elliethoughts

This week we focused a lot on link building to improve SEO as well as using Google Analytics 4 to collect and analyze data from a website. Learning about and trying to build links to my site was an interesting process. Essentially the idea is that we’re trying to build connections from other websites to our website through links, so that when Google is analyzing the site, it sees these references from other sites and recognizes ours as more reliable. One action I took after seeing this recommendation on an SEO link building article was registering my business with Google, Yelp and Bing business accounts, as well as sites like Angi and Homebuilder. This was supposed to create links, but either they aren’t high value or don’t count because they didn’t show up when I used the link analyzing site. But I will continue to try and use social media and other ways to naturally encourage links to build my SEO reliability.

Trying to learn Google Analytics 4 was difficult, but interesting. The information you’re able to collect with the vast amount of filters and variables under the explore tab allow you to find very specific pieces of information about the site. I recognized that most of this information would be more useful to me if I had more knowledge in marketing or software development to actually implement some of the information the program can gather. It seems like a very powerful tool with lots of possibilities.

This week we explored how we can use social media to promote our site and business. As we looked into how to use social media to promote, one thing that stood out to me was the necessity of prioritizing use of the best platforms. Not the best platforms in general, but the platform that is most suited to your target audience. For instance, a business marketed towards a younger audience may choose to prioritize Instagram or TikTok, while a business marketed towards an older audience would have better results on Facebook. And then there’s how you want to present your product or service. LinkedIn is a great way to build a professional reputation for a business, Instagram is great for showcasing a product, and TikTok is good for showcasing a product or service using videos.

The other prominent note I took from this week’s studies was the importance of setting goals for you social media campaigns. Specifically, short term and long term goals that can be measured. A goal to increase brand awareness through posting regularly should lead to a bigger picture goal of increasing traffic to your site by a certain percentage. This way you can re-evaluate if your social media strategy is working the way you want it to, if it’s worth investing time and money into, and ultimately if the return on investment is what you want.

This week we learned MORE ways to get the best bang for your buck when using Google Ads. Optimizing your site and ads means that Google will prioritize your ads because they will be most helpful and attractive to customers, meaning that your ad money is giving you the best possible return on investment.

We learned about how to optimize landing pages, ensuring that users who click on your ad stay on your website and complete your target action. Ensuring that ad text matches the text and options the user will see when they arrive at your landing page will help users to feel like they’re finding what they’re looking for. After that point, it also helps to make action buttons very clear to keep the roll going.

Search Engine Optimization also has a lot to do with website design and UX design. But SEO also focuses on the finer details of website design, such as repeating keywords from your ads into image, file and page descriptions throughout your site. A greater number of inbound links to your site makes it appear more reputable to Google and therefore Google will bump up its placement in search results. Knowing these little tricks definitely helps to create the most efficient and productive ad campaign.

This week we finished and launched our Google Ads campaigns. We pasted a code snippet from Google Analytics into our site so that we can track conversions from our ads. Because conversions, in my case the action of a customer requesting a quote, are the main metric for determining profitability, this tool is a great starting point for determining what should be edited. Analytics will tell me how much time people spend on each page, how many conversions resulted from each ad. This helps me decide if I need to improve my landing page, my ad text or my keywords to better match the ad text or landing page.

We also studied return on investment (ROI) and how our ad money will be used to get us the highest possible return on investment. As a poor college student, I’m grateful to have tools that ensure that my money is being used as efficiently as possible. If ads have a poor ROI, I would rather improve or delete them rather than spend money to have them not be profitable.

This week we learned how to use different tools offered by Google Ads and Google Analytics to improve ad campaigns and landing pages. Ultimately the guidance that these tools provide should increase customer traffic to the site and encourage them to engage in key events like purchasing the product or requesting a quote.

The first tool to examine is the Quality Score from Google Ads. This tool is a score generated to give you an idea of expected feedback to your ad based on data Google has collected. It will prompt you to increase your click through rate by recommending strong and relevant keyword text. Google Ads will also determine how relevant and helpful your keywords will be to linking customers to what they’re searching for. It also will prompt you to improve your landing page experience so that customers can find what they’re looking for and easily buy or sign up for it.

We also learned how to use Google Analytics in tandem with Google Ads to gather data about how your ads and website are performing. Information is power, and the data that Google Analytics can gather is so helpful in strengthening user draw and experience.

This week we learned about running GoogleAds campaigns to promote our site. GoogleAds is a great tool that can be even more useful the more familiar you become with its features.. When creating a campaign, you are given different options for how and where your campaign will run. For instance, you can choose to target certain geographical areas, which for my business will be essential because we are a service that operates out of Rigby, Idaho. You can also choose to target certain devices, which may be beneficial if you know what devices your target audience will typically be using when they search for your product or service.

Something else that will help you out a ton if you understand how to utilize it is your ad campaign keyword list. These keywords will connect potential customers who are searching those words to ads that lead to your site. To ensure that your ad campaign money is being used to reach customers who will pay, your keywords should be relevant to both your product and their search. Google provides several helpful articles for coming up with a list and understanding their tools, such as negative words and ad groups.

This week I went through the processes of finding the required licensure for my business. Sometimes I have had difficulties with trying to go through government processes for personal documents, but the resources for registering a business and finding the required licenses were super helpful!

First off, the business wizard feature on business.idaho.gov was an extremely useful tool. After inputting all of the information about my business, it generated a checklist of agencies I should contact along with links to the forms I need to apply for. I learned that I need to register as an LLC through the Idaho Secretary of State in order to get an EIN for tax purposes. It also guided me to a website that helped me understand the difference between hiring employees or independent contractors, which was helpful because I need to decide what forms I have employees fill out. The last main website I used was the Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses, which has pages for any business you might want to start. When I navigated to the FAQ page for contractors it told me a lot about registration and required licenses.

What a week! Unfortunately, I had to dump the business idea I was really excited about. It won’t work with the parameters of this class. So that meant a lot of restructuring and reorganizing of priorities! This new list of priorities helped me sort through my options to make a decision about what site builder and hosting company to use.

A few things I decided I’d like to preserve on this business- my time, my money and energy resources. A few things I’d like to optimize- user experience and capacity for growth. These things in mind, the site builder that stood out to me was WordPress, with its thousands of available plugins and accessible support for expanding the site. For hosting sites, I was very attracted to GreenGeeks for their sustainable business practices and commitment to putting out three times as much energy as they consume with their servers.

This week I’ve learned so much about the options available for building an online business. We’ll see how the new idea adapts as we go forward with these exciting next steps.

This week we discussed different types of suppliers you can source products from. A helpful tool for choosing a suppliers was learning to us a quantify and compare chart. This chart helps you to compare the different aspects of your (in this case, suppliers) options and then weigh those aspects against each other to mathematically quantify which option aligns best with your priorities.

While this was an interesting tool to learn, what really stood out to me from this week’s lessons was our deeper dive into a couple business models. In our discussions, we practiced using the same quantify and compare tool to decide between a drop-shipping and an affiliate business model for a product. This closer look at the affiliate model helped me form a better idea for a business model. The business I have in mind will be a free service, thanks to AI, and will generate revenue using an affiliate link to follow through with plans that the AI service will generate.

This next week, my goal is to find a few businesses that I can be an affiliate for. Then I will get to work building the product and linking the business’s sites to mine.

My name is Ellie Sterr. I love plants, Jesus and my sweet husband. After graduating this December (2025) with my degree in Horticulture, I look forward to using my knowledge of native plants to continue improving sustainable landscaping.