Please sir, can I have some more?

If sir is Google and more is domain authority, this blog will give you some ideas on how to raise your score so your content gets found on the first page of search results.

I explained in this post about what domain authority is and why we need to care about it. So here are my top 5 super easy things you can do to increase that authority.

1) Clean up the toxic links. Go to moz.com and use their free URL checker for all the links that point to your site. Moz's link checker is brilliant because it tells you why a link is bad and how to get rid of it.

2) Get some good links.  Ask people in your industry if you can write a guest post for them and then have their site point to yours for more reference on a subject.  Google rewards good linkage, especially if it's industry related.  Also, because Google is the smartest of them all, it understands the sentiment and authenticity of a post, so if a site with a high domain authority is throwing your site some shade, that will reflect in your domain authority score.

3) Check your site health.  This post from Moz back in 2010 still has some good pointers, that will help you learn how to clean up your site and have it squeaky clean to attract lots of lovely domain authority points.

4) Run a social media audit and delete all the dead, unloved and untouched profile pages.  Get a social media strategy, and get active with sharing your content through those channels to your audience as fresh, new traffic sources like what you might get from a specked up social platform activation, are like domain authority raising gold.

5) Focus on preparing high-quality content.  Avoid nonsense blog posts and posts with errors.  Long-form, explainer type content that is helpful and useful for a reader will be rewarded. As will preparing content in a form that your audience will benefit from. A well researched content plan makes all the difference in knowing what and why you're spending the time writing.

Lou Draper is Managing Partner of Draper Cormack Group and a public relations veteran. Originally from Auckland she is now living, working and breathing public relations, personal brand and content curation in Wellington City.

Where is my blog post and what is domain authority?

So you've started blogging.  Maybe someone at work has said you ought to, and so you have, but why do your posts not come up in Google search results?  Here's why.

I'm going to assume you understand that Google ranks websites and content and pretty much everything on the internet. This is a good thing, because their ranking of how good things are means we save time by not having to go to page two and beyond to find what we're looking for.

The problem with that is if you don't know what those ranking factors are, you could be spending a lot of time preparing blogs and other content that probably won't get found by the people looking for it.  There are many factors and criteria that make up Google's ranking algorithm. It changes frequently, and there are more than 200 things you could do to your content to 100% optimise it for the first page of results. But by the time you'd done all that, Google could very well have changed the algorithm to make search results even better, so you'd have to start again. Also, 200 things! Who has time for that?

If we agree that the goal for our content is to appear on the first page of results, we need to do all we can to help Google rank our content, but before that we need to understand some of those influencers.  One of those influencers is called domain authority.

Domain authority is the measure of how solid your domain URL is. It is calculated on a points basis out of 100 and sites that have a higher domain authority than you are more likely to be ranked closer to page one of results.

There are a lot of factors that determine your domain authority score, but largely it comes down to two things:

1) Content
If you prepare wonderful content, that is in line with what your business offers and it meets the need of what people are searching for, Google will rank that content in an upwards fashion, therefore helping your overall score to increase. This is particularly true if you use relevant keywords pertaining to what people are searching for - there are tools to help you find those keywords or a PR firm can help you.  Writing rubbish blogs about things that don't have anything to do with your business won't win you any favours.

The type of content you produce is also really important to making your blog successful.  Just because someone has told you to blog, doesn't mean it needs to all be written out.  An infographic could be the right type of content for a particular topic you're wanting to share your expertise about.  Or a video, a podcast, a Venn diagram, even. (who doesn't love a good Venn!?). 

2) Links
If other, complementary sites with a high domain authority score are linking to your content, Google will take their influence into consideration when ranking your site.  Similarly, if you have a tonne of bad links from terrible sites, that will affect your score negatively.  So go ahead and clean up those toxic links and increase the good links.

Something to note, if you have a low domain authority, and there are others providing content on the same subject as you that have a higher domain authority, and their content is appearing on the first page of results, there's a good chance you won't be able to compete with them for one of those elusive 10 slots on the first page. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go ahead and prepare that content, just know that you'll need to work a bit harder with promotion of your content, to raise your domain authority to help increase your chances of page one results.  Moz offers a free toolbar giving you direct insight to your domain authority and a few other goodies.  Download the free Moz toolbar here.

