How Press Coverage Builds Backlinks and Boosts SEO (JUNE - 2026)

How Press Coverage Builds Backlinks and Boosts SEO: A Founder’s Real Experience .cj-blog { max-width: 1100px; margin: 0 auto; padding: 42px 22px; font-family: Inter, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.75; color: #202230; background: linear-gradient(180deg, #fff8fd 0%, #f7f4ff 32%, #f5fbff 100%); } .cj-blog h1 { font-size: clamp(38px, 6vw, 66px); line-height: 1.05; letter-spacing: -0.05em; margin: 0 0 18px; } .cj-blog h2 { font-size: clamp(28px, 4vw, 42px); line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.03em; margin: 0 0 18px; font-weight: 650; } .cj-blog h3 { font-size: 24px; margin: 28px 0 12px; font-weight: 650; } .cj-blog p { margin: 0 0 20px; } .cj-blog a { color: #5c3df1; font-weight: 750; text-decoration-thickness: 2px; text-underline-offset: 3px; } .cj-hero { padding: 58px 34px; border-radius: 34px; background: radial-gradient(circle at top left, rgba(255, 214, 232, .9), transparent 34%), radial-gradient(circle at bottom right, rgba(202, 226, 255, .9), transparent 38%), linear-gradient(135deg, #fffafd, #f4efff 52%, #eef8ff); border: 1px solid #eadff7; box-shadow: 0 24px 70px rgba(77, 58, 106, .12); margin-bottom: 34px; } .cj-eyebrow { font-size: 14px; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: .09em; color: #6842db; font-weight: 800; margin-bottom: 12px; } .cj-subtitle { font-size: 23px; color: #585063; max-width: 820px; } .cj-pill-row { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; gap: 10px; margin-top: 24px; } .cj-pill { padding: 8px 14px; border-radius: 999px; background: rgba(255,255,255,.78); border: 1px solid rgba(124, 77, 255, .16); font-size: 14px; font-weight: 700; color: #4d4560; } .cj-card { background: rgba(255,255,255,.82); border: 1px solid #eadff7; border-radius: 28px; padding: 28px; margin: 30px 0; box-shadow: 0 18px 55px rgba(55, 43, 87, .08); } .cj-card.pink { background: linear-gradient(135deg, #fff2f8, #f5f0ff); } .cj-card.blue { background: linear-gradient(135deg, #eef8ff, #fff9ef); } .cj-card.green { background: linear-gradient(135deg, #f2fff9, #f6f0ff); } .cj-contents { background: #fff; border: 1px solid #eadff7; border-radius: 28px; padding: 28px; margin: 36px 0 46px; box-shadow: 0 18px 55px rgba(55, 43, 87, .08); } .cj-contents ol { margin: 0; padding-left: 22px; } .cj-contents li { margin: 8px 0; } .cj-cta { margin: 36px 0; padding: 30px; border-radius: 30px; background: radial-gradient(circle at top left, rgba(255, 207, 229, .9), transparent 35%), linear-gradient(135deg, #fff8ef, #f3efff 55%, #edf8ff); border: 1px solid rgba(124,77,255,.16); box-shadow: 0 20px 60px rgba(85, 63, 130, .12); } .cj-cta strong { display: block; font-size: 25px; line-height: 1.25; margin-bottom: 10px; color: #211832; } .cj-button { display: inline-block; margin-top: 8px; padding: 13px 21px; border-radius: 999px; background: linear-gradient(135deg, #7c4dff, #4b2cc9); color: #fff !important; text-decoration: none; font-weight: 850; box-shadow: 0 13px 32px rgba(76, 45, 201, .25); } .cj-image-wrap { float: right; width: 320px; max-width: 42%; margin: 4px 0 18px 28px; border-radius: 24px; overflow: hidden; box-shadow: 0 18px 45px rgba(28, 24, 40, .14); border: 1px solid #eee5f9; background: #fff; } .cj-image-wrap.left { float: left; margin: 4px 28px 18px 0; } .cj-image-wrap img { width: 100%; display: block; } .cj-caption { font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4; color: #656b78; padding: 10px 12px; background: #fff; } .cj-list { padding-left: 22px; } .cj-list li { margin-bottom: 10px; } .cj-clear { clear: both; } @media (max-width: 760px) { .cj-blog { font-size: 17px; padding: 28px 16px; } .cj-hero { padding: 36px 22px; border-radius: 24px; } .cj-image-wrap, .cj-image-wrap.left { float: none; width: 100%; max-width: 100%; margin: 24px 0; } } Founder SEO Guide How Press Coverage Builds Backlinks and Boosts SEO A founder’s real experience of how one press feature kept working quietly in the background for years. Backlinks SEO Press coverage Founder-led PR 7-day free trial June 2026 Update: I’m Using ContactJournalists.com Myself My recent Jobs & Careers Magazine feature. Click the image to view it larger. June 2026 Update: One of the things I’ve realised after spending the last month actively using ContactJournalists.com myself is just how quickly PR opportunities can turn into credibility, backlinks and brand-building moments. In just a few weeks, I’ve secured upcoming appearances on both the TryLaunchAI and Zunesty Media podcasts, continued growing links and mentions for ContactJournalists.com, and was delighted to be featured in Jobs & Careers Magazine alongside advice from Dragon’s Den’s very own Karren Brady . You can see the feature here . It’s a timely reminder that press coverage isn’t just an ego boost. Every interview, podcast appearance, expert quote and magazine feature has the potential to generate backlinks, increase branded searches, build trust with potential customers