Blatant commercial here for a new lens I produced using Squidoo on Top 10 Women’s Halloween costumes for 2011. Thought it might be of interest to you.

In the process I have created a backlink to the site from this blog. That will assist the site with both traffic from this site (if you go to see it) and a better ranking in Google when the google bots come around because they will go and see that the site is about Women’s Halloween costumes. It will remember that and give that site a bit of a boost because of the anchor text in the first paragraph saying so.

Thus I’ve turned this purely self promotional post into a mini lesson on anchor text, and backlinking. Hope you enjoyed it.

Technorati Tags: anchor text, backlinking, seo

Technorati Tags: anchor text, backlinking, SEO

In our last article, we discussed the hidden or invisible “on-page” factors that can help or hinder your ability to rank high on the Search Engines. Today we will look at some on-page factors that matter as well. By on page I am talking about the text that people can read on your home page.

From a search engine optimization standpoint, the key factor for any web site is your selection of keywords. These are important in both the visible and hidden portions of the page. They should be in your meta tag title tags, keyword list and description. They must also be on your page.

If the search engines see keywords in the hidden code that aren’t on your page, they will discount them and possibly even penalize your site.

Specifically you want to have your primary keywords appear in the first 50 words of your page text at least once. In the past some internet marketers tried to game the system. They would stuff their keyword on the page over and over to get a high ranking. Such tactics worked for a short while but Google and the other search engines changed their algorithms to punish keyword stuffing. The rule of thumb now is that you want your main keyword to appear between 1-4% of the time. If you have a thousand words on your page that would mean you would use your primary keyword from ten to forty times. For five hundred words of text that would be five to twenty times. This is called keyword density in the trade.

This is usually not a problem for most sites, but it does require keeping in mind which keyword you want your web page to rank for, and them being sure to use it when you are writing your page. When working with a home staging client, I noticed one occasion where they used the term “home stager” repeatedly, while the focus may have been better put on the term “home staging.”

By the way, if you have a top three or four keyword variations that people search for, you may want to have one page of your site optimized for one term, and another for the second, etc.

So, my home stager above might have stressed the term Home Staging on her home page, but talked about House Staging or Home Stagers on another page talking about services provided, or a third page on her certifications, Qualifications etc. This takes a bit more time, but helps raise your sites ability to rise to the top not just on your main keyword but on other keywords as well.

The final topic we will discuss today is total word count. It appears that the magical number of words on a page that the search engines like to see is 425. In my experience most business web sites don’t have that many on their home pages, while most information sites do. The search engine bias is toward sites that provide more information, so it’s not hard to understand that they would tend to reward sites that appear to be “meatier.”

For many of the sites I have reviewed in my WART Analysis program I have had to suggest they add a paragraph or two of text to their front page. And since I am an advocate of using geographical keywords in the meta tags I encourage them to consider adding their geography to their home pages as well.

Many of them have followed this suggestion and added a final paragraph on each of their pages. A butcher for example might include on the bottom of each page a phrase like the following: “South Minneapolis’ premier source of quality meats serving Minneapolis, Richfield and Bloomington as well as the Highland neighborhood and the rest of St Paul.” This adds some words to the page, and also the geographical keywords to complement those in the meta tags.

One final comment on words on the page. Words that are placed on images or graphical elements such as on your header are usually invisible to the search engines and don’t count as keywords on the page, or in the total page or first 50 word counts. If you put your cursor on your header and right click and do not see View Source or View Page source in the box that appears, you are probably on an image that cannot be read. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you need to keep it in mind when designing your page so it can compete in the search engines.

That’s it for today. We will continue with on page visible factors in the next article. After that we will explore off page factors.

Technorati Tags: geographical keywords, Keywords, Meta Tags, search engine optimization, Web sites

Getting to the Top of the Search Engines 2

There are two main areas of attention when discussing how to move your website to the top of the search engines.  The first are the on-page factors and the second are the off-page factors.

