We are over the moon to announce that we won SIX UK Search Awards at the event last Wednesday – a great way to finish off a record year in 2024! 🎉
On the night we took home:
🏆 Best Small PPC Agency 🏆 Best Small Integrated Agency 🏆 Best SEO Agency (Silver) 🏆 Best Use Of Search (Healthcare) – Patient Claim Line 🏆 Best Low Budget PPC Campaign – Salt Of The Earth 🏆 Best Use Of Search B2C (PPC) – Salt Of The Earth
2024 has been a great year for us as we continue to grow from strength to strength, improving partnerships with our existing clients while growing each of our departments in turn so it’s great to have been recognised in particular for the agency awards which are testament to this.
It was a great evening all round and we are already looking forward to 2025!
Last week I spent a few days in one of my favourite places for my first BrightonSEO conference. Along with other team members, I made the 250-mile journey across the country, in the hopes of finding fish & chips and gaining some SEO insights.
As a Digital Content Executive, I had the pick of the litter when it came to the talks and panels, and I went to quite the range. I left feeling very impressed by how actionable and engaging the discussions were (and still dreaming of the Donatello’s Tiramisu).
If you couldn’t make it to the conference or found yourself torn between conflicting talks, this blog is for you. I’ll be summarising my standout talks and sharing the top takeaways and highlights. Read on for a comprehensive overview of my most impactful sessions from BrightonSEO.
I kicked off my first day bright and early with two talks on relevancy in Digital PR….
Liv Day – How To Find The Relevance Gap
Liv opened the conference by highlighting the crucial role relevance plays in a site’s link profile. She offered a clear explanation of why relevancy is a metric we simply can’t afford to neglect. Through a compelling case study, she demonstrated the impact of irrelevant backlinks on traffic and rankings. These links, she explained can contort the topicality of a website, potentially causing search engines to misinterpret the site’s focus.
She then shared her process for identifying and bridging the relevancy gap between a site’s themes and its backlink profile. Her team employs tools like IBM Watson’s natural language processor to identify relevant concepts, analysing both the site and the linking pages to check for alignment.
Liv’s talk underscored the importance of maintaining a relevant backlink profile, and thinking carefully about the subject of your campaigns. Today, shoehorning a connection can do more harm than good but the good news is, there are new tools being developed every day to help us guarantee topical alignment.
Sophie Coley – Audience-centric Planning and Creative Personas: a strategic approach to relevancy
Sophie then followed up with a different, but equally compelling angle on link relevancy. Drawing from her journalism background, she advocated for a persona-driven approach to help brands create more resonant content.
She recommended using platforms like Reddit or TikTok to understand audience pain points, or simply playing around with seed phrases in an incognito browser (e.g. ‘travel insurance when… ‘, ‘travel insurance for…’ etc.’
Sophie then used this travel insurance example to outline a framework for using AI tools like Perplexity to assist with ideation of relevant content ideas. Upon providing a detailed prompt, the tool generated five hypothetical persona examples, complete with first-person statements explaining their experience shopping for travel insurance (including motivating factors, challenges faced etc.)
It became evident that considering these tangible personas makes it significantly easier to ideate creative yet relevant campaigns. As Sophie put it: ‘Having broad boundaries in place makes ideation a lot easier’.
Yasmin Birchall – The Digital Generation is Here: why you’re about to overhaul your online strategy
Later in the morning, Yasmin drew our attention to Gen Z, how they are changing search, and how we can adapt accordingly. She highlighted that we’re now living in a new age of people who’ve never lived without technology at their fingertips – and that this generation now makes up 15% of our population! As a result, we need a holistic, multi-touch approach to guarantee engagement. Some key points I took away were:
–>Users are diversifying away from Google, now it’s TikTok that the new generations are looking to first when considering where to go for dinner, or when planning their holiday agenda.
–>Gen Z prioritise authenticity and individuality – they’ll respond well to tailored content, rather than being ‘creeped out’ by how well the ads are aligned with their online behaviour.
–>Price is as, if not more, important than sustainability – Yasmin drew on a Mintel survey to highlight that for 51% of Gen Z, managing their finances is their biggest priority.
Yasmin’s insights provided a valuable glimpse into the minds of Gen Z consumers and reminded us not to get comfortable with our strategies. Brands and marketers must evolve their approaches to meet the changing expectations of our younger audiences.
Nathan Height – Diversifying Beyond Google
Nathan’s talk similarly discussed how search is changing, but focusing on the search engine landscape. Whilst Google still undeniably dominates the market, we’re seeing a greater number of competitors than ever before. He even highlighted that Google and OpenAI themselves are turning to Reddit to inform their generation of information.
So, what can SEOs do to cater for these changes? Nathan shared some practical advice, including the importance of creating content for conversational long-tail queries. He pointed out some good ways to build an understanding of these specific searches (Quora, Reddit, TikTok keyword insights etc.) that I’ll be factoring into my keyword research going forwards.
This talk offered a persuasive case for SEOs to broaden their horizons beyond Google. My overall takeaway was the importance of diverse content creation and understanding user intent across multiple platforms. The online search scene is increasingly fragmented and it’s important to stay ahead.
Carla Dobson-Elliot – Is SEO killing curiosity
How many times a day do you find yourself reflexively reaching for your preferred search engine when a question pops into your head? For many of us, this habit has become all too frequent. Carla opened her talk with the now-familiar scenario of “going down an online rabbit hole”, highlighting how search engines have become the go-to source for satisfying our curiosity.
Carla emphasised that brands need to tap into this curiosity as well, rather than letting search engines monopolise our inquisitiveness. She argued that traditional demographics like age and gender are no longer sufficient for understanding audiences. Instead, she proposed a new framework based on “curiosity cohorts” – five distinct modes by which people search for and consume information and advertisements.
