Cedarwood’s resident Digital PR expert Alex Fisher talks to Emma Stretton about the power of puzzles in earning links.
Most people know that SEO often means keywords. Backlinks, on the other hand, are a slightly lesser-known buzzword and, yet, theyโre an incredibly important way to increase your websiteโs search engine rankings. Backlinks are when another website, preferably a tried and trusted one links back to your website. They essentially tell search engines your website is one worth going to.
Who?
Building genuine links into a website is a great way to improve the overall authority of the site. Having websites with a high domain rating direct users to your site indicates to search engines that your website is also trustworthy and will increase the authority of your website.ย In turn, this willย improve your website’s rankings. A website’s authority is one of the key factors that Google considers when ranking websites, so the more authority your website has the better chance it has to climb up the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).
Letโs look at how weโve used this recently for one of our clients: Rimmers Music. When Christmas kicked in we thought it would be a great time to grab some extra coverage and use the opportunity to build links into the Rimmers Music site. Backlinks arenโt always game, set and match and we knew we needed some attention-seeking content that would definitely get Rimmers Music noticed.
What?
After an unusual year, the run up to Christmas 2020 needed some festive cheer and light heartedness. With that in mind, we decided to create a Brainteaser based on Christmas carolling (because it was for a music shop โ see what we did there)?! Journalists and publications benefit from brainteasers because theyโre shareable, they keep people on the page and they bring light to balance the shade.
Why?
The Rimmers Music brainteaser was a big picture full of people singing Christmas carols. The idea was that you had to spot the one little boy with his hands over his ears refusing to take part. We tied the concept in with data found by Rimmers Music the previous year, which uncovered that a quarter of Brits wonโt open the door to a Christmas caroller. This gave the press release more weight and more for publications to work with. The end result was for websites to include an article about the brainteaser with a link to Rimmers Music. Whilst we do want to secure those all-important backlinks, we are also aiming to get as much coverage as we can. Getting your client seen on major websites with hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of readers is a result in itself.
The Results
86 pieces of coverage
39 backlinks
Average Domain Rating – 63
We donโt like to brag (well maybe a little) but it did the trick. The Rimmers Music brainteaser resulted in 86 pieces of coverage and 39 backlinks. Incredibly, one article alone led to 1000 new users clicking on the link and heading to the Rimmers Music website. Most sites ran the story early on in December but some picked it up later, providing additional coverage. It was the Christmas gift that kept on giving.
Backlinks signal to search engines that a website can be trusted. Theyโre a bit like a good friend recommending a restaurant; youโre more likely to go there if you were sent by someone you trust. Not to mention, the more people shouting about your service, the more likely this is to convert into sales. Getting into a search engineโs good books might not sound that exciting but finding new ways to get noticed and creating content that lands is what SEO experts (like us) thrive on.
Many PRs spend hours, weeks and even months putting their heart and soul into their latest content. However, great content can sometimes be let down by a poor pitch.
Pitching to a journalist shouldnโt be where your content strategy fails!
We have compiled a list of our top tried and tested tips that will increase both open and response rate and ultimately land coverage in your desired publications.
How To Improve Email Open Rate
A clear subject line
A summarised introduction
Personalisation
Reduce attachment size
How To Improve Email Response Rate
Be direct with your request
Conduct research before sending your email
Ensure that you follow up
Be clear
Keep it short and sweet!
How To Improve Open Rate
Ensure your subject line is clear
Subject lines are CRUCIAL!
It’s really important to show a journalist that your email is relevant to them and their audience. Make this clear within your subject line by summarising your key points in one snappy sentence. It is also useful to state what kind of story you are pitching, whether it’s a case study or some new, juicy data.
Be sure to write your subject line in the style of the desired publication. Some publications, such as The Sun, like sensationalised headlines, whereas business publications for example, prefer the more professional angles.
Here are a few examples:
NEW DATA: 1 in 3 Brits won’t invite vegans to Christmas dinner, survey finds
RE: Garden furniture review – holiday at home this summer
See the Dog-tor: could prescription pups end lockdown loneliness?
It is nice to have punny and punchy subject lines, however, this is not always necessary. Sometimes being clear and straight to the point will do the trick.
Summarise! Summarise! Summarise!
Summarise your pitch within the first sentence of your email – and keep it short. Journalists are often strapped for time and can get hundreds of emails a day, so make their job a little easier for them.
