Link building vs digital PR: which earns what?
Link building is the discipline – earning links from other websites to yours. Digital PR is one method within it: earning links by giving the press stories worth covering. They are not competitors; the real comparison is between methods of link building, and it decides what kind of links you end up with.
The methods, compared
| Asset-led link building | Digital PR | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of work | A linkable asset promoted to relevant sites | A story pitched to journalists |
| Typical links | Steady accumulation to deep pages | Bursts of links from news domains |
| Link targets | Guides, tools, data pages | Usually the homepage or campaign page |
| Best for | Ranking specific commercial pages | Domain authority and brand visibility |
| Side effects | Content that also ranks and converts | Press coverage, seven-figure readerships |
| Risk profile | Slow if assets are weak | Zero links if the story doesn't land |
Which should you buy?
Wrong question, mostly – mature campaigns run both: assets earn the deep links that rank pages, PR earns the authority that makes everything rank easier. What you should never buy is the third option: links that are simply purchased, which violate Google's spam policies and concentrate risk instead of authority. If a proposal quotes you a price per link, you're reading the third option in disguise.