site unrelated to your industry won't do much. What matters is a combination of links from genuinely relevant, trustworthy sources, built up over time.
This doesn't happen overnight, and consistency tends to be rewarded more than a sudden burst of activity for one campaign. Digital PR does not guarantee a specific ranking, and no good PR agency will claim it does — it's part of a bigger SEO strategy alongside technical SEO and on-page work, not a substitute for either.
Traditional PR — print, broadcast and local radio — still matters for businesses whose customers are older or more locally oriented, but it rarely produces anything a search engine can measure. Digital PR does much the same job of getting your business talked about by credible sources, except the coverage happens somewhere linkable, which is something a newspaper clipping can't offer. Most businesses don't need the most expensive option of either — it comes down to where your audience actually pays attention.
Our Digital PR Process
The mechanics are relatively straightforward to explain, even if it takes practice to get them right.
Research
Getting to know your business and where the genuine opportunity for coverage sits, rather than starting from a stock list of questions.
Campaign idea
Shortlisting ideas, testing them, and committing time to the ones worth running with.
Content & data development
Developing the chosen idea properly — collecting information, building a report or producing creative assets.
Outreach
Individual pitching of the finished story to relevant journalists.
Media follow-up
Following up where it's appropriate — a good story can easily get lost in a busy inbox.
Coverage monitoring
Tracking where the story has been picked up and which links have been created.
Reporting
Communicating clearly and simply what the campaign actually achieved.
How We Measure Digital PR Success
We report on what a campaign actually achieved, not just what looks good on a slide.
Relevance
How relevant the coverage is to your industry — a major factor in how much it's likely to help.
Quality links
Links from sites relevant to your sector, not just any link — the number of unique referring domains matters more than volume alone.
Referral traffic
Visitors who come to your site directly from a piece of coverage.
Brand mentions
Coverage with or without a link, and a fair estimate of reach rather than an inflated headline number.
Organic visibility
Your overall search performance trend over time, viewed alongside your other SEO activity.
Worth noting: if a Digital PR campaign is running alongside other SEO activity, it's genuinely hard to give it full credit for a ranking change — and rare that you fairly can. We'll be upfront about that rather than claiming credit that isn't properly ours.
Digital PR Ideas for Derby & UK Businesses
A few directions that typically yield a real story rather than a press release that goes straight in the bin. This doesn't need to be a huge creative campaign to work — a smaller, well-planned idea often lands better than a vague one built for a bigger business.
- Local data studies — public data with a Derby or East Midlands slant, such as commuting patterns or local business activity
- Industry surveys — original opinion data from your customers or peers, giving journalists a quote that didn't exist before
- Expert commentary — a well-supported opinion on a story already in the news, ready in time to be of use
- Original research — internal data, anonymised and presented properly, if there's something genuinely interesting in it
If a story isn't picked up
Even with a good idea, timing, competing news and journalist workload all play a part. We'd rather be honest about that than promise coverage nobody could actually guarantee.
Digital PR Derby FAQs
Need a Digital PR Concept?
Curious whether Digital PR is right for your business? Talk to the Webgenix team about your goals and we'll tell you honestly whether it's a good fit — no obligation, no hard sell.