Condensing a whole press release or email into one line can sometimes be tricky, so try to imagine that you are speaking to a friend and summarising a project that you are working on at work – this should help.
Personalise your emails
An oldie but goldie! Make each email personal to the recipient. It’s so easy to spot a mass-churned out email that doesn’t have any personalisation. Ensure your email has the target journalist’s name on it and potentially reference their publication or recent work that they have done which is relevant to your pitch.
For example…
Reduce attachment size
Be careful with attachments, as big documents within an email can get your message stuck in spam filters. If you need to send over additional content such as images, include a Dropbox link where the journalists can download these items themselves. You can also include a link to your website that has all the info the journalist needs, as this also gives them an incentive to link to your site.
How To Improve Response Rate
Being direct with your request
Be direct! Make sure that you ask direct questions.
Here are some examples of classic lines that can easily be converted to more direct questions:
โLet me know if youโre interestedโ and โLet me know what you thinkโ can be easily converted to โWhat do you think?โ
โLet me know as soon as possibleโ can be converted to โPlease let me know by Friday at 4 pmโ
As recommended in Martin, Goldstein and Cialdini in “The small BIG: small changes that spark big influence”, people are more encouraged to fulfil a request when they have engaged in some sort of commitment to it. This can be achieved by asking journalists a few extra specific questions about how they plan on fulfilling your request…something that requires more than a โyesโ answer.
For example, try asking the journalist to let you know โwhatโ, โhowโ and โwhenโ they will publish the content from your press release.
Research is essential
PRs can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking the more contacts they send their pitch to, the better – but this simply isn’t the case. Do your research for your mailing list; the number one complaint that journalists have about PRs is that they send them irrelevant pitches.
A well thought out, targeted email will have a much better open and engagement rate than a blanket email that is spammed to the masses. If you want to improve your open rate and get journalists to engage with your content, then do your research.
We would recommend picking 10 publications you want to target and find the best contact at those publications.
Consider a few things:
Who has recently written about the topic that your story relates to? This is key – if a journalist wrote an article about your topic a year ago and haven’t done a piece since then, find a better contact.
The tone of voice. If your topic is broad, then there may be a few different journos that cover it, so pick a journalist whose tone of voice and style matches the content you’re sending out. For example, if your story teases about an error on a TV show, you may need a journalist that has a more satirical approach, or if your piece is about the latest must-have fashion item, then you’ll want to target a journo with more serious sartorial credentials.
Here are two examples that show how ample research before a release can really benefit the pitch.
Example one:
We recently sent out a brainteaser to just two journalists. This may seem like too small of a media list however, we had done our research and these contacts were extremely targeted. In the end, we got great coverage in 14 publications off the back of these targeted choices.
Example two:
The above press release worked well for us because the journalist we pitched to mainly writes about Coronation Street, so having โCorrieโ in the subject line was key here.
The timing of this pitch was also great: there was a big debate on social media and in the press about an incident that had happened on Coronation Street. We acted fast to get this release out, focusing on the fact that people were in fact concentrating on the wrong mishap and explaining the real issue from a legal standpoint.
This was great for our client as they could also show off their expertise in the field. A win-win.
Overall the piece gained 42 pieces of coverage including Express, Star, MSN and many regional publications.
Send a follow up email
If youโre not already sending follow-up emails then you are missing a trick! This is a simple way to gain a response. When you do follow up, try to put a twist on your initial email. Adding in a little extra info, or tying the story in with a topical event, gives you more of a reason to chase the journalist.
A general rule is to follow up the next week and then again if there are any updates in the story, so keep an eye on the news and recent trends for any reasons to follow up.
Do you have a graphic that can be reformatted in other ways?
Do you have hi-res images that you can send over?
Do you have samples to offer? Use samples/gifts to your advantage here to reiterate that they are available, this will always catch the journalistโs eye.
Be clear
Make your intentions clear. If your number one target of your content campaign is to get links, then let the journalist know this in the pitch so they know what you’re expecting.
A simple “If you’d like to use this story, please credit this story with a link to [client website]โ is enough to make your goals transparent.
This saves both you and the journalist time, as they know what you want before they take the story and prevents you from having to chase for links that the journo wasn’t aware they needed to include.
