Continuing in my impromptu series about parenting and web marketing...
My older daughter J has hounded me for months about putting together a website for her considerable collection of art. And like any apprehensive parent, I keep putting it off, giving her the usual "I'm too busy" excuse so it never materializes. Of course, I also don't want it to be a magnet for possible lurkers and other similar slimy individuals.
To be honest, starting a website is a pain the butt. Trying to do two of them as part of my business - and planning a third for social media content copywriting and a fourth for a monetized site - is tough enough. Well, let me rephrase that. Starting them is easy...including worthy stuff on it is the hard part.
J (right) and her sister, who'll probably want her own blog someday
What exactly is "worthy stuff?" The usual suspects - quality content, inbound links, visuals like tagged video and photos, high ranking and low competitve keywords and phrases, all the geeky HTML code that the big Google god will love. I just ran a site audit on Wordtracker and finally realized some of the issues that may be keeping my site from ranking higher - <mind blown>. It was good to see exactly where I need to improve things, rather than think I know where to. So even though I'm a web marketing strategy expert, I still have things to learn. But I can teach a few things, especially to an almost-12-year-old who is going to be more tech-savvy than I am, if she's not already.
As J is now moving on from elementary to middle school, and her options for summer camp activities dwindle, I decided she can have her website. But it's really going to be a blog, so she can also maintain her writing skills, as well as post her artwork.
Of course, I'm going to supervise this whole process, giving her guidance about content (but nothing like what I have to do), writing for an audience and making a point, clearly and succinctly. This is going to be an interesting endeavor, and I have no idea where it's going to lead.
Let me ask for your opinion...am I doing the right thing? I hope so.