SEO Blog Post- Week 7 (SEO Monitoring)

During class this week, I read information from http://www.seocertification.org and developed a deeper understanding of SEO monitoring. Essentially, SEO monitoring allows you to deliver long-term success and better overall ROI. In turn, search engine marketing can offer a unique promotional advantage when it comes to ROI. In order to measure a successful SEO marketing campaign it critical to to measure rankings, percentage of traffic from different search engines, and traffic from various keywords.

Furthermore, visitor traffic analysis constitutes another major aspect of SEO monitoring. Moreover, the objective of visitor traffic analysis is to obtain qualified traffic to a site and convert as much as possible into leads or sales. To fully understand this concept, I also believe it is important to understand the characteristics of traffic analysis, otherwise known as the evaluation of referrals from search engines based on conversion of traffic for keyword choices.

Examples of How to Measure Traffic Analysis:

• Traffic on Keywords
• Keywords & Landing Page
• Whether the Call-to-Action was followed for conversion 
• Qualified (Targeted) & Converted Traffic 

Lastly, SEO consultants play a large role in SEO monitoring as well. SEO consultants typically provide SEO services to clients who own websites and would like to achieve a beneficial ranking in search engines. Further, the ultimate goal of a SEO consultant is to achieve higher rankings for a client's website. However, it is important to note that some SEO consultants use spam and are considered unethical, so it is necessary to conduct research and only hire those individuals who are "SEO Certified" and that can provide a ranking guarantee. 

HubSpot Blog Post- Week 7 (Perfecting the Conversion Process & Taking Your Sales Process Inbound)

This week I learned how to perfect the conversion process and take your sales process inbound. To begin, I found it interesting that the conversion process is widely considered the main way to convert visitors into leads. Moreover, there are three main building blocks to implement in order to strive for a successful conversion path. The following picture illustrates the conversion path being put into fruition:

Next, I have also learned about the concept of converting the right visitors into leads when it comes to the conversion process. For instance, it is crucial to use conversion paths to guide visitor's through the buyer's journey in order for them to recognize your call-to-action (CTA). Therefore, the ultimate goal is to attract an ideal buyer persona and guide them to your site through the conversion process. One way to go about doing this is to create a compelling CTA, which is a button or image placed on pages with the sole purpose of driving visitors to your landing page. Once a visitor reaches your landing page, it is then important to make sure he or she views your thank you page. As a result, the visitor will be officially introduced to your content through the CTA or landing page and can now be considered a lead.

In order to ensure that your CTA and thank you pages are effective, be sure to abide by the following best practices:

CTA Best Practices:

• Make your copy action-oriented
• Use an attention-grabbing design
• Make sure to use strong on-page placement
• Repeatedly test for efficiency 

Thank You Page Best Practices:

• Deliver the offer
• Guide visitor further though the buyer's journey
• Include social networking capabilities 

To learn more about thank you pages, be sure to visit the following link: http://blog.hubspot.com/customers/bid/109485/5-Steps-to-Creating-the-All-Important-Thank-You-Page

As mentioned previously, I also learned more about how to take your sales process inbound after this week of class. In short, to successfully take your sales process inbound it is critical to change it to match the buying process of your intended buyer persona. 

There are various strategies to use to fulfill this goal, but one of the most important is to research a lead thoroughly. This can be done by researching the following factors :

1. Company Information
2. The Lead's Industry
3. Check Social Media
4. Lead Intelligence 

Overall, adopting the best practices for effectively transforming the way you sell provides you with the best foundation to take your sales process inbound. Please consider the following picture for more clarification on the subject if necessary: 

SEO Blog Post- Week 6 (Pay Per Click)

For this week of class, I read about Pay Per Click campaigns related to search engine optimization. I learned about the material from http://www.seocertification.org, which is a very informative site that offers bundles of information regarding SEO. Moreover, PPC campaigns are advertising campaigns that run on search engine result pages. Payment is based on the number of times an ad is clicked on the results page. Even more, PPC is the only form of online advertising where media is sold exclusively on clicks and not on impressions or actions. I found it interesting that PPC campaigns are all paid placements, but offer the best opportunity to generate traffic for a website.

There are three major players in the PPC Campaign arena:

1. Google: Google Adwords
• Considered the best in the industry 
• Can invest any amount
• Ads are added automatically 
2. Yahoo: Yahoo PPC Ads
• Defined minimum level for every single element of advertising ($.10)
• Human editors review your keywords and site, as opposed to ads being added automatically
3. Bing 

I also thought it was important to understand how to set up a PPC Campaign after learning about the benefits they offered. In short, it is critical to monitor keyword selection, bidding strategies, advertising text, and landing pages when creating a PPC Campaign. For example, bidding strategies could include Atlas One Point, BidRank, or PPC Pro. On the other hand, advertising text may include the title of your campaign and the ad text used. Further, landing pages make webpages attractive and motivate visitors to visit and possibly view your PPC Campaign. 

