Let me start off with a disclaimer. I’m not an SEO expert. But you don’t have to be an expert to get your website optimized for Google. Before I get a bunch of emails on the subject – I know there are lots of other search engines, but for simplicity (and because it’s my search engine of choice). Besides, no one Yahoo’s anything, right?
Back to business. There are a lot of ways you or your virtual assistant can help your site become a little more Google friendly.
1. Take advantage of the little things. Everyone knows that you should utilize the title tags of your images. Some people stuff it full of their keywords, others are literal in their descriptions, and others leave it as the default of whatever happened to be there when they downloaded/uploaded the picture.
Your chair should be pulled up in between. See the picture up there? The one of the Google stress ball? The title tag is “Virtual Assistant gives quick tips on how to optimize your website for Google”. It beats “google ball” or some crazy string of letters and numbers. I have some keywords in there, but it’s not stuffed to the point where the Google Geeks (and I say that lovingly) look at my site and scream SPAM.
2. SEO doesn’t have to be ugly. You know how the first tip of any SEO primer course is to wrap the keywords you want to rank for in an H1 tag? Open up a Word document and type your keyword. Now use the default H1 tag. Wow. Big. The good news is that you can manipulate the default H1 properties to be a little more pleasing to the eye.
3. SEO is expensive. Okay, this is a little misleading because to hire someone who truly knows SEO (as much as anyone can) it will be expensive. But just like I’m pointing out in this post, there are a lot of things that you can do with little or no cost.
Picking your ranking keywords shouldn’t be a shot in the dark. Using a tool like WordTracker will help you immensely. You choose a keyword that you think you’d like start optimizing your website for and WordTracker will show you how popular it is and show you some alternative choices and longer tail keywords. There are two versions – paid and free – and for most people (especially just starting out) the free version should be just fine. If you use the free version, you’ll be given 99 additional keywords that revolve around your keyword. The big difference between the free and paid version is that the free version will only include additional phrases with your original keyword. The paid version will explode your world with new ideas.
So lets say you search for Virtual Assistant. The free tracker will give you things like “virtual assistants”, “hiring a virtual assistant”, and “at home virtual assistant”. But unless you use the paid version, you won’t get the explosion of ideas like “VA specializing in SEO”. You can check out the difference in the two by grabbing the 7 day trial here. Cancel before it’s over so you’re not charged if you don’t plan on keeping the service.
4. A few last quick tips. You want your page to be keyword dense, but not to the extreme. For example, how many times did you read Virtual Assistant on this page? The keyword density is good. But something to keep in mind is that if you tip the scale – either way – you’ll lose. Too little and Google won’t really notice. Too much and Google will think it’s spam. (not to mention your page would look ridiculous if every other line contained the word Virtual Assistant.)
Update your page. Google loves blogs because they are (usually) updated regularly. Think of the difference between how often you update your blog and how often you update your static pages. Change in content brings Google back for more (not to mention your audience).
Don’t ignore your meta tags. In days gone by, these were the end-all-and-be-all for getting your page ranked. While Google doesn’t give much of a whoop-de-doo about them anymore, it IS what shows up when your page shows up on the search engine. If this is descriptive, then people are more likely to click. And that is the overall goal, right?
Anchors away. In my link to Wordtracker, the anchor text was “click here”. It’s the words that you click to go to the link. Anchor text is a pretty important piece of real estate and you shouldn’t really be giving it up to any old “click here” phrase. If you noticed the top of this post, you’ll see that the anchor text is “virtual assistant”. The link is to my website, and it’s a keyword for which I’d like to optimize my site. Anchor text. Don’t ignore it. And if people are linking to you, ask them to use the anchor text of your choice.
So that’s the tip of the iceberg, but it’s a good start on optimizing your website. It’ll also keep you busy long enough for me to put together another post on SEO. In the meantime, leave a comment or email your questions about SEO.
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