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Cybersecurity and the Arts

Working in the arts, DWG sometimes hears that they don’t need all of the security standards of large corporations. I am reminded of a non-profit executive telling me awhile back that they don’t need to be like the Pentagon when we recommended a two factor authentication system. This article was inspired by a genuine concern that many art organizations may not be fully aware of the consequences of the slippery security slope. Our hearts sank as we heard of The Met’s ordeal and our minds were outraged. DWG does not know the exact cause of The Met cyberattack so this is not meant to be in any way derogatory to the wonderful folks at The Met. References and articles are included below.

Beginning on December 6th, 2022, hackers started the process of breaching the Met Opera’s information infrastructure. By December 7th, a cyber attack against The Metropolitan Opera in New York was well underway. The attack affected the opera’s network systems, including its internal network, website, ticketing server, box office, and phone center. The Opera’s website was restored eight days later, on December 15.

During this period, the opera continued its performances, and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts supported ticket sales until the Met could recover from the attack (Kudos Lincoln Center!). While the exact magnitude of the damage has not been disclosed, the stoppage in ticket sales effected revenue. According to Peter Gelb, The Met’s general manager, the opera earns roughly $200,000 in ticket sales per day throughout this season. Because the malware impeded the opera’s ability to sell tickets, seats were temporarily sold for $50 on the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts website.

The cyber attack on the Met is far from the first on a cultural institution. In 2019, ransomware attacked the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. In 2020, hackers obtained access to personal information from hundreds of cultural institutions and NGOs. I’m sure you all have heard plenty of stories of hacks and cyberattacks.

Hackers do not care whether a business is a Fortune 500 company, a small business, or not-for-profit cultural institution like The Met, all these institutions still make transactions and hold their customers information.

A month after the attack on Met Opera, the attackers have yet to be identified, but The New York Times underlined the opera’s vocal support for Ukraine amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.

But whatever the motivation and tactics, the cyberattack on the Met should serve as a wake-up call to other cultural organizations. Anyone could be a target. “I usually warn clients that everyone, regardless of size or sector, is a target. It should not take an occurrence like this to wake up other cultural institutions to the fact that they are in grave danger,” says Richard Sheinis, partner and head of data privacy and cybersecurity at full-service legal firm Hall Booth Smith.

Cultural organizations, like performing arts centers, theaters, and museums, are typically attractive targets for cyberattacks since they may not always have the time, money, skill-set, or up-to-the-minute understanding to build a good cybersecurity strategy. Unlike many for-profit organizations, which are victims of zero-day* vulnerabilities, the bulk of security breaches in smaller enterprises and most non-profits are caused by preventable flaws in human/device interaction. The untold story of cybersecurity is how criminals leverage the imperfect nature of humans to further their own goals.

Finding funding for cybersecurity is often difficult at a non-profit but it is a worthy investment. A good security posture today, can save hundreds of thousands later, but many people are hard pressed to believe that it could happen to them. Furthermore, many cultural institutions are still striving to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and are not in a position to embrace the additional concerns brought about by cybersecurity.

So, bringing cybersecurity to the forefront in a cultural institutions is the first critical step. Subsequent evaluation of the infrastructure, and investment in prevention, detection, and response can help lower the likelihood of cyber attacks while also mitigating the damage of an attack if one occurs. It is always recommended that the evaluation phase be done by in-house IT team, then if company lacks the means to retain in-house cybersecurity personnel, it can turn to third-party cybersecurity firms.

Please remember until you get a cybersecurity firm to help:

Layered firewalls (one from your service provider, one for your institution, and if you are running your ticketing server in-house, one more for that)
Separation of subdomains for internal and external networks,
SSL
Two-factor authentication
And for goodness sake, we recommend your site should not be on the same operating system as your ticketing server (if one is on windows, the other should be on Linux) – make the hackers work more difficult (hardening). If they are the same, security should be monitored in real-time.

* The term “zero-day” refers to newly found security flaws that hackers can exploit to attack systems. The term “zero-day” alludes to the fact that the vendor or developer only recently discovered the fault, implying that they have “zero days” to repair it. A zero-day attack occurs when hackers exploit a weakness before engineers have time to fix it.

