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

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsLink BuildingSEO

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

That is not how I think about it.

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

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

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

AI should improve efficiency, not replace human intelligence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Custom GPT 3: Find the coverage your monitoring tools miss

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The future of Digital PR is still human

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

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

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

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

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Organic Traffic Declining? How to Diagnose the Real Problem and Build a Recovery Strategy

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsSEOUncategorised

A modern framework for diagnosing sustained organic decline across relevance, intent, technical SEO, authority and verifiable trust.

Organic traffic declines used to be relatively easy to diagnose.

A migration went wrong. A robots.txt rule changed. Important pages were accidentally noindexed. Rankings dropped after a major algorithm update. A competitor simply started doing SEO better.

Those problems still happen.

But some of the most difficult SEO challenges we see today look very different.

There is no catastrophic overnight fall. There is no manual action. There may not even be one obvious algorithm update that explains what happened.

Instead, visibility slowly erodes.

A position-three keyword becomes position five. Position five becomes position nine. Pages that previously dominated a topic start competing with each other. Featured snippets disappear. Long-tail traffic weakens. Competitors gradually take a larger share of the SERP.

Six, 12 or 18 months later, the website is generating substantially less organic traffic – despite publishing new content, updating old content, fixing technical issues and perhaps even continuing to build links.

At this point, simply asking “what caused the traffic drop?” is often the wrong question.

What has changed about Google’s confidence that this website is one of the best sources to surface for these queries?

That distinction matters.

Modern organic recovery requires us to look beyond rankings and individual pages and evaluate the entire ecosystem around a website: technical accessibility, search intent, topical structure, content purpose, external authority, entity signals, reputation and user preference.

Google itself recommends investigating traffic drops across several possible causes rather than automatically attributing them to an algorithm update, including technical issues, spam issues, changing search demand, migrations and ranking changes.

So when organic performance declines, the first job isn’t to start changing things.

It’s to diagnose what type of decline you’re actually dealing with.

Step one: understand the shape of the decline

Before undertaking an audit, look at the trajectory.

The shape of a traffic decline often provides clues about where to investigate.

An immediate cliff-edge decline might indicate a technical problem, migration issue, manual action or major ranking reassessment.

A seasonal decline may simply reflect falling demand.

A gradual decline across many months is different.

This is particularly interesting when:

  • rankings are falling across both commercial and informational queries;
  • multiple sections of the website are affected;
  • competitors are progressively gaining visibility;
  • there is no obvious indexing catastrophe;
  • content updates provide only temporary improvements;
  • previously strong pages repeatedly fall back after being refreshed.

In these situations, we’re probably not looking for one broken title tag.

We’re looking for a systemic competitive disadvantage.

In one recovery analysis, an 18-month decline had affected high-intent and long-tail keywords simultaneously, while the brand had moved from one of the stronger visibility positions in its competitor set to one of the weakest. That pattern was important because it suggested the issue needed to be addressed at a broader website level, rather than by simply refreshing a handful of individual pages.

This is why your first recovery report should segment the decline.

Brand vs non-brand

Has generic visibility fallen while branded traffic remains resilient?

Commercial vs informational

Are money pages declining faster than guides, or is the loss site-wide?

Page type

Compare services, categories, locations, guides, tools and editorial content independently.

Topic

Has one subject area collapsed while another remains stable?

Position movement

A fall from position two to four can create a large traffic reduction without looking dramatic in average-ranking data. Google specifically recommends distinguishing small position changes from genuinely large ranking losses when diagnosing declines.

Clicks vs impressions

Falling impressions may indicate lost visibility or demand. Stable impressions with falling clicks may point towards SERP changes, weaker positions or changing click behaviour.

Don’t start with solutions. Start by determining where confidence appears to have been lost.

Step two: stop assuming that more content is the solution

One of the most common responses to declining organic traffic is:

“We need to publish more content.”

Sometimes you do.

Frequently you don’t.

AI has dramatically reduced the cost of producing acceptable written content. As a result, simply possessing a 2,000-word guide covering the same entities and subtopics as every competitor is increasingly unlikely to create a meaningful competitive advantage.

Google’s own people-first content guidance explicitly warns against creating large quantities of content primarily to attract search traffic, writing outside your genuine area of expertise or summarising what other people have already said without adding substantial value.

This changes the role of a content audit.

Don’t just ask:

Is this page optimised?

Ask:

Why should this page exist?

Then:

Why should Google prefer this page to every other page satisfying the same query?

