Website Devlopment

 

For this week’s blog post, we were instructed to create our own website. The website that I decided to try out was Weebly. In the past, I have played around with E-Commerce sites such as Shopify. The purpose of this assignment was to try and have some real life context for a Google Ad, either to market ourselves or an imaginary business. This gave me an opportunity to express my inner entrepreneur spirit and play around with a business idea that I have brainstormed in the past..

To give you a little background of the platform, Weebly has a built-in editor, whose interface makes it easier to build a website, by simply dragging and dropping elements. There is also a nice feature to see what the site looks like on mobile applications. Having a website gives you the power to establish market power, but not just domestically. The ability to have multiple domains of traffic coming into your site is a major beneficiary in today’s business. It is common to see stores that have larger acres generate larger sales and profits. Now imagine the amount of acres your “online” store can potentially cover via the internet, without the cost of maintaining the physical brick and mortar locations. 

There is no doubt in my mind that having a website can be extremely beneficial, especially for small businesses, in today’s economy. Digital technology and the Internet has influenced how we live and work. Having a E-commerce presence allows businesses to improve their credibility, build the business, and enhance their online presence. Here is a statistical fact that I am sure will raise a few eyebrows. Of the 7.4 Billion people in this world, 3.5 Billion people, or 47%, are online each and every single day. These people are searching for information, sharing on social media, or shopping on E-commerce websites looking for a product. A product that can very much be your product. So why not capitalize on the opportunity to drive sales for your company?

-Calvin Jordan 

 Link to Website:

https://allamericanfitness.weebly.com/my-work.html

 

Modern Warfare?

Surfing the Tsunami.

 I happened to come across an impressive novel by Dr. Todd Kelsey,PhD. He is an author and educator whose publishing credits include several books for helping people learn more about technology. He has appeared on television as a featured expert and has worked with a wide variety of corporations and non-profit organizations.

Due to the recent advancements of A.I, companies like Boston Dynamics have been able to innovate humanoid robots that act and move just like humans. ATLAS, the humanoid robot of Boston Dynamics, can even do backflips which is incredibly difficult to program, given all the technical hurdles. Yeah, we all joke about the Terminator and human robots, but in reality,  we are not that far away. Everyone across the globe is shifting their focus to improving artificial intelligence. Some experiments are more public than others, obviously.  Looking at Russia, in 2017, they were making some public experiments with a robot named FEDOR. “Robot FEDOR showed the ability to shoot from both hands. Fine motor skills and decision-making algorithms are still being improved”. Although I am a fan of A.I, and the benefits it can have on our society, I cannot help but worry about a robot who can shoot weapons accurately and do backflips.

We are creating robots that can perform better than the average human. My biggest concern with this is the algorithms that are being created to operate these humanoid robotics. What if terrorists somehow get ahold of this technology? We cannot assume that only good people are capable of understanding sophisticated algorithms. This can potentially get into the wrong hands and be used for diabolical reasons. Even with our military,  technological advancements can potentially allow us to have an army of robots in the future doing our dirty work for us. The sky's the limit when it comes to this area, and scientists are starting to make sci-fi movies a living reality.

-Calvin Jordan

Surfing the Tsunami

Let's Talk A.I

This week, we were encouraged to look into A.I and acknowledge the potential economic shift that it can have on the economy.  

It would be nice if we were able to take a laid back sort of nonchalant approach towards A.I, but as you analyze the data and find trends, you can't help but take this issue seriously. Data shows that over the next 5-20 years, there will be a significant net job loss. Among this job loss, Blue-Collar and low income families are the most vulnerable to this change. In 2053, African-American net worth is going to have a median of 0 due to these economic changes.  Since I am African-American, this statistic stood out to me the most. It is important for me to take action now as things start to change. I have started to adept by downloading apps that teach you how to code, such as DataCamp. 

It is a blessing to be born at this time and age, not only for technological innovations but also youth. Being young is a blessing since we are still pretty much inexperienced and can adapt to change better than older individuals. It is far more difficult to try and teach a 40-year old truck driver or a coal miner how to code. The overlap from the skills of being a coal miner and the skills to be a coder is not very high. Actually, a program was  developed to try and teach coal miners how to code, but was unsuccessful. It had a 0-15% success rate. Ultimately, it is more difficult for a seasoned professional to try and learn a new skill compared to a young, ambitious adult(s) who is fresh out of college and can adapt to market value skills easily. Even if we were to teach these seasoned professionals basic coding skills successfully, A.I and machine learning will be able to take over basic coding in 5-10 years.