~Nami

Posted by The Met:

“After suffering a cyberattack that temporarily impacted our network systems, we’re pleased to announce that the Met is now able to process ticket orders through our website and in person at our box office. Based upon our ongoing investigations into the recent cyberattack, we would like to reassure our customers that ticketing customer data, including credit card information used when purchasing tickets, has not been stolen. We do not keep credit card information in the systems that were affected by the cyberattack. Thank you for your patience.”

Links:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/arts/met-opera-cyberattack-website.html
https://www.reliasmedia.com/articles/commonspirit-ransomware-attack-holds-lessons-for-cybersecurity
https://amicusmsp.com/human-interaction-is-key-to-successful-cyberattacks/

Customer’s Journey and Conversion Funnels

Mastering your customer’s journey is crucial to your organization’s success, and conversion funnels are handy tools for that achievement. Conversion funnels are essential for growing your revenue stream and client engagement.

By evaluating each step of the funnel, businesses can uncover opportunities to optimize their efforts and convert more leads into lasting customers. Customers take a unique trip through your company’s conversion funnel as they purchase. As a result, you must capture their attention, establish trusting relationships, and persuade them to act.

What Is A Conversion Funnel

As a marketer or salesperson, you shape the customer’s journey. Conversion funnels, or sales funnels, provide a realistic structure for this process by allowing potential customers to go through several steps until they complete the desired action: a transaction or purchase.

A good conversion funnel reveals where your visitors and target audience are coming from, what they do on your site, and what happens when they convert. This data can be used to improve your marketing efforts and increase conversions. This post will teach you more about target audiences and how to find them.

Marketers can utilize conversion funnels to track customers’ journey from initial interest to final purchase. Understanding the distinct progression of the digital customer experience enables you to find chances to impact each stage.

The Customer’s Journey

Every customer has a unique journey with your company.

The days of a sequential, linear client journey are long gone. Instead, they perform several activities from the minute they become aware of your brand until they attain their goal, each of which needs tailored approaches for an optimal result.

More customer journeys are taking place online, and 80% of consumers place as much value on the experience as they do on the products and services. As a result, you must comprehend online consumer behavior and provide them with relevant digital experiences.

Understanding and optimizing these clients’ journeys enable you to provide an experience that will tempt them to return again and again.

Organizations utilize a variety of conversion funnel models. They are all dependent on the sort of business and customer. They can also differ since marketing and sales have slightly distinct models. We will look at the Top, Middle, and Bottom (T/M/B OFU) funnel model, which is more sales oriented and thus more applicable to the performing arts. After all, without an audience, there can hardly be any performance.

The TOFU (Top/Middle/Bottom of the Funnel) refers to the early stages of the customer journey when the primary focus is on raising awareness and generating initial interest in a product or service. For example, the TOFU funnel could function as follows in the performing arts:

Top Of Funnel (TOFU): Awareness

The initial stage in every conversion funnel is to attract visitors. Make the general audience aware of the approaching performance or event. This can be performed via a variety of marketing channels, including social media, email marketing, sponsored commercials, public relations, and so on. The goal is to reach a large number of individuals and capture their attention. Once you’ve piqued their interest, you’ll want to keep them interested. To persuade them to take the next step, you can utilize email marketing campaigns, popups, or even retargeting ads.

Engaging yet informative content is ideal for keeping these visitors intrigued. Reviews, articles, or videos may help maintain their interest. SEO is a fantastic way to identify intent-based inquiries to assist in the development of visible and discoverable digital content.

Middle Of Funnel (MOFU): Build Interest and Tempt them

After making people aware of the show, the following step is to pique their interest and communicate with possible customers. This can be accomplished through sneak peeks, trailers, or behind-the-scenes footage highlighting the performance’s distinctive elements and why it’s worth watching.

Next, you’re attempting to persuade your prospects to buy a ticket. You can emphasize the significance of the performance by stressing the audience’s unique experiences, such as live music and fantastic scenery. They also highlight the artists’ talent and the effort they put into the performance.

Bottom Of Funnel (BOFU): Conversion

Once you’ve persuaded them to buy something, you must move them closer to making a purchase. By providing clear calls to action and a simple ticket purchasing process, the company makes it simple for customers to acquire tickets. They also offer discounts and special packages to entice customers to take the next step.