Those are very different questions.

A website can have technically competent content and still decline because its pages have become indistinguishable from the rest of the SERP.

Step three: audit intent before you audit keywords

One of the first areas I look at during a recovery project is intent clarity.

A common problem on mature websites is that pages gradually accumulate content.

A commercial landing page starts with a conversion-focused proposition. Then an FAQ is added. Then a 1,500-word SEO section. Then comparisons. Then definitions. Then related queries. Then another content refresh adds another 800 words.

Eventually the page is simultaneously trying to:

  • sell;
  • educate;
  • compare;
  • answer FAQs;
  • rank for long-tail informational searches;
  • explain the market;
  • target several adjacent commercial keywords.

The result is technically comprehensive but strategically unclear.

This is a common pattern in recovery work: mixed commercial and informational intent can dilute transactional relevance, while multiple pages targeting overlapping intents can cause cannibalisation. The response should be clearer intent mapping, page-level NLP analysis, testing content positioning and CTAs, and improving internal linking to establish a clearer hierarchy.

That is a useful model for any website experiencing decline.

For every strategically important URL, define:

Primary intent -> Primary query family -> User stage -> Page purpose -> Conversion action

There should be very little ambiguity.

Commercial page

“I understand the solution. I am evaluating providers. Help me take action.”

Explainer page

“I need to understand the subject before deciding what to do.”

Comparison page

“I understand my options. Help me evaluate them.”

Trust page

“I am considering this company. Give me enough evidence to believe it is legitimate.”

Trying to make one URL fulfil every role can weaken all of them.

This becomes even more important as search extends beyond traditional SERPs into AI interfaces.

A cleaner architecture can deliberately separate:

  • commercial pages designed primarily for human conversion;
  • guides and explainers designed for information retrieval;
  • trust and legitimacy content designed to answer risk and verification questions.

For higher-stakes searches, that can also mean incorporating clear definition blocks, step-by-step explanations and transparent risk disclosures.

The principle is simple:

One page doesn’t need to answer every possible question about a subject. It needs to perform its specific job exceptionally well.

Step four: find and resolve cannibalisation

Intent problems frequently lead directly to cannibalisation.

And cannibalisation isn’t simply “two pages contain the same keyword”.

The real problem is unclear ownership of an intent.

If Google repeatedly rotates several URLs for the same query, that can indicate that your site architecture isn’t clearly communicating which page is the definitive destination.

Map your important queries against URLs and look for:

  • multiple pages swapping positions;
  • location pages targeting essentially identical intent;
  • blogs outranking service pages for commercial searches;
  • guides competing with categories;
  • legacy pages retaining links despite being superseded;
  • internal links pointing to several competing URLs using similar anchors;
  • canonicals and redirects contradicting your preferred hierarchy.

Then make decisions.

Merge pages where appropriate.

Redirect obsolete URLs.

Differentiate genuinely separate intents.

Strengthen internal links towards the canonical topic owner.

Rewrite overlapping pages rather than simply making each one longer.

The objective is clarity.

Search engines shouldn’t have to guess which URL represents your strongest answer.

Step five: check whether Google is actually experiencing your site the way you think it is

Content strategy won’t fix a website that Google struggles to crawl or interpret.

Technical audits during recovery therefore need to go beyond ticking off status codes and Core Web Vitals.

One particularly useful source is server log data.

Analytics tells us what users do.

Crawl tools tell us what a crawler can access.

Logs tell us what search engines are actually requesting.

For larger websites, log-file analysis can expose priority pages that receive surprisingly little crawling, orphaned sections, excessive bot activity on low-value URLs and internal-linking structures that fail to communicate commercial priorities.

During a recovery audit, investigate:

  • indexability;
  • canonicalisation;
  • redirects and redirect chains;
  • crawl patterns;
  • orphaned URLs;
  • duplicate and near-duplicate content;
  • faceted navigation;
  • XML sitemap quality;
  • internal linking;
  • JavaScript rendering;
  • URL architecture;
  • crawl waste;
  • Core Web Vitals;
  • mobile usability;
  • structured data;
  • site migrations and historical URL changes.

Google also recommends looking holistically at page experience rather than treating any single metric as the answer.

Technical SEO creates the conditions for recovery.

But technical SEO alone often isn’t enough to produce it.

Step six: understand the trust ceiling

This brings us to one of the most useful concepts when diagnosing prolonged organic stagnation:

The trust ceiling

“Trust ceiling” isn’t a Google metric.

