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How to Use AI and Custom GPTs to Take Your Digital PR Strategy to the Next Level

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsLink BuildingSEO

When people talk about AI in marketing, the conversation often jumps straight to replacement. Can it write the press release? Can it build the campaign? Can it replace an agency or an entire team?

That is not how I think about it.

When I think about the real promise of AI, I think about the house robot we all wish we had: the one that vacuums the floor, folds the laundry, waters the plants and takes care of the repetitive jobs that somehow consume a disproportionate amount of the day.

Digital PR has its own version of that housework. We scan the news every morning. We search for journalists. We check whether an angle has already been covered. We verify claims, review spreadsheets, look for missed links and work through long lists of coverage. These tasks matter, but many of them are time-consuming rather than creatively demanding.

This is where AI and custom GPTs can genuinely improve a Digital PR strategy. They should not replace the strategist, the expert or the journalist relationship. They should do more of the vacuuming so the people in the team have more time to think.

AI should improve efficiency, not replace human intelligence

I approached this topic from both sides of the media relationship. Before running Cedarwood Digital, I qualified as a journalist and worked across broadcast and print, including in some extremely busy Australian newsrooms. I have written stories, received press releases and seen first-hand what happens when a pitch is irrelevant, overstated or sent without understanding how a newsroom actually works.

That experience makes me fairly sceptical of the idea that more automation automatically creates better PR. It does not. Using AI to produce hundreds of generic releases or blast the same pitch to a huge media list simply helps a team do the wrong thing faster.

AI should not be used to fabricate data, fake expertise or remove oversight from regulated claims. It cannot replace the instinct that tells an experienced PR professional whether an angle is genuinely interesting. It cannot build a trusted relationship with a journalist on your behalf and it should never become an excuse to send low-quality outreach at scale.

The opportunity lies in decision support. A well-designed custom GPT can organise evidence, identify risks, surface relevant opportunities and turn an overwhelming dataset into something a skilled person can act on. The human remains accountable for the judgement and the final output.

Custom GPT 1: Put a compliance and risk gate before publication

When most people discuss AI in Digital PR, they focus on speed. For teams working in finance, insurance, health, legal services, gambling or other regulated sectors, I think one of the most valuable uses is actually risk reduction.

A Compliance and Risk GPT acts as an extra pre-publication check. It asks whether a claim can be verified, whether the language overpromises, whether the content strays into regulated advice and whether a campaign could create reputational risk or what I call trust debt.

The GPT needs to be built deliberately. Start by defining the organisation’s risk appetite, then create a policy pack containing sector rules, prohibited or flagged language, claim-qualification requirements, evidence standards and brand constraints. The input should also be standardised: client, sector, claims, sources and draft copy. The output should be equally structured, with a risk score, a pass/revise/block recommendation, specific concerns, evidence requirements and safer wording.

Consider an insurance comparison campaign claiming that drivers could save up to £500 a year by switching provider. On the surface, the statistic sounds compelling. But is £500 the average saving, the maximum observed saving or a possible outcome for a particular customer profile? What period does the data cover? How many quotes were analysed? Does the sentence imply that most drivers will save that amount?

A trained GPT can flag those questions before the release reaches a client’s compliance team. It might recommend changing ‘switching could easily save motorists up to £500’ to: ‘Our analysis shows that some drivers could save as much as £500 by switching providers, although the amount varies according to individual circumstances.’ It can also prompt the team to disclose that the finding came from, for example, 50,000 UK quotes analysed between January and March 2026.

This does not replace formal compliance approval. It creates a more considered first draft, reduces avoidable back-and-forth and helps build confidence with clients because the agency is demonstrating that it understands both the story and the risk.

Custom GPT 2: Make reactive PR less dependent on manual monitoring

Anyone who has run a reactive newsroom knows how much time can disappear into scanning publications, social platforms, trend tools and forward calendars. The goal is to spot the right opportunity early, but a person can only read so much in a morning.

A Newsjacking Scout GPT can provide an additional layer of monitoring. When connected to appropriate browsing or source feeds, it can review current stories against a client’s topics, experts, locations and restrictions. Instead of returning a generic list of headlines, it can provide the source, a short summary, an explanation of why the story is relevant and a suggested expert-comment hook.

The quality depends heavily on the rules. Define the countries and publications to monitor, the date range, the number of outputs, excluded subjects and the client’s preferred sentiment. Add a clear topic universe and tell it what counts as a genuine connection rather than a forced one. It should avoid duplicated stories and distinguish between an immediate reactive opportunity and an upcoming event that needs preparation.

For an exterior-paint brand, that could mean identifying a live story about weather damage and suggesting an expert angle on protecting external surfaces. For a mattress retailer, it might identify a forthcoming clock change, heatwave or major sporting event and connect it to useful commentary about sleep. The GPT does not write the final opinion or decide whether the hook is strong enough. It gives the team a faster, broader view of where demand may already exist.

Used well, it can improve opportunity discovery and story relevance while reducing the hours spent checking the same sources. Used badly, it simply creates another noisy feed. Human filtering is what turns a surfaced headline into a credible pitch.

Custom GPT 3: Find the coverage your monitoring tools miss

Finding coverage sounds straightforward until a brand name has several variations, a journalist mentions a spokesperson rather than the company, a publisher removes the link or an article uses the campaign data without the expected wording.

