Archive for marketing online
Google Search Engine Optimization Tips
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Google is by far the largest search engine on the planet. Though Bing and Yahoo have merged, they still haven’t made a dent in Google’s market share. If you want to get free traffic, optimizing your site for Google is the most important thing you can do.
By and large, what you do that benefits your Google ranking will also help you improve your rankings with other search engines.
Here are a few tips for optimizing your website for Google SEO.
Start with High Quality Content
The content in your website is like the engine of a sports car. It’s what truly matters. Having great artwork on a sports car is a nice touch, but without a good engine, it doesn’t matter.
Marketers who focus on things like link building or SEO tactics at the expense of content will inevitably lose out. Google is constantly updating their algorithm to separate the high quality content from the chaff.
Design Does Matter
In addition to creating high quality content, aim to create a high quality website overall.
After Google’s “Panda Update,” the quality of your web design is starting to play an important part (learn more about how Google Panda has changed SEO). You can read more about Panda on Web Pro News here and here.
Google knows that great websites have great design. Without getting too much into the technical details, Google has essentially trained a complex artificial intelligence robot to spot the difference between good design and poor design and reward good sites accordingly.
Hire a professional designer to do your site. Or, if you’re doing the site yourself, at the very least hire a designer to do your header or look over your site.
Build a Variety of Backlinks
Build backlinks to your site using a variety of different tactics and methods.
There is no “golden method” when it comes to link building. Sometimes getting one PR 5 link is what it takes to get to #1, at other times you need 200 PR 0 to PR 1 links.
The best way to take your site to the top is to throw in a mix of all different kinds of tactics.
Use traditional press to get high quality backlinks. Do guest blogging on high PR related websites. Use low quality backlink tactics like social bookmarking or article marketing. Throw them all together and see what sticks.
When you get backlinks, optimize both your home page and subpages within your website.
Pay Attention to Internal Linking
Internal linking matters. It matters a great deal, in fact. Try to interlink all the pages on your website through a “related articles” section at the bottom of your post.
Silo your content so that different topics on your site are split into different “groups.” Grouping your articles is one of the proven methods of effectively passing link juice throughout a website.
These tips will help you get legitimately ranked in Google, which will help you rank in all the other search engines as well. Lay the groundwork and don’t take shortcuts with SEO. It’ll take a little while for your site to really get traction, but when it does, it’ll be unstoppable.
Link Building Mistakes
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Link building is an important aspect of a successful search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. The more quality links you have coming into your site, the better. It the sites linking to you are quality sites and contain your keywords, even better. However, on the path to the number one spot on the page rankings, many business owners make a few common link building mistakes.
Limiting the sites you target for backlinks – Yes, high page ranking websites and pages are lucrative opportunities. However, don’t neglect the smaller businesses either. Focus on getting a wide variety of links from relevant websites.
Not using keywords, anchor text, in your backlinks – Keywords are your bread and butter. Not only do they help motivate actual clicks, they help the search engines index properly. And they boost your search engine ranking, which is of course the ultimate goal. Skip using anchor text like <Click Here> or <Download Now>. Use your keywords!
Too many links on a page – Too many links on the page confuses not only the website visitor but also the search engines. It divides the power of your links and minimizes their effectiveness. Instead, choose your links wisely. Choose the ones that seem to carry the most weight.
Counting on social media to provide links – Social media links are not considered quality links. And most networking sites nofollow external links. (A nofollow is when a webmaster tells the search engines to essentially not pay any attention to links.) However, don’t neglect social media as a tool to generate awareness for your content and your website.
Placing backlinks only to your homepage – One rule of thumb is to identify key strategic pages and work to increase backlinks to those pages. Your landing page likely already receives an abundance of links.
There are of course other mistakes which it shouldn’t be necessary to mention. However, just to make sure we’re all on the same page and striving for success, these mistakes include linking to link farms or link exchanges. They also include avoiding any black hat or spammy behaviors. And no cloaking.
Link building is about creating great content, building relationships online with your associates, prospects and customers. It’s about planning and creating a strategy. The old “throw spaghetti to the way to see what sticks” approach won’t get you where you want to go. Avoid these mistakes, create a link-building plan, and regularly assess your success.
