Theories of Gender and development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Theories of Gender and development - Essay Example Emphasis will also be made to shade light on some of the critiquing approaches to development. This will be done in comparison to the effect of colonial masters in their application of mode of production as a bench mark to the contemporary culture. â€Å"†¦revealing the workings of power and the capitalist mode of production† (Smith 84). Women have for a long time been undermined in most nations. The gender discrimination has been felt by most women in the society with severity varying from country to country and from time to time. For instance, in India, according to the census conducted in 1972, about 94% of women were either employed in the informal sectors working in farms and handicrafts or remained at home taking care of the family. Because early crusaders for women equality were not vocal enough in ensuring that women were given equal opportunity in matters of employment, women accepted the existence of the initial development initiative without question. Therefore , the WID approach did little to improve the social and economic status of women. The situation has however improved given the fact that society has began to recognize women in matters development. In its approach, the WID has very much concentrated on working with women by empowering them by offering development opportunities to them through work related approaches so that women can concentrate less on home based economic activities and concentrate more on income generating activities (D'Agostino and Levine 34). Whereas Women in Development approach focuses on empowering women through self reliance projects and gender identity, Gender Development draws its focus on the gender perspective where the social and economic roles are looked at from the gender perspective rather than from the sexist approach. Gender analysis approach with respect to Gender and Development, however, explains how development projects can be pushed in the society so that focus is not placed on women alone but rather on the relationships between men and women. This approach is however not very much different from the initial WID approach, the difference lies in the integration of women in development projects without isolation. This incorporation of women and men in economic development is essential to ensure that as men make yards of progress in their areas of income, women also do the same. This focus in relationship between men and women is useful at the family level. For example, if I am married and own a handcart that I use for transportation, I shall have relieved my wife of the cost, energy and time for transporting, say her goo ds to the market. This is what Gender Development advocates for. In totality, I believe the Gender Development approach has advantage over the WID approach because of the pattern it follows in the integration of women in activities that are male dominated so that both can help in matters of national development instead of putting much weight on women alone. It is the Gender Development that has gained recognition worldwide and most nations are enthusiastic in adopting it so as to improve on the per capita income of the citizen. WID has rather decided to remain relevant by advocating for what women can do in order to promote development (Razavi and Miller 19). However, there have emerged various critiques to the GAD and the WID approaches by various scholars

Advantages and disadvantages of the oligopoly market system

Advantages and disadvantages of the oligopoly market system This essay will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the oligopoly market system. Supermarket has brought into the service for man for long. The roots of supermarkets are the Co-operative of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the early 20th century the people come up to an idea for selling goods. After that there become the first Supermarket which was set up in January 12th, 1948 in UK. (Brainy History, 2010) As soon as the first supermarket has been set up, a large number of supermarkets came out such as Tesco and Sainsburys. The supermarket industry is now developing in a very high speed. As the supermarket is one of the great improvements in peoples daily life, it becomes one of the most important places for all the people. Today, the supermarket industry in UK has already been changed into oligopoly market. This essay will discuss the characteristics of oligopoly market, and then discuss the kinked demand curve, non-price competition and the marketing mix in the o ligopoly market. First of all, an oligopoly market means that several relatively interdependent companies which concentrate the supply and compete with each other. Therefore, this become highly competitive and the oligopoly companies sell the homogeneous products which are branded. (Tutor2u, 2010) If the company sells the homogeneous products, the consumers will not get the new and better product in a very short time because of the competitive between the firms. They all sell the same product so that there wont be pressure for them to be survived in the UK Supermarket market. Another characteristic of oligopoly market is that the market has been controlled by a few big firms. As a result, these companies will control the market as they like. That may let another characteristic happened which is called price maker. (Tutor2u, 2010) Price maker is a kind of people or firm who set up the price for the product in the market. These people could easily control the market in a way the oligopoly firms want, s o that the consumers will not get some preferences in this kind of market, such as discount, promotion and so on. Therefore, from the characteristics above, it easily shows that the oligopoly market does huge harmful for the normal consumers. If the UK supermarket keep on being like this, the consumers will not get preferences anymore. The next point which is going to talk about is the kinked demand curve. The blank area is where price stability happens (from figure 1). These oligopoly firms always use the non-price competition to increase their output quantity. According to these two figure, in this case, there are no rising in price so that the consequence is what consumers want to see. Non-price competitions, is a kind of competition which is not focus on the price. That shows there are many other competitions in this market. From the Tesco.com and Asda.co.uk, it shows that the Big Fours official websites are some promotional activities, for example discount and cash back. Although, there are some different methods for non-price competition. Figure 1: Figure 2: Reported by TIMESONLINE 2007, Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys and the former Safeway, and the dairy companies Wiseman, Dairy Crest and Cheese Company are doubt for the dairy product price in 2007. As a result, Tesco possibly get a number of number for about 80 million bill. After that, Tesco is going to get back the money by law. So that the case shows that there are some mistakes in this market system. This may also damage the market system too and the consumer confidence can be lost at the same time. The last and which is the most important that can not be ignored is the marketing mix for the oligopoly market system. First of all, in an oligopoly market, the place for which the consumers can go to buy the products are mainly the Big Four. The consumers can not have many different choices for choosing the place to buy things so that Big Four has already control the market as they want. Then, the price can just set up by the price maker. In an oligopoly market, the price maker is the oligopoly firm which shows that the firms can set up the price as they want. For the product, every oligopoly company produces homogeneous product and service. The Big Four use their selves advantages to build high barrier to entry which is to protect their market share. These will make the consumers own less choices for buying the product. Promotion also doesnt always happened in the oligopoly market. All in all, the oligopoly market do harmful for the consumers. In conclusion, from the discussion above, we know that the characteristics of ver, the maximum competition in the oligopoly market can be advantageous to the improvement in providing various products to meet the needs of consumers. It will be meaningful in their oligopoly market and the marketing mix and kinked demand curve shows that the oligopoly is beneficial to the consumers. And oligopoly is also beneficial for sellers too. What is more, our consumers are able to enjoy a well-developed purchasing environment.

Mans Ability to Adapt as Evidenced in To Sir With Love :: Movie Film comparison compare contrast

Man's Ability to Adapt as Evidenced in To Sir With Love    In the novel To Sir With Love various human characteristics are portrayed. Of these, the idea that humans are able to adapt and change their way of thinking seems to be demonstrated throughout the story. In the novel, both the teacher, Braithewaite, and his students end up going through many changes that ultimately result in their coming to change their way of thinking about each other. In life, as in this fictionalized account, the ability to adapt to the world around one's self is a very important trait. In my own life, this has occured on many occasions. Thus, it can be said that to be able to change and adapt ourselves and our ways at looking at things to our to our situations we are truly at advantage.   In the story, Braithewaite begins with a set of preconceived ideas about his students. He expects them to be unintelligent, rough, racially intolerant children with no future-hardly deserving of his respect. But, as he sees later, they are are the total opposites of his of his initial ideas. This is gradually shown through their actions, such as such as the students all going to visit the house of their black friend during his crisis, or their learning to treat each other with respect;they learned to address each other as their last names, inthe case of the boys, and "Miss", for the girls. For the students,they learned to respect and really learn from their teacher,something they had never cared to do before. Braithewaite helped them to break out of the the pattern of intolerance and roughness that society had placed them in. They began to respect themselves and then to respect others. In short, it was obvious that both the teacher and his students were able to adapt their way of thinking to their advantage;they did not get stuck in their original set of preconceived notions about each other. This is a key point of the novel, this idea that people can change their ways.   In my own experiences, I have ended up changing my ways as I have become wiser.

