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

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

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

Government Agencies:

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

Industry Associations & Research Bodies:

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

Public & Academic Institutions:

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

Business & Consumer Data Providers:

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

Data Portals & Open Data Initiatives:

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

News & Media Resources:

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

Trade Associations & Professional Bodies:

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

Retail & Consumer Insights:

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

Social Media & Online Trends:

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

Sustainability & Environmental Data:

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

Health & Wellbeing Data:

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

Education & Skills Data:

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

Transport & Travel Data:

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

Culture & Entertainment Data:

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

Public Opinion & Polling Data:

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

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

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Cedarwood Take Home 4 Northern Digital Awards!

We’re delighted to share our success at the Northern Digital Awards last week! 

We attended the awards ceremony here in Manchester on Thursday and were awarded: 

🏅Search Agency Of The Year

🏅Best SEO Campaign (Patient Claim Line)

🏅Best Digital Marketing Campaign – B2C (Little Loans)

🏅Best Digital Marketing Campaign – Finance (Cash Lady)

We are so pleased with this outcome, especially given the tough competition from a host of esteemed agencies. It’s really exciting to see our hard work this year recognised through such respected awards.

Here’s what the judges had to say:

Thank you to our clients for another successful year, and a huge well done to the team for their efforts! 

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Five Key Tips To Create An Effective Digital PR Campaign

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

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

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

The importance of Digital PR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five Key Tips

  1. Start With Your Strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Do You Research

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some additional tips for doing your research:

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

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

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

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

3. Create High Quality Content

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Promote Your Content

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

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

Here are some top tips to land coverage with journalists:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Measure Results

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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Rounding Up Five Recent Quick Turnaround Newsjacking Campaigns

With the first half of 2022 already drawing to a close, we thought we’d have a quick look back at five recent quick turnaround newsjacking campaigns which have delivered high-quality, relevant, super expertise driven links to our clients with very little prep or turnaround time.

Knowing how important our E-A-T signals are, particularly for some of our clients in Your Money Your Life verticals, building high quality, expertise-driven links is important to our client’s SEO success. Here we’ve rounded up a couple of examples from recent months where jumping on the latest trends has helped us to deliver solid links for clients with a quick turnaround time.

Cheapest Roast Dinner

Links: 112 / Average DR: 55

The Cheapest Roast Dinner campaign for our client Cash Lady was one of our favourites – a super simple campaign to carry out with a clearly defined purpose and an outcome which had a great hook for journalists and relevant at a time where the cost of living is increasing and general costs are going up. This campaign involved researching which supermarket offered the cheapest roast dinner, compiling the data together and then presenting it on our client’s website. We created some juicy angles around the data and seeded it out to our media lists.

The campaign was a great success placing well across a range of regional publications, in addition to a number of key dailies including The Daily Record, The Daily Star and Birmingham Live.

New Years’ Resolutions

Links: 23 / Average DR: 82

If you’re like us then the New Year is a great time for change and New Years Resolutions are one way to at least encourage yourself to change or improve something (or just give something up) from the year before – but we all know that these never last – so we looked into search data for one of our ecommerce clients MIST, to find out exactly how long people manage to hang onto those New Year Resolutions before they start slipping back in to their old habits.

The answer? Not very long – after reviewing and analysing search data it turns out that February 19th is usually the key date – less than two months after the resolutions have started! To reach this conclusion we analysed five years’ worth of search data and evaluated when specific keywords spiked that related to an ending of a specific resolution. With most resolutions revolving around health – it was easy to see when a spike in keywords such as “takeaway” rose that people were starting to give up on these habits…

Once we had the data we pulled together some great press release angles and sent it out to our media lists. A super quick piece to turnaround which landed over 23 links across some high tier publications including AOL and Yahoo!