There is no Trust Ceiling score hiding inside Google’s systems.

It’s a strategic way of describing something we increasingly observe in competitive organic search.

A website can have:

  • technically strong architecture;
  • well-optimised content;
  • reasonable backlink metrics;
  • relevant pages;
  • competent internal linking;

…and still struggle to progress.

Why?

Because compared with the websites around it, there may simply not be enough independent evidence confirming that this entity should be trusted for this particular subject.

The website reaches the limit of what on-site optimisation alone can achieve.

That’s the trust ceiling.

This pattern is particularly visible in websites experiencing long, gradual declines rather than dramatic penalties: the business continues improving content and acquiring generic links, but competitors possess much stronger external validation in the niches that matter.

To understand whether this is happening, traditional backlink-gap analysis isn’t enough.

You need to audit three separate authority gaps.

Domain authority gap

At the simplest level, do competitors have materially stronger backlink profiles?

Useful – but this tells only part of the story.

Topical authority gap

What subjects are those backlinks validating?

Imagine two financial brands each have 1,000 referring domains.

Brand A’s links predominantly come from generic lifestyle, entertainment and syndicated news websites.

Brand B is repeatedly referenced by financial journalists, lending publications, consumer-finance organisations, accountants and regulatory commentators.

A raw referring-domain comparison could suggest parity.

A topical analysis tells a very different story.

Entity authority gap

Finally:

How strongly is the brand itself associated with the subject?

Who gets quoted by journalists?

Whose experts appear in industry coverage?

Whose research gets cited?

Which brand repeatedly appears alongside the entities, terminology and issues defining the sector?

This matters because external authority is broader than backlinks alone.

Coverage, expert commentary, mentions and semantic associations can collectively create clusters that repeatedly connect a brand with a specific field of expertise.

Step seven: close authority gaps with hyper-relevant Digital PR

This requires a different approach to Digital PR.

Historically, link acquisition was often treated as a numbers game:

More links = more authority.

But a link profile consisting of hundreds of disconnected publications doesn’t necessarily explain what a company is authoritative about.

Instead, ask:

Where does this brand need to appear for its expertise to make sense?

This is the basis of hyper-relevant Digital PR.

The aim isn’t to abandon national media or high-authority publications.

It’s to create the right blend of reach and relevance.

A smaller specialist industry publication may contribute far more to a particular authority cluster than a superficially impressive placement completely disconnected from the subject.

Relevance beats reach.

Industry publications, specialist journalists, targeted reactive commentary and highly specific thought leadership repeatedly reinforce the connection between brand + topic + expertise.

A recovery-focused PR programme might therefore include:

Niche commentary

Place genuine experts in the publications already influencing your target market.

Reactive newsjacking

Become a reliable expert source when stories relevant to your specialism break.

Original data

Create information journalists can’t obtain elsewhere.

Thought leadership

Develop distinctive viewpoints rather than rephrasing accepted industry wisdom.

Research assets

Turn proprietary data, FOI data, surveys and internal insight into genuinely referenceable resources.

Original research is particularly powerful because the brand becomes the origin of the information, rather than simply another website commenting on it.

Over time, the goal is to create authority clusters.

One relevant mention isn’t authority.

Repeated corroboration from multiple trusted sources around the same subject starts to create something much more defensible.

Step eight: move from E-E-A-T checklists to E-E-A-T 2.0

This is where traditional E-E-A-T audits also need to evolve.

First, an important clarification.

E-E-A-T is not a single Google ranking factor.

Google describes E-E-A-T as a collection of concepts represented by multiple signals, and its guidance identifies trust as the most important element. These considerations carry particular importance for YMYL subjects involving areas such as health, financial stability and safety.

The mistake is turning that guidance into a checklist.

Add an author box.

Add an About Us page.

Add five references.

Add a “reviewed by” label.

Done.

Except none of those elements proves very much by itself.

This is why I use an expanded framework I call E-E-A-T 2.0.

The shift is from:

declared trust -> verifiable trust.

Your website might say:

“We’re experts.”

But can that expertise be independently validated?

You might say:

“We’re award winning.”

Can those awards be verified elsewhere?

You might claim:

“Trusted by thousands of customers.”

Does independent evidence support that?

You might add an “expert reviewed” label.

Does the reviewer actually exist as an identifiable professional entity with credentials and a reputation outside your website?

