#googling it and looking at a handful of infographics made by people who have also only googled it (and only abt children) is not real info

[binders-and-beanies]

“Ummm I’ve been researching dyspraxia and I’ve never heard of any of what you’re saying 🤔”

The research:

[topitservices]

Importance of SEO in Today’s World

It is a vital Digital marketing tool that helps the site rank on Google. Even if you have the basic knowledge and understanding, you may not have a strong grip on this multifaceted process. SEO Services is made up of different elements; it is very crucial because it makes your website more visible. In simple words, we can say that it helps in increasing web traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers.

The main crucial elements of SEO are given below:

Keywords

Keywords were the only SEO technique that mattered, but that doesn’t mean they are still crucial yet. The difference is that in today’s world, keywords must be well researched and carefully selected. If you use your selected keywords, then there is a criteria that should be followed: content must be affected by those keywords in a positive way. In simple words, we can say that keywords are phrases that prospects use to find online content and that can be used to connect with prospects who are ever looking for their services to rank their site on the browser.

To find the perfect keywords, there are some steps that every SEO must follow, as given below:

i. That particular keyword must be commonly used in daily day-to-day life that is related to your content. ii. After finding the keyword, there must be a high search rate and low competition. iii.The primary keyword should also have secondary tertiary keywords, as they will add value to your business.

Conent

It is an important part of SEO because this is the vehicle that you use to reach your desired audience and also engage them. If you want to increase your visibility, you must publish a series of blogs about related topics that attract the desired audience. The content must be interesting, valuable, contain relevant information, and last but not least, be shareable with others so that we can reach a larger audience.

Content comes in different forms, like:

i) Blog writing ii) Videos iii) Podcasts iv) Local Listings

Off-Page SEO

It includes external optimization practices that happen on other sites rather than on it. The technique used for off-page SEO is backlink building to your site from external sites. The backlinks must be of high quality, which includes high domain authority (DA). There are many ways to build backlinks; some of the current best backlinks include creating infographics that will be shared, guest posting, and influencer marketing in your content.

Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

It is becoming increasingly important as more people use mobile devices for searches. From a survey, it was confirmed that 60% of all searches are performed locally on hand-held devices. For example, if you own a bike showroom, then local SEO ensures that when people in your area go looking for the best bike showroom in the town, they come to your site because of the SEO that is done on your site by using local keywords like “best bike showroom near me,” “Bike showroom in Delhi,” etc. In this way, local SEO works, which is also defined as creating pages for your business, also called doorways pages.

Search engine marketing

It includes paid marketing for achieving greater goals or also to get business and clients leads for their businesses. In short, we can say that businessmen pay some amount of cost to grow their business in less time so that they can get promoted and also get famed for the factfor the fact that yes, this or that company exists in the marketing.

Although search engine marketing (SEM) is not always a major component of a compressive search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, it also has its place so that it helps you achieve highly targeted audiences. You can also make your search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) work together.

Some of the paid tools of search engine marketing (SEM) are given below.

i) Google Ads ii) Social media ads iii) Pay-per-Click iv) Shopping Ads v) display ads

[thesfwinternaitonal]

What is the dark world of the dark web, the RED ROOMS?

It’s late one night and you can’t sleep. You toss and turn, but can’t seem to doze off. So, you pull out your computer and head to some of your frequented online forums. You are on your favorite subreddit/infographics show when suddenly a popup blocks your screen. The box is all black with red lettering. It reads: do you like the red room? The red room? You think. What is that? You shrug and go to close the popup. As soon as you click on the creepy message another window appears. A list of people’s names who have accessed a red room before begins scrolling across your screen. The list ends.

                                                   An ominous message is left for you to read. It says: everyone who accessed the red room is now dead, will you be next? You slam your laptop shut and sit in the darkness. You are breathing heavily as sweat pours down your face. Well, that was creepy, you think. Your curiosity gets the better of you and you begin doing research on what red rooms are. One of the first things you find after a quick search is an account from a blogger who knows about red rooms. The blogger explains he knows a friend of a friend who once paid a red room on the dark web using cryptocurrency.

               The red room user went deep into the dark web using the anonymous browser called tor. It was the only way to reach the red rooms, because of the insane stuff that happens in them. The user logged in and waited. The live stream video was of a room covered in translucent tarps. In the middle of the room was a chair. In the top right-hand corner of the screen was a countdown. The user had three minutes to wait before the show would begin. When the countdown got to zero one of the tarps was pulled back. A tried-up man was escorted in by a hooded figure. The captive was secured in the chair and the hooded figure left the room. He then came back with a pushcart piled high with tools and instruments of torture.

                                                                 The man tied to the chair began to scream and plead for mercy. But there was none to be had the red room. The user was able to vote for different ways to torture the man. The executioner would read the messages and do it. But there was a catch. The user said that in order to suggest torture people watching the stream had to pay using untraceable cryptocurrency. The person with the highest payment got their torture of choice carried out. The user explained that this went on for around twenty minutes until someone made a monstrous donation to have the captive killed. The execution was carried out live on the red room video for all to see. You are a bit skeptical that something as horrible as torture and murder could be found on the internet. Also, this description, like every account of red rooms you find, all happened to be second, third, or fourth-hand accounts. It seems like red rooms are tied to the dark web, yet when you do a quick google search for ‘red rooms’ a bunch of sites comes up.

                        Yes, they are all either scams or old sites that no longer work, but they were relatively easy to find. This makes you think that people made up red rooms to scam others and it evolved into an urban legend. But the weird popup from earlier in the night still haunts you. You need to learn more. You decide to uncover more about what the dark web is and how it is tied to red rooms. After some research, you find that the dark web is a relatively small collection of websites that are not indexed by search engines, such as Google or Yahoo! In fact, you discover that there are only about 2000 unindexed sites that make up the dark web. When you compare this to the regular internet, which contains well over a billion sites, you are surprised at how small of a niche the dark web actually makes up of total virtual content.

                                          Supposedly the only way to access these sites is to use open source anonymity tools to uncover the hidden IP addresses. Browsers like tor make it incredibly difficult to determine what is on the dark web and who is there unless you know what you’re looking for. The dark web is based around anonymity so it appeals to bad people doing bad things. You scour the internet for more information about red rooms. It is clear they are video streams of people doing terrible things like torture and murder but do they really exist? Can you actually find one that is streaming live? From everything you’ve read, it seems unlikely. Most videos that claim to be red rooms are obviously just scams trying to steal people’s money. “What a time to be alive”, you say sarcastically. As you go deeper and deeper into your research you find an interesting rumor.

                              It is claimed that the term red rooms have been around for decades. The name may have its origins in the movie the shining where ‘red rum’ is written out in lipstick on a door. Later the movie reveals that what is really being written is murder backward. Another hypothesis of where red rooms got its name is from the 1983 horror film Videodrome. In this movie, torture is shown on live tv in a room painted red. Both ideas for the name of red rooms seem plausible. What doesn’t seem plausible is that they actually exist on the internet. People have been known to do terrible things on the internet, especially when their identity is a secret.

                                                You don’t have to go to the dark web to find websites geared towards racism, hate, and cybercrime. All of that can be found right on the regular internet. As you dive deeper into your research on the twisted world of the dark web, you come across a site that is claiming to be currently live streaming a red room. You are hesitant, but you need to know if it is real, so you click on the link. It takes you to a video in progress. Do you think it’s odd that a red room video would be easily accessible on the regular internet, but like so many others your curiosity gets the better of you? The video in progress shows a woman being tortured by a man. The torturer is using different tools to inflict pain. Blood sprays everywhere. The man disappears behind a curtain. This can’t be real, you think. He comes back into view as the shrieks of the hysteric captive fill the room. click the link to read more: 

[seovegasconsultancy]

Tips For Choosing A SEO Consultancy

This list is a personal point of view. Others may have another vision. No order of priority in my list.

1) Choice of queries on which to position yourself.

I read an article this morning in which a "webmarketing blogger specializing in natural referencing" was interviewed. Lots of interesting points in his interview and a few points of divergence, including this one: "it is often the company, its salespeople, its technicians who give the right list" (speaking of priority keywords.

I do not agree at all with this opinion and my experience through the customer cases that we have had for 7/8 years now even shows that this is one of the main mistakes.

In their content, whether for SEO, white papers, blogs, videos, infographics, newsletters most companies (and many providers) make this mistake of staying focused on their offers and not on how they are sought. Experience shows that this has nothing to do with it. Self-centering and brainstorming are often missing the point for SEO and online visibility.

I think a good seo consultant shouldn't be limited to taking your keyword list. He must on the one hand validate if they are relevant (in particular in relation to the level of demand and in relation to the competition) and on the other hand be able to make you argued proposals (with figures) and not limit to selling you what he got for free in a few seconds via Google Keyword Planner (a more widespread case than we would like to believe).

A habit of some SEOs is to refer you to your brand that nobody knows and therefore nobody will look for. SEO is not only positioning yourself on your brand, it is also (above all) positioning yourself on queries around your products, your services and the needs you meet.

2) Speech / commercial approach

Your interlocutor must be focused on you, on your business, on your offers, on your objectives, on your needs and not be limited to trying to blind you with guaranteed nicknames or bogus promises.

Some people also have fun using technical terms that you don't understand. Your interlocutor must get to your level, adapt their language and use an adapted vocabulary.

3) Customer references (on how many keywords they are positioned and which)

Don't be satisfied with speeches and promises. Ask your contact for references in several areas. He must show you that he has referenced BtoB and BtoC sites and sites in different sectors: leisure, real estate, banking, training.

Ask him on how many keywords each site is referenced, on which queries.

4) Google Ads

Be careful, as indicated above, more than half of Internet users do not differentiate between advertising results and so-called natural results. Some providers will take the opportunity to make you believe that you appear in a good position when it is only an ad for your site that is displayed.

5) Packages / tailor-made

Also beware of packages that are already ready. SEO has become very complex today. Practices have improved. There are several sites that target the same queries as you. The standardized approaches that worked 15 or 20 years ago are no longer working today. Each case is unique, the needs are specific to each. Some sites must change their structure, their architecture, the technology used to develop it, others must develop their content, still others must work on the quality of inbound links. The package that suits everyone, actually doesn't suit many people.

6) Directories

Some have told you that in a few days your site will be present in hundreds or thousands of directories. To flee immediately. The main risk of this type of practice is to penalize your site and prevent its good referencing.

7) Number of words

It is an almost systematic subject as soon as we talk about content production (writing articles) with a client. A lot of customers want sites with little content because:

They want to preserve their graphics.

Internet users "do not read".

They do not have the place to put long content.

They don't want long content.

Many sites still talk about making articles of 300 or 500 words minimum and many providers offer this service. Problem: On average, the pages on the first page of the results have an average of 1,890 words.

For the reasons mentioned above, there is a demand. An IT group published a call for tenders this summer with a clear objective of visibility and referencing with articles of up to 500 words. Impossible mission.

Many studies show that the amount of content is a necessary (not sufficient) element for a first page presence. Some studies even indicate that in the United States, it is more than 2,000 words. If you are offered 300/500 words, beware.

8) Relation to time

A referencing in a few days or in a few weeks and which respects the good rules of Google, that does not exist. You should start seeing results a few weeks after the content is uploaded, but SEO takes time and it takes at least 3 months to start having significant results. Watch out for promises of miracles.

9) Measuring results

There are plenty of possible criteria to measure results. Ask your contact what he offers you: what indicators? from which source (s)?

Another criterion: on how many keywords the created pages are referenced. This page ( http://notredamedeparislespectacle.com/villes/zenith-nantes/ ), created in the 1st half of 2017, is referenced on more than 200 keywords.

