Expanding an offline consulting business on the web
Got a quesiton for everybody out there. I have an offline consulting business. We provide services around automated software testing. While the company has been around for years, I've never gotten around to setting up a website.
Basically I want to do two separate things. One would be to build your standard about page / who we are / contact form for the company. This would serve to tell the world who we are, and I would also like to start to drive traffic to the site with the intent of generating potential leads for consulting services.
The second thing is I want to develop a site that sells online training packages for automated software testing.
So my question is should I just launch one website and group everything together. I.e. try to pull consulting leads and sell related products from the same site (I'm thinking a portal site maybe). Or should I launch them both independently, even though they are related?
What would be the best way to go in terms of getting things up quickly, and reduced maintenance in terms of SEO, marketing etc in the future?
0
Answers
I can't honestly say what would be the best way to deliver content to visitors to your site with regards to the company and the product. Though my gut feeling would be to promote the product on your companies site somewhat, and then on a subdomain of the company site, have another site dedicated to the product itself. By linking to the product site your telling google that you trust the site and that it is relative to your company's sites web content in some way. By having a subdomain dedicated to the product you have better opportunities for Seo. I'm not an expert....Far from it but I do know that by having dedicated pages for your product, that have alot of keywords or phrases throughout, and a regularly updated news section, you will eventually increase traffic to your site for certain keywords or phrases.
Google loves content, and a site that has regular content added is favoured over another site with far less updates, hence the need for a news or blog section.
As far as sit back and relax SEO is concerned, it doesn't exist. There's no magic bullet or quick fix that will get you out of your SEO duties, Unless you outsource it of course. But there are tools out there to help make your life easier. Which brings me on to my next point.
For fast, effective deployment of a site, that is already SEO optimised to an extent I would suggest using wordpress. With wordpress you can make SEO easier for yourself thanks to the hundreds of different plugins available for that exact task. And with an almost endless offering of free and premium themes (These contain the layout and style of your site), you're guaranteed to find something that fits both the company and the product.
I used to develop in html but it just wasn't cutting it, I didn't know php so I couldn't make sites dynamic or easily updatable online, so I needed something that could eliminate my need to learn php. That's when I was introduced to wordpress. Now any site I create is built using wordpress. It's easy to update and add new content , I can add many different types of media quickly and easily, I can extend the functionality of my site in a couple of clicks thanks to the 1000's of plugins available, and If I ever get tired of looking at the same old layout and the same old graphics I can just update the theme without upsetting the content. It really is your best friend for quick deployment and usabilty.
That's My 15 cents!
48
Another great way to drive traffic to your site would be to take out a google adwords campaign, If your software is unique, it may prove to be a very cost effective way of building traffic depending on the keywords or phrases you use. but that's another story altogether.
— vin.fSome other ideas for SEO: Creating a YouTube Page for your product that contains backlinks is good, you could publish video tutorial on using the software, and an infomercial. Twitter and facebook is also another obvious yet good choice and if you use wordpress, there's plugins that will publish your web posts to both your twitter and your facebook page, again using keywords and links in your post will help.
— vin.fInterestingly, I too used to use HTML for website design, then learned a little PHP, but don't want to think of myself as a coder. So, I'd also highly recommend Wordpress; it's pretty easy to learn, allows tons of add-on functionality, and doesn't require you to know code (for most things).
— GregMI like the idea of promoting your training product on a subdomain; you could have a page on your main site for, say, "Products," and on that page, link to your subdomain products site.
I have an offline consulting business also, and have built some tools that I've had multiple clients purchase and which I'm starting to market on my website. I've decided not to go with a subdomain though, since my consulting business is already strongly focused on tools that are similar to the "repeatable" tools that I have on my Products page. So, my consulting services aren't really that different from my products, whereas it sounds like your consulting services are a bit more separate from your products--hence the subdomain idea.
20