Social Media for SEO & Social Networking

 

This week was about learning how to use Social Media to maximize SEO in marketing strategies. There was great content within the readings this week for beginners to start doing the research in discovering where the ideal customer base is hanging out, how to get your business seen online by those customers, and how to grow a circle of affiliates to gain reputable mentions to add creditability to your business. 

One of the first things I learned was to have a plan in place with short and long term goals. Some memorable advice in setting goals to market a business using social media are 

1. Discover your target audience by researching other businesses in the same industry. Find where potential customers are going to find information or content related to the products and services you are selling then create a unique marketing strategy to meet the needs of those customers.
2. Include social media advertising within a marketing budget to reach short and long term goals. Social media can help reach goals pertaining to increasing sales or generating creditability through customer shares and recommendations, so an allocated budget is necessary.
3. Once  a customer "hang out" has been realized, create "content that is segmented, searchable, snackable, and sharable."  Learn about segments from analytic tools within the platform you are using to create relevant hash tags, words, and phrases potential customers are using to make your content searchable to those users. 
4. Make significant content sharable throughout diverse platforms by tracking social shares and backlinks. Knowing this data can help reach marketing goals by understanding what your customer base is really interested in and then make adjustments to keep customers interested. 
5. Start with the end in mind. Dream big for the long-run. Where do I want my business to be in five years? One year? Once a long-term goal has been established, work backwards by setting smaller realistic and achievable goals within a doable time frame. 

Landing Page Optimization & Basic SEO

Learning about search engine optimization this week provided more clarity on how important the relevancy of keywords and their placements are to a business website. I also learned how to utilize different strategies to achieve a higher ranking within searches on the web by enhancing my photos through placement and adding alt-text. 

The key points I want to remember this week about search engine optimization are from the video What is Search Engine Optimization. 

Keywords matter because search engines narrow down all the information gathered on the web to to the relevancy of a few key terms used in a users search. 

Page titles offer more details on the content of a website. Having descriptive page titles which include relevant keywords will increase more traffic to the site. 

Web links between other websites lets search engines know a website has a lot of good information. It also adds creditability to the website attracting more users to the site.

Reputation will grow visibility in searches by adding fresh content, being consistent, and offering engaging material to keep users involved on the website for longer periods of time. 

A mentioned earlier, in addition to these tips, other suggestions from this weeks readings that will improve searches and bring traffic to my website are: First, a good URL should include a keyword relevant to the ad. Second, alt attributes included in images can provide an opportunity for images to show up in search results. Finally, the body text of an ad should be comprehensive and include relevant keywords and phrases. 

ROI & Optimizing Ad Performance

To expand and improve my ad performance, I learned there are several ways to give a boost to existing ad campaigns with just a few simple observations and edits. This week offered a review on keyword optimization for improving ad performance and understanding the benefits of conversions. The article that I want to remember from this week was based on the search term report found in my Google ads account. By accessing the search term report, I can see what keywords users are using to search for relevant products related to my business. For example, if a consumer is looking for a relaxing essential oil, they could enter the search term, "calming essential oil." By looking at the search term report, I can improve my keywords to match what potential consumers are searching for to draw more traffic to my website and optimize my ad performance. In Google Ads help, the article, "About the Search terms report," shows how to access the report and explains the difference between search term s and keywords. Other points to remember when using search term reports are: 

• Modifying the search term report to view search terms used on ads, campaigns, or specific ad groups, can help maximize a list of relevant keywords that the majority of people have used resulting in showing my ads. This is a helpful information because I will be able to add, delete or pause specific keywords that are not performing as well, but may be costing me additional money to run.
• Another factor to improving search terms is understanding match types. Match types determine how closely searches come to your keywords. Depending on how close the search terms come to showing my ads, I can make changes to my match types to be more or less specific to increase y ads presence online. 

Understanding how to use conversions to find my ROI, was more challenging for me this week. Although I understand the benefits of determining a value for conversions and how they can help me maximize my campaign budget, I have a lot more to learn in this area. Below are some helpful articles within this weeks readings that I want to reference for future use. 

Return on Investment (ROI)

About return on investment

Setting up conversion tracking

Relevance & Quality Score

 

This week I learned a quality score is the relevance of how useful my company ad is to the user and how well it compares to other advertisers in the same industry. The key metrics that determine my websites quality score are based on the following and will determine a score status of above average, average, or below average. 

1. Relevance of  keywords and text in my ads. If I advertise "essential oils" in my ad, the consumer must be able to click on my ad and find essential oils or any supporting elements I have written in my ad text filling a need.
2. A click through rate which determines how many people clicked on my ad and what is the likelihood that users will continue to do so. 
3. Quality of my landing page and how east it is to navigate for the user.

An example of how this information is useful and how to apply improvements to a quality score would be if my ad had an average CTR, but below average in landing page experience. This means people find my ads interesting, but they are not finding what they need on my website because it isn't relevant enough to my ad. The landing page would need to be improved to match the existing ad. This could improve my overall quality score. 

Although I am new to online marketing, I found the relevance of a good quality score to be significant in streaming traffic to my site. I needed to do some additional research to fully understand the benefits of Google Analytics and how it will impact my marketing strategies. In my research, I found case studies to be informative and creative in finding what is going to work best for me as I develop my own marketing strategies. A case study I found to be helpful was from The American Cancer Society. Although I am a small company, I liked the strategy used in this case study. By organizing traffic needs in three simple categories, a scoring system was developed based on relevance to the user and what the website had to offer. This study was primarily focused on human behavior, but still applicable to the greater interests of any business marketing strategy and improving quality scores in any industry. 

Case Studies

10 Best Google Analytics Case Studies

From this weeks readings: 

Quality Score in Google Ads and how to improve it.