SEO is the process of optimising a website’s presence in organic Google search results to drive ongoing, non-paid traffic, leads and new customers to a website.
SEO can be high return marketing investment once high position rankings are achieved – Google has a high level of trust among users and your potential customers, so traffic from SEO is often among the highest converting channels.
However, it does require a comparatively higher level of ongoing time and effort compared to paid marketing activities such PPC advertising which is generally more immediate, making the use of virtual assistance services a smart strategy for time poor businesses.
There are a wide variety of activities that can contribute to a website’s SEO visibility, including technical optimisation, content writing, link building and usability improvements and in this article we’ll look at how each one can be effectively outsourced to a virtual assistant service.
Technical SEO Optimisation
SEO specialists can prepare a website audit that identifies the key areas preventing your website from ranking well.
Generally, this would start off with a consultation about your business to discover what terms your potential customers might search for, and then performing keyword research to identify the best keywords to target (based on search volume and relevance) and how your site is currently optimised against these.
Other areas of investigation you can expect from an SEO website audit include (but are not limited):
- Site crawl audit – to identify broken links, HTTP response header issues, link depth issues and URL structures
- Page speed investigation – for example identifying issues from the Google Page Speed Tool
- Google Search Console configuration – XML sitemaps, detected crawl issues and mobile usability testing
- Keyword mapping – detecting the targeting of keywords across landing pages, and inclusion of keywords in HTML titles and meta descriptions
- Crawlability – checking for incorrect crawl directives such as noindex tags and robots.txt files that may be incorrectly blocking crawlers
- Schema Code – presence of correct and relevant schema mark up to achive
If you don’t have the time or technical expertise to implement the issues and opportunities identified in a technical SEO audit you might also consider hiring a web developer on a project or ongoing basis to make the changes for you – either through your CMS such as WordPress or Shopify, or custom coded website.
SEO Content Writing
Website landing pages that are content rich and helpful for users are more likely to rank in Google, as well as become a target for backlinks from other websites which will build domain authority.
Content writers that specialise in SEO can help you write blog articles, landing page content and descriptions that are optimised for your target keywords.
In addition to website copy, content writers can also source images add to website pages or embed relevant videos to produce a richer SEO experience for your audience.
To maximise the SEO impact of content writers working on your website, it’s important to ensure:
- Consistency of writing – posting regular content every day, week or month.
- Content is well written, without spelling or grammatical errors.
- Content is genuinely useful for readers and does not simply exist for search engines.
- Content is comprehensive. ‘Thin’ content that might consist of a few sentences for an entire article, for example, generally performs poorly in search results.
Below are some examples that companies use BruntWork content writers for:
- Blog articles
- Product descriptions
- Online guides
- Downloadable e-books
- White papers
Backlinking and PR Outreach
Backlinks from external sites are a powerful signal for Google of website’s trust and popularity.
A virtual assistant or SEO specialist can assist you with writing articles or PR outreach to secure media mentions and links to your site on an ongoing basis.
Looking for help with your SEO?
Speak to BruntWork’s sales team to find out how we can help with outsourcing your SEO