and strengthen your SEO. The businesses winning in 2026 aren’t necessarily shouting the loudest. They’re consistently putting themselves forward when the right opportunities arise. After all, Google isn’t just ranking websites anymore. It’s ranking reputations. TL;DR Press coverage is not just a lovely credibility moment. When a reputable publication links to your website, that backlink can help your SEO for months or even years. Founder-led PR works because it earns links naturally, through real stories, real journalists and genuine relevance. For founders, especially solopreneurs, press can become one of the cleanest ways to build authority without buying dodgy backlinks or paying for endless ads. Table of contents Why press matters for SEO The Forbes backlink that kept working What is a backlink? What is Domain Rating? What is link juice? Why press links are different The compounding effect I didn’t expect Why relevance matters more than raw authority Press as an SEO strategy Final thoughts Why press matters for SEO Press coverage can do far more than create a buzz on launch day. Hey founder! I'm Fortuna, the founder of ContactJournalists.com , and I know exactly what you've been through, trying to push your business forward and out there, into the real world and the world wide web. I was there too, and when I had ItReallyWorksVitamins.com it was such a lovely buzz getting your product featured in different blogs including: Charlotte’s Makeup Blog review The Fashion Junkie review Those early features felt amazing at the time. Seeing someone take the time to write about your product properly, to actually try it and share it, really mattered. But then something bigger happened. Let me explain this from experience, not theory. The Forbes backlink that kept working When I was running It Really Works Vitamins, getting featured in Forbes was one of those absolutely amazing moments that seem to happen to other founders, and then it actually finally happened to me. We were included in Best Nutrition Innovation 2019, and I remember refreshing the page about twenty times just to make sure it was real. I visited my Grandma and showed her! Here’s the actual feature: 👉 Forbes: Best Nutrition Innovation 2019 But what I didn’t fully appreciate at the time was that the real value of that feature wasn’t the buzz of the moment. It was what happened gently in the background afterwards, for months and years to come. That Forbes article didn’t just mention us. It linked to our website. And that single backlink went on to boost our SEO for absolutely years to come. Long after the initial excitement faded, that link was still doing work behind the scenes. What is a backlink? Backlinks are one of the reasons press can keep helping your website long after publication. A backlink is when another website links to your website. Search engines treat backlinks as votes of confidence. The idea is simple: if trusted sites link to you, your site is probably trustworthy too. Google has confirmed for years that links help search engines discover and understand pages, and its SEO starter guide explains why links matter for visibility: 👉 Google SEO Starter Guide But here’s the nuance most founders miss. It’s not about how many links you have. It’s about where they come from. If you’ve ever found yourself Googling “how to get backlinks” and immediately feeling exhausted, you’re not alone. Most founders don’t struggle because they don’t understand backlinks. They struggle because they’re forced into guessing games. Cold outreach. Spammy tactics they don’t feel good about. Link-building advice that makes you want to shut the laptop and go and stare at a wall. Press shortcuts all of that. Instead of chasing links, you respond to journalists who already need sources. That’s the entire philosophy behind ContactJournalists.com. There’s a 7-day free trial, so you can see how it feels to respond to real requests instead of forcing it. And we’re here for you, the solopreneur. For only £14 per month you can reply to press requests and make use of our database of journalists. Want backlinks without the horrible cold outreach spiral? ContactJournalists.com helps founders find live journalist requests, reply quickly and build visibility through real press opportunities. Start with the 7-day free trial and see what journalists are already asking for. Start your 7-day free trial What is Domain Rating? Domain Rating, often called DR, is a metric created by Ahrefs to estimate how authoritative a website is based on its backlink profile. You can read the official explanation here: 👉 Ahrefs: What is Domain Rating? In plain English: Higher DR means your site looks more trusted. Trusted sites can rank faster and more easily. New pages may get indexed quicker. You rely less on paid traffic over time. When a site like Forbes links to you, it strengthens your domain as a whole, not just the page being linked. That’s why one strong press backlink can outperform dozens of