Common SEO Mistakes – Audit Your SEO Work Says Qamar Zaman SEO Audit Expert

Dallas based SEO & conversion rate optimization / SEO Audit Expert Says Look out!

Optimizing your website and blog for maximum search engine visibility continues to be important, even with the rise of other inbound marketing methods. In fact, content marketing, by far the most popular inbound marketing strategy, relies so much on solid SEO to be truly effective. It helps to think of content marketing as handling the content creation process, while SEO takes care of distribution and acceleration.

But because SEO practices rely on Google’s search engine updates, it also means that marketers must constantly adapt to the changing landscape of search, not to mention the changes in users’ search habits. Still, this doesn’t change the fact that SEO is still on top of many marketers’ priority list of strategies.

Obviously, it’s not easy trying to keep up with the most effective SEO techniques, so much so that many marketers end up making costly SEO mistakes. One way of ‘keeping up’ the smart way is knowing what not to do instead. In this guide, we go over a few of the most common SEO mistakes you should avoid to prevent your website’s search rankings from being hurt.

 

1. You’re Using Irrelevant Keywords

 

The point of using keywords is to make your website, your ads, and all your other content assets relevant.

So the question is: How relevant are your keywords?
One of the most common mistakes that can cripple an SEO campaign is focusing on short generic keywords (with high competition, mind you), and neglecting the value of long-tail keywords.

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While your business’ products and services might fall under one set of keywords that you think might be relevant, it’s also important to consider how your actual potential customers search for your brand and offerings on Google. And more often than not, people do so by using long-tail search terms, which usually fall outside of the typical marketer’s radar.

The key is to be more careful and thorough with your keyword research. Use as many tools as you can, whether it’s Google’s Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Moz, or Google Trends. Better yet, just ask your customers how they found you on Google and what search terms they used.

 

2. You’re Still Spamming Keywords

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Sure, in the old days, you could get away with stuffing your landing pages and blog posts with keywords to game search engines into boosting your rankings. But that was before Penguin and Panda, Google’s search algorithms that effectively ended blackhat SEO techniques and prioritized the creation of original high-quality content to create authority and better rankings.

And even back in the day, such practices were already deemed unethical because they provided little or no value at all to a brand’s customers. Unfortunately, the practice of stuffing content with target keywords continues today, even if Google has made it clear that spammy content will only result in a penalty to rankings.

But don’t get tricked into thinking keywords are the be all and end all of SEO. In fact, keyword placement might soon become irrelevant, with Google employing Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), an indexing method that allows the search engine bots to understand the content topic without the need for signaling them with target keywords.

In other words, a time may come that search engines will be so smart they’ll immediately understand what you’re trying to say in your website content or blog without having to rely on keywords.

 

3. Your Content is Misleading

While keywords should not be your only focus in your SEO efforts, it’s still important to make sure that whatever content you produce is actually related to your target keywords.

Say you want to rank for a certain keyword: restaurants in New York City. That’s fine, but any content you create should also focus on a topic related to that keyword—you can’t write about cookware or shopping tips.

This might seem like common sense, but many marketers actually make the mistake of trying to fit as many topics into a single content asset, which ends up not being relevant to the keywords it’s trying to aim for. A slightly different version of this mistake is to use too many keywords in one piece of content, giving it no direction.

Google wants you to use content that’s actually relevant to the search terms people are using. So if you’re going to use specific keywords, make sure your content answers the needs of people that use those terms when looking for you.

 

4. Your Content Isn’t Original

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If Google’s Panda update made anything clear, it’s that quality will always trump quantity, at least as far as content is concerned.

In the old days, it was common to duplicate or spin text-based content for as many private blog networks (PBNs) and other link farms. It worked for a while before Penguin and Panda too.

Fortunately, that practice has since been banned, resulting in a search engine penalty.

