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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.
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.
A website is now an essential marketing tool for most businesses but having an online presence involves more than having a web address and an impressive website. Customers need to know how to find you – but how do they do this if they don’t know you exist? This is where ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ comes in. By now everyone has heard of Google and most customers use this search engine to find what they are looking for on the internet… but does Google know about your website and where does Google rank your website? History shows that customers rarely look beyond the third page of search engine results to find what they are looking for. Remember that the customer doesn’t know your business name so they won’t be searching for that – they’ll be searching for your industry or product.
Search Engine Optimisation for Google and the other search engines is essential if you want to have prospective customers viewing your website. There are a variety of factors involved in making sure your site ranks highly and attracts quality traffic. Search Engine Optimisation is also an ongoing process so it is important to view it as a long term proposition. A virtual assistant is a great business partner for working on your SEO. You can delegate tasks to your VA so you know that your site is continuing to be optimised for improved SEO results.
Once you’ve undertaken some SEO work on your website you need to check how successful it is. Web analytics using Google Analytics or other statistic products is an essential part of the SEO process. Analysing results means you can view your website’s traffic, see where they came from, how long they’ve spent on your site and where they’ve exited your site. There are many automation tools available with analytics software so either you or your VA can keep an eye on your progress.
Is updating a brochure on your ‘to do list’? Perhaps you want to update your templates with your new business phone number but you don’t have the time or expertise to do this. Or maybe you’d like to have your important documents in PDF format.
A Virtual Assistant can take care of all of these tasks with the minimum of fuss. Most VAs are highly experienced in Microsoft Office and PDF conversion and you may be surprised how little time it takes for your VA to get your documents looking ultra professional. The documents you send out either by email or post reflect your business image so it is very important that they look the part.
I am delighted to announce the safe arrival of my beautiful daughter, Imogen on Monday 15th June weighing 9lb 4oz. We are both doing very well and I must admit I’d forgotten how much newborns like to sleep!
