Digital PR can help rankings, organic traffic and more.

The term digital PR may differ slightly depending on who you ask.

We recently discussed the differences between US and UK digital PR with Rise at Seven’s Will Hobson on our podcast.

But ultimately, the goal is the same: to get high-authority links to boost rankings and brand awareness.

As digital PR continues to grow and refine worldwide, with new agencies and sites adopting the strategy daily, we thought it was worth exploring how brands use digital PR to support their SEO goals.

No two brands are the same, but there are some key strategies that you can use in digital PR to help support SEO.

How Does Digital PR Help SEO?

In short, studies show that getting high-authority links can improve rankings.

Most wield digital PR by getting links to a page directly and then internally linking to a secondary page that they want to get ranking.

Link building does not happen in a vacuum. We’ve all but confirmed that other factors, like clicks, may also impact rankings.

So, first, I’ll show you some studies showing a strong correlation between ranking and links. Later in this post, I’ll show you significant evidence of organic traffic boosts from digital PR to individual pages.

Last, I’ll discuss directional metrics that ultimately make up the digital PR mindset.

Links Impact Site Authority

Several flagship studies have shown a correlation between overall site authority metrics and backlinks.

One study from Backlinko analyzed over 1.18 million keywords and the top ten ranking URLs for each to identify correlations.

They found that the top-ranking result in Google has almost four times more backlinks than positions 2-10.

Another point found that Ahrefs Domain Rating correlates with higher rankings.

SEMRush’s Ranking Factors Study analyzed over 16,000 keywords and analyzed the top 20 positions and their performance.

As you can see in the image below, several backlink factors (in yellow), including domain authority, number of referring domains, and number of backlinks, are highly correlated with ranking.

A study from Internet Marketing Ninjas found that over 96% of websites ranking in the top 10 of Google had more than 1,000 unique referring domains.

However, not all links are equal. In our post about the number of backlinks you need, I showed how looking at the raw quantity of links is misleading.

Sites need quality, relevant backlinks to improve their domain’s authority and rank for keywords.

Another Moz study reached similar conclusions. In 2021, it examined the first 20 organic results for every MozCast keyword (10,000 keywords).

They, too, found that the number of links to a page was highly correlated with ranking.

They also found that Page Authority was highly correlated with ranking, meaning that links from authoritative sources play a bigger role.

After the 2024 Google leak, even more potential connections between ranking and links have come to light.

What the Google Leak Says

Many SEOs have found connections between links and ranking based on the leaked documentation from Google.

The documentation mentions a locality and bucket when referencing links and ranking:

A link’s quality is categorized as low, medium, and high:

Many believe this supports Google’s use of a link’s relevancy and quality for ranking purposes.

The documentation even supports evidence that Google can track links across pages even when not directly linked.

This supports the common digital PR practice of getting links to a page and then passing that link value internally via an internal link to a product or service page. (More on that later.)

There’s a lot of evidence to support how high-authority, relevant links can impact rankings. But let’s look deeper at where Google is headed with AI and LLMs.

AI Wants Unique Information

Google wants things they haven’t seen before.

After the Helpful Content Update, many sites were penalized for simply regurgitating the same information as everyone else. (Though Google does seem to show bias to news sites—more on this later.)

One of the central tenets of their self-assessment has been to provide “original information, reporting, research, or analysis,” as seen below.

But the future brings even more adjustments to Google, including AI.

LLMs Need Fresh Information

Campaigns that provide unique data are primed to succeed during AI.

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews need fresh information and data. When they cite information, you can be cited within that.

Check out the example below of how ZipRecruiter is getting mentioned in the AI Overview and then cited as a source below:

So, by providing unique data in your content, you put yourself in the best position to rank and get links and exposure over time.

But Are Links the Cause of the Rankings or the Result?

In some cases, they can go hand-in-hand. In the next section of this post, I will show you how many brands use content to build links and organic traffic over time.

Some might argue that you build links because a post is ranking, not vice versa.

This can be the case sometimes.

A well-known brand like Nike may not need to manually build links to help their pages rank because they naturally get mentioned in the press.

Some keywords have high link intent and are often searched for and cited within blog posts or news articles.

Sites focusing on these high-link intent keywords can gain more links over time (as we’ll see next.)

Let’s look at how to run a digital PR campaign that ticks SEO boxes.

Using Digital PR to Increase Rankings

In all cases, finding that happy ground between keyword-driven content and pitchable digital PR content is where you can make the most significant impact.

You can drive relevant organic traffic and bring in high-quality, relevant links.

The challenge is always how to make keyword-driven content link-worthy.

The answer is with unique content.

So, let’s look at some examples of how brands do this to improve their SEO.

Best Cities for X

In a “best cities” or “index” campaign, the goal is to create a ranking of cities, states, or countries, rank them, and then pitch the winners (or losers) to those regional news publications.

Most start by identifying keywords that are relevant to their industry. For instance, here is a snapshot of keywords with “best cities for”:

The question to ask is, can this get me relevant links? Can this get me coverage from a place that makes sense and supports my statements?

For example, when creating digital PR for a construction rental company, I knew I wanted to focus on construction industry publications.

However, it might not be that obvious. Sometimes, you must leave your primary service offering area to get links.

For example, WalletHub is a personal finance publication. They rank for hundreds of “best cities for X” queries tangentially related to personal finance.

Take a look at this snapshot from Ahrefs Site Explorer:

Digging into the backlink profiles for these posts, you’ll see a steady stream of backlinks and increasing organic traffic over time.

You can also see short surges of traffic right when the post is published, pitched, and subsequently updated and repitched.

For example, here are the best cities for families:

But, to make this work, you don’t have to be a high-authority site like WalletHub.

Here is a DR 63 site that did a post about the best cities for runners:

Here is a DR 42 site that looked at the best cities for biking:

Again, you can see the impact of the digital PR campaign on organic traffic at publishing and right at the time of the update.

One thing you may notice is that the traffic is waning between updates. This is due to a few factors, but “best cities” don’t always have much interest year-round. And if sites aren’t getting clicks or searches, the traffic can drop.

So, let’s look at a keyword type that can get more consistent traffic: statistics.

Statistics Posts

Statistics posts are any kind of post that rounds up relevant statistics about a current subject and presents them in a digestible, easily citable way in a post.

The way these work for digital PR and SEO is that they have both search volume and high link intent, meaning they are topics often searched for and cited.

For instance, here is the link profile for a customer service statistics post. You can see that it slowly gains links over time.

However, to truly make this digital PR, you must pitch them first. And to make something pitchable, you need to give something of value.

Value can be something like a pitchable asset, such as this construction statistics post, which includes an infographic that can be pitched for coverage:

But another way to create value is by using proprietary data for your statistics posts.

This is data that no one else has and can be extremely valuable when pitched correctly. (Check out how to pitch media.)

Hubspot’s Marketing Statistics report is an excellent example of this.

They survey and publish their data results each year. As you can see, their links grow along with the organic traffic (although it dips a bit yearly, it’s not nearly as drastic as the city studies mentioned above).

They rank for “marketing statistics” and get links over time.

However, statistics keywords aren’t the only ones with high link intent. Other general data queries can bring in passive links while still being pitchable.

Let’s look at these next.

Data-related queries

General data-related queries can also have high link intent. If you can make these pitchable, you can see gains across organic and links.

This study from Attentive is based on proprietary survey data, giving them something unique to pitch, while being also setting themselves up to rank.

It ranks for “millennial shopping habits,” which gives it high link intent but also a monthly search volume of 80.

Looking at the overview in Ahrefs, you can already see the traffic and link gains moving together.

Here’s another piece by Insurify that looks at the most ticketed cars. They used their proprietary data from thousands of insurance claims to determine the car models that get the most speeding tickets.

Then, they pitched it for coverage.

This piece ranks for “most ticketed cars in america”, which gets 250 searches per month, and has accrued over 400 links.

You also see a boost in links and rankings when they published and refreshed.

(There is slightly more than meets the eye to this post as it was updated after Insurify’s merger with Compare, which is most likely why you see that big boost with the publish date.)

But let’s look outside the data-related queries and into my favorite (and most underutilized) way to tie digital PR to SEO: informational queries. That’s up next.

Informational Queries

You can also get creative with how you tie digital PR campaigns to keywords.

If you can take any old question and provide proprietary data to make your content pitchable, you are uniquely set up to rank for the keyword and grow links over time.

Casper took the informational query “couples’ sleeping positions,” which gets 800 monthly searches, and made it pitchable by gathering their proprietary data.

They answered the query in the post by listing the different sleeping positions and what they meant, but then they supplemented the post with survey data to pitch to journalists.

You can see from the results that the piece gains organic traffic and links over time.

In all of these cases, digital PR directly impacts organic traffic.

Next, we’ll examine how brands use digital PR to build domain authority.

Using Digital PR to Increase Rankings Indirectly

Building links to a product page or money page can be challenging. So, the common practice is to create links to related content and then internally link to a money page or home page.

Most digital PR campaigns use the indirect approach to supporting rankings.

Because of this indirect relationship, you are more likely to find directional data supporting the campaigns.

Here are some signals you can look at with this tactic:

Money Page Traffic Increase

With this tactic, you can pass some of that link value to help your money page rank specifically.

I say “some” of that value because it is unclear how much passes through via an internal link. (It is safe to say that if it were 100%, then we’d see everyone’s money pages ranking all over the place.)

But if you remember this graphic from earlier, it is clear Google may track this kind of internal linking:

So, this is what we mean when discussing using digital PR to help SEO indirectly. You both boost the overall site domain authority, making it easier to rank overall, and you boost a specific page through internal linking.

The digital PR campaign below by ScrapCarComparison looked at how dirty car interiors are.

They got over 190 referring domains, and while it doesn’t rank for a keyword, you can see that they link to one of their money pages at the top of the piece.

This way, all the link value gained can be funneled to their money page. Then, if we look at the money page itself (which is a page about scrapping cars), we can perhaps see a brief boost.

Homepage Traffic Increase

You can also look at homepage traffic increases.

One of my favorite posts of all time is from Signs.com. They asked users to try to draw common logos from memory and plotted them on a graphic based on their proximity to the actual logo.

This has drawn over 500 referring domains over time.

And when you look at the impact, there is a boost in traffic to their homepage around the time that piece went live and began gaining links.

See that next bump in March 2020?

A very successful post about coronavirus signage went live then. In the below you can see a screenshot below of the burst of links right after March 2020 that coincides with the boost in the overall traffic:

These may not be the only cause behind the spike in traffic during those timeframes, but they play a part.

A Mix of Metrics

As you can tell, it’s virtually impossible to give a 1-to-1 attribution in this fashion.

Your money page or homepage traffic may increase based on numerous other factors, such as social or traditional PR.

Your digital PR campaigns can also increase brand awareness, increase interest in the brand, and send more traffic to your homepage.

So, this is where you start looking at directional gains rather than individual metrics. Sure, you can have a KPI of links per campaign, but connecting the dots to sitewide rankings becomes more difficult.

This makes sense because digital PR (and other tactics) should be part of the marketing mix, not your entire strategy.

Do You Want Homepage Links or Links to Content?

From an SEO perspective, if the content targets a keyword, get a link to the content.

If your brand isn’t well known or growing, getting links to your homepage may be more beneficial to establish some authority and awareness in the space.

But, for an established brand, linking to a blog might make more sense, though I’ve seen it go both ways.

Either way, if you are getting links to a homepage, ensure that it is optimized to pass value to your priority pages by linking to them prominently on the page.

What to Think About in the Pitch Process

Digital PR doesn’t end with a great piece of content. The pitch process is just as crucial to supporting your SEO goals.

Here are a few tips for ensuring your pitch gets you the best value.

1. Pitch to Quality, Relevant Sites

When building your target list, getting links from relevant sites is critical.

Google’s leaked documentation may show that links from highly clicked sections are worth more than those from low clicked sections.

Since most cannot access a website’s click data, you can lean on relevance and homepage.

Most sites highlight their homepage’s most important/relevant sections.

For instance, a site like Timeout, based on its homepage, mainly focuses on travel. You see it in the tagline.

And it’s one of the only categories they highlight on the homepage:

So, getting a link from them about a travel study would most likely hold more weight in Google’s eyes.

2. Pitch to Sites That Get Updated Frequently

The documentation also shows evidence that Google considers links from frequently updated sites.

What this primarily points to is news sites, aka digital PR.

3. Pitch to Sites That Provide Follow Links

Although new evidence shows that Google tracks unlinked and nofollow links, the most direct value is from followed, linked mentions.

So, to get the most SEO value out of a campaign, we should focus only on sites that provide follow-links.

You can easily tell if a link is a follow link using an SEO extension like Nofollow.

I cover this extensively in my post about building a media list from scratch.

4. Push Your Brand Keywords in Your Pitch

Anchor text and the surrounding text are essential for SEO. (Again, the new leaked documentation supports this.)

So, you want to ensure that your brand name is mentioned correctly.

Since many journalists copy exactly from a pitch, you can nudge them in the right direction by providing your brand name and a short description they will likely include in the article.

For example, if I were pitching a study to a journalist from our site, I’d say “a study by email outreach tool, BuzzStream.”

If you’re interested in learning more, we have some comprehensive articles on writing media pitches and email outreach templates.

5. Follow Up to Ask for a Link

Sometimes, journalists link incorrectly. They may forget to link, link to the wrong page, or sometimes even use a click-tracking link instead of your link.

Although journalists are incredibly busy, if your goal is to support SEO, it is always in your best interest to follow up and ask them to change the link.

The email draft would look something like this:

I wrote a whole guide about finding and claiming your unlinked mentions.

6. Maintain SEO Best Practices Sitewide

This might be obvious, but if your site doesn’t follow SEO best practices, you are hindering your digital PR performance.

You may get links, but to effectively support your core keywords or domain authority, you don’t want something like site speed or keyword cannibalization slowing you down.

SEO Doesn’t Equal Leads

To wrap up here, it’s worth mentioning that good SEO doesn’t always mean you are converting customers, generating leads, or turning a profit with a website.

SEO can support organic and some branding goals, but you need to consider the entire funnel for a customer.

Digital PR can be wielded for bottom-funnel keywords, but it is limited.

Think of digital PR as a supporting player in the entire marketing mix. You can integrate it into conversion goals, but if that’s the only thing you are leaning on for leads, you may be limited in what you can accomplish.

The post Digital PR and SEO: Getting The Most Value Out of Campaigns appeared first on BuzzStream.

In the case study, the RebootOnline team shared some fascinating insights into writing subject lines based on a study they ran.

So, I wanted to know more.

Oliver told me I needed to talk to Helena because she had put together this excellent subject-line study.

This episode is packed with great insights on ideating, iterating, and testing your subject lines to perfection.

Main Takeaways

1. Avoid Questions: Subject lines with questions have a 13% lower open rate than those without. Statements tend to perform better.

2. Be Direct and Clear: Providing a clear and direct subject line that tells the recipient exactly what they will get increases open rates.

3. Leverage Buzzwords: Using trending topics, celebrity names, or current events in subject lines significantly boosts open rates.

4. Keep It Short: Subject lines between 4 to 8 words tend to perform better, as they are concise and less likely to be cut off in email previews.

5. Avoid Overused Keywords: Common words like “data,” “study,” and “survey” don’t significantly impact open rates and can sometimes be seen as spammy.

6. Use Listicles Wisely: Listicle headlines (e.g., “Top 10 Beaches”) perform slightly better, but ensure they are relevant and compelling.

7. Personalization Matters: Personalizing subject lines based on the recipient’s preferences and writing style can increase engagement.

8. Mobile-Friendly: Shorter subject lines are more user-friendly for mobile devices, ensuring they are not cut off.

9. Build Relationships: Focus on building long-term relationships with journalists by being transparent and avoiding deceptive tactics like fake “RE” or “FWD” tags.

10. Test and Iterate: Experiment with different subject lines and analyze what works best for your audience, refining your approach over time.

Resources Mentioned

Reboot’s Case Study

Reboot Online

Note: below is the slightly-edited transcription.

Can you lay out the methodology for your study?

Yes, sure. The methodology we used is analyzing over a thousand subject lines targeting a variety of topics. Our aim was to identify the ideal headline length and the type and styles of headlines that are most likely to grab journalists’ attention.

We analyzed the headlines into four groups and wanted to compare their open rates.

So the four categories were:

1. Interrogative: so the type of headlines that end with a question mark,
2. Research-based headlines: headlines that start with keywords such as data, study, research, things that show the journalist that the story we’re trying to give them is based on data research.
3. Listicle headlines: those headlines that are, that organize the results of the study by, uh, rankings or lists.
4. Buzzwords: headlines that include current events, any trends or celebrity names, and things that are happening at the moment and will grab journalists’ attention.

We analyzed this and compared the open rates between them to see what does well and what doesn’t and what tends to increase open rates and what doesn’t.

Are those headline types primarily what you all send at Reboot?

Uh, yes, I would say not only those, we do different other types of headlines, but we felt that categorizing by this would be good to kind of have a better idea of open rates.

What industries did you send to?

Yes, we, because we actually analyzed, uh, the headlines that we, uh, used in a specific amount of time. We included a variety of topics. So, from property, sector, lifestyle, and travel industry to motor, finance, and entertainment. So it was quite a big pull.

Why do you think subject lines with questions have had a 13 percent lower open rate than headlines without questions? 

Yeah, we found that interesting because it shows how headlines with questions are quite predictable and ambiguous.

So I think predictable in a way that, uh, you’re kind of asking the journalist for a response. You’re not actually giving them what they need. You’re asking for information. So, I think that this can potentially lead journalists to just skip opening the email because they already know the answer. So it’s pretty predictable.

You’re not actually giving them the data.

Could you give us an example of a question subject line?

Yes. An excellent example of a question in a headline, which we even gave in the blog post on BuzzFeed, is why Plymouth is the most haunted place in Britain.

So it’s a headline we used that didn’t get as many open rates as we had when we actually said Plymouth is the most haunted place in Britain or is amongst the most haunted places.

This is because we’re giving the journalist a sentence that we are actually, we know the answer, whereas the other one, you’re kind of requesting the journalist to think of reasons why, if that makes sense.

Yeah. I recall us having a rule at Siege where it was like, if that journalist could answer the question, no. Like that would get them to not open the email, you know, like, that’s not a good type of question. So if it was like, is Plymouth the most haunted place, if they knew right off the bat, like, yes or no. Then they’re, they’re just going to click through it, right?

Yeah, we say a lot at Reboot that there’s always the so what that we have to think about when, uh, not only in head, in subject lines, but also like the hook of the story that we’re doing or even like, um, the type of data we are searching. Uh, to get our data team, our, uh, data team is actually trying to find, we’re always trying to think about the, so what, so what we’re giving to the journalists is a, so what kind of a story or headline that they will look and say, not really interesting.

It’s not giving me anything.

So, if I were writing a post about, say, the 10 best beaches in the UK, what would a subject line question be?

The top 10 beaches you said in the UK are beaches. I think, like looking at our study, you can apply them four to the four categories that we analyzed. So we could look at, for example, no question mark and avoid maybe saying data or survey.

So it would be probably something more tailored to the region. So for example, go to the region that come up on top or the city that come up on top and say, X is the best, has the best beach in the UK.

It’s really important to understand the journalist you’re reaching out to when thinking about subject lines.

Analyze the type of subject lines and headlines they use in their articles and also the website and outlet. So, how does this outlet tend to be more positive or negative about the topic of your study?

You can approach that in the same language as they use because this will help the journalist feel familiar. The journalist is going to look at their inbox and actually see something they’re familiar with and they know. So this is really important.

Why do you think open rates weren’t impacted by subject lines with keywords like data, study or survey?

I remember the difference not being very significant. But I feel that it’s because of overused keywords. First of all, these keywords have become very common subject lines. So if many emails that the journalists receive use this keyword, they may not, and your study won’t stand out enough to actually increase the open rates.

And I think that even if important words like data study are there, uh, at the beginning, maybe the best part of your study, the actual hook is at the end. This means that depending on the length of your subject line, it’s going to cut off.

So the journalist will actually see data reveals or survey reveals, but won’t see the rest.

Did you test anything like including the word “exclusive”? 

Yeah. Journalists are always searching for exclusives—not all of them, but they are always trying to find a more unique story. So yeah, they do make the difference. We’ve never done any study on this. Uh, so I don’t have data to back up, but I think speaking from personal experience really helps.

And I think it is a good way as well to start building relationships with journalists as well, because when you offer exclusive, you’re, uh, you’re starting there a connection that you could benefit from later on and they will benefit as well.

Are there any other keywords besides “survey” or “data” that people should avoid?

Um, I think it really depends on the study, isn’t it? But I do feel that it is more of what you want. There are always spam keywords as well; words that the mail server will see as spam and won’t actually deliver will go to the spam folder, so this is something to be mindful of as well.

So, this is something quite good that can help. We constantly try to find and avoid them because they can lower the open rates.

Yeah, sometimes not even words, but how you write the press release. For example, if there are too many uppercase, it can go to spam. Not all cases, obviously, but things to consider when writing.

Can you clarify what you mean by a listicle subject line?

Yeah, we call them listicle headlines that have this type of ranking or list. For example, the top 10 beaches to visit in the UK, the 10 worst TV series finales, or the five best coffee shops in London—this type of list is something we’re quite used to seeing online. So, this is the type of headline that we call a listicle.

Interestingly, there wasn’t a huge difference as well. The open rates were just 1 percent above. But I think that, again, this type of headline can be predictable depending on who you’re sending it to. I think all of the subject lines are pretty relative. It depends on who you’re sending to and the context of your story.

