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The Value Of External Link Building In Enhanced E-E-A-T

Even in 2024, with Google’s algorithm boasting over 400 ranking factors, the concept of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) continues to hold significant weight in the SEO realm. This framework emphasises the importance of content created by experienced sources with demonstrable knowledge and a strong reputation for accuracy. By prioritising E-E-A-T, Google aims to deliver search results that users can confidently rely on for trustworthy and valuable information.

While on-site optimisation is crucial for building E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), its reach extends beyond website elements. Discussions surrounding E-E-A-T often emphasise on-site tactics like testimonials, author profiles, and internal linking. However, for websites in the Your Money Your Life (YMYL) category, leveraging external link building strategies effectively can significantly enhance E-E-A-T. By acquiring high-quality backlinks from reputable sources in your niche, you demonstrate your website’s authority and trustworthiness to search engines. This comprehensive approach to E-E-A-T ultimately leads to a stronger SEO foundation.

How Do I Build E-E-A-T Friendly Links?

While building E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) friendly links might seem straightforward, the focus should remain on acquiring high-quality, genuine links through effective digital PR. Digital PR campaigns, when executed well, naturally contribute to E-E-A-T by securing placements on reputable websites that acknowledge your website’s expertise.

However, if your goal is to strategically strengthen your E-E-A-T, particularly when paired with on-site improvements, consider focusing on these specific digital PR tactics:

Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is a powerful tool for establishing E-E-A-T. By sharing your expertise externally through insightful content or interviews, you demonstrate your website’s knowledge and credibility. This knowledge-sharing approach effectively builds trust and positions your website as an authority in its field.

Thought leadership initiatives can be implemented in various ways. You can leverage interviews with your clients or internal subject matter experts to showcase their experience and insights. Providing strong biographies highlighting their credentials strengthens their authority in the eyes of journalists. Additionally, staying updated on industry news and proactively seeking opportunities (newsjacking or event participation) increases your chances of securing media placements. This comprehensive approach to thought leadership ultimately contributes to a stronger E-E-A-T foundation for your website.

To find out more about how effective thought leadership can be, check out our case study for client Little Loans where we achieved some great coverage in a traditionally tricky vertical. 

Newsjacking

Newsjacking presents a valuable opportunity to build external E-E-A-T for your brand. It involves capitalizing on trending news stories and offering insightful commentary or unique perspectives from your resident experts. This strategy allows you to showcase your website’s expertise on relevant topics while potentially securing placements in high-quality publications.

Newsjacking doesn’t require complex or time-consuming efforts. For instance, we created a successful piece with our client Hayes Garden World, leveraging their resident gardening expert Angela Slater’s knowledge. The piece focused on the impact of lockdown on houseplants, providing a simple yet engaging angle on a trending topic. This approach resulted in acquiring high-quality backlinks, demonstrating the effectiveness of newsjacking for E-E-A-T building.

Data-Led Campaigns

Data-driven campaigns offer an excellent opportunity to demonstrate your E-E-A-T. By analyzing relevant industry data or your own data sets, you can create valuable resources that showcase your expertise and provide journalists with compelling insights. This approach fosters trust and positions your website as an authority within the industry.

Data campaigns can be implemented in various ways. Consider creating data-driven guides or reports addressing industry trends or consumer behavior. A well-executed example could be a guide titled “How Much Energy Do Your Household Appliances Consume?”. This type of informative content, especially when relevant to your industry (e.g., energy providers), establishes your website as a credible source and has the potential to attract long-term backlinks from journalists who reference it repeatedly.

Each of the approaches above will really help you to hone in on building that E-E-A-T through each of your external link acquisition campaigns which, when paired with a solid on-site strategy, will improve your website visibility in no time. 

Product Reviews & Placements

If you’re an ecommerce agency, then chances are you will be looking to build external trust through visibility for products. Top 10 lists and product round-ups are a great way to get exposure for your products and brand and they also help to build those all-important external trust signals which are a great way to build key E-E-A-T signals here.

To find out more about how our Digital PR and Link Building service can help your SEO efforts, or to enquire about our white label digital PR services you can contact us here.

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A Guide To Newsjacking In 2024

Newsjacking has been a buzzword in the digital PR space for a while now and I often think of it as akin to E-E-A-T in the SEO space – it’s something that everyone knows about and if you get it right it can have a significant impact on your client’s results. Knowing where to start with newsjacking can be tricky especially if you’re doing it for the first time so let’s take a look at how we approach newsjacking and what we need to do to ensure that we get the best results for our clients and land those all-important placements. 

So What Is Newsjacking?

Chances are you are probably already familiar with the term newsjacking as it’s a pretty common term that gets used in day-to-day language but for those who aren’t familiar, the concept of newsjacking involves jumping on a trend or something that is topical in the news and adding to the conversation that might be through adding an expert comment or sending over some data that’s relevant to the conversation and can add value to a piece that a journalist might be currently covering.

The reason newsjacking is such an effective digital PR technique is that combines two of the most important elements that go into a great story, that is relevancy for the journalist – you’re jumping on something that’s happening right now, and also adding value to the conversation through data or expert opinion, you’re adding real value to a story that journalists already writing and that’s a surefire way to get coverage for your client.

Newsjacking comes in two formats, that’s proactive and reactive depending on when in the story you add your comment or expertise, both can be really effective from a link acquisition perspective and if you’re prepared, then chances are that it can be quite a quick turnaround project. So let’s take a look at how we can approach newsjacking to ensure that we get the best results for our clients and land some great placements and coverage across the board.

Preparation

Preparation is absolutely key when it comes to newsjacking as you want to be able to jump on a trend as quickly as you possibly can. This means putting some time in to gather images that they might want to use, look at areas of expertise and understanding who the best person to be the spokesperson is, and also any additional resources that they have available which you might be able to use to supplement their comments.

Stockpiling all of this information beforehand can help to make your newsjacking experience a lot smoother – we recommend having a sit down with your client to run through the newsjacking process and gather this information before you start your outreach – this will help you to improve your turnaround times and make sure that you’re able to jump on that emerging story as quickly as you possibly can.

News Listening

One of the most important elements of an effective newsjacking campaign is understanding what is topical and trending, finding topics that journalists are likely to cover – this means looking at what’s trending in the news and finding something that’s relevant to your client that you can add value to.

There are a number of different ways that you can conduct news listening but we’ve included some of the most popular options to get you started:

  1. X (Twitter)

X is a great place to start when you’re looking for new ideas and the trending hashtags are a great place to get your inspiration from. This can give you a good idea of topical issues that people are talking about, topics that are trending across the UK and also internationally, in addition to topics that people like to talk about and are maybe in the public interest.

X has a “trending” section where you can understand what people are talking about – this can also be broken into areas such as “News”, “Sports” and also for your local area. Additionally, if you are looking to research into a specific area, you can research specific hashtag data to understand how many people are talking about a specific topic.

Source: twitter.com

X is a great way to get a feel for what people are talking about – and also what is topical in the news – so it’s worth keeping this open throughout your day. Additionally, using hashtags like #journorequest and #prrequest can help you keep on top of what journalists are looking for – another great way to get an idea of relevant topics you might want to cover. 

2. TikTok

TikTok is another great way to find out what is topical and trending and you can trendjack really quickly with the user generated content – getting a great idea of topical stories that are in the public interest by also looking through engagement metrics.