Virginia Woolf’s a Room of One’s Own

Though published seventy years ago, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own holds no less appeal today than it did then. Modern women writers look to Woolf as a prophet of inspiration. In November of 1929, Woolf wrote to her friend G. Lowes Dickinson that she penned the book because she â€Å"wanted to encourage the young women–they seem to get frightfully depressed† (xiv). The irony here, of course, is that Woolf herself eventually grew so depressed and discouraged that she killed herself. The suicide seems symptomatic of Woolf's own feelings of oppression within a patriarchal world where only the words of men, it seemed, were taken seriously.Nevertheless, women writers still look to Woolf as a liberating force and, in particular, at A Room of One's Own as an inspiring and empowering work. Woolf biographer Quentin Bell notes that the text argues: the disabilities of women are social and economic; the woman writer can only survive despite great difficulties, and despite th e prejudice and the economic selfishness of men; and the key to emancipation is to be found in the door of a room which a woman may call her own and which she can inhabit with the same freedom and independence as her brothers. 144) Woolf empowers women writers by first exploring the nature of women and fiction, and then by incorporating notions of androgyny and individuality as it exists in a woman's experience as writer. Woolf's first assertion is that women are spatially hindered in creative life. â€Å"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,† Woolf writes, â€Å"and that as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of women. . . and fiction unresolved† (4). What Woolf seems to say is that being female stifles creativity.Woolf does not assume, however, that a biological reason for this stifling exists. Instead, she implies that a woman's â€Å"life conflicts with something that is not life† (71). In other words , mothering, being a wife, and the general daily, culturally defined expectations of women infringe upon creativity, in particular the writing of fiction. The smothering reality of a woman's life – – housekeeping and child-rearing duties, for example – – distract a woman from writing. Sadly, Woolf notes, even if a woman in such circumstances manages to write anyway, â€Å"she will write in a rage where she should write calmly.She will write foolishly where she should write wisely. She will write of herself where she should write of her characters† (69-70). Woolf posits here that an angry woman, writing out of the repression of her everyday life, will be an ineffective writer. Finally, Woolf blames the patriarchal culture, as if the freedom of women writing is â€Å"some infringement of [man's] power to believe in himself† (35). She suggests that men resist women writers because fiction by women somehow diminishes their belief in their own wo rks.Woolf's message, it seems, is that women must rail against the resistance of the patriarchal culture and attain some degree of independence and androgyny. Woolf does not suggest that women write the same as men. In fact, Woolf asserts that â€Å"it would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men† (88). Woolf believes that a man's sentence is not a woman's sentence, that the two will be vastly different from each other, though not necessarily one better than the other.Her assertion is that men's sentences are awkward in the hands of women because â€Å"the nerves that feed the brain would seem to differ in men and women† (78). This difference of gray matter and neurons would necessarily result in a difference of perspective and sentence structure. Woolf suggests that for fiction to be artfully done, there must exist a measure of androgyny, â€Å"a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one fema le† (98).In essence, Woolf claims that this state of androgyny would allow women the same freedom to express themselves that men seem to have been inherently endowed with. â€Å"The androgynous mind is resonant and porous,† Woolf continues, â€Å"it transmits emotion without impediment; it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided† (98). What Woolf overtly states here is that the ideal creative mind is a marriage, or balance, of the supposed female traits of emotionalism with the supposed male traits of productivity and style. What is implicit, however, is that the female mind can be resonant and porous only when undivided.In other words, a woman can write well only when her mind, like a man's, is not forced to choose between gender and identity, or between her art and society's expectations of her. A woman will write with fluidity and resonance only when she has the same freedom of expression as a man. An additional notion Woolf presents is that women mu st maintain individuality in their experiences as writers. This intimacy with one's identity nurtures the creation of fiction, but only when written out of one's own personality and not imitated through another's. â€Å"Why are Jane Austen's sentences not the right shape for you? Woolf asks Mary Carmichael (80). The idea Woolf reinforces here is that a woman should find and develop her own writing style, not simply mimic her predecessors. Notice, though, that Woolf does not suggest we glean no stylistic inspiration from women writers like the Brontes and Jane Austen, who paved the way for generations of women writers. â€Å"Books continue each other,† Woolf says, â€Å"in spite of our habit of judging them separately† (80). Continuing something, however, does not mean using the same blueprints or tools during the creative process.What Woolf implies is that every book a woman, sitting in that room of her own, produces will generate books from other women. A degree of m imicry, of course, is impossible to avoid. â€Å"A woman writing,† Woolf admits, â€Å"thinks back through her mothers† (97). The â€Å"mothers† here are not only biological mothers who give birth to our physical bodies, but also those women who meticulously scratched their way out of patriarchal constraints and into print; the women who acted as surrogates to birth generations of women writers.Subtle mimicry would seem a natural act under such circumstances, much as a child unconsciously develops personality traits of either parent. Finally, a woman reading Woolf's book has to wonder if that â€Å"room of one's own† is strictly a spatial, physical concept. It is possible that Woolf writes of a psychological construct as a room of one's own, a place one can emotionally go to and write from. Few of us have the luxury of a concrete room of our own, and if we are to be writers, emotional space of our own is the barest necessity.Women who want to write must f ind some quiet space in their psyches from which they can create. â€Å"So long as you write what you want to write, that is all that matters,† Woolf encourages, â€Å"and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say† (106). What Woolf seems to say is that what we create within that space of ourselves, within a single moment, is what matters so long as we do it with an eye toward our own individual, androgynous hearts.

Oreo market research Essay

Nabisco is a company that has been in existence since 1898. During their 109 years in existence, they have grown through natural growth, mergers, and acquisitions. This has allowed Nabisco to be the leading snack maker in the world. The Oreo chocolate sandwich cookie was first introduced in Hoboken, N. J. in 1911. Oreos today are far and away the world’s most popular cookie. The Oreo family accounts for approximately 10 percent of all store cookie sales–a $3 billion market. However in recent years Nabisco has been reluctant to adapt to current market trends. The company was focusing on producing new versions of existing products to make them more convenient. Situation Analysis In 1898, the New York Biscuit Company and the American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company merged over 100 bakeries into the National Biscuit Company, later called Nabisco. Founders Adolphus Green and William Moore, orchestrated the merger and the company quickly rose to first place in the manufacturing and marketing of cookies and crackers in America. To expand their global presence and to strengthen their position in the fast-growing consumer snacks sector, Philip Morris Co. Inc. acquired Nabisco Holdings in December 2000. Philip Morris purchased Nabisco for $14. 9 billion in cash plus assumed $4 million in debt. Eventually, Philip Morris integrated the Nabisco brands with its Kraft Food operations. And now it includes brands such as Chips Ahoy, Fig Newtons, Mallomars, Oreos, Premium Crackers, Ritz Crackers, etc†¦.. Nabisco Arabia Company Ltd. (NAARCO) was formed in 1995 as a joint venture between Nabisco International and The Olayan Group of Saudi Arabia. In 2000, NAARCO made a major investment in a new plant to produce OREO, the world’s most popular cookie. OREO cookies were launched in the Saudi market in March 2001 with a major TV campaign. Internal Analysis The $3 million plant upgrade included a whole new production line, new offices, additional warehousing, and new mess rooms for the increased work force. Equipment from Spain, Italy, India, France, and Austria went into the world-class facility, under the supervision of Nabisco Technical Director Frank Willemsen and the Technical Services Manager Anselmo Codina. The people of Kraft have recognized that the business has an important role in society- a responsibility that included understanding and meeting the public’s expectations, helping to address important social, environmental and economic issues and making a difference in local communities and the world. They firmly believe that â€Å"Our success will depend importantly on our willingness and ability to listen, get feedback on what we’re doing from those both inside and outside Kraft and act responsibly on issues of important concern. † 1 Stargate Institute Market Analysis Target Market: The current target market for the original vanilla filling Oreo is children. The original Oreo cookies have previously focused on and promoted the new colors for the creme filling and change the round shaped cookies into rolls, which would generate new interest amongst children, who would in turn convince their parents to buy the new cookie. Geographic Factor: This project is done and carried on in Riyadh, the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia. Riyadh belongs to the historical regions of Nejd and Al-Yamama. The population of the city is 4,700,000 of which 60% are Saudis and 40 % are foreigners. And the density is 3,024 km square. Demographic Factor: As Riyadh is known for its restrictions and being an Islamic country, the family life cycles followed here are usually all family members. Young single people can not live separately and independently, fearing for them young mature boys/girls will live under their families until its time for them to start up their own families. And generally Saudi people are well known by their family sizes. Most of the family sizes are more then 6 or even far more than that. This is what makes the youth population really high in the kingdom. And it is something obvious and general that Saudi people are known for their wealth and considered as rich people and in return earn high incomes. Behavioral Factor: As Riyadh is developing, people now are becoming aware of various new brands which are attracting them to explore and investigate things. Women here are obsessed about shopping and show a favorable attitude and interest towards the different brands. They are also considered as heavy users when it comes to brand loyalty. 2 Stargate Institute Marketing Need As Oreo is a biscuit, and biscuits are food, so the most important need the Oreo biscuits satisfy is Hunger. But if we further narrow down the needs, Oreo can be satisfying more than just the drive (hunger). *Oreo satisfies the nurturing need example, a mother having difficulties in feeding her 4 to 6 years old child with some nutrition food, can consider Oreo to feed her child with a sip of milk. *Oreo satisfies the imitation need example, kids watching the Oreo ad on TVs while the other kids are enjoying twisting, licking and dunking the cookie into a glass of milk. This forces the kids to want that cookie right away and imitate the same steps. *Oreo also satisfies the fun need, and in this case not only kids will want to have fun and enjoy Oreo even adults like to have fun once in a while individually or even with their kids. Market Trends Various on-going and changing trends in the consumer market affect the business of an organization. Some of those having an impact on Oreo chocolate sandwich biscuits are: A 2004 TNS study amongst Saudis has found a trend towards smaller families. It revealed that Saudis – realize the need for smaller families to provide a better quality of life for their children. Females have been given permission by the government to work which resulted in the increase of purchasing power. Driven by changing lifestyles and population growth the impact on the food market has been positive. The market therefore witnessed rapid growth over the review period. The consumers in Saudi market are seen as active switchers with a medium brand loyalty level. Lastly, a study was conducted by TNS in 2007 which showed that 99 per cent of Saudi respondents in the study consumed chocolate â€Å"food† (chocolates, chocolate milk, biscuits, etc. ) in the last seven days, an increase from 95 per cent in 2004. 3 Stargate Institute Market Growth Growth in the Saudi Arabian biscuit market is being driven mainly by two factors – firstly, the marked increase in advertising spend by multinationals such as Nabisco, Master Foods and Danone. Secondly, the popularity of emerging products such as chocolate-coated biscuits and bread substitutes, which have recently been launched in the market. Researches have shown that biscuits, particularly sweet biscuits, are generally sold at low prices, averaging between SR0. 25 and SR2 (US $0. 06 – US $0. 53), for a single-serve pack and enjoy excellent distribution in all outlets. The biscuits sector is highly developed owing to the strength of the local industry in Saudi Arabia, represented by large manufacturers such as United Food Industries. Oreo sales showed a fluctuating result during the past 13 years. When Oreo initially was launched into the market, sales increased to a high extent for about 3 years but then sales decreased for a long period during 1997 to 2002. Oreo marketing managers became aware of their loses and immediately went back to action and changed their marketing mix and started to introduce several different new products. This effort resulted with high sales in 2008. Sales were amounted to $4 billion and market share 41%.