A Coverage Scanner GPT can complement traditional monitoring by looking for a wider set of signals. Give it the brand name and common variations, product names, abbreviations and misspellings. Add spokesperson names, the client’s keyword and topic universe, and rules for identifying followed links, nofollow links, unlinked mentions, citations and quoted commentary. It can also cross-reference the publications and journalists that received the original outreach.

The output should be practical: publication, URL, date, type of mention, link status, spokesperson or data cited, and a short coverage summary. This gives teams a cleaner view of what has landed and where follow-up may be worthwhile—for example, requesting attribution when research has been used without a link.

It will not necessarily produce a complete coverage record, and it should not be presented as one. Its value is in finding additional evidence with relatively little extra manual resource. It can also reveal patterns: which angles are travelling furthest, which experts are quoted repeatedly and where negative or inaccurate coverage may need attention.

Custom GPT 4: Turn a basic link gap into an authority-gap strategy

Traditional link-gap tools are useful, but their starting point is usually simple: which domains link to competitors but not to us? In competitive and YMYL sectors, that is rarely enough. A long list of domains ranked by authority metric does not tell you which gaps matter, why competitors earned the links or what kind of story could close them.

A Link Gap Analyser GPT can combine backlink exports from platforms such as Ahrefs or Semrush with coverage data, article context and brand mentions. It can then classify opportunities by niche, topic cluster, publication type and journalist beat. Instead of treating every missing link equally, it can score opportunities using topical relevance, authority, editorial style, competitor presence and the likelihood that the publication would cover a credible angle from the client.

Imagine a finance brand with a large gap in technology publications, finance-and-lending sites and business media. The important insight is not merely that competitors have more links. The GPT can analyse whether those links were earned through fintech research, consumer commentary, financial-literacy resources or digital-transformation stories. That context turns a spreadsheet into a strategy.

It also helps teams distinguish visibility gaps from authority gaps. A national news link may generate reach, while a citation from a specialist lending publication may do more to reinforce what the brand is trusted for. The strongest Digital PR plans need both, but the balance should be intentional rather than dictated by raw domain metrics.

The result is a prioritised map of niches, missed publications, relevant journalists and potential story formats. The GPT accelerates the analysis; the team still decides which opportunities align with the client’s expertise and deserve investment.

Custom GPT 5: Build media lists around how journalists actually write

Even an excellent story can fail when it reaches the wrong reporter. Yet media lists are still often built through job titles, broad beats and previous contact databases. The result is predictable: too many journalists receive pitches that sit outside what they genuinely cover.

A Journalist and Outlet Intelligence GPT changes the starting point from ‘who is labelled as relevant?’ to ‘who has demonstrated an interest in this type of story?’

The workflow begins by collecting articles from journalist author pages, publisher archives, search discovery and RSS feeds. Store the headline, URL, date, publication, article content and category in a structured dataset. The GPT can then identify recurring topics, framing, sentiment, evidence preferences and story formats. It can build a profile for each journalist and match a new campaign to the reporters whose recent work suggests genuine relevance.

For example, two journalists may both sit on a personal-finance desk, but one regularly covers household bills using consumer data while the other focuses on policy and regulation. Sending them the same angle with the same introduction ignores the evidence already available about what they value.

The output can include the journalist, outlet, relevance score and a plain-English explanation of the match. This creates a stronger foundation for personalisation, but it should not become automated imitation. The aim is to understand the journalist’s interests and respect their time—not mimic their voice or pretend there is a relationship that does not exist.

The quality of the GPT depends on the quality of the system around it

None of these GPTs should be treated as a one-off prompt. The useful work sits in the system around them: clear instructions, reliable inputs, approved documents, defined outputs, examples of good and bad decisions, and a feedback loop.

They also need ongoing checking. News changes. Journalists move publications and switch beats. Regulation evolves. A client changes its risk appetite or messaging. Coverage-detection rules need refining. A model can produce a confident answer that is incomplete or wrong, so sources must remain visible and important claims must be verified.

Over time, the workflow improves because the team learns where the GPT adds value and where human review needs to be strongest. The objective is not full automation. It is consistent assistance at the repetitive points where people are most likely to lose time or overlook something.

The future of Digital PR is still human

The future of Digital PR is not AI-driven creativity. It is AI removing enough busywork for humans to build the stories that actually earn coverage.

A custom GPT can scan more sources than one person can read over breakfast. It can highlight an unsupported claim, cluster thousands of links or summarise a journalist’s recent coverage. But it cannot sit with a client and uncover the experience that makes their expert genuinely interesting. It cannot recognise every cultural nuance, take responsibility for a regulated statement or build mutual trust with a journalist over time.

The best use of AI therefore feels less dramatic than the replacement headlines suggest. It is a second pair of eyes. A research assistant. A monitoring layer. A way to turn large, messy inputs into a more useful starting point.

Let the GPT do more of the vacuuming. Let the Digital PR team do the thinking, questioning, relationship-building and storytelling. That is where the real competitive advantage still sits.

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E-E-A-T 2.0: Why Trust in Modern Search Has Moved Beyond the Page

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsLead GenerationLink BuildingSEO

Back in April, I spoke at BrightonSEO about the concept of E-E-A-T 2.0: the trust layers that I believe now drive visibility in modern search.

As someone who works heavily in YMYL and regulated industries, the shift over the last 12 months is something we have had to be at the forefront of. In sectors such as finance, insurance, legal and health, trust has never been a nice-to-have. But with so many changes happening at once – including what we have learned about NavBoost, the growth of AI Overviews and the sheer volume of AI-generated content entering the web – we almost need to start thinking about trust in a different way.

