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July 19, 2010 
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
Home staging involves taking the time and effort and yes, a little bit of expense to ensure that your home is a marketable product and that you get the greatest possible return on your largest PEI real estate investment, your home.
Home staging involves presenting your home in a way to take the focus off the less desirable aspects and focus buyers on the reasons that they would want to buy your home. It involves de-personalizing your home and making it suitable for the maximum number of potential purchasers.
Much of homestaging you can do yourself and in fact might even enjoy doing – however, some aspects may require the services of a professional, especially if anything is in need of repair.
1. Curb Appeal – the outside
Make your home the best looking on the block when potential buyers drive up. Remember, on average, island homes are well looked after, so this might be a “tall order” in your neighborhood. Make sure that paths are swept and in winter snow is cleared and paths are de-iced. In spring, summer and fall make sure that at minimum flowerbeds are cleared of old growth, however if the growing season is right plant some flowering plants. Tidy away garbage bins and any derelict items from around the house, and paint the trim in an attractive, complimentary color.
2. Clean & Clutter Free
The next step is to move indoors and give your home a thorough “spring cleaning”. That means behind the stove and fridge and all the places people don’t see as well as those that they do. Make sure that your home smells fresh. Clean out cupboards and closets of extraneous items. These prohibit the buyers from seeing themselves living in the home. Take the time to de-personalize the rooms as well. Take down family pictures and momentos as these also distract buyers and make the rooms look smaller.
3. Reduce and Arrange
As well as de-cluttering, reduce the amount of furniture in your home and keep only those pieces that suit the decor and are in good condition. Your furniture will also add or detract from how buyers view your home. If you have older furniture that is not in good condition then buy some attractive throws and cover the worst pieces. You should most likely paint unless you did so recently. If your walls are anything other than a muted, pastel shade or white then paint anyway. The more strong or unusual your choice of home decor and colors the greater the need to mute-down your decor.
4. Lighten up
Make sure that during day showings that window coverings are open and during evening showings that as many lights as possible are on. You may want to add a few bright touches in your now muted decor. Choose a potted plant, a nice picture for the wall. a rug – well this is the fun part, right?
5. Security
You are inviting strangers into your home. Make sure that you have removed any items, documents, prescriptions or anything that tells the visitor about you. You do not want them to know anything about you as this could be used in negotiation, ie if a buyer saw a prescription for a certain drug they might know your health issues and realize your need to sell. As you don’t know who is coming through your home, these people may have reasons other than purchasing PEI real estate, so play it safe. On the subject of safe, also make sure that the environment is safe for the buyers too. Ensure there are no obstacles in their path, no potentially dangerous items on display (your gun collection for example), and that your pet(s) are secured.
R. Parker works with local realtors to promote PEI real estate and PEI as a place for people to relocate to. Known as the “Gentle Island”, PEI is known for it’s laid back lifestyle.
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
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