Home again, home again, jiggelty-jig.

What happens when I get home, jiggelty-jig? Do I just take off my marketer’s hat and the “me” comes back?  Or has the “me” been affected by my involvement in marketing?

This blog post isn’t our standard “How Do I SEO?” article, despite the similarity in the way the title starts. It’s a reflection on the negative emotional and psychological effect that I think marketing has on me and anyone else in the business. You won’t find practical tips here – but you may find some food for thought.  If you’re interested, read on.

Given #1 that I’m starting with here is that human beings have the potential for infinite depth – emotional, psychological, spiritual depth. Given #2 is that it is a value – if not one of the ultimate values – to develop that depth.

I find myself at a trade conference. At a trade conference, you have to network.  That’s why you’re there.  So you ready yourself with your pitch that you’ll hand out like a business card (and it’s probably the preemptive strike to “Do you want my business card?”). You’ll get lots of times to say it, because everyone’s first question to you is “So, what do you do?” Every time it happens, I give my line, something along the lines of “I help website owners increase their online business – either by doing it for them or by teaching them how to do it by themselves.” And my networking partner says, “Oh really? I do business coaching, enabling businesspeople to be more productive and make their time their own.” “Oh, very nice.” And then we proceed to have a conversation which consists of either subtly trying to impress the other with how professional, savvy and in-the-know we are, or of subtly trying to get information out of the other.  And thus the conference continues – sessions, lunch, after-conference mingling. I meet lots of people, have lots of conversations, come away with lots of business cards and Twitter handles scribbled on the back of my session notes.

I met lots of marketing pitches with human faces on them. Did I meet any humans – the way the value of a human being is defined? Was I a human being? Or was I also a marketing pitch with a face?

The more I do this, the more it becomes ingrained. The more I act like a marketing pitch, the more that defines me.

One of the popular marketing recommendations now is “Be authentic.  Be real.” That sounds good. But if “my realness” is part of my marketing plan, is it real? Or is it a mask of authenticity? Or was it based on realness but it became shallower once I had to market it? Did it get cut off from the inner depth from which it stemmed? And do I even know the difference any more?

You can’t market depth. If you can say it in two sentences or less, it’s not depth. If you can expose it to every person you come into contact with, it’s not depth.  In fact, even if it was deep, once you expose it, bring it up, spread it out before everyone – it’s shallow now.

Some people just can’t market their authentic selves. If you are a contemplative person who thinks a lot before you say something – well, that doesn’t Twitter too well. So you’ll have to take on a persona, slip on a marketing mask of “contemplative – but outgoing and interactive and shares all her contemplations.” If you spend all day tweeting like that, who do you feel you are? “@DeepContemplativeTweeter?”

Even if you naturally have the gift of charisma and smooth, flowing interaction with anyone under the sun – is that all you are? Is that as deep as you get? What about the rest of you? The part that not many people see? Should you expose that on social media? The more authenticity the better, no?

It’s a catch-22, in both of the examples above. If you make any part of you that is truly deep part of your “marketing of my authenticity,” you’re bringing the depths of the well up into the sunlight – and then the well’s not deep anymore. If you don’t and save it for yourself, but you’re still spending the majority of your day marketing yourself with your “authentic” mask, how long will it take before you primarily identify with the mask? After all, it’s real, no?

This wasn’t a marketing pitch for the perfect solution to help you with this issue. I don’t have the perfect solution. The only thing I can think of is to be aware. Be aware of what you’re doing when you speak to other people in any context relating to “what do you do.”  Think about how it’s impacting on your self-perception.

May we succeed in working as marketers but becoming people of depth.

If you agree or disagree with any of these points, or have any thoughts of your own on the topic – let’s continue the discussion in the comments below.

How Do I Market Myself and Remain A Deep Person? is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

Here are a number of link building ideas for ecommerce sites:

1. Getting Reviews

People love getting free things.  And bloggers who get free things often blog about them. Search Google for “[your niche] blog” and check all the relevant blogs to see if they have done product reviews in the past. Or search “[your niche] reviews” or “[your product] reviews” and see which relevant blogs come up.  (Even if a blog hasn’t done reviews, there’s no reason why not to ask, but if you’ve seen that they have, the chances are greater that they’ll be interested.)  For example, if you sell t-shirts, just looking for “t-shirt reviews” will give you a whole pile of sites – like http://www.cotygonzales.com/.