For years, E-E-A-T was often treated as a fairly contained on-page exercise. Add a detailed author biography. Improve the About page. Include references. Display awards or accreditations. Add a reviewed-by line. All of those things can still be useful, but they are no longer enough on their own.

The bigger question today is not simply whether a website claims to be credible. It is whether Google, an AI system and, crucially, a real user can verify that credibility elsewhere. That is the difference between traditional E-E-A-T and what I call E-E-A-T 2.0.

Relevance gets you retrieved; trust determines whether you stay

One of the simplest ways to understand this shift is to separate relevance from trust. Relevance helps a search engine decide whether a page is a possible answer to a query. Trust helps it decide whether that page is a safe, reliable and worthwhile answer to retain near the top of the results.

Two pieces of content can match search intent equally well. They can cover the same subtopics, use a similar structure and demonstrate comparable semantic relevance. Yet one may remain stable through updates while the other gradually declines. We see this frequently when auditing websites that have rewritten and expanded content several times but still cannot recover the visibility they once had.

The instinct is often to edit the copy again. Add another section. Increase the word count. Improve the optimisation score. In reality, the page may not have a content problem at all. It may have a trust problem.

Google does not need more content for the sake of it. AI has removed many of the old production constraints, so publishing volume is no longer a meaningful proxy for value. At the same time, scaled content abuse, site reputation abuse and increasingly sophisticated spam have made it necessary to distinguish between a page that looks authoritative and an entity that can genuinely be trusted.

This is especially important in YMYL search. When the wrong answer could affect somebody’s health, finances, legal position or safety, the least risky answer can be more valuable than the longest or most aggressively optimised one. Trust is, in many ways, risk management at scale.

E-E-A-T is a framework, not a score

It is worth clearing up a common misconception here: E-E-A-T is not a single ranking factor. There is no visible trust score, expertise dial or authority switch that an SEO can turn up. It is better understood as a quality-evaluation framework – a way of thinking about the signals that ranking, spam, review and helpful-content systems may use to approximate experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust.

That distinction matters because checklist thinking encourages cosmetic fixes. A framework asks whether the evidence is coherent across the whole ecosystem. An author biography is useful only if the person exists beyond that biography. An award claim matters only if the award can be independently confirmed. A statement such as ‘trusted by thousands’ is stronger when reviews, demand and third-party references support it.

E-E-A-T 2.0 is therefore less about displaying signals and more about making them verifiable. Can the identity be cross-referenced? Can the claim be substantiated? Can the reputation be independently corroborated? Trust is not what a brand says about itself. It is the probability created when multiple sources tell the same credible story.

What NavBoost changes about the trust conversation

The information that emerged through the US antitrust proceedings helped bring behavioural signals into much sharper focus for the SEO industry. NavBoost showed that aggregated click and interaction data can be used over time. This is not the same as saying one click instantly moves a result up or that Google keeps a permanent memory of every individual search. The more useful takeaway is that patterns of user choice and satisfaction can reinforce which results consistently meet an intent.

That has a direct relationship with trust. When people are uncertain, they often choose a brand they recognise, a source they have used before or a result that appears credible. If users repeatedly select a particular domain, do not immediately return to reformulate the query and continue to choose that brand across related searches, those behaviours create a form of reinforcement.

Trust drives choice; choice can reinforce trust. This creates a flywheel: stronger trust supports visibility, visibility creates more opportunities for selection, selection generates behavioural reinforcement and that reinforcement can contribute to greater stability.

It also explains why shortcuts tend to plateau. A page can win a temporary relevance battle through optimisation, but if the brand behind it is unknown, poorly corroborated or repeatedly passed over, there is no strong reinforcement loop. Sustainable visibility is not just about earning the initial ranking. It is about becoming the result that people expect, recognise and choose.

Trust is becoming contextual

Historically, publishing on a strong domain could allow a new section to inherit a significant amount of that domain’s authority. That assumption has become much less reliable. Google’s response to site reputation abuse shows a clearer willingness to evaluate sections according to their own purpose and relationship with the wider site.

A coupon directory, betting subfolder or third-party comparison hub should not automatically inherit trust simply because it sits on a well-known publisher. The same principle applies more broadly: authority is not universal. A brand can be highly credible in one subject area and have very little legitimate authority in another.

This is why generic high-authority links are not always the answer. A mention from a publication closely aligned with the topic can do more to clarify what an entity is trusted for than an unrelated link from a website with an impressive metric. Visibility without contextual relevance can build awareness; it does not necessarily build defensible topical trust.

The five layers of an E-E-A-T 2.0 trust graph

To make this practical, I assess trust across five connected clusters: identity, provenance, reputation, compliance and demand. No single layer proves trust on its own. The strength comes from triangulation.

Identity asks whether the people and organisation behind the website are clear and cross-referencable. Are there real experts attached to the content? Do their biographies, credentials and experience remain consistent across the website, professional profiles, conference appearances and third-party citations? Authors increasingly operate as entities in their own right. A credible, visible expert can strengthen a website; an anonymous or unverifiable author can undermine it.

Provenance is about origin and accountability. Who created the information? What qualifies them to do so? Where did the data come from? Was the content reviewed, and how is it kept up to date? Editorial standards, methodology disclosures, named reviewers, update histories and transparent sourcing turn a claim into something that can be checked. In an environment flooded with generated content, accountable provenance is a meaningful differentiator.

