Ranking & Link Building

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Overall Thoughts

This week’s topic took a lot more research than I think any other topic I’ve researched so far. Honestly, it didn’t make a lot of sense at first. I was really confused. But, the more research I did, the more sense it made! Funny how that works, huh? Anyways, here’s what I found this week:

Linking Strategies

When you’re looking at linking or backlinking (links that lead back to your website), it’s very important that you first decide on a strategy. Plan out what you want to do. As I’ve said before: plan your work then work your plan. This makes things much less difficult for you in the long run, and it helps you better organize your rise to success. But remember, no two websites are the same. Every site you want to link is different, and therefore requires a different linking strategy.

Naturally Building Links

A lot of website owners look to competitors and do research to look into getting their links on websites that are more successful. But, building links naturally is often looked to as a better way to get links. Here’s some ideas.

Blogging

Get a blog! Honestly, blogging is an easy way to gain attention to your site – as long as it has useful content that is of great value to your target audience. Make sure you are appealing to them. But also, only add a blog if it makes sense for your business. Don’t do it because you feel like it would help, do it because it makes sense and you know it would help.

There’s also guest blogging. People love to hear more than one opinion. So give them that! Have guests (professionals that have relations to your product or business of course) post on your blog. This will give your site better credibility in the eyes of your audience.

And last but not least, blog commenting. Build links from blog comments. This means add links to your site or products in blog comments. But, don’t add links if you don’t think that you’d accept that comment on your own blog. Make sure they’re relevant and have a purpose that serves your audience.

Images and Infographics

Using images to place links on is a great idea to build links naturally. This way, when other sites use your images they can link to your site and give you the credibility.

You can also use infographics. A lot of times site owners will use infographics to display important information instead of lengthy text and statistics. Just make sure that if you’re using and infographic that you’re using existing content. You want this to be 100% accuracy for your site!

Document Sharing and Press Releases with Google News

Document sharing means that you share content of your site in documents that are placed on sharing sites to help increase the number of views on your content. This is often used, but in my research I didn’t see it being used as much as other methods.

There’s also press releases with Google News. When you feature our articles, blog posts, or business/product information in Google News, it can be a good way to gain some exposure for your content. There are a lot of Google users out there!

Social Media

This. This is by far one of the best ways to build links. Practically everyone is on social media. Smart phones are a necessity these days. So make your links and your site easy to see on them! Create accounts, hashtags, tweet about it, host giveaways. Partner with other big time brands that will mention you. Use social media to its fullest.

Prioritize Your Efforts

In doing all this link building, make sure that you are prioritizing your efforts. Tie your goals to the reasons for building those links. Remember that reasoning for your links always. Is it to establish a higher rank for your keywords? Is it to increase the ranking authority of a specific website? Is it to get more high-value traffic? To get more visibility to a higher value audience?

Keep your reasoning in mind. And also know that it relies on different judgments. You need to consider if your link is a nonfollowed one, if its passing through the key text your looking for, if its going to send you traffic. Or better yet, if its on the right page of your site, if it has high relevance, or if there is any risk to it.

Concluding Thoughts

Don’t be afraid to try and then try again. If you get some links and they don’t bring the success you wanted, try again! There is always room for improvement. If you don’t know how to do so, do the research until you know. Don’t call it good after you fail or don’t do enough digging, really dig deep and strive to accomplish your goals. Happy linking!