The E-E-A-T 2.0 framework therefore focuses on three ideas:

  • Verifiable identity.
  • Verifiable claims.
  • Verifiable reputation.

And underneath those sit five broader trust clusters.

1. Identity

Can search systems confidently determine who is behind the website?

That can include organisations, founders, authors, experts and reviewers.

Consistency matters.

2. Provenance

Where did the information come from?

Who created it?

What experience informed it?

Was it reviewed?

What methodology produced the data?

When was it updated?

Good provenance turns anonymous information into accountable information.

3. Reputation

What does the wider ecosystem say about you?

Relevant editorial mentions, reviews, references, citations, awards and industry recognition matter because reputation cannot be created entirely through self-declaration.

4. Compliance

Does the website behave like a responsible organisation in its sector?

That may involve editorial standards, regulatory transparency, policies, risk disclosures and appropriate governance.

It also means considering publishing behaviour itself. Producing enormous quantities of low-value content simply because keywords exist can create the opposite impression from genuine expertise.

5. Demand

Do people actually choose the brand?

Branded searches, brand-plus-category searches, direct navigation and repeat behaviour can provide useful indicators of genuine market preference.

Together, these five areas create what I call a Trust Graph.

Trust isn’t generated by one author bio. It emerges when multiple independent signals consistently corroborate each other.

A useful question during any recovery audit is therefore:

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

If the answer is no, you have identified an important vulnerability.

Step nine: build trust infrastructure, not just trust pages

This distinction is important.

Don’t respond to a trust problem by creating a new “Why Trust Us?” page containing 1,500 words written by the marketing team.

Instead, build infrastructure that makes trust easier to verify.

Depending on the organisation, that could include:

  • editorial standards;
  • expert profile hubs;
  • detailed author biographies linked to independently verifiable profiles;
  • content review processes;
  • transparent update histories;
  • original research centres;
  • methodology pages;
  • complaints policies;
  • regulatory information;
  • clear business details;
  • independent review profiles;
  • case studies with verifiable outcomes;
  • industry memberships;
  • expert speaking and commentary;
  • data sources;
  • appropriate citations.

The distinction is moving from isolated assets towards repeatable systems: editorial standards demonstrate governance, expert hubs connect content with identifiable expertise, methodology disclosures explain how conclusions are reached, and research centres create material genuinely worth citing.

This is significantly harder to fake.

And that’s the point.

Step ten: create a recovery flywheel rather than chasing individual ranking wins

Successful organic recovery rarely comes from one magical optimisation.

It comes from several improvements beginning to reinforce each other.

Better intent alignment improves relevance.

Better architecture strengthens topic ownership.

Better content satisfies users more effectively.

Better technical structure improves discovery and consolidation.

More relevant external coverage strengthens authority.

Stronger expert visibility improves entity associations.

Greater visibility creates more opportunities for users to encounter the brand.

Greater recognition can increase selection.

That selection creates more visibility.

And the cycle starts again.

Trust -> Visibility -> Selection -> Reinforcement -> More Trust.

It’s also why shortcuts tend to plateau.

Buying another 50 links might temporarily move a metric.

Publishing another 100 AI-generated articles might increase indexed-page count.

Adding another 2,000 words to a commercial landing page might make your content score turn green.

But none necessarily creates a reinforcing ecosystem of relevance, authority and genuine user preference.

And then AI search raises the threshold again

This approach matters beyond traditional Google rankings.

Search is increasingly becoming an environment where systems don’t simply retrieve ten possible answers.

They synthesise information.

That creates another decision:

Which sources are trustworthy enough to include, reference or cite?

Google’s current guidance for its AI search experiences still emphasises fundamentally familiar principles: unique and useful content, good page experience and making content technically accessible to Search.

But strategically, the implication is significant.

SEO has traditionally focused heavily on ranking eligibility.

Generative search increasingly introduces another consideration:

citation eligibility.

Can the system confidently understand:

  • who you are;
  • what you specialise in;
  • where your information came from;
  • whether other trusted entities corroborate your expertise;
  • whether your brand is consistently associated with this topic?

That makes topical PR, original research, identifiable expertise and strong provenance increasingly valuable assets.

The objective isn’t simply to make a page relevant to a keyword.

It’s to make the organisation a credible source for the subject.

A practical organic traffic recovery framework

When I approach a sustained organic decline today, I work through five interconnected layers:

1. Diagnose

Understand when, where and how visibility declined.

Separate algorithmic changes from technical problems, changing demand, SERP changes and genuine competitive loss.

