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Page Title Tags

Yesterday I discussed keywords and the Google Keyword tool. Today, we will explore page title tags.

These are the first of several elements that are in the hidden code for your web site. It is one of several elements that the search engines can see about your page that you and you visitors don’t.

Well that is only partially true, because you do see your Page Title Tags. They are in the tab at the very top of your browser when you are on your site.

If you are reading this on my web site, you will see Home Staging Business Tips at the very top, left hand side. If you were on your web page, you would see the title of your page there as well.

If the name of your company is “Staged Homes Sell” it shows up because in the hidden code on your page this is what is inserted as the of your page. To see your hidden code, right click on some where on your page where their isn’t an image.   A box will appear with a variety of labels. Click on “View Source” or “View Page source.” This will display the source code for your entire page. At the top of this code is the “Header” code. This is where several critical elements of your web page are placed. Including your title.

If you live in Minneapolis, like I do and your company is called “Staged Homes Sell” you will see code that reads: <title>Staged Homes Sell</title>

My tip for you is to change that code slightly. Change it to: <title>Staged Homes Sell in Minneapolis</title>

By adding the “in Minneapolis” you provide the search engines with important information.

They will now be more likely to post your web site in the top of the listings when someone searches for stage and or Homes and also use word Minneapolis.

We will discuss this more in a future article.

Geographical keywords added to your business keywords are a surprisingly under appreciated way to get a higher rankings in the search engines. The first place to make this change is in your Title Tags.

Not only will it help you get higher rankings, when people see your page, it gives them a better sense that you are like them, local. And that helps build your standing in their eyes by virtue of affinity.

More on this tomorrow. And don’t forget to sign up for information on Market Maker.

Money maker is specifically designed for the Home Staging Industry and will put your web marketing on auto pilot and pay for itself!

Go to http://homestagingbusinesstips.com/MarketMaker/ComingSoon.html

Word to the wise. Market Maker is a powerful tool that will give participants a competitive advantage in their market place.  Its power could be diluted if everyone in a local market used its techniques, therefore it will be made available on a first come first served basis. Initially it will be limited to just 30 participants and they will all need to be from different telephone area codes.  If someone in your area beats you to the punch you may need to wait a year before being able to access its powerful features.

You are getting a head up on this as a reader of my blog. Take advantage of that and sign up now to get a shot at being at the head of the line when it launches sometime next week.

http://homestagingbusinesstips.com/MarketMaker/ComingSoon.html

Technorati Tags: geographical keywords, getting traffic, Meta Tags, page title tags, SEO

I have reduced the prices on the executive summary of my home staging survey results as well as the full report.  This survey done in June and July of 2008 provided significant insights into the practical business issues facing independent home stagers as they conducted their business.

For some insights into the finding visit my Squidoo page on the subject  (you may purchase the reports for the Squidoo page is you wish.)  The link is http://www.squidoo.com/House-staging

I have also begun a series of articles comparing web sites to trade shows on my http://MicroBusinessSpecialist.com blog.  Some of the background thinking for the series came out of the realization that most home stagers had very pretty but largely ineffective web sites.

It turns out that this is a problem not restricted to home stagers.  I commented about it in my survey results, and on a special teleseminar I conducted for home stagers last year.

Since then, I have decided to move more dramatically into the role of internet marketing consultant for micro businesses.  It is just too easy and too inexpensive to transform an existing web site into a far more productive one, to allow so many businesses to continue to miss the boat.

Keeping people interested in your blog, whether it is a business or personal blog, is key to attracting a lot of regular visitors. Many blogs have died because people have just lost interest. The main reason for the lack of interest is simply a lack of posts by the blogger. Regular, frequent posting, which will boost your blog’s ranking in search engines, is essential to the survival of any blog.

You might be asking yourself, what is frequent posting? How many blog entries should I make on a given week? How do I make frequent consistently good posts? What are the reasons for me to post frequently? In this newsletter, we will go over all of the above.

What is frequent posting?

Frequent blog posting is posting enough to keep your readers interested. Obviously, people will not want to come back to a blog that hasn’t been updated in months. They want to see consistent posting so that they know coming back to check the blog next week to see if there are more posts won’t be a waste of time.

How many blog entries should I make each week?

This is one of the tougher questions to answer. It really depends on the purpose of your blog. If it’s a personal blog, a weekly or twice weekly update is an excellent idea. A political/sports/music/religion blog should have 3-4 posts per week. Some believe internet business blogs should have at least 2 posts, but preferably 4 each week. I feel the actual number is less important than a consistent regularity of posts.

For most brick and mortar businesses once or twice a week is more than enough. If you are building a web only business, more frequent postings are probably more important.

The thing to remember is that quality counts. Posting frequently just for the sake of posting frequently tends to result in subpar posts which people won’t care about. It is important to find a balance–frequent, quality posts that won’t result in burnout on your part. Why create 4 poor quality posts each week when you could post 2 quality posts per week?

How do I create quality postings on a consistent basis?

