Abridged with the author’s permission from a post on Winning the Web.
Doctors, consultants, lawyers, and web designers all live and die by their reputations. Marketing any kind of professional service is based on relationships that are traditionally built by word of mouth and networking. In fact, every professional service provider I know spends a lot of time “pressing the flesh” and asking for referrals.
Since most of these professionals have expert status in their respective industries, they work hard to promote themselves as “thought leaders” with by-lined articles, tip sheets, and corporate logos. So why not modify each of these strategies to cash in on search engine traffic online? Besides the snazzy tricks and fancy sounding buzzwords, Internet marketing is rooted in the basic principles of marketing.
Supercharge Your By-Lined Articles
Popular bloggers, social media gurus, and web 2.0 experts will tell you that the best way to get traffic is to write for another site that already has lots of traffic. Consultants in the offline world do the same thing by writing by-lined articles in trade journals and niche publications. Publishers need content for their readers and authors need the publicity. So long as the articles are informative and not overly promotional, you’re almost guaranteed placement.
The key to optimizing your articles for the web is to understand the keywords your target market is using to search on the Internet. For example, let’s say you’re a supply chain consultant who focuses on “supply chain integration” and you already write a bi-monthly article in a few popular trade publications. Most editors also publish content online, so by peppering your article with a few keyword-rich links back to your website, you’ll not only get traffic to your site, but you’ll dramatically improve your search engine rankings.
Be sure to perform keyword research using the many free tools available online to see what your target market is searching for. Also consider ultra-niche publications like “Seafood Business” and “Industrial Health and Safety News.”
Turn Tip Sheets and White Papers Into “Link Bait”
Tip sheets are either copied verbatim or referenced in magazines and journals all the time. Auditors may write something like “Top 10 Tips to Ensure Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance.” Law firms may release studies like “Financial Implications of Not Having a Will.”
“Link bait” is a term describing compelling content that attracts natural links from other sites. It is the Internet’s version of the tip sheet. Create an ebook or white paper and distribute it throughout the Internet. The buzz you generate will attract links to your website, which will give your site a boost in the search engines. A great example of this kind of link bait is Gyutae’s Park’s The Winning Way.
What resources, ebooks, or industry guides can you create to attract website traffic? One thing to remember is that the headline is the most important aspect of your ebook.
Logos = Web Widgets
Many web design firms leave a logo at the bottom of their clients’ sites saying something like “Powered by Adaptive Solutions” or “Created by Programmers R Us.” Similarly, SEOs and Internet marketing professionals have been using clever little widgets to spread publicity about their companies as well as increase their search engine rankings.
For example, a friend of mine works for a company that sells software to museum and zoo gift shops (talk about a niche market). The company has over 5,000 customers and all of them have its logo on their sites. This is great, but the problem is the logo doesn’t contain any keywords. If they simply added “museum POS experts” or “museum software experts” they would literally own these terms in the search engines.
Raza Imam is a Chicago-based marketing consultant and owns an offshore software development company. Visit his software outsourcing blog at www.SoftwareSweatshop.com.
