Alex Fisher, Author at Cedarwood Digital

As 2018 draws to a close, we at Cedarwood are reflecting on what has been our most successful year to date. For both ourselves as a company, and for our clients, we have achieved exceptional business growth and development, and generally have a lot to shout about!

New client wins & successes

This year we have taken on a range of new and exciting clients, including the international brand design consultancy Elmwood and Ovo, the UK’s leading positive energy supplier. Our PPC campaigns have seen great success, increasing transactions for Casa Bella Furniture by 51.66% and revenue by 41.41% in the year period. Aided by the introduction of the new display campaign, we also accomplished increasing paid traffic for Patient Claim Line by 465.89%.

Always striving to stay current with marketing techniques, we were quick to utilize Google’s new creation of “Smart Shopping” which was introduced in the second half of the year. This has already seen great success, bringing in impressive revenue at 800% Return On Ad Spend for Hayes since its introduction in July. Our Smart Shopping campaign for Casa Bella also brought a fruitful 900% ROAS.

This year Cedarwood have continued to build strong media relationships, which we hope to maintain and evolve further in 2019. Through tactical content and outreach techniques we have secured numerous features for Hayes Garden World in high profile publications, including The Telegraph, The Independent, and The Daily Mail. Our link strategy has proven effective, and we have secured prime time TV coverage for key products, increasing brand visibility and relevance.

The Cedarwood team

In November, we were delighted to attend the Northern Ecommerce Awards. It was an honour to be involved and to have our progress recognised, as we were shortlisted for the Small Agency of The Year award for 2018. We were also thrilled to expand the Cedarwood family, and welcome three new members of the team – Anna, Ed and Alex. Each of them have brought their own unique skills and expertise, making our marketing abilities even stronger and more diverse. A bigger and better team calls for a bigger and better office space, so 2018 also involved upgrading the Cedarwood HQ and relocating to a shiny new office space.

The Cedarwood Digital team has continued to grow this year

Finally, our managing director Amanda has done some impressive work with Google Digital Garage this year. Providing training courses to marketers across the North West, she is sharing her invaluable expertise across the region, and doing Cedarwood Digital proud.

We would like to say a huge thank you to the whole team and to our wonderful clients who have made 2018 a sparkling and successful year for Cedarwood. Here’s to an even brighter 2019!

On 28th September, the Cedarwood Digital team travelled south to attend Brighton SEO, a huge one-day search marketing conference. Here are 10 outreach tips that we picked up during the day:

Broken backlinks

Whilst many companies are familiar with fixing backlinks to their own websites, now is the time to start taking advantage of competitors’ backlinks. Screaming Frog, a website crawling tool, allows companies to find any inbound links to a competitors website that result in a 404 error. Once these have been identified, outreach teams can contact the journalist who published the article to suggest that they link to their company’s website instead. If the article contains content that the company’s website doesn’t currently have, then create this content first and then pitch it to the journalist alongside a link to the content. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links

Reverse image search

This may be an old technique, but it is still useful for identifying new link opportunities. Find a graphic or image that a competitor had featured in national publications and then use this in a Google image search. This will show the websites that covered that graphic and the context that it was used in. Then work on creating a graphic with updated information on it and contact the publications to see if they would be interested in your material. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links

Hashtags

Take a competitors URLs and paste it into a link tool such as AHREFS or Majestic and then identify their new backlinks. If there any hashtags in the articles they have recently received links from then make a note of these and simply Google these hashtags. This is a great way to find out which bloggers have worked with a competitor which gives an indication of the articles that they publish. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links

Backlink analysis

A backlink analysis is a great way to understand where a competitor has been recently securing links – for example, using the SEM Rush gap analysis tool. This will not only show the domains that are linking to your competitor, but also exactly where the link is and its context. It is likely that your competitor has a large number of backlinks in their profile so it is recommended to compile a list of around 15 top opportunities to start with and then build this list up in stages. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links

Set up alerts

Set up Google or Ahrefs alerts for your business and then set up alerts for your competitors. This will tell you when your competitors are being mentioned online, meaning that you can see if they are receiving links from high authority websites. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links

News & media jumping

This is a technique that is used on Twitter by those who work in PR and it involves using a set of hashtags to request specific information. These hashtags are #PRRequest and #JournoRequest and journalists often use these when they are are trying to find someone to comment or interview for a story or feature. Sign up for email alerts so that you don’t miss out on a potential opportunity. Charlie Marchant – Ways To Definitely Get Links For Your Business

Trade & industry publications

Industry-specific publications are always on the lookout for relevant content so use them as part of your outreach strategy. If you have any content that you would like to share that would be useful to others in your industry, then pitch this to relevant journalists. It is likely that the publication operates in print as well as online then this could also lead to some fantastic exposure for your business. Charlie Marchant – Ways To Definitely Get Links For Your Business

Secure links before you produce the content

Time is very important and every second of an outreach campaign counts, so try to secure a link before you have produced the content. If you have an idea for a piece of content or infographic, check first that this is of interest to your target publications. You can find out by pitching your idea to journalists and writers to get their feedback. If you are able to compile a small list of publications that would be willing to use your content with a guaranteed link then you can go ahead and make the content. Stacy MacNaught – Securing Links Before You’ve Even Produced Your Content

Surveys

If you want to create content or a press release on a certain topic that requires the public opinion, then try surveys. Google Surveys allow users to gather information in a short space of time, whilst Survey Monkey allows you to collect a large pool of data. Analyse this data, collate your findings and write them up into an interesting piece of content. Charlie Marchant – Ways To Definitely Get Links For Your Business

Data outreach

If you have a content idea that requires data and statistics from reputable sources, then try government bodies. The Office For National Statistics (ONS) and Freedom Of Information Requests are great for getting reputable data from government departments, such as the police force or the department for education. There are already requests available that other users have submitted but you can submit your own. Charlie Marchant – Ways To Definitely Get Links For Your Business So if you work as part of an outreach team and have been struggling for campaign ideas, then try some of these outreach tips to ramp up your link-building strategy. READ NEXT: Why are links important for SEO?

All posts by : Alex Fisher

Cedarwood Digital: a year in review