Okay, so I am extremely a newbie when it comes to SEO. I am reading and learning, or at least trying to comprehend. All the talk about keywords, metatags etc.. refers it seems to the websites that you build using HTML or whatever, but what about the websites that are offered by godaddy, MS small biz live or any of the other plug in sites for those of us that don't know any code. I use MS live office small biz and I am wondering how would I go about SEO for my site? Any tips?
thx, diana

Diana - You can optimize your text by including keywords, using headlines, including alt tags, etc. According to a course I recently took, the number one most important factor in SEO is how many and what quality of other websites link to yours. So it's really the networking, social media, and relationship building that benefits you the most in SEO, and none of that has anything much to do with the html of your site.
Although, I will add, your site has to keep their attention once a visitor does come by; otherwise all your SEO efforts are in vain. So you may need to either learn html or get some help to ensure that your site is optimized in terms of user interface to make the most of your traffic. I'll explain more if that's unintelligible to you.

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Mary H. Ruth/Virtual Writing & Communications
http://www.writingVA.com

Yeah, I gotta admit that it still confuses me a little. I am not opposed to learning HTML but I am not sure on how to go about doing even that. I am also confused on how to get google to list my site. I can go to it by putting in my addy but I get nothing when I google my business name. Sorry to be such a newbie at SEO etc..
Thanks,
diana

One of my favorite topics

I think that while it's true that quality links back to your site will aid in SEO the reality is that Google returns search results from your site based on the content on your pages as well as your page titles and meta description. So, highly optimized content really is key. The frustrating thing about free sitebuilders, or even paid ones for that matter, is they will often have very messy code that can actually prevent the search engines from properly indexing your site.

If at all possible, I'd recommend using WordPress on your own domain as a website foundation, rather than something like Homestead or MS Live. You'll still have the flexibility and ease of use without the chunks of useless code clogging up your internal SEO.

No matter what you use to build your site though, attention to your content, image tags, etc. is most important. Because no matter who links to you, if there's nothing worthwhile on the page for Google to say 'hey, this is relevant!' you're not going to garner returns.

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Using Google's keyword selection tool located at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and type in virtual assistant. You'll get about 50 keywords or phrases. I literally googled each one of them and identified which ones were relevant to my business. With that refined list in hand, I placed those keywords in my metatags AND I wrote my first sentence on each page that utilizes my top 4 keywords. Tess is right in that the search engines, e.g. Google look for the first couple of sentences that contain those words used in the search. If they're there, then your chances of getting listed in the search results are much higher. Hope this helps.

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Trish Hallmark
www.thvaonline.com

Hi Trish, actually my reply wasn't intended to read as a reference to the first couple of words on the page - and if it did, that was my mistake.

Ideally, she's going to have proper descriptions for each page so Google will grab those for display in the return - but the **entire page** of content is indexed and used in the algorithm for returns - that is assuming the search spiders can index the entire page of content. As is the case with sitebuilders often the code used to create the page actually prohibits indexing at all, or in part.

Thanks for the opportunity to clarify.

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Tess, you're welcome...more likely my misinterpretation precipitated your need to clarify.

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Trish Hallmark
www.thvaonline.com

have you used your meta tags? i don't know a lot about them, but apparently they're important!

Originally Posted by THVA Trish

Using Google's keyword selection tool located at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and type in virtual assistant. You'll get about 50 keywords or phrases. I literally googled each one of them and identified which ones were relevant to my business. With that refined list in hand, I placed those keywords in my metatags AND I wrote my first sentence on each page that utilizes my top 4 keywords. Tess is right in that the search engines, e.g. Google look for the first couple of sentences that contain those words used in the search. If they're there, then your chances of getting listed in the search results are much higher. Hope this helps.

Thank you Trish for sharing this link. That is neet!! I sat here and played with it with many different words for a LONG time... LOL! What a neet tool.

Thanks again,
Bobbi

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Bobbi Hunter
http://www.huntervaservices.com

Thanks for the information. SEO is something that greatly confuses me. I am thinking of building my website through weebly.com but I'm not sure its the best choice as far as SEO is concerned.

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Jocelyn Y. Wilson