Presentation of the Gothic Male Protagonist Essays

Presentation of the Gothic Male Protagonist Essays Presentation of the Gothic Male Protagonist Essay Presentation of the Gothic Male Protagonist Essay To what extent does the characterization of Heathenish exemplify gothic elements? Emily Bronzes Withering Heights is not necessarily described as a gothic novel; however it certainly exhibits many gothic elements throughout its narrative. These are present through the characterization of Heathenish as the gothic protagonist as he often exemplifies numerous characteristics of the male gothic archetype. This can be seen through the exploration of binary oppositions within his character, such as his simultaneous representation as both victim and Machiavellian villain. This duality of character can be likened to the protagonist In The Strange Case of Dry Jewell and My Hyde, in which an alternate persona is created in order to fulfill Dry Jellys evil desires. Although Heathenish does not create a defined alternate personality, his drastic inner contradictions are reminiscent of Dry Jellys, shown through his capable for intense love towards Catherine, and simultaneous tyrannical treatment of Isabella. Another prevalent gothic aspect which Is significant to the characterization of Heathenish Is his current associations with bestial and preternatural Influences. Josephs assertion that weve all as summate uh rather side in us, introduces the idea of being connection with bestial or non-human influences, a recurrent theme in the characterization of male protagonists within gothic literature. His appearance is a physical manifestation of his separation from the Earns family, aligning his with the other, describing him as a dark skinned gypsy emphasizes his unknown parentage, marking him as an outsider. Likewise the degrading term gypsy presents the Idea of being underbred, meanwhile his foreign appearance draws upon his connection with the exotic. Recurrent descriptions of him being dark creates ambiguity of whether this is a reference to his race or his nature, heightening the enigma surrounding Heathenish. Its so dark almost as if it came from the devil, through labeling him as it, the lack of nominal attribution disables him from ever truly being Integrated into the Earns family. Satanic connotations draw upon the gothic theme of the supernatural and connect him to these evil Influences, acting as warning of his potentially destructive powers. Shelter associations of his characterization are once again highlighted through the description of his basilisk eyes, suggesting bestial and mythical connections. This constructs Heathenish as being in possession of considerable powers, whilst the annalistic qualities depict a degree of other-worldliness. His continual connection with alternative influences further divides him from the Awareness: A lying fiend, a monster, and not a human being! This demonstration of Heathenish places him In a lamina sphere between human ND inhuman while monster reinforces his brutality, distancing him from empathy or humanity, reminding us of his status as other. Claire Jones stated Heathenish has only the singular name, which serves him as both Christian and surname. This places him radically outside social patterns and conventions. The implantation of the protagonist lends his character to the constant alignment with the enigmatic and unconventionality rather than being accepted by the Awareness: subsequently being An archetype of the gothic male is the possession of considerable powers to create n imposing stance; as stated by David Punter they often stalk the pages of the novel, adding to the subtle terror present within gothic literature. Throughout the narrative the striking physical appearance of Heathenish is communicated to the reader, an aspect constructed through his dominance. Even after death the protagonist holds a power over the remaining characters. Through using a dash close his eyes - Bronze creates a fragmented, breathless tone and we adopt Kneels fearful nature as we are forced to pause and reflect on Heathenishly threatening presence. Likewise as a consequence of her feeble attempts l tried, her fears are projected onto the reader as we adopt her perspective throughout due to her dominance in relaying the narrative. Her tentative nature If possible reinforces his striking physicality as Newly appears to be confronting a considerable force, this notion is emphasizes through continual reference to his life-like gaze which denotes a threatening presence. Meanwhile her doubtful tone is indicative of his ability to transcend the boundary between life and death as her contains passions which Anton be constrained in death. The preternatural nature of Heathenish is communicated through his physical description they would not shut. Through the use of his eyes as the focal point, a satanic, defiant power is suggested while his sharp, white teeth convey his tyrannical behavior through the annalistic connection. This can also be likened to a vampire descriptions which is reminiscent of Count Drachma from Stokers Drachma, thus creating a threatening tone through the linking of both protagonists as it suggests reverent behavior. Heathenishly physical ability is communicated a blow form Heathenish is significant as it is demonstrative of the ease with which he can inflict harm in a single blow. Binary oppositions are often utilized as a vehicle for portraying Heathenishly duality of character, a collective trait within gothic protagonists. A recurrent aspect of his characterization is the representation of him to the reader as both victim and villain. The description of his lip of devoid of their ferocious sneer exemplifies his manipulative nature and constructs his capability for savagery as constant and a defining trait within his harasser. As he is devoid of this malicious gaze, we glimpse a rare of his inner vulnerability. This is reiterated through his unspeakable sadness which outlines the contradictions which occur within the characterization of Heathenish. Despite this, we are unable to ever truly sympathies with the protagonist as any helplessness we are shown the stray sheep us immediately contradicted through the use of contrasting imagery an evil beast. This leaves the reader in a state of ambivalence towards Heathenish as his potential for evil is omnipresent, even in times of weakness.

