You’re paying for digital PR. Or link building. Or some hybrid your agency describes in language vague enough to cover both. Every month you get a report full of URLs and metrics. Everything looks fine.
But is it?
The only way to find out is to pull every link into a spreadsheet and run it against seven checks: authority, relevance, follow status, anchor text, placement, traffic, and persistence. That’s the framework this guide walks through, built on Search Intelligence’s analysis of 5,272 real media placements, which is the closest thing PR has to a public benchmark for what a genuinely good link looks like.
This guide shows you how to audit the links you’re getting from any PR or link-building provider: what to look for, what the red flags are, and whether you should keep paying or start looking elsewhere.
Why You Need to Audit PR Links
The gap between “we got you 15 placements this month” and “we got you 15 links that actually help your business” is enormous. Monthly reports that look impressive on the surface can hide:
- Links from sites with inflated Domain Ratings (DR) that get zero organic traffic
- “Placements” that were actually paid advertorials marked as sponsored
- Follow links that were quietly changed to nofollow a week after the report was sent
- Links buried in the author bio of a guest post, not in the editorial body
- Coverage on sites so irrelevant to the client’s industry that Google probably ignored them entirely
None of these are useless. But none of them are what most clients think they’re paying for. The only way to know what you’re getting is to look.
The 7-Point Link Quality Audit
This is the framework we use to evaluate every link, whether it’s one we earned ourselves or one a client hands us from a previous provider. Run every link in your last report through these seven checks.
1. Domain Rating / Domain Authority
Look up the publication’s Domain Rating (DR) in Ahrefs, or Domain Authority (DA) in Moz. Different metrics, same purpose: how authoritative is this site, really.
- DR 70+: Tier 1. Publications like The Guardian (DR 92), Forbes (DR 95), Business Insider (DR 93). Links here carry real SEO weight and brand credibility.
- DR 40-69: Tier 2. Solid industry publications, strong regional news, established niche sites. The workhorses of most PR campaigns.
- DR under 40: Tier 3. Smaller blogs, local news, niche directories. Not worthless, but not premium.
Red flag: your agency promised Tier 1 coverage and most links land DR 30 to 45. That’s a targeting problem. Check our PR KPIs guide for how we benchmark this.
Deeper red flag: some sites have artificially inflated DR. A site might show DR 55 in Ahrefs but get almost no organic traffic. That’s usually a sign it’s a link farm or a private blog network (PBN) that built its authority through link schemes, not real content. Always cross-reference DR with organic traffic. A DR 55 site should be pulling at least 10,000 to 50,000 organic visits a month. If it’s getting 200, something is off.
2. Topical Relevance
Ask whether the site that linked to you actually matches your industry or audience. A fitness brand landing in Men’s Health. A fintech in Business Insider’s finance section. A travel company in Conde Nast Traveller. The publication’s readers overlap with the brand’s customers.
Red flag: a SaaS company getting links from a recipe blog, a pet care site, and a wedding directory in the same month. That’s not earned editorial coverage. It’s a sign the agency is buying links from whoever will sell them.
Google’s guidelines are clear on this: links should be editorially placed and contextually relevant. An irrelevant link from a high-DR site is usually worth less than a relevant link from a mid-DR site.
This is one of the core differences between digital PR and link building. Earned media coverage is inherently relevant because a journalist chose to cover the story. Bought links are often irrelevant because the transaction is about the link, not the content.
3. Follow vs Nofollow
Right-click the link, inspect the HTML, and check the rel attribute. A standard follow link has no rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” tag. A nofollow link does.
What good looks like: a healthy mix. Across the placements we studied, roughly 60 to 65% of editorial PR links are follow and 35 to 40% are nofollow. Major publications like Forbes and HuffPost, plus many regional outlets, default to nofollow on external links.
Red flag: 100% of your links are follow, especially from mid-tier sites. That suggests the links were placed, not earned. Real editorial coverage across a mix of publications always includes some nofollow links.
Nuance worth knowing: Google has said since 2019 that nofollow is a “hint,” not a directive. Nofollow links from authoritative, relevant sites still carry some SEO value, drive referral traffic, and build brand awareness. Don’t dismiss them — but don’t pay follow-link prices for nofollow links either.
4. Anchor Text
Look at exactly what text is hyperlinked. Your brand name? A keyword? A generic “click here”? The bare URL?