The on-page factors are the easiest and quickest to deal with and are where we will start to focus our attention.  They are critical but not the most important. The off-page factors will in the long run carry more weight. But that said, if your on-page factors aren’t set up properly you can and will lose much of the benefit your off-page efforts could supply.

We will talk about 10 on page factors. Of these four are invisible, and of the six that are visible, one may already be cast in stone for better or worse.

The invisible elements are the Meta Tags. The meta tags are in the hidden code that the search engines can see, but your visitors normally don’t see.  You will learn how to see them, and anyone else’s when we discuss them in detail in our next section.

The meta tags include your title tags, your description and your keywords. The fourth of the invisible items is called an H1 tag.  The results of it are visible, but since it’s also HTML code (of the simplest kind) I am listing it as one of the invisible factors. Almost all of you will be able to make improvement to these elements on your web page.  For some of you this alone will make a significant difference in your page ranking. So stay tuned.

I’ve been surprised at how few websites I’ve reviewed have had adequate meta tags. Even those done by expensive web designers are often poorly done or in some cases missing altogether.

The visible elements include your first 50 words specifically, and the total number of words altogether. The total keyword count within your text and the percentage of the whole they comprise. We call this keyword density. The visible elements also include the internal links you have on your site and the way you link them, as well as the originality of your content.

The one item that may already be locked in stone is your domain name itself. As we will discuss, you will do better with the search engines if your web site includes you main keywords in it. If your site is already up and established you may not want to change it. That’s understandable. But if you are just now starting up and or are considering a complete makeover of your web presence, give serious thought to including your keywords and geography if appropriate in your new domains.

In our next article we will focus in detail on the hidden items. That will be followed by a look at the visible elements. Once we have covered those we will move on to discuss the off-page strategies.

—-

P.S. I have just launched a new service I call the WART Analysis and Consultation

I have been testing it over the past week or so with home stagers and it has been very well received. I’ve got the service rock bottom priced for a short while, but will be raising it soon, so check it out now and take advantage while the price is so low.

Technorati Tags: SEO

Yesterday, I described a problem that a lot of home stagers and other businesses have. When your web site starts out with a splash page, and/or your site uses a lot of flash coding you can become invisible to the little bots Google and others send around the internet to index sites. And that means your competitors have an advantage over you in terms of their ability to out rank you on Google and the other search engines. That costs you opportunities, and that means less jobs, and less money.

Today, I will briefly share more on what you need to do to mitigate the situation short of redesigning your entire web page. The “on page” factors that the Google Bots look for are just a part of the equation. And while lacking all the umph! having them would provide, you can still get yourself some traction using “off page” factors. There are a variety of off page things to do, but they basically boil down to getting BACK LINKS.

You do this by posting on other peoples blogs, writing articles, posting on web 2.0 sites like Squidoo and others.  When you do, you don’t want to link to your splash page if you have one. Instead link to your home page, or another page on your site that is relevant to the topic.

So, picking on my Friend Allegra again, I would have her sign her posts as “www.styledandsold.com/home.html” rather than “www.styledandsold.com”  It may look a bit odd at first, but it will take google to the page that matters and will count as a backlink in many cases. (not all but that is too long a discussion for now.)

Better yet, are situations where instead of signing with your URL you are able to use an anchor tag.  For example, if you are writing an article to post in an article directory instead of using your url, say Allegra Dioguardi is a Hamptons Home Staging Expert.

In this case, the keywords Allegra wants to rank for on Google is “Hamptons Home Staging”.

If she is on a Blog Site like Active Rain that has a Link tool (Looks like three links of a chain) in its WYSIWYG editor, she would highlight the words Hamptons Home Stager, and then insert her URL as the link, using the /home.html version.

That way when the bots find the link they provide not only a backlink but also identify the keywords at being relevant to the site. This process starts building keyword status for your website.