Biography of William Morris, Arts and Crafts Pioneer

Biography of William Morris, Arts and Crafts Pioneer William Morris (March 24, 1834–Oct. 3, 1896) was an artist, designer, poet, craftsman, and political writer who had a major impact on the fashions and ideologies of Victorian Britain and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. He also had a profound influence on building design, but hes better known today for his textile designs, which have been repurposed as wallpaper and wrapping paper. Fast Facts: William Morris Known For: Leader of Arts and Crafts MovementBorn: March 24, 1834 in Walthamstow, EnglandParents: William Morris Sr., Emma Shelton MorrisDied: Oct. 3, 1896 in Hammersmith, EnglandEducation: Marlborough and Exeter collegesPublished Works: The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems, The Life and Death of Jason, The Earthly ParadiseSpouse: Jane Burden MorrisChildren: Jenny Morris, May MorrisNotable Quote: If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. Early Life William Morris was born on March 24, 1834, in Walthamstow, England. He was the third child of William Morris Sr. and Emma Shelton Morris, though his two older siblings died in infancy, leaving him the eldest. Eight survived into adulthood. William Sr. was a successful senior partner at brokers firm. He enjoyed an idyllic childhood in the countryside, playing with his siblings, reading books, writing, and showing an early interest in nature and storytelling.  His love of the natural world would have a growing influence on his later work. At an early age he was attracted to all the trappings of the medieval period. At 4 he began reading Sir Walter Scotts  Waverley  novels, which he finished by the time he was 9. His father gave him a pony and a miniature suit of armor and, dressed as a tiny knight, he went off on long quests into the nearby forest. College Morris attended Marlborough and Exeter colleges, where he met painter Edward Burne-Jones and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, forming a group known as the Brotherhood, or the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They shared a love of poetry, the Middle Ages, and Gothic architecture, and they read the works of philosopher John Ruskin. They also developed an interest in the Gothic Revival architectural style. This wasnt entirely an academic or social brotherhood; they were inspired by Ruskins writings. The Industrial Revolution that began in Britain had turned the country into something unrecognizable to the young men. Ruskin wrote about societys ills in books such as The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice. The group discussed Ruskins themes about the impacts of industrialization: how machines dehumanize, how industrialization ruins the environment, and how mass production creates shoddy, unnatural objects. The group believed that the artistry and honesty in handcrafted materials were missing in British machine-made goods. They longed for an earlier time. Painting Visits to the continent spent touring cathedrals and museums solidified Morris love of medieval art. Rossetti persuaded him to give up architecture for painting, and they joined a band of friends decorating the walls of the Oxford Union with scenes from the  Arthurian legend  based on  Le Morte dArthur  by 15th century English writer  Sir Thomas Malory. Morris also wrote much poetry during this time. For a painting of Guinevere, he used as his model Jane Burden, the daughter of an Oxford groom. They married in 1859. Architecture and Design After receiving his degree in 1856, Morris took a job in the Oxford office of G.E. Street, a Gothic Revivalist architect. That year he financed the first 12 monthly issues of  The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, where a number of his poems were printed. Two years later, many of these poems were reprinted in his first published work  The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems. Morris commissioned Philip Webb, an architect he had met in Street’s office, to build a home for him and his wife. It was called the  Red House because it was to be built of red brick instead of the more fashionable stucco. They lived there from 1860 to 1865. The house, a grand yet simple structure, exemplified the Arts and Crafts philosophy inside and out, with craftsman-like workmanship and traditional, unornamented design. Other notable interiors by Morris include the 1866 Armoury and Tapestry Room at St. James Palace and the 1867 Green Dining Room at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Fine Art Workmen As Morris and his friends were furnishing and decorating the house, they decided to start an association of â€Å"fine art workmen,† which in April 1861 became the firm of  Morris, Marshall, Faulkner Co. Other members of the firm were painter  Ford Madox Brown, Rossetti, Webb, and Burne-Jones. The group of like-minded artists and craftsmen responding to the shoddy practices of Victorian manufacturing became highly fashionable and much in demand, profoundly influencing interior decoration throughout the Victorian period. At the International Exhibition of 1862, the group exhibited stained glass, furniture, and embroideries, leading to commissions to decorate several new churches. The pinnacle  of the firm’s decorative work was a series of stained-glass windows designed by Burne-Jones for Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge, with the ceiling painted by Morris and Webb. Morris designed many other windows, for domestic and  ecclesiastical  use, as well as tapestries, wallpaper, fabrics, and furniture. Other Pursuits He hadnt given up on poetry. Morris first fame as a poet came with the romantic narrative  The Life and Death of Jason  (1867), followed by  The Earthly Paradise  (1868-1870), a series of narrative poems based on classical and medieval sources. In 1875, Morris assumed total control of the fine art workmen company, which was renamed Morris Co. It remained in business until 1940, its longevity a testament to the success of Morris’ designs. By 1877, Morris and Webb had also established the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), a historic preservation organization. Morris explained its purposes in the SPAB Manifesto: to put Protection in the place of Restoration...to treat our ancient buildings as monuments of a bygone art. One of the most exquisite tapestries produced by Morris company was The Woodpecker, designed entirely by Morris. The tapestry, woven by William Knight and William Sleath, was shown at the Arts and Crafts Society Exhibition in 1888. Other patterns by Morris include