What good looks like: natural anchor text distribution. In genuine editorial coverage, anchors tend to be:
- Brand name (“Presslei” or “according to Presslei”)
- Descriptive phrase (“the PR agency’s study found”)
- URL (“presslei.com”)
- Occasionally a natural keyword (“reactive PR agency” in a sentence about reactive PR)
Red flag: exact-match keyword anchors like “best digital PR agency London” or “cheap flights to Spain” showing up repeatedly. This is the single biggest tell that links are being built, not earned. No journalist writes “according to best digital PR agency London, a study found…” That’s not how English works.
Google’s Penguin algorithm specifically targets unnatural anchor text patterns. A backlink profile stuffed with exact-match keyword anchors is a penalty risk, not an authority signal.
What to do: pull your full backlink profile from Ahrefs (Site Explorer > Backlinks > Anchors) and look at the distribution. Brand name anchors should be the majority (50%+). Natural phrases and URLs should make up most of the rest. Exact keyword matches should be rare and incidental.
5. Link Context and Placement
Check where on the page the link actually sits. Body of the article? Author bio? Sidebar widget? A “sponsored content” section?
What good looks like: the link appears naturally within the body of an editorial article, referenced because the journalist found your data, product, or expertise relevant to the story. The surrounding text reads like genuine editorial content.
Red flags:
- Link in the author bio of a “guest post” (paid placement, not PR)
- Link in a “sponsored content” or “partner content” section (pay to play)
- Link in a blogroll, sidebar widget, or footer (sitewide links are often manipulative)
- Link in a listicle of 50+ “best tools” where every entry is clearly paid
The context test: read the paragraph around the link. Does it read like a journalist wrote it, or like marketing copy? If that paragraph could sit on the company’s own website unchanged, it’s probably not genuine editorial coverage.
6. Traffic and Engagement
Check whether the page and the site actually have real readers. Ahrefs shows estimated organic traffic for any URL. SimilarWeb gives broader traffic estimates. If the site claims 500,000 monthly visitors but SimilarWeb shows 3,000, something doesn’t add up.
What good looks like: the page has some organic traffic of its own, ranks for related keywords, and is indexed by Google. People actually read it.
Red flag: your link sits on a page with zero estimated traffic, on a site with zero social following and no visible signs of real readership. That’s a ghost site — it exists only to sell links, and Google devalues it accordingly.
Bonus check: look at the page in Google’s cache. If Google hasn’t cached it recently, or at all, that tells you how much Google actually values the content.
7. Link Persistence
Check if the link is still live, not just today but reliably, month over month.
What good looks like: links that stay live indefinitely. Genuine editorial coverage doesn’t get deleted — the journalist wrote it, the editor approved it, and it’s part of the publication’s archive. We’ve tracked placements that are still live 3+ years later.
Red flag: links that disappear within 30 to 90 days. Common with paid placements sold on a rental basis.
How to monitor: set up a monthly link audit. Use Ahrefs (Backlinks > “Lost” tab) or a dedicated tool like Linkody or Monitor Backlinks. Earned PR links usually drop off because a page got restructured. Bought links usually drop off because the deal expired.
More on link tracking, including the spreadsheet template we use, is in the PR KPIs guide.
How to Run the Audit: Step by Step
Step 1: Collect all links. Pull every link from your agency’s reports for the last 90 days. Also pull your backlink profile from Ahrefs to catch anything they didn’t report, or anything they reported that doesn’t actually exist.
Step 2: Build the audit spreadsheet. For each link, record:
| URL | Publication | DR | Organic Traffic | Follow/NF | Anchor Text | Placement Type | Still Live? | Relevance (1-5) |
|---|
Step 3: Score each link. Use a simple scoring system:
- DR 70+ and relevant: 5 points
- DR 40-69 and relevant: 3 points
- DR under 40 but relevant: 1 point
- Irrelevant regardless of DR: 0 points
- Deduct 1 point for: nofollow, author bio placement, or keyword-stuffed anchor
- Deduct 3 points for: paid/sponsored disclosure, ghost site, link already removed
Step 4: Calculate your average. Sum the scores, divide by number of links. Below a 2, you have a quality problem.
Step 5: Compare to what you’re paying. A good digital PR campaign delivering genuine editorial coverage should average 3+ on this scale. If you’re paying premium prices for links scoring 1 to 2, the value isn’t there.
What Good PR Links Look Like vs What Bad Ones Look Like
Let’s put the contrast side by side.
