My Online Textbook

After a brief hiatus to help out with my cousin’s wedding, I am back and still learning even though I’m done with classes for the semester at Moraine Park Technical College.

For some of my classes we use an online textbook and pay for access to tutorials. It’s like having a really, really big textbook that uses video to cover tons of topics relating to technology and computer programs. I am taking advantage of the fact that I have a year subscription. Why not use it during the summer to learn more about something or to learn something new?

I’ve learned how search engines work in class and a little about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The video tutorial site we use for class has an informational tutorial for SEO. For those of you who’ve never heard of SEO, basically, a search engine takes what the visitor is looking for and finds what it thinks is the most relevant websites by searching for the key phrases on Web pages. This topic is so important in Web design. Every company wants to know more about it and how to use keywords effectively. They want their website to be as high up on the search engine results as possible so people can find their site.

Some of the material so far has been review, but some of it is new. I’ve learned more about how to research keywords so I’m reaching my target audience and choosing keywords that are high in search queries but low in usage by competitors’ websites.

I’m about halfway through the tutorial videos. It’s over 2 hours long and is broken down into chapters, just like a book. When I’m done with this one, I may see if there are some tutorials on how to use programs on my computer that I know how to use but would like to be better at using them.