low-quality links. This is why founder-led press works so well for SEO. You don’t need hundreds of links. You need a handful of meaningful ones from places that already carry weight. That’s what raises your baseline so everything else becomes easier. If you want to build domain authority without hiring an agency or buying dodgy links, responding to journalist requests is one of the cleanest ways I know to do it. You can try that approach yourself with a 7-day free trial on ContactJournalists.com and decide if it’s right for how you want to grow. What is link juice? “Link juice” is the informal term SEOs use to describe the authority that passes from one site to another via a link. If a high-authority site links to you, some of its credibility flows through that link. Moz explains this concept well here: 👉 Moz: Link juice Editorial press links are especially powerful because they are: Placed naturally inside content. Surrounded by relevant context. Earned, not manipulated. Difficult to fake or scale artificially. Google is extremely good at recognising these signals. The reason press links hit differently is because they’re earned, contextual and human. They come from real conversations. Real stories. Real journalists writing in real time. That’s why speed and relevance matter so much. Find the press opportunities while they’re still live. ContactJournalists.com is designed to surface journalist requests while they are still active, not days later when the opportunity has gone. Try it now and see if this feels like a calmer way to approach PR. Try ContactJournalists.com free Why press links are different from other backlinks Press links are different because they are earned, editorial and contextual. Press backlinks sit in a category of their own. They tend to be: Editorial, because they are chosen by a journalist, not paid for. Contextual, because they are embedded in a real article. Relevant, because they are tied to your industry or expertise. Trusted, because they come from domains Google already respects. Compare that to paid guest posts, link exchanges or random directories. Those might move the needle slightly. Press links can move the whole site. This is exactly why I set up ContactJournalists.com in the first place. After years of doing PR the hard way, I realised the real problem wasn’t writing pitches. It was finding the right journalists at the right moment, before the opportunity disappeared. Founders were spending hours guessing, cold emailing, or chasing links that barely made a dent. ContactJournalists.com was built to flip that. Three things we focus on Live journalist and podcast requests So you’re responding to real demand, not shouting into the void. A curated, relevant journalist database No scraping, no spam, just people who actually cover your space. AI-assisted pitch responses To help you reply quickly and clearly, without overthinking every sentence. If press links are the backlinks that actually move the needle for your SEO, this is the calmest way I know to earn them. There’s a 7-day free trial, so you can explore it properly, respond to real journalist requests, and see if it fits the way you want to build, without committing to anything upfront. Founder to founder, that’s exactly how I’d want to try it too. The compounding effect I didn’t expect After the Forbes feature, there wasn’t a huge overnight spike or a dramatic moment where everything suddenly took off. It was subtler than that. The website began ranking more naturally for brand terms, product-related searches, and questions people in our niche were actually typing into Google. New blog posts didn’t need the same huge level of effort in pushing to get seen. Pages seemed to get picked up faster. SEO stopped feeling like such a fight. Even outreach changed. When journalists looked us up, they could see we’d already been featured in credible places. Woohoo! Conversations started warmer and replies came back quicker. One press mention made the next one easier to land. That’s the bit founders don’t usually factor in when they think about PR. It’s not just a moment or a traffic spike you screenshot and move on from. Press really becomes part of the foundations of your business. It’s infrastructure you build once and benefit from again and again and again. This is the part that’s hard to explain until you’ve lived it. Once your site has a few strong press mentions behind it, everything else feels less uphill. SEO. Outreach. Even confidence. If you want to start building that kind of quiet momentum, responding to journalist demand is one of the most reliable places to start. You don’t need a big launch or a perfect story, just visibility into the right opportunities. That’s exactly what the 7-day free trial on ContactJournalists.com gives you. Why relevance matters more than raw authority The best press links make sense for your industry, not just your backlink profile. A link from a huge site is powerful, but relevance is what makes it work. Google