Week 15: Back to the Basics

April 24th, 2019

While quality content and information is a focus of content development, many creators often forget to use basic tips or tools to make sure that your posts are professional. There are many changing factors such as trending topics or search engine ranking algorithms, but constants are equally as important to utilize too. Some of these basic constants of content development include:

• Spell-checking
• Formatting 
• Grammar Check
• Visuals 
• Design

Consistency is one of the best words to describe success in the industry. Creators that utilize all the tools to optimize their content, and consistently produce high quality content usually see growth of activity. Using all the basic tools available is a great start, but it is encouraged to advance your content by using additional tools to help optimize your content. 

These basic tools offer valuable help to correct errors that can be easily overlooked otherwise. Maximize your potential by doing all the little things correctly!

Week 14: Search Console/GWT

April 21st, 2019

What exactly is a Search Console? Formerly known as the Google Webmaster Tool, this service offers users  wide range of data analytics on the people who view your website and some of the insider opinions. This information is essential for making improvements to achieve optimization of a website.

Other functions include:

• Fix errors
• submitting sitemaps
• creating a robots.txt.file

This is a great tool that marketers are taking advantage of in growing businesses, and can be used in many other fields with online interactions. After all, the information regarding your sites performance are hard facts where negatives can be turned into positives after diagnosing the problem and optimizing a solution. Therefore, a search console should be a site owners best friend being that it shows what you could be doing better with. If you are considering using this service, I would recommend that you visit the link below for a few tips or techniques when setting it up.

https://moz.com/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-the-google-search-console

Week 13: SEO Imaging

April 14th, 2019

Today I will be going over the basics of imaging as well as the importance. First of all, using pictures in your content sparks interest in most readers because it shows some style of character. I would recommend investing some time into some photo editing and canvas work because it allows your content to be more creative and more focused on your business activities compared to a picture found off of Google. Social media is also a great outlet for this creativity because it fits the norm and creates a little advertising.

The details matter! Always have a plan for your imaging. The image should have purpose, should appeal to the eye, and most importantly it should better your content(bring activity). Cropping can be another factor of significance being that some pictures have too wide of a background where this tool can help focus the attention. Overall, imaging is a very undercut area of content creation, and I believe that some of these simple reminders or tips can help businesses optimize their output.

Week 12: SEO Decisions and Steps

April 6th, 2019

Today I will be going through some of the important techniques of optimizing a website and some of the steps to take. If I was hired as an SEO coordinator, first I would do a situational analysis of the current activity and some of the actions in place to promote SEO. This way we can diagnose the pros and cons of what is happening in our websites activity/decisions. From there, we can generate alternative solutions aimed at achieving optimization and improving the websites ranking. For example, if the website was unaware of the ranking and had a lack of keywords, it would be beneficial to implement periodic check ups and better keywords to show up at the top of the viewers screen. A simple tool I suggest is Moz's Keyword Explorer which offers some great help in this area. Rank correlates with website activity which is why keyword research should be a strong focus.

One key step to achieving SEO is frequently keeping ahead of the curve via SEO News, so that these new changes in algorithm or other aspects don't make too large of a negative impact on website activity. Also, constantly evaluating results from changes is a great idea to decrease the volatility as the industry is continuously evolving. The list of steps or strategies continues, but these are some of the most important besides the quality of content (which is a main concern). There are many tools available that should be taken advantage of to create the most optimal website possible.

Week 11: SEO Images

March 30th, 2019

Besides content, images are also a great attention getter to attract people to your posts, advertisements or announcements. Proper image selection is essential for making your content the best quality and as most interesting as possible. What goes into proper image selection?

• Relevance
• Color schemes
• Fonts/Lettering
• Image quality
• Uniqueness
• Other design elements 

After looking at multiple CNN articles I am shocked of their layout for articles. It appears that they use one image or video near the top of the article, and spread out related articles with their images or videos intended to have readers go from post to post. In the entertainment section of CNN, they typically just post a clip of a new movie trailer and report on their findings and some additional info regarding the movies. Overall, it seems that they don't value their images highly as they are more concerned with content solely. 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/27/opinions/jussie-smollett-charges-we-are-the-problem-bailey/index.html

Week 9: Significance of Buyer Personas

March 17th, 2019

First of all, a buyer persona is a profile that a business compiles based on lots of research to further understand and relate to the intended audience. Businesses may have many different profiles for different audiences that they may be targeting. These are some of the reasons using a buyer persona is helpful...

• Gaining Trust
• Attracting new customers
• Conversation starting
• Directly meeting consumer needs

Creating a buyer persona is a lot of research and requires a lot of time to fully understand precisely what your specific target wants. There are tools that can be used to speed up the process which is an option for businesses. Innovation of products/service requires a time schedule typically to launch ASAP. Creating buyer personas allows businesses to focus their market marketing goals and make efforts to meet the exact needs through interactions online, face to face, surveys etc. Small businesses can take the advantage over other small businesses by implementing buyer personas, so why not take the initiative?

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/what-is-a-buyer-persona-and-why-is-it-important/507404/

Week 8: SEO Ranking Activity/Strategies

March 10th, 2019


Today I will be discussing some SEO strategies that are used to keep websites high on the list as well as some ways to monitor search results. Long-term strategies are aimed at the big picture, which means that content is the number one priority. Sharing content (via Facebook, LinkedIn etc.) and getting feedback allows consumer insight to help kickstart research on high demand topics that can be a potential attention getter for new viewers. Sharing it via multiple sources will create a larger network of viewers and can improve the activity, thus increasing the rank.

There are many ways to check your rank, one being www.seocentro.com which finds which place a website shows up given certain keywords or phrases. For example, I searched baseball bats to see what rank Rawlings would get (21st). The results show specific data such as speed or spell checks which is instant feedback just by conducting an SEO search. By adding keywords to your content, short-term SEO Ranking improvements may be seen where hopefully new viewers are turned into loyal consumers. Although, changing demands will eventually change the ranking.

Therefore, long-term strategies involve much more work while considering many factors that go into creating relevant and interesting content. Short-term strategies are a meant to be a "quick boost" to gain new consumers or viewers to become active on your site. Either strategy requires close monitoring of the SEO rank to see how your changes made an impact.

Keeping up with trends, algorithms, and posting unique content is one of the best ways to climb the ladder up to the #1 spot.