Reputation is the independent evidence that other people recognise, cite, review or endorse the entity. This could include relevant media coverage, industry citations, expert commentary, association membership, awards, reviews or speaking engagements. The context matters as much as the volume. Google is not only asking, ‘Is this brand trusted?’ It is asking, ‘Is this brand trusted for this subject?’

Compliance covers both formal governance and publishing intent. In regulated sectors, visible licences, policies, claims processes, complaints procedures and appropriate disclaimers matter. But compliance is also reflected in the site’s architecture. Thousands of low-value pages created primarily to capture traffic can build what I think of as trust debt, regardless of whether they were produced by people or AI. The issue is not the tool; it is the intent and value at scale.

Demand is the behavioural expression of trust. Are people searching for the brand by name? Are they combining the brand with a product or service category? Do they navigate directly to it, return to it and choose it repeatedly? Brand demand is difficult to manufacture convincingly because it reflects genuine preference. It shows that trust exists beyond the copy on a landing page.

AI Overviews raise the threshold again

AI Overviews and other answer-led search experiences compress the traditional journey. In a standard results page, a brand may have several opportunities to earn a click across the ten blue links and additional SERP features. In an AI-generated answer, visibility and selection can happen in the same step. A source is either considered suitable to support the response or it is absent from the answer.

That changes the optimisation goal. Keyword coverage still helps a system retrieve and understand content, but citation eligibility becomes more important than keyword repetition. Trust density becomes more valuable than content volume. A concise page with clear provenance, original evidence, consistent entity signals and strong external corroboration may be more useful to an answer engine than a long article that merely restates what already exists.

This does not mean every page should be written for a machine-generated citation. It means brands should create information that deserves to be selected: original research, clearly attributed expertise, transparent methodologies, distinctive first-party insight and claims that can be independently checked.

How to turn trust into an SEO strategy

The best place to start is a trust audit. Score the brand from zero to five across identity, provenance, reputation, compliance and demand. Then prioritise gaps according to risk, competitive disadvantage and ease of verification. A regulated financial-services website with unclear authorship should be treated differently from an ecommerce brand with strong reviews but limited niche authority.

From there, the work falls into three areas: build, earn and measure.

Build the infrastructure that allows trust to exist consistently. That can include editorial standards pages, expert hubs, transparent update logs, research centres, policy pages and methodology disclosures. These are not decorative additions. They explain how knowledge is produced, reviewed and maintained across the organisation.

Earn the external signals that a website cannot create for itself. Focus on topic-specific mentions, industry citations, association memberships, speaking visibility and expert commentary. Digital PR has an important role here, but the objective should not be a large number of loosely relevant links. Hyper-relevant coverage helps search systems and users understand exactly where a brand has legitimate authority.

Measure the signals that show trust is strengthening. Rankings and organic traffic still matter, but they are lagging indicators. Track branded search growth, the quality and relevance of mentions, entity consistency, SERP-feature visibility and citation presence in AI answers. Look at whether ranking volatility reduces over time. The question is not simply whether more people saw the brand; it is whether more credible sources validated it and more users chose it.

The question every brand should ask

If your website disappeared tomorrow, would the rest of the web still confirm your expertise?

It is a deliberately uncomfortable question, but it quickly exposes the difference between claimed authority and verified authority. If the only evidence that your authors are experts, your service is trusted or your research is robust sits on pages you control, the trust graph is fragile.

The future of SEO is not the end of optimisation. Technical accessibility, relevance, information architecture and excellent content remain essential. But they now operate inside a wider system of verification. A page needs to be understood, then believed; a brand needs to be discoverable, then chosen.

For organisations in YMYL and regulated industries, this is not a distant trend. It is already shaping the way we audit, plan content, approach digital PR and measure success. The brands most likely to build durable visibility will be those that stop treating E-E-A-T as an on-page checklist and start treating trust as infrastructure: something built internally, validated externally and reinforced through real user behaviour.

Relevance may get you retrieved. Trust determines whether you stay – and, increasingly, whether you are selected at all.

[blog]_[Director Amanda On The Main Stage @ Brighton SEO]_[Blog Picture]

Director Amanda On The Main Stage @ Brighton SEO

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsGeneral Marketinghome pageLink BuildingPaid SearchPaid SocialSEO

For her fourth time speaking at Brighton SEO, Director Amanda took to the main stage at Brighton SEO to deliver a talk on “Reimagining E-E-A-T: Using Ethos, Pathos And Logos To Boost SEO Campaigns” drawing on skills that she learnt when studying philosophy at school, Amanda discussed how the valuable rhetoric of Ethos, Pathos and Logos can be applied to SEO campaigns to not just improve performance, but most importantly to improve conversion rate and drive sales and leads – which at the end of the day is why everyone does it!

At the event which had over 2,000 attendees, Amanda went into detail about how to apply these principles to your SEO campaigns and why doing so plays such an important role in ensuring your maximising your return on investment. Key focus areas included:

  • Understanding that 87% of people will leave the conversion funnel if they read a negative review or mention of your website – brand perception and awareness is key and building/protecting your reputation plays a key role in this

  • Showcasing “benefits” not “features” – why should I use your product/service, what benefit does it have to me? Rather than just listing a specific feature it has, appeal to the user’s emotional side by helping them to understand how it could help them

  • Matching user intent plays an important role in keeping users in the funnel – understanding what type of content best resonates with them is important here, do they want content that showcases experience or expertise? Or sometimes do they want a mixture of both?