The TOFU funnel’s purpose in the performing arts is to raise awareness and interest, increase desire, and convert potential customers into ticket-buying customers.

Once you’ve convinced the customer to buy something, you need to move them toward making a purchase.

Closing the sale is the last step. Whether it is physical goods or digital downloads, this is the part where you collect payment and ship out the item.

Dream Warrior Group, a Los Angeles Based web design and digital marketing Company, providing solutions for your online marketing needs. Our expertise includes Redesigning your site as a perfect marketing tool. Call us now at 818.610.3316 or click here.

7 steps towards voice search optimization

Alexa and Siri are unquestionably essential aspects of our daily lives. For example, we may ask Siri or Alexa to find the closest athletic event, play, or day spa. In addition, searching the web using voice search is frequently faster and more convenient than typing in a query.

The problem is that regular voice searches are different from text searches. When speaking with our devices, we word our questions differently, closer to how we communicate in person. As a result, to reach this growing pool of searchers, SEO specialists and marketers have had to adapt.

On top of that, ranking for voice search is difficult. Devices that offer voice search frequently show only the top three results for a given query. You’ll need exceptional content and a strong voice SEO to get there.

Voice search isn’t just a passing novelty; it’s slowly becoming the norm. Approximately 40% of US internet users use a voice assistant at least monthly, which is growing daily.

Voice search is yet another significant opportunity to obtain organic search traffic. You will gain access to a new group of individuals who use smartphones and smart speakers to find businesses and make purchases using voice search.

Voice search optimization can help improve your website’s overall SEO and rating. Search engines love it when websites optimize for voice searches, which can provide your site with greater authority and hence higher rankings on results pages, if not higher rankings overall, possibly even landing in a voice search result.

Voice search optimization is the collection of methods that improve the chances of your content appearing in voice search results. The idea is to address common verbal questions in your content so that consumers can find your website in voice search results provided by voice search technology and virtual assistants.

A typical voice search starts with a word (for example, “Alexa” or “Hey Siri”), then a query or statement (for example, “What broadway plays are performing near me?” or “When are the 49ers playing the Rams?”).

The device then responds verbally or, if it has a screen, with the top results from a search engine results page. The purpose of voice search optimization is to obtain a position in this type of search.

While there is some overlap between on-page and voice search optimization, some essential characteristics of voice search distinguish it from a text search on a website like Google.com.

Voice search inquiries, in particular, are more conversational than text searches. They are more like how we speak in real life. For example, you may use a voice search, “What are some decent spas around me?” A text search query is phrased more like “live shows near me.”

As voice search became more popular, search engines became better at deciphering the meanings of longer, more conversational questions and returning relevant results. This was the birth of long-tail keywords. Google has changed the focus of the search to searcher intent, recognizing the underlying meaning of searches and offering more relevant results to more conversational voice queries.

You are now responsible for creating content relevant to voice search users. To acquire voice search traffic, you don’t need to change your current SEO strategy:

Make use of schema markup.
Use questions and other long-tail keywords.
Make local SEO a priority.
Use conversational language.
Make your site mobile-friendly.
Attempt to capture featured snippets from Google.
Improve the speed of your website.

1 – Make use of schema markup.

Another strategy that enhances your site’s on-page SEO in general, as well as voice search SEO, is schema markup.

Schema markup is structured data that you can add to your website’s HTML to assist Google and other search engines in giving more detailed results. Schema markup often includes essential information about your company, such as hours, addresses, contact information, price information, reviews, and more.

Human visitors cannot see schema markup. Instead, it aids indexing bots in better understanding your material, increasing exposure in search results and increasing clicks. Because search engines will regard your site as more relevant, it will have a better chance of appearing in voice search results.

2 – Use questions and other long-tail keywords.

As previously stated, voice searches are typically phrased differently than text searches. They are more detailed, longer, and more likely to be complete queries than mere keywords. We’re used to speaking in whole sentences with greater detail than we are to typing.

This makes sense when we consider interaction cost: for most people, typing out a query takes more time and effort than saying it out loud. Because speaking is less physically and mentally demanding than typing, voice search inquiries are lengthier.

