How we delivered 100+ top tier links by jumping on a trending topic. (2)

Cedarwood Digital Nominated For 6 Northern Digital Awards

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsPaid SearchSEO

We are so happy to share that we have been nominated for six Northern Digital Awards 2024 nominations. As we approach the end of our best year yet at Cedarwood, it is so great to see our hard work recognised.

We have been nominated for:


⭐ Best Digital Marketing Campaign – Finance
⭐ Best Digital Marketing Campaign – B2C
⭐ Best SEO Campaign
⭐ Search Agency Of The Year
⭐ Integrated Search Agency Of The Year
⭐ Best Small Digital Agency Of The Year

In 2022 we were awarded Silver for Best Small Digital Agency Of The Year and look forward to hopefully taking home another award in 2024! 🏆

Congratulations to the other nominees and a huge well done to our team at Cedarwood Digital. 👏

We look forward to seeing everyone at the ceremony on the 25th of January. You can see the full shortlist here: https://northerndigitalawards.com/2024-shortlist/

How we delivered 100+ top tier links by jumping on a trending topic. (1)

Cedarwood Win UK Ecommerce Agency Of The Year!

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsPaid SearchSEO

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

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

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

Blog Picture - How To Use Data Driven Campaigns In Your Digital PR Strategy

How To Use Data Driven Campaigns In Your Digital PR Strategy

by Digital PR & Outreach tips

With business after business churning out impressive PR stories, how can you make yours stand out?

The answer is data. Incorporating data-driven campaigns into your strategy can be the key to attracting readers and journalists, and gaining substantial coverage.

This guide is going to look at what data-driven PR is, how it can elevate your marketing game, and give you some advice on how to create, present and pitch your campaigns.

What is data-driven Digital PR?

Data-driven Digital PR is the process of using data as a basis for your PR stories. These stories are then pushed out to relevant publications and journalists in order to achieve coverage. It brings reliability to a piece of PR and can be visually presented in a way to attract attention.

Let’s discuss the benefits

  1. Journalists love data 

Using unique data in your press releases really makes your stories stand out to journalists. It makes the piece valuable and more likely to be respected. Without the use of numbers, there’s a risk of your narrative coming across vague and indirect – data provides precision. It also helps you to position yourself as a source of innovative, fresh information that the journalists can only get from you. But more on expertise and authority later….

  1. Data is great for SEO

People love stats so search engines love stats. They signal to Google that you are an authoritative source, improving your domain authority, and as a result, your ranking. This should make more sense if we are to talk about E-E-A-T. 

Part of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, E-E-A-T means that you need to demonstrate Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness to be deemed a useful site. And what plays into this? You guessed it… good data. Include relevant and reliable data in your content, in accordance with meeting the other guidelines, and Google will be evaluating your domain favourably in no time.

  1. Backlinks

A main benefit of using data in your Digital PR is its potential to earn you backlinks. Stories involving statistics, particularly unique statistics, tend to earn a greater number of links. People researching a topic related to your data will come across your information and credit you as a source. 

You’ll then secure backlinks from authoritative domains like online newspapers. These links will help drive traffic to your website, especially if you make sure to upload a more in-depth piece on your dataset to the landing page of your website. Also, each backlink will act as a trust signal to Google that your domain is a worthwhile and quality source of information.

  1. Make readers act 

Data usage can get you your desired outcome from the reader. It helps fuel your audience’s desire to act – whether that be clicking a link, making a purchase or sharing the piece. It acts as a bit of a guiding star: fine-tuning your message and making it relatable and tangible to the reader.

Data also builds credibility with your audience. This will support your brand image and give customers more confidence to buy into the services you’re offering. Today, misinformation is rife in the online world and audiences are more sceptical than ever. Figures and evidence bring much needed reliability to your digital PR.

  1. Potential for several angles 

Data-led PR tends to have a higher success rate as it can result in multiple, alternate angles. A good example of our Digital PR team using this approach was a campaign for a client in which we ran a survey looking into what Brits get up to while working from home. Through keeping a close eye on online discussion surrounding the data, we noticed a lot of conversation on Twitter surrounding statistics about people having sex whilst working from home! To capitalise on this, the team sent out a new angle focusing on this data specifically, which led to more and more backlinks from authoritative outlets.

