Sponsorship does not just refer to sports sponsorship. Today, many businesses are considering sponsorship for their marketing strategies. Sponsorship is often an underutilised marketing strategy that can benefit both small and large businesses. Sponsorship marketing can grow your brand, improve your reputation and create a positive image by working alongside a relevant sponsor and brand.
Here, we will share exactly what sponsorship marketing is, sponsorship’s marketing benefits, and how to implement sponsorship in your own marketing strategy for 2023.
Sponsorship marketing is when two brands decide to work together professionally for mutual gain. Businesses often sponsor events, trade shows, brands, and charities to achieve specific brand goals and improve their competitive advantage. Sponsorships don’t directly promote your company, products, or services. Your company supports and finances an event, business, or charity your target audiences care about. Your business and brand are then associated with the sponsor. Sponsorship can be provided in different forms including funding, resources and services. Sponsors receive in return a boost in brand awareness and reputation.
Some examples of sponsorship marketing include:
Charity events
Entertainment sponsorships including concerts, festivals, theatrical events and other outdoor entertainment
Media sponsorships (Particularly podcast, TV, radio and online or print media)
Sporting events
The impact of sponsorship marketing
Sponsorship can be a very worthwhile investment for your brand and marketing efforts. Sponsorship allows you to reach a targeted audience and enhance the sponsors’ brand public perception. The affiliation creates a ‘halo effect’ of goodwill, reflecting the positive associations with the sponsor.
Sponsorship makes a positive impact by empowering the existence of entities consumers care about, sponsorship is typically more positively perceived than advertising’s sole focus on commercial goals. Sponsorship’s commercial intent is more subtle and indirect compared to traditional advertising.
Brands or businesses can establish credibility with their target market by investing in sponsorship. To achieve effective results, there needs to be common values, visions, and goals shared between the sponsorship’s beneficiary and the sponsor. Simply put, the business or organisation you choose to sponsor should relate to your business.
Sponsorship provides invaluable exposure by allowing companies to reach and connect with their audiences and build consumer trust through affiliation. Sponsorship marketing allows businesses to cut through the noise and reach their audience with targeted messaging,
A meaningful and effective sponsorship campaign will help your business to improve its credibility, promote brand awareness, improve public image and differentiate from competitors. Sponsorship marketing should be used strategically to reach your target customers.
To build out a sponsorship strategy in your marketing plan, you should research events, organisations, and charities that your target customers care about. Sponsorship reach and opportunities can prove to be a good use of your marketing budgeting compared to other traditional advertising.
Identify sponsorship goals
Before considering adding sponsorship to your marketing plan, your business should consider what you will accomplish through a sponsorship. You should ensure that the sponsorship in mind aligns with your business needs and goals. For example, to improve your business reputation with the local community, you could research what events and issues the community care about such as supporting a local sport or youth group.
Research your target markets
Perform research into the company’s target market to add sponsorship to a marketing plan, this will help to learn about the interests of the company’s ideal customer. Aligning the sponsorship strategy to your company’s target market can help the company benefit from the sponsorship. The sponsor should consider commonalities between themselves and the sponsorship beneficiary. For example, a healthcare brand could align with a sports team.
Allocate a budget
Decide how much of your marketing budget can be spent on the sponsorship campaign. A smaller business could consider local events and charities to sponsor that fits within their marketing budget.
Engage with the local community
Networking can be a great way for businesses to recognise potential sponsorship opportunities. Networking can also be a great opportunity to identify local groups and charities that people in the area find important.
Research sponsorship opportunities
To identify sponsorship opportunities, businesses can attend industry, local community, or charity events and research past events that align with their target audience.
Create a sponsorship proposal
Once you have identified a suitable sponsorship opportunity, you can create a sponsorship proposal. The proposal should include a company description, similar values in common with the organisation you are sending the proposal to and you can include your ideas and contribution in mind.
Sponsor an event and get started with your sponsorship
Once the sponsorship has been secured, the sponsor can start to plan the sponsorship campaign or event. A photocall and PR outreach are sometimes used to spread awareness around the sponsorship campaign or event.
Measure the results
After the campaign or event has ended, the sponsor should evaluate the results to see if the initial business goals were achieved. It also provides insight into future sponsorship strategies and opportunities.
Laya healthcare is the proud health and wellbeing partner of Leinster, Munster, and Connacht Rugby and last year celebrated their eighth year of rugby sponsorship in Ireland. Their “A Beat Ahead” campaign brought the best of laya healthcare to provincial rugby and was designed to uniquely connect fans with their team.
Energia are the proud title sponsor of the Energia AIL and Official Energy Partner of both Leinster Rugby and the IRFU. To celebrate the anniversary of the All-Ireland League, Energia created a look back at AIL’s 30-year contribution to Irish sport and culture.
ALDI Ireland was the Official Supermarket for Electric Picnic 2022. ALDI created a fun sponsorship activation to kick off the much anticipated return of Electric Picnic, Music and Arts Festival. Picnicers were able to visit ALDI’s pop-store and shop for essential festival items throughout the weekend.There will be a pop-up store located in the campsite where customers can shop essential festival items throughout the weekend. Picnicers will be able to purchase all their festival essentials from breakfast foods, snacks, sweet treats, beauty items, sun cream to those all-important festival Specialbuys to fully kit out your camping area when you arrive.
In 2022, Indeed, the number 1 job site in the world, became the new official sponsor of Dermot & Dave’s mid-morning show on Today FM.
Commenting on the new partnership, Dermot & Dave said: “Are we excited about the new partnership? Indeed we are! Working with a huge global brand like Indeed is very exciting for the show. We’re very much looking forward to creating some great content together and we just know our wonderful listeners are going to love the new partnership, especially those that are on the hunt for the next step in their career!”
In 2022, Organic Dairy Glenisk announced a 5-year Partnership with Offaly GAA, Camogie and Go Games that supports all age groups. The sponsorship is a great example of a brand engaging with its community.
In order to choose the right sponsorship for your business, you should consider the following questions to ensure the sponsorship aligns with your business goals, brand, and target audience.
How will the sponsorship affect your business image?
Will the sponsorship create new business opportunities?
Does the sponsorship align with your customers and target audience?
What will the sponsorship campaign consist of?
How long is your sponsorship commitment?
What will the business get in return?
Legacy’s award-winning brand and sponsorship division has broadened its reach beyond sports into many different business sectors. We help brands to select and secure sponsorship and activate the brand throughout the campaign. Our campaigns include a strategic mixture of communications, content creation, social media, influencer marketing, events, and experiential.
Vampire Teeth is a name I use to describe a particular phenomenon in Google Search Console. It is not that common and sometimes difficult to spot, but it is extremely helpful to SEOs.
Any SEO that has ever ranked a page in the SERPs knows that impressions increase when rankings increase. It’s simple logic that’s been an in-field observation since the dawn of SEO.
Rank Better = Get more Impressions.
This also rings true when your rankings go the other way as well.
Rank Worse = Fewer Impressions
But what about when we see a sudden drop in the average rank of a page but impressions shooting up simultaneously?
This is what we call “Vampire Teeth“.
When two are close together, like in the following image, it’s also fairly easy to spot.
It’s when there’s only one that spotting this becomes a bit trickier.
What we are looking for is a sudden drop in the average rank with a sudden spike in impressions at the same time.
The timing is the key, when these two things happen at the same time, on the same day.
Why is it important to spot this, you ask?
Well, let’s look at what actually happens on this day.
We know that Google uses click data to confirm the relevancy of a page. Suppose Google gives impressions to a page in the SERPs, and searchers click on the result consistently. In that case, the click data confirm that the result is highly relevant to the search that was made.
And if the SERP result gets low to no clicks, then obviously, the page is less relevant to the search that was made.
Basic SEO 101.
From this simple observation, it’s safe to assume that the sudden increase in impressions and decrease in average rankings clearly indicate that Google is testing the page’s relevancy for a new set of phrases at a lower-ranking position.
Why is this significant?
Well, this proves that Google is not confident in what your page is about. Either current click data did not confirm what Google thought your page topic must be, or the page content itself is not “on-topic” enough for Google to make a clear decision on how to index and rank that page.
This should be seen as a gift from Google, and as SEOs, we know this doesn’t happen often.
How to analyze “Vampire Teeth” for SEO benefit?
We first need to determine what Google tested the page in question for. We want to see if Google tried the page for a set of common phrases or a group of random words.
To do this:
Create a date comparison report within Google Search Console’s Performance report.
Compare either the day before or after with the day the anomaly happened.
Look at the queries tab and sort the Impressions column for the typical day from smallest to biggest.
Identify all the queries with zero impressions on a typical day and with many impressions on the anomaly day are queries Google tested.
Random phrases indicate that Google has difficulty in understanding what the page topic is and really what the intent behind the page is. When this happens, a complete rework of that page should be considered.
You should:
Make sure that the purpose of that page matches the searcher’s intent.
Think about where you want your page to be positioned in the sales funnel and make sure the content reflects that.
Keep to a single topic per page, and don’t try to stuff related keywords in there to try and rank for “all” the longtail terms.
When the phrases are common, meaning they are mostly related or even on the same topic, compare them with your target keywords. This will help you get an idea of what Google “thinks” your page could be about.
Use this analysis to identify words to either add or remove from your content. Yes, I said to remove it from your content.
