Saturday, March 27, 2010
start your own seo business?
Nowadays you don’t have to be big to get big clients. After 3 months of starting up (early 2006) our own web content firm (Applied Content), we landed a big deal with a Fortune 500 company (actually in top 30 though!). It’s not that we looked like a giant corporation, but we looked big enough to show that we cared about our business and about our image. Whether you are a business-to-business or business-to-consumer company, looking “bigger” or more professional will help you land bigger clients, and more of them.
Now for my top 10 list of ways to make your small SEO firm look big:
1) Show that you exist
You should exist more than having a website and a contact form. Preferably put up a phone number and an email address. Get a toll free number if you need to and have it forward to your cell phone. Show your office address, a physical location that someone could look up on a map and find. If you work from home, consider getting a PO Box, but get one that has an address instead of a box number (I think UPS is starting to do this).
2) Show that you actually work with clients
In the field of web content our clients don’t want us to tell the world we write their content, so we actually just “hint” at who our clients are (Fortune 500 company, a site listed in Time magazine’s 50 Coolest sites, other SEO firms, local companies, etc). If your clients don’t mind, I’d like to see the list, even a short (best of) list. If you’re doing SEO, what keywords is the client ranking for?
3) Clean Website
I can’t even count how many interested clients for our web content firm have called and said “I like how clean your website is”. It’s not perfect by any means, but yes it is clean and simple. Don’t have your 14-year old nephew design your site and don’t use clipart. You can find all sorts of free web templates, just make sure you customize them a bit so they don’t look “templatey”.
4) Nice Logo
You should have a logo if you don’t already, even if it’s just the name of your site in a nice typeset. We’ve used LogoWorks before, but I’d try a local design shop first if you can.
5) Link out
There’s a reason that Google et al. like it when you link out to authoritative sites, and for me that reason is because I want to know that you know your industry and resources.
6) Multiple author blog
Now not everyone can do this, but if you have someone else on your staff or even someone that remotely helps you out, even if its a Link Ninja, have them blog too. They don’t have to blog all the time (you should, at least once a week) but enough so we know you actually talk with other people.
7) Rank for your Business Name
If I am going to use you for SEO you’d better be ranked #1 when I search for your company name. Remember that Google et al. is not just a search engine, it is also a dictionary, phone book, map, and calculator.
8) Run a PPC ad for your Business Name
It won’t cost you hardly anything, especially if they use your organic listing (see #7). It tells me you are using pay-per-click like a smart business does, even if I don’t know what other terms you are advertising with.
9) About Us Page
Be personal about your company or yourself. How did you start, what makes your business strong, what are your strongest points, what makes you you? You can do this on a Contact Us page if you want. You don’t need to tell me about your family and your dog, but I do need to know you are real. I need to trust you.
Now for my top 10 list of ways to make your small SEO firm look big:
1) Show that you exist
You should exist more than having a website and a contact form. Preferably put up a phone number and an email address. Get a toll free number if you need to and have it forward to your cell phone. Show your office address, a physical location that someone could look up on a map and find. If you work from home, consider getting a PO Box, but get one that has an address instead of a box number (I think UPS is starting to do this).
2) Show that you actually work with clients
In the field of web content our clients don’t want us to tell the world we write their content, so we actually just “hint” at who our clients are (Fortune 500 company, a site listed in Time magazine’s 50 Coolest sites, other SEO firms, local companies, etc). If your clients don’t mind, I’d like to see the list, even a short (best of) list. If you’re doing SEO, what keywords is the client ranking for?
3) Clean Website
I can’t even count how many interested clients for our web content firm have called and said “I like how clean your website is”. It’s not perfect by any means, but yes it is clean and simple. Don’t have your 14-year old nephew design your site and don’t use clipart. You can find all sorts of free web templates, just make sure you customize them a bit so they don’t look “templatey”.
4) Nice Logo
You should have a logo if you don’t already, even if it’s just the name of your site in a nice typeset. We’ve used LogoWorks before, but I’d try a local design shop first if you can.
5) Link out
There’s a reason that Google et al. like it when you link out to authoritative sites, and for me that reason is because I want to know that you know your industry and resources.
6) Multiple author blog
Now not everyone can do this, but if you have someone else on your staff or even someone that remotely helps you out, even if its a Link Ninja, have them blog too. They don’t have to blog all the time (you should, at least once a week) but enough so we know you actually talk with other people.
7) Rank for your Business Name
If I am going to use you for SEO you’d better be ranked #1 when I search for your company name. Remember that Google et al. is not just a search engine, it is also a dictionary, phone book, map, and calculator.
