I suppose there will be varying opinions on whether this is worthwhile or not, but I do think the article makes good points, and I will definitely be applying some of these simple and, at worst, harmless changes.

Optimizing for Ask

Take a look. I'll be interested to hear your reactions!

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AnnaLisa Michalski, Sunny Words Writing Services

wow.. I certainly don't have the expertise to know about this.. Can't wait for Tess to return.. She will have tons of ideas I am sure!

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Winslow Girl Virtual Assistant
www.winslowgirlva.com
Taking Virtual Assistance to the Next Level

AnnaLisa, this an interesting article (my first thought was 'Ask!?!?' as it doesn't have a huge part of the market share - but they addressed that in the first paragraph )
Thanks for posting this link! It's generally the case that if you've optimized for Google, most other search engines will find you and index you equally quickly - but it's nice to have the info for the Ask City business listings - you can bet that these kinds of (physical) listings are highly underused in the VA industry and are a great way to gain more exposure for your practice.

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Yes, I thought Ask City was particularly interesting, too!

Another thing I found nice about the article was, every "basics of optimization" article I've read says pretty much the same thing. I've applied every technique I have the know-how and/or time to maintain, but it's not enough to achieve a SE listing with anything close to visibility. (Last time I checked, I showed up somewhere around the twentieth page of search results, at best, in each of the four most popular search engines.) The techniques in this one, though, are mostly new to me. It inspires a bit of new hope in me. My clients so far have come from other means, never a Web search, but I'm always hoping.

I'm not technical enough to judge whether they really are useful techniques (or will be some day, as the article predicts), but I'm excited about the possibility. And since I'm preparing for some changes in my Web site anyway in the next two to three weeks, I figured what the heck--it's worth a shot.

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AnnaLisa Michalski, Sunny Words Writing Services

Absolutely! 'Why not?' right?
Might as well optimize the heck out of it.
Our industry keywords are incredibly competetive and it is just about (but not entirely!) impossible to get onto the first page. Keep building links back to your site at viable, well managed, SEO optimized directories and you'll slowly but surely notice some movement there.

Also, check your page titles for keyword relevancy. If you're looking to rank for 'VA' relative keywords you'll do well to rewrite those. (and I don't see the words 'virtual assistant' in any of them.)

My SEO-guru husband wrote a few replies on member sites, relative to SEO in the Website Reviews section that you might find helpful - or you can always post your own site

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On the page titles? That's a new one on me. Everyone harps on keywords in copy, but titles will be a simple improvement to add to my list. Thanks!

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AnnaLisa Michalski, Sunny Words Writing Services

Yes, page titles are huge.
That's one of the reasons why blogs are indexed so quickly and easily by search engines - because a properly formatted blog automatically has the post title act as a page title (in permalinks, etc.) ....use the same concept on your site and you're one step ahead

(Just for the sake of those who aren't familiar - page titles are what displays at the very TOP of your browser window - like for this post the page title is something like 'Interesting article - Virtual Assistant Forums - Windows Internet Explorer'- search engines use those too rank your pages for search results too so don't forget to write keyword rich titles for your website pages )

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