10) A site referencing requires budget

There are many offers at all prices, including a few tens of euros per month. Problem, SEO experts charge between € 75 / hour and € 150 / hour. Make the ratio from the budget we offer to calculate the time we will devote to you.

Several serious sites clearly indicate that SEO is a minimum of 1000 € per month over 12 months. Below, it's suspicious.

You understood it, I think, SEO is a serious subject, which requires real skills and therefore has a cost. Beware, avoid too good promises and take a step back from the offers that are made to you.

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, July 19 2020

Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy! This covers articles, podcasts, videos and infographics I came across since the late June report, although some may be older than that.

I‘m still working on Etsy search testing and a few new blog posts and pages for my website, so it is still difficult for me to get this summary out more than 1-2 times a month. All suggestions on solutions to my time crunch are welcome. 

If you have an questions, comments or suggestions about my Tumblr or my blog, please contact me here or on my website. I’d love to know what you think! 

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

Latest change from Google: the free Google Shopping listings will now show up in US organic search as part of product knowledge panels. Unfortunately, since they are only doing this for product knowledge panels to begin with, it likely won't help handmade sellers, but could be useful to sellers of vintage & supply items that are known products that will have a knowledge panel. It may be a sign that they are planning on moving free ads to more Google "surfaces" over time, however. Note that it appears that all product knowledge panel ads will be free starting this summer (US only), so that means that any Etsy paid ads for these types of items will become free ads that you won't have to pay EOA fees on if you get a sale. Google claims the free ads are bringing more searcher engagement to Shopping.  

Amazon announced they will begin to show US sellers’ business name and address on the Seller Profile page as of September 1. The same requirement already exists in Europe, Japan and Mexico. 

The USPS will no longer be delivering mail as promptly every day, to cut costs. This potentially affects anyone shipping to a destination in the United States. 

How 7 different companies grew profits during the last recession - there will still be business opportunities during the upcoming recession, but you have to be positioned to take them. 

ETSY NEWS 

Etsy Labels no longer offer USPS international shipping options for all packages under 4.4 pounds other than Canadian orders, replacing them with the Global Postal Shipping Program (GPSP). Many US sellers dislike the GPSP, and have moved on to outside providers that integrate with an Etsy shop and other services, such as Pirate Ship, Shippo, Stamps, and Shipstation. 

The quarterly category & attributes updates are limited to face mask & hand sanitizer attributes for July. Etsy also made some other minor updates recently, including allowing us to set a message auto reply for up to 5 days. 

You may have noticed that Etsy is really pushing Etsy Ads on sellers right now, despite the numerous complaints about the average cost per click becoming far too high last year. I’ve turned mine off permanently, but if you are interested in trying them or fine-tuning them, Etsy released an article and a related podcast with a transcript.

Louisiana and Mississippi have been added to the list of states that Etsy collects sales tax from. 

Etsy raised fees on Reverb to 5%, “to make further investments on behalf of our sellers.” 

Etsy will release the second quarter results on August 5. We already know that April and May were record-setting, and June was also probably pretty good. 

The site has continued to receive decent media coverage for the mask initiative; Etsy is mentioned in several articles/broadcasts a day as a place to get masks, including stylish ones. This article briefly interviews a seller and looks at what Etsy will do next, as the mask demand peak might be over. 

Now that people think of Etsy for things like face masks, Etsy is continuing to market itself as a place to buy everyday items, something it shied away from for a few years. (Remember when Etsy was all about “owning special”?) They’ve added “Everyday Finds” links & Editors Picks pages, and have published tips on what pandemic shoppers are looking for. (Note that the year over year values compare this April to last April, and so were during peak lockdown for the US.)  “Keeping surfaces clean is top of mind these days, and shoppers are searching on Etsy for many types of cleaners, from all-purpose scrubs to washable sponges...134% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “ceramic sponge holder.”...”74% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “mug”...”352% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “diy”.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but this page on the search and ads algorithms appears to be relatively new. 

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

The sea change in online buyer behaviour during the pandemic may mean that you need to update your keyword research. Keyword volumes have changed, some very dramatically. For example “‘adult bikes’ shows a massive upturn.This represents over ten times as many searches for this term compared to just under a year ago. If you projected this back in 2019 you’d probably be laughed at.”

Speaking of keyword research, if you need a refresher on why you should do it and how to approach it, here is a recent article. 

There are many different ways to get backlinks; here are a few that are pretty easy [video & text]. 

Are longer blog posts better for SEO? Not necessarily, as long as you cover the topic well. The exception is that blog posts under 300 words are usually not worth writing. 

Most SEOs think there was an unannounced Google update around the third week of June. Some are reporting that sites that specialize made gains, as opposed to those who have more general material. That same study reports Etsy had one of the largest traffic increases, but not as much as Pinterest (I’ve been seeing a lot more pins when Googling lately, so this seems likely.) Government websites also seem to have received better visibility. “As Google has described in their document on how they fight disinformation, they describe that their systems are designed to prefer authority over other factors “in times of crisis”. If this truly is related to what we saw happen in June, these changes could possibly be reversed once the worldwide pandemic situation improves.”

Bing released a few basic tips on how to use its keyword planner. 

(CONTENT) MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails) 

TikTok has moved out of Hong Kong, while the US government may be looking at banning them, following India’s move on July 6. With TikTok in peril, many people are now downloading its competitor Byte. 

If you use Facebook for your business, please read up on the changes required to comply with California’s new privacy law. 

Instagram is now testing an Instagram Shop tab, which allows users to filter by category. 

Twitter is planning on starting a subscription service, but deleted some of the details  from the job listing just hours later. 

One of the results of the big Twitter hack on July 15th was Google removing the Twitter carousel from its search results. 

Pinterest searches involving Christmas started way earlier this year, with a 77% increase YOY in April. “That includes a 3x increase in searches for “Christmas gift ideas”, while other queries like “holiday recipes” and “Christmas” were up more than 90% and 80% respectively.” These are good stats for marketers to have, helping us decide when to release and promote new products.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS) 

Spending too much on Facebook ads? Here are some common mistakes and some suggestions on fixing them. 

If you already know that ROAS stands for “return on ad spend” then some of this article may be old news to you. 

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING 

If you are using Google Shopping with your website, be aware that the Google bots may be inflating your abandoned cart rate. 

Google Analytics can help you track the effects of changes to your website, or other business conditions. You can also get alerts when certain types of events happen, or when traffic is abnormal. 

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS 

Walmart is expected to launch Walmart+, similar to Amazon Prime, this month. But note that while many brick & mortar businesses are now doing a lot more business online, it is more expensive for them. 

For those of you who use Stitch Labs, they have been purchased by Square, and the existing services will likely be cut in 2021. 

Deja vu for Etsy sellers - eBay was apparently offering incentive payments for signing up for their new Managed Payments system by mid-July. (Etsy did the same with its Etsy Payments system, but only for Americans.)

Is Amazon Handmade as good for small makers as it claims? Maybe not. If you sell on Amazon, consider these strategies to protect your core business from being swamped by the big A. 

Wix has introduced an ecommerce version with a lot more options and integrations. 

Shopify’s new “Shop” app has some good features but also some issues. [podcast & edited transcript]

BigCommerce filed to go public, and added Ayden as a payment option. More details on the Ayden move here. 

Did you know there are sites you can use to sell your ecommerce business? Here are 10 of them. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

US ecommerce sales are now expected to grow 18% this year, while overall retail is predicted to be down 10.5%. “In a pandemic economy, consumers have gravitated toward trusted and reliable retailers. As a result, we can expect the top 10 ecommerce retail businesses to grow at above average rates (21.8%). Amazon will gain US ecommerce market share this year, while Walmart's accelerating ecommerce growth will take it to the No. 2 position for the first time.”

Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a factor you can use to drive sales; here are 6 tips. 

Generation Z is acutely attached to internet use, and is more likely to be planning on starting their own business than any other generation. 

MISCELLANEOUS 

It’s possible that the increase in people working from home will lead to more work hours and therefore more burnout.

[purplesurveys]

563

Have you ever been to a Chinatown in any of the cities you’ve been to? No. The Chinese are rude to Filipinos so I don’t really like going to places that commemorate their culture lmao How old was the oldest person you’ve dated? I haven’t dated anyone older than me. My girlfriend is the same age but I’m also like a month and a half older than her haha. Do you know anyone who has their own podcast? I don’t think so, unless someone I know has a side project that they’re keeping a secret. Who is the first person under C in your phone’s contacts? How old are they? Considering that Apple files contacts by last names, the first person under C on my phone is Mike. I’m fairly certain he’s also 21. If not, my second best guess is that he’s 22. Have you ever been to couple’s counseling? No lol, I would be worried if I had to already resort to counseling while being in my first ever relationship <- Aha, same. I’d also be worried that we would be needing couple’s counseling this early on in our lives in general.

How often does your employer ask you to work overtime? I don’t work yet. What did you have for dinner last night? I skipped dinner last night because of my toothache but the last thing I ate yesterday was a slice of pizza. How many children do you want, and how did you decide on this number? One or two. I’d consider three, but that would be pushing it. They just seem like the most manageable of options. Where did your last kiss take place? It was in my car just before Gab’s ride going back to her dorm drove by to pick her up. Did you often read for fun when you were a kid? Yesssss reading was my whole life as a kid. Books were all I asked for during Christmases and my birthdays and I’d always spend my free time reading. I wonder where that girl went. ^ What were some of your favorite books? I liked book versions of Disney movies; I’m not sure if they still do those but I had thick books of literally the Disney Princess movies translated into book form. I also liked reading books of nursery rhymes because they usually had cute illustrations. My dad also geared me up pretty early and bought me encyclopedias that were a little too advanced for my age; they did have maps and infographics and other illustrations that made them fun to read, and it definitely helped form my love of trivia that still stands today. When and why did you last feel lonely? This afternoon. No reason, the feeling just comes and goes. Are you more of a visual learner or an auditory learner? Visual. <- Same. I find it difficult to follow through when the only option is to listen to a source. Do you have any dietary restrictions? Nope. Do you prefer Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze, or something else? I use Waze when driving everywhere because it tells me the traffic situation for my entire route as well as my ETA, and since it’s the norm in the Philippines. I can’t imagine using any other app for directions. What is your favorite coffee brand? I'm a Starbucks hoe through and through. Coffee Bean is slowly winning my heart over too, though. What is your favorite tea brand? I don’t like tea. Have you ever worn false eyelashes? Once, and it was just for junior prom. That night gave me awful memories and part of my coping mechanisms in the aftermath is to just never ever wear faux lashes ever again. How old does someone have to be for you to see them as an adult? 25 or 26. Do you ever ‘manspread’ when you sit down? When I’m sitting on a solo chair, yes. Which of your good habits has made the biggest positive difference in your life? Going out of my way – sometimes literally – to help my friends out. For instance whenever they ride in my car I’d never tell them that their drop-off points are usually quite far from where I’m supposed to be headed, but I know it’ll make it easier for them so I drop them off where they need to be anyway. The relief on their faces when they know they don’t have to commute as much as they usually do everyday is worth it. Or sometimes, when I’m already free to go home, a friend would need a ride but they get out later than I do but I’m okay with waiting for them. Idk I just like doing good deeds for my friends because it’s what they deserve :) When I have shitty days it always helps to look back on my day and realize I helped a few people. Have you ever dated someone who was very lazy? Gabie is the COMPLETE opposite of lazy, so no. Girl hustles hard. Have you ever turned down a job offer? I haven’t received one yet, or looked for a job in general <- Same. What was the last medical appointment you scheduled? Dentist. What are some of your favorite alcoholic drinks? Tequila and certain cocktails, like the Zombie. Any mixed drink with gin is also a go for me. Have you ever taught an elderly relative how to use a computer/smartphone? Yeah my mom used to be awful on the laptop so I would help her out. Where did you get the shirt you’re wearing? No clue. It was probably a hand-me-down. How many people can be seated at your kitchen table? Six.

