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Link strategies in PR: what really matters in the age of AI search

Posted on by Claire Stephenson

How backlinks, brand mentions and smart PR can work together for SEO and GEO

For as long as search engines have existed, links have been the part of the currency of visibility. When Google’s PageRank algorithm launched in the late 1990s, it treated links as “votes of confidence” – the more quality sites that linked to you, the more important you looked.

That logic turned link-building into an industry. In the early 2000s, SEO was dominated by tactics focused almost entirely on volume: link farms, article directories, reciprocal linking schemes and worse. Over time, Google cracked down with major updates (like Penguin) and shifted the emphasis from more links to better links: relevant, authoritative, earned.

Today, we’re going through another shift. AI-powered and generative search tools are changing how people discover brands. Instead of a list of blue links, users increasingly see summarised answers with a handful of citations – often drawn from trusted media and high-authority sites. Research into Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) finds that generative search has a strong bias towards earned media and third-party sources – more so than traditional Google search.

So where does that leave link strategies in PR? Are backlinks still worth chasing? And how should SMEs think about links in press releases and media coverage in 2026?

A quick history: from any link will do – to authority signals everywhere

To understand where we are now, it’s worth briefly revisiting how we got here:

  • Early 2000s – the link gold rush
    Once PageRank became widely understood, SEOs realised that external links could push sites up the rankings. The result was a flood of low-quality tactics: link exchanges, spam directories, keyword-stuffed articles. Quantity often trumped quality.
  • 2010s – Google fights back
    Google rolled out a series of algorithm updates that targeted manipulative links, rewarding sites that earned links from relevant, trustworthy sources and penalising those relying on spam or paid schemes. The message was clear: natural, editorially-given links equals good; manufactured links equals bad.
  • 2020s – authority, context and brand matter more
    Modern SEO guidance consistently stresses that backlinks still matter – in fact, they remain one of the strongest signals of authority and trust. But the weight has shifted towards fewer, higher-quality links from relevant domains, supported by strong content and clear brand signals.

In parallel, AI-driven search has arrived. Large language models and generative engines don’t crawl the web in quite the same way as Google’s link graph. They infer authority from patterns in text, entity relationships and, crucially, the sources they choose to cite. Studies suggest that generative engines lean heavily on earned media and high-authority sites when deciding what to surface.

That means our concept of “link strategy” needs to widen. Traditional backlinks are still important – but they now sit alongside brand citations, mentions and context as part of a wider authority picture.

Links vs brand citations: what really matters now?

So, are links less important than they used to be? Recent analysis from SEO and GEO specialists paints a consistent picture:

  • Backlinks are still extremely powerful for SEO
    Quality backlinks are still among the top ranking signals for Google, especially as part of E-E-A-T.
  • AI search values mentions and citations as much as the link itself
    Large language models pay close attention to where and how your brand is mentioned, and which sources are talking about you.
  • Earned media plays an outsized role
    GEO research suggests that a high proportion of citations in AI answers come from earned media – the kind of coverage PR delivers.

The emerging consensus is that it’s not a choice between backlinks and AI citations. Both matter, but in different ways.

In practical terms for SMEs:

  • Links from credible media and relevant websites still help your organic rankings.
  • Brand mentions and citations in trusted outlets help you show up in AI summaries.
  • PR is one of the few disciplines that can drive both at once.

So yes – links are still valuable. But PR strategies now need to think in terms of authority signals, not just getting links.

Links in press releases: what to expect (and what not to)

This is where expectations can get misaligned. Many businesses assume that if they stuff a press release with keyword-rich links and push it out via a distribution service, they’ll get an SEO bump.

That’s not how it works. The key reason is it doesn’t matter what you put in your press release so much as what the journalist who publishes it keeps in.

Sensible expectations for clients

1. Include links – but for readers, not robots
Include homepage links, product pages, or campaign pages. They help journalists find what they need. If they think it’s valuable for the reader to keep them in, they might do. But this should not be an expectation. It should be seen as a bonus to the citation and brand-building value of the story.

2. Editors may strip or modify them
Newsrooms may remove links, change anchor text, or automatically add no-follow in their CMS. This is something you just have to accept. Journalists are not there to market your business. Never ever ask a hard news journalist to add a link to your coverage. It’s the equivalent of asking a policeman to pop to McDonald’s for you. It shows a deeply disrespectful, and potentially dangerous misunderstanding of their role in the world. 

3. Don’t over-optimise text
Overly keyword-stuffed text might work against you. If you describe your business as a “tax efficiency strategist and financial services and solutions provider” a journalist will just change that to “accountancy firm” if they know that’s what you actually are, or just bin the release because they cannot be bothered working out what you actually do. Use natural phrasing and brand names.

4. The real SEO value is in actual coverage – not hosting on newswires
The press release might be optimised to the hilt, but will have zero affect on rankings if it is not published. The value comes when journalists write a story off the back of your release and choose to link voluntarily.

