The recent vote for Britain to depart the European Union came with a tall side order of hate, racism, and fear. Your first reaction will probably mirror mine: deplorable. And it is. But there's more to it.
Hate Comes From Fear
This kind of hate, anyway, is the stuff of fear. The people most affected by any economic or political changes are those who are struggling to survive. No matter what the change is, it hits those who are the least stable in their lives and situations. When you see lots and lots of reports of people in Britain shouting “Go back to Poland,” my guess is that it comes from people who aren't getting enough to eat, or who have to decide whether to pay for medicine or heat.
Every SEO, webmaster, and digital marketer has a powerful tool at their disposal.
I would go so far as to say that this tool is a must-have. You can't do SEO without it.
What is this powerful tool?
It's Google Search Console, or GSC for short (former Google Webmaster Tools, or GWT).
GSC is a free service provided by Google to manage your website's search functionality. The search console is a collection of reports and tools that help you rectify errors as well as strategize and optimize your search engine rankings.
I want to show you exactly how you can use this powerful tool to improve your SEO.
Putting it bluntly, GSC is to SEO what oxygen is to humans. You need it. Your site can't live without it.
The article you're about to read will put you in a graduate-level intensive study of GSC. Once you understand the information shared here, you'll become a GSC ninja.
And it's going to make a huge difference in your SEO.
First, let me give you a quick overview. The article is pretty long, so you'll want to set aside a good half an hour to read it.
The article is divided into sections and subsections, based on the the GSC menu:
I'll give most of my attention to the first four sections: Parts A through D. Parts E and F are important but mostly self-explanatory.
Part A: Search Appearance
The Search Appearance section helps you visualize what your website would look like in the search results.
Please be aware that there are many code snippets such as rich cards, rich snippets, and different types of framework such as Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) as well as the usual HTML corrections that can help your website stand out and look ultra informative in search results.
Here is what each element in this section represents and how you should use it to your search advantage.
(a) Structured Data
Structured data (in the form of rich snippets), when programmed into the HTML code, marks up your content so that Google can categorize and index it better. Google uses it to serve up “rich” results.
SERP results that look like this are using structured data:
I searched for “blackberry sauce” on Google.
The image above contains the first four results.
Look at the results carefully. Two results, 3 and 4, look “richer” because they contain ratings, votes, and reviews. The fourth result even displays the calorie information.
Which result would you be tempted to click on? It depends on what you're looking for, of course, but I headed straight for results 3 and 4.
Why? Because the rich results told me that the site would not only help me learn how to make blackberry sauce but also provide reviews from people who have made it before.
Plus, I know how long it will take me to make it. I can also have the confidence that other people did it and liked it. And I can even find out how many calories I'll be consuming when I eat it.
See the power?
Visually, rich results will help you bring in the traffic.
Currently, Google supports rich snippets for the following:
Articles (AMP-only, I'll get to this later)
Local Businesses
Music
Recipes
Reviews
TV & Movies and Videos.
That may not seem like a huge list, but you'd be surprised to see how much rich information you can add to your site.
It makes a huge difference!
How to leverage Structured Data for SEO: Ask your developer to build rich snippets into all of the mentioned features available on your website. Ask them to refer to Schema.org for code snippets and help.
How does the GSC > Search Appearance > Structured Data section help?
It tells you where you have gone wrong with your rich snippets coding and provides you with a tool that helps you test live data (see the blue button in the image below).
(b) Rich Cards
Rich Cards are a new invention by Google. They work like Structured Data (see (a) above in case you haven't been paying attention) but are visually more appealing. Check this image out to learn the difference between rich snippets and rich cards:
When your content is visually appealing, it may translate to heavy user engagement, thereby increasing your traffic and sales. Google currently allows users to deploy rich cards for Recipes and Movies.
How to leverage Rich Cards for SEO: As in the case with rich snippets, ask your developer to build rich snippets into either recipes or movie information, if you host such information. Refer this page for sample code snippets.
How does the GSC > Search Appearance > Rich Cards section help?
It tells you where you have gone wrong with your rich cards coding and informs you how many cards you can enhance. Like in the rich snippets section, Google equips you with a tool that helps you test live data.
The Data Highlighter is an excellent substitute for Structured Data, and you don't need a developer to write the code snippets in your HTML.
It marks up the same content that Structured Data does.
That being said, this tool has limitations. You have to write the tags individually per URL. Basically, if you have thousands of pages on your website, it can be a pain.