How to Use Google Analytics
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Google Analytics is a handy tool you can add to your website pages to learn valuable information. This information can help you fine tune your website and your business. Let’s take a look at some of the information Google Analytics offers and how you can use this information to your advantage.
What Google Analytics Provides
A Google analytics report breaks down the information into a list of sections. They include:
Site Usage which includes:
- Visits – Total number of visits to your site
- Page views – Total number of pages visitors looked at
- Pages/visit – Average number of pages viewed per visit
- Bounce rate – The percentage of users who left after viewing only one page on your site. Aim for under 50%.
- Average time on site – How long a visitor stayed on your website
- New visits – The percentage of people who haven’t visited your site before.
Visitor Overview – this section breaks down the visitor information into more detail including the number of pages viewed overall and the average page view per visit. This information can be invaluable. However, it takes a bit of analysis to find the noteworthy information.
For example, if you notice that there are only three page views per visit that might make you worry. People aren’t spending much time on your website. However, if the majority of your visits are not new visitors, meaning people are coming back to your website for information. Then the number of page views may not be so concerning. It’s likely that the visitors are just reading your new content.
Traffic Source overview – This section tells where your traffic comes from. It lists how many came from search engine traffic, for example Google Organic, but how many came from direct traffic and from referring sites. You can use this information to fine tune your traffic generation strategies.
For example, if you find that 60% of your visitors are coming from Google Organic, that’s good. However, if only 15% are coming from referring sites, you may want to increase your link building strategy. And vice versa, if you find you have low Google organic numbers, you would then know it’s time to work on your keyword placement and optimizing your content and your site.
The traffic source overview also tells you what top keywords people used to find your content. This is of course extremely helpful when creating your content plan and learning what keywords people use and what they’re looking for on your website.
Content Overview – This section of the report lists the top content and the page views for each piece. This is ideal information for building and creating your content strategy. It’s more beneficial however, if you compare the information over time and look for trends. Is your top article always a tips sheet? Is it always on the same basic topic? Google Analytics compares your present week to the prior week. However it’s more advantageous to look at your content overview information over a longer period of time.
Google analytics provides valuable information for you to fine tune your keyword strategy. It helps you learn what content people prefer on your site. And it helps you learn where your visitors are coming from so you can adjust your traffic generation strategies as needed. It’s not a crystal ball that can put you inside the minds of your prospects and visitors. However, the information Google Analytics provides is extremely useful to build your business and your business website.
Sharon Williams Stops By on the OIVAC Blog Hopping Tour
Posted by: | CommentsSharon I am so glad to have you here today and I appreciate you coming. If there is one thing that I am passionate about, it’s virtual assistants. They totally rock don’t they? The educational opportunities available to them this year at OIVAC are mind blowing. If they don’t have their tickets yet, they need to get them right now at www.OIVAC.com!
Now onto Sharon!
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Hello Becki,
Lady, I’m glad to be able to stop by and chat. My train ran out of fuel, and I had to make a pit stop and recharge the engines. But, I’m back on track and ready to go full steam ahead. Pump your questions into my engine and let’s chug along the virtual assistant education and information track. Whatcha got?
What are some of the little known target markets a VA can focus on?
Becki, I’m asked this question often, and have created a short list for your readers:
• financial planners
• architects
• nonprofits
• churches
• artists
• chiropractors
• appraisers
• bookkeepers
• accountants
• associations
• building contractors
• import/exporters
• market research companies
There are literally hundreds of “little known” target markets VA can focus on to build their practices. These markets may not have much information about or even be aware of virtual assisting. Because of this lack of awareness, approaching these industries provides an excellent opportunity for a VA to penetrate these groups and become the “go-to”, resourceful VA.
To accomplish this, identify the market/profile that best matches your idea of a “dream customer”, conduct research and survey the particular industry, become knowledgeable about the group’s issues/problems, communicate with members and eventually be able to offer solutions. In other words, first identify their pain, let them know you are aware of it, possess the solution and provide the soothing balm.