If you have a TikTok Business account then you will also have access to some of great hashtag data and trends information that is available and you can find this across two main dashboards to help your news research – the first one is the general trending dashboard which goes through all of the trends from the last seven days:

Source: tiktok.com

You can also drill down into further detail around each of these specific hashtags to understand where they are trending and with which audiences (as well as their related interests which is great for helping you to build your media lists!). This information can give you great regional insights as well as tell you more about their age range and demographic information:

Source: tiktok.com

You can also just use TikTok generally to research data around a given topic by monitoring hashtag data and getting an idea of how people are approaching the topic / what they find of most interest. This is particularly valuable if you are looking to create content that targets Gen-Z who are usually avid TikTok users.

3. Google Alerts

Google Alerts provides a great way to stay on top of topics that are trending around your client and have them delivered straight to your inbox. By setting up notifications within Google Alerts it will email you every time there is news around a particular topic, your client name or something that is related to. This is a great way to stay on top of breaking issues that are topical to or related to the services or products that your clients sell. 

It’s relatively easy to set Google Alerts up, but we would recommend setting them up in a subfolder of your email inbox to avoid being inundated with alerts as they are coming in throughout the day. Set these up separately and spend some time running through them to see if they are relevant for your client, over time you’ll become accustomed to the types of news that this is pulling out and you can adjust your filtering to make this more relevant as you need to. This is a great way to jump on something that is topically relevant for your client without having to sift through an entire news site to find the information.

4. Upcoming Reports

Upcoming reports can be a great way to get ideas for newsjacking particularly if it’s proactive.  there are a wide range of industry bodies who published reports on a regular basis ranging from weekly through to daily, and jumping on these reports and putting your client into the centre of the conversation, is a great way to newsjack and really add that element of expertise and relevancy to the links you are building through to the website.

If you aren’t sure where to start with reports then try some popular industry bodies – places such as the NHS and the ONS are frequently reporting on a wide range of topics and you can easily find a way to link please through to your clients. In many situations these bodies will also have a calendar that you can access which showcases the types of reports that are coming up, this allows you to plan in advance so that you can support to ensure that you’re able to quickly jump on this trend once the report comes out.

Reports are really effective way to newsjack because they’re topical and they’re data-led – something which journalists love, so if you’re looking for ideas for your newsjacking then have a look at relevant industry bodies that are related to your client and the types of reports that they have coming up to see if there’s somewhere that you can add expert commentary and topical value.

5. Event Calendars

Event calendars are a great way to undertake proactive newsjacking and we often find that many publications publish their upcoming calendars for the year in advance,so this is a great way for us to prepare for upcoming events and to plan ahead some ideas for proactive newsjacking.

Keep up to date with your favourite publications and don’t be afraid to reach out to editors to ask them if they have a publication calendar in advance, this can help to give you an idea of the topics that they are looking to cover and the type of content that they might be more likely to include within their pieces.

As a result it is valuable to use this to guide your newsjacking because it already gives you an idea of what journalists think is relevant and what readers are likely to engage with, therefore making it more likely for your content to be picked up if it is relevant to this topic

6. Colleagues

Often in Digital PR we find ourselves the victims of trying to come up with all of the ideas  ourselves and it’s hard for everyone to always be on top of what’s in the news and what is a trending topic – so why not use your colleagues?  We set up a group chat where we encourage our colleagues to post something that they’ve read that is newsworthy or trending – that could have been something that they’ve read in the newspaper that morning or something they’ve seen on TikTok or read on X. 

By encouraging our colleagues to contribute in this way we are getting a much bigger pool of information that we can use to take ideas from and chances are that many of us are reading different publications or fall into different TikTok algorithms, so this can be a great way to get a wide range of newsjacking options.

Research

Once you have undertaken your news listening it’s important to thoroughly research an idea before you start as you want to make sure that the idea hasn’t been done before and that someone else isn’t currently working on it. You also need to ensure that any information you are  bringing to the table is offering a new opinion or something that hasn’t been published before, after all, that’s what journalists are looking for – a new angle on an existing story.

The research is important to ensure that you’re bringing something fresh to the story – so how do we go about undertaking research to understand topics and areas that journalists have covered before? Here are a couple of ideas for tools that can help you:

  1. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a great way to get an understanding of topics that are covered recently or topics that are popular with the press. You can use this tool to understand the types of content that journalists have covered recently, which journalists have covered which types of content and also in what volume so you can really start to understand how many people are covering a particular topic and therefore a) has it been done before and b) is it likely to be picked up by a particular journalist.

One of the other important metrics that was talking give you if social shares and while this isn’t a direct impact on SEO performance, what it can help to show you is how engaged a particular article is and therefore potentially how many people are likely to read that article and how much it is in the public interest – this is a valuable analysis before you start investing your time into creating content around that topic.

Using tools like Buzzsumo allows you to understand how well your content is likely to land as well as to ensure that hasn’t been covered before and therefore that you’re not wasting your time.

  1. Google News Search

Google News search is another great way to understand how content is landing and this can give you an idea again of topics that have been covered before, the types of journalists that are likely to cover your content and also any angles that you could potentially pursue that haven’t already been done.

We often use Google News to understand what is topically trending when we pitch to new digital PR clients – that helps to give us a overview of the market and understand what types of stories have been covered in recent times, but as a client you can also use this to understand if a topic has been done to death, even a bit or if there is opportunity to add a new angle into a pre-existing trending topic. 

  1. Use External Tools

In addition to Google alerts and external tools that you can also use to help with your research. One example of this is semrush and you can use this tool to understand topics which are trending and also at the types of search volumes around specific keywords or topics that you might be looking to cover. 

You can also use tools like the Topic Research tool to understand popular trending topics and how they are evolving over time. This allows you to type in a particular keyword/topic and evaluate topics around this that are currently being covered/talked about – this is another great way to check that your topic hasn’t already been covered, or to help analyse a new angle or approach.

Source: SEMRush

Research is key to ensure that you don’t waste your time undertaking a campaign which has already been done and that you are able to bring a fresh angle and approach to the story. 

Ideation & Creation

The ideation and creation stage plays an important role in any newsjacking campaign and this is where you pull everything together. So you take the information you found within your research, you take anything that’s topical and trending and relevant to your client and you can bind it all together to create a great story, piece of data or angle that delivers great coverage for your client and also insightful information to a trending topic.

The ideation stage has a number of different parts to it and this includes:

  1. Brainstorming

Brainstorming is when you put your heads together and come up with some great ideas as to how you can get your client coverage in a story. Brainstorming can take a number of different formats but it’s a great idea to get the whole team together. If the client has time this is also a great opportunity to get them involved so that they can lend their expertise and showcase this. 

Try and come up with a number of different ideas and angles and run them past your client to see what they are comfortable with and which best showcases their expertise and their data. Once you have a couple of ideas, start to narrow them down until you’ve selected the options that you want to go for.

  1. Identifying Your Angle

An idea is nothing without an angle that adds value to the article or the story – this is often more important than anything else, you need to bring something fresh to the article, so identifying your angle and making this clear early on is important to getting coverage. 

Look at what has already been done and hone in on the value that your data or expertise can add – do you have something new to bring to the conversation? Do you have data that showcases an additional angle on a regional/international level? Identifying your angle plays a key role in ensuring that journalists feel that your content adds value to their article. 

