Online Marketing Assistance SEO and SEM

Building Better Content

2007-10-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

Everyone who has a website has been smacked in the head about content. You need more content, you need to update your content. They are all absolutely correct!

You've done all your research. You've researched your competitors. You've researched your keywords. You've drawn out and planned how and what you want to present on your website.

Now, we start writing content. Your website readers will generally fall into 2 categories.
1. They have somehow landed on your site from another site or link.
2. They have gone directly to your site.

Let's start with the visitors who have somehow landed on your site. How did they get there?
These are called unique visitors. I also call them potential new business. We all know it is harder to get new business that it is to sell to current customers. We want to WOW them. We want to keep them on YOUR site to buy our product or to send us an inquiry about our services.

So we have a list of the main areas/products/services we want to concentrate on with our business. Start writing around these key elements. They found you because they were interested in what you had to say. They were informed or curious. You now have to position your self as the foremost expert in this area. HUH? Start writing what you already know or even the normal questions you get from clients and buyers. If one person had that question, chances are there are many others who have had the same question. Now, educate. Research more if you need to or add what makes your products and/or services stand out from all the others. This should keep you writing for awhile. I always suggest you do not FORCE yourself to write content.

If the urge strikes, then go with the flow and write as much as you possibly can. Don't worry about spelling or grammar. We have technology for that these days. Write what you know, write what you believe in, write to educate your customers and clients.

Now that I have given you a lot of ideas, next time I will talk more about your customers that have come directly to your site.

Yes, I know you want traffic to your site and you want to be listed on the first page of Google. It will come, baby steps.

Need more help? You can always contact me through my VA website. I answer every email personally.

Research, Now What? What Does This Have to do with SEO or Getting Traffic to My Website?

2007-10-14T09:06:00.000-07:00

By now you should have all the tools neccessary to revamp or even start designing your website. If you already have a website, look at everything you've written down and researched. Do your goals and thoughts match your website? Have your services or products changed since the site was last updated?

Another idea is to send your url to someone who understands what you really do and have them review it. Your good friend or your spouse/significant other should be able to help you out. Don't let them look at your notes! You want a fresh objective opinion. DO NOT submit to a site review forum unless you are prepared to cry for hours. Webmasters are harsh and we are not looking at functionalty or design right now. We are looking to see if you are able to communicate your goals and what you sell to your customer. We will work on design and functionality later. Just look at the content.

Write it all down. Everything you see that needs to be changed, updated, or deleted.

Next, review your goals and services with what you wrote down.
Draw out as much as you can. It doen't matter if you want to draw boxes or an outline.
You want to organize your thoughts and the way other perceive your site. Try to group like categories and services together.
I ususually start with a big long rectangle as my home page and go from there.
Once you see on paper the general idea of your site. You'll be better able to see what you want and need to change.

If you don't have a website yet, look at competitor sites or even sites you like. Write everything down you like about them. Start drawing out your vision of your site.

A lot of people get so caught up in, the backlinks, the pagerank, the traffic, and the google listings, they miss the basics. Baby steps. You'll get there and you will be proud that you learned how to do something new and saved thousands of dollars. Hey, really I promise this SEO thing is not that hard!

Need more help? You can always contact me through my VA website. I answer every email personally.

More Research? For Better Optimization

2007-09-21T19:35:00.000-07:00

Does your company sell a product or service? These are questions you will need to to ask yourself FIRST... before you get cracking in the code for the spiders.

You already know if your company sells a product or a service. So, onto the next question. What products or services do you feel are the most valuable to your website? If you are service oriented, you don't want to offer a zillion services on your site. You want to offer what you know and what you do the best. If you sell products, what products are the MOST profitable to your business? I would generally start with 5 and elaborate on those.

Next, measurable results. You cannot get to where you want to go without knowing your starting point. SEO is a long process. You most likely will not see the results you want to see within 1 month. More realistically, you should start seeing some results within 6 months. So what results would you ultimately like to see? Everyone wants to be Number 1 on google, and Everyopne wants more traffic and sales to their sites. You HAVE to dig deeper. Crunch numbers. Where are are you sales now and where would you like them to be within 6 months? What kind of traffic do you have now and where do you want it to be?

Sit down and start writing out what you want to see. The results YOU want. Not what a SEO company is telling you is possible for thousands a month. They want your business. They will give you the moon and the stars.

Next, Competitor research and how you measure up compared to your competition. Are you taking lots of notes? Good! You'll need them in just a bit and all of your hard work will pay off!

