How can an SEO virtual assistant help take your online business to new heights? Why should you be paying attention to SEO, anyway?
SEO or search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website. This improves its visibility on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo!. Internet users type in billions of searches on Google every day. This means that getting your website on the front page is like being on the world’s largest billboard with the biggest audience. If you aren’t paying attention to your online presence or the state of your website, you are seriously missing out.
However, SEO is a time-consuming process and is most likely not something you can handle yourself. Today we will be going through the top 14 tasks that you can outsource to a virtual assistant. This way, you can improve your rankings on SERPs (search engine results pages).
1. Keyword Research
Keyword research is foundational to a successful SEO strategy. This process involves determining which terms users enter into search engines. Your SEO keyword research is then used to inform SEO campaigns and other marketing tactics. This type of research allows you to peek into the minds of your target audience. Keyword research is more than just figuring out the exact words or phrases they search for. It is also about finding out the search intent or what the goal of the search is.
A keyword research SEO virtual assistant knows how to:
- Create a list of topics related to your business/industry
- Search for keywords relating to those topics
- Check monthly search volume for those keywords
- Use keyword research tools to find more keywords
2. On-Page Optimization
On-page SEO refers to the process of optimizing your website and its pages. This is so that you can improve your ranking on search engines.
According to Search Engine Journal, there are 12 on-page SEO factors divided into three main categories. These categories are: content, HTML, and website architecture. The twelve factors are:
- E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
- Keywords
- SEO Writing
- Visual Assets
- Title Tags
- Meta Description
- Image Optimization
- Geotagging
- Site Speed
- Responsive Design
- URL Structure
- Links
3. Off-Page Optimization
Off-page SEO, as the name suggests, is the process of improving your SEO through off-site methods. This type of SEO work is conducted to build the authority and reputation of your website. The goal of these methods is to make your website a trustworthy source of information in the eyes of users and search engines.
Off-page SEO efforts include:
- Link building (getting authoritative websites to link back to your site)
- Guest posting
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- Local SEO
4. SEO Audits
An SEO audit is the process of sweeping through your entire website and assessing if it is optimized for search engines. The goal is to identify any potential problem areas. Then you can find opportunities to go up in the search rankings.
Several factors influence your ranking on results pages. These can be on-page or off-page SEO and technical SEO. They usually make use of certain SEO audit tools.
An SEO virtual assistant performing an audit usually checks things like:
- Website architecture
- Backlinking
- Internal linking
- Indexing
- Crawlability
- Sitemaps
- Keywords research and usage
- Site Security
5. Competitor Analysis
Search engine results pages are one of if not the most competitive landscapes for organic online digital marketing. You have several steps to overcome to gain any kind of positive traction. Getting any visibility at all, like on the first page of Google, is already difficult enough. Winning bids on keywords and ranking for them are two separate battlefields. This is why competitor analysis can be so valuable.
Competitor analysis allows you to find opportunities where you can gain an edge over the competition. You do this by evaluating what your competition is doing. Copy what works, find out where their gaps are, and capitalize on that. A VA can help you find the competition in your niche. Then, they can gauge the difficulty of ranking for specific keywords and find other opportunities for social listening.
6. Content Creation
What’s the difference between a virtual assistant content writer and an SEO virtual assistant content writer? While we recommend all content writers learn the basics of SEO, there are a few differences.
A normal content creator has more flexibility and freedom when writing. They don’t have to worry about ranking signals or keywords. They can use whatever formatting they want. It’s really up to the writer’s preference as to what direction a piece goes.
An SEO writer, on the other hand, needs to write articles that appeal to readers and search engines. They have the goal of driving traffic to websites. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Plus, they do all this while also offering valuable information. This information, mind you, has to meet the search intent of audiences. They can’t just put in whatever they believe is valuable. The topics and subtopics are often based on the target audience. SEO writers must know and answer users’ questions. Then, they have to know about keyword placement. Plus, they must weave keywords into their writing naturally and creatively.
7. Content Optimization
This is a step up from content creation. You need to do more than just keyword insertion that goes into creating SERP-friendly content. Take internal linking for example. This is the practice of directing one page of content to another relevant content within a website. You’re probably familiar with the highlighted “Read More” buttons on blog posts that direct you to additional content you may be interested in. Content optimization also involves including images or videos to supplement text content. Your SEO VA can also write attractive title tags and meta descriptions. This is the text you see on a regular Google search result.
