W13 Ranking, Link Building and Google Analytics.

            I can't believe this is the last full week of classes this semester. I feel like there is still so much to learn with running a business. I do feel like I have learned a lot this semester on how to run a successful online business. 

          This week We learned how to rate our sites for free and feedback on how to make it better. I think this is a great tool!  woorank.com - Once a week this site allows you to check it for free. As a business owner this along with Google analytics you can learn so many different ways to make your website better every day.

          Something else that we learned this week was link building. The idea behind link building is finding sites similar to yours and add your site link to that site. You can do this in a variety of ways you can add it in the comments of some of their pages or you can ask to be a guest blogger. This is something that I wish we would have spent a little bit more time on. I plan on spending more time looking into it in the future.

       Overall I am very grateful for this course it has taught me a lot and has set me up for the future.

W11 Landing Page Optimization & Basic SEO

This week we looked into how important landing pages work. Landing pages are important so people who are brought to your website are brought to the place in your site that they were looking for. My favorite page that we were brought to help us this week was straight from google. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2404197?hl=en This site taught us the basic steps to having a good landing page.
Google knows what helps people stay on your website and they separate it into simple steps.
Step 1. Offer relevant, useful and original content.
Step 2. Promote transparency and foster trustworthiness on your site.
Step 3. Make mobile and computer navigation easy
Step 4. Decrease your landing page loading time.
Step 5 Make your site fast.

The next thing that we taught was the basic SEO. This just means the simple things that keep the website better than others. Many of these things are what you would think like making sure your site loads quickly and that you have all your links working.
This site mentions a lot of things about the deal and why they are important.
https://moz.com/blog/visual-guide-to-keyword-targeting-onpage-optimization

W10 ROI & Optimizing Ad Performance & Google Ad Campaign

There was so much that was involved in this week's class!

First of all, Conversion tracking and seeing how well your site is doing compared to the people that are visiting the site. Hopefully, I put the code in correctly and it will show me how much time people are spending on which pages so I can improve the pages that people aren't spending time on.

I started my Google ad Campaign a few days ago and already had things that google told me I could improve on. I have been in aw with how much Google does for free. I could spend hours on this site with the amount of information. I will continually keep checking back and changing things because google knows what works on google.

I am so grateful for this "test" run of owning a business online. I fell better to prepared for the future if/when my husband and I open up a company together.

W09 Relevance and Quality score / Google Analytics

This week I was blown away with the information that Google gives you.

The first thing that we learned this week was relevance and quality score. Basically, that means how good your ads will do based on everything in your ad. So what demographic your ad is being advertised. Do you have the right landing page for every ad? Does your ad have the right keywords to attract people? All of these questions get rated by google and it gives you a score. This way you know areas where you can improve to get more traffic to your site.

Then we learned about Google Analytics. I was surprised that this is a free tool that google allows anyone to used to track their site. Everything that you would ever need to see how your site is doing is on there. You can see how many people are visiting your page. What pages people are viewing the most. How many comments there are, the average time that people spend on your website and so much more. I am still not done checking out what it all does. This tool makes it easy to see how your website can be better for consumers.

W08 Ads

I forgot to post last week... Oops.

This last week we learned about the importance of ads and how they should look. I think the most important thing that I learned was having the landing page match what was on your ad. Instead of having your ad bring them to the main menu of the page. I think this very important to keep the users on your website. After learning this I monitored how I looked up stuff on the internet. This was a great time for reflection when thinking about how to make my ads attractive so that people click it.

The next thing that I learned that would help visitors get to my site is making sure my keywords are on the ads that I match with them. When people are looking for a site they are more likely to click an ad that has words that they used to search for than ones that don't.

Both of these things I wouldn't have thought about if it wasn't for this last week's lesson.

W07 Keywords and Ad's

Before this class, I didn't recognize that there were so many steps involved in advertising for a business. This week the most stressful and hardest part about this week was trying to find the right keywords to promote my website. After several minutes of adding random words, I realized that I wasn't being specific enough. Instead of just adding words that kind of made sense I sat down and thought about what my website was offering to people.