A good PR link:
- Appears in The Guardian, Business Insider, or a respected industry publication
- DR 75+
- Follow link (though nofollow from top-tier is still valuable)
- Anchor text is the brand name in a natural sentence
- Written by a staff journalist or named contributor
- The page ranks for related keywords and gets organic traffic
- Still live 6 months later
A bad PR link:
- Appears on a site you’ve never heard of with a generic name like “BusinessNewsDaily247.com”
- DR 45 but organic traffic of 150 visits/month
- Follow link (suspiciously — real publications at this level are often nofollow)
- Anchor text is “best digital PR services UK”
- Reads like a press release copy-pasted with no editorial input
- No social shares, no comments, no signs of real readership
- Disappears in 60 days
If your monthly report is full of the second type, you’re not getting PR. You’re getting link building dressed up as PR. The difference in long-term value and risk is significant.
What to Do With Your Audit Results
Mostly good (average score 3+): your provider is delivering genuine coverage. Make sure you’re also tracking the downstream metrics: referral traffic, keyword rankings, brand search volume.
Mixed (average score 2-3): have a conversation with your provider. Ask specifically about the low-scoring links. Were they part of a broader campaign that also included strong placements, or are they padding the numbers?
Mostly bad (average score under 2): you have a problem. Either your agency is selling you link building as PR, or their approach isn’t landing real editorial coverage. Good time to look at what earned reactive PR looks like versus what you’re currently getting.
The Business Case for Switching to Earned PR
The math is uncomfortable once you actually run it. The link-building industry charges $100 to $1,000+ per link depending on DR. For that money, you get a placed link on a site that may or may not be relevant, may or may not have real traffic, and may or may not stay live.
Earned editorial PR, where a journalist at a real publication covers your data study and links to you because the story is genuinely newsworthy, produces links that:
- Come from sites with real audiences (because the publication has real readers)
- Are topically relevant (because the journalist covers that beat)
- Have natural anchor text (because a journalist wrote the sentence)
- Stay live indefinitely (because it’s part of the publication’s editorial archive)
- Build brand awareness beyond SEO (because real people read the article)
Full cost comparison in the digital PR pricing guide.
Your Audit Checklist
Before your next report review, check every link against these questions:
- What’s the site’s DR, and does it match its organic traffic? (Inflated DR is a red flag)
- Is the publication relevant to your industry or audience?
- Is the link follow or nofollow? (A natural mix is expected)
- What’s the anchor text? (Brand name and natural phrases are good; keyword-stuffed is bad)
- Where does the link sit on the page? (Editorial body is good; bio/sidebar/footer is weak)
- Does the page get real traffic? (Check Ahrefs estimated traffic)
- Is the link still live? (Check monthly)
Run this audit quarterly. It takes 2 to 3 hours and it’s the single best way to know whether your PR spend is building real authority or just padding a number in a spreadsheet.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many links should I expect from a PR campaign per month?
Depends on the approach and budget, but a good benchmark for a data-driven digital PR campaign is 8 to 15 placements per campaign, with roughly 60 to 70% including a backlink. Some placements will be brand mentions without a link, still valuable for awareness, less so for SEO. If your agency is promising 50+ links a month, they’re almost certainly not all earned editorial coverage.
Is a nofollow link from Forbes worth anything?
Yes. A nofollow link from Forbes still drives referral traffic (Forbes has millions of readers), builds brand credibility (you were covered in Forbes), and sends indirect SEO signals (Google treats nofollow as a hint). It won’t pass as much direct link equity as a follow link, but dismissing it entirely is a mistake. The best PR campaigns produce a natural mix of follow and nofollow.
My agency says DR doesn’t matter as much as relevance. Are they right?
Partially. Relevance matters enormously: a DR 45 link from a perfectly relevant industry publication can outperform a DR 80 link from an irrelevant source. But that claim is sometimes used to justify a steady diet of low-DR placements. Both matter. A relevant, high-DR link is the gold standard — push for both, not one at the expense of the other.
Want links that pass every point on this audit? Presslei earns editorial coverage in DR 70+ publications through data-driven reactive PR. No paid placements. No guest posts. No link schemes. See how it works.
Salva Jovells is the founder of Presslei, a reactive PR agency based in Zurich. He built this audit framework by studying Search Intelligence’s analysis of 5,272 UK digital PR placements and testing it against real campaigns. Get in touch at presslei.com/contact.
About the Author
Salvador Jovells
Founder of Presslei. 12+ years in ecommerce SEO across international markets. After a decade of link buying for Hockerty and Sumissura, I reverse-engineered 5,272 earned media placements and founded a reactive PR agency that builds authority through data-driven stories journalists actually want to publish. Based in Zurich.