  1. Tapping In On Expertise

Make sure to tap into the expertise of your clients if possible, this will of course give you a great angle when you’re approaching a story and will help you to identify how you can add value very quickly. 

Feel free to sit down with your clients to really understand the areas of expertise or to conduct an interview with the spokesperson to understand the types of angles that you could look for, tapping in on the expertise will really help you to showcase this through the content that you’re creating and also to add real value to the article.

  1. Creating The Right Content

Creating the right type of contact is also really important whether this comes in quote format, whether it’s a piece of data or whether it’s simply a couple of lines having a new angle to an existing story.

Having a look at the types of content that journalists are covering and the format this is in will help you to identify how to best approach the content that you want to create, to ensure it’s the right type of content that the journalist would like to cover. Having the right content and the right angle will help to get your content placed and is an important part of the newsjacking process.

  1. Creating The Right Format

Creating the right format for your content is also very important, this means how you display the content and the type of content that you’re sending to journalists.Make sure to include any assets that will help support the story this could be high resolution images or associated data tables and always remember to clearly state your methodology for any data analysis pieces that you’re doing this is important to ensure that the journalist is comfortable to cover your content and also that you explain where you’ve got the data from and at what time. 

Outreach

Once you have the idea and you’ve pulled it together into a press release with the supporting information now comes one of the most important parts – the outreach. Using the right tagline, contacting the right journalists and creating a killer press release are all important parts of this process and to ensure that you get your coverage landed we’d recommend the following steps:

  1. Research Your Journalists

Researching your journalists is super important to ensuring that you are sending your content to people who are likely to cover it and who have a genuine reason to cover it/interest in the topic. There’s a number of different ways that you can research journalists and these include:

  • Using tools like Buzzsumo to understand which journalists are covering similar content or similar topical areas
  • Researching on X – most journalists announce moves on X, make a note of these and start to follow these journalists – they will often do a shoutout if they are looking for a specific type of content to cover
  • Manual research through Google News – looking through Google News and other web indexes to understand journalists who have covered the topic recently and any articles where you could reach out and add a new angle
  • Look at specific topic journalists i.e. journalists who cover soaps, finance, travel etc… add these to your list for the topical coverage

By researching journalists in advance you are more likely to build a list of journalists who are more engaged with your content, therefore leading to better overall results and avoiding sending unrelated content to journalists who may find this annoying. 

  1. Build An Effective Media List

An effective media list plays a key role in ensuring that you’re giving your content the best chance of getting covered, so taking time to build your media list is time well spent. When pulling the list together, call on your journalist research to understand which journalists you want to include on your list, you can then follow this up by using a journalist database tool (we use Vuelio) to source relevant emails and start to build out your list. Remember that relevancy here is key so you need just enough journalists to ensure you get a good reach, while at the same time you don’t want to flood journalists who aren’t interested in your content.

  1. Monitor Opens & Trends

Data plays an important role in an effective newsjacking campaign so make sure that you monitor your opens and trends to understand how journalists are engaging with your content.
Using tools which allow you to track open rate will help you to understand how journalists are engaging with your content, over time this will help you to understand which journalists engage with which type of content and will naturally make your content more effective – using data in this way can help you to streamline your outreach is very effective.

  1. Follow Up

It’s important to follow up your content and press releases – don’t just do one push, always follow up with a couple of different pushes at different times. It might be that you caught a journalist when they were particularly busy, or that they already have a full news roster for the day, by doing follow ups you can ensure that you’re continuing to push your story out and you may find that in many instances it lands on the second or third push.

It’s also valuable to follow up when something particularly relevant has landed in the press – send your press release along with some updated comments or information on something which is trending topically, this can be a great way to get it included in a news round up or timely news story.

  1. Rework Content Where Needed

Don’t be afraid to rework your content where you need to. You might find that you actually need it in a different format, that it’s a little outdated or that you need to use a new angle. You always have the opportunity to update your content, so don’t be afraid to launch it at different times of the year with new, up to date information, or a slightly more relevant/different angle – reworking content can often be a great way to land content which perhaps didn’t place the first time round. 

Review

Once we’ve completed the outreach process, it doesn’t end there and the review stage is perhaps one of the most important stages – this is where we analyse what went well, what type of content was covered and how we could leverage this for future campaigns. Key areas that we review and look into include:

  1. Open Rate

Open rate plays a key role in our reviews as it gives us a great idea of how journalists have engaged with our content – who has engaged with it and at what rate. Over time this becomes a very valuable metric and one that we can use to understand which journalists are likely to engage with which content, to better inform our outreach process

  1. Publications Covered

Reviewing which publications have covered our content also plays an important role in informing our outreach strategy moving forwards. It’s important to review who has covered what type of content and when, which journalist has covered the content and how it has been covered – these are all vital pieces of data to understand how we can best tailor our newsjacking efforts to the right publications.

  1. Journalist Feedback

This is also a good time to review any feedback that you’ve received from journalists, this could include journalists asking you to remove them from your mailing list, or alternatively journalists who have fed back on what they liked about an article, or what could have been improved/what they needed to support the article. All of this information is super valuable and should be noted to improve the outreach process moving forwards.

Conclusion

Newsjacking isn’t just a buzzword, it’s an important facet of any effective Digital PR campaign and it’s a great way to get your clients at the forefront of the conversation, quickly. To find out more about how newsjacking works, check out our Digital PR services or case studies

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Director Amanda On The Main Stage At Brighton SEO

Having attended Brighton SEO for over a decade now, I can safely say that it’s one of the best, if not the best SEO conference in the world, so I was absolutely delighted when asked to speak on the main stage this year covering the topic “SEO For YMYL Websites”

For those of you that don’t know what YMYL is, it stands for “Your Money Your Life” and it’s a term that was coined by Google to cover websites that can have an impact on someone’s money or life. At Cedarwood, we specialise in working with companies like this and with years of experience building links in particularly tricky industries i.e. gaming, vaping, medical, legal so it was great to be able to share some knowledge about this with the community.

So what were some of the key takeaways from the talk?

  • User intent is key – matching user intent plays a huge role in the YMYL space and it’s really important that we are keeping this in mind. This ties in really well with the idea of creating a “satisfying amount of content” – that is the right amount of content for a user, not a certain number of words, to answer the questions/queries they might have and allow them to make an informed decision
  • Reputation is important –  in particular your external reputation. Google yourself – see what people are saying about you and make sure that you work to build your reputation with effective Digital PR – this will go a long way to helping what people have to say about you and also what Google are seeing being said about you
  • Showcase your trust signals – whether it’s through industry accreditations or simply by telling people why they should trust you, showcasing this on your website and on external websites plays an important role on building those all important E-E-A-T signals
  • And on the topic of E-E-A-T, making sure that it shines through in everything that you do. Google have openly stated that for YMYL websites they place a heavier weight on E-E-A-T signals so it’s important that those are showcased at every opportunity
  • Finally, making sure that the look and feel of your content matches the expertise of it – there’s no point having great content only for it to look “amateurish” – take time to consider the way content is displayed and that it matches the expertise you are showcasing.

I had a great time in Brighton, got to meet some fantastic people and hear from some thought leaders across the industry.