These cohorts should inform content strategy. For example, an “exhilaration hunter” might be drawn to Uber’s random promotion spinner, while a “novelty seeker” could find a Spotify playlist as a call-to-action more appealing. Carla urged marketers to identify their audience’s curiosity type and create fresh, engaging content tailored to these preferences.
I found this a really innovative approach to content creation, and will definitely be taking Carla’s curiosity quiz to discover which category I fall into.
Chris Meabe – 100% Evergreen Articles To Survive Search Updates
Now, while this title sounds a bit too good to be true, Chris delivered a practical guide for creating content resilient to algorithm changes. By analysing a set of evergreen articles, he’d uncovered several suprising commonalities:
📌Most articles began with ‘what is’, or at least opened by defining key terms
📌Introductions typically ranged from 100-150 words, with overall word counts between 1,200 and 3,000.
📌The number of backlinks was less crucial than internal links. Successful articles contained at least 10 outbound links to authoritative sources, often citing statistics.
📌Total word count mattered less than the depth and quality of information provided.
📌Lastly, Chris cautioned that while these articles were evergreen, they were not just left to their own devices, but were refreshed annually to maintain relevance.
📌This was a super actionable talk, giving me some clear Do’s and Dont’s to keep in mind when content-writing.
Sabine ljunggren – How To Maximise Your Search Visibility On Social Media
The final track I attended before sadly bidding Brighton farewell focused on social media, beginning with Sabine’s guide to maximising visibility on social.
Continuing a recurring theme, she emphasised TikTok’s emerging role as a new search engine. She cited a 2024 Adobe survey revealing that “new recipes” and “DIY tips” are among the most searched keywords on the platform. A particularly striking statistic showed that over 90% of TikTok users use the search function within 30 seconds of opening the app. So, if you’re not capitalising on this evolution of search behaviour, you’re missing out on some hefty search volume.
To capitalise on this trend and increase brand visibility, Sabine offered a few key tips:
Prioritise creating optimised content that will improve click-through rate and maximise the time users are spending on the platform.
Implement ‘pattern interrupts’ – unexpected frames or different camera angles.
Develop ‘comment-friendly content’ that encourages interaction and debate in the comment section.
In summary
If I was to distil everything I learnt from the conference, the overarching themes were:
💡Understanding your target audience is more important than ever, and go beyond basic demographics
💡Like it or not, TikTok has evolved to be a significant search platform and ignoring it potentially could mean missing out on engagement opportunities
💡The quality and relevance of your links matter more than quantity. Irrelevant or low-quality links can potentially harm your SEO efforts more than they help.
Need a hand with your performance marketing strategy? Whether it’s SEO, link-building, or paid advertising that you’re looking to enhance, we’ve got you covered.
Cedarwood Digital are an award-winning digital marketing agency, based in Manchester but working with SMEs and large multinationals internationally. Get in touch today to chat about how we can improve your online visibility.
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.
In 2024, digital PR is bigger than ever. 9 out of 10 PR professionals send their pitches to digital media, an increase of 14% since 2022. This growth is largely due to the increasing importance of online visibility for businesses and brands – driven by the rise of social media and online news outlets.
Today, digital PR should be factored into every digital marketing strategy to increase brand awareness, provide high-quality backlinks and increase search engine rankings.
We are now over half-way through the year, so have a strong sense of how the digital PR landscape is looking. It’s now clear to see which trends are here to stay, which campaign styles have been gaining traction, and the new techniques that show long-term potential.
This blog will be looking at the trends we’ve been seeing in 2024 and our predictions for suspected future trends still to come this year. If you’re a digital PR professional or a business owner hoping to land online coverage, staying informed about the latest trends will ensure you’re staying relevant, so read on.
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What are digital PR trends?
Firstly, let’s check you’re up to speed with what digital PR is all about. In 2024, it’s no hot take that we’re living in an online-centric world; as a result, traditional PR has had to adapt. It’s the art of building visibility online through pitching press releases to online journalists, providing quotes for online articles, and guest posting in blogs.
And what’s the point of all this? Well, digital PR has a whole array of benefits, all ultimately feeding into increased brand awareness and visibility online – at the end of the day, increasing conversions. It improves SEO by earning high-quality backlinks, it will help to establish your company as an authority in its industry, and can even help with crisis management.
Digital PR trends, then, are the shifting behaviours and techniques defining the digital PR industry. This can include new softwares, audience preferences, and particular styles of campaign that are landing with journalists. Below, we take you through the 4 trends you should be aware of this year which are here to stay in 2024.
The top trends for 2024:
We’re increasingly seeing new tools automating aspects of digital PR
AI isn’t going to steal our jobs, but it’s certainly making them easier. Every week there’s another software on the market to help with a different task in digital PR. In a study by Prowly AI came in as the top trend prediction from respondents, with 36% predicting it would be a primary trend in 2024 – they weren’t wrong!
AI tools and platforms are playing more and more of a significant role in digital PR campaigns. A couple of our new favourites are:
Sourcee: This tool acts as your own personal Journo Request lookout, with the slogan: ‘Letting you know about relevant requests, straight away.’
Midjourney: This can be used to create imagery for your campaign, or to provide inspo for your ideation.
AI technology can help you analyse large amounts of data to create a story, automate tasks like media monitoring, and provide sentiment analysis about a brand on social media. Have a browse at what’s on offer, your boss and clients will thank you!
TikTok as a research tool
I don’t need to tell you that the popularity of this platform continues to grow. And, more and more, brands and agencies are using it in digital PR as a research tool. It’s surprisingly valuable for gaining insights into consumer preferences and trends. Tiktok can also be used to identify viral trends and popular hashtags – helping brands stay relevant to their audience.
A good digital PR campaign addresses an issue or topic of interest of your target audience; where are customers most vocal and transparent about products they’re using? TikTok! Have a look for yourself when ideating your next campaign.