Overall, I have learned PPC Campaigns offer insight on how to efficiently track and monitor the success of a website's traffic or success. The following list includes some of the most impactful ideas that I took away from the reading I did this week:

• Google has the greatest overall reach, but Yahoo tends to have the highest conversion rates for PPC Campaigns
• Many experts recommend to use both Google Adwords and Yahoo PPC Ads simultaneously 
• Usage data that is generated from a website is often the most important research to analyze 
• Keyword level tracking systems should be used to distinguish which PPC search engine results in the most cost effective option and best converting visitor rate 

HubSpot Blog Post- Week 6 (Sending the Right Email to the Right Person & Smarketing)

This week I learned about sending the right email to the right person, which is actually rather important when considering a customer base for your business. In fact, email marketing is starting to grow in popularity. It's an ideal way to gain trust with potential customers, especially if you use it as an avenue to listen to your audience's needs and wants. In addition, I have learned that email marketing is a cost effective strategy to strengthen relationships with customers by repeatedly engaging them with remarkable content.

Consider the following link to learn more about how to make your emails more clickable: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/make-emails-more-clickable-list

Here are the some of the reasons why email marketing works:

I have also become more educated on how to send the right email, especially where content is concerned. The following list addresses that notion:

• Determine who your audience is
• Segment your content's database
• Send the right content at the right time
• Nurture your lead into a customer 

It is also important to segment your contact database to create context and to hit specific goals. This includes increasing deliverability, engagement, and reach. Consider the following picture regarding segmentation to truly grasp an understanding of the impact it can have on turning leads into customers:

Lastly, I read about information regarding "smarketing" this week. In short, smarketing is the combination of sales and marketing. It offers alignment between the two fields in hopes to establish and reach goals or buyer personas. There are five simple steps to incorporate smarketing into your business; speak the same language, set up closed-looped reporting, implement a service level agreement, maintain open communication, and rely on data. Although the relationship between sales and marketing is often portrayed as negative, smarketing provides the opportunity to capitalize on that perception and turn it into success. 

SEO Blog Post- Week 5 (Site Readiness)

From material published on http://www.seocertification.org, I have started to learn a lot about site readiness. I was responsible for reading chapter 3 from the certification textbook for class this week, in which discussed two main ideas. First, it explained the different types of link building techniques  that are available to increase search engine optimization. Second, the chapter went into great detail about cloaking and doorway pages, which are two potentially unethical SEO practices.

According to my reading, there are three main types of linking to consider when studying site readiness. They can be considered the following:

1. One Way Linking
2. Reciprocal Linking
3. Triangular Linking

One way linking is when your link is put on a website without exchanging another link. Therefore, it can be considered the best way to improve your search engine ranking. One way linking also protects you from bad links, so search engines will be able to tell which links actually offer value to customers. The one major disadvantage to one way linking is that is usually beneficial in the long run, as opposed to it being helpful in the short term. Next, reciprocal linking is widely considered to be the most popular link building technique to date. It allows two websites to agree to link with one another, which can provide credibility to both parties involved in the link since both believe each link is relevant enough to trust. The main focus of reciprocal linking is to get quality links to generate traffic to a website and increase its ranking in search engines. Lastly, triangular linking attempts to fool search engines that it uses two websites, when in reality it is attempting to turn reciprocal linking into one way linking. Techniques are being developed to stop the ability to utilize triangular linking since it can be considered deceptive.

Another important topic I learned about this week was the difference between cloaking and doorway pages. Thus, cloaking is the process of serving different versions of a page based on identifiable information about a user. On the other hand, doorway pages are built to draw search engine visitors to your website to trick them into crediting you with a higher ranking. Doorway pages are considered an unethical SEO practice. 

Based on what I've read, an example of cloaking would be if a webmaster delivered one page to search engines for indexing, while also serving a different page to everyone else. To gain a better understanding about cloaking, here is a list of 5 common types that are used: 

1. User Agent Cloaking (UA Cloaking)- For Specific Agents
2. IP Agent Cloaking (IP Cloaking)- For Demographic Groups
3. IP & User Cloaking (IPUA Cloaking)- Combo of the two types listed above
4. Referral Based Cloaking- Basing delivery on specific referral strings
5. Session Based Cloaking- For sites that use session tracking techniques

HubSpot Blog Post- Week 5 (Creating Content With a Purpose)

During this week of class, I learned more about the concept of creating content with a purpose. Put simply, inbound marketing cannot exist without content. Therefore, it is crucial to create content that is meaningful to potential end-users of your product or service. In other words, content is the information or message that you are attempting to get across to your buyer persona. Another important concept to grasp regarding content is that the limiting factor for marketing success is attention, not space. So, it is more important for your content to grab the attention of your target audience as opposed to it accounting for more space through social media or blogging.