Average GRE Scores for Top Public Universities

Average GRE Scores for Top Public Universities Many graduate schools have taken the average GRE scores for incoming graduate students off of their websites. Theyre not publishing the rankings in many cases. However, some graduate schools are willing to post average ranges  of scores for incoming grad students, although most of those scores are arranged by intended major rather than by the schools statistics. If youre interested in seeing the most up-to-date GRE scores by intended major, then take a peek at the link provided. Otherwise, read on for the average GRE scores as listed for top public universities for a select few of their majors - Engineering and Education - as published in US News and World Report.   GRE Scores Information If you are confused perusing these scores because you expected to see numbers in the 700s, then Im betting youre probably still thinking about the old GRE score system which ended in 2011. Currently, average GRE scores can run anywhere between 130 - 170 in 1-point increments. The old system assessed students with a scale from 200 - 800 in 10-point increments. If you took the GRE using the old system and want to see what your approximate GRE score would be on the new scale, then check out these two concordance tables. Please note, however, that GRE scores are only valid for five years, so July 2016 was the last time students with GRE scores in the prior format were able to use them.   GRE Verbal Concordance TableGRE Quantitative Concordance Table University of California -  Berkeley: Engineering:   Quantitative: 165 Education Verbal: 149Quantitative: 155 University of California - LA: Engineering:   Quantitative: 162 Education Verbal: 155Quantitative: 146 University of Virginia: Engineering:   Quantitative: 160 Education Verbal: 160Quantitative: 164 University of Michigan – Ann Arbor: Engineering:   Quantitative:   161 Education Verbal: NAQuantitative: NA   University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill: Engineering:   Quantitative: 160 Education Verbal: 158Quantitative: 148 College of William and Mary: Education Verbal: 156Quantitative: 149 University of California – San Diego: Engineering:   Quantitative: NA Education Verbal: NAQuantitative: NA   University of Illinois – Urbana/Champaign: Engineering:   Quantitative: 170 Education Verbal: 156Quantitative: 160 University of Wisconsin – Madison: Engineering:   Quantitative: 168 Education Verbal: 158Quantitative: 149 University of Washington: Engineering:   Quantitative: 170 Education Verbal: 156Quantitative: 147 Pennsylvania State: Engineering:   Quantitative: 170 Education Verbal: 154Quantitative: 145 University of Florida: Engineering:   Quantitative: 169 Education Verbal: 155Quantitative: 155 University of Texas – Austin: Engineering:   Quantitative: 170 Education Verbal: 158Quantitative: 152 Georgia Institute of Technology: Engineering:   Quantitative: 164 Ohio State University: Engineering:   Quantitative: 169 Education Verbal: 156Quantitative: 151 Texas AM: Engineering:   Quantitative: 163 Education Verbal: NAQuantitative: NA So Are My Scores Going to Get Me In? There are a number of factors that go into your admittance into one of these top public universities. And although your GRE scores  are  important, they are not the only things considered by admissions counselors, as I am sure you already know. Make sure your application essay is top-notch and that you have secured stellar recommendations from those professors who know you best in undergrad. And if you havent worked on that GPA already, then now is the time to ensure youre getting the best grades you possibly can in case your GRE score isnt exactly what you wanted it to be.

12 Cause Effect Essay Topics on #8220;Living Downstream#8221; by Sandra Steingraber

12 Cause Effect Essay Topics on #8220;Living Downstream#8221; by Sandra Steingraber If you are tasked with writing a cause or effect essay on the book Living Downstream there are many potential topics from which to choose. Of course, no matter the topic you have selected, it is imperative that you back up any statement or claim you make with facts. In order to help you in that regard, below you will find a handful of facts which might prove useful in the course of your writing. In the book, agricultural and industrial pollution are mixed together with anecdotes in order to provide readers with medical literature assessments, scientific assessments, and the conclusions therein about the relationship between rising rates of cancers and environmental influences. There remains a serious imbalance between studies of which environmental factors influence or contribute to cancers and those studies which focus instead of genetic predispositions for cancers. This remains a serious concern given that many cancers are not genetically transferrable and the source must be derived from an outside factor, such as an environmental factor. The reason this need should be filled is that the cancers caused by genetics, meaning those which are inherited, cannot really be altered at present and nothing can be done to improve upon the situation. However, those cancers caused by various environmental factors can be changed immediately and all influences mitigated, especially carcinogens. Carcinogens are substances which are known to cause cancer inside of living tissue, and these carcinogens exist in a variety of environmental substances to which people are exposed regularly. Chemical pesticides are one striking example of carcinogens which make their way into the human body. Those workers who are exposed to high levels of many chemicals regularly face contamination that goes unchecked by local healthcare, and only with blood and urine samples can the changes to the body be tracked. In the state of Illinois alone 54 million pounds of synthetic pesticides had been used on farms, many of which were poison. In 1950 less than 10% of all fields were sprayed with any pesticides but by 1993 99% had been treated with chemicals. Americans today between the ages of 35 and 64 are likely to die from cancer above all other ailments. In fact, by 1950 only 25% of adults could expect to get cancer while today that rate is almost 50% for men and 40% for women. The rise in cancer has increased steadily with processed foods, changing production habits, and changes in manufacturing. The qualifying link between all of these changes is the introduction of different chemical contaminants to the environment. Tazewell County located in the state of Illinois has shown many cases of a rare bladder cancer, a cancer which was contracted by the author when she was only 20 years of age. The high rates of said cancer has been linked scientifically to the carcinogenic chemicals in the region. The evidence presented in the book revealed that there was a six fold increase in the rates of bladder cancer among the workers who were exposed to particular chemicals related to rubber before legal workplace limits were put into place. In addition, immigrants who came to the area started to exhibit signs of the cancers adopted in the new area, and not the cancers which were prevalent in the place where they had been born. The maps presented by the author indicate that there are more cancers prevalent in urban areas compared to rural areas. In these maps, there are more cancers in the rural counties where the use of pesticides took place heavily, compared to those rural areas where the use of pesticides was minimal. The various studies presented in the book indicate that cancer clusters are prevalent near polluted dump sites, polluted valleys, polluted rivers, and near chemical factories. The same studies revealed that the rate of cancer in children has increased. The lifestyles of children have remained much the same over the last fifty years, without changes to alcohol consumption, smoking, or stress-related work, and yet the rate of cancer among children has risen at steady rates. Research indicates that the rate of shellfish and fish living within polluted waters has directly influenced the increase in cancer rates. Today, North Americans are seeing an increase in liver tumors among 16 fish species located throughout 25 different locations both fresh water and salt water. Each of these locations has become chemically polluted over the last sixty years. This was contrasted to the fact that the rates of liver cancer among members of those same fish species which inhabit waters not polluted by chemicals is almost non-existent. The studies conducted and presented by the author have indicated that chemicals contained in polluted areas are damaging to the immune system as well as to the endocrine system. The damage which is done to these areas results in the promotion of cancers. Regardless of whether the carcinogens have been introduced into the environment deliberately or accidentally, many scientists are afraid to speak out toward improvement unless they can be 100% sure there is a serious link and no other possible influencers. However, the existence of such high chemicals, even with the near one hundred percent studies which have been published, now render these areas seriously dangerous to the people who live there with very little legislation being done to help or hinder. There remains a serious cancer epidemic brought about by the chemical residues and the pesticides which have been used among the environment. This first claim has only been substantiated by studies covered within the book, and few and far between beyond that scope. With these facts in mind, you can find a unique cause or effect on which to focus for your writing (we prepared for you 20 sample topics on â€Å"Living Downstream† by S. Steingraber as well). Remember, there are many more facts out there within the span of the book and this list is by no means comprehensive. However, it should serve as a useful guide when you are starting off your work. Along with this information feel free to read our writing tips on cause effects essays. References: Reus, J. AN ENVIRONMENTAL YARDSTICK FOR PESTICIDES: AN INSTRUMENT TO MEASURE THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF PESTICIDES.  Acta Hortic.  347 (1993): 215-224. Web. Searle, Charles E.  Chemical Carcinogens. Washington: American Chemical Society, 1976. Print. Steingraber, Sandra.  Living Downstream. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1997. Print. Stich, H. F.  Carcinogens And Mutagens In The Environment. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 1982. Print. Viroj Wiwanitkit.,.  Melamine And Other Problematic Food Carcinogens. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2009. Print. Zahm, Shelia Hoar, and Susan S. Devesa. Childhood Cancer: Overview Of Incidence Trends And Environmental Carcinogens.  Environmental Health Perspectives  103 (1995): 177. Web.