If you are on a site where you need to use html code you would build the link with a standard opening

<a href=”   and then insert your url, again with the /home.html (Or another page on your site) and end it with a   “>  Once that’s done, you add the keyword you want to rank for—  Hamptons Home Staging and a closing code which is  </a>

So the completed phrase in HTML is <a href=”http://www.styledandsold.com/home.html”>Hamptons Home Staging</a>  When this is put in the HTML of a site, anyone reading the phrase once published would only see:Hamptons Home Staging The words would be highlighted and most people will recognize them as a link. If they click on the link they would be taken to the page.

By virture of this post, Allegra now has a back link to her site.  You want to get as many of these as you can from as many different sites as possible.  Some sites are more valuable than others, but we will cover that in the future.

Focus on your major keyword. For home stagers, the number one word is Home Staging. But as I did for Allegra keep in mind that there are over 6 million web sites with the words “Home staging” in them. You want to rank for Home Staging and your town or what ever the dominant regional term people in your market would be likely to use.

I will be starting my new series on getting ranked by the search engines soon. But since I had several questions on this point I thought I would answer it now.

Technorati Tags: anchor tags, Keywords, Linking, SEO

I got up before 5 AM this morning, which is against my religion.  I am a night person, not a morning person.

I do some of my best thinking when I am on long walks, driving to or from Chicago (400 miles) or sleeping. Last night the muse hit me while I was sleeping.

A couple of pieces finally fell into place.  And they may make a difference for you.

For some time now, I have been imploring home stagers and other small business people to make changes to the meta tags on their web pages.  Many have and have had good results. Other less so. And I have been troubled as to why.

There are two major categories of things you can do to improve you search engine success. Things that are done on your page and things that can be done off your page.  I will be starting a new series on this topic this week to repeat much of what I have already said, but to expand it into additional areas that I have not covered as well in the past.

My mistake in the past was to focus on just part of the equation – the meta tags and my innovative emphasis on geographical keywords. And while these are important, not paying attention to other factors was undermining results we were getting on some web sites.  I now think I know why, and better yet what to do about it.

It’s too early in the morning to tell my Market Maker associate Allegra Dioguardi, but her web site promoting her Hamptons Home Staging business was bothering me. Despite my efforts, it was not rising as rapidly as I thought it should in the Google Listings.   The reason – it has a splash page. The same problem affecting her, may affect you as well, even if you don’t have a splash page, so please read on.

By a splash page I am referring to a graphic page that viewers first come to when they type your url into their browser. When you go to www.styledandsold.com you see a logo and then some pictures slide in from the right. When fully resolved there is a link that says enter here.

This is an attractive and stylish design and may even win a design award, but it creates a marketing problem.  Let me explain why.

The Googles of the world use a variety of factors to rank different web sites.  Among these factors are a variety of on and off page aspects of a web site. While I have been stressing the meta tags because so many home stagers and other micro businesses have grossly inadequate meta tags, another set of key factors are what is actually on the page. This shouldn’t be surprising at all.

The keywords listed in the meta tags should also be on the page. The main keyword of the site, and for home stagers, the main keyword is “Home Staging” should not only be on the main page but should be in a “H1″ tag on the main page.  It should be used between 1-4% of the time on the main page.  It should be used at least once in the first 50 words of the main page.  And finally, the main page should have at least 425 words.

I will be discussing all of the above in the coming week in my new series on getting to the top of the Google Pile.

But for now, let me point out that even if you don’t have a splash page like my friend Allegra, your front page may also lack some of these features. And it is costing you Google Rank.  But never fear, there is at least a partial solution.

In Allegra’s case, her front page is all graphics.  Even if she had the keywords in the images, the Google bots couldn’t read them. Google bots read text, not images. So if your first page is heavily graphics, you may fall into the same boat.  Her site didn’t have the H1 tag which is Headline sized type. It didn’t have 425 words which Google uses to determine is the page is “substantive.”  It didn’t use her keyword in the first 50 words, and It didn’t repeat the keyword enough without over repeating it, which google uses to counter keyword spammers who attempt to game their system.

All of this means that this splash page gets a weak rating for the keyword “home staging,” or as in Allegra’s case she really wants to rank on the term “Hamptons Home Staging” to get the geographical long tail keyword benefit I have been advocating.

