25+ Digital PR Statistics for 2024

The top Google result has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than the 2nd-10th places (Backlinko)

92.3% of the 100 top-ranking domains have at least one backlink (Semrush)

There’s a positive correlation between the number of websites linking to a page and its ranking position & search traffic (Ahrefs)

46.5% of SEOs spend $5,000 – $10,000 on link building every month (uSERP)

77% of journalists don’t include links when they publish content (BuzzSumo)

Every month in the UK, there are 7130 Google searches that include the keyword ‘digital PR’ (Energy PR)

4158 posts included the term ‘digital PR’ on X (formerly Twitter) in 2023 (Energy PR)

Long-form content gets 77.2% more links than shorter content (Backlinko)

80% of SEOs think brand mentions influence organic search rankings (Aira)

87% of PR practitioners are from a white ethnic background (CIPR)

45% of PR practitioners are aged between 16 and 34 years old (CIPR)

60% of PR practitioners are female and 40% are male, but at the Director group level, 46% of practitioners are female and 54% are male (CIPR)

13% of new PR agencies are founded by women (Instant Offices)

2% of PR agencies work fully in the office, 73% work hybrid and 25% are fully remote (Cision)

32% of communications teams are regularly using generative AI (Cision)

42% of agencies and 63% of corporations have a dedicated data analyst (Cision)

42% of comms leaders say they are heavily relying data and analytics this year (Cision)

47% of PRs spend around a quarter of their time measuring and reporting on success (Muck Rack)

66% of PRs say producing measurable results is the number one way to increase the value of PR among key stakeholders (Muck Rack)

PRs use 8 different measurement metrics on average (Muck Rack)

50% of PRs say the inability to measure impact effectively was one of the biggest challenges to their comms efforts in 2023 (Cision)

73% of journalists reject PR pitches because they’re not relevant enough (Muck Rack)

46% of journalists receive 6 or more pitches every day (Muck Rack)

49% of journalists rarely or never respond to PR pitches (Muck Rack)

64% of journalists don’t care which day they are pitched to (Muck Rack)

65% of journalists say that their main pet peeve is being spammed repeatedly by email or phone (BuzzSumo)

48% of journalists said that the main way PRs can get in their good books is to “Understand my current beat and position, and make their pitch relevant to this” (BuzzSumo)

62% of journalists say that up to a quarter of the stories they publish come from their own outbound requests for content (BuzzSumo)