Childhood Hepatitis

Links: 29 / Average DR: 70

As cases of childhood hepatitis rose towards the start of the year it was something that was trending broadly within the news. We worked closely with our medical negligence client Patient Claim Line to produce expert comments on how parents can help to identify if their child could potentially have meningitis and what to look for – as well as what to do if they find that they have suffered from misdiagnosis or a delayed diagnosis.

The piece was quickly picked up by mainstream media and landed 29 links with an average DR of 70.

Holiday Savings Tips

Links: 42 / Average DR: 66

Brits love a summer holiday and as summer holiday season started to ramp up we saw that a lot of newspapers and publications were starting to publish savings tips and tricks which would be particularly effective in the current economic climate. With this in mind we teamed up with Instagram Mum Emma Stretton to deliver some great holiday savings tips at a time where everyone was looking to make their money go a little further.

Once we’d spoken to Emma we pulled this together in press release form with some great hooks for journalists and outreached it to our media list. The content landed really well with over 40 links generated on high quality publications including Wales Online, The Sun, MSN and the The Birmingham Mail.

Gardening Hacks

Links: 15 / Average DR: 74

As we approach summer, gardening has been a hot topic of discussion across a lot of news channels, working with our client Hayes Garden World we have jumped into numerous conversations and added our expertise to news jack and build high quality links into our client’s website. Topics that we have contributed to include: “How to fertilise without chemicals”, “Everything you need to know about planting trees”, “How to prevent weeds growing” and “Making the most of your garden in March”.

Our expert commentary and news jacking has been featured across a range of high profile publications including House Beautiful, Daily Express, The Mirror, Ideal Home and the Yorkshire Post.

Newsjacking is a great way to land solid links by jumping on a trending topic and it’s also a great way to push expertise driven links into your website, adding that all important E-A-T value! To find out more about our newsjacking service and Digital PR or how we could help to gain you brand coverage and valuable high quality links enquiry today!

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

Expertise, Authority and Trust is a topic widely discussed in the digital space, especially when it comes to SEO. Although Google has over 400 different ranking factors that it takes into consideration when it’s looking to rank a website, we know that expertise, authority and trust are pretty high up there in terms of the ones that really matter.

When people talk about E-A-T they usually focus on what we can do on-site to help build this across a website.Common elements that get discussed are external trust reviews, on-site testimonials, author profiling, attribution and external linking. There are of course many more on-site tactics, but E-A-T isn’t just limited to on-site workIf you are really looking to enhance this area, especially if you are a website that falls into the Your Money Your Life category, then utilising your external linking building techniques properly can also be a great way to build this trust.Which will result in an even bigger boost to your SEO performance.


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

So building E-A-T friendly links is a lot easier than it sounds and, in general, if you are building links to the website through Digital PR then they should already be E-A-T friendly, as they will be genuine, high quality links, designed to exhibit the expertise of your website.

However,  if you do really want to focus on enhancing your E-A-T, and you want some great Digital PR to support the improvements that you’re making on-site, then you can put a particular focus on any of the areas below:


Thought Leadership


Thought Leadership is one of the best ways to build expertise and trust.It’s built on giving your expertise to an external party or creating something which exhibits your expertise that you can showcase online. This alone can help to build the trust and authority of your website in a great, knowledge-sharing approach.

Thought Leadership can be quite straightforward.You can either interview your client or choose relevant representatives from your client’s business (or your business) to provide their expertise. Have a bio at the ready to prove to journalists why they are experts in their field, and keep up to date with newsjacking opportunities or proactive opportunities for upcoming events to get them in front of the press. If you’re looking for proof of how effective this can be, check out our Little Loans case study to find out more about how targeted thought leadership can drive solid results. 


Newsjacking


Newsjacking is another great way to build external E-A-T for your brand.This is the concept of jumping on something that is trending in the news and coming up with great ideas or a new angle from your resident expert. You can then seed this content out to journalists to add into their story, or create a whole new story and showcase your client’s expertise by adding an authoritative comment to a trending topic.