Write to the blogger via his email address or contact form. Try to go a little beyond the form letter – actually read a little bit of their blog and make some kind of comment on it. Then you can give your disclaimer about how you’re writing because you work for a company that sells the kind of product they review and you wanted to know if you could send them a sample. Include a link to your website so they can see that you’re a reputable place and aren’t going to do something spammy with their mailing address.

One hint on choosing sites to contact: check that they are still active – some sites I saw haven’t posted any reviews in months.  It still might not hurt to contact them, but concentrate your efforts on sites that people probably look at because they’re updated.  That way you’ll not only get one link, but you’ll get exposure that might give you more.

2. Who Are Your Suppliers?

If you’re a jewelry maker, you probably buy your stones, earring posts, wires from one or more suppliers. Do they have websites? Is there a space for testimonials – or can you offer one? Do they have a place to submit the designs that you’ve made with their products? Take, for example, www.artbeads.com.  On their blog they accept your submissions about the jewelry you’ve made with their products – and in the posts the artists have links to their sites.

Whatever your business is – see if you can give some kind of testimonial with a link after your signature. Happy supplier – and happy you.

3. Current Customers

You make a great product. So your customer is probably very happy when she receives it. That’s the perfect time to gently request a link.  Enclose a little card in the shipping box saying: “Thank you so much for ordering from us. If you enjoy your new _____, please let others know about it by reviewing it on your blog, Facebook or Twitter.” If you have done confirmation via email, instead of the card you can send them an email a few days after they should have received the item. (And you can even easily suggest which URL they should link to when it’s an email.)

For more incentive, you can set up a system where they get discount code if they review you with a link. That may motivate people more, but you have to find a good way to track it.  (If you’re working with email, ask them to tell you where the review is in order to receive their code.)

4. Guest Blogging in Your Niche

You know all those niche bloggers that you found in Step 1 above?  The ones that you didn’t write to about reviews – write to them and ask if they’re interested in a guest post on their blog.  You’re definitely an expert in the field and you probably have something interesting to say. And it’s very acceptable that in your bio you’ll explain your background in the field – and put a link to your site.

Good luck – may your products make many (many, many, many, many people happy!

Get your small business SEO tips delivered right to your email or to your feed reader. Up next week: using Google Shopping to get more exposure for your products.  See you then!

How Do I Get Links to My eCommerce Site? is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

And now having a Places page is more important than ever, because whenever someone does a “local search” on Google – meaning they add the name of a place in addition to the type of business they are looking for (e.g. “pizza new york” “graphic design jerusalem”), Google often merges these Places pages into the traditional Google results. So even if you would never make it onto the first page otherwise, if your Places business page is among the first in the Google Places results, it may end up on the first page here.

But when Google creates it for you, it is “unclaimed.”  Even in the countries where Google lets you edit unclaimed listings, your additions won’t have the authority of “added by owner.”  Additionally, if you don’t claim it, someone else with a little effort could claim it instead, even if they’re not the true owner, making it impossible for you to claim it.

In some countries, claiming an unclaimed Google Places page is very easy.  The United States, England, Argentina and Malaysia are some examples.  Here’s what a claimed listing looks like:

And here’s an unclaimed listing:

So claiming this is simple: You click on “Business owner?” You will need to sign in with a Google Account (an email that you already use with some Google product).  If you don’t have one, you will need to create one.  You will then be given the following options:

For any of these options, you will have to validate that you are really the business owner.  To do that, Google will send you a PIN by either calling the phone number listed on the Places page, sending an SMS to the cell phone number listed on the Places page, or by postcard to the address listed on the page.  You then enter the PIN into the validation webpage, and voila – the business is yours. Add as much information as could be helpful.  Add photos.  Make sure the category is correct.  Ask your customers to write reviews.

The other way to claim your business is to use Google Places “telephone lookup”.  Pick your country, type in your business phone number, and if your phone number matches a business listing, they’ll give you the option to claim it.  If it doesn’t, they’ll give you the option to create a new listing.

Now this is all fine and dandy if you live in a place where Google provides this option.  But what if you live in a place like Israel, or Turkey, where this is what a claimed listing looks like:

And this is what an unclaimed listing looks like:

Wait – it gets worse.  I’ll just use the telephone lookup, you think. And Israel is an option in the drop down menu of countries, so obviously that should work. (We’re not even talking about countries like Bolivia, that aren’t an option in the menu. How they get on Google Places is another story altogether.)