I will like to conclude this blog with these final thoughts. We as a society needs to change the race to one that we all can win at. Racing against A.I is not going to work. Surfing The Tsunami, by Professor Todd Kelsey, suggest that humans do one(if not all) of these 3 things. “Adapt(good): keep an eye on things; keep yourself informed; and see what happens. You might get lucky, but you might want to review the evidence. Adopt (better): you can adopt AI platforms and automation tools as they arise, and hopefully be the ones who manage AI and automation, until the management itself is automated; or in such a place where there is an ongoing need for human interaction and Adept (best): yes, I am suggesting that you seriously consider

becoming adept and involved in AI in some way”. Personally, I am in favor of A.I due to its potential to make our lives more efficient and gives us more time to use our precious neurons some place else. I want to work with A.I and collaborate with this technology to get aboard a vehicle that will  free me from a system structure that typically works the average American rigorously most of their lives then retire late in your career & enjoy whatever time you have left(If you are lucky). With Machine learning, and A.I innovations, I am confident that capital growth and equity will be much easier to achieve without being at a physical job location. With A.I, you will be able to earn your time back and actually get a chance to live a life with vast memories.

Calvin Jordan

Surfing The Tsunami , Todd Kelsey,Phd

Fun & Interesting Video of A.I in the Real World:

Having trouble with Converting? Call Extensions might be your solution!

This week, we analyzed call extensions and how it may be beneficial for a business to implement them into their budgets. For example, Professor Todd Kelsey is working with a Dental company in Aurora, Illinois.  The company is exploring new ways to market their business to drive new customers from other sources than word of mouth (warm market).

He asked the owners how much revenue was generated from each customer on average. The reason why he asked this is because sometimes it can be helpful , when using adwords, since you have an idea of how much revenue each client is bringing to your business. Therefore,  you can decide how much you can afford to acquire that customer. Such as, how many clicks you can afford to pay before someone schedules an appointment. 

A informational video was also provided to us to give a better understanding of callout extensions.  The video was by SF Digital Studios and explained how to set up your extension number as well as the benefits from adding a callout extension. An example of a benefit from a callout-extension would be, a direct number for customers to click on to reach your business besides searching through the ad to find it. Ultimately, constructing your ad to be at the greatest convenience of the customer, which will increase the amount of clicks and conversions.  



Calvin Jordan

Week 10: Frustrated With Your Ad Campaign?

We all know the frustrations that can emerge when using Google Adwords. We might often wonder why campaigns are not getting any clicks or generate any impressions. Often it can be due to a low quality score, or not enough money being spent on the actual bid, which can cause your ads to not even be displayed.

If your ad is not showing up then it is due to you not having enough good quality content to support the given set of keywords. Google scans the keywords with their advanced analytics technology to sort of the highest quality scores from the low’s. Quality score is basically the relevance of your ad and your pay-per-click ad. The quality score is important because the better the score is, the less money you would have to invest into your cost-per-click bid. These two multiples ultimately makes up your Ad Rank. 

It is important that users remember to make sure that their site experience is optimized for mobile, or at least try to target users on mobile devices with specific mobile-friendly ads and pages. The user’s device is taken into account when ad quality is calculated. It can be extremely beneficial to your ad if you make sure that the information is easy to find and the navigation is intuitive for users on mobile devices.

Also, make sure that your ads are relevant to users searches and intentions. This is literally the heart of adword quality. This will allow your ads and sites to help users gather relevant information, complete a sale, and navigate easily.

-Calvin Jordan

-Google AdWords

Can Google truly be a worldwide company?

For this week, we observed the conflict of a repressed technological economy that is being denied the access of Google’s services. Sundar Pichal, who is Google’s CEO, spoke publicly for the first time on the company's effort to launch a search engine project in China. Google has not been available in China for the past decade. However, Pichal stated that Google’s mission was to provide the world with information, and that a dedicated search engine could help Chinese citizens access more reliable medical information.  Sundar Pichal has no plans on slowing down his initiatives as he looks to launch in China and drive profits to new Highs.

