Self Employed Success

Congratulations to Helga Matzko! Last year we designed a new website for her, and last month Helga asked us to create a matching blog, which she launched yesterday: http://www.gestaltri.com/blog/ 

Helga has a great take on the blend of Gestalt psychotherapy and life coaching…it’s worth reading the past issues of her newsletter and blog!

Helga understood that in order to create a lasting brand for The Gestalt Institute of Rhode Island, she needed her website, logo, and blog to deliver the same visual message.

• Check out her home page and the natural “spiral” theme from the photographs.
• Next, look closely at her new logo that was created from the website spiral photos we used.
• Then, go to her blog and see how, using WordPress, we were able to bring the logo and colors from her main website (including the SAME navigation!)  into her blog for a consistent brand.

When thinking about your website and the possibilty of adding a blog to it, remember to tie the visual elements together so that you create a strong brand, too.

Also notice that Helga put her blog on the same domain as her website, not a new domain/URL. In this way, her main domain receives more SEO credit for each blog post she adds. A big mistake I see people making is having one URL for their main website and a different URL for their blog.

Getting a Top 10 listing on Google take a bit of doing…getting a Top 3 listing is a real accomplishment! So we offer huge congratulations to Kate Nasser, who implemented our SEO suggestions on her website after we did an SEO Review of her site, and now lists as #3 on Google for the keyword phrase Professional Soft Skills, and #9 on Google for Professional Soft Skills Training!

Aly reviewed Kate’s sight and found lots of SEO ideas that could boost Kate’s search engine rankings. After producing a written report for her, we got on the phone with Kate and her web designer and brainstormed an implementation plan, which they undertook immediately. (I just love Kate’s “can do” attitude…she jumped in and made the changes even though the holidays were upon us!) That phone call was on December 21, and by January 10 Kate had emailed us with the good news – she was on Page 1 of the search results for her chosen keywords!

If you ever doubt that you can achieve high search engine rankings, or think it’s going to take six months for your site to crawl to the top of the listings, Kate’s success shows you that you can do it, too. (I’ve had situations where I’ve done a major SEO edit on a site on Friday, and by Monday I was on Page 1 of the Google results for my chosen keyword….zoom, zoom, zoom!)

Check out Kate’s website at  www.katenasser.com (and don’t forget to go to Google and type in her keywords, so you can see her rankings!).

Need more information about our Website and SEO Reviews, and how we can help you get the marketing results you want from your website? 

Visit our site:
http://www.passionforbusiness.com/website-review.htm

Heard a great quote from CopyBlogger for all of us who speak and teach and write: “We’re valuable precisely because we can cut through the noise and give them only what’s useful and relevant to them.”

Sometimes I think, “Everyone knows what I know!” There is so much free information on the internet, it can get disheartening when you’re trying to create a profitable business. Then I remember: it’s BECAUSE there’s so much free information that people can’t cope with the quantity of it…and they NEED us to synthesize it, distill it, and give it back to them in practical, simple terms.

A friend and colleague said to me, “I often say I offer a shortcut and I’m able to share what works and more importantly what doesn’t.”

It used to be that people couldn’t get access to all this information easily, so they needed us. Now they have too much information, and still need us.

A few months ago,  I posted a note on my Facebook page about how our cat brought a dead mouse into the house, got chased around by us (looking like idiots), and eventually dropped the dead mouse in the cat toy box alongside her catnip toys.

My peeps loved that note and shared so many stories of the cool things their cats have done (with and without dead critters).

It was a great non-business, non-marketing post – just a funny story I wanted to share. I got THREE emails from people who had seen or commented about that post, thanking me for it, and asking me if I had any openings for private clients. One person even said, “If you have six cats, you’re my kind of business coach!” (Kitties got an extra treat that night for giving me the funny story, too.)

It’s not just the “here is what I offer in my business” posts that get attention. When we’re acting real, authentic, human…people can see and touch us in a new way. And we get to connect so beautifully with our clients and students, really communicating about ALL that matters to us in our worlds.

In December, I had lunch with David Newman and grilled him (no pun intended!) about creating information products.

Lots of great strategy ideas and tips!

You can listen to the interview in MP3 format here:

Karyn Greenstreet interviews David Newman about Information Products (MP3)