You can find a link to my full slide deck here: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/amanda-walls-brighton-seo-seo-for-ymyl-websites-9pptx/267570020

Until October!

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70 Free Data Sources For Your Digital PR Campaigns (All In One Place!)

Over the last few months I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Creating Low Cost High Return Digital PR campaigns – but in order to do that, knowing where to go for free data is a huge bonus!

Below we’ve compiled a quick list of 70 great (free) data sources that you can use for your Digital PR campaigns, so if you are looking for inspiration for your next piece of data analysis, look no further!

Government Agencies:

  1. Office for National Statistics (ONS): Extensive economic, social, and demographic data. (https://www.ons.gov.uk/)
  2. Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS): Data on business sectors, energy, and innovation. (https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-business-energy-and-industrial-strategy)
  3. Department for Education (DfE): Education and skills data at national and regional levels. (https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-education)
  4. Food Standards Agency (FSA): Data on food safety, diet, and nutrition. (https://www.food.gov.uk/)
  5. Environment Agency: Environmental data on pollution, water quality, and waste. (https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/environment-agency)

Industry Associations & Research Bodies:

  1. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD): Data on HR practices, workforce trends, and employee engagement. (https://www.cipd.org/en/)
  2. Federation of Small Businesses (FSB): Data on small business demographics, challenges, and growth. (https://www.fsb.org.uk/)
  3. Retail Economics: Retail sales data and insights into consumer spending behavior. (https://www.retaileconomics.co.uk/)
  4. Centre for Cities: Research and data on urban economies and city development. (https://www.centreforcities.org/)
  5. The Work Foundation: Research on work, employment, and the changing nature of jobs. (https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/work-foundation/)

Public & Academic Institutions:

  1. Bank of England: Economic data, policy decisions, and financial market analysis. (https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/)
  2. Resolution Foundation: Research on living standards, poverty, and inequality. (https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/)
  3. National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR): Independent economic research and forecasting. (https://www.niesr.ac.uk/)
  4. Joseph Rowntree Foundation: Research on poverty, inequality, and social justice. (https://www.jrf.org.uk/)
  5. The Health Foundation: Independent research on health and social care issues. (https://www.health.org.uk/)

Business & Consumer Data Providers:

  1. Statista: Global market research data and statistics on various industries. (https://www.statista.com/)
  2. Euromonitor International: Market research data and insights on consumer trends. (https://www.euromonitor.com/)
  3. Kantar Worldpanel: Consumer behavior and purchase data across various product categories. (https://www.worldpanel.com/)
  4. Nielsen: Market research data on media consumption, advertising, and consumer trends. (https://www.nielsen.com/)
  5. GfK: Market research data on consumer behavior, retail sales, and brand preferences. (https://www.gfk.com/home)

Data Portals & Open Data Initiatives:

  1. Data.gov.uk: Open data platform from the UK government. (https://www.data.gov.uk/)
  2. London Datastore: Open data platform for London. (https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset)
  3. Scotland’s Open Data Platform: Open data platform for Scotland. (https://opendata.scot/)
  4. Open Data Wales: Open data platform for Wales. (https://datamap.gov.wales/)
  5. Northern Ireland Open Data Platform: Open data platform for Northern Ireland. (https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/open-data)

News & Media Resources:

  1. BBC News: News data and statistics from the BBC. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news)
  2. The Guardian: Data journalism and interactive features from The Guardian. (https://www.theguardian.com/)
  3. The Times: News data and analysis from The Times (may require free registration). (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/)
  4. The Telegraph: Data journalism and interactive features from The Telegraph (may require free registration). (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/)
  5. Financial Times: Financial data and analysis from the Financial Times (may require free registration). (https://www.ft.com/)
  6. Sky News: News data and statistics from Sky News. (https://news.sky.com/)

Trade Associations & Professional Bodies:

  1. Confederation of British Industry (CBI): Business surveys and economic forecasts. (https://www.cbi.org.uk/)
  2. Institute of Directors (IoD): Data on director attitudes and business decision-making. (https://www.iod.com/)
  3. Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM): Data on marketing trends, consumer behavior, and advertising effectiveness. (https://www.cim.org/)
  4. Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW): Data on financial reporting, accounting practices, and business confidence. (https://www.icaew.com/)
  5. Law Society of England and Wales: Data on legal trends, access to justice, and the legal profession. (https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/)
  6. Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS): Data on property prices, housing market trends, and construction activity. (https://www.rics.org/)
  7. The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT): Data on logistics, transport, and supply chain management. (https://www.ciltuk.org.uk/)

Retail & Consumer Insights:

  1. British Retail Consortium (BRC): Retail sales data and insights into consumer spending trends. (https://www.brc.org.uk/)
  2. Office for National Statistics – Retail Sales:
  3. IMRG Capgemini Online Retail Index: Data on online retail sales and e-commerce trends.
  4. Which?: Consumer research and product reviews from Which?. (https://www.which.co.uk/)
  5. MoneySavingExpert: Consumer finance data, price comparisons, and money-saving tips. (https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/)

Social Media & Online Trends:

  1. Google Trends: Track search trends and see what people are interested in. (https://trends.google.com/)
  2. Sprout Social: Social media analytics and insights (free trial available). (https://sproutsocial.com/)
  3. Brandwatch: Social media listening and analytics platform (free trial available). (https://www.brandwatch.com/)
  4. Buzzsumo: Content marketing insights and influencer identification tool (free trial available). (https://www.buzzsumo.com/)
  5. Talkwalker: Social media monitoring and analytics platform (free trial available). (https://www.talkwalker.com/)

Sustainability & Environmental Data:

  1. Committee on Climate Change (CCC): Independent advice on tackling climate change in the UK. (https://www.theccc.org.uk/)
  2. Met Office: Weather data, climate change information, and environmental data. (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/)
  3. UK Green Building Council (UKGBC): Data on sustainable construction and green building trends. (https://www.ukgbc.org/)

Health & Wellbeing Data:

  1. The King’s Fund: Independent health research and analysis. (https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/)
  2. NHS Digital: Health data and statistics from the National Health Service. (https://digital.nhs.uk/)
  3. Mental Health Foundation: Data on mental health and wellbeing in the UK.
  4. Cancer Research UK: Cancer statistics and research data. (https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/)

Education & Skills Data:

  1. Department for Education – Education & Training Statistics: Education and training statistics from the Department for Education.
  2. Ofqual: Data on qualifications, assessment, and regulation in education. (https://www.ofqual.gov.uk/)
  3. The Sutton Trust: Research on social mobility and education. (https://www.suttontrust.com/)
  4. The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI): Research and analysis on higher education policy. (https://www.hepi.ac.uk/)

Transport & Travel Data:

  1. Department for Transport (DfT): Transport statistics and data on roads, railways, and aviation. (https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-transport)
  2. Civil Aviation Authority (CAA): Data on air travel, airports, and aviation safety. (https://www.caa.org.uk/)
  3. National Highways: Data on traffic flow and road conditions on motorways and major A roads in England. (https://www.nationalhighways.co.uk/)

Culture & Entertainment Data:

  1. Office for National Statistics – Culture, Media & Sport: Data on cultural participation, leisure activities, and the creative industries.
  2. Arts Council England: Data on arts funding, cultural participation, and the creative economy. (https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/)
  3. Barbican Centre: Data on audience engagement and trends in performing arts. (https://www.barbican.org.uk/)
  4. British Film Institute (BFI): Data on the UK film industry, cinema attendance, and audience preferences. (https://www.bfi.org.uk/)

Public Opinion & Polling Data:

  1. YouGov: Polling data on public opinion and social attitudes (free basic account available). (https://yougov.co.uk/)
  2. Ipsos MORI: Polling data on public opinion, social issues, and political attitudes. ([invalid URL removed])
  3. NatCen Social Research: Social research data on a wide range of topics (some free data available). (https://www.natcen.ac.uk/)
  4. The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR): Public relations industry surveys and reports. (https://www.cipr.co.uk/)

Want to you know more about what Digital PR can do for your business? Get In Touch!