Pichal stated, “ Today people either get fake cancer treatments, or useful information”. Google has not been available in the mainland for over a decade. The hard part is coming up with a solution that complies with China’s censorship laws. China makes up about 20% of the world’s population, which makes Google’s goal of providing information to users worldwide a bit challenging. 

As Pichal continues to move forward with his plans of expansion despite the criticism, the company internally has been negatively affected by this movement. A senior scientist resigned from the company due to the company ultimately enabling China’s ‘repressing and manipulating’ of its citizens.

A lot of challenges come into account when big businesses, such as Google, decides to expand in different domains. As you can see, politics and government play a huge role in policies and regulations. Executives must take into account all the factors that go into play when expanding their businesses in other global leaders territories. 

Calvin Jordan

Week 7 Blog

For this week, we focused on really preparing for Google Adwords exam and making sure that we are devoting enough time and effort into our studies to optimize our chances of success. It is critical that we keep ourselves accountable during this learning process due to the availability of obtaining a job upon completion of both exams.

Google is the most popular search network on the web, most Americans use it.  It is a good place for brands and businesses to buy ads and target their keywords. With that being said, it is very competitive and hard to contend with all the other companies out there. That is why it is important that people get certified in AdWords to help users gain an edge over their competitors. It can also boost your popularity, credibility, and clients. 

A certification in Google AdWords gives someone a professional accreditation that Google gives out to show proficiency and understanding in AdWords.  Once you obtain the accreditation, you are then allowed to display a badge on your website that shows that Google recognizes you as an advanced AdWords user and an expert in PPC advertising. You can essentially show off the badge on your resume, website, and social profiles to drive more traffic and sales to your business. 

All in all, Google AdWords is worth the time and the investment. Once you complete the two exams, then Google rewards you with a certificate and allows you to gain credibility. Personally, I am taking the course to obtain a skill that I feel will be useful for our day and age. Every business will need to have somewhat of an E-Commerce presence as new innovations and technologies are being created daily.

Calvin Jordan  

Week 5: Call Out Extensions

Call extensions can be a great opportunity for your business to thrive and drive visitors to your content.  Often in the past, markets would find creative ways to use site links in their pay-per-click ads to communicate key benefits. Call-Out extensions can allow a user to get an extra line of text to communicate your companies value and also boost your quality score, which ultimately reduces your costs. Another benefit that users can get from using call-outs include freeing up site links. Sometimes users come across situations in which their site links were never being clicked on. In this situation, you can convert them to callout extensions and use the site links for click throughs that lead directly to your site content.

Keep in mind that there are no additional cost to run callout extensions. Each extension can be up to 25 characters and they should not duplicate content from your ad or other extensions.  When you want to evaluate your extension, you can view your click through rate which assess how many times our ads viewed. This is extremely important because it allows us to analyze the data to see which callout extension is helping your ad the most. We can then use this data when it is time to create future call out extensions.

Finally, once you start gathering data from successful extensions, you have to build upon it. Once you start noticing the traffic that certain extensions can bring your cite, you can start capitalizing and driving profits.

-Calvin Jordan

-Google Ad Call-Outs

Week 4 Blog

This week, we looked at search terms report and how to adjust your strategy based off the report.  For example, if you are looking at your reports and notice traffic entering your cite but not equally reflected with sales, then one strategy that you can use is to decide to get rid of negative keywords that are completely irrelevant to your ad.

Search term reports can be used to see how your ads performed when they are triggered by searches within a search network. As stated before, you can determine how closely actual searches are related to your selected keywords and also identify search terms with the highest potential. Keep in mind that the performance metrics on the search term report may differ from the data in the product groups, since it reports traffic for queries that meet Google’s privacy initiation.

When looking at your search report you will notice two columns, one is the keyword column and the other is the match type column. The keyword column tells you which one of your keywords matches someone’s search term and triggered your ad. This can be useful to help you see your keywords in action by giving you a visual representation on how the are matching to actual searches. The Match type column in your report tells you how closely the search terms that triggered your ads on Google are related to the actual keywords in your account. By determining which match types are working well for which keywords and searches, you can change/improve match types for all your keywords to optimize your campaign and bring in the right customers that are looking for your product or service.   