  • Utilising Digital PR effectively to build reputation – how to best use your thought leadership and data-led campaigns to make people find your brand online and ensuring that when people are researching they’re finding what they need to to better understand your brand.

Overall, the outline of the talk focused on how Aristotle utilised “rhetoric” to help persuade an audience to do something – not too different from what we try to do in modern day SEO and provided relatable takeaways that not only help to align E-E-A-T (specifically in YMYL industries) but also help to boost those all important conversion rates.

A big thankyou to everyone who attended the talk – please reach out if you’d like a copy of the deck!

[blog]_[Director Amanda Walls Speaks At The SEO Mastery Summit, Saigon (Vietnam)]_[Blog Picture]

Director Amanda Walls Speaks At The SEO Mastery Summit, Saigon (Vietnam)

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsGeneral Marketinghome pageLead GenerationLink BuildingPaid SearchPaid SocialSEO

Our Director Amanda Walls was on stage at the SEO Mastery Summit, Saigon last week discussing “Using Digital PR To Simultaneously Boost SEO And CRO”

The SEO Mastery Summit is one of the most highly regarded SEO conferences in the world with nearly 500 delegates from around the world attending the week-long conference each year & Amanda was delighted to have been invited to speak at the event. The conference is held each year in Ho Chi Minh City and attracts a huge international audience.

“The SEO Mastery Summit is one of the leading SEO events in the world so it’s great to be able to get on stage and share knowledge with as well as learn from some of the world’s best SEO’s,” she said.

Also on stage, were leading SEO speakers including Craig Campbell, Kavi Kardos, SEO Jesus, Christopher Hofman and many more…

Key themes of the conference focused around the rise of AI and how we can adapt it into strategy to help improve efficiencies, as well as looking at personal branding and the rise of this within SEO. There were many cutting-edge talks discussing recent Google algorithm updates and how to stay ahead of the evolving landscape, as well as some great social networking events and a chance to meet SEOs from all over the world.

Overall, the conference had some great actionable takeaways to bring home for clients, in addition to being a great way to learn from and speak in front of some of the world’s leading SEOs.

[blog]_[Director Amanda On The Main Stage At Brighton SEO]_[Blog Picture]

Director Amanda On The Main Stage At Brighton SEO

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsLink BuildingPaid SearchPaid SocialSEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until October!

[blog]_[Core Web Vitals - What Is It & How Do I Find Out If I Pass?]_[Blog Picture]

How To Get Media Coverage For Your Business In Seven Steps

by Digital PR & Outreach tipsLink Building

As a small or start up-business, gaining media attention  is important for growth and gives your SEO a significant boost. But, it can often feel like a daunting, nay impossible task. Where do you even begin? And do you need a big budget to make a difference?

At Cedarwood Digital, we work with clients of all shapes and sizes, with a variety of budgets. So, we know first-hand that you can make an impact, regardless of size or budget.

We’ve rounded up our top tips and broken down the process of  landing coverage for your business, so you can start a media storm. 

 

1. Understand what journalists want to see

When creating a press release, keep in mind that journalists receive countless similar emails each  day. Focus on providing something valuable that they can’t get elsewhere! Create fresh content that either supports established ideas with research or challenges them with new data. Surveys that provide journalists with interesting and topical statistics are a great way to get your business featured in the press. Whilst there are companies that will run surveys for you, these can be costly, so SMEs can benefit from using their own customer databases to conduct surveys and research.

Images are also crucial for a strong press release, as we live in an increasingly visual world. Including a few good  images to support your press release saves journalists time and could be the difference between your story getting picked up and falling flat.

 

2. Know your target audience

Craft a unique angle that makes your story resonate with the publications you’re looking to target. Try not to generalise content and send it across all genres of media – this will be obvious  to the journalist and appear lazy. It’s best to brainstorm and research topical news, upcoming events and  media trends relevant to your brand to ensure your content hits the right mark. Don’t neglect regional press, as a local angle can also be a great hook. Though regional publications may have a smaller audience than nationals, they offer the chance to showcase news on a local scale and can be easier to land  features in than the bigger publications. If you’re offering research and statistics that cover the whole of the UK, try breaking your research down into key city demographics so that it is more relevant to regional publications. 

 

3. Build a comprehensive media list 

Whilst you may already be familiar with some key publications you would like to target, it’s useful to go beyond the obvious and expand your horizons to more niche publications as well.  It’s a good idea to think about your ideal customer, and then pinpoint the media outlets they would be using for their news. There are numerous online tools  to help you build out  a thorough media list – with everything from trade journals to nationals. Tools like Roxhill Media, Muckrack, and Cision offer subscriptions, allowing you access to media databases. Or for those with smaller budgets, websites like Hunter.io allow a limited number of free searches for journalist contacts. Both X (Twitter) and LinkedIn can also be good places to start building connections. Monitor #journorequest and #prrequest on X (Twitter) to find relevant feature opportunities and connect with journalists on LinkedIn.

We recommend keeping your media list nice and organised. Categorise the publications by type, size, and geographic reach to make your life easier when you get to the outreach stage.

 

4. Research the targeted journalist

Once you’ve built your media  list, double check that the journalist specialises in your topic. Ensure you’ve got accurate contact details noted as first impressions count and you don’t want to come across as unprofessional!  