A shift in metrics
If you haven’t got the memo, links are out and relevancy is in. Quality over quantity is what matters now – PRs are digging deeper than surface-level metrics, focusing on how their campaigns can put a brand in front of the right people and drive conversions.
Metrics like brand mentions, relevancy of links, and sentiment analysis are increasingly being paid more attention. Hundreds of links at face value is no longer impressive, but hundreds of links aligned with the brand, in a credible and relevant publication, is.
So, in 2024:
✔️Ensure your campaigns and placements are consistent with your brand’s messaging
✔️Shift away from link-building tactics, focusing instead on creating content that’s genuinely valuable for your audience
Impact of the cost of living crisis
We’ve all seen the price of a Tesco meal deal these days – the cost of living crisis is unfortunately continuing to rise and people are feeling the pinch. In light of this, journalists are looking for tips and stories on how to save money. In our work, we’ve noticed a pattern of good coverage for campaigns like ‘where to find the cheapest school uniforms’ or ‘best deals this bank holiday weekend’. For example, if your brand is in the automotive industry, could you provide tips on fuel efficiency, to save money on petrol? Or, tips for getting the best deal when buying a used car? If you work in the entertainment sector, could you create a guide to a DIY home theatre?
Equally, the cost of living crisis is just one of the many things making our news very negative in 2024. Considering this, any light-hearted and optimistic content is increasingly popular with journalists – they know it’s what readers want to see, to brighten their day a little.
What future trends can we expect to see?
➡️We’re seeing a surge in data-led digital PR campaigns, with journalists increasingly looking for fresh and fact based stories. PRs that can create a narrative from client research or survey data will stand out in a busy inbox. Raw statistics can be turned into attention-grabbing headlines, especially with the help of…
➡️AI. You guessed it – expect to see AI filtering into more and more areas of digital PR, automating routine tasks and freeing us up to concentrate on strategy and client relationships.
If your digital PR strategy could do with a bit of a spruce up, why not get some professional help? Cedarwood Digital is an award-winning digital PR and SEO agency based in Manchester – drop us a message to get the ball rolling.
Relevancy – you’ve probably heard this term buzzing around LinkedIn recently and may be wondering: is it just another industry fad, or does it actually matter? Surely any coverage is good coverage?
We’re here to break the news that, as a PR, links aren’t the only metric you should be tracking and it’s no lie that the majority of digital pr companies are now also looking at relevance as a key metric of campaign success. To see real growth, a business needs campaigns that are relevant, in publications that are just as relevant. We know how tempting it can be to jump on any old topic that’s trending and exciting, but if it doesn’t resonate with your target market, it can be harmful.
This blog will get into the details of why this is, explaining what exactly relevancy is when it comes to digital PR, why you should care about it and our tips for creating relevant but still newsworthy content. We’ve even shared some examples of our recent and relevant campaigns to give you a bit of inspiration.
But, if you prefer to skip the ramble, here are some key takeaways:
👉Quality over quantity: aim to secure placements that align with your brand, even if it means fewer links
👉Relevant campaigns put you in front of the right people and increases visibility, driving conversions
👉To create a relevant but newsworthy story, you need to understand your audience, and have a close eye on your industry’s trends
What is relevancy in digital PR?
In 2024, the phrase ‘they’re not relevant anymore’ is tossed around in pop culture, as a jab at former Love Islanders or child actors who haven’t survived the cutthroat cycle of mainstream popularity. In fact, it offers an interesting parallel to digital PR, but whilst both brands and celebrities must continuously work to stay connected to their audience – there’s a key difference.
In digital PR, relevancy isn’t about chasing fleeting trends or viral moments; it’s creating lasting, meaningful connections that align with your brand’s core values and resonate with your target audience.
So when we talk about relevancy, in practice this means asking yourself “does it make sense for my brand to be mentioned in this particular article and this particular publication”. Securing a feature in a prestigious magazine like GQ might seem like a big win, but if your business has nothing to do with fashion, it’s not a strategically relevant placement.
It’s time for us to move away from the outdated numbers game of link building that characterised the early days of SEO. Today, the best marketers are focusing on quality and brand relevancy, steering clear of spammy tactics.
Relevancy is about ensuring that every mention, every link, and every campaign reinforces your brand’s identity and speaks directly to the audience you’re trying to reach. This approach has a whole host of benefits….
Why is it important to make DPR campaigns relevant to the brand?
There’s a growing consensus in the world of digital marketing that relevancy isn’t just important – it’s crucial for the success of a digital PR campaign, and growth of a business. Here’s why:
➡️Visibility
When your digital PR efforts are relevant, you’re more likely to appear in publications and platforms where your target audience is actively engaged. This targeted visibility not only increases your chances of being seen but also ensures that you’re reaching the people who are most likely to be interested in your products or services. Each mention drives relevant traffic back to your site, boosting what we all ultimately care most about – conversions.
➡️Brand alignment
When your PR activity is in sync with who you are as a brand, it creates a more cohesive narrative for your audience – strengthening your brand image and helping to build trust. From a messaging perspective, you don’t want to confuse your customers by having your brand linked to campaigns that say drastically different things.By prioritising relevancy, you’re building a consistent image that resonates with your core audience.
➡️SEO
A handful of highly relevant links provide far more SEO value than hundreds of non-relevant ones. This is because when a link comes from a source closely aligned with your brand, it carries more weight in the eyes of the search engines. Google is getting increasingly good at understanding context and it now evaluates the relevance of the linking site to your content; when you secure a link from a highly relevant publication, you’re sending strong signals about your site’s authority and relevance in your niche.
➡️E-E-A-T
This is partly because relevant coverage plays a huge part in enhancing your website’s E-E-A-T signals. When you consistently appear in relevant discussions within your industry, you’re demonstrating your expertise and building authority. This improves your standing with Google, boosting your rankings and also positioning your brand as a go-to resource to your audience.
