SEO - My statistics after two months of blogging

Search Engine Optimization can be very complexe for a neophyte, which is why companies often employ professional specialized in SEO. But a manager still has to be aware of the basics of SEO.

Improving the visibility of your own website is important to generate traffic. Several basic tricks are given by google so that you can improve your visibility:

- hierarchize your content and create links between your internal pages

- Create a sitemap in which links are directed to the main sections of your website

- Don't put too many links on each webpage

- Build a site rich of information rand present the content clearly and relevantly

- Try to think about the terms internet users will use to search for your site, and insert them in your pages

There are a lot of other techniques that you'll be able to find out following this link >> http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=fr&answer=35769

Concerning my own statistics, I figured out by using the blogger statistics page that my blog "Six Months in SoCal" as been visited 189 times exactly, which I think is poor compared to the time I have been keeping it updated.

Most of the pageviews come from the United States, but I also have several of them coming from France, which is probably due to my french friends following me on my twitter account. It also seems that most of the traffic comes from the links from the blogs of my classmates.
On the following graphs, we notice that the stats about internet browsers are equally shared between Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari:

Concerning my facebook account, I currently have 536 friends. I created my account in 2008, but I think I got in contact with most of my friends since 2009.

As for my twitter account, I created it approximately one month ago and I now have 14 followers. I follow 16 twitter account and have posted about 15 tweets since I subscribed to twitter.

Return On Investment

Return On Investment is a way of measuring what are your benefits as a consquence of a certain strategy.

You have several ways to measure Return On Investment for Social Media:

- Click Through Rate: the CTR represents the number of people who navigate on your website by having clicked on a link on another website.You can calculate with the following formula:

CTR = Number of people who clicked on the link to your website/number of times the link is shown

- Number of followers (also known as "eyeballs")

- How many likes/retweets/reposts you get

- How are increasing/decreasing your sales

- Analytics (you can measure them using Google alerts)

- The number of mentions you get

- Create an Activity Timelines: you have to track everything that is hapenning (posts, new friends, e-mail blasts...)

Time for VLoging...

As a first Vlog try, I have to introduce myself in a short video: here is the result >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Masp4NG6l2c&feature=youtu.be

I'll try to update it with a new and better one when I'll be able to!

The science of Social Timing

The "science of Social timing" is about what is the best time to post on social networks, when will you get the most answers to your post and when will you get the more chances to be read by internet users.

For example, the best time to post on tweeter is at 5 in the afternoon: people get out of work, teens get back to school, and while relaxing they all check their smartphone and comment on others' posts.

The CTR (Click Trough Rate) is a good way to measure the number of replies or comments.

CTR = number of persons that comment on your posts / number of followers you have

For example, to have the best CTR on tweeter, one should post from 12 to 48 tweets per day. The best days to tweet are on wednesdays and on weekends: at the beginning of the week, people are busy with the big amount of works that belong to the week beginnings. After wednesday, people are busy and want to finish their work before Friday night, that is why wednesday is one of the best days to tweet. However, companies like clubs and bars might be interested in posting on Thursdays and Fridays because these are the best nights for events.

Speaking of Facebook, according to the statistics the best day to share is on saturday, especially at noon (the "noon rules" for everyday). The best sharing frequency on facebook is to post one time every 2 days.

On the following research presents the percentage of American Citizens per time zone.

Percentage of American population by Time Zone

The 2 big takeaways are that:

- Nearly 50% of American Citizens are in the Eastern Time Zone

- The Eastern and Central Time Zones combined represent almost 80% of the U.S. population.

This  facts might be relevant for West coast companies because Pacific Time Zone only represent 14% of the American population.

West coast companies might take it into consideration because since the best time to tweet is 5PM, and therefore they would "hit" more people if they tweeted at 5PM for Eastern Time Zone.

These same companies might choose to "ignore" this advice because they might just want to hit the local population and therefore they have no interests into reaching the Eastern and Central Time Zone population.

Today I had to create a twitter account and to follow people that can represent an interest for me.

I chose 5 twitters account, and here are more details about two of them:

- Fubiz, witch is a french blog about new trends: by following this blog you can keep updated to design trends, new technologies outgoings, great videos... I really like surfing on this blog because i'm interested in video production and realisation, and also in new information and communication technologies.

- BNP Paribas: I've been working in this company for one year and i'm considering getting a job in this group. By following BNP Paribas, I can stay up to date with the main happenings, and understand better the strategy of the group!

Online communities

So, for our next class we had to join two online communities and post messages on it.

My aim when applying to UCR really was to discover California: therefore, I joined the online community called "CouchSurfing". This community allow people to organize trips, find great places to go, and welcome other members of the community in your home: they sleep on your "couch", which explains the name of this community.

Then, I joined the group "California", and posted a message asking the things to do near Riverside, the places I should visit, if there are great places to hike or swim... Nobody answered me yet, but since the community is pretty active, I think i'll get some answers soon!

The second community I joined is a Yahoo group called "canukscavalierclub", it is a group to talk about Chevrolet Cavalier. I joined this gorup because I'm actually buying this car, and therefore I wanted to get some advice about it: I put a link of the ad for the car on the forum, and ask the members if they think that it is a good deal or not. I didn't get any answer, but the "weird" thing about this forum is that there are more than 500 members, but the last posts are not really related to the subject of the group...

I hope that someone will answer, even if I already took the decision of buying the car!

About Personal Branding

Why is it important to market myself?

I think that nowadays the job market is very tight, and to be part of the "best values" you really have to market yourself online. All the Human Resources departments of the companies are now searching profiles online, that is why you really need to join serious social networks and to update your profiles with your qualities and what you're searching for. It is important to show your interests, why you would correspond for the job you're searching for, and to write in your profiles the keywords that match you the most.

Personal branding is a trend of the 21th century that we really have to follow.

How can I build my brand online?

To build your brand online, your firstly need to join the social networks from witch you can take an advantage when applying for a position. But subscribing to these networks is not enough. You need to "feed" your profile, and to show you're active on them, that you have connections that also match your interests. All of this contributes to showing you are "present" on the web.
But you also need to attract people to you. You have to publish things that correspond you, you can lauch "campaigns" on social networks and invite your friends to like what you posted.
So, basically, ou not only need to be present, but also to be an "activist".