Make sure to stay on top of deadlines and publication dates to ensure timely outreach and avoid interrupting journalists when they’re working against the clock. There’s no problem in getting in touch to ask if a certain topic is of interest, but don’t harass them. If you’ve followed up twice via email and have still not had a response, then unfortunately the journalist may just not be interested in your pitch.

 

5. Design your press release to make an impression

Structure press releases in a way that makes them easily digestible to busy journalists. Generally, try to stick to the following rules:

  • ➡️Use a snappy and attention-grabbing headline; assume the journalist is in a rush and reading it on their phone, it needs to grab them! 
  • ➡️It can be useful to think about your press release as an inverted pyramid. Immediately summarise the gist  of the content in the first paragraph, making sure to answer the 5 Ws (who, what, where, when, why). Then, bring in your additional context below with the information becoming less vital as you move down the page. 
  • ➡️Avoid technical terms which aren’t accessible.
  • ➡️Support your story with evidence or data where possible. In particular, including a shocking statistic in the headline is a good technique to get your release noticed and show journalists that it’s news.
  • ➡️Include your contact information at the end of the press release, and make sure to be available for follow up calls.
  • ➡️A ‘Notes to the Editor’ section at the bottom of the release is always useful. This is where you can include relevant background information that does not feature in your press release, such as an overview of your business’ services, how you conducted your research  or a brief history of your business.
  •  ➡️Then you’re ready to press send!

 

6. Add supporting information & special extras to the press release

To give your press release a bit more zest, it’s worth considering what extra support you could provide to each journalist. Publications often want to get unique angles on stories to avoid duplicated articles, so think about offering a case study, interview or photograph to sweeten the deal.

If you have a larger publication in mind that you are eager to work with, then you could offer them the exclusive on the story first; being featured in one large publication with a significant audience could be more worthwhile than coverage in  multiple smaller publications.

 

7. Build relationships with journalists

To establish long-term media relationships, provide journalists with a steady stream of good content, stick to deadlines, and be readily available for interviews and commentary.  This way, you’ll create a great reputation for yourself as a useful contact and build a lasting relationship with the press. 

 

Land media coverage with the help of professionals


With these tips under your belt, you should now be in the best position to get out there and secure coverage for your business. Need a hand getting started? Our digital PR team here at Cedarwood Digital have a proven track record. We deliver campaigns that land you 100% earned links and coverage from top publications because we know what the journalists want to see, and how to execute it.

We’ve achieved excellent results for both SMEs and large international clients alike. Get in touch today to get your brand in front of its target audience.

[blog]_[A Guide To Digital PR]_[Blog Picture]

A Guide To Digital PR

by Digital PR & Outreach tipsLink Building

If you’ve landed on this blog, chances are that you have heard all about Digital PR. It’s been an industry buzzword for a few years now & has really taken off in this time; even though many agencies, including ourselves, have been doing this for over 5 years!

Digital PR has been used in conjunction with SEO to help grow visibility for websites in a very holistic manner. While these two elements were previously siloed amongst marketing campaigns, more recently, agencies have started combining the two to provided added, targeted benefits for both their SEO and Digital PR campaigns. By combining the two elements, you are able to use the data-research side of SEO with the creative PR side of Digital PR to drive consistent campaigns. This not only drives high quality links into your website and grows brand awareness, but also supports growth in your overall SEO rankings and, therefore, traffic to your website and subsequent sales/conversions.

So What Is Digital PR?

Digital PR is essentially a strategy or plan which takes the principles of traditional PR & applies it in an online environment to online content & placements. Think of it as promoting a product or service but in the digital space and with the added incentive of creating high quality, relevant links for SEO. In turn, you also get the added bonus of the optimisation that comes with that. 

Digital PR has been around for as long as PR has, but has only really come to the forefront in recent years. This is mainly due to the value that it can add to SEO campaigns and the real world returns that PR of this style can generate. PR has never been more measurable from an ROI perspective as it is in Digital PR format. This makes it an appealing option for businesses who are looking to grow sales/leads in addition to just growing standard visibility. 

When we look over time we can see that “link building” in its raw format has always been a popular option for companies looking to improve their “website authority” or “Domain Rank” for SEO. In the last few years, however, we can see that Digital PR has started to meet link building as an equal. This has mainly been due to the rise in popularity of the term as a buzzword, but also the approach being seen as a more effective, sustainable and achievable method of link acquisition.

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We’ve even seen John Mueller, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, weigh in on it through his Twitter account, offering his view that he loves some of the things that he sees from Digital PR: “It’s just as critical as tech SEO, probably more so in many cases.” Who are we to argue?!

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Although we’ve compared Digital PR and Link Building together above to review trends over time, it’s important to note that the two can be very different. Digital PR is a more holistic offering. It’s designed to not only improve SEO value and drive leads to your website, but also to enhance your visibility and start to create buzz around your brand, just as traditional PR does.

What Are Some Common Digital PR Techniques?

Digital PR, like any element of digital marketing, is done in a number of different ways depending on the agency that you work with and the results that you are looking to achieve. For example, Digital PR for an ecommerce company looking to drive sales of a specific product would look very different to a company looking to launch a new product, or a company who is looking to improve their overall awareness and traffic within a specific niche. 

