You’ve poured your expertise into crafting that insightful blog post, that comprehensive guide, or that compelling video. You’ve nailed the research, polished the prose, and optimised for SEO. But then… silence. Or, at best, a trickle of traffic. Sound familiar?

Sometimes we need to stop creating and start amplifying.

Here’s the truth: without an effective content distribution strategy, even the most brilliant content is essentially invisible. It's like building an architectural marvel in the middle of a desert – impressive, but no one will ever see it. The missing link? An effective content distribution strategy.

Why distribution is the missing link in your content strategy

Many businesses focus heavily on content creation, pouring resources into producing high-quality content. This is absolutely essential, but it's just the start of something much more powerful: getting that content seen. 

That's what a distribution strategy does. You create content for your website and then distribute that content elsewhere so that others can enjoy it too. Basically, once you've created that content, you need to market it!

It’s the bridge between a great idea and tangible business goals like generating leads, increasing brand awareness, and boosting sales. A truly successful content marketing strategy doesn't just create; it actively distributes.

How to build a content distribution strategy

The real win when it comes to content creation is getting that digital content into the hands (and minds) of your target audience. This is what we call "content marketing".

This isn't about blindly pushing digital content onto every platform. It’s about a deliberate, strategic plan to connect your valuable content with the right people, at the right time, on the right channels.

Let's look at how to develop an effective content distribution strategy that turns your content creation process into a marketing strategy designed for growth.

Phase 1: Developing strategic foundations for your content distribution strategy

Before you blast your digital content everywhere, take a second. A well-defined content distribution strategy starts with understanding your landscape and your ambitions.

Know your target audience (intimately)

This is the bedrock of any effective content strategy. Where do your target customers spend their time online? What social media platforms do they use? What publications do they read? What are their preferred content formats? Understanding their customer journey and where they look for information at each stage of the buyer's journey is paramount for your content distribution strategy. Your content marketing strategy hinges on this insight.

Quick tip: Don't assume. Conduct market research, read your reviews and survey existing clients. Get to know your customers and their buying journeys.

Define your business goals for distribution

What do you want this content distribution strategy to achieve? Is it primarily for lead generation, driving website traffic, boosting brand recognition, or improving search engine rankings? Clear business goals will dictate your choice of marketing channels and your content distribution channels. Your overall marketing strategy should inform your content distribution strategy.

Audit your existing content

A comprehensive content audit can help you identify gaps in your distribution for existing content and pinpoint outdated content that needs a refresh before being re-distributed. This step is crucial for any effective content strategy.

Phase 2: Owned channels – maximising your home base

These are the marketing channels you fully control. They are the backbone of your content distribution strategy and where your digital content ultimately lives, for example:

Your company website

Your content management system is your central content hub. Every piece of valuable content starts here. Ensure your blog posts are optimised for search engine results pages (SERPs) and easy to share. Our SEO checklist for optimising web content can help here. Ensure your landing pages are targeting customers in the right buyer stage and are keyword targeted to show up in the SERPs when your buyers are ready to make a purchase. Use dedicated landing pages for gated digital content like e-books or whitepapers, serving as crucial points for lead generation in your marketing funnel.

Email marketing

Marketing emails have an average open rate of 35.63%. This is an incredibly powerful content distribution channel. Nurture leads, promote new blog posts, and share curated digital content directly with your subscribers. It's like a private social media channel between you and your potential buyers and should be a core component of any strong marketing strategy.

Phase 3: Earned channels - Spreading the word organically

Phase 3 uses third-party platforms and user engagement to amplify your message. This phase of your content distribution strategy is all about organic reach.

Social media accounts

Your organic social media content strategy is vital. Share compelling social media posts on various social media platforms. Don't just post links; craft engaging social media posts that spark social media engagement and encourage shares.

Strategic tip: Tailor social media posts for each platform. LinkedIn for professional insights, Instagram for visuals, X for quick tips and conversation, etc. Tailor the tone of the copy and the designs to ensure you cater to the different audiences on each platform. Encourage user-generated content related to your brand.

Guest posting & collaborations

Write blog posts for other relevant industry websites. This is most commonly called guest posting. This exposes your digital content to new audiences, cements your brand as an industry or thought leader and builds valuable backlinks, supporting your overall content marketing strategy.

Online communities & forums

Participate in relevant forums (like Reddit and niche industry boards). Share your digital content where it's genuinely helpful, but avoid spamming content as this can cause frustration with forum members and admins.

Public relations & media relations

Craft strategic press releases for major announcements or valuable content that warrants media attention. This is what we like to call Digital PR. It can boost brand awareness significantly, earn more backlinks and get you in front of more potential customers.

Phase 4: Paid channels - strategic amplification for content distribution

When organic reach isn't enough, paid content distribution offers precise targeting and accelerated reach for your digital content.

Social media ads

Run targeted social media ads on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, or X to promote specific blog posts, landing pages, or lead magnets to a highly defined target audience. Paid ads can drastically increase your audience engagement.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Consider paid search ads that appear on search engine results pages for relevant keywords, directing prospective customers to your digital content assets. This complements your efforts to increase organic traffic.

Content syndication

Partner with publishers or platforms to republish your digital content on their sites, reaching their established audiences. This often involves paid content distribution.

Influencer marketing

Collaborate with industry influencers who can share your digital content with their followers, offering targeted exposure. This is a form of paid content distribution that can boost brand awareness.

Paying to advertise every new blog post on your social media pages is overkill, and the costs will add up quickly. However, a strategic approach to advertising key pieces of content, whether guides, events or new products, can put them right in front of your audience quicker than organic approaches.

Phase 5: Measure, analyse, & adapt - the continuous loop

Developing an effective content distribution strategy is not a one-time setup; it’s an ongoing process of measurement and refinement. Here's some ways to measure the results of your campaigns:

Utilise Google Analytics: Track website traffic, conversions, and user behaviour originating from your various content distribution channels.

Monitor Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs): Keep an eye on your search engine rankings for key terms. Use tools like Google Search Console to identify areas for improvement in your content strategy.

Track social media metrics: Monitor engagement, shares, and referral traffic from your social media posts across all social media platforms.

Review your content calendar: Based on the data you're seeing elsewhere, adjust your content calendar accordingly. What's working? What isn't? Periodically review your content distribution strategy to ensure the content you have planned is going to move the needle.

Perform regular content audits: Regularly review existing content to ensure continued relevance and identify new content gaps or outdated content that could be repurposed for new content distribution efforts.

This data-driven approach is a key element of any successful content marketing strategy.

Distribute with purpose, not just presence

Your content creation efforts deserve to be seen, consumed, and acted upon. A well-developed content distribution strategy transforms your content marketing efforts from a passive expense into an active, high-performing asset that directly fuels your business goals.

It's time to stop publishing content into the void and start strategically distributing content that truly resonates with your target audience at every stage of their buyer's journey. This is how you move beyond simply having content to truly dominating your market.

Need help building a content distribution strategy that delivers unstoppable growth?

Want to learn more about how strategic content can help your business grow? Get in touch today, and we'll help develop a content distribution strategy that grows your business. Don't let your valuable content sit idly by. Let's design a strategic plan to get your message heard and seen by the right people.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a strategy focused on growing a business by fostering meaningful, long-term relationships with its customers. It benefits both: customers receive more personalised and relevant content and interactions, while businesses can attract their target audience, build lasting relationships, and create brand advocates. When balanced with calculated outbound marketing efforts, it can generate some truly powerful results.

Inbound marketing is a concept pioneered by Hubspot, which has become massively popular and for good reason. According to Hubspot, Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional outbound marketing methods. Whew! This means that the potential impact of inbound marketing tactics can no longer be ignored! So in this article, we will go into detail on all things inbound marketing including:

• The Three Phases of Inbound Marketing
• Key Trends in Inbound Marketing for 2025
• 8 Tactics for Creating an Effective Inbound Marketing Strategy
• Where to Begin With an Inbound Marketing Strategy in 2025
• FAQs

So like a dolphin, let's dive in!