SEO Content Strategy How to Skyrocket Your Traffic By 594%

SEO Content Strategy How to Skyrocket Your Traffic By 594% SEO moves fast. Its an ever-changing discipline where what worked six months ago, might be completely out of date. However, there are some fundamentals that stay more or less the same. When was first getting started, we knew we needed to attract the right kinds of customers. In order to pull those customers in, we also knew we needed to capture valuable search traffic. That led to a lot of research. Here are some of the basic strategies and tactics that guided our success: Focus on publishing compelling, quality content that is uniquely different and more valuable than anything else out there. That usually means its long-form content. Use the keywords your audience is searching for. Search engines understand synonyms and similar  terminology, so using related  keywords in multiple pieces of content helps the bots know what topics your site covers. That said, focusing on keywords for each piece of content you publish still matters. Offsite references, reviews, and social links play a role in how your content performs on search engines. Inbound links to your site are still important, and so is a logical sitemap with  internal linking among  pages. Content freshness matters. Keeping your content up to date helps search engines  understand that your site is accurate today. SEO Content Strategy: How to Skyrocket Your Traffic By 594%And of course, any SEO strategy should work hand-in-hand with a basic content strategy: Know your audience. Know your business. Know your goals. So lets see how this  sort of SEO content strategy really plays out  with a deep dive of how we do it at . Results  From Our SEO Content Strategy (Or Simply, This Stuff Works) While there's a lot to  SEO, we primarily focus on applying keywords to compelling, quality content. There's not much more to it than that. And it's working: That's our 594% increase in organic search traffic from January 2015 through December 2016. Aside from some seasonal dips, it's mostly trending in the right direction. This screenshot was grabbed from our Moz.com account. Those results have helped us reach a larger audience, bringing in more than 150,000 email subscribers and increasing our customer base. SEO was one tactic  of our content strategy that contributed to these results. We had a lot of growth with our marketing calendar itself that boosted these results beyond the SEO tactics you're reading about now. But it all adds  up in the end. What It Is And What It's Not Did you know some folks in the SEO industry have actually talked about changing the term from  search engine optimization to optimizing content for discovery and conversion or simply OC/DC? SEO has become an infamous initialism some people  relate to content targeted at ranking for robots instead of answering real people's questions. That is exactly what a great SEO content strategy is not. At least, that's not how we got  the results we saw at . OCDC compared to SEO with Google Trends shows which term is forecasted to stick around. While the term "OC/DC" hasn't widely caught on, the idea is perfect for setting up your SEO content strategy. As Sean Jackson from Copyblogger puts it: Optimizing Content for Discovery and Conversion, or â€Å"OC/DC† for short, encapsulates this idea of amplifying the overall reach and results of content creation. Sean goes on to say there are two main aspects of OC/DC: On-site optimization is all about publishing  awesome stuff in the first place. Interestingly enough, Sean didn't really cover growth hacks to optimize your content specifically for conversions, but this is definitely something we do  at to turn traffic into subscribers. External optimization involves optimizing your content not only for search engines, but for tons of other referral sources, too. Republishing, repurposing, and distributing your content all fall within external optimization. Essentially,  Sean is spot on with this idea: Your SEO content strategy is not about thin content targeted at appealing to robots, rather, it's about publishing timely, compelling content your audience is seeking, and helping them find it. #SEO is publishing timely, compelling content your audience is seeking, and helping them find it.Let's combine everything you just learned into the three  steps you'll use  to  plan and execute your strategy: 1. Research And Target Keywords Relevant To Your Niche Start by brainstorming the core topics for which you'd like to be known for. Since we're talking through 's story, here's how we did it: is a marketing calendar for everything- blogging, social media, ads, e-books, brochures- you name it, you can plan it with . We could talk about content types... but it makes more sense for us to target keywords around marketing strategy, planning, and that sort of thing to help you gals and guys doing the work execute more efficiently than ever. Finding your marketing niche, especially in super broad industries, helps you hone in on your audience's needs really easily. This topic definition focused our vision from any willy-nilly marketing topic to purely marketing strategy, planning, and execution- all things our audience can do even better when they use  . After you have the topics, it's time to find your keywords. First, watch this awesome video from Rand Fishkin at Moz to get started: Then put everything you just learned into action: Enter your topics into Google's keyword planner tool and check out the keyword ideas tab. That shows you a ton of related terms people are searching for. Select the best related keywords and start a list. Words with  low competition will catch your eye as opportunities. Those are keywords  people are searching for, but there isn't a hefty amount of content available to answer their questions. From here, whip out SEMrush's keyword research tool to understand if the keyword is predicted to grow in popularity (making it worth your time to target), gauge your competition, and get a feel for the difficulty. SEMrush's keyword research tool is a handy way to understand if it's feasible to target certain keywords and helps you find better related terms. Bonus: Combine your data from Google's keyword planner and SEMrush with Moz's keyword difficulty tool. For us, when a keyword is in the low 50s for a difficulty percentage, we rank well. From here, we took Brian Dean's  advice and  found keywords that our audience would use to find as a tool for planning your marketing with a calendar, as well as the related keywords for our niche. Product keywords: To clarify that a bit, there are some keywords that we found people search for like  marketing calendar tool that show the searcher's intent is on finding an app like . We should show up in their search results for these sorts of terms, so we're creating a landing page that provides helpful advice on using a marketing calendar, then ends with information about how fills that need. These keywords are very important because folks searching for these words are set  on buying. If we can help searchers find as a solution for these terms, we have the opportunity to convert searchers into paying customers. It's demand generation. Does your SEO content strategy focus on commercial intent? Get buyers, not just traffic. Here's how.Niche keywords: This list is perfect for blog posts with terms like  social media strategy template. That keyword is a core element of , providing a template of how to share content more than once on social media. Yet when we target this keyword, the goal is to provide a sweet download that helps our readers plan this on their own. So these words are great because we know a need depending on the popularity of the keyword, so we can mention how is helpful.  But really, these terms are usually the ones the doers search to learn how to do the work on their own without buying a tool like . They are perfect keywords to target, however, because we can provide helpful advice on how to do it on their  own, but if they just used , their lives would be even easier by consolidating their tool base thus saving 30 minutes for every piece of content they share. See how that works? Recommended Reading: Your Ultimate Content Marketer's Guide to Keyword Research 2. Plan To Execute Your  SEO Content Strategy So you have a big list of keywords you could target with your content.  Now it's time to plan how you'll actually accomplish your SEO content strategy to prioritize your projects and make execution a breeze. There is a traditional approach for marketing project management that will help you do just this: Initiate Your Project Your SEO content strategy is made up of multiple projects. The first step is prioritizing your keywords according to your goals: Start With Your Goals We have three core marketing goals at that all build upon one another.  Focusing on SEO helps us meet all of those goals: Grow traffic: Enabling our audience to  find through search engines, guest posts, and republished content helps us grow our traffic. Increase subscribers: The content we publish on our blog, for the niche keywords specifically, always contains free downloadable content in exchange for an email address. In that way, we optimize our content not only to be found, but to also convert readers into subscribers by providing valuable bonus content. Get more customers: The content we publish that targets the product keywords helps us turn readers into customers by showing the value provides as a marketing tool. From the get-go, it just makes sense for us to prioritize SEO as a valuable component of our overall content strategy. That said, certain keywords have more impact on those goals than others. For us, it makes sense to focus on both product and niche keywords. Here's what to do: Prioritize each list of keywords according to importance for your business to help you reach your goals. Take a hard look at the average monthly searches, competition, and difficulty, and choose the ones that will be easiest for you to rank for now. Select the top 15 keywords from each list to have 30 total keywords to target in your first  project. Define Your Content Types You could turn those keywords into a  million different content formats, right?  For each keyword, determine the best content type you'll use to rank for that keyword. At , we specifically think about the keywords first, then apply our knowledge of why our audience is searching for that term to the process. That helps us choose the right content type for each. Product: Think e-commerce pages, landing pages, and feature pages. These aren't necessarily best for blog posts because folks searching for these terms are likely ready to buy. Use the best content types to help you sell your product or service. Niche:  Think more traditional content marketing like blog posts,  landing pages, templates, and tools. Pro Tip: Think about the content types that work best for your audience- not just what you can do in-house with your current resources. Plan How You'll Execute Your Project Ask yourself, "Who's doing what, and how will they do it?" Resources:  Take people, tools, and budget into account: How you'll actually create the  content. Schedule:  Plan to publish  two pieces of content each week. That'll help you knock out your first project in about two months while staggering the workload to not overwhelm your schedule. Tasks:  Look at each piece of content you'll create, and break it down into what needs to be done. It's like a workflow. If you have team members, meet with them to understand where their skills will come in handy. Calendar: Plan your content on your marketing calendar, and add in the tasks for your workflow to nail every deadline. 3. Create, Publish, And Share Your Optimized Content Google's best results on  SEO content strategy suggest  tons of ways to optimize your content  as you create and share it.  