Search Engine Optimisation - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 10:03 - 2 Comments

Online Strategies - Become a Thought Leader

After reading an article on the fastest growing entrepeneurs the other day i have decided to summarize some of the main strategies or ideas shared by the more web savvy entrepeneurs mentioned. The first point I want to raise, or first strategy is this.

Become a Thought Leader.

For businesses turning to the internet as their main source of lead generation or chief sales tool, many online entrepeneurs say it is important to become the thought leader in your industry. By thought leader they mean that you should be active in the emerging forms of online marketing. These entrepeneurs are busy submitting white papers, writing blogs, leaving comments on forums, contributing professional articles to information sites, writing press releases.

There are two reasons that Kareem Tawansi from Solventine does this. Firstly there is the SEO,SEM benefits of creating new links from different sources besides just directories. The other is that fresh content on their site gives visitors something new when they come back. They aim to create innovative and original ideas about their industry and share these via interesting articles or essays.

The main goal of their website is lead generation. Combining the benefits of more visitors both from direct clicks from their resources and increased Google rankings, with more intersting fresh content, the amount of leads they get through their website has continued to grow.

David Markus from an IT company called Combo, uses a different strategy. He creates a lot of white papers or articles about the questions he is often faced with when prospecting new clients. This info is available on their website and in different forms on blogs, forums, article sites etc. By providing the answers to his potential clients questions before he speaks with them, he finds their credibility increased and the sale made easier.

Finally Les Katz from, Lift Shop, says the her online strategy was simple. They promoted themselves to be their industries resource centre. She said their goal was to provide loads of information, anything people might want to know about their industry. This continuous fresh content both on and off page has secured them both authoritative search engine rankings for their targetted phrases aswell as many long tail phrases too. Nobody in their industry has more visitors than they do.

Visitor activity on your site is all monitored by Google and other search engines too, it plays an important role in both SEO and affects the cost of your Adwords campaign.. If people find what they are looking for and stay longer, search engines will want to show your site. Creative original content is a great way to do this.

So be brave and start to promote your business as a thought leader.