How to leverage Rich Cards for SEO
Click on “Start Highlighting.” A pop-up will appear.
Enter your URL, and choose the data you want to highlight (articles, events, reviews, local business, movies, products, restaurants, TV shows, etc.).
Once you've made your selection, Google will render the page in GSC and allow you to highlight the relevant data.
You now have to select the text or images per page that you want to highlight. You can highlight titles, images, category, and ratings.
Google will then prompt you to highlight data in other pages as well and help create page sets.
Here's a helpful video for a tutorial on this feature:
(d) HTML Improvements
HTML improvements is a report that reveals any problem areas that Google has discovered while crawling/indexing your site.
Here is a list of issues that may surface in this report:
Duplicate/long/short meta descriptions
Missing/duplicate/long/short title tags
Content non-indexable by Google
How to leverage HTML Improvements Report for SEO:
It's simple. Just fix the problem areas that Google has reported.
Here are some basic SEO rules that you may already be aware of:
Ensure titles are up to 70 characters long (or up to 612 pixels in width).
Ensure descriptions are about 160-165 characters.
Each page must be supported by a unique title and description.
Google should be able to crawl all pages you want to rank in SERPs. Ensure that critical content is not blocked by robots.txt or .htaccess files.
(e) Sitelinks
Sitelinks are automatically generated by Google. You can't necessarily change these because Google uses its algorithm to decide when and how to display them.
Accelerated Mobile Pages is a technique that allows developers to build fast-loading HTML and JS pages. It is based on open source specifications.
The idea behind AMP HTML is to make web pages render quickly on mobile devices. The number of people using their mobile devices to browse the Internet is growing exponentially. Google introduced AMP HTML to help website owners remove any pages loading sluggishly for mobile devices.
How to leverage AMP for SEO:
Embrace the technology. Ask your developer to get up to speed on AMP, and then convert your regular HTML into AMP HTML.
This section digs deeper into your rankings and reports on links to your site, how your keywords are ranking, penalties imposed by Google, mobile-friendliness, etc.
There's a lot in this section. I consider it to be the most valuable section of GSC for SEO actionable data.
(a) Search Analytics Report
The report digs deep into your site and shows you how often the site showed up in search results.
The report even displays clicks per keyword, how each keyword ranked geographically, its click-through ratio, and more. Here's an image with each category broken down into parts and how you should leverage each feature or filter to improve your SEO:
The number of clicks per keyword. This helps you learn how each keyword ranks in the search results and how many clicks it received. You can build backlinks, add/optimize content, or create specific landing pages to increase the number of clicks per keyword.
The total number of impressions per keyword. This helps you understand how users interacted with a keyword. For example, a high number of impressions and a low number of clicks implies that your page title or description is not well written or that you have not built in rich snippets.
CTR (click-through ratio) is reported as a percentage. It is basically the CTR:Impressions ratio expressed as a percentage.
Checking the Position box tells you the search position per keyword. For example, position # 120 implies that ? particular keyword landed on Google SERP #12. You can then optimize keywords and pages based on the keywords you want to rank higher.
The Queries filter helps you search specific keywords from within the results, check how one keyword compares with another, and sort the keywords. The filter tool gives you a deeper insight into each keyword. Use this filter to drill down into the keywords and improve the performance of those that already rank high.
The Pages filter helps you filter URLs, compare one page with another (excellent for A/B split testing), and sort out pages in terms of clicks. Use this feature to figure out your top, middle, and worst performing pages, and then deploy SEO to improve their rankings.
The Countries filter comes into play if you are targeting a global audience. I've experimented with this, translating the Quick Sprout blog into 82 languages, and have seen some amazing results. This filter helps you filter your site performance by country and compare site rankings between two countries.
The Devices filter shows you the devices, including desktop, tablet, and mobile, used to access your site. You can compare search figures between the devices to get advanced insights. Use this filter to optimize your site for devices often used to access your website. For example, if mobile devices make up most of your searches, you can focus on improving your mobile user experience and creating faster loading pages.
The Search Type filter reports the volume of searches for web, images, and videos. Let's say you own an art gallery but are ranking low for image searches. You can then optimize your alt tags and image titles to help improve your image search rankings.
The Dates filter helps you set up a date range. You can compare site performance between two date ranges, just as you would do in Google Analytics.
(b) Links to your Site
This section reports the websites that link to your URLs and the keywords used by most backlinks.
You can gain a lot of valuable insights from this report.