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How To Forecast For SEO

In recent weeks the topic of forecasting for SEO has been widely discussed here at Cedarwood and as we are in the thick of pitching season, being able to provide data-backed forecasts for clients plays an important role in helping them to understand the type of ROI they can expect to get from our services, while also helping them to sell the service internally in at a higher level.

Forecasting has always been a tricky topic since the dawn of time, especially when you are dealing with an area such as SEO where you are very much at the behest of Google when it comes to algorithm updates and elements which can impact your performance no matter what you do.That said, being able to provide clear guidance and an outline of what is achievable plays a key role in being able to showcase the benefit that you can bring, so investing some time into forecasting effectively and setting up milestones along the way, goes a long way to showcasing a positive ROI and the value that SEO can bring.

Why Do I Need To Forecast For SEO?

Forecasting plays an important role in identifying ROI from an SEO campaign and while ROI on SEO is much harder to initially measure compared to other channels such as PPC, being able to give some guidance on what the available opportunity is, helps to quantify the role that SEO plays within the wider marketing mix and show the value that it can offer.

What Should I Include Within My SEO Forecasting?

While overall SEO forecasting is designed to give an idea of clear ROI and set targets for the first 6/12 months of a campaign, SEO forecasting should also look at the bigger picture of what an effective SEO strategy can offer, this can include:

📍Impact on other channels – while SEO will drive leads in its own right, it’s likely that implementing an effective SEO campaign will have a knock on impact on other channels. Reviewing assisted conversions and other metrics can help you to identify the type of impact this could have, which can be particularly prevalent for users who might have multiple touchpoints, where SEO is just the first step of the journey

📍Overall awareness – in addition to measuring conversions and return, forecasting can also be utilised to identify how brand awareness can grow within an SEO campaign, especially if your off-site SEO is focused around digital PR. Referral sales, placements, links and just general brand mentions can all be taken into account when it comes to evaluating potential reach and each of these can contribute to positive brand sentiment, in addition to increasing sales/leads

📍Brand reach – in addition to leads and conversions which can showcase ROI, brand reach is also another area where you can potentially forecast. If you are to gain coverage across key publications what does this mean for additional reach of your brand 

Where Do I Start With Forecasting For SEO?

The first place to start with forecasting is through data gathering – to make accurate forecasts, you first need to work with data that’s in place to ensure you’re able to take into account seasonality, on-site conversion rate and any other external factors. Examples of data that you need to collect from your clients include:

➡️Historical Data: Google Analytics can be a great place to start with this, but historical data from your client will give a good idea of where they’ve been and any seasonality that they face, which you can incorporate into your forecasting

➡️Conversion Information: Any information you can gather around Conversions including Conversion Rate, Top Converting Keywords – anything that will help you to quantify the impact that new traffic/improved keyword rankings can have on your website

➡️Order/Conversion Value: Conversion Value is also important as we know that some conversions are more valuable than others – understanding different conversion values allows you to project the business value or ROAS a lot more accurately

➡️Lifetime Value: In addition to the value from a single transaction, there will also be the lifetime value from multiple transactions – initial conversion value might be low, but over time this could grow if they become a repeat customer and it’s important to take this into consideration 

Once you have collated your data, you are ready to start the forecasting process.

So How Do I Forecast?

There are a number of different ways that you can forecast, depending on your own personal style, but in general I like to work with high performing keyword positioning and CTR graphs to understand how the growth of high performance pages and keywords can impact growth in conversions and therefore ultimately drive business revenue. This is particularly valuable when grouping the keywords together to understand which sections of the website offer the most opportunity and what that opportunity could look like. 

The beauty of this approach is that I’m not relying solely on a metric like “Organic Traffic” which can be impacted by blog posts and other non-converting pieces, rather I’m relying on keywords which I know drive value and conversions so I can be confident in the conversion rate I’m putting forwards and that if I’m forecasting a traffic increase I know that it’s going to have an impact.

I use a spreadsheet that allows me to input keywords, conversion rates, search volumes and associated data and showcases a graph like the below which allows me to understand at a basic level what one, two, three or more position increases would look like both in terms of traffic and in terms of conversions.

While it’s not an exact science, it allows me to look broadly at the impact that SEO can have on a website and quickly identify whether it’s a worthwhile investment (we won’t recommend SEO if we don’t believe it can drive an effective ROI).

Once I’ve pulled together some top level graphs I can then deep dive into different circumstances based on CTR graphs and SERP snippets – i.e. looking at keywords where there are specific SERP features vs others where there are not, or looking at keywords where there might be an easier SERP as it won’t take the same amount of effort to move all keywords on position – that’s why I group my keywords into “themes” at the start and forecast them accordingly. 

Once I have all of this, I focus on  the main outcome – total conversions – and then use conversion value to place a metric on this which relates to ROAS from their initial SEO spend. I often convert this into a multiplier to showcase the value of SEO investment that we hope to achieve.

By doing all of this we are able to give some guidance to our clients of what we expect them to receive from SEO and what is realistic within a given timeframe. As with anything to do with SEO we know we are at the behest of Google, but this is still a great place to start!


If you’d like to find out more about SEO forecasting, or the opportunities that might be available to you, get in touch!

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Cedarwood Win UK Ecommerce Agency Of The Year!

We’re delighted to announce that we took home the UK Ecommerce Agency Of The Year award at last night’s UK Ecommerce Awards, to add to the awards that we have won at this event over the last two years!

We also had some great feedback from the judges on our entry:

Congratulations to all of the staff & our clients on a successful year in 2023!

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Cedarwood Nominated For 12 UK Search Awards!

What a great way to end the week! ⚡️ – We’re delighted to announce that Cedarwood has been nominated for 12 UK Search Awards after our best year ever for digital marketing performance.

The nominations follow on from our success last year where we won:

🎊 Best Use Of Search (Finance)

🎊 Best Use Of PR In Search (Silver)

🎊 Best SEO Agency (Silver)

We have been nominated for:

💥 Best Use Of Search (Finance) x2

💥 Best Use Of Search (Retail PPC)

💥 Best Use Of Search (B2C)

💥 Best Use Of Search (Health)

💥 Best Use Of Content Marketing

💥 Best Use Of PR In Search x2

💥 Best Use Of Data (PPC)

💥 Best PPC Agency

💥 Best SEO Agency

💥 Best Integrated Agency

The event will be held at Bloomsbury Big Top on November 30th and we are looking forwards to seeing everyone on the night! You can find a full list of all nominees here: https://searchawards.co.uk/2023-shortlist/

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Cedarwood Nominated For 2x UK Ecommerce Awards

We’re delighted to announce that we have been nominated for 2x awards at the UK Ecommerce Awards. Having taken home the award for Best Small Ecommerce Agency for the last 2 years we will be hoping to emulate our success in this year’s categories!

