I am recommending a new free report by Ryan Deiss for anyone who either buys pay per click ads or who wishes to get their web site or blog ranked higher on Google.  Its called the Perpetual Traffic Report.   It runs some 29 pages and was must reading for me, and perhaps for you as well.

It covered a lot of different topics including a bit of a history on Google and how its ranking algorithm has changed over time.  But what I want to focus on today is just one element of the report.

It used to be that to get the most traffic from Google, it made sense to buy pay per click ads.   That’s no longer true.  Now I have been a cheap s.o.b. for some time, so I have always preferred to do what is called search engine optimization to get as much free traffic as possible.

According to the report it appears that my time is now.

Based on their research, it appears that the top ads, the one that shows up on top of the organic listings get only 2-3% of the people who come to the page to click.  The ads on the side get only 1-2% of people to click.

This is in contrast to the top organic listing.  It typically gets 41-45% of the people who come to the page to click.

The #2 listing gets 11-18%

The #3 listing gets 7-15%

The #4-9 listings get 2% putting them on an even base with the highest paid advertisers, and

The #10 listing gets 3-4% as it appears that some people start at the bottom up, or some other rationale.

What does this mean to you as a home stager, or any type of business online.

Clearly, the place to be is #1 on the organic listings for your keywords.

Number one is 4 times as valuable as the #2 slot.

And the bottom line is that you must start paying serious attention to your search engine rankings.

The report goes on to stress the three major contributing aspects toward getting top search engine rankings. Two of these I have written about in detail and will pick up again in coming posts.

The two old ones are, Getting your page set up right in the first place. Even now, after some 16 months of harping on the topic, most home staging and other small business web sites are not set up properly. This is particularly true of most of the group template websites so many new homestagers use.

The second key to the game is getting backlinks from not only a lot of places but also from highly ranked authority sites.  I will also take up this mantra in the coming weeks.

Finally, the third aspect that I have not given much direct attention to is what Ryan referes to as “Activity.”  By which he means proof in Google’s eyes that a sight is a real site with people rather than robots running things.

This may seem strange to those not familiar with all the people who sell black hat tools and programs to try to fool the search engines.

I will return to this topic again as well. But frankly need to do some additional research of my own.

In the meanwhile I recommend you get your own copy of this excellent free report.  Ryan is one of the Good Guys, who actually does his own research and knows what he is talking about.

Get your copy of Perpetual Traffic Report while it is still available for free.

Technorati Tags: Ryan Deiss, perpetual traffic report, perpetual traffic, Google Rankings, SEO Factors, SEO, how to rank high on Google, Search Engine Optimization

Setting up your web page, and getting your web site to the top of the search engines is a challenging but worthwhile task. The first step is to take stock of your current web site. How does it stack up in terms of its meta tags, on page factors and off page factors. What would need to happen to get to the top of the search engine rankings in your local market? For $99, I will review your existing site, identify its strengths and weaknesses. Suggest any easy changes you or your computer person can make quickly, and evaluate the steps you would need to take to rank in the top organic listings in your market place. This will include a half hour personal consultation with me, after I complete the analysis. To learn more send me and email together with your web site address, and I will do a free quick evaluation of your site to see whether or not my services would do you any good. Then and only then, will I ask you for a commitment, and payment. Send email to enetwal@gmail.com

Technorati Tags: Google Rankings, how to rank high on Google, perpetual traffic, perpetual traffic report, Ryan Deiss, search engine optimization, SEO, SEO Factors

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kimberley_Pacholko

Setting up your web page, and getting your web site to the top of the search engines is a challenging but worthwhile task. The first step is to take stock of your current web site. How does it stack up in terms of its meta tags, on page factors and off page factors. What would need to happen to get to the top of the search engine rankings in your local market? For $99, I will review your existing site, identify its strengths and weaknesses. Suggest any easy changes you or your computer person can make quickly, and evaluate the steps you would need to take to rank in the top organic listings in your market place. This will include a half hour personal consultation with me, after I complete the analysis. To learn more send me and email together with your web site address, and I will do a free quick evaluation of your site to see whether or not my services would do you any good. Then and only then, will I ask you for a commitment, and payment. Send email to enetwal@gmail.com

I have long preached about the power of what I call geographical long tail keywords.

