BUS 572 - 3

Concept 1 - Search engine optimization (SEO)

Illustration of SEO (Source: SEO)

The process of making a site "search engine-friendly" - also known as "SEO" -- is probably the most important aspect of website design. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's ‘natural’ or un-paid (‘organic’) search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. It needs to help users find what they’re looking for. To make sure they list the best results first, they look for signals of the following:
• Relevance - for instance, every title, sentence, phrase, header, link, filename, graphic name, video name, data element name, you put into your web page, make sure it is somehow relevant to your subject.
• Importance – how important is the content of the website for search result?
• Popularity – how many times the website has been viewed?
• Trust – is the website/link trust worthy?
• Authority - Is your site an authority? Is it a widely recognized leader in its field, area, business or in some other way?

Concept 2 – Link Popularity 

Illustration of SEO Link Building (Source:  Link Building)

The purpose of a link is to allow a user to go from one Web page to another. Generally, the more votes a Web site receive, the more trusted it becomes, the more important it is deemed, and the better it will rank on search engines. Through links, search engines can not only analyze the popularity of a website & page based on the number and popularity of pages linking to them, but also metrics like trust, spam, and authority. Trustworthy sites tend to link to other trusted sites, while spam sites receive very few links from trusted sources. In our group project we realized that our client’s website doesn't have many external links, which means very few external sites were linking to our client’s website. Having a high link popularity is an excellent way not only to build a website but to also show others how good the website it. When other web pages link to a particular website it draws additional traffic for that website, as well as giving it what constitutes as votes in the search engine rankings. When two websites with very close levels of search engine optimization and information are being ranked by a search engine, more often the search engine will choose to rank the particular website with the higher link popularity first on search engine results pages.
 My question is how can we build the link popularity for our client’s website? Her present external links are Facebook and Twitter only.

Skill Set – Keywords


The most important concept we learned is developing list of potential keywords. Ranking for the "right" keywords can make or break your website. Using keywords correctly throughout a page and a website can be critical when you are trying to improve search engine ranking as part of your Internet marketing strategy.  Because of this, it is crucial that Web sites contain content with keywords that are likely to be used by their target audience. Web sites need to appear when their potential customers are searching for them. For our project we would recommend our client to add more relevant text in her website and using the right keywords.

Reflection

This week’s reading didn’t involve too much new content, but a more detailed version of what we have previously learned. We have already studied about SEO and keyword research in the past weeks so this was like a revision. For the next week I hope to learn more about the campaigns and maybe see some examples or more information about how the competition works. I am also looking forward to this week’s class presentations as well as get ready for our group to present in the following week.

BUS 572 – 2

Concept 1 - Goals, Events, and Key Performance Indicators

Before you plan to design your website it is important to have clearly defined goals. A these goals will be used to measure the success of the Web site or campaign and are crucial to maintaining focus within online activities. A goal is the action that you want your visitors to perform. For example, my client’s ultimate goal is to make sale and have more people visit their website. Although a Web site has an ultimate goal, the process of achieving that goal can be broken down into several steps. These are called events or micro conversions. Analyzing each step in the process is called Funnel Analysis or path analysis and is critical to understanding where problems in the conversion process may lie.

                                               

                      Illustration of Funnel Analysis (source: eMarketing Textbook )        

Key performance indicators, or KPI’s, also define and measure progress. They can also give clues as to what factors you need to work on so as to reach your goal. For example, on a florist website, the ultimate goal is that the visitors buy flowers from their website. Each step in the process is an event that can be analyzed as a conversion point:

Event 1. Perform a search for available florist in the desired area.
Event 2. Check prices and different flowers.
Event 3. Select flowers and go to checkout.
Event 4. Enter personal and payment details and confirm order (conversion).
This is important to understand because it helps you track your data and analyze how you are performing and what steps you should take to optimize your campaign. My question to everyone is what are some other ways to track?

Concept 2 – A/B testing, Multivariate testing, Listening Labs and Single page heat maps

A/b test is a testing process by which more than one component of a web site may be tested in a live environment. It measures one variable at a time to determine its effect on an outcome. Different versions are created for the variable you want to test. For example, does time of day affect overall click rate? What day of the week gets you better open rates? What subject line style works best? Hard sell? Soft sell?

Multivariate testing allows you to test many variables at once and still determine which version of each variable has a statistically significant effect on your outcomes. Multivariate testing allows you to test for example; a page that includes a sign-up form, some kind of catchy header text, and footer.

Listening Labs, which I found very interesting, is also called a watching lab, as this involves watching users interact with your site and listening to their comments. In a listening lab, a moderator asks users to perform tasks on a Web site and asks them to describe what they are thinking and doing. These exercises can provide important information that looking at data cannot. My question is how does it actually work? Do the users sit in front of the moderator and talk?

Single-Page Heat Maps are a program that shows you exactly where users click on a web page. This can also show you what visual clues on your Web page influence where your visitors click, and this can be used to optimize the click path of your visitors.

These testing methods are important to understand why users behave in a certain way on your Web site and show how that behavior can be influenced so as increase successful outcomes.

Skill Set – Using ‘Keyword Planner’ to develop keywords and ad groups

In the beginning I found Google Adwords really challenging to work with. But after the weeks reading and videos I had a better understanding of Keyword Planner. The tool gives you greater insight into which keywords, ad groups, bids, and budgets you may want to use. You can also get statistics and traffic estimates. These estimates can also help guide your decision on which bids and budgets to set.  

Reflection  

This week was a challenging week to work with Google Adwords and to plan our strategy for the ad campaign. I’m sure by the end of the course we will be confident enough to work on our own on Google Adwords. The PowerPoint presented by Sarah had a lot of information which became overwhelming by the end of the class. I couldn’t retain all the information presented by her but I’m glad I can refer to her presentation anytime as it’s available on moodle. My next week’s goal is to play more with Google Adword so that I get comfortable with it.