But before, this type of headline can fall in the place of being pretty predictable because it makes the recipient feel like they already know what to expect. But if you give the hook, for example, as I was saying, the X beach, the banks, uh, Y beach in the UK, for example, this already gives the hook, even though it kind of shows that you have a listicle style of content, if that makes sense.

Why do you think buzzwords helped open rates?

Yeah, it’s funny. This one wasn’t a surprise when we saw the results. I think it’s because obviously, the news cycle is always urgent, so journalists are trying to find things that resonate with their audience.

But it’s also timely. It’s happening at the moment, so trends, any celebrities that are in the, in the news at the moment, they’re doing something relevant, or, uh, even like special dates, Valentine’s Day, Easter, summertime, for example.

So, any of these words that people are talking about are what journalists want to write about because they are relevant to their audience.

So I think that’s the main reason why this type of headline does well.

I think it’s also being smart enough in the way you phrase the headline again, trying to always find the hook that links to that specific buzzword to actually make it relevant in your study.

It’s not only the buzzword that makes it relevant; it’s also finding that hook in your study that will be relevant and give the journalist something new to talk about that person.

Because people or specific dates are in the news. They’re overly shared; there is so much content about them that you have to find a unique angle that will add value to what you’re doing.

Using our beaches example are you saying it would make sense to try to find some type of event or buzzword that you can kind of tie that to?

Yeah. Exactly that. Yes. I think, I think the beach one is an excellent example for summertime, for instance. It’s an excellent way to tie both. We did one recently, a reboot that was about Taylor Swift. Obviously, she’s everywhere, and her tour was everywhere as well, with people trying to buy tickets. And there were a lot of scams in the news.

We decided to do a study on tips to avoid being scammed when buying Taylor Swift tickets.

So we used the relevant keyword there, Taylor Swift, but added a unique angle that was tied into what was happening in the news, and it did really well.

Is it better to tie these keywords or buzzwords in the ideation stage, or do you find it doesn’t really matter?

Different people have different ways of doing it, but I would say that, at least personally, I find that it is a constant process.

So, first, obviously, when you’re developing your strategy and have your campaign idea in mind, you will search for keywords related to your campaign. Then, you will go online and see how the media reacts to this topic.

They will use headlines differently. So it’s good for you to have this knowledge before even writing the press release just when you’re doing your research and ensuring that the keywords that you’re using in your study are accurate.

It’s a constant process because then, when you write the press release, you can revisit it again.

Is there something else you clicked on when writing that you can add to your subject line?

So we tend to do exclusives as well, but not always.

You could contact the journalist when you know what you want to do in the study.

For example, in our case, sometimes, uh, it is extensive data sets. So we want to make sure that this is actually like we’re giving, we’re analyzing the best metrics to actually create that story.

So reach out to journalists and ask like, uh, have this study that we are working on. Uh, is that something that is of interest to you?

While we’re searching for something in a study like that, having that feedback early on so you can build up, and I think the subject lines are similar.

You can try it out with the feeler emails.

What subject line do you use for a feeler email?

In this case, yeah, you can either go with an exclusive and say, look, we are doing this. If it is of interest to you, we can give you an exclusive.

You could put the exclusive in the subject line, or you can add “upcoming study” as well. For example, an upcoming study on UK beaches. Something like that gives the journalists an idea of what we are going to talk about.

Subject lines need to be clear of what you are delivering, and I think given this, yeah, there are specific words that they’re going to look at, and they were writing to know what it was about. It’s the key.

Do you recommend brainstorming lots of potential subject lines before choosing the best?

Yes, definitely. With digital PR, it’s about trying out different headlines and comparing industries, countries, and different journalists. It’s about seeing what works and then always trying to improve and use the one that stands out the most.

At Reboot, we work very collaboratively, so we always try to help each other with this as well. We always write different headline options that we think are relevant for that specific sector and always ask each other what we believe works or not.

Is that in Slack or do you have a formalized process?

Yeah, it’s on Slack, so it depends if you can do it with your team or company-wide. We tend to do this because we already have a feel of what will grab the most attention from journalists, but I think every person has a different way of doing it as well.

A/B tests work well also.

Again, I think that is always trying to improve from what you kind of learned in the beginning.

Can you expand on what it means to tailor the headline to a journalist?

What I am trying to say is that journalists have different ways of using headlines and approaching topics.

So, I think it’s important to keep this in mind when you’re writing and actually reaching out to the journalist about your study.

I feel that researching journalists’ preferences, writing style, what they like to cover, and how they cover that will help your subject line be more relevant than others when they’re actually going through their email inbox, if that makes sense.

I think some journalists will obviously have stronger opinions about something.

Regional journalists, for instance, will obviously come from sometimes the region they’re writing about. So they will be more protective about the results of this study than like any other person.

How far do you get into personalizing per journalist?

I think that’s a huge part of what we do, actually.

We try to personalize emails as much as we can, making sure that we know who we are reaching out to.

I think that this is important because sometimes we forget that we are building relationships with this journalist.

This starts very early on when you write your subject line and ensure it is relevant to that person.

It’s essential to understand that journalists are very busy people, and we must also respect their time.

We need to respect their preferences.

Obviously now emails are the biggest preference but it could be even the time you reach out to them. Not not all of them will work five days a week.

So I think we should do everything we can to make their lives easier. This is what we want, and it ensures that they know that on the other side here, we know who they are.

So, when you’re talking about personalization, it sounds like you are talking more about understanding the journalist’s preferences or beat rather than calling out an article. Is that right?

No, I think you can do both. We talk a lot about writing personalized emails to journalists. But I feel that personalization comes from this strategy of knowing who you’re reaching out to and understanding how they write.

I think it’s a combination of everything.

Do you feel like there’s ever a time when you should definitely personalize vs not?

I have encountered these two types. Some journalists say that they don’t like it and prefer a straightforward email. I think you can do both; it depends on the journalist, and that’s why it’s so important to understand the person who’s behind it.

Journalists quite like to know that you’re researching about them.

It takes a long time to personalize every email. Are there tips that you have for speeding that up and finding out the information that you need?**

I think BuzzStream is a good one.  There are various ways to personalize the emails on BuzzStream, which we find are very useful.

I feel that our job is to make their lives easier and build these relationships.

I find that it will save me more time if I have a good relationship with journalists.

I will have them in mind when I write press releases. Then I’ll write to them or ask them if this is something that interests them.

Would you like to receive this? It guarantees a link without much effort. I know what they like and what is relevant to them. I personally used that strategy when I did a lot of digital PR campaigns, and it worked well for me.

Buzzstream is a good way to personalize emails, but I always do feel that bulk send is something that we cannot do and we should avoid as much as we can.

You can build good results and get links without doing this.

So, I prefer the personalized email.

Why is the subject line word length so important? And then what kind of tips do you have for cutting out some words?

Four words is tricky. I think it’s just, I think maybe for content, everybody loves to try things. We tried to see if it worked. And, yes, I think that’s where this four word headline comes from.

We tend to use between eight and 11. I think that’s kind of the best practice, at least for me. Shorter headlines help us be concise and clear and also help us look at the strategy part of it.

It helps that it’s more user-friendly for mobile as well, and it helps that you don’t cut off when you’re in an email inbox.

So it’s just a little bit of a strategy, and it shows that it works. The shorter ones have higher open rates.

So I think it’s just avoiding extremes. Going over, I would say, 12, 13 words or going too low, like, four words.

Any final thoughts on the study?

Something I would say again is that I think everyone has different ways to do this.

Apart from the buzzword one, as you said, there are no very significant ones.

So I think, again, it goes down to what we were saying: It depends on who you were reaching out to.

So I think knowing, knowing the person that you’re sending your email to and researching about the journalist is better and more strategic.

Did you ever experiment with putting the website name in the subject line?

I’ve never tried myself, no.

Looking at the findings and the analysis we did, it could come down to familiarity.

Maybe that’s why adding a website name in the subject line works so well: the journalist will recognize it as a familiar name.

So it brings that and, uh, yeah, it makes the email show appear more trustworthy or even more relevant to them.

I’ve seen people recommend using RE: or FWD: in an initial email to make it appear like you’ve had a conversation already when you haven’t. How do you feel about that?

We tend to take the long-term route. I think, personally, this may result in short-term results that will increase maybe open rates and even lead to coverage. But it’s not sustainable.

From my point of view, the FWD or RE approach kind of compromises the relationship we are trying to build with journalists and makes them not see you as a trustworthy source.

At Reboot Online, we tend to follow the more complex and longer route, which is pro-journalist and prioritizes transparency with them.

And I think this lays the groundwork for lasting collaborations with them and ultimately also contributes to our clients’ positive reputations. If they see us as a trustworthy source, they see our clients as a trustworthy source as well.

The post Optimizing Subject Lines with Helena Maniglia appeared first on BuzzStream.

Those shared Google Sheets lists seem too good to be true because they are.

I’m not against guest posting. I have an entire post on guest blogging and how to do it effectively.

We also have a guest post list post, for which I weeded out over 800 sites to create a custom list based on several quality factors.

I’m against those shared Google Sheets that get passed around the web selling backlinks at extraordinary rates, like these:

If you do it right, getting featured on a third-party site can help build links, especially for new sites.

But since I receive these kinds of lists daily, it was worth writing a post about their value (or lack thereof).

Helpful Content Crushed Most Guest Blogging Sites

The problem with a list is that it gets outdated quickly.

Take any chunk of pages on a list like the one pictured above. You’ll find traffic metrics have dropped in previous Helpful Content updates or the recent March 2024 ranking system update.

For example, here are the organic traffic metrics for the first five sites on the list.

See the trend?

Google is out to get low-quality sites whose only goal is to profit from selling links.

In 2022, Google announced that it was using an AI-based spam-prevention system called SpamBrain to detect sites buying and selling links.

Not Every Placement Is What It Seems

One site that I get guest-posting pitch emails about all the time is MSN.

This made me dig deeper into this because I’ve also seen it on various spreadsheets.

When you look into the kinds of placements you can get on MSN, you find that they are essentially sub-sections of a site.

MSN used to be a news site. Now, it is essentially just a syndication platform.

You can see that they dipped during some of the previous Helpful Content updates in 2023.

That said, they still bring over 40 Million Organic Visits per year.

So why is getting a link from them potentially worthless?

You’ll notice it’s broken up into profiles when you dig into MSN. Anyone can create a profile if they follow MSN’s guidelines.

Based on what SEOs have learned from the Google leak, Google may value links from highly clicked site sections.

Furthermore, Google penalizes verticals that make less sense on a site.

For example, Google penalized coupon sections from top-tier sites like Forbes as site reputation abuse.

So, if the profile is well-known, like Newsweek or The Hill, and posts relevant news, you probably get some value from the link.

But the link likely isn’t valuable if a spammy link builder sets up a random profile that only lists random guest posts.

It may even be subject to a penalty at some point.

Google Most Likely Manually Devalues Sites

Another reason to avoid these sites is that there is evidence that Google has taken action to devalue sites manually.

I saw it in action.

I once had a conversation thread on LinkedIn, and someone shared a link to a Google Sheet of Guest Post Sites.

Google rep John Mueller jumped in (he wasn’t tagged anywhere) and just said, “Thanks for the link.”

This tells me that he would devalue all the links from those sites.

Of course, there’s no real way to tell; he never responded when I asked him about it.

However, the evidence is backed up by Google’s link spam guidelines, and there is no reason they wouldn’t want to devalue links from sites that sell placements for ranking purposes.

You Don’t Need As Many Links As You Think

I wrote an entire post explaining why you may not need as many links as you think.

Many evaluate their link building needs based on competitors. However, an analysis of most sites revealed that they have far fewer quality links than what appears on the surface.

For example, if I am a mattress site and went into link building thinking that I needed to compete with Casper, on the surface, it would appear that I need over 35K links from referring domains to stay competitive.

But when I run a quality check and filter out low-DR and low-traffic sites using Ahrefs’ Best Links feature, that number drops to 2,632.

Shifting your focus from the quantity to the quality of links will help you avoid succumbing to lists like this one.

So Why Do So Many Guest Post Spreadsheets Exist?

Why are so many people using spreadsheets like this to purchase link placements if they don’t work? Why do so many lists exist?

Some of the sites on these lists may have worked sporadically in the past, so people kept running with it.

Others who don’t necessarily have the time or knowledge to research SEO more deeply were sold on the quick shortcut to links.

Either way, they are no longer reliable based on Google’s data and actions in the past months.

What’s the Better Strategy?

Here’s an entire video I did on the better guest blogging strategy. It involves providing keywords, traffic value, and competitor insights to convince a site to accept your guest post.

Essentially, you pitch like an SEO content writing agency or freelancer.

Here is the condensed version below:

1. Find Sites Where You Want to Appear

First, you find sites contextually relevant to your product and not a direct competitor.

What I like about the strategy is that you’re not only beholden to these sites that accept guest posts.

2. Identify Keywords That Benefit Your Target Site

You want to provide so much value to your target that it’s hard for them to say no.

You find keywords for which your target site should rank but don’t. Look at the SERPs and competitors.

If I were to pitch BuzzStream, I would look at keywords that are valuable to BuzzStream. Are there keywords around link building or digital PR that are lacking?

3. Pitch the Keyword Metrics and Value

Aside from pitching the post idea, clarify why the keyword is valuable. Use search volume, click metrics, and traffic value to support your claims.

Ahrefs has all of these metrics for keywords.

For example, here are some metrics for “digital marketing trends.”

As I said, you don’t need to contact sites that accept guest posts. If you could do this correctly and find some people who may be low in writers, they may be looking for quality work and don’t have the time to do it.

Then, you add your link to that post naturally.

Or Consider Digital PR

Digital PR is the best way to get high-authority links. As we saw previously with Casper, a few high-authority links can significantly impact a site’s authority.

It is something that Google itself has lauded as quality content.

I love some of the things I see from digital pr, it’s a shame it often gets bucketed with the spammy kind of link building. It’s just as critical as tech SEO, probably more so in many cases.

— John … (@JohnMu) January 23, 2021

Many of my recent takeaways from the Google leak have all pointed to Google valuing high-authority links from news sites over random guest post sites.

We’ve covered numerous successful digital PR examples that have proven to be repeatable strategies across various industries and the essential tools to run a successful campaign.

The post Stop Using Shared Google Sheet Guest Posting Lists appeared first on BuzzStream.

We even had an entire podcast episode devoted to the differences between digital PR strategies US and UK with Rise at Seven’s Will Hobson.

Some people refer to digital PR as content-led link building. But there is a lot more to digital PR. There are also asset-less digital PR strategies that include pitching quotes to journalists.

Ultimately, digital PR is designed to build high-authority links to help you build your brand and rank better.

Instead of showing you digital PR examples by industry, I’ve broken it down into different ideation strategies and vehicles that drive the content.

Since most people reading this are interested in ideas for their brands or clients, I will avoid showcasing publications like NYTimes, Pudding, or VisualCapitalist, as well as independent artists and content creators like Neal Agarwal or others you might find on r/dataisbeautiful.

Those are all great examples of content that gets links and coverage, but they aren’t as helpful if you want to replicate them as a brand.

So, without further ado, here are some of the best digital PR examples that work today.

Keyword-Driven Digital PR

Strategically tying keywords to digital PR campaigns has many benefits. I actually wrote a whole post about tying search volume to a digital PR survey-type campaign.

• If you can tie search volume to your digital PR campaigns, you can get extra value out of the links that you build.
• Alternatively, you may need a little boost for some lower to mid-authority sites to get ranking. I refer to this as “jump-start link building.”
• Lastly, bigger brands that don’t necessarily need many links to rank can rank more quickly with a little link building.

Building links to a product, service, or “money” page can be challenging. Many brands utilize digital PR to drive links to an asset and then use internal linking to direct SEO or link value to their money page. (More on this in a bit.)

You have to go further up the funnel to find relevant keywords for your brand while still maintaining pitchability.

So, let’s take a look at a couple of examples.

1. Most Affordable Cities to Buy a House from Homebuyer.com

Strategy: Building a pitchable city “index” study around a mid-funnel keyword.

Homebuyer.com is a lender for first-time home buyers. When I worked for them, I helped create a post around the cheapest cities to buy a home.

To create the index (as some call it), I weighted a handful of criteria, such as homeowners insurance and transportation costs, and then assigned scores for over 800 cities.

Then, I divided the post into four sections: an overall list of affordable cities and a list of affordable large, medium, and small cities.

How to pitch: This gave me four rankings lists that I could pitch to journalists in the local media outlets in the top-ranking cities.

But since it’s a nationwide study, I knew national pubs would be interested.

Results: While the search term “cheapest cities to buy a house” isn’t likely to lead users to buy directly, it has a traffic potential of 3.6k monthly searches. They rank #5, and it has bought in over 80 LRD (Linking root domains, aka backlinks from unique sites.)

Coverage came from high-authority media like Yahoo, Lifehacker, and local news sites for top-ranking cities like Chicago and Cleveland.

Whereas the primary goal of this Homebuyer.com post was to raise awareness of the top-mid funnel, it is possible to achieve a lower funnel.

Next are two examples of search-driven keywords related to tools that are pitchable for coverage and can serve as bottom-funnel lead generators for companies.

2. Pinrose’s Fragrance Quiz

Strategy: Building a pitchable interactive tool that serves as a bottom-funnel, keyword-driven asset.

Pinrose is a fragrance company that sells candles, perfumes, and lotions. Using the “science of synesthesia,” they created a tool to help you choose a scent that works for you.

By the end of the 9-question quiz, Pinrose presents you with recommendations to buy.

How to pitch: This approach gives Pinrose an asset when pitching to beauty and lifestyle journalists. These journalists talk about topics like fragrances, and since their readers would also value a quiz like this, it makes it much easier to pitch.

They also gain links for a relevant keyword by tying this to search volume.

Results: You can see coverage from lifestyle publishers like Self and TeenVogue, aligning with Pinrose’s buyer persona.

Then, because of their link building, the asset ranks for the keyword “perfume quiz,” which brings in 2.3K monthly searches. This traffic is highly relevant and much further down the funnel.

Interactive tools like this are a tremendous way to build quality links via a digital PR asset. Because they are shareable and tied to search volume, they can even grow links passively—more on that approach next.

3. Hubspot Marketing Statistics

Strategy: Gathering proprietary data to make a pitchable search-driven post (with high link intent).

You can grow links passively by targeting a keyword with high link intent. This is where some of the digital PR lines get a bit blurry because these topics can be harder to pitch.

However, if you can find the right topic, you can have great success growing links over time.

Statistics posts are some of the most common examples of this. These are keyword phrases that writers search for when researching an article.

To create these posts, you can gather statistics from the web (most people do this) or utilize your proprietary data (which is much more effective in the long run). If it’s interesting, you can pitch it for coverage.

Let’s look at how Hubspot does this with their Marketing Statistics post.

They’ve compiled their statistics into a post with research, breaking it down into categories like content marketing statistics and social media, as well as subcategories like blogging or content strategy.

How to pitch: They not only have the statistics (most of which are proprietary data), but they’ve also collected everything into one massive report. This report becomes a shareable asset, and they can pitch to get links from high-authority marketing industry sites.

It also becomes information that anyone discussing marketing may want to cite passively.

Results: The coverage shows that they achieved both. They’ve got links from highly authoritative industry sites like Inc.com, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, and CBS News, as well as marketing sites like Shopify and Salesforce.

They refresh the statistics yearly, so their link profile has climbed to almost 14,000 Linking Root Domains (LRD).

Tip: AI Overview may help this approach even more. Google shows statistics and cites sources. (However, the ones I see don’t always cite the original source.)

But statistics are the only way to gain passive links. Let’s look at another keyword-driven post.

4. Casper’s Couples Sleeping Positions

Strategy: Using survey data to make a (non-passive link intent) keyword-driven post pitchable.

In a Casper post I worked on, we chose a keyword—couples sleeping positions—and built a blog post around it.

But, to jump-start it, we also gathered some proprietary data.

Why?

So that we could make this more enticing to pitch.

How to pitch: With a shareable asset with brand new data, we could pitch to high-authority sites to discuss relationships, sleep health, and other wellness pubs.

Results: The result was coverage from publications like Marriage.com and HealthDigest. Over time, the post gained passive links because it also ranked for “couples sleeping positions.”

But keyword-driven content is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s my favorite from a strategic point of view, but it can be challenging to get very creative.

So, let’s get into some of the more “link-baity” kinds of digital PR.

Visual-Led Content

One of the best content types is visual-led. Photos, graphics, and data are easily shared, and stories are told through the most accessible medium.

So, let’s look at how some brands do this successfully through digital PR!

5. Signs.com Branded in Memory

Strategy: Using an enticing graphic illustration to build links.

One of my favorite pieces of all time is one from Signs.com (so much so that I mentioned it in my talk at SearchLove in 2019.) It’s not a particularly interesting industry (no offense to Signs.com), but they have the visual aspect to lean into.

So, for this piece, they took 10 famous logos, such as Apple, Ikea, and Target, and asked people to draw them from memory.

The result is a fascinating look at how well (or not well) people can remember images and logos they see.

Take a look at the Apple logos:

How to pitch: Because of the broad focus of topics covered, they could pitch everyone from high-end news to design sites.

Results: The resulting coverage is well over 1200 LRDs and came not only from high-end news sources like DailyMail and Houston Chronicle, design sites like CreativeBloq and Core77 but also brand-specific blogs mentioned in the piece like MacRumors.

