June 07, 2023
4 minutes
The digital PR industry in Australia has experienced significant growth in recent years, but link building in Australia is notoriously difficult. The media landscape is relatively small compared to the UK and buying links is still prominent, with many publications charging for a backlink to your client’s website.
Over the last 12 months we’ve increased results in Australia by over 875%. But how did we do it? Our overarching strategy has remained the same, but by implementing five key tactics, we have successfully built links in the likes of 9Honey, News.com.au, Women’s Health AU and more.
The first and most important step is to get to grips with Australian culture, current affairs and the media landscape. You can immerse yourself in a number of ways, from reading the news, subscribing to newsletters, listening to podcasts, keeping up to date with social trends – or in my case binge watching Married at First Sight Australia. A top tip to stay on top of trends in Australia is using Google Trends and TikTok Creative Centre and filtering by country, for country and region specific trends.
Creating content relevant to the country and economic climate helps you connect with your audience, establish trust and provide valuable insights. For example, the cost-of-living crisis is having a huge impact globally and we created campaigns and expert commentary on the back of this. By providing real valuable insights and relating to an Australian audience, we were able to secure links in leading publications, such as Women’s Health AU and Men’s Health AU. It’s important you keep to date with current affairs, but more often than not news is mirrored worldwide.
An example of link building in Australia that worked really well for NORTH is a survey campaign we conducted. The survey revealed that more than two-thirds (68%) of Aussies say that a lack of both supplies and time to cook at home is now prompting them to order takeaway every single week. This is super relevant to the current economic climate, provides helpful content for our client’s target audience and secured us a number of high DA links, including Women’s Health AU.
At the core of a good digital PR campaign is a solid media list. We analysed outreach in Australia and found that a huge percentage of our emails were bouncing back or not getting opened at all. Upon further research, we found that AU inboxes have much stricter rules regarding spam, so we had to rethink our strategy.
We discovered AU-based media software platform Medianet, which is a press release distribution service and media database, which offers direct access to newsrooms and journalists via direct feeds, email and other online publishing options. Now, all of our emails get sent via an AU email and we have a much wider and up to date range of contacts in Australia. The media database is updated daily to reflect any changes in the industry, and this has been a game changer for securing results.
Our expertise in media relations and skill in personalised outreach has been incredibly helpful when it comes to link building in Australia. The Australian media landscape values relationships and direct engagements with journalists, with super personalised outreach you can foster connections that will drive results. We’ve managed to build relationships with journalists in Australia who now come directly to us for an expert comment on behalf of our clients, so it’s a win-win.
We have successfully built links in the likes of 9Honey and News.com.au on the back of survey-led campaigns. Data provides a solid foundation for PR campaigns by offering factual information and supporting efforts. When PR efforts are backed up by reliable data, they gain credibility and are more likely to be trusted.
Data-led campaigns offer journalists a wealth of information that can be used to create informative and insightful articles, and they don’t always have to break the bank. For low-budget clients, you can create strong, data driven campaigns in a number of ways with free digital PR tools – from Google Trends data to discover trending topics to the keyword explorer tool in Semrush.
If you have any questions or need a hand cracking the Australian digital PR market, get in touch we’d love to speak with you!