But if you’re smart, you don’t have to worry about best content practices. You’ll have made sure your content is:

• Original
• Well written
• Relevant

Copying and plagiarizing content from other sites is not only unethical, it might also result in your site being banned from the search engine results pages (SERPs). Remember that there are no shortcuts to content marketing.

 

5. You Have Low-Quality Links

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One of Google’s key ranking signals is a healthy link profile that clearly shows your site’s authority. To achieve this, you need high-quality links coming from relevant, high-quality content across a diverse array of sites.

Some key notes on effective link building include the following:

• More than anything, Google cares about how important the sites linking to you are.
• The higher the authority and the older the indexed age of the site, the more weight and influence it has over your rankings.
• Google also cares about the quality of the content your links are coming from—think news articles from media outlets.
• In addition, Google is also looking for diversity in IP links, as an added guarantee that they’re not manufactured from one source.
• Avoid ineffective anchor text. The anchor text should signal both the reader and the search engine about the context and value of the link. So, stay away from the practice of adding a link to the text ‘Click here.’

 

6. You’re Ignoring Your Meta Titles and Descriptions

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The process of optimizing your site and its content for a search engine like Google doesn’t end once you’ve inserted your target keywords into your landing pages and blog posts. Don’t ignore the value of optimizing your meta titles and descriptions, both of which are critical SEO elements that too many marketers ignore.

It’s not exactly a deal breaker for your rankings, but ignoring them means that you’re also ignoring the potential gains your content can get in search visibility. Just know that search engine bots will always crawl a site’s meta data. If it’s done properly, these factors can improve the performance of your landing pages and onsite content.

Likewise, don’t ignore the power of optimizing images. All images on your site and content should have relevant alt tags, which search bots will use to identify the content you have on your page, adding it the information affecting how your pages are indexed.

In Summary

SEO continues to be a crucial component of any inbound marketing strategy, especially on the content marketing side of things. While this guide should help you avoid some common SEO mistakes, be sure that you understand what challenges other marketers have faced in their efforts to improve their rankings. This will help you understand why these mistakes are so common in the first place.

Qamar Zaman offers SEO Audit Services. He can be reached at KISSPR.com

 

 

 

 

Qamar Zaman
Chief Visionary at One SEO Company. An Internet Entrepreneur SEO & lawyer Internet marketing professional & Starbucks Lover.

from Dallas Internet Marketing Blog

SEO Expert Qamar Zaman Explains – 4 Ways Old SEO and New SEO Are Different

Lawyer SEO Expert Qamar Zaman Says, lawyers needs to make sure that they are keeping up with search engines and observing best practices when creating and executing a strategy.

After Panda and Penguin—Google’s sweeping search engine algorithm updates—the landscape of search engine optimization has never been the same since.

To cut the long story short, what used to work wonders back in the old days just doesn’t anymore.

But the good news is that, at its core, the goals and basic tenets of SEO haven’t changed. Sure, some tactics and best practices may be different, but SEO is still about connecting your brand with your target audience by increasing your search rankings.

Perhaps the best way to describe new school SEO is that it’s about optimizing for real people instead of search engines. But then again, this school of thought has already existed even in the old days of SEO.

For law firms, knowing the best practices for modern SEO is now more important than ever, as more and more providers of legal services jockey for online visibility.

So, how do you know which practices to avoid, and which ones you should be spending more time and resources on? Here are a few key differences between old and new SEO, which should tell you everything about the kind approach to take when marketing your law firm.

     1. Today’s SEO is About Engaging Customers, Not Just Rankings

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In the past, the thrust behind SEO was to focus on a few keywords and trying to rank for them on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Some search marketers believed that it didn’t matter how you did it, as long as you managed to grab and keep top rankings on Google.

However, Google’s Penguin and Panda updates saw to it that marketers could no longer game the system with link farming and keyword spamming.

Today, SEO is about managing your brand’s reputation, and making people want to interact with your brand by spreading quality content about your products and services.

For law firms, this means creating content that attracts your target audience and nurturing them until they become your actual clients. If you have this down pat, your rankings should improve through organic sharing/mentions, and natural linking across the Internet.