The Three Phases of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a straightforward concept, but it can be explored in as much detail as you’d like. Think of it like an iceberg, what’s visible on the surface is just the beginning, with much more beneath the surface waiting to be discovered. But to get started, let’s break it down into three simple stages: ‘attract,’ ‘engage,’ and ‘delight.’ These stages form the foundation of inbound marketing and are easy to follow, but there’s a whole lot more beneath them that you can dive into as your strategy evolves.

8 Tactics for Creating an Effective Inbound Marketing Strategy

SEO, Valuable content and Blended Search

SEO is the backbone of inbound marketing and a solid content marketing strategy goes hand in hand with this. Create relevant and engaging articles and landing pages to attract your target audience. It is a strategy that is tried and tested. However, SEO in 2025 requires a shift to focus on what we call here at Aira ‘Blended Search’. Search engine results pages (SERPs) are evolving and now display a variety of results including images, videos, news articles, maps and AI summaries. Blended search takes all of these factors into account and aims to rank for image, video, and news results as well as typical search results. This will involve optimising image alt tags, videos, and news articles for relevant keywords.

Use Video!

Video isn’t optional, it’s essential for creating those deeper connections with your audience. In fact, businesses that use video marketing generate 66% more qualified leads. Short-form videos, product demos, and behind-the-scenes content are all great ways to connect with your audience. Don’t overlook the power of platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn for driving traffic and engagement. It could be something as simple as a short-form video explaining exactly what a product does, or a long-form video/podcast that goes further in-depth on examples and real-world applications for your product.

Personalisation and Data-Driven Insights

Personalisation is key in today’s crowded market. Using data analytics to segment your audience and tailor content to their preferences helps increase conversion rates and builds stronger relationships. A CRM platform is an example of a powerful inbound marketing tool that can track your leads' journeys and deliver personalised experiences. Work to bring your company's data such as contact lists, into one neat application and see how much simpler your marketing, sales and customer service efforts will be.

Optimise Your Lead Nurturing Process

Inbound marketing isn’t just about attracting leads; it’s about nurturing them through the buyer’s journey. Marketing automation tools can help you send targeted content based on where prospects are in the sales funnel, increasing the likelihood of a conversion. Email campaigns, drip feeds, and retargeting ads are excellent tactics here. This means you do not need to handhold each customer through the sales process, freeing up more time for your sales teams to assist customers at the end of the funnel.

Focus on ROI

Prioritise your ROI by focusing on metrics like cost-per-lead (CPL), customer lifetime value (CLTV), and conversion rates to measure the effectiveness of your inbound efforts. The beauty of inbound is that it’s easy to track, so you can demonstrate clear results to stakeholders. This is especially easy with dedicated CRM software which stores all of this information and tracks individual customers and how they engage with your brand.

Interactive Content

Interactive content, like quizzes, surveys, and polls not only engages users but also generates valuable data for your strategy. It’s an effective way to increase time on site and gather insights into your customers’ preferences, which can fuel further personalisation. Your customers want to get involved and be a part of your brand's story, give them an interactive experience that they will remember!

Diversify Your Marketing Channels

While blogging and SEO will always be foundational, don’t overlook emerging channels. Voice search, podcasts, and social commerce are all gaining traction in 2025. Test new platforms, but ensure they align with your brand and audience to avoid spreading yourself too thin. Remember an important part of any successful inbound marketing campaign is balance.

Optimise for Mobile

With more than half of all web traffic coming from mobile devices, your inbound strategy must be mobile-friendly. Whether it’s your website, email campaigns, or video content, ensure that everything is optimised for mobile viewing to enhance the user experience. Focus on content that balances images, aesthetics, content quality and loading speed. It is a delicate balance but one that you need to strike to even keep up with the competition these days!

When we sit with businesses to figure out what they want to achieve with their marketing, it ultimately comes down to one thing - sales. They may want to increase traffic to a certain part of their website or rank for a particular set of keywords but, ultimately, any business selling products or services wants to use SEO to drive more sales from their website.

But once you’ve realised that sales are what you’re after, how do you make that a reality? In this post, we’ll be sharing 5 ways you can use SEO to get more sales from your website.

1. Work out how people search for you

Businesses will often choose a handful of keywords related to their products and services and try to rank for them in Google, sometimes successfully, and then wonder why they haven’t seen an increase in sales.

SEO is about being found in search results where your customers are looking. If you’re ranking for ‘beach holidays’ but your potential customers are searching ‘beach vacations’, they won’t be able to find you.

Here are some ways to find out how people are searching for you:

• Talk to your customers - check case studies and testimonials or host interviews and make a note of any common terminology.
• Do some keyword research - use a free tool like Keywords Everywhere to find long-tail keywords and compare search volumes.
• Check out the competition - have a browse of your competitors’ websites. What terminology are they using to describe your products or services?
• Check Google Search Console - Google Search Console is free and will tell you the search terms people are already using to find you online.
• Check Google Ads - You can use Google Ads to check for keywords that are driving traffic to your website. Even if you’re not running ads, setting up a Google Ads account and using the Keyword Planner tool can help you discover relevant search terms and their competition levels.

2. Get your house in order

Much like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, SEO comes with a hierarchy. Before you start creating new content or securing links, it’s important to ensure your on-page SEO is in good shape. Considering 47% of customers expect a webpage to load in 2 seconds or less, if your website takes 5 minutes to load, no one will stick around to buy.

Here are some things you should check:

• Site speed - Google has indicated that it uses site speed as a ranking factor. Moreover, if your site takes too long to load, users will buy from your competitors instead. You can check your page speed using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
• Minify images - one way to speed up your site is by optimising your images. Run them through a tool like TinyPNG before uploading.
• Check for redirect chains - a redirect chain occurs when one URL redirects to another which redirects to another, and so on. Each link in the chain loses link equity (which tells Google how reputable your site is) and increases load time for users. You can use Screaming Frog to check for redirect chains on your website.
• Has the appropriate schema – Implement structured data (schema markup) to help search engines understand your content better and improve rich search results. You can test your schema using Google’s Rich Results Test.
• Images have alt text – Ensure all images have descriptive alt text to improve accessibility and help search engines understand their content.
• Has internal links from other pages of your site – Internal linking helps search engines discover content on your website and improves user navigation. Ensure that all important pages are linked to from other relevant pages on your site.

There are two other important, non-SEO considerations you should keep in mind:

• The ability to convert easily – Is the page well-designed to get users to convert? Are forms easy to use? Is the call to action clear? Make sure there are no unnecessary barriers preventing users from taking action.
• Having tracking in place: You need proper tracking (Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, etc.) to monitor performance, understand user behaviour, and measure success.

3. Create great content

The next step is to create some killer content that tells Google what your website is about, and which is relevant and useful to your target audience. By creating great content, you’re drawing users to your site, giving Google an indication that you must be pretty great and they should show you more prominently in search results.

If your content is useful and people actually want to read it, they’re more likely to trust and buy from you. 

Here are a few examples of content you could create around your products:

1. • Show them how it’s done - create written or video tutorials. Think about how to use your product, but also how it can be used in wider projects.
   • Product comparisons - don’t be afraid to talk about the competition. Your customers already know who they are and this gives you the opportunity to own the narrative. This also helps to pre-qualify leads, particularly if your product or service is a luxury one.
   • Don’t forget the fun stuff - back in 2006, Blendtec launched their video series 'Will it blend?'. They put everything from iPhones to glow sticks in a blender and the series went viral. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box when it comes to content ideas.

4. Build some links

With the killer content you created in step 3, you may have already got a few people linking back to you from their own websites. This sends their audience to your site to become customers and also tells Google that you have a great website that they should show to more people. But, unless you already have a big audience, how do you get people to find and talk about your products online? It’s time to build some links.

• Citations - add your business to reputable local and industry online directories. Make sure you use the same details on each one - this helps Google match you up across the internet and recognise you as one business.
• Find mentions and ask for links - find other websites mentioning your brand and reach out to ask for a link. You can use Google Alerts to get notified when someone mentions your brand.
• Check who links to your competitors - use a tool like Ahrefs to check which domains are linking to your competitors. This could reveal industry blogs or lists that might be willing to link to you too.

