Search engine optimization (SEO) is a part of online business. Do it well and you’ll be positioned to drive traffic and attract prospects and customers. Avoiding SEO myths and understanding the facts will help you start strong. Sometimes I actually get mad at the myths that continue to be perpetuated so I want to make sure you know what is true. So, let’s take a look at seven SEO Myths and Facts.
 
Myth #1 I have to submit my site to a search engine for it to get listed. 
 
Fact – You don’t submit your site to the search engines. They in fact index pages daily. What you do have to do is have content for them to index. 
 
The only site that I recommend that you submit your site to is dmoz.org (Open Directory Project) which is manually updated by humans. The ODP powers core directory services for some the most popular portals and search engines, including AOL Search, Netscape Search, Google, Lycos, and HotBot, and hundreds of others. Being listed in DMOZ is like an endorsement of your website quality.
 
Myth #2 Meta tags matter.
 
Fact – Meta tags USED to matter but they no longer do. In fact, they haven’t for quite some time. You can put meta tags in your HTML code but it’s not necessary. The only meta tag that I pay attention to is the “description” tag, which looks like this:
 
<meta name=”description” content=”Featured free products on internet marketing and online businesses” />
 
Having a helpful description in the search engine results pages (SERPs) helps the reader identify if your page is what he or she is looking for, but it has no bearing on Google’s ranking algorithms. 
 
Myth #3 Trading links is a great idea because linking to my site boosts my page ranking. 
 
Fact – I probably get requests several times a week asking to exchange links. But trading links with people isn’t as powerful as you might think. In fact, trading links or getting links from websites with poor reputations, or from websites that have nothing to do with your business niche, can hurt your page ranking. Focus on getting links from quality websites in your niche or industry. Link to others only when it’s appropriate and makes sense to do so.
 
Myth #4 I should work to increase the page ranking for my landing page first. 
 
Fact – Not necessarily. The pages you focus on depend largely on your business model, target audience, and your goals. You could have a website devoted to custom skateboards. However, it may be easier to gain visitors and the first spot on the page rankings for “custom skateboard designs.” 
 
In that case you may want to bring people to your website based on those keywords and ideally you’d take them directly to your page devoted to custom skateboard designs. Search engines evaluate each page independently which means you should focus on optimizing the page(s) that would best help you reach your goals quickly.
 
Not to mention that increasing a page rank will not happen overnight and takes time. So, if your landing page is a squeeze page that has been added for a promotion two weeks from now, it is unlikely that you are going to rank high for your search terms in that short amount of time.
 
Myth #5 All of my pages should be optimized for the search engines.
 
Fact – Not necessarily. For example, does your contact page, your privacy policy and your affiliate sign-up page need to be indexed for the search engines? Maybe, but maybe not. You can add a disallow tag to your code to prevent a page from being indexed. 
 
I used to say to also put an opt-in box on each page of their site, but now I believe that the focus of the page comes first. So if the focus of the page is to contact you, then you probably shouldn’t add an opt-in box.
 
Myth #6 If I link to high traffic and quality sites, it will help my page ranking. 
 
Fact – It will help their page ranking, not yours! However, linking to authority sites can help your credibility and it generally won’t hurt your search engine rankings. Well, if it did, then I guess everyone would start doing the same and it would not make any difference. While linking to authority websites is a healthy habit, they don’t give you any added advantage.
 
Myth #7 The more the internal links my site has, the better.
 
Fact – Internal links are great for SEO; however, just linking for the sake of linking won’t do much. (Internal links are links that go to other pages of your own website while external links are links that go to pages that are not part of your website. In other words, other people’s websites.) 
 
Don’t just link willy-nilly, keyword placement in the anchor text is extremely important for page ranking. You’ll also want to create a plan about which pages you’re going to focus your attention and your internal links on.
 
Internal links should 1) Use keywords as anchor text, 2) look natural and be interspersed within the content of your site, and 3) link to the other pages of your site that are related to each other.
 
Armed with the proper knowledge you’ll be prepared to create a winning, and effective, search engine optimization strategy. Avoid the myths, stick with the facts, and create a solid optimization plan for your website and strategic web pages. To your success!
 

Online, one of the most significant keys to success is getting website traffic for your virtual assistant business. Think about it, the more visitors you have, the better your chances to land clients!

Presumably you have a specialty or a niche and you know your keywords, and regularly conduct keyword research to stay on top of what’s popular. Based on those assumptions here are five quick and easy tips to get website traffic fast!

Tip #1 Make sure you’re actually tagging your keywords

Do you spend a lot of time optimizing your content and then neglect to tag them on your webpage? Tags are where search engines look and if there are no tags they’ll pass right by your web pages. Here’s a quick brief on tags.

There are a number of tag types including,

* Title tags. Title tags are quite possibly the most important place to situate your keywords. Here’s what they look like -

<title>Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant for Hire – YOUR NAME</title>

Your title tag is where you place your primary keyword or keyword phrase. The sentence will describe your business in less than 90 characters.

