Web Business Adventure

 This week we talked about social media and SEO and I'm glad we did because I feel like I only kind of understood them, so this was really helpful. I have social media pages for my blog but I felt like I wasn't taking full advantage of them, and I knew SEO was important I just didn't know how to do it.  I think the most important thing I learned was consistency. Consistency is the biggest thing for business especially on online. It's important to post and update on my blog consistently, as well as being active on my social media consistently. Frequent and consistent, that's what makes bloggers and youtubers successful.  It's also important to interact with people, comment on other's posts, interact on their stories, like and subscribe to people, and don't be afraid to send personal messages, learning from others is also important and you can do that through connecting and asking for advice. 

 I really liked the things we learned this week. I finally got Google Analytics working, which has been nice because now I can see how my site and my ads are doing. It was good learning about SEO and landing page optimization because now that my site is out there the best thing I can do it to optimize it and make it better. Learning these things will help me bring more people to my site, keep them on it, as well as keep them coming back. The best things I learned were - to make sure you put keywords everywhere you can, in posts, in titles, in links on photos, etc.  - Take people directly to what your ad advertises - Make sure it's user friendly and easy to navigate - Make your landing page interesting and inviting - Post frequently and post relevant things - Make sure everything works, no broken links or misalignments etc. 

So far it looks like my ads are doing well. According to Google Ads I get quite a few clicks, which is awesome, and they're all within my niche. It also shows me which things people are most interested in, my most clicked keywords are "cheap decorating" and others similar to that. So that tells me I need to do more cheap decorating projects. Though I'm also seeing that people don't stay on my site very long, but Analytics is being funky so I don't even know if that's accurate. Its super frustrating, especially since Google Ads says I get a lot of clicks, and then Google Analytics says I get almost no users on my site. Apparently my site tag wasn't even set up, which is annoying because I definitely did set it up, and it was reporting for a while. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I've reached out to Google for help and they are very unhelpful. I don't really know where else to go for help. 

 The relevance and quality scoring seems really helpful, but I'm worried I won't be able to follow/apply the help it can give me. I used blogger for my blog before I started this class and I loved that it would show me who visited my site and which posts they viewed. It would also show me how people reached my site, whether from facebook, instagram, or from looking it up directly. This was really helpful for knowing how and where to market my site. But I'm having a hard time with google analytics, I can't figure out how to view all the things I want to. I also had a hard time trying to sink it with my site. I just find google products hard to work with. I hope that with time I can learn and understand it better. I think I just need more practice and time getting to know how it works. 

 Ads have honestly been the hardest part of the whole process. I don't really like working with Google, but I also am just not very good at marketing. I wish we'd had a few lessons on good marketing strategies and what makes a good ad. Learning about keywords has really helped because that allows me to focus on things that will be helpful for my site and bring people who are actually interested in  my business.  I've learned its important to use good keywords, and to be straightforward in my descriptions. I think that again helps focus my ads and bring the right people to my site. It also helps people understand and be more interested in what is on my site. I hope that with more practice and more content on my site to advertise  I will get better at advertising and making ads. I would like to see more advertisements and other people's ideas. 

 This week was surprisingly hard. I don't like working with Google, I've found that they aren't very user friendly especially for beginners. I feel like I don't have the right skills and knowledge to understand what they're talking about or want me to do. I'm starting to understand keywords, but I feel like I'm not very good at coming up with good ones. They remind me of hashtags on Instagram and I'm still struggling to get good at those. I think marketing is the hardest part for me honestly.  Maybe I just need to do more research. I understand they're really important, I'm just not understanding how to make it work in my favor. There's a lot of information from Google out there too, support forms, FAQ pages, and all kinds of videos and blogs, but when it comes down to it you have to figure it out on your own. I had the same problem with Google analytics, and I asked customer service for help with my problem I was having and they told me they...