My long time readers know that I like to use Squidoo as a tool in my internet marketing.  I have often suggested it to others as well.

Why?  For two reasons mainly, in addition to it’s being a free service.

First Squidoo is relatively simple to do.  Once you know your way around you can get a “Lens” or Squidoo page up in about 10 minutes, even if you have no technical expertise.

And it only takes a little while to learn the basics to know your way around.

This makes it easy for people who do not have any type of web presence to create one for themselves.  What separates Squidoo from many of the other social networking sites out there like Facebook, Myspace and others is that they welcome commercial content.

So it’s perfectly okay to create a lens on Homestaging in MyTown, USA and talk about your business and solicit customers.   You can get banned from other sites for doing so, if you are not careful.

(Another site similar to Squidoo that is fairly open to commercialization are Hub Pages.)

The second reason I use Squidoo is it’s value as a source of back links.

Backlinks to your web site, blog or individual blog entry are one of the key criteria in how high your site ranks in the search engines.  I counsel my clients to set up Squidoo lens with this in mind.

If you are in business, you want to be on top of the search engine results when someone searches for home stagers in your community. The more backlinks you get, the greater the likelihood that your page will appear in that top position. And you want to be there.

Now Squidoo has what’s called a high page rank. And what that means basically is that search engines like Google consider a link from a site with a high page rank to be more important than a link from your cousin’s occasional blog posting.

There are ways to enhance that value further by joining groups within Squidoo of other homestagers.  It seems the groups, add to the weight of the link, because they represent links from similar types of lens on related topics.

That relevancy is another of Google’s criteria. In this case the theory is that a link from a site about home staging or perhaps real estate is more relevant that a backlink from someone’s blog about dog training.

Now both of these reasons are good reasons to spend some time learning about Squidoo.

Some quick tips.  You are probably better off from a Search Engine Optimization point of view to create several related lens on your topic than just one long one.

Thus you may want to do a short lens called Homestaging, your town and another called Your town, home stagers: and perhaps another on Selling Your House In Your County.

In each of these lens, you will want to insert a link to your main web site that you want to rank high.

I recommend that you include your geography in your lens titles. If people use different terms when thinking about your area, consider creating lens that highlight each of them.  That way when they search for information on home staging, they may well find your lens.

Your lens then should provide a soft sell on how exceptional your services are and encourage people to go to your site.

If you are interested in learning more about Squidoo and how to put it to work for you, you might want to invest in a Squidoo eBook.

There are also people who will create Squidoo lens for you. The longest running such service is offered by Squidoo experts Tiffany Dow and Lewis Smile. They will build your lenses FOR YOU!
Dow & Lewis

A newer resource and cheaper is available here. SEO Ninja & Squidoo Queen

I’m a do it yourself type of guy, but I recognize most homestagers are more interested in doing home staging than they are in creating web properties.

There’s a lot more to Squidoo and even more to getting a good ranking on the search engines. I welcome your questions or comments.

If you are new to Squidoo, you can sign up here for Free.

[tags]Squidoo ebook, Squidoo, SEO, Backlinks, Search Engine Optimization, page rank[tags]

Setting up a web page is only the beginning to online marketing. Now you need to get it seen by potential customers. This used to be challenging in many markets, but there has been a big change in what matters. Today, what matters is being seen on the Google Places Page, and you don't even need to have a web site to do that. (although you should.) The good news is that its free, and if you know what you are doing, you can maneuver yourself to the top listing in many markets. That's one of the skill sets I bring to the table. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

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