After I narrowed it down I am offering moral support to people through hard times in their lives. Once I had a theme the Keywords came a little easier. I am not sure I have exactly the keywords that I want yet but I am getting closer to the words that I would be willing to pay for

Another aspect of what we did this week was choosing what regions of the world we wanted to advertise for. I know that I am not ready to advertise to the entire world so I left that out. I definitely need more content before I open my site to the entire world. I also feel like I don't have enough information to advertise to the entire United States. I  decided to pick a few states where I recently have received stories from, this way my readers could identify easier with the authors. Overall this week was a great week for learning and growing my knowledge of the advertising world. I know understand that opening a business definitely takes a lot more effort than just an idea.

W06 Legal Structure

This week was an essential week in the classroom. We had the opportunity to learn about how to successfully find a way to start a business while following all the legal requirements. I am grateful to know how to find this information for my future buisness endeavors. This week was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. I found that Salt Lake City doesn't make it easy for you to find the type of business license you need. 

The blog I am doing right now doesn't necessarily need to be licensed but it would be a good idea just in case I decide to do more with it in the future.

W05 Site Design Guidelines and switching... maybe.

This week was a very different week for me. This week I spent several hours playing with Squarespace and loved the look that I was coming up with there. After a while, I ran into a problem that I didn't know how to fix and having a hard time coming up with a solution. I decided to check out Wix and see if this problem was easier to manipulate there. It was they already had the button I needed built-in on one of their site designs. I started playing with Wix and love the way that the site is coming together. Now I have two sites and I love both of their designs for different reasons. I am not sure what to do.

Overall this has probably been one of my hardest weeks because I am not sure what way to go now. I know that the design of the website is the first building block and I am not sure what block I want to use.

W04 Picking a Site Builder and Choosing a Host

      This week was probably my favorite week so far because I was surprised the whole time. I am so grateful that we were able to compare site builders this week. When I started this class I had a site builder in mind but this week based on my needs for my business I changed my idea completely The site that I was going to use wasn't the best site. Before this week started I wouldn't have told you why a site needed a host. Now I can. I am grateful that Squarespace already has one built-in so I don't have to worry about the set at this point in time. 

      I am grateful to understand how to find the best one because if in the future I want to set up a more sophisticated website with a different site builder then I will understand more on how to find the best host.

Overall this week I feel like I am gaining the knowledge I need to run a successful web business.

W03 Reflection Affiliate Marketing & Drop Shipping.

At the beginning of this week, we learned how to compare businesses for products and the best way to decide if a business would work for your current situation. When you are looking for business to use as your inventory you need to be aware of things like shipping time, shipping cost and the quality of your products. When you look at all of these different categories of starting a business it is easier to push companies that won't for you aside faster. 

The next thing we learned was the pros and cons of Affiliate Marketing and Drop Shipping. Overall if I had a lot of time to start a business I would choose drop shipping. It would be a lot of fun to open up and run my own business and drop shipping makes it easy because you don't have to deal with any inventory. Affiliate Marketing I feel it is a great business for people to start if they don't have a lot of time on their hands. It is a great way to help people find products that they will love and not have to deal with customer service or inventory of the products that you promote.

W02 Reflection

This week in my Web Business Creation class we learned so many great tools that I will be able to use in the future. The most important thing that I  learned this week was Google Keywords. Learning Google Keywords is so essential to an online business. I love this tool. It helps bring a different perspective that an idea that sounds good to you and makes sense might not be the best idea because of time management or money to spend on advertising My husband and me when we were first thinking about starting a business we thought an auction site would be a great business to do on the side. After looking at google ads and how much it would cost to advertise for this business. One of the other things that I was grateful to learn was the process of choosing a business excel sheet. It was great to see the best options for my budget, time and effort that I want to put in the business. I love how this class is teaching me hands-on because I feel like I am learning more and retain more when I am actually applying what I am learning.