Estate Sales Business | Fine Estate Sales, Antiques and Collectibles

Give Antiques and Collectibles Visitors What They Want

February 28, 2010

Or They Won’t Buy Your Antiques

It’s That Simple

Here’s The Big Web Secret: It ain’t personal; whether a visitor buys an antique or stays on your website is dependent on one thing and one thing only. Is your site useful to their search, to their objective for visiting your site in the first place. If not, they will leave, your bounce rate will remain high, and your Google Analytic’s will sink, and your site will tumble and fall through layer upon layer towards eventual mediocrity. And the biggest secret of all, is that the way your fortunes will fail, poised as they were on your ineffectual web strategies, won’t be personal.

Let Me Explain: It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve spent on your site, how fancy your logo is, how many hours you spent on your message. It only matters what the consumer of your little bit of PHP or HTML wants – that the information consumer, like the retail consumers of old, is always right. Yes they are, they are always right; what they want, how they want to see it, and how they will respond, is entirely in the hand that holds the mouse.

Please know that their surfing habits are just like your surfing habits, and like you, visitors to your site who do not either understand your sites navigation, or who do not resonate with your content will leave, and they will leave quickly.

And It Won’t Be Personal: The wind of their quick exit is impersonal. That’s just the way it is. They don’t know you, don’t care necessarily, and will only stay on your site if there is something in it for them. So give them something…

Websites and Antiques Have To Be Useful

It’s That Simple!

Antique Marketing Secret #1: In today’s economy it’s more true than in times of boom, that buyers tend to wear their practical shopping hats when shopping for antiques. Yeah they want items that look good, that are stylish, that have value, but more than ever what they buy has to provide a practical solution to something that is missing in their home.

Shoppers leave antique stores without buying, when the store they are visiting can not match their desire with anything useful to the utility of their search.

Websites Too, Have Secrets: Think of your website as the answers to questions – not the questions you pose, or the answers you found on a get rich quick SEO marketing site…the only questions that your site should answer, are the questions being posed by visitors to your site.

You see, your visitors are smarter than you about what they want to find on your website, they know what they want to find, and again, if they don’t find what they are looking for, they will leave quickly.

And It Won’t Be Personal: If you want people to stay, to enjoy what they read, then find out what they want to read. Every page on your website is like a test. This site for example has about 300 pages on it. Here in order of visitor preference are the top 5 most visited pages on this site:

When visitors get to these pages they tend to stay, they tend to read, and more importantly, they tend to take action, by either buying, or letting others know via various social networking platforms about this site. Here Are Mine: MY Twitter Profile – My Facebook Fan Page – My Stumbleupon

Visitors Stay On Websites When Given Something Of Value

It’s That Simple

Look At This Site: Notice the paucity of advertising, yes there is a bit here and there, but not much. My focus is clear: I want to give, and have given a lot of valuable Antiques and Collectibles Research Information away for free, as my gift of gratitude to the industry that has supported me for the last 14 years. I am not afraid that this gift of information about where and how to find an Estate Sales Professional will undermined me, to the contrary, I know that my Estate Sales Business has grown from this…I watch this happen everyday.

Your Antique Store or Website Can Do The Same: The Big Guys in the antiques business are slowly taking over, buying up URLs, setting up innumerable shopping sites, and slowly taking over the internet for searches related to antiques, collectibles, estate sales and so on. I describe this process here as Big Business Is Making A Web Mall Of The Antiques Business.

Take Control Of Local Antiques Searches: In the same way that you sweep and clean your store, and manage your store’s presentation, give some attention to the internet, to the way shoppers are looking for the kind of antiques you sell…never allow for them to find an antique on the internet – from some far away store or dealer, when they could find it down the street in your store.

Don’t let the big boys control your physical mall because they are more sophisticated about how to exploit and capture local search terms and present the answers to antiques and collectibles web queries on their websites.