Always remember to rework and remix your data campaigns. One set of data could have endless potential lines of narrative. Keep track on which aspects of the story are being frequently picked up and linked to, and hone in on them specifically.

Our tips for data-driven Digital PR

The value of Digital PR has never been more important, but how exactly do you pull off a brilliant data-led campaign? Stay tuned, we’re going to take you through all our top tips for everything from developing initial ideas, through to constructing a visualised piece that journalists will love.

Gathering data 

Perhaps you’re an ideas person who decides on the topic of a story, then generates data to support it. Or, maybe your style is forming ideas through analysis of data. Both methods can bring about equally successful campaigns, the key lies in the numbers being used. Let’s begin by looking at where to find this crucial data.

There are a few effective kinds of data you can make use of:

📍Internal customer data

If you own a website then I have good news for you, you’ll have a wealth of data there at your fingertips (visitor data, purchase data, interactions, location, products bought etc.). Anonymised data about your customers can sometimes reveal interesting insights, perfect for shaping a Digital PR story. Analyse your customer demographics and internal data and you might find some surprising findings and changes over time.

The good thing about leveraging your own data is that it will be one of a kind information that your competitors don’t have access to. Your story should be entirely unique because you have conducted this research yourself. So, when searching for the numerical backing for your next PR story, bear in mind that it might well be right under your nose.

If not quite what you’re after, another idea is to run a customer survey with your own customers – this can help you get more specific insights. But, as this sample size will likely be on the smaller side, we’d recommend finding other third-party data to support your research and increase credibility.

📍Public data

Third-party data can be retrieved from a whole range of online sources, and the great thing is that many of them are free! You can check out our in-depth guide here to the best free data sources. Whether getting your numbers from YouGov surveys, SEMrush Keyword Research, or even the NHS website, there’s heaps of useful data in the public domain which can be utilised for a good story. Just remember to credit your source and ensure you’re doing something new and different with the data.

Another great source of information is of course social media. Things like the TikTok Creative Centre hold data on hashtags and trends which can be used to get figures for a campaign on ‘the most popular..’ or ‘most hashtaggable…’. 

However, you really can get the data for an effective story anywhere. At Cedarwood, we like to think outside the box, like in this campaign on roast dinners that we put together for a client. The Digital PR team pulled off a hugely successful campaign, simply from analysing ingredient prices on supermarket websites!

📍Generating new data

Another technique we’ve used for many of our most successful PR campaigns is to produce our own new data through commissioning surveys. It’s a good idea to use a third party agency, like One Poll or Toluna which can provide a good sample size. Take a look at this survey we generated for a client, discovering how much pet owners know about the impact of smoking on their pets.

It is worth noting that running your own survey does not mean it will definitely come up with the results you’d like! Also, this technique often requires payment and a good portion of time. However, as you can see, these sacrifices can pay off in an impressive campaign.

Displaying your data

Once you’ve secured your facts and figures, the next important step is working out how to display it to the readers. Data visualisation is a big thing these days. Plain bar charts are being replaced with research formatted in more beautiful displays than ever before. 

Don’t neglect a good bit of brainstorming when it comes to visualising your data. Data is useless when not portrayed in an effective way, formatting really can be the make or break of your campaign. Graphs, charts, maps, animations and infographics can all be equally effective ways to display your data. We’d recommend following a few data visualisation blogs which can be great for inspiration. For example, Information is Beautiful presents bespoke projects where big portions of information are conveyed accessible and creatively.

Consider the website it is going to be displayed on and the audience you’re targeting. Another tip is to have a look at the data stories published recently by your media targets. Learn from how they presented their statistics to get some ideas for your own visualisation.

Pitching the story

So, you’ve gathered your data, and presented it stylishly. Now it’s time for the crucial pitch. Here are our do’s and don’ts to get your story sought after by every journalist:

>Keep your headline short and punchy, no more than 10 words ideally

>Determine why a journalist should want this story, and how it’s new or different and get that across from the beginning

>Don’t overdo it with the statistics. Pick a few key points from your data that are most relevant for your audience. Too many stats and there’s danger of your pitch becoming confusing.

