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

Curb Appeal for Search Engines

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When you want to show yourself off, you may decide to put on your best dress.

When you talk to your clients, you tell them to stage their house, to present it to its best advantage.

When you put up a web site to attract potential customers, you need to do the same thing.

To attract people to your site, you need to dress up your META tags.

Geeky it may be…but it’s curb appeal for search engines.

Starting sometime next week, you will be able to get all of this done for you when you become a member of Market Maker and much, much, more.

But even if you don’t, you should be aware of what you can do to make you web site sparkle in the eyes of the Google bots. They roam the internet and determine whether or not your site has enough curb appeal to merit a look see.

Previously, We’ve talked a bit about finding keywords and how to improve your Page Title Tags. Today we are going to dress up one more section of your “Hidden code” the Hidden charm that the bots love to see. (See yesterdays article on how to find your meta tags, if you don’t know how.)

The Description Statement is one of the META tags that makes a difference in how to professionally stage your web site.

It starts like this:

“<meta name=”Description” content=”______”/>”

In the blank, you want to put a description of your business. This should be keyword rich.

In the first article in this series I told you how to look up keywords. This is where you begin to use them.

You want to come up with a sentence or two that includes as many top ranking keywords as possible and an appropriate geographical reference.

Example:

“Staged to Sell is a professionally accredited and certified Home Staging Service specializing staging houses in Minneapolis, Bloomington, Edina, Burnsville and Apple valley and other South Metro suburbs. Our home stagers are expert real estate fluffers and the best home staging company in Minnesota”

Notice: Very few human will ever see this, although some might. Stilted language is okay. We’re going for robot sex appeal, not your English teacher’s ok.

Getting people to find your web site is just the beginning of the process of communicating with them. But it is the essential first start. Like curb appeal, it will help get them to look closer, but its what’s on the inside that gets them to buy.

Next week, the Market Maker program will launch. Market maker will not only deal with this geeky tech stuff, but will also add significantly more to the conversation you have as a home stager with your prospective homeowner.

Market Maker is a complete home staging web site marketing plan that runs on auto pilot. It will give you a distinct competitive advantage. Sign up for advance notice at Go to

www.homestagingbusinesstips.com/MarketMaker/ComingSoon.html

Best wishes,

Earl Netwal

www.HomestagingBusinessTips.com/blog

PS: Market Maker is coming, but not everyone who wants to will be allowed to join. Initially only 30 Home staging companies will be allowed to join, and only one from every telephone area code. This will be a powerful tool to build your business. Be sure to sign up for advance notification.

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

Technorati Tags: Market Maker, Meta Tags, prospecting, Web sites

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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

Within the internet marketing world, people have ten’s and hundreds of web sites. Each with a different URL and each targeted to a specific niche or purpose. That permits each web site to be addressed to a particular audience. And since the site is targeted, so too are the keywords, which means these sites tend to rank higher than if they were attempting to be all things to all people.

Off line businesses and those firms operating online in niche arenas should consider whether or not they too would benefit from multiple web sites.

I will once again use my friends in the Home Staging Industry as an example of a situation where two web sites may make a lot more sense that one.

If you go to most home stagers web sites you will see that they are primarily directed to the home owner. But if you were to survey home stagers as I have done, you will see that most of them market not to home owners but to Realtors, who they hope will refer home sellers to them.

This means the Home Staging company has two different marketing objectives. One is to convince realtors that they can help sell a home faster and for more money, and the second is to convince the home owner that they can help sell a home for more money and faster. While it appears to be the same objective, it’s not.

For the home stager, the sale to the individual home owner is critically important, but represents just one sale. The sale to the Realtor, might not in itself win any direct business, but represents a series of prospective future business.

Home stagers offer two primary benefits to their customers, faster sales and higher price. While both are important to home sellers and to Realtors, the relative ranking between the two vary. A home owner is more likely to be impressed with the prospects of a higher price, as any such higher price will help pay for the services they are being asked to cover. For a Realtor, the higher price may mean a marginal improvement to their commission. More important to them, is the speed with which a home sells, so they can go on to the next.

Now while both share same objectives their motivations differ. To be most efective, the sales pitch to either market should lead off with their primary motivation. That in turn calls for two web pages, and two marketing pitches.

This is going to be true for any business that markets to distributors as well as final customers. And probably many more circumstances as well.

How about your business. Do you have multiple audiences you are marketing to?

If so, you really should be thinking in terms of multiple rifle shots rather than a blunderbust shotgun spread.

Most businesses try to accomplish this with multiple pages on one web sie. And this may be an adequate compromise in some cases, but it is always a compromise, and an opportunity for a competitor to step in and out compete you.

One objection has been the need to buy multiple domain names and hosting accounts. And while this is a pound wise penny foolish objection, the fact is that with the right hosting service there is no need to pay any more to host a second, third, fourth, or even twentieth web site.

It would take me a while to sit down and even count the total number of web sites I have. And they are all on one account. And that account costs me less than $25 a month. I use HostGator

They offer me the opportunity to have an unlimited number of web sites on one account and enough bandwith to cover my needs and that of most small business people. These can be readily stepped up should my increased use of video require a future adjustment.

I mention the hosting problem, as just one barrier to having multiple sites. A second site, probably means reworking the first and then adding the second. This will take some site design work and of course that entails a one time expense. But the final result is a more clearly targeted marketing campaign, and better marketing results.

I would have two “ethical bribes,” one each on each of the two new web sites to build a separte email list of prospective home owners and Realtors. Using my home staging example, I might offer a report on how to de-clutter your home on the web site directed to homeowners, and a different report on how to discuss home staging with your clients on the Realtor Oriented Web Site.

The prepackaged follow-up messages would be distinctly targeted as well.

It’s important to clarify your marketing objectives, and then to develop approriate marketing tools such as web sites and autoresponder porgrams to meet those objectives over time. If you need three web sites, you should have three.

What do you need?