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Gain Exposure In Saturated MarketsA recent study of my own search engine rankings has taught me a lesson in 'personal branding'. Although I've always believed in setting yourself apart from your competition by being unique in some way, I didn't realize the ultimate power of your brand!I'll be using my own situation as an example. I run a web design & Internet marketing business. The competition in both of these markets is fierce, with literally millions of web sites listed in the search engines. I've optimized webwenchdesign.com to the point where, within 6 months in existence, I achieved a ranking of 13th on Google for keywords 'graphics and design'. Out of almost 3 million web sites listed for those keywords, I was thrilled with my ranking of 13th, but planned to work towards gaining position to the top ten so I can be listed on the first page of search results, rather than the second. This was accomplished by month 8 and I enjoyed that listing for months before I changed my focus to promote my E-zine instead. What surprised me though, as I continued to study the various search engine rankings for my business, was that people were finding me by searching for other terms, and they were terms that I hadn't spent any time 'optimizing' my site for! What were they? The Portal To Success, my E-Zine's name was being searched! Not surprisingly, when you do a search for 'The Portal To Success', or even 'Portal To Success', I'm listed with #1 ranking on Google, and #2 on Yahoo! (Never did pay to be listed in Yahoo, by the way.) Further investigation proved my hunch to be correct. People were also searching for 'Real Deal Reports' and finding me that way, also with #1 rankings on both Yahoo and Google! So, I started searching for different terms and found similar results. Conclusion: Although I may not be listed on the first page of results for Internet Marketing, Web Design, or Newsletters... Clients and most importantly, *prospects* WILL find me if they search for my business name, my newsletter name, or my specialty reports name! This makes 'offline' advertising and personal networking much easier. Branding myself through consistent use and promotion of my business names has given me the luxury of being found! How can you do the same? By posting to forums with your business names in your signature file, providing reciprocal links to similar sites, publishing tutorials, and even by providing testimonials for recommended products and services, your business names will be indexed on hundreds of sites! Posting classified ads, FFA links and E-Zine ads also plays a large part in finding business names all over the Internet. It's nice to know that through conversation with prospects I can now say, "If you want to find my site, just do a search for Portal To Success"! How have you been branding your business? -- Resource Box -- This article may be distributed freely on your website, as long as this entire article, including links and this resource box are unchanged. Copyright 2003 Ginger Geracitano All Rights Reserved. The Portal To Success E-Zine http://theportaltosuccess.com Receive Ginger's recommendations that may solve your client's needs: mailto:subscribe@theportaltosuccess.com
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