Julianna
Small business owners and independent contractors alike will find the Freelance Switch blog helpful. While much of their content is targeted at freelance writers and designers trying to make the leap to full-time independent work, the blog offers great insights on how to make the most of your work day, generate business leads and manage different types of clients – useful advice for any business.
Freelance Switch has a great post this week on Getting Exposure On Search Engines. Focusing on four key areas – Choosing your keywords, Making the content of your website searchable, Fulfilling the needs of browsers and Getting other sites to link to you – this post is an excellent overview of how to use some simple SEO tactics to gain exposure and get new clients. If you have looked at other SEO sites and thought it seemed confusing, too time consuming or difficult, this post is for you, it focuses on small concrete things you can do to promote your business.
Below is an excerpt from point #4 – Getting other sites to link to you:
Promote your website as a resource.
Having an armory of visuals or articles is important for obtaining good quality incoming links.Lots of top-ranking websites have ‘Resources’ or ‘Useful links’ sections. You need to be in there. So write up a description of your resources and send to the web editors of high-ranking sites. Try to include your main keywords within your link description copy, so meta-crawlers identify it as a ‘good link’.
Send out articles.
Be a featured writer on a website that prospective clients hit on every day. You’ll not only get quality links to your site, you’ll also get your name out as an expert in your field.Your articles can be adapted from your website or your blog entries. Just make sure they are useful and informative, leaving your website address and service description for your bio at the end of the article. Be sure to add a ‘call to action’ line at the end of your bio, persuaded interested readers to contact you (e.g. “Need a fresh new look? Ask about my design services. Email jon@callmewoo.com”.)
The key point here is to provide value for your current and potential customers. By establishing yourself as an expert and a resource, your business will gain positive exposure and give something back to your customers. Admittedly, writing is much harder than most people realize, so sending out articles may not be the easiest or best fit for you. If you have the budget, don’t be afraid of hiring someone to help you. As this blog shows, there is a wealth of talented freelance writers available for contract work, so this might be a great opportunity to gather your ideas and work with an independent consultant to bring them to your site.
If you are interested in learning more, check out the full article, or the book it was adapted from The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook, available for download at www.marketing-designers.com.