Plus, it’s not just a flashy post designed to get links. It’s an advertisement for Signs.com.

If consumers forget what your logo looks like, your business may need better branding.

This was done in 2017, but a study like this can 100% be done today as a digital PR campaign. It’s been replicated in industries like VanMonster’s Motors By Memory from 2020, which has 200 LRD.

6. Perceptions of Perfection Across Borders From SuperDrug

Strategy: Using an enticing photograph to build links.

SuperDrug, a remote healthcare service in the UK, took another approach to a similar concept. They asked artists worldwide to Photoshop an image of a woman, making her, “in their opinion, more attractive to other citizens of their country.”

How to pitch: Since the piece has a highlight image for various countries, they could pitch this to regional news publications in each country featured. Due to the subject matter, they could also pitch to lifestyle, wellness, or beauty sites.

Results: They earned almost 400 LRD from major publications like DailyMail, Huffington Post, and the Telegraph.

The “re-imagined” concept used to work well. We did one long ago that reimagined famous comic book strips as popular TV shows.

It’s still some of my favorite artwork.

However, the concept somewhat played out. Google “Disney princesses reimagined as” and you’ll see what I mean:

But AI image generators like Midjourney and DALL-E are breathing some new life into this.

For example, here are states reimagined as shoes, as done by KURU Footwear:

Given the proliferation of independent artists and social platforms, you’ll find that most publications are more likely to share artist renditions rather than major brands.

I’ve found that data visualization is the better option these days. Let’s examine an example.

7. WriterBuddy AI Tools Industry Analysis

Strategy: Using an enticing data visualization to build links.

To me, a graph isn’t data visualization. Technically, it is, but it typically isn’t interesting enough to inspire coverage on its own.

So, let’s look at how WriterBuddy made data more exciting and visually engaging.

They investigated the available AI tools, such as ChatGPT or Bard (now named Gemini), and explored the traffic they received in a given timeframe.

Then, they created a shareable data visualization:

How to pitch: The pitch process is more impactful with a shareable visual because sometimes the visual can do the heavy lifting for you. I recommend putting the visual right into the email pitch. A picture says a thousand words.

One note is that visual-led content only works when you invest in the design of a post. The above visual might cost ~$1-2K from a good data visualization artist. But as you can see, the results below show that it is a good investment.

Results: They ended up close to 700 LRD with major coverage from publications like Forbes and Cnet.

As you can see, you can also use data to drive stories and power visuals. So, let’s shift focus to data study types in digital PR.

Data-Led Digital PR

This section overlaps with some previous sections in terms of content type and presentation, but since data-led campaigns are one of the best ways, if not the best way, to win in digital PR in 2024, I think it deserves its own focus.

From an SEO perspective, providing new data and research is one of the things that Google mentions in their Helpful Content “self-assessment.”

As Google continues to roll out AI features, it will continually seek new data points to feed its LLM.

You can pull third-party data from government sites, online databases, APIs, and hundreds if not thousands of other sources. If you’re lucky enough to have proprietary data, that’s the best.

So, let’s start there.

8. Insurance.com’s Most Ticketed Cars

Strategy: Using internal data to create a pitchable post.

Insurance site Insurance.com lets you compare quotes for various insurance types. As users fill out online forms, they constantly collect data.

For instance, to get auto insurance quotes, the tool asks for your car’s make and model and the number of tickets you’ve received.

So, after realizing they were sitting on a treasure trove of interesting information, Insurance.com decided to use this data to create a piece of content showing how many tickets your car model gets.

How to pitch: This approach lets Insurance.com pitch to journalists covering the auto industry and auto sites, but since it has an interactive element that makes the user the star, they can also pitch to general news sites.

Results: This got over 90 LRD from sites like Forbes, MSN, and USA Today and many auto sites like MotorTrend and TheDrive.

However, not all sites have access to internal data sets like Insurance.com, but you can create your own proprietary data through third-party survey platforms. Let’s look at that next.

9. MattressNerd Nation of Nappers

Strategy: Using survey data from a full-service paid platform to create a pitchable post.

Mattress review sites are trendy. So, it’s essential to stand out in any way you can. MattressNerd went the digital PR route to gain links and eyeballs on their brand.

They used a paid, third-party survey platform, OnePoll, to gather responses from 2,000 people about their napping habits.

The study found interesting insights, such as that nappers are more productive than non-nappers and that others would take a pay cut if they could nap on the job.

How to pitch: This approach allows them to pitch to relevant sites or blogs about sleep and lifestyle or general news publications.

Results: Ultimately, the piece has over 90 LRD and coverage from top news sites like the NY Post, Huffington Post, and the Sun.

10. Preply’s Why Are Americans Obsessed with Subtitles?

Strategy: Using survey data from a self-service platform to create a pitchable post.

Preply is a peer-to-peer language tutoring site. So, communication is an excellent arena for them to play and ideate in.

They studied subtitle use based on a stat about how younger generations prefer to watch content with subtitles.

They asked general subtitle usage questions and which celebs were hardest to understand (Tom Hardy, of course!).

And to tie it back to Preply, there was even a question about using subtitles to understand a foreign language better.

How to pitch: This can appeal to mass audiences, making their prospect list every general news pub. However, it could also narrow the focus and pitch to movie and TV-related publications and blogs (which number in the thousands).

Results: The survey tapped into something special because it ended up with over 800 LRD, including coverage from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TimeOut, ArsTechnica, and foreign sites like Observatório docinema and El País.

11. Angi Home Renovations Confidence Survey

Strategy: Using survey data from a full-service paid platform to create a pitchable post.

Angi is an online marketplace for those looking to connect with professionals for home projects and services.

So, it makes sense for them to lean into a home renovation survey.

There is always some trepidation about starting a home renovation project, so this study leaned into that. They asked how people feel about the home renovation process, whether they add value, whether DIY is better, etc.

How to pitch: In our email outreach templates post, we outline great ways to pitch surveys like this one. This survey has a finance and home improvement angles, appealing to a large audience of high-authority publications.

Results: The piece ended up with over 50 LRD, with coverage from major publications like FoxNews and industry-relevant publications like realtor sites.

Some journalists say that the survey platform affects coverage, so let’s look at one more digital PR example: YouGov, which uses a third-party survey platform to gather data.

(I’m not saying one is better, but since this is a post of examples, I want to show as much range as possible.)

12. ResumeBuilder’s AI Interview Study

Strategy: Using survey data from a full-service paid platform to create a pitchable post.

Many content creators gather data from self-service platforms like YouGov, SurveyMonkey, and Pollfish.

One study from ResumeBuilder.com used SurveyMonkey to craft a survey around the interview process from a company hiring standpoint.

Although this doesn’t necessarily relate to their core audience of job seekers, it is still more than relevant enough to build authoritative links from the right kinds of sites.

Their campaign asked employees involved in the hiring process to determine whether and how they’d use AI in the interview process going forward.

The study had interesting findings, such as AI being mainly used for screening questions. A survey like this for ResumeBuilder can help bring relevant, authoritative links to their site.

How to pitch: This topic allows ResumeBuilder to pitch to general technology-focused sites, small business sites, and the HR/job-seeker market, which is right in their wheelhouse.

Results: They received over 160 LRD from sites like ZDNet, CBSNews, and NBC, as well as industry-related sites like Workable and HRDaily.

Self-service platforms are typically cheaper than full-service, so some opt for self-service. But let’s look at an example from full service next.

With some of these surveys, successful brands will try to run it back annually, quarterly, or monthly.

If you have a data-savvy team, you can get creative with collecting data in other ways.

13. BuzzBingo’s Profanity in Film

Strategy: Using scraped data to create a pitchable post.

Scraping tools like Webscraper.io or ScrapingBee allow you to scrape any available dataset online.

This is a great way to unearth or analyze data that may otherwise be hidden or too time-consuming for journalists and publishers to find. If you can find a good angle, it can be extremely sharable.

Online gambling site BuzzBingo found a tremendous f*ing angle.

Using scraping tools, BuzzBingo looked at the text from 3,565 film scripts, cross-referenced them with lists of curse words, and then ranked the films and actors with the most profanity.

They also looked at swearing over time to add other angles for pitching.

How to pitch: With a film-focused post, they could really dive into high-authority cinema sites, but because they also focus on celebrities, they could tap into mass media news as well.

Results: This campaign garnered over 800 LRD from top publications and social media mentions from actual celebrities like Jonah Hill and Samuel L Jackson, who were mentioned in the study.

Sometimes, the data for your survey doesn’t exist yet, so you need to find it yourself.

14. Backlinko’s Voice Search Study

Strategy: Using manually gathered data to create a pitchable post.

Backlinko’s Brian Dean was on our podcast in an episode about using data trends. He talked about a study he did for Backlinko right when a voice search came out.

As an authority in the SEO space, he wanted to dive into the new world of voice search.

No datasets existed, so he was forced to gather the data old-fashioned: manually asking 10,000 questions to a Google Home and recording the answers to create a proper data study.

The study looked at data points such as response length, reading level, and the pages on which it appeared.

How to pitch: Since this post bridged the gap between tech and marketing, it can appeal to both markets. And since the data collection method is unique, you could even mention that in the pitch (I’m not sure if Brian did).

Results: The current number is over 3000 LRD, with links from Inc, Entrepreneur, and Forbes, as well as industry-relevant coverage from Wix, Hubspot, and SEMRush.

In Brian’s words: “If you’re willing to put in that little elbow grease, you’d be surprised what you can accomplish with this sort of stuff.”

If you succeed with a single study, you can sometimes repeat it with new data for the next year.

So, let’s dive into some examples of recurring digital PR content next.

Recurring Content

Some brands release recurring content to refresh data, establish trends, create anticipation and buzz from journalists, or all three.

Let’s look at a few successful examples of those.

15. Bankrate’s Annual Emergency Savings Report

Strategy: Establishing an annually-recurring, data-led piece.

Bankrate covers all things financial.

They have been around for a long time and have garnered a lot of authority in that time.

They keep getting eyeballs on their content through recurring surveys, like their Annual Emergency Savings Report for 2023 and 2024.

In it, they survey Americans about their saving habits, including how much they save, how highly they prioritize saving, and more.

How to pitch: This is a financial piece that addresses a general population, so any news site would fit in a pitch. Since it’s a recurring post, it’s essential to call that out in the pitch and focus on any gains or losses from the previous post.

Results: The resulting coverage is massive. And the fact that they publish on the same URL each year allows for cumulative link gains.

The post currently has over 8,000 LRD, and the bump will be visible in 2024 when they re-release their new survey.

However, yearly studies can be extensive, and some don’t want to wait long between publications. So, let’s look at a monthly report next.

16. CNBC|SurveyMonkey (Monthly) Workforce Survey

Strategy: Establishing a monthly data-led piece.

Speaking of SurveyMonkey, they are also involved in digital PR.

Given that they are a survey platform, it’s only fitting that they run a survey campaign.

They publish a monthly Workforce survey as part of a co-marketing collaboration with CNBC.

It asks questions covering the gamut of employee happiness, such as whether they want to start their own business, how enthusiastic they are about work, and how open they are to discussing politics.

How to pitch: Employee happiness appeals to HR and job seeker markets, but it can also fit in high-authority wellness sites, as mental health is playing a much more significant role in the news these days.

The fact that this is monthly allows them to highlight trends and changes, making the story much more enjoyable for journalists who want to cover it.

Results: Each month gets about 30-75 LRD and coverage from relevant, high-authority sites.

Getting Regional Coverage

The region coverage game is a highly successful strategy for many digital PR agencies and brands looking to generate news links.

I also referred to them in the keyword-driven section at the beginning of this article, but we’ll go a little further here.

It has one of the broadest outreach markets, allowing for extensive coverage.

So, let’s look at a few versions of this.

17. Expensivity’s Burger Economics

Strategy: Creating a piece for worldwide coverage.

Expensivity is a financial information site that covers topics like investing, credit cards, and insurance.

These sites (like Bankrate) are very competitive, so I’ll show you how Expensivity leans on digital PR to get links and help build authority.

In this piece, they looked at the price of McDonald’s in every country.

This interesting approach compares common benchmarks, such as the price of a Big Mac and a Happy Meal, in every country.

How to pitch: By focusing on every country, they could pitch this worldwide. As discussed in the data-led and visual section, a solid visual component makes it easier for journalists worldwide to understand.

Result: The result was over 100 LRD, including coverage worldwide, including the UK’s The Sun, Canada’s Globe and Mail, and Japan’s Big Globe.

18. Wordtips’ United States of Cussing

Strategy: Creating a piece for national US coverage.

As we saw in the post about Profanity in Film, curse words get links.

So, WordFinder site Wordtips also decided to lean into the language of swearing for a digital PR campaign.

They used Twitter (now X) data to create a map showing when, where, and how different states curse.

How to Pitch: By pairing a potential buzzworthy idea with geography, they expanded the outreach market. The map below helps this get regional coverage.

Each state becomes an interesting data point for a journalist to share.

Results: They ended up with almost 300 LRD, with coverage from local pubs in Alabama, Louisiana, and NY and more general coverage from publishers like Mental Floss.

So far, these studies have creatively presented data, but their methodology has been a little less data-heavy. Let’s look at a more traditional “index” or “city study” in the next piece.

19. CoworkingCafe’s America’s Top Cities for Work/Life Balance & Mental Health

Strategy: Creating a piece for regional city coverage.

I’m writing this piece during Mental Health Awareness Month in May. So it’s fitting to share Coworking Cafe’s study about the top cities for work/life balance and mental health.

To create this list, they needed to conduct an extensive data study and determine which factors best represent “mental health and work/life balance.”

So, they focused on U.S. cities with at least 200,000 residents and scored their piece based on factors like average work hours per week, green spaces, and recreational amenities (among others).

Then, they scored the cities to create the index below:

Each category gets weighted differently, and each city is scored accordingly.

How to pitch: With the information broken down and scored, they can contact local publications for the top-ranking (or sometimes bottom-ranking if it’s newsworthy) cities.

You can even lean into city “rivalry,” as I explained in a recent newsletter.

Results: They gained over 75 LRD, and their coverage came from many local publications. They also received links from colleges and universities in the cities that ranked highly on the list, which is a great alternate angle for these indexes.

Let’s step away from data and get into digital PR examples with interactive elements.

Interactives

Interactive content is typically high effort but can have high rewards. Most require developers and designers. However, with AI these days, you can code pretty much anything.

(Check out how UK agency Distinctly is working on building a digital PR campaign using only ChatGPT.)

With that in mind, let’s look at some interactive pieces in various industries.

20. JustPark’s Reaction Time Test 

Strategy: Creating an interactive game.

JustPark is a UK parking app that lets users reserve or rent out parking spaces. So, they could focus their content on driving.

They created an interactive game that simulates driving and gauges your reaction time.

Then, your results are compared to those of the typical age.

Games like these are great for building links because they have built-in sharing triggers.

For example, when I got my score, I immediately wanted to brag about it to my friends. (I may be 37, but I still have the reaction time of a spry young buck!)

How to pitch: Since this appeals to drivers, there is obviously a built-in outreach market there. But they cleverly positioned this as a reaction test, not a “driver test.” So, this appeals to the mass media outlets as well.

Interactives can sometimes be challenging to pitch, so I’ve seen some PRs that include animated GIFs or at least screenshots.

Results: This interactive digital PR campaign got them over 1,300 LRDs, including many UK-specific outlets like DailyMail and Metro. They were also featured in many international sites like Larepublica and Levif.

21. Zava’s Sexual Exposure Calculator

Strategy: Creating an interactive calculator.

I talked about calculators as a tool for tackling search-driven keywords, but they can also be pure link bait as well.

Zava is a prescription medicine site in the UK and Europe that offers solutions for STDs, ED, and other things that most don’t like to talk about.

So, Zava smartly leaned into this and created their sexual exposure calculator. This is not only a helpful tool that provides real information but is also highly linkable, given the subject matter.

How to pitch: Although people might not love discussing it, many news publications do. So, this is pitchable to a variety of general news pubs as well as getting into wellness sites.

Results: It currently has 45 LRD, including coverage from Express, Metro, Esquire, and, surprisingly, even PCMag.

Microsites

Sometimes, brands create an asset so significant that it ends up on a microsite. This is done less often as the link value may not be passed on as clearly as if it were done on the same domain.

An example of this might be Lucidworks’ The Data That Lies Beneath.

For digital PR, you are better off building your content on your site for the link value. A microsite can still work if you are building it just for awareness.

I’ll show you a unique version of that in the next section.

Newsjacking

You can news jack with any of the previous kinds of content mentioned. It can be a data study, an interactive, or sometimes just a simple quote.

The challenge is that you have to move quickly actually to ride the news wave.

Brian Dean discussed using his tool Exploding Topics to catch trends that are on the rise but have yet to reach their peak.

But to catch something in the news currently, you need to be plugged into the news.

Here’s one example that went above and beyond:

22. HireAHelper’s WeWontMoveYouChargers

Strategy: Newsjacking a bit of regional news with pitchable content.

I’ll set the scene. The San Diego Chargers were an American Football team leaving San Diego and moving to Los Angeles to become the Los Angeles Chargers.

The San Diego fans were not happy.

So, the San Diego moving company HireAHelper had a very creative idea. They created a microsite called wewontmoveyouchargers.com to boycott the move.

They then enlisted several other moving companies in the SD area and pitched this project to local media.

How to pitch: Pitching a newsjacking piece involves reaching out to the same journalists who covered the original news topic, which would be journalists in San Diego and LA.

However, after this piece gains traction, it could be pitched to more general news. But don’t take my word for it; check out Ryan Charles’ breakdown.

Results: This piece of content not only received 45 LRD for the microsite from top-tier news outlets like Fox, CBS, CNN, and USA Today, but HireAHelper, who spearheaded the post, also received a lot of love, including multiple TV spots.

But you don’t always need a microsite for newsjacking. It’s quite a rare feat, given how much lift it can take in such a short time.

23. RareCarat Jewelry Estimates

Strategy: Newsjacking a bit of regional news with a quote.

If you have something important to add to a story, you can try to get a link to it. Unique data and insight can provide extra context for a news story and make you an invaluable resource to a journalist.

For example, Brooklyn Beckham’s engagement was one of the significant news events in the UK in 2020 (besides that thing we don’t like to talk about).

How to pitch: You must be prepared to add value to a trending news topic. You need to have something relevant to say and be an authority in the space.

In our podcast episode with Mark Rofe, he mentions, “I think the answer would probably be, would you feel okay if you got invited on TV, like live TV, to kind of talk about that?” I think that’s the best way to approach newsjacking.

Results: Jewelry site RareCarat’s CEO Ajay Anand got a quote and, importantly, a link from PageSix by providing their ring estimate.

Talking with Digital PR agency RiseAtSeven’s team, they used this strategy to tackle multiple celebrity engagements and pitch their client for over 100 placements over multiple months.

Where to Find Digital PR Examples

If you’re stuck in an idea rut or looking to jumpstart your brainstorming, here are some great places to find your own digital PR examples:

Content Newsletters and Roundups

Many others out there collect great examples and showcase work from around the web, either as an email, a newsletter, online roundup posts, or even on dedicated X accounts.

Iona Townsley’s Grapevine Newsletter

A monthly newsletter showcasing fantastic digital PR campaigns from around the web.

Thea Lauren Chippendale’s The PR Insider

This weekly newsletter includes PR campaigns and resources for those looking to up their game.

The BuzzStream Newsletter

We highlight case studies from BuzzStream users’ digital PR campaigns at least monthly.

Nathan Yau’s FlowingData Newsletter

A weekly newsletter sharing really cool data visualization work from around the web.

@Digitalprex on X

This account on X shares PR content found online.

Case Studies 

A Google search for “digital PR case studies” from digital PR agencies will get you far.

Content Inspiration from Creators

Content inspiration can come from anywhere. We have an entire post on the topic, but here are some of my favorite places to get inspired.

Neal.Fun

Neal Agarwal does some great interactive work. (If you want to kill some time, check out the Password game.)

Remember StumbleUpon – it’s back! In CloudHiker form!

CloudHiker takes you to random sites on the web based on the topics and industries of your choosing.

Reddit’ r/dataisbeautiful and r/infographics

Reddit is a treasure trove of great content from around the web. Its search functionality can also help you find nuggets of gold like this thread.

Content Inspiration from Publications

I mentioned in the beginning that I didn’t want to include examples from these types of sites because they aren’t the kinds that individual sites typically release, but they are still incredible for inspiration.

NYTimes Graphics

The graphics team at NYTimes is masterful.

WallStreetJournal Graphics

So is WSJ’s team.

Reuters Graphics

Same with Reuters.

Bloomberg Graphics

And Bloomberg.

Pudding.cool

I’m saving the best for last. Pudding.cool is one of the most creative agencies that tell stories with data.

Did I miss anything? Reach out and let me know!

The post 23 Digital PR Examples and Strategies That Work Today appeared first on BuzzStream.

I dug in a bit more to find that Mark has had a prolific career in digital PR. He’s been involved in some of the most clever campaigns I’ve seen, including one where he took out a billboard ad to help find a companion (or at least a date).

Again, the campaign is aptly named DatingMark.co.uk. (If you check out the site, you’ll find he was featured on huge news outlets like the BBC.)

He also has a course where he teaches everything he’s learned over the years called…you guessed it…DigitalPRCourse.com.

What stood out to me was a specific edition of the newsletter in which he discussed the “Warren Buffet approach to PR.” He went on to discuss finding the sweet spot for reactive PR pitching.

I don’t want to spoil anything more because this one is full of great tips and advice from Mark about reactive digital PR.