July 19, 2019 0

Social Media SEO & Marketing

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Overall Thoughts

Social media is everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I would bet that more than 3/4 of businesses in the U.S. have some online/social media marketing system. Before this week, I had no idea how much thought really goes into making your social media apply to more viewers. I thought that you simply put things online promoting your business and hoped for the best. But, I was so wrong! There is so much more that goes into it! Here’s some things I learned:

Four Must Haves for Social Media SEO

Last week we talked about SEO. This week we’re going to incorporate social media into that. SEO is just as important for your social media as it is for searching for your business or website. Social media on the other hand though, can get you way more recognition. I learned of four things you want to include in your social media SEO, they are:

Make it segmented. Make sure that each piece of your content addresses the needs of audience segment(s) you know well. The better you show that you know what they’re looking for the better chances of them coming back.
Make it searchable. Use words and terms you know that your audience will search for. Think about it, how would you search for your business’s product if you were a customer? Don’t make it difficult to search for, but also don’t make it too easy.
Make it snackable. When I say this, I mean make it appealing and interesting. Use headings, fun fonts, pictures, tables, charts, graphics. Make it look interesting and like your viewer has to look at it.
Make it shareable. Make sure that your site is worthy of sharing. The best way to see how shareable your business is is to track your social shares monthly. And make sure that you are boosting the sharing ability of your most shared items or ads.

Making sure you have these four things is a good start to a great SEO!

Use Social Media Tags Wisely

When I say social media tags, I mean using meta tags in your sites HTML coding. And the more meta tags you set up, the more social shares get noticed and shared. Make sure your keeping track of them so you can see if they’re being successful or not. These tags make it easier for people to share your content, and they also give you control of the shared image. These tags also help search engines to understand what your content is about.

Set SEO Goals

Don’t be afraid to set goals. Also don’t be afraid a goal is too large. You can do it if you put in the work! Understand what your end goal is, and be realistic about it. You can make big goals, but make sure that they are realistic and reachable.

To set goals, really set a target audience. Think about the audience that will benefit from your product the most. Who are they? Why do they like your product? Use content strategies with your audience. Read people, look into what they want. People want information fast. They don’t want to read a lot of information. If you do have a good amount of information though, make it entertaining to read to draw them in.

Looking Into Marketing

Social media is an inexpensive way to market your business and its easy to track. When you are looking into your marketing strategies, there’s a couple of approaches you could take.

The passive approach – this approach looks at social media as a useful source of marketing information and hearing customer perspectives. With this, businesses are able to listen and look and customer voices and feedback with marketing purposes in mind.

The active approach – this approach looks at the use of social media for public relations, direct marketing tools, and communication channels. This approach allows the ability to target niche markets more precisely.

Engagement

Engagement is the term that is used when talking about customers and stake holders being participants versus viewers. Being active rather than passive. Engagement requires two big actions. Being proactive and reactive conversations. Being proactive means regularly posting new content. And reactive conversations being conversations with social media users responding to those who reach out to your social media accounts for your business. Basically, engagement is the term used to describe active participation in your social media marketing.

Concluding Thoughts

Social media is a lot more strategy than I originally thought. But, good social media marketing strategy can really benefit your business. The more you understand the different strategies, the more advanced your marketing can be. Don’t be afraid to do the research! Make sure you really understand what you want to accomplish and how to accomplish it. Happy marketing!

July 12, 2019 0

Landing Page Optimization & SEO Basics

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Overall Thoughts

At the beginning of this week, I kind of had the thoughts as to what the heck is landing page optimization and SEO and why should I care? Because I truly thought that they weren’t very important. Just so you know, I was very wrong. They are some of the most important things about ensuring your site is getting views and traffic! Here’s some insights and tips:

Understand Your Landing Page

What exactly is a landing page? A landing page is the page that your viewers go to when they click on your ad. You also want to make sure you understand your landing page experience. When I say this, I mean that you want to understand how well your website is giving people exactly what they’re looking for when they click the ad you’ve created.

Continually Try to Improve

Make sure you are also continually listening to your viewers and customers and are continually editing your landing page to make it more appealing. Make sure you are offering content that is relevant, useful, and original. What makes you stand out? Why is your business better than the business that sells similar product.

Your content can be improved by making sure your landing page is relevant to your ad, and that it is relevant to the keywords that you use in your ads and headlines. Make sure you are being specific, customers are searching for specific things! But, not too specific, remember to still be general if your viewers/customers want options. And always, always, always provide useful information about what was on your ad on the landing page. Don’t make your viewers search around for it. You want to impress them in seconds so they stay on your site.

