The Sales Side of Online Marketing / SEO

The Sales Aspect of SEO
If you were to give the New England Patriots and the Detroit Lions the same playbook, the New England Patriots would, undoubtedly come out with more touchdowns, more field goals, more forced turnovers and a high completion rate. The same is true for SEO. Anybody can go online and look up the basic components of search engine optimization. Among other things, they include: strong meta-tags, meta-descriptions, online branding, link building, frequent content update and the proper selection of keywords to go after. Just like in football, SEO is all about execution and creativity.
Get creative with your SEO – Think about the services your firm can provide free of charge. This is the best way to get the best links. For instance, if you are a carwash, give out free carwashes to people who currently can’t afford the service. If done correctly, this is free publicity and should lay the foundation for you to get quality links. Additionally, write a synopsis of the current demand for free services, proof-read it well and send it to your local newspaper. However, before you email, call to “make friends” and network, wait a week or two and go in for the kill. Never act as if you are doing something for publicity; this is rule #1. Rule #2 is if you fail to executive Rule #1, there is no rule #2. Additionally, you should not be doing these things just for publicity. Provide the newspaper and other sites with a HTML tag ready to go. Sell it as you are doing a favor to aid them in quickly submitting your article. “Sure Sally. Oh, let me send you this, it may help your programmers.”
Reach out to universities. Do you have some expertise which a university can need? If so, then that’s great. Write some articles which can help the students, find some online libraries which have .edu links, again make friends and eventually begin your link building.
Example:
As a recruiting firm, my company can gain access to .edu links. I have given back to several universities around New York City and, when I ask, they are more than glad to put me on a directory within their website. Find out how you can give back to the community and, not only will the experience be satisfying, you will have helped your business out by gaining links from really reputable sources.
Write, write and write some more - Google loves content. The search engine loves content more than ever. Keep your website fresh. Also, try to bait in Alexa Tool Bar surfers with interesting content which everybody likes. Whether or not Alexa rating is filed in to the actual Google search results is not 100% (nor is anything about Google’s SE), though it can’t hurt and it is sort of like an online marketing trophy.
Second, article submission sites are a great way to get great links to your site. This is well known. However, there are many blogs and niche directories in your industry which would love an article or two. Again, approach initial contact as you would if you were selling something. A brief explanation as to who you are and the article which “they may find helpful and you don’t need recognition if that is not their policy.” Having these contacts is huge. This has especially become more prevalent as the Google search engine is getting smarter everyday and now holds relevant links in the highest regard.
Make friends – The more friends you have online, the better. Friends will give you various blog and website links, turn you on to useful resources and will be someone to bounce ideas off of. Also, you get to learn about other people who are fun, exciting and share the same goals and career aspirations. Again, when signing up for a blog, approach it as if you are a salesman or saleswomen and you are beginning the sales cycle. Consider the sales cycle to be as long as 6 months. Remember, you are not the first person who has tried to manipulate these people for online marketing gain. However, if done correctly, you have some new friends, link building resources and industry contacts.