Further, this week I increased my understanding on how to create remarkable content. To begin, content should focus on the solution to a problem. Hence, you will need to know the problem and who you're trying to solve the problem for before you can create remarkable content. Once this is done, you will be able to determine what content to create that will be valuable to a consumer.

There are two key ideas to consider when creating remarkable content:

1. Buyer Personas
2. The Buyer's Journey

Moreover, I have learned that it is critical to realize that content is the honeypot or bridge between your buyer persona and their respective buyer's journey. A key component to creating remarkable content is to abide by the content creation process, which is pictured below for more clarity:

Finally, towards the end of this week I read about something interesting regarding landing pages. In short, landing pages are when website pages are specifically designed to convert visitors into leads. I found it interesting that HubSpot coined the term "Digital Sales Reps" to represent landing pages. If you want to learn more about landing pages, make sure to visit the following link:  

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33968/Before-and-After-3-Real-Life-Landing-Page-Makeovers.aspx

SEO Blog Post- Week 4 (Search Engine Optimization & Keywords)

Last week I discussed the basics of search engines. After reading up on material from http://www.seocertification.org, I now have a better understanding on search engine optimization. Broadly, SEO can be separated by two major factors; on-page optimization and off-page optimization. Regardless, I have begun to understand that spelling and grammar are extremely important to monitor regarding SEO. If kept in mind, grammar and spelling can greatly increase the likelihood that your site will rank higher when typed into a search engine. This also goes hand in hand with creating remarkable content, as both will give you a significant advantage over competition.

I believe that some of the more interesting information that I learned this week consisted of the differences between on-page optimization and off-page optimization. The following lists will provide a basic explanation on the different factors that make up both types of SEO:

On-Page:

• Keywords
• HTML Tags
• Content
• CSS
• URL Writing

More specifically, I will breakdown a few of these on-page optimization factors to provide a more precise idea of what they are composed of:

Keywords: (Suggestion Tools)

1. WordTracker
2. Yahoo!
3. Google Suggest
4. Digital Point Tool

HTML Tags:

1. Title Tag
2. Meta Tag
3. Alt Tag

Content Optimization:

1. Headline Tags
2. Special Text (Bold, Color)
3. Inline Text Links or Anchor Text (Visible Hyperlinked Text)
4. Keyword Density

Lastly, I will list common off-page optimization factors that are often associated with SEO.

Off-Page:

1. Building Link Popularity
2. Google Page Rank
3. Measuring Link Popularity
4. Anchor Text Optimization 

HubSpot Blog Post- Week 4 (Amplifying Your Content with Social Media)

This week during class I learned about recommended ways to amplify your content with social media to successfully align it with your inbound strategy. In short, it is crucial to use social media as an avenue to convert visitors into leads. Therefore, social media can be considered an effective way to increase your customer acquisition rate. It is also important to note that incorporating your social media links within your blog content can rapidly foster connections with prospects and provide you with the opportunity to display your personality.

According to information that I have learned from HubSpot, content is considered king, and distribution (social media channels) are queen. Both can be considered interrelated, especially if you are looking to attract your buyer persona to your blog or website. Be sure to read this article for additional information on how to effectively manage your time on social media platforms: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33438/11-Ways-to-Make-Social-Media-Marketing-Less-of-a-Time-Suck.aspx

Moving forward, I would highly recommend following these social media best practices to improve your overall content:

1. Optimize Profiles
2. Personas (Know who they are)
3. Build Reach
4. Customize Your Content to Each Platform
5. Analyse to Refine

Another important topic I learned more about this week was how to specifically customize content to each major social media platform. Hence, it is crucial to understand what content is appropriate to post on each social media site that you use. A major component of refining your content for social media is using keywords that attract potential customers to a post or topic, or at least make your profiles more searchable for them. The following picture does an excellent job of illustrating the impact keywords can have on a social media profile:

In addition, I would also consider the following descriptions of the "Big 4" social media sites to ensure you are posting appropriate content with your buyer persona in mind: 

• Twitter: The Conversation
• Facebook: The Personality
• LinkedIn: The Professional
• Google +: The Search Engine Driver