But when I put in the above number, in the format it tells me to: 03-566-1134 – Google tells me:

But wait – Google! You have a page with that number!  What do you mean, “no address found”?  Maybe I’ll try inputting the phone number in different ways, like with the country code, even though that’s not the format you specified.  Hmm – still doesn’t work.  How do I claim my business on Google Places?

Well – that’s the bad news.  As of now, it seems like you can’t. We recently went through this with a client, and no amount of asking on SEO forums or Google Places help forums turned up any answer.  If you actually “add your information below”, and go through the verification process as mentioned above, you will end up with your own brand-new owner verified Google Places page for your business. But the original?  The one that has all the reviews?  The one that is outranking the new one on a Google search? Untouchable.

For our client, we decided to start a new Google Places page.  There were address issues with his other existing pages, and we’re hoping that if we change the addresses in the sources from which the reviews came from to the address on the new page, eventually Google will redirect the reviews over to the new page. We’re going to see – this is apparently uncharted territory in Israel, from the silences in the SEO forums.  We’ll keep you posted on our experiences – and if one day Google updates their Google Places Israel support so that you can actually claim your page, we’ll let you know.  If you want to make sure to get these Google Places updates, you can subscribe to this blog by email or by feed reader. Looking forward to sharing more Google Places tips – including tips for getting your Places business page to rank higher!

Update: after a few months, the new Google Places page did start ranking, and pushed the other pages off the map (yes, pun intended).  So all’s well that ends well, but we still hope Google will make it a little easier in the future.

How Do I Claim My Business on Google? is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

For those of you who weren’t there (and even for those who were), here’s a selection of the business-building takeaways from the conference:

Focus your business. We’re tempted to provide everything for everyone, Dov Gordon commented in his session. It makes us feel as if we’ll get more business – the more we can offer, the more people will be interested, right? But then we lose out on attracting our ideal customer – the person who we really want to work with. Ironically, the more we focus, the more business we seemingly reject, the more relevant business we will receive.  Shlomo Kalish, founder of the venture capital fund Jerusalem Global Ventures, recommended the same. Especially in a competitive market, you need to find your niche. For a potential customer to do business with you, you have to appear to him to be “the best” in what he is looking for. The more focused your niche is, the more you will appear attractive to that segment of customers. (Just one example from our own experience – one of our clients told us that they looked for a company who specialized in SEO for their industry. They couldn’t find one, so they had to go with a more general SEO provider. Had there been someone who did “SEO for restaurants” [not their actual niche], they would have gone with them almost no matter what.)

Find who has your customers’ attention. Every business has one just behind it in the chain of purchase, explained Charlie Kalesh, head of J-Town Productions. If you sell wedding gowns, the business just behind you might be engagement rings. Make deals with those businesses to target customers who are already there and potentially headed to a business like yours. Get them to recommend you, give out coupons for 10% off a purchase from your business. Sometimes you might need to give a commission, and sometimes it might be enough that they look good to their clientele, as in Dov Gordon’s example of getting a fitness club to promote a theatrical production by telling its members that because of their membership, they can receive the lower pre-reservation ticket price even if they buy tickets at the door.

Think things through before acting. Alacrity is a wonderful trait, Dov Gordon quoted from the Malbim. But in action, not in thought. If you take the time to think out a plan, then you can run full speed ahead and get somewhere fast. If you run before you think, or think while you run, you will likely get nowhere fast. You’ll end up spending your time doing many unnecessary things, instead of focusing on the tasks that will really get you to where you want to go. (This is not from the conference, but I read at one point a “best tip” from a leading SEO, who said that at the beginning of his work day he takes out a pen and paper and writes down the things to do for that day. And then he sticks to it. After trying it myself, I’ve found it immensely helpful. If something else to do suddenly “comes up” – don’t just jump and do it. Take a look at your list and pencil it in where in needs to go – as it fits into the priorities already there.)  The responsibility to think things through is seen in Jewish law, as Rabbi Yitzchak Berkovits, head of The Jerusalem Kollel, pointed out. If a business owner and a customer agree verbally on the price for a transaction, and then the business owner says he will only sell for higher or the customer says that he will only buy for lower, he is given an official designation of “Unreliable” by a Jewish court. Although there are certain changes in circumstance where the court would give authorization to a change, just “I thought it through, realized I was mistaken and changed my mind” without an actual change in the situation is never acceptable. If you’re doing business, you have the obligation to be responsible, to think things through before committing in any way to anything, and to stick to it.