Targeting long-tail keywords, particularly question keywords, in your content is a highly effective strategy for voice search optimization. This will allow you to attract visitors who submit longer, more specific inquiries.

Long-tail keywords have three or more words and are an essential part of overall keyword optimization. Because they are more tailored to the user’s aim, they attract high-intent visitors. You can even narrow them down to be more relevant to your business (for example, “spas in the Denver region” rather than “spas”), which means less competition on the results page.

Trying to cram a slew of questions and answers into your page’s material might be problematic at times, which is why many websites include a frequently-asked-questions section or dedicated page.

An FAQ section allows you to list every frequently asked search question about your website and provide an answer that can compete for a spot in voice search results. This content type is also ideal for Google-featured snippet placement, which we’ll go over in more detail later.

Consider “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” and “how” questions while looking for question keywords. Include these in your page copy (for example, in an H2) and follow up with a brief, satisfying answer. After your initial response, you can go into greater detail in the body of your material.

You don’t have to rely just on intuition while looking for long-tail keywords. To locate the most relevant keywords for your target consumer, you can use one or more keyword research tools. You can also get ideas from the “similar searches” or “people also ask” areas of the Google results page to discover which questions your target audience frequently asks. Enter a search term related to your business and see what Google suggests.

3 – Make local SEO a priority.

Local SEO refers to the technique of increasing search engine presence for local businesses, usually brick-and-mortar establishments. Local SEO is critical for these firms since it targets potential clients in neighboring areas who are highly inclined to purchase. It’s also one of the most effective methods for optimizing voice search.

Consider this: When someone conducts a voice search on their smartphone, they’re probably on the go and looking for something nearby, such as a restaurant or store.

There are numerous methods for improving your local SEO, but the most crucial is to create and maintain a Google Business Profile. This is the list that displays when you search for “_______ near me.” It informs visitors of your location, contact information, hours, directions, and more.

Because voice search results frequently pull information from various profiles, your Google Business profile is helpful here. As a result, a thorough listing increases your chances of ranking for specific local voice searches.

If you haven’t already, this is one of the most beneficial actions to take for your site’s overall SEO, especially if you’re a brick-and-mortar shop. In many circumstances, your Google Business Profile is the first and only opportunity for searchers to learn about your company. Make sure that it is always correct.

4 – Use conversational language.

Voice searches are conversational. So, it would help if you give your material a conversational tone to meet readers where they are. A less formal writing style is viewed as more relevant to voice requests, in addition to feeling more natural and simpler to read.

Incorporating more conversational words (e.g., “I,” “me,” “you,” “we”) in blog articles, avoiding jargon and too technical language, and adding touches of comedy to reinforce your views are some strategies to make your material more conversational. If you must adhere to an established brand voice, make the tone of your material fall toward the more informal end of that voice.

This is not, however, a license to lower the quality of your content. Maintain a more informal writing style while ensuring that your material delights and adds value to users. Google still rewards high-quality material like this — write it (nearly) as though you were saying it aloud.

5 – Make your site mobile-friendly.

Mobile devices account for more than half of all worldwide internet traffic. If that isn’t enough to convince you that mobile optimization is crucial, consider that 27% of smartphone users utilize voice search.

Google believes mobile user experience to be essential to a good website and incorporates it into its results. To appear in both text and voice search results, use responsive design and look for other ways to make your website mobile-friendly. It’s another move toward remaining competitive in voice search.

6 – Attempt to capture featured snippets from Google.

Google highlighted snippets are small pieces of material that appear above organic search results on the Google results page. They are extracted from a web page that ranks highly for the query and, if caught, can provide a significant traffic boost. They could be presented in the form of a paragraph, a numbered or bulleted list, or another format.

This is important for voice search because if a featured snippet exists for a question, a virtual assistant will most likely interpret it as its answer. It would help if you attempted to capture the featured fragment to win the question.

Unlike a Google Business profile, appearing in a Google featured snippet cannot be guaranteed, so do your best, and do some voodoo (it may help, who knows?).

7 – Improve the speed of your website.

How much do you consider the performance of your website? Hopefully, you’ve given it some thought – it’s widely accepted that a page must load in less than two seconds before the user experience suffers.