Most of the time, when I come across Vampire Teeth in SEO, I find that Google is testing a page for non-related and off-topic search terms due to unrelated words and phrases on the page. Intent and poor grammar is also a common culprit.
How do we use this data to make positive adjustments to a page
The page we are using as an example is a page that shares information on the best curtain fabric to use when making curtains.
The page’s content starts by saying, “If your current curtains make you feel blue, then don’t buy ready-made eyelet curtains online. Rather make your own”. It then continues to share the best type of fabric to use when making these curtains.
We found that Google tested the page for these terms on four separate occasions over five weeks.
Remember that this page is not an affiliate page selling curtains, nor an e-commerce page selling ready-made curtains. The page is informational on curtain fabrics, yet Google tested it for sales-related terms. This is a classic example where I recommend removing words or phrases from a page.
When you find that Google is testing a page for terms closely related to your target terms, consider adding these words to your content. Do not just blindly stuff them onto the page. Use these to see if your page lacks some fundamental info. Try to restructure the page content to include them without compromising your content quality.
Google does not give us SEOs a gift like this every day, so use it to your advantage.
The benefits of sponsorship can sometimes go unnoticed without considering the tangible marketing strategies that a business can deploy through sponsorship.
When most people think of sponsorship, they think of their favourite sports team like Manchester United and the iconic Sharp sponsorship, or maybe even Irish Rugby and permanent tsb.
Cantona, Keane, Scholes, Giggs, Neville, Beckham and Schmeichel. The list of legends who wore a Sharp sponsored shirt is long and illustrious, but the legacy of the sponsorship still lives on.
The high-profile Sharp sponsorship lasted 18 years with Manchester United. Sharps association with the club massively benefitted Sharp for global brand awareness. Martin Arnold, Sharps Marketing Communications Manager at the time, admitted to Tech Radar in 2010 that the end of the sponsorship also marked a slide away for Sharp in the UK.
“When you say Sharp to people today many of them either bring up Manchester United or microwave ovens that have lasted for 20 years and since we stepped away from Manchester United the awareness of Sharp has fallen.”
From Sharp, to Aon, AIG and most recently Tech Viewer, it can thrust a company’s name into the mainstream with their logo on the iconic red shirt. They are rarely forgotten. The historic Champions League comeback on the evening of 26 May 1999 in Barcelona will go down in the greatest footballing moment of all time. Sharp’s sponsorship is still etched in our memory 23 years later equally as clear as Solskjær’s 90’ +3’ winning goal and knee slide (or perhaps as an Irish person, the most unforgettable memory would be Thierry Henry’s 2009 handball)
Sport sponsorships have broadened their complexity in recent years compared to the conventional exposure of a logo on a jersey or a sign in the camera arc. However, sport sponsorship is often favoured over advertising since it is usually targeted toward an audience through sporting ties and fan loyalty. The Irish sponsorship industry grew by 6% to reach €180m in 2021, and while the sector’s size has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, the 16th annual ONSIDE Irish Sponsorship Industry Survey estimates there will be further growth of 8% in 2022 to €195m.
According to Statista, the global sports sponsorship market was worth an estimated 57 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 and is expected to grow to almost 90 billion U.S. dollars by 2027. The market size is set to grow by 6.72 percent in the next 5 years.
The dynamic of sponsorship has changed dramatically in recent years, stretching beyond the realms of sport, becoming a vital part of marketing and PR plans.
Sponsorship comes with many benefits and is as effective in a B2B application as a B2C application.
Sponsorship provides opportunity for business access, brand affinity, connections, access to target audiences, data and much more, depending on your execution strategy. Most importantly it helps to shape public perception, which can be hard to achieve using your own branding and marketing efforts alone.
Sponsors and businesses working together can create a broader reach and shared objectives, multiplying the resources they have and leveraging the combined power of the partnership. In this in-depth guide to the benefits of sponsorship you’ll learn what is sponsorship, how to use sponsorship for PR and the different types of sponsorship including Legacy client case studies.
So, if you’re ready to go “all in” with sponsorship, this guide is for you. Let’s jump right in.
Sponsorship is a cash and/or in-kind fee paid relationship between a provider of funds and a business which offers in return some rights, access and associations that may be used for commercial advantage.
It allows a business to demonstrate its affiliation to the individual, event, or organisation that it has chosen to associate with
A common misconception is that sponsorship is the same as advertising. While sponsorship can deliver increased awareness, brand building and propensity to purchase. Unlike advertising, sponsorship cannot communicate specific product attributes and requires support elements.
What Are The Types Of Sponsorship?
Sponsorship occurs on many levels across media, sport, the arts, music, venues, gaming and there are a few different types of sponsorship. The key thing to remember is that sponsorship is a targeted approach to marketing that resonates with their customer base through rights and benefits to the buyer or ‘sponsor’.
Sponsorship is particularly impactful when the sponsor and the rights holder have similar goals, values, and a sharp vision. Choosing the right type of sponsorship, can ensure a strong sponsorship deal that means both parties benefit from the agreement, right from the outset of the negotiation.
Sponsorship is much more than your brands name on the front of a jersey or a logo on a sign at a high footfall venue like a trade conference.
Sponsorship provides opportunity for business access, connections, hospitality, employee engagement, brand affinity, audience sharing, data growth, and brand awareness. All of which can be accessed in numerous ways through clever activation of the right sponsorship type. The four main types of sponsorships are:
Media Sponsors
Media sponsors are financial sponsors that secure advertising for an event. Media sponsors agree to advertise the event. This can mean purchasing advertising space in national or regional newspapers/radio, publishing content about the event on their own social media channels. Our client, Indeed, proud sponsor of Team Ireland at the Tokyo 2020 Games partnered with Newstalk’s Off The Ball to exclusively sponsor three weeks Team Ireland content across all online and digital platforms, resulting in a high brand recall amongst the target audience in question.
In-Kind Sponsors
An in-kind sponsorship is an arrangement where the sponsoring company provides goods or services in lieu of direct financial support. Instead, they perform services or products based on an exchange of retail cash value. This type of sponsorship is attractive to a business that wants to save money on sponsorships, and it gives the company a chance to show the quality of their work.
Promotional Partnerships
Promotional partnerships are similar to media sponsors. The difference between these types of sponsorships is that promotional partners are typically individual figures rather than companies and media outlets. A promotional partner advertises to their own network which is a good way to reach your target audience. For example, our client Energia used their rugby ambassadors from their sponsorship portfolio to promote their Smart Home Store campaign. We executed three paid influencer partnerships with each influencer gifted a Smart Home Store bundle that would best suit their needs. Influencers choosing their preferred bundle ensured authenticity and allowed them to promote an Energia product that would most appeal to their followers. The ambassadors had high levels of engagement and a combined reach of 71,000.
Financial Sponsors
These are the sponsors that give money directly to an organisation and campaign leaders to fund their activity. The level of support given by the sponsor often dictates the type and amount of exposure offered by the beneficiary. For example, in sports kits, placement and size of sponsor logos on the can be dictated by the financial amount of sponsor support. Our client Immedis, is proud to support two of Ireland’s most respected golfers, Shane Lowry and Stephanie Meadow as global brand ambassadors to the company. Having started from scratch as a start-up in just 2016, the now international payroll solution employs over 400 people in over 150 countries. The strategic sponsorships with homegrown, Irish golfing talent who regularly compete on the global stage, have resulted in an extremely clever way for the business to tactically reach their target audience in billions of homes worldwide.
Without funding for a sustained global above the line marketing campaign, the execution of the ambassador partnerships acted as key early marketing tactics to increase brand awareness, profile, and affinity of the business among the key target audience across the globe. After a carefully considered selection process, Shane Lowry was chosen as brand ambassador after proving to be a perfect fit for the brand in terms of target audience and bullseye global reach amongst the target demographic. Once the results were proven, Stephanie Meadow was later signed on as an Immedis athlete, building on Immedis’ affiliation with golf. Both players live Immedis’ core values.
How do sponsorships benefit companies?
Sponsorship might seem like more of an act of charity rather than a self-serving act, but there are many benefits to business that are willing to invest in sponsorship. Sponsorship can provide tangible benefits in the pursuit of their overall business goals as way of positioning the brand. Sponsorships have the potential to reach beyond short-term sales to build a brand’s identity. According to McKinsey brand strength contributes 60 to 80 percent to overall sales which is one benefit on sponsorship but there are more benefits which can be seen below.
Boost Brand Visibility
Sponsorship spending has grown significantly around the world, and it constitutes a remarkable proportion of marketing budgets. The purpose of a sponsorship might be to reinforce or change the image of a company, by identifying it with a particular market segment, altering the consumers’ perception of the brand, or differentiating it from other competitors. Sponsorships can increase brand recognition. It can give your company exposure to new audiences and target audiences. This often happens through mentions in the press or social media and event advertising, signs, radio and featured ads and that’s where we at Legacy Communications come in!
By using minimum spend across stadium advertising, employee engagement, PR, digital advertising and ambassador content, AIG’s sponsorship of the New Zealand All Blacks resulted in an increased brand awareness in the UK market of 4% in 2019 alone as seen here in their case study.
Build Business Relationships
Sponsoring an event or trade show can help your company make connections with non-competing businesses, giving you opportunities for collaboration in the future. Aside from having a strategy for engaging new customers, it is important to network with other companies and sponsors.