Promote Landing Page Transparency & Trustworthiness

You want your landing page to be easy to navigate, easy to understand, and easy to intrigue your viewers. Make sure you are openly sharing information about your business. Tell them how it started, who you are as an owner, what your product is and how you think its the best quality.

And when you talk about those products, make sure you are explaining those products (or services). Make sure your viewers know every last detail they need to be a customer to your business.

Lastly, make it easy for them to find your contact information. They will probably want to contact you if they’re really interested, so make it easy for them!

SEO Basics

SEO is Search Engine Optimization. This is SO important if you want your ads to show up in possible customers searches. Here’s a few basic things to remember about SEO:

Know your content and know how it relates to the viewers search. This is important, if your product relates to their search, show them how it does and why they should come to your website.
Words matter. In titles, headings, ads, and body text. Use keywords! They make all the difference. Don’t go overboard though, try to narrow it down to the most successful ones.
Keep an eye on your site reputation. Is your site known for getting lots of clicks, views, and for having lots of internal links that connect it to other places? A good reputation = good business!

Let’s dig a little deeper into SEO.

Unique Value & A Great UX

You may be wondering what these two phrases mean. Unique value is pretty self explanatory, make sure that your keywords and ads that you want to show up in searches are unique. Simply meaning no one else’s business ads or keywords show up like your specific business does. Make your site stand out, make it intriguing to viewers.

A UX means that your page or site is easily understood, provides intuitive navigation and content consumption, it loads quickly, and it is designed to be attractive or pleasing to the eye. These are all qualities that can make your UX a great one! So use them, and continually improve to continually grow your business!

Concluding Thoughts

As this week’s topic and research came and went, I realized that this is a more simple thing that has a great amount of importance. This can really make or break your ad campaign strategies, and should be paid close attention. So, I hope that now you all can go and improve your landing page and SEO’s and continue to thrive in your businesses! Remember: continuing to improve is key, don’t be afraid of failing and needing to do research to improve. Just do it!

July 7, 2019 0

Under Armour Design Tactics Reversed

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Overall Thoughts

This Under Armour ad was made for the I will what I want campaign. There are multiple ads depicting strong women. I chose to reverse engineer this particular women’s boxing ad. I also created an ad that could go in this campaign with the original ad, in this post I’m going to compare the two. We’re going to talk about four design elements that went into these ads:

Alignment

Everything in this original Under Armour ad is on straight lines. The woman’s legs are straight, the punching bag is straight (diagonally but still straight, there’s no curvatures), the text is straight, and even the buildings behind the woman are set up on straight lines. This helps to make the ad look nice, neat, and very organized. There are clear lines, and this makes the image overall really appealing.

Now here is my ad. In terms of alignment, I used a left align for my text, and lined it up with the top of the car. I used all straight lines, as the original campaign ad did, to draw the eye from text to person. While this image does not have as many clear lines, it still has the lines the text created, as well as the lines of the car and the woman’s leg.

Proximity

In this ad, the words are on top of the woman, who is making contact with the punching bag, and there are buildings all around. Normally when we talk about proximity there is more space between things. In this particular ad, there is very little or close proximity. The buildings behind the woman are all very close together. But, she is also the only one on the roof. The close buildings and the woman alone on the roof are almost a stark contrast in terms of proximity.

In terms of proximity for my own ad, everything was much closer. The picture of the woman was taken from a closer angle, and the real open proximity is to the right of the woman on the car. But, I kept the close proximity theme of the original ad when I put my text closer to the woman and the car.

Color

In this original ad the city around the woman is full of white, grey, and other neutral colors. But, her athletic clothes are bright colors and stand out very nicely. These color contrasts draw the eye in while also being very visually appealing.

For my ad, the colors are a little more vibrant. You can see the yellow car, and the yellow boxing gloves, as well as the colorful leggings worn by the woman. So, obviously my picture involved more color, but it still draws the eye to the main subject: the strong woman.