We’re nominated for:

🎊 Ecommerce Search Campaign Of The Year (Hayes Garden World)

🎊 Small Ecommerce Agency Of The Year

2023 has been our strongest year to date and despite challenging economic conditions, our ecommerce agency offering continues to grow and thrive. We look forward to seeing everyone at the awards down in London in November!

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Cedarwood Appoints New Head Of Digital PR

Manchester’s Cedarwood Digital has appointed Matt Thompson as its Head of Digital PR.

Matt brings over a decade of experience to the role, having previously worked at iProspect, Open Partners and THG.

“It’s an exciting time to be joining Cedarwood,” Thompson said. “The team are already producing some fantastic work, with a whole host of recent award wins under their belt. I’m looking forward to driving things forward, helping grow the team as well as our clients’ businesses.”

Amanda Walls, director of Cedarwood Digital, added: “The past 12 months have seen our digital PR team go from strength to strength, and we’ve got big plans for the future. Matt’s experience in launching new products, as well as growing existing channels, will play a key role as we look to further expand our offering to be truly market leading.”

Founded in 2016, Cedarwood Digital works with a diverse array of national clients to enhance their business’ visibility online through organic, earned and paid channels.

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Five Key Tips To Create An Effective Digital PR Campaign

Digital PR has been a buzzword in the world of online marketing for quite a while now and it’s a popular marketing approach for businesses who are looking to grow their online profile while also landing important links back to their website. 

Here at Cedarwood, digital PR has always been an important part of our service offering, not just for the visibility that it garners for our clients, but also for the positive impact it can have on SEO campaigns and as a result we have a lot of experience (over seven years direct experience in fact!) in rolling out effective digital PR campaigns. 

Although it is one of the more popular approaches within the SEO mix, digital PR is something which if not done properly can fail to have the desired impact – so below we’ve included some top tips on how you can go about creating an effective digital PR campaign.

The importance of Digital PR

Before we dive into five key tips to creating an effective digital PR campaign, let’s first look at why digital PR is important and how it can help you to achieve your goals across both SEO and also improving overall awareness.

Digital PR is important because it can help businesses achieve a number of goals, including:

➡️ Increase brand awareness: When your brand is featured in high-quality, relevant publications, it can help to raise awareness of your company and its products or services. This can lead to increased traffic to your website, more leads, and ultimately, more sales.

➡️ Generate leads: A well-executed digital PR campaign can also help to generate leads for your business. When journalists and other influencers write about your company, they often include a call to action, such as a link to your website or a way to sign up for your email list. This can help you to capture the contact information of potential customers who are interested in learning more about what you have to offer.

➡️ Improve SEO: When your brand is mentioned in high-quality, relevant publications, it can help to improve your website’s search engine ranking. This is because search engines take into account the number and quality of backlinks to a website when ranking it in search results.

➡️ Build relationships with journalists and influencers: Digital PR can also help you to build relationships with journalists and other influencers in your industry. These relationships can be valuable assets for your business, as they can help you to get your company featured in the media and reach a wider audience.

There’s a lot of value that you can add to your overall marketing mix with digital PR but it’s important to understand how it fits in with a broader marketing mix, so that you can understand how to utilise it effectively.

Five Key Tips

  1. Start With Your Strategy

Strategy plays a key role within your digital PR campaigns and understanding your client’s audience, the current landscape and the type of content that will resonate with your audience (and journalists!) is important to driving success. 

So let’s start off with some key considerations and questions to ask around your digital PR strategy:

➡️ Your target audience: Who are you trying to reach with your digital PR campaign? What are their interests? What are their pain points?

➡️ Your goals: What do you want to achieve with your digital PR campaign? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Generate leads? Improve SEO?

➡️ Your key messages: What are the key messages you want to communicate with your digital PR campaign? What do you want journalists and influencers to take away from your story?

➡️Your content: What type of content will you create for your digital PR campaign? Will you write blog posts? Create infographics? Produce videos?

➡️Your distribution strategy: How will you distribute your content? Will you share it on social media? Submit it to media outlets? Pitch it to influencers?

➡️ Your measurement strategy: How will you measure the success of your digital PR campaign? Will you track website traffic? Leads generated? SEO ranking?

It might seem like a lot, but putting time into understanding your target audience, goals and distribution strategy will save you a lot of time further down the line so invest the time early on to ensure you are driving maximum efficiency through your campaigns. 

2. Do You Research

Undertaking research at the start of a digital PR campaign is another way to ensure you save time further down the line, don’t repeat stories which have already been covered and really maximise your outreach capacity and capabilities. 

When you’re doing your research for a digital PR campaign, there are a few key things to keep in mind:

➡️ Identify your target audience: Who are you trying to reach with your campaign? What are their interests? What publications do they read? What influencers do they follow?

➡️ Identify the right publications and influencers: Once you know who your target audience is, you can start to identify the right publications and influencers to reach out to. Consider the following factors when making your selection:

➡️ Relevance: The publication or influencer should be relevant to your target audience.

➡️ Reach: The publication or influencer should have a large enough audience to reach your target audience.

➡️ Credibility: The publication or influencer should be credible and respected by your target audience.

➡️Find out what they’ve written about in the past: Take a look at the publications and influencers you’ve identified and see what they’ve written about in the past. This will give you a good idea of their style, their interests, and the types of stories they’re interested in.

➡️ Find out how to contact them: Once you’ve identified the right publications and influencers, you need to find out how to contact them. This may involve finding their email address, phone number, or social media profiles.

By doing your research, you can increase your chances of success with your digital PR campaign.

Here are some additional tips for doing your research:

➡️ Use online tools: There are a number of online tools that can help you with your research, such as Google News, Cision, and Meltwater. These tools can help you to find relevant publications, influencers, and stories.

➡️ Talk to people in your industry: Talk to people in your industry who are familiar with digital PR. They can share their insights and advice with you.

➡️ Attend industry events: Attending industry events is a great way to meet journalists and influencers and learn more about their needs.

Taking additional time to thoroughly research all of the above and build your contact list can really help when it comes to outreaching the campaigns, so make sure you put the groundwork in before you start building the campaigns to maximise the success.

3. Create High Quality Content

If you want journalists to link to your website then you need to generate great content which gives them a reason to link to it. So whether it’s a data piece, a piece of thought leadership or just something of genuine interest to the user, make sure that the content you create is relevant, up to date and most importantly, within the user interest. 

Great content for Digital PR comes in a number of different formats and can include:

➡️ Data-driven content: This type of content uses data and statistics to tell a story. It can be very persuasive and can help you establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. For example, you could create a blog post that analyzes industry trends or a report that provides insights into your target audience.

➡️ Compelling visuals: Images, infographics, and videos can be very effective at engaging your audience and driving traffic to your website. Make sure your visuals are high-quality and relevant to your content.

➡️ Interviews and thought leadership pieces: Interviews with experts in your industry can be a great way to generate backlinks and establish yourself as a thought leader. You could also write thought leadership pieces that share your insights on industry trends or best practices.

➡️ Case studies: Case studies can be a great way to demonstrate the value of your products or services. They can also help you generate leads and build relationships with potential customers.