Tulip and Willow Pattern, 1873, and Acanthus Pattern, 1879–81. Later in his life, Morris poured his energies into political writing. He was initially against the aggressive foreign policy of Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, supporting Liberal Party leader William Gladstone. However, Morris became disillusioned after the 1880 election. He began writing for the Socialist Party and participated in socialist demonstrations. Death Morris and his wife were happiest together during the first 10 years of their marriage, but since a divorce was inconceivable at the time, they lived together until his death. Exhausted by his many activities, Morris bean to feel his energy waning. A voyage to Norway in the summer of 1896 failed to revive him, and he died shortly after returning home, in Hammersmith, England, on Oct. 3, 1896. He was buried under a simple gravestone designed by Webb. Legacy Morris is now regarded as a modern visionary thinker, though he turned from what he called â€Å"the dull squalor of civilization† to historical romance,  myth, and epic. Following Ruskin, Morris defined beauty in art as the result of man’s pleasure in his work. To Morris, art included the whole man-made  environment. In his own time he  was best known as the author of  The Earthly Paradise  and for his designs for wallpapers, textiles, and carpets. Since the mid-20th century, Morris has been celebrated as a designer and craftsman. Future generations may esteem him more as a social and moral critic, a pioneer of the society of equality. Sources Morris, William. The Collected Works of William Morris: Volume 5. The Earthly Paradise: a Poem (Part 3). Paperback, Adamant Media Corporation, November 28, 2000.Morris, William. The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems. Kindle Edition, Amazon Digital Services LLC, May 11, 2012.Ruskin, John. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Kindle Edition, Amazon Digital Services LLC, April 18, 2011.Ruskin, John. The Stones of Venice. J. G. Links, Kindle Edition, Neeland Media LLC, July 1, 2004.William Morris: British Artist and Author. Encyclopedia Britannica.William Morris Biography. Thefamouspeople.com.About William Morris.The William Morris Society.William Morris: A Brief Biography. Victorianweb.org.

Strategic managemet Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Strategic managemet - Essay Example This is because those factors may help towards determining measures that can be taken to increase their business efficiency and productivity. Additionally, managers should understand factors within their business environment (internal factors) such as: their competitors, available finances, employees, suppliers and their consumers in order to act strategically towards ensuring their business objectives have been realized (Nieuwenhuizen, Rossouw and Badenhorst, pp-7-20). In above connection, both internal and external business environment tends to undergo via dynamism this may act as an impediment for managers to understand the entire business environment (Thompson, John L and Frank, p 83). Managers tend to over concentrating on day to day problems and overlook on other factors that affect their business, this may also act as an impediment for understanding the entire business environment (Stokes, David and Nicholas pp140-141). Additionally, inability of managers to learn fast and consistently monitor changes that are taking place may act as an impediment towards understanding the whole business environment (Stokes, David and Nicholas p140). Tyndall, Gene R, John Cameron, and R C. Taggart. Strategic Planning and Management Guidelines for Transportation Agencies. Washington, D.C: Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, 1990.

Drugs Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Drugs - Essay Example Further the report states that prolonged drug abuse can lead to participation in crime. Most crimes are committed when the criminal in under the influence of drugs or needs funds for drugs. College students remain vulnerable because of crime which is perpetrated under the influence of drugs. Half of the sexual assaults that occur on campus are by people influenced by drugs. Drugs have known to change the personality of people as normal and calm people can become irrational under the influence. This paper analyzes the psychological and sociological basis of drug abuse. Sociology attempts to answer the phenomenon of drug abuse by using three perspectives. The first theory is known as the conflict perspective which states that society is a continuous state of change which results in competition. Another perspective is that of functionalism which says that society consists of segments which are linked with each other and serve a function (Campo, 2005). The final perspective of sociology is about symbolic interactionism which studies about the affect of society on the individual. The conflict theory postulates that drug abuse is more rampant in poor areas because marginalized communities do not have legitimate means to earn money. They are forced to sell drugs to earn a good living. The functional theory believes that drug abuse occurs because they provide an escape for people who cannot cope with the harsh realities of life. Drug abuse creates jobs for people who do not have the necessary skills required in a legal work force. Symbolic interactionist s believe that an individual may become a drug abuser because of labels which denied them the opportunities. The individual in this case had to resort to drugs to survive. Conflict theory further states that drug abuse creates opportunities for lawmakers to exploit the poor (Devlin, 2006). Functionalists would point out that drug abuse creates more jobs for people in the field of law enforcement. It also creates

Eriksons Theory Essay Example for Free

