How A Virtual Assistant Could Help With Your Website

You may think that a website is a set-and-forget thing, but to be truly effective, a website needs to change regularly. Whether you’re making changes to better suit your clients, updating the CMS, themes or plugins for security, or making updates to improve your website’s SEO or just because you need a change – a good website is more fluid than static.

How A Virtual Assistant Could Help With Your Website - Sharyn Munro Virtual AssistanceUnfortunately, adding yet another job to your unending list of tasks is not something that is easy for most business owners to do. Luckily, it’s something that you can easily delegate to your Virtual Assistant. With that in mind, here are 17 ways a Virtual Assistant can help with your website:

  1. Make changes to the content – Get your Virtual Assistant to upload new content, edit existing content and remove content that’s no longer needed.
  2. Add or change images – If the images on your website are becoming stale, or you’ve had new images made or photos taken, your Virtual Assistant can load them onto your website and optimise the SEO.
  3. Check that backups are happening regularly – I’ve recently had an issue with a client’s website being lost due to automatic backups stopping some time ago, but nobody noticing until too late. Get your Virtual Assistant to add a regular task to check that backups are happening, and that the backups are OK and can actually restore your website if they’re ever needed.
  4. Update themes and plugins on a regular basis – Website updates are important, not only because they often give new functionality, but because updates often plug a security hole that’s recently been uncovered. If you don’t pay attention to backups, you might find that it can be months before you get round to them. Get your Virtual Assistant to check regularly, or if you’re using a security product like WordFence add your Virtual Assistant as the contact for emails letting you know when things need updating.
  5. Proofread your content – Spelling or grammar errors on your website makes your business look bad, but they’re often hard to spot on something you’ve created. Your Virtual Assistant can read through your website content and make sure that everything is correct and help your business to promote a professional image.
  6. Add, change and remove widgets – To keep your page updated, every now and then you’ll need to add, edit or remove a widget. Finding the right widget and getting all the settings right can be time consuming and fiddly. Get your Virtual Assistant to do it and spend your time doing the things that you need to do.
  7. Add, change and remove plugins – Plugins often need to be updated, or maybe you want the functionality that a new plugin can offer, sometimes you just don’t need a plugin anymore. Your Virtual Assistant to make these changes and ensure that your website functions the way you want it to.
  8. Update static information as needed – There are website pages that you don’t intend to change, but from time to time, you need to update some information. Whether it’s updating the copyright year in your footer from year-to-year, making changes to your address or phone number, or updating the terms & conditions, privacy policy or any other static information, your Virtual Assistant can quickly and easily make any required changes.
  9. Add client testimonials – Testimonials should always be added to your website. Regardless of whether they’re added via social media, an email or letter from the client, or on another site (Yelp, TripAdvisor, Zomato etc.) it’s a great idea to add them to your website as well.
  10. Update your FAQ when needed – If your website has a FAQ it should be regularly updated to reflect the questions your clients are asking. Have your Virtual Assistant do a regular review of what’s being asked and add anything that’s not already on the FAQ.
  11. Monitor your website contact email address – Get your Virtual Assistant to monitor the email address that received queries submitted through your website’s Contact Us form. They can then answer any simple questions, pass queries from potential customers on to the appropriate person and delete any spam, leaving you to only deal with the emails that you need to respond to.
  12. Format and upload lead magnets – Pretty much every website has a few lead magnets, free giveaways that share some knowledge and get people to sign up to your website and enter your sales funnel. Your Virtual Assistant can help format the document when it’s being created, then upload the final thing to your website and organise the link to your mailing program as well as a landing page, buttons etc.
  13. Post, format and perform SEO on your blog posts – If you don’t blog, it’s worth considering it. It’s a great way to regularly update your website content and it keeps potential customers coming back. Your Virtual Assistant can upload your blog posts, format them so they look good online and use programs like Yoast to make sure the post has SEO optimised for the keywords you’re targeting.
  14. Monitor and respond to blog comments – A lot of blog comments are just spam, but when somebody takes the time to write a thoughtful comment on your post, they deserve an answer. Get your Virtual Assistant to keep an eye on the comments on your blog and they can remove spam, thank commenters and notify you when a more comprehensive response is needed.
  15. Edit your website menus – When you add pages to your website, add or remove categories, or just have a change in priorities you’ll need to edit your website menus. Get your Virtual Assistant to make changes to your menus so you can focus on other facets of your business.
  16. Receive and act on web form queries – Many websites have a form to “ask a question” or “get a quote” or similar. Get your Virtual Assistant to monitor the email addresses that these forms go to and they can make sure the message is acknowledged and pass the request on to the appropriate person.
  17. Perform HTML and CSS edits – Most Virtual Assistants are capable of creating a website and making major edits to the HTML and CSS to give the functionality and look you want. Pretty much all Virtual Assistants are capable of making minor changes to code.

I’m sure there’s something there that will inspire you and give you some ideas on how a Virtual Assistant can help with your website.