W11 Reflection: Landing Page Optimization & Basic SEO

This week I learned about how keywords can affect your landing page and SEO. This was a really helpful week but also difficult to work my way through some of the reading. While full of great information, Rand Fishkin’s article on Keyword-Targeting and Landing Page SEO was a very slow read. Mostly because I wasn’t familiar with some of the industry lingo and acronyms that he used. I had to look several terms up separately and even then, it wasn’t always clear how to understand the information without more additional research. Several times I just wanted to give up, but I didn't. Although, I did have to take several breaks and come back to read more later. I’m likely not his target market but I appreciated the information. Otherwise, he spelled everything out really well and used a lot of great details, examples, and visuals.

I was surprised to see that Keywords are not as important in optimizing a page as they used to be. I hadn’t considered that algorithms were able to evaluate things like user experience (Or UX as I learned today. That one made sense, at least. I still think he made up KW for keywords, which took me longer to figure out than it probably should have). As an internet user, I can see how that makes sense objectively because I really hate it when I can’t figure out how to find things on a website or when they are just was too crowded. I hope to design a website that is really natural and enjoyable to use.

W10 Reflection: ROI & Optimizing Ad Performance

I found the reading this week really interesting but a little tricky to implement. Setting up conversion tracking was satisfying because I was able to figure out the best way to edit my theme safely and that has made these tracking features a lot easier to implement. I had done the header edit last week but this week I was able to figure out how to have it automatically populate in all the headers and then add code to only specific pages for the conversion goals.

I’m still a little stuck on setting the trackers to ignore my own traffic. I figured it out in one area, but it doesn’t seem to apply to the primary one that our class is using. I think I’ll have time this weekend to research that a little more and hopefully find the answer. 

I am currently wondering how to narrow the focus of my ad group to avoid people searching for specific family surnames. That was something I had not anticipated would happen but there are a few last names that populated my ad. These last names aren’t attached to any one keyword and those keywords seem to perform well otherwise. So, I’m trying to determine a way to limit the appearance of family surnames as a category. I’m also wondering if trying to eliminate this is actually a bad idea. I am not currently prepared to do so but I have been considering that instead of trying to eliminate a category (surnames/proper nouns), there might be a way to demonstrate that I’m useful to these researchers.

This week my other class, which is a family history research class, inspired another business niche idea that has been very distracting to me this week. Unfortunately it isn’t something I currently know how to do and likely requires a lot of coding knowledge. But I’m planning to incorporate it over time (sooner rather than later as it is a research tool that I would like to use in my own research and is a tool that I couldn't find anywhere else) and hope that it will be a useful tool to bring in traffic.

W09 Reflection: Relevance & Quality Score

This week has been interesting and gone a bit smoother. I really enjoyed installing and exploring Google Analytics, I can tell it will be a valuable and powerful tool. Plus, I love graphs and data, so this is right up my alley.

In terms of my ad campaign, I’m think I’m on track but I’m a little concerned about my keywords. I think I came up with a list that will be okay for a starting point but it’s hard to find a wide range of applicable words for genealogy. Especially when so many can be considered industry terms that beginners might not be familiar with and that are just plain trickier to spell.  Even I had to re-type genealogy two sentences ago and again just now. If I go any broader, I risk my ad appearing for completely unrelated searches from uninterested people. Any narrower and it’s unlikely to be triggered at all.

I appreciated Brother Beck’s recommendation to incorporate a blog into my website for traffic. I can see how this will help as I could focus on specific subjects and create ads around those posts. Thus solving my keyword dilemmas. I do worry that I won’t have anything new or interesting to say to draw in the traffic as the major brands already cover most topics really well. Although, I think I could compare and analyze the tools these websites offer effectively. Ancestry has a few shortcomings that I find frustrating and are amplified on their premium subsidiaries despite the high subscription costs of Fold3 and Newspapers.

I do have many different directions that I’m excited to explore with my genealogy business overtime, but I’m trying to limit my focus for the semester so I don’t end up overwhelmed and spread too thin.

W08 Reflection: Ads

I really appreciated the assigned reading from this week. On the “Edit you text ads” page, just after the intro, there was a mention of Google Ads Editor and verifying that it was updated. I’ve been thinking that Google Ads was not very intuitive, and I misunderstood this to mean a Chrome plugin or something that could need updating. Ultimately, I ended up downloading a program, which was unexpected, but I am glad I did. The Google Ads Editor was a lot easier for me to navigate and resize my windows. The web based one feels like it would work better if I had two monitors. 