Typography

The original ad has very simplistic typography. The designers used a san serif font (a font without the little tags on the ends of the letters), and in all caps. The san serif font makes the text easy to read, and the all caps makes you read every letter. This was very clever on the designer’s part in my opinion. They use the colors to draw you in and then the capital letters to make things look neat and precise.

In my own ad, I kept the theme of a san serif font in all caps. I also used straight lines to guide the viewer’s eye across the text and to the woman. I also stacked my text more than having it in a couple of lines.

Concluding Thoughts

The original ad compared to the new ad I created myself are similar in many ways, yet also very different. Design aspects are so important when creating ads, because they make things interesting for the viewers. You need to draw in their attention and keep it, while also being creative and unique.

July 7, 2019 0

ROI Conversion Tracking & Optimizing Ad Performance

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Overall Thoughts

For this week’s post, there was a lot of information. And it may be a little lengthy, so hang in there! But, what I did learn this week is that there is so much thought, time, and effort that goes into tracking ads and their success. So let’s jump in!

ROI & Conversion Tracking

Your first question is probably what is ROI and conversion tracking? Well, ROI means Return On Investment. And conversion tracking is basically keeping track of all the actions that you want your customers to take when they click on your ad and go to your website. This will help you see how much of a profit your making from your ads compared to how much your spending on those ads.

ROI is one of the most important things for advertisers because its showing you the real effect that your ads have on your business. Knowing your ROI helps you to evaluate and decide whether the money your spending on your ads is leading to healthy profits for your business.

How ROI Works & Why it Matters

ROI is basically a ratio of your business’s net profit to costs. To calculate ROI you take the revenue result from your ads, subtract your overall costs, and then divide by overall costs. Or you can look at it like this: ROI = (revenue-cost of goods sold) / cost of goods sold.

Like I said earlier, this is one of the most important things to advertisers, it shows the true success of your business! By calculating this, you’re seeing how much money your actually making for how much your spending. ROI can also help you to see better ways to spend your budget and improve the success of your ad campaigns.

Conversion Tracking – Use it!

Conversion tracking is very, very helpful when looking in terms of ROI. Conversions are customer actions that are considered to be valuable in terms of ads and clicks on your website. This type of tracking is used mainly to show you what is happening after a customer interacts with an ad for your business.

Using conversion tracking helps you to really fine-tune your ads. It can help you see which keywords, ads, ad groups, and campaigns are doing best (and which aren’t doing so good) to help you understand where your spending needs to be targeted. To set up conversion tracking, you simply need a website and the ability to edit the site so you can add a conversion tag (HTML coding that enables you to track the conversions).

Looking at Ad Performance

Now that you’ve got ROI and conversion tracking going, you need to get your ads to perform well to boost those ratings and bring you a better profit. The best way to optimize ad performance is to focus on negative keywords. We’ve talked about this in past posts, but we’re going to go into more detail here.

Understanding Negative Keywords

Negative keywords allow you to exclude certain search terms from your campaigns in order to help you focus on the keywords that matter most to your customers and business. In order for these negative keywords to work, you need to pick search terms that are similar to the keywords you’ve already chosen, but that could potentially steer customers to search for a different product. Basically, you’re finding search terms that are related to your product, but are not exactly your product.

Types of Negative Keywords

There are three types: broad, exact, or phrase match. Each type is different in the way that negative keywords work best when you add synonyms, singular or plural versions, misspellings, and other close variations. Keep in mind: If you use exact keywords or phrases or words that are strongly related to the content ads won’t show. Let’s talk about each type.

Broad match negative keywords are the default of negative keywords. But you still have to be cautious, if you choose words where when a search is done and it contains all of your negative keywords (even if the words are in a different order), the ad won’t make an appearance in the search. So don’t be too broad, be reasonable.

Exact match negative keywords will cause your ad to be a no-show in a search if the search has the exact keywords in the same order. So again, be reasonable. Don’t be so specific that your ad can never be found.

