Online Web Business

 Social Media for SEO & Social Networking This week we learned about the power of Social Media and how we can use it to grow and expand our online businesses.  It seemed that what I was learning on the subject, more additional information would crop up which suggests that this subject is much larger than what meets the eye.  I can now understand why there are jobs that deal solely with Social Media Marketing - you can really get yourself knee deep in this subject. For me, it taught me that once my site is up and running and is functioning the way I want it to, that I can then use Social Media to help the word get spread out about the existence of my business.  Unfortunately, for me right now, I'm still in the stage of getting distributors set up for my board and card games.  My biggest hurdle right now is getting my Sales TAX ID situation straightened out so that I can submit this number to potential distributors as this is a requirement with ones that I've ...

  W11 Reflection: Landing Page Optimization & Basic SEO Before taking this course, I thought I understood the basics of SEO and how to improve the chances of a  website being found in an internet, or in the case for me, how to find a YouTube video I created on the internet.  I knew that KEYWORDS played a huge part in how the web crawlers aggregate that data into their search algorithms, but when it comes to actual websites, I've learned much more how SEO optimization efforts improve their chances of being found and reported on search engine results.   I understand now that in addition to keyword optimization, you need to add keywords to the HTML title of each of your website pages.  You also need to ensure that whatever you have listed in your Google Ad as far as keywords are concerned, you need to make sure those keywords appear somewhere on your Landing Page that the Google Ad is pointing to.   My plan going forward is to go in and continue ...

 I continue to run into issues accessing my website from work, so I am having to ensure that I look ahead on my assignments and determine what I need to do from home to ensure I'm completing assignments on time. I was able to get my campaign up and running.  I checked everything when I turned it on back on Thursday, and it seemed like it should run quite well, but as today, I have seen no clicks on any of my keywords.  This makes me worry because I either did something completely wrong, or maybe my niche is just getting outbid all the time since I'm running on a $3 daily budget.  I plan on emailing my instructor to see he thinks.  I'm thinking, though, that I may need to get in touch with Google to see what is happening and if there's anything I can do to rectify the situation.

 I had a heck of a time this week trying to complete my assignments.  I found out the hard way that since my website deals with Board and Card Games, the company I work for has a Firewall system that blocks out any content coming in that deals with "GAMES".  This made it hard to complete the assignments since I do most of my school work while at work.  My time outside of work comprises of ridesharing and babysitting my grandchild.  But, I was able to carve out some time while at home (even though the assignment was handed in a little late) to complete the Google Analytics homework. I haven't had a chance to really try this out since my website isn't technically published right now, but I'm very curious to see how my Google Ad translates into clicks onto my website and how long people actually to stay to explore me site.  I know that this information will be extremely helpful in figuring out what to do to improve my site and improve the user experience.

 This was a pretty slow week...  I was able to refine my Google Ads according to the assignments given to us.  I feel like until I'm able to turn these ads on and verify how they're going to respond will determine what else I can do to improve their efficiency.   I have failed this week to get in touch with the distributor that I want to work with.  I have set an alarm to call them on Monday morning.  Until I can get this resolved, there won't be much that I'll be able to do once I'm required to start testing my Google Ads.  I want to be able to actually have something to offer my customers other than a single item that is currently in my "store". Some plans I have for my website is to publish at least 20 various board games and to have about 10 different types of card games.  From there, I want to try and provide "hard to find" games.  Not sure how I will accomplish this at this time, but that is something I really to focus on to help g...

 This past week was all about learning the Google Ads system.  I have learned quite a bit - I didn't realize you could separate out the ads into different groups which makes sense for me because I have both board games and card games that I will be selling on my site.  It's important to choose specific words for each ad group that relate directly to my target audience.  So, I basically made the same list of search keywords, but switched out the words "card" and "board" interchangeably.  That way I can focus on either "game" in the same campaign.   I know I still have quite a bit more to learn.  I'm still trying to make connections for drop shipping, but it's been slow going.  I'm hoping to nail something down this week so that I can start to take orders and get this business moving forward.  Southern Hobby in Tennessee seems to be the best option as they have a wide variety of options for both card and board games.