5. Look great in search results

So you’ve managed to rank in search results for the keywords you identified in step 1. That’s great, but the hard work doesn’t end here. Now you have to get people to actually click through and buy from you. You have limited real estate in the search results page, here are three ways you can make the most of it:

• Page titles - ensure your title is something that accurately describes what the page is about, includes your brand name and isn’t so long that Google cuts it off at the end (somewhere between 60-80 characters).
• Meta descriptions - Google automatically pulls through a short snippet of text from your page to give users a better idea of what they can expect when they click. Make this taster as enticing as possible by adding custom meta descriptions. If you’re using WordPress, you can install a plugin like Yoast to do this.
• Product schema - if you’re selling physical products, product schema can bulk out your listing in Google’s search results and take up more space on the page, making it more likely users will come to you instead of your competitors. Core features of product schema include showing your price range and displaying star reviews in the SERP. 

To discover  how SEO can drive more sales for your business,read some of our other SEO posts, or feel free to get in touch for a tailored strategy to boost your revenue. 

1.  

There are few things I enjoy more than auditing a website, and fixing technical SEO issues that will help improve the site’s search rankings. Sad? Perhaps, but I love a good puzzle.

We have access to so much data that it can be difficult to decide where to focus our efforts. It can also be tempting to fix every single issue in the hopes that something helps to move the needle.

Here are three tips on how you can look in the right places to harness your technical SEO data and improve your presence in organic search.

1. Glean hints from the SERPs

I like to begin at the end and head straight to the search engine result pages (SERPs), to see which websites are ranking highly for my desired keywords, and reverse engineer how they’re ranking.

Competitor analysis won’t just look at technical SEO, of course; you’ll also be taking on-page, off-page and other factors into consideration to inform your complete strategy.

However, there are a number of technical SEO pointers we can tease out of top-ranking websites to help you rank better.

For example, you can determine whether there are any correlations between rankings and site architecture and indexing rules.

This can be especially useful when assessing how high-ranking ecommerce or recruitment websites use canonicalisation, noindex/nofollow and robots.txt to handle sub-categories, filters and parameters.

I’m not saying you need to copy your competitors’ setups, but it’s something you should consider when looking at your technical SEO.

2. Look to the search engines

My humble opinion is that it’s pointless crawling a website, identifying problematic areas of the site and tidying up those areas if search engines don’t even take any notice of them.

Luckily for us, search engines like Google and Bing are kind enough to tell us what they see when they look at our website.

Performing site: searches and using tools such as Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools quickly gives us insight as to whether an issue you’ve discovered is actually causing problems for your site.

My general rule is to review what is and isn’t indexed, so you can focus on getting valuable non-indexed pages indexed and ranking, and leave non-valuable unindexed pages. 

Heading straight to Search Console and Webmaster Tools can also flag up issues such as crawl errors, conflicting directives, rogue parameters and sitemap inconsistencies, which may be hindering the ranking performance of your pages.

You can use this research to form parts of your analysis, but the actions you take should ultimately be driven by business goals. What fixes will help you achieve them? Usually, the first step is getting key pages indexed and ranking. From there, you can work on getting the technical health of your site in a good place.

3. Marry your crawl data with log file analysis

Checking Search Console and Webmaster Tools is a great starting point, but for larger sites (or those with indexing issues) search engines come across plenty of other technical SEO issues that they won’t report on, which we can’t see in a standard crawl.

The answer to this problem is log file analysis. If you can get access to your log files, you can find out exactly which URLs get crawled by your most important search referrers, how often, and other incredibly useful insights.

Using the date range, number of unique URLs crawled and the crawl rate of your log files, you can determine whether any search engines are not crawling any pages that you consider important to your site:

We can also see whether the pages being crawled generate more organic traffic than those that don’t get crawled:

If the numbers aren’t looking too healthy, you can dig further into the log file data to identify any pages you need to either discourage search engines from crawling, or encourage them to crawl.

I hope these three technical SEO tips help to get you into the mindset you’ll need to identify and fix the right issues that will actually help your site to rank higher in the SERPs.

Two of the most powerful and widely used digital marketing strategy approaches are Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. These two powerhouses are often pitted against each other, but the "SEO vs. PPC" debate is confusing and outdated. The reality is that for most businesses, these two potent digital marketing tactics can be far more effective if we all just get along.

So, we're calling a time-out on this debate and sharing how SEO and PPC can work together to create one of the strongest digital marketing campaigns available.

Understanding the difference between SEO and PPC

Before diving into how both SEO and PPC can complement each other, let's take a look at the core difference between SEO and pay-per-click. Both are about appearing at the top of the page on search engines, but they achieve this in fundamentally different ways.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO is the long-term strategy. It's focused on improving your website's visibility in organic search results on search engines. It involves a range of techniques designed to help your website rank naturally for relevant queries. This includes:

• Optimising website content
• Improving technical aspects of your site like crawlability, indexability, site speed and performance
• Building high-quality backlinks (link building is a crucial part of off-page SEO, and our Digital PR team is a dab hand at it)

The goal of SEO is to drive organic traffic to your site. So, when users conduct a search, search engines crawl and index websites, then present the most relevant and authoritative pages. Achieving a position at the top of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) through SEO means earning that spot without paying for it.

You may have heard that “SEO is dead”, “AI is taking over”, and other doom and gloom recently. Well, here’s how we’re thinking about SEO with our very own David Westby to put your mind at ease. 

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

PPC is an advertising model. Advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked. Primarily, this refers to paid search advertising, most commonly seen through Google Ads. When you run PPC campaigns, your PPC ads can appear at the top of the SERP or (much to the annoyance of some SEOs) mixed in with organic search results.

PPC marketing offers immediate visibility. You bid on targeted keywords, and if your bid is competitive and your ad is relevant, your ad can appear at the top of search engine results pages instantly. It delivers quick results, making it ideal for promotions, new product launches, or driving immediate traffic to a specific landing page. However, once you stop paying, your visibility disappears.

SEO and PPC together: A blended approach for optimal results

So, is SEO or PPC better? Well, we could pit search engine optimisation and pay-per-click campaigns together. Or give the classic “it depends” and move on with our day.

However, the real answer isn't about choosing one over the other. Instead, the most effective digital marketing strategy for long-term growth and immediate impact brings SEO and PPC together.

This blended approach allows you to maximise your reach across search engines and capture a wider range of potential customers. This is a big part of our Blended Search approach, and here's why it works.

Dominate the search landscape

While organic search through SEO builds long-term authority and provides a steady stream of organic traffic, paid search offers immediate exposure. A common misconception is that users skip paid search results in favour of organic listings. While some do, many users click on the first relevant result, regardless of whether it's a paid ad or an organic listing. In fact, almost 60% of people don't recognise Google ads when they see them.

So, by having both SEO and PPC running, you increase your chances of appearing at the top of the SERP in multiple spots, effectively dominating the search results for your key terms. SEO covers the organic visibility, and the pay-per-click marketing takes care of waiting for organic traffic to hit your pages.

It allows for data-driven decisions

You can use PPC campaigns to quickly test targeted keywords and see which converts best. However, one of the drawbacks of PPC ads is that they cost money. If you have a small budget for ads, this isn’t a long-term solution.

However, the data collected during your PPC campaign can inform your keyword research for your SEO efforts, allowing you to create content that aligns with high-performing terms. Getting rid of one of the drawbacks of SEO - the waiting game.

As your SEO efforts begin to drive more organic traffic and improve your domain authority, you might find your ad spend for certain keywords decreases in PPC, as your organic presence grows stronger. This can be the right strategy for anyone who doesn't have a huge budget for PPC but isn't sure what keywords to target with SEO. Gather the data with PPC short-term and grow with SEO in the long term.