[ronaldsmcrae86]

What is Content Marketing? (An Easy Primer for Beginners)

Have you been Googling “what is content marketing” and keep finding lightweight fluff or, worse, ultimate guides packed with so much info that reading them is like drinking through a water hose? If so, this simple, thorough primer is just what you need.

How does this sound?

A marketing channel that…

Stands the test of time. You can do it for years without the channel going out of style or your work becoming less effective.

Provides a compounding positive return on investment that improves as it ages. You put in $100, and by the end of year three, it’s made $10,000.

Helps you attract, convert, and retain customers. It does triple duty without triple the work or investment.

If it sounds too good to be true, I have good news.

It’s not. This marketing channel exists.

It’s not just for online influencers. It’s almost free to kick off and run. And you don’t have to do anything illegal to start it.

It’s content marketing.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic marketing channel that drives user and customer acquisition and retention through the consistent development and distribution of digital content.

All types of businesses use content marketing, from individual consultants and solopreneurs, to large media and ecommerce companies.

Back to Top

Why Is Content Marketing Important?

Many marketing teams new to the content marketing process will publish a few articles, track their performance for a few weeks, and then throw up their hands in frustration when Google Analytics shows that they didn’t make any sales.

“We tried content marketing and it didn’t work” they’ll say, and then move onto the next channel experiment to find their golden ticket to marketing nirvana.

But the truth is, they didn’t give content marketing a fair shake.

Content Marketing Acts as the Engine for All Other Marketing Efforts

The majority of content-driven sales won’t show up as “last touch” conversions. That’s because content marketing rarely gets the credit for the sales it has a big hand in driving.

Not sure what I mean?

Consider the following customer journey scenario:

You’re traveling to Europe for business, and when you arrive at your destination, you need to be on your A-game, as you’re meeting a potential customer that would be career-making if you were to land their business.

The problem? Between the dehydration, jet lag, bloating, and headaches, you never feel good when you fly.

But because this is such an important business trip, and you know it’s extra important to stay healthy while you’re traveling, you try to find solutions on Google.

You type in “healthy travel tips” and find this article with 12 strategies to stay healthy and feel better before, during, and after your flight.

After reading the blog post, you continue planning your trip. The next day, you’re browsing Facebook or LinkedIn and you see an ad for a health supplement to support your body while traveling.

When you click on the ad, you’re brought to the same site you visited the day before.

When you go to leave the page, a form slides in offering you a 10% discount in exchange for your email. You enter your email address and then go back to browsing social media.

The next day, you open your inbox and find an email with your coupon code for 10% off the drink mix. You use the coupon at checkout and feel prepared for the long flight ahead of you.

Now, when the company’s marketing team reviews their metrics, your purchase will likely be attributed to email marketing. That’s because you bought the product from the follow-up email they sent you.

However, without good content marketing, you never would have been retargeted on Facebook or LinkedIn with the advertisement that led you to become a subscriber to their email list.

In other words:

A content marketing campaign is often a customer’s first interaction with you.

Back to Top

What are the Benefits of Content Marketing?

Of the many marketing channels available to digital marketers, content marketing is one of the channels with the widest-reaching benefits, because it enables many other channels to be more effective.

A successful content marketing program will also benefit all stages of the marketing funnel.

Here’s how:

1. Drives Sales Conversions

As with any inbound marketing channel, the main purpose of any content marketing effort is to drive sales and conversions.

Some content closer to the bottom of the marketing funnel, such as sales pages and landing pages, will drive direct conversions, but the majority of content captures users at the awareness and interest stages of the funnel, so they assist in driving sales, as mentioned in the earlier scenario.

2. Increases Website Traffic

With a few exceptions, you can’t convert people who never land on your website.

Experienced marketers look to content marketing to drive traffic to their websites and grow their customer base.

The best part about content marketing is that the traffic a good content strategy can drive is targeted and qualified.

You create valuable content that is highly relevant to your products or business, and your new visitors are seeking that content, so they’re more likely to be warmer leads.

The warmer the lead, the more likely the lead will become a new customer.

3. Improves Brand Awareness

Say you were to launch a new yoga gear brand from scratch. You have no traffic, no customers, and no brand awareness. Nobody knows who you are.

But then, you begin publishing consistent content that’s high quality. And your ideal customers — beginner yogis and yoga enthusiasts — start to see your brand name when they’re searching for yoga content.

On YouTube, the 5-Minute Morning Yoga video content you developed is popping up when they’re searching for guided yoga videos.

On Google, the content you developed about the different poses, and the benefits and types of yoga begins to show up in their search results.

They begin to see your brandmark on the infographic you developed that’s been shared on social media.

As you create and publish more relevant content, your target audience begins seeing your brand everywhere — you build brand awareness.

That’s because content marketing is extremely powerful in building brand awareness online. So powerful, a whopping 81% of survey respondents in a recent CMI report touted content marketing’s effectiveness in boosting brand awareness.

In short, it works.

4. Enables Other Marketing Channels

Because content marketing is effective in driving traffic and brand awareness, a solid content marketing strategy can enable and drive a return on investment for other marketing channels.

For example, when you attract visitors to your website via an informative, valuable piece of engaging content, you can then capture their email address, thereby activating your email marketing strategy.

If you don’t capture their email address, you may be able to retarget them with a social media marketing or PPC advertisement, driving them back to your website to convert later.

5. Acts as a Backlink Magnet

Whether valid or not, backlinks are still often viewed as the holy grail of digital marketing.

“If we had more backlinks, we’d be able to rank for this search term, have a better domain authority, and be more trustworthy.”

“If we had more backlinks, we’d be able to attract more partners, affiliates, and influencers.”

But “link building” should not be used as a verb. It’s not something you should go out and do.

After all, the sites that are willing to link to your article because you reached out to them and asked them to, or in exchange for a monetary reward or reciprocal action, are probably not the type of websites you want links from.

Those who write for or operate the websites that you want links from — the media sites, popular bloggers, and influencers — link to the best, most relevant content, because they don’t want to waste their audience’s attention on anything else.

When you publish the best content on the internet about your topic, you’re building a backlink magnet. Backlinks will come to you. You won’t have to seek them.

6. Builds Your Email List

Aside from content marketing, email marketing is the channel well known for having one of the highest return on investments available.

It makes sense too.

A list of people who wanted to hear from you enough to give you their email address are far more likely to convert than anybody else — besides maybe your mom.

Content marketing provides ample opportunity not only to drive qualified traffic from whom to capture emails, as mentioned above, but also to incentivize visitors to subscribe to your email list.

Back to Top

What are the Different Types of Content Marketing?

When many people think of content marketing, they think mainly of written content, such as blog posts. While this is the most widely-known content type, there are different mediums through which to deliver content, including audio, visual, written, and video.

1. Written Content

Written content is the most widely known form of content, and is what you’re consuming right now as you read this guide. This includes:

Blogging (articles and posts)

Ebooks

Whitepapers

Swipe files

Case studies

PDFs

Written content is the most popular form of content for good reason: it allows you to target relevant keywords in hopes of ranking on the first page in search results for that search term.

For example, the SEO (search engine optimization) friendly Happiest Baby website, which sells products to help newborns sleep, ranks #1 for the popular search term “baby sleep schedule”:

This undoubtedly brings in plenty of traffic.

It’ll happen eventually, but Google’s not yet savvy enough to identify these keywords in audio or video content beyond listing data, so when you’re creating a good content strategy, written content is where most content marketers start.

2. Audio Content

Most of us consume audio content regularly, in the car on our way to work, on the treadmill, or in the kitchen cooking.

Examples of content in audio format include:

Podcasts

Audiobooks

Radio shows

If you’re a regular listener of podcasts, you probably feel like you know the show host somewhat personally. That’s because it’s hard not to feel friendly with somebody when you hear their voice talking about something that matters to you every day!

Audio content allows you to connect with your audience more personally. Many marketers supplement their audio content with written content like a blog post or transcript to help rank for relevant keywords.

3. Video Content

When you think of search engines, you probably think of Google, Bing, and Yahoo, right?

But believe it or not, YouTube is one of the largest search engines in the world. Every time you watch something online, you’re consuming video content. Video content exists on:

YouTube

Tiktok

Instagram (IGTV, Instagram Story, and feed videos)

Facebook (Facebook Watch, Facebook Live)

Recorded webinars

Digital course sites (Skillshare, Creative Live, Lynda.com, etc.)

As our friends over at Ahrefs prove, video content can be highly effective in educating, converting, and building brand awareness:

4. Visual Content

Another common type of content marketing is visual.

Content marketing examples of visual content include:

Infographics

Slide decks

GIFs

Memes, etc.

High-quality visual content often is developed to supplement and enhance written or video content, though it can also be consumed by itself.

Back to Top

What is Content Marketing? A Marketing Force Multiplier

Abraham Lincoln has been quoted as saying, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Applied to marketing, high-quality content marketing is like sharpening your axe.

It makes all of your other marketing more effective.

It’s sustainable, strategic, and provides long-term growth.

It provides an unreal return on investment.

And it’s completely organic. It’s one of the only marketing channels you don’t have to “pay to play.”

Bottom line?

If you’re ready to increase your traffic, improve your brand awareness, grow your email list, and make more sales; you should start building a great content marketing strategy today.

The post What is Content Marketing? (An Easy Primer for Beginners) appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/what-is-content-marketing/

[margaretbeagle]

How We Used Guestographics to Improve SEO

SERP is volatile. Staying on top of these fluctuations can take up as much time as any other marketing process. Worse, a lot of these efforts to improve SEO have become overused.

It’s a harsh reality but it’s the truth. So, what can marketers do?

Our marketing team has tried numerous different methods over the years to improve our SERP. Out of all of them, one method has consistently proven successful—offering Guestographics.

What is a Guestographic? It’s a term we coined internally but it’s catching on. Essentially, it’s an infographic we create for guests or partners.

The process is collaborative. We offer to design an exclusive Guestographic for a site. All we ask for is credit for designing it and a link of our choice.

Sounds simple? Most of this process is. And that’s why we want to share it with other marketers.

We’ve had so much success with this technique over the years. For instance, Guestographics have directly contributed to 200,000 of our organic sessions a month.

So, what does a Guestographic look like? Here’s one we made for Mention around their study on social sentiment.

Source: Venngage

Now you know what a Guestographic is, let’s explain why you should create one to improve your website SEO.

Why Should You Use Guestographics to Improve SEO?

As a design solution, we’ve learned one crucial thing—people love visuals, as you can see from these visual marketing stats.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/venngage_5-visual-marketing-statistics-for-2020-activity-6654042308683665408-OrM7

Visuals are great for breaking up text and they also share complex information at a glance.

There’s so much content available online that a well-designed and well-placed visual arrests the user’s attention.

That’s why our Guestographics strategy has worked so well. Marketers want their content to        stand out in the crowd and visuals can help them do that.

But there’s yet another reason why Guestographics work—they make for great backlink opportunities.

Let’s break down the backlink process. You send your cold outreach to hundreds of sites asking if they can link back to you, and you promise to do the same for them.

Guess what? Dozens of other sites are doing the same thing. Why should any site prioritize you over someone else?

This is where value-addition comes in. When you reach out to sites and offer them more than just a link—say, a Guestographic—you make your offer more attractive than everyone else’s.

We also found that, by designing Guestographics for sites, we were able to get links on hard-to-place anchor text. It’s a win-win.

There are so many benefits to using this strategy to get more backlinks, improve your website SEO, and increase your contacts database. But how can you create Guestographics?

How Can You Create a Guestographic to Improve SEO?

Now you know why you need to offer Guestographics. But how do you go about this process? We’ve tried different methods and these five steps worked best for us.