Here are the main things we focused on to grow our #1–3 search results by 248%: Focus on Compelling, Quality Content Yeah, I know how many more times you can hear that before you go nuts. But it's a lot easier said than done. One of the top posts on this topic by Julia McCoy on Scoop.it suggests that brands like BMW, GE, and Red Bull are focusing on engagement tactics that are also helping people find their content. And it's no surprise that Neil Patel would say something similar with his take on interactive content reducing your bounce rate: Engagement and interactive content go hand in hand, and we’ve known it for quite a while. Interactive education was originally studied at home and schools even before the Internet was a thing. Let me define interactive education: Interactive education is teaching that requires participation from students. Interactive content, as we’ll soon see, is the same thing- just swap out students for readers. So while Neil is focusing on bounce rate,  it isn't that far of a leap to suggest  that focusing on engagement as a tactic to reduce bounce rate keeps readers  on your site longer, helping them understand your content is awesome and influencing them to share or convert. The more awesome it is, the more times it's shared. The more that happens,  you'll see more backlinks to your site. All of that is a good thing for SEO. For , engaging content is actionable: Tips and advice to plan better, write better, share better- and all of that with free downloads to help you remember the tips you learn when you're ready to implement the advice. Write Long-Form Content We started experimenting with long-form content in February 2014. In fact, Garrett did a whole little study with our data back then to share the results:  5 Things That Will Change Your Mind About Long Form Content Marketing. It's no guarantee that search engines will rank long-form content that's about 2,000 words higher in their search engine results pages (SERPs) than a post that is around 500 words. But there is a lot to be said for the quality and depth of longer content that seems to complement the previous point on quality. As Neil Patel puts it in another article on the KISSmetrics blog: My number-crunching, data-loving self has come to the conclusion that search engines and people are really into long content. It converts better, shares better, looks better, and just is better. But only to a point. I don’t want you to grovel in guilt or give up on blogging, just because you can’t write 2k-word articles. In an ideal world, we’d all be churning out 2k-word masterpieces. But in the real world, you don’t have to write 2,000-word articles. That said, even when we recently published a blog post that reiterated that blog post length doesn't matter, it is now just part of our content culture to provide long-form, detailed, and actionable content: Jason's on to us. We like long blog posts because they go way beyond scratching the surface to provide super actionable advice. The results have been great for us, and we're going to keep with it. Build Internal Links You never know which post  will be the very first that someone sees on your blog. So we backlink to what we determine are the most important pages on our site from all of our new posts. And you know what? Those pages that get linked to all the time are now some of our highest viewed and best converting on the entire website. Internal linking is supposed to help search engines cruise around your site. We see this as an opportunity to focus on our audience, however, and direct them from new posts to some of the best content we've ever published. Use the Keyword in Your Content We keep  this very simple: Page title Meta description URL Headline Image name and alt (mainly for organization) At least a few times in the body copy (including in subheadlines) There are many times when we let the context of the post speak for itself  without changing the verbiage to jam the keyword in there a few more times.  Search engines are smart and can read deep into context- you don't necessarily need every word in your long-tail keyword in the exact order. In fact, Brian Dean, the wizard behind Backlinko, pulled together a bunch of stats to look for in your on-page SEO that you can focus on right now: Source: On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page – Infographic These are all things we've taken into account at to boost our SEO, too. It definitely works! Understand Latent Semantic Indexing Once you understand basic keyword targeting, digging into latent semantic indexing is the next step. It's a term describing the process search engines use to understand the relationships and context between related keywords. For example, let's say you're writing a post about Chevy cars. If you included some text about the Impala and the Cruze, search engines can infer those are both types of Chevy vehicles. If your goal was to create a really comprehensive post about Chevy vehicles, you might include a subheader for each different model. Search engines would then be able to see your page thoroughly covers its topic. Therefore, it would be more likely to rank well and drive traffic. Here's how to put this principle into practice. Find terms related to your primary keyword. These can be related terms you find using Google's Keyword Planner. LSI Graph is another great free tool that can help uncover related keywords, based off of one primary term. Include those terms strategically in your content. Section subheaders are one logical place for your LSI keywords. Weave them naturally throughout your content as well where it's natural and appropriate. That covers the basics of what you need to know. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Keyword Research With Latent Semantic Indexing Share Your Content By  sharing, I mean optimizing your content for your readers to share it  while distributing it yourself  to reach more people (remember that OC/DC thing?). First, we optimize our content to help you share it with social media  buttons and . We also use the social queue in to help us share our content with our followers. Sharing our content more than once has helped us get 3,150% more traffic. Content promotion  including email distribution is a huge driver of traffic for us to keep our audience coming back. When we reference other folks' awesome content in our posts, we let them know through outreach marketing. We help our guest bloggers promote their content by providing helpful tips after their posts publish. All of these techniques help us  gain the visibility our content needs to be shared, which grows our traffic and helps search engines understand its value. Claim Unlinked Mentions For Your Content Once you've started publishing content, getting rankings, and growing your brand presence, people are going to start talking to you. And that's awesome. However, sometimes people might forget to link back to your content when they're mentioning your stuff. Those missing backlinks represent a missed opportunity to drive even more referral traffic and improve your search engine rankings. An easy way to monitor mentions is to set up a Google Alert for your brand name, and some terms related to your industry. Here's a quick video that'll show you how: Now, any time those terms are mentioned on the web, you'll get an email notification. Check those mentions to see if they include a link to your site. If they don't, find the contact information for those sites. Then, send them a quick email thanking them for the coverage, and ask if they'd consider adding a link. Here's some sample email text you can copy and paste: Hi,   My name is [INSERT YOUR NAME], and I'm the [INSERT POSITION] at [INSERT COMPANY]. I noticed you mentioned us on your site here: [INSERT URL] However, we noticed the link to our [HOME PAGE/BLOG POST] is missing. Would you consider adding a link to make it easier for your readers to find us? Here is the URL: [INSERT URL] Thanks for mentioning us on your blog! Our team appreciates the coverage. Best, [INSERT SIGNATURE] Most of the time, people will be glad to add in the link. Since they've mentioned your company, they have to be interested in what you do, right? Here are some additional tools for finding unclaimed mentions: BuiltVisible's free Link Reclamation Tool. BuzzSumo's monitoring and alerts can track unlinked mentions (and email you more detailed reports than Google Alerts). It's a paid tool, but it's indispensable for our  team. This guide from Moz  and this one  from Ahrefs  are packed with more detailed information on turning brand mentions into links. OK, Now Go Execute Your Plan Here is our best advice to get started on your  content creation process  while taking into consideration everything you just learned about optimizing your content: Angles: Know exactly  what you'd like the outcome of your content to look like. A great angle is appealing to real readers while targeting a keyword just helps them find your content. This is where the compelling nature of your content comes into play. Outlines: Stay on point in your content by beginning with an outline. This is also a great way to make sure you cover your angle. Headlines: Write emotional  headlines. There is some research out there to show that a variation of your keyword in your headlines  to help them feel less like search engine bait is a good thing. Introductions: Focus your first 100 words on drawing the reader in. Start with interesting facts, stories, anecdotes, and similar hooks to keep your readers reading. Brian Dean suggests using your keyword at least once in your introduction. Body: Follow your angle and outline and write your content. Use your keyword naturally. Take Julie's advice:  How To Write A Blog Post: Your 5-Point Checklist To Rock A Perfect Post. Calls to action:  Provide free content in exchange for email addresses and include calls to action for hard sales of your product or service. You're blogging to make money; don't forget to ask for it. Recommended Reading:  4-Step System For Writing A Great Blog Post, Even If You Have Writers Block What Doesn't Work (And Other Lessons Learned) Knowing what worked is all fine and dandy.  But we made a few mistakes you can learn from and avoid ever making in the first place: Adding in keywords after the post is written: Boy, this is super tough and feels like keyword stuffing. It's great to write posts that cover an idea no one has ever searched- that's thought leadership. Just know in your head that thought leadership is the point and adding in a keyword here and there may just make it awkward. Guest bloggers: It's super great to help them know exactly which keyword to use and your expectations before they get too far along. See point #1 for why. Headlines: Having your keyword in your headlines is important. But it's not worth the risk if you make it unreadable for humans. Don't be afraid to use a synonym for your keyword in your headline if you have to because your primary audience is, and will always be, people over robots. To top it off, here are the things I want to target in the near future to improve even more: Choosing the right keywords faster: I've been known to drag my heels on certain content,  searching for a millennium for the perfect keyword. It is a super important process, but we plan to publish for a long time to come. So it's easiest to just pick a few and run with  them now to keep us moving. Improving older content: There are tons of ways to optimize the content that's already published on your site. Lately, I've been researching the Google's 2oo ranking factors in a list from Brian Dean and plan to check out no-follow links, headlines, last updated dates (freshness), and just plain old better on-page optimization in old posts. More product-centric landing pages for demand generation: There are lots of product keywords out there that people could use to find . I'd like to target  all of them with dedicated features pages and landing pages. More super long landing pages because we know they work: Our blog posts convert readers into subscribers really well. But. Our landing pages perform even better. That said, we're going to publish more keyword-targeted landing pages with free offers to convert readers into subscribers. (By the way, some of those landing pages are only able to be found by search engines, so that tells you how much we rely on the robots to help people find our content.) More interactive content and tools:  You guys love the  headline analyzer. It's the #1 search result for that term. So it would make sense to bring you more interactive content we know you'll love. Good luck as you get started with your SEO content strategy.  