When you are setting up your web pages for your home staging business or any other locally based business for that matter, you want your page text and the invisible meta tags behind your page to include the key geographical keyword terms appropriate for your market.

This helps the search engine know that your site is and should be shown to people in your area, and will help get your web page to the top of the search engine results for people doing a search in your community.

In smaller markets this alone, when done properly will get you to the first page of results.  However, in most markets you need to go beyond this.

You need to generate backlinks to your site.

One of my favorite ways to do so is through article writing.  I encourage you to create short meaningful articles and post them to article directories. Perhaps the most important of which is www.ezinearticles.com

I recently checked them for articles on Homestaging and noted several that included geographical references in their titles.  There’s something good and bad to be said about that idea.

The good first. Article Directories like ezinearticles have high page ranks on their own. An article that includes your town name and home staging in it may well show up on the search engines by itself.

Being a published author online in a Google Search will certainly aid in your perceived credibility in the eyes of the reader, which is certainly good.

The downside is that far fewer newsletter, blog or ezine editors are likely to use the article.  For example in the article below the author lists 5 ways to homestage PEI (Prince Edward Island) real estate.  Since it mentions PEI, its not likely a California or Florida or Australian site on homestaging or realestate is likely to repost it.

People who reprint articles from these directories are not allowed to edit them, and thus most will just pass them by.  I will be the exception as I include it below.

It’s important to understand that the widespread reposting is the primary goal of article marketing.  For each republishing of your article counts in your total backlink tally.  The reason to write articles is to gain this backlink power to raise your ranking on the search engines.  And that would be my focus, so I would tend to say do not put geopraphy in your article titles.

That said, if you have a number of good articles written, it may be worth an experiment to see if you can’t get some of them ranked.

Now what I like about the article below is that the author did create anchor text linking his site to the term PEI real estate.  This will help him rank higher in anyone’s search for that term.

Here’s his article.

5 Ways to Homestage Your PEI Real Estate For Best Sales Opportunities

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Robert_K_Parker

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PS: I am still willing to assess your home staging websites SEO status and give you hints on what to do about it.  This involves examining your websites meta tags and on page aspects plus a 20 minute or so consultation.  For the balance of July, I will do this at a discounted rate of $49.  Email me at enetwal@gmail.com for more info.

Technorati Tags: article marketing, backlinks, geographical keywords, long tail keywords, curb appeal, clutter free, seo, search engine ranking

Setting up your web page, and getting your web site to the top of the search engines is a challenging but worthwhile task. The first step is to take stock of your current web site. How does it stack up in terms of its meta tags, on page factors and off page factors. What would need to happen to get to the top of the search engine rankings in your local market? For $99, I will review your existing site, identify its strengths and weaknesses. Suggest any easy changes you or your computer person can make quickly, and evaluate the steps you would need to take to rank in the top organic listings in your market place. This will include a half hour personal consultation with me, after I complete the analysis. To learn more send me and email together with your web site address, and I will do a free quick evaluation of your site to see whether or not my services would do you any good. Then and only then, will I ask you for a commitment, and payment. Send email to enetwal@gmail.com

Last week I discussed how I use Squidoo as a Search Engine Optimization tool. I explained that you want to get free backlinks to your web site or blog to help lift it toward the top of the search engine rankings.

Squidoo is one of several high ranked authority site where you can create your own content on your topic and create your own backlinks. What I neglected to focus on in my last post was the need for and how to create what are called anchor text or anchor tags.

Anchor texts are backlinks that have been coded with the url of the destination we want people to go to. We do this for the practical reason of making it clear to the reader and to the Google Bots not only where to go but why.

For example, a home stager may want to get their web site to appear on the top of the search engines when someone searches for the term San Francisco Home Staging. They could just enter their url www-MaryJanesHomeStaging.com in a Squidoo page and anyone who visits the site will be able to click on the link and go to the site. So will the search engine bots.

The search bots will note that the backlink exists, and will give it some credit depending on the value the attribute to the the site where they found it.