Eriksons Theory Essay When discussing the development theory, Erikson had been the frontier with many major contributions. Unlike Freud and Piaget, Erikson’s theory of development focused much more on social interactions. While most of us agreed that children do become toilet-trained between ages one and three, Erikson’s theory also went further to acknowledge that children also learn to talk, walk, feed themselves, etc. In order to understand Erikson’s theory of development, we need to focus on three main principles: dynamic balance of opposites, vital involvement and life in time. Dynamic balance of opposites: There are two opposing tendencies in dynamic balance of opposites: dystonic (negative) and syntonic (positive). Erikson believed there were eight stages, and at each one, the individual resolved a crisis between the positive (syntonic) and negative (dystonic) tendencies (Erikson Kivnick 1986). A resolution of crisis does not mean that a person rejects either syntonic or dystonic completely, but rather that a person should find a balance between two of those tendencies. For instance, our American culture has frequently taught parents to never say â€Å"no† to their children because that could potentially damage a child’s self-esteem. However, Erikson would disagree and say that children do need to hear â€Å"no† sometimes to understand that the whole world does not revolve around them. Erikson would also say that telling the child â€Å"no† all of the time is bad as well. Vital involvement depends on the balance of syntonic and dystonic tendencies. Vital Involvement: Erikson developed eight stages of development. First, the trust versus mistrust stage, where infants start to learn that either the world is good and can be trusted, or is bad and can’t be trusted (Erikson et.al 1986). For instance, Erikson would state that babies learn to trust their caregivers for not letting them go hungry, but babies also learn to mistrust their caregivers for yelling at them and not feeding them consistently. Second, the autonomy versus shame and doubt stage where children learn about their own â€Å"selves† which is separate from their caregivers (Erikson et.al 1986). In this stage, children usually develop their own will and desires and apply  them well by saying â€Å"no†. When children start to feel comfortable using â€Å"no† as a way to reach their desires, they have reached the initiative versus guilt stage. In this stage, children learn to internalize values from the elder and also acquire the sense of guilt for wrongdoing. The next stage is industry versus inferiority where children explore the greater world in elementary school and their surroundings. Erikson did pay a lot of attention in the identity versus confusion stage because it focuses on adolescents and their identity crisis. Fidelity is the heart of identity because adolescents share some of their parent’s values, as well as develop their own. The last three stages include intimacy versus isolation, generativity versus stagnation, and integrity versus despair. Each of these stages focuses greatly on the continuity of human development until death. Erikson recognized that there are certain time periods when it might be easier for some to develop and harder for others to develop, depending on the environment that influence them. For instance, some children who faced hardships (family separation, family violence, etc.) might have trouble in certain stages or even all of the stages, depending on where the factors start. Life in time: Erikson referred to his theory of development as epigenesis. Epigenesis is relevant to evolution (the past and the future) and genetics. Erikson explained, â€Å"†¦epi can mean ‘above’ in space as well as ‘before’ in time, and connected with genesis can well represent the space-time nature of all development† (Erikson et.al 1986). Erikson did not refer epigenetic to individual genetic make-up and how it influences individual development. Rather, Erikson was concerned with how personality and behavior is influenced after birth and so on. For instance, my mother has had a hard time adjusting with American culture when we first migrated here from Vietnam. My sister and I started to adapt to the new culture right away—from clothing style, hairstyle, hobbies, etc. in which my mother had a very difficult time to accept. She wanted us to keep our traditional customs at home, as well as outside our home. At first, we felt reluctant because we felt she did not understand the importance of â€Å"fitting-in† at school. However, as we started college, my sister and I started to realize that our culture and traditions are unique and understand where my mother was coming from (Identity/ confusion stage). Conclusion: Erikson had dedicated his life by contributing to developmental psychology in major ways. Erikson’s theory of development is still widely used and studied by many scholars.

Promotion Mix and Channels of Distribution for Farmer’s Choice Product

Promotion Mix and Channels of Distribution for Farmer’s Choice Products McCarthy (1975) devised the idea of the 4Ps - product, price, promotion, and place marketing mix. For many years, these have been utilized as the key basis on which a marketing plan is founded. Pricing Establishing the value for an item is an intricate and inexact task, often consisting trial-and-error decision-formulation. This course is regularly even more intricate in global promotion. Prices may be stated in the firm’s currency or in that of the overseas buyer. At this point we come across constraints of foreign exchange and exchange of currencies. As a common statute, a company involved in foreign business whether it is exporting or importing-considers to have the price stated in its own state currency. If the firm transacts in a foreign currency which later fall in value amid contract signing and the reception of the overseas currency, the seller gets a loss. Equally, a buyer transacting in a foreign currency would lose cash if the currency rose in value prior to payments. The risks from variation in foreign exchange are swung to the other party in the deal if a company transacts in its state currency. Product This mix describes the traits of product or service that meet the requirements of customers. â€Æ' Promotion The aim of promotion is similar in any nation, namely to converse information and influential appeals efficiently. For various goods, pleas are satisfactorily common and the markets are adequately consistent to allow utilization of very comparable advertising in numerous countries. It is just the media approach and the particulars of a message that must be adjusted to each state’s cultural, economic, and political setting. On th... ... retail stores, hotels, institutions and fast food outlets alike. Farmer's Choice products are sent by Air, Road and Sea from our factory to destinations worldwide. â€Æ' Conclusion After examining the promotional mix of Farmer’s Choice, it is clear that the firm can be said to be scaling heights to `global’, i.e. mixing constituents of globalization and internationalization. Farmer’s Choice have will achieve this through applying the maxim, `think global, act local’ (Ohmae, 2000), to all the elements of the promotional mix. â€Æ' References McCarthy, J. (1975), Basic Marketing: A Management Approach, Irwin, Homewood, IL Ohmae, K. (2000), Managing in a Borderless World, Harvard Business Review, May/June, Sandler, D.M. and Shani, D. (2001), Brand Globally but Advertise Locally? An Empirical Investigation, International Marketing Review, Vol. 9 No. 4

