Data-led campaigns
=
More links
Product, service and
category page links (and
how to get them)
Rebecca Moss | JBH The Digital PR Agency
SLIDESHARE.NET/REBECCAMOSS4
@BEXMOSS

If you work in
digital PR you’ll
wear many hats

For some brands you will
build beautiful, shareable content

And for others, you’ll be asked to
achieve specific links to support
specific SEO objectives

But it’s vital that we can prove the
commercial impact
of the links we build

And it’s something we have spent
a lot of time improving.

Let me take
you back in time
about 4 years
ago

The HERO campaign was king

We were creating
any old campaign
and we were happy
with any old link

The landscape has changed
MASSIVELY

Brands are loading
on the pressure for
more niche and
relevant links to
their key pages

If your job revolves around
building links, then you’re
probably sat here
thinking…

a link is a link, right?

Not really.
Not anymore.

Nine in every ten enquiries we get at
JBH are from SEO managers looking
for help with their link acquisition

And around 70% of those
enquiries feature a request for
links to their priority pages

So we needed to
figure out how to
do it!

I realised that we
were so wrapped up
in KPI’s and
arbitrary link
metrics…

We were forgetting
about the bigger impact
of the activity

SEO Managers do not care
about your homepage link*
*that much

They care more about the
relevance of that link

And crucially where it
points to on their site

We’re catering to
a more
demanding
customer

It makes
commercial sense

Building links to
product / category / service
pages is hard!

But it is the best way to show the
direct commercial impact
of digital PR

I believe that’s where
we were going wrong

We were so caught up
celebrating individual
link wins

Rather than
celebrating
overall
performance

Almost every brand has a
deep linking strategy
bubbling with everything else

We worry less about the
quantity of links
we’re delivering

We care more about the
commercial impact
of those links

We’re not out here building
hundreds of links
to these pages

We’ve seen results
with as few as five
powerful links
pointing to a well
optimised page

We have a
templated framework
to follow

And I believe it balances
logic with creativity

We’ve been following this framework
since the start of 2021 for a brand in
the healthcare sector

Initially, we were
so excited for our large-
scale campaigns

Those campaigns delivered
a huge number of links

But they were
not the right
kind of links

Alone, this activity
wasn’t going to have
the desired impact

We diagnosed
THREE
different problems

Some of the linked coverage
wasn’t that topically relevant

Some links were not on
publications the target audience
were likely to be reading

They didn’t point to pages
they wanted to rank

It wasn’t a complete fail,
we’d hit the promised link KPI
after all.

This reminded
us
that whilst a
numbered link
KPI keeps us
accountable

A numbered link KPI
doesn’t tell us the
best way to deliver
it

We knew we
could do better

We ended up
binning the
original strategy

Invested time developing a
commercially led
digital PR campaign strategy

NO IDEA
if this would work

Could we transfer what we’d learned
delivering large-scale campaigns
to this new approach?

We already knew how to:
Build a media list
Write a pitch email
Come up with ideas

All we really had to change
was our mindset

Instead of thinking ‘link first’
we started thinking ‘audience first’

● Over half (56%) of all the
links built pointed at a
priority page
● 500% increase in organic
traffic to their priority
pages
● Resulted in 167% more
first page keyword
rankings

< 20 links
Topics:
○ Side effects of
cocaine withdrawal
○ Cocaine use stats
● Traffic to the page has
increased 154%
● Keywords on the first page
increased by 136%
Cocaine Addiction
Page

< 30 links
Topics:
○ Side effects of
alcohol addiction
○ Spotting functioning
alcoholic
● Traffic to the page has
increased 2404%
● From 3 page one positions
in May ‘21 to 161 in January
‘22
Alcohol Addiction Page

Those results were not a
happy accident

We developed a
three-part framework
for the team to use

We end up with a
database of information
to refer back to time & time again

Framework Part 1
Discovery

We start by going on a mission
to understand 5 different things about
the business

1. The Sector and Competing Sites

2. Commercial priorities of
the business

3. The website itself

4. Priority landing pages
and keywords

5. What the brand is able
to talk about

Make sure you
listen and interpret

This might seem and feel like
admin overkill

But by increasing the amount of
time you spend on discovery

You’ll have a much
deeper understanding
of business goals

It will give you
more accountability
over your output

Creative ideas
will be aligned with
commercial objectives

Journalists will have a genuine
reason
to link to your priority page

Expert comment
published in the health
section of Healthline
Mentions a
priority keyword

Framework Part 2
Gathering

Get immersed in
important topics
surrounding the brand

Make note
of which
journalists &
publications
pop up

Snoop on the
competition

What are they publishing?
Are their stories getting covered?
Is their approach working?

You’ll naturally come
up with topically
relevant content
ideas that journalists
will love

And you’ll end up with a
database of ideas that are
RIGHT for your brand

Framework Part 3
Delivery

Here’s where
logic & creativity
collide

We take what we learned when
pitching larger campaigns
and apply those skills

We realised the only difference
is in the set up

Expert or
data
Trend + =
A tried and tested formula
Priority
page link

Alcohol
dependency
expert
Mindful
Drinking
Trend
+ = Alcohol
addiction page

Our agency hit rate
with this technique

For the healthcare brand
it’s 56%
Out of 214 links built -
56% go to one of their priority pages

And pitch calendars that
look like this…

Download the Deep
Linking Template
jbh.uk/bseo22

Key Takeaways!

1.Earn links from the most
relevant publications to the most
relevant landing pages

2. Work WITH your clients,
rather than FOR your clients

3. Create content that makes
sense for the brand and
also to the reader

4. Prove the commercial
impact of your work

THANKS FOR LISTENING!
For more digital PR tips & tricks follow me:
@bexmoss
Download the template here: JBH.uk/bseo22