Now as I mentioned at the start, there are on page and off page factors that influence Google Ranking.  As readers of this blog know, I am an advocate of article marketing as a way to build back links to your web page.  Back links to this splash page will help the page, but without a lot of its own keyword gravitas they may be wasted.

So here is the solution.  When Allegra writes an article she should seek to get backlinks not to her splash page but to an inside page.  So when I included the anchor text in this article for the term “Hamptons home staging” I used http://www.styledandsold.com/home.html as the link and not www.styledandsold.com. This is her real home page on her site. This allows her to rework that page to meet the above google criteria and increase her chance to climb in the Google rankings for her actual home page.

That way she can keep her existing web design and still build her Google ranking.  Now if I were to recommend a new web site, I might argue against the splash page all together, but if you have a splash page, and/or a page that is heavy on graphics, or just light on text, you may want to consider focusing your attention on an interior page for the purposes of getting ranked on Google.

I suspect this article will raise some questions. If so, please leave me a comment.  I will answer in the upcoming posts.  As mentioned, I will be doing a series over the next several posts on how to get your page a better ranking in your local market.  This is important stuff. And while you may not always be able to get the number one spot, you want to be in the fight because it matters. The top ranked organic site almost always gets more viewers and more business as a result of that placement than number 2 and #2 does better than #3 etc. (but I will share a hint that will help you even if you are #2 in the new series.)

Technorati Tags: Google ranking, SEO, Splash pages, web design

Listen to this podcast, Chased by a Bear:

Homestaging Business Tip: Chased By a Bear!

Chased by a Bear!

There is a story of two people in the woods, being charged by a hungry bear. One stops to tie his shoes, the other scoffs, “you can’t outrun a bear.”  “I don’t need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you.” His companion replied.

So too, with marketing in a local market.

You don’t need to be the best in the nation at marketing, you just need to be better than your local competitors.  That may be easier than you think.

With notable exceptions most home stagers spend very little time thinking about their marketing. Some may even feel it contrary to their nature. But if you are serious about your home staging business, you must give some serious thought to how you are going to attract your next customer and then the one after that.

That’s one reason you have a web page. But many of you make a mistake and think a web page is all about selling a potential customer on your staging skills. The purpose of a web page is to get prospects to call you.

I will discuss that more in a future article, but many of you have a bigger problem and don’t even know it.

Many people looking for a home stager in your town can’t find your web site.

In past articles, I’ve touched on two things you can do to remedy that problem. One is to change your page title tags to include relevant keywords.  Another is to change the Meta Tag description on your web page to also include relevant keywords.  There is one more major step to take in the meta tags area, that will greatly increase the chance that prospects looking online actually find you.

And that is the formal meta tag keywords.

There are over six million web sites that show up when someone searches for the term “Home Staging” in Google. That’s way too many, so most people when confronted with so many responses do a second search.

And in that second search they may try another keyword, like “home stager,” but more likely they will use the same keyword and add a geographical term.

When my son searches for pizza on the web, he adds his zip code. For a less common business like home staging, he might use his telephone area code, or the town name.

I’ve written about this before, but I am amazed at how few people actually take the time to make this simple change to the keywords they have in their meta tags.

If you do, and your competitors don’t, it’s like you putting on a pair of tennis shoes. Hey, they may even be a slightly better home stager than you. But if you are wearing geographically based keywords as your tennis shoes, you will get ranked above them in the computer search engines.  You will get seen, they won’t. Or if they do, they will be listed under you in the rankings.  You will get first chance to stage more houses. And they won’t know why.

Now I know some of you aren’t into competition, but this is business. If you want your phone to ring. If you want to be doing two to four more home stagings a month, you need to pay attention to your marketing.

You need to change the keywords in your web page’s meta tags. You need to include terms like “Home staging in Minneapolis”, “St. Paul Home Stager”, “House Staging in 612.”