Expanding Content Strategy
Sponsorships can provide a great source of new material for a company’s content strategy. By promoting your involvement in an event or activity, you can drive traffic from the event and increase your engagement on your social media channels or company website. One way to do this is engaging with your target audience through clever content creation that resonates with both audiences. Our client, Go-Ahead Ireland sponsors Dublin club leagues and championships. We helped build out human-interest stories portraying how both Go-Ahead Ireland as leading transport providers and GAA Clubs across Dublin connect communities. This campaign resulted in hundreds of thousands of video views amongst their key target audience.
How To Use Sponsorship To Benefit PR
Well thought out sponsorship campaigns can be a powerful positioning device. It can demonstrate brand values, increase visibility and improve reputation.
Sponsorship is an invaluable tool for PR, it allows you to captivate your target audiences, join in with the current trends, get involved with the conversation but most importantly it allows you to become newsworthy.
With the help of PR you can send positive messages to your audience who are in line with your sponsorship brand image by using the ideas that your target customers respond to more positively.
Legacy Sponsorship Case Study – Energia & Get Ireland Growing
Approach & Overview
Energia have partnered with GIY since 2016. Over the 4-week period, we executed an extensive media relations strategy consisting of two key PR touchpoints.
First, highlighting the giveaway of the 1,000 FREE GrowBoxes and the announcement of this first ever national Get Ireland Growing Day (GIG) on June 19th and the Grow Cup activation, followed by regional media outreach, detailing stories of the Community Grow Group winners.
We partnered with leading national radio station Today FM, and TV show, Ireland AM. For organic engagement, we issued 20 GROWBoxes to a selection of Influencers, within the target market.
Ahead of Get Ireland Growing Day we released an interactive map of Ireland across all social channels to show where in Ireland people could collect their free seeds from on Get Ireland Growing Day.
This Grow Cup activation also included a social competition whereby, the best coffee cup picture on GIG Day won a €500 cash voucher. We also secured four influencer partnerships and an ambassador partnership.
Results
Through a targeted Digital PR approach, the campaign resulted in 58 pieces of media coverage – with a combined reach of 4,900,054 million. Energia’s sponsorship impact score increased from 58 in 2020 to 67 in 2021.
Marketing Benefits of Sponsorship
Strategic sponsorships can help your business meet multiple marketing goals at once, the right sponsorship can give you numerous messaging opportunities to resonate with your target audience cutting through the noise from your competitors with increased visibility and reach.
Some sponsorship benefits for marketing include:
Generate media exposure
Increase reach
Increase brand awareness/affinity
Differentiate yourself from competitors
Shape consumer attitudes
Enhance business, consumer, and industry relationships
Why You Need to Add Sponsorship to Your Marketing Plan
Sponsorships help your business increase its credibility, improve its public image, and build prestige. Like any form of marketing, it should be used strategically to reach your target audience and customers.
Depending on the cost and reach of different sponsorship opportunities, you may find that they are a better use of your marketing budget than many forms of traditional advertising.
According to T.B Cornwell, “Sponsorship appears to be another area of marketing, along with source effects, store atmospherics, brand extension, and brand alliances, where the consumer’s ability to see an association between marketing assets enhances the effectiveness of these assets.”
A few points to consider:
How much exposure can you reasonably expect at different levels of sponsorship?
What sort of financial support do they expect from sponsors?
Who is the target audience & is sponsorship the best way to reach them?
Sponsorship helps to enhance the sponsors’ brand’s public perception. The affiliation creates a ‘halo effect’ of goodwill, reflecting the positive associations onto the sponsor.
Sponsorship provides a positive benefit through empowering the existence of entities consumers care about, sponsorship is typically more positively perceived than advertising’s sole focus on commercial goals.
Sponsors invest in sponsorship to establish their credibility with their target market. For this practice to be effective, there needs to be an organic link in terms of similar values, vision, and goals between the sponsorship’s beneficiary and the sponsor.
According to a study by Trinity Mirror in 2017, almost half of consumers (42%) distrust brands, 69% distrust advertising. Sponsorship’s commercial intent is more subtle and indirect, lowering consumer defence mechanisms. Sponsorship gives companies invaluable exposure by allowing them to reach and connect with target audiences while the affiliation builds on the element of consumer trust. The ROI and the cost per reach for sponsorship is relatively low compared to advertising space whether in print media or Instagram ads. Sponsorship allows you to cut through the noise and reach your target audience with your targeted messaging.
Sponsorship Case Study: Indeed #TalentUnleashed
Our client, Indeed were proud sponsor of Team Ireland at the Tokyo 2020 Games. The omni-channel campaign, drove awareness of both Indeed and the Team Ireland partnership. Read below on how we implemented the sponsorship to achieve our goals.
Background of Sponsorship
Indeed Ireland, became proud partners to Team Ireland for the Tokyo 2020 Games in 2019. The partnership brought to life #TalentUnleashed which shone a light on Irish athletes, their untold skills and showcased the commitment and hard work that often goes unnoticed.
This sponsorship embodied Indeed’s commitment to giving Irish talent the best opportunities, and created significant brand awareness and positive sentiment, for both Indeed and Team Ireland.
Approach
The #TalentUnleashed campaign created a unique voice for Indeed to champion Team Ireland by supporting the athletes in a way that no other brand could.
To achieve our goals, we implemented an omni-channel campaign, that simultaneously drove awareness of both Indeed and the Team Ireland partnership.
To achieve scale and presence, we used seven key pillars of communication including: the partnership launch, ongoing ambassador activity, paid digital, organic social media, Career Coach programme launch, athlete mural reveal, and Ad-hoc/reactive PR.
Key Results
Results In total, this represented an overall campaign reach of 170,058,438 plus over 96,690,000 impressions on #TalentUnleashed across digital
Campaign reach of over 170 million
105 million reach through PR alone, securing almost 160 pieces of coverage
#TalentUnleashed hashtag had almost 97 million impressions
Organic social reach of over 15 million
Benefits Of Sponsorship: Conclusion
Sponsorship is a complex phenomenon that falls within the strategic communication mix used by a business to position its product or service on the market.
We hope through the use of our case studies that you can understand the importance of sponsorship and the direct and indirect benefits it can have on your business.
In summary, sponsorship is a marketing tactic involving a business relationship between two parties.
One party is the sponsor who provides support in the form of resources, funding, or services to the other party (beneficiary), who allows access to the sponsor for rights and associations used for brand awareness or commercial advantage.
This guide has discussed how sponsorship works and its benefits, different types of sponsorship, and some of our client case studies on how they’ve used sponsorship.
Now you’ve learned everything there is to learn about sponsorship feel free to reach out to us at Legacy for your business sponsorship needs.
How we do this is with our unique Storysell model which uses data to inform our campaigns; creativity to explode them into a magnificent story and then we supercharge them with a focused delivery strategy which can include digital pr; seo; content and of course sponsorship.
It’s often touted that Google’s search algorithm uses more than 200 factors to determine rankings.
But how does Google determine which website to rank on page one? For us it can be simplified to two important factors. On-page and off-page. If you get the on-page right, then build quality links to the page, it will rank.
In fact, a recent study of over 1 billion pages by Ahrefs found that pages with more links rank higher.
SEO fact: Pages with more backlinks tend to rank higher in SERPs.
In our study of 1 billion pages, we found a strong positive correlation between the number of websites linking to a page, and how much search traffic that page gets from Google.
Link building is a different skillset in SEO though. And an awkward truth is that many SEOs don’t like to build links. In fact many of them straight up hate it and will do whatever they can to avoid building links.
That’s why many SEO agencies don’t include link building in their retainers as standard. They either don’t want to or don’t know how to build links.
Especially the high quality links you need to outrank your competition.
This can be your advantage, if you can build more high quality links than your competitor. You’ll be able to outrank them.
In our guide to link building we’re going to teach you how to build high quality links that your competitors can’t.
Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to a page on your website with the goal of increasing your rankings and website traffic.
Generally speaking, the more high quality links your website has, the higher your website will rank.
The easiest way to understand the impact of a link, is that search engines see each link from another website as a vote that your content is valuable and relevant.
The relevance of a link is based on the content of the linking page/site.
That’s why it’s important to search for sites that talk about the same subject, or that is in the same niche as your site.
Here’s a simple example, if your website was about landscape gardening, a link from another website/webpage that talks about landscape gardening is a highly relevant link.
How to build backlinks
So what are the three main types of link building strategies? Loosely speaking, there are three types:
1. Submission type links: Submission links are links you can get by submitting your website to another website. This can be done by adding your website to social media profiles, directories or leaving meaningful comments on blogs or forums such as Reddit and Quora.
Because these links tend to be easier to get, these are considered low quality links and in most cases they won’t significantly move the needle.
2. Buying links: This is the elephant in the room. It is 100% against Google’s guidelines and it can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results. However, that’s not to say it doesn’t work. Many SEO’s have had a ton of success by buying links. Private Blog Networks are one of the most popular ways to buy links.
Sites like Fiverr, Legit, the Warrior Forum and Reddit are popular places to buy links. Buying links is a black hat strategy though and isn’t a strategy we use or one that we implement for our clients because we prefer to use “White-hat strategies”
3. Earning links: The number one way to earn links is to create an amazing piece of content known as a “link magnet” or a “linkable asset”, then reaching out to website owners and authors in relevant niches and asking them to link to it.
This is the best strategy to build links in my opinion and this link building guide will show you a number of tactics you can use to build these links.
The anatomy of a great link
Not all links are created equal! Some will help propel your pages to the top of Google, while others can hurt your site.
