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Look Before You Leap 4 Hr. Video & Text A-Z Overview of Internet Marketing.  Click on Image Now! |
I recently read a Blog Post on Leads Leap discussing the value of back links. I’ve preached on this topic before, but thought it might be worthwhile to share another person’s take.
The Power of SEO Backlinks: A Classic Example
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back links, backlinks, leads leap
Have you been listening in?
Last night was the second session of the League of Extraordinary Minds, and what a great two hours it was.
While you as a home stager might not think that the internationally famous panelists that are participating in the program have anything to offer a small business like yours, you would be wrong.
I took a ton of notes last night, and got a lot of actionable ideas in the process. One I will share with you today is the understanding that people buy emotionally, and that they are motivated more by fear of loss than by hope of gain.
As an example a person is far more likely to take action to avoid suffering a $20 loss than they would be to gain $20.
What this may mean to a home stager, is that your clients are more likely to respond to a pitch that focuses on their risk of having to pay double mortgage payments, than they are to the hope of getting a higher price from a well staged home.
They may similarly respond to a pitch that details all the work they will have to do by themselves and the drudgery entailed rather than to the freedom they may enjoy by letting you do it for them.
That doesn’t mean the positive doesn’t matter, but rather that the loss elements are more effective in selling your services.
Now there was a lot more that I pulled out of last night, but I thought I would share that one. It’s up to you to think about how you could apply that knowledge in your own interactions with prospects.
Replays of the League of Extraordinary Minds sessions are not available, as they are being turned into paid products. But you are able to sign up and listen in to the remaining sessions for free, if you register at League of Extraordinary Minds. The next session is at 8PM, your time, next Thursday, no matter where in the world you are.
I encourage you to register and to listen in. There have been two sessions so far and 7 to go. The first two have been very powerful, and have lead me to make several changes to the way I do things. I am confident that you too will find value in each of them as well.
The newest suite of article spinning programs. Push the Arrow to Hear the 1 hour 2 minute presentation.
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Last week I did an hour long presentation for Allegra Dioguardi’s new home staging curriculum. Staging Training by Design
In it I covered three different major topics. The first section dealt with some basic decisions most people make before they have enough information to do well. That includes picking their url, web host and decision as to whether to have a blog or web site.
The second topic covered includes a discussion of how to make your web site more search engine friendly and also how to generate back links need to raise your standing in the search engines.
The third section, dealt with how to get more of the people that find your web site to do something.
These are topics I’ve dealt with before, here and in my two eBooks. My challenge was to condense all the information into a single 60 minute presentation. Turns out I ran about 2 minutes long.
But if I say so myself, I did a pretty good job of covering all the major points you should be aware of when setting up your internet marketing campaign for your business.
Now while I would advocate that most people should learn how to manage and run their own web sites, the reality is that most will not. Therefore I discussed these topics so that people would know what they wanted to accomplish, so that they would be better equipped to tell their computer people what they wanted, and why.
Thus while the conversation was directed to home stagers specifically, the comments apply to almost any locally based business wishing to attract more customers by internet marketing.
In support of the audio, I have created a resource page of links and resources. It is pretty rudimentary at the moment, but I will be developing it as time goes on.
The internet's most cost-effective article spinner samurai. Allegra Dioguardi, Interior Designer and president of Styled and Sold Home Staging is now offering training and mentoring for aspiring and seasoned Home Stagers alike.
http://www.stagingtrainingbydesign.com
Allegra is a Parsons School of Design graduate. And her sense of design is the missing element in many home stager’s education. It’s one thing to declutter and establish some focal points, it’s another to tie everything together with a sense of style.
Allegra has had decades of experience that predates the home staging revolution. She has worked and taught many people how to stage model homes, long before the term Home Staging was coined.
She has invited me to prepare a module as part of her course on websites and search engine optimization. I am looking forward to it. It will give me another chance to distill the essence of my two eBooks, Why Most Small Business Web Sites Stink, and Main Street Climbs to the Top of the Search Engines.
I anticipate that I will revamp both my WART Analysis and Market Maker programs in advance of the course presentation. My goal will be to provide affordable support and training for Home Stagers who want to take a hands on approach to controlling their web sites.
I will use this preparation process to devise the easiest way to train home stagers to get more people to see their web sites, and then to get more of the people that do see them to actually do something.
In the meanwhile, I am very interested in hearing from you. What issues do you have with your web site that I can help you with?
What lessons have you learned that should be shared with other home stagers in the area of web site, and email marketing?
