A friend of mine and I have been doing freelance work for quite some time. We finally decided to stop messing with freelancer and went out on our own. We created a website but now how in the world do we get people who are seeking our services to come to that website? I know how to writer articles and gain traffic but I also know that if it seems like too much of an advertisement then they wont' get accepted and then we are back to square one. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Build backlinks everywhere to get people to know your website, social bookmarketing, Twitter, ect... How about writing guest post article in a high rank blog which is related to your service?
create a great website and well maintained, and do not forget the article in it must be qualified. I'm sure many people will come to your site.
My take on article marketing is to provide maximum value with minimum selling. This will get them posted every time and you can count on viral promotion from readers (sharing the link). Keep'em short (500-1000 words), focused (1 problem, 1 solution, 1 benefit), and come across as an expert. End them with a call to action, eg. for more great tips/ideas/solutions/performance_boosters/insider_secrets/... visit our website.
It is difficult and I think many people make the mistake of assuming that they'll get plenty of visitors once they've built a site - unfortunately, this is rarely the case! An intelligent marketing strategy will certainly help you to build brand awareness and customer numbers.
Optimize your web pages for Google and other search engines and work out an effective concept for your online marketing to have success in SEO efforts. Yes, as it was mentioned your online marketing must include the community-building component. Also put the Share button to your site. It is a community-based website promotion tool allowing visitors to add an article or a link from your website to their facebook, twitter, digg and etc. accounts (retweet your article or become a fan on digg or facebook and etc). Your website is being promoted and made more popular by your visitors.