To put it simply, SEO is now rooted in traditional marketing and public relations, in that you’re trying to build your law firm’s authority through reputation management and savvy PR.

     2. Keywords are Still Important, But They’re Not the Only Thing Going On

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Anyone who’s been engaged in SEO before 2011 knows that for many years, the industry was always focused on one thing: keywords.

In the past, search marketers would focus on just one major keyword, hinging all their efforts on getting ranked for that specific search term, and only that term.

But as search engines continue to get smarter, the goal is now to think of what search engine users think and want when typing into the search engine. This has given rise to semantic SEO, which focuses on keyword intent and long tail keywords.

For law firms, this means the days of gaming Google with keywords are over, with the context behind searches now being taken into account when showing search results. In turn, this means your content has to be topnotch and relevant in order to generate traffic and improve your site’s rankings.

Relevance will be the primary factor affecting how effective your website content is. This will be both a challenge and opportunity for providers of legal services, possibly requiring them to change their website content and marketing campaigns.  But it can also place you in a prime position to beat your competitors in the SERPs.

Read more on semantic search here http://bit.ly/2ho8iQ6+

     3. Content for People, Not Search Engines

Although the concept behind using content to increase search engine rankings was to create content for readers, search marketers nevertheless deviated from its intended purpose.

In the old days, SEO was focused on creating content that would rank on the search engine results pages. This meant that keywords and keyword density took precedence before the actual quality of the content. And so, you had marketers flooding private blog networks with poor-quality and sometimes even plagiarized content stuffed with target keywords.

But Google’s Panda update pretty much put that practice to an end, forcing marketers to realize that content needs to be written for people, as it was always intended.

Law firms thus need to focus on creating content assets that are not only relevant, but also educate and solve their target audience’s problems.

Read my blog post content for people not for bots

     4. Link Building Should Be Natural and Earned

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To be fair, everyone knew what the best practices for link building were, even in the old days of SEO. Search marketers were already aware of black hat link building and that it was pretty much a way to trick search engines into increasing their rankings.

That didn’t stop many people from building links the shady way though. It was all about jamming as many links into content assets whenever possible, and posting them on as many websites as they could. It was pretty much open season for search marketers, which made postings on discussion forms and social bookmarking sites so popular.

But such questionable practices never had a chance of lasting, and so after Panda and Penguin, the only way to build links without suffering penalties is to do it the right way, as everyone should. In other words, links have to be natural and earned.

A link should be the result of forming a relationship between your law firm’s site and a relevant and authoritative party. Of course, there’s no rule prohibiting you from posting on forums and social bookmarking sites like Pinterest or Tumblr, but you should still be very selective on the sites you choose to avoid any penalties.

What Does All This Mean for Law Firms?

As with any other company, your law firm needs to make sure you are keeping up with search engines and observing best practices when creating and executing a strategy. Most of these changes aren’t actual changes in best practices per se, because they’ve actually been recommended since the early days of SEO—so it shouldn’t be too much of an adjustment if you’ve always put your audience first in your SEO efforts.

Still, it’s important to be fluid with your SEO methods and be ready to adapt to trends and changes when they benefit your marketing efforts.

Qamar Zaman is a renowned national SEO expert for lawyers. With his office based in Dallas, Qamar Zaman specializes in conversion rate optimization for law firms. He works with all types of law firms and helps them get improve ROI without increasing more on marketing cost.  

Follow Qamar on Huffington Post

Qamar Zaman
Chief Visionary at One SEO Company. An Internet Entrepreneur SEO & lawyer Internet marketing professional & Starbucks Lover.

from Dallas Internet Marketing Blog

Dallas Social Media Expert Explains – Impactful Social Media Trends in 2016

You should be able to draw some ideas and direction on how to improve your social media campaigns for 2017, says Qamar Zaman a Digital Marketing Expert from Dallas.