Here are the two biggest takeaways:
You'll know whether you should be disavowing backlinks that look suspicious (pharma or drug enhancement sites, adult themed websites, foreign language sites, PBNs, thin content sites, link farms, unrelated spammy sites, and other sites that practice black-hat SEO).
You'll get a good perspective on who is linking to you and what they're linking to. This information can help you increase the number and quality of backlinks by targeting similar sites or by increasing engagement/advertising on the sites that already link to you the most.
(c) Internal Links
This section reports on the number of internal links pointing to a page.
Here's how you can use this report in SEO:
Many internal links to a web page inform Google that this is an important page. As a result, that page should rank higher than other pages for keywords present on that page.
You should focus on building internal links to important pages that do not have any or many internal links pointing to them. Avoid sending all your links to the “about” or “contact us” page. Instead, use internal links to strengthen your deep internal pages, such as content-rich articles or information pages.
Pages that have internal links pointing to them, but have been deleted or renamed, should be identified and redirected (using 301 redirects).
(d) Manual Actions
This report informs you when Google penalizes your site for any spam or black-hat techniques.
Keep in mind that a “manual action” is different from an algorithmic penalty. Algorithm penalties are automatic and will not be reflected in this section. Manual penalties, on the other hand, are more severe and require you to take extensive action.
After fixing the reported issues and ensuring your site contains meaningful content, you must file a reconsideration request to get your site ranking back in the SERPs.
This section is applicable only if your website serves translated/modified-for-a-country or regional content for users in different geographies beyond your main location.
For example, if your website attracts viewers from the UK, you may want to present a UK-English version to visitors from that area.
Or if you sell to customers from France and Germany, you should translate your website into those languages for better targeting.
In such cases, your web developer will employ the hreflang tag to inform Google to serve the appropriate page according to geography.
This GSC section reports on the accuracy of your hreflang tags. This information can help you fix and optimize your coding.
(f) Mobile Usability
This report lists problems that might be keeping your website from delivering a positive web experience on mobile devices.
Google reports on elements that are too close together, content that is wider than the screen, content for which the viewport is not set, and other places where the text is too small to read.
Everything in this report matters. Mobile optimization is a significant ranking factor, and your website needs to be totally up to par.
For SEO purposes, fix all the issues reported, and make sure that your website delivers a great experience on every device.
Part C: Google Index
This section reports on how Google is crawling and indexing your website and keywords.
(a) Index Status
The indexation status displays the URLs indexed by Google, blocked URLs (by your robots.txt) and any URLs that have been removed.
If you come across pages that are not indexed or blocked, you can find out what's happening on your end and correct the errors.
If there are any indexation issues, you may want to examine your robots.txt file or look into the accuracy of your sitemap.
(b) Content Keywords
This section reports on the keywords in your content and their significance in search results.
Drilling down into each keyword will help you understand the top pages where that particular keyword or its variants are situated.
The report helps you understand the keywords and pages that are not ranking well. Such reports help you optimize your content by introducing keywords and variants in the title, headers, alt tags, on page SEO, tags, and content.
(c) Blocked Resources
Google needs complete access to your javascript, CSS, JQuery, image files, etc., in order to index and render your pages correctly.
If you block Google from accessing any of these resources either by disallowing access in your robots.txt file or by any other means, you will stop Google from indexing and rendering your pages to viewers.
This section informs you where the blocked resources are hosted.
Unblock whatever is necessary to enhance your search engine rankings.
(d) Remove URLs
Some areas of your website must be kept private and away from the prowling eyes of the search engines.
For example, you may want to prevent search engines from crawling your members' private data, third-party content, or content that is of no value to your viewers.
The tool in this section informs Google that its bot must not index such URLs. After filling in the “Temporarily Hide” field, you can specify whether you want to remove the URL from the cache or search results or both. You can even temporarily hide URLs and make them indexable later.
Removing URLs containing thin, valueless, and third party content can really improve your SEO, and blocking search engines from accessing your members' private data will help protect your brand.
Part D: Crawl
This section reports on Googlebot's website crawl rate, the errors it picked up, sitemap, robots, URL parameters, and the indispensable Fetch as Google tool.
(a) Crawl Errors
Here's what you'll see in this section:
the last date Google crawled your site
server errors (Request Timed Out or instances of your site blocking Google)
Soft 404 errors (the URL does not exist, but the server does NOT return a 404 page)
URL pointing to a nonexistent page
URLs that redirect to an irrelevant page
URLs that are blocked for Googlebot mobile
Fixing any errors will help improve your SEO.
