Description : 15 SEO Tips for Virtual Assistants and Home-based Businesses. It also works for all website owners and increase their chances of getting seen in search engine searches.
We recently conducted a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basic and Advanced Course and I’d like to share a few tips for virtual assistants and other home-based businesses who rely on the internet to offer their products and/or services.
Since your website is your “virtual office”, it is important to optimize it first before thinking of going outside. Once your website design, content and feature is SEO friendly, it’s easier to add more strategies.
Big companies have a team of people that handles their SEO activities but if you’re on your own, it’s hard to keep up with them so I suggest to start with the basics.
1. Identify the product or services you want to offer and decide if you want to market locally or go global. Example: “shoes” as a keyword to be optimized is too generic. You might want to use “running shoes” as an alternative to narrow your market and increase your chances of getting in the top page.
2. Clearly describe your Ideal Clients. Be more specific. Make your website copy as if you’re talking directly to them. If possible, include them in your keyword, too.
Example: ladies, 21 above, working in a corporate setting, health enthusiast, into running and jogging, from all over the globe.
3. Choose a Domain Name that has your product or services “keywords” in it. It would be better if your Ideal Client’s keywords are also there. More specific is better.
For example: RunningShoesforLadies.com or ladiesrunningshoes.com
4. Create a short description of your products or services that has your keywords in it (56 characters to be exact). Please take note that you can choose 5 or more keywords to optimize. You can check google on the best keywords to use or you can simply hire an SEO consultant for best keywords for your business. Keywords alone is a big topic and I will tackle that on my next posts.
5. Optimize your website content for your keyword. It should be written in a way that your keywords will come up in the body and even in the titles of your copy and blogs.
6. Each blog has descriptions, too and make sure that your keywords also appear there, though not too much.
7. Your headers 1, 2 and 3 should also contain your keywords. If you’re not sure what they are, ask the help of your website developer.
8. Proofread your content. Grammar and spelling also matters as google thinks of your site as “low quality” or “less authority” if your content is poorly written. If you feel this is not your strength, hire someone who can do it for you.
9. Update your site regularly. Add contents or blogs. Freshly updated sites gets indexed more often as compared to a website that hasn’t been touched for a year or so.
10. Longer blogs now are given more points. Google treats it as someone that gives more value to its audience.
11. Don’t reuse or spin old articles. Google knows it. Create fresh and original contents that will help your audience solve a problem or give them information about something.
12. Make sure your keywords appear on your title tag including your country, city and ideal clients if possible.
13. Always have an optin and a valuable freebie. This will give you a chance to follow-up on your visitors and make your offers.
14. Get your google authorship. If you’re constantly blogging, this is a must.
15. Install google analytics and check on it often. If you don’t know how to read it, learn it. You’ll find it useful in your marketing strategies. Believe me, it isn’t so hard as it sounds.
It’s always easier to learn the basics and set up your website’s SEO foundation from the beginning rather than go back and fix everything. If your website is new, it’s better to start now. Ask an expert if you don’t know how it’s done.
If you had your website up for a couple of months or years and no SEO effort has been made, it’s time that you start one. It’s like having a business card that stays in your wallet and nobody sees it.
Investing in SEO consultants and managers will pay off eventually. It’ll save you tons of marketing efforts in the future and will give you a steady flow of client inquiries through your website visits.
Treat your website as your office and most often than not, walk-ins come in and they’re the ones who are more serious about buying so, make sure your office is can be found and is customer-friendly. Give them the BEST website experience and most of all, give them what they’re looking for.
Have some more SEO questions? Type them in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer them all.
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