MKT 250 Web Business Creation wk 13 Reflection: Ranking, Link Building and Google Analytics

Reflection week 13 Ranking, Link Building and

Google Analytics

This week we studied about ranking, link building and google analytics.   We created strategies about specific people to contact, when we were going contact them, the actions to complete of what we were going to do and how. For example, were we going to create a blog, be a or have guest post on a blog. Were we going to create a press release, or some other actions to get build trust and connection through links. We also learned about how important it is to have a designated place of where we were going to keep track of all the links we were creating/acquiring.

We also learned more about how to navigate and use google analytics by navigating a demo account and answering some questions.  We participated in a discussion board and demonstrated our new skills with a quiz.

We Learned more about ranking and utilized the site Woorank.  We took the score and report and created an action plan on high and low impact changes we could make to our site to improve it.

I felt like this week was a refining week. We have worked so hard all semester to create these sites. We have constantly evaluated and reevaluated, changed and changed some more.  This week was kind of the week that asked, “How did you do?” and “What else can you do now and in the future for continued improvement?”  

  

Some of the resources we used this week were.   

o    Link Building for 2017 and Beyond (Links to an external site.)

o     (Links to an external site.)How to Prioritize Your Link Building Efforts & Opportunities (Links to an external site.)

o    Google Webmaster Guidelines (Links to an external site.)

o    Link Checker at Moz.com (Links to an external site.)

o    Google Analytics for Beginners (Links to an external site.) (1:07 min; transcript coming soon) 

o    (2:52 min; Core Analysis Techniques transcript (Links to an external site.))

o     Demo account. (Links to an external site.)

o     (7:10 min; Google Analytics Help transcript (Links to an external site.)).

MKT 250 Web Business Creation Week 12 Reflection Social Media for SEO

MKT 250 Web Business Creation Week 12 Reflection Social Media for SEO

This week we studied social media. We used this knowledge to create both short and long term social media SEO plans for our sites. We studied from the following resources:

o    5 SEO Strategies for Social Media You Need to Know (Links to an external site.)

o    5 Steps for a Successful Social Media Strategy (Links to an external site.)

o    Google Analytics Tutorial Part 5 - Social Media Traffic (Links to an external site.)

o    Developing a Social Media Plan (Links to an external site.)(23:02 min;

o     How To Create A Social Media Marketing Plan transcript (Links to an external site.)).

o    Free Tools for Social Media Optimization (Links to an external site.)

We learned from Maria Riefer Johnston referring to Jeffrey Haslam, Senior director of social SEO at Education Dynamics. Maria shares Jeffrey’s talk from a conference about the 4 4 s’s. They are 1. Segmented-know your audience find what they are looking for by using tools such as google alerts, buffer, Klout, Hootsuite, Cyfe Twitter counter, Tweet Deck, Social bakers then create your content based on their needs.  2. Searchable-use the words that your people are searching for. They encourage us to use tools like keyword planner, Conductors searchlight and Google suggest. 3.Snackable- they guide us to use things such as charts, images, tables and headings to make our information quick and easy to read. 4. Shareable-This means to make frequent interesting posts that are highly structured with headings.  Remember to focus on inbound links to have high engagement and a well-organized sitemap. She also encourages to use Meta Tags and Meta Data wisely. Use searchable words in URL and as Alternate text on images. Another article we were encouraged to read was 5 Steps to Creating a Successful Social Media Strategy for 2017

What do you want your site to do what are your smart goals? Know your target audience utilize google analytics, facebook insights, twitter analytics, Instagram analytics and linkedIn Analytics. Have content for every type of learner. Those who love to read have blogs, images for those who love to look this will help people remember more, videos for more engagement, and listen-podcasts are becoming a huge market. Remember to have a dedicated budget set aside for social media marketing. Adapt people previously used their computers for the majority of online activities now they use their phones and our sites need to be set up to be able to reach these people and be competitive.