Page load time, like mobile optimization, is a Google ranking element that influences how well your site appears in voice search results and beyond. It’s all about the experience once again: Google wants to show us results that will make us happy, and no one wants a slow website.

There are numerous ways to boost the speed of your website. To begin, we recommend using a speed-testing tool such as Website Grader to see where your site currently sits.

Dream Warrior Group, a Los Angeles Based web design and digital marketing Company, providing solutions for your online marketing needs. Our expertise includes Website Development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Posts & Marketing & Google PPC campaigns. Call us now at 818.610.3316 or click here.

Crucial Tips for GBP Optimization

Suppose you have followed up with our past articles. In that case, it is time now to focus on how an optimized Google Business Profile (GBP) can help you surface more often in the local pack and search results. Here are the five crucial tips for GBP optimization:

Links & Attributes

The chosen principle category will impact the features and even traits offered to the company. The restaurant category, for example, will include several dining options or qualities. A GBP also has more general characteristics like accessibility and payment methods.
A GBPs primary purpose is often to drive traffic to a client’s website. To that purpose, Google offers a variety of local business links, such as arranging an appointment, placing an order, viewing a menu, and more. It would help if you used UTM tracking on your URLs to collect data for your clients.

Description

To grab readers’ attention and fill the profile with pertinent search terms, you have 750 characters (including spaces) in the GBP company description. A brief history of the company, points of uniqueness, and personality can all be included in the description, which also targets industry keywords and fosters consumer confidence.

GBP & Services

Be succinct and direct with your service descriptions. Keep them to 250 characters or less, and concentrate exclusively on the service offered. The services tab is only accessible on mobile devices at the moment. Still, don’t be shocked if it eventually makes its way to the desktop.
Google may occasionally pull information about a company’s services from its website, so keep an eye on your GBP. Additionally, remember that Google may sometimes cite services as reasoning why a company is listed for a specific local pack.

GBP & Products

Last but not least, GBP Products is a tool that is underutilized but has the potential to improve a profile. You can create compelling, keyword-rich product descriptions that entice customers to visit the company’s website (with UTM tracking included). Aim for 100 words or less, and remember to update product details that need to be corrected. Please take advantage of the fact that Google is now comfortable with companies listing services under their products.

Dream Warrior Group, a Los Angeles SEO Company, provides the needed solutions for your online marketing needs. Our expertise includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing & Google PPC campaigns. Call us now at 818.610.3316 or click here.

Developing SEO Strategy For Your Website

You are one of many who may need clarification about developing your website’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy. In addition, thousands of companies worldwide need help getting organic traffic (non-paid) to their websites.

For some time now, I have been watching with pleasure as Google SERP has risen to the challenge of “factscimilles” – sites that pretend to be factual but are not. I have seen the SERP put the kibosh on the “top 11.1225 best things since apple pie” lists, emphasizing the science behind the semantic (relevant) search.

I think it may take work to know where to begin your efforts. However, following a few crucial measures will improve your organic traffic significantly. Proper use of schema, researching long tail keywords, producing high-quality content and backlinks, technical SEO, and appropriate user information design will be your ticket to stardom.

As you can see, stardom is a long and winding road (I almost hear Paul signing).

Part One: Proper Use of Schema

The search engine is explicitly seeking to gain detailed information on your content via schema markup. Schema markup is a set of codes that informs a bot what the content on your website is attempting to communicate. By transforming unstructured data (text-based) to structured data, you have aided search engines in crawling (data gathering) and indexing, thereby improving the website’s rating.

It is worth the time and effort to use structured data. Rich snippets, which can increase the prominence of your pages in SERPs, are enhanced with more content and fed to search engines with extensive information about your websites thanks to your schema markup.

Step 1. Find the best schema type that describes your business and aligns with your business plan. For example, it may be schema.org/music or schema.org/theater.

Step 2. Add as much schema markup to your business entities and services as is necessary to explain them in detail. A schema markup expert will use more ontologies to add more comprehensible data.

Step 3. Choose your coding strategy and decide how to use the markup on your website. Many CMS tools can utilize specific schema-generating plugins and APIs because they are generally straightforward.

Step 4. As much as feasible, write your SEO schema utilizing natural language processing. The terms you employ matter and should align with your audience’s demands and search intent.

