October 22nd, 2009 by Bruce

From just about any point of view, online business is clearly a cut-throat enterprise. You’ve got to invest time into your SEO every single day, pushing your know-how to the limits while using every tool you can get your hands on to make your website a cut above the competition. More and more websites are striving to improve their search engine rankings, and if you drop your guard – even for a few days, you could quickly find yourself at the back of the pack.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a commonly used term by almost everyone involved with online business. For the past few years, and definitely for the next decade or so, search engines will continue to be the most commonly used interfaces for finding information online.

It’s a well known fact that most people who use search engines only actually look at the top ten search results on the front page. If a company has their website on the front page of the search results, it’s a clear barometer of their success with SEO techniques. The higher up your website is ranked, the greater the possibility of it being clicked on by a partially qualified lead. In simple terms, the more traffic you’ve got coming in, the more business you’ll take in.

With strategic SEO, you can realise the awesome benefits of generating high volumes of traffic. For instance, let’s say that an average of 3 percent of your incoming visitors make a purchase. If you usually get around a thousand hits or more every day, you currently have an excellent online business, but if you generally only get fifty or sixty hits in a day, your business is desperately in need of some intensive SEO strategies.

So one more time, what is SEO – really? It’s the process of utilising tools and strategies to make your website rank higher up in the search engines results. Getting your website on the front page – or better yet the upper half of this page, will guarantee that your website will generate public awareness, and generate a steady stream of additional traffic, traffic which could easily lead to new business down the line.

Surf the Web for some useful tips. There are a variety of sources for fantastic information on tips, methods and general guidelines for pursuing SEO strategies for your website development. Check out an article directory and read an assortment of articles which can help you optimise your website’s SEO. The more information you get your hands on the better. You’ll soon find that this endeavour may take a great deal of time and effort, but if you really persevere, the benefits can be truly astounding.

If you’re online business is already profitable, and you’re able to invest some money, there a few exceptional virtual assistants who can help you – far more than you may realise, in getting to the front page of Google. Make your move today, and experience the impressive benefits which can come from truly effective search engine optimisation.

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, an Executive Virtual Assistant who assists businesses and individuals with achieving their professional goals. Want to find out more about online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Now!

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October 13th, 2009 by Bruce

If you’re developing an online business, your website should retain a lot of your attention as you design what is effectively your window to the world. If you don’t actually have a physical address for your place of business, or any kind of “concrete and glass” operation, the overall appearance of your website will tell your potential customers or clients just about everything they need to know about your company.

In an idea situation, you should place your whole website on your very own private server, or at the very least a VPS (virtual private server), so you don’t have to deal with operating hours, tight limits, restrictions or other regulations. If you don’t know anything at all about coding, go for one of the easy to use platforms, which will provide you with the ability to work on your website directly, without this taking up too much of your valuable time. If you know that any alterations to your site represent a formidable challenge, you’re much less likely to keep up with its development. Affordable online business providers like iCapitalise can quickly supply you with an extremely user-friendly option, using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) system.

You have to find out how the World Wide Web actually works, and what it really takes to to truly make your website visible to the masses. You will want your website to appear within search results when your prospects search for something that you could provide. This is fairly complicated and quite time consuming, as the search engines utilise an array of guidelines to determine what’s relevant and what’s not. The process of “search engine optimisation” helps you to specify certain appropriate elements of code as well as the overall structure of your site. There are quite a few experts in the widely renowned arena of website development, and to stay ahead of the game, you may want to look into hiring an expert virtual assistant to help you stay on the winning team. At the very minimum, you need to have an understanding of the basics, including what your favoured “keywords” are and how the content on your page should be written.

Think back to how you used to write essays when you were in college, where you would structure and lay out your content to retain a natural progression of ideas, then apply this same system to your website development. You’ll have a variety of different pages, with an array of separate topics covering products or services, each of which could easily result in additional pages of associated content. Inside the home page you need to have a crystal clear description of your business, with prominent links providing a logical path of progression for visitors to move through as they look over your business information.

Visitors rarely take the time to read all the information on your page, and this is where the term “surfing” originated. A large percentage of people tend to look for “frequently asked questions” and other areas where they can quickly scan through to get a good idea of what you’re providing. Therefore, always remember to set up a FAQ database and link to it very prominently.

A blog is a very important part of an online strategy initiative, and you would do well to include one within your website. Social media is becoming very important as we go on, and your blog represents an opportunity for you to update daily news and information for prospects and interested parties. You should make sure that you keep current with blog posting and establish a close bond between yourself and any visitors. If you’re clever about the type of content you include, you could end up creating your own social “buzz.”

Even though you may only have an online presence, visitors will be looking for reassurance before they do business with you, and because of this, you should include your contact details in a visible position for when this trust is established. Take a photograph or two of the owner and key staff, as this helps to add a human touch to your site. The customer service contact number is essential and a physical address is highly recommended.

Once your website is up-and-running, make sure that it’s maintained on a very regular basis. You should learn as much as you can about search engine optimisation, and get to know software packages that allow you to analyse your visitors. The analytics program accessed via the Google website is a great and free tool, enabling you to set up goals and events that can help you to see whether certain promotions are working for you.

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, a state-of-the-art Executive Virtual Assistant Service which assists businesses and individuals with every aspect of their enterprising requirements. Do you want to explore these inspiring online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Now!

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