In our series on blogging tips for home stagers, I discussed the problem of building your home staging blog on someone else’s property.
I used the example of using Houzz, Blogpsot, Active Rain or WordPress.com because of their ease of use for beginner bloggers.
Great for getting started but not good long term
These sites are great for getting started but the longer you stay on them, the longer you build up “Google Juice” for someone else’s domain instead of your own.
Plus, as time goes on, the more content you build up that’s not really yours because it’s not on your own domain! (Click here if you want the bigger explanation of why you need to move your home staging blog.)
Here are 10 time saving steps that I learned the hard way about what to do when it’s time to move your home staging blog onto your own domain:
1. Register your own domain that you’d like to use for your home staging blog OR decide you’ll have it in a sub-domain of your current domain.
For example, since I built StagingDiva.com as an HTML site years ago before WordPress became the industry standard, I already have a full-blown website.
The quickest and most SEO-friendly way to add a blog, was to create a “sub-domain”, in this case, I called it “HomeStagingBusiness.” That’s why the first page of my blog, Home Staging Business Report has the address: https://stagingdiva.com/homestagingbusiness.
You’ll see others set up sub-domains simply called “blog” which creates a URL like, http://www.sixelements.com/blog.
If you’ve taken the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, refer back to your notes where I spoke about “keywords” and you’ll see why just choosing “blog” isn’t your best option, though it works well if your entire website is on WordPress, as StagingDiva.com finally is.
2. Install WordPress on your new domain, or in the sub-directory of your current website, if that’s the route you’ve taken (see step 1 above).
Ask your website hosting company whether WordPress is pre-installed (GoDaddy does this for you). If not, here’s a guide to installing WordPress yourself in 5 minutes.
You can also search online for someone to do this for you. There are thousands of WordPress experts on Twitter and sites like elance.com who can help you.
Since WordPress is now the industry standard, any programmer will know how to do this and it’s cheap to hire someone to do it for you.
Here’s a link to download your own copy of WordPress free so that you can then upload it to your own domain.
Remember, if you don’t want to deal with any of this, as a Staging Diva Graduate you can join the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers and have a professional Internet presence in under 7 days!
3. Decide on the look and layout of your new blog.
I have spent $5,000 and more having a website designed and built for me in the past. (This is one of the reasons I created the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers so my graduates wouldn’t have to go to that expense!)
However, today you can get it done cheaper by choosing from the thousands of pre-designed WordPress templates that are available online. You can use a template as-is, or have it customized by the person who installs it for you.
4. Start moving your content over to your own domain.
As I discussed in a previous article, you want to avoid search engine penalties for duplicate content. Here are 4 steps to moving a specific blog post over to your new domain:
1. Go to your original blog post, on Blogger, ActiveRain or WordPress.com for example, and copy it completely.
2. Paste that content into a new post on your new blog.
3. Before publishing, choose a new keyword-rich title and your category (example: Dining Room Home Staging) .
4. Return to the original post and rewrite the first paragraph as more of an introduction to your new post on your own domain and then eliminate the rest, replacing it with a link to your new complete post. In other words, your old blog will no longer have all your content anymore, instead it will act as a traffic driver to your new domain.
I don’t want to overwhelm you with too much content at once. This is plenty to get you started in thinking about, and acting on the process. In my next post, I share the next 2 steps which are:
– Batching your work and spreading out your posts.
– Leveraging your posts on social media.
Please share your comments and questions so far on this topic of home staging blogging! I want to make sure I’m meeting your needs with this content. If you liked this article, I’d also really appreciate a “share” on Twitter or Facebook so we can keep this conversation going.
all of this makes my head explode ; ). this is awesome information. I am on the process of building my website and will now ask better questions of the person I’m working with–thank you!
Thanks Lori, though I don’t want you to feel like your head might explode.
It’s a struggle to figure out how to dissect really complicated technical stuff and turn it into simple language and a step-by-step process.
I do confess that I often feel like my own head will explode while learning this stuff. The best advice, I think, is to look at in in chunks.
Also you raise a good point, even if you don’t totally understand all the pieces of the puzzle, if you have enough information to ask the right questions of the people you hire, than that’s totally fine too!
When I do Home Staging Website CheckUps with my coaching clients, so often they’ve been taken advantage of simply because they didn’t know the right questions to ask. Once I highlight the pitfalls they’ve fallen into, they know how to sort it out and protect themselves going forward.
I applaud you for tackling this mind blowing subject! I’m tackling it personally right now as I am almost ready to “go-live” with my new self-hosted WordPress site. I’m glad I started on Blogger, as at that time it was just a blog. But, like WP, it expanded to pages and a full website tool. And even now, they seem to add new features every day.
What I’m really glad about is that I did not try to build my own HTML website back in 2007. Having the directory listing, and knowing it had great SEO made it so easy, quick, and ultimately a lot cheaper than hiring someone to build my own website.
