Lau says: “When we are focusing on links or just link numbers, we are missing out on a lot of other things.

If you tell a PR, you need to get me X amount of links, and that is your KPI, and that is what you've got in your contract, and you have to actually achieve that number of links, then most of the time, we are just going to try to get those links from publications that are not necessarily the publications we should be going for, because we just know we can get the links from those publications.

It’s the same with the topics. We are just going to try to do the least risky topics that might be a great opportunity, but they might be a great risk as well. We need to get those specific number of links, but we are missing out on a strategy.

I think the first thing we need, the first conversation that needs to happen is not the number of links or the links itself, but what kind of publications do we need to go for and what niches do we need to be targeting? Where is our audience, what topics are our audience interested in, and are we proven that we are a trustworthy brand by doing this type of content? All these things are the things that we need to be thinking about. If we are just focusing on links, we are missing out on all these things.

I've seen it with clients that two links are worth more than 100 links. That's something that has been proven before. But I keep seeing briefs that say just get me 50 links for this campaign, and sometimes you end up just trying to get the links and using a strategy that you shouldn't be using.”

Two links could be better than 100 links. So that's great, but surely it also needs consistent building of links, ideally, to a page to demonstrate its continued relevance to search engines and users. So how often should you be adding new links to your page?

“I do understand that there should be consistency. But you can have consistency by doing a piece of reactive content or a leadership piece that's getting you maybe one link, but that link is actually giving you more.

I keep seeing brands producing campaigns that are going to exactly the same publications and getting links from them. There's a consistency in that, but there's not really much value there. You're obviously not exploring other niches, your backlink profile is very specific, and there's not really a lot of variety when it comes to links. When you're just targeting the same publications all the time, getting the same amount of links, there's not really a strategy there.

Consistency in terms of achieving links can look different for every client. Some people want you to kind of produce a certain amount of links not to just overwrite your competitors, but to not fall in terms of rankings. It looks different for every client, some of the clients are just starting and they are trying to kind of increase their odds. The consistency in terms of length might need to be a little bit more often. It really depends and that is the reason why you need a strategy.

To determine what your success looks like, it might not be the same to yourself and to your competitors or other clients. So if you're looking at your backlink profile and you're looking at other competitors' backlink profiles, it might not be the same, and I think that is the reason for our strategy. You can't just say I want 20 links. You put why. You might not need 20 links, you might need to be featured in this specific publication or you might need to do some thought leadership pieces because what you're lacking is trust, which is exactly what you're trying to achieve. And then you need to know how many leads you need to get.”

What does strategy mean to you?

“I think strategy is just basically listening to your client. Obviously they know the brand better than you, nobody knows the brand better, but they sometimes think they need something because when you see someone doing it and you see an agency sharing things like we've gotten like 100 links for these clients and this, how amazing it works. They just think: ‘oh, I need 100 links, because this is what it did for this specific brand.’ So then they come to you. And they say: ‘Oh, I've seen that they had 100 links in this campaign, and it did these amazing results for them.’ And you are the one that has to say no, that obviously comes from a strategy. So the client sat with the agency, and they found out what are the specific needs that client has.

Sometimes your strategy can be pretty easy. One can campaign with outreach into different niches can get a consistent amount of links, or maybe your strategy might look like doing a lot of reactive activities, shorter pieces that are easier and quicker to create, that you send out in the press very consistently, every week, or your strategy might look like just using your existing content to distribute in the press. It's just researching what you've got, what your competitors are doing, and where you want to get to, and then come up with a plan to get there. That might not be 100 links, might be just 2.

I had a client in Spain, and they were looking to get a huge amount of national lifestyle links, and we got them. Obviously, that's great. It's great to have them. I'm not saying it isn't. But what actually moved the needle most was a really small regional publication whose audience was highly engaged, and we had a lot of not only traffic, but also conversions. It was a tricky client to get conversions for.

So what I mean is sometimes for other people, more regional publications are not really that successful when it comes to getting a link, but it's actually what brought us more results. So I think identifying that and using that as a strategy, coming up with a plan that helps you and your objectives.”

So in order to identify the ultimate link opportunity, do you sit down with your client, and actually get them to talk through the publications that they'd like to appear on as well?

“Yes, and no. There's an element of ego in the publications we want to be featured on, isn't it? Obviously everyone wants to be featured in Forbes or The Guardian. It's cool to say I've been featured in The Guardian or in Forbes, but it’s more about identifying what their needs are in terms of brand.

Sometimes they come to you, and they say I want these links, but when they are actually talking to you, you realize they actually don't really want the links, they want the brand awareness that comes with it. They want to be featured in certain publications, because they want people to know about them, and they want people to hear about them. So that's where you need to say we are going to try to get the links, but you can highly benefit from getting some coverage in printable publications, or even getting some brand mentions, it’s not necessarily about the links.