Phrase match negative keywords will cause your ad not to show up if the search has the exact keywords in the same order. But, the search can include additional words. Most of the time though, the ad still won’t show up as long as all the keywords are included in the search.

Be cautious: too many negative keywords may make your ads reach fewer people.

Don’t Be Afraid to Use All Types

You can also use all three types to make more efficient ads. For example, you could use broad match to target your ad towards a bigger audience, but then also use exact match to target specific groups of customers. The best way to know what works for you is to experiment.

Expanding Keywords

The last topic we’re covering today is expanding keywords. You want to expand the reach of your keywords to improve your ad rank. The rank of your ads makes them more competitive and therefore more popular- leading you to have more success with the popularity of your ad. To boost this there are three ways to start: increase your bids, increase your ad quality, and enable/ improve ad extensions.

Of the three ways to boost ad performance, I strongly suggest looking into improve ad quality. Best performing ads are the ones found most relevant. Think about how you search for things on the internet and apply that to your ads. This way, if you know what you’re customers are looking for, you can target them and focus on making your ads, campaigns, and keywords relevant to them.

Concluding Thoughts

When looking at the success of your ads, be patient and don’t give up. Take the time to experiment and research what your customers want to see and what they think is relevant. Also regularly review your ROI, conversions, and ad optimizations! This way you can keep up with your customers and keep your business afloat. Good luck with your ads!

June 28, 2019 0

Relevance & Quality Score: What Is It And Why Do I Need It?

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Overall Thoughts

When I first came into this week’s topic, I had absolutely no idea what relevance and quality score were. But, surprisingly, it’s very interesting! I didn’t realize one thing could be so helpful in weighing the success of an online business.

Disclaimer** The business statistics program that I researched and looked into for this was Google Ads Quality Score. Here’s what I learned:

What is Relevance & Quality Score?

Relevance and quality score is a diagnostic tool that proves very helpful to tracking the statistics and success of an online business. Keep in mind, a quality score is not a performance indicator. Get that out of your head right now. The Google Ads system is set up in a way that works to identify and reward good quality ads. When you have high-quality ads, you can gain a higher rank, which leads to many benefits such as lower costs per click, better ad positions, and even eligibility for ad extensions. The quality of an ad is calculated for each auction they enter.

Quality Scores Are Not an Exact Representation

When looking at quality scores and relevance remember: the quality score that you’re seeing is not an exact representation of real-time ad quality calculations. What you’re going to see is a general metric that shows your overall performance. When ads are considered to have quality determined, there are lots of factors (like user’s exact query and the context of the query for example), and the resulting quality is based on an average value of those factors.

Quality Score is A Summary of Recent Performance

Your quality score will based on recent performance with the addition of three components:

Expected click-through-rate – the likelihood that the ad will be clicked.
Ad relevance – how closely your ad matches the user’s search intentions.
Landing Page Experience – how well your landing page shows relevance, transparency, and easy-to-navigate systems when it comes to your users.

When quality score is considered your keyword quality will also be diagnosed. You should focus more of your efforts on areas that are high-value and if changed can be effective. You shouldn’t put your main focus on your quality score, you should be focusing on how it aligns with your performance. Don’t try to force your score up.

Focus On Making Long-Term Performance Goals

If you really want your score to go up, you need to focus on looking for ways to reach those good scores by improving things first, and then checking your quality score. Make goals – and set out to reach them. You need to put your focus on finding every possible way you could improve your statistics, and focus on the positive experiences that come from those improvements.

In putting your focus on improvements, you also need to be paying attention to all of the other metrics that are being shown for your account. Examples of these are clickthrough rate, conversion rate, and site engagement (but there are more). These metrics are more connected with your performance directly, and should help determine areas that are in need of improvement.

Scores Will Tell You Where To Focus Your Efforts

Your scores will help you to know to look at a variety of things. Some include:

High-value keywords – quality scores will help identify the keywords that are lagging and need improvement
Low quality scores – these help you to find components that are doing much worse than others. You can also set priorities when it comes to improvement.
Scores help you to see there is always room for improvement.