The idea doesn’t have to be complicated or time consuming; we did a great piece with our client Hayes Garden Worldand their resident gardening guru Angela Slater, on what happens when your houseplants get lonely after lockdown.It was a simple idea with a quick turnaround which landed a lot of high quality links – you can read more about it here.


Data Campaigns


Data campaigns are another great way to showcase your expertise and, if you are looking to use a more data-led approach to your outreach, then this is a great place to start. Analysing your own data, or data that is relevant to your industry, can not only showcase expertise within the industry, but it can also provide a very valuable resource to journalists. They may choose to link back to it time and time again as you are really adding value.

Many times I’ve seen businesses publish guides on their website such as “How Much Energy Do Your Household Appliances Provide.”It’s a really simple concept which is data driven and could be easily tied back to an energy provider or anyone who works in the energy industry. It’s also the gift that keeps on giving, as if you get that page to rank it means that journalists will continue to use it as a resource and link to it! 


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

To find out more about how our Digital PR and Link Building service can help your SEO efforts, you can contact us here.

Case Study: How we earnt 121 links for one Digital PR campaign

Overview

The client: Patient Claim Line 

The campaign: Survey data uncovers how NHS delays are affecting Brits 

The results:

  • 127 pieces of coverage    
  • 121 links    
  • Average DR 56.67

Background and objectives

Patient Claim Line is the UK’s highest-rated medical negligence Solicitors, who currently deal with one in 10 of all medical negligence claims in England and Wales.

They needed a PR campaign to earn them coverage in UK publications, in turn generating links to their website to improve it’s authority. We were particularly focused on gaining links from new domains to broaden their link profile and improve their overall SEO.

In terms of the content of the campaign, we had four main aims:

  1. Create content related to the medical negligence field which the client can back up with their legal expertise
  2. Collect new and informative data that could used by journalists, and is relevant and therefore usable for months to come
  3. Ensure that the content is helpful to the British public and is sensitive to the current climate and difficult times within the medical sphere
  4. Make sure that the content can be reworked to have a number of different angles, and therefore can appeal to medical, national and regional publications

Strategy

After brainstorming and researching current topics related to medical negligence, we decided to delve into a subject that had gained some media discussion but was lacking hard statistics –   the effect of NHS delays on the British public over the past twelve months. 

To source new and reliable data, we worked with a survey provider to collect information on how patients feel like the pandemic has impacted or delayed their NHS treatment.

We analysed the data from a national perspective, as well as split regionally to see which areas of the UK were impacted more than others.

A survey report was created detailing all of the findings including regional splits, and also offered legal advice from Patient Claim Line’s experts on patient rights if their treatment has been delayed. This informative guide was published on Patient Claim Line’s website as a useful hub for journalists to refer back to. 

That’s the beauty of this content – it will be of use to journalists for months to come because it isn’t too time sensitive.

The content

We found some brilliant statistics that we knew journalists would love, including: 

  • Half of Brits have had their medical treatment delayed by the NHS since the pandemic started and 45% have seen their condition get worse as a result.
  • Almost a third of the population have opted to delay their own medical treatment since the pandemic started
  • Half of those who delayed their own treatment have also seen their condition worsen
  • 53% delayed their treatment due to fears of catching COVID, followed by 52% who don’t want to put a strain on the NHS
  • 78% of the UK appreciate the NHS more than they did before the pandemic


We created multiple press releases with different angles to target journalists in a variety of fields. We also coupled the data with expert comments from Patient Claim Line to make the content more helpful to the reader if they’ve been affected by NHS delays.

The results

The results were fantastic.

We achieved 127 pieces of coverage from predominantly new domains for the client. 121 of the pieces of coverage included a link back to the website, and these links were from sites with an average DR of 56.67 (compared to the client’s current DR of 27).

Some examples of the variety of coverage include:

The content was extremely relevant to the Patient Claim Line, helpful to the reader and even brought in leads through the website of those looking to make a medical negligence claim. We smashed all of our objectives, and the client was thrilled.