The keyword insertion feature is also really interesting and I would like to explore it more in the future. I wasn’t confident enough to try it out this week. Plus, most of my drafts weren’t dynamic enough and would stop making sense with a few of my keywords. But I think in the future, I could have a more tailored ad group and try this feature out in an ad to see how it performs for me.

I sort of enjoyed creating my ad this week. It was strange to be both limited by characters but also struggling to fill the space. But as always, balance in all things is good and should be expected.

W07 Reflection: Google Ads & Keywords

I found the readings this week helpful. They provided an interesting way of considering keyword choices more thoughtfully than just a random assemble of synonyms. I particularly like the information on negative keywords. I have often searched for various things on Google where I needed to include the “-“ in front of a word because I was getting bogged down with the wrong kind of results. I love the idea that I can do the same sort of thing on the advertisers end to streamline my campaigns effectiveness.

Personally, I originally felt that marking the major brands as negative keywords would be helpful. Thinking that if a person is already specifically looking for FamilySearch then I don’t want to waste my money in those search results. However, I find myself turning this concept over in my brain, maybe eliminating these brand words isn’t the best way of narrowing the market in that it could be beneficial to leverage the brand notoriety.

As far as I can tell, I’m not exactly anyone’s competitor because I haven’t found anyone offering the same exact service. Mostly, professional genealogists are offering the actual research as their service. So, distancing myself from these companies might do the reverse. Now I’m leaning more towards the idea that these brands presences would help drive traffic my way because people who might want my service would likely be familiar with the main Family History brands.

Tomorrow I might switch back again but I really like the analytical approach to choosing keywords. It’s like an entertaining never-ending riddle.

W06 Reflection: Legal Structure

This week has been exciting and a bit complicated. I am excited to be figuring out all these legal particulars as it means I am that much closer to launching my business. Which is also a little terrifying. I find myself (almost) hoping that I won’t have any clients. Partly because I’m nervous about doing a good job and partly as a defense of setting my expectations low so I’m not disappointed. I’m doing a sole proprietorship because that seems like the right choice for my business, but the liabilities make me a little nervous, so I almost wish I was doing an LLC. My current plan is to start as a sole proprietor and the make the transition to LLC. But even that is a little unappealing because it would mean paying the one-time new business start-up fees all over again, plus the LLC fees. It still seems to fit my current situation the best.

It’s complicated because of the sales tax. I have many hours trying to unravel my legal tax obligations. I think I have figured out my state obligations for an interactive analyst service. Although, learning about retail sales tax has introduced a question that I haven’t been able to answer yet.

• I am to collect and remit a “Service and Other Activities” B&O sales tax for the state of Washington.
• Retail sales to out-of-state buyers require recipient specific state sales tax to be collected and remitted for each different state, but only if a certain sale quantity threshold is met.

Which makes jumbles my brain into asking:

1. Do I follow this pattern for the “Service and Other Activities” B&O type sales tax and collect and remit sales tax according to client billing state? Are there thresholds before the tax applies?
1. If not, do I collect the Washington state “Service and Other Activities” B&O sales tax from everyone, regardless of what state they live in?
2. Or do I only collect that sales tax from Washington state residents?

I’m also interested in participating in digital download sales on my website in the future, so figuring out the digital sales tax issue is interesting to me as well.

The complication of out-of-state sales feels pretty overwhelming. It’s almost a tipping point of if I bother with an online business or not. I really want to move forward with this, but the out-of-state sales taxes are so complicated as to be disempowering and excessively time consuming.

I think I have it sorted out that digital retail sales only count in certain states and retail sales only count after certain thresholds in each state, so if I don’t hit those thresholds I don’t collect/remit state specific sales taxes nor do I collect/remit WA state sales tax from out-of-state residents. And I think that is also how I treat the B&O sales tax.

W05 Reflection: Site Design

I really appreciate mindful web design when I am a visitor to a website, even when I have not fully recognized what I liked about a website. I can generally identify what I do not like about a website before I can spot what appeals to me, so the reading materials this week helped me understand what I was responding to.

I am concerned about images for my website. My job a few years ago included choosing stock images to use for articles and various areas of the website. I was always struck by how redundant the selection was for my assigned topics, so that worries me. However, I am hopeful that it will be easier to design the website now that it is my own and a topic that I am passionate about, instead of working to illustrate someone else’s passion. I really enjoyed the design element of that job, but it was often a struggle to figure out what would make my employers happiest.

I also enjoyed experimenting with colors through Paletton. My mother is an artist and loves the science behind the color wheel, her paintings always have amazing colors. She taught me about this growing up, I am still aware of it to some extent, but it was never something that I could intuitively manipulate the way she could. This tool is so helpful in overcoming uncertainty in my choices. It makes quicker work of choosing what I like that also works well and eliminating everything else.