8. Local SEO
SEO is basically about ranking on the global search engine results pages. Local SEO is more about ranking in local results. This is the process of optimizing your site to perform better on searches related to specific locations. For example, grocery stores in California, movie theaters near me, restaurants open now, etc. As you may have noticed, these searches don’t have to include the specific names of places. Local results come up based on what was implied in the search.
Your local SEO virtual assistant can help with your online visibility. They work to draw more attention to your physical store. Some of these methods include:
- Creating content with localized language
- Claiming and setting up your Google Business Profile so you show up as a listing with Google Maps
- Inputting business information on your Business Profile and other online local business directories
9. SEO Reporting
SEO reporting is the process of arranging data collected by SEO tools and putting it in a visual format. These reports show how your SEO efforts have affected the performance of your site. This data reveals how people interact with your website. These metrics include conversion rates, user engagement, clickthrough rate, organic traffic, etc. SEO reports are essential for planning and implementing future marketing tactics.
10. SEO Tools Management
There are a lot of processes that go into SEO. To do all of these manually would not only be incredibly difficult, but also extremely inefficient. Thankfully, virtual assistant SEO tools exist to optimize and streamline the process. In exchange for convenience, your SEO VA needs to be familiar with some of these tools (depending which task you’re hiring for specifically).
These include:
- Keyword research tools like Semrush and Jaaxy
- Metric measurements tools like Google Analytics and Bing Webmasters Tools
- Campaign monitoring tools like Ahrefs and Google Analytics
- SEO reporting tools like SE Ranking and Databox
- Google Search Console, SEMRush, and other SEO audit tools
11. Using a SEO Virtual Assistant for Website Analytics
Website analytics and SEO go hand in hand. Search engine algorithms do take website performance metrics into account when ranking sites on their results pages. These include bounce rates, how long they stay on pages, scroll depth, and Core Web Vitals. Your virtual SEO assistant can keep track of these metrics and analyze them. They can offer actionable insights to improve these numbers which will, in turn, contribute to your SEO efforts.
12. SEO Strategy Development
This SEO task requires a little bit more experience and expertise in the field. As such these virtual assistants are likely to be on the more pricey end of things in exchange for excellent results. They use SEO reporting, analytics, and the data gathered through campaign monitoring. Then, in combination with industry-specific knowledge and what they know of SEO best practices they come up with several plans.
These SEO strategies can help optimize several aspects of your business’s SEO operations. This can be related to content creation, on-page and off-page optimizations, keyword bidding, keyword targeting, link building, and more.
13. SEO Performance Monitoring
If you’re familiar with SEO campaigns, you’ll know that they require a close and watchful eye. Whether it’s monitoring keywords, keyword bidding, A/B testing web pages, or tracking KPIs, there are a lot of moving parts. Managing a campaign and a business simultaneously to equal degrees of success is implausible. That’s where hiring an SEO virtual assistant comes into play. They can view real-time data on your behalf with the help of SEO campaign monitoring tools.
14. Use a SEO Virtual Assistant to Stay Updated with SEO Trends
Google changes its algorithms constantly. The SEO landscape is dynamic and ever-evolving. There is no guarantee that the methods you’ve used for the past years are going to get you to the top or keep you there.
As a business owner, you need someone to stay on top of these updates. You need an SEO expert who can communicate the changes. They can also help you come up with an action plan to adjust quickly and potentially get ahead of the competition.
Looking for a more outsourced SEO solution? Check out TrioSEO. They’re a full service SEO agency that will put together an SEO strategy for you, publish SEO content monthly, and drive more traffic and leads to your website.
What Is Outsource School?
Outsource School helps you to unlock the potential of virtual assistants and accelerate your business growth.
This is the exact system Outsource School’s founders, Nathan Hirsch and Connor Gillivan, used to go from zero to 8 figures and 40+ virtual assistants with an exit in 2019.
Since being founded in 2020, Outsource School has helped 1,000+ business owners hire 2,000+ virtual assistants for their companies.
Schedule a free sales call to learn more
Free resources you might like:
- Outsource School Case Study: How We Scaled to 45+ VAs and 8 Figures in Revenue
- Free VA Calculator | See How Many VAs You Can Afford
- Free Training on 5 Keys to Working With VAs
- Learn Outsourcing 101 | Guides, Downloads, and Checklists
Final Thoughts on Hiring a SEO Virtual Assistant
As you can see, virtual assistant SEO services are a valuable asset to any online business looking to gain more organic traffic to their site. If you have an online presence, you should seriously consider learning more about the impact of SEO in the current digital marketing age.
If you want to learn more about outsourcing and SEO, why not check out “5 Steps to Outsource SEO to a Marketing Assistant”.
