Rebecca heads up the Digital PR team at JBH, delivering creative digital PR strategies for lifestyle brands. After working in SEO for more years than she would care to admit, Rebecca's presentation reveals how the SEO industry has fallen out of love with large-scale hero campaigns, and shifted back to fundamentals of earning links using content marketing techniques.

1. 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

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

3. For some brands you will
build beautiful, shareable content

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

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

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

7. Let me take
you back in time
about 4 years
ago

8. The HERO campaign was king

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

10. The landscape has changed
MASSIVELY

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

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

13. a link is a link, right?

14. Not really.
Not anymore.

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

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

17. So we needed to
figure out how to
do it!

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

19. We were forgetting
about the bigger impact
of the activity

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

21. They care more about the
relevance of that link

22. And crucially where it
points to on their site

23. We’re catering to
a more
demanding
customer

24. It makes
commercial sense

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

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

27. I believe that’s where
we were going wrong

28. We were so caught up
celebrating individual
link wins

29. Rather than
celebrating
overall
performance

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

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

32. We care more about the
commercial impact
of those links

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

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

35. We have a
templated framework
to follow

37. And I believe it balances
logic with creativity

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

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

40. Those campaigns delivered
a huge number of links

41. But they were
not the right
kind of links

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

43. We diagnosed
THREE
different problems

44. Some of the linked coverage
wasn’t that topically relevant

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

46. They didn’t point to pages
they wanted to rank

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

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

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

50. We knew we
could do better

51. We ended up
binning the
original strategy

52. Invested time developing a
commercially led
digital PR campaign strategy

53. NO IDEA
if this would work

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

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

56. All we really had to change
was our mindset

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

58. ● 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

59. < 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

60. < 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

61. Those results were not a
happy accident

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

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

64. Framework Part 1
Discovery

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

66. 1. The Sector and Competing Sites

67. 2. Commercial priorities of
the business

68. 3. The website itself

69. 4. Priority landing pages
and keywords

70. 5. What the brand is able
to talk about

71. Make sure you
listen and interpret

72. This might seem and feel like
admin overkill

73. But by increasing the amount of
time you spend on discovery

74. You’ll have a much
deeper understanding
of business goals

75. It will give you
more accountability
over your output

76. Creative ideas
will be aligned with
commercial objectives

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

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

79. Framework Part 2
Gathering

80. Get immersed in
important topics
surrounding the brand

82. Make note
of which
journalists &
publications
pop up

83. Snoop on the
competition

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

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

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

87. Framework Part 3
Delivery

88. Here’s where
logic & creativity
collide

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

90. We realised the only difference
is in the set up

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

92. Alcohol
dependency
expert
Mindful
Drinking
Trend
+ = Alcohol
addiction page

93. Our agency hit rate
with this technique

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

96. And pitch calendars that
look like this…

98. Download the Deep
Linking Template
jbh.uk/bseo22

99. Key Takeaways!

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

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

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

103. 4. Prove the commercial
impact of your work

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