Step 5. Schema markup, like SEO, is a continuous effort. Set up a regular auditing program to discover problems to aid strategic site mapping. Some schema will depreciate with time, while others may add new necessary elements, and sometimes a new schema will develop.

Part Two: Longtail Keyword Research

Investigating the subjects for which your target audience searches is a big step in creating an SEO plan. Google is a great place to start since you can look up keyword ideas and associated search terms. Start with a keyword recommendation linked to your niche if you need clarification about what to include in your SEO approach. Make a list of keywords once you have one, then develop an SEO plan. Then, use these keywords in your content to increase the relevance of your website to consumers’ interests.

Please be aware that getting high search engine rankings is the purpose of keyword research while developing your SEO plan. Knowing how competitive a term is can help you prepare for how challenging it will be to rank for that keyword. Of course, the ideal keyword is one with high search volume and low competition in your target market, but if you’re going after a competitive phrase, the ranking could prove to be an uphill struggle. As a result, if you’re in a highly competitive area, you should concentrate on longtail keywords.

Use BuzzSumo’s “Questions” tool or “answer the public” to find pertinent questions from millions of forum posts if you’re unsure what to put in your article. You may also use Quora’s question features to find relevant questions on your subject. These tools are just a few that can help you focus your search approach and provide the most compelling content. There is no better strategy to increase the customer relevance of your website.

Keyword Research, by its very nature, involves snooping into your competitors’ websites and seeing what they are doing. You will get a good idea about their keyword usage, the type of content that has traction, the backlinks that have helped them rise in the SERP … In general, an excellent road map of the areas where you need to fill your gaps.

Part Three: Producing high-quality content and Authoritative Backlinks

If you write your articles, always try to answer a “Why” or a “What” and, even better, do a video version. Answer your audience’s most common questions, then explain more to become the ultimate guide!

The finest content informs readers, addresses genuine issues, and provides solutions. In an ideal world, content is also seen as helpful and shared, which increases traffic and aids in a high ranking in Google’s search results. But what exactly constitutes high-quality content? The objective of producing high-quality material is arbitrary.

A solid longtail keyword base is the first step in an SEO content strategy. Excellent content is only worthwhile with a reliable technical foundation. Consider dividing it into smaller chunks to influence search results more. You may boost your content’s relevance, impact, and effectiveness by introducing a technical framework into the creation process.

Not all backlinks are created equal, and their place in the hierarchy changes over time. There are a series of strategies for building solid backlinks, but as always, Google demotes the frivolous ones.

For example, take skyscraper content, where you find an article in your field that is gaining real traction – the page has generated many backlinks, and then you go and try to do them one better.
Instead of the top 10 ways to quit smoking, you will come up with the top 12 ways. Upmanship used to be an effective tool, but as of the September 9th update, it seems Google is trying to put this space under some form of control.

Another step to help yourself is to locate sites that are pointing to outdated links regarding the subject you write about and suggest they could replace it with yours.

There are many articles about backlinks, but I recommend hiring a professional unless you have extended time to create top-notch content and then take time to promote it.

Part Four: Technical SEO and proper user interface design

Last but by no means least is the technical SEO. Technical SEO is ensuring a website complies with the technical standards of current search engines to get higher organic ranks. Information architecture, crawling, indexing, and rendering are crucial aspects of technical SEO.

Your site must be mobile friendly at the very least, mobile optimized in the best scenario, and more than anything else free of duplicate content. You must use 301 redirects, canonical tags, Nice URLs, Meta tags, H1 and H2 Tags, and accessible and WCAG compatible code.

In addition to all o the information provided above, you must have a respectable site speed. Many site owners handle their site speed first without addressing significant optimization work, then wonder why their site is not ranking. Without SEO optimization, your site will not rank, no matter how fast.

I hope this answers some of the questions I have been answering lately. Please note that the changes Google has made to the search algorithm (which others usually follow) since August of 2021 have been very significant, and anyone using older guidelines needs to be updated and will have varying effectiveness.

In one of my following articles, I will address ROI. I cannot entirely agree when folks say it is impossible to calculate the ROI of digital marketing. So, I sat down and coded an ROI calculator, but that is for the next blog.

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