>Remember to include a link to your website, where people can find the full set of data

Final takeaways 

We’ll end by reminding you that a data-led campaign may not always land immediately but that doesn’t necessarily mean your research is futile. Have a re-think and try a different angle – you may just get the results you’re hoping for.

To sum up, journalists and readers love data and in Digital PR we need to use this to our advantage. It brings context and credibility to a narrative. When illustrated in an effective way it’s the key to a world of increased backlinks, coverage and conversions.

Why not get in touch with one of our experts at Cedarwood today to discuss how we could help you utilise data for your SEO strategy. Fill in our 2-minute form here, it couldn’t be easier!

Blog Picture - Why Building Backlinks To Your Website Is So Important

Why Building Backlinks To Your Website Is So Important

by Digital PR & Outreach tips

I’m sure you’ve heard of backlinks, but why do they matter so much, and how can they be secured?

The Cedarwood team have heaps of experience in this area of SEO, and in today’s blog we’re going to explore what backlinks are and a strategy for building them to your domain.

Whilst there are numerous SEO concepts to follow for increased site traffic, link building is a really great place to start. The more high quality and relevant backlinks you can acquire, the higher the likelihood of your site ranking well in the SERPs, because Google will view it as an authoritative source. Keep reading to find out exactly how to build those all-important links.

What are backlinks and why are they so important?

So, let’s begin with the basics. A backlink is one website linking to another with anchor text. Magazine and news articles will commonly use backlinks but you can find examples all over the internet; from scholarly literature to ecommerce websites. This is an example of us using anchor text to link to our most recent blog (which you should check out if you haven’t already!) 

Backlinks are gold dust because they act like a vote of confidence, suggesting to Google and other search engines that the linked website is trustworthy and useful. The domain receiving the backlink demonstrates better authority. Then, in theory, this in turn results in the website securing higher search rank positions because backlinks are one of Google’s most powerful ranking factors. The higher your rank, the more likely that your content will be seen! 

I’m sure you’re getting the gist now of just how important backlinks are. But to drill it in a bit more, I’ll remind you of the three pillars of SEO. It’s well-understood that search engine algorithms reward distance, prominence and relevance. So, it is crucial to secure prominence if you want your domain to rank, especially if focusing on local SEO. And what’s the key to building prominence? You guessed it, the ever-important backlinks.

Domain Authority Score

Unfortunately, you can’t just secure backlinks from any old site and expect your rank position to sky-rocket. To carry out successful backlink SEO, you really need to work on securing backlinks from sites with a high domain authority score and sites that are relevant to your subject matter.

The scoring system is logarithmic and runs from 1 – 100, with a higher score indicating authority and reliability. A high DA score and a strong website overall means that Google will be a big fan of your site, and you’re therefore far more likely to appear at the top of SERPs. You won’t be surprised to hear that these high scorers include the big-hitters: Youtube, Facebook, Wikipedia, IMDB etc.

You should always ensure that any backlink you acquire has been sourced from a reliable domain, ideally with a higher authority score than your own. If you’re ever wondering what a website’s score is, this can be easily found using a tool like Moz or Semrush.

Purchasing backlinks … is it really that bad?

There’s really no simple yes or no answer here. Whilst buying backlinks is a frowned upon practice and has historically led to Google penalties, more recently a paid link is likely to be ignored rather than penalised. In Google’s link spam updates in recent years, they have repeatedly used the words ‘nullify’ and ‘neutralise’, rather than ‘penalise’. So, no you’re unlikely to receive a fatal penalty if you choose to splash the cash on some links but we still wouldn’t recommend it. Let us explain.

Ultimately, buying links could result in a short term boost of traffic to your site, but you will quickly find that this isn’t sustainable. When bulk-buying backlinks online, you are often being supplied with low-quality links and Google knows which backlinks are high quality and relevant to your site. 

Perhaps your next thought is, fine I will make sure to only purchase high-quality links… I’m afraid to say that this is not advised either. High-quality backlinks are far more expensive than their low-quality alternatives, so it is often not feasible to secure many of them. You’re then stuck with one or two of these prized backlinks which, without high quantity, are unlikely to make a difference to your rank. Buying your backlinks, whether high or low-quality, has the potential to be at best a waste of money, and at worst the cause of a fatal penalty. I know the prospect is alluring, especially if you are a start-up with financial constraints, but it really is worth investing your time and money into sustainable SEO strategies.

