Digital PR has become essential to increasing a brand’s digital footprint, whilst proving beneficial for SEO development. A key component of digital PR is building relevant links; this has become even more important with Google’s increasing focus on relevancy and E-E-A-T.
As a digital PR, few things compare to the excitement of securing a link on a high DA site; but with this increased focus on relevance, we must know whether that is a relevant link.
With this in mind, how can we decide the relevancy of a link when it’s a bit of a grey area, with no wrong or right method? Here are a few things to consider when reviewing relevancy.
Topical Relevancy
The reason your client is appearing in an article should always be obvious. In digital PR, much has been made of brands appearing in articles where there is no obvious reason for them to be there. Whilst, this wouldn’t be detrimental for SEO and digital PR benefits, it just doesn’t make sense.
For example, if you are working with a makeup brand, it makes sense for them to feature in an article about a celebrity’s new look or how to make sure your makeup still looks good in increasing humidity.
Even if you remove the SEO benefits topical relevancy has, it also guarantees you are getting placement in front of your target audience; increasing exposure and potentially sales.
Outlet Relevancy
So we have established that the topic of the article must be relevant to your client/brand. Now consider how relevant the outlet is.
This feels extremely broad, but it’s important to consider and probably more applicable for business and trade press, rather than nationals.
Niche publications are an excellent way to get coverage that is not only topically relevant but is in the brand’s ideal market. When digging around, you can find publications that cover just about anything, so there is bound to be a variety of outlets that will have an interest in your client.
Content Relevancy
Look within the article and consider creating a shortlist for relevancy. Look into:
- The headline
This is the strongest sign of intent that a page can send to Google because it summarises what is in the article.
- Link placement
Where in the article is the link? Links towards the start of the article are going to have a greater emphasis placed on them than the ones shoved in towards the end. This is mostly because that’s how people read, it’s unlikely the average reader will take in the whole article so less emphasis is put on the end of the piece.
- The set up
The content that surrounds your link should also be considered. Does the article set up your client’s mention by describing what they do, or do they just name them in isolation? Both are fine, but the one where they paint a bit of a picture will be more beneficial for Google.
How to Report the Relevance of Links?
Digital PR is tough and getting relevant links can be challenging, which is why it’s important to report on the great links you build. You can consider making a scorecard for your links, where you score the links from one to five, based on it’s relevance.
For example, a link for a makeup brand on Vogue, talking about red lipstick would be a five. Meanwhile, a syndicated link on Yahoo for the same brand discussing an irrelevant topic could score lower.
Due to the vast number of links on Google, it’s important to have this level of transparency. Just remember, it is completely subjective, and it isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, depending on the client and their goals is what’s most important when evaluating link relevancy.
What Is E-E-A-T and Why Is It Important?
E-E-A-T is an acronym for Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Whilst not a factor in its own right, it is the currency Google uses to evaluate your brand’s credibility.
It’s important because the more expertise and experience you can showcase, the better you will be viewed in Google’s eyes. It improves brand visibility by driving authority and showing higher in the search engine’s rankings.
There are a variety of ways of doing this, in recent times we have seen a big emphasis on brands attributing blogs and insight to authors. Therefore showing a clear demonstration of expertise and experience.
However, it is important to consider how your digital PR efforts can play a role.
How Can Digital PR Impact E-E-A-T?
This is where we come back to the overarching topic of relevancy, getting placement on key titles will improve the brand’s E-E-A-T.
Placement on highly relevant articles will improve your brand’s E-E-A-T, because it shows Google that you are experts and can be trusted within that space.
This is why digital PR is far more than a tactic for securing high authority backlinks to websites, it’s a method for creating trust and showcasing your brand’s expertise in a field.
Getting Started
We have established that expert comments are a great tool to increase each section of E-E-A-T, now it’s important to put the steps in place for success. This starts at the onboarding stage, get an understanding of who the key spokespeople are in the business, and ask where their expertise lie.
Schedule a call and develop a document with banked concepts and topics. This will not only help to grow your understanding of their industry and build relationships, but it will speed up the approval process because you know what they are happy to talk about.
Once you have established the areas they are keen to talk about, digest the news. The key to reactive opportunities is speed, you need to be in a position to supply comments within a couple of hours of the story breaking, if not it will be old news. The life cycle of a trend begins and ends very quickly, which means reading the news and trawling social media is important.
Establish the story and consider if your client has anything to add. For the reactive to be successful, you must add value to the piece. If there is nothing that you can add to make it worthwhile, then it’s better avoided. Not every opportunity is going to be perfect, it’s often a waiting game – but when it does you will be ready to make the most of it.
So How Can We Measure E-E-A-T?
You’ve implemented your press office activity and the links from relevant titles are coming through thick and fast – great! So can the impact on E-E-A-T be measured?
The unfortunate news is that it’s not easily measurable. Although, you can report on the links and the effect that relevant links have. You can also see the impact it can have by viewing organic traffic and keyword ranking. E-E-A-T plays a big role in Google’s impression of your site, so getting more placements and coverage will lead to an uptick in traffic.
From a digital PR perspective, you can use the aforementioned scoring system as a way of proving why articles could be beneficial for E-E-A-T. The articles that include an expert spokesperson quote are more likely to have an impact on E-E-A-T than those that don’t; this is because it proves expertise and experience.
Relevancy and E-E-A-T go hand in hand, so from a PR standpoint, we must be offering expert comments and quotes in our pitches. If you include them from the get-go, they are more likely to be included in articles as journalists look for a credible source to provide context to data. Furthermore, it means the brand can have more ownership of the article, a space is an opportunity for a competitor to provide context and steal a mention within the piece.
Trust the Experts
To summarise, relevance and its impact on SEO can be hard to track. With that said, your goal should always be getting your client seen in front of its target audience and potential new customers. The more relevant articles you can feature them in the better because you know their audience will be reading it.
We’d love to hear from you if you want to scale your Digital PR and help increase your brand’s E-E-A-T by securing relevant links that make a difference, contact us here.
Article author
Chiara Riva
Business Development Assistant
