The Process Of Creating And Improving A Website

Once you have your website created and you have listed it on the search engines, you need to see how effective it really is. There is a website that will monitor your website and rate it according to how effective it is. The website is called Woorank.com, you can use it once a week for free. If you need to keep a constant eye on how to improve your website, they have various levels of service that you can pay for.

My first Woorank score was 61.2, which is not too bad. Under 40 your website is terrible, over 70 it is pretty good. The things I had to work on were:

Content. I needed to improve my blog.

Social Media shareability.

I needed a description on my website.

Key word consistency.

I needed back links and links to credible sites.

The other thing that lowered my score was the age of my URL, but that was not something I could change. The other things I did change this week. I added a new blog post which attracted over 94 views. Those numbers may sound miniscule, but it was the most views I have had in one day on my site, since creating it for this course. I also added Google+, Twitter and Instagram. These are social websites I am new to, so I will have to invest some time in learning my way around them. I added a link to another website on my blog, but do not have any back links yet. I tried to fix my key word consistency by adding the key words to my description and throughout the website.

After all of the changes, I checked my Woorank score again. As I waited for the little circle to finish calculating, I hoped my score had improved. Alas it dropped to 54.1. I have no idea how I managed that but I will have to play around some more and check Woorank next week.

I would highly recommend Woorank.com if you really are looking for ways to improve your site. It covers so many different facets and can help you see things you may not have considered. Check your site today at Woorank.com.

It’s A Social World Out There!

Did you tweet before you took a bite to eat? Had you updated you facebook before brushing your teeth? Did you take a selfie of your cute outfit and post it on Instagram? Was your breakfast pin worthy? Before running to the office, did you network with LinkedIn? There are so many ways to communicate and so many people communicating, what does this mean for your business?

The world is addicted to Social Media, people check status and updates continuously on their mobile phones and computers. Your business can use this social media frenzy to its advantage. Are you LinkedIn? Up until this week I only had presence on Facebook with a personal Pintrest account. After reading the advantages of sharing your business through social media, I have signed up for Instagram, Twitter and a business Pintrest Account.

Once you have the accounts set up, how do you make sure your business is shared online? You have to have unique and interesting content. It has to be interesting and share worthy. Blogs are a good way to keep you constantly in view, so long as your blog is interesting and offers something of value. Once you blog, Facebook, Tweet, Pin and Instagram it. Have an order in which you do things, so that it is an automactic process to share your new product or service.

Do not hog the internet. You can put your business out there but do not overwhelm people with endless tweets. Maybe you could have a sign up for email for latest information and sales. There are many ways to share, but share sparingly, so you don’t get un-friended.

Woorank.com is a company that will access your website and give suggestions for improvement. It gives you a score, mine was 61.2. The score is under 40 means your website stinks, fix it. If it is over 70 you are doing good. In their evaluation they offer ways to improve your score, which improves your site. Here are some of the things I need to do to improve my site.

Add a description to my site. (What is my site about?)
Add a conversion form.
Connect and make my site more social media friendly.
Write a blog and connect it to social media.
Work on my Keyword consistency.
Try out Woorank today and see how your website scores?

Help The Librarian Find You (Google Search Optimization)

Google is the greatest Librarian in the world. It can help you find the information you need from any of its resources at the click of a button. How is this librarian so effective and what are its secrets? With so much information to choose from, how I can I make sure it picks mine to share with the world?

There are 3 ways it delivers it’s answers to the searchers. In the article, “How Google Search Works” by Google it says.

“Crawling: Does Google know about your site? Can we find it? Indexing: Can Google index your site? Serving: Does the site have good and useful content that is relevant to the users search? See full article for more details.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/

So you now know the librarians secrets, how do you make sure it picks you? I picked 5 ways out of the suggestions given from various articles on-line.

I will improve the content of my site. I need to add relevance and uniqueness to my blog. I need to make it so people want to share what I have made, providing useful tips and information. The more my page is shared or linked to other sites, the more the Librarian is watching me.
I will Pin, Facebook, Tweet and Instagram my work. One of my colleagues in my class suggested a workflow from after the photo shoot. It involved blogging and sharing on all social media so that again, I am more visible to the librarian. I also need to make sure in my website, the work is pinnable by those who visit it.
I will add links to credible sites from my website. Knowing that I am not the expert in all things, I will link to great articles and ideas. I will make sure these links open in a new window, so that those who were on my site can stay with me.
I will change the headings to match the keywords that are used to search for my site. I will also change the URLS so that they have keyword embedded in them so the Librarian can find them easily.
I will make sure that my site is crawler/bot accessible. If my page is down I will use a status code 503 or use 301 for a permanent redirect. If I have gone to all of the trouble to make my site found, I need to allow the crawlers who are searching in to find me. Geoff Kenyon’s wrote a great article “Technical Audit Checklist” which explains how to make this happen. http://moz.com/blog/how-to-do-a-site-audit
Making sure you are on top of your search engine success is an ongoing process and using Google Analytics as a tool, you can see where you are succeeding or failing in your attempts.