It’s all about following a consistent pattern of writing. Maybe you’re not a natural writer and this is difficult. That’s why we’ll give you an outline to help you.

1. Pick a topic that is interesting to you and to your readers. Maybe if your blog is a personal blog, you could write about the latest happenings in Hollywood.

2. Carefully think about what you’ll write about the topic. It makes it easy to make quality blog postings if you know exactly what you’ll write. Plot out everything about the post before even beginning to write it.

3. Before writing your content, pick out some keywords that are relevant to your blog. If you naturally use keywords throughout your post, you will please search engine spiders which will get your blog ranked higher on search engines. Your visitors won’t mind the use of keywords if they are used in a tasteful way.

4. Begin writing your post. Don’t limit yourself to a particular amount of words. Just do what’s natural. And if any blog post is hard for you, just take a timeout and relax. You should be able to finish the post a bit later on, after you’ve had some time to think things through, you should be able to finish the post with
no problems.

I like to write four or five posts at a time, if I can, on a related topic and have the task done for a while. It also has the advantage of allowing a more in depth discussion of a topic.

Why is frequent posting important?

Blogs are meant to be outlets for individuals or businesses. They are used to get an opinion out on something and to engage readers. Readers need to have something that makes them want to keep coming back to a blog. That something is usually quality, frequent posts.

Gaining and maintaining visitors isn’t the only reason to post often in your blog. Catching the eye of a search engine–and achieving a high ranking–is another valid reason for posting frequently. Most likely, each posting in your blog features some keywords or keyword phrases scattered throughout it. Logic says
that the more natural keywords you have on a blog, the better.

Thus, the more posts you make on your blog, the more keywords you have on there. And the more keywords you have, the more likely a search engine bot is to crawl your site. The more your site is crawled by bots, the more likely it is that you will have a high ranking on a search engine.

Technorati Tags: blogging

So you’ve decided to blog, but aren’t sure whether you should host the blog yourself or sign up for a free service like blogger.com. It’s a dilemma that many bloggers face. There are pros and cons to both, which makes the decision difficult for many. Neither is perfect, and neither is for everyone.

Fortunately, you should be able to make the best decision for you if you are armed with adequate knowledge of both. In this newsletter, we’ll go over services like blogger.com and others, plus software that allows you to host your own blog. We’ll also go over the pros and cons of each. After reading this, you will know which is best for you.

Who offers free blog hosting?

Many sites offer free blog hosting. Among them are Forumer, Blogger, BlogEasy, Aeonity, BlogThing and Blogates. A quick search for “free blog” on Google reveals many possibilities.

What software can I use to host my own blog?

Like free blog hosting, there are many possibilities for software that makes hosting your own blog easy. Most of them are free to use. These include:

WordPress(the most popular software)
Apache Roller
Blosxom
Geeklog
Textpattern
LifeType

There is also blog software which you can purchase for use on your site. These include:

Community Server
Movable Type
Radio UserLand

One negative about using software and hosting your own blog is that the process can often times be complicated. You have to download the software and install it to your server, which doesn’t always go easily. It’s particularly hard for those who don’t have a lot of experience installing things on servers.

[I had difficulties until I got myself a web host that used C-panel and then learned how to use the C-panel to control my own site. Prior to that I had to pay a guy who would eventually get around to doing things on his time line. Having control is much better and not that hard, once I was properly set up and familiar with how to use the C-panel.]

Why should I remotely host my blog at a place like Blogger?

Places like Blogger allow you to host your blog there. It’s a good option for many people.

The Pros

-It’s easy to set up and maintain a blog. You don’t have to go through the trouble of installing software and configuring it to work on your server. All you have to do is sign up for an account and start posting.

-It’s friendly for beginning bloggers. Sites that host blogs offer good tutorials on how to make your blog postings, so that even someone who is completely new to the concept of blogging can do it easily.

-Most blog hosting sites are completely free to use. There is no need to pay for things like a domain name and hosting.

-Monetizing your blog is easy. Rather than having to manually put HTML/Javascript codes on your blog to manually set up things like AdSense and Pay Per Click advertising, you can select an option on most blog hosting sites that does much of the work for you.

The Cons

-You don’t have as many options to customize your blog. Remotely hosted blogs are admittedly somewhat limited in terms of what you can actually do on them. You have to stick with what is provided to you in terms of look and features.

-The URL you get is always yourname.BLOGSITE.com. You don’t get to have a custom domain name like YOURNAME.com. This can possibly hurt traffic to your blog.

-Blogs hosted on free blog sites don’t look as professional as self hosted blogs.

Why should I self-host my blog?

The Pros

-You have more options and more flexibility. You are able to tweak the blog to your liking.

-Your URL is your address for your blog. Rather than having go to where your blog is hosted to read it, they can read it right from your site.

-The ability to make your blog look professional. Blogs that are hosted on sites of their own tend to look a lot better than those hosted on free sites.

-More space for your blog. Free blog sites usually place a restriction on how much space you have for things like photos and music. By hosting your own blog, you are able to use as much space as you need.