Main Takeaways

1. Reactive PR can be divided into planned (e.g., holidays, scheduled events) and unplanned (e.g., unexpected company layoffs, natural disasters) components. Prepare for both types to maximize opportunities.

2. High-media-interest topics are likely to get more coverage but are also more competitive. Low-media-interest topics might yield fewer but more targeted placements.

3. The window of opportunity can be very short, sometimes just a few hours. Being plugged into real-time updates and having pre-prepared comments can help.

4. For planned events, prepare different potential comments in advance and get pre-approval from clients. This allows you to react instantly when the event occurs.

5. Create a list of journalists who have covered similar stories in the past. This list should be updated regularly to account for their roles or beats changes.

6. Focus on sending high-quality, relevant pitches rather than mass emailing. Tailor your pitches to the journalists’ interests and recent work to increase the chances of coverage.

7. To ensure that the comments or insights you provide are authoritative and relevant, ask, “Would I (or your client) be comfortable talking on TV about this topic?”

8. Include relevant keywords in your email subject lines and comments. This increases the likelihood that journalists will find your past pitches when searching for sources on similar topics in the future.

How Do You Differentiate Newsjacking and Reactive PR? 

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a good question. I think they’re often used interchangeably. You know, if someone. Says newsjacking and someone says reactive PR often, they’re kind of talking about the same thing.

I think that there’s just maybe a very small difference. And I think that you know, if you were to look up newsjacking, it, it’d be something along the lines, you know, if you looked up a definition, something along the lines of, uh, piggybacking or inserting your thoughts or opinions into like a breaking news story.

So, something like that, and I think newsjacking is more about adding to or contributing to an existing story. So, if something happens, you add your thoughts or comments to it.

On the other hand, I think reactive PR is a bit wider in scope. I think it can include that. But it can also include, maybe there’s a breaking news story or something and creating a new angle or story off the back of that existing story.

So that might sound slightly confusing, but if I give you an example—um, it’s probably a really bad example—let’s say a celebrity couple gets engaged. I think an example of newsjacking would be getting a comment from an expert on the engagement.

If it’s someone in the royal family, you might get a royal expert or something to comment on that.

So I’d say that is kind of newsjacking.

Whereas I would say reactive PR would be if you had that same story, you would kind of find a new angle to it, which would be, um, maybe where they are going to get married and why, or how much is that engagement ring that they proposed with worth?

So that is a slightly different angle from that existing story. But I could also be talking absolute rubbish, but that’s how I would perceive it in my head.

Is Reactive PR a Big Part of Your Digital PR Toolkit Nowadays?

So it wasn’t initially, but I think as time has passed, it has become more and more of something I’m doing.

And maybe I can talk a little bit more about why that is, but yeah, I think, you know, if we take a step back and look at what’s been going on in the industry.

So, journalists have been being made redundant, you know, left, right, and center across the US and the UK.

And I think that, you know, I’m trying to remember the stats now, but I think there will be 8,000 journalists in the UK in 2023.

North America, including the US and Canada, was made redundant. Just this year, I think it was about a thousand in January 2024. And in February, I think it was another 600.

So basically, um, you know, this includes some pretty large companies as well, like PLC in the UK. You’ve got, uh, vice, uh, bustle. Um, LA Times, uh, business insider, they’ve all made cuts. Right. And I think when that happens, you have journalists that were, no, they’ve lost their job.

So they’re going to do a couple of things:

Some will maybe get another job in journalism. Some will become copywriters, but I don’t have any data to back this up.

I have seen, and it’s quite common, that journalists also do PR. So, you’ve got a slight imbalance.

You’ve got fewer journalists.

And now you’re adding to the PR bucket over here because some journalists are getting jobs in PR. And then you’ve also got some SEOs who, um, or, like, old school link builders or whatever you’d want to call them.

Also, having a go at doing PR, they’re having a crack at it.

So you’re adding that you’re adding those to the mix as well. With fewer journalists and more people doing PR, it’s become more competitive.

And what I think that has happened because of that is that you’ve got journalists working with basically like a skeleton crew, right? And if your story isn’t relevant now, then it’s not a priority.

So they want to be writing about stuff that is relevant right now. And a few years back, maybe you could get away with something if it wasn’t relevant right now.

You could cover that, but if you tried the same thing now, it might not work. So that’s how I see things play out.

And I think that is why, uh, across the board, you’re kind of seeing hero or creative campaigns become less effective because of a combination of all those reasons. Um, it’s not necessarily a fact, but it’s my opinion on the situation.

Have You Seen a Drop-Off in Getting Your Pitches Read?

It’s a difficult question to answer because I’m not a journalist. So I can’t, and I don’t have visibility into the inboxes.

But I can guess that there are more PR people who are sending the same or very similar stories to the same journalists or the remaining journalists.

So I think it has become more challenging to get, you know, to get cut through, which is why reactive PR is so important.

If it’s relevant now, then there’s a higher likelihood, in my opinion, that it’s going to get covered. Otherwise, it just goes to the, you know, just goes to the back of the pile.

The journalists may love your story, but it’s like, I’ve got all these other ones that I need to write right now.

You know, there’s a sense of urgency about these other ones. And they might like your story and return to it, but we’re all humans. They might also forget about it and something else might come up.

Could You Outline Your Reactive PR Matrix?

Reactive PR can generally be broken down into two components: planned or unplanned.

So “planned” is stuff that, you know, will happen, right?

You know, Christmas is coming, you know that pancake day or Mother’s Day or whatever is coming. So, you can plan reactive stuff in advance.

In finance, maybe that’s the budget in the UK or when the Bank of England will set interest rates. So that’s planned.

“Unplanned” would be things you have no idea will happen.

Maybe a company is going to make layoffs, or they go into an administration, or a volcano erupts, and suddenly there’s like travel chaos or, you know, anything like that, so that’s kind of planned and unplanned.

You may hear some people talk to them in a slightly different way, but they mean the same thing.

So they might mean, when they’re talking about reactive, they might talk about reactive and proactive. It’s the same thing kind of planned and unplanned.

But you can break that down further, into high or low media interest, which is basically just a way of saying how likely the news publications or whatever publications are to cover these stories.

If it’s a high media interest, lots of them will cover it.

If it’s low media interest, maybe some niche publications, like trade publications, will cover it because it’s very specific to them, or maybe regional publications will cover it because, you know, it’s happening in their region.

Would Something That’s Low Media Interest Yield Less Coverage?

I like to go for stuff that is maybe high media interest because I know there’s an appetite for it.

But, you know, conversely, someone might think that I’ll go for the, maybe, the low media appetite ones because I might be able to pick up one or two links there or pieces of coverage there because maybe no one else is kind of going for it.

The great news about planning is that you can plan for it in advance. So you can work with your client and maybe come up with comments from them in anticipation of an event that’s coming up, or you know, get sign-off and pre-approval on things.

It’s great because it’s planned.

The downside is that everyone else, all your competition, also thinks the same thing, so they can plan for it in advance.

Right. And it’s really interesting to see this play out because I’ll go back to the Bank of England interest rates example. Every month in the UK, the Bank of England sets the interest rates.

And they can either go up, stay the same, or go down. So, if you have a finance client, you might prepare three comments from them for each scenario. Then when the Bank of England makes the announcement, everyone is just sending the same thing: a comment from their client to the journalist.

I’ve seen the journalist kind of—I don’t want to say the word complain, but I guess, tweet about it and be like, Oh my God, the announcements just came out like three minutes ago, and I’ve already had 20 or 30 journalists contact me.

Screenshot below is from a journalist:

It’s really difficult in that situation to get coverage because they’re not going to be able to use all of those comments from all these different clients; they might pick one or two.

So, people are doing that and then maybe wondering why they’re not getting coverage because everyone else is doing the exact same thing.

And that is, that’s the downside to it. Right.

So I think because there is more competition now, you not only have to think about the idea that you’re doing and the execution, you have to be thinking, what is everyone else going to be doing, and you kind of have to think, okay, if it’s predictable and everyone else is going to do it, you maybe have to think, okay, we won’t do that.

And we will do something different over here. We’ll try this over here.

I mean, I would probably prefer to do something different. I like to operate in the unplanned high media interests sphere; there’s nothing wrong with any of the others.

It’s just, you know, a different way of doing it.

You just probably have to accept that you’re going to have a higher chance of not succeeding and getting coverage if everyone else is doing the same thing.

And I know, I know in the newsletter, I spoke about a baseball analogy, but for me, I see it as more of an H.I.T. class.

So I will be doing high-intensity interval training for a short amount of time.

Whereas maybe some of my competitors will be sending out more campaigns and emails to journalists to try and get the same amount of coverage. And maybe that could be compared to a marathon.

So I would much rather be doing the, you know, the hit class, so to speak, than the marathon.

Can You Scale Either Approach?

I think it’s tricky because you might see something that you can react to that may be low interest, but if it’s such a low interest, maybe no one is interested in covering it.

So, I guess one example is that whenever a celebrity couple gets engaged, someone jumps on and wants to talk about the value of the engagement ring.

So if the celebrity couple is more famous, that will be a higher interest story for the publications. And they’ll probably be interested in receiving those kinds of stories.

But if you go down the low media interest scale, maybe a celebrity couple gets engaged, and no one cares about how much the ring value is worth because they’re just, you know, there’s, there’s no media appetite for that. It’s low media interest.

So you might be able to, if you’re the only one doing it, you could, you could give it a go, and it might work.

But on the other hand, if there’s no appetite for that story because they’re just not, they’re just not famous enough; then it could just not work at all.

So I think that it depends where you want to operate really.

Still, I think if you’re doing something unplanned, you’ll automatically remove a lot of your competition purely because they’re not fast enough or unprepared.

I did, a reactive piece of a week, which is the one that I spoke about in the newsletter, which was when Ted Baker called in the administrators, and the life cycle of that story was so short, like, um, I saw the news breaking, got the comment out, and within about three hours, I got my client coverage.

The story has come and gone, and it’s over now, but something else happens later on.

Some clients will take days or maybe weeks to get a comment approved, and they’ll just not be able to compete there. The downside to this unplanned stuff is that you’ve got to be plugged in.

You’ve got to know what’s going on all the time. If you’ve gone out for lunch, you might be too late.

You might’ve missed, you might’ve missed the boat on that story.

So you have to be quick. And, by being quick, you know, that’s obviously like a competitive advantage.

Whats the Workflow For a Reactive Approach?

So I think that, um, it’s not going to work for all clients. It’s just not going to be possible because, like I said, some may have a really long approval process.

The way to get around that, maybe you could get pre-approval or you could maybe try and, um, if once you’ve built up enough trust, maybe you can help.

Or find an expert to help write the comment. And then maybe they would just have to approve it on their side or maybe, or maybe you just kind of work beforehand.

You develop a framework for how you would respond to certain situations if they occur, and maybe you could tweak it a little bit for when that event happens.

But yeah, it’s not going to work for all clients.

And if they’re not quick enough to respond, or they just may not be suitable at all, because maybe something doesn’t happen in their new cycle enough, as you know, I’ve got a Christmas tree, like a website, and doing reactive for most of the year is just not going to be possible.

It’s just not going to work. Right? Like no one will care about Christmas trees and March, April, or whatever.

So, yeah, some things are just not going to work, but there are some things you could do that, um, can maybe make it a little bit easier. One is if you’re doing it in-house.

Because automatically, you know, you might be able to just, uh, if you’re sitting next to the guy that needs to approve it, that’s easy for you to kind of, to do kind of that or yeah, pre-approval to do, you know, almost like free reign, uh, for, for the agency or whoever wants to do it from whoever that stakeholder may be.

Those are a couple of things that can help out a little bit.

What Tools Do You Use to Stay on Top of New Trends for Reactive Pitching?

Yeah, I think there isn’t anything out there that solves that problem.

I don’t think there is a one-stop kind of tool.

I think if there was, then, you know, it would make everyone’s lives easier to kind of do it.

I think it is just being plugged into what’s going on on social media and having the news on in the background.

I may be a little bit fortunate because I live in Spain, and often, the work I’m doing is for the UK. Now, I’m only one hour in front of the UK, but that one hour, maybe someone is in bed and they miss something.

Whereas I’m awake, it can help a little bit in terms of, uh, in terms of that way, even if I was to do stuff for the US, you know, just being, I think it’s like four or five hours in front of New York, um, that if something, if something breaks early in the morning, you know, I’m probably more prepared to kind of jump onto it.

Are You Basically Building a Mini Newsroom?

Right. That’s, that’s exactly right. Yeah. And I think it may sound a bit tricky, like, to begin with. And it’s not an easy thing to do, but I think if you think about 99 percent of the headlines that you see. I’ve kind of happened before. So I, for example, I bet you this summer that there will be an airline that goes bankrupt or something, and it causes some kind of travel chaos.

I’d bet you 10 that that’ll happen. And you know, let’s do it. It’s on tape here. Yeah. Or like, you know, there’s, there’s going to be a celebrity engagement or there’s going to be like a celebrity divorce, or a company’s going to go bankrupt or, A company’s going to make some layoffs, or there’s going to be, you know, uh, a data breach or a data leak.

These things are going to happen. So it’s just basically preparing in advance. And I think that that’s what a lot of it is. It’s unplanned because you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen and you don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen. But there are still some things that you can prepare in advance.

So I think it’s just a case of anticipating what will happen. Uh, you know, waiting for that situation to happen and then pouncing on it when the opportunity, you know, uh, arises basically.

Yeah. Yeah. And again, it’s, uh, getting back to that baseball analogy, it’s like, just waiting for your pitch, like, it’s exactly, you know, having, you know, exactly what, what, uh, talking points you’re going to have.

And you know, exactly like what specific news item that’s going to be the one that you jump in on exactly.

How Much Time Do You Have to Formulate An Idea and Pitch?

I think it will depend on how competitive whatever industry is.

So if we look at finance, um, I think that that’s more competitive, and I think it’s almost kind of instantaneous. Whatever happens, it’s just fast. It’s quick. Right?

So I think in finance, you’d have to be quicker wherever, whereas if it was pet health, you might have a little bit more time, you know?

It’s hard to put a timeframe on it, but I can tell you from the other week when Ted Baker said they were calling the administrators. The window for that was just a couple of hours. Meanwhile, for the pet health one, um, you might have a day. I don’t know. It depends on the exact story.

Or let’s just bring it back to like engagement rings again, like you, you probably, depending on how popular the celebrity couple is. It gets engaged to do the, you know, the valuation of the engagement ring, um, you probably would have like a day as well.

It depends on how I would just bring it back to how competitive your industry is.

Um, finances are very competitive; pets, maybe not so much.

So you might just get away with having a little bit more time. But it’s one of those annoying things where I’m just like, “it depends.”

How Do You Recommend Building a List of People To Reach Out To?

Um, I think that there’s kind of a little bit of a learning curve, just discovering maybe who the journalists are that you want to talk to or who are likely to cover this story. And maybe, you know, there’s going to be teething problems whenever then, there’s a new client. You’re trying to do this kind of stuff.

Maybe they’re just not quick enough, maybe the quality of if you’re trying to get a comment from them, the quality of the comment isn’t good enough, but this is part of the process. The second time, you get a little bit better, and then the third time, you get a little bit better, and then maybe by the fourth or fifth time, they’ve nailed the comment.

Now they’re quick, and you already know in advance who the journalists will cover because the first or second times, you’ve done kind of the research there that you know.

That means you’re able to get there kind of.

So it’s just one of those things is there’s a process, you’re going to get better at it, and then if you keep doing it as well, you can sometimes find yourself in the situation where journalists remember, “Oh, that, that person sent me a good comment when that happened last time.”

And they might find themselves in a situation where they actually contact you to get a comment rather than you having to go to them, which is a lovely situation to be in, but yeah, it just takes time, those types of things.

Is the Ideal Workflow: identify topics we want to be authorities for, identify key journalists, and establish media lists?

Yeah, you could do that. You can absolutely do that.

This is easier if I just give you the example that I did the other week. I did one with Ted Baker going into administration, but if I wanted to prepare that list in advance, I might look for journalists who covered a very similar story that happened a few weeks before that, which was The Body Shop kind of saying that they were going into administration.

So I could find all the journalists who covered The Body Shop story in advance and maybe use that for when it happened to Ted Baker.

Now there might not be some, there might be some in there that are irrelevant. For example, you know, Ted Baker’s fashion-related.

There may be some fashion websites that specific websites that are talking about that, that, um, that probably I wouldn’t get from the list and that, you know, from The Body Shop story, but there may be a core, uh, list of journalists that might be, uh, you know, that, that would cover both.

So you can do things like that, um, that, that might help, but if you do it too far in advance as well, journalists may, the journalists that you’ve kind of created for your list may move on to other jobs, or they may stay with it within that publication, but move on to like, you know, another division or, uh, or, you know, do another, you know, change beats or whatever, you know, so your list might kind of become out of date.

How Do You Validate a Prospect Before Pitching?

So I think that there’s kind of two way, two extremes of doing it. Right. So some people say like, you’d be, you should be reading all their last articles to make sure that, you know, uh, you get a really good understanding of, of what they’re writing.

But, if you were to contact, I don’t know, 50 journalists and each, each article takes you, I don’t know, like five minutes to read. I’m not very good at maths, but that’s an awful long time to be, you know, to be reading and, uh, to, to understand who you’re kind of sending it to. So I think that that approach is, is far too long.

And then you’ve got the other side of things, which is like, oh, let’s just grab a list from the media database and I will just like send it to all of them.

And the problem with that side of things is, well, there are a few problems, really, like one, not all the journalists in there, too, and they might not be categorized correctly.

And then three, like, let’s say you sending him to travel journalists or whatever. There may be a lot in there that are like bloggers, or maybe they’re like, you know, radio talk show hosts or, um, just completely irrelevant people. So, you have to realize that if, if that’s kind of the approach, then you’re going to get a lot of crap with it, you know, that there’s going to be in there.

So the middle ground for me is that I just like to read headlines, and I’ll maybe give the story a click to see, just to check, that it’s relevant.

So I’m often just using Google, using certain key phrases. Then I’ll go to the website and check the article. I’m not reading it.

I’m just checking the headline. Does this make sense? Is it in the right section of the website?

For example, maybe I’ve had this in the past, as I Googled finance experts to try and find articles related to, you know, finance experts. And I found one about Cristiano Ronaldo. Some finance expert was talking about him, and that would just not have been relevant.

And it was easy to tell when I clicked through, because one, I could see there was a photo of like Cristiano Ronaldo and two, it was in like the sports section of the website, you know, it was just not right at all. So it’s just, I’m looking at those little indicators. It’s very quick that I could see it, but that this approach is, it’s still more time consuming than kind of taking a list from the media database.

I’m getting a good idea of, um, whether I think someone is relevant. I understand who I’m sending it to and why I know why I’m sending it to someone, because I’ve taken a look at, you know, um, just very quick look at the, the articles that they’ve written.

Are You Formulating Lists Ahead of Time—on the Fly—or Both?

So in that instance, I probably, if I’m trying to prepare a list beforehand, then I would be doing it, uh, how I just said, you know, searching Google, trying to find like similar articles from the past.

But when you do it on the fly, you don’t have the time to go through kind of and make a media list like that. Yeah. So occasionally, what will happen, and this, this is kind of a dream scenario, really, but you just Google the story that has broken, and very often, journalists are in a rush to write about the story. They’ll just put a page up, which is just a headline.

And it kind of says, like, breaking story, more news to follow, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that’s brilliant because I know that they need content. And they haven’t got the content because they’re still scrambling to find some information. So sometimes when I’m doing offline, I see instances like that and I’m like, brilliant, let me send them a comment and, you know, they’re looking for information. They get a comment sent through. They’re probably so happy. T

hey just to have something that they can include on the article. So that’s great when that happens. And when I did it the other week, you know, Um, a journalist I’d never had such a quick response from a journalist.

They just was like, oh, thank you so much for this like, you know, it was almost like a sigh of relief from them that they had something that yeah, right.

So, yeah, they don’t have to do the work I guess right?

Maybe they’ll be searching Twitter, and you can sometimes see that.

So seeing the page where it says like, you know, this is developing news story or something along those lines. That’s excellent for me because I know they really need my comment.

And I find that this is the great thing about when you’re doing like unplanned stuff is that, um, kind of have a high success rate from, from what I found, because there is no competition or very low competition because people aren’t quick enough, but also there’s that sense of urgency. There’s a panic among journalists.

I need something to fill this page that has nothing on it about the story that’s just happened, you know?

How Do You Determine if You/Your Client is Relevant or Authoritative Enough to Pitch a Quote?

Uh, yeah, I think, I think it does matter. Yeah. And I think it’s just basically. I think it’s okay to broaden things kind of, um, a little bit.

So, uh, I’ll give you an example. So there’s this guy called Ash in the UK who sells car mats. And so his website is just about car mats.

And, uh, If he was to do any kind of story about car mats, I think he’s going to struggle.

There’s just nothing in the news cycle that would kind of, you know, warrant a story kind of, uh, about that. It’s just not, it’s just not that interesting.

But I think, uh, what would work for him and, uh, is basically broadening them, broadening that out a little bit.

He can talk about cars, maybe he can talk about automotive things that are happening, and I think it’s okay to do that because it’s, it’s, it’s still relevant.

You know, his site is about car mats, but talking about cars is, is not a problem. Um, I think you can do that and that’s one thing that can work, but sometimes there’s just maybe, I don’t know, maybe you’ve got, uh, a company that’s like a forklift hire or something.