What makes a high-quality backlink?
There are two main categories to look out for.
The Relevance Of The Link
Ideally, you want to get backlinks from relevant websites and pages.
Let’s imagine you have created a piece of content on the ‘best kitchen cabinet paint colours’ (Like this one, from Improovy). Getting a link from a page on the topic of interior design would be much more relevant than a link from a page about fitness tips.
Ideally, you want to get links that are relevant to the story you’re writing.
There are a number of different factors in the strength of a link:
Destination URL: This is the URL address of the page the person will reach when the link is clicked
Anchor Text: This is the clickable word/phrase/image attached to the link. It’s often blue and underlined.
Rel Attribute: This defines the relationship between the page a link is on and the page it is pointing to. There are three rel values you should be aware of.
Rel Attributes
No-Follow Link: This tells search engines not to crawl/follow the outbound link. It essentially means that the website linking to you is not “voting” for you. As a result, it will not pass SEO ranking power.
Many publications now add the nofollow tag to outbound links. Here’s what a nofollow links looks like in the code:
You can quickly identify Follow/No Follow links through the NoFollow plugin.
Once you’ve installed the plugin. If a link is outlined in red, it is a “No Follow” link.
When you’re analysing a website for Follow/No Follow links just look at the main body of text, don’t look at links on the page like those which link out social media websites or the author biography.
UGC: This stands for User Generated Content, and the UGC value is recommended for comments and forum posts. UGC link can be identified as follows:
Sponsored: This tag identifies links that were paid for. Use the sponsored value to identify links on your site that were created as part of advertisements, sponsorships or other compensation agreements. The sponsored link can be identified as follows:
Google’s original algorithm contained something known as Pagerank. In fact, the reason Google’s algorithm was so much better than their competitors is largely because of page rank.
In the early days, Google even had a tool where they would tell you what your pagerank was.
But because SEO’s got so good and realized if they could get a higher page rank, they would rank higher, Google no longer makes pagerank public.
It’s not known if Pagerank is still part of the algorithm, however it is strongly believed that it is.
If Pagerank is no longer part of the algorithm, it is believed that it has been replaced by something newer and more sophisticated, but based on the same principles that Pagerank was built on.
The weight of Pagerank in the algorithm is often referred to as “Authority” when it comes to SEO.
The authority of a website or a web page linking to your own website is a ranking factor.
If you have more, high quality links from a more authoritative site than your competitors, you will likely outrank them.
Many SEO tools have tried to create their own version of Pagerank to interpret the authority of a page.
Moz uses Domain Authority (DA) for instance, Ahrefs has created Domain- Rating (DR) and Majestic SEO has created Trust Flow.
To check a website’s authority using Majestic SEO’s Trustflow metric, you can download the Majestic plugin.
Majestic gives us information about the links that are pointing to that given page/website.
When you’re analyzing any website focus on the following four attributes:
URL
Root Domain
Trust Flow
Referring Domains
URL: This tells us about the specific page we are on. So, in this case, we are on the “Spark Real Estate Marketing” page. The URL is showing us all the links pointing to that page.
Root Domain: Analyzes the links that are pointing to the entire website. This adds up all the links, for example, the About Us Page, Blog Page, Contact Us Page etc.
Trust Flow: This is the overall quality of the links pointing to the page/domain. The higher the score the better. Any trust flow over 15/20 it’s considered a high-quality site.
Referring Domains: This is the total number of links pointing to the page/domain.
Linkable Assets
When it comes to link building it might seem that it’s all technical jargon but there’s also a creative aspect that’s required.
Link building is about value, you need to find out what value you can offer with your content as well as get creative with your email pitch.
First and foremost create content that is worth linking to. This is what we call a “Linkable asset”. A linkable asset is any piece of content with a high probability of acquiring backlinks.
So, what are the benefits of creating a linkable asset?
Linkable content can increase your referral traffic as you’re getting links from other authoritative websites in your niche.
Linkable assets will also lead to increased brand exposure, as journalists and industry-leading blogs will cite your content in their articles.
There are a number of linkable asset formats you can create:
Case Studies
Original Research/Studies
Infographics
List Posts
Free Tools
Research Using Trends and Statistics
Let’s explore some of these in more detail:
1. Infographic
An infographic is a great way to use visuals to showcase your findings.
If choose to create an infographic as your linkable asset, pick one topic that appeals to websites in your niche. Brian Dean refers to these people as “Linkreators” – people who run websites in your industry or a related industry.
Try to brainstorm – What topics are they passionate about? What topics are they arguing against? Let’s imagine your linkeators are running bloggers. And you notice that a good chunk of these linkreators don’t recommend running every day to reach your goals.
You’d want to make an infographic topic that they agree with, EG something like: “Why too much running is bad for your health”.
Make sure in your infographic you cover 6/10 data points.
If you feel stuck with your ideas check out visual.ly to find infographics in your space or Google “topic” + “infographic”.
If you don’t have design skills don’t worry you can hire a graphic designer on websites such as Fiverr. So, don’t sweat the small stuff.
2. Original Research/Studies
Original studies naturally attract links. Why? They offer unique data and insights on a winning topic.
In order to get coverage, you need to have something interesting to write about.
How to choose your topic? Use the Source Magnet Technique (Another Brian Dean creation).
Is this topic trending?
Does this topic lack data?
Is your topic a “Tangential Topic”? (Topic that is related but not directly about your business)
In order to find what’s trending, put your topic into Exploding Topics or Google Trends.
Remember journalists want something that is blowing up. Once you have chosen your topic, collect and analyze your data.
If you’re doing a DIY Industry Study you should have a sample of at least 1,000 of whatever it is you’re looking at. Trim your list down to 12/15 data points. Important note: Journalists want to see how you conducted your study.
When you’re organizing your results, start off with the most compelling finding to grab the reader’s attention.
If you want to promote your study even further find influential people in your space that cover some of the topics that your study is about.
Reach out to them and ask them to give their thoughts about one specific topic they’re most interested in.
This will add credibility to the content. Once it’s published, share your content with those influential people.
They are more likely to share your content as they contributed their expertise and it will make them look good.
Content frameworks for linkable assets
There are 7 content frameworks that are ideal to create linkable assets with.
1. Trademark Technique: Identify a problem a linkreator and their audience cares about.
Follow these simple steps:
Choose a Catchy Headline: The title is the first thing a potential reader sees and getting it right is the single most important thing.
In your headline use three of the following:
1. A specific result
2. Specific Number (this increases credibility)
3. Specific Timeline (days/weeks are much better than months/years)
For example, How to (Achieve a Specific Result) in Only (Timeframe).
Identify Obstacles: Pick one obstacle that stands between someone and their solution. Give a brief overview of the obstacle and outline specific results in the Introduction. Share a solution that hasn’t been seen before and combine it with a unique name so it sticks in people’s minds.
Branded Solution Elements: The solution needs to be descriptive and must contain a visual element. Combine your branded solution with one of these terms: Approach/Formula/Method/System/Technique.
The First Section: Don’t jump into the steps of your branded solution. List out your results the following way:
1. Result #1 – Branded solution name & the Benefit you got from your solution
2. Result #2
3. Result #3
The Details:
1. Include 3/5 very detailed steps.
2. Show people how to implement each step exactly
Write your Content as a Case Study: It’s important to show actual proof. Try to avoid the “this changed my life” type commentary. Average type results will do as they are more believable and attainable.
2. Go-to-Guidebook: Contains just about everything someone needs to know about a specific topic.
Steps to follow:
Choose a broad topic that can be broken down into 7/10 sub-topics which is not too broad or too narrow.
Use Google Trends/Buzzsumo for topics that have already proven to perform well in your industry.
One you have your idea organise it into chapters:
Beginning: Basic/Introductory Topics
Middle: Detailed and Advanced Topics
End: Short Case Studies/Brief Tutorials/Tips etc.
Add Table of Contents and list out all your chapters and add page jump links.
For each chapter first write a short intro. This should briefly describe why this sub-topic is important. Then briefly describe 3-5 things someone needs to know about the subtopic.
Conclusion: Ask your readers to comment – you want them to take action once they’re done reading.
3. Expanded List Post: These articles contain a list of tips and tricks readers can use to achieve specific results. The list should be brief and easily digestible. Avoid writing in-depth paragraphs.
Steps to Follow:
Find a topic that you can provide 17/27 bite-sized tips on.
If you’re stuck, research other blogs using keywords like “your topic” + tips and “your topic” + strategies. You want techniques and tactics that people can use that day.
Do keyword research to figure out what people are already searching for. If you search for a keyword and no list posts show up this means it’s it isn’t a good for for a list post.
Find 3/4 best tips for each technique. You can include actionable steps, screenshots, video tutorials, infographics and extra content to beef up your content. Tell them exactly what to do.
4. Ego Bait: Make your topic linkreator friendly meaning a topic that journalists will be willing to link to.
Steps to Follow:
Your topic needs to be: specific and in a niche with at least 100 other blogs.
The 100 blogs benchmark to see whether a topic is the right size.
Gather your list of winners. Make sure the blogs you choose cover the topic now and again. Include at least 25 winners in your AwardsBait campaign. The more sites you include the more links you’ll get.
Use .edu sites as they are authoritative. To find them simply search: site: edu + fitness blog. Use Alltop.com for linkreator research. Type in the keyword that describes your AwardsBait topic. Use best of lists to find more potential bloggers.