How can a VA find the right client for them?
Who you work with is your choice and has a huge impact on your happiness, productivity, quality, and the future of your business. Working with the right clients is absolutely critical. The wrong client can kill your morale and cost you big opportunities. Working with the right client isn’t work at all — it’s a pleasure.
However, there are several factors to consider during your evaluation:
Feeling Trust!
Working closely with someone is a rather personal experience and you want very much to positively present this person in a way that represents the business in an exceptional manner. However, if a person bombards you with a million questions and wants to know why you can do a better job than someone else, you’re probably heading in the wrong direction fast!
Consciousness of Success
The person you work with has to be willing to control their own destiny. I mean, they cannot place their success in your hands – and should not hold YOU responsible if they do not achieve it. Each business owner is responsible for their own success, and once an individual recognizes (and projects it), they have developed the consciousness of success I refer to.
Conduct a Thorough Interview
As part of our interview process, drilled down into the potential client’s business model and financial objectives. Ask lots of questions to see if you can contribute significantly to a company’s success and to see if they meet your criteria for the right fit.
See the Opportunity and Weigh the Risks
Clients are an important and valuable asset and a major investment of time, processes, brain power, etc. Complete this brief exercise to help determine your dream client.
1) Get a piece of paper and draw 3 columns.
2) In the first column list your clients in order their profitability – most profitable at the top, least profitable at the bottom.
3) In the second column, write the annual revenue the client brings to your company.
4) Use the third column to apply adjectives to each client (ex: pleasant, fun, easygoing, motivated, distrustful, draining, etc.)
5) Now go back and circle all of the clients that have negative adjectives.
Usually, the most PROFITABLE (don’t confuse this with gross sales!) are also the ones with the most positive associations (pleasant, easy, friendly, respectful, loyal). The least profitable usually have the most negative associations (high maintenance, untrusting, hagglers, etc).
Bottom line, carefully define your dream customer. Write down as many things about them as possible – their annual revenue, personality, industry, business approach, and the amount of money they spend with your company. In most cases, this description will align with your clients who are at the top. Now, commit to using the criteria you just defined as your new rulebook for accepting new clients. If a prospect doesn’t fit, then respectfully decline the engagement. Only take on new work that is a match. Pretend your business is an exclusive nightclub and you only let a select few past that velvet rope. And yes, your company is that special!
*Exercise provided by: www.kinesisinc.com
What kind of technical education opportunities are available at OIVAC?
OIVAC 2010 has quite a bit of technical education opportunities planned this year. They include:
• Landing Business Success with a Facebook Fan Page (FBML)
• Shopping Carts for VAs
• 1Shopping Cart Mastery: Marketable Skills to Make You a Star
• Digital Security Salad
• How to Incorporate Camtasia Screencasts into Your VA Practice
• Creating a Membership Site to Use with Your Clients
• Incorporating Video into Your VA Marketing
• How to Add Website SEO Services to Your VA Practice
• Basic PC Maintenance – Tools to Keep Your PC Functioning
• Turbocharge Your Wordpress Blog
• How to Get Out of Second Gear and Get Your Wordpress Site Moving
But don’t despair! We also have excellent business and marketing sessions scheduled, too. Stop over to the seminar schedule to check out dates/times and registration packages.
Becki, it was great to stop over today. I particularly enjoyed discussing finding “the right client” and hope the information will open some eyes and help struggling VAs reevaluate how they decide who to partner with.
Next stop, Amy Blesser’s Virtual Services 4 U, where I’m sure Amy will ask very interesting questions.
Sharon Williams is President of The 24 Hour Secretary and chair of the Online International Virtual Assistants Convention. Don’t forget to stop by OIVAC and checkout our lineup of savvy business owners. Visit the schedule and register for the Technology or Business/Marketing Tracks to propel your business to its next plateau.
kO′ch VA adj. 1. a highly specialized and niched virtual
assistant who is in tune with their coaching clients and customizes solutions based upon their individual needs and goals 2. differs from a general virtual assistant as they only partner with members of the coaching industry [syn: 






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