There’s probably not going to be much in the news cycle about forklift hires or, um, or even anything. You know, it’s a little bit tricky, so you might have to ty and think of an angle that’s related to it.

Maybe you could comment on construction, like stuff, if that makes sense, or topics. So it’s just trying to find your angle and, um, yeah.

And you’re right, is it, am I authoritative enough or am I, or is it relevant enough? I think the answer would probably be, would you feel okay if you got invited on TV, like live TV to kind of talk about that?

Iif you were happy to go on there and kind of talk about it, it shows that you probably know enough.

And that’s something that can, that can happen. And, there are some instances where you see some comments that are just not relevant.

And I think, journalists, some of them, probably will take it because all they care about is the story.

But I think some journalists will be like, “Oh, that didn’t really make a lot of sense to do that.”

And they may pick up on it and kind of question you about it a little bit more.

But you do not want to be in a situation where, you know, you can’t, you can’t talk about the topic in further, you know, in, in more depth if, if you get asked more questions about it, basically.

Does Where/How You’re Reaching Out Make a Difference?

I don’t think the actual email address itself matters.

I think it’s just basically explaining, maybe why, the person who is giving that comment is giving that comment. So I would tend to be like, um, I would tend just to say the subject line, like. “Expert comment” or “travel expert” or whatever it is.

And then kind of put about like, you know, what is the story that’s happening now, the breaking story that’s happening so that the journalists can know what it’s about and maybe, you know, who the expert is.

And then when they open it up, they will get the comment. And then I like to put a little bio underneath just explaining who the person is, maybe what qualifications they have, what company they work for.

Any of those types of things will make the journalist understand that this person knows what they’re talking about.

I’ll also, and this sounds bad when I say this, but I’ll also kind of keyword stuff it a bit.

So what I mean by that is that, if I was doing it for like my, Christmas tree website, maybe I would call myself like a “Christmas tree expert” or something within the bio or “Christmas tree retailer” or whatever, because, —this happens to me the other day—at some point, the journalist may have another story in like three, four, five months time or whatever, and they’re trying to find an expert about that.

And they remember getting your one all that time ago, whether they use that story or not, and you know, they may search their inbox and find you.

So I’ll kind of make sure I’ve got some keywords, whether that’s in the bio, the, the, about, you know, in the email or whether I’ve got like a little about section about the company just to be on the journalist radar in case it comes, you know, in case they want to get in touch in the future, it makes me just more, um, just, yeah, it just makes me more, more findable.

Basically they’re using the. If you want, if you want, they’re using the email as like a search engine, I guess.

What Made You Decide to Create a Digital PR Course?

Yeah, so I think I just wanted to create something that I wish existed when I started, and that’s also what I try to do with the newsletter.

Check out Mark’s digitalprcourse.com

I really wish there was a newsletter like the one I had, um, you know, when I started out, or even now, if someone else created something similar, that that would be great. And I think. It’s, it’s been great for a couple of reasons. Like I like showing people, um, how to do things and I like it when they can go away and do it themselves and kind of get results from it.

But I also think selfishly; it’s made me better at what I do.

It took me maybe a year or 18 months to create this course. But after I’d done it and had to think about how to explain things to people, it made me just, um, Yeah, basically just better at what I do. And that’s now something that I see in my newsletter.

Um, so each week, uh, digitalPRnewsletter.com, you get sent a tip on how to do digital PR or something that will either make your job easier or help you get more coverage. And just by doing that, it’s just, it’s just made me better at what I do. I know that sounds selfish, but, um, but yeah, it’s, it’s for me, but also, um, For people as well.

I want to help people. So it’s kind of twofold there, really.

Where Do You Get Ideas and Inspiration For Your Newsletter?

I mean, is it just all personal anecdotes or, you know, yeah, I’d like to say, yeah, go ahead. Um, yeah, it’s very funny to say, I think, well, it’s anywhere really, to be honest with you, but, um, in terms of what I always tell people about ideation is that you kind of need to, uh, you kind of need some inputs in order to create those outputs.

Um, so really you need to be consuming stuff. You need to be reading things or watching things, or whether it’s in the same industry or something, that’s not a tool. And, you know, I’ll give you an example of that, but, you know, uh, you mentioned earlier, but the, the Warren Buffett analogy that just came about because I was literally watching a documentary about, You know, Warren Buffett, and then I thought, Oh, that’d be interesting.

What if I took that and I applied that to, you know, PR and then there we go. That that’s one idea for, for the newsletter then I thought, you know, what he said was a really good way to kind of explain what to do, but. Sometimes. And also because I know I have this newsletter and I know that each week I need to kind of find some content for it.

And yeah, you know, it goes out every Monday. So some Mondays I’m kind of panicking and I’m like, Oh my God, what am I going to, what am I going to put in there this week? So I have that, but I’m, I’m taking note of what I do during the week. If I just do something a little bit different, um, that works, or if I just discover something completely new, I’m just like, Oh, actually maybe I could put that in the newsletter.

Sorry. It’s coming from anywhere, really. I wish, um, I wish I could give like a, a good like source here. I’ve just taken these ideas from here or there or whatever, but it’s just kind of where it’s come about, really.

Subscribe to the Podcast!

Subscribe on Spotify

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

The post Mastering Reactive Digital PR with Mark Rofe appeared first on BuzzStream.

Numerous posts and analyses have been made about this information, and I’m sure more will follow. But for a primer, I highly recommend checking out Mike King’s post on IPullRank and Rand Fishkin’s post on SparkToro since they were the first to report on the matter.

With the help of the BuzzStream dev team, I’ve reviewed the documentation to extract important takeaways about backlinks. I plan on updating this as we dig more.

Backlinks aren’t the only piece of the ranking puzzle, but having more supportive documentation around link building is excellent.

For a bit of a spoiler, everything points to how powerful digital PR can be.

But, let me show you everything I can about what we can learn about link building (and digital PR) from the Google Algorithm leak.

1. Power of Internal Links

One piece of the documentation talks about how documents can link indirectly, which may have implications for internal linking and digital PR strategies.

This indicates that the indexing and ranking process may consider indirect document relationships.

For instance, if Document A has high authority and links to Document B, and then Document B links to Document C, the indirect link from A (through B) to C can contribute to the SEO value of Document C, even though A does not link directly to C.

So, in the digital PR realm, this suggests that you could get a high-authority link to a piece of content and then internally link that piece of content to your money page to pass that same authority through.

I posed this exact question to LinkedIn users, and most seem to agree with this sentiment.

It may be evident that internal links are essential, but I’m not sure people appreciate precisely how much.

Nate Matherson of Positional discusses the power of internal links in our podcast episode (and his thoughts are backed up by this documentation).

Cyrus Shepard’s study provides excellent advice on the exact number and types of internal links needed to really have an impact.

2. Quality and Authority Measurements

Quality and authority have always been discussed in link building, but seeing some of these in action is excellent.

Here’s a quick look at some of the mentions for both.

Quality

According to the documentation, an anchor’s quality is measured by its ‘locality’ and ‘bucket.’

These localities and buckets likely refer to a categorization system Google uses to identify anchors.

This indicates that backlinks from specific sources are valued differently based on the context (and relevancy) of the link source to the target domain.

Furthermore, they mention source quality for anchors, suggesting that backlinks from reputable and high-quality sites carry more SEO weight.

For example, anchors from high-quality base documents (TYPE_HIGH_QUALITY) are more valuable than those from medium or low-quality documents.

Authority

Lastly, a confidence and authority metric is mentioned, highlighting that a page can boost the authority of the linked site.

This should be nothing new for link builders and digital PRs.

We’ve covered this extensively in our link quality and relevancy posts, but it’s important to reiterate the importance of link builders and digital PRs.

For my money, digital PR is more effective today for building links naturally from high-quality, authoritative sites.

There are options for link builders, but these are mainly paid options, which isn’t reflected at all in the leaked documentation but is a potential risk.

3. Anchor Text Context

Google’s document mentions the significance of anchor text and its context.

The text, including capitalization and even punctuation, is considered.

Then, they mention the “hash of terms” near the anchor.

This amounts to the words surrounding the anchor. (Google has actually said this in their links documentation, but it’s great to see it backed up.)

You can quickly gauge this with Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, which gives you the anchor text of a link and the surrounding text.

So, a link to BuzzStream is much more effective if it includes relevant contextual terms like “email outreach software.”

If you can control the anchor text of a backlink, do your best to control it.

But this gets into the idea of branding your business or site.

4. Authorship Is Recognized

The concept of Authorship appears to be very important.

I even discuss it in my Helpful Content post and when evaluating guest posting sites.

Google considers and tracks authors. You can see many instances of authors mentioned in the documentation.

But again, just because an author is listed on a page doesn’t mean the site is worthwhile.

Instead, Google most likely looks at how the author is associated with the site or topics they are writing about on the site and web.

The more closely associated the author is with the topic they are writing about, the more it would make sense to value that page.

For example, I Googled Vince Nero and saw my name associated with keywords like “content marketing,” “SEO,” and BuzzStream.

So, if I wanted to write about baseball, I’d have to do a much better job associating myself with that terminology.

This could be done by guest blogging, podcasting, or other forms of social media.

5. Redundant Anchors Are Dropped

Based on the documentation, redundant anchors from the same domain are often dropped to avoid spam and ensure the uniqueness of backlinks.

So, is it a bad thing to get multiple links from the same domain?

No, but there appears to be a reasonable cutoff point at which additional links will not further impact ranking.

This also points to getting diverse backlinks from multiple high-quality sources to help with ranking rather than just repeatedly leaning on the same source.

That said, there’s nothing wrong with getting links from high-authority domains where your customers spend their time if ranking isn’t the goal. You can send quality direct traffic to your site.

SEOs can gauge the impact by looking at referral traffic from a specific source on Google Analytics.

For instance, here’s a look at a referral sources for BuzzStream:

You can see that some blog traffic came in from Ahrefs, for instance.

6. Links Impact PageRank Weight

The documentation references a “pagerankWeight” associated with links, seemingly connecting the two.

From Moz’s documentation, Domain Authority (DA) considers several metrics, including linking root domains. Similarly, Ahrefs uses Domain Rating (DR).

So, if you want to build links, metrics like DA or DR are a great way to gauge their impact.

When evaluating sites in BuzzStream, you can quickly look at a site’s Domain Authority or Domain Rating as pictured in the screenshot below:

This allows you to focus only on sites with a high impact.

7. Link Freshness and History

Google’s documentation shows a link’s first and last seen dates are recorded.

Not only that but they are also updated with timestamps for freshness tracking.

This suggests that newer and frequently updated backlinks, like high-end news sites, may be more valuable.

Or, as Mike King put it in his post: Look at that, I just made digital PR cool again!

(Mike, it was always cool .)

Strategically, this means that older posts — specifically those commonly offered on link-buying sites and some resource pages buried deep within a site — are not helpful for link building.

I discussed this extensively in our link insertions post, as it is one of the main ways users place links on older content.

8. Clicks on Links

If a link is placed but no one sees it, is it valuable?

According to the documentation, no, not really.

Pulling from Rand Fishkin’s SparkToro post, he shared a quote from his original source: “Google has three buckets/tiers for classifying their link indexes (low, medium, high quality). Click data is used to determine which link graph index tier a document belongs to. See SourceType here, and TotalClicks here.”

So, if a site section gets little to no clicks, it is considered lower quality and devalues the link.

All of this points to the fact that you can get a link placed somewhere, but it doesn’t matter if no one sees it.

News sites get higher visibility, leading to more potential clicks.

Conclusions From the Leak

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’ll repeat: everything from the above points to the fact that digital PR should be part of your link building strategy.

Relevant links gained from digital PR pretty much hit all of the things this documentation lays out as it relates to link building:

• Quality, authoritative sites
• Highly recognized authors
• Fresh content
• Highly visible content leading to more clicks

Many studies have shown for years that most of these are true, even if Google says otherwise.

So that brings me to my second conclusion: you should always test.

This leak has come out at a time of SEO uncertainty. The Helpful Content Update decimated many sites, for better or for worse. AI Overviews has just been sloppily launched, much to the chagrin of most Google users.

In times like this, instead of relying on what Google shows us, the best way to succeed is to test your own methods (or, like me, rely on the testing of much smarter people.)

As BuzzStream co-founder and CEO Paul May put it in his recent LinkedIn post:

“Google has shown repeatedly that you need to focus on what they do, not what they say.”

For example, sites like SearchPilot put out SEO-related A/B test case studies that I highly recommend checking out.

We have a whole section of research and data studies we’ve performed on the best ways to do digital PR.

Don’t let these necessarily inform your link building strategies; instead, consider them ways to support your thinking and make better decisions and cases to stakeholders or clients.

The post What the Google Leak Means for Link Builders and Digital PRs appeared first on BuzzStream.

I’ll be blunt: they are never good.

And yet, according to uSERP’s State of Backlinks for SEO report, guest posting is the third most popular link-building method behind content marketing and digital PR.

I’ve cited it as a useful link building strategy as well.

Some simply buy links on large guest posting directories, and others pitch quality content to get published on an external site.

Guess as to what’s working best these days?

Here’s an example of a guest posting site directory that was pitched to me via LinkedIn:

If you look at many of these sites on lists, you’ll see that Google’s Helpful Content Update has decimated most of their traffic.

As you can see, when you start to explore the waters of guest blogging for backlinks, things get very muddy quickly.

To succeed with guest blogging in 2024, you need to think of yourself as a content creator instead of a link builder. In this post, I’ll show you exactly how.

What is Guest Blogging?

Guest blogging is when you write a unique article to be published on an external website. You sometimes get a link to your site in an author byline.

For example, here’s a post I did for Ahrefs in 2021 that featured a link to Siege Media (where I worked at the time) in the author byline area.

In other cases, you can add a link within the post itself.

For example, here is a guest blogging placement I did years ago for Page One Power.

Rather than a link to the generic home page, I mentioned a post I wrote for Siege Media.

Since you can typically add a link within the content, guest blogging has become a common link building strategy for SEOs.

In the next section of this post, I’ll explain how to think about guest blogging as a content creator rather than a link builder.

Step 1: Find Guest Posting Targets

The most important thing to remember with guest blogging is relevancy. Building relevant links is a shortcut to building authority.

So, let’s start by finding relevant sites that have a blog.

The easiest place to start is by looking at the sites that want guest contributors.

1. Sites Who Want Guest Contributors

The best way to find these kinds of sites is via a Google search for your industry + the following terms:

• Write for us
• Contribute
• Guest article

For instance, say I owned a boat rental site and I wanted to find guest blogging sites in the fishing industry, you might search for:

“Fishing + write for us”

It’s worth mentioning that some risk is involved in sites that overtly mention they offer guest post placements if your goal is link building.

Risk 1: If anyone can contribute, the link will be worth less overall. Even with the very strict writer guidelines, the gates are still open to anyone, which makes it less likely to be very valuable, even if it’s a high-authority site.

In our podcast with Linkpitch.io’s Aaron Anderson, he recommends avoiding sites that blatantly advertise the links. Here’s his take:

“If they’re being very blatant, if it’s like from every page, you see the write for us page, generally speaking, I would say that that’s a bad sign… but having a contributor page or write for us page isn’t necessarily a negative.”

Risk 2: The more significant risk is that most sites offering guest posts exist only to make money. These sites carry a risk, which I’ll get into in Step 2.

If you want to avoid the risk altogether, you can try to find sites that don’t overtly offer guest bloggers or guest contributors.

2. Sites That Have Blogs In Your Industry

The cleanest way to get a link into a post through guest blogging is by avoiding the sites that openly advertise working with guest bloggers.

Instead, look for relevant sites that simply have blogs. So, you can do a Google search for something like industry + “blog,” articles,” or “resources.”

Based on our previous example of the fishing industry, I already found several new blogs.

Not all of these sites will be open to guest contributors, but if you jump down to step 3, I’ll show you how to drastically increase the value of your guest post offer and thus increase the potential of you getting a link placed.

Finding Sites Using BuzzStream

The benefit of using BuzzStream to find sites or prospects is that you can search multiple Google queries simultaneously.

First, I need to set up a new project and name it.

Then, I’ll scroll down to enable some Research Metrics.

Since I have Ahrefs synced to BuzzStream, I can pull in Domain Rating, Position Metrics, and backlinks.

All of these will be integral to helping me weed out low-quality sites in Step 2.

For instance, if I wanted to start a new Research List using BuzzStream, I’d start a New Project, name it, and then choose Search the Web.

Then, I add my search queries to pull in all target sites.

This will pull in hundreds of results that I’ll then narrow down for quality in Step 2.

Now we can start the evaluation process.

Step 2: Evaluate for Quality

If you want a shortcut to quality guest posting sites, I evaluated the top-ranking guest post sites’ lists of over 800 sites and ran a quality check.

Ultimately, I identified 165+ high-quality guest posting sites.

I already did a video and post on this, which you can find below.

But here are some of the quality checks you should do on your site.

Do They Advertise the Price for a Post?

Any buying and selling of link placements for ranking purposes (i.e., without nofollow, sponsored tags) is technically against Google’s guidelines and will be marked as spam.

So, while this isn’t a “quality” check, a site that accepts guest posts for money and clearly advertises this on their site is essentially a nonstarter for me.

Google has the technology to find patterns and signals determining whether a link is bought or sold. As recently as 2022, Google announced that it is using its AI-powered SpamBrain to detect and devalue sites participating in these link practices.

What clearer signal than publishing the cost of a link placement?

For example, I would stay away from a site like this:

(Thanks to Geoffrey Archer for his help finding this page example.)

Are sites that accept guest posts for money but don’t advertise them still at risk?

This is where it gets a little hazy.

I mentioned this in Step 1. It is risky to get a guest post published on a site that exists only to make money from guest posts and link insertions.

You’ll often reach out to a site that doesn’t advertise a price, and then you get a response like this:

But if the site isn’t advertising, how would Google even know?

Brian Dean discussed this problem in our podcast. He referred to these sites as ones that could get you into a “bad neighborhood.” (Check out the recording at around the 7-minute mark.)

“Also, if you can just buy a link from a site, then anyone can. So those domains tend to get degraded over time if they aren’t already.

So what happens is a lot of times they’re like, no gambling, crypto, CBD, blah, to make it seem kind of legit. And then they eventually allow like a borderline one and then it’s a free for all.

And then your link is all of a sudden goes from like, Oh, this is really nice link to like on a spammy site with bad neighborhoods as I used to call it.”

An obvious signal is when a site can be found on a list, like a Google Sheet, that someone offers you, you should avoid it.

I mentioned in the intro that I receive lists like the one below from agencies almost daily (note that this is a different list, yet equally as sketchy):

The sites truly doing this incognito may be less risky than others.

I haven’t seen any compelling study or data to tell me one way or another, but the evidence in favor of avoiding these kinds of sites is mounting.

Let’s move on to other checks like traffic or authority with that out of the way.

Traffic Above 5,000 Organic Searches Per Month

I set the bar at 5k monthly searches in my guest post site analysis. Essentially, the higher you set the bar, the fewer sites you’ll find. I might sometimes go even higher, like 10k, but for our purposes let’s stick with 5k.

Use a tool like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to see the actual organic traffic.

Enter the domain, and look below at the Traffic value under “Organic search.”

This isn’t foolproof because a site with overall traffic doesn’t mean the page you write will get any traffic. But it’s a good starting point.

Domain Authority or Domain Rating Above 50

Authority metrics like Domain Authority (DA from Moz) or Domain Rating (DR from Ahrefs) help give some directional sense for whether or not a page can rank for keywords in Google’s eyes.

So, getting a link from a higher authority site typically sends more value.

You can check DR using Ahrefs’ Site Explorer as well. You’ll find it under Backlink Profile.

Just because a site has a high Domain Rating doesn’t mean it’s necessarily high quality. You still need to evaluate some of the relevancy and content quality.

Content is Relevant To Your Site

Content relevancy is critical to a successful guest blogging campaign. Getting links from irrelevant sites will not help your case.

Think about it: even if your goal is just brand awareness or establishing yourself as a thought leader, if you are doing so in the wrong industry, you aren’t going to get much value out of it.

So why waste the time?

A quick way to determine if your target site overlaps your industry is to evaluate the top-ranking keywords to determine their topical authority.

For example, if I were evaluating the fishing blog, I’d head to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and, on the left navigation, choose Organic Keywords.

Many fishing-related keywords rank well, telling me they are an authority in fishing.

It would make sense for a boat rental site to get a link from a fishing site. (You use boats to catch fish, and they rank for fishing keywords.)

You always want to search keywords in the top 5 or 10 positions.

FishingBooker ranks in the top 10 for all of these keywords.

I realized that this example is relatively straightforward, so let’s examine a type of guest post site I see a lot on the web: general news sites.

For example, the site below, DailyGenius, covers education, tech, business, lifestyle, health, and “general” topics.

So, when evaluating these for topical authority and relevancy, I’d try to look more at the keywords on the vertical or category level vs the site overall.

Regarding our boating rental site, we can argue that travel is a relevant industry (you might rent a boat to travel).

So, let’s examine Daily Genius’ travel section to see if it has any topical authority.

I only see eight keywords with no discernible focus, and only one page ranks in the top 10.

So, to me, this page has no strong topical authority and isn’t relevant to boat rentals.

But, even if the site’s overall content is relevant, it’s essential to evaluate it based on Google’s Helpful Content recommendations.

Site Provides Helpful Content

In March 2024, Google rolled out a massive algorithm update, solidifying Helpful Content into their ranking systems.