Make sure you pay attention to the three components we talked about earlier, because they are a good indicator of your accounts health. If your account is healthy, you’re meeting your performance goals and focusing your efforts in the right places!

Other Factors

There are some other factors that contribute to an ad’s quality, but aren’t directly reflected in your quality score. Some of these are geographic signals, differing qualities of multiple ads in an ad group, and non-exact query matches.

There is also something called clickthrough rate definition. This is the visibility of your ads. It’s determined by your keyword status (statuses are above average, average, or below average) that measures how likely it is that your ads will show up and get clicked by users when your ad shows up as a result of their search.

Concluding Thoughts

Quality score can help immensely when it comes to knowing how to improve your ads. Remember, quality score can’t be forced, only improved. Be patient. Look for what you need to improve. And most importantly, set goals that motivate you to improve your ads.

I understand that quality scores can be somewhat confusing, so don’t be afraid to ask questions and research!

June 21, 2019 0

Ads & Ad Groups

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Overall Thoughts

This topic came as a surprise to me this week. I always thought creating ads was just a way to show your product or business. But, there is much more thought that goes into it! Creating and editing successful text ads is a much deeper thought process than I originally imagined. Here’s some things to look out for.

What makes a successful ad?

When writing an ad, there are many things to consider. Such as highlighting uniqueness, including prices and promotions, empowering customers to take action, and more that we will touch on later in this post. A successful ad grabs the attention of possible customers or clients, and pulls them in. The ad needs to be simple and easy to understand. But, also not so simple that you can’t tell what the product is. An ad also has eye drawing colors and easy to read font type. Making sure you have these things in your ad is so important! Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask your self: “what would appeal to me as a customer of this business?” Now, let’s talk about making a good ad.

Highlighting Uniqueness

Make sure that your ad shows that your business is unique. What makes it different from all of the others like it out there? Do you have free shipping? Do you have a shocking variety? Products or other offers that make you more competitive? Put them on the ad! Ads are all about drawing people in.

Prices, Promotions, & Exclusives

If you are planning on having good prices, promotions, and exclusives, you can show it in your ad. Customers often look at ads and weigh the decision in their mind whether they need your product or not. But they do need it (in your eyes at least)! So help make the decision for them. Give them what they need to make the decision to visit your site.

Empower Action

Give your customers the power to take action. Give them every opportunity to feel that they have all the facts. Tell them what they can buy. Tell them how they can contact you. Use different calls to action. What do I mean by this? Use words and buttons that say things such as “purchase”, “call today”, “order”, “browse”, “sign up”, or “get a quote”. These words tend to draw attention and draw in customers. Give the customers the power. You’ll be grateful you did!

Keywords

Last week’s post explained keywords. Well, in this weeks post, we are including them in our ads. And it is smart if you do! Including at least one of your keywords shows the relevance of the ad to your product, a.k.a. what people want. This can ad to the simplicity factor of your ads – it’s straight and to the point.

Matching Ads to Landing Pages

Your landing page is the page that you’re linking to the ad. It’s the first thing people are going to see when they click on the ad. Make sure that they match. People see the ad, and they might be confused or less interested when they see that the landing page doesn’t quite match the ad or the theme it gave off. If you put promotions or products on the ad, make sure you’re also showing those promotions or products on the landing page. People might leave your site if they aren’t seeing what they expected to see.

Appealing to Mobile Customers

In today’s day and age, everyone and there dog have a smart phone, tablet, or other mobile devices. So, it’s important that you appeal to them. Personally, I see more ads on my smartphone than I do on my computer, I even click on more ads on my smart phone than on my computer. Again, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Think about what they would be seeing your ad on. In addition to this, putting a phone number on your ad gives customers the power to call you. Mobile ads are one of the best ways to get your business the recognition it needs.

