The three letters SEO refer to a buzz word, and rightfully so. Investment in SEO can mean long-term sustained growth and an increase of traffic to your website or eCommerce site. However, SEO is not an instant solution; therefore, CEOs want their marketing executives to spend time and money on pay-per-click advertising. Yet once the funding stops for these PPC campaigns, so does the campaign. On the other hand, SEO will keep growing. This is where a virtual SEO assistant can come in and assist you.
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What is SEO?
SEO is the acronym for search engine optimization. This term is relatively recent; however SEO is millennial. This is because the SEO dates back to the 1990s. In 1996, SEO really took off. Currently it’s used to drive a higher site ranking on search engines. Moreover, the reason for this massive push to be in the top three search results relates to more clicks. For instance, the first search result would achieve 30% of the search traffic. The second search result will achieve 16% of the search result. The lower you go, the more dramatically the search results drop. More so, being on Page 2 or the tenth search result means almost no traffic to your site, no matter how great your product might be. As such, SEO optimization can help you climb the rankings, and gain more traffic for your website.
Hire a virtual SEO assistant
Hiring a virtual SEO assistant is an alternative to hiring an SEO expert. The reason for businesses hiring a virtual assistant is mostly linked to the cost benefits. Using a virtual assistant allows the company to be flexible. Therefore, as the company scales, the business can spend more on SEO. This is particularly useful for small- to medium-sized businesses, and especially businesses that are dependent on website traffic. The virtual SEO assistant will conduct various tasks, from keyword research, to fixing site structure.
The various tasks of a virtual SEO assistant
Keyword Research
Adding random words will not give you the search results you are looking for. You should be aware of which keywords to use for your product or service, the market you want to attract, and which keyword strategy would be best for your position versus your competitors. Here the remote assistant will build a buyer persona and relate keywords to this. These keywords will also relate to the best search intent these theoretical buyer personas might have.
User experience and usability
Search engines such as Google or Bing would also reflect user experience (UX) and usability when determining rankings. To demonstrate to Google that visitors want to spend time on your eCommerce site or website, you must have excellent content that retains users on your website for as long as possible. Your content must also encourage these website visitors to visit your other pages, not only the home page. A virtual SEO assistant will modify your website to make certain that this occurs. This assistant will refine the layout and navigation, increase load speed, and check that the website loads correctly on all screen sizes and types of device.
Site structure
To handle your site structure, your remote assistant will unify the website pages into a logical structure, which can also include grouping information under topics. This assists users to navigate your website more easily, making sure that they find the info they seek, and keeping them on your website for an extended time. In addition, site structure is important to search engines. A site structure will inform seekers of what your website is about. Moreover, the structure will indicate which pages would have similar topics and which are the most essential.
Metadata
In terms of onsite SEO, the metadata is part of the HTML on web pages. Here metadata is beneficial for search engines to interpret the page content. Your remote assistant should ensure that each web page has the critical meta tags, together with meta content type, meta description, viewport, and title. If your site is older than about 15 years, the site could have dated meta tags that might be irrelevant. Your virtual SEO assistant would be able to update these, and add extra keywords for the meta tags, to increase searchability.
Content optimization
Content such as blogs, more than just landing pages, must be optimized. What the virtual assistant will do it is to review the content to ensure that the URLs and keywords are good, that the images have an ALT tag, and that the meta tag has been added. Additionally, the assistant will ensure that the pages have outbound and inbound links, that there are no broken links, and that the H1-structure is correctly applied. Also, the assistant can review the content, tailoring it correctly tor the target market, or make changes if needed.
Canonical Links
Now and then it is common sense also to have the identical content on other pages. In the past, search engines would flag these pages as duplicate content. Search engines track down fresh, unique, and high-quality content; duplicated content would be viewed negatively. This could negatively impact the page rankings. However, this can be corrected by adding canonical links to lower-level pages. As such, search engines will merely index the preferred pages and ignore the others, which will boost your SEO.
Google Analytics
A web analytics tool such as Google Analytics is useful to gather data on user demographics and behavior. Here a virtual assistant can set up a Google Analytics account, then begin to gather the data, compiling reports which can be used to enhance the SEO.
Offsite SEO
Offsite SEO is equally significant as onsite SEO. Here Offsite SEO encompasses a wide spread of activities. The virtual assistant can take care of all of this. Most of all, they can assist with link building.
Online Directories
One link building strategy is to make use of online directories. Online directories are the modern equivalent of an old-fashioned phone book. Business details are listed to assist local clients looking for services and products in your niche. However, not all online directories are worth listing on, and some can damage your ranking. The virtual SEO assistant will be able to identify the better options, based on, for instance, relevance, or domain authority.
Guest blogging
Another link-building strategy is guest blogging. Here you write a blog post, which will be posted on another website, ideally with a high domain authority. A few links will be added to the post that directs the reader to your website. This also helps to drive traffic to your website, especially a new market that can help your brand’s visibility. Here a virtual content writer searching for good websites to approach can support the virtual assistant, writing the blog posts, editing these posts, and correcting the broken links. It is also key to ensure that broken links are fixed, so that your SEO efforts are not hampered.
YouTube marketing
When video marketing is part of your strategy, you need a YouTube channel. In addition, videos can be embedded onto your site and hosted on YouTube, which will help your site not to slow down. The virtual assistant can optimize the titles, write the descriptions using keywords, add custom thumbnails, and also add call-to-actions to the videos.
Competitor analysis
Your virtual SEO assistant can scrutinize what your rivals are up to in terms of their SEO. Here you can gauge what needs to be improved to beat the competition. This is more of a long-term strategy, and it’s more important to have all your elements in order before you start comparing.
The bottom line
The importance of SEO efforts is that they boost traffic to your website. However, it is also key to have a low bounce rate. This means that you have to have relevant information to attract your market, and not attract the incorrect audience to your site, since they will just leave. Leaving your site will increase your bounce rate, which you don’t want. Moreover, SEO takes time – around 3 months to show some effect. And you need to be consistent – even if you do not see results in the beginning, trust the process. The results will come.