Choose the Right Content to Improve SEO

Not all content makes for a great infographic. We found that out the hard way in the early days of offering Guestographics.

If a blog post has multiple subheadings or different sets of data, it becomes impossible to pack them all into one infographic. The final product becomes confusing and won’t win you any links.

On the other hand, if your data can be categorized into a few subsets, you can create a data infographic like the one below.

Source

There’s a lot of information in the infographic but it’s not overwhelming and it follows one theme. That’s the kind of overlap you’re looking for when you offer to design Guestographics.

We recommend that beginners start with simple topics like lists. For example, we reached out to Hubspot to turn their lead generation list into this simple infographic.

Source: Hubspot

How do you find articles with lists that you can potentially turn into Guestographics?

We use Ahrefs for most of our SEO planning. Their Content Explorer is easy to use—search for your topic and export the list as a CSV.

For example, if you’re looking for lead generation tips, you’ll see a page like this one.

Once you have a list of topics, sort them by relevance. The site and topic must have some connection to your brand.

If Google notices that your backlinks are coming from random sites, you won’t appear as an authority in your space. Rather than improving your SEO, you could end up hurting it.

Also, look for articles that lack visuals but have clear formatting. This makes it easier to adapt them into an infographic.

Determine Who the Guestographic is For

As we mentioned before, the Guestographic you create needs to be for a site in your niche. This helps build brand authority and awareness, and improves your SEO, of course.

Let’s not forget, designing a Guestographic requires some work. You want to expend effort for a purpose.

The best way to do this is by studying your current customers and their journey. Who are they? Why would more users like them support your brand? What are their interests and pain points?

By answering those questions, you can get crucial demographic information, but more importantly, you can learn what your users are interested in.

This will help you narrow down your list of potential sites that will have the largest impact on your audience and your SEO.

Improve SEO with the Right Guestographic Keywords

Keywords are a crucial element of SEO. The Guestographic process won’t be successful if you haven’t determined your keywords.

As we’ve mentioned a few times now, you want to get backlinks on sites that are in your niche. They can direct the right customers to your brand.

Go to Google Keyword Planner or other popular keyword tools and look for a seed/ primary keyword. Also, note the related keywords and long-tail keywords.

This will help you search for topics in the Ahrefs Content Explorer.

The great thing about keyword research is that you don’t need to think about what sites to search for—you already have the topics, so now you just need to filter by relevancy.

Once you have these keywords, you can plug them into Ahrefs and find content that you could pitch a Guestographic for.

But don’t throw the list of keywords away once you’re done.

You can always use them in the alt-tags of your Guestographic. Visuals rank on Google Image Search, so that’s a lucrative area to target.

I know this sounds like a lot of work, but you will get the hang of it with some practice.

Pitching Your Guestographic

Once your research into your audience, keywords, and relevant sites is complete, you can move on to pitching your Guestographic.

It’s important to get to the point with your pitch. Nobody has time to read 300 words about why your company is great.

Let the contact know why you’re getting in touch, what you’re offering, and what you would like in return. Schedule 2-3 reminder emails and if you don’t get a response by then, move on.

Now, pitching is always going to be a thorny process. You can write the best pitch in the world and someone will still find a reason to come back with a rude response.

Ignore those emails and concentrate on the positive replies.

There’s one thing we’ve learned while collaborating with other sites: there are a lot of emails exchanged in this process.

It takes up so much time that we had to make adjustments. First up, ask for an outline from your contact. Don’t offer to create the outline because the review process is long-winded.

Instead, ask the contact to condense their article into headers and one-liners. Since they’ve written the piece, they know which points are the most important to readers.

Always ask for brand colors, fonts, and their logo. Don’t try and match it yourself because that could cause errors.

Simplify the process further by giving them design options. That way, everyone’s expectations are limited and the contact is happy with the final product.

It usually takes about two or three drafts of the Guestographic to reach final approval. Then the contact can publish their brand new infographic.

Design Your Guestographic

You have all the information you need to design the Guestographic. As a design solution, we know how to create infographics. Not all sites have this resource.

However, there are online platforms that make creating infographics easier—Venngage is one such solution.

If you’re creating designs from scratch, keep graphic design and infographic layout rules in mind.

For example, there are visual hierarchies that designers need to adhere to. Z patterns and F patterns, as you can see below, are how the human eye moves over an image.

  Source: Venngage

Once the design is complete, send it for final approval. As we mentioned, there will be edits but it shouldn’t take long to get the design approved and ready to publish.

At this point, let the contact know how you want to be credited and what link and anchor text you want them to include on their page.

And there you have it, a potential long-term partnership with a site in your niche, and a backlink.

Improve SEO Ranking with Guestographic Promotions

Publishing a Guestographic doesn’t mean that the process has ended. You want the collaboration to continue so you can earn more backlink opportunities.

Once the infographic is live, you have to start promoting it. Let people know that you’ve created a Guestographic for the site by sharing it on your social channels.

Divide the graphic up into smaller content pieces—this makes it easier to share on social media. Ask the contact to share the posts on their platforms, as well.

Share the graphic with your existing contact list. You may even get some people in your database interested in creating a Guestographic of their own.

You can also write to other sites in your niche, letting them know that you’ve successfully published a Guestographic and would love to offer them the same service.

The point isn’t just to create one Guestographic; it’s to use each Guestographic to earn multiple backlink opportunities.

Start Improving Your SEO with Guestographics

Marketers have exhausted their methods of improving SEO. Especially since brands have become used to receiving outreach emails.

You have to stand out from the crowd to get your content noticed and to earn backlinks. That’s why we’re suggesting you use the Guestographic approach.

In this guide, we’ve shown you how to improve your backlink process by creating and offering Guestographics.

This is the kind of strategy that adds value to your contacts and creates long-lasting relationships for your business.

The post How We Used Guestographics to Improve SEO appeared first on Scoop.it Blog.

How We Used Guestographics to Improve SEO published first on https://improfitninja.weebly.com/

[devontroxell]

How We Used Guestographics to Improve SEO

SERP is volatile. Staying on top of these fluctuations can take up as much time as any other marketing process. Worse, a lot of these efforts to improve SEO have become overused.

It’s a harsh reality but it’s the truth. So, what can marketers do?

Our marketing team has tried numerous different methods over the years to improve our SERP. Out of all of them, one method has consistently proven successful—offering Guestographics.

What is a Guestographic? It’s a term we coined internally but it’s catching on. Essentially, it’s an infographic we create for guests or partners.

The process is collaborative. We offer to design an exclusive Guestographic for a site. All we ask for is credit for designing it and a link of our choice.

Sounds simple? Most of this process is. And that’s why we want to share it with other marketers.

We’ve had so much success with this technique over the years. For instance, Guestographics have directly contributed to 200,000 of our organic sessions a month.

So, what does a Guestographic look like? Here’s one we made for Mention around their study on social sentiment.

Source: Venngage

Now you know what a Guestographic is, let’s explain why you should create one to improve your website SEO.

Why Should You Use Guestographics to Improve SEO?

As a design solution, we’ve learned one crucial thing—people love visuals, as you can see from these visual marketing stats.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/venngage_5-visual-marketing-statistics-for-2020-activity-6654042308683665408-OrM7

Visuals are great for breaking up text and they also share complex information at a glance.

There’s so much content available online that a well-designed and well-placed visual arrests the user’s attention.

That’s why our Guestographics strategy has worked so well. Marketers want their content to        stand out in the crowd and visuals can help them do that.

But there’s yet another reason why Guestographics work—they make for great backlink opportunities.

Let’s break down the backlink process. You send your cold outreach to hundreds of sites asking if they can link back to you, and you promise to do the same for them.

Guess what? Dozens of other sites are doing the same thing. Why should any site prioritize you over someone else?

This is where value-addition comes in. When you reach out to sites and offer them more than just a link—say, a Guestographic—you make your offer more attractive than everyone else’s.

We also found that, by designing Guestographics for sites, we were able to get links on hard-to-place anchor text. It’s a win-win.

There are so many benefits to using this strategy to get more backlinks, improve your website SEO, and increase your contacts database. But how can you create Guestographics?

How Can You Create a Guestographic to Improve SEO?

Now you know why you need to offer Guestographics. But how do you go about this process? We’ve tried different methods and these five steps worked best for us.

Choose the Right Content to Improve SEO

Not all content makes for a great infographic. We found that out the hard way in the early days of offering Guestographics.

If a blog post has multiple subheadings or different sets of data, it becomes impossible to pack them all into one infographic. The final product becomes confusing and won’t win you any links.

On the other hand, if your data can be categorized into a few subsets, you can create a data infographic like the one below.

Source

There’s a lot of information in the infographic but it’s not overwhelming and it follows one theme. That’s the kind of overlap you’re looking for when you offer to design Guestographics.

We recommend that beginners start with simple topics like lists. For example, we reached out to Hubspot to turn their lead generation list into this simple infographic.

Source: Hubspot

How do you find articles with lists that you can potentially turn into Guestographics?

We use Ahrefs for most of our SEO planning. Their Content Explorer is easy to use—search for your topic and export the list as a CSV.

For example, if you’re looking for lead generation tips, you’ll see a page like this one.

Once you have a list of topics, sort them by relevance. The site and topic must have some connection to your brand.

If Google notices that your backlinks are coming from random sites, you won’t appear as an authority in your space. Rather than improving your SEO, you could end up hurting it.

Also, look for articles that lack visuals but have clear formatting. This makes it easier to adapt them into an infographic.

Determine Who the Guestographic is For

As we mentioned before, the Guestographic you create needs to be for a site in your niche. This helps build brand authority and awareness, and improves your SEO, of course.

Let’s not forget, designing a Guestographic requires some work. You want to expend effort for a purpose.

The best way to do this is by studying your current customers and their journey. Who are they? Why would more users like them support your brand? What are their interests and pain points?

By answering those questions, you can get crucial demographic information, but more importantly, you can learn what your users are interested in.

This will help you narrow down your list of potential sites that will have the largest impact on your audience and your SEO.

Improve SEO with the Right Guestographic Keywords

Keywords are a crucial element of SEO. The Guestographic process won’t be successful if you haven’t determined your keywords.

As we’ve mentioned a few times now, you want to get backlinks on sites that are in your niche. They can direct the right customers to your brand.

Go to Google Keyword Planner or other popular keyword tools and look for a seed/ primary keyword. Also, note the related keywords and long-tail keywords.

This will help you search for topics in the Ahrefs Content Explorer.

The great thing about keyword research is that you don’t need to think about what sites to search for—you already have the topics, so now you just need to filter by relevancy.

Once you have these keywords, you can plug them into Ahrefs and find content that you could pitch a Guestographic for.

But don’t throw the list of keywords away once you’re done.

You can always use them in the alt-tags of your Guestographic. Visuals rank on Google Image Search, so that’s a lucrative area to target.

I know this sounds like a lot of work, but you will get the hang of it with some practice.

Pitching Your Guestographic

Once your research into your audience, keywords, and relevant sites is complete, you can move on to pitching your Guestographic.

It’s important to get to the point with your pitch. Nobody has time to read 300 words about why your company is great.

Let the contact know why you’re getting in touch, what you’re offering, and what you would like in return. Schedule 2-3 reminder emails and if you don’t get a response by then, move on.

Now, pitching is always going to be a thorny process. You can write the best pitch in the world and someone will still find a reason to come back with a rude response.

Ignore those emails and concentrate on the positive replies.

There’s one thing we’ve learned while collaborating with other sites: there are a lot of emails exchanged in this process.

It takes up so much time that we had to make adjustments. First up, ask for an outline from your contact. Don’t offer to create the outline because the review process is long-winded.

Instead, ask the contact to condense their article into headers and one-liners. Since they’ve written the piece, they know which points are the most important to readers.