Wrapping Up

Now that we have the basics of a good ad, it’s time to experiment. Create a few ads, three or four, and use different messages. These ads all together are an ad group. Keep track of which ads in the group are the most successful and use those. Make sure you are also paying attention to common ad mistakes. Make sure everything is clear, your URLs are working, there’s no awkward spacing or extra capitalization.

You do not need to use each and every one of these basics. Don’t clutter your ad. Remember, simplicity is key- get the message across. But, not too simple. Find a good balance. Now go create create your ads!

June 15, 2019 0

Keywords & Ad Campaigns

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Overall Thoughts

Before I had done this research, I didn’t truly understand the importance or the necessity of keywords or keyword lists. But, they really are important. They are usually the main source of traffic to your site. Here’s why that is.

Keywords

What are keywords exactly? Keywords are words or phrases that can be used to match ads with terms people search for. You as the business owner can decide what target you want to aim your keywords at. You can also target them to different ad networks. There are some strategies to choosing the right words. Some include:

Grouping, Lists, and Targeting

When you pick words and phrases that describe your company and your product, group words that are similar together. Think of ways that your future customers would use to describe your business. Also think of the ways that your customers would describe an app.

You can also make a keyword list. A good list ranges from 5-20 keywords. The key to doing this is to think like a customer. Think of the main categories of your business and think of what specifically could fall under those categories. These categories and what falls under them could also be descriptions of products.

Target specific customers. Using more specific words can target a more specific audience. But be cautious, being too specific is not always good.

Negative Keywords

Negative keywords help you to exclude search items from campaigns and are words that are similar to other keywords. There are types of negative keywords:

Negative broad match: this type is the default of negative keywords. But, this is a broad type. Meaning it is a more general search. If your keywords are all negative, then your ad won’t show in a search.
Negative phrase match: In this type, it means that if your keyword search is exact to the keywords you have and they’re in order, then your ad will not show in searches.
Negative exact match: This type has the danger of ads not showing in searches if the search contains exact keyword terms in the same order without any extra words.

Like the other ways to use keywords, negative keywords can be useful, but they can also be unhelpful and do more damage than good.

Be Aware of the Warning Labels

I said to be aware of the warning labels because using too general or too specific of keywords can make your ads almost impossible to find.

Generalizing your keywords can be a good idea. They will reach more people, and it could help your business appear in more searches that aren’t always related to your ads and business specifically. Just be sure that they actually relate to your business. But using general words comes with warnings of being too general. If keywords are too general then your ads and business will rarely appear in searches. General words can also be more competitive.

The same goes for using more specific words. Using specific words can can go towards a specific audience. Using specific words helps to really narrow your search limits. But, too specific of words can make searches more restrictive, causing your ads to not appear in a lot of other searches.

Concluding Thoughts

Keywords can make or break your business. If they don’t ad to the traffic your business gets, they may not be helping at all. Be sure to do your research! Always be looking for words that really help describe your ads and your business. And make a list. A keyword list is very helpful. Happy listing!

June 7, 2019 0

Choosing A Business Structure and Making Your Business Legal

https://www.pexels.com/photo/top-view-of-man-holding-android-smartphone-near-macbook-and-newspaper-938965/

Overall Thoughts

This week’s topic was one of the more confusing for me. I felt lost often, and had to research and pay close attention to understand. But, now I’m at a better understanding and will share my thoughts with you!

Business Structures

A business structure is basically choosing the form of your future business. Structures vary widely, but you should be careful when choosing. Choosing the right structure is critical. This will help you with all of the legalities for your business. There are four types.

Sole Proprietor

A sole proprietorship is the most traditional business structure / form. Under this structure, you go into business under your own name or under a DBA (“doing business as”) name. A sole proprietorship offers the least amount of protection to the owner of the business, but it is the easiest to set up. This means that if your company were to be sued or attacked legally, your personal assets are what is in danger. While this is unfortunate, if you aren’t worried about being sued, or the business is only open for a short time, or you’re looking for easy set up- then this is the structure for you.