A better course of action, (and the point of this post) would be to use a keyword you want to rank for rather than your url as the link.

For example, if Mary Jane lived and did home staging in my home town of Minneapolis, she might choose to type in the link as “Minneapolis Home Staging” and then highlight those words and then insert a link on those words. In most browsers, the words Minneapolis Home Staging would appear blue, and most people would know that it was a clickable link.

On most text editors you will often find a small image of a linked chain, which serves as a tool to create links on the selected text.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy on Squidoo,  so you need to learn a tiny bit of HTML code to create your anchor text.

Here is the HTML format for an anchor text.

<a href=”http://www.MaryJanesHomeStaging.com”>Minneapolis Home Staging</a>

Lets look at this more closely so we can understand what’s happening.  It’s not hard.

The <a href=”  is the actual HTML code that tells a computer that a link is to follow. In this case, we are telling the computer that we want the link to connect with http://www.MaryJanesHomeStaging.com

We let the computer know we are done with our url, by adding a end guote and closing arrow. ie  “>

Next we have our keyword that we want to be our anchor text.  Again in this case it’s Minneapolis Home Staging.

Then we tell the computer that we are done with all of out HTML code by ending with </a>

You will note that the code started with an <a  and ends with a </a>

This convention is used throughout HTML.

Once we have done this, the people reading our Squidoo Lens will know that MaryJanesHomeStaging serves Minneapolis. More importanly, the search engine robots will learn that MaryJanesHomeStaging.com is about Minneapolis Home Staging.  Now when someone goes to Google or another search engine and searches for a Minneapolis Home Stager, the search engines will know that MaryJanes site is one they should list.

The more backlinks associated with the anchor tect Minneapolis Home Staging that Mary Jane is able to establish on Squidoo and elsewhere, the more likely Mary Janes site will be ranked toward the top of the search engines.

HTML is actually relatively easy to learn, and very helpful in many different applications.  I have a good HTML Guide for those who want to learn more.

But whether you wish to learn HTML your self or not, you do want to understand that using sites like Squidoo and others can be a powerful way to move your web site to the top of the search engines.  The advantage of sites like Squidoo is that you can generate free back links from a high ranked site.

When you create your own links you have control, and can use the anchor text of your choosing to in essence Brand your web site to appear in the search engines on the keywords you use as your anchor text.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions on this topic or any other by leaving a comment on the blog.  It was a comment there that generated this post.

Anchor text are not limited to Squidoo, its just that to make the maximum use of Squidoo, you do need to learn how to do a little bit of extra work. Once you learn how, it’s a piece of cake.

Click here to get my Squidoo eBook.

Technorati Tags: anchor text, free backlinks, anchor tag, how to get backlinks, Search Engine ranking tool, search engine optimization tool, improve search engine ranking, squidoo ebook, HTML Guide

Setting up your web page, and getting your web site to the top of the search engines is a challenging but worthwhile task. The first step is to take stock of your current web site. How does it stack up in terms of its meta tags, on page factors and off page factors. What would need to happen to get to the top of the search engine rankings in your local market? For $99, I will review your existing site, identify its strengths and weaknesses. Suggest any easy changes you or your computer person can make quickly, and evaluate the steps you would need to take to rank in the top organic listings in your market place. This will include a half hour personal consultation with me, after I complete the analysis. To learn more send me and email together with your web site address, and I will do a free quick evaluation of your site to see whether or not my services would do you any good. Then and only then, will I ask you for a commitment, and payment. Send email to enetwal@gmail.com

Technorati Tags: anchor tag, anchor text, free backlinks, how to get backlinks, HTML Guide, improve search engine ranking, search engine optimization tool, Search Engine ranking tool, Squidoo ebook

My long time readers know that I like to use Squidoo as a tool in my internet marketing.  I have often suggested it to others as well.

Why?  For two reasons mainly, in addition to it’s being a free service.

First Squidoo is relatively simple to do.  Once you know your way around you can get a “Lens” or Squidoo page up in about 10 minutes, even if you have no technical expertise.

And it only takes a little while to learn the basics to know your way around.

This makes it easy for people who do not have any type of web presence to create one for themselves.  What separates Squidoo from many of the other social networking sites out there like Facebook, Myspace and others is that they welcome commercial content.

