by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jul 31, 2013 | Blogging, Small Business
Your business blog is an essential tool for your inbound marketing efforts in terms of SEO, creating a community, becoming known as a thought leader and generating visits, leads, conversion to customers and brand ambassadors.
As THE most valuable piece of company real estate, your blog content should speak to your audience and prospects first and then the search engines. Your blog content should resonate with your prospective buyers, meeting their needs and answering their questions. Make it rich, valuable and educational.
WHY?
People are searching for answers to their problems and pain points every single day and you have the solutions.
Hubspot: Companies that blog have 55% more visitors and generate 70% more leads than companies who don’t.
If you are writing content and optimizing your site and pages to answer the questions of your buyers, then you will be discovered, valued and your content will be shared. Don’t just push product and services. Answer questions with exceptional content that is worth talking about. When they talk and share, this creates more inbound links. The more inbound links you have, the higher the rate of getting found in organic searches. 97% of companies that blog have more inbound links.
Laboring over content and strategy can present a challenge for many. Think about what you want to say to your readers. What solutions you offer. Research trending topics, keyword searches, case studies, statistics and other industry related materials. Set aside time each week for research and writing. Your blog content strategy is simplified and better organized if you create an editorial calendar containing columns for:
- Theme
- Posting date
- Social media channels
- Title
- Keywords
- Tags
- Meta description
- Links
- Statistics
- Guest authors
When considering your keywords and descriptions remember: Blogging impacts your SEO!
HOW does a blog influence your SEO??
- Each and every new blog post you write is actually an indexable “site” of its own.
- Each page gives you an opportunity to be found by search engines.
- The more pages you have, the more indexing you receive: the greater opportunity to move your site higher up the ranks.
- You can optimize each post with strong keywords that your target market is searching.
Keywords are just as important as your content. When creating your post, consider what probing question (s) you want to answer and use these in your title, meta descriptions, image file name/alt tags and body of text. Long tail keywords are much more powerful and targeted than just a single word. They help to drill down to a slimmer defined market of those in need. It trims the fat and returns much better results.
“The long tail contains hundreds of millions of unique searches that might be conducted a few times in any given day, but, when taken together, they comprise the majority of the world’s demand for information through search engines.” Moz.com
Your blog is a cost effective inbound marketing tool to generate new interest, business and web traffic.
- Keep it rich, enticing and educational for the greatest return.
- You are writing for your audience.
- Content that is relevant and can be trusted as an authoritative resource will drive search engines to crawl your site.
- Make your content personalized for your visitors, answering their questions.
- Use long tail keywords
- Create internal links to other posts on your site
- Blog consistently
- Monitor your brand’s online chatter
- Submit your posts to online blogging directories and business sharing communities
Are you ready? Now set aside the time right now to work on your editorial calendar and content. If you need help overseeing your blogging efforts, just send us an email to schedule a consult.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jul 29, 2013 | Entrepreneur, Life Thoughts, Small Business
How often do you step away from your office and take a break? Just shut down for a bit to refresh your brain matter and gain clarity? We all need a respite or as Jennifer V. Miller of the People Equation says, a “staycation.” It is a short mental holiday from the hustle and bustle of our information overloaded lives. We are constantly on overdrive, meeting extensive demands and teetering on a tightrope.
Whether at your home or office take a break and slow down a bit. Life won’t stop if you do, but it may if you don’t.
Say YES to you.
Learn to give back to yourself; rewards, small pleasures, time to do nothing, time for YOU. A few simple steps toward SELF will reduce your stress, give renewed focus and refresh your whole soul to keep pushing forward.
ME time can be anything you want or need it to be, but just do it.
You may be thinking that ME time is being selfish. On the contrary!! Please don’t believe that you are a superhero and can only give to others. While that is a commendable quality, you can’t continue to empty your tank. You must make deposits to refuel. Aren’t you worth it?
If you are a solo-preneur, you are fortunate to be able to create your own stress breaks, but if you are an employee, you may need to implement some of the suggestions in Jennifer’s blog post above.
In either case, you still have other hours to choose from, so schedule ME time.
- You are entitled to it.
- You earned it.
- You deserve it.
Get More Out of Life: 5 Tips to Focus on You
My ME TIME is my mornings to lift at the gym. My phone does NOT go out on the floor with me. It is locked up. I put my earbuds in and tune out everything else around me.
This afternoon’s brain break is the image above: homemade watermelon sorbet with my Champion Juicer. I needed to step away from the computer for a bit. It didn’t take long to make. I could still check my Smartphone if needed, but the world didn’t stop while I cleared my head.
How will you gift yourself today?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jul 25, 2013 | Entrepreneur, Small Business, Virtual Assistant
A code of ethics and honor exists amongst most Virtual Assistants, at least with the tremendous women in my network. As entrepreneurs we pride ourselves with strong character and morals, not just because we are business owners and great human beings, but we are also trusted with managing our client’s business. We are privy to logins, credit cards, proprietary information and other business “secrets.” We treat these components with the utmost confidentiality, similar to HIPAA.