In the first article of this series, I told you where and how to look up keywords. You need to find the top keywords people actually use, and then mix and match the appropriate geographical references for your market place.

It’s a chore, but not hard. It will make a real difference, and will allow you to outrun your competition.

Next week, the Market Maker program will be launched. All of these changes and much more will be handled by Market Maker for you. Market Maker is a unique program designed specifically for the Home Staging industry.  It will put your web based marketing on auto pilot and will pay for itself.

Membership will be limited, particularly at first. So if you want to sprint to the front of your market place, make sure you sign up for advance notice of the release date.

To do so go to http://homestagingbusinesstips.com/MarketMaker/ComingSoon.html

Best Wishes,

Earl Netwal
MicroBusinessSpecialist
http://www.HomestagingBusinessTips.com/blog

Technorati Tags: homestaging, Keywords, marketing, Meta Tags

Listen to “Page Title Tags” Podcast

Page Title Tags – How to Get More People to Visit Your Website

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

Listen to the Pod Cast

Getting People To Find Your Web Site

There are many ways to market ones home staging business. Most of them are enhanced by having a good web site where you can refer interested people to learn more about you and your business.

That way, when you give a talk to a church group or Chamber of Commerce luncheon you can give people a web page to visit.

But you can also get a lot of free traffic from people surfing the web for information on home staging, if your site is properly set up so it can be found.

Unfortunately, most home staging web sites are not easy to find, because they have not been optimized for search engine traffic. About 85% or all web traffic results from searches on search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and a myriad of others.

If you were to enter the words “home staging” into Google today you would get over 6 million responses. The top 10 names on the page get the vast majority of actual page views, the others 6 million don’t, and that includes your page.

That means that 85% of the people searching for a home stager are unlikely to see your page at all. That’s lost business. Business you could have a shot at…if your web pages were properly optimized to get the search engines attention.

There is an entire industry devoted to Search Engine Optimization or “SEO.”

But there are some simple steps anyone can do, if you are willing to take action and make your web site more attractive to the search engines. If you do, you will get more traffic to your page. And that’s the first step. What you do with that traffic is another issue. But first things first.

In the next week I will be posting a series of articles on SEO. This is a prelude to the release of a major new product. The exact release date and time is being held under wraps for now.

The new product is called Market Maker. Not everyone that wants to will be allowed to join when it releases. I encourage you to sign up for additional information at
http://homestagingbusinesstips.com/MarketMaker/ComingSoon.html

Today, I want to let you know how easy it is to begin to find keywords that apply to your business and website. In later articles I will tell you how to use these keywords, for that’s where the magic of SEO takes place.

There are a lot of expensive paid keyword tools, but the best free tool is Google’s.
Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
In the middle of the page, you will see a blank box with directions to enter a single word or phrase. Type in the word “Home Staging.”

Make sure the box that says synonyms is checked.

Then you will need to enter the letters from the Captcha code that is there. This is to confirm you are a person and not a computer or robot.

Then click get keyword ideas.

When I did this recently I got 127 keywords related to Home Staging and another 73 related terms. Not all of these are appropriate for a home stager looking to find customers. But many are. This is because different people will use different terms to search for you. If your web site is only set up to attract some of these keywords, you won’t stand a chance of showing up in the results the search engines return at all.

There is a lot more to say about all this, and it does matter. If your web site is properly optimized to get traffic from all the relevant keywords and your competitor across town isn’t you will get more business.

If your competitor’s website is properly optimized and yours isn’t you will loose out on business you could be getting.

If you’re not turning away customers today because you are too busy, you may want to consider making the effort to understand keywords and how they apply to your web site.

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

It is designed to put your web marketing on auto pilot and to pay for itself!

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

Best wishes,

Earl Netwal
www.HomestagingBusinessTips.com

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, homestaging, Homestagingbusinesstips, Market Maker, SEO

I’ve been writing about meta tags and keywords and how frequently many of the web sites I review have them all wrong.

I suspect some of you are wondering how it is that I can see your meta tags, when you can’t?

It’s just a matter of knowing how, and it’s very easy to do.

