(Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes)
Benefit: A post that is properly SEO optimized and linked within your own site.
Problem: Lack of knowledge or lack of time to implement the various SEO techniques.
Blog Better with a Virtual Assistant: Tip #3
How a Virtual Assistant can help:
- By performing keyword research for your site as well as your competitors. This can help make you more aware of phrases that can be used within your posts for maximum exposure.
- Can bold/italicize keyword phrases, add in appropriate headings and write custom title tags for your posts.
- Hyperlink to other applicable posts or pages within your site.
- Add in anchor text.
- Add ALT and TITLE attributes to your photos.
- Handle the SEO metadata for HTML title element, and meta description and keyword elements.
Once the above steps are completed for each post it would be a wise idea to run the posts through a service such as ScribeSEO. (Michelle’s affliate link, please help support Website In A Weekend’s guest authors. -dave)
Why: You want to increase your search engine rankings organically. The steps above, while easy to accomplish, can be time consuming.
What do you think, what SEO tasks would you add to this list that you would like to outsource?
Michelle Mangen is owner of Your Virtual
Assistant in Venice, Florida, providing virtual assistance
to small business owners who realize their time is better spent on
high value, high ROI tasks. Visit Michelle at
Your Virtual Assistant.
Michelle, this series is shaping up very nicely. We’re about half through!
Dave Doolin´s last post ..Olympic Blogging- Running your race
Dave – thanks again for this opportunity. I am working on putting together a beta package of this entire series that will only be offered to your website readers.
Hoping to get that fleshed out and live before my next “appearance here”.
:-)
Great tips. Outsourcing a simple 300 word article and submitting it to ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com will have a great effect on the ranking of a post.
Of course, don’t forget to add your link in the resource box of the article you submit! :)
Josiah Staggs | Tumblr Themes´s last post ..Antiquity
That is a good one: submitting to article directories.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..Content Strategy – Olympic Blogging Part II
Josiah:
Ezine is great (though a tad touchy on actually getting certain types of articles approved but definitely worth the extra effort, IMHO).
Another directory that seems to show decent performance for traffic is IdeaMarketers.
Dave – thanks for the link below, I will be sure to read that as well!
Working as a virtual assistant means you would work for the company from the comfort of your own home. Virtual assistants manage projects, handle accounting, deal with correspondence, set up and cancel appointments, and deal with incoming calls. These are the basic duties – depending on the company or the person you work for, being a virtual assistant could also mean making frequent travel arrangements for others, transcribing notes, contacting clients on behalf of your employer, and handling countless other jobs that come along with working in an office setting.
I enjoy actionable articles like this one. I’d love to see a more detailed explanation of “keyword research” with a step by step example.
I’ve heard about it a lot but I’m still not sure what it looks like in practice. A real world example would go a long way to helping me understand this important SEO strategy.
Thanks for the great content.
Siddhartha´s last post ..Write- Talk- Think
Siddartha:
I can’t think of any detailed step-by-step post on SEO Keyword Research off of the top of my head. If I think of one I will let you know – I learned how to do it (and it can be a lengthy process depending on the topic/niche) from someone else who has been doing it for years. In my case it was a type of “on the job training”.
A decent free tool to use to get an idea on keywords, traffic volume, etc. is Google’s Keyword Tool. http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/
Another decent free one is WordTracker http://www.wordtracker.com/
I still use these for my client’s research but also use a paid program as well because it gives me a more in depth look at competitor backlinks, Page Rank, etc. which are all very useful when planning out an overall strategy that also includes reaching out to influencers.
Michelle Mangen´s last post ..Selling a House with Social Media
I don’t resonate with keyword research at all, but I have high hopes that Alex Whalley can produce something that catches my interest. He’s targeting that area, specifically for bloggers.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..Getting in the race – Olympic Blogging Part III
Thanks for the referral and mention Dave.