Msc Accounting & Finance at LSE

During this dire economic times, the emphasis on quality accounting and finance practice is greater than ever. These two areas have been my area of focus in my education and career goals. I am looking to take another step towards my aspirations by gaining more knowledge through enrolling in the MSc Accounting and Finance program. I believe I have what it takes to do well as well as contribute to LSE during my graduate study. I was born and raised in Indonesia until I was ten when I went to Singapore seeking better education while my family remained in Indonesia. After graduating at the top of my class from my secondary school, I decided to pursue my college education in the US despite of my family's strong disapproval. In March 2009, I graduated from University of California, Los Angeles with a Summa Cum Laude and College Honors after spending only three years, instead of the customary four years, pursuing my Bachelor's Degree in Business Economics with Minor in Accounting. I managed to stay on the Dean's List while being active in extra-curricular activities in clubs such as the Golden Key International Honors Society as well as the UCLA Student Accounting Society. I also volunteered at Special Olympics Southern California, a non-profit organization that provides activities to mentally challenged individuals. Here, I learnt the different accounting system involved in running a non-profit organization as compared to a for-profit. My initial interest in accounting and finance started when I was young. I observed how my parents, who were running an electrical supplies distributing company, struggled through the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. Many businesses closed down and it finally led to a riot, as people demanded political reforms, which made it even more difficult for us, being a Chinese minority in a 90% Muslim population. After a couple of years, my parents managed to bring the company out of financial troubles through proper budget planning and restructuring. At UCLA, I had the privilege to interact with people from different cultural backgrounds through organizing events and project work. This gave me an insight to how people work and opened my mind to other perspectives. My professors are experts in their fields and the teaching programs are very flexible and diverse. My courses span across economics, finance, management as well as accounting. My passion in finance was further developed during my college years, particularly in hedge fund investments, real estate and currency exchange. I have been keeping track of the current updates through news and articles ever since. I always have a deep curiosity in the relationship between countries and how they interact for finance and business purposes. With the situation in the global market getting more complicated and volatile, it has become increasingly important to make informed decisions to minimize risks. When I graduated in 2009, the US was in the middle of the biggest financial meltdown and it was difficult to find a promising job when thousands were losing theirs each day. I was glad when I found one though not a well-known firm in my field of interest but it unexpectedly gave me a peek at the education system in the US. It was a supplemental education service provider that has contracts with government schools to provide extra tutorials to underachieving students with financial difficulties. The whole system looks good on paper, but on practice, I think the policy has numerous flaws. As soon as I learned the ropes and the business operations there, I decided to explore other opportunities. My professional goal is to have a strong career in financial consulting and finally able to run my own business. I will continue to seek and gain valuable experience through education and work experience. I turned to Singapore, which has increasingly become one of the strongest economies in the Asian region. I am now working as Accounts Consultant in a management services firm, providing accounting and corporate tax consultancy to small and medium enterprises. My work scope includes meeting clients, preparing financial reports, analyzing their financial conditions and giving tax-saving advices. From the job, I get to practice what I learned in school and apply it in real-world situation as well as gain skills in leadership, management and analytical thinking. The learning curve is very steep especially when I had to master Singapore's accounting and tax policies in a short time to make practical recommendations to my clients. Through my two years of work experience, the learning curve is very steep. I am glad that I have great supervisors that are willing to guide me. I am not afraid of hard work and I am very independent. I want to be able to make a difference one step at a time. With my knowledge, I hope to assist people to achieve better standards and help propel other businesses through proper practice. LSE is a leading world-class research institution that I believe will help me advance to the next step in my long-term goals. I thrive on challenges and having lived in many countries, I am used to being out of my comfort zone and adapt well to atypical situations. I have experienced the US and Asia, and now I am looking to delve into another region. What better way to do that than to immerse myself in the international community at the heart of London.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries

TEVA Pharmaceutical Industries,Ltd Problem statement After many years of successful growth in the Generic Pharmaceutical industry, competing against the biggest western Pharmaceutical companies, TEVA Pharmaceutical Industries, Ltd the major and biggest player in this competitive industry, has reached a point where after acquiring many other pharmaceutical companies and achieving his 1 billion dollar theory goal, seem to have lost focus and found themselves in need of setting a new goal that will give them, future vision and will help them avoid being scattered all around the market and dispersing their limited budget ?On one hand is the global market for generics, where many new low-cost players are growing using Teva’s exact same successful formula to capture market share and existent gigantic innovative players are starting to incur, making of this specific industry a very challenging one with stiff competition, collapsed prices and very low profits. On the other hand, the i nnovative drug market, an unknown market for Teva, where