I'll admit there are just some things I'm not good at. If you absolutely do not have time to invest in this stuff, you can contact me through my professional Virtual Assistant website for help. Or, just send me an email asking me a question. That's OK too. My opinion is always free and I almost always have an opinion to share.

Start with Basic SEO for Your Website

2007-08-24T11:12:00.000-07:00

Starting with the Basics.

There are all kinds of things you can to to make your site more search engine friendly. Today, I'm going to start with the basics. This is not rocket science and almost anyone, yes anyone can make their site more search engine friendly. If you don't know HTML, I suggest you start to learn the basics or get a teenager to teach you. There are also many free online HTML resources to help.

Decide on what keyword or keyword phrase(up to 4 words) you want to optimize your one page for. Not, the entire site and I don't ever suggest that you start with your main/index page. Use iwebtool and come up with key phrases that "fit" your content. Iwebtool is not as robust as Wordtracker, but it's free. You will be optimizing each PAGE for ONE specific keyword or keyword phrase. This is VERY important. You do NOT want a bunch of keywords on a single page. If you find you have numerous keywords and phrases in the content of of your page then you'll need to add additional pages.

Your goal is to have the most related content you can produce related to that specific key word or phrase on your page. A good rule of thumb is to have somewhere between 8-20%.

So, your homework is to research, research, research and make a list of all of your related keywords and how many times they are searched per month. Next, I'll talk about meta tags.

As always, if you feel like you already have too many tasks on your plate and just don't have time for basic optimization, you can contact me through my professional Virtual Assistant website for help.

Not A Writer? No Problem!

2007-08-22T06:07:00.000-07:00

Today I want to talk about adding content to your site. Does that mean you will need to spend hours and hours slaving at the computer in order to crank it out? No!

Your site needs fresh updated content at the very least weekly. So where is the best place to get it? I suggest doing 3 things:

1. Search the Article Directories for information on your topic. Some authors allow you to reprint their articles as long as you keep a source link. Be sure to check first!

2. Read other articles and stories related to your topic and write some quick content of your own or a review.

3. Add RSS feeds to your site

I'm in a bit of a time crunch today so this blog is short. Later, I'll talk about ways to get the "word" out about your site using some free methods of advertising out there.
Need more help? You can always contact me through my VA website. I answer every email personally

Baby Steps, Backlinks, and Blogs

2007-08-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

If you blog daily for 1-2 months you will see higher rankings in the search engines. Google loves backlinks. I choose Blogger to create and post my blogs. It's not that I don't like WordPress but Blogger is owned by Google. Doesn't it make sense to you then if you blog through Blogger it will be easier for Google to find you? Yes!! I like some of the features of Wordpress and I believe you can do a lot more with it than Blogger but my goal is also to increase my rankings so this is my own personal example (so to speak).

So, this leads up to my next step: Start a Blog on Blogger. Personalize it and Blog, Blog, Blog about your site and the topics you are passionate about.

There is NO quick way to get higher rankings in Google. Did you hear me guys? Don't fall for any of those ads out there! You may be at risk of your site being blacklisted. It takes baby steps and continuous effort. DO NOT get frustrated. Sometimes you may not see results for up to 6 months!

Why is everyone so obsessed with PageRank these days? Read #7 of the featured article at SiteProNews and you will start to understand why pagerank is inaccurate. Let me ask you this question. If your site was ranked on the first page in Google (organic search), and you were receiving visitors and converting those visitors into sales, would it matter to you if your pagerank was 1? Absolutely not!

The goal of your website should be to provide useful products, information, and/or services to your visitors. EVERYONE has an opinion about what you should or should not do to increase your Google rankings. They are all guesses and opinions, even mine. I can say what has worked for me in the past and what didn't. However, Google's algorithims change constantly so what works today may not work tomorrow.

Again, you just concentrate on providing a site that is useful to your visitors.

Start your blog today and you can learn more tomorrow!

Basic SEO Will Not Automatically Drive Traffic to Your Site!

2007-08-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

SEO and SEM are my passion as a virtual assistant. You do not need to pay firms thousands of dollars a month to get high rankings and more traffic. You just have to be resourceful! Most website owners believe if they do basic search engine optimization to their site they will open the flood gates and receive tons of traffic. This is simply NOT TRUE. When you optimize your site, you make it easier for the search engines to find you. You have to promote your site to get traffic.

The first step I always suggest to people who have websites is to sign up for a free Google Analytics account. You cannot tell if you are getting results unless you can measure where you started from.

Need to optimize your site but can't afford a big SEO firm? Join Cricket's free SEO class and learn how you can do it yourself.

So, those steps will get you started on your quest for higher rankings, more traffic, and more sales.

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