Digital PR.

Digital PR joins two disciplines that ran separately for a long time: media relations and SEO. The starting point is always something an editor would actually write about — your own analysis, a surprising figure from your operations, a documented case, a well-founded take on a current issue. That material is then placed deliberately with relevant media, trade portals and industry blogs. The link is a by-product, not the purpose. That distinction is what separates digital PR from paid placements, which Google has been actively devaluing for years.

For Swiss SMEs the realistic target is rarely a major national title. Impact comes through trade media in your own sector, regional publications, association websites, universities and well-maintained industry portals. A mention in the bulletin of a professional association is often worth more for topical classification than a mention on a high-traffic but unrelated site. Relevance and credibility of the source decide, not visitor numbers. There is a practical advantage too: small specialist newsrooms are reachable, but they still check whether a contribution holds up. Once you are on file there as a reliable source, you tend to be asked again.

AI search has increased the weight of digital PR. Language models derive recommendations from agreement across several independent sources. A company named repeatedly in the same context across trade articles, round-ups and association pages becomes a plausible answer for that topic. No amount of polish on your own website replaces this effect, because your own site counts as self-description. Digital PR is therefore the most effective lever on metrics such as share of model, which barely move through on-page work alone.

A worked case: an engineering firm analysed two hundred of its own projects in anonymised form and published a short overview of the typical cost drivers in building refurbishment. Two trade portals and one association picked the piece up. Immediate traffic was modest. The effect showed elsewhere: the firm was subsequently named as a source in answers about refurbishment costs, because several independent pages had made the same connection. Effects of this kind take months to appear and then last a long time.