How to build backlinks to your website naturally

We’ve put it pretty plainly that you shouldn’t pay for backlinks but should build them naturally. No stress though, following the right backlink-building strategy will get them flying in in no time – and without any attached risk. There are various methods you can use to acquire backlinks but here are a few of the most effective to get you started.

Digital PR

Digital PR is a strategy that has been rising in popularity as a sustainable method of link acquisition. It’s a technique in which traditional PR principles are applied to online content and can be carried out in a number of ways. Some of the most effective Digital PR tactics that we utilise at Cedarwood include:

📌Newsjacking – identify a newsworthy topic and place your client at the centre of the conversation. This can be done proactively (researching events in advance) or reactively, like when we recreated Harry and Meghan’s Oprah garden backdrop for a client in the garden furniture sector. Monitoring the media and turning around newsjacking content efficiently can be a speedy way to secure links, and highlight your clients’ expertise.

📌Data-Led Campaigns – another expertise-driven approach to Digital PR is a data-led campaign. We recommend using free sources like ONS Data and Google Trends to pull together your data, then back this up with a fresh angle and some expertise from your client. And…data doesn’t have to be dull! Here’s an example of a data-led campaign we executed for our client, looking into the cheapest roast dinners. These campaigns can then be outreached to gain some great backlinks.

📌Thought Leadership – this is another effective approach for Digital PR which positions a senior representative of your client’s brand as an expert in their field. Done effectively, it’s a failsafe way to build trust with your audience, and secure quality links back to your site. Identify your target audience and pain points that your client could provide valuable insights on. Then, create helpful content, remembering to update it regularly to keep it fresh. LinkedIn is a fab place to share thought leadership PR and reach the decision-makers in your industry, as are email newsletters.

Include linkable visual content

One of our favourite backlink hacks is to create engaging assets that other websites will want to link to. 

Venngage found that 41% of marketers say infographics and illustrations help them reach their marketing goals. If you create an infographic or any other type of visual, people are more likely to naturally cite you as a source. This is because visual content is appealing and sharable to a user. Design your content with creativity and intention. Make sure that your assets are accurate and well-researched, even whilst being aesthetically pleasing!

Source: Venngage

Competitor backlink analysis

Conducting competitor backlink analysis is a great way to create backlinks for yourself at no cost. Begin with using an SEO software to pull together a list of the various websites that are providing backlinks for your competitor sites.

>Enter the competitor’s domain address into a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs.

>They’ll do the hard work for you and identify a list of domains that link to the competitor’s website.

>Then, set about reviewing these domains, highlighting the ones with high authority and a good domain score that are relevant to you.

>From here, you can then begin backlink outreach. Research the company behind the domain and find the best person to contact to discuss a backlinking opportunity.

*Another top tip is to make use of the Skyscraper Technique when looking at competitors’ sites. This is a proven process in which you find successful content that has earned a hefty amount of links, create better content, and then promote it to those who linked to the original piece.*

Source: Ahrefs

Reach out with relevant and useful content

You won’t be offering these domains a financial incentive for the backlink so, instead, you need to provide high-quality content that they will want to link to. It is essential that your content is well-researched, informative and readable. You may not have success with every domain that you reach out to, but leveraging your expertise to produce genuinely useful content will make it far more likely to be shared.

High-quality content is the gift that keeps on giving because every time a blog or business features your research, you’ll receive a white hat backlink (a link attained ethically through good SEO practice).

A failsafe way to make sure you’re producing informative content is to publish ‘ultimate guides’ or ‘step by step guides’ – like the one you’re reading! Users love simplicity and content that’s digestible, which a step by step guide is great at.

Get featured on resource pages

Another simple but effective way to secure backlinks is resource page link building. A resource page is a curated list of helpful links, and they exist for pretty much any niche topic you can think of. From information on the best tools for baking, to resources for dog training.

Being featured on a resource page sends a powerful signal to Google about the authority of your site and that you may be a thought leader here.

