Guide to Increasing Your Online Visibility Using Work.com

First of all, choose the right guide topic, title and keywords

Guides with "hot", current, or viral topics tend to be talked about and visited often, so choose your topic wisely. When writing your guide, keep in mind the way business owners would look for your topic in search engines. What keywords and terms would they typically use? The most important ones need to be in the guide title, with the secondary ones in the subtitle and intro and throughout your guide. If you really know your topic well, you've heard how people talk about it, whether offline at a trade show or a retail store or your office; or online at an industry forum, an email list, or your blog. Getting into the mind of the business owner will help you not only do well in the search engines, but also write a useful guide that has the potential to become popular.

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To find the best keywords to use in your guide, try these keyword tools: Overture, Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker, or SEO Book Keyword Research Tool.

Hint: Take a look at some guides that do well in search engines: Doing Business in Second Life & Starting a Pool Hall. Try Googling them...

Another hint: Guides that explain a complicated topic simply, are witty, or provide insider details that are hard to find anywhere else tend to be popular.

After publishing your guide, let people know about it

How do you let people know about your guide? First of all, email your guide to your colleagues, clients, and friends. If your industry association has a website or email list, ask them to link to your guide. If you have your own site, link to your guide from it. Add links to your guide in relevant discussions and blog comments about your topic, and put your guide URL in your email signature. Also, add your guide URL to some social bookmarking and aggregator sites -- remember to tag your guide in a relevant way. If you're a member of social networking sites, you can often add several links to your profiles so you can let people know about your guide, particularly at business networking sites such as LinkedIn. And of course, if you have a blog, blog about your guide, and for maximum effect use Technorati tags in the body of your post so people searching on Technorati can find your guide.

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Here's where to search for blogs about your guide topic: Technorati.com or Google Blogsearch

Here are some social bookmarking sites to add your guide to: del.icio.us, digg, reddit, stumbleupon

Here are some online business social networks which have profiles where you can add your guide URL: LinkedIn, ryze, Intuit's JumpUp, StartupNation

Join or create an email discussion for the topic of your guide at Yahoo Groups

Start a MyBlogLog community based on your guide topic

Also try: Yahoo 360, Squidoo, your university website, library and regional business resources pages, Gather, flickr - be creative! If you're really creative, do a podcast interview about your guide topic and submit it to podcast directories (you can link to your podcast from your guide!) Or take photos that illustrate your guide topic, post them on flickr, and link to your guide from flickr and to your flickr photos on your guide. What about video? I'd love to see the first guide that actually links to a YouTube video

Check back frequently to see how your guide is doing

Did you know that Work.com has a top guides and experts section, where you can check to see how many pageviews your guide has received? The top 20 most popular list is often referred to in blogs as a measure of what entrepreneurs and small business people want to know, so making it to that list will magnify your visibility. The top 5 most popular guides automatically show up on the Work.com homepage. Other notable guides are often spotlighted on the Work.com homepage or blogged about in the Work.com Community Blog.

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Check often: Work.com Top Guides & Experts, especially the Top 20 Most Popular and Top Experts pages.

Keep updated on what the wider web is saying about Work.com

Any time you find a blog post where someone discovers the usefulness of Work.com, it's your chance to comment and mention your guide -- or get new ideas on what to write about in your next guide!

I recommend: 

Anita Campbell: Be an Expert Using Work.com

Small Business Trends Radio: Increase Your Online Visibility Using Work.com

Aaron Wall: Market Timing in New Verticals

Jessica Bowman: Add Work.com to B2B Link Building Campaigns

ClickZ: A Small Business Site that Works

c|net: Skip Business School--Work.com Puts Best Practices Online

http://del.icio.us/popular/smallbusiness

Technorati: Work.com search

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