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

I think SEO, along with email marketing, are two of the hottest and most quickly rewarding internet marketing techniques in 2009.

I saw a great article from Mashable today, 20 Best SEO Plugins for WordPress.

You often have full control over implementing SEO for your website, but if you have a WordPress blog, you’re left with the way WordPress “thinks” SEO should be done.

These plugins can help you revv up your SEO on your blog today!

Eighty-five percent of all websites are found through search engines.

Is your website getting the fullest traffic possible from the search engines?

In order to achieve high rankings on search engines, you need to know search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Join us for this one-hour teleclass where we’ll cover some of the most important things you can do as a business owner to improve your search rankings.

This non-techie class is for business owners to learn the basic principles of SEO and how to apply it to your site.

This free teleclass is held
April 7, 2009
1:00 – 2:00 PM eastern

Class will be recorded, so if you miss a session, registered participants will be able to download the audio recording of the live class and listen to it later.

To register for this class:

http://www.passionforbusiness.com/calendar.htm

I saw a great article today called Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves: Ethical SEOs and Search Engineers Narc Out SEO Fraud. It is sooo wonderful to see real-life examples from experts on what devious tactics are out there in the SEO world.

The funniest one has to be from Matt Cutts, a long-time search engineer at Google. He says, “My favorite is always the one where someone emails Google and asks to exchange links, or email-blasts me and says that they can guarantee a No. 1 ranking or wants to buy links on my site.” Imagine emailing Google to say you can get them high SEO rankings! 

Educate yourself so that you know the real deal in SEO when you see it. (Hint: no one can guarantee you No. 1 ranking.)