One only needs to look back at the state of social media marketing in 2016 to know that it was definitely a watershed year for the industry. It’s common for trends to come and go in the world of inbound marketing, but this year, we had a number of megatrends that made a huge impact on how brands market themselves on social media.

And as 2016 comes to an end, it helps to look back at your strategies and methods applied in 2016, evaluating if they generated positive ROI for your overall campaign.

Try to ask yourself these questions:

• How many social media platforms did you include in your SMM campaign?
• What kind of content assets received the most activity?
• Did you have a distribution strategy?

Remember these questions and your answers and see how they stack up next to the biggest social media marketing hits and trends of 2016.

1. Live Streaming

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Live streaming has been called “the future of social media,” a claim that marketers seem to hear time and time again whenever a new trend comes into town. But this time around, it seems to be the real thing.

Live streaming pretty much blows the notion of video having to be heavily produced and edited to be effective out of the water. With live streaming, just about anyone can leverage the power of video and share whatever they record in real time.

For marketers, it means being able to use video in real time without having to spend on graphics, editing, and other production expenditures. It’s also a great tool for interacting with audiences, especially if you were to hold a question and answer session, a contest, or an interview.

Interest in live streaming apps first started in 2015 with Persicope, which was later acquired by Twitter. And things haven’t slowed down since, with Facebook Live taking the social media world by storm and used by brands to stream events and interact with their audiences in novel ways.

If you’re still skeptical of live streaming, just look at how Buzzfeed held a live stream event where they counted how many rubber band could be wrapped around watermelon until it burst.

Silly? Sure. But it drew it 807,000 viewers in real time. That kind of engagement is the stuff of marketing dreams.

       2. Social Media ‘Stories’

Snapchat’s Stories is the feature that launched the once-fledgling social media platform into the spotlight, where it would become the go-to app for young millennials. YouTube star and filmmaker Casey Neistat chalks up Snapchat’s popularity to its ephemeral nature—he points that it allows users to share a slice of their life in the moment, right then and there.

Snapchat took a while to develop the same kind of audience as Twitter or Facebook (but it does boast of a staggering 10 billion video views daily), so its Stories feature wasn’t really understood by non millennials for a while.

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It did, however, receive a new surge of attention after Instagram unveiled their own Stories feature, which some would say was lifted directly from Snapchat’s.

In any case, Stories offer a new way to tell, well, stories in ways that are very different from traditional videos uploaded on YouTube or Facebook. It’s more raw, more in the now, and more real—qualities that consumers are looking for in an increasingly ad-heavy world.

     3. Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

 

 

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Research from comScore shows that digital media time spent on smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices is now at a staggering 68 percent. Simply put, we’re spending more time consuming digital media on our phones than on any other platform. In contrast, people spend just a third of their total digital time on desktop computers.

We’ve arrived at a point where your next customer is probably going to visit you through a smartphone, so if you still don’t have a mobile-optimized site, you’re placing yourself at a serious disadvantage against your competition.

Mobile usage has always been on a steady rise from as early as 2008, but 2016 was a remarkable year, with several events happening on the mobile front. For example, consider the Pokémon Go craze, which caused people to spend so much time on their phones, some of them even got into car accidents.

For social media marketers, the challenge is to take advantage of this unprecedented immersion in mobile. One way to do that is by ensuring all your content is optimized for mobile devices.

Fortunately, both Google and Facebook have taken steps to make this easier for marketers, releasing Accelerated Mobile Pages and Instant Articles respectively, both of which essentially streamline website pages into faster and simpler versions for mobile screens.

     4. Gamification

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Fun and games were also big factors in the success of many social media apps in 2016. Perhaps the best example can be found in Snapchat’s filters, which transformed your face into animal heads, added a variety of effects (complete with music), and basically made taking selfies much more fun.

In hindsight, it might not have been very interesting to the non-Snapchat crowd, but it was certainly new and never before seen, at least as far as mainstream social media platforms go.

