Week #4- Intro to SEO- Ch. 4

This week I read chapter 4 of Introduction to Search Engine Optimization and this week it was about Keywords. I touched on it briefly last week in chapter 3, but this time we get more in depth with it. A keyword is a word that someone would use on a search engine, they would type it in and then a bunch of different results would pop up, and if the keyword has something to do with a certain type of product, that product should come up in the search results. To get a good keyword or keywords, you have to do a little research to see what most people are searching for. If you're too specific, a lot of people probably aren't looking for that, so you can use the website Wordtracker. You can use this website to see if people are searching for the keywords that you want to use. You can see the traffic of the keywords and it gives you other suggestions of words to use. AdWords keyword planner is also a good tool to use to help you figure out keywords that you should use for different products.

In the picture above, I went to Wordtracker.com and searched the word red dress and it shows up with other words that would be helpful to use as keywords. The first column shows the number of times the word has been searched for. So the term red dress was searched 135,000 times. It gives you so much useful information that can really help you in the long run. 

Week #3- Surfing the Tsunami- Ch. 3

This week I also read Chapter 3 of Surfing the Tsunami and it was about how AI is impacting the job market. In this chapter he gives a bunch of examples as to which jobs are probably going to be jeopardized. Jobs such as: accountants, lawyers. retail workers, financial advisers, and sales jobs. So as you can see its in no specific area of work that is going to be losing jobs, its pretty much all over the board. He pretty much says that you have to be a realist and realize that the change is coming and we need to adapt to the change. Change can also be good. Certainly, if AI doesn't effect your job, then yes the change is a good thing. AI has started to effect my job. I work as a teller at a bank and the job of a teller is slowly becoming a smaller and smaller job. I can't tell you the last time I walked into the bank, because of AI. ATM's can pretty much do anything a teller can do. Most basic transactions can be done through an ATM. So I am a little worried for my job, but not really. I don't plan on being a teller for a very long time, so I'm not too nervous about losing my job. But I do think this change is a good thing. If companies can save money by switching to robots, then they should, and I think we would all think like this if we were the CEO's of all these companies.

Week #3- Intro to SEO- Ch. 3

This week I read Chapter 3 of Introduction to Search Engine Optimization. He starts off by saying that 90% of Search Engine Optimization is about content. If you put relevant content on your website, that would be about 90% of the battle. The other 10% of SEO is technical tweaks. It is also called "classic SEO". Search Engine Optimization is up there with Search Engine Marketing, and its one of the top skill that gets people hired. This is based off a LinkedIn report. He goes on to say that as long as you remember that content is more important, you're good.

Kelsey also talks about an SEO audit. This is kind of a good way to understand how SEO works. There are 3 factors that go into an SEO audit and they are:
See: Can Google can "see" your site properly
Here: On-page factors
There: Off-page factors
See, is talking about Google. When someone posts a website to the Internet, Google will find it and scan it.
Here means how you set up your website and what it looks like. He likes to think of it as "on-site" SEO.
There has to do with traffic and how other people get to your website. And he refers to this as "off-site" SEO.

The next thing he discusses is keywords. Keywords are words that if you type into Google your website would pop up. Some keywords might be: the name of your company or organization, the name of a product, or the generic category of your product. As you can see below I typed in the word 'baseballs' and so many different types of baseballs popped up. And links for Dicks Sporting Goods popped up and another website at the bottom of the screen. So if you were selling baseballs as a product, a keyword that might be good for you to use, would be baseballs.

Week #2- Surfing the Tsunami- Ch. 2

This week I read chapter 2 of Surfing the Tsunami and it was about what AI is up to these days. That is actually the title of the chapter. But the first example that he gives is self driving cars, its pretty much a robot that is driving your car and you are just sitting in the drivers seat, but not actually driving. He pretty much goes on to say that this could potentially be a very dangerous thing to do, because obviously humans make mistakes and so can AI. Machines aren't perfect just like humans, sure they have far fewer errors but they still can make mistakes.

Another area that AI is taking over is drones. These are a physical example of how AI is taking over. The ability that drones have to fly and take pictures and videos is amazing. And they can also go pretty far from where the operator is. Farther than something like a little helicopter. Siri is another good example. I never think of Siri as a robot. I think of her as just an easier way to do things, which is really AI. AI is trying to make humans lives easier. The ways that iPhones store things such as our locations and what we say to Siri is almost scary. I can't speak for Androids because I don't know much about them, but when I turn on my car and the Bluetooth on my phone connects to my cars Bluetooth, the maps on my iPhone automatically pop-up and depending on the time of day it will tell me how long it will take me to get somewhere. Usually it says how long it will take me to get home or to get to work. That is AI. So the amount of AI that is already in our lives is astounding, and we don't even realize it half the time.

Week #2- Intro to SEO- Ch. 2

This week I read Introduction to Search Engine Optimization, chapter 2. It started off by talking about Curation vs. Creation vs. Collaboration. Curation is when you go find content and share it and then review it and then comment on it. Creation is a lot of things. It could be writing a blog or creating a video or writing an article. Collaboration is when you find someone to work with on something.

He says that starting a blog is a perfect way to start to develop content and really get to show yourself. I started a blog for the last marketing class that I took and you can customize it so it kind of fits your personality. In blogs you just write like you talk pretty much. So it really shows off your personality most of the time. And creating a free website is good for search engine optimization. In this book he goes through ways to create a blog and how to create a website in case anyone wants to do that. Creating a vlog or videos is a good way to create content as well, and of course he goes step by step and tells you how to create videos on YouTube and how to edit videos. Basically this book is super useful if you want to create content on the Internet and you don't know how to.

Week 1- Intro to SEO- Ch. 1

This week I read, Introduction to Search Engine Optimization, the first chapter. It was about Google and other search engines such as, YouTube and Bing. Just about everyone who uses a computer or a phone uses Google to search things. If not Google, than Bing. He says that a way to think of Google is like a library, except they make a lot of money at their library. But it really is like a library because you find whatever you are looking for on Google.

When you search for something on Google, they first couple that come up are ads that people or company's pay for to get people to see it and then under the ads are organic search results. There are also a bunch of ads that are on the right hand side of the page depending on what you search. In the picture below I searched 'Benedictine University'. The top link is an ad that Benedictine paid for. And under it, it shows the organic search results. On the side this time there are no ads, I think it might be because I searched for an actual place instead of just searching for something random.

The need for search engines probably won't go away for a while. Google is such a huge platform that so many people use around the world. In the book he says that Google probably will not slow down any time soon, and he wouldn't be surprised if Google bought Facebook or if Google bought Twitter, which wouldn't really be surprising to me either!

Week 1- MKTG 348- Surfing the Tsunami- Ch. 1

In Chapter 1 of Surfing the Tsunami, he talks about AI. AI is Artificial Intelligence. Its basically robots doing tasks for us. It is a faster and more efficient way to do things and it is decreasing jobs for many people. I work in the banking industry and we just got a faster more efficient way to do our job. AI is probably alarming to a lot of people, because they are probably thinking that we are all going to lose our jobs to robots someday. We can't take our jobs for granted because we never know when they will be gone. Doctors aren't even seeing patients face-to-face anymore. They can do this thing now called "virtual visits", all that has to be done is you video chat the doctor and they can send you a prescription. Now that seems a little scary to me. I think some people might try to take advantage of that and not in a good way. 

AI is a fast growing topic and debate, and I hope it doesn't put us all out of a job someday. But with technology now-a-days, I could see these robots getting pretty complex and being able to do things just as a human would do. And that is very scary to think about. We never know when they will come out with a robot to do all of our jobs so we can't take anything for granted.