They’ve provided a helpful checklist for content creators to use to evaluate their own content and determine whether it’s “helpful.”

We’ve summed this up in a helpful document:

To summarize, what you are looking for is truly quality content.

I like to look for proper sourcing of information, whether or not the author talks about doing the thing they are writing about, and original data.

For example, here is a post from Fishingbooker about getting a fishing license in Nebraska. It has abundant helpful information, such as the costs for permits.

And—one of the more accessible signals to discern— it clearly shows that the author knows about fishing:

For comparison, I found a low-ranking post about restaurant equipment:

The only external link is to a product page (clearly trying to rank for deep fryer.) I see a wall of text with no photos of the equipment.

Lastly, I don’t see an author, so I don’t know who wrote this or if they ever worked in a restaurant kitchen.

I can go on, but you get the picture.

Is this a time-consuming process?

Yes, but it gets faster as you do it.

Plus, it’s way more effective than brute-force link building. Google has even said that one link from a highly relevant, quality site can be worth more than hundreds of others —something I discuss a lot in our post about the quality of a link.)

Do They Have NoFollow Links?

This one is simple.

Google views purchased link placements as advertisements, requiring tagging with rel=nofollow, sponsored. Technically, Google doesn’t pass value from a nofollow link.

This prevents sites from scaling link building schemes.

I should note that nofollow links do provide indirect value. If you get a link or article from Forbes, there’s a good chance that people will see it. When people see it, they are likelier to click on it and visit your site.

Thus, nofollow links can provide direct traffic and general brand awareness. So, if that is your goal for guest blogging, then you don’t have to worry about nofollow vs follow links.

But if you want to build a link building campaign from nofollow links, you’ll find little to no value there.

Filtering For Quality With BuzzStream

Once a Research List is compiled in BuzzStream, it pulls in metrics and contact information.

I can filter the contacts relevant to my guest post outreach using these features.

Remember when I added Ahrefs’ Metrics.

Well, look at the list it pulled in for me.

Now, I can use BuzzStream to help me qualify the sites based on the two previous qualities: organic traffic (T) and domain rating (DR).

First, I click Filter, then find my Ahrefs metrics under “Metrics.”

Then, I can filter out the low-quality sites by choosing DR >=25 and Traffic >=5000.

I can further filter down to include only sites whose contact information BuzzStream has found (which will be super helpful in step 5).

Now, I can use BuzzStream to comb through my list and evaluate the content on the page with the Research flow.

I click the Research drop-down and choose “Review on the Web.”

Select the default settings to comb through the sites 5 tabs per time. Now, I’m taken to BuzzStream’s Research flow, where I can evaluate the site for quality on the left and Approve and Reject it from my guest blog target list on the right.

Once I choose Approve or Reject, BuzzStream opens up another tab in its place so that I can seamlessly move through my list without needing a thousand tabs open!

Now you know what to look for, let’s discuss how to find topics your targets want.

Step 3: Find Relevant Topics

Before we get started, here is a quick disclaimer: you must ensure you can provide experience and expertise for all your content choices below.

Ask yourself: Am I qualified to write a guest post on this topic? Am I bringing something new to the table?

These two qualities make and break writing these days—as evidenced by Google’s recent Helpful Content changes.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s find topics.

The other day, I received a guest post request that pitched 25 article ideas.

None were related to BuzzStream, digital PR, or link building. (I’m also pretty sure they were all AI-generated.)

The approach will not work. To succeed with guest blogging, you need to think like a marketer—or, better yet, like an agency.

You are trying to sell your idea. So, you need to provide value to the site you are contacting.

Luckily, I have two killer tactics for you.

If you don’t have the time, I did a quicker video walkthrough here:

Below I’ll walk you through both tactics in more detail:

Tactic 1 – Keyword-Driven Approach

When trying to find a topic to pitch, the best thing you can do to get a guest blog idea accepted is to provide quantifiable value to your target.

The most straightforward way to provide value for most sites is to choose a keyword they should rank for but do not and offer to write that content for them.

This offers a quantifiable value (search volume and traffic value), making it harder for them to say no.

This approach requires knowledge of the site and content area.

Head to Ahrefs Site Explorer for this approach and evaluate the site’s current Organic Keywords.

Then, let’s look at the keywords that aren’t ranking well. We can set the position to 30-100 and only examine lost or declined places.

Now, we will look for keywords with no relevant content ranking.

I’ve found two that might work:

“How to set up a fishing pole,” and “How to hold a catfish.”

I want to ensure they can rank for these keywords, so I will look at the SERP for “how to set up a fishing pole.”

If I click on the keyword, I will be taken to the Keyword Overview page in Ahrefs. Then, I can scroll down to see the SERP overview.

(Alternatively, you can just Google search “how to set up a fishing pole,” though you will get more localized results.)

In both cases, this SERP includes virtually all YouTube videos. So, this topic wouldn’t be a good fit for a guest post.

Let’s check “How to hold a catfish.” The SERP for this query has a little more variance (although it still has videos ranking in the top 2 spots.)

So, this could be a good keyword to choose and pitch to our target as a guest blog post.

When we pitch, we will focus on the organic traffic that this keyword could potentially bring in for them.

For this, you can look at the Traffic Potential metric.

So, in our case, this keyword has a potential of 600 monthly searches.

This may be enough to convince them to choose this keyword. If so, you can proceed to step 6: drafting your email.

However, to maximize this keyword approach and find super valuable keywords, let’s look at this tactic more thoroughly.

Tactic 2 – Advanced Keyword-Driven Approach (Using Content Gap)

After working at an agency for six years, one thing was sure: companies (and clients) are driven by competition.

I could make a case for any SEO improvement or content idea by saying these seven words: “Your competition is doing this and winning.”

You can use Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool to show how your target site compares to the competition.

Find competitors with Ahrefs

Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool has an “Organic Competitors” tool on the left sidebar.

Click it, and you’ll see multiple sites whose keywords overlap with your target site. Focus on the sites whose DR is similar to your target site.

In the below, you can see sites like takemefishing.org, captainexperiences.com

Select the two using the check box, then click Open in Content Gap:

Now, you’ll see the Content Gap, which shows terms for which both sites rank but your target site does not.

Go to “All intersections” and select 2 (or if you have 3+ sites, select at least two intersections.)

Now, you’ll see keywords for which the two main competitors rank, but the target site is not.

You are now looking for keywords where both competitors rank on page 1. This will tell you that this keyword is relevant enough for the target site and provide that FOMO to convince your target site.

I found “types of fishing,” with a KD of 26 and a monthly organic search volume of 1,900.

I still like to spot-check the site to ensure they don’t have a piece of content written for the term. (They might, but it may just need some updating.)

So, I Googled site:fishingbooker.com “types of fishing,” and found that they have what amounts to a hub page:

This page does not have unique content and will not rank for anything. I can confirm this by putting it into Ahrefs Site Explorer.

This makes an excellent choice for a guest post.

(For the SEOs yelling at the computer that their current post is a navigational hub, I would challenge that this post can still have dual value with some unique copy. I would argue that a blog post can also serve as a navigational hub. Lastly, the SERP seems to favor blog posts for this query, as evidenced by the top-ranking post.)

The last thing you must do is confirm the traffic potential and value. You can click on the keyword within the Content Gap, or we can return to Keywords Explorer and plug in the keyword.

Let’s scroll down to see the SERP again. We are looking for the relevant post’s traffic potential and traffic value.

In this case, I will skip britannica.com because it’s not likely Fishingbooker.com can outrank them (their DR is much higher). So, I’ll look at the 2nd ranking post, which has a traffic potential of 519 monthly searches and a value of $123.

Now, I can jump down to Step 6 and draft my email.

If you have trouble finding potential keywords, you can use Google to attract more competitors, which I’ll outline next.

Find More SERP Competitors With Google

Typically, a simple Google search for a similar query can find more competitors than Ahrefs’ Organic Competitors tool.

I can start by Googling a keyword our target site already ranks for to uncover other competitors.

For example, looking at the top organic keywords for our target site, I see that they rank for “best catfish bait.”

So, let’s Google that and see if we find any new organic competitors.

Here, I see Wired2Fish and Angling Edge.

I can add them to my existing Content Gap search or start a new analysis.

Looking through the results, I see many “best” types of posts, which can be incredibly valuable if you are an expert in the field.

For example, I see “best fishing line.”

Let’s focus on this as our guest post idea because 2,000 monthly searches will make it valuable to them.

Jump down to Step 6 if you’re ready to draft the email.

What About Non-Keyword-Driven Guest Blogging?

A non-keyword-driven approach may work if you have something else to offer, such as an extensive social following or distribution network to bring traffic to your target site.

For example, we sometimes proactively find guest authors who are industry experts and well-known. We get valuable information from them to give to our readers and hope that BuzzStream reaches new audiences through their network.

But if you are at the point where you have a big enough audience or industry recognition, you probably don’t need guest posting to build your brand.

(I know what you are thinking, and we never accept unsolicited guest post pitches.)

Step 4: Identify the Correct Contact

Now that you have your list of sites and topics, you want to find the correct person to receive your guest blog pitch.

The sites that accept guest posts will tell you exactly who to address your email to.

But let’s continue pretending fishingbooker.com doesn’t overtly accept guest posts.

For the sites that do not overtly accept guest posts, you may have to dig to find the correct person. These are the kinds of roles you are looking for:

• Director of Content Marketing
• Marketing Director
• Communications Director

You can start by looking at the target site’s About or Contact page, which often lists the team members.

If you can’t find it there, you can move to LinkedIn. Search for the company and choose the “People” tab.

Then, look for similar roles. For FishingBooker.com, Jacqueline R. is the Head of Content Marketing & Communications.

Once you find the correct person, you’ll need their email.

Step 5: Find Their Email Address

To find contact info for your prospects, you can fall back on the tactics in our trusty guide for finding anyone’s email address.

Here are a few quick tips.

Finding Email Addresses with BuzzStream

As previously mentioned, BuzzStream will pull all email addresses it finds on the site.

For example, I looked at one of the sites on my list, Fishidy, and pulled in info@fishidy.com.

But sometimes, email addresses aren’t accessible.

For example, on FishingBooker.com, BuzzStream didn’t find any email contact information because there was none on the site.

In these cases, you might have to turn to Google.

Finding Email Addresses with Google

First, I can Google the person’s name + “email” or “contact.”

Unfortunately, we don’t know Jacqueline’s last name yet, which would make Googling a bit easier.

But we can find that out with Google as well!

Let’s start with Jacqueline R. Fishing Booker. Immediately, I found her last name, Rees, or rather Rees-Mikula.

So, I can now continue to search for Jacqueline Rees-Mikula Fishing Booker + email.

Unfortunately, nothing is popping out to me.

But wait, I know she’s on LinkedIn, so I can take a shortcut using a Chrome extension.

Finding Email Addresses with LinkedIn

Several Chrome extensions can help cross-check LinkedIn profiles with email addresses. For example, I can check Jacqueline’s email address if I use RocketReach (which allows for 5 free lookups).

I want to verify the email I found to be entirely sure before heading to Step 6 and drafting my email.

Email Verification with Hunter

You’d want to verify an email address for several reasons, but the biggest is that sending too many undeliverable emails can hurt your sender’s reputation.

Sender reputation is essential these days with Google’s new email requirements.

Hunter allows free email verifications, which also provide a confidence score.

Once you know that it’s valid, you can start drafting.

Updating Contacts in BuzzStream

Before I draft, I want to circle back to my list.

Now that I’ve found Jacqueline’s email, I’ll manually enter it into BuzzStream.

I’ll do this by clicking on FishingBooker in my Outreach List, then clicking Add under People.

I can now add Jacqueline’s name and email, which will help me in the next section.

Alternatively, instead of going through the BuzzStream Database, I could just navigate to FishingBooker.com and use the Buzzmarker Chrome Extension to add any new contact information to the page quickly.

Now, it’s time to email your targets.

Step 6: Draft Your Email

Your pitch for guest posting is very straightforward, which we cover in our email template post.

The pitch includes an introduction, previous guest posts you have written, and, most importantly, the value they will get from ranking for said keyword.

In our scenario, the focus should be that the target audience is missing out on a keyword their competitor is ranking for.

So your template would look something like this:

–

Not everyone will agree, but it’s important to be upfront and tell them you are looking for a link.

Most will get the game, and as long as your writing examples are good enough and your case is strong enough, you will be OK.

Also, note that this template calls out the target keyword, traffic potential, and traffic value. This is where we are going to stand out from the competition.

As mentioned, I receive 3-5 guest post pitches each day. None of them have ever used this tactic.

Why? Because it takes a little extra effort. But that’s how you can cut through the noise.

What if You Haven’t Written Any Guest Posts?

This is a common question, and it’s reasonable. Five or six years ago, I was in the same boat! (Fishing pun: engaged. And don’t worry, there’s more to come.)

If you haven’t written guest posts, that’s OK; you may have to start on smaller, newer, lower-authority sites.

You’ll need to provide writing examples 95% of the time. I recommend finding a site where I can get some writing published. The generic “write for us” sites are great for these purposes.

Without any previous guest posts, your pitch should call out anything you’ve written:

If you’re feeling ambitious, you can write an entire article for them without getting their approval and take your chances that they’ll want it.

That will really hook them (pun!).

Drafting and Sending Email in BuzzStream

In BuzzStream, I can use my previous list to begin drafting my emails.

If I toggle through to the Outreach List, I’ll see all the sites I approved during my prospecting/quality evaluation phase.

I can see all of the contact information that BuzzStream has found, making it less necessary for me to spend time in Step 5 digging for some emails.

When writing an email, I can select all the sites I want to contact and choose “Send Individually” from the Outreach dropdown.

Next, it will prompt me to choose a Sequence or Template. I choose Create New and paste my template.

Next, I’ll create a quick follow-up email by pressing Add Follow-up Email. This will automatically follow up if my contact doesn’t reach out.

Once the template is set, I’ll be taken to the Outreach flow. I see the email on the right, with all fields merged onto it.

Then, on the left, I see all of my team’s contact history with my target site.

Once I send my emails, I’ll see the status and any replies within BuzzStream. Then I can continue the conversation and hopefully start writing my posts.

Step 7: Write a Great Post

If your guest post idea is accepted, all that’s left is to write a fantastic post. This isn’t a post about writing great content, but I do have some integral tips:

Make Sure Your Content is Helpful

The golden rule for guest posting is this: your post should be the same quality as what you would want on your own site.

In Step 2, I previously linked to my Helpful Content evaluation checklist for evaluating your target site. The checklist was modeled after Google’s content self-assessment post.

So, when writing your post, follow the same guidelines if you want your backlink to provide value.

Include Your Link Naturally

Some sites will include your link in an author bio section. Remember that Ahrefs post?

Here’s where my link was included:

Others may not take this approach, so you must naturally weave your link into your site. Linking to a product page is rarely natural. Instead, I recommend linking to either a blog post or your homepage.

Either way, you do it naturally.

Avoid exact match keywords because those stick out like a sore thumb and could be seen as spammy.

You can get enough value from a backlink even if you don’t use exact match keywords. We chatted about internal linking with Positional’s CEO, Nate Matherson.

He essentially showed that with this approach, as long as your website’s internal linking is configured correctly, you could see gains of up to 20-30% in organic traffic.

Is Guest Blogging Risky?

According to Google, paid guest posts must have rel= “nofollow” and “sponsored” tags, which effectively render the links nonexistent for SEO purposes.

In fact, after a now-deleted conversation on X with John Mueller in 2020, it was clear that essentially devalues links from guest posts because they are “unnatural.”

“The part that’s problematic is the links — if you’re providing the content/the links, then those links shouldn’t be passing signals & should have the rel-sponsored / rel-nofollow attached. It’s fine to see it as a way of reaching a broader audience.”

He then confirmed that this even applies to links in the author contributor area.

(You can read the whole saga on Search Engine Journal.)

So, what most people did was remove author contributor links.

Is that enough to convince Google that it’s not a paid placement?

Google has also discussed how it uses its AI-based spam prevention tool, SpamBrain, to find sites that are buying and selling links.

So, chances are they are a little smarter than that.

With any link building strategy, it’s essential to diversify your tactics. Leaning into any one piece will get you into trouble.

If all your links are from guest post sites, that will get you into trouble—especially if you pay for them.

My approach helps to alleviate this risk in a big way, but you should still always want to diversify how and when you build your links.

Too many links in a short period is an unnatural signal to Google.

Google will continue to look for sites that buy and sell link placements, so as SEOs and content marketers, we must always be able to adjust our strategies.

If your goal is to scale and spray hundreds of emails to catch one site, that’s not the way to do it.

However, if you look at guest posting as if you are providing valuable information for your target sites, you will have success.

The post Guest Blogging: How You Should Be Doing It in 2024 appeared first on BuzzStream.

With the Helpful Content algorithm update, AI Overviews, and all of the other changes in the industry, I wanted to reach out to Aaron Anderson, who owns and operates a link building agency, Linkpitch.io, that is deep in the trenches building links every day.

I had the chance to join Aaron’s podcast as a guest a few years back, and what struck me was his unique approach to link building.

It was a client-first, intentional, content-driven approach that drove results.

In our conversation, we discuss strategies that work (or not) and how you should think about your link building in 2024.

So, without further ado, here’s my conversation with Aaron. (Or if you’d like just to check out the takeaways, here they are below:)

Main Takeaways

1. When ideating content to pitch for link building, the content needs to be appealing to those who can actually give you links (not just appealing to your readers.)

2. The free tool or freemium model in SaaS is an effective link building strategy.

3. When pitching, never lie. Stay genuine. If you haven’t read an article, don’t say you did.

4. The better and quicker you can evaluate whether a site is a link farm, the better off you’ll be.

5. It’s generally OK to pitch to sites that accept guest posts or contributors, but avoid sites that advertise “write for us” all over the site (e.g., in the main navigation or footer areas).

6. Broken link building works because it gets you a wide variety of links from different pages and sites.

7. Aim for consistency rather than stressing about the ultimate power of each link.

8. When determining the link strategy, it’s essential to understand the risks and decide which risks are worth taking.

9. Although his agency doesn’t specialize in link exchanges, he remains open to opportunities. He’s seen that sites doing the best job with their SEO are typically the ones most open to link exchanges.

10. For those new to link building, learn about the different types of link building that you can build and try to understand what would work best in your industry.

11. When engaging with a link building agency or consultant, ask: If this is the only way we get links, why aren’t we getting links in other ways?

12. Aaron prefers (and recommends) that you invest in building links to pages that Google is already ranking at least on the first few pages of the SERP.

Below is my slightly edited transcription:

What’s the best content approach you’ve seen lately?

I can’t think of any examples kind of right off the top of my head, but generally the approaches that I prefer are companies that just recognize that content is, where links are going, and that you have to have good content to build backlinks.

Because I get so many people, sometimes they come to us and say, “Hey, just let’s build links for our site. “And it’s okay. “Well, what do we have that people are going to be interested in and that people are going to be willing to link to you?”

And sometimes, if you don’t have that, you’re limiting your options as to how you’re going to be able to build links for your site.

What happens if a client wants links but has no content to pitch?

I just have to be honest with them and say, if you want to go pay for links, that’s one option. That’s not an option I generally do too much with.

And, if you don’t have anything to link to, you can always just pay someone to link to you in some way. But if you want to earn the backlinks, you have to have something valuable to those who can link.

What’s a value to other site owners or those in your industry and how can we have some valuable things? I think there are things that you already have that you could better utilize or sometimes it’s thinking, okay, we could change something temporarily and give something for free for a while, and maybe we’re charging for now so that we can garner links with it or something.

For example, a SAAS product—you know, there’s debate about whether it should be freemium. But from a link-building perspective, I’m like, well, being freemium definitely helps because it’s a free tool, and people love to link to free tools. So, if you have a different approach, would you consider changing to a freemium model?

Because that’ll help you on the link-building side. So I think some of it is just thinking, you know, what do you have, and is there something that we could change or adjust so that people could find more value in sharing and talking about your product? What do you have to offer?

Is there a cost-benefit analysis for link building for SaaS companies building a freemium tool?

I’ve never run the numbers like that. I think it’s, it’s hard to quantify sometimes what you’re going to get and, and, and how,  Can you predict, you know, how successful it’s going to be? But, you know, at the core, it’s just like, okay, do you have something of value? If you don’t want to do the freemium model, that’s fine, too.

But what types of tools or resources can you build in your niche that could be valuable for other people? If you don’t have anything to pitch to others, then it’s just hard to get started.

What is the link building strategy for a freemium tool?

So I think it really depends on the niche, and a freemium model could make more sense in certain niches than others. But you know, as a free tool, the first thing you kind of look like, let’s just say, an SEO, if you have a free tool.

You know, it’s like, Oh, there’s probably list posts out there that are like, Oh, the best free tools in SEO or the best, you know, whatever. And so you can compile those together and look for those, um, any types of pages that are like resource pages that are for people in your industry.

And if, if your tool is helpful in those situations, those could be good opportunities to, for pitching your, your tool.

We’ll say, Oh, you know,  like you have a. A page dedicated to helping people learn SEO and say, Oh, our tool is free. And this certain way, and it’s helpful for doing research. And so that’s a pitch you can do. So you just kind of find,  and then you look at other free tools in your space where they getting their backlinks from, and then you can kind of see, Oh, they’re getting that from these list posts or these resource pages or wherever.

And then you can kind of mimic. Okay, let’s find those types of pages because I see these other free tools are getting links in this way.

How would you define content that’s valuable for pitching?