Nobody loves me, Nobody Cares.

You have all heard the song, it continues, if I get eaten by lions and bears. This sentiment sums up my feelings, entering the world of google ads. Where are all the people who are seeking my business? Why are they not clicking on my ad when they see it? Why did my ad not grab the attention of the 145 people who saw it? Only 5 people were interested enough to click on my site and then nothing.

The first thing I had to do was to make my keywords more relevant to the ad. I changed “Senior Portraits” to “High school senior photos” and added “Graduation photos.” I have yet to see the results in my changes. I also had to add more ads to my campaign. I was just focused on one aspect of my business. I needed to expand it, so I added a “cake smash” ad and a “family photos ” ad. I am hoping these changes bring more traffic to my site.

I learned about the ROI this week (Return of Investment). The formula is:

(revenue – cost of goods sold)/cost of goods sold.

This helps you to know how much money you have made using google Adwords. You goal is to get more in revenue from the advertisement, than the cost of the advertisement itself. To track how many sales are made from the ad, you need to add the given coding to the landing-place on your website. Maybe it is the checkout, maybe it is the sign up for further information. As of now mine is attached to the checkout, but I am going to change it to the “Contact me page”. People will not book a session without talking to me, so the true value of the ad, is if I can get people to call me to book a session, from just seeing my website.

Google Analytics

This week we wanted to check the quality score of our ads we created last week, and sign up for a google analytics account. I found that the quality of my ad, and the keywords in it, was just 6 out of 10. This is an average result and could be improved.

The quality score is based on your ads expected CTR, your display URL, the quality of your landing page, your ad/search relevance, geographic performances and your targeted devices.

So how can you increase your quality score? First you can change the keywords, to make them more relevant. I could add “high School” to my “Senior Portraits” so that just teen seniors search, not the old seniors. I could broaden the geographical area for my text ad, but that would mean I would have to be willing to travel farther for my business. The last thing I could do is, ensure that my landing page is relevant to the ad, and captures the interest of my audience.

The next thing we had to do was to install Google analytics. This is done by going to the Google analytics website, setting up an account, and copying and pasting the code they give you on every page you want analysed.

There are many benefits to Google analytics, and the information it gives you can help you see what changes you could make to improve your business.

Google Analytics can track:

Which marketing initiatives are most effective?

Accurate website patterns.

Where users come from and what they do on your site?

Which keywords work best?

Which of your online ads is most effective?

How your users are finding you? FaceBook, Pintrest, Ad or other?

Which content is being viewed most often?

I am sure that the list goes on, but you can see that even with this information you could make adjustments to improve. For example, if all your business is coming from Pintrest, but no one responds to your ad, focus on Pintrest. If you do not have enough repeat customers, what can you do to make them come back to your site, over and over again?

I am excited to start tracking my site with Google analytics and to see what I can do to promote and share my site more effectively.

Google has made a blog page to answer questions about their product. It has an analytics academy to train you on anything google analytics related. It has how to videos, and testimonials and all sorts of information. If you have questions, or are interested in learning more, I suggest you check out this blog http://analytics.blogspot.com

Text Ads

How do you create an ad that will attract potential customers? First: Be Relevant, Second: Be Specific and Third: Call to action. I looked at several articles and videos which gave tips and ideas of how to create the best text ads. Here is what I learned.

The text ad has a limited amount of characters, so you have to know what you want to say, and say it in as few words as possible. This is an example ad.

Headline – 25 characters long

Description #1 – 35 characters long

Description #2 – 35 charaters long

Dispay URL on to the page you want them to see.

Some of the tips to make your text ad stand out, given by Russ Henningberry in “7 tips to improve google adword clicks” were;

Use specific numbers such as $8.23 or $99.
Ue spunky characters # ‘ $ & @.
Use a call to action, Sign up for your free newsletter today!
Include a benefit “Accelerate your career.”
Use a phone # and address .
Remove Risk, 100% guaranteed !
There is a way to make your ad more accesable to your potential customers. You can add keywords, with a little coding, into the headline of your ad. This way if users type in one of those keywords, your ad will adapt to what they type into the search engine.