PR tactics that make journalists want to link

If you want journalists to keep your links in – and even better, add their own – the question becomes: Have we given them a good reason to link? There are ways to do this, but they require dedicated extra effort and possibly investment. Options include: 

Create data or insight hubs

  • Commission a survey, publish full results and methodology, and use the press release to highlight key findings while linking to the full data. Editors will often link when it adds genuine value.

Build evergreen resources and explainers

  • Create: industry benchmarks, plain-English explainers, toolkits or glossaries. If these resources are helpful, journalists have a clear incentive to link.

Offer visual or interactive assets

  • Examples: calculators, interactive maps, downloadable tools. If the full interactive experience is only available on your website, journalists are much more likely to link.

Make your content machine-readable as well as human-friendly

  • Clear structure, headings, descriptions, and schema markup make it easier for both search engines and generative AI to understand and cite your content.

This is where PR, SEO and GEO intersect. 

  • PR earns the coverage
  • SEO ensures the linked-to content is technically strong
  • GEO benefits when your brand is consistently cited in trusted sources

What this means for PR strategy for SMEs

For SMEs, the takeaway isn’t links don’t matter anymore: it’s far from it, but links alone are not the goal – authority is.

In practical terms:

  • Treat links as a by-product of doing PR well.
  • Build campaigns that generate editorial coverage and host link-worthy assets.
  • Include links in press releases, but set realistic expectations about how editors will handle them.
  • Invest in content that journalists and AI search tools both regard as useful and trustworthy.

Get this right, and you’ll build a visibility engine that works across traditional SEO, AI-powered search and human audiences. Links will still matter – but alongside brand citations, earned media and genuine authority.

Industry experts confirm AI is just a tool 

Posted on by Claire Stephenson

No, they weren’t name-calling. This was the rough summary, as interpreted by our Greg Wilson, of an event he attended last month (we’ve also discussed AI as threat or opportunity here).

AI Futures

The event, AI Futures: the Creative Industry in the North West was organised by ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University and Wash Studio. Keynote speakers and panellists were drawn from across the worlds of academia, TV, film, music, architecture, design and marketing. 

Industry experts confirm AI is just a tool 

Here’s Greg’s take: 

Without regurgitating the whole speaker and panellist list for the full-day event, it’s hard to capture the credibility of the speaking panel, so hopefully, it’s suffice to say the organisers pulled together an extremely impressive array of senior and well-informed contributors. 

My key takeaways from the event were that, while AI is a genuine technical wonder that is developing fast, its outputs will only ever be as good as the human inputs it receives. And, more crucially for me in terms of its impact on the creative industries, it will never be able to judge the value of its own outputs from an emotional perspective. 

In short, to provide value, it will always need a human operator and/or “selector” at some level. Yes, it can produce imagery in seconds. But it will never experience an emotional response to that imagery, so will never know if it has done well, unless a human tells it so. 

Now, some people in the creative industries may say they know that feeling well! But, to me, the binary nature of AI means that it will only ever be a tool for people working in the creative industries. In that sense, it will only ever work for humans, and will never replace them… entirely. 

Entry-level at risk

There is huge weight in the word ‘entirely’ there though. The danger that AI poses, potentially, to the creative industries, is that it will be able to replace some of the entry-level creative roles where most of us got our start. 

I’m not sure, personally though, whether that is just part of natural change. I, for one, started my PR career in the late 90s, gluing photos to printed press releases, stapling them together, putting them in envelopes, slotting them through the franking machine then walking over to the red post box at the far end of the office estate to post them one by one – sometimes until it was too full to fit any more. 

And then they invented email. And then guess what?  

But people have still been getting entry-level jobs in PR since the 90s and long after I hung up my Pritt Stick. It’s just the nature of entry-level jobs that have changed, pretty much hand-in-hand with technological progress. 

At the moment, I feel that AI will, in fact, just help us do our jobs quicker, which means providing better value for clients. And the more value we can provide and quicker, the better shape the industry will be in, overall. 

AI: a threat or opportunity for creative industries?

Posted on by Claire Stephenson

Is AI the long, hard look in the mirror that the creative industry needs? Greg Wilson considers what we know so far about AI and its impact on public relations in particular.

The world is currently awash with articles about AI. The sad irony though, is that half of them could easily have been written by AI. But sadder still, is the fact that most of them probably weren’t.

Because if the creative industry is so worried about AI taking its jobs away, what does that really say about the state of the industry itself? The clue is in the name; the value that we provide, is that we are, well, creative. Or we are supposed to be.

Content v PR

I, for one, was so relieved when “the PR industry” rebranded itself back again to “the PR industry”, after having toyed around with the idea for a few years of being the “content” industry.