So, if raising your domain authority is now your goal in order to help your content get found, preparing good quality content that is relevant to your business or expertise is really important. You'll be spending a good amount of time on your content production (you should be), so you may as well publish at a high standard. For example, if you are in the business of professional services, there's very little point to you blogging about roller skates.  Similarly, if you were not a spelling bee champion, or there are other reasons why good grammar and spelling escape you, get someone to proof your work.  Google doesn't enjoy hot mess content and neither does your audience.

If you do have a low domain authority (less than 20), it's not an entirely bad thing.  As Moz reports, "it's easy-ish to raise your domain from 20 to 30, but raising 70-80 is considerably harder."

So in summary:

1) We need to care about our domain authority in order to be found on the first page of results.
2) We need to care about producing quality content that meets the needs of what people are searching for, and,
3) We need to care about having great links to our site and making sure toxic ones are removed.

As always, we love to share our findings in the world of communications.  Sign up to our list to read more about all the things we have to say.

Lou Draper is Managing Partner of Draper Cormack Group and a public relations veteran. Originally from Auckland, she is now living, working and breathing public relations, personal brand and content curation in Wellington City.

Tell me about media relations

OK!

Media relations is a tactic in your communications strategy that helps rubber stamp your content with an unbiased opinion. It's called earned media, it's good fun, and incredibly satisfying.

As a job I've been doing for the last decade, I love media relations. There's something about taking a story, finding just the perfect media title to tell it through and amplifying the results to reach new and existing audiences.

It's hard, though. Like, really hard. Years ago (back when we used to clip the coverage from a newspaper and fax it to our clients) it was very acceptable to write a press release and send it out to a cast of thousands and wait for the journalists to bite. It was super common to tell our receptionist not to put through calls from lower tier journalists until we'd heard from our big mainstream contacts. I'm quite mortified that we did that.

How the mighty have fallen! In 2016, we have probably two-thirds fewer journalists writing for fewer newspapers and magazines than we did when I cut my teeth in PR 16 years ago. Pulling the press release spam trick out to our journalists now ends in a deleted email and potentially a black list. You can't do it and what's more, there's no point to it. No point.

Our industry has changed massively, where press releases are out, business stories are hard to sell in, and business profile pieces are even harder to place. We now need to make our business news appetising to a consumer audience. 

Integrated communications models are what progressive PR firms are offering now.  We have happily adopted the PESO model coined by Gini Dietrich in 2014 as our MO and it's working well. PESO is made up of Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned tactics which in conjunction with search-based methodologies for content creation, create a winning formula for achieving authority in domain and personal brand.  

There's lots to read about PESO, but the crux of it results in a focus on the story and content type, the audience and how they will consume it best. Very little point, trying to get your story meant for youth in a business publication, when you could actually just snapchat the whole thing. Good to note the Earned part of the PESO model doesn't limit itself to earned media like what you might get in your local newspaper, but also extends to promoting your own content on another site. And if that site promotes links back to your own website, then all the better for you.

Lou Draper is Managing Partner of Draper Cormack Group and a public relations veteran. Originally from Auckland she is now living, working and breathing public relations, personal brand and content curation in Wellington City.

What does a public relations agency do?

David Jones is in Wellington now. It’s tremendously exciting for me because I live there and I love the new and shiny.  I love having the chance to fondle the $2,000 Louboutins and gasp at the Alexander McQueen scarves. Today though, I had an appointment at Benefit Brow Bar, inside David Jones, to tame my unruly brows.

My “brow expert” ran through the usual questions and small talk that she’s probably trained to do.  We talked about the weather a bit, a lot about how she gets any work done being so close to the new and shiny things but then she asked me what I did for a job.  “PR”, I said.  “What’s that?” she asks. 