doesn’t just look at how authoritative a site is. It looks at context. Who is linking to you, why, and whether it makes sense in the wider topic space you operate in. That’s why these kinds of mentions are so effective: A nutrition brand featured in Men’s Health. A fashion startup mentioned in Vogue. A SaaS founder quoted in a technology publication. In each case, the publication already has topical authority in that space. When they link to you, Google isn’t just seeing a trusted domain, it’s seeing a relevant endorsement. Google uses relevance to understand what your site should rank for, not just whether it’s legitimate. You can see this reflected in Google’s own guidance around links and ranking signals: 👉 Google SEO Starter Guide And it’s something SEO platforms have been talking about for years. Moz explains how relevance strengthens link value here: 👉 Moz: Backlinks This is why random high-DR links, even from “big” sites, often underperform. A powerful link that doesn’t make sense contextually sends a weak signal. Press coverage that actually fits your industry does the opposite. It reinforces what your brand is about, what space you belong in, and which searches you deserve to show up for. That’s why one relevant press mention can outperform dozens of generic backlinks, and why founders who focus on relevance tend to see much stronger long-term SEO results. Relevance is why random link-building tactics feel frustrating and ineffective. When press fits your niche, Google understands you faster and journalists trust you more quickly. If you want coverage that actually makes sense for your industry, ContactJournalists.com helps you filter by category, topic, and relevance, so you’re not wasting time replying to things that were never a fit. You can try it risk-free with the 7-day free trial. Press as an SEO strategy, not a vanity play I didn’t fully understand this while I was building my first company. Back then, press felt like something you chased for the feeling it gave you. Credibility. Validation. Social proof. That little moment where you thought, okay, this is real, people are taking us seriously now. And to be fair, all of that matters. But what I didn’t see at the time was that press was doing something much quieter and much more valuable in the background. It was strengthening the business in ways ads never could. Good press doesn’t disappear when the traffic spike fades. It doesn’t reset when you pause spend. It doesn’t rely on constant optimisation or budget top-ups. When a reputable publication links to you, that authority stays put. It keeps working long after the article stops circulating on social. That’s why, looking back, I’d tell any founder this: Good press is one of the cleanest, most defensible SEO strategies you can invest in. No hacks. No spammy link schemes. No endless upkeep. Just earned authority that compounds quietly while you get on with building your product, talking to customers, and trying to keep everything else moving. It also changes how everything else feels. SEO becomes less fragile. Outreach becomes less awkward. Even new content performs better because you’re no longer starting from zero every time. This is the mindset shift most founders miss. Press isn’t a vanity channel. It’s not a “nice-to-have” once you’re bigger. Used properly, it becomes part of your growth infrastructure. If you want to go deeper into this way of thinking, this post expands on why press works when founders stop treating it like a performance: 👉 Why Most Press Releases Fail And How to Fix Yours It breaks down why traditional PR approaches rarely lead to meaningful coverage or backlinks, and how founders get better results by focusing on relevance, timing, and responding to real journalist demand instead. You can also explore more founder-led breakdowns like this across the ContactJournalists.com blog here: 👉 Read more founder PR guides Final thoughts: press coverage is SEO infrastructure Overall, used properly, press becomes one of the most stable growth assets you can build. It strengthens your SEO. It builds trust before someone ever lands on your site. It compounds quietly while you’re busy dealing with everything else that comes with running a business. That Forbes feature felt magical in the moment. But the link, the authority, and the knock-on effects years later ended up mattering far more. That’s why I built ContactJournalists.com the way I did. Not to turn founders into PR machines, but to make press feel calmer, clearer, and genuinely useful again. If you want to explore that approach for yourself, there’s a 7-day free trial. No pressure. No hard sell. Just a chance to see if this way of working fits how you want to grow. Start building press-backed SEO without doing PR the horrible way. Try ContactJournalists.com. Find live journalist requests, discover relevant media contacts and start earning the kind of press mentions that can support your SEO for years. Start your 7-day free trial