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This week in mkt250 we learned about ranking and link building, and we went more in depth into Google Analytics. We talked about the importance of having external links to our websites. It mostly boils down to getting more exposure for your website. The more people who are exposed to your links (just like your ads and ad campaigns), the more likely they will visit your website. There was a question on whether it was more effective to have a few quality links or a large quantity of links. In my opinion, it is better to have a large quantity of links, and it really isn't difficult to make them good quality either. As long as the link has keywords relating to your website and the user's intent, then they should be effective. We also used the demo account for Google Analytics to explore different ways to use the site. It was interesting to see how you could find specific information for specific demographics, regions, devices, etc.

This week in MKT250 we learned about social media for SEO and social media marketing. We learned about different strategies to market ourselves on social media. One of the more interesting methods was "Make your content segmented, searchable, snackable, and shareable". We know that the internet makes our attention span go down, so this piece of advice is really helpful in using that to our advantage. We should make sure we are targeting the right audience first and foremost, then make sure our content is easily searchable through search engines such as google, then make our content "snack-sized" to keep that small attention span, and then make our content interesting enough to be shared and spread out through other social media platforms. I argued in one of my essays that using TikTok would be optimal because it is a rapidly growing platform with a wide audience, even overtaking YouTube which has dominated the video sharing market for a decade.

This week in MKT250 we learned about Landing Page Optimization and SEO. I took a look at my Google Analytics to see what was going on and it looks like although I did get a bit of traffic to my website, not too many people stayed and actually read my posts. Most of the traffic came from a male audience, which I thought was interesting. I am working on make my blog posts more appealing to that audience, although I don't want to forget my ladies either. I want to make my landing pages and keywords more relevant like we discussed in this lesson so that more people will click on my site and stay there to read what I've posted. I need to make sure the words on my landing page and the words I use in my ads match and are relevant to what is on the page and match the user's intent.

This week in MKT250, we learned about ROI and optimizing ad performance. Honestly, I felt this lesson was very redundant. Last week we learned about google analytics, and I felt that we basically just redid what we did last week, just slightly different. If we already have google analytics, I don't understand why we need to put the conversion tracking tag on our website. I thought google analytics already did that. Also, we had to look through our keywords and ads and figure out how to make them better, either by getting rid of some, altering some, or adding some. I also felt this was redundant because we have already done this a few times in previous lessons. A few other students felt the same way in the group discussion, so I am glad I'm not alone in this. Anyway, I am excited to see how many people make it to my website now that my ad campaign is enabled. I already have one subscriber which I am pleasantly surprised at.

This week in MKT250 we learned about Google Ad's relevance and quality scores and how to install google analytics on our websites. The quality scores are useful in determining how effective an ad will be in generating traffic to your website. If your score is average, or below average, there are a few things you can do to improve it. The most important thing is to make the ad relevant to your landing page or vice versa. Make sure you use specific words in your ads and keywords that link to your landing page. I will admit I had a difficult time figuring out how to install google analytics, but with the help of my husband I think we figured it out. After we implement our ad campaigns next week, I'm excited to see what kind of data I'll receive. I'll keep in mind the quality score when making my ad campaign.

This week in MKT250 we learned about expanded text ads, and how to successfully make one. I focused on using my keywords in my ads as well as giving the viewer a call to action. For example, one of my ads said "Read reviews of classic anime. Anime Review Village is a blog all about your favorite anime." My keyword here is "classic anime" and the call to action is "read". It was admittedly a bit difficult to come up with because Google Ads gives you so few characters to work with. I think this is on purpose, however, because I don't think anyone wants to look at a long winded ad. If it's too long, I don't think it will grab the attention of the viewer. Most people have a very short attention span when it comes to browsing the internet, so having a smaller ad maximizes viewership and the possibility that it will be clicked on.

This week in MKT250 we learned about the basics of using keywords and google ads. We had to come up with a list of keywords that could be used to search for our web businesses. The trouble comes down to making sure the keyword isn't too broad, too specific, or irrelevant. It helps to think from the customer's perspective: what would a customer be inputting to search for a businesses similar to mine? It also helps to know what sort of negative keywords to exclude from your keyword list. For example, if your business was centered around karate lessons, you wouldn't want "taekwondo" or "kung-fu" to show up because even though they are similar martial arts, they are not the same. It also helps to have keywords that are low competition and have a middle ground of volume, so that when those words are used, your website is more likely to show up than someone else's.

This week in MKT250 we talked about legal business structures and what the differences are. For the requirements of the project, it seems most students are going with a sole proprietorship, which makes the most sense as most students are just doing a small business that won't require any employees. For myself, since I am looking to host advertisements on my site, it does not seem necessary to have a legal structure, not do I need a license. As long as I am paying taxes on my revenue it should be alright. To be honest, I am still feeling quite nervous about this class and the money that I will be putting into my website and whether or not I will be able to make any money back, but I still think it will be a good learning experience. I plan on trying to advertise myself on social media and such in order to generate some traffic, so I'm really hoping that will help.

In week 5 of MKT250, we talked about effective website design choices. In my first essay, I talked about some good website design choices I saw when conducting research. I looked at two different blog websites that have an affiliate business model. Between them, I noticed that both had a hotbar that followed the user as they scrolled, which I think it great because it means the user doesn't have to scroll all the way back up to get to it. They also only had 2 or 3 colors as their main color scheme, which looks clean, modern and doesn't distract the user. They also made use of images that took up the whole screen to grab the viewer's attention, and interspersed smaller images with links to relevant pages. In their hotbars, they had between 3 and 5 links to choose from, which is good for the viewer because having too many can be hard to remember and be a little overwhelming.