Good Luck Out There…

Martin Codina

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3 Comments | Antiques Business Articles, Estate Sales Business | Permalink
Posted by Martin

Ignore Local SEO, and Your Estate Sales Business Will Falter

December 2, 2009

Oh No! I can’t Fail, I hired an Expert Web Guy…

What is local SEO: Your Local Estate Sales SEO can best be understood by entering the keyword “Estate Sales” into a browser search box along with the name of your city or geographical region. The results of that search can reasonably be described as the Local results particular to that city or geographical area. This will allow you to see how Google ranks your site in contrast to others.

Where is your site: Try this, open a browser, enter the keyword Estate Sales, add the name of the city or region you do business in and hit your enter or return key. If your site is not among the first 10 or so results, then the way your website, or its contents are constructed are not fully optimized.

The Majors Dominate Local Estate Sales Search Results

Who are the Majors: Estate Sales.net, Craigslist, Oodle, Yelp, and there are a few others.

Why you should care: There is only one reason to care about this: Business, your business, the way new clients might find you, is minimized and marginalized, or it will seem to be non-existent to those who use the web to find their local contacts.

Take Back Your SEO Turf, after all, It’s Yours

Who Controls Your Website: If you are not actively engaged with your site, if you do not have access to it, or do not personally know how to upload content to your site, then because your competition does, you will falter. If you think about your site like once or twice a month, and are unaware that the Majors, and even some of your bigger local competitors think about their sites everyday, then you will falter, and may even fail.

Oh my! What ever will you do: Read, read, read about SEO, and then and only then consult with the right people. Study the Majors, and your local competition. Learn how to upload content to your website.

Why ever would you take the time to improve your SEO…

…because it will both save, and make you money…

Delegating this to others: I would only recommend delegating this very important task to others after you yourself have done the research necessary to fully understand what I have written above. No one understands you, and your message better than you. After you have taken the time to compose your message, have learned how to post content to your website, and have at least a working knowledge of SEO, then I think it is reasonable to hire a web person to improve your SEO.

But I don’t Have Time: Here are three questions – 1. Do you have time to wait for your phone to ring? 2. Do you have time to watch others succeed? 3. Do you have time to waste hoping to be noticed? If you do not have the time to do any of these three things, then you’ll have to learn to make time for learning about SEO, and how it will substantially improve your business.

Martin, Why Should I Listen to You About SEO?

Take a look at these three sites: San Francisco Estate Sales (Fine Estate Liquidation, Inc.), The Do It Yourself Estate Sales Guide, and of course the site you are currently on – Fine Estate Sales Blog, chock full of articles and post, many of which rank on the first page of various Google searches. Here’s a link to our Article Archive. I wrote and created these sites! And I wrote and created them as a 52 year old guy, who four years ago didn’t even type, never mind that I was also at the time completely ignorant about computers…If I can do it, so can you.

Prepare Yourself For 2010: From late December 2009 to the end of January 2010 I will work with up to 10 different Estate Liquidators. Estate Liquidators who want to extend themselves, who want to succeed, who are not afraid to be the Estate Sales Leaders in their local cities or regions.

But I Have Conditions, Luckily There Are Only 3 of Them

You have to be prepared to change.
You must call me at least once a week.
You are willing to learn to navigate the admin portion of your site.

This is going to cost money, a fair bit of money…

How Much: I don’t know how much I will charge each of the Estate Liquidators I will work with until I see their sites. Some sites will have simple changes to implement, while others will be more difficult to implement changes on. So each site I work with will be treated as a project, and I will generate a project cost projection for each of them.

Here’s a Cost Range: $1,500.00 to $5,000.00

Is That a Scary Number?

Of Course It Is: But is it as scary as doing nothing? Is it as scary as watching the majors gobble up your local SEO? Is it as scary as waiting, and watching, or expecting a miracle to bring people to your site?

Inaction is the same as: Capitulation; is the same as folding at a card table because the stakes are misunderstood, is the same as agreeing to the success of others at the expense of your own businesses survival.

When you are ready, send me an email or give me a call…

Martin Codina
CEO Fine Estate Sales and Estate Liquidation, Inc.

415-235-7238
Email Martin Here

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