Week 13: Ranking, Link Building & Google Analytics

This week can some interesting information.  I had always known that people shared links and helped each other out or tried to get traffic from other people that have gained popularity, but I didn' t ever really know how they did that.  I liked the advice of being sincere.  I know that these are popular practices and that they work, but I always try to ask myself if I like the experience when I am the consumer not the business person.  There are certain things that marketers do that I hate.  I think we should be more responsible as business owners not to irritate our customers.  I have learned these principles in other business classes.  I don't think that goes away simply because the internet is such an anonymous platform. 

It was interesting to see all the data that you can get from Google Analytics.  What a powerful tool to help the marketing efforts of your ads, links, and content.  It all takes time and money after all. 

Week 12: Social Media for SEO & Social Networking

This week was a little hard for me to get in to.  I personally hate all things social media even though I know what an invaluable tool it can be for marketing your business.  That being said, I created a website for my brother and I am not sure what his plans are.  I created a scenario in a hypothetical that I think makes sense. 

It would have been nice to have a little more in depth info for those of us who are not up to date on the best uses and practices for each platform.  I think in some cases you can do some of the same things across all platforms, but each one tends to be used in certain ways and you might want to tailor your marketing strategies a little differently depending on which one you are using. 

I also think it might have been nice to have some specific examples of people that do this well.  I am not sure how to show or teach this, but I still feel a little unprepared to dive into the social media world and feel like we can get our name out there. 

Week 11: Landing page optimization and SEO

This week was interesting.  It is crazy that getting ahead in the online world is so specific and precise.  I never knew anything about SEO.  I know that I am annoyed when I click a link and I can't find what I was looking for.  This is especially a problem on a site like pinterest or how those stupid traffic hog websites put in some title or picture and the article isn't even about that.  We don't need more annoying websites out there.  It has been interesting to learn the legitimate ways to get a better ranking. I think all the work we have done so far on keywords is starting to make more relevant sense.  It is second nature to me to be organized and well laid out so doing that on my website and landing pages was easy, but the information about SEO this week was helpful and useful knowledge for the future.

Week 10 ROI and Optimization

This was the most frustration week so far.  I spent so much time trying to figure out how to get the requested actions set up on my site and I have no idea if they will work the way they are supposed to work to give us the information we need for the course.  I don't know if it is just my inexperience with building a website or my lack of time to figure it out, but my opinion is if we are paying to learn something we should be taught it in our class and not have to figure out most of the steps on our own.

I completely understand the selling points of being able to customize a website to what you want to do (if you already know what you want to do) but I have no experience doing any of this and I am getting more frustrated the deeper we dive into the back-end workings of our site.  I think it would be a good idea in the future for this class to offer an option of following along with a pre-designed site that we could all do together.  That way we are all using the same host, the same page builder and actually being taught the steps to accomplish these tasks required.  Getting the outcomes required here at the end could vary wildly depending on choices we made at the beginning of the semester, choices might I ad, that we had no idea how would impact what we had to do in the future! 

I am pretty good at figuring out how to do things, but there are too many variables in a market that changes as rapidly as the internet does. 

Week 9: Setting up google analytics

This week we learned about setting up our google analytics account and getting it installed on our website to start tracking valuable information in regards to visitors to our website.  Some of the things we can see in analytics is how many people visit your site, how long they stay on your site, if they are browsing around your site.  This information tells you something about the user experience of your website.  If people can't find what they are looking for or they don't like the feel of it, they will leave pretty quickly. 

We also learned about a Quality Rating Score in Google Ads.  The score tells you how likely it is that your ad is being seen, as well as the click through rate of your ad.  This information helps you determine if you are using the right phrases and keywords in your ad.  We linked the ad account to analytics so that we can also see which ads are doing the best in getting people to our site.

Right now it is all in theory, but I am excited to see how it works in relation to the money we are spending.  I am worried that my site doesn't have enough content yet to keep people there, but I think seeing if the ads work will still be interesting. 