2. Relevance

Map every important page to a clear intent.

Resolve cannibalisation.

Improve topic ownership, internal linking, page purpose and content alignment.

3. Technical foundations

Ensure search engines can efficiently discover, crawl, render, understand and consolidate the pages that matter.

Use crawl data, Search Console and – where possible – server logs rather than relying on a single audit tool.

4. Trust

Audit identity, provenance, reputation, compliance and demand.

Ask whether claims made on the website can be independently verified.

5. Authority

Compare your external authority at domain, topical and entity level.

Then use hyper-relevant Digital PR, expert commentary, original research and specialist coverage to close the gaps that actually matter.

These activities shouldn’t happen sequentially.

A strong recovery strategy addresses them in parallel.

That might mean beginning technical auditing while remapping high-intent pages, while Digital PR starts building external signals from day one.

Because recovery isn’t usually about fixing one broken thing.

It’s about rebuilding confidence across the entire organic ecosystem.

What should you measure during an SEO recovery?

Traffic and rankings still matter.

But they shouldn’t be your only measures.

I’d also track:

High-intent visibility

Are commercially important query clusters actually recovering?

Cannibalisation

Is one preferred URL increasingly becoming the stable ranking page?

Competitor share of visibility

Are you reclaiming ground rather than simply gaining impressions in isolation?

Qualified organic conversions

Recovery should ultimately reach commercial performance.

Relevant authority growth

Are you gaining coverage in the subject areas where competitors historically dominated?

Mention quality

Who is talking about the brand, and in what context?

Entity consistency

Is the same expertise being reinforced across your website, media coverage, expert profiles and third-party sources?

Branded search

Is market demand for the brand itself changing?

SERP feature visibility

Are you winning snippets and other enhanced search features?

AI citations and mentions

Is the brand appearing as a source or recognised entity in relevant generative searches?

Recovery should be measured as growing confidence, not simply a line moving upwards in Semrush.

The biggest mistake: fixing symptoms instead of causes

When a website has been declining for a year, the temptation is to search for one explanation.

“It was the core update.”

“We need better content.”

“We don’t have enough backlinks.”

“Our Core Web Vitals aren’t good enough.”

“The domain isn’t authoritative enough.”

Perhaps.

But prolonged organic decline is often cumulative.

Your commercial pages become less aligned with intent.

Content starts competing with itself.

Competitors improve.

Your external authority remains generic while theirs becomes more relevant.

Your authors have limited external footprint.

Your claims are difficult to verify.

Your content architecture expands without strong governance.

User preference moves elsewhere.

Each weakness might be relatively small.

Collectively, they change which website looks like the safer, clearer, more authoritative answer.

And that’s why recovery requires a coordinated strategy rather than another content refresh.

The future of organic recovery is about rebuilding confidence

One of the most useful principles in Google’s quality guidance is that trust sits at the centre of E-E-A-T.

That doesn’t mean technical SEO is obsolete.

It doesn’t mean content doesn’t matter.

And it certainly doesn’t mean there is a mysterious “trust score” that agencies can optimise.

It means that relevance, technical quality, experience, external authority, reputation and user signals increasingly need to make sense together.

So if your organic traffic has been declining despite repeated optimisation, stop asking:

What else can we add to the website?

Start asking:

What evidence is missing that would make this website the obvious source to trust?

Sometimes the answer will be content.

Sometimes it will be architecture.

Sometimes it will be intent.

Sometimes it will be technical.

And sometimes you’ll discover that you have simply reached a trust ceiling that no amount of on-page optimisation can break.

That’s when the recovery strategy needs to extend beyond the website itself.

Because increasingly, what you say about your expertise matters less than whether the rest of the web can verify it.

Relevance gets you considered. Trust gives you staying power.

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

Director Amanda On The Main Stage At Brighton SEO

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsLink BuildingPaid SearchPaid SocialSEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until October!

[blog]_[70 Free Data Sources For Your Digital PR Campaigns (All In One Place!)]_[Blog Picture]

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

by Digital PR & Outreach tipsSEO

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!

[blog] [northern digital awards] [blog picture]

Cedarwood Take Home 4 Northern Digital Awards!

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsSEO

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! 

[blog]_[Five Key Tips To Create An Effective Digital PR Campaign]_[Blog Picture]

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! 

[blog]_[Case Study: How we earnt 121 links for one Digital PR campaign]_[Blog Picture]

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

by Digital PR & Outreach tips

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.