Don’t lose sight of the goal. One of the benefits of a business plan including a mission statement for your business is that it keeps your goal right in front of you. Besides pure business goals, there are other – even more critical – goals to be aware of in business. Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller made the point that whatever work you do can be a springboard for personal development and growth. If you find yourself sacrificing your personal, ethical, spiritual progress for progress in business and profit – you missed the point of why human beings are supposed to be working.

Don’t be afraid to fail. No one wants to feel failure. But when it stops you from trying, that’s when you really fail.  What comes across from almost every single successful business person that I’ve heard from – including the speakers at the conference – is that success usually comes after lots of failure. Lots of tries. Lots of tweaking. The start-up CEO who made it big – on the sixth start-up. His first five start-ups went bankrupt. You know it – it makes sense. But it’s good to actually hear it from people who’ve been there. As Dov Gordon phrased it, often we try to do G-d’s work: we think we’re supposed to do it right the first time; we think we’re supposed to do it right every time. And then when that doesn’t seem feasible, we give up before even starting.

Be honest. Because we’re afraid to fail, we’re also afraid to admit to failure. If we see that our plan isn’t going as successfully as we thought, it’s very tempting to cover up, minimize the problem, wait until the last minute to inform our investors, workers, customers that things aren’t working out. But if you manage the expectations, said Shlomo Kalish, letting them know in advance that things aren’t working out as planned and explaining what the new plan is for the current situation, they will actually respect you more.

Thanks, Kishor organizers!  We’re looking forward to next year.

If any other attendees have any takeaways that weren’t mentioned above, please add them in the comments below so that we can all benefit.

Six Takeaways From Kishor Business Strategies Conference Yesterday is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

One is a more standard case study, written up by WebSiteOptimization.com, about how they drastically improved the number of new clients sent by the website of Dr. Ken Cirka, a dentist in Philadelphia.  Among the changes they made was adding Dr. Cirka’s office number to the homepage in a second spot and by drawing attention to it with his photo and calls to action.

This would seem to make sense for any site. I saw a question on LinkedIn recently asking for an opinion about improving his company website. Mel Cooper, a LinkedIn member who responded, suggested: “From a usability perspective you should have your company’s phone number at the TOP of every page. DO NOT force the visitor to go to your Contacts page since this will reduce the chance for a conversion by as much as 50%.”

(The number 50% seems to be based on a study also mentioned in the above WebsiteOptimization.com case study indicating that any time a user needs to make an additional click the chance of him doing so and following through on the conversion path decreases by 50%.)

So then anyone not having their phone number front and center – or at least front, top and a little off to the right – is doing his or her website a disservice, right?

Not always.

Conversion Rate Experts published a case study about how they doubled vacation booking company Sunshine.co.uk’s profits during a recession.  It’s worth a read, because all their stuff is worth a read, but one of the very interesting points is how they turned the fact that Sunshine.co.uk does not have a phone number on their site into a great advantage. Sunshine purposely doesn’t have one, so that they can keep their prices low by doing all bookings online only. But visitors coming to the site didn’t know that, and the lack of a phone number could get some people nervous or frustrated. So they added a line in the header saying “Where’s our phone number?” When people clicked on that, they got a little text box explaining why it’s really all for the benefit of the customers, and the different ways that Sunshine can be contacted. Visitors now comment on that added explanation.

What does that mean for your site? In most cases, you’ll probably want to have a phone number. But in all cases: be thought out. Know why you’re doing what you’re doing. If it’s for the visitors’ advantage, tell them.

Any other reasons you can think of why purposely not having a phone number would be a selling point?

Do Phone Numbers on Websites Increase Conversions? is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

• What are the goals of your business?
• What do you want your website to achieve – quantifiably?

This information should be at the tip of the tongue for anyone running a business – especially someone who is actively looking for a professional to improve the achievements of their business – but it is surprising how many people just… don’t know.

“I’m not sure…”

“I have to think about that…”

“Good questions…”

When you get a degree in education and they teach you how to write a lesson plan, one of the most important elements (in the professor’s opinion) and the most annoying (in the education student’s opinion) is the definition of goals. What should your student be able to do at the end of your lesson?

• The student will recite the times tables backwards.
• The student will identify all the nature metaphors in an unfamiliar poem.
• The student will design an experiment to test the pH of chicken soup.

“Why do I have to define goals? Why can’t I just write the lesson? Why can’t I just teach?” complains the typical education student. Some solve their discomfort and frustration by writing the lesson first and then formulating the goals. Much less annoying, and as this former education student found, much less effective.