(b) Crawl Stats
Crawl stats report on Googlebot's daily crawl on your website, pages crawled, kilobytes downloaded, and the time it took to download a page.
Not all of this information is actionable, but there are some things that you want to pay attention to.
As a whole, this report shows how active Googlebot is on your website and how heavy or light your pages are.
I'm assuming you have already used Page Speed Insights for tweaking your loading speed and are adding fresh and helpful content on a regular basis. If not, run your website through this test, and make any improvements that it recommends.
(c) Fetch as Google
The Fetch as Google tool allows you to test the way Google fetches your URL and renders it.
Here's how to use the Fetch as Google Tool:
Enter the URL you want Google to fetch.
The Fetch Button checks whether the URL connects and whether the tool encountered errors, redirects, or any security loopholes. It checks the code but does not render the page.
The Fetch and Render button fetches the page (and checks for all the issues mentioned above) and renders it.
You can fetch the page for Desktop, Smartphones/Handhelds and even check the Mobile XHTML/WML (older hypertextual computer languages for mobile). cHTML for mobile is mostly used on Japanese mobile phones, so you may not have to use this feature.
After you Fetch and Render a page, you should, if required, submit it to Google for indexation.
Google can return any of the following statuses:
Complete: Google successfully crawled your page.
Partial: Implies that you have blocked Google from accessing some of your coding resources such as Javascript or JQuery, etc. These should be unblocked; otherwise, Google cannot render your page correctly.
Redirected: You set up a redirect to another page (maybe because you may have deleted the page or some other reason).
Not Found: Google could not find the URL on the server.
Not Authorized: Google (and other viewers) have been blocked from accessing the URL.
Blocked: Your robots.txt blocks Google from accessing your URL.
Unreachable or Temporarily Unreachable: Google's request got timed out.
Error: Some error prevented Google from accessing the URL.
When should you use the Fetch as Google tool and resubmit pages for reindexation?
After fixing any of the statuses described above
After optimizing a page with copy, images, or videos
After adding a new category/sub-category to your site
Whenever you optimize your site for mobile (select the Fetch for Smartphones option)
When you change your sitemap.xml or your robots.txt files
When you set up 301 redirects
When you buy an SSL encryption, which changes your http into https
(d) Robots.txt Tester
The robots.txt file (domain.com/robots.txt) informs search engines about the pages they should crawl (and those they shouldn't).
When a crawl bot looks at this page, it will crawl anything that's not disallowed.
For example, you don't want search engines to view your CGI-BIN, admin login, Forgot Password, members' private data, and some other areas of your website.
The robots.txt Tester section tests your robots.txt file and reports errors and warnings. It also allows you to test pages to check for any blocking.
(e) Sitemaps
A sitemap.xml is a critical part of SEO. It informs search engines about the URLs on your site along with the date they were changed. It helps search engines crawl and index your URLs efficiently.
This section in GSC allows you to submit Sitemaps. It also informs you about the number of URLs that were submitted and indexed.
Essentially, the tool helps you fine-tune your sitemaps.xml file to ensure all your URLs are indexed.
(f) URL Parameters
Quick warning: Work on this section only if you know how to code. Otherwise, you should ask your web developer to handle it for you.
URL parameters are values that are dynamically entered per URL. For example, if you own a product website that sells globally, you may set a Country parameter that differentiates pages that should be served in different geographies.
This GSC section allows you to tell Google how to handle your URLs.
Like I said earlier, this is a technical area, so don't go near it without your web developer. Setting the wrong parameters can ruin your SEO.
Part E: Security Issues
Security issues are a big concern with nearly any website today.
Google takes the issue very seriously. You may have seen warning screens like this one:
Google also displays these warnings in the SERPs.
Sometimes, websites are flagged for phishing.
If your site has been compromised, hacked, or is simply vulnerable to hackers, you'll find out about it in this section.
If, on the other hand, you see this message, you're clean.
What if your site is hacked?
Check out this video.
Hacked sites can be costly to fix, both in time and money. Thankfully, Google has a helpful tutorial on the process, which you can explore here.
Here is the process summarized:
Part F: Other Resources
“Other Resources” is a collection of Google's tools, helpers, and testers.
Here is a list of all these pages as summarized in GSC:
Learn to create a great website with valuable content and have it findable in Google Search.
I consider all of these resources helpful but not essential.