Keep it short and sweet
Journalists are short on time, remember. So giving your story a concise, succinct pitch demonstrates to the journalist that it has a clear angle and they can decide straight away whether they want it or not. If you can’t sum up your story in a short email pitch (less than 300 words) then it’s not ready to go out. Try sticking to 3-4 lines, or even better, bullet points to summarise the most important topics.
If you found this blog useful for improving your email response rate then head to our blog to check out more.
Google loves content that helps its users find what they’re looking for. So, by creating blogs on topics that your target customer is interested in, you can drive traffic back to your website through search rankings.
Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website than those who donโt (Hub Spot). Plus, the more useful and valuable your content is, the more likely people are to share it within their own content or social media channels.
2. Highlight your expertise
Let’s be honest, it’s pretty easy for anyone with an internet connection to set up a website these days. So why should your target customer buy from you? Because you have a wealth of authoritative, well-written content on your blog that showcases your expertise (amongst other awesome trust signals).
Consumers rarely make a purchase instantly. 53% of consumers consume 3-5 pieces of media before making a purchase or speaking to someone from that company (EliseDopson). Customers want to shop with credible, authoritative businesses online that they know they can trust with their money – so don’t make it hard for them. Tell them why you’re the best. Or better, show them with great content.
3. To give your company a voice
As business guru, Seth Godin, once said โPeople do not buy goods & services. They buy relations, stories & magic.โ And with consumer trust wavering, it’s more important than ever to get real with your customers.
Blogs are a great way to show the human element of your business and the thoughts, feelings and stories of the people behind your brand. Be authentic, honest and strip back the corporate jargon. Show your customers the people that their custom impacts.
4. Engage with your audience
Speak your customer’s language! Show them that your company is interested in the topics they’re interested in, you know their concerns, you understand them. All through great blog content.
Engagement isn’t just about social media. Open up the comments on your blog, ask readers direct questions or even publish customer reviews or opinion pieces to create conversation and a community with your customers.
5. Blogging has long-term results…
Companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that don’t blog (DemandMetric). Blogs are not just a one-off, they are a long-term strategy that continually provides value to your consumers.
6. … and can beat paid advertising
70% of people would rather learn about a company through articles rather than advertisements (DemandMetric). Blogs are a trustworthy source of information for consumers that acts as free advertising for your company.
Oh, and one more thing…
Did we mention that its FREE?!
Many businesses don’t realise that they often have the skills, expertise and customer understanding to produce high-quality blogs in-house. All it takes is investing in a little bit of time. But if you want to speed up the process, then a marketing agency can give you direction on which are the best topics to write about, keywords to include and even produce the content for you in the tone of voice of your business.
If you have any questions regarding creating the perfect blog, then get in touch with us by emailing [email protected]
To mark Father’s Day, our Digital PR Executive Alex recently worked with our clients and selection of small business to shed light on how entrepreneurs balance their careers and family life. Six leading businessmen from across the UK shared their advice with us on maintaining a healthy work-life balance, as well as the things they wished they’d known when they launched their careers.
The interview was featured on Fleximize’s small business blog – you can read the original here.
From making more family time in lockdown to switching off and separating business life from home life, the six businessmen shed light on the best ways to balance home and work life.
Maintaining a pressurized job whilst spending enough time with the kids can be difficult at the best of times – and it’s something that dads simply donโt get enough credit for. With Father’s Day on the horizon and many working dads juggling their career and kids in lockdown, five British entrepreneurial fathers have shared their experiences of trying to find the perfect work-life balance.
The working fathers have shared their triumphs and mistakes, along with advice they’d tell their younger selves. The relatable pearls of wisdom are a must-read for working parents or first-time dads.
What’s the biggest challenge of juggling your job with fatherhood?
Iโve always struggled to switch off from work. At my worst, I didnโt take a day off for seven years straight, including Christmas Day, meaning that my relationship with my kids suffered. Even when I’m out of the office, itโs all too easy to log on and do a little extra work at home or quickly check emails during family time.
How did you handle or overcome this?
Once I realized how much Iโd missed of my kids growing up, I actively invested in improving my work/life balance. Iโve found that itโs crucial to mentally clock out of work where possible so that I can be fully present with my family. I try to leave my job at the office.
What advice would you give to someone who has recently become a father and also has a high profile job to maintain?
