SEO

SEO stand for search engine optimization. This is a free way to get your site to appear at the top of the search page. There are different ways to improve your SEO search rate.  When you start a website, not only do you need to build it, you need to promote it. SEO is a good way to promote your website.

 

ON PAGE	OFF PAGE
–          Include keywords in your title –          Include keywords in your content (body copy) –          Google cannot see pictures. Instead, include keywords in your pictures file name, alt tag, description –          Add internal links with the keyword –          Be aware of load time on your page	–          Back links (other sites that link to your site) –          More important than on page –          Gives site credibility –          Hard to manipulate

 

Back links

http://www.kgtech.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/linkbuilding.png

Back links are super important and influential in having good SEO. In order to get back links, we have to have a good website! If your site is just about selling stuff, no one will want to link to it. We need to have valuable content!

One way to get back links is to search sites with similar keywords to yours. Ask them if you can link to them and ask them to link back to you. By doing this, it will benefit both of your sites.

Optimize Your Site

Optimizing you site is all about trial and error. There are many ways to test things out without messing up your whole site. Google AdWords lets you organize your ads in ways to help you find what is most effective. For example, you start with one campaign. Within that campaign you can have different ad groups. These can be made for each section or topic of your site. Within each ad group it allows you to set keywords up with specific ads. You can have more than one ad for each set of keywords so you can more easily see which ad is bringing in more customers.

Key Words

There are different ways to optimize keywords also. You can make a word broad match, which means if that word is in a search you ad can pop up. You can add quotation marks around the word or phrase to make it a phrase match. This means your ad will only show if they type in the exact phrase that is in your quotation marks. IF you put a plus (+) between words it will make it so it has to have all of those words but they can be in any order and your ad will show up on their search. If you put brackets ([]) around your word it will be an exact match. This means it has to be that exact same word. These key word optimizations will help to make it so you ad only shows for people who really are interested in your site.

Landing Page

The landing page is also very important to the success of you site. Customers want to be taken directly to what they are looking for. If they are looking to buy shoes on sale and they click you shoes sale ad but are then taken to your regular shoe page, they will most likely click the back arrow and try another site. To be more effective you should link the ad to the page that is selling the shoes on sale.

Also speed has a big influence on how long a customer will stay on your site. IF your site has a lot of slow loading images, chances are the customer will not wait long enough for them to load, they will click back and move on to the next site. Depending on your audience, you may want to consider to loading time on mobile vs desktop screens. Optimize according to what your audience will be using most.

Another big turn off to a customer is poor design. If it is hard to find things within a site, the customer will likely click out and try a new site. If things are easy to find, they will be more likely to stay on your website and browse through different sections.

Google Analytics has a program to do A/B page testing. This means you can make two pages and test them to see what is more effective and will keep customers longer. While setting up this test, you can choose what percent of your audience will be a part of this experiment. This can help you to determine which layout is most effective.

Links:

Get More Traffic with Keywords

AdWords Optimization for Beginners

Landing Page Optimization

Google Analytics: Experiments

 

Conversion Tracking

Conversion tracking help link. https://support.google.com/adwords/topic/3121936?hl=en&ref_topic=21905&guide=21899&visit_id=1-636458515555506995-2607711856&rd=1

Conversion tracking is for tracking what is done on your website. It can help you figure out your return on investment or ROI. The main reason you have conversion tracking is so that you can see if you are making more money than you spend.  The goal is to spend less than you make.

Picture on http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/ROI

If you have a conversion rate of 2% that means out of every 100 clicks, two people will but something.

Analytics

Data is how you make decisions. Google Analytics is for tracking what goes on in your website. analytics can be used in a variety of ways. It can help you to see what is viewed most often so you can improve that part or give it an extra emphasis.

Ads and Quality Score

Ads

As we are making new ads we should evaluate how effective they are/will be. We can do this by looking at a few different things. Some of them are:

1. Key words. Are they being searched often? Are they helping people to click on our ad or do they just pass by?
2. Grammar and Spelling. Is everything spelled right? Will people understand what you site is about just by reading your ad? Is it clear?
3. Landing Page. Make sure your ad takes them to right landing page! Make sure they are being led to what they are looking for so they are more likely to buy. The final URL is where you will put the URL to the correct page. The display URL is the simple URL for your website.
4. Will you ad lead them to what they are looking for? If your key words are not too great it will show your ad to someone who is not looking for your product.
5. Be unique! Make sure your ad sets you apart from all the others around it. Why is your site different? What makes you better than the other? Try to show your good qualities and the perks to using your site.
6. Try a call to action. If you are selling something, let the people know! This will help so you don’t get clicks for someone who just wants to learn. If there is a call to action someone who wants to buy will be more likely click on your ad.