There are restrictions and rules to text ads and obviously your ads need to be appropriate and lead to a real website, not just a bridge to send users elsewhere. The site you promote must have useful content and cannot just be an advertising site. Everything you advertise must be availabe and there should be no hidden fees.

So to close I will share the text ad I intend to use.

Senior Portraits {keyword:proffessional, photographer, Bartlesville}

Stunning Senior Photography

Call me today! 555 555 5555

Sarahjaynesphotos.com

Key words

If you could describe your business in one or two words what would they be? Would those words lead potential customers to you if they were looking on-line? Or would they lead them on a wild goose chase of related but not relevent products or services?

Key words are words to describe your business and bring customers to you when searching on an internet search engine. The success of those keywords, depends on how good or bad they are.

What makes a bad keyword? One that is too general, and could bring all sorts of attention. For example if you sell leather-bound journals. If you used the keyword journal, it would bring you these results. “The Wall street Journal” “Images of journals, ” “Oxford Journals,” and”writing for an academic journal.” None of these results help you to sell your leather-bound journal. However, if you have “buy leather-bound journal” as your key words, you get these results. “leather-bound journal at Amazon.com” “Vintage Leather journals- Priced from $20.” This clearly has narrowed your customer list to the ones interested in purchasing a leather journal. So a good keyword, consists of more than one or two words, which are specific to your business. This list of keywords is called an ad group.

Why is it important to be specific? If you have money to pay for everyone wanting to read any journal, you can. One of the ways you pay for advertising is called CPC, or Cost per Click. You want every one who clicks on your keyword to go to your website. If it is too general, they may not be interested in what you had to offer and you have paid for a wasted click. The other way is to pay by CPM which is Cost per-thousand impressions. This is handy if you want to get your name in front of a lot of people, but if your keyword is too general, it will be in front of a lot of irrelevant people.

Once you have decided on your keywords, or your ad groups, you need to think about your text ad. This consists of a headline, description 1 and 2 and then the display of your URL for your website. For this headline you want to attract the right people. Again, be specific, be relevant, tell the customer why they should pick you. Are you cheaper, faster, better, vintage, classy etc…? The second description is a call to action. Tell them to “check out your sale,” “sign up for a coupon” or “join the newsletter.” These four lines will determine if a potential customer clicks on your ad, or scrolls down to the next one.

I think the most important thing in knowing which keywords to use, is to think like your customer. What would they type in, when looking for the service or product you offer? My husband is known for his Google Fu, he can find an answer to his question with just a few key words typed in the search line. What words are your customers typing to find you? Try a few out and search for someone like you. Which words worked and which ones did not? Good luck in picking the right keywords for your business. May the odds, be ever in your favor.

The Rules of the Government.

Tim Hawkins – The Government can https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO2eh6f5Go0

Because we live in a society we are expected to pay taxes. It has and always will be that way. Even Jesus said to the people in his day. ” Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” (Mathew 22:21)So when we have a business and involve ourselves in trade, we have to pay the government it’s share in taxes.

Depending on the state you live, those taxes can break you before you even break even.

According to Business Insider the best 5 states for small business are: Utah, Idaho, Texas, Virginia and Louisiana. My state of Oklahoma came in 7th which is not bad. This survey was based on how easy it is to get a license. The worst are, according to the Washington Post: Massachusetts, because of environmental regulations. Florida, because of overall support of business. New Jersey, for zoning regulations. New York, because it is really hard to start a new business there. Pensylvania, because of hiring and labor regualtions. Conneticut, because of the lack of overall support of small business.

Oklahoma is pretty friendly to business and especially the small town I live in, which supports local business.

The other thing we learned about, was the legal structure we should use to form our business. I chose, sole Proprietorship. It is a small business and I do not have the overhead to worry about loosing everything, even my house, if the business goes under. I have decided If I ever started a business which hired people, I would go for the LLC which has the same ease of start-up and taxes as a Sole Proprietorship, but offers the protection against liability of a Corporation.

One day I dream of a land where it is a simple thing to file your taxes. As Albert Einstein once said.

Albert Einstein
[on filing for tax returns] This is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher.

Site Designs and Payment Options

As a photographer, the images are the most important thing I want to showcase on my website. I want a clean, bright site that is contemporary and appealing. The best way to find out what sites you like, is to find the best in your industry, and see how they design their sites. Do you like the style, would you do it differently? In photography there seems to be two popular ways. One with a large image that takes up the whole page, or with a collage of smaller images.

The look is not everything you need to consider. Navigation and user friendliness is also on the top list of priorities when designing your site. Test different navigation menu options and see which make you happiest. If you do not like scrolling to the top after an article, add a “scroll to the top” button at the bottom of each page. Some have the navigation bar on the top and bottom for the ease of the user.