And please, if you know of other marketers who may benefit from this information, please share it with your friends. SEO Content Strategy How to Skyrocket Your Traffic By 594% SEO moves fast. Its an ever-changing discipline where what worked six months ago, might be completely out of date. However, there are some fundamentals that stay more or less the same. When was first getting started, we knew we needed to attract the right kinds of customers. In order to pull those customers in, we also knew we needed to capture valuable search traffic. That led to a lot of research. Here are some of the basic strategies and tactics that guided our success: Focus on publishing compelling, quality content that is uniquely different and more valuable than anything else out there. That usually means its long-form content. Use the keywords your audience is searching for. Search engines understand synonyms and similar  terminology, so using related  keywords in multiple pieces of content helps the bots know what topics your site covers. That said, focusing on keywords for each piece of content you publish still matters. Offsite references, reviews, and social links play a role in how your content performs on search engines. Inbound links to your site are still important, and so is a logical sitemap with  internal linking among  pages. Content freshness matters. Keeping your content up to date helps search engines  understand that your site is accurate today. SEO Content Strategy: How to Skyrocket Your Traffic By 594%And of course, any SEO strategy should work hand-in-hand with a basic content strategy: Know your audience. Know your business. Know your goals. So lets see how this  sort of SEO content strategy really plays out  with a deep dive of how we do it at . Results  From Our SEO Content Strategy (Or Simply, This Stuff Works) While there's a lot to  SEO, we primarily focus on applying keywords to compelling, quality content. There's not much more to it than that. And it's working: That's our 594% increase in organic search traffic from January 2015 through December 2016. Aside from some seasonal dips, it's mostly trending in the right direction. This screenshot was grabbed from our Moz.com account. Those results have helped us reach a larger audience, bringing in more than 150,000 email subscribers and increasing our customer base. SEO was one tactic  of our content strategy that contributed to these results. We had a lot of growth with our marketing calendar itself that boosted these results beyond the SEO tactics you're reading about now. But it all adds  up in the end. What It Is And What It's Not Did you know some folks in the SEO industry have actually talked about changing the term from  search engine optimization to optimizing content for discovery and conversion or simply OC/DC? SEO has become an infamous initialism some people  relate to content targeted at ranking for robots instead of answering real people's questions. That is exactly what a great SEO content strategy is not. At least, that's not how we got  the results we saw at . OCDC compared to SEO with Google Trends shows which term is forecasted to stick around. While the term "OC/DC" hasn't widely caught on, the idea is perfect for setting up your SEO content strategy. As Sean Jackson from Copyblogger puts it: Optimizing Content for Discovery and Conversion, or â€Å"OC/DC† for short, encapsulates this idea of amplifying the overall reach and results of content creation. Sean goes on to say there are two main aspects of OC/DC: On-site optimization is all about publishing  awesome stuff in the first place. Interestingly enough, Sean didn't really cover growth hacks to optimize your content specifically for conversions, but this is definitely something we do  at to turn traffic into subscribers. External optimization involves optimizing your content not only for search engines, but for tons of other referral sources, too. Republishing, repurposing, and distributing your content all fall within external optimization. Essentially,  Sean is spot on with this idea: Your SEO content strategy is not about thin content targeted at appealing to robots, rather, it's about publishing timely, compelling content your audience is seeking, and helping them find it. #SEO is publishing timely, compelling content your audience is seeking, and helping them find it.Let's combine everything you just learned into the three  steps you'll use  to  plan and execute your strategy: 1. Research And Target Keywords Relevant To Your Niche Start by brainstorming the core topics for which you'd like to be known for. Since we're talking through 's story, here's how we did it: is a marketing calendar for everything- blogging, social media, ads, e-books, brochures- you name it, you can plan it with . We could talk about content types... but it makes more sense for us to target keywords around marketing strategy, planning, and that sort of thing to help you gals and guys doing the work execute more efficiently than ever. Finding your marketing niche, especially in super broad industries, helps you hone in on your audience's needs really easily. This topic definition focused our vision from any willy-nilly marketing topic to purely marketing strategy, planning, and execution- all things our audience can do even better when they use  . After you have the topics, it's time to find your keywords. First, watch this awesome video from Rand Fishkin at Moz to get started: Then put everything you just learned into action: Enter your topics into Google's keyword planner tool and check out the keyword ideas tab. That shows you a ton of related terms people are searching for. Select the best related keywords and start a list. Words with  low competition will catch your eye as opportunities. Those are keywords  people are searching for, but there isn't a hefty amount of content available to answer their questions. From here, whip out SEMrush's keyword research tool to understand if the keyword is predicted to grow in popularity (making it worth your time to target), gauge your competition, and get a feel for the difficulty. SEMrush's keyword research tool is a handy way to understand if it's feasible to target certain keywords and helps you find better related terms. Bonus: Combine your data from Google's keyword planner and SEMrush with Moz's keyword difficulty tool. For us, when a keyword is in the low 50s for a difficulty percentage, we rank well. From here, we took Brian Dean's  advice and  found keywords that our audience would use to find as a tool for planning your marketing with a calendar, as well as the related keywords for our niche. Product keywords: To clarify that a bit, there are some keywords that we found people search for like  marketing calendar tool that show the searcher's intent is on finding an app like . We should show up in their search results for these sorts of terms, so we're creating a landing page that provides helpful advice on using a marketing calendar, then ends with information about how fills that need. These keywords are very important because folks searching for these words are set  on buying. If we can help searchers find as a solution for these terms, we have the opportunity to convert searchers into paying customers. It's demand generation. Does your SEO content strategy focus on commercial intent? Get buyers, not just traffic. Here's how.Niche keywords: This list is perfect for blog posts with terms like  social media strategy template. That keyword is a core element of , providing a template of how to share content more than once on social media. Yet when we target this keyword, the goal is to provide a sweet download that helps our readers plan this on their own. So these words are great because we know a need depending on the popularity of the keyword, so we can mention how is helpful.  But really, these terms are usually the ones the doers search to learn how to do the work on their own without buying a tool like . They are perfect keywords to target, however, because we can provide helpful advice on how to do it on their  own, but if they just used , their lives would be even easier by consolidating their tool base thus saving 30 minutes for every piece of content they share. See how that works? Recommended Reading: Your Ultimate Content Marketer's Guide to Keyword Research 2. Plan To Execute Your  SEO Content Strategy So you have a big list of keywords you could target with your content.  Now it's time to plan how you'll actually accomplish your SEO content strategy to prioritize your projects and make execution a breeze. There is a traditional approach for marketing project management that will help you do just this: Initiate Your Project Your SEO content strategy is made up of multiple projects. The first step is prioritizing your keywords according to your goals: Start With Your Goals We have three core marketing goals at that all build upon one another.  Focusing on SEO helps us meet all of those goals: Grow traffic: Enabling our audience to  find through search engines, guest posts, and republished content helps us grow our traffic. Increase subscribers: The content we publish on our blog, for the niche keywords specifically, always contains free downloadable content in exchange for an email address. In that way, we optimize our content not only to be found, but to also convert readers into subscribers by providing valuable bonus content. Get more customers: The content we publish that targets the product keywords helps us turn readers into customers by showing the value provides as a marketing tool. From the get-go, it just makes sense for us to prioritize SEO as a valuable component of our overall content strategy. That said, certain keywords have more impact on those goals than others. For us, it makes sense to focus on both product and niche keywords. Here's what to do: Prioritize each list of keywords according to importance for your business to help you reach your goals. Take a hard look at the average monthly searches, competition, and difficulty, and choose the ones that will be easiest for you to rank for now. Select the top 15 keywords from each list to have 30 total keywords to target in your first  project. Define Your Content Types You could turn those keywords into a  million different content formats, right?  For each keyword, determine the best content type you'll use to rank for that keyword. At , we specifically think about the keywords first, then apply our knowledge of why our audience is searching for that term to the process. That helps us choose the right content type for each. Product: Think e-commerce pages, landing pages, and feature pages. These aren't necessarily best for blog posts because folks searching for these terms are likely ready to buy. Use the best content types to help you sell your product or service. Niche:  Think more traditional content marketing like blog posts,  landing pages, templates, and tools. Pro Tip: Think about the content types that work best for your audience- not just what you can do in-house with your current resources. Plan How You'll Execute Your Project Ask yourself, "Who's doing what, and how will they do it?" Resources:  Take people, tools, and budget into account: How you'll actually create the  content. Schedule:  Plan to publish  two pieces of content each week. That'll help you knock out your first project in about two months while staggering the workload to not overwhelm your schedule. Tasks:  Look at each piece of content you'll create, and break it down into what needs to be done. It's like a workflow. If you have team members, meet with them to understand where their skills will come in handy. Calendar: Plan your content on your marketing calendar, and add in the tasks for your workflow to nail every deadline. 3. Create, Publish, And Share Your Optimized Content Google's best results on  SEO content strategy suggest  tons of ways to optimize your content  as you create and share it.  