Thanks for stopping back for part 4 of my SEO Basics 5 part Series.  SEO Basics Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (catch up and then come back for part 4) Don’t miss the continuation of the series 1-5

SEO can be tricky and we all struggle to get it just right. I’ve attempted to layout for beginners a layman’s terms way of assuring your site is optimized for search engines. I hope you stay with me over the next couple days flip back to the parts you have missed and then follow each part 1 – 5

Part 1 Tuesday 6/4/2013

Part 2 Wednesday 6/5/2013

Part 3, Thursday 6/6/2013

Part 4 Friday 6/7/13

Part 5 Saturday 6/8/13

Bookmark it!

If you are a beginner and find this useful (and I hope you do) feel free to print and use as a reference as you build your own website

As a Virtual Assistant, we need to be multi-faceted more so than when working outside the home in corporate. Every day is learning something new (and it should be). As a start-up Virtual Assistant I’ve found I don’t have the resources to hire a web designer and it may be the case for you as well. But, that’s okay because as I learn new tasks (some big one’s I might add) it allows for another niche to be added to my portfolio. So, remember learning something new can be a grueling task but it comes with benefits.

With that said, I will move on to the topic of this post: Notifying Google of your mobile site and promoting your site

I encourage you to review each part of the series!

NOTE: Each checklist item has a much deeper and technical explanation, writing text, organizing your site and optimizing images can further be searched by a Google or Bing search. Just search the phrase I’ve provided. I will only note a snippet of the explanation. However, I’ve provided some links and visuals to help you along the way.

—–>>>Excerpted from: Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. However, I have not performed any copy/paste methods here. It was important for me to learn more deeply by reading and researching and posting as I understand.

Submitting Your mobile-site to Google:

Mobile sites use different formats than desktops. This creates a challenge. Be certain that your mobile site is properly recognized by Google as well as other search engines so that users can find it.

•Assure ‘Googlebot-mobile’ can crawl your site by using XHTML Mobile
•Create a sitemap specifically for mobile.
•Submit the URLs of mobile phone content to Google Webmaster Tools
•Use GoMo (GoMo meter) site to test the functionality of your website on a mobile device

For more information, see the Mobile Webmaster Guidelines

   GoMometer Report is a must

Avoid:

• Believing that your desktop site is mobile friendly. Users see something different on mobile
• Only submitting your desktop site map to Google or other search engine (mobile sitemaps create another challenge
• Redirecting mobile users to your desktop home page (redirect to the product they are viewing)

The process of making your site mobile-friendly creates a challenge. Visit Google Webmaster Tools to dissect the particulars of making your desktop site mobile ready. Guiding users to the right site for their device is beyond the basics as addressed here. Please utilize reputable research tools to assure your users have a distinguishable desktop and mobile experience.

Promoting your site:

•Announce changes on your blog
•Promote offline via business cards, letterhead, posters, newsletters via snail mail
•Have a brick and mortar business – add business information to Google Places
•Cross promote on all your online social media sites – add a note with the link

Avoid:
•Purchasing links from another site to gain page rank
•Spamming – asking for link request
•Involving your site in quick artificially promoted links etc.

I hope this has been helpful to you. Again, it’s the basics and much deeper and technical explanations can certainly be found across the internet. Please don’t forget to mark your calendars for continuation of the topics below:

Check out the entire series:

Part 1 Tuesday 6/4/2013 (SEO for websites)

Part 2 Wednesday 6/5/2013 (Writing easy-to-read text, staying organized, optimizing images)

Part 3, Thursday 6/6/2013 (Headings, Robots crawling, and dealing with spam)

Part 4 Friday 6/7/13 (Notifying Google of your mobile site, promoting your site)

Part 5 Saturday 6/8/2013 (Summing it all up and more)

Bookmark it!

Comments Welcome – Go ahead 🙂

My Final Thought:

”If you always do what you’ve always done – you’ll always get what you’ve always got”