Choose your blogs and narrow the finalists down to 25-100.
Create AwardsBait Power Page by choosing a good title for example, “Top 50…” and add your keyword after so people know what your page is about.
Don’t put your winners in any particular order in this case “everyone is a winner” BUT put the most authoritative and popular sites at the top.
Create a listing for each winner. Include the following four elements in the listing: their name/blog’s name, a flattering bio, an image and link to their site or social media profile.
Promote your piece using unique logo/banner, create a badge for your winners and reach out to your winners.Write an intro using this formula:Introduce what the awards are, talk about how many blogs exist in this niche, emphasize that it’s an exclusive list and outline what your blog will bring to the table.
5. The Industry Study: Is a great way to show off your market research about a certain topic.
You can review the links your competitor has, then build a list of websites to reach out to and ask them if they will also include your website.
Broken Link Building
Broken link building is a process where you look for your pages that are similar to yours that have gathered some links, but the website is now offline so they are broken (404).
Here’s an example of a 404 page:
If you can find a broken page in your niche, then you can use Ahrefs to look at the websites that link to that broken page.
Then you can reach out to the sites that link to the broken page and let them know they have a broken page, but it’s OK because you’ve got a similar piece of content they can link to instead.
In your outreach email tell your designated contact exactly where the broken link is and provide your content as a solution.
Guest Posts
Guest posting will increase your credibility and increase your brand awareness. If you can include a link to your website within the content or at the end in the author bio, it can still be a great link building strategy.
This process takes time as you have to find websites that still accept guest posts and figure out a unique topics to write about.
Link Roundups
Link roundups are ‘best of’ lists where bloggers link to their favourite articles. Here’s an example from wow group.
The key here is that you must have a quality piece of content that you have recently written. Although not as popular these days, link roundups can still be found.
Unfortunately, you can’t pitch a product/sales page. It usually has to be a blog/video/guide.
Link Reclamation
Find a website that mentions your name/brand/business but hasn’t linked to you. Then contact them to include a link to your website for the attribution process. To find unlinked mentions go to Mention.com. Ahrefs content explorer or Google Alerts.
Resource Page Link Building
A resource page Is a blog post/dedicated page that links out to that individual’s favourite things they think their audience will find helpful. You can create content around that link and pitch it to other potential resource pages.
For example if your website was a website that offered free stock photos, you would find resource pages that had a list of free stock photos.
Sponsored Posts
For sponsored posts, you’re looking for sites that actively accept advertisements. When evaluating the quality of sponsored posts look for:
Overall domain authority and trust flow
Content quality (are there any spamming links?)
Sponsored posts (do they say “sponsored post”?)
Digital PR
Digital PR is our favourite way to build links at Legacy Communications. Digital PR involves creating a story that news websites and journalists will love and will publish, ideally with a link to your linkable asset. You can get the full play-by-play in this Digital PR case study.
If you’re interested in our Digital PR services for link building, you can also reach out to us directly, we’d love to chat!
How To Scale Your Link Building Campaign
There are a number of ways you can scale your link building campaigns and in this section we’re going to take you through them.
Create separate link building roles
At Legacy, we favour the link building process created by Ryan Stewart at Webris.
In this process, the link building team is separated into 4 clear roles:
The Link Prospector – This person spends time looking for relevant websites to pitch and collects email addresses for the right contacts.
The Outreach Manager – This is the person who spends their time reaching out to new websites, promoting linkable assets and ultimately asking them for a link
The Content Writer – When the outreach manager gets a pitch accepted for a guest post, they forward the content brief to the writer, who then spends the time to write the post
The Lead SEO – This is the SEO who sets the target pages for links, as well as setting the full SEO strategy.
Use Outreach Tools To Build Links At Scale
There are a number of tools you can use to build links at scale. These tools will help by automating pitch emails, automatically sending follow ups and more.
There are a number of tools that are popular with link building teams around the world:
-Mailshake
-Pitchbox
-Buzzsumo
-Ninja Outreach
-Just Reach Out
-Press Hunt
Link Building Guide: Conclusion
The digital space is constantly evolving. If you can’t adapt your business will be left behind.
Always remember that link building is about exchanging value.
If your content is not link-worthy, then don’t expect other sites to link to it.
Your content is your biggest asset when it comes to link building campaigns so use it to your advantage to increase organic traffic for your business.
While we might not be primarily known for hospitality SEO as a team at Legacy, in my time as an SEO I have helped hotel clients rank for extremely valuable and highly competitive keywords across the entire industry and in multiple countries.
I’ve been in SEO dog fights with behemoth online travel agents and still come out on top, achieving top of page rankings for highly coveted keywords such as “Hotels Hyde Park”. At one point, I had four hotels ranking in the top ten spots for “penthouse suites London.”
So it’s fair to say that when it comes to hotel SEO, I know what I’m talking about and in this guide I’m going to teach you everything I know about SEO in the hotel industry.
We will cover the most important tactics when it comes to hotel SEO, starting with:
Search engine optimisation is a process to improve the visibility of a hotel website on search engine results pages such as Google or Bing. With more visibility, we can help grow your traffic and enhance your direct hotel bookings.
Our SEO approach covers the whole funnel regarding hotels in an area, things to do, maps, and how to get to the hotel. We use a broad description of hotel SEO because a search engine is at the centre of each experience above
Why is SEO for hotels important?
SEO produces the best return on investment for hotels when you rank in the top ten search results of Google. Ranking in the top ten can unlock a new revenue stream each time a customer searches for a hotel in your location. These customers are ready to reserve a hotel room once you meet the criteria to rank in the top ten of Google. To rank in the top ten of Google requires a hotel SEO strategy which includes content, conversion, and PR. We consider content, conversion, and PR our three pillars of SEO.
Our hotel SEO tactics for content:
When creating content about your hotel, it is important to understand that you need to stay local. If your hotel is in Hyde Park, you can write about Hyde Park, Speakers’ Corner, Kensington Gardens, Bayswater, Bayswater tube station, and the Diana Memorial Playground etc. You cannot go outside of that area because it is too far from your address.
Unless you want to target things to do where you would discuss Hyde Park, Kensington, South Kensington, Notting Hill, and Mayfair.
The types of keyword you are targeting will depend on the type of content you can create and rank on Google. It is best to go local because each area will have individual hotels, chains of hotels, and online travel agents in the search results. To stand out, you need to use clever ways of communicating your unique selling point through offers, a story, or the history of the building. Keyword research of your local area will help define what is achievable in terms of creating traffic to drive revenue. Once the keyword research is complete, we would recommend writing your titles and description to stand out from the crowd.
Create unique titles, descriptions, and use hotel schema
99 times out of 100, your home page is where you will rank for your most important keyword.
As a result, if you were targeting “hotels Hyde Park” you would ensure to get Hyde Park into the title. In the description you could highlight an offer or the main USPs of your hotel. We would also recommend adding hotel schema to your website. Hotel schema will allow you to display your star rating from Tripadvisor, an offer, or to ensure you get the right image in the SERP.
Take advantage of FAQs
FAQs are a great way to add more value to your page. FAQs are also valuable because you can use FAQ schema to take up more real estate in the search results (SERP).
The online travel agents take advantage of FAQs in every SERP. You can utilise this tactic by adding extra content at the bottom of your page and use FAQ schema to help Google display it like Tripadvisor above. If you are looking for FAQ ideas, you can use Answer Socrates or Also Asked for ideas on what to add to your page. SEO tools such as Ahrefs provide questions when doing keyword research which can add ideas on what to say in your FAQ section.
Reviews: a simple content tactic
When creating your page and trying to boost how frequently you mention the keywords on your page. Add in a subsection highlighting reviews of your hotel. You can read through Tripadvisor to find four and five-star reviews. We would suggest choosing reviews that highlight your unique selling points.
Target keywords with your hotel rooms in major cities
Most hotels will have a combination of room types, such as your family room, executive room, hotel room with a balcony and a penthouse for four or five star hotels. In large cities such as London, these room types have niche search volume. Using the keyword explorer by Ahrefs, we found over 350 keywords with 8,500 searches per month for hotel rooms.
The beauty of optimising your family room page for “family room hotel London” is that you have an opportunity to rank for a city wide keyword no matter where you are in London. For example, the Apex City of London Hotel is ranking in sixth position after Booking and Visit London:
Use content hubs for awareness content
A content hub could target keywords such as things to do. A content hub can display this content in a user-friendly manner and bring the best parts of SEO that are applicable to search engines and users. A content hub is a curated collection of branded content on a specific topic or subject. It houses articles, videos, infographics, and other forms of content that let users take a deep dive into a specific area in which the brand is an authority or expert.
We can elevate the brand through the content hub by overlaying different call-to-actions according to the marketing funnel. We would also highlight that a content hub allows us to express a brand in terms of colours, tone of voice and imagery.
Hotel SEO tactic for conversion
When considering the conversion side of hotel SEO, we would focus on technical SEO involving your website and the pricing of your rooms. Both converge to improve your conversion rate which should grow month-on-month when you work with an SEO team.
Pricing your hotel rooms
Direct bookings are the most valuable for a hotel. Once you engage an SEO agency, it will be important to provide an incentive for someone to book directly instead of through the online travel agent. These incentives could include free breakfast, a breakfast and dinner package, a drink on arrival or a discount for staying longer.