Resource link building is a sustainable SEO strategy because it’s clean and easy. There’s no money involved and, whatever niche you operate in, there will always be a number of good websites building resource pages relevant to what you do.

To get your website listed on these sorts of pages, all you need to do is fill out a form that will look something like this:

Carry out an audit for broken links

As we know, broken links will not get Google on side. Search engines prioritise overall web page experience when deciding where sites will rank, and a broken link causes frustration for the user.

Broken link building is the process of finding broken links on pages within your field and reaching out to the site manager with replacement resources of your own. It’s relatively simple and a win-win situation – the webmaster fixes their broken link, and you achieve an updated backlink so your previous efforts are not ignored.

So, how do you go about this? Well, firstly navigate to “Backlink Analytics” on one of the softwares we mentioned earlier (Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush). Then, type in a domain related to your niche and click the “Indexed Pages” tab. Click the “Broken Pages”/”Broken Links” box and look for any broken pages focused on topics that you have existing content for (or could create content about).

Effective Guest Blogging

The final effective way to get white hat backlinks is to find relevant guest blogging opportunities. It allows you to build your business’ backlink profile organically because you can include links to your own resources in the blog.

This is another mutually beneficial method; websites will welcome your guest blog content because it adds fresh topics to their content schedule for little effort on their end.

When looking for these opportunities, search for sites that:

  1. Accept guest post contributions
  2. Are relevant to your industry or services
  3. Have a higher domain authority (you can use Moz’s link explorer tool to check a site’s DA)

In particular, it’s definitely worth being fussy about a site’s domain authority score because the higher the number, the more traffic your backlink will receive.

Another important note is that Guest Blogging, like any effective SEO tactic is victim to abuse and manipulation. This is something that Google has cottoned on to, and you can be penalised for ‘spammy’ practices including: backlink-cramming, repeatedly publishing on the same website, writing thin content purely for the sake of a backlink etc.

Therefore, this technique should be used with caution and following best practices. As long as you’re producing relevant, original content for authoritative websites then you will be fine, and hopefully reaping benefits in no time.

Build high authority and relevant backlinks with Cedarwood Digital

Here at Cedarwood Digital, we have a talented and experienced team of Digital PR and SEO specialists on hand to provide a professional backlinking service. On your behalf, we reach out to reliable domains to secure high-quality backlinks to content published on your online site (created either by us or your in-house writers).

Why not speak to one of the friendly members of our team to get your backlinking strategy moving today. You can either send us your enquiry in an email to [email protected], or fill out our 2-minute form.

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Cedarwood Nominated For 12 UK Search Awards!

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsSEO

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

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

🎊 Best Use Of Search (Finance)

🎊 Best Use Of PR In Search (Silver)

🎊 Best SEO Agency (Silver)

We have been nominated for:

💥 Best Use Of Search (Finance) x2

💥 Best Use Of Search (Retail PPC)

💥 Best Use Of Search (B2C)

💥 Best Use Of Search (Health)

💥 Best Use Of Content Marketing

💥 Best Use Of PR In Search x2

💥 Best Use Of Data (PPC)

💥 Best PPC Agency

💥 Best SEO Agency

💥 Best Integrated Agency

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

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Cedarwood Appoints New Head Of Digital PR

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsLink Building

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

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

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

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

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

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Cedarwood Win Two UK Digital PR Awards!

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tips

We’re delighted to win not one, but two awards at the UK Digital PR Awards yesterday!

We took home:

🏆Digital PR Agency Of The Year

🏆Digital PR Campaign Of The Year – E-commerce

 

Here’s what the judges had to say:

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Digital PR has been a huge area of success for Cedarwood over the last 12 months, so we’re over the moon that this is now being recognised in such a competitive space🎉.

A big congrats to the team, for all their hard work! 👏

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Five Key Tips To Create An Effective Digital PR Campaign

by Digital PR & Outreach tipsSEO

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

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

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

The importance of Digital PR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five Key Tips

  1. Start With Your Strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Do You Research

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some additional tips for doing your research:

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

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

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

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

3. Create High Quality Content

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Promote Your Content

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

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

Here are some top tips to land coverage with journalists:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Measure Results

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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Cedarwood Wins Two European Search Awards!

