Graded Blog Post #4 Papyrus SEO

After evaluated Papyrus and its SEO it is evident that they are doing a good job at making sure that they are found on the Internet. According to the SEO Optimizer it is evident that they have a good Page Title and Meta Description to optimize the availability of their website. Although SiteReport.com says that their Meta Tag Check is a ten out of ten, the SEO Optimizer found that although they have an abundance of site keywords, they are not as relevant without optimization. Even though you can find Papyrus’s website it is important to make sure that when Googling keywords, that they are relevant to your business and optimized to make sure you can get as much Search Engine Optimization as possible.

When it comes to the body content of the website it is evident that they are using a lot of internal links and have a good text to HTML ratio throughout the site. One thing that they need to improve on are their images which is surprising because throughout my research I thought that their use of images was strong enough to optimize their advertising but its seems with SEO that they are lacking the ALT attribute which optimizes them through search engines.  They also need a site map.xml file for the website which would help with the overall SEO of the website and brand. The only other improvement that SEO Optimizer had was to create H1 and H2 headers in order to have optimal HTML.

According to the SiteReportCard for Papyrus their only lacking ratings include the HTML check, the Load Time check, and the Keyword check. This is evident because of they are not using the most optimal keywords and lack in HTML aspects include the ALT attribute as well as the site map.xml file. This also coincides with the Load time of the overall site as well.

After going through their best keywords, Google Trends shows that they are up in the ranks but not at the top of the charts like their competitors Hallmark and PaperSource. This is evident from their ratings as well. After seeing other rating from the SEO Optimizer and SiteReport I now understand that even though you have keywords it is important to make sure that they are optimized throughout your website otherwise your overall web presence will not be as effective.

Graded Blog #3 Reputation Management Companies

After doing some research on Reputation Management it became evident that there are many options out there for when you want to protect yourself and your brand on the world wide web.  I would say that two of your best options are Brand.com and Reputationx.com. These two companies are highly rated and given the best reviews.

Brand.com has overall 1 million members, was rated the #1 online reputation management company by TopSEOs.com, and was winner of the 2013 Red Herring Award. This shows that the company is well-known and goes to show that its million customers are very satisfied. Having a good reputation online reveals a company’s strengths rather than its weaknesses. If your online reputation is not as good as it could be it can be a huge downfall and cause you to lose brand loyalty. What Brand.com does for you is create different ways of monitoring what your identity is like online. They use tactics including Search Engine Tracking, Attack Watch, a Task Management System, Review Moderation, Brand Monitoring, Social Media Tools, and so much more. They refer to the application section of the website as the Command Center which shows how professional the company is. They provide you with a free consultation but it is very hard to find out how much their services are. It seems like they want you to call them first and then sign up online and eventually put in a credit card. This is the only thing that worries me. When a company is secretive about their prices it may be a red flag that they will bill you large amounts of money. I found some mixed reviews about this.As for managing your information, it seems like they have a team look forth into your marketing profiles. They claim to have the best experience in SEO, social media, and direct response marketing and use their well trained teams to fix your online reputation.

As for Reputationx.com they have different categories for individuals, agencies, and businesses. As for reviews and ratings they are Better Business Bureau Accredited and were given an A+ rating for their phenomenal customer service. Price depends on the work needed to be done to solve your reputation problems. The individualize a plan to your needs and then work to create content, web properties, and then they work to refresh your search engine optimization and social media indicators. I personally feel that the website is a lot more reputable even though they are not award winning.

Compared to the cookie cutter aspects of brand.com, I feel that reputations.com is a more personalized experience. This will attract individuals in a better aspect as they are more relatable. Although both companies have great ratings, it is evident that both are attracting different clientele in a prestige vs average consumer kind of way.

In conclusion your reputation online can make or break your personal identity, your brand, and the amount of success your business holds. Whether you are a corporation looks for SEO management or an average middle class adult looking to change their identity for the better, we should all be aware of the importance of online reputations through search engines and social media

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Graded Blog: Building a Community for Papyrus

After watching the video on ‘How to Build a Community Around Your Brand’ I learned about Primal Branding and the 7 most important aspects of branding, or building communities.

            When using the Primal Branding Code for my brand choice, Papyrus Stationary and paper products, at first I didn’t think it would work out with a smaller company. Then I came to see that almost all the seven aspects panned out:

            1) Creation Story- Papyrus listed their brand creation story on the left hand side and bottom of their website. It talks about how they came to be, where is all started, and the inspiration behind it all. This helps to captured the meaningfulness behind a particular brand and can help a consumer strongly grasp the makings behind their products.

            2) The Creed- The creed is what helps a consumer choose this brand, Papyrus, over another. I feel that as a brand they do this by having two tabs on their home page, one for the ‘Our Story’, which relates to the creation story and then there is another tab “About Us’ which goes more in depth about their products. I feel that this is where people make that decision to join due to how they are speaking about themselves and what they do as a company.