For More Information on Allegra’s Classes go to: Home Staging Training
The internets most advanced content spinner samurai. Hearing the word spyware tends to evoke an image of popups for most internet users. It would probably surprise most to learn that almost every internet user has at least some spyware or adware on their computer. The reason for this is that these parasites can hide in parts of the computer that you can’t normally access.
The biggest problem with these parasites is that most users don’t know just how dangerous they can actually be. Sure they cause your computer to slow down (a lot), install things you don’t want, and more, but they also do much worse things. Having spyware or adware on your computer compromises your privacy to a very dangerous level.
How often do you enter personal information on the internet? For most people, this will be very often. Many of these parasites will track everywhere that you go on the internet and report it back to it’s creator. It doesn’t stop at that though. Not only will it track everywhere you go, but it will track everything you type and click at these locations as well.
What this means is that if you enter sensitive data such as your social security number, credit card number, bank password, or anything else of that nature, a stranger also has that information. To make matters even worse, this information is often sold to even more people; this means that hundreds of people could have access to all of your personal information.
If you want to keep your privacy on the internet, you’ll need to rid yourself of any spyware and adware that inhabits your computer. There is a free report named “Adware Removal” which outlines everything that spyware and adware do, as well as how to get rid of it. Remember, the report is completely free and definitely worth a read.
Click Here To Dowload Your Free Spyware Removal Report
article spinner software just for the web user. Yesterday we talked a bit about the “Inspection” blog post. Today we will cover “Insights” and the “Index” type of post.
2. The INSIGHTS Blog Post.
Quick tips are great “in between” posts since they are so short. They are normally between 100 and 250 words. If there’s a great bit of information that you want to share with your niche but it doesn’t really warrant a full blog post, you can post a quick tip. The tip should be focused on one key area of the niche. For example, “How to Grease a Muffin Pan” is a perfect quick tip article for a cooking blog.
For a home stager, it could be on Where to store valuables during a house showing, or How to dress up your front door.
If you put you mind to it you could probably generate a list of 50 such tips in no time. Write the titles down, and use them for infill when you are busy.
The third I is for “Index” which is just another word for a list.
Blog readers love lists! If you’ll look at the most popular blogs you’ll see that they make good use out of this type of blog posts. You can make lists fit any niche topic imaginable. They are great ways to convey information online because they can easily be scanned by web readers who like to skim over information.
You can create resource lists that will help your readers find information on your niche. You can also create lists of different ways to accomplish a goal in a niche, like “5 Things to Do Before a Showing.” The possibilities are endless.
How about a list of things to do, room by room? Or perhaps a list of X things to pack away before you begin to stage their house.
Utilize a wordpress plugin form - your web sites will definitely adore you. Five Different “Kinds” Of Blog Posts
Blog posts come in many different forms and lengths. If you want to keep your blog fresh and interesting, you should post often. Creating different types of blog posts will help to keep your audience interested. It will also keep you from getting bored with your blog.
Blogging can be done as an adjunct to your business, to help attract customers or it can be a sideline of your business designed to generate revenue, as well as attract customers to your Home Staging enterprise.
If you are going to invest time and effort on your blog, why not use it as a profit center as well?
The five types of blog post are the
1. The INSPECTION Blog Post.
2. The INSIGHTS Blog Post.
3. The INDEX Blog Post.
4. The INTERVIEW Blog Post.
5. The INSTRUCTION Blog Post.
1. The INSPECTION Blog Post.
Review blog posts can help you monetize your blog. You “inspect” – take a closer look at – a product. When you review a product and include an affiliate link, you’ll make a commission off of each sale generated with your affiliate link. Review blog posts should go over some of the major plusses and minuses of the product. Even if you loved the product, you should keep your review balanced by mentioning a few things that could have been improved. Your audience will appreciate your honesty and be more likely to trust your recommendation.
What type of a product could you as a home stager comment on? How about paints, cleaning products, furniture stores, etc.
While there is no reason why you couldn’t do a blog on any vendor you choose to without compensation, why not find a product that has an “Affiliate Program” and join it.
One of the easiest ways to identify such products is to join one of the major affiliate market places like Commission Junction. It’s free to join, and once you do, you will be able to search from thousands of vendors to find products relevant to Home Staging that you could review and comment on.
Such recommendations, if done honestly and forthrightly will be well received by your readers, and could potentially add a new revenue source to your business. Not a bad idea to market yourself and make money at the same time.
To learn more about commission junction go to www.cj.com.
In the next couple of days I will go into more detail on this and the other four types of blog posts. By combining these ideas you can add a lot of reader interest in your blogs.