➡️Why the journalists should link to your page
Aside from anything else, relevancy increases the likelihood that a journalist will want to use your content in the first place. Relevant content enhances their article and offers the journalist genuine value. You want the connection to be plain as day, so that it’s no question that they include your content to enhance their article.
Examples of relevancy in our work at Cedarwood
The best way to explain a relevant campaign is just to show you one! Here are three examples in our work recently where we’ve crafted a story both relevant to our client, and newsworthy – resulting in lots of coverage.
A super relevant campaign that went viral just last month across national papers is our newsjacking piece for a printer toner client. We aligned our client’s products with the peak in summer holidays through identifying essential documents to print before boarding your flight. This transformed a mundane product into a timely solution and landed our client widespread coverage:
For our new DIY supplies client, we launched a newsjacking piece where we jumped on a topical trend (apprenticeships) to provide relevant data that appealed to their target audience. We outreached the campaign to outlets in their industry and landed a number of hyper-relevant niche links to the website:
There’s no hiding the fact that you have to be a little more creative in some industries than others when it comes to crafting relevant digital PR campaigns. The vaping space is a great example of this – there’s certainly a less exhaustive list of related topics. So, to get round this, we thought outside the box and submitted FOI requests to local councils to identify how many illegal vapes had been seized over time. With this data, we then created an infographic showcasing the UK’s vape raid hotspots, outreaching it as an asset for journalists.
The outcome was over 150 relevant and targeted links that enhanced E-E-A-T signals across the brand:
How to create relevant but newsworthy content
🔈Audience understanding
Your first step should be getting a deep understanding of your target audience, their interests, and problems they’re facing. But the insights from tools and AI aren’t really enough, so how can you go about this? First, have a clear contact page and form so that people know how and where to go to send you their feedback.
Secondly, platforms like TikTok are a great way to get a better sense of the thoughts and feelings of your audience. Search your product or service keyword and have a look at what the main discussion points are – is there opportunity for you to provide data or expertise that solves an issue they’re having? For example, searching ‘printing’ into TikTok reveals viral videos surrounding the idea of DIY- printed t-shirts. Therefore, a campaign looking at this new gen-z trend of upcycling our clothes at home, and an expert how-to guide, would be a relevant campaign for a printing company.
🔈Timely, trending content
Relevancy is time-sensitive and journalists don’t want stories that are yesterday’s news. To create relevant stories, you need to be constantly monitoring the emerging trends and events within your niche and create content that offers unique insights on these. Content calendars are a great way to do this, marked with key dates and relevant events. With this, you can then brainstorm ideas in advance, allowing you to newsjack quickly. To return to our printing example, key educational dates like the dissertation submission period or GCSE exam period would be worth marking in advance as this allows you to create timely content surrounding printing dissertations or practice papers.
🔈Keyword research
Whilst often overlooked in digital PR, this shouldn’t be left to the SEOs! In fact, keyword research should be one of the first steps of a digital PR ideation process, as it guarantees that you’re narrowing in on genuinely relevant ideas. Looking at these terms guarantees that your campaigns are going to align with what your audience is actively searching for. Plus, by incorporating these keywords into your pitch, you’re hitting two birds with one stone – speaking the language of your audience, and increasing the likelihood that your content is discovered organically in the SERPs.
Cedarwood Digital is an award-winning SEO, digital PR & PPC agency based in Manchester. If relevancy isn’t your forte or your campaigns just aren’t landing, how about getting some expert help. Contact us today to find out what we can do for you.
Since the very beginning of SEO , the follow vs nofollow links debate has been getting a lot of airtime. Are nofollow links brought into the ranking equation at all? Is a nofollow link from a high DR valuable? Are all nofollow links entirely useless for SEO and therefore not an important PR metric? These are questions raised and debated on a constant cycle in the world of SEO. And, with nofollow links recently becoming more and more common, we thought we’d chip in our two pence.
This blog will firstly take it back to the basics, explaining what nofollow and follow link are, and how they came to be. We’ll then get into the juicy stuff – how they differ in terms of SEO and overall value. But if you don’t have all day, here’s the whole blog nicely summarised in 3 takeaways:
➡️The difference between nofollow and follow links lies in the message they’re giving to Google. Follow links pass link equity and tell Google to crawl the page, whilst nofollow links are a way of saying it’s not very important.
➡️Despite this, nofollow links are still valuable for SEO and should not be overlooked! Search engines value a natural backlink profile with a mix of dofollow and nofollow links. You should aim for a ratio of roughly 80/20.
➡️Nofollow links can also directly improve your sales by bringing in relevant traffic and improving brand awareness – especially when found on a reputable website.
So what’s a nofollow link?
A nofollow hyperlink has “nofollow” in its HTML code, which tells Google not to crawl the linked page.
So, to put it simply, a nofollow link is a way of telling search engines to ignore a link on your website. You’re essentially saying it’s not very important and not recommending it for search ranking purposes.
They were introduced in 2005 with the aim to combat a dodgy practice where sites were attempting to manipulate rankings by acquiring lots of irrelevant links.
And what are dofollow links?
As the name would suggest, ‘dofollow’ or ‘follow’ links are the opposite! They’re the standard type of hyperlink on websites and tell search engines to follow and rank the attached page. With this, you’re saying to Google that the linked site is relevant to your content and providing valuable information – it’s like a vote of confidence.
How to know if a link is nofollow or dofollow
I see you now scrambling to check your links, and luckily for you, it’s very easy to find out if the link in question is follow or nofollow. Simply hover over the link, right-click it, and choose “Inspect.” You’ll then be able to view the source code and have a look for that ‘nofollow’ tag.
How do they differ for SEO?
Follow links have a direct impact on SEO; acquiring high-quality follow links from relevant sites will have a significant impact on your rankings for related keywords. This is because follow links pass on link equity, boosting the page they link to.
