Our Virtual Assistant Blog has now moved to our main website – we hope to see you there!
How can you come up with keyword ideas? A good starting point is to use online keyword software to get some more ideas. There are programs like Overture that can take one keyword and then they will return many more for you to look consider. These keywords can be used in your content and elsewhere on your website. Many Internet marketers also use WordTracker’s Free Keyword Tool to help them determine which keywords are popular. These keyword programs obtain their results from the various search engines so you can be assured that your keywords represent current parameters.
Search engine optimization is useful for your website content but the content is not the only place where keywords are important. Use your chosen keywords to get ranked through other places on your site and other sites too. Here are just a few:
- Headlines (for each web page and article)
- Anchor text (for links within articles and elsewhere on the page)
- Picture tags
- Tabs (pulldown menus)
Search engine optimisation helps you to create a relevant website for the search engines. After you take the time to set up your website with all the information that your customers will want to see, use your keywords. This gives the search engines what they need to rank you well so that those customers can find your products or services when it’s most important.
Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour programme today has featured two of the UK’s most experienced Virtual Assistants, Emma Walker and Justine Curtis – the broadcast can be downloaded from the BBC website. It’s great to see that the media is giving the VA industry air-time – not only as a career option for women but also as a great administrative solution for businesses in tough economic times.
So, how exactly do you get your website up to the top spots in the search engines? There are several tools and resources that can help with achieving great SEO results for your websites. Mainly they revolve around keywords and keyword phrases but the problem is what deciding which words to use for your particular business niche.
This is when you need to think like a customer. After all, you own a business but at times you are also a customer. If you were one of your customers, what words would you enter to find the information that your potential visitors are trying to find? This may be a short list but one that you can begin to conduct keyword research with.
Need help with SEO? Versatile Assistant offers SEO services for SMEs looking to improve their web presence.
I have just completed our new website for new VAs who may be interested in our licence opportunities. If you would like to become a Virtual Assistant – check it out and download the info pack. You can also find a special fan page on Facebook.
Position, position, position!
Research has found that over 60% of all Internet searchers will click on one of the top 3 websites they are presented with. The majority of those will choose the number 1 ranked position. Having one of the top three positions, especially on Google, can result in a much greater amount of web traffic. However, it’s not just the amount of traffic that’s important. After the 3rd spot, the response from search engine searchers diminishes greatly. This means that the visitors that you get from position 4 and below are less likely to become paying customers. So if you are online to generate business it is especially important to aim for a top 3 position in the search engines.
Need help with SEO? Versatile Assistant offers SEO services tailored to your business.
To be successful online in business or even just for personal sites, you need to get your website noticed. How can anyone read or buy from you if they can’t find you? But, how do you get yourself out there so people CAN find you? That is where search engine optimisation, more commonly known as SEO, comes into play.
But what exactly is SEO?
Search engine optimisation, or SEO for short, is a series of tools, or thought processes and tasks completed on your web pages, that help your website or blog to get noticed by the search engines. Search engines, particularly Google, use clever things called bots and spiders to crawl sites for anything that makes them relevant to search parameters entered by Internet visitors.
Most people either don’t know what they are looking for or they don’t know where to find it on the Internet. They rely on the search engines especially Google to do the work for them. The words that visitors use in the search boxes are termed “keywords” by Internet marketers. When you use the same words in various places on your site, search engines will rank your web pages in relation to others using the same keywords. The site’s who use research and optimisation techniques the best, will end up on top of the list. So why does being at the top of search engines matter? More on that next time!
Need help with SEO – Versatile Assistant offers SEO services tailored to your needs.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, the list goes on!
Social Marketing is well and truly here but how do you find time to keep them all updated or even set up profiles on these interfaces. Your Virtual Assistant can help you tap into the potential of social marketing by setting up professional profiles and pages for you, updating them with important information and monitoring your success with these applications.
If your Virtual Assistant is familiar with these applications they can also show you time-saving ways of updating them automatically and maximising the time you have available for this form of marketing.
Many small businesses start out with the best intentions and set up a database or CRM system but as their business becomes busier they are unable to dedicate the time to update the system or utilise it to its’ full advantage.
A Virtual Assistant can help you update your database with that huge pile of business cards and then maintain it on a regular basis for you. In difficult economic times your existing database is one of your greatest assets so it is important to ensure it contains current information that you can tap into.
Would you love to know what your competitors are up to but you just don’t have the time to ring around or check them out? Your Virtual Assistant can undertake research on your behalf… perhaps you’d like to know what your competitors are charging, what their customer service is like or find out about the new product or service they are offering.