It's an integrated strategy for business growth

When SEO and PPC marketing teams work together, they identify gaps, share insights on the constant search engine algorithm updates, and fine-tune the marketing strategy to deliver the best for your company. For small businesses, this can be particularly beneficial, as it allows for agile budget allocation, moving resources between pay-per-click campaigns and SEO as needed to seize opportunities.

Even for much larger companies, though, the blended search approach can be the right strategy. Take a look at how this approach helped Just Tyres achieve a 146% uplift in organic revenue following a website redesign.

SEO vs. PPC: Which digital marketing strategy is right for you? Why not both?

Ultimately, the question of which digital marketing strategy is right for you is best answered by considering a combined approach. The way people are searching is changing, and relying on a one-channel approach can be costly and risky.

By adopting a blended search approach, you gain the immediate visibility and testing capabilities of paid search while simultaneously building the sustainable long-term growth and authority that comes with strong organic search.

And we haven't even touched on incorporating social media, marketing automation and more into this digital marketing strategy! This approach is targeted, putting your budget where it makes sense. The blended search approach used to be a nice-to-have, but now it's a necessity. SEO, PPC and every other marketing channel need to work together to maximise profits.

Let's chat about blended search

Blended search isn't new. Our team at Aira have been using this technique for years to help grow our clients' websites, whether organically or with paid search ads. So, if you're curious about whether blended search is the right strategy for your business, let's have a chat. 

Dynamic Search Ads have been around since October of 2011. They are a powerful tool to use in your paid ads marketing strategy. 

In this guide, you will learn what Google Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) are, the benefits of using them, how to set them up and Google best practices.

What Are Google Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs)?

Dynamic Search Ads use Google’s advanced crawling technology to crawl your website for the most relevant keywords to target, and automatically use them in your ad targeting and ad copy.

According to Google, DSAs are:

‘Ideal for advertisers with a well-developed website or a large inventory, Dynamic Search Ads use your website to target your ads and can help fill in the gaps in your keywords-based campaigns.’

What’s important to emphasise with the above quote is that Dynamic Search Ads fill in the gaps for your campaigns.

No matter how much time you spend researching keywords, there’s still a chance you’ll miss out on relevant search queries. Without Dynamic Search Ads, even well-managed Google Ads accounts with thousands of keywords and each match type possible can still miss relevant searches.

Why you might ask? Well, according to Google, 15% of searches that they see on Google.com are brand new, every single day.

So Dynamic Search Ads help to fill in these gaps within keyword targeting by using website data to create dynamically generated ads and match them to these new and relevant search queries.

This means that the headlines of ads and landing pages are generated based on the products and services a business offers, and what users are searching for.

What are the key benefits of Dynamic Search Ads?

Full keyword coverage: As we discussed above, DSAs ensure you don’t miss any relevant search queries by filling in the gaps with keyword targeting.

Capture additional traffic: Dynamic Search Ads can help you gain additional traffic and sales by promoting your business to more customers than you can reach with a keyword-targeted campaign.

Guaranteed relevancy with dynamically generated headlines: When a user makes a search that is relevant to your product or service, Google Dynamic Search Ads will dynamically generate an ad with a clear headline for the most relevant page on your site.

Saves time with quick and easy set up: You can create a DSA campaign once you know what you’re doing (which you will after reading this post!) in less than 10 minutes. No more keyword research, ad creation, or bid management.

Why shouldn’t you use Dynamic Search Ads?

Can bring in irrelevant traffic if not set up correctly: Although DSAs are easy to set up, they will pull in a lot of long-tail queries, and they won’t all be relevant. If you don’t add negative keywords and targeted exclusions, this might hurt performance.

Not recommended for websites that change rapidly: If you update your website on a daily or hourly basis, DSAs are not recommended.

How do Dynamic Search Ads work?

Traditionally, Google Search Ads are targeted using keywords. When someone’s search is exactly, or includes these keywords, an ad may be eligible to show.

Keyword targeting Search Query

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Which targeting option should you pick for Dynamic Search Ads?

Dynamic Search Ads uses content from your website to target your ads to incremental search queries not captured by keywords.

You choose from five different targeting options, which range from those that give you more control, to those that give you better reach.

URL is & URL contains

What

Target specific URLs or URL strings on your site

Who is it for?

• Those who want more control
• Those who have un-indexed sites

Example

Target URLs of your website that contain “services” or “products”. So as a digital marketing agency running Google Dynamic Search Ads, we might have Dynamic ad targets for “URL contains /ppc-management/”

Commentary

This targeting option limits DSAs potential but does offer the most control.

Page Feeds

What

Use a spreadsheet of URLs for the most focused targeting. You can then target your entire feed or parts of it.

Who is it for?

• Those with larger websites
• Those who have un-indexed sites
• Those who can set up and maintain page feeds

Example

A campaign for televisions with 5-star ratings (while using a ‘5 star custom label’).

Comments

The feed must be maintained and is complicated to set up. Here is the Google help sheet for how to use a feed to target Dynamic Search Ads.

Landing pages from ad groups

What

Automatically expands traffic on webpages where your search ads are already sending traffic.

Who is it for?

• Can be used by all advertisers

Example

An advertiser is already targeting televisions, gaming consoles and DVD/Blu-ray players in their standard ad groups, and can now target the same landing pages dynamically without the need to manage additional keywords for those pages.

Comments

Might not work for advertisers with limited or no search ads.

Categories

What

Google’s SEO indexing will provide logically grouped category suggestions.

Who is it for?

• Advertisers with large websites organised clearly by categories

Example

Targeting a DVD player category, or a collection of several TV categories.

Comments

If the website is not crawlable, Google can't make suggestions.

All websites

What

Targets your entire website, providing the broadest reach.

Who is it for?

• Large websites who are comfortable with the automation of their website.

Example

An advertiser targets all pages in www.website.com.

Comments

It’s important to use negatives to avoid sending traffic to irrelevant pages.

Dynamic Search Ads best practices

Dynamic Search Ads aren't complicated to set up or follow, but we’ve found there are a few best practices to follow:

• Check your search term report daily after setting up DSAs. Add any unwanted search terms to your negative keyword lists.
• Focus on your ad descriptions as they’re the only part of the ad that you can control. We recommend reviewing your other ads’ descriptions to see which ones perform the best.
• Check your website coverage metric - according to Google, you should aim to reach a website coverage of above 75% to avoid missing traffic.
• Exclude irrelevant/low-performing webpages
• According to Google, start with a daily budget of at least 10% of your keyword campaign’s budget.
• Create a separate campaign for DSAs.
• Add your search campaign keywords as negatives to your DSA campaigns

How to set up Dynamic Search Ads

1. Create a new campaign and enable the settings for Dynamic Search Ads

Click on the ‘Ad Group Type’ drop-down and select ‘Dynamic’.

2. Select your dynamic ad targets

3. Set up your creative

4. Choose the right bidding strategy

What performance can you expect from DSA campaigns?

Compared to their keyword performance, for the average advertiser, DSA generates a much better performance. Google has provided the metrics below:

 

Conclusion

So should you ditch all your keyword campaigns and replace them with Dynamic Search Ads? No. DSAs should be seen as a way of filling in the gaps in your keyword-based campaigns. They’re complementary, not a replacement.

We’ve found that for accounts looking to increase their conversion volume, Dynamic Search Ads are one of our go-to options, especially if the Search Impression Share is lower than we would like. 

If you have any questions about Dynamic Search Ads or PPC management, please feel free to get in touch as we are happy to help.

While many fundamental principles of SEO have remained unchanged the landscape is always changing. 

Within the industry, we’ve got used to increasing numbers of “zero click” searches which has been further accelerated through the introduction of AI overviews.

On top of this, Google is always rolling out new SERP features which are eating into the real estate owned by organic results. This means that, as SEO’s, we’re getting less CTR for each search. That’s something we’re constantly having to contend with.

Alongside this, there are new technologies, most noticeably AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, which are changing the way that users do research, and find their way to making purchasing decisions. 

So where does SEO sit within all this?

This blog talks through 5 key trends and the way we’re thinking about them at Aira.

What are 5 key trends we’re thinking about?