Always ask for brand colors, fonts, and their logo. Don’t try and match it yourself because that could cause errors.

Simplify the process further by giving them design options. That way, everyone’s expectations are limited and the contact is happy with the final product.

It usually takes about two or three drafts of the Guestographic to reach final approval. Then the contact can publish their brand new infographic.

Design Your Guestographic

You have all the information you need to design the Guestographic. As a design solution, we know how to create infographics. Not all sites have this resource.

However, there are online platforms that make creating infographics easier—Venngage is one such solution.

If you’re creating designs from scratch, keep graphic design and infographic layout rules in mind.

For example, there are visual hierarchies that designers need to adhere to. Z patterns and F patterns, as you can see below, are how the human eye moves over an image.

  Source: Venngage

Once the design is complete, send it for final approval. As we mentioned, there will be edits but it shouldn’t take long to get the design approved and ready to publish.

At this point, let the contact know how you want to be credited and what link and anchor text you want them to include on their page.

And there you have it, a potential long-term partnership with a site in your niche, and a backlink.

Improve SEO Ranking with Guestographic Promotions

Publishing a Guestographic doesn’t mean that the process has ended. You want the collaboration to continue so you can earn more backlink opportunities.

Once the infographic is live, you have to start promoting it. Let people know that you’ve created a Guestographic for the site by sharing it on your social channels.

Divide the graphic up into smaller content pieces—this makes it easier to share on social media. Ask the contact to share the posts on their platforms, as well.

Share the graphic with your existing contact list. You may even get some people in your database interested in creating a Guestographic of their own.

You can also write to other sites in your niche, letting them know that you’ve successfully published a Guestographic and would love to offer them the same service.

The point isn’t just to create one Guestographic; it’s to use each Guestographic to earn multiple backlink opportunities.

Start Improving Your SEO with Guestographics

Marketers have exhausted their methods of improving SEO. Especially since brands have become used to receiving outreach emails.

You have to stand out from the crowd to get your content noticed and to earn backlinks. That’s why we’re suggesting you use the Guestographic approach.

In this guide, we’ve shown you how to improve your backlink process by creating and offering Guestographics.

This is the kind of strategy that adds value to your contacts and creates long-lasting relationships for your business.

The post How We Used Guestographics to Improve SEO appeared first on Scoop.it Blog.

How We Used Guestographics to Improve SEO published first on https://wabusinessapi.tumblr.com/

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, late-January 2020

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across since the mid-January report, although some may be older than that. 

Right now I am trying to get at least 2 of these out each month. Is that enough? Too much? Am I missing topics you want to see covered? Please let me know! Comment here, message me through Tumblr, Twitter, or my website.

Also, I am once again working on plans to start an ecommerce business forum, where small business owners can learn and discuss topics like the ones I post about here. If you have any preferences for a suggested platform/forum space,please let me know! I will be running a survey once I narrow down my list. 

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

Etsy introduced alternative shipping for US sellers shipping outside of the US & Canada, run by Asendia. Etsy Labels will no longer offer USPS First Class International for those shipments, but faster levels will still be through USPS. The Help file doesn’t give that much more detail; discussion is here. 

Having educational/information pages on ecommerce websites can help product page search rankings. Blog posts, pillar pages and tutorials can all be a good investment. 

Excellent article on how to keep your existing buyers (aka customer retention) rather than always going after new ones. It cites decent research in the area, with examples. (As regular readers know, I love Help Scout’s customer service articles!) For example, “When it comes to highly rated customer service, quality and completeness matter more than speed. According to research from Gallup, customers were nine times more likely to be engaged with a brand when they evaluated the service as “courteous, willing, and helpful.” “Speedy” service, on the other hand, only made customers six times more likely to be satisfied.”

ETSY NEWS 

More updates to listing categories, including a new Presets & Photo Filters category, and Cribs & Cradles is now called Moses Baskets & Hammocks. 

Tips on marketing your Etsy listings for weddings. “Etsy wedding shoppers are often drawn to Etsy because they identify as creative people themselves, an asset you should consider when developing and marketing your products. By offering DIY versions of some of your popular items, you can draw in crafty shoppers, who may end up purchasing a finished handmade item from your shop instead. Offering both options can also be a great way of hitting multiple price points.”

If you sell jewellery and/or accessories, here is Etsy’s advice for marketing in the first half of the year. “While high-end jewelry is often a carefully considered purchase, more affordable everyday items make easy impulse buys and gifts due to their small size and approachable price points.” Also, people are still shopping by gender: “70% YoY increase in Jewelry, Accessories, and Bags category searches containing “him”. “We expect the bags category to grow the most out of these three categories in the next year, led by the increasing popularity of small leather goods such as wallets, dopp kits, and items for travel. A recent increase in average order value within the Bags category suggests buyers are willing to pay more for high-quality materials like leather.” But note that “Buyers tend not to use the term "purse" in their searches.” Finally, “From July through September 2019, over half of Etsy US and global GMS came from purchases that shipped for free.”

In case you missed it, Disney is going after Etsy sellers of Baby Yoda merchandise. Some speculate that they are mostly focusssing on the listings making the most sales. More sarcastic & humorous take here.

Interesting interview (podcast & transcript, including a pdf) with CEO Josh Silverman, on business strategies.  I do like this quote: “When you’re successful, what can be really hard is to tell you’re successful because of some things and in spite of others.” To be very honest, I have this problem a lot, and have seen other business people misjudge their success as well. This is telling, though “And you have until December 31st to ship it.” I have a hunch that is what happened with Etsy Ads and the free shipping tools. So they shipped unfinished tools, and that was bad for the business. Finally, “HOFFMAN: Until this point, Etsy’s focus had been on its sellers. It saw itself as a marketplace for handmade items, and the people who made them. Josh knew he had to change this perspective… SILVERMAN: It was a really big shift in focus. I think Etsy, like many two sided marketplaces, has very deep empathy for sellers, so much so that it can forget to have empathy for buyers. And when you talk to your sellers, they really mostly want three things. They want buyers, they want buyers, and they want buyers – in that order. In order to serve the sellers, you’ve really got to focus on buyers...By the end of my fifth week almost everyone in the company had a new job.”

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Google confirmed a core search update that started to roll out January 13 and took about 3 days, and showed substantial changes on most tracking tools. Early analysis indicates this has once again affected sites based on trustworthiness, but big winners and losers are still unclear. The take from Moz is that this hit health sites like previous updates, but also hurt diverse sites such as Orbitz, Yellow Pages, Poshmark, USA Today and Forever 21. RankRanger noted that there was more volatility in finance rankings than the December update. 

Remember Google’s algorithm change late last year, called BERT? George Mueller offered a bit of advice [text and video] on how to optimize for it: “if ... there’s anything that you can do to kind of optimize for BERT, it’s essentially to make sure that your pages have natural text on them...So instead of stuffing keywords as much as possible, kind of write naturally” 

Google is now highlighting some products (clothing & accessories) in organic search results on mobile in the US & India; you have to have a Google Merchant Centre account set up, but you do not need to buy ads to get this organic boost. Here’s the Google help file on how to optimize. 

If your website has many related pages on a specific topic, organizing the info on one “content hub” (aka pillar pages, or even category pages in some cases) is an excellent way to get user and search engine attention. 

Brief video from Google for SEO beginners: how to optimize images for Google search. They also link to their support file on this question, which has more advanced info. And here is another beginners video on Google SEO considerations for your website. (More links in the video comments.)

Google has a “SafeSearch filter” that removes porn and other mature content from search results, but sometimes it catches innocent sites as well. 

Another good article on how internal linking can serve multiple purposes on your website, especially keyword ranking.

Sites that get the “featured snippet” position in Google search results can no longer get organic ranking on the first page. This could change, though. 

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails) 

Excellent tips & advice on how to make email marketing work for you. Not using emails? You should. “...email has over 3.8 billion daily active users. Take a minute to think about that. Most people who use email probably fall between the ages of 15 and 64, and since there are only about 5 billion people on the planet in that age range, that means email has over 75 percent market penetration.” And “Almost three-fourths of people prefer to hear from businesses via email.”

Do you think that every email campaign needs its own landing page? I’m not sure, but there are some convincing arguments here. And don’t forget to plan to send your emails at the right time for your list subscribers. 

Updated for 2020, HubSpot does an excellent holiday calendar that can help you plan social media posts and other content ahead of time, including hashtags where applicable. 

Tips on converting your existing content (blog posts etc.) into podcasts. “Podcasts tend to be longer-form content than video or blogs. Many videos that companies produce are relatively short, ~2 minutes. For someone looking to listen to your podcast, this may not be substantial enough in terms of the information covered.”

Here’s a useful list of demographics of social media users - think about which sites would work best for your business based on who is using them. 

Reddit is an excellent source of content ideas (video & transcript), as people are usually discussing and upvoting things that interest them, and it is all organized by topic for you. 

Instagram is adding direct messaging (DM) access to their website. 

Facebook is accused of denying data access to potential competitors. 

A surprising number of American adults use LinkedIn, and their numbers are growing faster than expected. “LinkedIn users make up around one-third of all social network users in the U.S.”

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS) 

Another tutorial on setting up a Google Ads account. 

Google ads were less evident in organic search results, for about a week. This mirrors the changes on mobile several months ago, & includes favicons next to brand sites. But more people complained about the desktop layout, so they have backed down and will continue to test new versions. 

Facebook, Google & Amazon are not the only advertising options out there. 

Short infographic on how to advertise on TikTok. 

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING 

If you haven’t set up Google Search Console for your website or blog, you should. [YouTube Video, from the Beginners series]

A good basic guide to using the Google Keyword Planner, including more tips on how to get in without setting up a paid ad campaign. 

Instagram is most useful when you track your stats - use Insights to track your reach, clicks, impressions etc. 

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS 

The growth of ecommerce purchases has been detrimental to US retail sales overall, due to brick and mortar store closures, lower b&M profit margins, and fewer jobs. Remember that Amazon now gets around 50% of ecommerce purchases in the US, meaning that the increase of online retail is more consolidated than the lost brick and mortar sales. 

Amazon will now be reporting counterfeit goods sold on its site to the authorities: "The hope has been that Amazon’s coveted data will help law enforcement make connections about criminals." 

Amazon has started a delivery program in Australia called Amazon Flex. Requiring drivers to sign up for shifts up to 4 hours that they choose, driving their own vehicles, the program is being compared to Uber. 

Shopify now has over 1 million merchants, and is growing rapidly. “This past Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, the company saw $2.9 billion in total sales; during its peak, Shopify software was processing $1.5 million in sales and 16,000 checkouts a minute.”

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

Smartphone purchases continue to increase: $5.9 billion spent on Black Friday & Cyber Monday, and 48% of online purchases in the US on Christmas Day. 

Supposedly, USPS is the most trusted brand in the US, followed by Amazon, Google, and Paypal. Actual quote: “levels of distrust are high in America, but it found that brands can win trust by protecting consumers' data privacy, not hiding important information in fine print and treating employees better than the minimum required by law.” I’m struggling with Amazon & Google in the top in particular, given that quote, but at least Facebook didn’t make the top 25. 😉 Note that age is a differential factor here: “Google is the most trusted brand among Gen Z and millennials, while USPS is the most trusted among older generations like Gen X and baby boomers.” Study details & top 25 list available here. (There is a large difference between the generations, according to this study; it’s worth a scan.)

MISCELLANEOUS

If you are looking for a new search engine, here are 7 that aren’t Google. Some of you  probably hadn’t heard of all of them, because I hadn’t. 

Anti-virus software Avast is still selling user data to major companies.

[clarencenicholsonata]

15 Low-Cost Alternatives to Paid Advertising

Your business needs to promote itself if it wants to attract customers. You may have an amazing product, but that’s only the first step. The next step is getting that product out to your target audience. Luckily, there are loads of effective ways to do this that don’t require big marketing budgets.