Just right click your mouse somewhere on the main body of your web site or that of virtually any other web site and a box will appear with a set of options. If you use Firefox as a browser, one of the options will be “View Page Source”, if you use Internet Explorer it will read “View Source.” Just click on either and you will see the code that is behind the web page.

Now sometimes people will right click on a part of the web site where an image is displayed, and you will not see the “view page code”. If this happens to you, try another area on the page, usually where there is text for the body of the page. On most web sites you should be able to find the code with out too much trouble.

The meta Tags are at the top of the code, between two “head” tags.  The first is <head> and then bunch of code and it ends with </head> which indicates that the Header information is done. It is almost always followed by the Body code. <body> Then all the stuff that actually appears on your page is listed. it eventually ends with a end body tag, </body>

You only need to look at the stuff on top to see if your meta tags are adequate.

There are a lot of possible Meta Tags, but of those there are two things you want to be sure to check.

You will want to be sure to check out your keywords and also your web site description.  Most meta tags such as the keyword ones are optional as far as getting your site to work.  But they are very important if you want the search engine bots and/or anyone else to find your site.

You should have, but are not required to have the following:

<meta name=”Keywords” content=”keywords,separated,by,commas”>  In the example, I include the words keywords, separated and comma to show what the keywords should look like. There shouldn’t be spaces between the keywords, each keyword or keyword phrase should be separated by a comma.

I have found web sites with no keywords at all, and I have found web sites where the keywords are totally unrelated to the page. In the later case, someone probably “borrowed” someone else’s web site because they liked the layout and replaced all the content without bothering to fix the keywords.  Look at your keywords, are they “geographically based  long tail keywords” as I have been preaching? If not, you want to get them fixed.

The second element that you want to be sure is in your meta tags is:

<meta name=”Description” content=”information about your site”>

The “information about your site should be 100-150 characters long and should include your best keywords.

To learn more about meta tags, you might want to get a copy HTML in Simple Terms by Terry Jett which I have published and sell. You can find a link on my other blog site http://MicroBusinessSpecialist.com/blog or you can use the links below. It’s only $9.97 and does a good job of explaining Meta Tags on pages 16-18.

I keep a copy of it handy by my computer to look up the HTML code I need on occasion to adjust my blogs, web pages and Squidoo lens. I am a marketer, and not a computer tech, so I need HTML help from time to time. If you do as well, you might benefit by downloading a copy, printing it out and keeping it by your computer like I do.

You can always look up things online by doing a search, but I find having a printed reference to be handier and quicker.

http://askearlabout.com/html-in-simple-terms/index.html

Technorati Tags: Meta Tags

Have you ever passed by a blank billboard on a backwater highway with a 1-800 number on it? Or perhaps one saying, “Your message here?” I have, but it’s been a while since the last time. Mostly I suspect, because I seldom venture off the main freeways in my normal travels these days.

In past years, I did a bit more traveling to smaller towns in out-state Minnesota and Wisconsin and I would see a fair number of them. Mostly on roads that used to be the main thoroughfare in the pre-freeway era. I suspect a good many of them still exist.

In those traveling days I used to consult with towns and counties on how to attract businesses to their communities. Today, I consult with businesses on how to attract customers. Same business, different focus.

A billboard is a marketing device some businesses use to attract customers. It’s like a display ad in a newspaper or magazine. It provides a graphic image and perhaps some keywords to people who happen to be passing by. On the highway, in their cars. In the newspaper or magazine as one’s eyes pass from one article or story to the next, one page to the next.

They have a hard job to do. They need to make an impression on your conscious or sub conscious mind quickly. It must be the sub conscious the advertiser is aiming for because there are very few such images that ever really capture my conscious mind’s attention.

Now as a kid, I remember the old Burma Shave signs because they were different and funny. I remember a number of teaser campaigns over the years that had me guessing as to what was coming next, but I can’t remember what any of them were about at the moment. I admit that I do notice some of the new billboard campaigns from time to time when they change along one of my regular routes. But I don’t remember ever buying something because I saw a billboard, do you?