Having a goal – a specific goal – focuses you. Knowing exactly what you want to accomplish – quantifiably – increases the accuracy of your foresight and your hindsight. You can plan more effectively before you act and analyze whether your actions were effective after the fact.

The critical connection between goal setting and achievement holds true in any area of life – from the most public to the most personal.

If I have to deliver a speech before the United States Congress, what exactly do I want them to do after I leave the room?

• The Congress will pass a resolution banning the sale of plush pink stuffed elephants.
• When approached individually, the members of Congress will be patient with termite-right-to-life lobbyists.

If I want to improve my marriage, how exactly do I want the improvement to manifest?

• My spouse and I will be able to discuss inviting so-and-so to the family get-together for ten minutes without raising our voices.
• My spouse and I will share our feelings about daily experiences at least twice a week.

Pursuing an elusive “achievement” or “improvement” without a specific goal is like going to the grocery store without a shopping list and vaguely expecting to come back and be able to prepare a gourmet meal. You may surprise yourself and succeed… or you may end up hungry. Either way, you will probably end up more satisfied in less time if you define quantifiable goals.

So don’t be the corner-cutting education student and jump into the water before you’ve charted a course. Before you start your business, before you expand your business, before you call us – or any other consultant – to improve your business, make sure you can give yourself answers:

What exactly do I want to see?

What specifically am I trying to achieve?

What’s Your Goal? is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

It really is a ray of sunshine in the gloom and doom of thousands of layoffs across so many sectors.

However, if you read on all the way to the bottom, then you get to this really cool post about 14 things to do if you are laid off from a tech job. 

The shortlist is below, but go and read the whole post, for the full explanations of what these things really mean, and why they are good to do (although some of them will need translating for wherever you happen to live).

1. Get involved in an open-source project
2. Go to start-up fairs
3. Get project work
4. Update your profiles
5. Learn some new skills
6. Answer some questions
7. Get a girlfriend or boyfriend
8. Campaign in a swing state
9. Take some time off
10. Move out of the Bay Area
11. Buy a new rig
12. Take pictures
13. Volunteer
14. Start your own company

I haven’t got anything else to add, except to hope that none of you really needs this list.

But if you think you might – get started now, before the guillotine drops. And in any case, do pass it on to any of your friends and family who may be in need.

If you have any other ideas to add to the 14 above, please stick them in a comment here for all my readers to see. Thanks.

It’s a short one this time. You deserve it, after all my long-winded posts (and I deserve to see my bed before 2am for a change)!    See you next time (if you sign up for my RSS feed, of course!)

You’re a Geek, and you just got fired – now what? is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

I left the warmth of the Corporate Cubicle for the cold, cold world outside.

Or maybe I left the cold of the Corporate Cubicle for the warmth of building my own business??

Whichever you prefer, it was a shock to the system, especially after more than 20 years as an employee. Anyway, it’s been a real roller-coaster, a bit scary in parts, but so much fun that you want to get straight back on again at the end.

So, a few months ago, I wrote about how to find your first clients. Half the tips I gave there were about Making and Keeping Contacts, and Networking, Networking, Networking.

With the economic situation as it is, I’ve recently had a number of calls and emails from friends who are worried that they might be laid off, some who already have been laid off, and others who are just hoping that they can stay shy of the Sword of Damocles.

They are all looking for help, tips, ideas, on how to move on, or what to do until they receive the dreaded word, and of course what to do if they do receive it.  I try to give them concrete advice, and suggest ideas that are relevant to them, but in the end, a lot of the answers come back to the same place – using the network of people that you have built up over the years.

So, in case any of them are reading this, and in case any of you, my loyal readers, aren’t already subscribed to JobMob, and are beginning to fell the pinch, here is Jacob Share’s latest gem on how to grow your job search network.

At this difficult financial time for many people, I do urge you to forward this post to anyone you know or think might be job searching. Hopefully, Jacobs tips will help them move onwards and upwards.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to my RSS Feed, to keep up with all future updates

It’s Been One Year … is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

What’s one of the biggest reasons for small businesses to stay small?

Is it a lack of talent, knowledge, and commitment?

NO, says Internet Marketing Guru Rich Schefren - these can only determine the potential of your success, but not the level.

What keeps businesses small are constraints:

Fast growth involves identifying and eliminating the one core constraint currently holding both you and your biz back…

So, in the spirit of the times, I’m going to tell you what my business-related core constraint is, and what I’m intending to do to eliminate it.