1. The impact of AI overviews on traffic (affecting clients in different ways!).
   
2. Google is getting bolder with penalties and more impactful with core updates.
   
3. The 2024 Google Search Algorithm leaks confirmed much of what we suspected.
   
4. We’re really thinking about how we measure performance.
   
5. Laser-like focus on the target audience

Let’s take them one by one.

1. The impact of AI overviews on traffic

If you don’t know what I’m referring to here, I’m talking about these bad boys.

Back in June 2023 at MKHUG, I spoke about these AI overviews, which were previously named Search Generative Experience (SGE). 

My main concerns at the time were around: 

1. Accountability - Both in terms of what would be presented in the SERPs and also whether the information being used for results would be cited fairly (spoiler - they’re not!)
   
2. The negative impact on informational traffic - This was always going to be the most likely type of traffic which would be impacted.

The number of AI Overviews has increased (and will likely continue to!)

This study by SE Ranking showed that the percentage of search results with AI overviews has increased towards the end of 2024.

Anecdotally, speaking as a Google user in the UK, since AI overviews have rolled out in August 2024, they are appearing for more and more searches.

Informational queries are far more likely to trigger AI overviews. 

Informational searches were always going to be the main casualty of this. 

Moz’s study of 46K keywords showed that 25.4% of informational keywords being tracked in the study displayed an AI overview. This is comparably more compared to the other key search intents. 

Naturally some industries have more informational search results than others. Some industries are more “fact” or statistic based which makes it significantly easier for an AI result to appear. 

Across our client base, many have kept their rankings for informational terms but seen a drop in clicks and impressions largely due to AI Overviews (and other SERP features).

Take this example of a publisher client of ours who came to us after seeing falling traffic. 

There were a few reasons for this, but a key one was the AI overviews.

How can we react to these increasing numbers of AI overviews?

1. Focus on building brand across other channels. It’s important to be visible.

The key thing is to not put all your eggs in one basket. 

Which channels - and how you go about this - is obviously going to depend on your industry. 

There’s no point creating a TikTok page with funny dancing videos if you’re a B2B SaaS company selling enterprise security software, for example.

Instead, focus on the channels where your audience actually spends time. For some, that might be LinkedIn, attending events and speaking at conferences. For others, it could be YouTube and podcasts.

Remember these LLMs gather their information from a range of publicly available sources such as social media, the web, reviews etc so it’s not just important to be visible in one.

2. We ensure that for Bottom of Funnel (BOF) terms, our sites are performing as best they can organically.

For BOF terms (i.e. “buy x now”) there are two key advantages:

1. There are less AI overviews. This means that there’s more opportunity to compete. Your main challenge may be fighting for SERP real estate with Paid Ads (more on this later)
2. These terms have a much higher commercial intent and are actually closer to the money - which is ultimately what we care about. 

3. Make sure your editorial content focuses on your audience's pain points, not just keyword targeting.

This is a given away. Let’s be clear. 

We’re here to make money (or leads/ conversions!) for our clients - we’re not here for the rankings. At most, they are a lead metric or an indication that we’re achieving visibility. 

It’s about making sure our target audience finds our content useful and that we’re speaking specifically to the problems they’re facing or that we’re an authority in the space,

We ultimately want to make it obvious that we’re the solution to their problems.

In short - focus on the users problems - not just the keywords.

4. Do not optimise like you do for featured snippets

Let’s talk about what you shouldn’t do.

AI overviews work independently of the main search results. 

See this extract from Authoritas.

As a result, playing around with headings and putting answers to questions below specific questions is likely to have minimal (or no)  impact in an AI world.

2. Google is getting bolder with penalties and more impactful with core updates.

For several decades, Google’s engineers were able to debug their algorithm and understand why pages are ranking in different positions.

Since then, Google has lent far more into “deep” learning algorithms which have become less predictable - and naturally harder to unpick.

The number of Google Searches updates has continued to increase and increase over the years.

In this article, Dr. Pete Meyers highlights the increasing frequency and intensity of algorithm changes over the past 11 years. He does this using data from MozCast - a tool that monitors daily fluctuations in Google's search results.

4 of the top 5 “Hottest” Core Updates have been in 2024 🌶️

This, again, comes from Dr Pete’s study.

Spicy.

Within these different core updates, there’s often a story of sites and industries seeing huge fluctuations in rankings (and as a result traffic!).

Take the example of Hubspot who saw a dramatic decrease in rankings and presumably traffic to their blog from ~September onwards.

Sites with high Brand Authority have tended to fare better with the Core Updates

Another theme - linking back to the previous point - is that sites with a higher brand authority tended to fare better with the core algorithm updates. 

Take this from Tom Capper’s Moz study which showed how losers from the Helpful Content Update back in 2024 tended to have less Brand Authority compared to their Domain Authority

Interesting observation. 

Google’s also been far bolder with manual penalties

We all saw what happened to the likes of Forbes Vetted and CNN Underscored when Google decided overnight to deindex them. 

If you didn’t, Google updated their site reputation abuse policy to prevent authoritative sites publishing third-party content, helping the content rank higher than it would elsewhere. 

The (correct!) decision is that it ultimately creates a poor search experience for users.

How can we react to this?

Stay calm, avoid knee jerk reactions and analyse the data

The first thing to say is that these algorithm updates happen all the time. Often one update will “fix” an overcorrection on a previous update. 

If you react with knee jerk reactions to each and every one of them, you’ll tie yourself in knots.

A better way of reacting is to analyse what’s up and what’s down once the situation has stabilised. From there you can make a judgement on what actions you should take.

Avoid strategies you know are risky

If you are actively building a review section on your site to leverage your strong domain, you’re in for a rough ride. 

3. The Google Search Algorithm leaks confirmed much of what we already knew

When the Google algorithm leak dropped and we were all flicking through Mike King’s blog pulling out the key findings, we were all filled with excitement….

…but then we realised that all the key revelations were all things we assumed - if we hadn’t already known already. 

There are several interesting things that we picked out when going through it.

Content

Google evaluates the core topics of a website, which is presumably used to see whether the site is relevant and suitable to rank for specific terms.

This does mean that it’s probably not worth writing about topics that are peripherally related to your core site focus - and more important to focus on the stuff that’s directly related.

Content freshness is also an important consideration. For example, we can see in the documentation references to lastSignificantUpdate which shows the last significant update of the page content. This shows the value of keeping important content up-to-date.

User Engagement

Google uses user interactions, such as clicks, gathered through Chrome User Experience data as a ranking signal. This is particularly evident in Navboost which is mentioned a fair amount in documentation, which refines search results based on how users interact with them.

Clearly the content we’re producing should look to focus on how to best drive interactions and engagement from the user. This just cements that it’s also useful for rankings.

Site Authority

Google Does Have a "Site Authority" Concept and we can see “siteAuthority” be mentioned in the documentation a fair amount. This is despite consistent denials that there was a concept of domain authority. 

How can we react to the fact that we now have this information?

Basically do what we are already doing… but importantly. 

1. Do focus on quality content… not just content for content’s sake.
2. Make sure that the user experience is at the core of what we do and that we’re encouraging engagement (i.e. long clicks!)
3. Make sure that we’re still thinking about how to build authority to our site and earn coverage for our content. Hence, we have a Digital PR team.
   

4. We’re rethinking how we measure performance.

Even when I started in SEO industry a few years back now, the concept of looking only at rankings was already outdated, but now that’s prehistoric. 

Let’s say that we’re looking to get money from organic search.

These are the broad steps: 

But that doesn’t factor in a LOAD of stuff such as these SERP features: 

Rand Fiskin has an interesting take on how to think about marketing KPIs in 2025.

Rand Fiskin from SparkToro did a LinkedIn post talking about how we have changed how we think about marketing KPIs.

This approach applies to more than just SEO and thinks about wider marketing channels - which is exactly how we should be thinking about our digital marketing efforts - even if we’re predominantly doing SEO work.

The summarise Rand’s thinking:

Previously, we thought of the different KPIs as:

• Top Of Funnel - Simply bringing traffic to the site.