2. The INSIGHTS Blog Post.
Quick tips are great “in between” posts since they are so short. They are normally between 100 and 250 words. If there’s a great bit of information that you want to share with your niche but it doesn’t really warrant a full blog post, you can post a quick tip. The tip should be focused on one key area of the niche. For example, “How to Grease a Muffin Pan” is a perfect quick tip article for a cooking blog.
3. The INDEX Blog Post.
Blog readers love lists! If you’ll look at the most popular blogs you’ll see that they make good use out of this type of blog posts. You can make lists fit any niche topic imaginable. They are great ways to convey information online because they can easily be scanned by web readers who like to skim over information. You can create resource lists that will help your readers find information on your niche. You can also create lists of different ways to accomplish a goal in a niche, like “5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Sales Letter.” The possibilities are endless.
4. The INTERVIEW Blog Post.
Although these require a bit of preparation, they can be very valuable to your blog. You can interview someone in your niche and share the results of the interview with your blog readers. This will not only help provide valuable content for your blog, but you can also get more traffic to your blog. Likely, the person who you are interviewing will publicize the event on their blog and around the ‘net which will bring more traffic back to you.
5. The INSTRUCTION Blog Post.
Like quick tips, how to posts help you provide valuable information to your readers. However, unlike quick tips, these posts go into detail on a certain topic. Some how to posts are even separated out into two or three part courses. For ideas on what to create how to posts about, look at the most frequently asked questions in your niche and develop posts around those topics.
The very best blog writers recommend a tags wordpress plugin. You’ve made major progress when you take care of your on page SEO issues.
Your page factors again are your title tags, keywords and description in the hidden meta tag area, and use of H1 tag, and appropriate keyword usage on your page and at least 425 or more words of text on you landing page.
For some people that will by itself be enough to get your site to the first page.
For others, in more competitive markets it won’t be enough all by itself. For example one of my most recent clients Ann Alderson from Tampa is trying to do business in a market that has almost as many home stagers as it does Realtors. Well maybe not, but it seems the various schools are having frequent classes in the area resulting in a lot of competition, especially for web site ranking.
In today’s economy the various schools are having a hay day, as more and more people are looking for supplemental income. And that means more competition for you. And more web sites trying to climb to the top of the search engines.
In Ann’s case we were able to raise her from somewhere in the deep dregs of page 23 or so to #35 overall just by making changes to her onpage factors.
Her site is located at Home Staging South Tampa which is a good example of an anchor text using her keywords of Home Staging and Tampa. (And she just got another backlink)
She uses GoDaddy as her web hosting service. It took them 3-4 days to turn around and do what she wanted, but it did have an immediate effect.
But it’s not good enough by itself in her case and perhaps in yours as well.
That’s why you need to pay attention to the off page factors. And they come down to one phrase. BackLinks, Backlinks, Backlinks to paraphrase our Realtor friends.
Your first step should be to set up an account and post on Active Rain. By putting a link to your web site on your posts, you will create your first back link. Now ideally this should be an anchor link as I have explained in past posts.
But while Active Rain is a great site, you need to get links from many different locations.
My next set of recommendations is to set up an account at Squidoo and Hub Pages. www.Squidoo.com and www.hubpages.com. Just signing up and creating a profile will give you a backlink if you include you web site in your profile. But what really counts is when you set up a page on their sites.
These need not be works of art. They don’t need to be long. They should be about Home Staging in your town. And your town name and home staging should be in the title. You have two possible audiences, Realtors and homeowners.
Make two pages to start. One for home owners and one for Realtors.
Do it first on Squidoo. Write a lens on the Top Three Things a Minneapolis Home Owner Needs to Know about Home Staging.
Then do it. If you want make it the top 5 or 7. Feel free to buy my guide on Squidoo Basics if you need help, although they have tutorials on both sites.
Then publish your first Squidoo lens, and immediately start another.
Write a lens on the Top Three Things a Minneapolis Realtor needs to know about Home Staging. Once you get the hang of it, you should be able to get one done in 30 minutes, but plan on spend a couple hours the first time.
Make sure both of them have a link back to your web site. If you have a separate page on your web site for Realtors, make sure your Lens on Realtors links back to that page.
Once you have these two lens done, go to Hub Pages. If you’re lazy, use the same text all over again but put the three hints in a different order. Ideally you would reword the entire thing.
The more effort you put into these the better. But you are better off with many short Squidoo lens and Hub Pages than with one or two comprehensive ones.
There are three reasons why you are doing this.
First, they will give you added stature and credibility. Second, these Squidoo lens and Hub Pages sometimes get higher rankings than your web site intially, so it’s quite possible they may get to the top of the search engines before your main site does. That means real potential customers who may never have heard of Squidoo or Hub Pages may find them and you. The third reason is that the backlinks from these sites carry more weight than many other sources of backlinks. So you want to get them set up for you as soon as possible.