Week 8: Google Ad Campaign

I felt like the articles and video for this week were very helpful in narrowing down the purposes of each section for the ad.  Since I am not selling something directly I feel like a google ad is a little harder than just en e-commerce site.  My "specials" are maybe more directly related to specific articles, ideas, podcasts, or appearances.  When I started with this last week and felt unsure about it, I think I was thinking too generally about the website.  I do want people to peruse the whole site, but I guess I could look at it more like pinterest.  You see a specific idea you like that takes you to the site.  You were drawn there by a specific idea, but the whole site might appeal to you.   Overall though, we are working on getting our specific content up to par so people really feel like there is something to look at when we get them to the site. 

Week 7: Keywords

This week we learned about Google Ads campaigns and using good keywords.  Coming up with a list of keywords really helped me stretch into what kinds of content we might want to offer on the blog.  Creating a google ad was exciting because of course I have seen them every time I do a search and now I feel kinda cool knowing how to do it.  I wish there had been some more info on the bidding for clicks and the budget and how all the works.  I don't feel like I understand it very well, although some of my students comments helped me learn a little about it.  I am wondering if a budget of $3 is going to be any help at all.  I guess that is all part of the experiment though.  I kept thinking of ads I see and wondering if those companies are successful and is the ad worth it.  I am excited to see how it works and use these powerful marketing tools.

Week 6: Legal Structure

This is a topic that is a little intimidating for some.  I have done the business license process before because I had to obtain a license to be a massage therapist.  It was a fairly simple process except at that time you have to physically go down to the office and wait forever.  Hopefully it is a little more streamlined than that now days. 

I think overall my opinion after the studies this week is to make sure that I have the right structure based on my goals and plans.  It is easiest and least expensive to start with a sole proprietorship, but if this is a business idea that expands or starts making a decent amount of income I would want to separate it into an LLC.  This is eventually what my brother and I want to do as we build a business that would likely have many ventures under it's umbrella. 

Week 5: Site Design

I felt pretty confident in most of this weeks info prior to this week.  I took some layout and typography classes earlier in my college years and I feel like I have always had a pretty good eye for layout and design.  I can notice in an instant if a website isn't really up to date and it is true they usually lose my business.  If things are not easily navigable that's a major negative as well.  The thing I did learn was about the numbers to "look impressive."  I never would have really thought about that, but I might try it when I go to design a home page or something to help break up pages. 

Week 4: Host and Site Builder

I am feeling a little frustrated and behind where I would like to be this week.  I took some time to finish week 2's excel file because I was having trouble even envisioning what I would do for the product.  The video of the example websites helped a lot to see how each of the business models might work within an actual website.  I wanted to pick something easy to do just to learn on, but my 2 easy options didn't end up being something that would give me the right opportunities and information feedback for this class.  So the result of this long thought process is now at the end of this week we are suppose to be starting to build a website and I haven't really had time to think about that itself.  I don't even know what we will call it.

This is all such new language that I am unsure of the best choices to make when it came to this week.  Sometimes these things you need to just dive into, which I am fine with, but now I have chosen something that I would like to work out so there is a little more pressure to choose good things that will translate into something that continues to work after the scope of this class.

Week 3: Drop Shipping and Affiliate models

I certainly learned more about two business models I knew nothing about this week.  I am not quite decided on which I think is better if I were to choose.  Ultimately I think it depends on a person's goals for a site.  Both require a little more work up front than maintaining a site.  I think you could potentially earn more money off a drop shipping site depending on the products and variety of products you choose.  But more variety keeps you more busy.

An affiliate site also takes longer to earn money with, but once the traffic gets rolling on your content the possibilities are higher I think.  This one might be more work overall because you need to keep your site relevant.  But you focus your efforts on the site itself and not the products or the hassle of dealing with orders and returns.

Week 2 in Web Design Business

The world of earning money online has always been a reality just out of my grasp.  I have known that many people do it, but never knew the language or where to start looking.  Even the preliminary learning of this week helped me to see the potential that is out there. 

I can only presume the power of such tools as Google Ads.  I have never had a desire to sell anything online outside of my previously contemplated business ideas.  The idea behind affiliated selling is foreign, intriguing, and exciting. 

Choosing a product or idea to sell in just a few short weeks is a little nerve racking.  I want to choose something that is exciting to me, but I want that product to do well and be able to see results of my learning and hard work.  The thoughts of entering a market where there are so many big names is intimidating.  I hope to learn the language and tricks of doing something successfully in this class.