The SEO team will be able to use these packages in the descriptions and on-page content to entice people to book. By highlighting the hotel packages, your conversion rate will grow. In Google Analytics, the product performance report will detail which packages are performing the best.
From experience, when popular packages are not available, revenue will fall. As a result, we would contact the hotel manager for new deals to kickstart revenue.
What sells through Google Ads
When a hotel uses the same digital marketing performance agency for Google Ads and SEO, the team can share insights on campaign performance. One of the easiest ways to improve performance, is to take insights from Google Ads. When you compare the two marketing channels, Google Ads will show results quicker than SEO. To help improve the SEO, your SEO specialist can take ideas from the Ad text for titles and descriptions. They can also take insights from product performance through Google Ads to find out which hotel offers to promote in the meta-description. These simple tactics between a digital marketing team can help improve the quality of your website visitors and improve conversion rates.
Make sure your pages load quickly
Page speed is vital for the user experience of your website. No one is going to wait for a page to load because we are hungry for instant gratification. For example, when we compare the page speed of the top ten websites ranking for “family room hotel London”.
We can see that the Apex City of London hotel is slightly behind the average of 51, with a score of 30.
If Apex Hotels were our client, we would suggest working on page speed because we have clients where a good page experience drives over 50% of traffic on a monthly basis. Google rewards page experience because it improves the user experience of its customers who are everyone that makes a search on Google. We used the SERP speed tool by Reddico for this analysis.
Link building and PR
As Legacy Communications is a PR agency, we consider PR to be the traditional format of pieces in a newspaper or magazine, online in a publication, or modern Digital PR. The goal of PR for a hotel SEO strategy is links. We use a variety of techniques to gain links such as from event venues and local attractions when working with hotels.
Build links from event venues
Gathering links from event venues within close proximity to your hotel is among the simplest link building tactics. We can reach out to event venues who have an accommodation list to see if your hotel can be among the hotels mentioned. Sometimes venues want a business agreement which we would forward to the hotel manager. When the event venues agree to listing the hotel, we would include an offer that we know will be on the website forever.
Go local with your Hotel SEO tactics
Hotels are essentially local searches no matter where the person making the search is living. The map pack by Google is always in the top three of the search results. The map pack is valuable real estate because of the ability for a hotel to display a price and book directly on your website.
To improve your visibility in the Google Maps results, we would recommend completing the following:
Add a keyword optimised description of your hotel
Add all of your hotel attributes
Add a lot of photos of the lobby, rooms, and restaurant
Add a 360 degree photo of hotel rooms and the lobby if you have the budget
Ensure to add your health and safety attributes
Maintain a 4.5 review score
Free booking links on GMB
Last year, Google introduced a way for hotels to show free booking links. This month, Google announced an expansion of free booking links. These free links are now available on Search and Maps.
Google is rolling out the expansion of free booking links because of the positive user experience. One of the booking engines, “myhotelshop” has seen a 30% incremental increase in bookings during the summer of 2021 due to free booking links.
Citation management for your name, address, and phone number
To correctly manage your local SEO, we prioritise organising citations for the business to extend our local listing beyond Google Maps. The citation management can also help people navigate to the hotel because of the agreements between Google, Nokia, TomTom, and the car companies. For example, some Google Map features are in Toyota, Audi, Mercedes, GM, Fiat, Volvo, and Nissan cars.
For the official mapping technology, most car manufacturers depend upon Nokia or TomTom, so we would use citations to expand our reach into other technology providers. Creating the correct citations for your hotel also helps corroborate your Name, Address, and Phone which helps to build trust with Google.
Creative content tactics for your hotel
All marketing strategies require a little creativity to engage users and create a brand. For some hotels this could be a big PR campaign to establish the name. For others it could be simple content tactics such as content for social media and the use of Web Stories.
Create content for social media accounts
This idea is unrelated to SEO directly but will help build a brand. If you are familiar with Instagram, you may know about the accounts which promote Instagram reels of holiday destinations and hotels. For example, Glorious Hotels promotes Instagram Reels from influencers.
Our suggestion is for the hotel to hire a videographer to create video content for Instagram reels and Tiktok content. If you are shooting a video of a room, make sure to have a person in the video to add the human touch of the walkthrough. Once the content is ready, publish it on your account tagging these larger Instagram accounts for a mention. We would also make it easy for the social media manager to use the content by putting it on a page on your website where it can be easily downloaded and reshared.
Web stories for rich content
Web Stories is a rich, engaging content format that can appear on Google Discover and Search Results. Web Stories are similar to Instagram Stories. You can add links, images, and videos. We can use Google Analytics on your website to track performance. Web Stories provides an extra channel to share Instagram Stories type content with tracking and control. We feel it is a type of content that could do very well for inspiration type posts leading up to calendar events or local attractions.
I’ve been working in SEO for over a decade, and SAAS SEO is by far my favourite niche to work in.
At Legacy, we use a proven framework for SAAS companies that we’ve developed over the years. In this article, we will run you through our SAAS SEO Blueprint, a proven framework for SEO success for SAAS companies.
The SAAS SEO blueprint is built on over a decade of SEO knowledge. It aims to combine every little trick I’ve learned into one post to help SAAS websites rank internationally.
This blueprint has been built by working with a variety of SAAS companies across very different niches, such as project management, design, legal, internal communication and employee engagement.
I didn’t know much about any of the above industries until I started working with clients in these niches. However, with the methods I’m going to explain in this post, I’ve been able to create SAAS SEO strategies that have helped grow organic traffic, increase leads and ultimately increase revenue for SAAS companies across the globe.
SAAS SEO Foundation – Competitor Analysis
One of the first places I like to start when building an SEO campaign for a new SAAS client is competitor research.
While I don’t think it’s a good idea to blindly copy everything that a competitor does, reverse engineering what works for competitors can give you a head start and help you formulate a killer SAAS SEO strategy.
To analyse competitors, I will start by Googling my main keywords to determine which competitors rank. Once I’ve identified my competitors, there are a few things I’ll look at.
Competitor links
I’ll go into this in more detail later on in the post, but it’s very important to get a baseline for your competitor’s links versus yours. If you work for or own a relatively new SAAS company. You likely have very few links pointing to your domain (unless you bought an expired domain).
I like to use Ahrefs to get a baseline for competitor links. Let’s use an example where I work for a fictional accounting software and I’ve identified that Xero is a competitor.
To analyse Xero’s backlinks, I would copy their Domain and enter it into Ahrefs Site Explorer.
I’ll do this across a number of competitors to get an average. This will help me formulate an overall strategy, because by using the baseline for competitor backlinks I can decide what keywords are realistic to go after.
Competitor keywords
At the beginning of a campaign, I also like to look at competitor keywords. Again by using Ahrefs I can see which competitors rank for the most keywords and therefore garner the most traffic. I like to find out which 5 competitors rank for the most keywords. I’ll then use this information during the keyword research process to help build the overall strategy.
SAAS Keyword Research
I break my keyword research for SAAS companies into 2 phases:
Brainstorming
Competitor Gap Analysis
Brainstorming keyword research
Brainstorming keyword research is relatively straightforward. You think of the keywords that you would Google if you were looking for your product and then check to see if the words you come up with have search volume.
To be honest about it, I prefer to use competitor keyword research as the main strategy. This is because brainstorming for keyword research can be a lot of work. Your competitors have probably already done most of the hard work and you can reverse engineer that work with tools like Ahrefs to save yourself a ton of time.
Nevertheless here is a step by step video I’ve created that shows you how to brainstorm keywords:
Competitor keyword research
One of my favourite ways to do keyword research and build my SAAS SEO strategy is to build on the above by analysing competitor’s SEO strategies to help me build my own.
Because of VC money, you’ll often find that you are up against larger marketing teams with much more resources than you.
You can use this to your advantage because in a lot of cases your competitor’s marketing team will have figured out what already works and essentially laid out the blueprint for you. You can then use this blueprint to do it bigger and better than your competitor has done and outrank them.
Carrying on from the above, I’ll export the competitor’s keywords from Ahrefs and filter out branded keywords.
I’ll then freeze the top row and sort the URL’s A to Z. I do this because it’s the quickest way to identify keyword clusters to target. For instance, in the screenshot below, I’ve identified that Xero has an invoicing content hub and that they’ve created content on:
How to make an invoice
How to send an invoice
What is an invoice
I’ll go through this data for all of the 5 competitors I found in the earlier steps to identify which keywords I can use to build my overall strategy.
I’ll then create a separate sheet called a content map. In the content map, I’ll create a row for each topic, with the main keyword and secondary keywords to use for the content. I’ll also map what stage of the funnel the keyword is at, if it needs to be new or existing content, as well as the search intent of the keyword (IE is it informational or transactional).
Luckily for you, I previously created a few videos that walk you through the full process, step by step and in more detail.
Competitor keyword research overview
Competitor Keyword Research Part 1
Competitor Keyword Research Part 2
SAAS Content Marketing Strategy
When you’ve completed the keyword research process and created your content map, you can start to build your SAAS content marketing strategy.
You need to break this down into three core funnels:
Top of funnel
Middle of funnel
Bottom of funnel
Top of funnel SAAS SEO content
Your top-of-funnel content is usually your informational content with guides on how to do things in your industry.
In the example above, you saw that XERO have a number of pieces of informational content on invoicing, such as “how to create an invoice” and “what is an invoice”.