-Calvin Jordan

Week 3 Blog

This week,  I continued my quest of figuring out Adwords and understanding the tool. I took a look at a video that Professor Todd Kelsey shared, which was a Google Ad Tutorial by Surfside PPC. Some important golden nuggets that I got out of that video was setting up Google Analytics to link with your ad campaign, different types of goals for your campaign,  and the difference between sales and a lead campaign.

When I started to create my campaign for my cousin’s business I was a little intimidated because this is my first time ever experiencing this software. Professor Kelsey shared his experience of starting the process of search engine optimization and how challenging it was at first. He started with Facebook ads to help him get a feel for the Adwords process and eventually got the hang of it. He then transitioned into Google ads and noted how doable it actually is to run and operate a successful campaign. 

Personally, I have my account set up successfully. The next step, for me, would be linking my campaign to Google Analytics and establishing my goals.  I know my cousin wants to bring in more clientele to his business and drive profits. His main focus is increasing his website visits and traffic. He does not have a product to sell other than his personal skill set, so a sales based ad, like the one you would use for a Shopify account, would not be appropriate for his situation. Also, when setting up analytics for his campaign, I need to make sure I only include the search network and not the display network so I won’t soak up the budget and waste money.

 I look forward to diving deeper into this software and developing the knowledge to be able to successfully run ad campaigns and becoming Google Adwords certified.

Google Adwords

-Calvin Jordan

https://www.linkedin.com/in/calvin-jordan-754573109/

Week 2

For any business, keeping your cost as low as possible and your profits high is a great importance for the success of an operation. Since we are learning about digital ads, I would like to focus on quality score and reducing cost per click.

To have success, you have to have good content. You have to have something that people would be interested in for a long period of time. If you look at successful mainstream platforms today, they strive because of their good content and services that they provide to customers. For example, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Amazon. All of these companies have good content and offer services that people use on a daily basis. By having good quality, you can save yourself money when you choose to digitally advertise. When you optimize your quality score you can tremendously reduce your cost-per-click at the same time. Some areas that you can invest in to help increase your quality score can be; research keywords, negative keywords, and high quality Adwords.

I decided to analyze my cousin’s business and use the Google Ad preview tool to get an idea of how a google ad would look for my cousin’s campaign. Once you have finished writing your Ad, you can download it and upload it to google Adwords editor, which I thought was pretty neat. To give you some background on my cousin’s business, he is an athletic trainer and wealth practitioner who believes in the pursuit of the advancement of learning the science of the human body, the respect for each of the human body's maturation stages, and the human body's ability to adapt through varying Kinesiological and proprioceptive advancement practices that challenge the mind and body on a daily basis. His practices are designed to service most every athletic stage, age and ability, and guarantees positive results (with full participation). He has clientele in the Chicago area, Kankakee area, and Frankfort area. Optimizing his online campaign the right way can help my cousin bring in more clientele and reach people who are looking for a personal one on one health consultant. He has served over 7,000 people over his 10+ year span of training and consulting and offers sessions for individuals, groups, teams, classrooms and camps. Click on the link below to view his page and reviews from other people who have connected with Kalmese Wellness in the past.

Kalmese Wellness  

Week 1 Blog

As the first week of classes begin and we get back in the motion of college life, I can only feel relieved as I approach my final semester of my undergraduate year. It has been a long four and a half years, from me being at my highest peaks, to me being at my lows.  I'm excited to have picked up a search engine optimization class to gain more knowledge of a skill that can be useful in our generation.

Prior to this class, I have little to no knowledge of SEO, or how it operates. I know basic information, such as advertisers entering auctions to buy certain keywords that match the content that they are trying to promote. Other than that, I am simply a mere mortal when it comes to google adwords. However, I can only imagine how much money Google makes from just competitive auctions alone. 

I am really looking forward to putting in the time and effort to really learn and understand Google Adwords and obtain a certificate. I feel like with this knowledge, I can apply this as an entrepreneur maybe and use my skills obtained from Adwords to promote my personal E-Commerce business. Worst case scenario, I can apply the certificate onto my resume and LinkedIn to make it more attractive to potential employers.

-Calvin Jordan

https://www.linkedin.com/in/calvin-jordan-754573109/