You are right about that assumption though, I am actually in the middle of preparing an ebook on keyword research aimed specifically at the blogger (free of course)
WIll let you and Michelle know when it is done
Thanks Michelle for a unique and interesting post on a subject that is not mentioned much – I like
Alex´s last post ..Article Marketing – Part 1 What’s a Search Engine
I see a product opportunity there for me: helping people turn free stuff into righteous paid stuff.
Good way to put my education to use, really.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..Backlink Kickstart – Don’t wait- create your own
These are good SEO tasks that can be outsourced to a virtual assistant. I would add:
-Research sites that could potentially link to your site and build out a list.
-Research keywords that competitors are using
-Brainstorm topics that no one is writing about
-Research sites that link to your competitors and build out a list
-Arrange guest posting opportunities for the site owner on sites seeking guest posts
-Finding sites that will republish articles from your site with a link back to the original article
-Researching information that can be used in articles about a specific topic
-Write blog articles
-Research information for lists (like top 50 blogs about ___)
Cheers!
Chuck…
You know, I looked up the IP you’re posting from, it says Kent WA, which matches the website location (ostensibly), but proves nothing.
There is no there, “there.”
Where are you, Chuck? Are you in Washington, or somewhere else?
Here’s the thing: posting comments on these blogs is a person-to-person activity. It’s how we, as bloggers, build trust with each other. Everyone here can look up who I am, and match that with what I write.
It’s not an “SEO strategy.”
When corporations or companies act as “people,” this trust is destroyed. Actually, it doesn’t even get a chance to take root.
I’m seriously considering a policy of “No Gravatar, no comment.”
Because there’s no excuse not to have a gravatar. Even a corporation can have a gravatar using their logo.
I have no beef with outsourced SEO work, and when I outsource MY SEO, I’m going to do it with someone, some *person* acting as my agent for it. There will be a person and a face.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..Internet Marketers – Who SAYS its time for Bed
Talk about this some more. What is the role of a VA with a face? Doesn’t that dilute the identity of the blog(er)?
Short, simple and straight to the point. Highlight the end result, the steps and ultimately the benefits. Great “call to action” …
DiTesco´s last post ..Breaking- SponsoredTweets Lowers Payment Threshold
If you have 10 minutes, it’s worth checking the markup on this piece, then reading my recommendations on the Flipboard blogging article.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..Flipboard Blogging- Are you ready for the next wave
How did I miss #1 and #2? Too busy trying to manage my new VA? Maybe. Did you cover, how to determine production and performance? What do you look for and how do you measure effort and results?
Ralph:
Post #1 covered having a virtual assistant review (proof) to assure the post is free of errors/typos and is visually attractive.
Post #2 covered having a VA find suitable videos/pictures for posts.
None of this particular series will address production, performance and results. This series is intended to give bloggers an idea of just some of the tasks that could be outsourced to a Virtual Assistant. Anyone who blogs frequently can attest to how time consuming it can become from “start to finish” (and are we ever really “finished” with a post?)
Prior to implementing any change that could / would affect traffic to a site I would highly suggest recording all baseline numbers for future review and analysis.
Ralph: click on Michelle’s byline: http://website-in-a-weekend.net/author/michelle/
Dave Doolin´s last post ..Getting in the race – Olympic Blogging Part III
Thanks. There is no danger around here of feeling that you understand what you are doing.
Ralph:
LOL I understand what I’m doing just sometimes don’t always understand the “mechanics” of how it works behind the scenes from the search engines aspect.
I hadn’t missed the early pre-release release…I’m cheap.
So…isn’t BPE and Scribe a redundancy, or am I missing something?
Bob Hayles´s last post ..Merry Christmas…enjoy
Bob:
I haven’t read all of BPE yet (though I swear it’s on my to do list for this weekend) so I’m not sure of the answer to your question. Dave can probably answer that better.
Scribe and BPE are complementary.
I’ll have a Scribe review in an upcoming revision. I also have an affiliate link with Scribe, which you are quite welcome to use.
But you should use Michelle’s affiliate =)
Dave Doolin´s last post ..Upping Your Social Media Trust Factor Who’s in your circle
But the question is, is Scribe an add-on, furthering blog promotion outside of BPE, or is it simply a post-BPE “check” to make sure you have done all the things BPE will teach?