Don't feel like you have to spend a lot of time on each of them. For example, if you're not selling any products on your website, then you have no need to check out “Google Merchant Center.”
Choose the ones that are most important to your business and SEO, and focus on those.
Here are my four main suggestions, in order of importance:
Pagespeed Insights: Use this tool to improve your site loading time, and make an instant improvement in SEO.
Google My Business: If you run a local brick-and-mortar shop, check this out. It's essential.
Structured Data Testing Tool and Structured Data Markup Helper: Once you've mastered the basics of SEO, move on to structured data to further enhance your website.
Webmaster Academy: You can never learn too much about SEO, right?
Conclusion
If you've read through this guide, you know more about GSC than most people on the planet. Even better, you can use this information to improve your SEO, your website, and your business.
GSC is a powerful tool, and the more you learn how to use it, the better an SEO you become. So what do you think, are you going to start using it to improve your rankings?
Sometimes, marketing takes the form of entertainment, but often, you get to assume the role of a teacher.
This is really powerful. You can become one of the few educational influences in most people's lives after they leave school.
Beyond helping your business grow, inbound marketing allows you to make a real impact.
Partly, that's why I'm still so passionate about it even after all these years.
Once you start thinking of yourself as an educator, you can become an even better marketer by learning from traditional teachers.
I'm going to show you 6 different teaching techniques you can use to make your marketing content even more useful to your readers.
1. Use the “desire” method
You might already be using this method even if it's not intentional.
The “desire” method is all about getting students' attention.
Think of an average class, even at the university or college level. Most students don't want to be there.
They feel like they're learning something that probably won't be very useful and just want to know what's on the exam so that they can pass it.
One of the main reasons for this is because lectures are set up to teach about a topic, not to satisfy a desire.
For example, in a computer science course, you might have a lecture about sorting algorithms or asymptotic complexity.
Even if you have an interest in computer science, those titles alone won't get you excited about learning.
What happens in the first few minutes of those lectures?
More or less the same thing every time. It's usually a slide about “what you will learn,” which again just lists the specific things included in that topic.
The solution is to build desire:What if you started off with the benefits of learning the topic?
Back to our example about asymptotic complexity, which basically just classifies how fast an algorithm can run (how complex it is).
What if, as a teacher, instead of saying that your students will hear a lecture on “asymptotic complexity,” you say that they will learn how to “find inefficiencies in code and speed up their applications.”
That's already more attractive and speaks to what students really want to learn.
The intro slides could focus on how coders at Google use the concept of asymptotic complexity in their daily work. Or how a long-time coding problem was solved because someone found a way to reduce the complexity of the coding solution.
Using the desire method in your content: This concept is all about focusing on benefits to readers and customers. More so, it's about conveying those benefits in the headline and at the beginning of any content.
While many marketers don't know why they do it, this is the reason why having a benefit-driven headline is so important. If you're teaching something that will help your reader accomplish something, make it clear!
In addition, your introduction is your chance to show your reader what could be possible if they learned what you are about to teach. Cite statistics, case studies, personal experiences, and anything else that shows how great the results can be.
2. Games are more fun than work
Ask anyone whether they'd rather read a textbook or played a video game, and you'll get the same answer 99% of the time.
Educators have realized that students learn better if they are fully engrossed in a lesson, which happens if they are having fun.
That's where the concept of “gamification” came from.
No, you don't have to create a video game for your content, but there are ways to make your content more game-like and fun for readers.
Let's look at a few ways you could do this.
Example #1 – Quizzes can be fun: A quiz can be either fun or boring, depending on the topic.
Online quizzes draw engagement and grow in popularity when done right-that's a fact. A study of 100 million articles in 2013-2014 found that 80% of the most popular pieces of content were quizzes.
By framing it around fun careers (Oprah on the intro image), the creators drew people to the quiz.
When you create a piece of content, consider designing a quiz to go with it.
There are many free tools, such as Qzzr, that you can use to create a quiz. You just copy and paste the HTML code that it gives you into your content:
If you use WordPress, you could try the SlickQuiz plugin, which allows you to create quizzes from inside your admin panel:
Another benefit of using quizzes is that most people who take them will consider sharing their results with friends, bringing you additional traffic.
Most quiz tools include social sharing buttons on the results screen to encourage sharing.
Example #2 – The M&M's pretzel scavenger hunt: This was a fun but simple game that M&M's made in 2013.