We also saw Facebook with their take on gamification, unveiling a series of new emoji reactions in addition to their like buttons. Even Apple got in on the fun with a new emoji system that allowed you to supersize, predict, and replace emojis.

     5. Influence and Confirmation Bias

In 2016, we also realized just how frighteningly powerful social media is as a platform. You only need to look at how social media played a role in shaping public opinion over the U.S. presidential election. It’s no secret that social media gives users more control over who and what they listen to, which in turn has led people to boxing themselves inside echo chambers where the only information they’re exposed is what they agree with.

The problem is that social media platforms are also rife with fake news—an issue that Facebook vehemently denies had anything to do with the stunning victory of Donald Trump.

In any case, we might expect to see the major social media platforms to take a more proactive approach against fake news. Most recently, we saw Facebook and Google moving to take fake news sites off their ad network. For marketers, this means more attention must be placed on content quality and accuracy if they don’t want to be kicked off or penalized.

In Summary

Ultimately, by reviewing these trends and events, you should be able to draw some ideas and direction on how to improve your social media campaigns for 2017. The way things are going, social media will only continue to grow next year and beyond. Your job is to anticipate what happens next by understanding the course of social media in the past.

Did you read my SEO Forecast for 2017

Qamar Zaman
Chief Visionary at One SEO Company. An Internet Entrepreneur SEO & lawyer Internet marketing professional & Starbucks Lover.

from Dallas Internet Marketing Blog

SEO Forecast for 2017 by SEO Expert Qamar Zaman a Dallas SEO & Lawyer Marketing Expert

Dallas SEO and Lawyer Internet Marketing Expert Qamar Zaman Goes Over 2017 SEO Trends

As the new year approaches we remain skeptical about things that will good on the internet marketing front and help us achieve our digital marketing targets. Does internet of things have any surprise for us in 2017.

2016 was more than eventful.

Mobile internet marketing grew and SEO trends shifted due to constant Google updates.

This has been a feature of the world wide web that has transformed with lightning speed over the years. With the completion of 2016, one may be uneasy of 2017 and how web marketing, particularly SEO trends, will proceed.

SEO is the first marker of internet marketing as it helps to improve the online visibility of your web presence on search engines. It will be beneficial monitor how SEO will progress in 2017.

Forbes contributes its thoughts on what might be the SEO trends in the coming year.

7 Online Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2017

2016 was an amazing year for online marketing, but the industry never slows down. We haven’t quite hit the end of the year, but it’s time to start thinking about how the industry’s going to change in 2017—and how you can prepare accordingly.

Marketing is a field dominated by those with the foresight to plan ahead, anticipate changes, and jump on trends before your competitors do, so take note of these trends to come and prepare for them. You don’t have to use all of them, but you should be aware of their existence if you want to continue being competitive in your industry.

http://bit.ly/2hh89hC

Mobile has grown over the years and will continue to grow in 2017

Mobile’s growth in the past led way to the prediction of 2016 being the year of the mobile, and it certainly was. The upcoming 2017 will see continual growth as more people adapt to the use of smartphone and mobile tablets.   

• Its Mobile social internet world
• Its Mobile search
• Its about Mobile online purchases
• Its about Mobile online payments

Everyone who searches on the go, does so with a purpose. The intent is to reach a destination, locating a coffee shop, or buying online. The world has adopted a somewhat changed intent as compared to when we used to surf the net through desktops and laptops. We search differently when we are in stage 1 of the buying cycle, education begins  however, we are using mobile handheld devices as compared to desktops.

MORE AND MORE MOBILE

1 purchase on a mobile every 15 seconds in Europe, over 50% of local searches on a smartphone in the world, 50% of internet connections made on mobile in France.  The use of mobile is already preponderant and will intensify in 2017.

