Use manual methods to see beyond the tools

Sinead says: “Find ways to look beyond what tools show you.

Sometimes, you have to use manual methods in order to stand out.”

What are some examples of not getting enough information from tools?

“In my line of work (digital PR), when I’m using things like media databases, they don’t always show you the full scope of relevant contacts that are available to you. On the other end of the spectrum, they’ll sometimes show you loads of contacts that look relevant from their job description, but you’re overwhelmed by the data.

Sometimes links get missed off backlink tools because they haven’t been indexed yet. Also, when you’re looking for relevant articles to include as part of your outreach or get information from, sometimes you don’t get the full extent of how many articles are available on that subject via a straight Google search.

There are many more examples, but those are a few that come to mind.”

If a media database isn’t showing the most relevant contacts, how do you determine they aren’t the most relevant and how do you find ones that are?

“You can determine that through simple methods like looking at the job description that is included. If it only has a couple of contacts listed for that particular publication, and it’s contacts like the director and someone who is an admin, then they might not be the best people for you to reach out to.

Another way that you can find that out is through trial and error, which is less straightforward. You might reach out to someone who the database says is a lifestyle editor and find that they have moved into a different section of the company or left the company entirely. Then you find that you don’t have anybody to contact.”

Can you use software to either augment your list or double-check that it’s relevant and up to date?

“You can. There are various email checkers that you can use to make sure that the email address is active. You can cross-reference across different databases to check if the same contact appears on different databases.

However, I find it to be quite difficult to pinpoint which specific emails aren’t working, especially if you’re working on a campaign where you’re trying to send information to several different people within different publications.”

For outreach, is it good practice to reach out to multiple people from the same organisation or do you stick to one individual?

“I personally think you can email a couple of people from the same organisation, as long as you keep the number quite low. You don’t want to bombard the entire lifestyle department with your press release.

It’s really important to determine which contacts are the best ones to send your press release to because inundating a load of people works against you.

However, if you do have a couple of contacts, even if your first choice isn’t the perfect person, then you have a better chance by having a second choice as well.

If you are reaching out to two people, I would send them two separate emails. That’s especially true if, when you were looking for that contact and doing some more manual searches, you found that they have written on a similar, but not identical, topic. You want to address the fact that they have covered something similar, but that’s not quite what you’re offering – and explain why you think it would be useful anyway.

Make sure that each outreach is a bit more personalised, rather than sending the exact same email with the exact same information.”

How do you know when a backlinks tool has not included all the information you need about the backlinks to a domain, and how do you research and find more backlinks?

“When I say that these tools sometimes don’t include key information, I’m specifically talking about syndicated coverage. Syndicated coverage appears the same across a media group so not all of it gets indexed because, in Google’s eyes, it’s the exact same content. It doesn’t want to regurgitate the same thing over and over again to its users.

However, it can be useful to see that syndicated coverage, especially when trying to assess where some of your traffic is coming from. For example, we have reached out to sites that are predominantly in the UK, but also have US parts of their publications. If you want to look at US traffic, that might not be shown to you because it’s extensively covered in the UK and that’s where you’re located.

To see if it’s being included in the US publication, you can use manual searches. You can search all of the sites within that media group and then determine whether you’re getting US traffic or not. You can then identify which links it is most likely to be coming from and look at the traffic of that link to determine whether there is an active audience in the US.

Even if the company is predominantly UK-based, you can then show that the product actually does have interest in the US as well, which is why you’re getting that traffic – and it’s through the particular link that you’ve established that fact.”

Would you use a proxy to make it more likely that you’re going to see what the US audience sees?

“You can do, but it’s good to establish that the link is there first, and you don’t necessarily need to use a proxy for all US sites. A lot of US sites don’t have a UK alternative that it will boot you straight back to when you access the US link. It will just send you to the US version, and you can view it.

Sometimes you do have to use a VPN in order to view it, but you can often see it just by identifying what the link is and then just going on to that site.”

In what ways is Google not showing all the relevant articles from a straight search?

“Let’s say that it’s around the Christmas period, and I want to look at last year’s Christmas gift guides – and the authors of those guides. I may want to reach out to them this year to say that, if they’re planning to write a similar article again, I’ve got a product that might be of interest to them.

Sometimes you find the same gift guides, or different variations of a gift guide from the same publication, being shown to you over and over again. Whilst those journalists might be helpful, it is also better if you can find a wide range of different publications that might have an interest in your product.

They always have to be relevant, of course, but you might not be able to identify all of those publications from a straight Google search.”

How do you know where to draw the line between automation and getting involved as an individual?

“That’s something that comes with time. The further you go with campaigns, the more that you exhaust your options in terms of what is offered by automation. You can start with automation and, if you find that automation isn’t working as well for you, then move your focus onto manual stuff.

There is an assumption that if you try and use manual methods then there is no way to make that process faster and more effective. With syndication, for example, there is an assumption that, if you want to find syndicated coverage, you have to do a tonne of individual Google searches.

However, it might just be a case of finding all of the publications within the media group, looking at the end of the URL of one piece of coverage, sticking that onto the end of the domain through a tool like Merge Words, and then creating a list of potential URLs and checking through those. That does take a bit of time, but it’s a lot faster than you would think because there is a method to it.”

Can you use AI to assist you or make you more efficient with these activities?

“When I’ve tried to use AI, it has some success, but it’s not perfect. It doesn’t find everything that I’m looking for.

Whilst AI is making some great progress, and it’s making a lot of things easier, it’s not perfect yet. I think it’s still very much in the ‘working things out’ stage. In order for us to continue working, and be sure that we’re getting all of the information that we need, we have to continue with methods that we trust.

Take full advantage of the manual methods that we have and give AI a little bit of time to catch up to what it is that we want it to do.”

Are clients comfortable with more time being spent on manual work or do they expect everything to be automated or AI-assisted nowadays?

“Clients are happy for you to spend more time manually searching if it yields them better results.

One of the things I tend to do more manually is use advanced operators to search a site’s author pages for lifestyle authors. You can use a database, but it doesn’t necessarily show you who has written lifestyle content recently. It also doesn’t show you the full extent of what each author covers within the lifestyle niche.

The Christmas gift guide example I referred to earlier would fall within lifestyle, but there are people who write reviews on things like dog beds, and they might not be the lifestyle writers that you’re looking for because they mainly work within the pet niche.

If you were to send that particular author your gift guide, it wouldn’t be very useful to them, and they would bypass it completely. Take that extra bit of time to make sure that the writer you are contacting covers the content you are working on. Even though it’s a manual process, and it takes a bit more time, it ensures that the percentage open rate for your campaign is higher.

It also means that, even if the campaign that you sent doesn’t get featured, at least there is a chance that you could reach out to that person again in the future because what you’re covering is going to be right for them so they might actually pick it up.

Clients are happy for me to spend a bit more time in the prospecting stage, doing things more manually, if it means that they’re done more effectively, will drive greater success, and get them their bottom line – which is more users on the site and more revenue for the company.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2025?

“Stop going through media databases with very wide search terms. If you don’t know where to start, you shouldn’t immediately opt for going through media databases. It’s really overwhelming having a tonne of contacts and not knowing where to start.

If you’re struggling for time, try looking more manually and more specifically, in order to get a better handle on the niche itself. Don’t waste time trying to figure out the couple of people that you can pull out from a list of thousands and thousands of contacts.

Start small and build out rather than starting big, getting overwhelmed, and then spending loads of time trying to niche down.”

Sinead Mclarty is a Digital PR Specialist, and you can find her over at Seeker.Digital.