Is that, in fact, just window dressing though? Was calling ourselves the “content” industry the day the mask slipped? Or is that all we provide now? Content. Filling for digital gaps.

People fear that AI will see the rise of machines as masters and we as their subordinates. I say that day has already come. It was the same day the words “link strategy” and “citation” entered the industry vernacular. When you think about it, we have been writing content to please the machines for some time – all hailing the great God of Google and its whimsical ways.

It’s almost a bitter irony that the machines got so smart, they could see what we were up to.

Having been in PR for over 25 years, I’ve got to say, it’s not this side of the value chain that gets me out of bed in the morning. Some people love it, I know – their self-worth now inextricably linked to moving clients a couple of places up the search results, because machines approve of their content.

Humans v AI

But what about the humans? Aren’t we forgetting them? Do they count for nothing now? And are they so easily fooled – sorry, engaged? Inspired? Educated? Amused? Enlightened? Moved? Transfixed?

Is a human brain as easily pleased as a machine? (scroll, scroll, scroll) Okay maybe. But not for long. To properly win and maintain a human’s interest, you have to give them something more. Something they have never quite seen before. Something… oRiGinAL?.

(Do you remember when people did that for a bit on social to show they were saying something CRaZy? I reckon a human did it first. And it was quite funny the first time. And there’s the rub…)

The thing is – while it’s true that, one day, AI might come up with the next weepy John Lewis Christmas ad, I firmly believe it could never have come up with the first.

For older readers, would it have ever come up with the Milk Tray Man, to advertise chocolate? “If you see Sid…” for shares in a public company. “Accrington Stanley!” for milk? Yes, milk.

To take creativity to its ultimate degree, I believe that while AI may one day (maybe even now) be able to produce music that sounds like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – it could never come up with Beethoven’s actual Fifth Symphony. Only Beethoven could do that.

Have I just compared Beethoven to the Milk Tray Man? Yes, I have. Would AI do that, if it was writing this article? Is it running the risk of sounding slightly smug and self-satisfied to say, probably not? Do I care?

A bit.

Because I truly care what you think of what I write. Because you’re a human and I’m a human and I hope to add a little value to your life, by writing something that might entertain you enough to read this far. In which case, I thank you.

Or as Bing’s AI Chat actually said…

What AI might mean for the public relations industry

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming various industries and sectors, including public relations (PR). AI is not something to be afraid of in PR, but rather a tool that can enhance the efficiency, creativity, and impact of PR professionals. Here are some of the ways that AI might change the PR game in the near future.

Data collection and analysis

AI can help PR agencies, especially when it comes to the enormous amount of data they must filter through. Because of the abundance of information available, it can be difficult for staff members to stay on top of the most recent trends and news, which makes it difficult for PR firms to stay competitive.

AI can help with data collection and analysis by automating tasks such as media monitoring, trend spotting, sentiment analysis, and audience segmentation. These tasks can help PR professionals understand the media landscape, identify opportunities and threats, measure the effectiveness of their campaigns, and tailor their messages to different groups of stakeholders.

Content creation and distribution

AI can also assist with content creation and distribution by generating text, images, videos, or audio based on natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision. These technologies can help PR professionals create engaging and personalized content for various platforms and channels, such as social media, blogs, podcasts, or newsletters.

AI can also help with content distribution by optimising the timing, frequency, and format of the content based on the preferences and behaviours of the target audience. AI can also help with content amplification by identifying and reaching out to relevant influencers, journalists, or bloggers who can help spread the word about a brand or a campaign.

Relationship building and management

AI can also enhance relationship building and management by providing insights into the emotions, motivations, and needs of the target audience. AI can help PR professionals craft messages that appeal to the emotions of their stakeholders, such as trust, empathy, or excitement.

AI can also help with relationship management by providing feedback and recommendations on how to improve communication and engagement with different groups of stakeholders. AI can also help with crisis management by detecting potential issues or risks before they escalate and providing guidance on how to respond effectively.

Skills development and ethics

AI can also impact the skills development and ethics of PR professionals. AI can help PR professionals upskill by providing them with resources and training on how to use AI tools and technologies effectively. AI can also help PR professionals develop their critical thinking, creativity, and emotional intelligence skills, which are essential for human communication.

However, AI also poses ethical challenges for PR professionals, such as data privacy, transparency, accountability, and bias. PR professionals need to be aware of these challenges and adhere to ethical principles and standards when using AI in their work. PR professionals also need to be able to explain how AI works and what its limitations are to their clients and stakeholders.

Final thoughts…

AI is changing the PR industry in various ways, from data collection and analysis to content creation and distribution to relationship building and management. AI can offer many benefits for PR professionals, such as increased efficiency, creativity, and impact. However, AI also requires PR professionals to adapt their skills and ethics to the new realities of communication. AI is not a threat to PR professionals but rather an opportunity to enhance their work.

© Bing