• Mid Funnel - The number of micro-conversions taken to the site whether that be newsletter signups, whitepaper downloads, or ebook downloads, for example. 
• Bottom of Funnel - The ultimate KPI is sales - this is ultimately the goal of marketing init.

In the current era, though, Rand’s thinking is that ultimately measuring brand exposure is the most important thing we should be thinking about in Top of Funnel and Mid-Funnel KPIs. 

This also means that he downweights the value of traffic - deeming it a “vanity metric.”

• Top Of Funnel - The question here is on whether your brand has made some form of splash in the places your target audience pays attention.
  • The key metrics are impressions, views and engagements on the platforms most important for your brand - this could be podcasts, LinkedIn, Youtube, TikTok etc - depending on which platform is most important for your brand.

• Mid Funnel - The question here is whether people are specifically searching for our brand. I.e. They’ve heard about our brand and are actively searching us out.
  • The key metrics to consider here are branded searches, brand search volume, direct visits and conversion rates. 
• Bottom of Funnel - We still have the same final objective - sales. This is still the ultimate point of doing marketing - or why else are we here?

This is pretty persuasive as a way of thinking about setting marketing KPIs - but something to note is that each and every industry or niche is going to be different. 

This model isn’t perfect, though.

For B2B SaaS businesses, this model is pretty effective. Ultimately the goal is making sure your brand is the first thing that springs to mind when looking for a specific product or service.

This same logic wouldn’t apply to other niches or industries. For example, if you work in eCommerce selling products people don't think about too much or impulse buys where brand recall doesn't matter as much.

In those cases, more traditional funnel metrics - and focus on conversion rates, for example - are more important as people are looking to make decisions quickly and mostly based on price.

But in B2B, and especially in SaaS, Rand’s thinking is a useful lens: brand exposure and recall aren’t just nice-to-haves — they’re the foundation for long-term success. If people know who you are and trust you before they ever hit your site, the rest of the funnel becomes way easier.

What are the key takeaways for us as we think about reporting? 

The central takeaway from Rand's video is to focus your KPIs and reporting on your performance in the areas that are most valuable to your target audience.

This is ultimately the key. 

If you are doing marketing for a site centred on more impulse buys where brand recall matters less, you may want to focus more on traffic, conversion rates, average basket sizes etc - then obviously sales. 

If brand recall matters more, then it’s worth doubling down on measuring and reporting on exposure in the places your target audience already spends time. That’s where early impressions are made and trust starts to build.

5. Laser-like focus on the target audience

This ties on nicely from the previous point. 

The central focus for us is meeting our client’s goals - in the vast majority of cases this is revenue directly. But this could also be Demo Requests, Form Fills, Subscribers etc. All of these ultimately tie back to making money for their business. 

Cross Channel thinking is key

At Aira, we are acutely aware that SEO is only a single channel and we have to think across multiple channels to meet our clients objectives. We focus on whatever combination of different channels will help us hit these goals.

When we look at the example of the type of journey a user would take on a B2B SaaS, it is absolutely not linear. Even this model is overly linear. 

At each of these stages, we need to consider what we can do to help move folks to the next stage. 

Awareness Stage

The focus here is getting seen in the right places.

This is all about showing up where your audience spends their time - and ensuring that you’re being noticed.

What are the kind of things that we can do at this stage?

• SEO driven content - What problems or questions do folks have?
• Paid Media & Paid Social - How can we push our brand at this stage?
• Digital PR - Where are our audience visible? Do we have any authority? 

We could also think beyond just digital: 

• Speaking at events
• Sponsoring events
• Using social media influencers
• Etc etc

There are so many different types of strategies we could use to gain awareness.

Consideration Stage

At this stage, it’s about staying top of mind. 

People know your brand - they are interested in what you’re selling.

The key here is moving them from this stage to the next stage in as seamless a way as possible.

What are the kind of things we could do at this stage?

• Marketing automation - Are our email flows doing their job? Are they personalised, timely, and actually moving people forward? What could we test or improve?
• CRO – Are people taking the actions we want after engaging with a webinar, blog, or landing page? If not, where’s the drop-off? What can we do to encourage them to take the desired action?
• Content strategy - Are we giving people the right info at the right time? Case studies, product comparisons, pricing pages - the stuff that helps them make a decision.
• Paid Media - Should we be running retargeting ads based on the specific content people have viewed on the site?

The goal here: remove friction, build trust, and make it easy for someone who’s curious to become someone who’s ready to buy.

Decision Stage

At this stage, it’s all about getting users to convert - whether that’s booking a demo, buying a product, or filling out a form etc.

They’re close. Now it’s about making the choice as easy as possible and removing any objections or reasons to waiver.

What are the kind of things we could do at this stage?

• CRO – What’s stopping people from converting? Are there blockers on key pages? What A/B tests could we run to improve conversion rates?
• Marketing automation – Do we have the right email flows after sales calls or demos? Could we test new approaches to help close the loop?
• SEO – When someone searches for “[brand] reviews” or “[product] vs competitor,” what shows up? Are we actively managing our online reputation and review presence?

The goal: remove doubt, build confidence, and make taking action feel like a no-brainer.

TLDR: Single-channel thinking misses the bigger picture

If you focus on one channel, you’re leaving results on the table.

There is real value in thinking holistically and about how the combination of how different channels can work most effectively together to drive more conversions.

Whether it’s organic, paid, email, or content each channel can play a role in driving conversions - then it’s about thinking about how we can leverage each channel to drive more conversions.

Blended Search: How we maximise search visibility

When it comes to SEO, this is the landscape we’re generally faced with:

For a majority of SERPs, the space for our website to get visibility is increasingly small. 

So what can we do to compete?

We look at the terms that we can achieve organic visibility for, and those which we cannot.

From here, we can work on a strategy which allows us to compete using Paid ads for terms which we’d struggle to compete for organically and have organic content targeting terms we can realistically compete for.

This is why we need blended search. 

To help with this, Keyword Navigator, our proprietary keyword opportunity tool allows us to see: 

1. What the organic opportunity is for specific keywords (in terms of traffic & conversions).
2. What the Google Ads metrics are for specific keywords (i.e. total cost, conversions, conversion value and ROAS).

This helps us to make those informed decisions and whether we should focus time and resources on organic content around a topic, paid or a combination of both.

If you like what you see, get in touch

If you're looking for a digital agency to partner with to drive your marketing efforts forward with experts in SEO, Paid Media, Marketing Automation, and Digital PR then get in touch.

How to create content that’s both link-worthy and helpful

As digital marketing continues to evolve, the quest for quality backlinks remains a crucial component of a successful SEO strategy. 

However, to remain competitive in 2025, it's not enough to simply chase links. 

At Aira, our Digital PR team always strives to make the content we produce work harder. 

I’m a firm believer that you can build creative content that earns links (both proactively and organically) but can also rank and bring traffic to your site. You just need to get the fundamentals correct.

In fact, I gave this exact talk at PRMoment’s The Intersection of PR & SEO webinar. You can view the presentation here.

Firstly, it’s important to note that not all Digital PR campaigns are made to rank and not all Digital PR campaigns are made to be overnight successes. After all, the main goal of these campaigns is to help build authority into other, usually ‘money’, pages to help those rank higher. And that’s fine. But if you’re working in a space where you can create content that delivers both, this is where magic happens.

So, how do you strike a balance between building authority and improving organic performance? Let's explore how to create digital PR campaigns that are both link-worthy and genuinely helpful.

Creating content that’s both helpful and link-worthy 

Leveraging expert commentary - becoming a trusted source

In Google’s helpful content guidelines, they list that ‘trust’ is the most important factor in assessing whether your content is ‘helpful’ and stands a better chance of ranking in the SERPs. 

Trust, therefore, is crucial. And it can be utilised in the following two ways: 

1. To demonstrate trust to our own readers. This can be in the form of showing expertise on a topic, commenting on your data’s findings or providing insight and tips to a problem or concern your content is addressing.
2. To land media coverage. Journalists are always on the hunt for true experts in their field and getting your client's spokesperson in the media builds up the brand credibility and trust. 