* Header Tags. Header tags are next in order of importance to search engines. They’re ranked in order of importance and look like this -

<h1>Primary and/or Secondary keywords here</h1>

The “1″ designates this header as the most important header on the page.

* Meta Tags. Meta tags provide the small descriptive text found underneath the title tag on the search engine results page. Like title tags these should be kept brief, informative and up to date.

Example: <meta name=”description” content=”Descriptive content goes here”>

* Alt Tags. Alt tags are used to provide a text description of a graphic. Each graphic on your site should have a description and an alt tag.

Tip #2 Add content to your site consistently

Content is essential for traffic and a top search engine ranking. Content is what search engine spiders look for and index – without it there’s nothing to index or rank. Give visitors and search engines a reason to visit and index your site. Make a commitment to provide daily, optimized content and your traffic will soar.

Tip #3 Procure valuable and relevant incoming links

The more websites which link to your webpages the more valuable search engines perceive you to be, though not all links are created equal. Search engines give more leverage to links from sites which are popular and credible and from sites which are relevant to your website topic.

There are different types of links.

- A direct link looks like a basic website address, for example, www.yourwebsite.com

- A text link occurs when the webpage address is embedded in the text. Readers simply click on the link and are redirected to a new website page.

- If the link is to an internal web page, for example an article published on a website rather than the home page, it is called a “deep link.”

You can encourage linking to your website by:

* Adding content to your site.
* Submitting to article directories.
* Publishing press releases.
* Blogging and participating in social networking forums, chat rooms, and social networking sites.

Tip #4 Be Social!

Now more than ever before, internet marketing is about building a community. Whether you offer a forum on your website or you participate in social networking sites, social networking is a valuable traffic generating tactic. Sites like Facebook and Twitter can be powerful tools for generating links and traffic to your site – create a profile and then post comments, links to your site, and ideas which generate conversation.

Get involved – many chat rooms and forums are industry specific, find those which cater to your industry, and begin participating. Speak to and connect with a highly targeted audience.

I kid you not, I got a phone call recently (Hi Lilly!) from a potential client, she left me a voice mail and this was the message: “Hi Lisa, I saw so-and-so post about you on Twitter so I visited your site and you are exactly what I need!” Trust me, it works.

Tip #5 Advertise for more exposure and traffic

Advertising, when handled strategically, can be used to promote your content and products or services. PPC advertising is often the tool of choice because you control the advertising budget on a daily basis and have the tools to test and track your advertising efforts. Once you’ve honed your PPC ads the return on investment can be phenomenal in terms of traffic and purchases.

I also think that Facebook advertising is a great alternative. You can really hone in on your target market by selecting a geographic location, gender, age group, Groups and “Likes.”

For maximum results, create a traffic and SEO strategy. Outline your plan and your goals and then take the necessary action. Take advantage of these five traffic and search engine tips to boost your business.

To your marketing success,

Last month I covered why content is important to your SEO rankings. This month’s article will cover what you can do behind the scenes to make sure the HTML code on each web site page is optimized for search engines. Updating HTML code can be done using a web editor program such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver, but it can also be done by hand using Notepad.

There are literally dozens of techniques that SEO consultants employ to optimize each variable that makes up a single web page. For example, at the bare minimum, you need to pay attention to researching and creating effective page titles, researching and creating effective file names, writing effective description meta tags, properly using heading tags and alt tags for each hyperlink and image file. This goes for every link, every picture, graphic, image, and for every single web page. As you can see, it is no small task to optimize a web site – even a small one!

While each variable plays a small part in the overall optimization – think of it as a recipe with each variable being a single ingredient – and all ingredients being important to the recipe, I want to cover three items: page titles, file names, and the description meta tag. Here is a graphic showing the search results for my own “VA for coaches” page that I optimized for the search engines (actually comes up #2 in Google for the search term “virtual assistant for coaches”).

Page titles

Page titles are the hyperlinked words that show in the search engine results (item 1) and also display at the top of the browser page. They are not only vital but greatly influence page ranking in the search results, so it’s important that the page title is rich in keywords. You add the title of the page in between the “title” tags in the HTML code at or near the top of the page.

Example:
<title>this is the page title</title>

Make sure every page has a different title. If you feel that you cannot pin down one title for a page because it has too many sections of information, then it would be best to create more pages and categorize accordingly. For example, if you sell widgets in different colors and you put them all on one page and name the title of the page “widgets,” this isn’t going to do much to help in your page ranking because your page will be competing with thousands of others that contain the same word.

Instead, create one page just to showcase your red widgets and title the page “Red widgets.” Think about it … when someone is doing a Google search, they will most likely be as descriptive as possible so as to narrow down the search results. Another rule of thumb is to keep the title to a maximum of 60 characters.

File names

Choose file names (item 2) that correlate with your page titles. These should also be keyword-rich as they do have a positive impact on search results. When choosing file names, use all lower-case letters and do NOT use spaces. I have read that using hyphens instead of underscores is preferred and nowadays having no hyphens or underscores in the file name is acceptable as well – the search engines should treat them as the same.
 