That said, there are a couple of techniques that can work across a number of different situations, they just need to be applied in different ways. Some of the most common Digital PR techniques that we use here at Cedarwood include:

Newsjacking

Newsjacking isn’t a new concept to PRs; it’s essentially the process of finding a newsworthy topic and putting your client at the front of the conversation. As Digital PR has continued to grow, so has the popularity of both Proactive and Reactive Newsjacking as a way of landing great quality coverage for a client while also showcasing that client’s expertise. 

There are generally two different types of newsjacking: proactive and reactive. Both work in a slightly different way. Traditionally, proactive newsjacking would involve researching events in advance such as the launch of a new product, event or movie, or the launch of a new report, perhaps from NHS Digital or the ONS or a particular themed day or month coming up. This gives time to plan, gain the right comments and angle, and outreach in time to land coverage for clients.

Reactive newsjacking, on the other hand, involves monitoring the media to identify opportunities where we can potentially jump in with expert commentary or advice. To be reactive you need to have a great media monitoring set up and you need to be able to get into the conversation quickly with a fresh angle. You also need to have a quick turnaround on comments. We often recommend speaking to clients or your internal PR team in advance to prep them where tight turnaround might be required. Ideally, try to develop a process for this early on so you don’t miss out on key opportunities. For media monitoring, there are a lot of tools out there but some of the most popular are social media platforms, such as Twitter and TikTok, BBC Breaking News, Hashtags and daily newspapers.

Newsjacking is a very popular Digital PR approach here at Cedarwood as it not only generates high quality expertise-driven links it’s also fast-paced and often fun. We love to get stuck in putting our clients in the centre of the conversation. Over the years we have created some fun newsjacking campaigns, from talking about how plants would handle lockdown ending to recreating Harry & Meghan’s Oprah garden scene. As well as tackling more serious topics such as highlighting the signs and symptoms of Cervical Cancer for Cervical Cancer Awareness Month. 

Done effectively, Newsjacking is a quick and effective way to gain your clients coverage and to gain those all-valuable links back to the website.

Data-Led Campaigns

At Cedarwood we’re a fan of always-on link acquisition, in fact in one slide we could summarise our approach to Digital PR as follows:

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That’s where data-led campaigns come in. Small, frequent data-driven campaigns are a great way to land links, highlight your client’s expertise and create a stable environment of always-on Digital PR. The days of high risk, high reward campaigns are often behind us, as we find journalists increasingly inundated with the larger style of campaigns. They now seem to prefer a smaller, more expertise-driven approach to Digital PR through data.

The great news when it comes to data-led campaigns is that there’s a tonne of free resources out there that you can utilise. In fact we’re currently pulling together a separate blog on all of the free data sources you can utilise, so watch this space. For now, we’ve listed some of the key ones below:NHS Digital

Once you have your data, undertake analysis to understand the angle. Remember a new, fresh angle backed up by expertise is your best friend when it comes to landing data-led campaigns. It’s therefore always good to have some ideas in mind prior to your data analysis, so you know what you are looking for. 

If you aren’t able to gather the data freely then there are a number of paid for options, especially if you have something specific that you are looking for. Google Surveys and other survey providers can offer good options here. In many instances, it might be that you only need to ask just one question, in which case it can often be quite affordable too. Data-led campaigns don’t have to break the bank to be successful.

Here are a couple of examples of recent data-led campaigns that we’ve turned around quickly and outreached to gain some great placements and Digital PR for our clients.

Patient Claim Line: COVID-19 Survey

Cash Lady: Cheapest Roast Dinners 

MIST: Pets & Smoking Habits

Thought Leadership

Thought Leadership is a great approach for modern Digital PR as it tends to combine a number of elements which are hugely beneficial for SEO – predominantly expertise and link acquisition all rolled into one!

Thought leadership is also a great way to extoll the virtues and expertise of your brand to a wider market, and really join the conversation on topics which matter to both you and your brand. Thought leadership is one of the elements that underpins a strong always-on Digital PR strategy and something that we love to do to build the expertise of our brands.

Speaking on his Twitter account John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, speaks directly about how one very relevant link can be significantly more important than a whole chunk of links built into a website. It’s very much about quality over quantity. In many cases, Digital PR firms steer away from thought leadership as they see it as a lot of work for maybe just one or two links. Yet, in many cases, these one or two links can be more valuable than an entire creative campaign if they drive the relevancy and expertise that Google is looking for. 

“Or there could be one really good link from one website out there that is, for us, a really important sign that we should treat this website as something that is relevant because it has that one link. I don’t know, maybe from like a big news site’s home page, for example. So the total number essentially is completely irrelevant.”

– John Mueller

So while many agencies and in-house teams are set on creating link goals or link targets based on the number of links achieved, to deliver real impact you need to focus on the relevancy and quality of individual links, rather than just trying to build links as a whole to the website.

Is Link Building Dead?

The way in which link building is done has come a long way in the last 10 years. Unfortunately, I still hear stories of agencies paying for links and more often than you would think. This is against Google’s guidelines. While it might work for a short period of time, after a while Google’s algorithm will catch this, and your website could be at risk of either a manual penalty or an algorithmic penalty from the Google Penguin update.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with Google Penguin or what it is, Google Penguin is an update designed to penalise websites that have undertaken dodgy link practices. There was a significant update many years ago now called Penguin 2.0 and it caught out a lot of Webmasters who had been purchasing links. For many of these it took years before they were able to get their websites back onto a good standing. 