So it’s perfectly okay to create a lens on Homestaging in MyTown, USA and talk about your business and solicit customers.   You can get banned from other sites for doing so, if you are not careful.

(Another site similar to Squidoo that is fairly open to commercialization are Hub Pages.)

The second reason I use Squidoo is it’s value as a source of back links.

Backlinks to your web site, blog or individual blog entry are one of the key criteria in how high your site ranks in the search engines.  I counsel my clients to set up Squidoo lens with this in mind.

If you are in business, you want to be on top of the search engine results when someone searches for home stagers in your community. The more backlinks you get, the greater the likelihood that your page will appear in that top position. And you want to be there.

Now Squidoo has what’s called a high page rank. And what that means basically is that search engines like Google consider a link from a site with a high page rank to be more important than a link from your cousin’s occasional blog posting.

There are ways to enhance that value further by joining groups within Squidoo of other homestagers.  It seems the groups, add to the weight of the link, because they represent links from similar types of lens on related topics.

That relevancy is another of Google’s criteria. In this case the theory is that a link from a site about home staging or perhaps real estate is more relevant that a backlink from someone’s blog about dog training.

Now both of these reasons are good reasons to spend some time learning about Squidoo.

Some quick tips.  You are probably better off from a Search Engine Optimization point of view to create several related lens on your topic than just one long one.

Thus you may want to do a short lens called Homestaging, your town and another called Your town, home stagers: and perhaps another on Selling Your House In Your County.

In each of these lens, you will want to insert a link to your main web site that you want to rank high.

I recommend that you include your geography in your lens titles. If people use different terms when thinking about your area, consider creating lens that highlight each of them.  That way when they search for information on home staging, they may well find your lens.

Your lens then should provide a soft sell on how exceptional your services are and encourage people to go to your site.

If you are interested in learning more about Squidoo and how to put it to work for you, you might want to invest in a Squidoo eBook.

There are also people who will create Squidoo lens for you. The longest running such service is offered by Squidoo experts Tiffany Dow and Lewis Smile. They will build your lenses FOR YOU!
Dow & Lewis

A newer resource and cheaper is available here. SEO Ninja & Squidoo Queen

I’m a do it yourself type of guy, but I recognize most homestagers are more interested in doing home staging than they are in creating web properties.

There’s a lot more to Squidoo and even more to getting a good ranking on the search engines. I welcome your questions or comments.

If you are new to Squidoo, you can sign up here for Free.

[tags]Squidoo ebook, Squidoo, SEO, Backlinks, Search Engine Optimization, page rank[tags]

Setting up your web page, and getting your web site to the top of the search engines is a challenging but worthwhile task. The first step is to take stock of your current web site. How does it stack up in terms of its meta tags, on page factors and off page factors. What would need to happen to get to the top of the search engine rankings in your local market? For $99, I will review your existing site, identify its strengths and weaknesses. Suggest any easy changes you or your computer person can make quickly, and evaluate the steps you would need to take to rank in the top organic listings in your market place. This will include a half hour personal consultation with me, after I complete the analysis. To learn more send me and email together with your web site address, and I will do a free quick evaluation of your site to see whether or not my services would do you any good. Then and only then, will I ask you for a commitment, and payment. Send email to enetwal@gmail.com

Technorati Tags: backlinks, page rank, search engine optimization, SEO, squidoo, Squidoo ebook

Setting up your web page, and getting your web site to the top of the search engines is a challenging but worthwhile task. The first step is to take stock of your current web site. How does it stack up in terms of its meta tags, on page factors and off page factors. What would need to happen to get to the top of the search engine rankings in your local market? For $99, I will review your existing site, identify its strengths and weaknesses. Suggest any easy changes you or your computer person can make quickly, and evaluate the steps you would need to take to rank in the top organic listings in your market place. This will include a half hour personal consultation with me, after I complete the analysis. To learn more send me and email together with your web site address, and I will do a free quick evaluation of your site to see whether or not my services would do you any good. Then and only then, will I ask you for a commitment, and payment. Send email to enetwal@gmail.com