Posts

Week 13

This week we learned about link building. The first thing you need to do is remove any bad or low quality links. The next thing would be to look at link profiles of your competitor. To build links naturally, you can write a blog. Your blog needs to have useful content. In order to know what to write, you need to know your audience. Looking at blogs that are linked to your competitor is a good idea. You can see what posts of theirs were successful. You can use tools such as SharedCount to see how many times a post was shared. This will help you determine which posts were successful. Some industries don't work well with blogs, so you should use them when appropriate. The next thing you can do is reclaim links that are broken, incorrect or missing but once provided value to your website. These do not include low quality links. You shouldn't use low quality links. There are websites that help you to spot broken or deleted links. Blog commenting can be useful as long as you are ok w

Week 12

I learned a lot this week about social media and optimizing your site by using social media websites. The first thing is your content needs to be segmented, searchable, snackable, and shareable. Those are considered the four “s” characteristics. Making your contents segmented essentially means knowing your customer segment and how to create content that they are interested in. There are plenty of social media listening tools that enable you to watch which hashtags are creating traffic. Making your content searchable is really important. One great way to do that is to use Google Adwords keyword planner. I found this website incredibly useful. Making your content snackable means creating content that viewers will want to keep “snacking” on. I take this to mean creating headlines that lure people in and keeping content intriguing. Making content shareable is just that. It needs to be content that people will want to share on their social media sites. I follow some Target hashtags. They al

Week 10

This week I learned the importance of return on investment. This can be calculated by taking the revenue that resulted from your ads, subtract your overall costs, then divide by your overall costs. Return on investment is the most important measurement for advertising because it shows the actual affect my Google ads has on my business. I also found conversion tracking fascinating. It's a free tool that helps you learn what happens after a customer sees your ad. It tells you whether they made a purchase, signed up for a newsletter, called my business, or downloaded an app, for example. This can help me see what keywords are driving interest and purchases. It is also key in understanding my return on investment. Through tracking conversions, you can also see what kind of device people are using to see your ads, like a mobile device or computer. You can also see what browser they use. This is important so that you can better gear your content to the way it is be viewed and used.

Week 11

I’ve learned that there’s a lot more to creating and running a successful online business than I had realized. I thought this class was going to be more about web design and choosing what to sell online. I realize now that there’s so much more to it than that. I love learning about advertising, choosing key words, optimizing your search engine, and how to make your website match your ad, be reputable, and draw in the consumer. I learned that a customer won’t spend much time at your website, so your landing page really needs to make them feel as though they’d like to learn more about your business. I also learned that certain keywords are more effective than others at bringing viewers to your website. You can also use words of reputable businesses like Amazon into your website to link your site with a bigger name company. This can raise your score in search engine optimization.

Week 5

This week, I learned how important it is to consider what elements an online web business needs to include. For example, information that leads to the credibility of the website are very important. If a customer comes to your site and feels that the credibility of our business is questionable, they won't spend much time trying to figure out if their impressions are true. There are so many online businesses, that they will just move on to a different website. The other things that I learned that are important to include in the website is crucial information a customer needs. If there are any specials, such as free shipping or a rewards program, that needs to be in a prominent location. Return information also needs to be easily assessible, along with contact information for customer questions, concerns, and issues. The product/service information needs to be on the main page. When a customer comes to my website, it should be easy to see what kind of company we are. They should eas