Illustrative case study

A fictional business. The figures are a modelled scenario, not a client result.

Case studies / Digital PR & linksRoll 01 · 10 months · 4 tactics

Pikeline Wild Trust — Wildlife conservation nonprofit · Denver

Trail-cam data that went viral: earning national coverage for a Colorado wildlife trust

Six years of infrared detections were sitting in PDFs. We turned them into stories newsrooms wanted to run — and pointed the links they earned at the pages that fund the work.

CAM-11 · IR11°F2026-01-09 04:02:55
SUBJECT DETECTED · LYNX CANADENSIS
+93
referring domains, 14 national outlets
● Motion triggerCAM-03 · ridge trailPIR sensitivity: high01 · The challenge

01The challenge

Great data, filed where nobody looks.

Strong research rarely left PDF reports, and the trust's site had little authority for donor and volunteer searches.

The trust runs 46 motion-triggered cameras across the Front Range. Researchers cited the findings; reporters occasionally mentioned them. But searches for “volunteer wildlife Denver” or “donate to conservation in Colorado” surfaced national charities with a hundred times the link equity, and the trust sat on page four.

02Diagnosis · camera log

  1. A-01
    ■ HIGH
    Content

    38 research reports existed only as PDFs; Google indexed 6 of them and none ranked for a research query.

  2. A-02
    ■ HIGH
    Links

    77 referring domains, 61% of them directories or partner logos; no national news link in five years.

  3. A-03
    ■ HIGH
    Mentions

    412 web mentions of the trust or its data with no link back — mostly local news and school pages.

  4. A-04
    ■ MED
    Edu

    Zero .edu links, despite three universities citing the trust’s field data in published coursework.

  5. A-05
    ■ MED
    Donor pages

    Donate page had 140 words, no internal links in and no Organization or DonateAction markup.

  6. A-06
    ■ LOW
    Technical

    Trail-cam galleries shipped 9 MB uncompressed JPEGs; mobile LCP sat at 5.8 s on volunteer pages.

● Motion triggerCAM-07 · creek crossingPIR sensitivity: high02 · The strategy

03The strategy

Make the data the story, then make the story pay the bills.

Built on our Authority plan (digital pr & links): four tactics, run as one loop, with every earned link routed toward the Donate and Volunteer hubs.

T134% of effort

Data journalism

Detections cleaned, mapped and written up as stories a reporter can file in an hour: one headline finding, a chart, a CSV and a named scientist available for calls.

T228% of effort

Digital PR

Seasonal hooks — lynx denning, bear wake-up, elk rut — pitched to science, outdoors and national desks with embargoes and exclusive regional angles.

T316% of effort

Edu links

An open-licence dataset and lesson pack for university ecology courses, each asking for a citation to the methodology page rather than the homepage.

T422% of effort

Unlinked mentions

All 412 brand and data mentions triaged by authority, then contacted with the precise page to cite. Reclaimed links pointed at the Donate and Volunteer hubs.

SERP · “wildlife volunteer denver”Month 1
  1. 1National wildlife charity
  2. 2Volunteer listings aggregator
  3. 3City parks department
  4. 34Pikeline Wild Trust — Volunteer with us (page 4)
SERP · “wildlife volunteer denver”Month 10
  1. 1Volunteer listings aggregator
  2. 2City parks department
  3. 3Pikeline Wild Trust — Volunteer with us
● Motion triggerCAM-02 · aspen standPIR sensitivity: high03 · The camera roll

04Month by month

10 months, one frame each.

CAM-03 · IR29°F2025-11-04 02:14:37
REF. DOMAINS
77
NATIONAL
00/14

Frame 01 / 10

Month 1: Baseline & link audit

Crawled 38 research PDFs, mapped 77 referring domains and logged 412 brand mentions with no link.

← → to step through frames · Home / End to jump

Full log as text
  1. M01 · 77 RDBaseline & link audit. Crawled 38 research PDFs, mapped 77 referring domains and logged 412 brand mentions with no link.
  2. M02 · 79 RDFree the data. Six years of trail-cam detections rebuilt as indexable HTML pages with a downloadable CSV and methodology notes.
  3. M03 · 84 RDFirst flagship story. “Where Colorado’s lynx actually walk” — an interactive map of 31,000 detections, embargoed to a regional desk.
  4. M04 · 92 RDReclaim the mentions. First 140 unlinked mentions contacted with the exact page to cite; 31 converted to followed links.
  5. M05 · 108 RDWake-up season peaks. Bear emergence dataset pitched to national science and outdoors desks; three national pickups in a week.
  6. M06 · 121 RDEdu partnerships. Open dataset adopted by four university ecology courses, each citing the methodology page.
  7. M07 · 134 RDDonor & volunteer hubs. Authority funnelled into rebuilt Donate and Volunteer pages via internal links from every data story.
  8. M08 · 146 RDSecond flagship. “The crossing”: highway wildlife-crossing usage before and after the overpass — syndicated by a wire service.
  9. M09 · 158 RDMentions sweep two. Remaining 272 mentions triaged; data-led follow-ups to earlier coverage add backlinks to the CSV hub.
  10. M10 · 170 RDHandover & refresh loop. Quarterly data drop scheduled; the newsroom contact list and pitch templates handed to the trust’s team.
● Motion triggerCAM-11 · saddle passPIR sensitivity: high04 · Results

05Results

Caught on camera.

Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.

CAM-07 · IR55°F2026-08-28 01:12:46
Referring domains
77 → 170
6090120150180M1M2M3M4M5M6M7M8M9M1017077

= one national pickup

14 national outlets · 93 new domains

CAM-02 · IR51°F2026-08-29 03:40:11
Organic donation revenue
+52%

Index, month 1 = 100 → 152

CAM-11 · IR49°F2026-08-30 00:27:09
Volunteer sign-ups
+81%
62 → 112/mo

Monthly sign-ups via organic search

Keyword positions · Google, Denver

QueryIntentM1M10
wildlife volunteer denverVolunteer343
donate wildlife conservation coloradoDonate414
colorado lynx populationResearch—2
wildlife crossing data coloradoResearch—1
trail camera wildlife dataResearch586
wildlife nonprofit denverBrand-adjacent122
bear sightings colorado 2026News—5
volunteer conservation colorado weekendsVolunteer274

Detections · national pickups

  1. #01Regional dailyM3 · Lynx map
  2. #02National science magazineM4 · Lynx map
  3. #03National dailyM5 · Bear wake-up
  4. #04Public radio networkM5 · Bear wake-up
  5. #05Outdoors monthlyM5 · Bear wake-up
  6. #06Environment desk, nationalM6 · Edu dataset
  7. #07Travel & parks siteM6 · Elk rut
  8. #08National broadcaster webM7 · Elk rut
  9. #09Data-viz newsletterM7 · Lynx map
  10. #10Wire serviceM8 · The crossing
  11. #11National dailyM8 · The crossing
  12. #12Transport trade titleM9 · The crossing
  13. #13Science podcast siteM9 · The crossing
  14. #14National weeklyM10 · Year in detections

Outlets described by type only; this is a modelled scenario.

● Motion triggerCAM-07 · end of rollPIR sensitivity: high05 · Your turn

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