I think sometimes people come to me and they say, “Hey, I have this great piece of content that’s going to work really well.” And I say, you know, “this is a good article and people could be interested in reading it, but the people linking to the article aren’t maybe necessarily the people that are going to be consuming the article.”

So you have to think in terms of link building. Those who can give the links, what are they going to find valuable because that’s really your market?

You can have content targeted for the consumer or your client, but maybe that’s not for a linkable asset. Maybe that content isn’t that interesting for those who can add links.

So you have to think of it in terms of who can give links and what’s valuable to them. And so yeah, maybe it is, maybe there’s some sort of tool or something that would be interesting.

Maybe it’s content, sometimes content like they’ve mentioned this topic, but they haven’t expounded on it. And so like your content can be valuable because it’s expanding on something that’s kind of complicated that they haven’t, they just met briefly mentioned their content, that topic or something. So yeah.

It’s a lot of different things that it could be. Um, but yeah, you have to generally think of it more like the site owner or the person you’re going to outreach. What would, how would they perceive it being valuable?

What do you think about content relevancy in link building?

Yeah, I find the mismatch greatest for B2B industries. If you’re in a B2C industry, there’s a lot more interest in content that appeals to consumers.

And so there’s usually an easier overlap between what drives links and what people are interested in.

But in B2B, it’s a very specific niche, and sometimes, it can be difficult. For example, let’s just say you have a vacation scheduler tool that HR teams use to schedule vacations.

Well, talking about vacation scheduling as a topic is not very interesting, but vacation is something people love to talk about.

So, you can create content that’s very interesting for consumers, whether or not they’ll convert.

The vacation scheduling tool doesn’t necessarily matter because you can get those backlinks by focusing on topics that overlap with consumer interest.

So that’s how I think of it: What, where, and how can you get topics?

These overlap with what people would be interested in, and generally, you can find those somewhere. Um, but in some niches, it can be harder to find things that are more relevant.

What are some of the main reasons that you think link building fails?

I have certain rules that I like to follow. One reason it fails is that you’re not reaching out to the right person.

So many people try to automate this. They’ll download a list from a link building tool like Hunter.io or whatever, and they do all this manually because you really want to be sure that you’re finding and thinking through: Okay, who can add a link on this specific page?

And some people I’ve seen, they say, Oh, you know, we first try to find the editor, and if not, like they, they automate the logic.

And I think that’s really hard to do. So that’s really important. You have to find the right person. Cause if you don’t, you’re going to lose. The second thing is, don’t lose people on the pitch.

If you write too much text, if you don’t get straight to the point you give them fake flattery and they just roll their eyes immediately.

You have to be short straight to the point. Just be very upfront with what you want. Don’t do fake flattery, all these kinds of things. Um, the pitch can lose it for you. Yeah, there are probably many other reasons, but those are a couple of ones that come off the top of my head.

What constitutes fake flattery in link building outreach?

Um, so I don’t do a lot of pitching journalists, uh, very little, so I’m not as experienced in that.  But what I constitute fake flattery is saying something that you don’t mean, um, which would be something like, Hey, I loved this article you read, and you haven’t read that article.

It would be like, Hey, I’ve been following you. You don’t follow them. Anything that you say to like, try to like build a connection, but it’s fake because it’s not true.

How specific do you get when personalizing?

If you’re going to reference a post, you don’t need to say that you love the post. You can say like, “Oh, I came across this post. This is something like you just speak specifically to what you’re talking about.”

If you haven’t asked, just get straight to the point, and don’t beat around the bush.

It depends on the type of outreach you’re doing, of course. If you’re doing highly targeted outreach, it might make sense to get into the weeds and define touch points, but just be real about them; don’t make them up.

What does your workflow look like from start to finish for link building campaign?

First, it’s just identifying the strategy that you’re going to pursue.  And then, uh, based on that strategy, you’re going to have a specific way of kind of finding the prospects. So, for example, if I find a broken link.

And I’m going to do a broken link campaign. I will use the prospects from that broken link as my prospect list.

So, based on the strategy, you’ll have a prospecting process that you’ll have to follow to get your prospects. Then, you’ll have to manually go through and ensure that all the pages you’re reaching make sense according to that strategy.

And then you’ll make sure you find the right person to reach out to. Sometimes, you know, we’ll find maybe two or three people, depending on what kind of outreach we’re doing who could be the right people to reach out to. Then, um, yeah, and then you put together the template, which can come before, during, or after; it depends.

I guess you usually need to have a template in place while you’re kind of choosing the fields like the, the text fields are going to put in the,  um, the pitch and whatever.  Yeah, and then just send it out. And manage the email communication.

What do you look at when you’re evaluating a site?

Yeah, everyone might have different criteria. We want to ensure that it’s a legitimate site run by real people and has been active somewhat recently.

But wait, how do you how can you tell if a site is run by real people?

It depends on the type of site you’re looking at, but for example, if you’re looking at a small business website, can you see who’s behind it? You know, sometimes sites, sometimes people try to hide who’s behind it, and sometimes that can be harder to determine if it’s a legitimate site.

So there’s certain, there’s different things that can give you like signals.  Metrics can help, you know, are they getting actual traffic? Um, you, you know, you can get a sense for, there’s like from link farms, the farms that sites exist just for the purpose of selling links.  There are certain things you look for to exclude, like if they write about everything and you know, there are certain templates It’s just immediately once you’ve looked at them enough.

You’re like, oh, yeah I can just tell that this like looks like a link form. So you gain some of those things over time, But it’s looking okay. Do they cover a specific topic, or do they, cover in-depth that topic where they’re trying to write about everything? If they’re writing about everything, have you ever heard of this site before?

It’s really a lot of it’s about trying to identify if it’s a link farm or not because at the end of the day, link farms are trying to look legitimate. Can you, you know, identify them and exclude them as, Yeah, as quickly as possible?

How do you feel about sites that advertise “write for us”?

Accepting guest posts, even if they have a right for us page, I don’t mind.

If the Write for Us page is linked to from the main navigation, yes, that to me is a big deal.

If they’re being very blatant, if it’s like from every page, you see the right for us page, generally speaking, I would say that that’s a bad sign. Uh, but having a contributor page or right for us page isn’t necessarily a negative.

It’s all about how open they are, like pushing it.  So yeah, that’s, that’s something I would avoid.

Has Helpful Content changed the way you build links?

Yeah, I think our strategies haven’t changed that much. Yeah. But we haven’t, we don’t do a lot of like guest posting, so we don’t, um, I’ve always been against the idea of Like a lot of guest posting companies or agencies. Um, it’s like, let’s get the lowest quality content that we can have accepted by the target site.

And so if we can get away with writing with AI, if we can get rid of writing with a cheap, for me, I’ve always been like, If the content doesn’t read well enough that I would read it, I don’t want to junk up the internet more. So, I only believe in higher-quality guest posting. So, as a strategy, it’s not one that we generally employ.

So, our strategies, like, we do a lot of old school strategies. Like, like, broken link building. This is like the OG link-building strategy they did in the ’90s.  Still works, and we still utilize it. So I like doing things that I think have staying power in terms of strategies. So you don’t have to keep adjusting your approach based on, you know, it’s like we have an approach that works and we get links that, that  I think, stand the test of time.

And so based on any updates, you know, I hope I don’t have to keep. Like redoing everything because the links are now being ignored that we were building before.

Are you doing link insertion?

Link insertions are generally used for pay linking. Is that how you use the term?

Vince: I would say just like finding a specific keyword or something on someone’s site and saying, hey, you know, you talk about content marketing strategies, and we have a post here about content marketing strategies. Would you be interested in adding that? It could give your users more context, however you frame it.

These days, a lot of those are paid placements just because that’s how the market has gone. But yeah, I don’t think they necessarily have to be.

Aaron: Yeah. We do some of that. Generally speaking, those tend to have lower conversions or you’re just getting most people say, yeah, this is the price for that.

And the types of campaigns that we run with that, usually it’s when the more specific you can be, it’s not like, Hey, you just mentioned this. It’s like, you mentioned this exact phrase.  And we have a topic on this exact phrase and you didn’t like to talk more about it.

So this could be a helpful addition like if you can be really targeted in those campaigns, that’s where I see the best success with it. Yeah, so we do it sometimes but generally speaking you get a lot of paid people wanting money when you run those campaigns in my experience

Does broken link building work?

Well, broken link building is great because you get links from a wide range of pages. So, let’s say we find a broken link, and then we’re just looking at all the pages that are linking to that broken link.

So, some of the pages and links might come from resource pages, and some might come from within content.

I mean, I’ve gotten links from the New York Times and Parade and, you know, like many really great sites, uh, with broken link building. So,  and lots of different types of sites. So I like it because you,  when you do resource page link building, you’re getting links just from resource pages. When you do like, okay, content, you’re getting links, just in content.

When you’re doing broken link building, you’re getting a wide variety of links and lots of different pages because it’s just how people link to that page. So, that’s one of the things I like about it: it’s very varied.

And does page depth matter?

Like, okay, do links vary based on where they are on a site and how deep they are?

Yeah, there’s definitely a difference in value—just like there’s a difference in value of a link based on how many outgoing links there are on a specific page. But if you really did refine your criteria to no more than this many outgoing links, I mean, you can really drill down and only get links from pages that have traffic.

You’re just going to have such a few prospects; it’s a numbers game. And so the more you narrowly define your criteria, the more likely you are to have to pay for the links that you think are most valuable, find a different approach, or do relationship link building to get those links that you think are most valuable.

So yeah, there’s always a difference in value, and my approach has always been to try to go for consistency rather than stressing about the ultimate power of each individual link. Go for consistency over time.

If you want to go just for the links and get you the most value, you know, that’s probably a relationship.

Link building is going to probably get you the best, highest-quality links, as far as that goes.

What do you mean by relationship link building?

By relationship building I mean link exchanges or, yeah, or knowing people and that can say, oh, Hey, I can, or ABC link exchange, or like, I’m doing guest posting on this.

You’re exchanging something.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a direct exchange.

What’s your take on link exchanges?

So, my broader take in terms of what strategy should you or shouldn’t use to me? It’s not like, oh, you should or shouldn’t do different strategies.

It’s all about, well, what’s your risk? How do you view risk and link building, and do you understand the risks? And then which ones do you think are worth taking?

And some people, people look at this differently. Some people are like, I don’t want to do anything that’s against Google’s written, uh, TOS and other people are like, I just want to do what works and, you know, Google keeps changing, and I’m just going to do it, you know, so,  so what you choose is all based on your risk profile and so however you’re comfortable, like to me, I’m okay with it as long as you just kind of understand the risk.

I do a lot of outreach, um, and you know, when we get clients, we always say, “Oh, are you open to guest posts?” “Are you open to paid links?” Are you open to, link exchanges?”

Those are the three we kind of like want to clarify.

In my experience, the sites that are doing the best job with their SEO, that are like the biggest sites on the internet, are the ones that are the most open to link exchanges.

They’re not interested in your content because they care a lot about their content quality and have really high standards.

They don’t want a random person getting their content, and they’re not interested in getting money for you for a link either.

But they see the value. If you’re a good site and you’re reaching them, they see value in getting backlinks and trading backlinks.

So the sites on the internet that are doing best do link exchanges, and they’re smart about it. They do it with the best sites that they see the most value in. And so that’s when I don’t have a problem with it. Some people have built entire agencies just on link exchanges.

It’s not such a part of what we do. It’s, it’s just like if we’re doing outreach and we come across as opportunities. It fits our criteria, we’ll, we’ll look at them, but you know, just, From my experience, the people that are doing best in SEO, they all seem to be okay and comfortable with it.

Yeah. And like big names that you’d like, oh wow. They do like exchanges?!

Even the back and forth, like if you think of a healthy site. They’re getting a lot of links regularly, maybe hundreds of links, a one-off exchange going to like a priority page that it might be hard to get links to, you know, where you’re getting maybe, or even just a supplement like we’re doing a lot of natural link building where people are choosing their anchor text.

So one off, okay, let’s have some input on the anchor text. Um, you know, those things can make a big difference. It’s not necessarily negating because, okay, maybe just domain to domain, it’s not a big deal, but you’re getting.

You’re linking to my priority page and I’m linking to your priority page and we’re both like really good sites that have a lot of authority, a lot of traffic, like you’re both going to benefit from that.

So yeah, I’ve done a lot of back-and-forth, not like a law, but I’ve done plenty of those where people exchange links directly. It’s just such a small part of your overall linking, and I don’t think most people worry about it from a risk standpoint.

Are you seeking out link exchanges in those cases?

We only do it when we’re doing normal outreach and if someone presents us with the opportunity.

We don’t run link exchange campaigns.  I would be nervous as a site owner if I ever saw my site on a list for anything.

Editor note: Here’s an example of a list of sites:

So from a risk perspective, I would not want to be part of like networks or lists where like, you could bank on me always to get a link, you know, so I would be nervous about that.

I think the smart site owners, they’re just, okay, well we get an excellent opportunity from an excellent site. Just doing it when it makes sense. And we were really like controlling it.

But again, it all comes down to your risk assessment, and how you perceive that.

How important is it to diversify your link strategy?

What I always like to try to let clients know is, even so, what we’re doing, you’re hiring me to build backlinks for you, but that shouldn’t be the only way you’re getting backlinks.

You should be getting some links naturally and you should be getting some links based on the quality of your content and stuff like that.

When you’re hiring, you have to think of it more holistically. Okay, how do we get backlinks? Okay, we hire a company for backlinks, but is that the only way we’re getting back? If it is the only way we’re getting backlinks, why aren’t we getting backlinks on other, any other ways?

And why aren’t we getting links naturally or passively? So, I always want to be like a small part of a larger, uh, pie of like how links are coming in.

And if, you know, if I can help clients think, okay, if you built this content and we can get this to rank, okay, then it can start linking, getting links naturally over time.

Cause you want to, you want links coming in various ways.

So, yeah, if you just have one approach and you’re getting one type of backlink and you’re not getting links any other way, yeah, there’s probably some risk associated with that.

Um, but again, it also depends on where the links come from in your industry.

And if that’s where the links come from in your industry, um, and your competitors also have that similar, they’re all getting links in that same way, then. Maybe it doesn’t seem as much of a risk.

How do you approach a new client?

So yeah, one thing is one way to look at is okay? You need something to build links to. And if you don’t have something to build links to, like you get, you have to get some links differently. So sometimes when people come to me and say, “Oh, you don’t have much”, I would suggest HARO-type link building because you’ll get homepage links.

It’ll help you build some of that foundational authority. I want to see how Google responds to your site when you have some initial backlinks. Are they going to start liking your content better? Sometimes, when you have a brand new site, you don’t know anything about it. Does Google like me?

Do they like the content I’m writing or whatever? So, okay, maybe you need to build some foundational, uh, links. So I might say, you know, that’s what I would recommend to start. Build some, just some good homepage links, and get some authority. Then the second way is like, do you build links to pages that aren’t getting traffic already?

So I prefer to build links to pages that rank somewhere. So, for example,  you come up with a brand-new website. I say, okay, let’s start building links. And then we built links for six months and still those links never had an impact. Well, because Google wasn’t sending you traffic before we built a bunch of backlinks.

And then, even after all the backlinks, they didn’t send traffic to you. So my approaches. I like to make sure that Google likes your content first. If Google likes your content without backlinks, they will like your content better with backlinks.

But if Google doesn’t like your content currently, like you’re not ranking on page three or four, like you’re not even in the top 100, you’re nowhere.

And I build backlinks to that page that it may do nothing.  So I like to get cues first. Like, so that’s the risk when someone’s brand new, they come to me and say, we can build backlinks. But like it may have nothing to do with the backlinks we’re building. It’s just that Google isn’t indexing your content and putting it somewhere in the top 10 pages of Google.

Maybe it doesn’t see it as relevant. Maybe there are technical things going on that you want to fix first. And once you see, okay, we’re on page 5, we’re on page 4, we’re, like, Google likes our content somewhat. Okay, now we build links to it, and now Google likes it better.

To me, that’s a way to de-risk your link building, is to make sure your content is being liked first before you start building links to it.

Do you think Google uses any quality or relevancy metric when looking at a backlink portfolio?

You see some people doing pretty weird things that sometimes seem to work. And if there were some sort of relevancy metric, you would think it would catch those things like sometimes using like expired domains that have no relevance.

NOTE: Since recording on this podcast, Google has started hitting some of these sites practicing expired domain abuse.

And it’s, I think, they said they’ve included in this recent update.  Um, but you see some weird things. And so you question, I’ve always been one to try to focus on relevance.

It makes sense, just from a logical perspective, that if you have on this topic and these people write about it, it would benefit.

I’m sure they try. Yeah, I don’t know exactly how well they’re always able to implement that as a criteria. Y

eah, I mean, I get, and the reason I ask that is that, you know, thinking about what you’re saying about a brand new site just starting out and making sure their content is on point first and Google knows their site.

Do you always need content first before starting link building?

Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, it’s a cart before the horse kind of question, or the chicken or the egg. Do you build links first to build up some of this authority so that your content will rank, or do you, you know, make sure that your content, like Google, likes your content before building a bunch of backlinks?

In my opinion, you should always start with content first. Content is really where you should focus your site.

You should really focus and make sure because Google will find and tell you what it thinks. I mean, and maybe to build some foundational authority.

Build some homepage links and, you know, build some, just like building your social profiles and these kinds of things like these, just to show you, I gotta have some semblance of a brand.  And then if you can build some like HARO backlinks to your homepage and build a little bit of authority, you can get some gauge.

I like doing that because I’ve had clients in the past, and they were brand new. Then we’ve built links for a long time, and they were like, maybe it was a cool tool.

I thought it was great, and people liked it, but from an SEO perspective, you know, there were question marks if Google was ever going to rank it for anything.

And then after, after working with them, I’m like, Oh yeah, maybe I should push back in the future because I feel bad if I build backlinks for people like six, 12 months and then I don’t see any traction for them.

So I want them to like, you know, get value from their money and make sure that they’re, And, and I think the best way to do that is generally try to focus on your content first and make sure that Google is liking it and then invest in link building.

And you can do some link building, mostly like the homepage, to build some initial authority. But, um, that’s kind of what I prefer cause it makes me feel less, um, just in terms of managing expectations, too. Like you, you can see, I can see the path of how links can benefit, you know,

Is your podcast Let’s Talk Link Building still going?

Yeah, it’s a bit of an unfortunate end; it may be resurrected at some point, but I had to stop Let’s Talk Link Building after about 30 or 35 episodes.

What are some of your biggest link building takeaways or tips from your podcast?

The biggest thing I really gained from doing the podcast is a much better understanding of link building as an industry, all the different approaches that there are, and how different approaches fit different situations.

Sometimes when clients are like, well, I need links, let me find someone that will give me links.

And they kind of view it like a commodity.

There are lots of different strategies and approaches, and those strategies and approaches may not always fit every situation.

Some types of link building are better in different situations, and not everybody is good at every approach.

And so it’s actually a much bigger industry than people recognize. And they want to commoditize it as they like “ I need a link. Oh, a DR 80. Okay. That’s good. Let me get the link,”

And, and it’s, you know, way more complex than that.

And so, yeah, if you’re looking to do link building, you know, understand a little bit about the different types of link building that you can build with PR, you can build it with guest posting, and try to understand what would work best in your industry and for your site.

I think it’s good to take some time before just jumping in and just saying, I need links, and let me give money to the first person who says they’ll get me links.

Subscribe to the Podcast!

Subscribe on Spotify

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

The post Traditional Link Building Approaches that Work in 2024 with Aaron Anderson appeared first on BuzzStream.

From ideation to pitching to analyzing success, BuzzStream is a key tool we utilize at KURU Footwear for all our Digital PR campaigns.

In this case study, we’ll outline how we used BuzzStream at all points of our campaign’s process: The Longest and Shortest US Airport Walks in the USA—A unique study that examined how much Americans have to walk in various major airports across the country.

I will be running through how we used this campaign to earn relevant, top-tier coverage, including 25 links over DA 80 (including Yahoo, MSN, USA Today, AOL, and Travel+Leisure), 60 syndications, and a total of 125 backlinks of coverage in March and April 2024.

Step 1: Starting With A Strong Idea

As a PR professional for over five years across many different brands and verticals, I can tell you that the most important part of any digital PR campaign is starting with a strong idea.

All the clickbait-y subject lines and high open rates in the world will be meaningless if your campaign idea isn’t interesting to journalists.

From late 2023 through early 2024, I noticed that an old KURU campaign continued earning organic links without active outreach. In fact, the report was about three years outdated.

The report was The Longest and Shortest Airport Walking Distances in the U.S., which included a survey from 2021 on Americans’ travel habits. Not only were this report and survey data three years old, but the world has drastically changed in travel over the past five years.

Taking a solid idea was a great starting point for a successful campaign to push ahead of summer and the peak of the summer travel season.

The travel industry finally saw its biggest rebound to pre-pandemic numbers in 2023, and the TSA predicts travel in 2024 will exceed travel in 2023. With a travel-related campaign earning 100+ links from CNN and other top-tier publications in 2023, despite being outdated, I knew it was an ideal time to revamp the campaign for 2024.

We refreshed this campaign in March 2024, just ahead of Spring Break, the first week that most Americans start to travel ahead of summer.

Step 2: Planning and Strategy Within BuzzStream

While the team worked on bringing the new campaign to life with updated data and graphics, and while I ran a new survey—it was time to plan a pitching strategy for the updated campaign.

