Hi,

I just started my VA business and would like to improve the SEO for my website, but I can't really afford to pay someone else to do it. Which are effective ways to build your SEO?

Thank you.


Yaritza

Yaritza,

There are several things that you can do yourself however building SEO and your brand takes time. First things first, you need to know what you want to achieve and I am thinking that it is to bring potential clients to your website.

1. Content-compelling content will help with search. Choose your message wisely and use targeted keywords in your content. You should design your content to attract your clients and not the search engines so be sure you include what makes you unique over your competition.

2. Friendly design-make sure that your site is optimized by including titles on your pages, descriptions on your images, and quality text links. Also be sure that your pages are optimized for search engines to index (index, follow as opposed to no index, no follow)

3. Fresh content-keep your content fresh. Write a blog, revise some content, make updates so that the engines come back to your page. Track your stats to see where you need to tweak and what is making clients come or better yet stay on your site.

4. Be active in social media-be sure that your profiles are complete (that includes here at VAF), be active and concentrate on what ties into your business. Many of my non-referral clients have found me here or on other social networks because I am an active participant.

Just remember then when clients do find you to be sure to ask how so. This way you will know which efforts are paying off and which ones you will need to work on.

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Lee Drozak
My Office Assistant

To follow up on what Lee said in her first point - write for your ideal client first. Do some keyword research but don't be so focused on SEO that your writing suffers. Know who you are writing for, what their "pain" areas are, and how you and your business can help them solve their problems.

Good luck!
Gladys

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Gladys Strickland
GS Business Resources

Content really is key - good content on your site which is engaging for your visitors but also appeals to the search engines. This is a hard balance but ideally you should have at least 300/400 words of content on each page, the contet should be keyword dense (don't go overboard though) to tell search engine spiders what your page is about. Also consider internal linking within your content (keyword rich links to other parts of the site allows search engines to discover other parts of your site easily)

Keeping with content, dynamic content is important - fresh content shows search engines that your site is updated on a regular basis and encourages them to crawl your site regularly. This is easily done in the form of a blog or news section.

Consider basic on page stuff as well - title tags (try and get a few keywords in here, but no more than 60-100 characters), meta description & keywords, general site structure, navigation (descriptive navigation is good because it aids search engine spiders to follow a structured path). If your website has any images, ensure they have ALT tags as search engines cannot see images so they rely on the alt tags and image names to determine what the images is about.

Make sure you site has an XML site map (you can generate one here http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/) and a Robots.txt file (http://www.robotstxt.org/)

In terms of off page SEO, again content is key - write good, unique articles and distribute them, guest blog, write guest articles for industry websites, etc etc.
Engage in social media, participate in forums (you're already a step ahead with this one :-) ), submit your site to relevant directories. With link building remember backlinks to your site tells search engines that your site is recommended, but it is also important to understand backlinks are about quality and not quantity - finding one site to link from that search engines deem important for a particular keyword is far more beneficial than hundreds of backlinks from spammy, irrelevant sites.

Hope this helps - PM me if you need any help.

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Telephone Answering virtual assistant
alldaypa.com

Thank you for the advice!!! I do have some homework to do. Both ideas and suggestions will definitely will be taken into serious consideration.

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Yaritza Baez
AdminSolutionsDirect.com

No problem - I suggest taking a look at the Seomoz beginners guide for further help.

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Telephone Answering virtual assistant
alldaypa.com

All the information given here is going to be very helpful once my website is up. Thank you for the link Jackie!

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Margaret
Helping You Build Your Empire

All the advice here is very good and I agree. I did come upon this excellent 94 minute video on SEO by Justin Popvic http://wpacademy.tv/wordpress-seo.htm/
It's worth the time!

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Terri Williams, Assisting the small business owner
www.terripwilliams.com

I'll take a look at the video this weekend, 94 minutes is rather long! Thanks Terri.

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Telephone Answering virtual assistant
alldaypa.com

It is a long one ... I have watched 45 minutes of the video and have yet to finish watching it. I did learn quite a bit from what I did watch so far.

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Terri Williams, Assisting the small business owner
www.terripwilliams.com