the capital investment is accounted in billions in expenses in R&D, and growth is expected to slow down, the possibilities for high revenues are greater than Teva can imagine. External Analysis Industry: The Pharmaceutical industry, a 600 billion industry, has been growing at an approximate rate of 12% over the last five years, with a typical ROE of 20%, among the highest of any industry.It has 2 main sectors, namely Innovative Pharmaceuticals and Generic Pharmaceuticals. The Innovative Pharmaceutical, considered a sector of high risk due to the high capital investment in R&D, the low probability of having an approved development hence the opportunity to generate revenues exceeding the invested R&D and costs, has currently negative expectations regarding the future mainly because of slow growth predictions, the end of a patent protection period of up to 70 drugs with no innovative products in the pipeline to replace them.Itâ⠂¬â„¢s counterpart, The Generic Pharmaceuticals a 52 billion sector, although dependent on the innovative drug’s patents to be produced, is expected to have a growth of up to 16% in major world markets and It has 3 categories: ? Commodity generics: Requires the lowest capital investment and also is the largest segment of generics, reason why many competitors were attracted to it. ? Niche generics: Have to be prescribed by physicians even in pharmacist-driven markets.Although requires higher capital investment than commodity the gross margins were higher. ? Biosimilars: Refers to the undeveloped segment of the generic version of the so called â€Å"Biotech†, which active’s compounds were highly complex, by far harder to duplicate than traditional pharmaceuticals. Has high expectative of growth, and margins General Factors per country of the generic market United States: The world largest generic pharmacist-driven market, offered benefits for generic drugs such as the ANDA process which shortened the approval of generic drugs and the â€Å"paragraph IV† which allowed generic companies to challenge innovative drugs long before patent expiration. The competition in the US is stiff due to a large amount of competitors entering the market which is negatively affecting the pricing and consequently the profits. Europe: The UK and Netherlands, the most competitive markets in the region resembled the US (pharmacist-driven, prices were regulated by the market, with a high penetration of generics, 49%, which makes the competition high). France and Germany on the other hand, were physician-driven for which generics have to market and brand their drugs like innovative companies, hence incurring in the same marketing expenses as innovative companies, while prices were regulated by the government.Also, these markets were accounted as part of the biggest globally and had lower penetration rates, 12% for France and 41% for Germany, while having high growth potential. Also they both accounted for only 12% of Teva’s revenues in Europe. ? Rest of the world: Japan is a highly regulated market with generic penetration of 10%, specially because of the patients’ perception of generics as of lower quality, only expected to growth in a the long term.Other markets like Latin America, Eastern Europe, Russia, China, and India were expected to grow in the generic market although due to limited disposable income the patients demanded low price generics. Five forces Analysis (See Appendix 1) ? Rivalry (High) ? Power of supplier (Low) ? Power of buyers (high) ? Substitute products (Medium) ? Threat of new entrants (high) Opportunities: There are 70 innovative drugs in the US about to loose their patents in 2010, which are potential new generics developments for Teva.There are still some unsaturated markets such as France, Germany, Latin America and Asia where Teva can make an strategic move. There is still the Niche generic and B iosimilar Markets where barriers of entry can be created to prevent new competitor entrance, and finally, there are still not many competitors and high growth expectations specially in Biosimilar products in the US. Threats: ANDA and â€Å"Paragraph IV† are slowing due to fierce competition and entrance of new competitors, while innovative companies started also to enter the commodity generic market.The industry is highly fragmented which makes competition fierce and some global markets have government regulated prices and compulsory licensing making competition on price difficult. Finally, the US Market is getting saturated of competitors which is reducing profitability. Internal Analysis Corporate strategy: Teva’s Corporate strategy is to diversify into related businesses that through a well managed chain value (Localized management and marketing, and centralized R&D, manufacturing and APIs) has given them greater scale benefits than any of its competitors, and a rep utation as the company not to compete on price with.Teva’s business strategy and Competitive advantage: Teva’s business strategy is cost leadership based in keeping R&D low, an efficient management of its supply chain, backward integration into pharmaceutical ingredients (API), rigorous execution including filing ANDA applications faster than competitors (which gave them a large pipeline of paragraph IV challenges and a broad portfolio of commodity generics), and finally a reputable, successful acquisition team. See Appendix 3) Value chain (see appendix 2): Teva has maintained its low cost culture during the years, and thanks to his careful growth into new markets through acquisitions has achieved greater benefits of scale than any other competitor. Its R&D, which usually adds for a high percentage in the industry (14% of net sales), was only of 7% for Teva thanks to the strong collaboration with the scientific institute in Israel such as Weizmann institute, Hebrew uni versity of Jerusalem and the Technion.Additionally, Teva has entered new markets where they have successfully been able to push their products by influencing market players namely Pharmacists-driven markets. Key success factors: Within the main success factor we can recognize former CEO Hurvitz , who fostered a culture of goal settings and low prices, acknowledging the commodity-like nature of the industry and whose vision took the company to reach and pass the â€Å"Billion Dollar theory†. His legal team, who is in charge of filing ANDA, is famous for being faster than any competitor.His acquisitions team who has a great reputation in the industry for the systematic approach and successful outcomes in integrating acquired companies. Strengths: Teva is the largest commodity generic producer in the world by having an amazingly well managed cost structure and by setting economies of scale to produce at a lower cost than its competitors, hence being able to compete with low pric es. Its capacity to influence key market players within its markets (pharmacists). An acquisition team that has lead to successful buys and integrations.Also, Teva has a non Bureaucratic structure that is aligned with the low cost structure. Weaknesses: The limited knowledge of Physician-driven markets, is for instance, the cause for Teva’s low presence in France and Germany that together accounted for only 12. 