The irrelephant in the room: Digital PR campaign planning in a post Google leak society

The last year has seen digital PR campaigns take a bit of a backseat. 

With budgets tightened due to the current state of the economy, clients across the board want more bang for their buck. As a result, clients are more hesitant to invest in campaigns, instead opting for less variable and ‘quick-win’ link-building strategies.

The focus across digital PR has seen a shift towards reactive PR strategies, which can be more accessible to clients working with smaller budgets. With a faster turnaround for results, reactive PR is an enticing alternative strategy to campaigns, with less production time and more flexibility.

Additionally, with major media houses downsizing over the last year, journalist-to- PR ratios have become even more stretched, with significantly more competition in vying for a journalist’s attention.

Now, only the most relevant and timely campaigns will receive so much as a glance from journalists, who have less time and more responsibility in covering the here and now.

Following the recent Google leak, the need for relevancy of campaigns is paramount. Not just to capture the attention of a journalist, but to generate links with genuine value.

On top of this, the leak revealed the immense value in ‘fresh’ content, with campaigns offering a fantastic opportunity to generate valuable links from newly created and regularly updated source pages from news sites.

It’s clear that generic campaign ideation and subsequent spray-and-pray outreach won’t cut it in 2024, with the key to client success being relevant, high-quality links. With the right planning and research into trending and widely discussed topics, campaigns can still be a highly effective strategy for  generating links.

Achieving success through relevant Digital PR campaigns: 3 points to consider:

1. Generate links, not eye rolls

To add value to your client’s site, first, you need to add value to a journalist’s inbox. No matter how catchy your campaign might be, or how robust your data, any weight is stripped away as soon as a journalist spots a disconnect between client and campaign. Granted, there are occasions where campaigns have succeeded beyond the venn diagram, but “The UK’s most thrilling theme parks” by Slough Funeral Directors* is headed for the bin.

Highly relevant campaigns are the most successful, with your client adding their own authority to the findings. Targeting a niche audience with a campaign in your client’s specialist subject can be far more reliable than casting the net wider with general interest stories. This is particularly true where your client is a reputable name within their industry, but not necessarily a household name beyond their remit. Thus, your campaigns can maximise a client’s authority in their industry, achieving high-quality links without leaning on ‘clickbait-y’ tabloid-fodder.

Needless to say, the chances of success and odds against irritating a journalist can be greatly improved by simply taking time and care during the media list-building stages. As Digital PR experts, it’s our responsibility to the industry to only target relevant journalists to avoid friction with journalists or risk your organisation’s email being blacklisted. 

Ultimately, we earn coverage; it’s in our interest to provide a journalist with maximum value, in order to create healthy and sustainable relationships to generate further coverage down the line. These relationships begin from the subject line, so it’s vital we are transparent from the get-go.

2. Maximise link value through relevant source content

One of the main takeaways from the recent Google leak was that Google could be ignoring links from irrelevant content. 

In the leaked documents, analysts have identified the ‘anchorMismatchDemotion’ attribute referenced in the ‘CompressedQualitySignals’ module. Whilst we can’t say for sure what this demotion entails, it’s obvious that its purpose is to ‘demote’ anchors (links) that have a semantic disconnect between the source and the target.

Despite not being certain what this mismatch refers to, we can presume this is relevancy. As a result, links sitting in content that doesn’t align with the target website may be ignored by Google, thus adding no value to your client’s site. 

The same applies to anchor text that doesn’t match the rest of the content; any out-of-place text with the sole purpose of shoehorning in a link will only distract readers, and detract value from any potential links.

With that in mind, campaign ideas shouldn’t progress past ideation if they fall outside your client’s sphere of influence. In the past, link builders have sworn by the mantra “a link is a link”, but the recent leak’s news firmly puts that notion to bed – relevancy is key.

3. Geographical relevancy

While this news isn’t a revelation, the leak also reinforced the value of links from the same country as your client.

Certain campaign ideas may supply a host of international angles with links a plenty to be had, but the real-term value of links from abroad is secondary.

In Google, the attribute ‘localCountryCodes’, found within the ‘AnchorsAnchorSource’ module, stores the countries to which the source page is the most relevant. As a result, it can be assumed that links from sites that match the countries to which the target page is most relevant are more valuable than links from sources from a different country. 

In other words, your campaigns should prioritise generating links local to your client’s country.

Needless to say, this ties in again to the relevance of your client to the campaign itself. For example, a Yorkshire-based logistics company will offer no real weight to journalists in the US, even if the campaign findings cover the US. Entirely different markets and economies will mean that many of your findings may not apply or be relevant at all to foreign press, with significant additional research required due to the nuance of international outreach.

More localised campaign planning will necessitate more specialised and relevant media lists, resulting in stronger and more relevant links.

As you were

For many, the leak has been a stunning revelation. But in real terms, it’s business as usual.

Distinctly’s link-building ethos has always been quality over quantity and the leak’s implications have only cemented our principles.

But for agencies and businesses building and buying ‘spammy’ links, the leak should serve as a curtain call for black-hat digital PR link building. The leak should also have positive ramifications for the industry in general, with a greater emphasis on quality and relevant campaigns.

*False name for confidentiality purposes