Check out another one of our client case studies in our blog ‘Backlinks and Brainteasers: a marriage made in SEO’ or find out more about linkbuiling on our Digital PR services page.

Why Are Links Important For SEO

Why are links important for SEO, and how can I get them?

If you’re in the digital marketing world, you’ve undoubtedly heard that getting backlinks from other websites is crucial for SEO. It’s important to utilise anything that can help to boost your website’s search ranking, so we’ll shed some light on why links are so important and teach you how to build them yourself.

Why are links important for SEO?

Building backlinks to your website (getting other websites to link back to yours) sends out a trust signal to Google that your website has good authority, and therefore should be ranked higher. However, this depends on the type and quality of the website that posts the link. Essentially, if a quality website which Google trusts links back to your site, Google determines that you too are a quality website, so should be ranked higher. You can work out the quality of a website by checking its domain rating on websites such as Ahrefs or Moz: the higher score the better.

However, Google can also penalise for backlinks which it sees as unnatural. For example, spamming forums, creating tonnes of directory listings, paying bloggers on fiver to link to your website are unnatural ways to build links, which in turn will lower your position on Google. It is far better for SEO to secure a few strong links a month than to build hundreds of low-quality backlinks in a short space of time.

Hence, you should always ensure that links have a natural connection to your business, which you can achieve with the following techniques.

Brand reclamation

 

It’s always great exposure when a publisher features your brand in their article, though sometimes they will mention a brand without linking back to the brand’s website. Whilst this can be frustrating, it’s easy to maximise this opportunity and secure a link from a high-quality website. Most of the hard work has already been done because a journalist has already noticed and written about your brand. Simply drop them an email thanking them for featuring your business and request a link to your website be added to the page in case their readers want to find out more.

Tracking brand mentions online is very easy to set up so that you don’t miss these opportunities. There are several web-monitoring tools that help you do this, such as Google Alerts (free), Ahrefs alerts and Gorkana. Some publications may have editorial policies not to include external links, but it’s always best to email and check.

Media tools

 

Now that GDPR is in place, media databases with opted-in contact details of journalists are more important than ever for sourcing good quality PR opportunities and contacts. There are a variety of tools you can pay for, as well as free databases that scrape public email addresses from across the web.

One relatively cost-effective way to find feature opportunities is through journalist alerts. These are email alerts that journalists send out to source contacts or information for the features that they are writing. You can then respond to queries that are relevant to your brand, offering information, images, product reviews or quotes. Not only do these tools allow you to effectively build links in a natural way, but they also allow you to develop relationships with key journalists in your market without the need of a pricey media database. Building your own database of journalists that you have successfully worked with makes it easier to work with them again in the future, as you can either contact them with valuable content or they may contact you with relevant upcoming features to you.

Local links

 

Big-budget content campaigns can bring in a lot of high quality links, but exploring your local link opportunities can also be a good cost-effective way to build links on a smaller scale. Investigate whether you have any current connections that you could source a link from. Is your Managing Director an alumni of a prestigious university? If so, perhaps they could make a donation or share their business expertise on their website. Is there a local charity you could work with? Or a local group linked to your industry? Explore current connections that your staff and management have to see if there are any natural links that could be secured by sending an email.

Competitor analysis

 

If a key competitor outranks you for several of your keywords, performing an analysis of where their links are coming from is a great way to see what kind of outreach work they are undertaking. Tools such as Ahrefs enable you to identify which publications your competitors are receiving links from, as well as spark ideas for potential outreach content.

Are there any high quality review websites that your competitor has a link on? If they do and your brand doesn’t, then this can be an area to explore. Do they have any links from high quality bloggers? Again, if they do then you can contact the blogger who wrote the article to introduce your brand and highlight what you can offer them, should they be planning any articles which you could contribute to.


