The digital PR landscape is an ever-changing creature, and we are currently seeing the most significant shift since the Penguin update of 2012. At this point, if you're still measuring success purely by link volume, you're going to get left behind.
For years, the industry chased high volumes of followed links. Unlinked brand mentions were dismissed as practically valueless. Agencies reported on low-quality links just to hit targets, and generic survey campaigns were churned out with the sole aim of getting syndicated across hundreds of sites, regardless of audience relevance. At its worst, digital PR risked becoming a numbers game with little substance behind the metrics.
But the rise of AI-powered search is rewriting the rules entirely. Now, successful digital PR looks less like link farming and more like traditional PR, where expertise, experience, authority and trust (EEAT) need to be at the core of everything we do.
The AI Revolution Has Changed the Game
It's hardly a hot take to say that AI is transforming digital marketing. What matters now is understanding exactly how it's changing things and adapting your tactics accordingly.
For digital PR, this means a shift in mindset from prioritising volume to focusing on relevancy and quality. AI search results predominantly pull from high-quality news publications and genuine human discussions on forums. Being featured in articles that directly answer real questions from your target audience has never been more important. Similarly, becoming a useful source of information that’s likely to be shared in forum discussions will have a direct impact on visibility.
When AI tools generate recommendations, they rely on patterns from training data and real-time content retrieval, prioritising brands that consistently appear in trusted, contextually relevant sources. This means your brand needs to be part of the conversation AI tools are pulling from, even when no one clicks through to your website.
What This Means for Your Strategy
The days of churning out clickbait survey campaigns with tenuous connections to your client's offering are over. Think strategically or suffer the consequences.
Every piece of content must start from this position: is this going to answer a real question that a potential customer might be asking Google or ChatGPT?
My three top tips for pivoting your strategy:
Start with data-driven insights. Every campaign needs validation. Is there search volume? Are people discussing this topic on forums? Are there social media conversations happening? Rather than guessing what journalists will care about, start with your customer base's interests and work backwards.
Check where your audience actually is. Look at Reddit, TikTok and Instagram to see what questions people are asking and what content gets engagement. Use Google Trends and Ahrefs Keywords Explorer to understand search behaviour. Reddit has become particularly influential, with AI tools frequently citing threads as sources for authentic user experiences and recommendations.
Go deep, not wide. Rather than creating generic content with broad appeal, create something genuinely valuable and in-depth on a niche topic that's highly relevant to your client's target audience.
No More 'Spray and Pray'
If you're still emailing 150 journalists with the same story, don't expect results that will move the needle.
Instead, establish your client's dream publications. Aim for between 10-50 key targets for your campaigns, then do an in-depth analysis of those publications to understand what content they actually cover. Is it founder Q&As? Original data? Case studies? Op-eds?
Tailor your outreach to your publications. Only pitch a story if you're 90% confident the journalist will care about it, and draft emails that are genuinely personal. PRs are busy, but spending extra time at the planning stage pays dividends.
When crafting pitches and press releases, explain what your brand does and the services it offers within the content itself, as AI models look for these descriptions to understand what to recommend. This is a shift from the old approach of simply stating "I-COM has discovered what really gets people opening emails" to " Chloe Richards, Email Marketing Strategist at I-COM, a Manchester-based digital agency, has discovered what really gets people opening emails."
How to Demonstrate Value to Clients
Many clients who aren't SEO experts will still expect a successful campaign to deliver 50 links. Changing this mindset requires education and evidence.
Have a conversation about how tactics are evolving in response to AI-powered search. Explain that a highly relevant brand mention, one that explains what the company does, who the spokesperson is, what makes them an expert, and answers a question their target audience actually cares about, is worth exponentially more than a generic link.
Research shows that brands with consistent unlinked mentions in trusted sources are significantly more likely to appear in AI-generated responses, as these models learn to associate brands with specific qualities and use cases.
Measuring What Actually Matters
Digital PR has value far beyond coverage alone, both measurable and contextual.
Measurable KPIs:
- Search visibility: Track your presence in both traditional search results and AI-powered answers
- Brand awareness: Monitor mention volume and sentiment across the web
- Authority and trust: Measure the quality and relevance of publications featuring your brand
Contextual KPIs:
- Brand building: Long-term reputation development
- Crisis management: The ability to control your narrative when it matters most
- Relevance and presence: Being part of the conversation in your industry
The brands succeeding in 2025 aren't just getting links. They're being mentioned in the right places, in the right context, establishing themselves as the trusted answer to their audience's questions. When AI systems can pull multiple examples of a brand appearing in expert guides, how-to content, and top recommendation lists with positive sentiment, they begin to associate that brand with quality and relevance.
The New Digital PR Playbook
Success in modern digital PR looks a lot like what traditional PR has long been focused on. Strategies still need to support traditional search rankings with earned links, but earned media, brand mentions, and presence in authoritative third-party content are now just as important.
This isn't about abandoning what works. Links still matter for traditional SEO. But if you're only doing something for links in 2025, you're leaving gaps in your strategy that competitors can exploit.
Not all coverage is equal. Focus on strategic placements, and target well-known media, review sites, industry publications, and even platform-specific content like Reddit threads. These are the sources that AI tools learn from. Positive, natural mentions, even without links, carry significant influence.
Push to be featured in roundups and lists. “Best X for Y” articles heavily inform recommendation engines and LLMs. If your product consistently appears across multiple high-quality roundups, AI tools recognise this pattern and become more likely to recommend you.
Perhaps most crucially, you need to build a consistent narrative. Ensure your brand story is reflected consistently across channels and publications. If you want to be known for innovation or affordability, make sure that's how others describe you, from journalists and bloggers to customer reviews.
The Bottom Line
The shift towards AI-powered search has fundamentally changed how people discover and trust brands. Traditional metrics like backlinks and keyword rankings remain important, but they need context, authority and consistency to have real impact.
Digital PR now plays a crucial role in shaping how AI sees you. If you're not being mentioned in the right places and in the right way, you risk becoming invisible, even if your traditional SEO is solid.
I-COM’s digital PR team is dedicated to learning and growing, as search constantly shifts and evolves. Our strategies have pivoted away from link numbers and into establishing our clients as trusted authorities in their fields, with consistent messaging and niche topic focuses.
AI isn’t going anywhere, and with everyone’s lives becoming increasingly online, brands can’t afford not to invest in smart digital PR. In-house or agency side, it’s time to get strategic.
For more information, check our dedicated pages on our approach to Digital PR and Generative AI.
Want tailored advice for your business? Contact us for a free consultation or insight review - call us on 0161 402 3170, or fill out our online form.
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I-COM Digital Marketing
With a large in-house team of specialists we provide a range of digital services including web design, web development, digital marketing, SEO, branding, content marketing, PR and outreach, social media marketing and paid search marketing, we cover every digital marketing need you may have.
Call us on 0161 402 3170 or use the contact form to get in touch.