Come and Get ‘Em – Farm Girl Fresh Keywords

This week in Web Marketing class we were assigned our first SEO client and despite recent news of Google pulling keywords our assignment was to come up with Keywords for Farm Girl food truck.

Now before you get your nickers is a knot, Google will still have keywords, it’ll just be harder to prove their worth but they’re still relevant.

We had to assess the food truck’s current keywords and pick new appropriate ones that would better suit their needs. My prof. pointed out that people don’t search the internet for food trucks. Most people go to food trucks because of convenience… they just happen to be in the same area. 

So we needed to revisit who would be searching for the very unique food truck’s website. It was decided that it would be other media outlets looking for a unique venue, like Farm Girl. The Food Network would be a prime example of the kind of  attention that the food truck could use.

After several brainstorms my partner and I decided that Farm Girl should serve a dish that was featured on the Food Network and use link to their website to increase SEO. Then Food Network could be on of their keywords and they wouldn’t be black hatted. A few keywords we thought would be good fit are “Food Network recipe, favorite pumpkin recipe, Kingston food truck, and foodie heaven”

So when picking keywords, it’s important to keep your audience in mind and think what they would be looking for.

Desperate Social – Abercrombie Style

I’m sure you heard over the summer how “Abercrombie hates fat people.” Personally, I found  their attitude repulsive and it put me in a rage. I have totally boycotted their brand. They got huge backlash from the public and I helped support an anti-Abercrombie campaign called #Fitch the Homeless. 

Upon further research, I know that their market share and sales have plunged since their CEO made those outlandish comments. Now I can’t help but think their new attempts to win back their customers as…. desperate. Last week they posted a video in response to the new pop song What did the Fox Say. They were trying to get on the viral train but failed miserably. People don’t care for copy cats, especially when they have already been alienated. Over 1,000 people like it but more than 4,000 people dislike it.

Viral can be successful but it has to be done right.

Conversion Rate and Why you Should Care

A conversion rate of a webpage is, “The measurement of the success of a paid inclusion campaign. A conversion rate is measured by the number of potential visitors performing the desired action, whether the action is buying a product, filling out a form, or some other goal of the web page.”

One of the most important parts of search engine marketing is the analytics. The conversion rate relates right back to the analytics. At the end of a campaign you want to know how successful it was or wasn’t. The conversion rate is to help see whether of not all your goals were met.

For example, if you payed for 200 pay per click ads and 20 people clicked through and bought your product. Your conversion rate is 10% for that product.

Conversion rates are the keys to measuring success and that’s why you should care.

Why my Time is too Valuable for a 100%

One of the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned, is that life is a balance.

My time is very valuable to me and I try my best to make sure that I spread out my time evenly over all my passions; school, being active, extra curriculars, family, friends, hobbies, and a part time job are all important to me for my health and overall well being.

Recently, one of my professors pointed out that my school mandates that if a students does all that is required of them they will receive an 80%. So in order to get 100% I must put in a considerable greater effort. If I have an assignment that takes me two hours to fill all the requirements and I would get an 80% but would have to put in another 2 hours to get a 100%… the ROI is not worth it. Mathematically this ratio doesn’t make sense and isn’t an efficient use of my (or anyone’s) time.

This is a very demotivating tool. I’m all for going above and beyond but 100% is not worth my time.

Blogging? Yes? No? or Maybe?

So I read this article about whether blogging is necessary or not.

I personally think that it couldn’t hurt (though I’m a little biased… I’m writing this on my blog). In this week’s SEO class we discussed adding outbound links to increase your SEO and makes you look more credible while creating content for your website. The article also mentions that blogging is another way to converse with your customers or readers. Customer feedback is important and it makes your brand more transparent. Blogs are easy to share and can be linked up to various social media sites.

Some of the reasons why it might not be so import is because other social mediums that are more appropriate to your brand might take precedence. It’s also possible that you could be a too popular and it would be very time consuming but that’s not very likely.

So my advice is, blog on. I mean what do you have to lose?

Google Leaves Me No Choice

I always thought Google would take over,

now I’m convinced it will. The other day I went to sign on to my Youtube account and I got bullied in a Google+ account. What? How can they do that? For a long time I had brushed Google+ off but they have so much clout on the internet that they have the power to make their social media the next big thing. Now I doubt they can make people use it but they can make people (like me) join. 

In the future G+ might be a very handy application because let’s face it, I’m on (we’re all on) Google a lot. This will help link all the different platforms we use but I was just taken by surprise at how I had to submit to Google. There are so many articles on people being forced to join Google+.

 

I’m not sure it will be a bad thing.

 

Does your Brand have Personality?

There’s this great article I found from a fantastic social media blogger (Aaron Lee voted the top 10 social media bloggers). He talked about the 8 ways to humanize your brand http://askaaronlee.com/humanize-social-media/ His list was very inspiring and I think a lot of social media sites should pick up on them. Humanizing your brand really gives your company (a distant and impersonal thing) a personality which I think makes it relevant and relatable to people. I can trust a company with a face. Brands should do more than just push products at me, they should have life and should be interesting to their followers. No one wants to keep up with a company that posts about themselves all the time. People are self involved and they want to hear about what you/your brand can do for them.

Brands don’t have to be boring. Give yours a big personality, one that people can’t ignore.

I Can Do Anything Better Than You

Good ideas, made better.

I’m enrolled in a web marketing class and my prof. directed us to a video to introduce us to digital http://slciwm.blogspot.ca/2013/09/this-is-digital-marketing-from-ad-men.html and there were a few interesting things I picked up; the first is the story of Google’s origins. You would think that Google was the original search engine but that’s not true. Google came after but they took the existing engine’s base idea and made it better. They were the first one with short text ads with the best accuracy. It just goes to show you that you don’t have to be the first but you just have to do it better and with new innovations. Look where Google is now; they own Youtube and last month there were 19.6 billion ad views.

Your idea may be good but could it be better?