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsSEO

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

On the night we took home:

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

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

Winner!!

Cedarwood Wins Digital PR Campaign Of The Year 2023!

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tips

💥We’re Winners!💥

We are thrilled to announce that Cedarwood has won the Digital PR Campaign of the Year award at the PR Moment Awards 2023 for our outstanding work with Little Loans. Our team of digital PR experts, including Alex, Amber, Beth & Elle, put in tremendous effort to bring this campaign to life and we are proud to see their hard work being recognised.

PR moments - winner 2023

Digital PR has been a significant area of success for us at Cedarwood in the past 12 months. This award, in addition to our recognition at the UK Search Awards, we are delighted that we have also been recognised for this directly within the PR space.

The judges were impressed by our well-researched and well-thought-out campaign, which produced excellent results. Our team worked closely with Little Loans to create a unique campaign that not only raised their brand awareness but also increased their online visibility. 

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Brighton SEO Deck: Using Digital PR To Enhance Your E-E-A-T Signals

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsSEO

On Wednesday I had the pleasure of speaking at Brighton SEO’s Online PR Show, along with a great line up of speakers, talking about all things Online PR and beyond!

My deck, entitled “Using Digital PR To Enhance Your E-E-A-T Signals” was designed to explore how Digital PR can and should be utilised to enhance those all important E-E-A-T signals that Google is looking for on a website, in addition to looking through some case studies of where we had used it effectively, with great impact.

This deck is particularly useful for clients who sit within the YMYL industry (of which we have quite a few!) where the importance of key trust and expertise signals become even more important due to Google holding the website to a much higher quality standard.

Some key takeaways from the talk include:

👻 Use your client’s expertise to generate great outreach ideas – focus on the key strengths of your spokespeople to understand the types of publications and areas you might want to cover & what they might be best suited to (and also most likely to be seen as an expert for!)

👻 Use Reverse Digital PR as a way of getting clients to come to you, rather than having to go to them, this is also a great way to establish yourself as a credible resource and it’s the gift that keeps on giving as journalists will continue to find and use this source over time.

👻 Think outside the box, if you can’t get any real life ways to showcase your expertise then innovate – look at soaps or fictional situations where you can demonstrate your expertise and still build those key signals

👻 Get your news listening right – digest news, as much as you can and get your news listening set up so that you are ready to jump on topical trends – this will help you to be first to the conversation when you need to be.

It was a great day with a range of great speakers & for anyone who missed the event you can catch it online again in the next couple of weeks or in the Brighton SEO vault! You can also view my slide deck here

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Digital PR: The Importance Of Deeper Page Link Building

by Digital PR & Outreach tips

Link acquisition has been around in many forms for years and has often been seen as one of the most important elements within an SEO campaign. Links are a great way to showcase to Google that people trust your website and find it useful – after all they are linking to it – and they’re also a great way to drive referral visitors to your website, in addition to building a great neighbourhood for your website to be in – but it’s not enough to just build links into your website and leave it at that, you need a strategy to maximise the impact of link building by looking at which pages you are directing your links into.

Many people focus exclusively on building links to the homepage, but in many instances this misses out a lot of value that can be created from deeper page linking.

Deeper page linking is something that has been discussed widely – but in practice it’s something that we need to actively incorporate into our campaigns. We can help to guide this by developing effective/thematic strategies to target specific sections of our website with targeted campaign to help grow authority within these sections and improve overall performance.

Why Is Deeper Page Linking Important?

So you might be asking – is it not enough for me just to build great links into my website? While building great quality links into a website definitely helps performance, if we look at the mechanisms of link flow and equity we can see why targeting these campaigns to specific sections can help to add value.

Think of your website as one entity – any link juice that comes into that entity is received by the page the link is pointing to – as such, if 80% of your links point into your homepage then this will likely be one of the strongest pages on your website. This is great if you want your homepage to rank well, but in most instances, the pages with the best user intent match and the pages we want our users to go to sit further within our website, usually on product or service pages – and these are the areas we really want to give an equity boost.