Brand mentions are kind of like links of the future. It is a signal of trust that publications are trusting you and your clients. So I think that all these things, guiding your client through what they actually need. Honestly, the brief of I want 20 links, sometimes it’s what we get, and I keep getting and sometimes you just have to deal with it and try to get them and try to juggle the strategy with the actual getting the amount of links, but whenever I can, I try to avoid the specific amount of links and try to talk to them, see what their objectives are. Then come up with a plan that will help those objectives. And sometimes it's 20 links, and sometimes it's 2.”

It's hard to measure the value of brand mentions, though. I think most SEOs would agree with you that brand mentions are valuable for different reasons, but if you sit down with a client, and they're used to trying to acquire maybe 20 links a month, and after a conversation with you, hear that 2 links a month is sufficient alongside brand mentions. How do you make them comfortable with that? How do you sell them into that idea so they completely agree with you, and they want to go ahead with it?

“The conversation always starts with the client telling me: ‘Yeah, but can you guarantee the links?’ And I'm like, ‘No, the reason I can't guarantee the links is because this is a completely organic strategy.’ And as such, I can't guarantee, the only way I can guarantee you a certain amount of links is by buying them, that is the only way. I can give you an idea of a range of links that we can get in a certain amount of time.’ If it's within a certain amount of time, you can use different strategies to get there.

When we talk about a campaign, if a client said to me, ‘is this campaign going to have 10 links?’ I would say I don't know. They also say that there's a risk, that they won’t get anything, and consider buying the links. But there's also an opportunity, for many campaigns KPI was around 5 to 10 links, and then they got 40. So there's a risk, but there's also an opportunity to get way more than you would have gotten if you paid for them.

Also link buying is a practice that shouldn't be a thing. But these are still happening sometimes, and I keep hearing it. Not only that, there are campaigns produced two years ago, they're still getting links, and coverage nowadays. And that is the kind of importance of any strategy. That campaign didn't get 100 links from week two. But it is a campaign that is consistently getting links in two years. It's kind of outdated a little bit but still nowadays is getting links in like huge publications. That is the opportunity. I think sometimes we need patience, we have to be thinking about a long term strategy and not just now. If you're looking to get 10 links now, I think the best way to go is just buy them, but that shouldn't be in our thoughts. Our thoughts should be about what content is that we want to be creating, what publications we want to be targeting, and what is our long term strategy, and then the rest will come on its own.

If you have really good content and you have got a strategy, then maybe a campaign that is not getting you any links now, in the long term, you can consistently get a good amount of links.”

You mentioned KPIs. What metrics do you use to measure the effectiveness of the services that you provide?

“I think it depends on the client, again. You can try to educate the client in terms of what is working for them or whatever, but I just think if you're working as a Digital PR with a client, the best thing you can do is listen to them. And sometimes even though I've been saying don't focus on links, if the client wants links, that's what you need to give them and that's what you need to focus on.

KPIs can look very different. When I work with clients, my KPIs are brand mentions and seeing how many times we get mentioned in publications consistently. So, two, three years ago, when we started working together, it was an effort to get a journalist to talk about us, whereas now we've got journalists from huge lifestyle publications in Spain coming to us. That is how we measure success.

We achieved a moment where we actually don't have to do as much distribution, producing as much content because journalists will come to us, and will ask us to provide quotes or an interview for them. That is great. That is what for me, success looks like with that client. For another client, that would be useless. Because I know other clients, if you said to them, we got you an interview, they would say: ‘I don't have time for that. Where's my link?’ So it really varies from client to client.”

You mentioned journalists there and how perhaps some weren't so keen to engage with you a couple of years ago. Has the way that you go about actually offering your services and building links as a result of doing that changed over the last couple of years?

“I think journalists are like an audience. So we are talking about users and we are constantly talking, especially now, about trust. We are constantly using the word trust and quality of content. If you start as a brand, and you start producing spammy content constantly, you might get quick results, quick wins, but in the long term, people will see you as a bit of a spammy brand. And the same happens with PR.

When we started, we weren't getting the immediate results, or like the 100 links per campaign that everyone talks about, and all of this, but we were producing consistent, good quality content that is really trustworthy in terms of data, data lead campaigns, data that was really valuable and trustworthy. And within time, that kind of sank into journalists, so now they trust not only obviously our campaigns, but also the brand, which is really important. Imagine that you're a journalist and you're trying to find a source to include in your article.

The main thing is that you trust the person and what they are saying. You trust that they are valuable and trustworthy, kind of like content. I think it is the same when we are outreaching to journalists we and need to be thinking about the same thing when we are producing content for people. We need to build that kind of relationship of trust. That's why I said that the ‘why’ in the strategy is so important, because if you send something like a really quick story that doesn't have much to it, you'll get a quick win, but in the long term, you won't be getting anywhere.”

What is something that SEO shouldn't be doing in 2024?

“It is very similar to what I was saying, in terms of time, really quick wins and you can get x amount of links doing this piece of content. We should stop thinking about those quick wins, and instead think about long term strategy. So focus less on links, and more on planning what we need to achieve and how to get there.”

Lau Miguez is a freelance International Digital PR Strategist, and you can find her over at laumiguez.com.