I have just found your site after receiving my Guardian News email. What a fantastic amazing website!!
How good is that?
One of my clients asked me to check on their feedback whilst they are out of contact and I went through and read all of their important messages to them. The quote above was the pretext to a message where the people wanted to make a booking. I was chuffed to bits and my client was too! I probably would never have seen it if he hadn’t been out in the wilds, so a lucky day for me!
I am sponsoring an event in October called Just About Digital and this made me stop and think about the value of having a central place on the internet to put all of your feedback, press, case studies and news. I have harped on about this before but there is no question that you need to exist on the internet strongly and predominantly in one place. Then everything else you do can link back to your main identity and all of the social media posting, directory listings, guest blogging, podcasts you do all make sense because they all point back to this central hub. The central hub that is YOU on the internet.
You really need a blog
Add an about page to your blog and you have a website. After all a blog is a website.
If you don’t want your own blog you need some kind of presence, otherwise your business will become the best-kept secret in the world! So the alternative is to go for a Facebook page or a LinkedIn profile where you can post about your business, post your good news and get reviews. If you are a local business, look at Google Places to claim your listing, you don’t need a website for that.
You need to post content
Whatever you decide you need to start posting updates, regularly. Doesn’t have to be often – once a week or even once a fortnight is fine. Put your good news on there, positive feedback, photos of what you do and a little bit of a story. It doesn’t take much to build up your profile online and the more you do it the more people will begin to sit up and take notice of you.
Share it
Then share your content around your Facebook friends on your LinkedIn Profile, on Twitter and if you have lots of lovely photos associated with your business go for Instagram and Pinterest. Just make sure that when you do share you include links back to your central hub, the one we talked about above. That will drive people to your place on the internet, raising your profile by just a little bit every day.
Keyword it
You will want to make sure that your central place on the internet, be that website, blog or social media profiles includes a sentence of what you do and where you are based. Quite simply these are your keywords. e.g. Web Designer based in Weymouth.
Then think about padding out that description a bit, giving more detail on what you do. These are your long-tail keywords. e.g. Web Designer based in Weymouth specialising in WordPress Development and SEO.
In a nutshell there could be a lot of competition for the main keywords and it could be more difficult to get a number one page position on Google. By writing a long-tail keyword you give yourself more chances of getting found. The best thing there is that when you do get found, people will have typed in that specific keyword and so you are exactly what they are looking for.
Then make sure you use those keywords in your profile in all of the other places you appear on the internet, without fail.
Keep your eyes peeled
So there you go, I managed to write 700 words on the back of one small sentence. Inspiration comes from all kinds of places and the key is not to miss the opportunity to post that little snippet of good news or that upcoming event because there is no point in keeping stuff like this to yourself.
