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Woorank.com is an excellent tool to help analyze your website to see how you can improve the ranking it will receive from search engines.  The SEO tools and analytical tools from Adwords all lead to the ranking it will receive from search engines.  The higher the rank the higher it lists when people search for your products.  Maximizing these tools and creating a website that uses these tools to review an help improve your site will help to maximize profits.

The landing page is the page that you are directed to from an ad.  The ad should direct the user directly to the landing page relevant to the ad.  Optimizing the page by using keywords on the landing page and the home page that are used in the ad or the keywords of a campaign will help to optimize the user experience and increase conversions.  This will help to maximize the ROI on ad spending.

It has been an interesting week learning about return on investment.  After a few days running an AdWords campaign it is clear that Google has created a tool to help the most simple business track ROI on AdWords.  You can see how effective each ad is and what it cost to run the ad each day.  It also shows the conversion rate.  These tools help me to make valuable decisions about where I want to spend my advertising dollars.  I am looking forward to seeing how these changes can help me maximize my ROI.  I will see over the next week and a half.

This week I worked to connect Google AdWords with Google Analytics.  Google has done a magnificent job connecting these services to help web businesses market more effectively.  The link together and the Analytics data is available on AdWords.  These tools allow you to review how you are spending advertising dollars.  The feedback Google provides on keywords and relevance are immensely valuable.  The analytical data about people that are searching for your products provides critical data that can help to focus advertising efforts.  This allows a small start-up company to have access to data that used to cost significant amounts of money.  That has turned Google into the “Monster Marketer” for my site and others that want to analyze the data provided through AdWords and Google Analytics.

It was interesting to look at a google search after this lesson.  The paid ads that pop up mean a little more to me than they did before.  I notice what they are saying and how they are saying it.  I have been able to critic some of the phrases used and understand the limits placed on the advertiser to meet Google’s standards.  I assumed that you could put anything you wanted in an Ad, but Google is actually very strict about what they allow and how you can write your ad.  I think the most important thing you can do in an ad is to be clear and concise.  The ads that are confusing or difficult to follow are one’s I usually skip past.  To be perfectly honest It has caused me to be a little more conscious about what the ads say.  In the past I would skip past the paid ads and look at the organic search results.  I don’t know how many people are like me, and I wonder if there isn’t some negative connection with some of the paid ads?

Keywords.  What are the key words that will unlike the secrets to a successful internet business?  Are they too broad or are they too specific?  The answer is, it really depends on what your business is selling.  Too narrow and you miss out on a segment of business that uses broad searches to find what they are looking for.  To broad and you waste your money have people click on your site that would never have any intention of buying your products.  It would be helpful to ask as many people from different walks of life what they would type into a search engine if they were looking for a product similar to what you are selling.  This will give you insight into how other people think.  We are experts at what we are selling, but do others use the same terminology that we do?  It is a high wire balancing act and there are tools available to help traverse this tight rope.  Analytical tools to help us see what has happened in the past as people searched for certain key words. Don’t forget the be negative!  Negative key words can help prevent people from stumbling onto your site and costing you precious advertising dollars. Again, talk to others to see what they would enter when searching.  The more research you do the better chances of maximizing your advertising dollars.

Building a functional website where you can sell your ideas or your products can be very difficult.  If you are a startup with no funding then it is even harder.  Choosing the right resources to build your site is critical.  I started this week building a website and after countless hours of trying to put the images where I want them. Including relevant content to just get the site started can be a grueling process.  The most difficult part was actually getting the site enabled to take some form of payment.  They wanted my bank account information just to allow the use of credit cards for payment.  This a school project and probably will not be a viable business after the semester.  I was hesitant to enter my bank information.  I did have to relinquish my credit card information to get the Paypal link setup.  All this was necessary to allow the instructor to view and make a purchase on the site.  It was a great exercise, but a real business takes countless hours to setup.  I have the basics, and if I can make this idea work, I may have a side business that can generate some income for my family.  My wife and I actually discussed her running the company while it is starting.  It is exciting to consider the possibilities.

I had not considered what makes a website great and what a makes a website bad.  Upon reflection and reading the advice of others, it is apparent that their are things that people like an dislike about websites.  In this fast paced world people do not want a slow site.  Making choices that will maximize the speed of a website is critical.  People do not want to wait.  Making it easy to navigate and using minimal paths to get to the information people are looking for will keep people interested.  It is also important to give customers various ways to make purchases.  Having a sleek, modern and easy to navigate website will help make the website look and feel professional.  Limiting the number of choices a visitor to a site has to make to find what they are looking for is what keeps customers coming back.  I think it is easy to make assumptions about how easy information is to find on a site you design.  It is important to have people outside of the business give feedback.

There are countless site builders and domain hosts to choose from when setting up your online business.  It isn’t like you don’t have enough to do planning your business and choosing a product, service, or business model that will fit what you need.  Choosing the right site builder and domain host can be just as critical as any of these decisions.  In fact it might be more important to the overall success of the business.  A poorly designed and slow website is an immediate turn-off no matter how great the product or service may be.  The cheapest site builders make it cheap and easy.  However, they lack many of the key elements that can make or break your website.  It isn’t that they don’t have the capabilities, but they will cost you! Working through the options and finding a site builder that will work for you to create a successful internet business is critical.  Choosing a site that isn’t going to break the bank when you finally add everything necessary to run your online  business is the first step to a successful online business.  As I reviewed the templates available and looked at the websites of Apple, Google, and Amazon.  They are successful businesses and I wanted to emulate their design ideas.  Hopefully it is a strategy that will pay off.

I think the most important part of starting a new business is determining how involved all parties will be.  If you do not have a desire to work directly with customers, then you need to choose a business model that will limit your interactions with customers.  Determining how much the business needs to make, and the level of involvement you want to have in the day to day running of a company can rule out some business models quickly.  It is also important to know what time of return or revenue you expect from the business.  Once these steps are complete, you need to partner with companies that fit your business model.  Choosing companies that will work with you and your business model is just as important as choosing your business  model.  If it is an affiliate or a manufacturer that will drop ship, you need to have a good partner.  The better you work together with vendors the easier it is to be successful.