Fine Estate Sales, Antiques and Collectibles

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

1. You have to be prepared to change.
2. You must call me at least once a week.
3. 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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Audrey Hepburn Wearing The Dress She Gave Away

(Offered at Auction By Kerry Taylor: Estimate £ 8,000 to £ 12,000)

In 1952 Audrey Hepburn was engaged to marry James Hanson. She was in Italy to film her first starring role alongside Gregory Peck in “The Roman Holiday. It is 7 years after the devastation and ravages of WWII.

I wonder if you know that Audrey Hepburn spent the last years of that war in the Netherlands, hoping she would survive the Allied artillery shellings, and the famine the Dutch endured as a result of Operation Market Garden.

In that short seven years, a lot happened for Audrey Hepburn

She Became a Star

Audrey Hepburn decided after already having her wedding gown designed by the famous Fontana Sisters to call her planned wedding to James Hanson off; stating “That the demands of their careers would keep them apart most of the time.”

Here is the Wedding Dress Audrey Hepburn Was Going To Wear

The Fontana sisters who designed this gown were renowned for their highly romantic ball and bridal gowns. The sisters Zoe, Micol and Giovanna founded their business in Rome in 1944.

While Audrey Hepburn was filming `Roman Holiday’ with Gregory Peck in Rome, she approached the Fontana sisters and asked them to make her bridal gown. Signora Micol Fontana said that the 23 year old Hepburn was ‘young, fresh, and on top of the world’.

But this was a wedding that was not to be, Audrey was not going to say “I Do.” She had other plans…

Once she had decided to call the wedding off, the dress she had had made, still at the Fontana Sisters shop, needed to be dwelt with. And this Audrey did with such generosity and grace that it leaves me with a smile still, as I hope it does for you as well.

She Gave The Dress Away To Amabile Altobella

Never heard of Amabile Altobella? Well of course not, she was a young girl from the town of Latina, Italy. You see Audrey had asked the Fontana Sisters to give the dress away, saying “I want my dress to be worn by another girl for her wedding, perhaps someone who couldn’t ever afford a dress like mine, the most beautiful, poor Italian girl you can find.”

So Audrey Hepburn Helped to Create A Dream Wedding

Amabile Altobella, was a poverty stricken young Italian girl engaged to be married to a farm worker named Adelino Solda. Here is a quote from Amabile, “I have had a happy marriage, so the dress brought me luck.” Indeed, she and Adelino stayed married, had three daughters, and five grandchildren, which is more than can be said for most Hollywood weddings…

(All images from this post came from Kerry Taylor Auctions.)

Written by

Martin Codina

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