8) Run a PPC ad for your Business Name
It won’t cost you hardly anything, especially if they use your organic listing (see #7). It tells me you are using pay-per-click like a smart business does, even if I don’t know what other terms you are advertising with.
9) About Us Page
Be personal about your company or yourself. How did you start, what makes your business strong, what are your strongest points, what makes you you? You can do this on a Contact Us page if you want. You don’t need to tell me about your family and your dog, but I do need to know you are real. I need to trust you.
is seo important?
SEO can make the content of your web pages more relevant, more attractive, and more easily read by search engines and their crawling and indexing software.
Why would this be of great importance to you? Would it be important to you if customers were unable to find your telephone number or find the address of your business? I do not think that many businesses could survive for very long in this situation.
This situation could apply to a web site. Can potential customers locate your current web site easily? Traffic to your web site could be extremely low. Potential customers might not even know that your site exists.
"Wait a minute!" you say. "We have a beautiful web site, and we include the web site address in all advertising campaigns. Why would people be unable to find our site?"
Of course, your current customers and persons already acquainted with your business would be likely to find your web site without difficulty. Wouldn’t they?
Are you absolutely sure that your advertising has reached enough potential customers? Did you consider that some people simply do not read the newspapers? How about people who didn’t get the issue of the magazine where you placed an expensive ad?
Did these people hear the WABC radio broadcast when your commercial aired? Were they watching channel 44 during the news hour? Were they on the direct mail list for which you paid thousands of dollars?
So how about those search engines that everyone uses? Potential customers will type a word or two into the box, hit ’Enter’, and immediately find a listing for your company’s web site. One more click and you have another visitor. Search engines sure are great, aren’t they?
Yes, they certainly are great, and the ’type-and-click’ scenario above does happen. More often than not, however, it doesn’t happen without a little work. Search Engine Optimization is that work.
Why would this be of great importance to you? Would it be important to you if customers were unable to find your telephone number or find the address of your business? I do not think that many businesses could survive for very long in this situation.
This situation could apply to a web site. Can potential customers locate your current web site easily? Traffic to your web site could be extremely low. Potential customers might not even know that your site exists.
"Wait a minute!" you say. "We have a beautiful web site, and we include the web site address in all advertising campaigns. Why would people be unable to find our site?"
Of course, your current customers and persons already acquainted with your business would be likely to find your web site without difficulty. Wouldn’t they?
Are you absolutely sure that your advertising has reached enough potential customers? Did you consider that some people simply do not read the newspapers? How about people who didn’t get the issue of the magazine where you placed an expensive ad?
Did these people hear the WABC radio broadcast when your commercial aired? Were they watching channel 44 during the news hour? Were they on the direct mail list for which you paid thousands of dollars?
So how about those search engines that everyone uses? Potential customers will type a word or two into the box, hit ’Enter’, and immediately find a listing for your company’s web site. One more click and you have another visitor. Search engines sure are great, aren’t they?
Yes, they certainly are great, and the ’type-and-click’ scenario above does happen. More often than not, however, it doesn’t happen without a little work. Search Engine Optimization is that work.
seo introduction
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, that is a technique through which a website can be made popular on internet, as well as website keyword ranking can be improved on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask and many other search engines.
How it Helps?
SEO helps the website to receive traffic through good keyword ranking on search engines, this traffic ultimately turns in to lead or possible business to the website owner. Millions and Billions of searches are performed on search engines on various products and services, in other words people on internet are searching on search engines for anything to everything. SEO helps the businesses to achieve top ranking for desired keywords and through the ranking the business gets the lead.
What we teach in SEO Course?
Sharma Web Academy is one of the premier institute in Ahmedabad providing the SEO training classes for interested candidates who wants to build their career as SEO executives. Our SEO training covers all the aspects of Search Engine Optimization techniques that are necessary to make a website popular on internet through search engines.
The course includes Three major sections.
Internet Basics
We drive our strundets through some facts about the Internet, Websites, Domains, Internet based technologies, that are essential basics before they understand SEO course.
Onsite Optimization
We highlight some key factors during the sessions of Onsite Optizations that is as good as Decorating and Organizing our Own Shop Before our major customer ( Search Engine ) takes a visit to our website ( online shop). Onsite optimization is abour 30-40% of the total session ratio for SEO training. A practical approach during these sessions encourages students to learn by their own experience.
Offsite Optimization
The SEO course by Sharma Web Academy has emphasized a lot on Offsite Optimization, you can compare this process with any formal advertisement process. During this process we teach our students how to make a website popular through out the world, how to run a successful and professional offsite optimization campaign to make a business popular.
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