For a successful SAAS SEO strategy, you need to create content for every part of the user journey.Xero does this well by creating informational content that will resonate with someone at the beginning of their book-keeping journey.
To- of-funnel content will typically be blogs/informational articles for most SAAS companies. However, we have found more success recently by creating specific content hubs for each subject.
Again if we take Xero as an example, rather than putting their content on invoicing into the blog, it lives in their content hub. This is a much better strategy as it helps create relevance across similar pages through internal linking.
Middle of funnel SAAS SEO content
Middle-of-funnel content is a key piece of your SAAS content marketing strategy that bridges between the high-level concepts of your niche and the value your product provides.
Users in the middle of the funnel are a little bit further along in their journey and a bit more educated than the top of funnel users. Content for middle-of-funnel users needs to help the user and ideally will move them towards the final step of the journey to the bottom of the funnel.
This might come in the form of an ebook or a webinar download that goes in-depth on the subject. EG our fake accounting SAAS might do a webinar on tips and tricks for a more productive accounting department.
Bottom of funnel SAAS SEO content
Your bottom of funnel content will typically come in the form of your product/solution pages.
These pages are designed to give your potential customer all of the information that they need to convert into a user.
Again using Xero as an example, we see that they have created a specific page to rank for accounting software.
This page ranks on page one of Google across the English speaking world and is likely a huge driver of traffic, trials, and customers for Xero
The SAAS SEO Challenge
Here lies one of the main challenges with SAAS SEO these days. A few years ago if you wanted to rank for bottom-of-funnel keywords, your number 1 strategy was to create solution/product pages like the above example to rank, or else rank your homepage directly in the SERP’s for the keyword.
But in recent years, when searching for the bottom of funnel keywords, the first page of Google is dominated by listicle-style articles.
This leaves you with a conundrum. You’ll want to rank your solutions/product landing page in the top 10, but in most cases, this won’t be possible as the page doesn’t match the search intent.
If you want to rank for the bottom of funnel keywords in most SAAS industries, you’ll likely need to create a listicle of your own that mentions your competitors so that you can rank for the keyword and match the search intent.
This is where it gets interesting because you have to decide on your overall content strategy and if a lot of your content will be listicles that mention your competitors.
This can prove especially tricky to get buy-in from other stakeholders, especially senior leaders who might want to avoid mentioning a competing product at all.
SAAS SEO Content Brief
When creating content for our clients, we use a content brief to help ensure that all content matches the search intent, includes the right keywords and is straight out of the box.
Because a successful SAAS SEO campaign should focus on all parts of the funnel, you need to be clever when it comes to conversion optimization.
The ideal situation is that each piece of content you create comes with a logical next step. You can’t just rely on Calls-to-action like “sign up for our newsletter”.
The harsh truth is that no one cares about your newsletter.
You should use your top-of-funnel content to drive traffic to the site and then use CTA’s with mouth-watering lead magnets that offer real value to encourage the visitor to take the next step.
For SAAS SEO campaigns, 3 CTA types that work well:
Embedded CTA’s
Pop-up CTA’s
Sidebar CTA’s
Embedded CTA’s fit right into the body of your content.
Ideally, the CTA will match the content, so if the accounting saas wrote a guide on how to send an invoice, the embedded CTA might be for a lead magnet with a free invoice template you can use.
Here is a good example of an in-content/embedded CTA from Digital Marketer:
You can also use the in-content CTA to push people from a top of funnel informational page to a bottom-of-funnel decision-making page, here is a great example of this from project management software Teamwork:
Pop-up CTA’s are just that, they pop up onscreen and offer you the chance to download something. You can also set various rules, such as time on page or exit intent. Here’s a great example from Optinmonster (who also happen to have a great lead magnet tool):
Sidebar CTA’s go on the side of your content. In our experience sticky sidebar CTA’s work best, as they stay in the website visitor’s eyeline as they scroll through your content. Here’s another good example from Optinmonster:
In this case, they’re actually pushing the user towards the product rather than a lead magnet.
SAAS Technical SEO
Technical SEO might not be as important for SAAS companies as it is for e-commerce companies. This is because SAAS websites will likely have few pages than an e-commerce website, so you can get away with your site being less structurally sound in the SAAS niche.
However, with that said, I do believe it is important to create a technically sound website for your SAAS company. If your technical SEO is on point, it can give you an advantage over your competitors, especially if you create a bulletproof site structure that spreads authority across all pages and internal links between relevant pages.
I do find that some of the tools really help you zone in on technical issues a lot easier these days. The Ahrefs site audit is a great place to start if you don’t know much about Technical SEO, you can run a crawl and the tool will identify issues that you can then pass to your developer to fix.
There are a ton of really in-depth guides on technical audits available such as this one, but if you are doing a technical SEO audit for a SAAS website, you’ll want to concentrate on the following areas:
Indexation
Google Search Console
Google Page Speed Insights
Pingdom Tools & GT Metrix
Robots.txt
Sitemap
Site Architecture
Links
Onpage SEO
Content
Keywords
Analytics
Mobile Responsiveness
Structured data
Our own site audit procedure at Legacy is extremely in-depth and can take 20-30 hours to complete.
I’ve put together a standard operating procedure document that you can use to run a mini technical SEO audit on your SAAS website.
Links are a significant part of the SAAS SEO puzzle. If your website doesn’t have high quality links, it won’t have the authority to compete with your competitors and SEO won’t be a viable marketing channel for your SAAS business.
Here are a number of strategies I like to use to build links for SAAS companies.
Finding listicles in your niche
This one is low-hanging fruit for sure. You’re looking for websites that have written listicle posts about your niche. For example, if your saas was in the internal communications niche, you would look for articles like this.
You can just google keywords like “best [keyword] software [year]”, so for example, if you are in the accounting saas niche, you would search “best accounting software 2022”.
You can then make a list of all the listicle posts that mention multiple tools and then reach out to them and ask to be added to the post.
Reverse Engineering Competitors Links
Just like reverse engineering competitors’ keywords, reverse engineering their links can be a great way to identify potential link opportunities. In a lot of cases, if a website has linked to a competitor, they’ll likely be open to linking to you as well. Reverse engineering competitors can be an even quicker way to identify listicle posts like the examples above. You can also scroll through competitors’ links to identify any other strategies the competitor might use.
Digital PR
Digital PR is ideal for SAAS SEO. It’s one of the best ways to build links at scale and at speed, which can be especially important for new SAAS companies, who need to accelerate their link-building efforts to compete with other SAAS companies that have been around a long time. In our guide to Digital PR, we take you through the step-by-step process we use to build links using Digital PR with main strategies including:
Reactive and proactive
Product PR
Creative Campaigns/stunts
Data led stories
Thought leadership
Guest posting
This one is slowly dying but is still a viable option. In my experience, the best way to do it these days is to partner with other SAAS companies in similar but non-competing niches to help accelerate each others growth.
Easy answer – Just choose us. We’re a SAAS SEO agency with a TON of experience across many SAAS niches.
We’ve ranked many websites, across many industries across the world.
That’s important.
Being able to rank websites in multiple markets is a completely different skillset and needs a much higher lever of SEO skills.
Local and national SEO can be relatively straightforward, but for SAAS SEO success, you need to be able to compete and know how to rank a website on a global level.
The SEO team at Legacy communications is well equipped with over 30 years of experience in ranking websites on a global scale and can help you grow your SAAS business, whether it’s a bootstrapped startup, VC funded, or publicly traded.
The days of merely using print media to achieve brand awareness are over. In order to beat the noise of 1.86 billion other websites vying for consumers’ attention, companies leverage blogs, newjacking, stunts, data, creative thinking and social media to powerfully ramp up their business success.
Your business will struggle to survive without a solid Digital PR strategy in place. That’s why we’ve created this guide that will teach you:
What Digital PR is
Why Digital PR is so Important
How to Build a Successful Digital PR Campaign
Proven Tactics that will Strengthen Your Digital PR Strategy
How to Measure Whether Your Digital PR Campaigns are Working
How Digital PR Agencies Can Help
With this guide in your business back pocket, you’ll know how to utilize Digital PR like a professional and start building brand awareness right away.
What is Digital PR?
Public Relations is the process of managing and maintaining a favorable image in the public’s eye. It’s a tactic that marketers use to promote their brand and increase awareness.
Over the years, companies’ public relations strategies have changed drastically. A marketing evolution driven by technology has transitioned public relations from traditional to digital.
To fully understand Digital PR, let’s examine this transition and the difference between Traditional PR and Digital PR.
Traditional PR vs. Digital PR
The main difference between traditional PR and digital is that digital PR is – you guessed it, digitally focused. Traditional PR typically targets traditional media sources – things like newspapers, magazines, TV, events and radio shows. Digital PR, on the other hand, targets online sources, like news websites, social media platforms, blogs, online news outlets, and video portals.
As a sub-service of content marketing (which also includes all your content creation), Digital PR is the process of:
Gaining publicity online
Connecting with online journalists and publications
Gaining high-quality backlinks (when someone sends their reader to your site) from websites, social channels, and online publications
Today’s most successful PRs have embraced savvy Digital PR strategies in order to reach a much broader audience.
Running Digital PR Campaigns, they can connect with their company’s target audience and boost product and brand awareness much more rapidly than traditional offline strategies.
Digital PR is a great way to gain additional coverage for a client by utilising a newjacking approach as well as creativity and timing to beat competitors to the punch and help your client rank as high as possible.
