Digital PR for Local Businesses: The Double Bubble of SEO Authority and AI Visibility

James Dooley: Digital PR is now giving a double bubble. It's helping increase rankings in Google Search, but also massively increasing AI visibility within the LLMs. Today, I'm joined with Chris Pantella, who does a lot of digital PR for a lot of different companies worldwide. So Chris, obviously, you've got quite a lot of data on this. With regards to, you used to sell, obviously, digital PR, and a lot of people was obsessed with the backlinks. But now it seems to be a lot of people are not really too bothered as much about the do follow, high authoritative, high DR backlinks, and more about even just the way things are being framed with the branded mentions. So for anyone who doesn't know who you are, and they've been hiding under a rock, can you explain why digital PR is now the double bubble, not just for SEO, but also for greater AI visibility?

Chris Pantella: Yeah, sure. So thanks for having me. When it comes to, for our clients, the deliverable is still the link. But we are seeing a transition now where, actually, the branded mention in of itself holds huge amounts of weight. So traditionally, earned media links are the best links that you can get to build authority in terms of SEO. You are getting that algorithmic SEO value of the page rank being passed to your website, to the root domain, from the link, from the backlink. But when it comes to digital PR and digital PR link building, 99.9% of the time, the way that that link will be structured is by way of attribution for the quotes that you've given. And that will be your name from your company. And then that company will hopefully be linked to. But that is the perfect anatomy of a branded mention. We've discussed this before. Name, frame, and explain, was it? Is that right?

James Dooley: Name, frame, and proof.

Chris Pantella: And you're getting that from a branded mention. If I'm getting cited in Forbes as Chris Pantelli from, who owns a digital PR agency called Linkify, that is who I am, what I do, on a website that is hugely authoritative. So the actual practice of engaging in digital PR means that you can win these SEO algorithmic links and also have branded mentions on huge websites, which does huge amounts for your AI visibility.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. Why do you think it is that digital PR earned media links are being cited more than majority of other sources? You've obviously have got one or two others like YouTube's doing all right, and Reddit's doing all right, and some social media and stuff like that. But generally speaking, it's the highly authoritative, trusted, high-end magazines, the high-end newspapers, the places where really you can only get earned media from a digital PR campaign. Why is it you think that the LLMs are citing those more than any other website?

Chris Pantella: Trust. Google spent 25 years developing an algorithm that meant that they were able to surface 10 websites on page one that they felt comfortable having on their front page. If somebody was gonna search for best treatments for cancer, they didn't want weird stuff on page one. They wanted stuff that they could trust. And they did that through an ingenious mechanism called backlinks. So I start a website tomorrow about weird cures for cancer. Who am I? What's my website? How can they trust me? Whereas if I have a website that I started 10 years ago, and I've got links from the BBC, Forbes, New York Times, then that website can be inherently trusted because of the trust that's being passed from all these other websites. So I think LLMs are in a position where they need to have results and surface recommendations inside of the answers that they can trust. And the easiest way to do that is by sourcing from already pre-existing trusted websites.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And with regards to that and like, so the episode here is called Double Bubble with regards to increasing search visibility within Google or within Bing, but also increasing LLM visibility. Have you started to find there's a transition between the customers? You do a lot of digital PR campaigns for a lot of different customers. Are they starting to now wanting to track the AI search visibility part, as well as seeing the backlink? Or is it still just obsessed with the backlink?