Nofollow links on the other hand are more of a grey area. Some believe they cannot directly impact search ranking and, after all, they were created with the intention of telling search engines not to follow the link and pass ranking powder to the page. However, there’s some evidence to the contrary.
Matt Cutts, a former Google engineer, has acknowledged that nofollow links might be used as a signal in a ‘complex way’. What he’s possibly referring to here is that some studies suggest search engines consider nofollow links in a couple of situations:
If a nofollow link comes from a trustworthy and relevant website, this might still hold some weight in Google’s eyes
Search engines will often look at the whole link profile of a website, including both follow and nofollow links, to get a good sense of its reputation. And the evidence suggests that a diverse backlink profile is valuable for SEO, but more on that later.
But whether or not nofollow links can pass link equity, to say they have no value for SEO would be short sighted. Here’s why…
Why you shouldn’t dismiss nofollow links
🔗Referral Traffic
Despite not necessarily passing on link equity, nofollow links can be a powerful tool for driving referral traffic, especially if the linking site is relevant to your niche, with a wide established audience. Their audience can click through this link, land on your website, and be exposed to your content – this increases your traffic and potential conversions!
🔗Brand awareness
Getting linked to, even with nofollow, is great for brand awareness. If your website gets linked to on a popular industry blog or high-traffic news outlet, your business is exposed to a huge new audience who may not have known about you before.
Being linked to by reputable websites reflects positively on your brand. Users aren’t checking the code for each link they see, they’re taking it for face value as a signpost that you’re as much of a trustworthy source as the site linking to you.
Increased brand awareness from nofollow links can also trigger a domino effect. As more people discover your content and find it valuable, they might go on to link to your site themselves – and these could even be dofollow links this time around.
🔗Backlink Profile Diversity
Search engines want to see a diverse backlink profile; what this means is a profile including a mix of link types, anchor texts, and crucially, follow and nofollow links.
This is because a website with only follow links could appear unnatural for search engines. Having a few nofollow links in there too shows that your site is not suspicious and instead, shows that it has grown organically.
This being said, the ideal backlink profile does lean towards follow links. Search Engine Journal recommends a ratio of 80/20 or 70/30 in favour of follow links.
You can find out your site’s ratio by using tools like the Ahrefs backlink checker. Here’s ours:
So there we have it, our defence of nofollow links. Enough of the hate and leaving them out of your reports – they’re probably benefitting you far more than you know!
Who are we? Cedarwood Digital is a link-building agency based in Manchester, with a track record of landing businesses a healthy mix of follow and no-follow links, all from top tier sites. Contact us today to have a chat about your Digital PR strategy.
In the dynamic world of digital marketing, the crossover between SEO and Digital PR is becoming increasingly vital. SEO and Digital PR are both crucial if you are looking to increase your brand visibility and online presence, and even though they can be viewed as separate roles, collaboration is absolutely essential. By collaborating your SEO and Digital PR strategies, you can successfully achieve brand awareness, increased visibility and more sales.
In the past, Digital PR agencies and SEO have been seen as completely separate entities, both completed by separate teams with no involvement. However, as high quality links and brand reputation have become more important for improving organic search results, collaboration between SEO and DPR is now extremely valuable. By integrating the two, both elements work together to increase each other’s impact.
Why Is Integrating SEO And Digital PR Essential?
➡️ Enhanced Online Visibility
SEO and Digital PR both aim to increase a brand’s online visibility. While SEO efforts focus on on-page efforts, DPR focuses on off-site but both can have a massive impact on driving more organic traffic to a website. When SEO and DPR teams work together, they can target the same areas of a website, and produce on-site and off-site content to increase rankings and visibility.
When SEO and Digital PR teams work together, they can identify high-value opportunities and target these together to increase visibility. Quality backlinks from Digital PR efforts can enhance domain authority, making it easier for SEO initiatives to achieve better results in the SERPs, alongside on-site optimisations, this can have a huge impact on SEO performance.
Successful Digital PR strategies can also drive targeted traffic to your website and this is a great opportunity for SEO teams to provide Digital PR teams with information about high intent traffic which will be valuable for the brand and the Digital PR team can then use this data to inform their strategies and create campaigns that will attract the right type of traffic. This collaboration can work really well and generate high intent users for your website. Product placements are an example where this can be extremely effective.
➡️ High Quality Content
Combining SEO’s data driven approach to keyword research with PR’s storytelling expertise can result in content that ranks well and engages readers. Both teams can ensure that the content is interesting for users, but also optimised for search engines, and this can also make it compelling enough to attract media attention. Sometimes, you don’t even need to outreach your Digital PR work, you can make the journalists come to you – by targeting relevant keywords and providing data hubs within your content, you can gain natural backlinks without the need for any contact with journalists. However, in order for this to work successfully, it is absolutely imperative that the SEO and Digital PR experts are working together. You can read more about this reverse digital pr strategy in our blog talking all about reverse Digital PR and how it works.
High quality content is a must for SEO and Digital PR, and by working together, you can create content that is fit for both SEO and Digital PR purposes.
➡️ Building Brand Authority And Trust
Building brand authority and E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust) signals is essential for organic performance and one of the many ways to do this and potentially one of the most direct crossovers between SEO and Digital PR is link building. Gaining high quality backlinks from reputable sites is key for SEO performance – it will make the brand more trustworthy in the eyes of search engines and consumers and it can significantly boost the website’s authority and online visibility. This therefore makes Digital PR an essential part of all modern SEO strategies and when both teams work together seamlessly, it can make this process much more effective.
➡️ Measuring Success
Having a unified approach between SEO and Digital PR will also allow for a more comprehensive set of metrics to measure campaign success. By combining SEO and Digital PR data and analytics, you can gain deeper insights into how both efforts are performing together and adjust your strategies accordingly.