So link building is definitely not dead, but the industry as a whole is still seeing a lot of paid for link acquisition. It wouldn’t surprise me if there is a new variation of the Penguin update (which now runs in real time) to tackle this. 

Digital PR is a great way to drive links into your website for link acquisition purposes, but it also helps to build on key E-A-T signals & drive relevance for your brand. Again, link acquisition definitely isn’t dead, but SEOs are having to adapt the way that they build links to really reach best practice.

Does Digital PR Actually Work?

Absolutely, hands down Digital PR is one of the most important elements of any SEO campaign. It’s also a great way to drive your overall brand relevancy and the visibility of your website. Digital PR is arguably one of the most important elements of any SEO campaign. It helps to build relevancy and expertise across your website, in addition to growing some great visibility for your clients. 

Good Digital PR can help to build your traffic & visibility over time & correlates with SEO visibility & performance by helping to improve the overall authority within the website.

Below is an example of a client that we have done Digital PR for, for a number of years:

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As you can see, the number of high quality links that we have created correlates closely with organic visibility & performance. When done well, Digital PR can have a direct impact on your SEO performance.

How Do I Find Relevant Topics?

Relevancy is an important element of any Digital PR campaign. Ensuring that your Digital PR campaigns match the relevancy and recency of your clients is very important to ensuring that you get the maximum impact from them. 

One of the ways that we look to drive relevancy for our clients is by creating a mind map to really understand the core themes of our client. We can then build out content and topical resources around this. 

Here’s an example of one that we did for a client in financial services. It shows how we are able to map everything to central themes to ensure that we keep relevancy at the heart of our campaigns.

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It’s not just enough to find relevant topics though. You also have to find topics which are trending and topical, i.e. topics that journalists want to cover. There are a number of tools that you can use for this, from Google Trends through to BuzzSumo. These really help you to identify what is trending and, most importantly, anything that has already been covered to ensure that your content is topical and relevant.

How Can I Make Journalists Love My Content?

One of the main ways that we understand what journalists are looking for is through the concept of “Why Does The Reader Care?” At the end of the day journalists are looking for clicks on their articles, so we need to make sure our content is juicy, relevant and backed up by great data and a clear methodology. Get journalists to love your content by giving them what they want and giving it to them in a format that they can use without having to make too many changes. This can include:

  • Attaching any imagery that they might require
  • Clearly stating your methodology or linking to the methodology if required 
  • Ensuring that you have a clear bio of the company or person that has created the article
  • Including any relevant links internally within the press release
  • Making sure the press release has a clear hook for the journalist (and readers)
  • Answering any questions that the journalist has previously asked.

Journalists are busy creatures so ensuring that you include all of the relevant information within your press releases is a great way to ensure that they’re best placed to cover your content. Additionally, make yourself available to them in case they have any quick questions. Don’t be afraid to jump on a quick call and point them in the right direction. 

Journalists love content which gets clicks and which really engages the user, mainly human interest pieces. So when you’re creating your mind maps, stories or even brainstorming, creating ideas which have a strong human interest point is a great place to start. Always think about who might be reading the article and what they might want to know. Make sure that you have that great hook, a great angle and, most importantly, that you bring something new to the table. 

Looking for more information on how to create a press release? Check out our guide to press releases which will help to point you in the right direction!

How Do I Measure Digital PR?

Measurement is essential to any effective performance marketing channel and Digital PR is no different. Being able to measure and justify the investment in this channel is key to growing clients and proving value and strong ROAS. So, how do we go about measuring how successful our Digital PR campaigns have been and what value this particular channel adds?

Measuring Digital PR can be done in a number of different ways with a range of different tools. Before you start measuring, take the time to work out what you are trying to achieve; it shouldn’t just be just a certain number of links. Think about the business goals and how you can map those down to online goals accordingly. I’ve always thought of it like this:

Business Goals – Online Goals – KPIs

By ensuring that you always have the business goals as the top marker, you know that you are delivering that all-important value and ROAS. Now that you have your business goals where do you start with measurement? Well this can be done in a number of different ways but I’ve listed the two most common metrics that we use below:

Link Scoring

We know that not all links are equal, so setting a simple link target wouldn’t quite cut the mustard when it comes to understanding the value we are delivering for a client. That’s why we use a concept of “Link Scoring” to understand how important and valuable our work can be. 

Our link scoring matrix takes the type and relevancy of the link and combines it with key metrics such as Domain Authority and Rank to produce a “link score.” Each month we set a target based on this link score and tie it back to our KPIs. This ensures that any Digital PR work we undertake is focused on our client goals and keeps relevancy, expertise and value at the core at all times.

Visibility Metrics

Key visibility metrics, such as overall traffic value, help us tie our Digital PR service closely to website impact and SEO results. By looking at a metric like traffic value we can combine a keyword’s position with its estimated traffic level to understand how much valuable traffic we are bringing to the website.

By measuring in this way we are ensuring that higher rankings for keywords are actually bringing in traffic. We don’t want to fall into the trap of getting keywords to position one that bring no traffic or value for the client. By tying these metrics back to our Digital PR campaigns we can prove value and ROAS for our client’s investment.

Summary

Digital PR is a hugely effective tool and a big part of the modern digital marketing mix. With experts from Google singing its praises and highlighting how important it is within the marketing mix, we can be sure that effective Digital PR will play an important role in digital strategies for many years to come. 

 

Want to find out more about how Digital PR can help your agency or business? Get in touch.