In short, does it just backup for BPE?
Bob
Bob Hayles´s last post ..Merry Christmas…enjoy
It’s also great to outsource linkbuilding and have a team of link builders to do the the tedious process of forum posting, article submission, and directory submission.
hi Michelle,
Most of us here wondering how to make good articles and how to produce better blogs than before. this article helps us to sharpen our knowledge about SEO and blogging. this is really well written.
;)
[Hey TryBPO, it's Dave here!
Michelle is a staff author on Website In A Weekend, and I'm the owner and editor.
I don't mind people promoting their businesses on Website In A Weekend. Really, I don't.
But you're essentially promoting a service which competes with Michelle, without providing your name, and without a decent gravatar. Ok, maybe your gravatar is ok. I'd prefer a head shot of the person who wrote the comment.
So I'm removing your link.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'd be delighted to feature your company, and be delighted to have your comments here on Website In A Weekend, but please, demonstrate your proficiency and professionalism with a real name. Perhaps you would be willing to write a guest post helping people understand both how what your service does benefits them, and why they should hire you to do it.
Thanks!
BTW, this is nothing personal, you just happened to be the straw breaking this camel's back.]
Hi Dave!
I just wanted to take a few minutes to apologize. It was not our intention to hijack Michelle’s (well written) self-promotion. We have a couple of new agents here in the Philippines that are doing some link-building training. They’re searching for related blog posts, (supposed to be) reading them, and responding with well thought-out comments.
Unfortunately, this post on your site is a bit generic. We’ll be using this as a point of training either today or tomorrow…thank you for pointing this out!
From our perspective…it’s great to have unassigned agents work on link-building for us. It both allows them to stay on top of interesting articles and findings in the industry and promotes our business so that they can become “assigned” agents.
We went through generic vs. non-generic replies yesterday but it looks like we still have a bit more training to do! Thanks for understanding!
Justin Cooke
p.s. I’m a real person…promise!
Justin @ TryBPO.com´s last post ..BPO Philippines- Indispensable Business Process Outsourcing Hub
Justin, thanks!
Definitely, have your folks use their own names, even their own gravatars. They’re acting as your agents anyway, and you will be setting the trend instead of following it.
I realize that has to be pretty scary, but I also believe this accountability is the wave of the future. I believe it increases everyone’s value. It certainly increases yours as both a thought leader and a business leader. There’s a lot of talk about empowering people, not much action. This would be action.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..Be Consistent to Write Better
That’s a good idea, Dave. I just sent out a message to the team via Skype to sign up for a gravatar account and post their own pictures. Some are complaining that they don’t have any “good” pictures of themselves…easy fix…I’ll be bringing my digital camera in tomorrow so that can get just the right shot!
Empowerment is important to us here. We’ve held social media training both for company and personal branding online. We understand our agents won’t always be working at our company…and hope some of the skills they learn while here will help them promote themselves via Web 2.0.
Thanks again, Dave!
Justin´s last post ..BPO Philippines- Indispensable Business Process Outsourcing Hub
It really is a win for everyone… except companies who believe treating people like mushrooms is the only way to succeed.
When I go into the hardware store, or the grocery store, or buy a book at the bookstore, I deal with Andy, or Suzie, or Martina, or Nguyen, or whoever. There need be no difference on line.
There’s several blog posts here. We’re changing culture!
Justin:
Nice to see you back here with a Gravatar and a human name.
I am not sure I have much to contribute to the ongoing conversation that you and Dave have had here, except, that I agree with him wholeheartedly regarding gravatars and being “human”.
I’d get into my tirade about commenting for backlinks and doing it authentically but that is a blog post in and of itself.
Michelle Mangen´s last post ..Want 24 Hour Access to the latest resources
It occurred to me that along with “searching for related blog posts,” why not also find a core group of blogs and bloggers who may not blog about SEO or outsourcing, but would benefit from your services.
I need to write a big blog post about this.