The brands and businesses that  improve the appearance responsive to their site will draw all the better their game Also, a complementary pattern emerges. Think of a mixed-use PC / laptop / tablet. As many carriers, that continue to be predominantly used. |Business2Cummunity

Top Mobile Marketing Trends for 2017

The more individuals become contingent to phones, precisely smartphones, the trend of mobile marketing becomes increasingly important and critical for the modern brand. The sooner you understand mobile marketing, the better for your business. With time, few trends have become obvious and approaching towards development of business. Ignoring the trend could damage your business greatly. Here is the list of trends that you might see in 2017.

http://bit.ly/2hh8alT

Video marketing will remain an IMPORTANT internet marketing medium in 2017

Among the types of content that will be used and those that will dominate the internet marketing horizon, VIDEO is and will remain an important online marketing medium.

• YouTube has over a billion users, which is almost a third of the internet population.
• It’s estimated that content delivery network traffic will deliver over half of all internet video traffic by 2019.
• On mobile devices, users spend more than 40 minutes watching videos.

Source |Envato.com

So what are they predicting?

Videos everywhere: Videos in emails, Videos in blogs, even videos in email subject lines? People are consuming videos more than ever, Facebook videos, videos ads, videos in websites etc.

The likelihood for consumers to have multiple devices is growing. Because of this expect in 2017 that cross-device video consumption will increase. Consumers are more likely to seek out videos from multiple different social media channels and websites. On top of that you can expect consumers to be watching video content from a traditional format, while also watching content from a modern format like a phone or tablet at the same time. | Boast.io

7 Video Marketing Trends for 2017 (and What They Mean for You)

Social media is always in flux, and one of the biggest shifts right now is video.

The development of improved mobile technology has enabled widespread video consumption – available always and at anytime. And although video content isn’t new, it’s certainly growing, and will to continue to expand in 2017 and beyond.

Check out the following video statistics reported by Insivia:

• One-third of all online activity is spent watching video
• The average user is exposed to 32.3 videos in a month
• 75% of online video viewers have interacted with an online video ad this month
• 75% of executives watch work related videos on business websites at least once a week
• 36% of online consumers trust video ads

http://bit.ly/2gnq4q1

Closing

Experts keep watch on how things will progress in the world of web marketing. The online marketers who have been, from year to year, working hard can offer expert online marketing advice and can help in carrying over your web marketing to the next year without letting your business disappear online.

About the Author:

Qamar Zaman can help in this transition. Qamar’s web marketing expertise spans over 20 years. He’s helped over 25,000 clients worldwide to achieve online marketing success. Qamar is a Dallas, U.S. based online marketing expert who can be reached at 972-437-8942.  

Follow Qamar Zaman Blog on Huffington Post.

Qamar Zaman
Chief Visionary at One SEO Company. An Internet Entrepreneur SEO & lawyer Internet marketing professional & Starbucks Lover.

from Dallas Internet Marketing Blog

Attorney Marketing Expert Reveals 7 Secrets – Successfully Measure Your Law Firm’s PR Efforts

Lawyer Marketing Expert, Qamar Zaman reveals Secrets for Law Firm to Get More Cases!

In a world that’s more social than ever, the role of public relations in organizations has never been more important. The wrong tweet by a company’s CEO can send stock prices crashing, while a mention by a superstar influencer (think someone like Kim Kardashian) can raise brand awareness in ways that PR professionals working with tight budgets can only dream of.

The need for PR also stems from changing consumer behavior, as more people are actively searching for your products and services on the Internet, reading product reviews, and sharing their customer experience with their online social circles.

Law firms and attorneys are just as affected by this paradigm shift, with today’s clients making a conscious effort to explore their options for providers of legal services. Many attorneys view PR as an unnecessary expenditure that costs too much money, while those who understand its value still want to see numbers and figures to quantify its potential.

As it stands, the global PR Industry is valued at $14 billion as of 2016, but as the role of public relations becomes more prominent, many companies are making the mistake of taking a traditional approach to measuring the ROI of public relations results.

