Reflection: Ranking, Link Building & Google Analytics

This week I learned more about link building, SEO, and G4 in Google Analytics. I found all of it informative, though I could see how those with analytical minds (hello, me) could get absolutely obsessed with the Analytic's site. Another beauty from this week was the site auditor (https://mysiteauditor.com/) because it gave specific steps you could take to improve your optimization. What a handy tool!

There were two frustrating things this week. First, was the amount of busy work we had. I'd have rather spent that time improving my site in order to improve my business, which is, after all, the point of this class. The second thing is that while I am currently trying to take the G4 Analytics quiz, the site is providing exactly ZERO data for the dates we've been instructed to use for the quiz. That's making it a bit tricky to take the quiz.

I did find some new resources for obtaining back links, so once this trimester is completed, that will be my priority.

Reflection: Social Media for SEO & Social Networking

This was one week that I actually felt like I knew something about it going in. I am a technical/content writer for a dental web company and we have to follow a workflow to maintain SEO for all of our clients. While there are little, yet important, things you can do, such as keyword optimization in the title, meta, and image alt tags, the biggie is content.

Nothing will help your site rank higher than it will with quality content. This is because other people will link to your site, which gives it value and authority in the Google Overseer's eyes. And we all must please the Google Overseer.

I started thinking about the importance of that in the real world. And by that I mean substantive content, not pleasing Google. It doesn't matter how great your outside is if you don't have quality content inside. Substance over Symbolism. It's sort of like those people who are always virtue signaling but never quite living out any virtue. For example, I had a friend write a long social media post condeming members of a particular political party for not caring about the poor. He wrote this post from his yacht and has never done anything to help the poor himself.

This got me to thinking, whether it is my website or my life, what really matters is the quality I put into it, not how splashy it looks.

Reflection: SEO

This week we learned more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There was some great information. There are some small, easy things you can do, such as good keywords in your title, meta description, and alt tags. However, no matter what you do to try and manipulate the algorithm, NOTHING will beat quality content. If you do that, the other biggie for ranking--backlinks, meaning when somoene else links to your site, is a sure thing. I've decided my focus has to be on the content.

I'd been preoccupied because my other classes have huge projects. One of them is building a complete front end for a website from scratch. No website builders, such as WordPress or Wix. We can't even really use any middleware, unless you can demonstrate you can do it without it first. The other is a major backend project with database capability through MongoDB. This has kept me from really putting great content on my site.

However, as a reflected on this, I realized that is just an excuse. I'm always going to be busy. ALWAYS. The key is time allocation. Sometimes, things won't go my way. For instance, yesterday I had an all day conference. I used my lunch break to do the discussion responses required for this class and my dinner break to do an assignment for another. My plan was to do this reflection post after the conference ended at 9 PM. Then, one of the attendees invited me to participate in a project that could jumpstart an important aspect of my career. He wanted to meet right then. I met with him thinking I'd get this post done as soon as we were done. We met until well after midnight, which meant I missed the deadline. I learned a valuable lesson on planning in a way that if something unexpected comes up, it doesn't derail me.

Reflection: ROI & Optimizing Ad Performance

I was greatful that my instructor met with me this past week and explained about ad groups. Though I'd read the material, he clarified some things that will help me optimize my ad performance. Tomorrow, I'll be separating my keywords into ad groups. There still doesn't appear to be a tracking ID on my account, which makes it hard to track conversions through analytics. There may be a way for me to do that through Amazon's Affiliate Dashboard. I'll look into that this week

I have been quite worried about the cost of the Ads and set a pretty low budget. As a result, Google keeps reminding me that most advertisers spend thousands and I'm unlikely to be able to compete with them. I'm totally okay with that. I'm going to put the link to my affiliate site in my next author newsletter, which will do a great job at generating potential sales from people I know love to read.

When I did my ROI for books, which is all I have in my store, I noticed how little books bring in. Games seem to be where the money is, so I am going to do a search for games related to literature and add those to my site.

Refection: Analytics and Agony

Note: This is a required post for one of my classes. If you're not my instructor, you can skip it.

This week we were to install Google Analytics on our websites. I watched the video, but didn't match the current technology. This has been a theme for this class. The curriculum needs to be updated. I think I'm just feeling a bit lost at the moment. That may be because I'm facing a few pretty big trials (not in the legal sense) at the moment and everything feels harder than it probably is. Plus, this trimester has been a frustration all its own with several of my instructors being completely uninvolved with the course (a serious problem for online students). One of my "instructors" it turns out is on sabbatical. How does that even happen?

I can see where Google Analytics would be extraordinarily helpful and look forward to seeing how it can help me fine tune my site, but I would like to meet with you to make sure I've got things in place right. I'm also having trouble with my landing pages for my ads. I can't figure out how to get the right page attached to the ad, which will be important.

As this is supposed to be a reflection and not just an agony post, I will say that it has made me think about how analyzing things and looking at the big picture, then breaking it down to the tiny details can help us make adjustments. As I've been having some major problems in my life, I decided to apply that to my personal life and do my own "Analytics." What is productive? What is a waste of my time? What is giving me problems that I can change? All of these things are useful both in business and life. I just wish I could rewrite problems the way we can rewrite pages on our website.

Reflection: Google Ads

*Note: not a normal blog post. This is part of an assignment. Please skip unless you are my professor.

This week we did more work on Google Ads. I learned something fascinating. Google is now using responsive ads. This means that we set certain titles and descriptions and through their A.I. system, they rotate and combine them in an attempt to discern which ones are more effective. Theoretically, it would then just use the ads that have the best response rate.

Fortunately, it lets you lock in the position for certain titles. The ones you don’t want to show up side-by-side, you lock into the same position. In that way, they can never appear next to each other. This is important because there would be certain combinations that would sound ridiculous, and you don’t want to waste an ad opportunity.

Picking the descriptions and titles was a bit tricky. I tried to put myself in the place of the person who might be searching for what I have on my website and think about what types of searches they might do. I’m hopeful I picked some good ones.

REFLECTION: Google Ads Keywords

*Note: This is a required post for my web business creation class. If you're not Br. Scott, skip it. It will mean nothing to you.

This was a tough week for me. I was already behind because of the writing conference I had been to the week before and then I came home and immediately got COVID. It was a really tough case too. I can only sit up for short periods of time. The good news is that I still completed my assignments.

I've been reflecting on the keyword planner a lot. I'm having difficulty coming up with appropriate keywords, especially negative keywords. I don't know if this is because I am terrible at using the keyword planner or because Google Ads is not the typical way that authors use to get their work out there. In the fiction writing industry especially, there is almost a parallel economy going on. We are a close knit group too and tend to share what works.

As far as ads go, most authors feel that Facebook Ads bring better results than Google Ads. They also swear by mailing lists to communicate with their super readers directly. These super readers are like a street team that get the word out for you. Another important tool is Bookfunnel that allows us to give away free stories and build our mailing list.

It used to be that you could depend on your publisher to do most of the marketing work for you. Unfortunately, these days, unless you are what is known as the "super lead", which is the top author for a publishing house, you're not likely to get any marketing money put toward your work.

If there is an effective way to leverage Google Ads toward this and I learned it, I would be a hero in the writing industry as I passed on the information to other writers. If you have some ideas, I am all ears. In the meantime, I am doing the assignments and seeing if I can discern something useful for this venue.