5% of the revenues of Teva in Europe. Limited research budget and limited experience in innovative pharmaceuticals market. High focus in the US market, reason for which any possible downturn, like the regulatory impasse, has a high possibility of affecting negatively the results of the company.Alternatives 1. Teva has successfully introduced 2 blockbuster innovative drugs into the market, Copaxone in partnership with Sanofi-Aventis, and Azilect, which proved that Copaxone was not a one-off. This can lead us to think that Teva can keep on going down the road of innovati ve drugs and in other therapeutic areas with sales estimates of up to $6 billion dollars. We can’t forget though, that Teva has limited research budget and limited experience in this market where giant companies like Merck, Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis compete.Additionally CEO Hurvitz qualified this move as nothing else than supreme self-confidence. 2. Move into Niche and Biosimilar markets which are relatively new or completely unknown markets for Teva, especially for the type of relationship with the Physician-driven markets but that can give advantages and possibilities to create entry barriers to new competitors and that would definitely set a solid base for Teva’s continuous growth. 3.Enter new geographical markets: continue with its low cost strategy and enter new geographical markets, such as Germany and France, this strategy is aligned with the move into Niche and Biosimilar market mainly directed to physician-driven markets. 4. Status Quo: Teva should focus sol ely in the commodity generic market in which the company is currently the strongest player, but risking to loose market share with competitors such as Sandoz, Ranbaxy and Barr. See appendix 4 for Analysis of Alternatives RecommendationIn the light of the alternative analysis (see appendix 5), the best move for Teva is to start entering the Niche and Biosimilar markets while also expanding geographically into Physician-driven markets such as Germany and France where it is wise to consolidate and try to get a bigger market share using Ivax and Sicor’s know-how in these areas. Ivax has already given Teva the leading presence in Latin America where must of the countries were physician-driven markets, proving that Ivax has experience in this type of market.Teva can give leverage to Ivax in order to be able to produce at low costs, while Ivax with its independent type of operation can give Teva access to global markets. For this purpose, Teva must successfully integrate Ivax into T eva’s culture while supporting its independent operation and providing marketing budget, which will definitely generate high revenues due the nature of Ivax’s niche generic products. Also, Ivax strength in first-to-file paragraph IV pipeline in the USA can positively affect Teva’s operation within its original market and generate a solid ground so that Teva can later on support its new operations in the new markets.On the other hand, Teva has already started developing Innovative drugs, and has had 2 blockbusters, but getting deeper in this market can be dangerous and the probabilities of failure are very high. Instead, Teva should use its previous experience in handling the innovative division, and handle Sicor experience in the Biosimilar in the same way. Teva’s experience in rolling out a product lunch will definitely become useful in order to support Sicor’s operation that can generate entry barriers to the Biosimilar market and higher revenues within the US in the injectables business.Also it is possible to use a low cost approach, and his economies of scale to be more prices efficient than the possible competitors. Implementation plan. Since 70 innovative drugs are loosing their patent protection by 2010 in the US, Teva should start developing the generic version of this drugs and can use Ivax experience in the first-filer paragraph IV in order to take advantage and make its position in the US market stronger. Teva should also start slowly moving away from the Innovative market.In order to do this, Teva should finish the development of the innovative drugs and they already have in the pipeline, and lunch them. After this, most of these resources are going to be transported into the production of Biosimilars leaded by Sicor. With the intention of moving into Germany and France, Teva must start creating a solid marketing team in conjunction with Ivax, this capital investment should generate enough revenues to overshadow t he cost knowing that Niche products have higher gross margins.With Sicor, Teva should start developing Biosimilars within the US, before Barr with Pliva and Sandoz move into the US market that is supposed to support only 3 competitors. We know that Sandoz has already lunched one Biosimilar in Australia and Europe. Although the regulation pathway for Biosimilar in the US was still unknown this will give some lead-time for Sicor to develop and then have approved Biosimilar products in the US and hopefully start generating entry barriers for biotech and other Biosimilar competitors.Biosimilar product has margins close to those of the innovative drugs and with lesser risk of competing against the giants who don’t play in this market. Finally, Ivax gave Teva the leading position in Latin America, and although it accounts for only 39. 3 billions or 7% of the industry revenue, this revenue is expected to growth at a 9. 