Start as you mean to go on in terms of the time you spend with your family versus work. Itโs easy to slip into bad habits but extremely difficult to get out of them. As cliche as it sounds, you will never get the childrenโs younger years back.
Christian Beadell
Head of Medical Negligence at Patient Claim Line | Father to four sons (11, 13, 15, 18) & one daughter (7) | Manchester-based
What’s the biggest challenge of juggling your job with fatherhood?
After our second child was born, we took the decision to minimize the amount of time they would spend with childminders or in afterschool clubs – despite the fact that my wife also has a busy, pressured job which involves a long commute. For me, it was really important to be there for them at the school gate or sports field and not for them to miss out in any way.
How did you handle or overcome this?
I have made some calculated career decisions to work flexible hours where needed or pursue roles that restrict the demands on my time. I have worked at smaller law firms with a family feel and this has stood me in good stead, enabling me to have a challenging and rewarding career but also to be there for my children.
What advice would you give to someone who has recently become a father and also has a high profile job to maintain?
Decide what is important to you. You will not get the time back with your children and whilst some employers may say they are family friendly, not all are. When you have a partner that works also, get used to compromising early on!
What’s the biggest challenge of juggling your job with fatherhood?
At first, it was a constant sense of guilt. When I was at home, I felt guilty for not being at work. When I was at work, I felt guilty for not being at home. More recently, itโs trying to find time for myself in and amongst all the madness.
How did you handle or overcome this?
I sacrificed my own time, and learned to live with the guilt. Over time, I realized that many in my team faced similar challenges, and that by sharing our experiences and encouraging each other to make time for our families, it got easier.
What advice would you give to someone who has recently become a father and also has a high profile job to maintain?
Be open about your challenges, and ask your team for their help, support and advice. Youโre not alone, and being a father is something to be proud of. You canโt wind the clock back so ask yourself: how do you want to be remembered as a father?
Lee Simpson
PR Consultant at Fourth Day | Father to one daughter (2) & one son (5) | Manchester-based
What’s the biggest challenge of juggling your job with fatherhood?
Trying to do everything to the best of your ability is constantly challenging. As any parent will tell you, often you have to accept that you just can’t.
What advice would you give to someone who has recently become a father and also has a high profile job to maintain?
During lockdown when we, as families, are all spending so much time together, try to remember to dedicate some time every day to your kids away from homeschool. It could be doing a jigsaw together, fighting with lightsabers or building a den in the woods.
Whatever it is, I think it’s important children know you have time for them no matter what, and not time spent telling them to get on with work or screaming at them to eat vegetables. It sounds so simple but I hope I will remember this after the lockdown and always make sure I make time for them.
What do you think has been the best part of working from home during lockdown?
Despite all its hardships and the obvious nightmares relating to Covid-19, I hope we will look back on this period fondly and remember trying to laugh our way through it. I complain relentlessly about it but I’m sure part of me will miss having children jumping on the bed next to where I’m working every day.
Peter Rigby
Legal Department Head at Fletchers Serious Injury | Father of two daughters (2, 12) & three sons (5, 8, 9) | Southport-based
What are some challenges you have faced whilst working from home around the family?
One challenge has been finding a way to change my mindset from work to home as there is no natural break at the end of each day. That is why it has become so important to put technology to one side for family time.
What do you think has been the best part of working from home during lockdown?
It has given me more time with the children and I feel I have gotten to know their personalities and needs better. I certainly feel closer to them as a parent.
Have you learnt anything from self-isolation/working from home in the past few months?
I have learned how important it is to have time away from screens. My children would comfortably sit in front of a screen for hours on end. Some screen time is ok, but they also need to use their imagination and make their own fun in the garden, with toys or with arts and crafts.
Manav Thapar
Managing Director at Loveraw | Father to one daughter (4) & one son (1) | Altrincham-based
What have you found to be the biggest challenge about juggling your job with fatherhood?
Feeling guilty when Iโm working instead of spending time with the kids. Owning a business is like having another child that needs just as much attention and care, and no matter which one you spend time with, you feel like youโre neglecting the others. Managing that balance is something Iโve always tried to work on.
How did you handle or overcome this obstacle?
We try to involve the kids as much as possible by bringing them to the office and making sure they know how the business affects them and us as a family. When I plan my week, I start with family time and schedule around that. If you focus on whatโs most important to you first, you can always build around it.
