Visions Virtual Assistance Blog

I went to Raincamp Boston on Monday. I highly recommend that everyone go to the one in their area. Sure, it’s Real Estate specific but I learned so much there. Ben Kinney is so knowledgeable about how to use social media to get business. Although my brain was fried at the end of the day, Ben gave us many ideas that could be implemented immediately. If you want your site to come up when people are searching for what you sell, then you should implement these strategies too.

The first thing I did when I got home is went to my site and added titles and descriptions to every page. My site is built on the WordPress platform which gives my site an advantage because many SEO (search engine optimization) strategies are already built into it, and the ones that aren’t built-in are easy to add. Not that you can’t SEO a site built in HTML – but because WordPress is actually a blog, it has the advantage of built-in changing content. It’s less work for me to maintain it.

I then added titles to all the links in my pages – not any titles. I used keywords. When you create links here on ActiveRain, they ask you for a title. The title is not the word that you are linking, it’s the word that you believe people will type into a search engine so that your post pops up first.

Oh, most important about keywords, when choosing a keyword, try to get very specific: ie if you are writing about Worcester real estate, using the keywords (key-phrase) “WordPress blogs” is probably too broad and there’s too much competition. They may type in “how to SEO my blog” though. That is called The Long Tail, just to give you the technical term.

Now, on each page and when writing a blog post you should use your Long tail key-phrase at the beginning (in the title) and also at the end of each article, then once or twice in the middle of the article. Ben suggests 2-3 times for every 100 words that you write. A typical blog post is 300-500 words long. Any more often would be considered spamming the search engines.

Of course the most important SEO strategy is to write good content. Write for your reader first, the search engines second.

Another tip you can implement easily is to get other sites linking to yours. I use blogsearch.google.com to find other blogs to comment on. Since I am a WordPress expert, I look for blogs that write about WordPress. Oh, do not leave your URL (web address) in the post. WordPress is set up so that your name is linked to your site automatically. Leaving your URL is considered spam in the outside world.

I can go on and on with more SEO Strategies that you can implement right now, but I don’t want to leave you in overwhelm so I’ll save some strategies for later posts.

I use Dreamhost for my web host. I signed up with them about 3 years ago. I only chose them because I had found a coupon code on the internet that gave me $97 off of my first year of hosting. That meant I only had to pay around $21 for an entire year.

Once I purchased my hosting I found out that I get a free domain name for the entire time that I am with them. So I purchased a second domain name – crystalpina.com. Domains are cheap, but it’s pretty cool that they offer that.

Dreamhost doesn’t come with phone support but they answer their emails almost immediately. Not only do they answer the email, they go above and beyond to make sure that my support question is resolved. Since I help people set up their blogs, I’ve needed support a bit more often than the average web host user. I’ve gotten the same fast response every time.

In the 3 years I’ve been with Dreamhost my site has never gone down.

Dreamhost also offers 2 extra tidbits that make using them pretty enticing. First, you can set Dreamhost to automatically upgrade your blog when an upgrade comes out. Second, you can backup up to 50GB of files from your computer to their Backup User area. Ok, that’s not a whole lot of space, but it’s a lot more than the free 2Gs offered by Mozy and DropBox.

If you are interested in hosting with Dreamhost, use the coupon code VISIONS for $50 off your first year of hosting.

You may have noticed some changes around here. Not the blog, but to the site. I have another project in the works. You asked for WordPress training. I am giving it to you.

Mark your calendars. The grand opening of the new WordPress training site is March 1st from 7-9pm. I’m working on getting prizes. Anyone want to donate, the target market is virtual assistants and entrepreneurs who want to maintain their own blogs.

During the grand opening call, I will show you around the site and introduce you to what it has to offer. It’s what you’ve been asking for!

Details will follow.

About a third of my inquires lately have been by people wanting me to teach them WordPress so that they can maintain – and even customize – their own sites. Makes sense. Most people create blog sites because you want control. You’re tired of being held hostage by a web designer who’s too busy to make a 15 minute change at the time you want it changed.

Before you can customize a theme, you need to know HTML. The best HTML tutorial I found is . Scroll down to the Basic Tutorial Mini-Chapters and begin. At the end of the tutorials I promise that you will have a good understanding of HTML.

Dave also has CSS tutorials too. Don’t worry about those just yet. Just get the HTML down.

Knowing HTML will also help you with formatting your pages. You will be able to fix formatting issues using the HTML editor because we all know that the Visual editor doesn’t always fix the problem.

If you are a user of Skype, then you probably know there are hidden emoticons. Here is the emoticon code for all 9, plus the code for the US and Canada flags.

(poolparty)

(swear)

(bug)
(fubar)
(tmi)

(mooning)

(finger)
(bandit)

(drunk)
(smoking) (smoke) (ci)
(toivo)

(rock)
(headbang) (banghead)
(flag:US)

(flag:CA)