Overall, incorporating your SEO and Digital PR strategies goes much further than immediate online visibility but it helps build a strong foundation for long term success in the online space. By understanding these benefits, you can effectively collaborate your SEO and DIgital PR efforts to create an extremely strong online presence.
How Can Digital PR And SEO Teams Collaborate?
➡️ Align Strategies
The first step when Digital PR and SEO teams are collaborating on any project or account is to start working together from the very beginning. Both teams should align their objectives and these can be increasing organic traffic, enhancing brand awareness and visibility, or boosting engagement – whatever the goals and objectives are, it is important that both teams are on the same page so that all strategies and projects moving forwards are focused on the same outcomes.
➡️ Share Keyword Research and Insights
SEO teams should consistently share keyword research and insights with the Digital PR team so that they can be aware of topics that are newsworthy and have a high search potential. This can help to inform strategy for Digital PR campaigns and ensure they are relevant, but it can also help ensure that all Digital PR content is optimised for SEO from the outset so that it can be uploaded to the website for SEO purposes as well as outreached for Digital PR.
➡️ Coordinate Content Creation
High quality content takes time to write, and with both SEO and Digital PR teams having expertise in content creation, these teams should definitely be sharing their content with each other. Digital PR teams will often be creating data hubs of content that would be absolutely perfect for the website, by sharing this content, the SEO team can ensure it is targeting the right keywords and once this has been uploaded to the website, it can attract traffic and potentially even receive natural backlinks – a win win situation which would have potentially have been missed if there was no crossover between the two teams. Likewise, SEO teams will also be creating highly targeted content that the Digital PR team can utilise for their benefit as well.
➡️ Cross Team Collaboration
Overall, creating collaboration between SEO and Digital PR teams needs to focus on consistent communication and teamwork between both teams. This can be achieved through joint training sessions, regular check-ins, collaborative brainstorming and shared tracking tools to ensure everyone is at the same stage throughout the whole strategy.
Summary
For any business looking to enhance their online presence, it is absolutely essential that Digital PR and SEO teams are working together. When these two teams collaborate, they can create a cohesive strategy that will amplify the impact of both efforts. High quality backlinks from reputable media sources can significantly impact SEO results, and SEO insights can guide DPR efforts to target topics that will drive high intent traffic and engagement.
The synergy between Digital PR and SEO will not only maximise brand exposure and authority, but will also ensure a strategic approach to content creation and online marketing, ultimately leading to increased visibility, traffic and conversions for the business.
At Cedarwood Digital, our SEO and Digital PR teams are constantly working together to drive online visibility for a range of businesses. If you are looking to boost the online presence of your business through Digital PR and SEO, make sure to get in touch with us today.
There’s no question that e-commerce is thriving; e-commerce sales are forecasted to make up a huge 23% of global retail sales by 2027. We’re seeing social media platforms increasingly integrating shopping features and live shopping experiences gaining traction on platforms like TikTok. We’re certainly in a new era of e-commerce but how can traditional e-commerce sites still ensure they’re getting seen? The answer is link-building. It’s an absolute necessity for e-commerce businesses aiming for growth and brand recognition.
This guide is going to explain exactly what you’re missing out on if digital PR isn’t yet part of your e-commerce strategy and give you the techniques our experts can’t live without.
Why your e-commerce site needs digital PR
In this saturated market, customers now, more than ever, need to really trust a brand to want to purchase from them. In fact, according to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, Gen Z exhibits the highest need for brand trust, with 79% saying it is more important to trust the brands they buy today than in the past. Digital PR is the key to building that trust and establishing your brand as an authority.
But alongside this, digital PR helps strengthen your brand image, attract relevant traffic and boost your organic search ranking for competitive keywords. When high-quality external sites link to your e-commerce store, search engines perceive your website as more authoritative and trustworthy. This translates to improved rankings for relevant keywords in search engine results pages – bingo.
A well-crafted digital PR strategy will secure backlinks not just to your homepage, but also to product and category pages. This “deeper link building” helps you rank higher for specific products and high-intent pages in the SERPs.
If your e-commerce site has physical stores, digital PR will also work in your favour. Press releases can be outreached to specifically target local publications, building brand awareness in your local community.
Plus, the benefits of digital PR extend to your paid campaigns too, enhancing their performance and maximising your return on investment. This is because digital PR can generate positive brand mentions and reviews online and, by incorporating reviews into your landing pages, you add social proof and enhance the credibility of your paid ads.
Whilst things like brand awareness and credibility are important, what we’re all ultimately after in e-commerce is a boost in sales. Digital PR goes beyond vanity metrics – each link, brand mention, and boost in authority helps an e-commerce site outrank their competitors, and get customers on their side. In other words, you significantly increase your conversions!
How to do digital PR for e-commerce: our tips
🧷Product placements
On the topic of trust, product placements are your golden ticket. If a trusted reviewer (say GQ or Vogue) features your new sandal range in their ‘22024 summer holiday must-haves’ list, that’s a powerful way to earn trust and stand out – in a natural way. These high-authority platforms have thousands of readers, and therefore, just as many potential customers for your products.
Focus on reaching out to publications and review websites that resonate with your brand values. And remember that product placement isn’t just a transaction – you want to build a relationship. Offer journalists early access to new products, and provide valuable industry insights alongside your product details.
We leveraged this technique successfully with our garden furniture client, Hayes Garden World. We used a mixture of media monitoring, and proactive outreach to get our products featured. With this approach, we landed over 65 linked product placements in a year, with £47,000 in referral sales generated! Told you product placements work. Make sure to have a Dropbox file of high-resolution images ready to go, so you can jump on trends and turn a product placement around quickly.
🧷Internal data
Due to the online interactions on an e-commerce site, they have a far bigger pool of internal data compared to traditional stores. This is because e-commerce sites can track every click, search and product interaction, which provides heaps of insight into browsing habits and product preferences. Additionally, e-commerce platforms often collect customer information like their demographics and purchase history.