The more ad groups you have the more often they will appear. It is good to have about 4 keywords per ad group. Do not use the same key words in different ad groups (if you do, you are competing against yourself…bad idea!). Create SPECIFIC key words in each ad group. This will help you to see which ones are most effective.

Once you start to get clicks, go back and see what keywords led to that click! If they keywords are ones you set, great! Try editing the less effective ones so you can improve the clicks from that ad group. If you are getting clicks for random search words, put them on your negative keywords list. Common words sometimes also cause problems, so you might consider adding them to your negative keywords list also. This way you are not paying for clicks that do not lead to a sale.

Don’t waste space in your ad! It is already small. Don’t put your company name in the description; it is already in the URL. It is always a good idea to have at least two ads running in each ad group. It will help you to compare to see which

If you want to see your ad, use the ad preview in AdWords. This way you don’t mess up your impression results as you search it.

Quality Score

Quality score is important because it can move you up or down on the page even if you don’t have the highest bid.

Quality Score Factors

1. High click through rate (CTR)
2. Relevant landing page
3. Ad relevance
4. Ad formats

Be specific in you key words for lower impressions and higher CTR. If you have a lot of impressions but little to no clicks, this will decrease you quality score.

If your impressions are high but your clicks are low, there are lots of things you can look at to try to find the problem/solution. You can look at graphs and compare changes in the graph to changes you have made to see if it helped or hurt. Also looking at the search terms can help a lot. If your ad is showing up for things you don’t even have or maybe it is too general, you can change them so it will show up less but be more relevant.

 

Google Ad Words and Keywords

Ad Words

Pro’s

• Fast results
• there are coupons for adword credits
• there are “safety nets” such as ability to set an end date and you cant set a budget

Con’s

• Have to pay to get some credit
• competing with other bids
• PPC (pay per click)
• Rules (can be a hindrance to certain types of businesses)
• it is key word based so if you use the wrong keywords you will get the wrong type of people
• you pay when they click but if they don’t buy you don’t make any money

 

Key Words

What are keywords? Key words are words or phrases that will direct customers to your site. Bad keywords bring the wrong type of people, have a low click through rate, and have a low search volume.  One one is usually too braod which can lead the wrong type of consumer to your site. Too many keywords (4+) is too specific and will not get searched.

• Ask yourself: if I were a customer looking for my product, what would I search?
• think of different categories and specific words for each category
• think of themes
• be specific
• take advantage of negative keywords (make sure you are not paying for clicks that don’t lead to a sale!)
• use keyword planner
• Ask: if it’s not going to convert(create a sale) do I really want it?
• Expect 50+  click per conversion
• Many keywords
  • more key words = more impressions = more clicks
  • not sure which key words are successful, you can narrow it in the future
  • use your budget faster
  • spread yourself too thin over searches
• Ad Group: key words + ad + landing page
  • you can have more than one ad group with related keywords
• three types of searches and their symbols
  1. Broad: has one of the words
  2. “Phrase”: only the phrase
  3. [Exact]: exact words only
• Don’t put one keyword in two groups, you are competing against yourself; it hurts more than helps

 

Types of Companies and Sales Tax

Sole Proprietor

• One person is in charge
• Can have employees
• Liability: they can take your personal assets if something goes wrong
• Insurance can help to limit liability
• Cheaper (about $25) for DBA(Business name)
• Taxes:
• Personal tax rate
• Use schedule C and 1040

 

LLC

• Multiple owners
• Usually more (about $100) for DBA
• Need to file with the state
• The business is liable, not you
• They cannot come after you personal assets, just the business (unless you do something wrong… there are exceptions
• Private company
• NEED an operating agreement
• Operation agreement: who will get what, how things will be divided, like a contract

 

Corporation

• Public company
• Also need an operating agreement

 

 

Sales Tax Rules

• Have to pay sales tax in states you have operations
• Affiliate and advertising do not need to pay these taxes (unless over a certain amount)