I started by building media lists by first creating all of my projects under a folder for the campaign. For this campaign, you can see the following lists:

• Travel
• Lifestyle
• National Lifestyle
• Specific state and city media lists

Tip: Look in BuzzStream to see what media lists you already have built. You can search keywords (e.g., “Travel,” “Lifestyle,” “National,” etc.) and easily copy the list over. Before copying a list over, check your sequence to ensure the list has good open rates.

• “Good” open rates may differ from agency to agency or brand to brand, but a list with open rates between 20% and 40% indicates a strong interest in your pitches.
• Ensure your list is relatively new and has been made in the past 1-6 months at the earliest.
• Utilize Buzzsteam’s ‘filter’ feature to clean up the list (I’ll discuss this later.)

Tip: if you have done a similar campaign with similar audiences (which would make sense for the client to target similar audiences in the same niche/industry), quickly check those folders to see if you’ve forgotten any obvious media list ideas.

After building out every media list I’d need to make and checking which lists we had built within the past few months, I used a database to create the lists.

I did manual prospecting to find and target relevant journalists I think would be interested in covering the report.

How We Used BuzzSteam To Avoid Spam Filters

It’s a digital PR’s worst nightmare to be flagged as spam, but BuzzStream has many features that can help prevent this.

We utilize BuzzStream to ensure that we are not marked spam by following these best practices:

1. Remove Those That Have Unsubscribed

BuzzStream makes this easy. Contacts who do not want to be emailed by your brand will have a “Do Not Contact” label next to them, preventing them from being emailed. It’s easy to create and save a filter that can be applied to each project to remove these contacts.

I always remove these contacts from my media lists before pitching.

2. Remove Bounces and Send Failures

As mentioned above, you can create a filter that removes email addresses that have bounced or failed from your lists. Emailing too many bounceback addresses can get you marked spam, and you don’t want to waste time emailing people who don’t exist.

The journalism and news industries have experienced significant turnover, layoffs, and restructures in the past few years, so it’s not unexpected that some journalists now have new email addresses.

3. Don’t Double Send

Utilize filters in BuzzStream to ensure that you are not sending a contact who may be in multiple media lists the same pitch, potentially at the same time. Journalists will (rightly) get frustrated and are more likely to mark you as spam if you do this.

Tip: If you’ve been working with the same client or website for a long time and have pitched multiple campaigns on behalf of this client, be sure to utilize filters to filter out any contacts who have not opened an email from you in the past 12 months or longer. This will help reduce the likelihood of being marked spam and ensure you’re not wasting time contacting journalists who aren’t interested in your pitch.

Step 3: It’s Time to Pitch!

Once the report was updated, the media lists were made and cleaned, and my subject lines and pitches were written and edited—it was time to pitch to journalists!

We launched this campaign on March 12th and started actively outreaching on March 18th. The pitch related to Spring Break as shown below:

Tip: ALWAYS personalize your pitches. BuzzStream makes this easy with custom fields, the most common being [First Name]. It can also be utilized for custom fields for state-specific outreach. Always include a greeting and a name when pitching.

Step 4: Analyzing Campaign Performance

The pitching process has various stages. While open rates are one strong metric to monitor, different data points can indicate why and if journalists are or aren’t resonating with your campaign.

BuzzStream makes it easy to track your campaign’s performance during active outreach. Sequences are shown in various stages in each project, and subject line performance can be monitored in real-time.

A high open rate means your subject line is interesting and catching the eye of the journalist. This is already a great start, as journalists are bombarded with many pitches each day. An open rate of about 18%-20% is expected and considered good.

If open rates are high but click rates or coverage is low, this may mean that journalists liked your subject line but didn’t find the report intriguing when clicking through. Finally, if the timing is right, the idea is strong, and the subject line and pitch are accurate, then you’ve got the perfect recipe for a digital PR campaign that would be deemed successful.

Tip: Luckily for me, in an instance where a similar campaign was run three years ago, I went into this campaign with data to guide my outreach strategy. I could evaluate which angles and subject lines resonated most with journalists while also testing unique and new subject lines. If this is the first time pitching this particular campaign, look at other campaigns to see what subject line structures worked and didn’t work.

Key Findings and Takeaways

This campaign is the perfect example of the PR stars aligning. With the combination of a solid idea, a tool like BuzzStream to evaluate outreach in real-time and pitch our report, and the timing of Spring Break, KURU Footwear was able to successfully revamp an old campaign and earn 125 pieces of coverage with an average DA of 48 (28% of the links being over DA 80, and 20% of links being over DA 90).

• The average open rate for emails across this campaign was 46%, which is well above industry average.
• The most successful subject line was “Travel Report: Longest and Shortest Airport Walks in the U.S. Revealed ” with an open rate of 60% sent to travel journalists.
• The least opened subject line was “Spring Break and Summer Travel Insights: 2024 American Travel Habits Survey ” with 30% open rates, also sent to travel journalists.
• In the past I have usually sent a two-step email sequence to all contacts in a campaign. For this campaign, I did a three-step sequence to travel and lifestyle journalists, which I believe boosted coverage by using a new subject line for each email.
• Timing matters: Launching this campaign just ahead of Spring Break contributed to the success of the campaign.

With a platform like BuzzStream, KURU Footwear could not have targeted as many travel journalists across the country with this interesting data.

The post How KURU Footwear Earned 100+ Links Using BuzzStream appeared first on BuzzStream.

Email is the best way to contact reporters, though social media is a close second. Finding them can be a challenge. We’ll show you how.

Imagine a world where journalists saw every piece you published.

Unfortunately, that world doesn’t exist.

We need to work for our coverage, get it in front of the right people, and share our stories.

For some in the social media space, these are influencers. Others rely on bloggers. In the digital PR world, journalists and reporters promote our content.

Some journalists love to get pitched great stories. But they are so bombarded with irrelevant stories and weak pitches that they don’t put their email addresses front and center.

This post isn’t about writing a media pitch because we’ve already done that. Instead, let’s discuss the most effective (and ethical) ways to contact reporters and journalists.

How to Find Journalists Interested in Your Story

There are at least six main ways to find journalists.

1. Use a Media Database to Find Reporters and Journalists

Media databases are the most obvious starting point for finding journalists in your industry. We cover a lot of media database tools in our post about digital PR tools, but some of the most used are:

• Cision
• MuckRack
• RoxHill
• Prowly
• Meltwater

For example, if I were writing a post about farming, I could search MuckRack with a keyword like “farming,” it would uncover journalists in their database who talk about farming.

Media database tools typically include the journalists’ email addresses and contact details.

However, the downside of media databases is that they typically get outdated quickly. In our post about building your own media list, we discuss the importance of verifying a target journalist’s industry (and contact information).

In our example, let’s imagine the post we will pitch covers something specific to Tennessee farming.

If we wanted to contact Lee Maddox from our screenshot above, I’d click on Lee Maddox to see what they have written about recently.

MuckRack displays recent Tweets from X, which gives me some idea of his current posts:

But I’d still like to click on his site, Tennessee Farm Bureau News, to evaluate whether the site is a good fit.

The most recent news story is about new USDA news.

The next is about an emissions study with some colorful graphics.

There is a good chance that this site may be open to our study.

No specific authors are listed in the News section posts, so Lee may be the best person to pitch to get a story included. So we can add him to the list.

You could continue using your media database tool to find more journalists or pivot to find journalists on social media.

2. Find Relevant Journalists on Social Media

According to Muck Rack’s State of Journalism report, X/Twitter is still the number-one place journalists go for news.

So, let’s focus on that platform as it’s the dominant area where journalists are active.

Finding Journalists on X

To find journalists on X, try a generic search in their search bar and then toggle to People.

For example, searching “farming news” will show us people who include “farming news” in their handle or description.

This search has uncovered publications, which we can use to search the site for relevant journalists, as outlined in the next section.

Let’s try to focus on reporters. We’ll use X’s Advanced Search feature, which allows you to be a little more creative with your searches.

I’m searching for any profiles that include farming, agriculture, or agriculture and “reporter.”

Ah, much better.

Now, I can click on these journalists’ profiles, see what they have written about recently, and gauge their relevance to my story.

If you’re lucky, the journalist will share every article they write on X, giving you insight similar to what you saw in the previous MuckRack example.

However, this isn’t always the case. Some journalists use X for personal news as well.

So, I’ll walk you through my workflow.

Let’s pretend our post concerns farming in Ireland, so I chose Kathleen O’Sullivan, a farming reporter for the Irish Examiner.

I see that she most recently posted on April 9 (over a month ago), and it isn’t a story she’s written (it’s one she’s reposted). So far, I don’t have a lot of confidence.

But we need to keep digging. I need to go to the Irish Examiner and see if I can find her most recent articles.

I navigate to Farming News on the Irish Examiner’s site and open a few articles.

Luckily, the first article I opened looks like it was written by Kathleen O’Sullivan—and it was written one day ago.

That’s good enough for me. I’ll add her to my list!

Some like to go a different route to find interested journalists and seek websites or articles via Google search.

3. Find News Sites on Google

To find journalists to contact about your post or story, you can always start by finding similar news sites and then identifying journalists to build your media list.

So, continuing our farming example, let’s perform a Google search for farming news.

This will give me generic farming news sites. Then, I can dig further into each page to find a relevant journalist interested in my post.

For example, let’s click on Successful Farming.

Now, I want to find relevant journalists.

I found an author in one recent article named Natalina Sents Bausch.

Now, confirming that Natalina writes about our topic frequently is essential. Given that this is a farming-centric publication and her bio confirms it, we can reasonably be sure this is true.

However, for illustrative purposes, I’ll still show how to confirm.

Let’s confirm Natalina writes about our topic frequently enough to be interested in our pitch.

If I click on her name, I’m taken to her author page, which is pretty standard practice UX for a publication.

When I do this, I can see all of Natalina’s recent posts—all about farming.

Jackpot!

Some sites display the date on an author page like this, but you can click on each to confirm the publication date.

I see that these are very recent.

Finding websites and publications and then identifying journalists can be time-consuming. Some prefer to find specific articles related to their pitch, which gets them closer to the journalist.

4. Find Similar Articles on Google News

To find similar articles using Google when contacting reporters, I recommend using Google News rather than Google Search. Both work, but Google News will get you the articles you seek more quickly.

Let’s type farming into Google News.

By default, Google News will display the most recent articles.

Again, although these are recent articles written by a journalist, it’s always critical to check that the journalist writes about this industry frequently. (Oftentimes, a journalist might jump onto a new beat for only one article and then jump back off.)

So, let’s click on the Guardian result and see if this reporter is a good fit.

We see that Jessica Murray is a correspondent for the Midlands area.

Maybe she covers farming in the Midlands! (UK readers most likely already know what’s coming.)

Let’s click on her name to take us to her author page.

Unfortunately, it looks like she covers all different news topics. I see everything from Birmingham City Council news to museum-related news.

But if she was interested in farmers in Shropshire, wouldn’t she be interested in my piece!?

Not necessarily. If our farming post were explicitly about a significant piece of farming news in the Midlands, perhaps she’d be a little more interested.

But the fact that she covers such a wide beat for the Midlands area, I’d pass on Jessica.

Then, it’s back to the Google News results to find a new article.

By adding extra keywords to your search queries, you can get more specific. For example, you can find journalists who have written about your posts.

For instance, if our farming post was about drought-resistant crop innovations, we could search for queries like “drought-resistant crops,” “drought news,” and “farming technology innovation.”

However, this approach of searching for single terms can get pretty tedious. That’s where BuzzStream comes in.

5. Use BuzzStream

I can use BuzzStream’s Research tool to combine multiple Google News queries simultaneously, compiling a list of prospects to evaluate.

For this, I open BuzzStream and Create a new project.

Then, I’ll create a new Research List.

Then, when prompted, I’ll choose Search News.

Then, I’ll name the list, enter my search queries, and adjust the date window. I like to start with a week or a month out to have a solid list of prospects to research.

Then, I click Save, and BuzzStream starts pulling in all of the Google News search results into one list.

Now, I can filter this list for quality or jump into the review process, which lets me review each page and approve/reject them.

I click the checkbox to select all pages and then click on Research to get into the research and evaluation flow.

I’ll select the default evaluation flow, which pulls up 5 tabs simultaneously. Then, I can see the first page on my list, a news article from CKRM in Saskatchewan, NY.

On the right, I can see the BuzzStream Research tab, which lets me Approve or Reject the page to add it to my prospect list for my project.

In this case, if my post had an angle about NY, I would consider this author as a potential target.

Let’s pretend it’s not a fit, and I click Reject.

When I close the tab, BuzzStream loads the next one, always keeping 5 in the queue. This allows me to repeat the process until I’ve completed my whole list (without needing to open hundreds of tabs at once).

BuzzStream also pulls all contact information on each page, allowing me to contact the journalist immediately. I will get to this in the next section.

6. Search for Journalists Based on Their Role

In more traditional newsrooms, there are specific roles that are better suited for pitching your story than others.

Some like to find a news site and seek out the person in the specific role.

You can do this using the aforementioned media list, but you can also search the site once you’ve identified it.

Most news sites provide a list of contacts.

You can find their team roster by searching for pages entitled Contact Us, About Us, Staff, or Our Team. Typically, these are found in the footer of a news site.

For example, if I wanted to contact the local NBC news site in Connecticut, I’d find the contact page in the footer and see a list of their staff.

Then, clicking on the names, I’d look for the assignment editor or relevant reporters.

To better explain who to prioritize when pitching your news, I asked Nicole DeLeon and her team from the content marketing agency North Star Inbound.

Here’s what they said:

Who Should You Prioritize When Pitching a Story to a Newsroom?

In order of importance…

1. Assignment editor
2. Reporters & producers
3. Executive producer
4. Digital producer/web team*
5. Anchor

You could probably switch the executive producer title to the editor in non-broadcast newsrooms.

Why Should You Prioritize Pitching Assignment Editors?

Assignment editors are the newsroom’s center (literally and figuratively).

Their job is to organize incoming emails, often from the general newsroom email and their personal emails, so that they can be directed to the right person.

If they see a press release with relevant or interesting information for their audience but not in-depth enough for a full reporter story, they will send it to the producers.

When they see information relevant to a story one of the station’s reporters is already working on, they will send it along to that reporter.

They also often run the morning and evening pitch meetings, sharing with the team the most exciting and relevant press releases they’ve seen.

But Reporters and Producers Are Also Important

Reporters are often responsible for developing their own story ideas and pitches. They have a lot of sway in the newsroom.

If they see an interesting pitch they think they can expand on and pitch it well enough, they will do just that.

Producers are in charge of their shows.

There are many spots in an hour or half-hour newscast to fill, some as small as a 15-second story.

Why Anchors Are at the Bottom of the List

Many anchors just read what is given to them and written for them. Those who work on their own stories don’t do it nearly as often as reporters do.

Reporters produce a story or more every day. Anchors, IF they work on their own stories, do it maybe once a week or a few times a month.

Now that you know who to pitch to, let’s discuss how to contact them.

How to Contact Journalists and Reporters

Contacting journalists and reporters is typically best done by email. In this section, I’ll discuss finding contact information, crafting emails, and messaging using different platforms.

1. Find Their Contact Information

Once you know who to reach out to, you need to find their contact information.

Many news sites include contact information right on their author or staff pages. For example, if I looked at the same Connecticut list, I could see the contact information for reporter Heidi Voight.

The journalists who want to be found can typically be found fairly easily.

You can even see her email address right on her Facebook page.

But what if you run into those sites that don’t advertise their reporters’ contact info?

I covered how to find everyone’s email addresses extensively already, so I won’t discuss it too deeply, but I’ll call out three tips:

BuzzStream

When you are on a page, BuzzStream will automatically comb the site and extract any email addresses and social accounts it can find using the Chrome Extension Buzzmarker.

For example, I wanted to look at Newsday’s Mark Harrington, who appeared on my X search for farming reporters. When I open Newsday, you can see BuzzStream extracting all the emails it can find (including Mark’s).

Google Search

Even if the publication doesn’t list its name, it can usually still be found using Google search. Often, their name, the publication, and the word email can be enough.

For example, let’s back up to the Irish Examiner example. That site doesn’t have a list of contact information on their site for each reporter, writer, or anchor.

So, a quick Google Search unveiled Kathleen O’Sullivan’s email right in the search results via X:

Hunter.io

Using a tool like Hunter.io, you can sometimes guess the email address.

Hunter.io will show you the format of the names and contact information on a website. You can then verify the address using an email verification tool.

For example, if I was reaching out to a farm site Hoosier AG Today, I see author Eric Pfieffer, but I can’t find his email address.

So, using Hunter’s Chrome Extension, I see that the website’s email pattern is most likely [firstname]@hoosieragtoday.com.

Then, I can use Hunter’s email verification tool to confirm.

Neverbounce also has a great email verification tool.

Now that you’ve got your email address for your journalist. You can craft your email.

2. Craft your Email

As I mentioned, emailing journalists is the best way to contact them.

Not every pitch is the same, but they all have similar components.

We’ve covered all of them in our email templates post, but here’s a basic structure for pitching a data study:

The idea is to include everything the journalist would need to write the post without needing to back.

In our podcast interview with Hannah Smith, she reiterated some of the best advice I’ve ever heard when contacting journalists:

“I’ll look at my pitch and I’ll be like, could the journalist write this story in 15 minutes just using my pitch…so if I get a paragraph or two in, and I’m suddenly Googling trying to find some sort of stat or some sort of other reliable bit of research, I’m like, “oh, I need to reference that in my email then.”

Email with BuzzStream

Now that I’ve got a vetted and qualified list of relevant journalists and know how to reach them, I can begin sending emails.

Using BuzzStream, I can easily email journalists from my outreach list at scale while still being able to personalize the emails to make them effective.

First, I go to the Outreach List in the navigation.

Then, I’ll click the checkbox at the top to select all of my prospects.

Next, I click Outreach and choose Send Individually. Then I’ll see the option to choose a template or sequence.

I click New Sequence to create something brand new for my project.

First, I’ll name my Sequence (so I can quickly find it later when needed).

Then, I’ll fill out my template using the Dynamic Fields on the right.

I can also enable a follow-up email if I don’t receive a response.

Then, I can work through my outreach list individually to personalize each email. On the left, I see any contact history my team or I might have had with a particular site.

On the right, I see the email outreach that I’ll be sending.

Then, BuzzStream keeps track of all the responses in my Dashboard so that I can easily see who has responded, linked, etc.

3. Pitching Via Social Media

Based on the same MuckRack study, most journalists receive ~3-5 pitches daily. So, some choose to pitch using social media.

If I ever decide to contact a journalist via social media, I lean heavily on X, given that is the preferred platform for most.

Journalists who want to be connected will keep their DMs open. You’ll see an envelope icon next to their follow button.

Keep your contact short and sweet:

Hi Kathleen – I’ve got a great new study on crop technology that I thought you might like. Mind if I send it along?

I sometimes like to use the double-touch technique: I email them and then DM them on X to let them know I’ve reached out:

Hi Kathleen – Just a heads up: I emailed you a new crop technology study that is right in your wheelhouse.

This puts you on their radar.

Some digital PRs recommend following and interacting with a journalist on X before pitching.

This is excellent advice if you plan on being in the industry for a long time and want to build relationships with journalists.

If you only pitch one-off pitches, it’s unnecessary and will likely not impact much.

4. Quote Requests

The last way to contact a journalist is through a journalist request platform. Although this slightly differs from other tactics listed in this post, it’s still worth mentioning.

This is more of an opportunistic approach to digital PR vs a tactic for pitching stories.

There are several platforms there.

• Connectively (formerly known as HARO)
• HERO
• Qwoted
• @PRJournorequest on X

Each platform requires setting up an account and keeping track of requests that come in daily.

For example, I utilize Qwoted to find opportunities to pitch quotes from myself in the digital marketing space.

You can also set up your own for specific industries.

HARO used to be the go-to but has waned in quality since Cision purchased it and renamed it Connectively. Luckily, the founder of HARO recently created H.E.R.O. or Help Every Reporter Out.

Simply sign up, and you’ll receive a daily email with pitch requests from journalists broken down by industry and detailed instructions for pitching.

Lastly, with X, the account @PRJournoRequest compiles all instances of Tweets that use #journorequest or #prrequest.

These two hashtags are the go-to ways many UK journalists source quotes for their pieces.

They are not used as much in the US, though as digital PR continues to grow in popularity, perhaps we’ll see US journalists utilize this approach as well.

Why It’s So Important to Pitch Relevant Journalists in 2024

We are in very interesting times.

Journalists are getting laid off around the globe, yet more agencies and teams are turning to digital PR for answers.

So we have an influx of pitches to an ever-shrinking number of journalists.

Google has also implemented new email requirements to prevent mass nonrelevant emails to personal email addresses.

They now require “bulk senders” — or those who send 5,000 or more emails within 24 hours from the same domain to personal Gmail addresses — to adhere to new security requirements.

Those who do not will hit spam filters, rendering their outreach useless.

Luckily, there is a simple solution: hyper-targeted pitches. The more targeted and personalized your pitch emails are, the easier it is to build relationships with journalists.

And I know that the term “building relationships” sounds fluffy, but it has real business value.

Once you’ve established a relationship with a journalist, you can pitch them again for the same client (or new clients) with little to no barrier to entry.

You’ve already established trust, and as long as you don’t abuse it by pitching non-relevant pieces, you can start to build your Rolodex of journalists you can count on for links.

So, while the workflows I’ve outlined in this piece may sound time-consuming, you realistically only need to do them one time and can reap the benefits for each subsequent campaign.

The post How to Contact Reporters For Your Digital PR Campaigns appeared first on BuzzStream.