Why does this matter? Sales data and customer behaviour patterns can be the foundation for compelling digital PR stories that will stand out in journalists’ inboxes and secure you those valuable links. This is completely unique data and analysis that only you have access to and will attract outlets looking for fresh, data-driven content. It’s also worth analysing customer data anyway to help you tailor your digital PR messaging. Internal data can help you understand your audience’s wants, needs and pain points, which will inform more effective campaigns.
🧷Content marketing
Great content is a magnet for backlinks and serves as a relatively low-maintenance technique to help attract customers and journalists to your site. We call this approach ‘reverse digital PR’ and here’s how it works:
Start by analysing your website to identify areas where you could establish yourself as a data hub. This could be through informative blog posts, buying guides, in-depth industry reports, or even infographics. Consider what information your target audience is after and what content gaps exist within your niche.
Whilst not essential, incorporating data into your content will boost its authority and newsworthiness. You can leverage internal sales data, customer behavior patterns, or commission external surveys, all to produce content that’s unique and engaging.
Present this information in a clear and visually appealing way, then optimise your content with keywords to ensure it ranks well in the SERPs. If it isn’t ranking, how are journalists and customers going to find it!
Now, you can sit back and watch as you attract backlinks naturally, without the need for constant outreach. Journalists and other websites looking for insightful information to add credibility to their articles, will come across your data and (hopefully) link back, boosting your site’s authority and visibility.
🧷Guest-posting
Guest posting allows you to share your expertise and build valuable backlinks to your e-commerce site. The way this works is you contribute an informative article to relevant industry publications with larger audiences. You’ll then ideally receive a do-follow backlink within the guest post, which acts as a vote of confidence, boosting your site’s authority and ranking. Equally, guest posting exposes your brand and products to a wider audience, and this increased visibility leads to more traffic and potential sales.
🧷Keep your eye out for unlinked mentions
Even mentions of your brand that don’t link to you are valuable – identifying them using a tool like Google Alerts allows you to then reach out to the site owner or article author. Offer additional information or propose a content collaboration, and this could potentially lead to a backlink. Even if you don’t secure a link, this mention is still increasing your brand awareness by getting your name in front of a new audience, so don’t discount it!
Whether you sell dog bowls, windshields, or Bakewell tarts, you’re setting yourself up for success by following the steps in this guide. In 2024, prioritising digital PR within your e-commerce digital marketing strategy is a need and a must. Without it, you’re missing out on valuable links, traffic, and most importantly, paying customers!
Cedarwood Digital is an award-winning digital PR agency specialising in landing reputable links and coverage for e-commerce businesses. If you’re looking for a hand with your digital PR, go ahead and drop us a message – we’d love to hear from you.
At Cedarwood, we use a tried and tested technique to build links and drive site traffic without the need for any outreach at all. Yep, you heard that right – we like to call it Reverse Digital PR and it’s our secret to low-maintenance link-building. Stay tuned for a run-down of what exactly reverse PR is, why it’s so valuable and a couple of case studies where we’ve used it successfully.
So, what is Reverse Digital PR?
As PRs we spend most of our time crafting content we think journalists will love, outreaching it and hoping for the best. But, with reverse digital PR we’re inviting the journalists to come to us. With this strategy, you create a data piece for your website, with the intention that journalists find it when looking for a resource, and link back to it. This works because journalists often search for data and statistics online to back up their articles and add credibility. It flips the traditional PR approach on its head; instead of chasing journalists, you create valuable data hubs that attract them to your content. The benefits are countless, it saves you time and energy, whilst being a great way to organically attract links, drive links, and boost E-E-A-T signals.
How does it work?
Well it sounds good in principle, but how does reverse digital PR actually work in practice?
🔗First, identify areas of your brand where you’re hoping to gain additional visibility and where you could feasibly create a high-quality data hub of facts or stats. For example, if your company is a travel agency and you’re hoping to increase search engine visibility for accommodation pages, a data hub comparing the average accommodation costs across popular destinations could be an effective reverse digital PR strategy.
🔗The next step is to then make the hub! You can gather the data in a few ways. To make your piece unique and fresh, so that journalists couldn’t find this information elsewhere, it can be a good idea to gather your own internal data. This can be done by:
>>Commissioning surveys, although an additional cost will come with this
>>Analysing your own sales data to identify customer trends or popular products
>>Using tools like Google Analytics to determine user demographics or conversion rates in your customer base
>>Analysing the social media data to understand how audiences are interacting with your brand
You can also gather external data from various public data sources online. Take a look at Statista, ONS, Centre for Cities and NHS digital for free data.
🔗Once you’ve sourced the data, now’s time to present it in the best way possible. You want the piece to be easily digestible, laid out in a clever format, and also optimised for search engines – a lot to ask I know. But this is all crucial to ensure you rank well so that the journalists can actually find the page!
Why is Reverse Digital PR so valuable?
You should have gathered by now that reverse digital pr is a pretty good idea. But what are the specific advantages it offers in comparison to traditional methods like newsjacking?
📈 Instead of constantly chasing down journalists, reverse digital PR lets your content do the heavy lifting. By providing valuable data journalists actively seek out, you attract coverage organically.
📈A well-crafted data piece on your website can generate ongoing value. Unlike a one-time press release, this content continues to attract journalists and relevant traffic over time.
📈A good piece of reverse digital PR will also work wonders for the good old E-E-A-T signals. Presenting original research or analysis solidifies your expertise, and is made more credible by the data or statistics. To make extra sure that the page contributes to E-E-A-T, ensure your data comes from credible sources, and is presented clearly. Also, it’s a good idea to update the information regularly to keep it relevant and accurate.