Once you are done with these, you may want to switch to article marketing.
The Good part of article marketing is that your articles can become viral. Once you publish them, they can be posted to hundreds of different blogs each of which will create a backlink to your site.
Most will be from smaller sites, without as much clout as Squidoo or Hub Pages, which is why we start with them. But in the long run, the article marketing effort is what will not only move you to the top of your local search engine results, it will keep you there.
With all the newbies entering the market, that’s one idea you may well want to consider.
Find out more about article spinning : free trial When you repost a blog post or active rain post on an article directory like www.ezinearticles.com you are allowed to attach a resource box to the bottom of your article. Anyone can republish your article for free if they agree to include your resource box.
When preparing your resource box, you are generally allowed two links that you can direct as you choose. It’s important to use anchor text for these links based on the keyword you want your destination site(s) to rank for.
Particularly if your goal is to build your search engine standing as well as generate traffic.
Anchor text is simple html code that creates a hyper link to the web site you want people to go, while displaying your anchor text. Your anchor text should be the keyword you want your site to rank for.
One of my newest clients is a home stager in Tampa Florida. The keyword she wants to rank high on for her business is “Home Staging” and “Tampa” or “Home staging in Tampa”
So to maximize the value of her resource box I advised her to use the following statement:
Ann Alderson is an expert at <* href=”http://stagingsouthtampa.com”>Home Staging in the South Tampa region. You can get more information on home staging on her blog about <* href=”http://blog.stagingsouthtampa.com”> house staging tips.
[Insert a letter "a" where the * are to appear as
When placed in html code it reads as follows: Ann Alderson is an expert at Home Staging in the South Tampa region. You can get more information on home staging on her blog about house staging tips.
In this case, we used the second anchor text to use an alternate keyword, “house staging” and sent traffic to her blog. This creates a back link to an internal part of her site which improves its standing in Google’s eyes. Google likes links to internal pages as it shows there is interest in more than the front page of the site.
As we’ve discussed before, the three main reasons to do article marketing is to establish yourself as an expert in your field, drive traffic to your site and build back links to raise your standing in the search engines.
In Ann’s case, the articles may help establish her credentials and even send a few people from Tampa to her web site. But most people who see her articles will be far from her marketplace.
More important to her is the knowledge that the Google bots and other search bots will find her site and rank it for the keywords she wants her site known for: home staging and house staging and Tampa.
Most of her competitors are not doing this, and as a result in the relatively near term, she should rise from her current relative obscurity in a highly competitive local market to the first page of the listings. In time with additional articles and other postings she may even win the coveted top spot.
That is the power of Article Marketing and the proper use of anchor text and keywords in your resource box.
article spinner software suites just for the wordpress fan. If you want to learn the fundamentals of internet marketing, but didn’t know where to look, you’re going to love this.
One of the internet’s best trainers of online marketing has redirected his business and rather than selling single courses has set up a “one-stop resource center.”
I have to tell you this is a great opportunity. I have taken well over a half dozen individual courses from Bob the Teacher, happily paying hundreds of dollars for some. Most of them are now available to you for just $47 a month as a member of the Internet Marketing Success Library.
Internet Marketing Success Library
As I said, I’ve personally learned from Bob The Teacher in the past, and I’m always impressed with how organized and methodical his training courses are.
They’re step-by-step video and audio courses that cover EVERYTHING you need to know about things like:
- website management
- traffic
- autoresponders
- list building
- technical know-how
- Twitter and Facebook
- information product creation
- affiliate marketing
- and a lot more.
And while not all of the courses are critical for a home staging business, many of them are. These are the fundamentals taught by a former high school science teacher who knows how to make everything clear and complete, even for newbies.
If you have ever thought about learning more in the way of internet basics this is your golden opportunity. Join and take one, two, three or more courses in your first month and quit if you want. Or continue on and take additional courses.
If you enjoy learning how the internet works and/or are interested in developing your personal or business skills online, this is a superb deal.
I specifically recommend you put discover cpanel and discover auto responders at the top of your list. But there is so much more that could benefit you and your business.
Now much of these courses are aimed at people who are looking to develop an online business. But don’t let that dissuade you. While your primary business is hands on in your clients homes, you need to learn how to use the internet to maximize your marketing.
Click on the banner and check this out. You must keep learning if you are going to be successful in the long run. In today’s world, like it or not that means getting comfortable with the internet. You won’t find a better teacher, not even me.
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November 17, 2009 
