Case Study · 7 min read · February 2026
This is the story behind one of our longest-running and most successful digital PR campaigns — earning over 800 editorial backlinks from 120+ publications for a UK building materials retailer with 20+ branches.
The client is a national building materials retailer serving both trade customers and homeowners. They had a solid physical presence but limited organic visibility. Their domain rating was low, their backlink profile was thin, and they were being outranked by larger competitors with stronger authority signals.
They needed editorial coverage at scale — not just a handful of links, but a sustained programme that would compound over time.
Seasonal data campaigns. We built campaigns around the seasonal buying patterns of their customers — cladding in spring, decking in summer, roofline in autumn, insulation in winter. Each campaign included original data, regional breakdowns, and expert commentary that made them genuinely newsworthy.
Reactive expert commentary. We deployed our AI outreach engine to monitor journalist requests 24/7 across HARO, Qwoted, ResponseSource, and X/Twitter. When relevant opportunities appeared — housing data releases, building regulation changes, extreme weather events — our bot drafted tailored responses in the client's brand voice and queued them for sending.
Unlinked mention recovery. Our crawler identified hundreds of existing brand mentions across trade forums, specification databases, and supplier listings that lacked backlinks. Automated outreach converted a significant proportion into live, attributed links.
Trade press programme. We maintained a consistent drip-feed of product stories, project case studies, and expert articles targeted at Construction News, Building, Roofing Today, and other sector-specific publications.
Editorial backlinks earned
Highest placement
Unique publications
Editorial (zero paid)
Publications included Metro, Daily Express, Yahoo News, MSN, Construction News, Building, PBC Today, Roofing Today, and over 100 more.
Consistency beats campaigns. The biggest gains came not from single viral campaigns but from sustained, consistent coverage across multiple channels. Reactive commentary alone delivered dozens of links per month.
AI-powered speed matters. Responding to journalist requests within minutes — rather than hours or days — dramatically increased our placement rate. Journalists work to tight deadlines; the fastest credible response usually wins.
Quality compounds. High-DR editorial links don't just improve rankings — they attract more links over time as other publications reference the same coverage. Authority builds on authority.
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