Chris Pantella: It really depends on the client, but AI visibility is increasingly becoming an equally important part for customers. And I think the reason that the digital PR is so attractive, especially the sort of digital PR that we do at Linkify, which is truly earned media. I think the reason it's so attractive is because you are able to try and achieve both those goals simultaneously. And yeah, I think you're exactly right. Tracking is vital, but it's extremely difficult. And you know, we're in the Wild West now. This is brand new. We've got existing established companies like Ahrefs who have huge amounts of data that are able to build into their existing tool, like some forms of what you could call AI visibility tracking, where you can look at the prompts, the keywords that they've got and where they're being cited across different LLMs. Although I think that's good in some ways, but it's not the full picture. As you know, the possibilities of what you could search for in an LLM are endless. And therefore being able to track, you sort of need to synthesize potential conversations. And then what's really important is that when those conversations or prompts are being run inside of an LLM, it needs to be done like how it would actually be done by a user. And a lot of the initial tools that came out for tracking relied on the API and the API, those prompts being run against the API would give you completely different results to if you were doing it in like an incognito browser. So as we level up, I think it's gonna become easier and easier. ChatGPT has launched ads now inside of its platform, although I can't get access yet in the UK. I can't wait till we do, so I'm gonna start playing with it. But as we get ads, we'll start getting data. And then as we get more data, hopefully we can track better. But yeah, I think that one of the best things you can do in terms of tracking now is just that final conversion, like track where your sales are coming from. Are people saying, I bought your product because I found you on ChatGPT. So you need to have like these part of your like onboarding or your sales process or your forms, find out how people are finding you.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. So obviously when people are doing digital PR, if they're using any sorts of AI search monitoring tools or LLM visibility checkers, it's great point that you made there with regards to making certain you're not using an LLM visibility tracker that's doing the API, because it's very different in the way a human is searching it, and the history and all the rest of it. So, but when digital PR has been done, obviously you're using some different LLM visibility tools. Are you pretty much seeing now a majority of the time, the minute a client does a digital PR campaign, it is increasing the volume of mentions in the LLMs, like ChatGPT, like Claude, like Gemini, like Grok. There's a lot of different LLMs. Are you finding across the board that all LLMs are starting to cite these digital PR articles and getting the brand they'd be mentioned in there?

Chris Pantella: I wouldn't say it's a one-to-one correlation with campaigns and citations for specific articles. What we're seeing is across the board, clients that have consistently invested in digital PR. So tier one earned media quote, being quoted in tier one media. Clients that have consistently done that over a period of months to years are the ones that are seeing consistently increasing AI visibility according to the trackers. And that's why they are continuing to invest with us in digital PR. Because it is, I think the single handedly, the one of the best marketing allocation of budget that a business can do now, because it is brand building. And we know that the LLMs trust brand, LLMs like consensus. And we talked about this before, James, you had this amazing way of phrasing it, making noise. There's no better place to make noise than like places that people have heard of. Like you can make noise on a subway bench, but no one's listening. If you're making noise across podcasts, TV appearances, newspaper articles, bylines, op-ed pieces, that's the places that people and LLMs are listening.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, for me, I'd train up all the team to be a holistic marketer, omnichannel, omnipresent, make as much noise in as many different places as possible. But I suppose the easiest way of explaining that would be the digital PR, in my opinion, is like you get in a stage and you get a microphone and then you're able to sing in front of tens of thousands of people as opposed to being on the subway singing and there's only a couple of people walking past. That trust that they get from the digital PR high-earned media links massively helps the LLMs. We've always known it helps SEO. For me, I only try to do it in the most competitive markets, some of the easier to rank for markets. I'm not really needing to do digital PR, but if you want to rank in a competitive market, you need digital PR, facts, period. Because you need to be making certain that you're building the entity, you're building up the brand, you're getting that trust, you're getting that power, and you're being cited by the AI overviews and stuff like that. All that traffic then feeds into who you are, what you do, and why you're freaking brilliant. One thing I would add to that is, actually, some of the best ROI that we've seen with clients that are spending money and investing money in digital PR is easier to rank local business clients. Clients that have local businesses with high margins, so like roofers, HVAC companies, pest control companies, realtors, to an extent, those individuals and businesses that are investing in digital PR are likely the only ones within their locale that are doing that, and they are building a moat, because it just has such an impact. As you can imagine, if it's already reasonably easy to rank and you're throwing into the mix digital PR, links and coverage, it's just like a magic combination of success.

Chris Pantella: Yeah, for sure, yeah. I'm frugal, as a business owner, I'm frugal.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. If a fencing or a landscaping company or a cleaning company decides to go and do a digital PR strategy, they are gonna be winning in their local area, because nobody else would have done it. It's one of them with regards to return on investment and the model of what needs to be done. I tried to do other things first, but digital PR is the icing on the cake. It is definitely the most powerful strategy. LLMs are definitely citing the digital PR the most. So therefore, yeah, it's an up-and-coming. For anyone who's watching this and they want to reach out to yourself, Chris, and say, okay, what different types of digital PR campaigns can you do for me? Where's the best place to reach out to yourself?

Chris Pantella: Yeah, fire me over an email, chris.linkify.io, or LinkedIn, Chris Pantelli.

James Dooley: Superb. So anyone who's watching this and they're looking for the double bubble of increasing SEO rankings and also trying to increase the LLM visibility, digital PR campaigns are working better than ever. People have kind of slackened off a little bit on talking about the link building side of things, but this is more about the branded mentions on top of the links as well, what can be being done for better LLM visibility. Chris, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Chris Pantella: Thank you.