While she’s waxing a fierce looking arch into my brow shape, I’m considering response.  This is small talk, after all.  She probably doesn’t care what PR really is.  So, should I tell her what everyone else knows it to be? We push press releases out to unsuspecting journalists, ticking a completed box for our clients and hoping that a journalist will pick up the story, or do I tell her the truth ? What we actually do. 

I started out in PR about 16 years ago as a junior.  My job was to clip the news clippings in the paper about our clients, stick them to a sheet of A4 and fax them through each day and pop the original in the mail to the CEO.  I also helped write press releases, I’d read them back to the seniors in the firm, I’d put together amazing press packs to accompany a story – it was a jolly good time.

Back then however, PR was seen as an expensive luxury.  Something you had to invest in.  The only thing we could measure ROI on was Advertising Value Equivalents – how much would it cost to place a story of the same size we just got as editorial in mainstream vs how much our fee was.

And sure, it felt good to be able to gather up those clips as a way to prove our worth, but if I’m honest here, every PR person around in the late 90’s knew that what we were doing was nothing more than an ego stroke.  But it was a good time, right?  So we all just went about our merry way until the internet came and social media came and we all collectively said “oh no”.

Obviously, there’s been a huge amount of change in our industry.  So what does PR mean now?

Press releases we do, but only if there’s a point to it, to update a large group with the same data or information, or for posterity.  And we have the posterity option because while you think everyone cares about your “business won new business” story – they don’t.  It isn’t news, but it’s news for you so you’ll write a press release and it’ll go on your website or a hosted press release site like scoop.co.nz and it’ll be there as a record of it happening.

All the usual jobs of crisis management (when shit goes pear-shaped, we’re good at figuring out the best way to apologise and make amends when you’ve said or done something stupid that you shouldn’t have), writing speeches, op-eds, reputation management including audits, communications strategy in some cases and of course social media strategy.  But guess what else we do.

We can help a company with their revenue. 

No joke, you want leads?  Talk to a PR firm.  You want to write blogs with purpose – that’s us.  You want to understand content, SEO, domain authority, personal brand, thought leadership and how great your website is?  That’s us too.  We also take all of the things above and build one big swift plan for you – that’s called integrated comms and it’s a bucket of fun.  We also very importantly measure everything we do, so we know that the work we’ve agreed to do is achieving its goals and so we’re not flogging a dead horse.

What can PR do for a company?  It might be easier to take note of what we don’t do.

Advertising on billboards, not us.  Writing jingles for your radio commercial – nope.  Buying your media space – All. The. Nope.

One thing about PR people is we love coffee and we love to talk.  We’d like to do both of those things with you sometime soon, so give us a yell.  If you’re not sure about committing to an actual date with us, try signing up to our sporadically sent email newsletter.  It’s usually full of golden common sense and just enough nonsense to make it fun.

Photo courtesy of Niuton May

Lou Draper is Managing Partner of Draper Cormack Group and a public relations veteran. Originally from Auckland she is now living, working and breathing public relations, personal brand and content curation in Wellington City.

I've got a wonderful idea, said a Farmers creative...

Oh boy, Farmers.  What a palaver! Sending an email to your list of thousands saying their mum has been in touch and created a wish list for Mother's Day is not your finest moment.

Here's the news coverage for context  but essentially, someone at Farmers or their agency has come up with this idea and not a single person on the campaign, in the agency, in store - no one who had a shred of knowledge, pointed out the glaringly obvious error.

Not all Mothers have connectivity with Farmers because, you know, they're dead.  Or estranged. Or simply don't subscribe to Mother's Day promotion.

Mistakes happen.  Farmers have managed it well, they've apologised, acknowledged their mistake and contributed towards how they'll do better next time, but what could they have done to prevent it happening in the first place?  And what can you do to make sure a similar thing doesn't happen to you?

Put your audience at the heart of your communications.  Create personas for your customer segments.  Get to know those personas inside and out and learn how to talk to them best.  Peer review.  Have a sign off process, 3 people deep.  Mostly though, ask yourself the questions your comms is asking of your customers.  Any hint of uneasiness and it's back to the drawing board.