With so many pages often on your website and usually some form of navigation to link all your key pages to the homepage, by the time you get to these pages a lot of link equity has been lost along the way and therefore the value from these links can often be heavily deprecated from what it was when it initially reached the website – as such, the value of getting link equity from the homepage to your sub-pages is far less than getting value directly from the source – hence deeper page linking is a popular option. By building the link directly to the page you are maximising the equity that you are passing to this page and helping to give that sub-section a boost.

Building links to deeper pages on your website can provide several benefits for your SEO strategy. One of the most significant advantages is the improved visibility and authority of individual pages on your site. When you build links to deeper pages, you signal to search engines that these pages are valuable and relevant, which can boost their rankings in search results.

This is especially important for websites with a large number of pages, as it can be difficult for search engines to identify and prioritize the most important pages on the site. By building links to deeper pages, you can help to ensure that these pages are given the attention they deserve.

Another benefit of deeper page link building is the potential to increase traffic, conversions, and revenue. When you improve the rankings of individual pages on your site, you make it more likely that people will find and visit those pages. This can lead to increased engagement with your content, more leads or sales, and ultimately a stronger bottom line.

How Do I Know Which Pages To Target?

If you aren’t sure which pages to target then a good start is to look at the pages that you are trying to rank/optimise or the pages that are the most valuable/important on your website.

There are several techniques and tools that you can use to identify which pages on your website to build links to for SEO. Here are a few:

💡 Analyze your website’s analytics data: One of the best places to start is by analyzing your website’s analytics data to identify which pages are already receiving the most traffic. By building links to these pages, you can help to improve their rankings and drive even more traffic to your site. Tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics can provide you with detailed information about your website’s traffic, including which pages are the most popular.

💡 Use a backlink analysis tool: Another option is to use a backlink analysis tool like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush to identify which pages on your site are already receiving links from other websites. These tools can help you to identify the most authoritative and relevant pages on your site, as well as opportunities for building additional links.

💡 Conduct keyword research: Conducting keyword research can also be helpful in identifying which pages on your site to target with link building. By identifying the keywords that are most relevant to your business and your audience, you can create content that targets those keywords and build links to the pages that contain that content. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, and SEMrush Keyword Research can help you identify relevant keywords.

💡 Conduct a content audit: Conducting a content audit of your website can also be helpful in identifying which pages to target with link building. By reviewing your existing content and identifying gaps or opportunities for improvement, you can create new content that is optimized for search engines and build links to those pages.

Overall, there are many techniques and tools available to help you identify which pages on your website to target with link building for SEO. By taking a strategic approach and focusing on building links to your most authoritative and relevant pages, you can improve your website’s search engine rankings and drive more traffic, leads, and revenue.

What Tools Can I Use To Evaluate Which Pages I Should Build Links To?

There are several tools you can use to evaluate which pages you should build links to for SEO. Here are a few options:

💡 Ahrefs: A popular SEO tool that allows you to analyze the backlinks of your competitors and see which pages are getting the most links. You can also use it to analyze your own website and identify pages that are lacking in backlinks.

💡 SEMrush: Another popular SEO tool that allows you to analyze backlinks and identify the most important pages on your website. You can also use it to track your rankings and monitor your competitors.

💡 Moz: This tool provides a backlink analysis feature that allows you to see which pages on your site are getting the most links, as well as identify opportunities for new links. You can also track your rankings and monitor your competitors.

💡 Majestic: This tool has a comprehensive backlink analysis feature that allows you to see which pages on your site are getting the most links, as well as identify opportunities for new links. You can also track your rankings and monitor your competitors.

💡 Google Search Console: This free tool from Google provides insights into your website’s performance, including which pages are receiving the most traffic and which pages are linking to your site. This can help you identify pages that are important for SEO and prioritize them for link building efforts.

Ultimately, the best tool for evaluating which pages to build links to will depend on your specific needs and preferences. You may want to try out a few different options to find the one that works best for you.

How Do I Get Started?

It’s not hard to get started with deeper link building, with a couple of quick steps. Firstly, identify the pages on your website where you need to build internal authority, secondly create effective digital PR campaigns to drive links into these and finally, outreach your great campaigns. In no time you’ll be building authority into the website and reaping the rewards of it.