Did your latest piece of PR coverage include a clickable URL link to your brand or client’s website, just like the example below?
It did? You must be jumping for joy!
If you’re not, let me tell you why you should be punching the air next time it happens.
Click throughs to your brand or client website from your coverage can have an amazing impact on the business and that impact is beyond just the awareness raised in the article. Let me explain;
Your coverage will be engaging the reader and informing them of your campaign. If they can then see that the influential website that they trust links out to some supporting content it’s likely they will trust this and click through.
In this moment the reader is engaged and wants to continue their fact finding so it’s very likely that they will explore the content and take action.
You can find out exactly how many people took that action by exploring traffic sent from coverage in your client’s site analytics. Work with the people that manage the site analytics to gain access.
If you haven’t used analytics before as it can be a little overwhelming. Either work closely with your digital team, gain training or read online guides and you’ll be fine. Alternatively you could use our free PR coverage analytics tool answertheclient.com.
It simply scans your site (through Google Analytics) to check what traffic your PR coverage delivered and then whether your target audience then went on to download or buy. Nice and easy!
That’s not all. There is a second major benefit to having links in PR coverage
Links to a website from influential media sites are also a key indicator to Google that your brand/client site is trustworthy and therefore should be in search results and in front of some of the Google audience (4 billion people daily!).
The more influential the site your coverage featured on the greater the visibility your content will have on Google. The greater visibility in search means more people will see it, engage and purchase.
You can find out more about the power of links in coverage and Google search visibility in my eBook ‘PRs Digital Resolution’.
I hope by now you can see why I want to see fist pumps next time you achieve a link in a piece of coverage. If you’re still not clear watch this video for a recap:
Yay! Links are amazing.. so how do I track and report?
Well… counting them is a start! But if you’re a successful PR practitioner gaining lots of coverage this is going to become tiresome and it’s not very accurate.
The next best way is to use CoverageBook.com to build your reports. One of the features scans all coverage for links going to your client’s site. Easy.
We’ll scan your coverage for links, count them and display your success in the summary metrics section.
So go forth, celebrate your links, tell people about them.. and then go and see what happened next too ; )