My main constraint is a common one for people who have been employees for many years, and then branch out on their own.

It’s having the self-discipline to plan your short and long-term goals, define the activities that you need to do in order to reach those goals, and then having what my parents used to call “zitsfleisch” – actually sitting down and doing the activities that you have planned. It’s all too easy to waste days and days, as if you were on vacation, especially if you work from home. You see, Pavlov has us where “being at home = vacation”, so breaking out of that mould is pretty hard work.

How am I going to eliminate my core constraint?

I once had a boss, a newly appointed VP of R&D, who needed to find out in double-quick time what the 500 or so people in his section were actually doing.

How did he do that? He requested from each of his direct reports (each of us managing departments ranging from 30 to 100 engineers) to send him a daily report.

“Yikes” we all thought – a daily report of what 100 people are doing? How on earth are we going to do that?

But it turned out to be not so hard. What did he want in that report? He wanted us to write everything that we personally had done that day to further our department.

I’ll let you into a secret (it’s not a secret to my ex-boss – I told him after a few weeks) – I have never been so productive in my life. It’s pretty obvious why … who wouldn’t want to impress his or her new boss every day for weeks on end with what they were doing to further the products and people they were responsible for !!??

Now this was quite a few years ago. Why did I just remember it today?

I read a blog post from a young man who calls himself “the Millionaire in Pyjamas” (המיליונר בפיג’מה). He’s a very interesting person, having decided to spend his year after the army on teaching himself Affiliate Marketing, and trying to earn 1,000,000 shekels. Everything he has done since he started on the 1st of January, he has written about in his blog. In today’s post he told us why he originally promised himself and his readers that he would blog every day – it was to eliminate his one core constraint: laziness (he said it!). If he blogged every single day about what he was doing, he had better make sure that he was actually doing something worth blogging about every day !!

Sounds familiar?

OK, so that’s what I’m going to do. No, I’m not going to bore you all with it in my blog, but I am going to look for a victim (oops) volunteer to whom I will send my daily reports. That victim volunteer will hopefully help me make sure I’m actually doing useful things day after day …

So, which of you wants to volunteer?

And have any of you had a core constraint that was holding you back, and cares to share how you overcame it?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to my RSS Feed, to keep up with all future updates

Growing Your Business – is it so hard? is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

Well, I was there not so long ago (and actually I’m still there, kinda, since I’ve been doing this for just 3 or 4 months).

What are the top 5 tips for getting clients when you’re just starting up? And actually this list goes for other areas, not just SEO. In fact, they have helped me get clients for both parts of my business, SEO and Software Quality Assurance.

1. Know Your Stuff – make sure you have a really good grounding. There’s a lot out there on the internet, but a lot of it is just too basic for you to be able to convince a customer, let alone do a reasonable job on his site. Some information is incorrect, and some is what in other businesses would be called “shady” or “fishy”, but in SEO is called Black Hat. Personally, I found that a good course put it all in perspective.
2. Use Your Contacts – most people starting off in SEO have already done something previously with their life. Hopefully, you were good enough, and have enough experience to have made some good impressions here and there. Meet up with your contacts, and tell them what you are doing now. Explain it at the level that they will understand, and let it be clear that you are looking for work in your new field. 70-80% of my new clients have come from contacts.
3. Network, Network, Network – before turning independent, I didn’t think that I had it in me to “sell myself”, so to speak, but you’d be surprised what you can do if you have to put food on the table!  And when you network, PLEASE remember to bring your business cards!  I was agonizing over “the right logo/brand”, but in the meantime, made myself some colorful (no surprises there!) but business-like cards with my name, phone number, email, and “new” profession. Where to network? There are loads of networking opportunities: local entrepreneur groups, local or national professional and industry groups, conferences, courses, and more. The other 20-30% of my clients have come from networking.
4. Keep up to date – find the best few blogs in your industry, and read them religiously. Make sure that you know what the Gurus in the industry are saying. If you can, find webinars, videos, conference presentations on-line, and the like.
5. I know I had a 5th in mind – it’s so nice to be able to write a headline like “the top 5 blah blah blah” – somehow “the top 4 …” doesn’t quite sound the same, but I can’t for the life of me remember it.

I’ll probably remember it in the middle of the night, or in the shower, or something. Anyway, I’ll add it when I remember.

It would be great if you added your ideas in the comments (but please do it here, please, and not on the SEO blog, until I manage to combine them), and I’ll add them to the list.

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5 Tips for Getting your First (SEO) Clients is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.