This is a followup to my last post, Coaches, Here Are 5 Ways To Get Your Coaching Site Indexed Quickly!.

Here’s one of my favorite tips and it involves s website you may be familiar with, CraigsList.org.

CraigsList is essentially a classified advertising site. It started out several years ago in San Francisco, but has now branched out to other cities across the U.S.

Once you’re at CraigsList, simply post a classified ad. I typically use the Services category, and then place my ad in the most relevant sub-category. You can post your classified ad for free!

Do not SPAM and do not abuse this service. Just post a legitimate ad one time, and one time only. Because the content of CraigsList.com is ever changing, the Google bots spider in on a regular basis.

Typically, your ad will get your site indexed pretty quickly.

What Do You Think?

E. Alvin Davis
“The Coach’s Online Marketing Coach” ™

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I’m often asked by fellow coaches, “How can I get my coaching site indexed quickly?”

Here are the top 5 ways I recommend.

1. Submit your site to the MSN.com (Microsoft) search engine. Go to www.msn.com and do a search for your site. If your site doesn’t come up you’ll receive a message saying, “We did not find any results for yoursite.com. At the bottom of the page you’ll see this, “If you cannot find a page that you know exists, send the address to us.” Simply enter your address and MSN will index you.” Check back in a week. If you’re still not indexed, resubmit.

2. If you don’t already have an account for My.Yahoo.com, create one. Then go to your My.Yahoo page and in the upper left hand corner, just below “Search,” you’ll see a “Add Content” link. Click it. On the new page you’ll see a large “Add Content” text box. To the right of that is a “Find” button. Right next to that is a “Add RSS by URL” link. Click that link and add your URL. If Yahoo can’t find your page, you may do better by submitting your RSS feed URL.

3. Create a blog and begin posting regularly. The two options for blogs are Blogger.com and WordPress.org. Each option has its own advantages and disadvantages. Check ‘em out and see which option is best for you. Register your blog with Technorati.com. Also, be sure and ping your blog each time you add a new post (this lets Technorati and other sites know that new content has been posted.)

4. Submit a “Google Sitemap” to Google. Note: This is different than a regular sitemap. The most important issue is making sure that your links are descriptive and written in complete sentences.

5. Make a post on a popular forum that allows the use of “forum signatures.” (Don’t just post anything, make a valuable contribution to the forum.) Since the search engine bots regularly visit forums, your post will get indexed with your URL.

So there you are, 5 ways to get your coaching site indexed quickly.

Of course, getting indexed is only dipping your big toe in the water. That gets you in the game (barely!), now you have to start building links back to your site to increase your rankings.

What Do You Think?

E. Alvin Davis
“The Coach’s Online Marketing Coach” ™

If you’ve been a professional coach for any length of time, you probably know you can enhance your professional coaching reputation by being an active participant in your niche’s online forums.

Regardless of your coaching specialty, whether you’re a career coach, parent coach, personal performance coach, or any kind of personal coach at all, there are likely Internet forums or discussion groups on your specialty.

But, before posting use caution.

It’s critical that you get familiar with a forum before you post. Be sure and read the rules for each forum (every forum has its own policies.) You might also want to read the forum for a few days before posting to gain a sense of the community and how it operates.

So, how do you find a forum on your niche?

The best way to find a forum (well actually, just about the best way to find almost anything!) is to do a Google search. You can search for the name of your niche plus the keywords “forum,” “discussion group,” or “bulletin board.”

Being an active forum member helps you gain visibility, make contacts, and demonstrate your expertise and helpfulness to your niche. It also gives the other forum members a chance to get to know you as a real person.

In addition to your forum posts, many forums allow posters to add a forum signature as a part of their post. A forum signature is typically two to six lines of advertising or promotional text with a clickable link that is displayed at the bottom of your post. Forum signatures are a reward forums give their members for contributing meaningful information.

Typically, you can use your forum signature to sell your products, services, or promote your website or blog. However, every forum is different. Some forums allow you to post any kind of signature you like, while other forums may let you promote your own products and services, but not affiliate products or services. Some forums prohibit commercial plugs all together.

Forum signatures are a great way to market to fellow forum members. Many forum threads are viewed by dozens of people and all it takes is one person to see your signature, click on your link, and you’ve made make a sale! Best of all, sigs are typically free.

Are you taking advantage of forum posting? If not, what’s stopping you?

What Do You Think?

E. Alvin Davis
“The Coach’s Online Marketing Coach” ™

Have you heard about the concept of viral marketing?

If you haven’t, and you have any kind of a professional coaching practice — life coaching, business coaching, executive coaching, or personal coaching, regardless of your practice niche — and you’d like to get more clients, easily and effortlessly, then you need to understand viral marketing.

So, what exactly is viral marketing?

Viral marketing is a term that was coined to describe the process that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message to other people (or their websites).

Viral marketing creates a potentially exponential growth in the visibility and effect of the marketing message. In effect, the marketing message becomes so infectious, it’s passed on like a virus, spreading from one person to another.

As the marketing message continues to be passed on from person-to-person, it’s growth snowballs, getting larger and larger as it builds upon its own self growth.

Viral Marketing is one of the most effective and powerful methods to drive traffic to your website and to grow your subscription opt-in list.

Well, now there’s a new software script that facilitates the process of viral marketing. It puts a system in play that makes it easy for your current website visitors to tell their friends about your site. It also incentivizes their friends to visit your site, sign-up, and then tell their friends too.

So, you have this continuous loop of people visiting your website, then telling other people who visit your website, who then tell other people who visit your website — and on and on and on.

This process causes your website visitors to opt-in to your mailing list. Once they’re on your list, they get to know you and you develop your relationship with them. Over time, that relationship can be extremely valuable to you and your coaching business.

Oh, and by the way, what would you think if I told you the typical website increases its opt-ins by 300%?

That’s not bad, is it?

Best of all, once you set it up, it doesn’t cost you anything to implement — and it doesn’t take any of your valuable time to run either.

So, if you’re not opposed to a system you can put on “auto-pilot,” that you can “set it and forget it,” while it virally builds your list, gets you more clients and grows your coaching practice, you should click on the link below for more information …

http://visitors2clients.com/recommends/viralfriendscript

This is really a very effective marketing tool. Be sure and check it out.

I bet you’ll be glad you did.

What Do You Think?

E. Alvin Davis
“The Coach’s Online Marketing Coach” ™