For example, if you work for a pharmaceutical company and you have a guide on how to stop hayfever, this should be filled with a wealth of comments from a pharmacist at the brand. 

These tips can help both your readers to take away information, as well as be shared with a journalist, who in turn can share this with their readers. It will then give you the chance to build links back to the landing page as credit. 

Data-driven insights

The most common form of a ‘digital PR campaign’ is using data and insights to form stories. This style of content has been around for years, and with good reason - it works.

Focusing on data sets that are close to your brand allows you to form stories relevant to the press for your target publications. 

But how do we ensure this data can work harder?

When it comes to creating content that’s helpful, and ultimately ranks, we need to think about what data can be cited organically. 

The dream for us is to create content that drives links organically over time, with no time spent on proactive outreach. To do this, we need to think of data sets that answer common questions, will be useful to journalists and in an ideal world, have some search volume behind them. 

For example, statistics pages. Here at Aira, we’re big fans of statistic pages. Focusing on our client's speciality, we can create pages that include a range of stats that could be useful for a journalist to cite.

Let’s go back to the pharmaceutical client. You could create the following pages:

• Hay fever statistics in the UK
• Prescription statistics in the UK
• STI statistics in the UK

Spoiler alert: We created these pages.

These landing pages can be filled with statistics, data, design and expert commentary forming a ‘report-style’ content piece.

Money.co.uk demonstrates great examples here with their business statistics pieces, which are updated regularly and cited by journalists from across business media.

1. The effect of cost of living on UK business statistics 2023
2. 50+ UK Business Insurance Statistics 2024 
3. UK business statistics and facts 2023

Key takeaways

By combining these strategies, you can create digital PR campaigns that not only generate valuable backlinks but also establish your client as a trusted and authoritative leader in your industry.

If you’re interested in creating content that’s designed to rank and grow site authority, get in touch! 

Getting website traffic is important, but getting quality website traffic is what really counts. Otherwise, it’s like throwing a party and only your weird neighbour who talks about conspiracy theories shows up. You want to attract the right people, those who actually care about what you’re offering.

Whether you’re starting fresh or trying to recover from a sudden drop in traffic, the key is attracting the right audience. We all love a good up-and-to-the-right graph, so let’s talk about how to make that happen.

What is quality traffic?

Not all website visitors are created equal. Quality traffic refers to visitors who are genuinely interested in your products or services and are more likely to convert. This might be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter or engaging with your content in a meaningful way.

However, quality traffic doesn’t always mean an instant sale. In industries with longer buying cycles, visitors may need time to research before they commit. Some might not convert directly but could refer your site to others who will. The key is that quality traffic has a clear link to your business goals, whether that’s immediate revenue, brand awareness or customer engagement that eventually leads to sales.

So, while it’s tempting to chase big numbers, what really matters is attracting relevant traffic that aligns with your business objectives. After all, 1,000 engaged visitors are far more valuable than 10,000 who bounce immediately without taking any action.

Make sure you can be found

If search engines can’t find you, neither can potential visitors. And if they can’t find you, you can forget about conversions. So let’s make sure your site is in top shape for visibility and more website traffic.

Check out Google Search Console

Think of Google Search Console as your personal website health check-up. This free tool tells you if Google can find your site, what issues might be lurking under the hood, and how well you’re ranking.

It also shows:

• The search queries bringing traffic to your website
• How often people click on your site (or ignore it - ouch)
• Mobile and desktop performance insights

So if you haven’t checked your Search Console in a while, now’s the time to right that wrong. Fix those errors and let Google work its magic.

Set up your robots.txt file

The robots.txt file might sound like scary coding stuff, but it’s actually just a simple text file telling search engine bots where they can (and can’t) go on your site. Sometimes, people accidentally block their entire site - far from ideal.

Check your file (www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt) and make sure you’re not accidentally telling Google to get lost:

If you find that, fix it immediately and re-submit through Google Search Console and the robots.txt tester.

Using Google Search Console to review search queries

One of the best ways to understand how people are finding your website is by using Google Search Console (GSC) to review the search queries you’re ranking for. This can give you insight into what is already driving traffic to your site and highlight opportunities for optimisation.

Reviewing queries for your entire site

By analysing the search queries your site is ranking for as a whole, you can:

• Identify key terms that are already bringing in traffic.
• Spot high-impression but low-click-through queries that could be optimised.
• Discover new keyword opportunities to target in your content strategy.

Checking queries for key pages

It’s not just about your website overall - you should also check how individual pages are performing. Reviewing the queries that drive users to specific pages can help you:

• See if the right terms are leading to the right content.
• Find pages that have ranking potential but need better optimisation.
• Improve existing content to target more valuable traffic.

Answering key questions

Using GSC effectively allows you to answer crucial questions about your website’s traffic, such as:

By leveraging these insights, you can refine your SEO strategy to attract more of the right visitors and ensure your content is aligned with what users are actively searching for.

What does your sitemap say?

Your sitemap is like a treasure map for search engines as it tells them where to go. Make sure it’s up to date, error-free and pointing search engines to the right pages so they can drive more traffic your way.

Structured data (Schema Markup) is becoming even more critical. If you’re not using it yet, now’s a great time to start.

Know your target audience

If you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll end up appealing to no one. That’s why understanding your target audience is essential in digital marketing. The better you know them, the easier it is to create content that actually resonates and encourages people to engage and, ultimately, spend their money with you.

Who are you talking to?

Defining your ideal customers helps you craft the right message, tone and content. But what is a buyer persona and how do you create them? If you’re not sure where to start, use a buyer persona template to map out who they are, what they want, what their problems are and where they hang out online.

What does the buyer’s journey look like?

People don’t just wake up and decide to throw money at you (unfortunately). They go through a process known as the buyer's journey:

If you’re not answering their questions at each stage, you’re missing out on potential customers.

AI chatbots can now help answer these questions in real time, keeping visitors engaged. A handy tool for both you and your audience, as it can free up your time and make sure you provide potential customers with information as and when it's needed.

Using search data to build a seed keyword list

By combining insights from the Google Search Console review with your understanding of the buyer’s journey, you can build out a list of seed keywords. These are the initial terms to track and investigate further through keyword research, as we can assume that the terms your buyer personas are interested in will drive quality traffic. This approach ensures that your content strategy aligns with user intent and business objectives, leading to better search rankings and higher conversions.

Align your marketing strategy to your target audience

Now that you know who you’re talking to, let’s make sure your marketing strategy is laser-focused on reaching them.

Keyword research

If you want free website traffic, you need to rank for the right keywords.

Here’s what you should do:

1. Research what people are searching for.
2. Check if you already have content covering these topics.
3. Expand or improve your existing content where needed.
4. Create new content to cover the gaps.

Google’s AI updates are shaking up search rankings. Optimising for long-tail keywords and featured snippets is more important than ever.

Where should you be marketing?

There are plenty of ways to get more traffic, but not all of them will work for you. Similarly, a blended search approach (a combination of tactics deployed at the right time) can be highly effective. Let’s break it down:

Organic traffic (SEO): A non-negotiable

This is the best kind of traffic because it’s free (and who doesn’t love free stuff?) and sustainable. But it requires work through SEO, such as writing blog posts, optimising your pages and getting quality backlinks. For more information on optimising your content, read our dedicated blog post.

Paid advertising (Google Ads and AI-powered ads): A necessary evil

Sometimes, you have to spend money to make money. Ads are sometimes necessary in highly competitive spaces where ranking might be hard. Paid ads can be profitable if done right as part of a blended search strategy. The key is to target:

• Relevant searches
• High-converting audiences
• The right locations and times

Digital PR: Getting your name out there

Digital PR is all about building brand awareness, credibility and trust online. This includes:

• Earning media coverage from relevant websites and news outlets
• Getting mentioned by influencers and industry leaders
• Writing guest posts to showcase your expertise
• Engaging in online discussions and thought leadership

A well-executed Digital PR campaign boosts your reputation and can help you gain quality backlinks, improving your search rankings and generating traffic to your site.

