February 2006 Archives

I first learned of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) through the school of hard knocks, i.e. 'this isn't working, now what?'. The problem was I needed to have our kettlecorn.info site be found so we could hook up with people who needed a better and faster kettle corn machine. So I started reading. I became a most informed consumer through Jill Whalen's www.highrankings.com newsletter. Not only is she an expert on the topic of optimizing your pages, she is a master at communicating the complex in simple terms.

She taught me the importance of page titles and how to make sure they match the content of the page. I also learned about meta-tags and their weight in describing the content of the site. I learned about descriptive paragraph tags and alt tags for my images, along with keyword laden links between site pages. Above all, I learned that content is king. If you create a website with great content, it will be found. Sooner or later people will begin linking to you because of the take home value in doing so.

Not long after I began absorbing the techniques I learned from Jill Whalen, my page ranking began to climb. The site has hovered at number one or thereabouts for my chosen keywords for quite some time now, thanks to solid advice and the page ranking angels.:).

I don't consider myself an SEO expert or anything remotely near, but I can help spot and fix problem areas and give suggestions to help your site begin climbing. For real expert advice I would go with Jill Whalen and her crew or Darlene Moore of www.drivetraffic.ca under whom I took an SEO class through the International Webmaster's Association training center. She knows quite a bit.

Blogging is coming of age as a marketing tool for coaches and independent professionals. A blog is an online journal. It is created with browser based software that allows you to choose a website design, easily update it, add content, post photos or other info and create links and lists of all things useful.

Blogging is inexpensive in terms of the tool, but expensive in terms of your time and attention. If you like to write, managing a blog will be no problem for you. If you don't like to write, you would probably rather have a root canal than start and maintain a company blog. That being said, it still may be worth your precious time.

Blogging is a tool that will help people find you. Not only can you list your site in blog directories, but your fresh content posts will attract search engine "spiders" for more frequent crawls and higher ranking. Blogs are keyword rich and search engines need a steady diet of keywords to deliver pertinent results to searchers.

A blog will also help you be known and create your authentic voice. People like to do business with people they know and trust. A blog can help you build trust and relationships through comment exchange and dialogue. You can be seen as an expert in your niche area. You can also use the viral power of blogging by linking to other blogs you like and vice versa. By inclusion on blog rolls you become part of an instant community of like-minded persons.

There are a ton of blogging platforms which will host your blog, Typepad, Wordpress, BlogHarbor to name a few. For blogging plus more I like Squarespace.

I cut my teeth in the website world ten years ago by creating my first website and posting content for our family manufacturing business (we manufacture high end kettle corn equipment). I learned from the ground up that our website could and would attract all kinds of attention from places of which I'd never even heard. We have gone on to create relationships and build a large customer base from the simple power of this attraction--knowing our niche market and building our site to attract.

You can put this tool to work in your coaching practice. Do you know your niche market? Defining the niche is one of the keys to attraction. Some questions to consider. Where does your ideal customer hang out on the web? What does he or she read? What problems is he or she trying to solve? Try thinking through these questions and see if your idea "niche" market becomes clearer in your mind.