Good User Experience

8 Guidelines for a Good User Experience

1. Simplicity
2. Don’t use too many colors
3. Only use 2-3 typefaces
4. Visual Hierarchy
5. Make viewers eyes gravitate to what is most important on the page
6. Navigability
7. Put in a search box
8. Have navigators at top and bottom of page
9. Be Consistent
10. If they say “what?” while using your site, they will probably leave
11. Accessibility
12. Make sure it works well with phones, tablets and computers
13. Some say to design for a phone before a computer (since phones are used more to search online
14. Conventionality
15. Click the logo and it will take you to the home page
16. Links change color when hovered
17. Credibility
18. Put the prices on your site
19. Be clear what you are selling
20. User-Centricity
21. Speed
22. Think of the users using it

 

Site Design

• Pictures add power

1. Use lots!
2. Have zoom with different angles. People can’t be there to see it in person so help them to “see it” before they buy

• Be aware of white space

1. Guides the readers eye
2. Create the feeling of sophistication/elegance
3. Essential for balance and harmony

• Have a value proposition

1. Explains how a product solves a problem/improves their situation
2. Delivers specific benefits
3. Gives them a reason to buy from you and not others

• Navigation tabs

1. Don’t have too many
2. Make them descriptive
3. Make them have good SEO
4. Have sort options in menu
5. Have search bar at top of each page

• Highlight the scarcity (show how many are left)
• Show related products
• Have a “call to action” on every page. (IE: add to cart, buy now, etc.)
• Logo

1. Professional
2. Unique
3. Memorable
4. Easy to read

BUILD CREDIBILITY

• About page

1. Establish relationship
2. Business Philosophies
3. Target Niche- make a relationship with those people
4. Give them a reason to vote for the underdog
5. Give the history-what is the purpose-the why of the business-what is the mission

• Contact Page

1. Need one to be “legit”
2. Make a business email-don’t use gmail/other provider
3. Have a phone number-google voice number can forward calls to your phone through a different number

• Professional Web Appearance
• Logo

Helpful Hints to Web Creation

When choosing a domain decide how long you want to sign a contract for. Prices will change according to the length of the contract you will sign. Many companies will try to get you hooked within the first year by giving great deals, then their rates will go up a lot. While signing up for a domain, make sure there is not automatic withdrawal option so it ends at the end of the year (if you only wanted a one year contract).

Don’t be a perfectionist! Keep moving forward in long strides. The little things will work themselves out. Maybe you just need a break.  It will help clear things up and see it with “new eyes.”

WordPress Perks

• Easier SEO
• Easier PPC
• Loads of plugins
• More powerful on the web, but it is a little harder to learn
• Most digital marketers use it
• Many options for page builders

Affiliate Marketing and Drop Shipping

B250 Lessons Learned 2

 

AFFILIATE	DROP SHIPPING
+ no inventory + little risk +less liabilities (returns, defectives, etc.) +less hassle/stress -low commission (you only get paid for what you sell and even then it’s only like 4%) -why would a customer go back to your website if they are buying off a different one?	+more control over pricing -liabilities(returns, defectives) -what if the manufacturer is out of stock but you do not know

Lessons Learned 1

Before class is was super confused about what we were supposed to be doing for today’s assignment. I read and reread the websites and just couldn’t seem to understand what I was supposed to be looking for. As we discussed it in class it just seemed to slow make more sense.

I had never heard of Alibaba.com before and I found it is a good website for connecting to suppliers around the world to get product. This is good for the merchant model. It is inexpensive and you can buy in bulk. Some of the concerns with it is that you can’t tell how good of quality the products are. You also can’t tell if you will be scammed. Another problem could be how long it takes the product to be shipped here and how much shipping will cost.

Using a US Wholesaler could potentially prevent these problems. Shipping wouldn’t take very long (since it is all within the US) and the postage will more likely be less also. We still do not know the quality of the product though. Since it is more expensive we assume it is a better quality but we don’t know if they are just ordering it off a cheap website.

I have never really thought of those different factors in considering a manufacturer. If I end up going the merchant model route those are some of the things I will want to look at.

Another thing we talked about is branding our products. A good company someone suggested was OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturing).

To help determine a manufacturer criteria and ideas can be compared in a chart. The example in class was:

	Criteria 1	Criteria 2	Criteria 3
Business 1
Business 2
Business 3

 

The criteria were weighted based on importance. (ie: speed of delivery 45%, price 30%, range of options 25%) After seeing this table it made a lot more sense to me why we need to compare manufactures according to our criteria. One that might do well in one area is majorly lacking in another. Depending on which area they are lacking, or doing well, we will be able to better decide who will be the best fit for our companies.