Social media sites: Yay or nay?

Some businesses thrive on social media platforms, others not so much. Focus on where your audience hangs out:

Short-form videos (Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts) are dominating engagement. If you’re not using them yet, it’s time to start.

Referral traffic: Your secret weapon

This type of traffic comes from relevant websites linking to yours. Getting guest posts, industry mentions or collaborating with partners can send a steady stream of website visitors your way.

Email marketing: Old but gold

People might leave your site, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone forever. A smart email marketing campaign keeps them engaged and brings them back when they're ready for your products or services.

There are three main types of marketing emails: 

1. Remarketing emails: These emails help re-engage visitors who have interacted with your site but haven’t yet converted. Whether it’s an abandoned cart reminder, a follow-up on a viewed product or a special offer to bring them back, remarketing emails keep your brand top of mind and encourage users to return.
2. Nurture emails: Designed to guide potential customers through the buyer’s journey, nurture emails provide valuable information at each stage. From educational content to case studies and testimonials, these emails help build trust and move users closer to making a decision.
3. Promotional emails: Everyone loves a good deal! Promotional emails focus on special offers, discounts and exclusive deals to encourage conversions. Whether it’s a limited-time sale or an exclusive early-bird offer, these emails help drive sales and engagement with your brand.

Yes, privacy updates and regulations have made email tracking trickier. But, if you focus on personalised, high-value content sent to an audience that opted in, you'll keep engagement rates high.

Google Analytics: Keep an eye on what's working

If you’re not tracking your efforts with Google Analytics, you’re flying blind. Monitor where your web traffic is coming from and what’s converting, and tweak accordingly.

Fix broken links: Your SEO depends on it

Nothing says unprofessional like clicking a link and landing on a 404 error. Fix broken links regularly to keep both search engines and visitors happy.

Conclusion

Now you know how to define what high-quality traffic is, how to identify your target audience and the channels to use to reach them. With this knowledge, you can develop a strategy that puts your brand in front of the right people at the right time. Whether it’s through SEO, paid ads, email marketing or social media, focusing on quality over quantity will lead to better engagement, stronger customer relationships and ultimately, more conversions. So, go forth and drive traffic that actually matters!

Need help driving more website traffic to your site? Let’s chat about how to level up your strategy.

Have you ever opened a spreadsheet filled with facts and figures and thought…‘huh’? If so, you're certainly not alone.

When you're dealing with a lot of data, you might spend a good 10 minutes just staring at a screen of numbers, columns and READ.ME notes before doing anything remotely productive. And this is normal, because our brains aren't designed to absorb an onslaught of figures with no apparent logic.

But fear not. As fun as it is to mindlessly stare at things, there is a better way to digest, share and celebrate data so everyone can understand what it means and the story behind it. It’s a magical thing that makes key trends and stories stand out in a flash, engages even the biggest spreadsheet haters of the world and makes data EVEN sexier (yes that is possible).

It's known as data visualisation, and we'll go into what it is and why it matters below.

Data visualisation

Now, most of us have heard of data visualisation (or data viz, as the cool kids call it), but if you haven’t, we'll define data visualisation for you using this simple formula:

Easy. Kinda.

The problem with data viz, is that design is hugely subjective. Designs, formats and interactive elements that might be super clear and beautiful to you, could be tragically complicated and unattractive to someone else. This disconnect between creator and user is common, you only have to Google ‘infographic’ to see an array of designs that someone, somewhere, at some point thought were great, but which don’t show a clear story and/or are extremely difficult to navigate and digest.

Technically, any visualisation of data is data viz, but there's certainly an argument that any visualisation that is just as bamboozling as the raw data, is less ‘viz’ and more just data. And we need the ‘viz’, guys - it’s the second best part.

Key data viz trends in 2025

Data visualisation has evolved rapidly in recent years, and 2025 is no exception. Here are some of the biggest trends shaping the field right now:

• AI-generated data visualisation – With advancements in AI, automated tools can now generate complex, insightful data visualisations in seconds, helping businesses and analysts save time.
• Interactive & personalised visualisations – Data viz is becoming more interactive, allowing users to filter and explore data in a way that’s meaningful to them.
• Augmented & Virtual Reality (AR/VR) data visualisation – Immersive visualisation techniques allow users to engage with complex data in 3D environments, providing deeper insights.
• Mobile-first data visualisation – More people consume content on their phones, so modern data viz must be designed with smaller screens in mind, ensuring clarity and usability on mobile devices.

Where to find great data viz inspiration

Now that we’ve covered what data visualisation is, here are some fantastic places online where you can find effective and impactful examples:

• Information is Beautiful: A showcase of beautifully designed, informative visualisations.
• Flowing Data: A blog dedicated to exploring how data tells stories through visualisation.
• The Pudding: A site featuring in-depth visual essays using data-driven storytelling.
• Tableau Public: A platform where users can publish and explore data visualisations from across industries.

Next, we'll run though some of Aira’s own digital PR campaigns to dissect them and show how data viz can help communicate cool stories and make data more readable and relatable.

Offshore Wind Turbines

This campaign used data visualisation to tell a compelling story about how offshore wind turbines can power major cities. Given the complexity of the methodology behind the calculations, data visualisation helped make the information more digestible.

We started by calculating the energy consumption of each city using data from the International Energy Agency. We then estimated how much energy a single wind turbine could generate. By dividing the total energy consumption for each city by the output of one turbine, we determined how many turbines would be needed to meet each city's annual energy demand. We also factored in the necessary spacing between turbines to avoid interference.

Despite the complexity of these calculations, we visualised the results in a way that was easy for anyone to understand. Instead of overwhelming viewers with raw numbers, the infographic highlighted three key data points per city:

• % of city area needed for offshore turbines
• Number of offshore turbines required
• Total km² of offshore turbines needed

These figures provided a quick and intuitive understanding of the scale of offshore wind energy required. Instead of bombarding users with complex numbers, the shaded areas on the map offered a clear visual representation of how much offshore space would be needed compared to the city's size.

World heritage sites

This campaign is a great example of aesthetically pleasing data viz. The user can easily hover over the world’s most endangered heritage sites and see the factors affecting them.

The images in the centre of the radial visual representation are eye-catching and the colours are complementary. The main drawback of this visual, however, is...mobile.

Now don’t get us wrong, UX on mobile for this piece is good. The data is still clear and easily readable, the images and the colours are still nice. It works. But when we initially designed it, we started with desktop first. We spent most of our time working out how to make it pretty on a bigger screen and the mobile design was more of an afterthought. The trouble is, 50% of web traffic now comes from mobile devices, so by neglecting it somewhat, you potentially alienate half your audience.

Basically, it’s really easy to get caught up in the desktop design, sitting with a digital artist or designer, looking at an expensive retina desktop display and filling all the lovely space with fun graphics and big graphs, but the reality is that a lot of your users won’t even see that. Sad, but true.

So, design for mobile first.

So what's the key to great data visualisation?

When it comes to digital PR, here are some key principles for effective data visualisation:

• Purpose-driven: A great data viz should clearly highlight the campaign's main message and key takeaways.
• Easy to understand: It should be accessible to a broad audience without requiring expert knowledge.
• Mobile-first: With more people consuming content on mobile devices, designing data viz with mobile usability in mind is essential.

By following these principles, you can create data visualisations that are engaging, informative, and impactful.

Why is data visualisation important?

Data visualisation is important because it allows us to present data in a way that makes complex data sets understandable, helping businesses, present data in a way that means you don't need to be a data scientist or expert in data analytics to understand it. This helps you tell your story effectively, which ensures you engage with your target audience. It's also a great tool as part of a blended search marketing strategy, helping you gain those much-needed links.

By using visual elements and different types of data formats, data visualisation helps you extract meaningful information from data points. This ensures that data values aren't just seen, but truly understood, making it easier to represent data in an impactful way.

So there you go. Hopefully, you have a better idea of what data viz is, but if you have any questions or would like to know more about how to make the best use of data viz, feel free to get in touch for a chat.