I recently discovered another Virtual Assistant who copied some content from one of my blog posts. I was irate of course. I labor over my blog posts, hoping they are rich and valuable to you, the audience. I immediately became incensed with anger and frustration. Those were not her words I was reading, but mine. Her title was even taken from a different post and she also stated the upcoming content of her next post, which of course can found on my blog. Maybe it was her idea, all fresh and new, but it certainly appears a little suspect. She is even a “Certified VA” with a badge on her website and a link to their code of ethics.
VAs are trusted with so much and if one is going to steal another’s content, what else may she consider? I feel very strongly about my industry and the trust from my client base. It is always an honor when Ace is chosen as remote business manager. My reputation stands for itself as does the other Virtual Assistants I know and follow. We work hard and earn our place in the business world. When I see something like this, it just makes me question someone’s business sense and character.
“Character is the firm foundation stone upon which one must build to win respect. Just as no worthy building can be erected on a weak foundation, so no lasting reputation worthy of respect can be built on a weak character.”— R. C. Samselat
As soon as you publish original content, it is protected by the copyright law, even without the symbol. This translates into the fact that people can’t repurpose or publish your content without consent.
- If you want to do a little research about your site and content, try CopyScape. It is a simple tool I discovered many years ago which will clearly display what content has been copied.
- Using Google Authorship also helps to reaffirm what is owned and protected by you.
- Make sure you take screenshots of the offending content.
- Email the perpetrator with the exact details, including the images, requesting that all copyrighted content is removed.
- If your correspondence is not successful, you can also contact the search engines directly under the DMCA Law or Digital Millennium Copyright Act
A little permission goes a long way. Ask. Give credit. Share honestly and professionally.
Know the laws and your rights.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jul 18, 2013 | Guest Blogger
The question came up on Twitter the other day. How does one find great content?
AllTop – The Alltop website has been around for years (since 2008) and what I like best about this site is you can search for your topics alphabetically. It is easy and quick to find topics of interest to you. It is an awesome way to find great content for your niche.
New Feeds – Since the Google Reader is now dead, there are several new feeds that folks are using to keep on top of their favorite websites blogs and updates. Most of them are free to use. There is Feedly, NewsBlur – With a $24 charge per year for this one. The Old Reader, Digg Reader, Newsvibe. Pulse, AOL Reader and Fever RSS – This one is not free but it is self-hosted. You can read more on Tim Bonners Blog on this RSS feeder. There are a few other options too out there.
Google News – They have added more topics since dropping the reader and it’s another great way to find the latest news. They offer 4 ways for you to view news: Modern, Headlines, Compact or Classic. They offer many editions via country. They also offer editors picks from top news sites.
Bing News – Bing is a great option and they offer news in text like Google but they also offer it via images. Bing is always a step ahead on the visuals I believe over Google. You can check in-depth coverage and images with Bing News. Sign in with Bing and get rewards too.
Triberr – Triberr is awesome to follow your favorite blogs once you build up a tribe and are a member of many tribes. I really love Triberr. I usually share many posts a day of bloggers I know and trust and some I will check out their post before sharing. But then later I can go back and read through the sent posts so I can further share and comment on. It’s becoming my own Feed!
So don’t sweat it looking for great content on the net, check out these 5 great ways to find that content for your next share, information, read, or ideas.
How do you find great content on the web now? Have you used any or all 5 of the above?
Guest Author: Lisa Buben
Lisa loves helping others to thrive online through Social Media, Blogging and SEO. What good is knowledge if you cannot share it with others? She has 20+ years experience in marketing/advertising with 3 years experience blogging, social media and SEO.
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by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jul 11, 2013 | Toolbox
Backlinks, also known as inbound links are building blocks of your SEO. Search engines calculate the relevance of a keyword and the QUALITY of your backlinks.
- Inbound URLs link directly to your site
- Search engines consider them quality when those sites have content relevant to yours and of course;
- It is from a respected site
- The directing site is not a linkfarm
- Backlinks will give you a greater opportunity for higher conversion and click through rates
I was on a mission for a client to find out who was linking back to his membership directory site. I had some basic knowledge and tools for the metrics such as inputting “site:www.yoursite.com” into the search bar. I also found a few other sites that permitted me to put in the client’s URL and it would provide me with either a short list for free or we could pay for the full report. One of the sites counted 41,800 backlinks.
Search for Backlinks:
- Rapid becomes Searchmetrics Essentials: SEO Tools and Link Popularity
- Linkvendor – Professional SEO Tools
- Backlink Checker
- Get Email Alerts for New Backlinks with Open Site Explorer
- Backlinks Checker Tool – Backlink Watch
- Page2RSS will let you create an RSS feed for any web page. Thanks to Moz for this free option to create an RSS Feed for backlinks or pages that do NOT offer RSS Feeds.
BONUS: I loved the last option: Page2RSS for checking new backlinks and providing me with an immediate update via Feedly.
What about you?
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