My uncle Urban had a billboard on the highway from the Minneapolis to St. Cloud where he had a butcher shop. The sign read, “Gaida’s Meats” with a sausage on on fork that protruded above the sign. It was a clever enough visual effect, breaking out of the box. I suspect he got at least occasional comments from customers in the store about it. Particularly when it was new. But I doubt it brought in any new customers. It may have, however, brought in a few more existing customers. Not because it made his product any more valuable, but because it created status. A sense of importance because everyone who lived in St Cloud saw it whenever they returned home from a trip to the cities.

In my uncle Urban’s eyes the sign wasn’t meant for people from Minneapolis that happened to be going to St Cloud, it was for people from St Cloud who happened to have traveled to the Twin Cities. They would be coming back on this road. And that’s where he placed his sign.

Now I’m talking about billboards today, because in many ways they are like a business website. The clever ones may catch my attention as I browse through many related sites online. But only if they are on the highway I am traveling. If I am on the freeway, and the web site is on a dusty county road, I will never see it. And no matter how cute, creative or otherwise inspired it may be, it may as well not exist at all. It may as well be blank. In my book, it’s not even worth a toll free call to find out how much someone wants to put my message on it.

When it comes to online advertising, far too many people have spent all their effort coming up with a great image and feel for their sites and not given any thought to whether to put their site on a freeway where it will be seen by thousands or on a dirt road where only the crows and gophers will see it.

On the internet, the way you get in front of the traffic from Minneapolis to St Cloud is to make sure the keywords in your meta tags put you on the right highway. In addition, you need to use those same keywords in your message – in the body of your web pages.

This is particularly easy for local businesses, and a bit more difficult for those who compete on a national scale.

If my uncle still had his butcher shop, I would encourage him to use St Cloud Butcher Shop, St. Cloud Meats, Saint Cloud Butcher Shop, Stearns County Butcher Shop, Benton County Butcher Shop, and Polish Sausage as just a handful of maybe several hundred keywords in his meta tags.

In fact, I would take every conceivable term like meat, sausage, etc., and pair it with every conceivable geographical term that people in the area might use to find what they were looking for in a computer search. I call such terms geographical long tail keywords. And they are designed to mimic the actual phrases people might type into their search engine. While they might type “sausage” the first time, when they see over 20 million responses they will quickly find a geographical term to narrow their search if they are looking for a place like my uncle’s where they can get good Polish sausage.

And yet if you look at most business web pages you will see terms like plumber, attorney, dentist, groceries, resort, bait, or what have you in their meta tags. Such keywords are worthless. But so too is having Minneapolis, or Saint Cloud, or New York.

As my frequent readers know, I have been working with the Home Staging Industry for the past 9 months or so. As I dug deeper into the keywords that people actually use, I have grown a list of 124 terms for the home staging industry. Most were fairly obvious, others less so. I have been offering a service to the industry where I concatenate the various keywords I have researched together with the relevant geographical modifiers for individual home stagers. It gets a bit tedious and time consuming. But the result has been a block of keywords that puts my client’s web pages on the internet freeway, while their competitors are advertising their business on the dusty back roads of the internet where no one goes.

Where do you want your billboard to be? If it’s appropriate for your business, follow my example and create a series of geographical long tail keywords. It will make a difference in how often your potential customers find you. It also will make it far more likely that you get top ranking for a keyword phrase when you are the only person who has taken the time and effort to include in in your keywords.

Don’t forget that you also want to incorporate as many of the major terms into the body of you text as well. So if you are a Homestager in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, make sure to say so in the text of your web page as well as in the meta tags.

Technorati Tags: advertising, geographical long tail keywords, Keywords, marketing, Meta Tags, websites

I just completed my newest report, called “Most Business Web Pages StinK!” subtitled, Web Sites are like Trade Shows. Readers of this blog will soon realize this is a recompilation of five previous blog posts on the Trade Show theme. The current version is number 1.2, I am working on 1.3 which will be revisions after my wife gets done proof reading it, and a resources section at the end.

