A crash course in getting press and building links

Carrie Rose is the co-founder of Rise at Seven, a creative SEO agency.

Over the last year I’ve been consistently blown away by how easy she makes getting press look.

And it’s not press for press's sake.

The reward is high quality backlinks which help her clients rank for ultra-competitive search terms.

Lets start with an example

Missguided is a fashion retailer who started working with Rise last year.

Carrie looked at their site for 5 minutes, saw they sold dog jumpers, and knew there was a story there.

So she found some similar looking regular jumpers, and wrote the headline:

Missguided launch matching jumpers for you and your dog this winter

The media loved it. The campaign pulled in 80 links. And Missguided soared from #30 to #1 for the search “dog jumpers”.

No big budget or photoshoot. Just the idea to link two pre-existing products with a clever headline.

Another example

November 2019, Game came to Rise.

They'd just launched a new webpage full of gaming chairs. The challenge was to rank this page in time for Christmas.

Now, getting press to link to a bunch of gaming chairs is near impossible. So, instead, Carrie dreamt up The Christmas Tinner.

A 3-course meal in a tin for hardcore gamers. And it was this page that then linked to their gaming chairs.

The Christmas Tinner went viral.

“SEO juice” passed down. And within 3 weeks Game's gaming chair page was ranking for over 400 keywords.

Honestly, I could tell a dozen more stories like this.. But I think it’s more important to try and understand the process.

Carrie tells me the trick is learning to think in headlines.

For example, last Easter she worked with a sex toy startup. The first thing they do is figure out the headline:

The world’s first Easter egg with a sex toy inside=

Then they work backwards until it becomes reality.

Most people plough ahead with an idea. And, only when it's too late, realise there's no “hook”.

Once you've got your story the next step is pitching it. Here's Carrie's crash course:

1/ Journalists are busy. Make their life easy.

2/ The email subject is my headline. I outline my article in the body. Embed my best image. And link my “campaign page”.

3/ Timing is key. Journos open laptops at 8:30. So schedule outreach for 8.

So there you go

14 months ago Rise launched with one client at £2k / mo.

Today revenue is £2M / yr. And yes, that is crazy!

It reminds me that nothing moves the needle like genuine creativity.

One 5 minute idea can have more impact than 100 guest posts.

That's all folks

Thanks to Carrie for sharing her wizardry. She tells me I've given her too much credit, and it's the team at Rise which really makes stuff happen.

— Harry