One of my clients for the WART Analysis mentioned that she has benefited from my past advice as well. She sent me this testimonial about how she took my advice and is top ranked not once but three times by virtue of her Squidoo lens.  It’s one thing to appear on the first page of the search engine, but when you are there three times, it really improves your credibility with prospects, don’t you think?

Here’s her comment,

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—– Original Message —–

From: Earl Netwal

To: Kelly Heaps

Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 8:55 AM

Subject: Kelly, Homestagers should use Squidoo.

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 homestagers 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.

Best wishes,

Earl Netwal

http://HomestagingBusinessTips.com/MarketMaker/index.html

Setting up your web page, and getting your web site to the top of the search engines is a challenging but worthwhile task. The first step is to take stock of your current web site. How does it stack up in terms of its meta tags, on page factors and off page factors. What would need to happen to get to the top of the search engine rankings in your local market? For $99, I will review your existing site, identify its strengths and weaknesses. Suggest any easy changes you or your computer person can make quickly, and evaluate the steps you would need to take to rank in the top organic listings in your market place. This will include a half hour personal consultation with me, after I complete the analysis. To learn more send me and email together with your web site address, and I will do a free quick evaluation of your site to see whether or not my services would do you any good. Then and only then, will I ask you for a commitment, and payment. Send email to enetwal@gmail.com

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