Learning As I Go

Watching the video about having a social media plan template was helpful this week- after I got past the presenters speaking style... (I'm not sure what my problem was)... she had a lot of helpful tips and organization ideas I hadn't considered.  One problem I have with my blog is finding time to work on it. I like how she broke down the goals from yearly to weekly. Since my spouse is a contributor on my blog I think it would be best if we sat down together and listed out our goals and expectations. This way we're always getting fresh content and we're on the same page.  We can also brain storm together which guest authors we'd like to contribute to our site. In the DB I liked a fellow student's advice about seeking out contributors who may run in different circles than I do. This way my content reaches a broader audience and can possible attract more viewers. 

This week was interesting - learning more about keywords, titles, and links to help my site  with search engine optimization. Since my web business is a blog I think applying these principles is a little tricky. I almost need to work on my sites credibility first before I spend additional money on ads, and time on titles/keywords.  The following two words I found useful in helping me accomplish this: Unique value. I need to determine my sites unique value. What is it that will make people want to stay on my site and read the various content? Also, is my content shareable? I need to go through my site slowly to determine these things. Once I have I can then work on backlinking and networking a little bit more. Next week I noticed that our study topic is social media which I'm looking forward to. I think this will further help me in my search engine optimization goals.

I'm realizing after studying about Adwords week after week that I need to make my keywords and ads more specific to the content that is already on my blog. I haven't had any conversion and I believe it's because my ad was way too broad. I have a few blog posts in my head that I need to create so I can make more ad groups to go with my campaign. Once I this content exists it will be easier to ad more relevant keywords to my campaign. Also, after this happens I can create some negative keywords as well. I'm a little at a loss of what those should be, but I know they're important. I also need to find some companies to do affiliate marketing with so I can bring in some potential revenue. I'm in the middle of testing out different sunscreens that I can recommend. One of them is from an organic company  that does drop shipping.

This week I was thankful for good customer service from Bluehost. I used that chat button a lot to help me navigate the Weebly web builder and to find out more about the ad credits that are linked to the package I purchased. Unfortunately those ad credits don't include Adwords. I'm not sure how I overlooked that with my research which is a little disappointing. Anyway, it took a little investigating to add Google analytics to my website, but it was successful. I then customized my goals on my analytics account to help monetize my website better. I set two goals that I think will help me take advantage of this tool. 1. Track how many times an article was shared and 2. Track how long people browsed my site. I think Google Analytics is also a terrific companion to Adwords. Analytics will enable me to know which ads need to be improved and which ones are working based off of the traffic and goals I've set. I always find it rewarding when things work out as they should. After...

So, last week I was feeling a little overwhelmed with Adwords. My blog is about many different ways one can live a little better and I felt like my keywords were all over the place. This week something clicked though when delving deeper into the Adwords Campaign. I was able to separate my blog into different ad groups and use some of the blog titles as the titles in my ads. In order to continue to come up with better ads I need to be adding more content to my blog. I've recently decided to change one of the taps to recipes. I cook for a large family and we eat pretty healthy- and it's affordable! - which is a big deal. Plus, most things taste lovely so I feel like this is one way I could help people live a little better. I'm already thinking up ads in my head to get people to click on my links. I think last week I was overwhelmed with how I would make money on my blog by people clicking on my links, and this week I was able to set that worry aside and focus on my blog con...

This week we delved deeper in Adwords and keywords. Keywords are tricky for me because my web business is a blog and I've only posted a few different things on it, which makes choosing keywords kind of hard. I want to branch into affiliate marketing and drop shipping, but I'm not quite there yet. I believe once I've chosen something to sell, that is linked to my content, keywords will become a little easier. I found this article helpful https://www.seo.com/blog/best-keyword-research-method-ever-for-blogs/ in choosing keywords. I'm not sure if I understood it completely, but it may come in handy.  I want to find out exactly how Adwords charges you. I'm a little confused about my budget of $2 a day, and how much they'll deduct for clicks. Is Adwords just something you pay for,for advertising, or can you make money from them as well? I better start researching... many things. Like better keywords for my blog -including negative key words.