2% CAGR with medium-low competition. It is a great opportunity f or Teva to establish himself as the market leader in this growing market. Appendix 1 Porters 5 forces. [pic] Appendix 2 Value Chain [pic] Appendix 3 Sustainability of competitive advantage. |Valuable |Rare | |INNOVATIVE |High revenues if successful. |Slow growth and stiff competition against giant| | |2 successful innovative drugs already launched |companies. | | |Has some innovative drugs in the pipeline |Huge capital investment required. | | |projected to generate revenues of $6 billions |Inexperience of Teva in this market. | | |Goes against advantage of Teva of producing | | | |with low costs | |NICHE AND BIOSIMILAR AND GEOGRAPHICAL EXPANSION|High revenues and market growth expected |Teva does not have experience in this area of | |THROUGH ACQUISITIONS |Possibility to generate entry barriers to new |production | | |competitors |Teva has no experience and know how in | | |Has already bought Sicor (Biosimilar), Ivax |physician-driven markets however it can | | |(Niche) and has alr eady set up a separate |integrate Ivax and Sicor know-how. | | |division to focus on Niche market and | | | |Physician-driven markets | | | |Aligned with focused strategy and efficient | | |chain value for low costs | | | |Experience in acquisitions and integration | | |STATUS QUO |Strong consolidated position in the US |Saturated market | | |Know-how and experience in pharmacist-driven |Stiff competition with new competitors and | | |market |giant companies entering commodity generic | | |Experience in ANDA filing |market. | | | |Prices lowering and with them profits | ———————– Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Ltd Final Report Professor

Thermal insulators Essay Example

Thermal insulators Essay Example Thermal insulators Paper Thermal insulators Paper Essay Topic: Sula To investigate different materials for the most effective thermal insulator for a house. Introduction Heat transfer is the gain and loss of energy. There are three ways in which thermal energy can be transferred:   Conduction   Convection   Radiation Conduction this is when energy travels from molecule to another. When one molecule receives energy it begins to vibrate and hits other molecules and makes them vibrate. And will spread throughout the object. Convection this will only occur in gases and liquids. When heat is applied to the bottom of the substance, it will heat it up. When it heats up, it will rise to the top, forcing colder areas towards the heat source and then they will receive energy and rise to the top, etc. Radiation it travels in waves. When it hits a molecule it makes it vibrate. I will be concentrating on conduction, as this is the main way in which thermal energy is transferred lost from housing. Which means that I need something that is a bad thermal conductor (good thermal insulator) to keep the amount of conduction to a bare minimum? Plan. I am planning to test five materials (paper, cling film, cloth, bubble wrap and plastic) and one control, three times and find the average (to ensure accuracy). Whichever material changes the temp of the water the least is the best insulator. I will wrap them around a 200ml beaker (no lid) and fill it with 200ml of boiling water. Then Ill take the temp eleven times: once at the beginning, and once every min for a period of ten minutes. Equipment List Stop watch 1 Thermometer 6 200ml beakers 6 Kettle 1 Fair Test The following will be kept the same throughout the whole experiment:   Method Time given to cool. Equipment   Conditions Also some of the variables will be need to be kept the same throughout the whole experiment: The variables The variables that will be kept the same The variables that will be changed Start temp of water Start temp of water Material (insulator) Start volume Start volume Room Temp Room Temp Material (insulator) Surface area of beaker Surface area of beaker   this is a variable because it changes the amount of convection that happens. Method 1. Prepare the beakers by insulating them with the five materials (except the control) using elastic bands. 2. Put water in the kettle and turn it on. 3. When the water is hot, pour 200ml into any 3 of the 6 (doing three at a time, gives you more control over the experiment. 4. Place thermometers in the beakers. 5. Record the start temp. 6. Start the stop watch. 7. Record the temp every min for ten min. 8. Repeat the process for the remaining three. Prediction I think that the best thermal insulator will be the bubble wrap due to the fact that it contains trapped air. Trapped air is a good insulator therefore it takes longer for energy to transfer through gasses because the molecules are further part, a vibrating molecule takes longer to hit into another molecule and make it vibrate. The worst thermal insulator will be something that has compact molecules as it is easy for the vibrations to spread throughout. Results in degrees Celsius Material Start temp i C 1 min 2 min 3 min 4 min 5 min 6 min 7 min 8 min 9 min 10 min Cloth did plan to repeat the experiment three times and find the average. However due to a lack of time this did not happen. Analysis All the materials are above the control; this gives me the impression that all the materials do have some resistance to the thermal energy that is transferring through the beaker. The graph has a negative correlation which explains, as time goes on the temperature of the water decrease. The papers final result is 68 and plastics is 67, however they both have same line of best fit, which implies to me that their results are very similar. This may well me that they are equally good insulators. My prediction was that the bubble wrap was the best insulator because it contains a lot of trapped air. However after completing the investigation, my prediction proved to be incorrect. The best insulator proved to the paper. My only explanation to this is that when the paper was wrapped round the beaker some air became trapped between the paper and beaker and cause and insulation sufficient enough to keep the temperature of the water higher than the rest. Evaluation Although this experiment went well I felt that it could have been improved, for example. Having the same length and width of each material would have the experiment much better in fairness. Also I was not able to repeat the experiment twice more due to lack of time which severely affected the accuracy of the results and investigation. Finally having a thermometer for making sure the room temp stays the same I think that the method was fine and has no problems of any sort except one: testing the room temp and making sure it stays the same. Conclusion To conclude, this experiment was seemingly fair, however there is a margin for improvement. The paper was the best insulator however I think this was an accident due to the trapped air. I now know that the closer the molecules in an object the better the object is at conducting energy. Which means any thing with trapped air would be a sufficient insulator. This is why they use double glazed windows as an insulator. Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Electricity and Magnetism section. 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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.