You’ve probably been advised to run ads on social media. Sure, this is a good tactic, but not all small businesses have the time and resources to pour all of their marketing budgets into paid ads. Instead, a more diverse approach to small business marketing should be followed.

If you’re looking for advertising solutions beyond paid ads, then you’re in luck. There are loads of effective lead generation and advertising alternatives that offer a low-cost solution to attracting more traffic and customers. Let’s explore some of these marketing alternatives for small businesses

Run Email Marketing Campaigns

Any business should be running email marketing campaigns to help move your customers further down your marketing funnel. Email marketing is an effective way of attracting and retaining new customers. And one of the best things about email marketing is that it is seriously cost-effective. The return on investment potential for email marketing is massive.

Email marketing is also incredibly appealing because you can automate it. Marketing automation lets you set it and forget it. Your business can run drip campaigns, send out regular newsletters, promote competitions, sales, new products, or send out anything else your business wants to communicate.

Email marketing as a form of online advertising can help you convert leads, build stronger relationships with customers, and retain customers for a longer period. From sending out welcome emails to interesting blog posts, your email campaigns have loads of advertising potential.

Social Promotions

We often see businesses run social media contests and giveaways. How effective is this really as a marketing strategy? Well, with the right social promotions tools, your business can see amazing results from a simple contest.

Social promotions help to get your brand out to a wider audience without you having to pay for ads. This should result in your business attracting many new customers and generating far more sales than the price of your prize.

With the right tools, social promotions also let you capture the contact details of your entrants. This means lead generation which you can remarket to using your email marketing or other tactics. Social promotions also increase your engagement on social media and help your business gain a larger following.

Guest Blog Posts

If you’ve just started a website, you need to find a way of generating traffic. Preferably free traffic that you dont have to use display ads to attract. Starting a blog is always a helpful way of generating traffic, but for new websites, it can take time for your blog to become popular. Guest posting is a great solution to this, as it takes advantage of another business’s audience.

Find blogs that appeal to the same audience as yours, and propose to write them a post that fits their blog’s style. Of course, the topic you write about also needs to relate to your business and point to your website. The links that your guest posts create pointing towards your website are also a useful tactic for SEO, helping your own site to rise in the rankings. This is a great alternative to sponsored content.

Referral Campaigns

We’ve already spoken about social promotions, but this can be taken a step further with a referral program. You want to get your active users to share your content in order to grow your audience. An effective way of doing this is running referral campaigns. A referral campaign will incentivize your audience to share your content, which results in gathering more customers.

If you run a social promotion, you can use a referral suite to generate bonus entries for your contestants with every share. The power of sharing can go a long way, exposing your contest and products to your followers’ circles, and their followers’ circles with each share. This takes your contest even further, ensuring your business is made visible to the widest audience possible.

Incentivized sharing means more social engagement, more customers, and ultimately more sales. This is an easy way to increase your target audience without the need for paid ads.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing takes up a big space in online advertising. Why be the only one promoting your product if you can get other people to promote it too? Affiliate marketing is particularly useful for small businesses starting out because you can utilize other people's audiences as your advertising platform.

If you dont have much of an advertising budget, affiliate marketing is also great because you shouldn’t have to pay anyone upfront. Instead, affiliates will gain a small percentage of each sale that they generate. This means you only have to pay them if you get paid. This can go a long way, and it makes a great alternative to promoting sponsored content.

Optimize Your Website for SEO

Search engines are where most people will probably end up looking for your business. This is why you need to focus on search engine optimization for long term online success. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most useful tactics for increasing your traffic and your sales. If your business is at position one for a particular keyword, you will certainly see a rise in revenue.

Sure, SEO takes time and some expertise, so you may want to get this handled by professionals if it’s not your strength. However, with the right knowledge, powerful SEO tactics can cost your business next to nothing, resulting in a major boost for long term success. Instead of creating expensive ad networks, SEO is an incredibly useful way to get more traffic to your site without worrying about sponsored content or native ads.

Put Together a Great Infographic

This one’s actually pretty simple, and it can generate plenty of the right traffic for your business if done properly. A quality infographic on a relevant topic to your business can be an appealing resource for other bloggers to link to, helping your site with SEO. It can also be a useful way to instantly attract more traffic to your site.

If you dont have the design skills, you will need to invest in an infographic., However, with the right content, a quality infographic could generate far more long-term value to your business than display ads. If your infographic is consistently relevant, it could help generate traffic to your site for a long time to come.

Video Marketing

Video is one of the most engaging forms of content on the internet. With the right content, video marketing can be an incredibly powerful way to generate interest and attract more customers to your business. These days, putting together a high-quality video is easier than ever. With just a smartphone and free video editing software, your business can produce a quality video that attracts new customers.

You dont have to pay for video ads to attract more active users. Simple create a useful video and display it in your campaigns. You can integrate video marketing with your social media and blog, adding a higher level of quality to your content. Never underestimate the power of a great video - even if it is made on a tiny budget.

Webinars

Webinars are a useful way of creating a high level of value for a customer while being able to still promote your business. By running a webinar, you will be able to attract a very specific audience who are already interested in what your business has to offer. The webinar can be used as a tool to educate and inspire them to choose your product or service.

While paid ads might help you target a wider audience, they dont always offer that much value to the person viewing the ad. Webinars, on the other hand, create significant value to the user. They can be used to explain in detail exactly why your business is important. A good webinar can also gain a lot of traction and attract a lot of viewers without having to go through expensive advertising options.

Online Forums and Communities

Before you start to pay for an ad campaign in the hopes of attracting a very specific audience, know that there are already places on the internet where this specific audience is gathered. That’s right, online forums and communities are a network of users interested in a specific niche. Find the communities that match your niche, and see if you can promote your business in these communities.

You will be able to target the active users of these networks without having to run any Google and Facebook ads. As long as the forum allows you to promote your business, use it to actually offer a solution to peoples queries or concerns. Spamming users with your product is not necessarily helpful, but using your product to add value to people in the community is helpful. This way, you can target your direct audience without running any ads.

Social Media

Social media is the big one when it comes to online marketing. Every business understands the power of social media as a marketing tool, but not everyone gets it right. Luckily, you dont have to run expensive Facebook ads if you want to do successful promotions. Here are some ways to utilize social media to gain easy traffic to your business.

Go Viral on TikTok

TikTok is huge, and all businesses should be using it if they want to reach a younger demographic. With millions of active global users, TikTok offers loads of potential for running powerful campaigns. So, how do you use TikTok for marketing?

Yes, you can run TikTok ads which work just like Facebook ads. However, we’re not interested in that right now. The advantage of TikTok is that its algorithm can help any user go viral, no matter how big their following is. This means fast growth and big results for users with the right content. Follow what’s trending, and create your own TikToks in line with this. It might result in a huge social media boost for your business.

Influencer Marketing

If you can find the right influencers to match your brand, they might be able to create a huge buzz for your business. A mention from the right influencer can do big things for a small business - especially if you are still building up your own following.

Using an influencer will involve a sponsored post, but this could bring more return on your investment than Google and Facebook ads if done correctly. Just make sure you find the right influencer, and that they promote your product in the way you need them to.

Create Micro-Content

People generally dont go onto social media with the intent of engaging in long-form, time-consuming content. Instead, they want fast and easy content in small doses. If you can condense useful content into small chunks, then you can run unique, powerful campaigns that offer loads of value to your audience.

A good way to do this is to repurpose content from existing blog posts of yours. For example, you can condense the main points from a listicle into a short video. Good examples of this type of content are Snapchat videos or Instagram reels.

Get On YouTube

YouTube is massive. In fact, YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world (after Google). Although YouTube is such a major platform, only a minimal amount of businesses are actually using it. Take advantage of YouTube’s growth and potential, and make sure your business is utilizing it to attract more customers.

YouTube offers many advantages to a business. You can attract new customers, build more authority and credibility around your brand, increase your engagement online, and use your videos to drive more traffic to your website.

We already mentioned how easy it is to make engaging videos with nothing more than a smartphone, so get out there and start putting together videos. The results can be massive.

Post Frequent Quality Content

There are loads of social media hacks and tools available, but at the end of the day, it’s just about creating high-quality content. That’s it. Post on a frequent basis, and post the kind of content your audience wants to see.

With various different social media platforms available, you can create a diverse range of content. Find different types that work well for your brand, and focus on creating a consistent content strategy.

Beyond just photos on Instagram and Facebook, there are plenty of other ways to share impactful content on social media. Pinterest for eCommerce can be hugely successful, Twitter is a great way to chat with your audience, and Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram offer engaging video options. Try out different formats to see what works for you.

Also, focus on quality content that adds value to your users. Instead of running pricey Facebook ads, shares are free for you. Try to get your followers to share content and engage with it. This could be even more useful than running paid ads.

Final Thoughts

Beyond Google and Facebook ads, there is a massive world of opportunity to promote your business online. Native ads can be an expensive option for small businesses, and if you don’t do it properly, your ROI may not be that impressive. This is why developing a broader marketing strategy that goes further than just display ads can produce some brilliant results for your business.

Generating leads and driving traffic to your site doesn’t have to involve a big investment. You just need to be smart about your marketing and use the right tools. Try out some of the ideas above, and your business may see a big rise in revenue without relying on a usual advertising platform.

Marketing is often about trial and error, so start experimenting with different platforms and campaigns. This is the only way to find a solution that works for your business.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8230801 https://ift.tt/3uUgEob via IFTTT

[ellenmcelroyixd]

Week 10 - Amplifying Data

This week we looked at data and how we can use data, as designers, to our advantage. In this modern day we are surrounded by an abundance of data, especially from the internet. For example, more recently, we are surrounded by COVID-19 data everywhere. As designers it is our job to display this data in the most appealing and factually correct way possible.

As designers, amplifying data and using data visualisations such as charts, tables, graphs, maps, infographics and dashboards help people make sense of (possibly complicated/boring) data.

One example of how charts, graphs, and illustrations helped us make sense of the chaos of 2020 was the “Flatten the curve” graphic that went around on social media. Distilling an important public health concept into an at-a-glance graphic. It helped persuade people that the pandemic is real and their individual actions matter.

This graphic is based on an article by Professor Sir Roy Anderson and his colleagues that was recently published in the Lancet Medical Journal. I love this simplistic, non-scientific approach to communicating information.

This article explains more about the infographic -

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/14-03-2020/after-flatten-the-curve-we-must-now-stop-the-spread-heres-what-that-means/

David McCandless

McCandless is a writer, designer & creative director who founded the site information is beautiful. This site is filled with data visualisations that are based on facts and data: constantly updated, revised and revisioned.

For example, this site has loads of interesting coronavirus information that is beautifully displayed in interactive graphs, pie charts, maps etc. -

The colour theme and interactions on these infographics make the information really clear and consistent which I love. Typography, sizing and positioning of information is also very important in his designs. I think these are such a clever way of portraying complicated and excessive information.

Manuel Lima

Manuel Lima describes himself as 'a celebrated voice on UX design and data visualisation'. He has spent the past 15 years leading design teams and building cutting-edge digital experiences at companies like Google, Codecademy, Microsoft, Nokia, R/GA, Kontrapunkt, and the Museum of the Moving Image.

In 2017, Lima released a book called 'The Book of Circles' which is a data visualisation book based solely on displaying data using circles and colour. Below are some early drawings and annotations that can be found on some of the pages inside the book.