We also studied from the following resources about creating our Social Media Plans:

o    How To Create A Social Media Marketing Plan For The New Year (Links to an external site.)

o    How to Create a Social Media Plan transcript (Links to an external site.)).

o    Wikipedia's summary of Social Media Marketing (Links to an external site.)

o    Free Tools for Social Media Optimization (Links to an external site.)

o    How Does Social Media Affect Search Marketing? (Links to an external site.)

o    Facebook Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners (Links to an external site.)

o    The Complete Guide to Using Twitter to Grow Your Business  (Links to an external site.)

o    Guide to Using LinkedIn for Your Job Search

We selected several social media platforms we thought would be a good fit with our company and created marketing plans for those platforms.  We refined those plans through discussions with our classmates about those plans. 

Web Business Creation Week 11 Reflection Landing Page Optimization, Website Optimizer, and Basic SEO

Week 11 Reflection

This week we studied about landing page optimization, website optimizer and basic search engine optimization (SEO)

We studied many materials throughout the week.  I learned so much! I have discovered how important keyword are throughout this course as I had some basic keywords that ate up my budget quickly, but also didn’t turn into any sales. Before this week, I still kind of felt that the concepts were not clicking for me as to how interrelated they all are.  We learned how important the keywords you choose really are and how they should work together in your title as they summarize your page. The keywords need to be in your links within the pages and alternate text of photos.  We learned how critical quality referrals from external sites (links) are. They are a validation of your reputation and your content.  All of this works together to help us have a clear vision about the content that we create and how it all needs to work together to be really successful. We evaluated our ads and made changes to help ensure our landing pages were working the best for us. We evaluated our websites to see how many outside sources were linking to us. We looked to see what changes we needed to make to make for better SEO. We identified keywords for our pages and optimized them.

Some of the resources we utilized this week are:

o    Does Your Landing Page Seal the Deal? (Links to an external site.)

(2:30 min; Does Your Landing Page Seal the Deal transcript (Links to an external site.))

o    Understanding Landing Page Experience (Links to an external site.)

o    Basic Strategies for Optimizing Websites and Landing Pages (Links to an external site.)

o    What Is Search Engine Optimization / SEO (Links to an external site.)(3:29 min; Search Engine Optimization transcript (Links to an external site.))

o    Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization. (Links to an external site.)

o    We used the backlink checker from Ahrefs.com (Links to an external site.) to determine the number of inbound links for our sites.

o    Google Basics (Links to an external site.)

o    Google SEO Starter Guide (Links to an external site.)

o    Webmaster Guidelines (Links to an external site.)

Web Business Creation Week 10 Reflection: ROI, Conversion Tracking & Optimizing Ad Performance

W10 Reflection: ROI, Conversion Tracking & Optimizing Ad Performance

This week we studied about return on investment (ROI), conversion tracking and optimizing our ad performance. We started our ad campaigns. We learned more about using google ads and analytics to help us understand how our keywords, ads, clicks, impressions, conversions, etc. work together and how to understand and utilize the data collected by the programs to improve our keywords, ads and campaigns through different actions. Such as adding or deleting keywords, starting a new ad, stopping or pausing a different ad, adjusting our landing pages to help our site relevancy.  I was able to identify which words were not performing the way I wanted to and which words were using up all my allotted budget. I discovered that due to current events the product I was waiting for is backlogged and I need to find new product.  I was not able to make any sales conversions because of this.  I asked my professor for guidance and some great advice was given. I will do that and continue to identify product I am able to get and hopefully sell.  Through the activity, I got some great ideas that might work and are a higher interest level than I ever thought they might be. I am excited to keep on working through this. It feels very much like learning to listen to the spirit and making necessary adjustments as I go.  Some for mistakes that sounded like a good idea at the time, but I learned over time that those choices were actually hurting me in the long run. I had to stop or pause the actions fix the things that needed to be and could be fixed and walk away from the ones that I learned were not the path I should continue down.  I am grateful for the atonement and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn about these concepts.  We studied from the many resources listed below: 

o    Measuring your profits (Links to an external site.)

o    Return on Investment (Links to an external site.)

o    Measuring Sales and Conversions (Links to an external site.)

o    Setting Up Conversion Tracking (Links to an external site.)