            3) The Icons- I found that their main logo/icon, the hummingbird has a meaning of hope, love, joy, and celebration which goes great since they are a greeting card company. Finding out the history behind this icon helped me to realize why they used it. This is also conveyed on the “About Us’ page.  Also this aspect has to deal with the brand personality and I feel that Papyrus takes advantage of their target market by relating their tweets to the women population.

            4) Rituals- When dealing with the rituals, or repeated engagements with Papyrus, I found that their use of twitter and email really help engage the consumer. Also, every time I have personally been in a store picking up a greeting card, the staff was always happy, enjoying their job and giving me some of the best customer service I have seen.

            5) The Sacred Words- this aspect is how the company or brand is portraying itself through word of mouth marketing and when making posts on their social media. I feel that Papyrus does a very good job in capturing their specific audience but also remain professional and always stick to the roots of the company and relate back to the fine art aspects as well as the significance of the hummingbird.

            6) The Nonbelievers- I feel that when it comes to this aspect, you are dealing with the competitors and how the relate in the market compared to your brand. The example given in the video was “PC vs. Mac”. I feel that this aspect is used to tell you where you stand among the others and what pull or intrigues consumers becomes important in this aspect. With one of there biggest competitors, Hallmark, I feel that although Papyrus is a smaller company they are able to compete because of their intimate fine art designs compared to the ‘normalcy’ of the traditional greeting card that Hallmark makes available. This is what puts Papyrus on the map in the greeting card industry and helps the “Papyrus vs. Hallmark” aspect take place.

            7) The leader- I’m not really sure how this aspect works but from what they were talking about in the video, I feel that is has to do with the leaders and founders of the company or brand. I feel that because of their brand history or ‘Creation Story’ the founders would be the most important leaders of Papyrus and then work its way down to the employees within the company.

            All in all, I found that the Primal Branding Code worked well with my selected brand, Papyrus paper products. As it was said in the video, when a brand has all of the seven aspects working together it makes the brand stand out amongst the market and creates more of a competition for them within that brand. 

Graded: Papyrus Brand Investigation

My selected brand is Papyrus papers products and stationary. After evaluating it’s usability and site performance with the information websites Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast I would say that Papyrus is a well-marketed brand but definitely has a competition. Its biggest online competition for stationary and paper products are Nordstrom, Hallmark, and Paper-source.com.

When it comes to the traffic of Papyrus it is evident that the ranking within the United States is 35,748 and globally rated 132,088. This is according to Alexa’s statistics and is updated on a daily basis. At first when seeing these numbers I was kind of confused but then I realized that these numbers are estimated by the average of daily visitors during the last three months.  After looking through Quantcast it is evident that there are sufficient changes within the traffic per month, but unfortunately it does not let me see and current traffic for the month of September because all of the data is not collected yet. Between July and August of 2013 there was an 18% decrease in usability, which is approximately the difference between 34,950 people in July and 27,493 people in August.  Also, according to Alexa there are 709 websites linking into Papyrus.

As for the demographics for Papyrus the website mainly is viewed by women, who are employed and have been educated through college. It is known that the male gender does not really view their website. All of the users from Papyrusonline.com come from the United States of America. The female users find the Papyrus website by searching for the keywords: papyrus, stationary, online wedding cards, stationery, and note cards. The highest amount of web traffic comes from the keyword “papyrus”.

Once consumers are on the Papyrus website, they stay on the subdomain, papyrusonline.com and only click into about five different parts of the website according to the daily page views on Alexa. The bounce rate, which is when there is only a single page view by a consumer is 40.10 percent. The average amount of time spend on their website all together is only around three minutes and thirty seconds and most American women are viewing the site in a setting where they are at work. So this leads me to the conclusion that for this brand in general there is not a lot of online consumption or dynamic of turning viewers into customers.

One of Papyrus’ biggest competitors is Hallmark, and after looking at all the website information for hallmark.com is it evident that are reaching almost the same demographic but they also have consumers in other countries including: India, Canada, The United Kingdom, South Africa, Spain, and Germany. Being on a much higher scale than Papyrus, I found it interesting that their global and national traffic ratings are sufficiently lower at 17,581 and only 4,015 for the United States.

When it came to the information found on the websites Alexa, Quantcast, and Compete I found that it was very different on each website. While Alexa had outlined all the information I needed, I had to dig more and search within Quantcast and Compete. When it came to the numbers and ranking of traffic on the Papyrus and Hallmark websites the numbers were very different on each site. I’m thinking since it is an average of the amount of views and clicks into the website they could possible be using different formulas or estimating differently. One thing that I disliked about Quantcast was the fact that since Papyrus was not a “Quantified” company I could not get demographic material from them, so my demographics are strictly from Alexa.

Overall, I found this exercise to be very informing and a great way to compare a company’s online presence with their overall marketing. I do know that Papyrus uses different types of social media as well which also helps with their online marketing. This has made me feel more confident about the brand I chose and I look forward to researching further on the different marketing aspects they use in order to stay in the competition with other brands since they are such a small company.

Updating My Blog

So with my new Internet Marketing class I have realized how important it is to have a brand for yourself. So since I haven’t really used this site since freshman year I am now realizing its importance. Looking forward to using WordPress in all its aspects!