Why is Digital PR Critical for Your Business’ Success?
Digital PR professionals are a powerful force in a brand’s marketing team, able to effectively improve online presence and brand visibility. Digital PR drives brand awareness, traffic to a website, sales, social following and engagement, and links that boost organic rankings.
Its benefits for your business stretch far and wide, but let’s narrow in on the three main advantages of investing in Digital PR:
Digital PR Gives Your Business a Glowing Introduction
When your target audience isn’t aware of you, Digital PR strategies can raise awareness, increase the visibility of your brand, and help you and your audience get acquainted.
By connecting with your target audience through a blogger, or journalist who already has credibility with your audience, you can shortcut your way into their trust. Rather than running ads that tend to put consumers off, your brand can appear in front of your target audience as a recommendation from someone they already trust.
Digital PR Ratchets Up Your Google Rankings
Digital PR SEO tactics, like when someone mentions your brand on their own website or online publication, may carry more than 50% of the ranking factor weight for search engines. How?
Each online article, social media share, and product review that mentions you or links back to your site looks great to search engines like Google.
As you rank higher on Google, you’ll gain even more traffic to your website. This increased traffic will boost your rankings even higher, and the cycle continues.
Digital PR Boosts Customer Acquisition and Lead Generation
The number of people consuming digital content on their handheld devices is growing each year. As a business, lead generation should be at the forefront of your campaigns.
Digital PR gives you a way to target this massive and growing group of digital consumers and build quality lead generation.
How to Build a Successful Digital PR Campaign
Digital PR can be powerful, cost-effective, and transformative for your brand’s success, but only when a solid strategy is in place. Below, we’ll walk you through four critical steps to creating and implementing a robust Digital PR Strategy.
Create Your Digital PR Plan
Before you start sending out dozens of pitch emails determine your plan and approach to Digital PR. You can create a concise and detailed Digital PR plan by answering these 3 questions:
What goals do I want to accomplish with these Digital PR efforts? Set specific goals within a timeframe. For example, you might want to increase sales by 10% by 2022, gain 1 million impressions for your brand, rank on the first page of Google in 6 months, or double the traffic coming through your website within the year.
Which people and publications hold the most influence over my audience? Find out where your target audience hangs out. Which websites, magazine and newspaper sites, social channels, and blogs are they frequenting the most? Make it your goal to show up wherever your target audience spends their time.
Where is my competition getting published?
Google your competitors’ names or the CEOs of competitor businesses and see which sites and influencers have mentioned them. These sites might be interested in interviewing you or featuring your products and services as well.
Lock-In on an Other’s-Focused Perspective
Job interviews, marketing, sales, and PR are no places to gush about your business and goals. In any situation where you’re trying to convince another person to take you or your business on in some way, it’s paramount that you think from the other’s perspective instead of your own.
Your story, your products, and your goals can be shared later. For now, all you should be thinking about is their story, their products, and their goals.
Which outreach proposal do you think would more likely be picked up by a publication?
Or
While the first message is all about John, the second is all about Sarah and her readers. If you want a “yes” from Sarah, pick a powerful angle for the piece you’re proposing that you know will capture her audience, increase her readers, and boost her sales.
Don’t Be The Company That Slips Through The Cracks
Influencers, entrepreneurs, journalists, newspaper editors, and magazine CEOs are busy people. On top of their daily responsibilities, they receive loads of pitch emails and outreach DMs daily. Your first message will almost certainly be left unopened or quickly forgotten.
Following up can make all the difference. Be patient and persistent. Send gentle reminders, graciously understanding that the people you’re reaching out to have a lot on their plates. They might need a few nudges before you hear back.
Build and monitor your contact list
As you work, keep track of every publication, blogger, or journalist that you’re interested in contacting. Create a Google Sheet that shows who you’ve already reached out to, followed up with, and gotten a response from.
When one of your proposals is rejected, reach out again with a different article idea or product for review. Just because the answer is no this time doesn’t mean that they’d say no to a different article or product in the future.
Note which sites published your content in the end. The commonalities can help you shape your outreach strategy in the future. Foster good relationships with the people willing to work with you. Oftentimes, you can continue working with them – especially if their piece or review covering your business boosted their own views and sales.
Tried and tested Digital PR tactics
Now that PR has moved online, methods are rapidly changing and developing to keep up with the internet’s constant advances. Here are three timeless approaches to Digital PR that will foster good relationships with the public and build your brand awareness in today’s market.
1- Reactive and Proactive PR (AKA Newsjacking)
Reactive and proactive PR is a great way to get ahead of your competitors by anticipating trends within the news cycle and hopping on breaking news stories and topics to increase coverage.
By monitoring breaking news you can keep track of ways that your client can easily gain some additional pieces of coverage – for example, is there a beauty story they can add an expert comment to? A new story they can add a fresh outlook to? Look for ways to apply the news to each client.
Introducing the new member of our legal team who will deal with the aftermath of admins #downingstreetparty tweets. Congrats Kim, on passing the baby bar. pic.twitter.com/FvgiWBgPgY
The same applies to proactive digital PR, a lot of topics will resurface year by year, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the calendar to predict trends and have your own takes ready to go.
2 – Product PR:
Product PR when done correctly can be a great way to drive traffic to a client’s site. The key is to think outside of the box – if a bottle of ketchup won’t get you a mention in a publication, a bottle of ketchup from Mars certainly will.
Get creative. The more outlandish the better, but make sure to approve any ideas with your client beforehand.
3 – Creative Campaigns or Stunts
When it comes to creating good digital PR, every campaign should be a creative one. Dedicate time and resources to thinking outside the box and figuring out fun ways to add value to journalists who might be reading your release.
Stunts are another great way to gain attention for your client, when done correctly you can secure massive amounts of coverage on both news and social sources.
4 – Data led/Data Stories
Combining data with creative thinking is a key part of digital PR. Once you have your idea, spend some time thinking about if it could be improved with data – and where you would get this data from.
Journalists are always on the lookout for new facts and figures but are often short of time to gather extensive data. By doing the work for them and offering them some quality data, you’re way more likely to see your piece land.
5 – Thought Leadership/Expert Led PR:
Similarly to the newjacking approach, keeping an eye on trends within each of your client’s sectors will give you a massive advantage. Monitor journalist requests and have somebody ready to provide quick quotes at a moment’s notice.
You can also use this approach to add value to your other stories, if you’re sending out a data or creativity based release, having a quote from an expert can give your piece authority and make it a lot more likely that journalists will pick it up.
How to Measure Whether Your Digital PR is Working or not?
You can use several success metrics for your Digital PR campaigns. Your measurement will largely depend on what goals you set while developing your Digital PR plan.
If your goal is to increase sales by 10%, you can use tracking links and, with Google Analytics, analyze how many sales have come from that one link.
If your goal is for your website to rank on Google’s first page within six months, you can track your search traffic and see whether that number is progressively increasing.
If your goal is to secure 15 pieces of coverage or improve overall impressions surrounding a client, you can search online or use tools to search for mentions of your press release on various publications.
If your goal is to gain more links to your client’s site you can then cross reference any publications who covered the release with any who attached a link to their site. Don’t be afraid to follow up and ask them to attach it either.
How Digital PR Agencies Can Help
To help build brand awareness, many companies hire a Digital PR Agency. These agencies can provide your company with professionals that can throw around acronyms like SEO PPC CRO, and CPC like Digital Marketing was their first language. The experts working at an agency can help you:
Generate market research
Create a strategy that beats the competition
Build and run powerful campaigns that help you reach your business goals
Create product or service advertisements in Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
Manage and optimize your website’s rank
Running Digital PR campaigns takes a lot of time—precious time and resources that you or your in-house marketing team could be spending focused on running your business. After cutting out payroll and taxes, hiring an external agency to handle your Digital PR campaigns can also be a lot lighter on your business’ budget.
Ideation: For our Ireland’s snowiest counties release, we dedicated time and resources to expand on the initial idea, finding tools to gather what we would need and analysing how it would work in practice before starting to collect data.
Data: To calculate the probability of a white Christmas in each county, Legacy used weather data from the past ten years from Met Eireann and weather checking application, TimeAndDate.
Timing: We chose the topic based on new cycle trends over the last number of weeks – as well as trends in the news cycle during the lead-up to Christmas over the past number of years.
Crafting: When writing our press release we crafted it like you would a news article, if you can do interviews with experts, think of snappy headlines and sub-heads and write in a news language style as much as possible – it will make a difference.
Outreach: You can always give your release an advantage by simply knowing what each publication is looking for. We took the time to look at what journalists were already writing about the topic before starting our outreach to achieve maximum results.
Retargeting: For Legacy’s Christmas-themed digital PR when coverage had come to a standstill after the first day or so we decided to ditch the traditional follow-up approach.
Instead, we decided to go back to each publication, see what journalists had covered similar stories in recent hours, and add them to the outreach list.
Insights: Even the most successful campaigns can always be improved. We found that certain aspects of our campaign such as the creation of a resource page on Legacy’s website to drive links, and the expansion to other locations would have made a big difference. Take note and apply it to your next campaign.
Is this guide “ultimate” enough, in your opinion? Did we miss something? Let us know by tweeting @Legacy_Comms. We’ll make sure to keep you updated with the most relevant answers to your Digital PR questions. Keep this Digital PR Guide in your business’ back pocket. With it, you’ll be able to build a powerful Digital PR strategy that will help you reach your business goals.