Here are the main things we focused on to grow our #1–3 search results by 248%: Focus on Compelling, Quality Content Yeah, I know how many more times you can hear that before you go nuts. But it's a lot easier said than done. One of the top posts on this topic by Julia McCoy on Scoop.it suggests that brands like BMW, GE, and Red Bull are focusing on engagement tactics that are also helping people find their content. And it's no surprise that Neil Patel would say something similar with his take on interactive content reducing your bounce rate: Engagement and interactive content go hand in hand, and we’ve known it for quite a while. Interactive education was originally studied at home and schools even before the Internet was a thing. Let me define interactive education: Interactive education is teaching that requires participation from students. Interactive content, as we’ll soon see, is the same thing- just swap out students for readers. So while Neil is focusing on bounce rate,  it isn't that far of a leap to suggest  that focusing on engagement as a tactic to reduce bounce rate keeps readers  on your site longer, helping them understand your content is awesome and influencing them to share or convert. The more awesome it is, the more times it's shared. The more that happens,  you'll see more backlinks to your site. All of that is a good thing for SEO. For , engaging content is actionable: Tips and advice to plan better, write better, share better- and all of that with free downloads to help you remember the tips you learn when you're ready to implement the advice. Write Long-Form Content We started experimenting with long-form content in February 2014. In fact, Garrett did a whole little study with our data back then to share the results:  5 Things That Will Change Your Mind About Long Form Content Marketing. It's no guarantee that search engines will rank long-form content that's about 2,000 words higher in their search engine results pages (SERPs) than a post that is around 500 words. But there is a lot to be said for the quality and depth of longer content that seems to complement the previous point on quality. As Neil Patel puts it in another article on the KISSmetrics blog: My number-crunching, data-loving self has come to the conclusion that search engines and people are really into long content. It converts better, shares better, looks better, and just is better. But only to a point. I don’t want you to grovel in guilt or give up on blogging, just because you can’t write 2k-word articles. In an ideal world, we’d all be churning out 2k-word masterpieces. But in the real world, you don’t have to write 2,000-word articles. That said, even when we recently published a blog post that reiterated that blog post length doesn't matter, it is now just part of our content culture to provide long-form, detailed, and actionable content: Jason's on to us. We like long blog posts because they go way beyond scratching the surface to provide super actionable advice. The results have been great for us, and we're going to keep with it. Build Internal Links You never know which post  will be the very first that someone sees on your blog. So we backlink to what we determine are the most important pages on our site from all of our new posts. And you know what? Those pages that get linked to all the time are now some of our highest viewed and best converting on the entire website. Internal linking is supposed to help search engines cruise around your site. We see this as an opportunity to focus on our audience, however, and direct them from new posts to some of the best content we've ever published. Use the Keyword in Your Content We keep  this very simple: Page title Meta description URL Headline Image name and alt (mainly for organization) At least a few times in the body copy (including in subheadlines) There are many times when we let the context of the post speak for itself  without changing the verbiage to jam the keyword in there a few more times.  Search engines are smart and can read deep into context- you don't necessarily need every word in your long-tail keyword in the exact order. In fact, Brian Dean, the wizard behind Backlinko, pulled together a bunch of stats to look for in your on-page SEO that you can focus on right now: Source: On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page – Infographic These are all things we've taken into account at to boost our SEO, too. It definitely works! Understand Latent Semantic Indexing Once you understand basic keyword targeting, digging into latent semantic indexing is the next step. It's a term describing the process search engines use to understand the relationships and context between related keywords. For example, let's say you're writing a post about Chevy cars. If you included some text about the Impala and the Cruze, search engines can infer those are both types of Chevy vehicles. If your goal was to create a really comprehensive post about Chevy vehicles, you might include a subheader for each different model. Search engines would then be able to see your page thoroughly covers its topic. Therefore, it would be more likely to rank well and drive traffic. Here's how to put this principle into practice. Find terms related to your primary keyword. These can be related terms you find using Google's Keyword Planner. LSI Graph is another great free tool that can help uncover related keywords, based off of one primary term. Include those terms strategically in your content. Section subheaders are one logical place for your LSI keywords. Weave them naturally throughout your content as well where it's natural and appropriate. That covers the basics of what you need to know. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Keyword Research With Latent Semantic Indexing Share Your Content By  sharing, I mean optimizing your content for your readers to share it  while distributing it yourself  to reach more people (remember that OC/DC thing?). First, we optimize our content to help you share it with social media  buttons and . We also use the social queue in to help us share our content with our followers. Sharing our content more than once has helped us get 3,150% more traffic. Content promotion  including email distribution is a huge driver of traffic for us to keep our audience coming back. When we reference other folks' awesome content in our posts, we let them know through outreach marketing. We help our guest bloggers promote their content by providing helpful tips after their posts publish. All of these techniques help us  gain the visibility our content needs to be shared, which grows our traffic and helps search engines understand its value. Claim Unlinked Mentions For Your Content Once you've started publishing content, getting rankings, and growing your brand presence, people are going to start talking to you. And that's awesome. However, sometimes people might forget to link back to your content when they're mentioning your stuff. Those missing backlinks represent a missed opportunity to drive even more referral traffic and improve your search engine rankings. An easy way to monitor mentions is to set up a Google Alert for your brand name, and some terms related to your industry. Here's a quick video that'll show you how: Now, any time those terms are mentioned on the web, you'll get an email notification. Check those mentions to see if they include a link to your site. If they don't, find the contact information for those sites. Then, send them a quick email thanking them for the coverage, and ask if they'd consider adding a link. Here's some sample email text you can copy and paste: Hi,   My name is [INSERT YOUR NAME], and I'm the [INSERT POSITION] at [INSERT COMPANY]. I noticed you mentioned us on your site here: [INSERT URL] However, we noticed the link to our [HOME PAGE/BLOG POST] is missing. Would you consider adding a link to make it easier for your readers to find us? Here is the URL: [INSERT URL] Thanks for mentioning us on your blog! Our team appreciates the coverage. Best, [INSERT SIGNATURE] Most of the time, people will be glad to add in the link. Since they've mentioned your company, they have to be interested in what you do, right? Here are some additional tools for finding unclaimed mentions: BuiltVisible's free Link Reclamation Tool. BuzzSumo's monitoring and alerts can track unlinked mentions (and email you more detailed reports than Google Alerts). It's a paid tool, but it's indispensable for our  team. This guide from Moz  and this one  from Ahrefs  are packed with more detailed information on turning brand mentions into links. OK, Now Go Execute Your Plan Here is our best advice to get started on your  content creation process  while taking into consideration everything you just learned about optimizing your content: Angles: Know exactly  what you'd like the outcome of your content to look like. A great angle is appealing to real readers while targeting a keyword just helps them find your content. This is where the compelling nature of your content comes into play. Outlines: Stay on point in your content by beginning with an outline. This is also a great way to make sure you cover your angle. Headlines: Write emotional  headlines. There is some research out there to show that a variation of your keyword in your headlines  to help them feel less like search engine bait is a good thing. Introductions: Focus your first 100 words on drawing the reader in. Start with interesting facts, stories, anecdotes, and similar hooks to keep your readers reading. Brian Dean suggests using your keyword at least once in your introduction. Body: Follow your angle and outline and write your content. Use your keyword naturally. Take Julie's advice:  How To Write A Blog Post: Your 5-Point Checklist To Rock A Perfect Post. Calls to action:  Provide free content in exchange for email addresses and include calls to action for hard sales of your product or service. You're blogging to make money; don't forget to ask for it. Recommended Reading:  4-Step System For Writing A Great Blog Post, Even If You Have Writers Block What Doesn't Work (And Other Lessons Learned) Knowing what worked is all fine and dandy.  But we made a few mistakes you can learn from and avoid ever making in the first place: Adding in keywords after the post is written: Boy, this is super tough and feels like keyword stuffing. It's great to write posts that cover an idea no one has ever searched- that's thought leadership. Just know in your head that thought leadership is the point and adding in a keyword here and there may just make it awkward. Guest bloggers: It's super great to help them know exactly which keyword to use and your expectations before they get too far along. See point #1 for why. Headlines: Having your keyword in your headlines is important. But it's not worth the risk if you make it unreadable for humans. Don't be afraid to use a synonym for your keyword in your headline if you have to because your primary audience is, and will always be, people over robots. To top it off, here are the things I want to target in the near future to improve even more: Choosing the right keywords faster: I've been known to drag my heels on certain content,  searching for a millennium for the perfect keyword. It is a super important process, but we plan to publish for a long time to come. So it's easiest to just pick a few and run with  them now to keep us moving. Improving older content: There are tons of ways to optimize the content that's already published on your site. Lately, I've been researching the Google's 2oo ranking factors in a list from Brian Dean and plan to check out no-follow links, headlines, last updated dates (freshness), and just plain old better on-page optimization in old posts. More product-centric landing pages for demand generation: There are lots of product keywords out there that people could use to find . I'd like to target  all of them with dedicated features pages and landing pages. More super long landing pages because we know they work: Our blog posts convert readers into subscribers really well. But. Our landing pages perform even better. That said, we're going to publish more keyword-targeted landing pages with free offers to convert readers into subscribers. (By the way, some of those landing pages are only able to be found by search engines, so that tells you how much we rely on the robots to help people find our content.) More interactive content and tools:  You guys love the  headline analyzer. It's the #1 search result for that term. So it would make sense to bring you more interactive content we know you'll love. Good luck as you get started with your SEO content strategy.  And please, if you know of other marketers who may benefit from this information, please share it with your friends.