10 Outreach Tips From Brighton SEO 2018

10 Outreach tips from Brighton SEO 2018

On 28th September, the Cedarwood Digital team travelled south to attend Brighton SEO, a huge one-day search marketing conference. Here are 10 outreach tips that we picked up during the day:

Broken backlinks

Whilst many companies are familiar with fixing backlinks to their own websites, now is the time to start taking advantage of competitors’ backlinks. Screaming Frog, a website crawling tool, allows companies to find any inbound links to a competitors website that result in a 404 error. Once these have been identified, outreach teams can contact the journalist who published the article to suggest that they link to their company’s website instead. If the article contains content that the company’s website doesn’t currently have, then create this content first and then pitch it to the journalist alongside a link to the content. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links 

Reverse image search

This may be an old technique, but it is still useful for identifying new link opportunities. Find a graphic or image that a competitor had featured in national publications and then use this in a Google image search. This will show the websites that covered that graphic and the context that it was used in. Then work on creating a graphic with updated information on it and contact the publications to see if they would be interested in your material. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links 

Hashtags

Take a competitors URLs and paste it into a link tool such as AHREFS or Majestic and then identify their new backlinks. If there any hashtags in the articles they have recently received links from then make a note of these and simply Google these hashtags. This is a great way to find out which bloggers have worked with a competitor which gives an indication of the articles that they publish. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links 

Backlink analysis

A backlink analysis is a great way to understand where a competitor has been recently securing links – for example, using the SEM Rush gap analysis tool. This will not only show the domains that are linking to your competitor, but also exactly where the link is and its context. It is likely that your competitor has a large number of backlinks in their profile so it is recommended to compile a list of around 15 top opportunities to start with and then build this list up in stages. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links 

Set up alerts

Set up Google or Ahrefs alerts for your business and then set up alerts for your competitors. This will tell you when your competitors are being mentioned online, meaning that you can see if they are receiving links from high authority websites. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links 

News & media jumping

This is a technique that is used on Twitter by those who work in PR and it involves using a set of hashtags to request specific information. These hashtags are #PRRequest and #JournoRequest and journalists often use these when they are are trying to find someone to comment or interview for a story or feature. Sign up for email alerts so that you don’t miss out on a potential opportunity. Charlie Marchant – Ways To Definitely Get Links For Your Business

Trade & industry publications

Industry-specific publications are always on the lookout for relevant content so use them as part of your outreach strategy. If you have any content that you would like to share that would be useful to others in your industry, then pitch this to relevant journalists. It is likely that the publication operates in print as well as online then this could also lead to some fantastic exposure for your business. Charlie Marchant – Ways To Definitely Get Links For Your Business

Secure links before you produce the content

Time is very important and every second of an outreach campaign counts, so try to secure a link before you have produced the content. If you have an idea for a piece of content or infographic, check first that this is of interest to your target publications. You can find out by pitching your idea to journalists and writers to get their feedback. If you are able to compile a small list of publications that would be willing to use your content with a guaranteed link then you can go ahead and make the content. Stacy MacNaught – Securing Links Before You’ve Even Produced Your Content

Surveys

If you want to create content or a press release on a certain topic that requires the public opinion, then try surveys. Google Surveys allow users to gather information in a short space of time, whilst Survey Monkey allows you to collect a large pool of data. Analyse this data, collate your findings and write them up into an interesting piece of content. Charlie Marchant – Ways To Definitely Get Links For Your Business

Data outreach

If you have a content idea that requires data and statistics from reputable sources, then try government bodies. The  Office For National Statistics (ONS) and Freedom Of Information Requests are great for getting reputable data from government departments, such as the police force or the department for education. There are already requests available that other users have submitted but you can submit your own. Charlie Marchant – Ways To Definitely Get Links For Your Business So if you work as part of an outreach team and have been struggling for campaign ideas, then try some of these outreach tips to ramp up your link-building strategy. READ NEXT: Why are links important for SEO?