Getting exposure on search engines

Getting exposure on search engines

Adapted from The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook. Wouldn’t it be great if new clients contacted you? In the following article I’ll show you how to conquer the search engines so prospective clients can find you online. We’ll look at four core areas: Choosing your keywords, Making the content of your website Googlable, Fulfilling the needs of browsers, and Getting other sites to link to you.

1. How to choose your keywords

By far the best tool for researching keywords is Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com). You can pay for access per day ($8), per week ($26), per month ($52), or per year ($260). It’s worth taking as much time as you can afford.

Amongst other things, Wordtracker allows you to type in words and presents you with an extensive list of connected keyword phrases with ratings. Ratings are based on the popularity of the keywords compared to the number of other websites competing for them. You’ll find that keyword phrases have better ratings than single keywords.

There are three obvious groups you could focus your keyword searches on:

* your specialist area (graphic design, web-design, animated web design, etc)
* the sector you work in (marketing & advertising,"