W13 Reflection: Ranking, Link Building & Google Analytics
Ranking is important because the higher the rank your website has, the greater chance you have of traffic, conversions, and revenue. There are multiple ways to increase the ranking of a website and link building is one of them.
Link building is a great way to improve a website visibility in Google and to generate traffic to your website. I want to do this more for my website even after the course is complete. My plan is to make my website into a useful hub for easy recipes that are healthy and/or fun. Then I want to get all my friends from Facebook to come and check out my website when there’s more content and the photos are more professional. I feel like I’m still learning how to make this look as good as I envision.
As for Google Analytics, I found the homework assignments challenging but fun. They got me thinking that it would be rewarding to work in marketing and pull the reports from a service like Google Analytics. I’m not sure what that would be called, maybe a data analyst? I think I will investigate that as a career option.
W12 Reflection: Social Media for SEO & Social Networking
There are lots of things to consider when starting a social media campaign to promote your website.
First, get the SEO right. I recently updated my landing page to reflect the text found in my Google Ads more effectively. One of my ads is about using the Instant Pot. So I added an Instant Pot recipe to my blog’s homepage. Moving forward, I also want to ensure that my text is always searchable, short and sweet, and packed with keyword-rich words.
Second, as for my social media marketing, I am going to use Facebook as my prime platform to promote my website. I have a few reasons for this. According to my Google Analytics, women ages 65+ are my prime website visitors. Most of the people on my Facebook account are older female friends, so my Facebook account is already setup to meet my website’s target audience. Many of these ladies are already interested in my Instant Pot recipes (which I feature on my website), so it will be easy to get them to click on my Facebook posts and go to my website to get the free recipes.
W11 Reflection: Landing Page Optimization & Basic SEO
I thought search engine optimization (SEO) was a thing of the past, but after this week I understand that it’s still a valid digital marketing service to use. Making sure that the content of our landing pages matches our Google Ads is vital to giving our users the best experiences possible. We don’t want to confuse them and lose them because they clicked on an ad and our website wasn’t reflecting that ad campaign very well.
You want to build your brand as something trustworthy for your customers to follow. And you can’t build that loyalty with a haphazard ads campaign and an unprofessional website.
Another thing that is important to keep in mind that the old days of placing key words into tags on each website are gone. As the article said, we need to think more holistically about how we place the content on our websites because Google’s algorithms have changed.
References
https://moz.com/blog/visual-guide-to-keyword-targeting-onpage-optimization
W10 Reflection: ROI & Optimizing Ad Performance
This has been a crazy week for me. I found out that my hosting plan with WordPress.com wasn’t allowing me to insert some of the Google Ads snippets. However, I did find an alternative which I am really excited about and I hope will okay to use for the remainder of the class. WordPress.com has a second under the Marketing menu that shows the impressions and clicks and other pertinent things that have to do with website traffic. This is already integrated into my Google Analytics account as well. Until I’m told to do something different, I’m going to use those statistics to track my website traffic. That should be helpful in knowing which pages were visited, which one’s got any clicks, and how to optimize for further success (if any). It’s actually hard getting traffic to a website. I wonder if there’s other ways of promoting a site besides Google Ads. Maybe a combination of multiple methods is necessary to generate traffic.
W09 Reflection: Relevance and Quality Score
With much thanks to this week’s lesson, I decided to change my keywords and ads to match my website a little better. I think I’m starting to understand a what it means to have good keywords so that when people search google, my website will hopefully be somewhere on the first page for them to see and click.
I also hope that my website is pretty enough. Nothing says “unprofessional” like a poorly designed website. Something I know I’m lacking is content. This is a blog and blogs need lots of new content. I’ve been making Pinterest recipes and taking pictures of the results. Now I just need to take the time to create the articles and post them to my website.
Something else I learned this week was about the Quality Score of an ads campaign. I’m afraid my ads are going to have really low scores at first. Hopefully I’ll be able to fix that with a little more fine-tuning when I get my ads results back and see which ones worked and which ones didn’t.
W08 Reflection: Ads
I really enjoyed creating my first Google Ad and submitting it to the group for their reviews. These ads make us focus on what our web business is really all about and how to communicate that effectively to the public in as few words as possible. It truly was a challenge, but I liked it!
The first thing that I learned from this experience was the need to find the focus of my ad campaign. What information did I want the reader to understand? What keywords did I want them to see first? To answer the first question, I ensured that my ad was an accurate but entertaining description of the service my website offers. Second, I wanted to feature keywords that normally get people’s attention such as “free” and “tested.”
The second thing that I learned was that effective communication is essential in any kind of situation where you want to persuade someone to think a different way or try something new. We might have the best product in the world, but if we can’t communicate that to our potential customers, we’re going to lose them.
W07 Reflection: Google Ads & Keywords
I really enjoyed this week’s lesson. Setting up my first real Google Ads campaign was fun and daunting all at the same time. I’m glad we didn’t have to pull the trigger just yet and start paying for the ads because I have a voucher from my website hosting plan that I want to use instead of my own money.
