Link building Archives - Page 2 of 2

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:

Create content related to the medical negligence field which the client can back up with their legal expertise
Collect new and informative data that could used by journalists, and is relevant and therefore usable for months to come
Ensure that the content is helpful to the British public and is sensitive to the current climate and difficult times within the medical sphere
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.

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.

Posts tagged: Link building

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