IS YOUR WEBSITE OR BLOG PERFECTLY OPTIMIZED?

Do you ever watch those home renovation shows on TV, the ones where someone is having trouble selling their home and needs some help? Often there s nothing wrong with the house itself, just an important design element missing. A team of experts is called in and, voila, the house gets noticed and sells! The home owners are amazed and anxious to learn the skills those experts used to make such a difference.

In your work, do you wish you could optimize your website or blog so that it attracts more attention? Are your clients anxious to optimize theirs too? The initial SEO work begins in the HTML, and consequently clients are now, more than ever, requiring their Virtual Assistants to have some level of HTML knowledge and skills. For some, that s exciting for others, worrisome. ;-)

SEOmoz has put together an excellent blog post that summarizes best practices for “Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization.” They provide a diagram of the “perfectly” optimized page and list all the elements that contribute to its ranking. Many of these elements are quite technical and require a good knowledge of HTML.

Below is a list of the important elements to optimize in on your webpage:

• Keyword Targeted URL

• Page Title

• Meta Description

• H1 Headline

• Image File Name

• Webpage Body Content

• Internal links

Now, if you re starting to break into a cold sweat at the thought of tackling such technical aspects, you re not alone. HTML is a very important task and one that requires specialized training in order to do it well. For that reason, we recently offered a special 3-hour HTML Training for Internet Marketing Success Clinic. The Clinic was taught by our very own VAClassroom Faculty Member, Christina Greenway, who helped demystify HTML and unpacked the important skills you need for your business and your clients.

So there s no need to call in a team of experts to optimize your website or blog! With some HTML training, you can make Google stand up and take notice, and that s as good as a “Sold “ sign on the front lawn!

CUSTOMER SERVICE 2.0 – LOCAL BUSINESS RAISES THE BAR USING SOCIAL MEDIA

You may remember a post we published a couple days ago entitled “Social Media Goes Local in 2010,” where we described the innovative way restaurant owner Joe Sorge is using Social Media to promote AJ Bombers and other restaurants in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Well, the interesting conversation on our VAClassroom Fan Page generated by this post revealed that one of our VAClassroom members, Janet Janowiak, a resident of Waterford, Wisconsin, also featured Chris Brogan s Kitchen Table Talks video in her post “Local Business Success Built by Twitter.”

Shortly after she published her post, Joe commented on her blog and emailed her an invitation to dinner. “Joe s comment came in moments after my post was published,” Janet explained. “This really proves how connected the social media world is. I don t know what tool Joe uses to monitor his brand, but I was praising him and look how quickly he replied. Imagine if someone made a comment that was negative. I m sure that Joe would do everything in his power to make the customer happy.”

What a gracious response and a perfect example of customer service reaching new heights through Social Media! Joe s personal touch goes a long way to building positive brand recognition and exposure for his restaurants via social networking – an excellent case study to encourage local businesses to adopt a Social Media strategy ASAP!