What advice would you give to someone who has recently become a father and also has a high-profile job to maintain?
Take advantage of every second your baby sleeps by trying to get as much work done as possible. If youโre lucky enough to have a team, aim to delegate as much as you can, and plan your days well. I know exactly where all my time is being spent โ right down to the minute.
When it comes to planning and budgeting for a new campaign, analysing the success of previous campaigns is paramount. Therefore, knowing the monetary value of coverage is hugely beneficial, providing teams with the ability to make informed decisions and allocate spend accordingly.
We have put together a small guide featuring one simple tool that can be utilised to extract the monetary value of your PR.
If youโre in the digital marketing world, youโve undoubtedly heard that getting backlinks from other websites is crucial for SEO. Itโs important to utilise anything that can help to boost your websiteโs search ranking, so weโll shed some light on why links are so important and teach you how to build them yourself.
Why are links important for SEO?
Building backlinks to your website (getting other websites to link back to yours) sends out a trust signal to Google that your website has good authority, and therefore should be ranked higher. However, this depends on the type and quality of the website that posts the link. Essentially, if a quality website which Google trusts links back to your site, Google determines that you too are a quality website, so should be ranked higher. You can work out the quality of a website by checking its domain rating on websites such as Ahrefs or Moz: the higher score the better.
However, Google can also penalise for backlinks which it sees as unnatural. For example, spamming forums, creating tonnes of directory listings, paying bloggers on fiver to link to your website are unnatural ways to build links, which in turn will lower your position on Google. It is far better for SEO to secure a few strong links a month than to build hundreds of low-quality backlinks in a short space of time.
Hence, you should always ensure that links have a natural connection to your business, which you can achieve with the following techniques.
Brand reclamation
Itโs always great exposure when a publisher features your brand in their article, though sometimes they will mention a brand without linking back to the brandโs website. Whilst this can be frustrating, itโs easy to maximise this opportunity and secure a link from a high-quality website. Most of the hard work has already been done because a journalist has already noticed and written about your brand. Simply drop them an email thanking them for featuring your business and request a link to your website be added to the page in case their readers want to find out more.
Tracking brand mentions online is very easy to set up so that you donโt miss these opportunities. There are several web-monitoring tools that help you do this, such as Google Alerts (free), Ahrefs alerts and Gorkana. Some publications may have editorial policies not to include external links, but itโs always best to email and check.
Media tools
Now that GDPR is in place, media databases with opted-in contact details of journalists are more important than ever for sourcing good quality PR opportunities and contacts. There are a variety of tools you can pay for, as well as free databases that scrape public email addresses from across the web.
One relatively cost-effective way to find feature opportunities is through journalist alerts. These are email alerts that journalists send out to source contacts or information for the features that they are writing. You can then respond to queries that are relevant to your brand, offering information, images, product reviews or quotes. Not only do these tools allow you to effectively build links in a natural way, but they also allow you to develop relationships with key journalists in your market without the need of a pricey media database. Building your own database of journalists that you have successfully worked with makes it easier to work with them again in the future, as you can either contact them with valuable content or they may contact you with relevant upcoming features to you.
Local links
Big-budget content campaigns can bring in a lot of high quality links, but exploring your local link opportunities can also be a good cost-effective way to build links on a smaller scale. Investigate whether you have any current connections that you could source a link from. Is your Managing Director an alumni of a prestigious university? If so, perhaps they could make a donation or share their business expertise on their website. Is there a local charity you could work with? Or a local group linked to your industry? Explore current connections that your staff and management have to see if there are any natural links that could be secured by sending an email.
Competitor analysis
If a key competitor outranks you for several of your keywords, performing an analysis of where their links are coming from is a great way to see what kind of outreach work they are undertaking. Tools such as Ahrefs enable you to identify which publications your competitors are receiving links from, as well as spark ideas for potential outreach content.
Are there any high quality review websites that your competitor has a link on? If they do and your brand doesnโt, then this can be an area to explore. Do they have any links from high quality bloggers? Again, if they do then you can contact the blogger who wrote the article to introduce your brand and highlight what you can offer them, should they be planning any articles which you could contribute to.
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 Googleโs new creation of โSmart Shoppingโ 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.
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. Hereโs 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 competitorsโ 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 donโt 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.
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