Partnerships

Partnerships are very common. A partnership can occur when 2 or more people own a business together. In terms of ease to set up, it is much like a sole proprietorship. This structure does offer more legal protection since there is more than one owner, but that doesn’t make the owners invincible. A partnership has many benefits. Some including, easier to set up, more than one owner to operate the business, easier brainstorming of new product/ business ideas, etc.

Corporations

This third form of structure creates separate legal entities which are jointly owned by multiple investors. There are two forms of corporations: S and C. Each form has unique benefits and disadvantages. These benefits and disadvantages range from raising capital to paying taxes and so forth. But, they are more protected legally.

Limited Liability

The last business structure is limited liability, or LLC. This is a newer structure, but it combines some of the better features of partnerships and sole proprietorship. There is an ease to organization, as well as a pass through taxation. An LLC is separate from its owners, meaning that you have more private protection. LLC’s are solely responsible for debts and obligations. You can lose money invested in the company, but your personal assets are not at risk. Personally, if you’re starting a small business, this is the structure I would recommend.

What Do Legal Structures Incorporate?

Legal structures all depend on what business structure you choose. Each business form determines amounts of regulatory paper work to be filed, liability on a personal level regarding investments in your business, and taxes you need to pay.

Do The Research.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: do the research. Do not go off what people tell you or what you first come across. Look at all of your options. Look into set up, taxes, paperwork, etc, and see which is really right for you.

Concluding Remarks

Choosing a business structure and legal structure go hand in hand. Don’t be afraid to ask a lot of questions and do a lot of research. Make sure you are doing this to fit your needs, not the needs you want to fit. Make sure this is doable for you and your business!

June 2, 2019 1

Photography and Typography: Reverse Engineered

https://www.behance.net/gallery/64913525/Double-Page-Spread-Magazine-Layout

While the magazine this spread was created for is unknown, it features Courtney Barnett, an Australian singer/songwriter from Sydney. Her first album was released in 2015 and was titled “Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit”.

Overall Typography

This particular spread uses three fonts: a script font, a modern serif font, and a sans serif font. You can see the script font on the right. Its lines are about the same thickness throughout and it has a hand written feel. The modern serif font is used in the heading the top left. You can tell it is a modern font by its lack of thin lines and its vertical stress on the letters. You can also see that it is a serif font by its small tags on the ends of the letters. The body of the piece is written in a sans serif font. You can tell this is a sans serif font by its lack of tags at the end of the letters and its constant thickness.

Contrast

You can see the contrast in this spread fairly easily. First, we have the white font on the darker background, and second, we have the large to small text. The dark green of the trees and the darkness of the model’s hair and jacket are contrasting directly with the white type. The script text on the right is only five words, but takes up almost the amount of space as the body text, which is a much smaller type. The contrast of each font also has a play to the overall contrast of the spread. the script really stands out, prompting the viewer to read it first.

Photography

This particular magazine spread uses both the rule of thirds and field of depth. The model, Courtney Barnett, is in the right third, while the text is in the left third. There is also the feel of depth as the tree on the far right closest to us is blurred, and the model is clear farther back. The photographer used these to draw the attention first to Barnett and then to the article text.

Alternate Images

The following are three images I have taken myself, using the same photography principles as the photographer of the magazine above and could possibly be used as alternate images in the spread.

This first picture of the piano uses depth and the rule of thirds. The hands are in the third to the right and the piano goes off into the distance, becoming blurred at the end.

This second picture features the model in the leftward third. This image does not use depth but it does apply to the rule of thirds.

This third image uses both the rule of thirds and depth of field. The instrument is in the right third of the image field and the neck of the instrument and the music are farther off into the distance, showing depth.

Concluding Thoughts

The principles of typography, contrast, and photography are so important to an overall design. These principles help to give the design life, and draw the eye to the most important parts and it enables an artist or photographer to get a certain message across.

May 26, 2019 0