➡️ Trendjacking: Trendjacking is the practice of capitalizing on current trends to create content that is relevant and timely. This can be a great way to generate buzz for your brand and attract new customers.

Undertaking the first two steps will help you to better understand the audience and it’s important to keep this in mind when creating high quality content to ensure that when you outreach it to journalists it’s going to be relevant to both their audience and yours.

4. Promote Your Content

In the simplest terms promoting your content is essentially outreaching it – getting it in front of journalists to ensure that you get the right level of coverage for your client, at the right time. The promotion of the content is almost as important as the quality of the content if not more so, as it doesn’t matter how great your content is, if no one sees it then it will have no impact on your overall marketing efforts! 

When outreaching to journalists the first step is to create an effective media list – remember – you don’t have to include everyone on your media list, rather focus on the contacts that count, people who are likely to cover your story or who have a genuine interest in what you are doing. 

Here are some top tips to land coverage with journalists:

➡️ Do your research. Before you reach out to any journalists, take the time to learn about their work and their audience. What kind of stories do they typically write? What are their interests? Once you have a good understanding of their needs, you can tailor your pitch accordingly.

➡️ Make a great first impression. Your subject line is the first thing a journalist will see, so make sure it’s clear, concise, and attention-grabbing. The body of your email should also be well-written and engaging. Get to the point quickly and clearly, and make sure your pitch is relevant to the journalist’s interests.

➡️ Be helpful and responsive. If a journalist is interested in your story, be prepared to provide them with all the information they need. This includes high-quality images, videos, and other supporting materials. Be responsive to their questions and requests, and make sure they have everything they need to move forward with the story.

➡️ Be patient. It takes time to build relationships with journalists. Don’t expect to get a response from every pitch you send out. Just keep pitching good stories, and eventually you’ll start to get results.

You won’t always get it right first time, but taking your time to build out media lists & prepare them effectively will play a key role in ensuring that you are maximising the most of your opportunity. 

It’s also important to stand out – in a crowded area where journalists receive hundreds of PR pitches each day, how do you make sure that you stand out from the crowd?

➡️ Personalize your pitches. Don’t just send out a generic email to a list of journalists. Take the time to address each journalist by name and tailor your pitch to their specific interests.

➡️ Offer exclusive content. If you can offer journalists exclusive content, they’ll be more likely to take a look at your pitch. This could be a press release, a white paper, or even an interview with an expert.

➡️Be persistent. If you don’t hear back from a journalist right away, don’t give up. Follow up with them a few days later to see if they have any questions.

Timing is also key – ensuring that you outreach at the right time to the right person plays a key role in getting the coverage that you are looking for.

5. Measure Results

Measuring results and evaluating your digital PR campaigns plays a key role in ensuring that you get the most out of them and that you can take learnings to continue to evolve and improve your offering. Digital PR is constantly changing and evolving, so staying on top of your game is key and ensuring that your clients understand the value of what you are offering plays a key role in ensuring that you’re showcasing the value that you are bringing.

To start with, you need to be clear about what you want to measure, approaches here include:

➡️ Set clear goals: Before you launch your campaign, set clear goals for what you want to achieve. This will help you track your progress and measure your success.

➡️ Use a variety of metrics: Don’t rely on just one metric to measure the impact of your campaign. Use a variety of metrics to get a more complete picture of your results.

➡️Track your results over time: Don’t just measure the impact of your campaign at the end. Track your results over time to see how your campaign is performing.

➡️Make adjustments as needed: If you’re not seeing the results you want, make adjustments to your campaign strategy.

Don’t be afraid to make updates and changes as you need – this will help you to ensure you keep firmly fixed on the overall goal of delivering value to your clients and the reach/coverage that they want. 

You can use a number of different ways to measure from a metric perspective, but here are some of the most common metrics:

➡️ Media coverage: This is the most basic metric, and it simply measures the number of articles, blog posts, and other pieces of media that mention your brand.

➡️ Link building: This metric measures the number of links to your website from other websites. Links are important for SEO, so this metric can give you an idea of how well your campaign is helping to improve your website’s search engine ranking.

➡️Social media engagement: This metric measures the number of likes, shares, and comments on your social media posts. It’s a good way to measure how well your campaign is resonating with your target audience.

➡️Brand awareness: This metric measures how well people know your brand. You can measure brand awareness through surveys, polls, and social media analytics.

➡️Website traffic: This metric measures the number of people who visit your website. It’s a good way to measure the overall impact of your campaign, as more traffic means more people are learning about your brand.

Whichever you use, it’s important to remember that you always need to be linking it back to revenue and results for your client – these are there key business metrics, so make sure to keep in mind how it closely links back to what your client is looking to achieve.

Final Thoughts

In addition to everything that we have mentioned above, at the end of the day an effective digital PR campaign all comes down to whether the user consumes it, engages with it and feels something for it – after all we are trying to create something which sits within the human interest angle. 

Keeping this in mind, additional elements which will play in to the success of your campaigns include:

  • The quality of your relationships with journalists
  • Your ability to generate buzz and excitement around your content
  • Your ability to adapt your strategy as the campaign progresses.

Each of these play their own important role in ensuring that your campaigns get off the ground, so in addition to some great planning and activation make sure you take the time to build the relationships and research the impact of your content – this is essential to gaining that all important coverage!

To find out more about how we can help you with your digital PR campaigns, get in touch! 

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Cedarwood Wins Two European Search Awards!

We were absolutely delighted to take home TWO awards at the European Search Awards in Lisbon last night! Hosted at the beautiful Patio De Gale it was great to see everyone come together in a celebration of search across Europe!

On the night we took home:

📣 Best Small Integrated Agency
📣 Best Use Of PR In Search

Absolutely delighted to take home two awards to showcase the great year that Cedarwood has had and was lovely to catch up with other agencies & brands during the night! 

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SEO Website Migration Checklist [Updated 2023]

For many SEOs, a website migration can be an incredibly stressful and yet important time – ensuring that you migrate a website effectively can help to improve or can potentially cost you a lot of hard earned work.

Getting a website migration right is critical for SEO because it can have a significant impact on a website’s search engine rankings, traffic, and overall performance. A poorly executed migration can lead to a variety of issues, such as broken links, missing pages, duplicate content, and other technical problems that can cause search engines to devalue or penalise your website.

When you migrate a website, you essentially create a new version of the site with a new URL structure, page hierarchy, and potentially new content. If this process is not managed carefully, search engines may not be able to properly index and rank your new site, leading to a drop in traffic and visibility.

To ensure a successful website migration, it’s important to carefully plan and execute the process, including redirecting old URLs to new ones, updating internal links, submitting a new sitemap to search engines, and monitoring the site closely for any errors or issues that may arise.

By getting a website migration right, you can help ensure that your site remains visible and competitive in search engine results, while also providing a positive user experience for your visitors.

Below we’ve listed important steps to take both prior and after website migration to ensure that you are maximising SEO performance.

Prior To Migration

Compile full list of existing pages

  • We would recommend compiling a full list of all pages on the website in the form of a sitemap, this will help to ensure that all appropriate redirects are in place & is a good benchmark for evaluating relevancy trends on the website moving forwards

Map page level redirects

  • We would recommend mapping page level redirects for each page across the website, this will ensure that any page level relevancy is carried across which can help the website rank for its existing long-tail terms.

