Every paid PR placement should be strategically placed to increase brand visibility and to achieve all measurable outcomes. Hence, it becomes necessary to choose ad spaces where placements can be done according to the brand’s goals and objectives. Once ad spaces are chosen it is just as important to audit it before saying yes to the deal.There are specific ways to audit if ad spaces and ad placements you are aiming for can help you to achieve your goal or not.
The modern media buying landscape is flooded with traps and scams that can harm your brand reputation. Google’s major algorithm update is working hard on detecting and taking actions against Expired Domain Abuse and Site Reputation Abuse. An entire underground marketplace of "zombie sites" and unmoderated link networks exists solely to steal media budgets. Hence it is of utmost importance for marketers and media buyers to audit in today’s competitive landscape.
Here are 8 ways to spot high risk PR placements ad spaces before you invest your budget in them:
1. Zero-Friction Publishing
Many vendors promise to post your content within 24 hours of submission which looks great on the surface. Reputable companies proofread the content as well as verify the facts so that their readers can get authentic information. All of these tasks require more time. If companies aren’t doing this, it brings down the reputation of the company as well as the brands that are buying their ad spaces and getting associated with them. Hence, in the long run, it is better to opt for reputable company’s ad spaces and discuss with them how your content can fit best in their ad spaces instead of opting for companies that are ready to do it quickly without discussing anything.
2. Association With Neighborhood
Research the website where your brand will be placed and look at other brands that are displayed on the same website. Discuss where your adverts will be placed and what other kinds of ads that will be surrounding it on the website. Brands must make sure that their ads are surrounded by positive, relevant, and do not look like spam. If the neighboring ads are positive and relevant, the audience will also view your ad in the same light. If they look spam and irrelevant, the audience will associate your ad as the same.
3. Right Engagement Metrics
While going through analytical numbers, don’t just look at views but also at likes, comments, and shares on websites. A lot of time views are purchased just to show that number during the media buying process. Moreover, look at the company’s social media accounts and engagement they have gained there. Research if there is presence of bot interaction and absence of human interaction. This will help you to identify between fake engagement and authentic engagement. There is no point in doing paid PR if there is no actual human viewing and engaging with the content.
4. Navigation From Homepage
Find the recently published article i.e. posted in the last few days. Now go to the homepage and see if you can navigate and reach that article naturally in just a few clicks. If you can’t, other human beings will also not be able to access them easily. If you are investing your budget, you must make sure that humans are easily able to navigate and find your brand. Invest your budget only where people can access your brand easily.
5. Visual Clutter & Ad Overload
Having a visually appealing website instead of a plain website is necessary, and also ads are essential to earn money, but cluttering a website with multiple visuals and ads is a bad idea. If there are too many visuals that are not complementing each other and multiple pop-up ads, then readers won’t stay on a website for long resulting in lesser exposure to your content.
6. Google site: Indexation Check
Many brands have this misconception that if an article is live on its URL, it will also be indexed by search engines. But the article can be easily hidden from search engines using coding and a few simple techniques. Do the given quick test to check if the article is indexed.
Test : Take the exact URL of published sponsored article and paste it into Google with site: operator. For example - site:thewebsiteurl.com/article-slug
If an article is showing up in Google search, then it is indexed. If it is not showing up, then it is not indexed.
You can do this to research how the company managed their previously published sponsored posts and do the same to check once your brand’s sponsored post is published. The budget should only be invested if your article is getting indexed as then only it will be available on search engines like Google and Bing.
7. Long-Term Traffic Audit
Never rely on a company’s provided static media kit. Media kits are self reported and intentionally designed in a way that it favours the company and influences you to purchase ad space. Research and analyze their traffic over a period of time such as the last 12 months. You can take help of Semrush and Similarweb to analyze this. If the graph shows sudden negative results that means most likely the website has suffered from Google algorithm penalty or has lost critical backlinks.
8. Link Attribute Verification - Inspect Element
If you are buying PR for SEO support, you must also discuss the structure of tags in outbound links. For their existing published sponsored articles, you can right-click on any outbound link and select the Inspect option. This will help you to view their HTML structure and analyze how they frame it. Search for tags that have rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". These tags instruct search crawlers to not pass the organic authority to the mentioned links. If you paid for explicit link equity, then these hidden tags should not be there. If you see these tags, it means your website won’t get the passed down authority and seo support it deserves.
FAQ Section
Q1. What are the biggest risks of choosing the wrong website for your paid PR placement?
A. Few of the major risks of choosing the wrong website for your paid PR placement are it will lead to poor credibility of your brand if you get associated with spam content, low audience engagement, reduced SEO value, and waste of marketing budget.
Q2. How can a founder from a non-technical background verify that his paid PR article is visible to search engines?
A. A non-technical founder can verify search engine visibility by copying the published article's URL and searching it on Google using the site: operator (e.g.site: thewebsiteurl.com/article-slug). If the article appears in the search results, it is indexed and visible to search engines. If it doesn't, it may not be indexed.
Q3. How often should brands audit their media partners?
A. Brands should audit their media partner before every major media purchase. They should also periodically keep re-evaluating their long-term media publishing partners as website quality and performance are very dynamic and keep on changing.