Regarding the strategy for selecting keywords, I find that it’s more complicated than I originally thought. The process is easy enough. What’s complicated is understanding your target market and being able to find the right keywords that will reach your correct audience. I wonder how much of it is trial and error and how much is purely looking at the statistics.
Or, maybe it’s a combination of both? You can’t get some statistics to apply if you haven’t done a little trial and error first. This is why so much money and time is spent on focus groups and testing products and market strategies before a service/product is launched.
W06 Reflection: Legal Structure
Today I purchased my domain name, setup my affiliate links, and launched my little blog. But before I did that, I needed to find out about the licenses and taxes that are required before officially starting my own business.
Because I live in Utah, all I needed to do for my business model was setup a sole proprietorship. I did that by filing some paperwork online with Utah.gov. Next year, when it’s time to file my taxes, all I need to do differently is report any extra income I make in the appropriate places on the tax forms.
Starting a business is a scary process. There’s lots of unknowns and lots of risks. I don’t even know if I will be able to make any money on this website. Chances are I will lose money. But you know what? That’s the risk all entrepreneurs take. I just need to give it my best and grow my business as slowly as I need to. I really want it to be successful. And I’m hoping the skill I’m learning in this class will help me to make that hope a reality.
W05 Reflection: Site Design
So much goes into designing a website. It’s more than just a logo, a navigation, and some fun colors and pictures. There’s a thought process that has to be followed. One has to take into consideration the business model, target audience, and good website design practices.
The business model will help us to understand how to best meet customers’ needs. For example, deciding on which PayPal button to use is made simpler through an understanding of the business model. Is it a subscription type of a business? Does it require a donation button? Does each product need an ID? All these answers can be found by understanding the business model.
Next is understanding target audience. How the website looks needs to reflect the audience you want to draw to your website. Is it corporate? Does it need a more feminine touch? Are your customers attracted to the cleaner lines of a minimalist design? These are all factor that need to be considered in site design.
Next we need to understand good web design practices. Most everyone who visits a website is going to look for a login and shopping cart near the top right of the website. The navigation to the different pages is also across the top with the logo on the top left or top middle of the page. These elements need to be consistent throughout each page of the website in order to create a unified look that will help customers stay long enough to make a purchase.
W04 Reflection: Site Builder & Hosting
Each lesson seems to get a little more complicated. This was had a lot of research to complete including finding a project and a hosting place. I think I’m going with my “Trying Pinterest” blog idea. It will be easy to setup and get some good content on there. I really did have my heart set on designing logos for women’s startup businesses, but hat model doesn’t seem to work very well for the purposes of this project. Maybe I will put that project on the back burner for now and start it up later when school is done. I really want to create logos to help me pay off my student loans.
That said, the “Trying Pinterest” blog is going to be a lot of fun to set up and get going. I’m constantly pinning recipes that I want to try and this will be a fun way to showcase my results and see what recipes work out and which one’s don’t. The trick is going to be getting the affiliate links from Amazon and then getting enough content fast enough so that it looks like a robust site.
W03 Reflection: Sourcing the Product
Choosing what product to sell and where to source it is a big deal. Not just for startups, but it’s a big deal for any company that wants to stay ahead and stay in business. Getting products that are quality, less expensive, and that there’s a market for is probably one of the hardest obstacles for any business to master. In my past experience and from books that I’ve read, getting a product that produces some kind of residual income would be the smartest. Why? Because you sell it once and then it keeps generating money. Maybe that’s why subscription boxes are so popular right now. You get a customer to sign up once and then you have the automatic monthly income. Multiply that over thousands of subscribers and you’ve got a nice little business for yourself. However, you still need to have a good product that’s sourced well, so this is by no meals a holy grail of business strategies.
This week we learned about drop shipping and affiliate links. In my discussions with fellow class-mates, we concluded that although you won’t make a lot of money using affiliate links, its the safer option especially when your business is just starting out.
There are so many things to consider when starting a business. I’m thinking that providing a product that doesn’t have to shipped might be a good option to pursue.
W02 Reflection: Choosing a Business
Startups are hard work. I’ve tried several online businesses in the past and kept running into issues that I hadn’t foreseen or thought through very well in the planning phase. That said, an online business can also be very rewarding. I loved waking up in the morning, turning on my computer, and checking on my little “empire.” It was fun being my own boss and setting my own hours.
One of the problems I ran into was a lack of creative ideas because my energies were being pulled elsewhere (school, work, family, etc.). Another issue was the lack of interest in the product. I didn’t have the passion for the product that was needed to keep going. Another problem that I run into (and this was addressed in this week’s lesson) was the financial barrier to getting started. I didn’t have the upfront costs for inventory or the money to hire the talent I needed to help me take my creative ideas to the next level.
After doing the exercises for this lesson, I’m seeing two things to remember as I create my own business:
First, get an idea that I’m passionate about already, such as a hobby that I’m good at an enjoy. Then find a way to capitalize on that idea.
Second, make sure that idea has low upfront costs. I am a student and I don’t have the money to spend on inventories, hiring a webmaster, etc. The idea has to be simple, unique, and something I can manage on my own.
Amanda Olson 