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

Squidoo: A Great Supplemental Marketing Tactic Podcast

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Getting your web site to be top ranked on Google and the other search engines is a complicated task. Particularly, if you are one of many within a given market area.

A little known tool to most home stagers is a web portal called Squidoo. It’s similar in many ways to sites like Facebook, and Myspace in that it allows people to create a web presence easily, but unlike the aforementioned it unabashedly permits commercialization.  That means you can put up sites that advertise your business.

The easiest way to do so is to reuse much of the content you have on you web page now, and/or items you have just taken down, or not yet put up on your main web site.

Squidoo calls its pages, lens.  There are a group of modules that you can create and edit in minutes once you get the hang of their system.

The most critical point when setting up your first lens is what you call it.  Pay attention now.  Call your lens, “Home Staging in ______” Fill the blank with your top geographical reference point in your market.

If you do, you will often find that your Squidoo lens will get higher ranking than your own web page, even if you have optimized your meta tags geographically as I do for my Market Maker Clients.

That’s because Squidoo itself has a high PR or page rank in the eyes of Google.

Now what you want to do is include links in your Squidoo Lens to your web site’s home page and to additional pages within your web sites.  This helps raise your web sites ranking in Google’s eyes as well.

It sees Squidoo as an “authority” site and gives more credence to links coming from it.

When I say you want links from your Squidoo lens to additional pages in your web site, I am suggesting that  if you have a separate page on your web site for Realtors (and I think you should), then somewhere in your Squidoo lens you have a section about Realtors in your home town, and link not to the front page of your web site, but rather to the page about Realtors on your web site.  Do this with other pages as well.

Google likes these links to internal pages.

There is a lot more to internet marketing than having a web site. And that is one of the reasons the Market Maker Program includes a monthly seminar on internet marketing.  While Squidoo is easy to use, like everything, there is a learning curve.

And once you master the basic mechanics you also need to learn the strategies to make it work for your particular needs.  There are a number of eBooks about Squidoo out there.  I publish one called Squidoo Basics. It is a general introduction to Squidoo and not specifically directed to home staging, but worth the $17 to get a handle on the Basics.

There are other formats beyond Squidoo, like Hub Pages, but Squidoo is probably the best place to start building a broader internet presence.  To get started all you need do is open an account at www.Squidoo.com

In due course, you will not only get your web site on the top of the Google Rankings in your home town, you will also have a Squidoo page there as well. When prospects see you listed not once, but twice, in the top of the local listings, they will begin to understand that you are the person to go to locally for home staging services.

And that’s where I intend my Market Maker members to be.  On top of their local markets.

Technorati Tags: Market Maker, squidoo, Top Ranking