A couple of examples
1)Using Reverse Digital PR to naturally attract links to Patient Claim Line’s website
Patient Claim Line is a leader in the medical negligence field, which is increasingly competitive and sitting within the Your Money, Your Life category. Within these verticals, it’s especially important to display E-E-A-T signals so we decided to create a valuable data hub on their website. We focused on cosmetic surgery statistics as this was an area of the site we were looking to boost visibility for. Previously, we’d relied on creating journalist-friendly content and outreaching it as a traditional campaign, but here, the plan was to simply create a hub and wait for the journalists to find us.
The page was designed to inform the user of information and up to date statistics around cosmetic surgery in 2022. We included fresh data from our own survey to ensure the information was as useful and unique as possible. Then, we presented it in a user-friendly format and optimised it to rank well.
As a result, the page ranked in position #3 for “cosmetic surgery data”, and has attracted thousands of visitors since its inception. We keep it updated regularly and receive a number of great links, from publications we wouldn’t usually reach.
2)Using the same strategy to drive links to our own website
Back in Valentines 2020, we created a hub of seasonal trend data. We included data around valentines day keywords, compared different types of searches e.g. ‘gift for boyfriend’ vs. ‘gift for girlfriend’ and fun facts like the increase in searches for ‘bridget jones’ on valentines’ day.
The aim was to create a hub of information that users and journalists might be searching for, but for it to also be an article of genuine interest around the when and how of user search intent. The idea was that journalists might be keen to pick it up as a topical interest article – and even now, four years later, we still attract seasonal traffic to the page at the same time of year.
All that’s needed is to refresh the content each year and the page continues to bring in traffic and links, with very little maintenance required. This same concept can then be applied to other seasonal trends, for example we produced a similar hub in March looking at the most popular easter eggs.
Cedarwood Digital is an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Manchester. If you like the sound of a reverse digital PR strategy or you want to enquire more about our white label digital pr service, why not get in touch with us to find out how we can help get you media coverage for your business. Fill in our quick form here.
I’m sure we can all agree that a solid media list is by far the most important part of any digital PR campaign. It’s the difference between the success or failure of your outreach, and will often take up the bulk of a PR’s time. If you’re new to digital PR strategy, you may be wondering if you need a media list and how to build one that’ll work. This guide will answer all your questions and help you to create a valuable press list that gets the results you’re after – with tips that’ll be useful to PR pros too.
What’s a media list?
Let’s begin by taking it back to the basics – what even is a media list? It does what it says on the tin – an organised list of your media contacts, and additional info like their contact details and news outlet. This may include journalists, bloggers, influencers etc. and is normally collated into a big spreadsheet for easy reference.
Essentially, it’s a collection of relevant people that might be interested in covering your story. Media lists are usually created for each individual campaign you’re outreaching, and targeted for that specific industry / and or location. It’s key for efficient digital PR as it allows you to approach the right journalists, and get a wider media pickup.
Why is it so important?
You might have gathered by now that a good media list is the real foundation of your strategy. But why exactly is that, and how is a media list better than alternative techniques?
🔗A media list goes beyond just identifying journalists, it helps you research their interests, define your target audience, and cultivate lasting relationships with relevant contacts – all in one place.
🔗Previously, sending out blanket press releases to a huge list of contact was a popular method, but that technique could damage your reputation and alienate journalists who aren’t interested in your story. Building genuine relationships with the right media contacts through a well-crafted media list will see you get far better results.
🔗Buying pre-built media lists is tempting, but short-sighted. These generic lists will often contain outdated information or irrelevant contacts. Creating your own list from scratch will mean you find journalists who cover your exact niche, increasing your chances of coverage.
A step-by-step guide to creating a media list
1.
Begin by setting up a spreadsheet and adding your chosen focus areas. As a basic starting point, start with the journalist’s name, ‘email’, ‘publication’ and ‘primary niche as columns. Other useful columns could include: links to social media accounts, topics covered, writing style etc and you can build this to be more detailed the more you do
2.
You’ll want to find journalists who’ve covered similar topics to your story; start by searching the title of campaigns similar to what you’re working on in Google News and filter by ‘past year’. Then, take relevant journalists’ names and copy them into the sheet. Avoid publications that do their own research, like ‘YouGov’, and play around with the terminology of the search to find all relevant results.
The key is to be super honed in on relevancy here. If you are writing a story about backpacking for students, there’s no point targeting all journalists who write about backpacking – writers on backpacking for retired couples wouldn’t be interested for example.
💡An additional tip is to look for sites that like to reference Digital PR links and data.
3.
Next, find a similar story from your competitor and input them into a backlink checker. See which publications and journalists are linking to this story, and add these names to your list.
Wondering where to find competitor campaigns? Email newsletters are a good starting point to find successful, recent competitor campaigns. The PR Insider and The Grapevine are conveniently organised by category, making it nice and easy for you to locate stories in the same vein as the release you’re working on. It’s also worth looking at Twitter and LinkedIn because one thing PRs love is a humble brag about a campaign that’s done well.
4.
Once you’ve got a decent amount of names, go back and fill in the ‘name’ and ‘email’ column for each link. Journalists will sometimes have their email on their online author profile, or you can use a tool like Vuelio, or Prowly to find their details.
5.
Finally, download and export the file into an outreach tool like Buzzstream or CisionOne, and that’s good to go.
It’s important to remember that a media list is never really completed! The most effective lists are actively maintained and updated with new contacts, and updated contact information.
Guarantee media coverage for your business with Cedarwood Digital
We’re Cedarwood Digital, a digital PR agency based in Manchester, with a proven track record of delivering earned links for brands – even those in the trickiest verticals! We’re proud to say that we don’t buy a single link and you can see the coverage we’ve landed in our case studies here. If you’re looking for a hand with your digital PR strategy or you want to explore white-label digital PR agency options, go ahead and get in touch with us today, we’d love to hear from you.
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:
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.
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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
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.
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.
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.
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