The Cons

-There are sometimes problems with setting up blog software to run on your site and server. If you aren’t experienced when it comes to working with mySQL, the process will be hard. [easier with C-Panel]

-Updates aren’t as easy to post.

-You have to manually set up programs to monetize your blog. However, if you are good with HTML/Javascript, this shouldn’t be
too hard.

-You have to pay for your own hosting and domain

As you can see, there are pros and cons to both. Which should you choose? Well, it depends on who you are and what you intend to use your blog for. If you intend to use it for business, then a self-hosted blog is the best idea. If it’s a personal blog, then a free hosted blog will probably be fine for you.

To your success,

Earl Netwal
Micro Business Specialist

P.S. Closely examine all of the pros and cons mentioned above. That way, you’ll be able to make the best decision for you! Keep in mind that there are ebooks and video programs available to help you quickly master the technical skills required.

P.P.S. Do you Have C-panel? If so, I recommend a course by Bob the Teacher which helped me learn how to use it quickly and painlessly. This basic information is essential to your internet independence and ultimately your success.

Discover C-Panel

Many but not all web hosting services utilize C-Panel for their user interface.

You can find out if your hosting service does by typing in your URL in your browser and adding /cpanel to the end. Example: http://www.yoururl.com/cpanel

If your web hosting service uses cpanel, it will pop up. That’s good. It means you have control of your web site. With a little knowledge can take charge of it. But you need to know how.

Discovering how to control my C-panel was the most significant bit of learning I’ve done to date on the internet.

Controlling your own internet presence is critical. Even if you decide to let someone else have the keys to your internet presence, it’s wise to understand what’s involved. (Particularly, how easy it is.)

I took a video course from Bob the Teacher called Discover C Panel. In a series of short videos I learned in just over an hour how to take control of my internet destiny.

I highly recommend this program. DiscoverCPanel.com – Step-By-Step Video Tutorials

Having a Cpanel interface makes it easy to set up a Wordpress Blog, to upload files to your web site without needed an FTP Program and much more.

Technorati Tags: C Panel, Home Staging, Home staging survey

Over half of the 123 Home Staging Professionals who answered my survey question on the “Climate of Competition” in their markets rated it as “Mild, we are all friends.” Only one rated it as “Hostile, we are fighting for every advantage”

That said, those with 2-4 years experience were the least likely to claim competition as Mild. My guess is after two years of business, they were more likely to have run into competition and not necessarily come out ahead in every case.

The “Top Dog” category in the survey seemed to share this attitude, although a few seem to have arrived at the point where they had developed strong relationships with Realtors which was providing them with a steady stream of new business. For them the competition was less relevant. In in many cases it may have been seen as asset as it provided an overflow valve when they were too busy.

The unasked question I refer to in the subtitle, was the “Null Set.”

The biggest competitor Home Stagers face is the number of Realtors and Home Owners who decide to not stage at all. Or who never consider the possibility.

While a few markets report large percentages of homes being staged, that is not true in most markets.

When you think about competition in that light, I think most markets could accurately list competition a

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging survey, marketing

One of the more surprising aspects was the fact that over half of the survey respondents reported calling fewer than five Realtors in the past three months as part of their marketing efforts.

This floored me. In the survey report, I break out seven different categories of respondents, and it turns out in this case that those with more experience are far more active in contacting Realtors, than are the newer stagers.

The new guys should, in my opinion, be burning up the telephone lines to get their businesses in front of as many Realtors as possible. How else are they going to get those initial jobs to develop their portfolios and referral business?

One anecdotal comment captured in the many essay questions on my survey suggested that they were calling a lot more than the three Realtors they were advised to contact in their training course.

I have to believe this was a misinterpretation of a comment that maybe all they needed was three regular Realtors to build their business with regular referrals. At any rate if this is being taught, I have to wonder about the wisdom of the instructor and the school employing them.

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging survey, marketing, Realtors

If you are a Home Stager, or considering joining the ranks of Home Stagers, you should be interested in what you can learn about the business from others in it.

In May and June of 2008, I conducted a series of personal interviews with several home stagers and gathered some initial information about the industry.

From there, I developed an internet survey which I presented to over 600 home stagers from around the US and Canada. I got responses from over 180. These I analyzed and broke the data into eight different categories, the first being all responses, then those who had less than two years experience in the field, those with two to four years, and those with four or more years.

I also asked how many actual homes respondents personally staged in the prior three months. Some had quite a few, with two reporting over 120. Many however are far more part time and so I split all the responses into two groups, those who did 9 or fewer in the prior three months and those who did more.

I also pulled a group out who were clearly Realtors in addition to being Home Stagers as I saw these as a distinct group.

And finally, I used a set of criteria to pull out what I referred to as the Top Dogs.

These multiple groupings allowed me to observe differences in the responses by various groups. This provided insight into the differences between new stagers and those with more experience.

The differences were significant in many cases, and
should be useful to those trying to emulate those more successful in the business.

This Blog will discuss some of the survey results and collect comments from those who have a copy of the report.

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging survey, Survey