But focusing on the dollar side of your return on investment raises several issues. While there’s no way to guarantee the success of a PR campaign, when it is successful, it raises brand awareness in ways that are hard to quantify. This creates a return on investment that’s beyond the traditional method of measuring ROI on a dollar for dollar basis.  After all, how do you quantify improved brand image brought about by positive representation on digital and traditional media?

So what then are your options for measuring the ROI of your public relations results, and what do you need to accurately quantify your success?

 

• Set Realistic Goals

 

A public relations campaign is only measurable if it’s guided by a strategy. A clearly defined strategy will allow you to identify ideal techniques for reaching your goals. If you’re not sure about your PR goals, just ask yourself what you wish to accomplish with your law firm’s PR campaign.

At the same time, it’s important to set realistic PR goals. Otherwise, you won’t accomplish your objective, much less measure your campaign at all. It’s better to under-promise than over-promise on goals your law firm has no means of achieving.

 

• Get Feedback from Clients

 

Your clients will be the best people to ask if your PR efforts are working and if they understand what you’re trying to do for your firm. More importantly, do they view your public relations in a positive light?

The simplest way to answer these questions is to just ask your clients. Where did they hear about your firm? What part of your communication efforts resonated with them the most? Did they get enough information from the message/s they came across?

 

• Track Press Mentions

 

Another way to gauge your PR’s success is track the amount of press mentions law firm is getting. Of course, these press mentions are more effective if they appear on publications relevant to your potential clients. In addition, press mentions are more valuable if they’re positive in nature. Bad publicity might generate short-term brand awareness, but the larger your company, the more damaging it will be to your brand.

 

• Conduct Market Research

 

In many ways, the goals of public relations closely resemble AIDA marketing and communication model—AIDA stands for “Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.” With PR, it’s to generate awareness, shape customer attitudes and opinions, and inspire action.

Comprehensive research will prove critical in this area. Before launching your PR campaign, identify and track your target audience to see if your PR strategies have a direct or indirect effect on turning them into leads or clients.

 

• Build Relationships

 

At the core of public relations is the process of building relationships—it’s about “relations,” after all. A good PR campaign will seek to create networks with influencers, media outlets, and journalists. In contrast, a great public relations campaign is about building long-term relationships with leads and clients.

Whereas some PR teams often focus on selling the brands they represent, effective PR teams seek to demonstrate how their company’s products and services can serve the media, and through the media, serve the final customer.

 

• Compare the Cost of Advertising

 

If you paid for a placement on a newspaper like The Washington Post or placed an advertisement on CBS, did you get your money’s worth? In other words, was the coverage of the ad comparable to its cost? It might be that you ended up paying too much for ad space but did not receive a proportionate level of coverage.

 

• Analyze Competitors and Compare Your Content

 

Besides the cost of placing ads, it’s also important to evaluate the quality of your ads. It helps to ask yourself these questions when evaluating the quality of your placements:

• How do your ads stack against competing law firms?
• How often do your ads appear compared to your competitors?
• Where do your competitors’ ads appear?
• Are you also placing your ads where your competitors’ ads are?
• What kind of messaging do the ads have?
• Whom are the ads targeted to?

These factors can be used to give your ads and ad coverage a rating (say a scale of 1 to 5), which will then allow you to measure the effectiveness of your PR efforts.

Conclusion

While ROI is an important factor when determining how much time and resources you should invest in public relations, measuring the dollar for dollar return of your PR efforts is not the only way to determine the bottom line. The nature of PR might be hard to quantify with traditional number crunching, but you can still evaluate the value of PR by looking at how it builds brand identity, helps you identify competitors, and builds meaningful relationships with potential clients.

About Qamar Zaman

Qamar Zaman is a Dallas based SEO & Lawyer Marketing Expert  and CEO  for Submit Press Release 123

Follow Qamar Zaman on Huffington Post

Qamar Zaman
Chief Visionary at One SEO Company. An Internet Entrepreneur SEO & lawyer Internet marketing professional & Starbucks Lover.

from Dallas Internet Marketing Blog