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Ranking, Link Building and Google Analytics

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That title is a mouth full, and this week has been the same. Lots of information learned this past week that I know will help my website be found. Quite frankly, I am going to need to optimize in every way I can so that my page will organically rank high because I don't see myself paying for google ads. At least not until I can refine my craft to the point that I feel like I have something truly unique to offer. I am encouraged by the audit score.  I have no idea how to fix some of the problems it pointed out, but I am encouraged that they are fixable. I am looking forward to deciding how I am going to approach Social Media. I know I have plenty of relatives who will give me a like, but I do really want to establish some good links that will support the strength of my site. I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of Google Analytics. The amount of information is almost overwhelming, but numbers and data can help you so much! The opportunity to understand what your customers...
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Social Media for SEO and Social Networking

 I think I would rather be a hobbit or maybe a hermit. I am not the most social butterfly on the planet. I love to see pictures of my friends and family far away, but for me social media becomes a black hole I get sucked into and hours later I come out on the other side shaking my head a little disheveled. After doing the reading this week and (thank heaven for) participating in the discussion board in my class, I can see why social media is a great way to grab peoples attention. I know lots of people see, scroll, love to post their selfies in social media, I am just not really that person anymore- and I feel I am better off for it. I will miss my sisters well documented dress up shenanigans at DI and I won't see my Aunt Brenda's latest crochet project, but outside of that, I don't really want to be there. So thank heaven for the post by Steven in the discussion board that suggested I look at social media as a modern day newsstand. This suggested attitude/perception change ...
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Landing Page and SEO

 Sometimes I feel like this website business creation class has been the blind leading the blind. Not that my professor is blind, or hasn't shared his knowledge- because He is probably the best teacher I have ever had in College. He knows his stuff and he shares it in a fun, engaging way. It's the ready-fire-aim approach that has had me "walking by faith" so to speak because I just am so ignorant of so many things when it comes to the "interwebs"(my dads word for the internet/websites). I didn't understand in the beginning how keywords would work, I just picked a handful of words that seemed to be right? Then building the website with one eye closed and one eye squinted as I trusted the words of others and started putting my ideas into this little site called: Theloveofsewing.com  (see what I did there?) Now that I started a Google campaign and can see the impact my keywords are having on my site, I feel like I am finally getting it. My squinty eye is op...
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Optimization and Learning as I go

 I gotta say I really felt lost as I started my google ads campaign this week. I feel like I picked my keywords a long time ago, just fishing in the dark, hoping I was choosing words that would be appropriate and work for my site. After reading through some really helpful material this week, and examining how analytics works, the numbers started to make sense to me, relevance started to make sense to me. After two days of data I could see some changes needed to be made. One of my keywords was too broad, embroidery- it had a below average CTR and was most likely gaining me a lot of traffic that had nothing to do with what the customers are actually looking for. I realized I had overlooked - hand embroidery- as an option people could search for, so I made "hand" one of my negative keywords, hoping to curb that section of embroidery lovers.  I also made the words "for sale" negative keywords, because my blog doesn't sell embroidery machines, and I know I had at lea...
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Analytics

 I have gained a new appreciation for data over the past year, and I have come to understand that I get it. I get why it is important and how it can help you understand needs, plan to fulfill those needs and change what doesn't work.  I took a statistics class last semester and was so interested in the way data was used to help make correlations and associations. It was fascinating to me to perform the different tests and to see the graphs and the way the numbers worked.  I have never used Google Analytics before, but my first look at it tells me two things.  Some really really smart people understand how to use data in a way that I will never understand in this life, and how important that data can be to helping me understand what is happening for others when they interact with my website.  Since I am not sitting next to them, taking notes over their shoulder, google analytics will be taking the notes for me. I am really interested to see what comes of this. I ...
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ADvertising - Defining moments

 This week as I focused on putting together ads for my blog, I had a hard time and almost a complete reset of what I am doing. The process of putting together these ads caused me to reflect and really define what my site is all about. I thought I already had these ideas firmly cemented in my mind. But honestly, each new step in this process has opened up more ideas and more possibilities to me and the act of putting it into words almost made me want a do over! One of the reading materials this week talked about highlighting what makes you unique. I honestly had a hard time defining that uniqueness. Everyone and their grandma sews! I have thought so many times that a sewing business would never work because the time involved in quality and creativity would drive the price of the finished product too high. No one would be willing to pay me $20/hour to make them a quilt + materials....to make them anything + materials. The costs are just too high- you can buy crap on amazon way too ch...
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Keywords, keywords, keywords....

 I have always felt words were important. And I have always liked "precision of language", in fact I hate it when language gets butchered. I was always tickled pink when my two year old son popped out a rather large word completely in context! So I have always loved words. The words we use are important. I had never ever considered what goes into a keyword before this week.  I have probably searched on the internet every day for many years, and still have never given it a thought. My fingers just spewing out the words of random people and things.... Keywords are also special. They can be broad, concise, vague, specific, gestalt and laser focused. So not only are the single words important, but the small combinations even more so. The words I started with this week were very broad, spot on, but broad. As the ball started to roll and I worked at it more, I came up with some good combinations that I think will really work for me. I guess one of the benefits of studying about...
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