Blog posts about: Blogging

A PR’s Guide to Blogger Outreach for SEO

Table of Contents: Introduction Why smart PR pros talk to bloggers Blogs are important for link-building and SEO They’re connected They’re genuinely well-read and influential They’re interested in your client (sometimes) Finding blogs Google blog search for your most relevant keywords & search terms Followerwonk search Inkybee Following commenter links on other blogs Blog directories Other search tools Evaluating Blogs Not all blogs are created equal Metrics to evaluate blogs Publication frequency To pay or not to pay Competitions Building relationships with bloggers Blogger events Optimisation Measurement Conclusion Appendix: PR outreach tips An influential blogger is effectively an independent publisher who writes about a specific niche that they feel passionately about. PR agencies and brands overlook blogs at their peril. The most successful blogs in the UK have readership figures that eclipse many newsstand magazines, and have extremely loyal and engaged readers who trust the information they read on blogs. Working with an influential blog doesn’t just give brands access to the readers of that blog, it has many benefits for SEO and beyond. Topicality, relevance and link equity are all valuable SEO assets when it comes to your association with a blogger. It also provides a gateway to the blogger’s network. With 90% of bloggers being active on Facebook, and more than 80% also using Twitter (based on the Tots100 Technology Survey of parent blogs in 2011), a post on the right blog at the right time, can have enormous impact on a brand’s reputation. Identifying influential bloggers is only the first step in successful blogger outreach. Consideration for how to engage bloggers and what techniques are most effective in building long-term, mutually beneficial relationships are key PR facets too. Get blogger relations right, and you will become a part of authentic, influential conversations that are a cost-effective form of marketing and reap on-going SEO rewards. Get blogger relations wrong, and you might find yourself going viral on social networks for all the wrong reasons. Why smart PR pros talk to bloggers Whatever campaign you’re working on, adding bloggers to your media mix will probably be a good idea. Here are four great reasons for working with bloggers: 1) Blogs are important for link-building and SEO SEO and PR now go hand-in-hand for many brands. Working with the right blogs provides a great platform for link-building and SEO campaigns. As a rule, bloggers are much more willing to...

Creative Content Marketing & Blog Auditing

Content was king. That is until it started to become poorly curated. Whilst marketers realise the importance of content they completely misunderstand the principles of curation. The very nature of relevance and visibility means that there’s a constant need for new content, but this is at the cost of engagement and longevity. ThinkSearch have a slightly different view of the world. While we appreciate the needs of the algorithms we also see a bigger picture – one where the value of content can be extended, and one where the depth of knowledge of content is more greatly appreciated.  The practice of SEO these days can quite heavily be one of content marketing. A good SEO strategy will involve research and auditing to determine the needs of those users that may be more willing to link to you and share your content, but this content, just with any content you publish on your website needs to be seen as part of your network and curated as such. How often do you review what you’ve written over the months and years and refer back to it via citation? Strengthening your offering, as the publisher that brands are having to become, is not the only aspect of this brave new world. Another big consideration is authorship. To layer on top of it’s automated technical link-based algorithm Google is also now starting to look at who has written which articles and bias it’s results based on criteria to do with this association. In the future the more well published you are the more visibility your content will receive over your peers and competitors. In an article today that AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong backs up this fact with his observation on how their bet on content strategy would save AOL, and it appears to be working. A video-based creative content marketing strategy might not be accessible to all but ThinkSearch would certainly suggest starting with blog auditing. Do you know what content you’ve published has been working better and why? Do you know who it reached and how? Even a simple WordPress plug in can help breath life back into a blog that has become a dumping ground for content on the advice of your SEO agency. Content can be king again, but not until it receives the contextual associations it needs to keep on receiving, both from citations (internal and external) but also...