No-index development website

  • Prior to migration it’s crucial that both the new domain & any associated development websites are no-indexed with a robots meta tag “no index, no follow” – this ensures that the content isn’t indexed by Google prior to launch thus preventing the website from incurring a penalty from Google due to duplicated content

Indexation

  • Evaluating website indexation prior to website migration is important to ensure that all the existing pages on the website are correctly indexed by search engines and that the migration process does not negatively impact the website’s search engine rankings. One way to evaluate website indexation is to use the Google Search Console, which provides valuable insights into how your website is performing in search results. By analysing the index coverage report in Google Search Console, you can identify any indexing issues, such as pages that are not being indexed or pages that are indexed but should not be. You can also use other SEO tools, such as Ahrefs or SEMrush, to check for any duplicate content or canonicalization issues that could negatively affect the website’s indexation. Additionally, it is important to ensure that all the website’s sitemaps are up to date and accurately reflect the current website structure

Keywords

  • We would recommend identifying the number of traffic referring keywords to your website through a tool such as SEMRush & evaluating these across Google geo-locations (i.e. Google.co.uk/Google.com) this will allow us to evaluate the migration & also ensure that new geo-based landing pages are appropriately targeted.

Incoming Links

  • Create a full list of current in-bound links to all pages on the website. This can then be compared to a full list post-migration to ensure that all in-bound link equity is preserved across the website.

Analytics & Webmaster Tools

  • Ensure that any new Analytics/Webmaster Tools properties are in place & that these are appropriately verified across the new website

Goal Tracking

  • You should set up Goal Tracking prior to the migration taking place, this will allow you to track any new goals and existing goal completions from the get-go, to ensure there is no drop off. To set up goal tracking, you need to define the goals that you want to track, such as completing a purchase, submitting a contact form, or subscribing to a newsletter. Once you have defined your goals, you can set up tracking using tools such as Google Analytics or Tag Manager. To test goal tracking, you can use the preview mode in Google Tag Manager to ensure that the tracking tags are firing correctly on the website’s pages. Additionally, you can use Google Analytics’ Real-Time reports to confirm that your tracking is working as intended. Testing should include a full range of user interactions on the website, such as completing a transaction, submitting a form, or clicking on links. It is also important to test the tracking on multiple devices and browsers to ensure that it works correctly across all platforms

Internal Linking Structure

  • This should be evaluated against the new website to ensure that key pages retain strong internal linking. A loss of internal linking can lead to a reduction in page authority & as a result this could cause a page to lose rankings.

Evaluate current site speed

  • Run a check of current site speed across key internal pages to evaluate load time. This should then be compared against the load time of the same page on the new domain to ensure a similar or quicker load time.

Spider Website

  • Spidering a website prior to website migration is important to ensure that all the existing pages on the website are accounted for and that any potential issues are identified before the migration process begins. Website spiders or crawlers are automated tools that can browse your website and collect data on all the pages, including their URLs, titles, meta descriptions, and other key elements. By spidering the website prior to migration, you can identify any broken links, missing pages, or duplicate content that could affect the user experience and search engine rankings. This information can be used to create a detailed plan for the migration process, ensuring that all the existing pages are correctly migrated to the new site structure without any negative impact on SEO performance. Spidering the website can also help to identify any technical issues, such as broken redirects or canonical tags, which can be fixed before the migration process

Measure Core Web Vitals

  • There are several tools available that can help you measure your website’s speed and Core Web Vitals, such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and WebPageTest. These tools provide detailed information on your website’s loading speed, time to first byte, and other key metrics that impact user experience. To measure Core Web Vitals, these tools provide specific metrics, such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). These metrics are important for ensuring that your website loads quickly and responds to user input promptly

After Migration

Creation & Submission Of A Sitemap

  • Setting up a sitemap after a website migration is important to ensure that search engines can quickly and easily discover and index all the pages on your new website. A sitemap is an XML file that contains a list of all the pages on your website, along with important metadata such as when they were last updated and their priority level. By submitting your sitemap to search engines like Google, you can help them understand the structure of your website and prioritise crawling and indexing the most important pages
  • To set up a sitemap after a website migration, you can use a sitemap generator tool or plugin, such as Yoast SEO or Google XML Sitemaps, to create the sitemap file. Once the sitemap file is generated, you can upload it to your website’s root directory and submit it to Google Search Console. This will help search engines understand the new structure of your website and index all the pages on your website more efficiently
  • In addition to improving indexation, a sitemap can also help with SEO by providing search engines with additional information about your website’s pages. This includes information about the frequency of updates, priority level, and any alternative language versions. By setting up a sitemap after a website migration, you can ensure that your new website is properly indexed by search engines, leading to better search engine visibility and improved organic traffic.

Modify External Links

  • We would recommend modifying any controlled external links including directory listings to ensure that the new domain is listed within any in-bound links.

Submit a “Change of Address” Through Google Search Console

  • To submit a change of address through Google Search Console, you need to log in to your account, select the website property that you want to update, go to “Settings” and then “Ownership,” and click on “Request a Change of Address” under the “Change of Address” section. Then, enter the new website address and follow the prompts to verify the new address. Once the new address has been verified, Google will update its search results to reflect the change.
  • Note that Google recommends using the change of address tool only if you’re moving your entire website to a new domain. If you’re just updating your website’s address within the same domain, you don’t need to use this tool.

Spider Website/Google Webmaster Tools

  • Run a spider over the website & monitor Google Search Console to capture & quickly address any 404 errors or broken links on the new website which may have happened as the result of incorrect or missed 301 redirects.

Remove No-index Tag On New Website

  • Remove the no-index tag which was placed on the website during development to ensure that Google can quickly & easily crawl your website.

No-index Existing Website

  • Place a no-index tag on the previous domain ONLY once the domain has been crawled & Google has found the redirects to index the new domain – this will encourage Google to de-index the website, but remember to let it keep crawling, this is important so that Google can easily access the no-index tags on the pages.

Evaluate Indexation

  • Indexation levels of the old site & new site should be measured within Google Search Console to ensure that the new website is being effectively indexed.

To effectively check indexation on a website after a website migration, you can follow these steps:

  • Use the site: operator in Google Search to see how many of your pages are currently indexed. For example, type “site:yourdomain.com” into Google’s search box to see a list of all pages on your website that are currently indexed
  • Check your Google Search Console account for any indexing errors. Navigate to the Coverage report, which will show you any pages that have been excluded from the index, as well as any errors or warnings related to indexation
  • Use a website crawling tool, such as Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl, to crawl your website and identify any pages that may have been missed during the migration process.
  • Check your server logs to see which pages are being crawled by search engine bots. If any important pages are not being crawled, it may indicate that there are technical issues that need to be addressed.
  • Monitor your website’s search performance over time, looking for any fluctuations in traffic or rankings that may indicate indexing issues.
  • By following these steps, you can effectively check indexation on your website after a website migration and ensure that all of your pages are being properly indexed by search engines.

Fetch As Googlebot

  • Utilise this function to submit key pages of the new website to Google quickly.

Check Analytics

  • Check that Analytics is working correctly across the new website & that it is firing goals where needed.

By adhering to a solid SEO migration checklist you can ensure that you are putting your website in the best possible position for a successful website migration. To find out more about how to undertake an SEO migration get in touch!