So now that WordPress is the new standard, it’s definitely the way to go. (And I encourage everyone to consider this tool, especially if you like to update your site often with success stories, testimonials and the like.) And, knowing Blogger – or another similar tool – makes it an easier transition. There are a ton of free online courses teaching WP and I think I’ve taken every one! (A nice basic free course I found recently is http://sitesetupkit.com/free-course/ , but take and read everything free that’s out there!)
Getting back to the topic, the biggest challenge is definitely duplicate content. I don’t mind cleaning up blog entries – even with 100 posts, reloading images or any of that, but making sure the new site ranks well is the main reason for going to WP. (Although, I recently noticed after the Google Penguin algorithm release that my Blogger site comes up on the first page of certain searches and that’s never happened before.)
Another challenge is old links that may be bookmarked by clients or that appear in eBooks, blog entries, archived newsletters etc. For this I’m adding a new plugin called Redirection. It can be found here: http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/. I’m hoping this will seamlessly redirect anyone with an old URL to my new site.
Finally, one other step I will take the day I switch from Blogger to WP is to change the “Privacy” in Blogger to “Not listed on Blogger. Not visible to search engines”. At the same time I will turn off the privacy in WP and “Allow search engines to index this site.”
There’s more, but I’ll also stop here as my head almost exploded as well. I’m thankful to have a few good geeky friends and, with 15 years of IT behind, me I’ve learned a few things. Mostly (1) fail to plan, plan to fail and (2) test, test, test. Test your site before putting it out there for the world to see. A proofreader, and/or someone to test all the links is a good start. Never test your own work!
Thanks so much Susan for adding your thoughts and resources you’ve found, I know everyone will really appreciate it! I’m really glad the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers got you started online and pleased that you’ve been a member so many years now. One of our other members, Donna Dazzo has written that her Directory listing is still consistently one of the top three sources of traffic to her own website — a great reason to keep it going even when you have your own site.
For the duplicate content concern, please see this separate article I wrote: Home Staging Website Duplicate Content Solutions.
Anyway, thanks again so much for adding your comments.
Debra
Hi Debra, I graduated from your course last year, but it wasn’t until recently that I heeded your advise and joined the directory (profile content is still in progress). Since my website will now be linked to yours, would my future blog also be linked to my profile on the directory, or is that separate? I am not tech savvy, so any tips for getting my blog started would be most appreciated!
Hi Anne, So glad you’ve decided to join the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers. I look forward to building your page, creating your brochure AND having you participate in our Staging Diva Dialog Coaching Program which you’re getting as a free bonus with your directory listing.
Now to your question: It’s unclear whether you plan on building your own website or blog at pygmalionhomestaging.com Right now, I see that it’s just a parked domain.
Here’s what I recommend, especially since you’ve mentioned you’re not tech savvy.
Make writing your copy for your page in the directory and gathering your 3 sets of before and after shots your first priority. If you need more help than the tips I sent you when you ordered your directory, please read the Staging Diva Ultimate Portfolio Guide. In there I give you lots of portfolio photo tips as well as how to write compelling copy about you/your business, how to get a good head shot and logo, etc.
Once you’ve submitted your directory information, we will build your page within 7 days and send you the address of your listing in the directory for your review and approval.
Once you have that address of your page, immediately forward your domain pygmalionhomestaging.com to that page (assuming you don’t already have a website or blog on that domain). This way, you can confidently hand out your business cards which should absolutely have pygmalionhomestaging.com on them without feeling like you have to apologize or explain about being new and without having anyone land on a “domain parked here” page.
Forwarding your domain is super easy. All you do is log into GoDaddy where you registered it and go to manage domains and then go to domain forwarding and paste your directory profile page address in there.
What this means is that everyone who goes to pygmalionhomestaging.com will land directly on your page in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers, giving you a professional web presence without the substantial learning curve of building your own site from scratch.
As for your “future blog” which was part of your question….
Don’t think about a blog and a website being two separate things. They are one and the same. For example, this blog is part of the StagingDiva.com website and the entire site is built in WordPress. When you’re ready to have a “blog” or a “website” you’ll do the same and create it and host it at pygmalionhomestaging.com. At that point, you’ll turn off the domain forwarding I described above. Meaning that anyone visiting pygmalionhomestaging.com at that point would land on your new website (rather than your directory listing).
Your directory listing will then be updated to include a link to your website at pygmalionhomestaging.com. It will be another source of traffic to your website and exponentially increase your chances of being found online. PLUS by being part of the Staging Diva Directory and the fact that it will link to your brand new website, your site will be found by Google 6 months sooner than it would be without that link. Why that is, requires a whole other technical explanation.
I hope that helps clarify your thinking. Don’t worry about creating your own blog/website right now, just get yourself into the Directory 🙂