Now I know many people will say what That goes against everything most have learned. You start a website then submit to search engines. That is something we need to do and something that is very important but its not the most important and not the only thing we need to do.
We do need to submit to the search engines, but you should not pay to submit to hundreds and thousands of search engines. Think about it, there are only a handful of popular search engines. Youve never heard of the other thousand engines, so chances are millions of other people have never heard of them either. So why pay $50 or more to a company who claims they will get you top spot in a bunch of search engines that most people wont use.
You can be the only website listed in that engine and it wouldnt matter. If no one is there to search on it, then they cant find you now can they There are also businesses claiming that they will get you into google, yahoo, msn, and other popular search engines in 24 hours. Those claims are hard because I dont know the methods or if they are even ethical, but most popular search engines, especially google, can take weeks and months to get into and its hard to say whether or not this company is actually telling the truth about letting you in.
There are many ways to get your website out there. After submitting to the top search engines, search for popular directories and submit your website. This can be more time consuming because there are hundreds of directories. Start with yahoo and dmoz directories. They are two of the most popular ones. There are also software in which you can submit to directories semi-automatically. Not fully automatic because most directories need you to fill in information that the softwares usually cant.
Another tip for getting your website noticed is to get a budget you can live with and advertise with adwords. If you do it right you can be spending less money than if you go with an advertising company. They can cost hundreds and thousands of dollars.
The most important one, but the hardest is getting sites to link in. Linking in means that other websites have a link to your website. Its really good because if this site is in high standing with google, yahoo, alexa and has a good page rank, then google will take notice that and your page rank can go up. Doing this is hard because you need to find similar websites that arent direct competition and see if they will place a link on their site or trade links, or even sell a little ad space. If you ask 20 websites, then realistically only 1 in that 20 might say yes. So like I said its difficult. Also only trade or get linked in with sites that complement yours. If you sell clothes you shouldnt link to a site that sells car parts. That will only hurt you with the search engines.
Written by Marsha James
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Consultancy is hard to sell to Internet search engines, because search engines rank by popularity and unique, original and focused text content. Clients and competitors most likely will not link to a consulting firms Web site, so where to gain topical link popularity Links from the local chamber of commerce plus a few Web directories arent enough.
Creation of unique and original content is the second major issue. The consultant usually cannot reveal details about consulting projects, also every project has a different focus, so without interesting stories there is nothing to write about
Wait! The consultants broad competence as well as extensive knowledge and experience should lead to a few pages of text content. Not really, most consultants are afraid to publish knowledge which may be sellable some day.
As a matter of fact, mission statements, visions, and similar sales pitches based on a finite number of catchwords will not attract organic search engine traffic. There are only so many ways to praise a consulting firm, none of them is unique any more. The search engines indexes are flooded with variations of the same yada yada yada, they consider it (near) duplicated text content, and refuse to deliver the consultants Web pages on their first search result pages (SERPs).
How to escape the dilemma You really want to reach the potential clients querying their preferred search engine with questions like [how can I achieve insert goal in a insert industry shop] or [what exactly is your special subject here and how can I implement it]. You cannot attract this highly targeted search engine traffic by focusing phrases like our Business Management Consultants are skilled management consultants with extensive combined experience gained at first addresses on your Web site.
Search engine users dont search for a consultants philosophy or academic background. They do search for solutions to particular problems, and they do use natural search queries as well as industry specific terms, including brands and abbreviations.
If you dont change your attitude, those potential clients will never join your clientele. You must provide tons of freebies to attract converting search engine traffic. You must plaster your Web site with valuable information, for example knowledge bases, state of the art tutorials and guides, (anonymized) case studies, up to date articles and white papers, free tools like branded checklists or spread sheets, online services like or weekly tax briefings ... be creative in revealing all your business secrets.
Actually, besides your payroll and such stuff you cant reveal crucial business secrets, because the toolset of a consultant consists of knowledge which is available to the public (even if buried in university libraries or obscure periodicals), common sense, and experience. Publishing knowledge in the context of consulting experience --applying all the phrases search engine users may search for-- will not make the reader a good consultant, but it pleases the readers mind. Pleased visitors more likely subscribe to your RSS feeds or newsletters and they bookmark your Web pages. Chances are good that a recurring visitor will get used to your site, making use of your service request form --or at least the contact page-- one day.
Above all, frequent online publishing is a great way to become noticed as an expert on a topic, which leads to increased popularity, and popularity on the Internet gets expressed as link love. Outstanding content combined with the power of link love --that is naturally earned inbound links-- leads to nicely targeted search engine traffic. It doesnt hurt to consult a smart search engine optimizer for some fine tuning of your SEO strategy, and to take care of the technical aspects like crawlability (info) and Web site structuring (info), but basically a good Web developer/designer will be able to get your thoughts on the World Wide Web.
Sebastian is a freelance IT consultant specialized in search engine friendly Web development. He is the author of several SEO guides and articles on Web site design published by Smart-IT-Consulting.