The whole came consisted of one simple picture in a Facebook post.
The objective was to find the hidden pretzel man in the image. Even without getting any prize, Facebook users loved the simple game and shared it with their friends.
This game resulted in 25,000 new likes on the product's Facebook page plus over 10,000 comments and 6,000 shares.
Example #3 – How Heineken successfully used an Instagram game: During one of the biggest events in tennis, the 2013 US Open, Heineken created an Instagram account.
A new account was loaded with 225 pictures of people in tennis audiences.
To win the game, you had to follow clues in the pictures that led you to the final picture.
It was essentially a complicated scavenger hunt.
This game lasted only 3 days, but Heineken increased its follower count by 20%.
3. Start with pain
This tactic goes well with the desire method (from #1 above).
People are motivated in two main ways:
To get benefits
To avoid pain
It's natural to want to get good things and avoid bad ones.
Focusing on inducing desire was about the benefits. It's achieved through showing what learning about your topic will do for your reader.
Here, though, you want to drill home what will happen if they don't learn from your content.
For example, if you write a guide to correct posture, you could point out that if the readers don't learn from your guide, they may develop poor posture, accompanied by back and neck pain and chronic discomfort.
Desire and pain can be used together, or they can be used separately.
The same goes with your introduction. Pain, especially if the reader is already aware of it, is a great way to get their full attention.
If you illustrate the pain well, readers will pay close attention to your work, which will result in better learning.
4. Chunking works wonders
There's more to teaching than just getting the attention of your students.
You also want to teach your material in a way that maximizes how well a student learns as well as remembers what you taught.
That's where chunking comes in:
Chunking involves breaking up a complex topic into smaller “chunks.” Studies have shown that this improves short-term memory retention.
The classic example is phone numbers.
Most phone numbers consist of 10 individual numbers, for example: 2338223948.
If someone just read out those numbers, they'd be hard to remember. However, if you separate them into three chunks, it gets a lot easier: 233-822-3948.
Applying chunking to content: The main principle behind chunking is breaking down something tough to learn into smaller bits.
When it comes to content, you can use that in two ways.
First, divide up your content into smaller subsections by using subheadlines.
If you look through any of my posts, you'll notice that I have subheadlines every 200-300 words.
While there's no specific length you need to aim for, make sure the subsections don't get too long. If they do get long, break them up again into further subsections (usually h3 or h4 tags).
Next, you can apply chunking to paragraphs. It's hard to focus and learn reading long paragraphs.
You should have 2-3 sentences per paragraph maximum in almost all situations. You can see that I have short paragraphs like this one in all the content I create.
This is a simple change that makes a big difference.
5. Understand and use VAK
Something that educators need to understand is that not everyone learns the same way.
One popular viewpoint is “VAK,” which stands for visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Or in regular terms: seeing, hearing, and touching.
Different people learn best in different ways. Some need to touch things to learn, while others prefer seeing.
However, the vast majority of people learn best when more than one (or all three) ways of receiving information are involved.
To illustrate this concept, let's go through an example.
Pretend you were teaching how to pump up a basketball. Here are examples of different ways to teach it:
Visual: Write a blog post on how to pump up a ball; you could include pictures. Or create an infographic, detailing the process.
Auditory: Create an mp3 recording explaining the steps.
Kinesthetic: Give a student a deflated ball and pump, and explain how to pump it up (would also include a visual or auditory explanation).
Visual+Auditory: Create a video that shows you pumping up a ball and explaining how to do it.
As you can see, there are multiple ways you can teach a topic for each learning type.
In addition, you could create multiple forms of content for a single topic. For example, you could create a podcast narration of a blog post so that your audience could both read (visual) and hear it (auditory).
The takeaway here is to try to involve multiple ways of learning for all your content. If you can get your audience to take action (i.e., go find a ball to work on), you can involve kinesthetic learning as well.
6. Engagement leads to knowledge
Many studies have shown that the more engaged students are, the better they learn.
The term engagement covers a bunch of different concepts, but it usually refers to any time when a student is actively doing something while learning. Examples would be things like asking questions, talking productively with peers, thinking, and answering quizzes.
While some of the other techniques we've looked at are difficult to apply online, improving engagement is very possible-not only in your content but in other areas of marketing like social media and email.
For example, we've already looked at including quizzes in content, which is an opportunity for students to engage.
Additionally, you can change how you write content and the type of content you write in order to get more engagement.
Here are some other guides that dig into this topic in more detail:
