Website localization and multilingual SEO: a bilingual Virtual Assistant can help you

by guest blogger Claudia Amendola of mtvirtualassistant.com

What’s the key of a successful international website?

Over the past year, many of my clients with international websites have been asking me for an easy and fast way to optimize their sites for each country or the European market. That’s the reason why I wanted to make this post and share with you my thoughts. Please feel free to share yours too by leaving your comments ,-) .

You may know already that an “international” website is a website for an international audience. In order to reach an international audience you will need to Translate and Localize your website in other languages. English is the most common language but that doesn’t mean that everyone on this planet speaks and understand perfectly English. Only 37 percent of the world’s online population speaks English as a first language.

Translate your website in other languages such as Spanish, Italian, French, German ect will assure you a niche of market you will never get if your website is only written in English.

But translating your website is not the only thing you will need to do in order to reach multilingual audiences. Your website needs to be localized. WEBSITE LOCALIZATION is the process of modifying an existing website to make it accessible, usable and culturally suitable to a new target audience. It is a multi-layered process needing both programming expertise and linguistic/cultural knowledge as well as marketing knowledge. If a website is only translated to a different language, the chances to reach a new market are lower.

The website localization process comes normally first. Followed up by the website and content translation. At least this is what I normally do as I prefer to search and focus first on the market and audience niche. It is important to study the right words, the target audience age you are communicating with, the society class as well as your competitors in that particular country. In the majority of cases it is the lack of linguistic and cultural input that lets a website localization down.

Last but not least is: INTERNATIONAL or MULTILINGUAL SEO!

Multilingual SEO is an important component to an effective global Internet marketing strategy. Some search engines are better than others and work differently, too. Google results, for instance, may differ from country to country. Just because you’ve achieved a certain rank for targeted keywords for the U.S. doesn’t mean you’ll achieve the same results for Italy or Spain, for instance.

So, these are some tips you may take in consideration for your multilingual marketing:

- Know Your Audience first

- Modify Web Page Code for your new market

- Choose the right Domain or Domain Extensions

- Always use the Native Language

Claudia Amendola, Multilingual and Travel Virtual Assistant successfully provides an outsourcing alternative for clients who typically do not have the time, space or budget for in-house staff, but have the same need for bilingual and travel assistance. Claudia speaks and writes 3 languages fluently: English, Spanish and Italian. She can be reached at info@mtvirtualassistant.com or on Twitter @italianmtva

For French or German services contact the author of the blog, Sarah Santacroce at sarah@simplicityadmins.com or on Twitter @sarahsantacroce

Article Marketing: A Great Free Marketing Tool

Since I’m still in the middle of the big move (for those who are new to my blog: I’m moving from California to Switzerland) I continue my series of guest posts. This one is

by Jodi Crosby (@SmartVAforU)

Doesn’t everybody need more activity on their website? And wouldn’t it be great to find this activity through a free resource? Well, there are several free resources, but one of the best is article submission. You take the time to write a compelling, informative article and post it to the article marketing publisher’s sites. They get free content that can be employed by others looking for great information to post on their websites. The article publisher’s readers are then given the chance to click through to your site and your additional content. This additional traffic to your website should provide you with more opportunities to help out those clients.

Another aspect of article marketing is you get to provide informative content to help “Brand” yourself as an expert in your field, show your style, and provide a foundation for building trust. Most importantly, when writing articles or any other content be you, be consistent, and be authentic. The best way to build loyal followers is by being genuine and trustworthy.

What are some of the ways you can boost traffic and, in turn, revenue?

1) Remember to include a link to your site at the end of every article.

2) Provide the reader a little bit of information about your background and knowledge.

3) Give a short explanation of the benefits of visiting your site.

4) Inquiring minds want to know, so leave them a little curious about what you can do to help.

What if an ezine publisher picks up the article to be published in their newsletter? This provides an opportunity for thousands of the ezine’s readers to view your article and click through to your site. When someone publishes your article, they should include your entire article, including the information about you and your site.

The more click-throughs to your site the higher placement you will receive on the search engines.

If you continue to add to the number of articles submitted and where these articles appear, the number of links back to you and your website increase accordingly.

As you increase the number of links to your site, the search engines will give your site higher rankings. Your click-through rates will soar as you appear higher in people’s searches, and you will receive even more opportunity to help new clients.

The general consensus is, if you can get your website up to the top 6 for your search terms or keywords, you will create a lot more traffic on your site. Article marketing can make the difference and help you reach this goal.

Here are a few of the top article marketing publishers:

http://ezinearticles.com/

http://www.articledashboard.com/

http://www.goarticles.com/

http://www.articlesbase.com/

http://www.articlecity.com/

http://www.articlemark.org/

http://www.articlealley.com/

http://www.isnare.com/

http://searchwarp.com/

http://www.ideamarketers.com/

Each of these sites has different rules. Please take the time to understand their rules prior to submitting any articles so you don’t waste time having to edit your content. Submission to multiple sites is critical to a successful article marketing campaign. A Social Medial Virtual Assistant has the skills and knowledge to submit your article quickly and efficiently to the right sites for the most return on investment.

Jodi Crosby, Smart Virtual Assistant for You, is a mom and an entrepreneur committed to working with small business owners. My goal is to enable you to accomplish your goals while leaving the administrative tasks to a professional. I understand that being in business for yourself, while very rewarding is also very challenging. Smart Virtual Assistant for You can help. Visit http://smartvaforu.com. Follow Jodi on Twitter @SmartVAforU

How to use your e-mail signature as a Marketing tool

by Guest Blogger Michelle Mangen

Wanting to have a fancy email signature for your Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail or AOL email accounts?

Come on – you know you want it! Up until now it’s never really been that easy to add an HTML signature to your Gmail account.

Several weeks ago I did a post on How To Add A Twitter Icon to your email signature for Outlook 2007. Since I wrote that post I came across “WiseStamp” which allows you to create the same type of signature for some of the free email services.

The steps on how to do this were quite easy and I was really pleased with the result.

and then….I realized that it wouldn’t work with Outlook and I don’t want to actually log in to Gmail in order to have my kickin’ new social media icon laden email signature.

So I figured out how to have the best of both worlds. For the ones of you that use the web-based email programs for Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail and AOL email you will only have to set up Wisestamp and in a few minutes you will be ready to blast off emails to everyone and their mom showing off your rockin’ new signature.

For the ones of us that still use Outlook you will have a few more steps but in the end, trust me, it will all be worth it.

Do you use the web-based email programs? If so, hop to the end and leave a comment.

If you use Outlook 2007 use these steps to add your Twitter, your Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Skype, etc. icons into your email signature.

1. Set up WiseStamp (they have directions so I won’t bore you with them)
2. Sign into your web-based program and send yourself a blank message
3. Log into your Outlook and open the message you just sent yourself
4. Right Click in the body of the email and chose “view source”
5. This will bring up a text document with all of the HTML of the email signature
6. Copy that into a free HTML editor (I use PageBreeze)
7. View the new “page” in “normal mode” (PageBreeze instructions)
8. Copy the “normal” looking page
9. Open your signature box and create a new signature (see my previous post for instructions on how to do edit your Outlook signature)
10. Go test it….are you now sporting a rockin’ new signature?

Michelle Mangen, Your Virtual Assistant, specializes in Social Media and Bookkeeping and will work with you to take your business to the next level. Find her on Twitter @mmangen

How to write a blog post with screenshots

by Sarah Santacroce

When writing my last post about Yahoo update changes, I realized that it would be way easier to explain the changes that Yahoo recently implemented by having some kind of visual support for my readers. As the old saying goes: “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Basically whenever you write a “how to” post, I think a screenshot of the different steps to follow will simplify your instructions and grab your reader’s attention.

The best screen shot tool I found is called Aviary. Aviary is a FREE Firefox extension that is installed in a couple of clicks. It then gives you the choice of either:

- capturing only a certain region of a page
- capturing the visible portion of a page
- or capturing the entire page

Once you made your selection you can easily save it to your desktop as a .png file. Choose a customized title for your image, this will help you with your SEO. 

When using screen shots or any other picture on your blogs, make sure you also take advantage of the ALT attribute, using your main keywords.  One of my favorite bloggers who uses frequent screenshots is Ching Ya and her blog Social @ Blogging Tracker. Check out this post on “How to import Twitter Favorites to Facebook Page” and see for yourself how she engages her readers with a very interactive and colorful article :-)

Now it’s your turn! Do you know about an other great screen capturing tool that you want to share in the comments ?

 

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Understanding Yahoo!’s recent update changes

by Sarah Santacroce

A friend of mine recently kindly informed me that her Yahoo e-mail homepage was getting swamped with my updates. She didn’t exactly know where all these updates were coming from and neither did I, because I was sure I didn’t send her any e-mails. So I decided to investigate. Here is what I found out:

A couple of weeks ago, Yahoo expanded their “Updates” section and now also acts as a Social Media aggregator. What does that mean? It means that when you login to your Yahoo homepage, you now see your “friends” Yahoo status updates as well as updates on third party services (such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Stumble Upon etc.) that they have added to their Yahoo profile. Before, both parties had to “agree to be friends”, but in the new version the mutual follow is no longer a requirement.

So, to get back to my story: my friend received an update for each single tweet (and I tweet a lot!), each status update on Facebook and every blog post I published! Obviously she was slightly bothered by my invasion of her Yahoo account! And I’m so glad she told me so I could solve this issue! In order to avoid this situation for you, I decided to write this blog post and show you in 3 simple steps what to do:

Step 1 – Update your profile
While you’re at it, you might as well update your profile. Go to http://pulse.yahoo.com/, click on Profile and hit “Edit”

Step 2 – Manage your Settings
Go to http://pulse.yahoo.com/y/settings and you’ll find the following screen. From there you can update your Privacy settings, your Updates, your linked Accounts and your Notifications.

Step 3 – Manage your Updates
If you click on “Updates” you’ll see the following screen:

On this screen you will have to choose, which updates you want to share with your friends. If you are on Twitter, I recommend you don’t share your tweets, because you will end up swamping your friends’ homepage like I did. I decided to share my Blog posts, my Stumble Upon bookmarks and my Yahoo status updates. Up to you, which notifications you want to share…

I hope you found this post useful. Let me know your thoughts on Yahoo’s update changes…

I post other useful tips on my Facebook page. Why not join me ?

2 x 10 things (a personal post)

by Sarah Santacroce

If you read my blog on a regular basis (if you don’t, consider subscribing to my RSS :-) you know that I’m moving back to Europe at the end of the month. In an earlier post I wrote about the professional implications of this big move: what it means to be a Virtual Assistant in Europe. This time I’d like to share some more personal reflections, looking back at those 3.5 years living in California. While waiting to pick up my older son from school (the younger one was sleeping in the back of the car), I came up with this list of 2 x 10 things: the first list summarizes the 10 Top things I’ll miss most about our life in California and in the second list I put down the 10 things I look most forward to when thinking about going back to Europe.

They are not in order of importance!

10 things I’ll miss the most :

1. Sunshine !
2. Avocados
3. The Beach
4. Convenience of shopping whenever I feel like it
5. Friendliness and positive attitude of people
6. Our community pool
7. Eat out without spending a fortune
8. Mexican food
9. Calling people by their first name
10. Did I mention the sun?

10 things I look most forward to:

1. Family and friends
2. Mountains
3. Grocery store and school within walking distance
4. Home made food at dinner parties
5. Clean air
6. Different types of music on the radio, not just English!
7. Weekends in Paris, Florence, Barcelona…
8. Long summer nights (in California it get’s dark at 8 even in July)
9. The feeling of fitting in, being home
10. Good looking guys (sorry, Americans are just not my type :-)

There you have it :-) Feel free to comment if you agree or disagree with my list :-)

Getting to know your future Virtual Assistant

by Sarah Santacroce

A couple of weeks ago, Christine Bearse, a fellow VA and champion for the advancement of the Virtual Assistant industry, asked me a couple of questions about myself and my business and posted the interview on her blog, VAProfiles. When choosing an assistant in the “real” world, you get to meet her in person, see her style, hear her voice and discover her hobbies. In the virtual world we have to work a little harder at getting to know the human being behind the gravitar. So Christine decided to start this blog to profile VAs with a bigger focus on their styles and personalities rather than on their rates and services. So in case you are looking for a Virtual Assistant, VAProfiles is a good way to start. Browse away and get to know your future VA.

Here’s an extract of my interview:

When I first “met” Sarah, she was living in California. Since then she has moved back to Switzerland where she has taken her VA business with her! Another great benefit of running a virtual office. Sarah Santacroce is the sole proprietor of Simplicity Admin Solutions. One of her unique talents is her ability to work in three languages (French, German and English). Her niche is multi-lingual assistance such as translations (English to German or French and vice versa) and internet marketing for small businesses or individual entrepreneurs. I asked her some questions about herself and her business, please see what she told me. Also be sure to check out her blog, I found lots of great information there.

Why did you become a VA?

I loved the idea of more flexibility, being able to be available part time for my kids, choosing the people I get to work with and just running my own business.

How do you prefer to communicate with clients? Phone, email, chat, combo?

I like to work with Skype and e-mail.

How do you stay organized? Do you have any organization tips?

I’m all about lists: to-do lists, task lists, priority lists, grocery lists…

How would your friends describe you?

Positive, good listener, usually in a good mood, very Swiss (meaning: on time, reliable, organized, picky about her chocolate)

How would your clients describe you?

Efficient, innovative, always finding better and faster ways

How do you feel about social media?

A must for small businesses! Social media offers small businesses so many free marketing opportunities which didn’t exist before. I’m thinking of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. It would be a pity if a business with a small marketing budget didn’t take advantage of them! Of course Social Media requires quite some time, so sometimes it makes sense to outsource these tasks to a Virtual Assistant.

To read the rest of the interview, click here.

Christine, thanks again for this great opportunity !
If you are a Virtual Assistant and would like to be get a profile on Christine’s website, please contact her through the e-mail on her site.

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