You should have a link to social media, so that you can put your site in front of more people. Be sure to keep people on your site. If they are looking at external pages, you do not want them to lose you, and give up trying to get back on your page.

A word of caution for the graphic designers out there. Even though your font may look really cool on the site you design. Not everyone has access to your font collections, and their computer will set it to the default of Times New Roman. This may look completely different than you want it too. It may be hard, but stick to “web safe fonts,” so that your site maintains consistency for all users.

Above all make sure your content it interesting, and applicable to the audience you are targeting. Your goal is to be the best in your field and your website is a reflection of you. Grammatical errors, or typos, reflect poorly and show sloppiness, and a lack of attention to detail.

Eventually you may need a storefront on your website. Maybe you want to sell your product or service. Some websites come with their own payment service. Square Space comes with Stripe, which is a credit card payment service similar to Square. Others will allow you to add payment through said companies, or others, such as PayPal. Fortunately all the HTML coding is written and it is a simple process of copying and pasting to your website, for you to be able to accept payments on-line. Make sure your shopping cart is visible and easy to find. If you have a lot of products to sell, a search button is always handy.

As with most things, there is a charge for these companies handling your payment on-line. The average cost is 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. You should never have to pay a monthly fee for these services and make sure there are no hidden charges.

The benefit of the online payment companies, is the security it offers and is required for an online business. They will also send out invoices and emails and make your life a lot easier when it comes to business transactions.

Somewhere in the Cloud.

Do you ever wonder where all your photographs are stored? All your documents etc, you may think of two places. A hard drive or “the Cloud.” This huge storage space that has no limits or physical address. It is just “the cloud” it is out there in the universe, and you can access it at anytime, from anywhere. I wonder how that would sound to my Grandma when she was little. “Hey grandma, do you want to look at this picture? just wait a second, while I download it from “the Cloud.”

You may wonder why I start with talking about this ominous cloud hovering over our heads soaked with information to rain down upon us. Well Cyberspace is kind of like it too. When we want to put information out there to the public, we need to find a place for it to go. So we design a website, but who is going to hold our website, or make a place for it on their shelves in cyberspace. The people who do that are called Hosts. There is Godaddy, Doteasy.com, BlueHost and Ipage to name a few. I wondered why we needed a host or a designated place in cyberspace. Apparently the host is what makes your site accessable to the internet (the big knowleagble information center in the sky). The host also takes care of technical problems if the site crashes etc. It is a lot easier and cheaper to pay a few dollers a month for that place on the shelf, than to try and make a new shelf or space in the internet for yourself.

So,once you have found a host, you also need a website. There are different levels for different levels of computer compitence and desire of control over the site. A few basic sites are Wix.com and Weebly. Both use drag and drop technology and are very user friendly. If you want a more proffessional set up , there is Word Press and Square Space. They are comparable to each other, but word press lets you code a lot more and have larger control over the site. Square Space is more user friendly, using drag and drop technology to design it. It also has it’s own place in Space. You do not need a host for it, it host’s itself. There are even more advanced websites for those who are not HTML challanged, they include Dreamweaver and KompZer. I had to chose Square Space. I want a higher quality site, but without the HTML coding.

I am excited about using Squarespace for my website and host, these are a few of my reasons.

Beautiful Templates, modern and sleek.
Customizetion with fonts, colors.
Free Domain name with a yearly subscription.
Popular with SEO (Search engines to find stuff on the internet)
Annalytics, so you can track who is looking and what they are looking at on your site. (Taking stalking to a whole new level.)
Hosts itself
24/7 customer service. Have I told you I love to talk instantly to complete strangers, who can answer my questions.(goodbye encyclopedias)
multiple template on one website.
Image focal point control. Nothing worse than having your photo show the bellybutton and not the head of somebody.
Lightbox presentation, full browser sized imagery of your photos.
Video and audio allowed.
Link to all your social media accounts.
Amazon blocks, so you can take advantage of Affiliate Marketing.(making money by referring a product through your site.)
Email lists on Mail Chimp. (who thinks of these names?)
Custom CSS. (this is for all those smart HTML coders)
Blogg Apps for on the go editing. (be careful of autocorrect!)
Commerce with order confirmation emails.
Note app to collect your thoughts on the go.
Ad free, no annoying pop up ads, unless you are trying to make money that way.
These are just a few of the reasons I chose Square space for my website and my host. An added bonus is the 50% discount for students and $100 in google adwords.

So next time you look up at the sky and see clouds. Just think of your information floating around out there and feel secure that you have made a place for it, on a shelf, easier to find and access for those who need it.