RACI Chart Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

RACI Chart - Coursework Example Changes in technology require improved infrastructure design. Additionally, management objectives change due to new technical knowledge, new regulations and demands of the potential customers based on their perceptions. However, development of a new network infrastructure required decision-making on the cost and efficiency of the developed system. It has to be a system meeting the needs of the business and at the same time cost-effective. The network managers of the business and their employees also need to gain more effective practical understanding of the working of the system and how to manage it for optimal performance (Schiefelbusch, 2014). In my assignment, I had to make a decision on the scale of the network required by the organization. The size of a network is an important factor to consider since it helps in the determination of the personnel required, level of expertise, depending on the client’s needs. There are various types of networks, from which a designer I had to select the most suitable for my client. They include local area network (LAN) is usually designed and implemented at the scale of a small office or a single building. This network primarily interconnects the computing resources within one organization. In most cases, LANs usually depend on Ethernet, twisted pair or wireless technology. The other type of a network is wide area network (WAN) which connects a single office to the parent organization. WAN usually covers a wide area such as a metropolitan, regional, or national. Only a few organizations have the resources for building and maintenance of their own WAN links, and is usually more c ost-effective to lease them from the local phone or Cable Company. WAN technologies are different in terms of speed, cost, and bandwidth. Another type of network to use is campus area network (CAN). This type of network connects multiple LANs of the

Human Subjects Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Human Subjects - Research Paper Example elinek works in however has never experienced any labour unrests for over thirty years, due to relatively higher payment and better or favorable working conditions. In the surge and increase of the internet, the industry and market as a whole has borne the brunt of change as most of the competitors lost their cutting edge and business or market share to the internet. This is to imply that customers value the retail services that they get from the internet as compared to physical or manual retail stores and shops. On the contrary, the Costco Company has continued to increase and grow in terms of stock price and sales (www.bloomberg.com). In the conventional and simple sense, it is as if the Costco Company has defied business and marketing conventions to realize an increase in its portfolio despite the fact that business and market as a whole is experiencing difficult times in the conventional sense and aspect. According to Craig Jelenik, the company gives better pay and more comfortable working environment where the welfare of the workers is ensured. For instance, Craig Jelenik mentions that people ought to have wages with health benefits ensure s that more money rotates back to the society which in turn would create a healthier nation. He also went ahead to write and advise the congress to increase the minimum wage to $9 an increase from the past level. The main reason as to why he fronts an increase in the minimum wage is so as to ensure that the employee productivity is increased, their loyalty and commitment is unwavering and the turnover of employees is high. Under the prevailing circumstance of labour unrest and demands in pay rise, the Costco Company has continued to give its employees a higher minimum wage as compared to what the government stipulates for minimum pay per hour. For instance, it pays its employees $20.89 an hour as compared to the stipulated wage rate of $9-which other retail stores pays their customers. The researchers demanded and inquired

Why Do Voters Vote Against Their Party Dissertation

Why Do Voters Vote Against Their Party - Dissertation Example The importance of this study is to determine the relationship between voting and party identification. The party identification significantly affects the outcome of an election. This was especially true in many elections that took place between 1972 and 2008 and this effect is mostly felt on the presidential vote choice.2 The effect of party ID was weaker between 1980 and 2000, but saw a dramatic rise in effect from 2004 to 2008. Ideological reputation is an emerging perception and attitude that citizens portray towards parties. This is the reason for the greater consistency in the policy views of the members of the public and their partisanship. This means the choice of leadership is motivated by partisanship which consequently implies party identification. In examining of these factors we draw the understanding of the nature of election results as well as the dynamics of the American election. Hence it is true that there is a close link of party identification to the voting choices of American citizens. Mark Twain stated â€Å"no party holds the privilege to dictate me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot†¦Ã¢â‚¬ 3 Plausible reasons why voters vote against their party identification include long term and short term factors. Candidate quality also has a bearing on vote choice. For example, incumbents are evaluated based on their previous record of work hence they can or cannot benefit from the voter evaluation depending on the quality of their work.

Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 37

Assignment Example Engineering controls also address toxicological contaminants at the workplace environment through measures such as isolation, design or change processes, local suppression, and ventilation. Isolation advocates for the segregation of hazardous processes and equipment into separate rooms or areas to reduce contamination of the entire workplace. Design or change of processes requires simple considerations or modifications that can significantly improve the conditions of the product, such as packaging or grouping. Local suppression include strategies such as wetting or palletizing of dusty materials, as well as blanketing of toxic liquids, such as using damp mopping in contaminated or dusty areas. Ventilation is very instrumental in controlling airborne hazards, which occur in the form of vapours, fumes, gases, mists, dusts, and fibres (Dever, 2006). Work practices and hygiene practices work as supplementary strategies to engineering controls. As such, they represent on job activities geared at reducing the potential exposure to the toxic substances, such as preventive maintenance of equipment, posting warning signs, as well as labeling hazardous materials. Personal protective devices includes strategies such as wearing protective glasses or goggles, face shields, skin creams, protective clothing such as laboratory coats and gloves, and respirators. This strategy works best on condition that the choice made is the proper type, and there being the provision of an adequate maintenance program for the equipment. A fifth strategy entails undertaking safe practices and emergency provisions. According to Fine & Fos (2012), this includes steps such as leak and chemical spill procedures, which require sweeping solid contaminants into a container, or neutralizing contaminant liquids. It also provides the necessary steps to undertake in waste disposals, as well as the requirements

Effects of Training and Development on Overall Organizational Research Paper

Effects of Training and Development on Overall Organizational Performance - Research Paper Example With employees’ development, an organization is able to retain them at their place of work for their own growth and for the growth of the organization for they will be able to fill new positions arising in the organization. In this paper, I will generally discuss training and development on overall organizational performance through work of HR management. I will also discuss how the human resource department seeks to improve the overall performance of its employees through training and development programs. The paper will deal mainly with the effects of training and development programs in improving employees’ performance and how it helps an organization to realize its goals by giving different perspectives from different authors and researchers. Training and development are essential to the success of all organizations. This is because; it ensures the ongoing managing of the performance of employees in organizations. Employee pieces of training not only set goals for t he employees but also monitors and motivates them in achieving the set goals. All human resource management should initiate training and development programs in their organizations so as to nurture professionals and a staff that is competent. It is vital because of the changes in economic and technological trends and the increase in the pace of modernization. All organizations need training and development so as to be able to grow faster with the changes. Training and development increase employees’ performance and it also increases the achievement of organizational goals. It is a fact that training and development of employees enhance eventual employee’s productivity and performance in an organization. Many organizations have occupied their staff in training and development programs so as to improve their performance. The performance of employees needs to be upgraded regularly. For an organization to meet its goals there is a need to instigate training, development, a nd employee evaluation programs. The best and most powerful tool in human resource training and development in e-learning. Online learning is very important because nowadays, everything is done technologically and all employees should be technologically literate. New technologies help in the improvement of an organizations performance. Even though there were cases whereby most employees were resistant to change, presently, they do embrace change. Due to this, most organizations are giving their employees training and development in their organizations for better performance. A research conducted by Rivera  found out that the human resource management is very confident and keen on the positive effects that training and development programs bring to their organizations (56). Many HR professionals interviewed during this research confirmed that the success and excellent performance of an organization highly rely on the constant training and development of its employees. The same rese arch revealed that many employees are happy with the training given to them and they also confirmed that it has improved their performance and it has increased their self-efficiency.

Summary Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 9

Summary - Research Paper Example The New York Times Media Group: The New York Times Media Group comprises of the New comprises of the New York Times which is a daily and Sunday newspaper media house; the New York Times index which is a print publication and in addition producing and licensing the New York Times Index; the International Herald Tribune which is a daily Newspaper; NYTimes.com; Digital Archive Distribution business that is responsible for licensing electronic archive database to resellers of that information in the professional, business, and library markets (Drexler, 2007). The New York Times Media Group is also responsible and management of the New York Times News Services Division (New York Times (Firm), & In Claiborne 1966) The New England Media Group: This segment of New York Times comprises BostonGlobe.com which is a paid subscription Web site; the Boston Globe which is a daily and Sunday newspaper. Boston.com is also part of the New England Media Group. Boston.com is a regional news and information web site. In addition, the New England Media Group comprises of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette which is a daily and Sunday newspaper and Telegram.com (BYERS, 2012). The New England Media Group sells advertisement through various channels that basically include digital, print, niche magazines, direct marketing and internet radio and events (Hitt, Ireland & Hoskisson, 2007). The company has started in a strong financial background this 2014. This is because of a strong finish of the year 2013. The New York Times’ operating profit for the 3rd of 2013 before depreciation, severance, and amortization was nearly $40 million. This represents 35% increase from the same year 2012 which was $30 million (Verbeke, 2013). During the same quarter of 2013, the company increased overall revenue by 2% with the continued building of the digital scriber numbers and notable sequential improvement in print advertising revenue trends.