The idea behind running this blog in my class was to go after keywords relevant to UNBC and the School of Business, and see just how far up the search results we could make it.
Today, we are rolling into week 4 of Serious Business. In that time, we have made good progress in search results, particularly for "UNBC Marketing." Last week we made it to #9 (first page) of Google results. In the last couple days we got knocked to #11 (second page), but we have multiple pages being returned, as both #11 and #12 positions are Serious Business posts. This is good news, and the results so far have exceeded my expectations.
You will notice that the top four results are on the UNBC domain. Given that we have no UNBC in our URL, it is not likely that we would overtake those positions. However, I consider the other 6 spots on the first page to be fair game. Our bump down over the weekend came from publication of UNBC's new University Plan, which got syndicated on Academica Group's website. Academica is a company that specializes in University and College Enrollment Management.
Seeing that Academica's post was really small, but took the 5th and 6th spot anyway, they are a tough competitor (for us anyway): Page Rank 5, Link Popularity 1034.
That happened on Monday. So what this scenario illustrates is that using blog articles to pursue search ranking is a very competitive, ongoing process. So far, we have primarily used social networking links (mostly Facebook) to drive the popularity of the site. Today in class, we will be reviewing our progress and discussing additional strategies we can employ over the last few weeks of the semester.
Hidden Badass
Some of our blogging activities land us in gray areas regarding University ethics and policies. So, instead of using mere media release forms for our guests and anyone appearing in media, I've gone ahead and secured Research Ethics Board approval. Just so everyone is clear on this, anyone you interview has to fill out some paperwork indicating their consent.
Furthermore, that doesn't license us to do ANYTHING we please. We still have to follow the rules laid out in the undergraduate calendar regarding behavior policies. Additionally, I still need to approve anything that goes live.
The next bit is more fun and MORE BADASS. Something we neglected to do is talk about monetizing the blog. With the click of a button we can allow Google to use the blog for advertising, allowing our site to generate ad money. The trade off is having ads on the site. Now, I doubt we would make much money, but I've already been positively surprised so I'm not totally dismissive of the possibility. But, of course, doing so would crack open a whole new can of worms. Most importantly, where does the money go?
Cash for CSS events? End of semester pizza party? Serious Business $5.00 Scholarships? For class members reading this, remind me to show you the blog's Monetize tab during our session today.
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