'The human iris, a full Moon, volcanic calderas: natural circles have inspired culture for millennia. Information visualiser Manuel Lima gathered centuries' worth of circular charts, graphics and illustrations for this volume, organised in a 'taxonomy' spanning everything from spirals to pies. It's a ravishing tour, from the spangled glory of globular star cluster M13, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope, to Martin Krzywinski's bold 2007 radial genomics diagram Human Dog Homology. Puts circular thinking in a whole new light.' -Nature magazine

Below is an example of 200 images that can be found inside the book.

GI think this is a really unique and informative way of displaying information. It definitely made me think a bit more outside the box for my own project.

Giorgia Lupi

Giorgia Lupi is an Italian information designer and partner at Pentagram and former co-founder of research and design firm Accurat. Giorgia is a prominent voice in the world of data. She has won numerous awards and worked with major international clients. Giorgia is said to have a very humanistic approach to the world of data - She uses data to better understand our human nature and every aspect of our society.

“Giorgia Lupi is the personification of grace under pressure. Of exquisite design grace under overflowing data pressure! Data visualization is a normal part of our information diet, but only a few designers are able to achieve utmost clarity and at the same time memorable elegance. Moving seamlessly between digital and analog space, Giorgia transforms even the driest quantitative analysis into a touching moment of humanity and poetry.” - Paola Antonelli

I especially like her work on 'Happy Data' with the team at Pentagram. The aim of the project was to focus on the positive through a world filled with bad news daily by creating a series of hopeful views of the world through data and drawings. The visualisations combine hand-drawn type and infographics with photo snapshots taken by the team and their friends, using information as a lens on current events.

I love this unique and fun way of expressing large amounts of data using photography, informal typography and colour. I thoroughly enjoyed analysing all this data.

[designjams]

Summary of Notes

What’s expected?

Requirements Filled in and signed cover page uploaded to Turnitin. Attendance. Final presentation uploaded to your Tumblr blog.

Learning Outcomes On successful completion of this paper students will be able to:  

1. Demonstrate knowledge of fundamental interaction design principles and concepts.  

2. Analyse digital user interface (UI) problems, then undertake user research and evaluation.  

3. Explore, experiment and analyse a range of creative ideas and concepts.  

4. Prototype, further analyse, refine and communicate concepts.  

5. Reflect on design processes and learning.

Siobhan’s Notes

Week 1.2

First assignment is a infographic of what you've learnt.

Taxonomy/diagram/infographic

Put it all together in the last week

Section 2

making - based on systems - grids, typography etc.

design system (music app)

do it with prototyping software

hand in design system, asset library, all the icons, all stages, plan for colours, typography, artwork

Taxonomy (general) is the practice and science of classification of things or concepts, including the principles that underlie such classification. Originally used only about biological classification, taxonomy has developed to be a synonym for classification (see Classification (general theory)).

Design for finding

Design for understanding

The hamburger menu, or the hamburger icon, is the button in websites and apps that typically opens up into a side menu or navigation drawer. It was created by interaction designer Norm Cox for the Xerox Star personal workstation in 1981 as an easy way to communicate to users that the button contained a list of items.

The Power of Design Jams (And How They Can Help Your Startup)

we work for findability.

classify things

basically organise our places of information - we are placemakers

we make online environments structured in such a way so that people understand

the understanding is driven from context, content and user.

Design for Understanding

Some organising principles that carry over to information environments from physical environments include: structure and order, rhythm, typologies and modularity and extensibility.

We experience information environments as places where we go to transact, learn and connect with other people, among many other activities.

How people make sense of where they are and what they can do there

Placemaking in the physical world and in information environments

Design for Finding.

Information needs are like fishing: sometimes people know exactly what they're looking for, but often they're casting a wider net.

Everything (exhaustive research)

A few Good things (exploratory seeking)

The right-thing (known item seeking)

Need it again (re-finding)

IA starts with people and the reason they use your product or service: they have an information need.

Three circles of information architecture

We need to understand the business goals behind the project and the resources available for design and implementation.

Context | Business goals, funding, politics, culture, technology, resources and constraints. We’re looking to understand goals, budgets, schedules, technology infrastructure, human resources, corporate culture, and politics.

Content | Document/data types, content objects, volume, existing structure. We’re looking to understand “the stuff in the information environment”.

Users | Audience, tasks, needs, information-seeking behaviour, experience. We’re looking to understand the people – real, living human beings – who will be using the information environment.

Finding and managing

The organisations and people who manage information are important, too. An information architecture must balance the needs of users with the goals of the business. Efficient content management and clear policies and procedures are essential.

Findability is a critical success factor for overall usability. If users can't find what they need through some combination of browsing, searching, and asking, then the system fails. But designing for the needs of the user isn't enough.

Structuring, organising and labelling.

Labelling means figuring out what to call those categories and the navigation structure elements that lead to them.

Organising involves grouping those components into meaningful and distinctive categories, creating the right contexts for users to understand the environment they are in and what they're looking at.

Structuring involves determining the appropriate levels of granularity for the information "atoms" in your product or service and deciding how to relate them to one another.

Information

We are concerned with information of all shapes and sizes: websites, documents, software applications, images, and more. We are also concerned with metadata: terms used to describe and represent content objects such as documents, people, processes, and organisations.

Knowledge managers develop tools, processes, and incentives to encourage people to share that stuff. Information exists in the messy middle. With information systems, there's often no single "right" answer to a given question.

We use the term "information" to distinguish information architecture from data and knowledge management. Data is facts and figure. Relational databases are highly structured and produce specific answers to specific questions. Knowledge is the stuff in people's head.

Information Architecture

The art and science of shaping information products and experiences to support usability, findability, and understanding.

The synthesis of organisation, labelling, search, and navigation systems within digital, physical, and cross-channel ecosystems.

The structural design of shared information environments.

It does this by asking the designer to think about problems through two important perspectives: that our products and services are perceived as places made of information, and that they function as ecosystems that can be designed for maximum effectiveness.

Information architecture is focused on making information findable and understandable. Because of this, it is uniquely well suited to address these issues.

This has had two important effects in our time: information is more abundant that ever before, and we have more ways of interacting with it than ever before.

Historically, information has shown a tendency to dematerialise, going from having one-to-one relationship with its containers to being completely detached from its containers.

Week 2.1

The Anatomy of Information Architecture

Organisation systems present the site’s information to us in a variety of ways, such as contect categories, or to specific audiences.

Navigation systems help users move through the content, such as with the custom organisation of the individual drop-down menus in the main navigation bar.

the only thing is sometimes organising info can hide info.

Search systems allow users to search the content; when the user starts typing in the site’s search bar, a list of suggestions is shown with potential matches for the user’s search term.

Labelling systems describe categories, options, and links in language that (hopefully) is meaningful to users; you will see examples throughout the page.

Top-Down Information Architecture

In top-down info architecture, the environment's designers posit a structure that aims to answer users' questions such as these.

The form that the environment takes – its content, page layout, etc. - is designed and produced to support this structure that has been centrally defined “from above”.

Categories are used to group pages and applications throughout the site.

Labels systematically stand for the site’s content.

Navigation systems and a search system can be used to move through the site

Questions users will ask from a top-down perspective.

Where am I? I know what I am looking for; how do I search for it? How do I get around this site? What’s important and unique? What’s available on this site? What’s happening there? How do I engage with them via various other popular digital channels? How can I contact a human? What’s their address? How can I access my account?

Bottom-Up Information Architecture

Instead of being dictated from above, bottom-up info arch is suggested by and inherent in the systems content (e.g., Netflix as it’s Based on what you've been watching/ Spotify is a mixture of top-down and bottom-up)

It’s important because users are increasingly likely to bypass your system’s top-down information architecture; instead, they’re using webwide search tools like google search, clicking through ad, while reading your content vis social media to find themselves deep in your site.

UNDERSTAND: Top-down vs Bottom Up - Initially I didn't really grasp what this meant

Week 2.2

DEFINE High-fidelity prototype?

Organising information then visualising information

Grid systems

Slides readable

Make sure you can communicate your research to your team and stakeholders

Fruit stall - hands on card game.

Assumptions VS. Facts

Week 3.1 | INRD | Card Sorting

Top-Down Information Architecture

LABELS systematically represent the site’s content.

We label things all the time.

Labelling is the most obvious way to show our organisation schemes across multiple systems and contexts.

We must try to design labels that speak the same language as our environment’s users, while also reflecting its content.

Textual labels are the most common type we encounter in our work; they include contextual links, headings, navigation system options, and index terms.

Iconic labels are less common, but the widespread adoption of devices with less screen real estate means that they are an important component of many information environments.

Designing labels is one of the most difficult aspects of information architecture.

TEXTUAL LABEL TYPES:

Contextual Links

Hyperlinks to chunks of information on other pages or to other locations on the same page

Headings

Keywords, tags, and subject headings that represent content for searching or browsing.

Labels that simply describe the content that follows them, just as print headings do.

Navigation system choices

Labels representing the options in navigation systems.

Index terms

Content, users, and context affect all aspects of an information architecture, and this is particularly true with labels. Any of the variables attached to users, content, and context can drag a label into the land of ambiguity.

Presentation

Similarly, consistent application of fonts, font sizes, colours, whitespace, and grouping can help visually reinforce the systematic nature of a group of labels.

Syntax

It not uncommon to find the following mixed together.  

Verb-based labels (e.g., “Grooming Your Dog)

Noun-based labels (e.g. Diets for Dogs)

Question-Based Labels (e.g. How do you paper train your dog?)

Within a specific labelling system, consider choosing a single syntactical approach and  

sticking with it.

Granularity

Within a labelling system, it can be helpful to present labels that are roughly equal in their specificity. Exceptions (such as site indexes) aside, it’s confusing o encounter a set of labels that cover differing levels of granularity – for example “chinese restaurants,” “restaurants,” “taquerias” “fast food franchises” “burger king”

Comprehensiveness

People can be tripped up by noticeable gaps in a labelling system. Aside from improving consistency, a comprehensive scope also helps people do a better job of quickly scanning and inferring the environment’s content.

Audience

Consider the languages of your environment's major audiences. If each audience uses a very different terminology, you may have to develop a separate labelling system for each audience, even if these systems are describing the same content.

Open Card Sorts vs. Closed Card Sorts vs. Hybrid Card Sorts

Open card sorts allow participant to cluster labels for existing content into their own categories and then label those categories (and clearly, card sorting is useful when designing organisation systems as well as labelling systems.

Closed card sorts provide participants with existing categories and ask them to sort content into those categories. At the start of a closed card sort, you can ask users to explain what they think each category label represents and compare these definitions to your own.

Hybrid card sort  use elements of both

Week 3.2

Recap card sorting

Good research means asking the right questions, and choosing the right questions requires a conceptual framework of the broader environment.

We use our Content/Context/Users conceptual framework as the basis of our research.

Diagramming Information Architecture

Provide multiple ‘views’ of your information architecture.

Information environments are too complex to show all at once; a diagram that tries to be all things to all people is destined to fail.

Instead consider using a variety of techniques to display different aspects of the architecture.

No single view takes in the whole picture, but the combination of multiple diagrams might come close.

Develop those views for a specific audience and needs.

You might find that a visually stunning diagram is compelling to client prospects, therefore justifying its expense.

However, it probably requires too many resources to use in a production environment, where diagrams may change multiple times per day.

Whenever possible, determine what others need from your diagrams before creating them.

You may need very different diagrams for communicating “upstream” with stakeholders and executives than for communicating “downstream” with designers and developers.

Content components.

What constitutes a unit of content, and how those components should be grouped and sequenced.

Connections between content components

How content components are linked to enable actions such as navigating between them

Sitemaps show the relationships between information elements such as pages and other content components, and can be used to portray organisation, navigation, and labelling systems.

Both the diagram and the navigation system display the ‘shape’ of the information space in overview, functioning as a condensed map for site developers and users, respectively.

As you create sitemaps, it’s important to avoid getting locked into a particular type of layout. Instead, let form follow function.