I intend to use this as an eye opener for hopefully thousands of Home Stagers and other small business people. In these tough economic times it only makes sense to better utilize all of our existing resources such as out web sites.

And since upgrading them is not difficult or expensive, it makes even more sense.

Let me know if you need my help.

Technorati Tags: interactive web sites, Internet Fundamentals, Internet marketing, list building, opt in, web pages

A decade ago, small businesses flocked to the internet. It was going to transform the way business is done and they wanted to be part of it. And many are today quite disappointed and perhaps philosophical about how their web pages didn’t do diddly squat.

While there is no doubt the internet has changed how business is done today, for most businesses all that changed is they now have an internet Yellow Pages add in addition to there actual listing.

The only people that go to their web site are people who already know about their business, and are jsut checking for a phone number or the times we are open.

While that’s certainly not true of all businesses, it is true for a good many, how about you?

I’ve been preaching on three major topics here about why I think most business web sites stink.

* Most aren’t using their ability to list their business in multiple categories.
* Most have just a billboard, or an electronic brochure and not an interactive site
* Why most web sites are so bad, even when you paid good money for them.

In my prior posts on this blog, I have tried to use the trade show as a metaphor as to what the role of your web pages should be. I encourage you to look back at my past postings and read them.

In the last few days, I have been focusing on how most web sites I’ve reviewed lately have poor and often no keywords.

If you were able to afford it, and were in the wall paper business, you might buy a yellow pages ad under wall paper, and maybe under decorating or a number of other yellow page headings. Most businesses don’t as its very expensive to do so, even with multiple category discounts.

With your web pages, you don’t need to pay extra to be listed in multiple categories. You just need to do a systematic listing of all relevant keywords that your possible customers might use in an effort to find you.

This may take a little time and effort, but once done, it will pay tremendous rewards in additional traffic and potential new business.

You may have thought your web designer would have done this for you. But unfortunately most web designers are not marketers. They tend to be graphic artists or techno geeks. Great at creating web pages, but not necessarily at getting your web site to generate the business you had hoped it would.

Technorati Tags: Internet marketing, Keywords, marketing, Meta Tags, web pages

So far, I haven’t found a single home staging web site with good keywords in the meta tags of their web site.

This is a big mistake, as these meta tags are what almost everybody other than Google uses to find web sites to display.  And while Google may have the largest chunk of web search, they certainly don’t have it all. And with the older demographic that is most likely to use the services of home stagers they may even have a lesser share of the pie. That’s cause most older folk are likely to use the search tool that comes with their computer. My wife for example has Yahoo on hers. While she may say she is going to “Google” something, she actually uses Yahoo.  Yahoo uses meta tags. So does MSN, ASK and virtually everybody but Google.

I have created a base list of some ten dozen key words people often use to search for home stagers in their market. I add or subtract a few depending on the scope of service of the individual home stager, and then incorporate geographical elements to come up with a comprehensive set of what I call, “geographical long tail keywords.”  These are the phrases people actually use to search for you.

Every business should have these in the hidden meta tags that the search engine “bots” see, but no one else does. Unfortunately most web site developers are techies, and not marketers, and they often don’t have a clue as to what they should put in there.

For an industry like Home Stagers, where I have already done the Keyword research, I charge $75 for a compiled list of keywords. I have a few simple questions that Home Stagers need to answer, and then I can generally get their completed keyword lists done in 24 hours or less, depending on what’s on my plate that day.

Until the end of January, I am offering a $40 discount as part of my Recession Fighter effort, (Yours and Mine) So if you would like more people to find your web site, drop me an email, and I will give your web page a look see. If it needs the work, and so far they all have, I will let you know and submit my list of Q’s.

But hurry, I will raise the price to $75 effective February 1st.

email me at enetwal@gmail.com with any questions.

Technorati Tags: geographical long tail keywords, homestaging, Keywords, long tail keywords, Meta Tags