One item I do want to stress is that I do not want you to run out and change all your file names because if a page is bookmarked or indexed in a directory somewhere and you change it, then it could not only hurt your rankings, but you may lose customers who can’t find your site because of a broken link. So consider changing the file name if the page is not yet indexed in the search engines or if the page has poor search results placement AFTER you’ve already changed the other items. If you are getting good search results placement, then of course do not change your file names.

Description meta tag

A good description tag will get you noticed! This is the blurb that is displayed right under the title tag in the search results page (item 3). It is what people skim over when viewing the search results. Too many times people will search on a term that has multiple meanings and the page titles may help a little, but it’s the description that will get their attention and let the person know that your is the site they are looking for! Its placement is right up there at the top of the source code, usually right under the title tag and looks like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”Virtual assistant and internet marketing services for today’s coaches: life and career coaches, self-help coaches, executive coaches, speaking coaches, and more.” >

Don’t forget to add key words and key phrases here as well. : )

Quick Start Assignment

Take just one of your web pages and optimize it for search engines. First, do some little research for keywords to use for the titles and descriptions. It’s important to use words that your target audience is actually searching, not what you THINK they are searching for. For example, if you think people are searching on the key phrase “certified life coach” – do some research because perhaps they are searching on different terms such as  “midlife transition coach,” “coach to guide me through a divorce,” “adhd coach” etc.

Check the title tag, do you have the keywords near the front where they carry the most value? Is the title too long? Is it an effective title? Is this page title the same as all your other page titles? Do your page titles have your business name right in front? If so, make some edits.

Next, write an effective description for the page. Lastly, only change the file names if there are spaces in the title, if it is not yet indexed by the search engines, or if it has poor placement in the search results.

Of course there is so much more to do in order to properly optimize your pages, but start with just ONE page and do this for each new page you add for the next few weeks.

I mentioned this last month and I feel I should mention it again – I took a free SEO online course and it was excellent! There is a time investment involved; the course requires active participation, and it lasts for a few weeks, but I would still urge you to attend. I literally learned everything I know about SEO by attending these classes and by completing each of the exercises. Find out more at: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SEO_Techniques/

Have an SEO question? Feel free to post a comment … I’ll answer your question and feature you in my ezine!

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the art of improving the chances of your web page showing up when someone searches for your type of business, a service, or a product. This article cannot possibly go into all the aspects of SEO in-depth, but I do want to give you a few basics to give you a better understanding of how SEO works and what you can do TODAY to improve your web pages for the search engines.

The two most important items of my SEO strategy are to 1) write relevant content and 2) properly code each page. They are both equally important and search engines take both of these into account when ranking pages. You can have loads of great content but if the page cannot be read by the search engine robot, then it is a problem. On the other hand, a page can be properly coded and pass validation, but with very little content, it will not do you any good.

Content is King

“Content” means the words, headlines, subject headers – what is seen on your web pages and viewable by the public. Content is important because search engines crawl your web page and read words and phrases. It takes this information and adds to an index, sort of like a giant catalog. Then, when someone does a search, the search engine returns the results, ranking each page by relevancy. Search engines are not mind readers; therefore, it only makes sense that you need to write the content using words that people (your target market) will most likely search on if you want your page to come up high on the results pages.

One of the first things that I tell clients as they go about setting up their web page is, “do not write website copy for the search engines, write for your audience.” A genuine message from your heart is going to go a lot further than a page that’s stuffed with keywords but not much else. You may think that you do not know what to write, but once you get started, the words will come.

Write about how you got started in the business, why are you passionate about your product or service, how you have helped people in the past… Don’t forget to include as many details as you can about the problems your service will solve, how you deliver the service, who might be the best client for this service, etc.

Try to use the exact wording that someone in your target market might use, e.g., “Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think, ‘How am I going to finish my newsletter article, answer all of those client emails, and still have time to actually do my coaching work? I need some help with my newsletter!’”

That way, when your prospective client types something like, “Help with newsletters” in to a search engine, this specific page is more likely to show up in the results, and higher up. This is what is called a “key phrase.” Incorporating key phrases into your content is much more useful than relying on single words, which has much more competition.

Quick Start Assignment

Choose just ONE of your web pages and look at the content. Do you give a clear explanation of what the intent of the page is? Do you give enough information about the product, service, etc.? Remember, each page is indexed individually. For example, if you are a virtual assistant offering a variety of services, of course you can list them on your “services menu” page, but also create a separate page for each service. This will go hand in hand with the back-end coding, which I’ll talk more about next month.

During my first year as a virtual assistant, when I didn’t have any clients and lots of free time, I took a free SEO online course and it was excellent! There is a time investment involved; the course requires active participation, and it lasts for a few weeks, but I would still urge you to attend. I literally learned everything I know about SEO by attending these classes and by completing each of the exercises. Find out more at: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SEO_Techniques/