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.

PPC vs. SEO

March 2nd, 2019

Welcome back once again!

Today I will be explaining some of the differences between pay per click advertising and search engine optimization. To start off, PPC see very quick and immediate results. For example, by clicking onto certain Youtube videos your are contributing to a creators PPC revenue via advertisements and via views. This strategy is aimed at creating high traffic on a businesses website as soon as possible. Businesses may use this during sales to not only promote the sale, but also in hopes that consumers navigate the site and find other products that appeal to them.

On the other hand, SEO strategies typically focus on content to grab consumers attention, but also keep in mind of the algorithms of Google that are constantly updated as mentioned a few weeks ago. These strategies are cost effective, but require lots of planning and detailed work to stay ahead of the curve. A major downfall is that the SEO strategy takes longer to see desired results, and desired results are more risky to achieve (this is because of error and demands of content).

Overall, both strategies require a developed plan to see intended results. With the changing internet environment, it makes SEO a little complicated and requires some exploration for opportunities for PPC advertising. Weighing the trade-offs and choosing the optimal strategy completely depends on the businesses general environment.

Week 6: Traffic Analysis and Tools

February 23rd, 2019

Hell everybody!

Website creators try to achieve high traffic rates and click rates throughout their website, but how do they go about this? Well, there are many tools that organizations may take advantage of in order to gather this information to make strategized decisions on how to further optimize the website. This can be new segments added to the website, eliminations, adjustments and much more. The struggle that some businesses may experience can be pointed towards search engines. These engines are constantly changing, or updating to change how viewers see rankings.

A perfect example is the Google Webmaster Tool which gathers information in SEO analysis. This helps those organizations make decisions in effort to optimize traffic flow while keeping the content ahead of the curve. This is just one of many free websites offered that enhance the overall functionality of the website and improve the ranking.

Since content interests can change dramatically, there should be a very detailed plan for content and constant use of tools to ensure that the website is optimal for your audience.

Week 5: Effective Writing Matters

February 17th, 2019

Happy Sunday! And Welcome back!

Quality content is a large contributor to attracting new visitors through search engine results, but also beware that the content being produced is professional. Unique content using keywords is extremely important because it does improve the ranking closer to the top of the list. Although, it is equally important to ensure that the content is proofread for grammar and spelling errors as many visitors may run away from websites that seem unprofessional.

Other key aspects of effective writing include a focused topic. This means that the content thoroughly describes a topic without creating tangent information, but also getting to the point efficiently. Producing effective content is a long process, so here are some of the steps.

1. Planning
2. Organizing Research
3. Drafting
4. Editing
5. Proofread
6. Testing
7. Posting

Creating professional content is the backbone of websites and blogging. Reports show that roughly 61% of successful content marketers used a documented plan. Therefore, writing content should be strategized as it has a much higher success rate.

Don't forget that this writing should also include keywords and other aspects of quality content as discussed in last weeks blog.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/298090

Week 4: Google Algorithm Updates

February 10, 2019

Hello everyone!

Today I will be discussing exactly what the effects of the recent updates in algorithms are causing and how they function. Content is a large factor in this because there are checks for relevance and originality that rank sites during search results. One of the more interesting factors accounted for in SEO rankings would be location. This means that the searchers results may be different from city to city based on how close you may be to a business producing what you've searched for. Although, businesses cannot control the impact of these updates, they can improve their content and relevance to searches by pursuing a structured plan to increase traffic.

The more unique the content is, the better off the business will be. A huge part of achieving SEO ranking success is keeping a close eye on the changes and news happening to large search engines such as Google. This helps websites prepare for the effects ahead of time or as soon as possible to stay at the top of the search!

Website originality is one of the top priorities to stay relevant in search results. Also, one of the worst things a site can do is to overpopulate advertisements to generate more revenue because viewers will notice and the updated algorithms will affect search engine rankings! I hope I have brought some new knowledge to light for some of you while addressing some of the do's and dont's for improving SER.

Week 3 Blog: Quality Content and Activity

February 3rd, 2019

Welcome back everybody!

Online business has been evolving very quickly in the recent years as new strategies and trends are proving to be successful. There is a variety of ways that businesses are generating increased activity via support chats, threads, ads, social media etc. Ultimately, their goal is to optimize their website to attract as many consumers as possible and hopefully to create a flow of loyalty. A great example would be incentives such as a student discount. For example, Jersey Mikes sub sandwich chain offers a student meal discount which saves the consumer roughly $4 every use. 

One of the most popular strategies to attract activity is a call to action to try the product or service typically with a small incentive. From experience, I have noticed that many businesses are exploring welcoming confirmation emails as an attempt to make consumers feel as they are a part of something special or as a way to establish business to consumer relationship. As growing businesses learn to produce interesting or relatable content, increases of activity flow will be realized. Once the website is optimized, it will be easy for visitors to make a decision because it eliminates uncertainty. Overall, businesses have discovered many ways to achieve high activity rates by offering different outlets of communication for consumers to formulate their decision to become a buyer. Personally, I will continue to go to Jersey Mikes because their subs are high quality and the student deal is too good of an offer to pass up!

Week 2: SEM and SEO

January 27th

Welcome back everyone!

The idea of todays post regards the difference between SEM (search engine marketing) and SEO (search engine optimization). First of all, SEM is digital marketing used to increase awareness over products, websites, or brands. A perfect example is Facebook and how they source their paid advertisements through digital marketing based on user activity. SEO on the other hand, maximizes website usage and popularity by ensuring that a website is high on the list in a search engine like Google.

Why is SEM and SEO important?
Both are important because they offer an extended reach to new potential consumers. SEO allows better connectivity between business and consumer which will help growing business continue to grow. Direct advertising through SEM offers unique opportunities and help create an increased amount of website traffic. SEM gives businesses an opportunity at a competitive advantage over traditional advertising since the people being targeted are already interested in whatever the business is offering.

Social media is taking full advantage of SEM tactics. While they are not considered a category under SEM, sites like Facebook and Instagram have established a mutually beneficial relationship in the marketing world. All SEM platforms use a pay-per click model as well as social media marketing. Even though these concepts share many similarities, they all have specific benefits and differences making each one a useful strategy.

Sources:
https://www.disruptiveadvertising.com/adwords/search-engine-marketing/