If you’re going to promote your service and expand your
customer base using the Net, potential clients have to be able to find you
quickly and easily and be able to trust you.
But simply finding you is not enough...
They have to find you in a confidence-boosting manner. An
endorsement from a valued friend or colleague, or a top ranking position for a
keyword search on a Search Engine, or a referral from a strategic partner are
the types of “leads” that boost your credibility.
Once a visitor finds you, the content on your site must
cement that confidence by providing high-value, benefit-focused info -- exactly
what your prospective client is looking for, wants and needs.
Bottom line?...
A visitor must find you in a credible fashion. And then you
and your service must be perceived as being trust-worthy before she will be
confident enough to contact or hire you.
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Soon, we will do the groundwork for building a site that is
“easy-to-find” on the Net -- a Theme-Based Content Site that works with the
Search Engines so that you can achieve a “Top Ten” position in their search
results. (Most surfers don’t have the patience to research past that point.
It’s a big Web out there, with lots of sites to explore!)
Your first action step is to discover the best “theme” that
correlates with your service. Then narrow it down as tightly as possible so
that you attract only the people who would be interested in your service (and,
if you choose to do so, the products you are representing as an affiliate).
Suppose, for instance, you are a personal trainer. Offline,
you could simply promote your service as “Kyle Brown, Personal Trainer” and use
ads in the local newspaper, business cards and friends’ recommendations to
create a buzz around your service.
Unfortunately, online, words like “exercise” for your site’s
theme and “personal trainer” for your service are much too general to make any
impact in the Search Engine world. There are thousands of different kinds of
exercise and thousands of different trainers. Where do you fit in? If you are
not able to be more specific, you might as well take a number and join the long
line to nowhere.
These two keywords, however, would probably be sufficient if
you were creating a site only for visitors who already know or have heard about
you (i.e., your existing clients or people in your region who have seen your
offline promotions).
But...
If you’re hoping to use an online presence to expand your
client base in and beyond your immediate locale (and create a second income
stream), the people who don’t know you have to find you first... and the
majority will come to you via keyword searches at the Search Engines (SEs).
The key to attracting targeted visitors to your site is to
take your general service theme and narrow it down to a tight niche, which is
what SEs like. Using that focus, you can pinpoint theme-related keywords that
will interest a particular group of visitors and pull them to your site. This
interest qualifies these surfers as potential customers for your service (i.e.,
your target group).
Does all this sound a little complicated? Don’t panic.
Creating a Theme-Based Content Site is very do-able, no matter what level of
Net experience you have. Let’s begin at ground level -- identifying your theme.
You have three ways to approach this...
OPTION #1 -- Narrow the theme to reflect the true nature of
your business. As an illustration, let’s say that you are an advertising
consultant. Here’s what you would do…
i) Identify your main clientele (budget-minded small
businesses)... and your main service (low cost, highly effective advertising
solutions).
ii) Pinpoint the major solution your service provides or the
problem it solves (provides clients with high-exposure for reasonable cost).
iii) Condense this information into a single sentence...
i) Identify your main clientele (pregnant women who want to
remain fit throughout pregnancy) and your main service (individualized
nutrition plan and a gentle stretching exercise program that is customized to
how the woman is carrying the baby throughout her pregnancy).
ii) Pinpoint the major solution your service provides or the
problem it solves (keeps women fit, flexible and well-rested through the third
trimester of pregnancy).
iii) Condense this information into a single sentence...
“Keeping pregnant woman fit and flexible though the third trimester of
pregnancy!” See how this theme is much more focused than “fitness trainer?”
OPTION #2 -- Narrow the theme to effectively target a particular
segment of your market. Let’s go back to the advertising example.
Even if your advertising consulting business does provide a
wide range of services to a wide range of customers, you’ll still need to
narrow your theme if you intend to attain success within the framework of the
Net. Remember that Search Engines like tightly focused sites and show their
pleasure by giving these types of sites higher positions/ranking on the search
results pages.
With this in mind, you decide to focus on providing solutions
to budget-minded small businesses. Watch the evolution of this theme as it
tightens... Service: Advertising Consultant General Theme: Advertising General
Focus: Advertising consultants Slight Focus: Small business advertising
consultants Tighter Focus: Small business budget advertising consultants
Of course, there is such a thing as tightening your
service's theme too much... Too Much Focus: Small business budget advertising
consultants for left-handed Norwegians
OK, OK, I’m kidding. But you see what I mean? You have to be
careful not to restrict your market too much, or your niche becomes too small.
You won’t have the numbers to create or increase income.
This is exactly why your theme has to be niched (to quote
Goldilocks)...
OPTION # 3 -- Narrow your theme to take advantage of the
profitable keyword opportunities you discover (as highlighted by keyword
SUPPLYDEMAND- PROFITABILITY
Basically, this means narrowing your theme and building your
site according to the interest displayed on the Net. Of course, this can be
accomplished only if your service is somewhat “flexible” and can be smoothly
“tied into” these keyword opportunities.
You will choose keywords for your theme that...
• Lead to a natural cross-sell of your service.
• Show great opportunity for profitability -- plenty of
demand (# of searches performed by surfers) with relatively little supply (few
results returned by the SEs for those same keywords).
• Permit a smooth referral to a merchant partner for
commissionable sales. Of course, you have to balance niche-tightening with
common sense and your own personal experience.
If you are a personal trainer, you can’t suddenly switch
over to being a gymnastic coach just because there is a lot of interest or
demand for that service. And here’s an example where personal experience comes
into play...
As an advertising consultant, your keyword research
indicates that there is a bigger online interest in budget-related consulting.
However, it’s been your experience that big businesses are much more likely to
hire you as an advertising consultant and, in general, tend to spend 10 times
as much on your services as medium-sized businesses do. So you decide to stick
with your current direction.
Bottom line? As a service seller, your range of criteria for
establishing the theme of your service site depends on three factors. The
“best” theme must...
1) Be highly profitable -- there is a strong demand. This
means that lots of people are willing to pay for your service. They will be
actively searching for a site like yours, which is why your theme must be as
narrow as possible. If it’s too general, your visitors won’t find you in the
crowd.
2) Display plenty of opportunities for niche-related keyword
targeting -- these keywords provide you with different angles by which you can
approach your theme. You want to find the angle with the highest demand and the
lowest supply. This will make it easy to attract targeted traffic (i.e.,
interested potential clients) to your site because competition is limited.
3) Excite you -- passion is key to your online longevity.
It’s difficult to stay
committed to something you don’t like.
Time for a quick recap. In order to position your service on
the Net, you need to narrow your theme. You can accomplish this by... •
reflecting on the true nature of your business Or... • effectively targeting a
particular segment of your market Or... • zone in according to demand on the
Net (the best option for working with the Search Engines).
If you followed the first two guidelines, you probably have
narrowed your theme choices down to a handful of possibilities. At this point,
you need to know how profitable each one is before you can make your final
selection for your theme. If you chose the third guideline, you are anxiously
waiting to narrow your theme according to demand... to actually start your
theme-identification process! Regardless of which option you chose, your next
step is... keyword research.
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