Keeping sitemaps simple.

As a project moves from strategy to design to implementation, sitemaps become more utilitarian.

At this stage, they are focused more on communicating the information architecture to others involved in design and development, and less on strategy and product.

Bring detail to your sitemaps.

As you move deeper into the implementation stage, your focus naturally shifts from external to internal.  

Rather than communicating high-level architectural concepts to the client, your job is now to communicate detailed organisation, labelling, and navigation decisions to your colleagues on the development team.

Modularise your sitemap.

The top-level sitemap links to subsidiary sitemaps, and so on. These diagrams are tied together through a scheme of unique IDs.

UNDERSTAND upstream and downstream communication

Content Components

How they are being grouped or sequenced - their relationships to each other

Let form follow function - don't get locked down into a particular type of layout. Don't force it into a certain shape

Sitemaps become more utilitarian as a project strategy moves form design to implementation.

You may need a second site map to explain smaller - itemised components from the bigger picture of the first sitemap.

top-level sitemaps links to subsidiary sitemaps, and so on, and so on. These diagrams are tied together through a scheme of unique IDs e.g. colour, how components are related to each other - keep people interested and make it so that understanding is easy. e.g. certain colours refer to certain level, if you were to zoom in on the sitemap you'd know exactly where you are on the sitemap. e.g. keep it organised and easy to understand

interaction-design.org

informationisbeautiful.net

Week 4.1

Wireframes

Consistency is key, especially when presenting multiple wireframes.

More importantly, colleagues take wireframes quite literally, so consistency makes their design and production work go more smoothly.  

Callouts – small notes placed around and over your wireframes – are an effective way to provide details about the functionality of page elements. Be sure to leave room for them at the sides and top of your wireframes.

Like any other deliverable, wireframes should be usable and professionally developed. So, tie your collection of wireframes together with page numbers, page titles, project titles, and last revision dates.  

When more than one team member is creating a project’s wireframes, be sure to establish procedures for developing, sharing, and maintaining common templates and components.

Schedule time in your project plan for synchronising the team’s wireframes to ensure consistent appearance, and for confirming that these discrete sdocuments do indeed fit together functionally.

In this design phase, the emphasis of the project moves from process to deliverables – it's where the information architecture starts to become manifest.

These deliverables aren’t the whole story – process is as important during this phase as it is during research and strategy.

Make sure your team are all working in up-to-date version, be clear to title your work so it's clear which is which. Establish procedures for developing, sharing and maintaining common templates and components. It's about how to design the design. You will never work by yourself in the real world - you will always work in a team.

Schedule time in your project plan for synchronising the team's wireframes to ensure consistent appearance, and for confirming that these discrete documents do indeed fit together functionally.

Make sure there is consistency in your work.

In your wireframe you can show your mistakes or opportunities for improvement in your sitemap. The process is still a way to figure things out.

Information Architecture diagrams define content components and the connections between them.

Sitemaps show the relationships between information elements such as pages and other content components, and can be used to portray organisation, navigation, and labelling systems.

Wireframes depict how an individual page or template should look from an architectural perspective. (Wireframes are working documents.)

A2 diagram/infographic of everything you've learnt so far.

Peer session with post it notes to comment on people's work.

You learn by giving feedback.

A2 poster

Choose a visual language - decide how you want.

Wireframes - how are you going to link your map to the wireframe.

Wed: wireframe to a prototype on Wednesday

Do this in Xd or Figma?

A2 examples of other's work will be shown.

Wireframes

-

Grid system - the easiest way to find out grid system for the website you're looking for - it's almost never touching content - there will always be margins and gutters, etc. go deeper into grid systems in Project 2, but it's important to keep in mind here.

Each website will have a grid system - examine them and get your head around.

Never try and make a grid system where one row interacts with the other.

[margaretbeagle]

How We Used Guestographics to Improve SEO

SERP is volatile. Staying on top of these fluctuations can take up as much time as any other marketing process. Worse, a lot of these efforts to improve SEO have become overused.

It’s a harsh reality but it’s the truth. So, what can marketers do?

Our marketing team has tried numerous different methods over the years to improve our SERP. Out of all of them, one method has consistently proven successful—offering Guestographics.

What is a Guestographic? It’s a term we coined internally but it’s catching on. Essentially, it’s an infographic we create for guests or partners.

The process is collaborative. We offer to design an exclusive Guestographic for a site. All we ask for is credit for designing it and a link of our choice.

Sounds simple? Most of this process is. And that’s why we want to share it with other marketers.

We’ve had so much success with this technique over the years. For instance, Guestographics have directly contributed to 200,000 of our organic sessions a month.

So, what does a Guestographic look like? Here’s one we made for Mention around their study on social sentiment.

Source: Venngage

Now you know what a Guestographic is, let’s explain why you should create one to improve your website SEO.

Why Should You Use Guestographics to Improve SEO?

As a design solution, we’ve learned one crucial thing—people love visuals, as you can see from these visual marketing stats.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/venngage_5-visual-marketing-statistics-for-2020-activity-6654042308683665408-OrM7

Visuals are great for breaking up text and they also share complex information at a glance.

There’s so much content available online that a well-designed and well-placed visual arrests the user’s attention.

That’s why our Guestographics strategy has worked so well. Marketers want their content to        stand out in the crowd and visuals can help them do that.

But there’s yet another reason why Guestographics work—they make for great backlink opportunities.

Let’s break down the backlink process. You send your cold outreach to hundreds of sites asking if they can link back to you, and you promise to do the same for them.

Guess what? Dozens of other sites are doing the same thing. Why should any site prioritize you over someone else?

This is where value-addition comes in. When you reach out to sites and offer them more than just a link—say, a Guestographic—you make your offer more attractive than everyone else’s.

We also found that, by designing Guestographics for sites, we were able to get links on hard-to-place anchor text. It’s a win-win.

There are so many benefits to using this strategy to get more backlinks, improve your website SEO, and increase your contacts database. But how can you create Guestographics?

How Can You Create a Guestographic to Improve SEO?

Now you know why you need to offer Guestographics. But how do you go about this process? We’ve tried different methods and these five steps worked best for us.

Choose the Right Content to Improve SEO

Not all content makes for a great infographic. We found that out the hard way in the early days of offering Guestographics.

If a blog post has multiple subheadings or different sets of data, it becomes impossible to pack them all into one infographic. The final product becomes confusing and won’t win you any links.

On the other hand, if your data can be categorized into a few subsets, you can create a data infographic like the one below.

Source

There’s a lot of information in the infographic but it’s not overwhelming and it follows one theme. That’s the kind of overlap you’re looking for when you offer to design Guestographics.

We recommend that beginners start with simple topics like lists. For example, we reached out to Hubspot to turn their lead generation list into this simple infographic.

Source: Hubspot

How do you find articles with lists that you can potentially turn into Guestographics?

We use Ahrefs for most of our SEO planning. Their Content Explorer is easy to use—search for your topic and export the list as a CSV.

For example, if you’re looking for lead generation tips, you’ll see a page like this one.

Once you have a list of topics, sort them by relevance. The site and topic must have some connection to your brand.

If Google notices that your backlinks are coming from random sites, you won’t appear as an authority in your space. Rather than improving your SEO, you could end up hurting it.

Also, look for articles that lack visuals but have clear formatting. This makes it easier to adapt them into an infographic.

Determine Who the Guestographic is For

As we mentioned before, the Guestographic you create needs to be for a site in your niche. This helps build brand authority and awareness, and improves your SEO, of course.

Let’s not forget, designing a Guestographic requires some work. You want to expend effort for a purpose.

The best way to do this is by studying your current customers and their journey. Who are they? Why would more users like them support your brand? What are their interests and pain points?

By answering those questions, you can get crucial demographic information, but more importantly, you can learn what your users are interested in.

This will help you narrow down your list of potential sites that will have the largest impact on your audience and your SEO.

Improve SEO with the Right Guestographic Keywords

Keywords are a crucial element of SEO. The Guestographic process won’t be successful if you haven’t determined your keywords.

As we’ve mentioned a few times now, you want to get backlinks on sites that are in your niche. They can direct the right customers to your brand.

Go to Google Keyword Planner or other popular keyword tools and look for a seed/ primary keyword. Also, note the related keywords and long-tail keywords.

This will help you search for topics in the Ahrefs Content Explorer.

The great thing about keyword research is that you don’t need to think about what sites to search for—you already have the topics, so now you just need to filter by relevancy.

Once you have these keywords, you can plug them into Ahrefs and find content that you could pitch a Guestographic for.

But don’t throw the list of keywords away once you’re done.

You can always use them in the alt-tags of your Guestographic. Visuals rank on Google Image Search, so that’s a lucrative area to target.

I know this sounds like a lot of work, but you will get the hang of it with some practice.

Pitching Your Guestographic

Once your research into your audience, keywords, and relevant sites is complete, you can move on to pitching your Guestographic.

It’s important to get to the point with your pitch. Nobody has time to read 300 words about why your company is great.

Let the contact know why you’re getting in touch, what you’re offering, and what you would like in return. Schedule 2-3 reminder emails and if you don’t get a response by then, move on.

Now, pitching is always going to be a thorny process. You can write the best pitch in the world and someone will still find a reason to come back with a rude response.

Ignore those emails and concentrate on the positive replies.

There’s one thing we’ve learned while collaborating with other sites: there are a lot of emails exchanged in this process.

It takes up so much time that we had to make adjustments. First up, ask for an outline from your contact. Don’t offer to create the outline because the review process is long-winded.

Instead, ask the contact to condense their article into headers and one-liners. Since they’ve written the piece, they know which points are the most important to readers.

Always ask for brand colors, fonts, and their logo. Don’t try and match it yourself because that could cause errors.

Simplify the process further by giving them design options. That way, everyone’s expectations are limited and the contact is happy with the final product.

It usually takes about two or three drafts of the Guestographic to reach final approval. Then the contact can publish their brand new infographic.

Design Your Guestographic

You have all the information you need to design the Guestographic. As a design solution, we know how to create infographics. Not all sites have this resource.

However, there are online platforms that make creating infographics easier—Venngage is one such solution.

If you’re creating designs from scratch, keep graphic design and infographic layout rules in mind.

For example, there are visual hierarchies that designers need to adhere to. Z patterns and F patterns, as you can see below, are how the human eye moves over an image.

  Source: Venngage

Once the design is complete, send it for final approval. As we mentioned, there will be edits but it shouldn’t take long to get the design approved and ready to publish.

At this point, let the contact know how you want to be credited and what link and anchor text you want them to include on their page.

And there you have it, a potential long-term partnership with a site in your niche, and a backlink.

Improve SEO Ranking with Guestographic Promotions

Publishing a Guestographic doesn’t mean that the process has ended. You want the collaboration to continue so you can earn more backlink opportunities.

Once the infographic is live, you have to start promoting it. Let people know that you’ve created a Guestographic for the site by sharing it on your social channels.

Divide the graphic up into smaller content pieces—this makes it easier to share on social media. Ask the contact to share the posts on their platforms, as well.

Share the graphic with your existing contact list. You may even get some people in your database interested in creating a Guestographic of their own.

You can also write to other sites in your niche, letting them know that you’ve successfully published a Guestographic and would love to offer them the same service.

The point isn’t just to create one Guestographic; it’s to use each Guestographic to earn multiple backlink opportunities.

Start Improving Your SEO with Guestographics

Marketers have exhausted their methods of improving SEO. Especially since brands have become used to receiving outreach emails.

You have to stand out from the crowd to get your content noticed and to earn backlinks. That’s why we’re suggesting you use the Guestographic approach.

In this guide, we’ve shown you how to improve your backlink process by creating and offering Guestographics.

This is the kind of strategy that adds value to your contacts and creates long-lasting relationships for your business.

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