o     Will Your E-commerce Company Make It? How to Tell (Links to an external site.),

o    Google Ads Data - Campaign 

o    Use Negative Keywords to Eliminate Unwanted Clicks (Links to an external site.)

o    About keyword matching options (Links to an external site.)

o    Expand the reach of existing keywords (Links to an external site.)

o    Improve Your Ads Quality (Links to an external site.)

o    Google Ads Data - Keywords and Ads

o    Write Successful Text Ads (Links to an external site.)

o    Test Your Ad Text Changes (Links to an external site.)

o    Monitor your ads and keywords (Links to an external site.)

o    Avoid Using Overly Generic Keywords (Links to an external site.)

o    Use Appropriate Keyword Matching Options to Control Who See Your Ads (Links to an external site.)

o    Find Relevant Keywords Using the "See Search Terms" Report (Links to an external site.)

Web Business Creation Week 9 Reflection and Quality Score

Week 9 Reflection Relevance and Quality Score

This week we studied about relevance, landing pages and how to improve our sites quality scores. These things are important because they make it more likely to have your ad be shown rather than someone else’s. If that ad is relevant to their search, hopefully they will be brought to your site and they can make purchases because they found the items they had been looking for. We created ads for a google ad campaign and installed/linked google analytics and google ads to our websites. We created an Ads campaign that contained at least one ad group, two ads, and ten keywords that were relevant to the landing pages. All of these actions are to help us be more successful by utilizing the tools to collect data and then be able to use that data to make changes to our sites so that we can make our sites drive traffic to them and then ensure that traffic converts to paying customers.   These are the many resources we used to help learn about all of this.  We read and watched the following:

o    What is Google Ads Quality Score (Links to an external site.)

o    Diagnose Keyword Quality Using Quality Score (Links to an external site.)

o    Expected Click Through Rate (Links to an external site.)

o     (Links to an external site.)Ad Relevance (Links to an external site.)

o     (Links to an external site.)Landing Page Experience (Links to an external site.)

o     (Links to an external site.)Improve your Ad Quality (Links to an external site.)

o    How Do I Improve my "Quality Score" in Google AdWords? (2018) (Links to an external site.)(4:20 min; Improve "Quality Score" transcript (Links to an external site.)).

o    Short Video that Summarizes Quality Score (Links to an external site.)(5:51 min; How to Improve Quality Score transcript (Links to an external site.))

 Running Your Google AdWords Campaign (Links to an external site.)(15 min; MKT 250 - Running Google AdWords Transcript (Links to an external site.)).

o    Get Started With Analytics (Links to an external site.)

o    Set Up Tracking Overview (Links to an external site.)

o    Link Google Analytics and Google Ads Account (Links to an external site.)

Web Business Creations week 8 Reflection: Ads

W08 Reflection: Ads

This week we worked more on our websites and created and refined our Google Ads and keywords for those sites. This week, I personally got even more sick.  I was not expecting that as the previous weeks have been so intense this winter. I have not been able to do any of the things a mom or wife needs to do.  My studies and the little childcare that I was able to manage was everything I was able to give, nothing held back.  I am drowning.

I began to wonder if I am in the right business, or if I should find employment outside of my home because I am meeting so many brick walls starting this online business. I know it will just be like this sometimes and I need to keep focused on my goals and working diligently to learn and do all that I need to do. 

It is just like writing the ads process.  Just because you do it once doesn’t mean you are good at something.  It takes several encounters and experiences with something to begin to feel comfortable and each time you hope to make improvements and be refined until you, or your draft of your ad, are great.

This week to prepare we read the following articles:

o    Edit Your Text Ads (Links to an external site.)

o    Write Successful Text Ads (Links to an external site.) 

o    About the Ad Approval Process (Links to an external site.) and scan the Google Ads Policies (Links to an external site.) to see if any of them would affect your ad. Adjust your ad, as necessary.

o    Short Sentences Sell: How to Make a Big Bang with Little Words (Links to an external site.)

o    Keyword Insertion (Links to an external site.)

o    7 Best Practices for Google’s NEW Expanded Text Ads (Links to an external site.)