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Can Your Customers Pay By Electronic Check?
What's the Real Story About Electronic Checks? Accepting electronic checks is essential to any business, and should not be overlooked. As many as 20% of America Online, Prodigy, and CompuServe users pay for their internet access by electronic...
Choose the Right Format for Your Ebooks
Choosing the right file format for your ebook is an essential step on the road to electronic self-publishing. This article looks at the factors affecting your choice and offers tips to help you make the most of your ebook, whatever ...
Is Google having a tough time with their website limit?
Is Google having a tough time with their website limit? By: Martin Lemieux If you are one to pay attention to what happens within the Google realm, you might find yourself thrown for a loop these days. As Google updates their results, it seems like...
Kick-Off Your Traffic Virus!
Have you noticed lately how savvy webmasters are using simple, content-rich articles to pull-in more targeted *traffic* to their Web Site audience without spending a dime on promotion or advertising? It's a fact: content is KING on the Internet....
Why You’re Not Blogging - And Why You Should Start Today
Those of you who aren't ready to wade into the Blog pool are taking your time for several reasons, according to my informal interviews with people before and after they blog. Others start blogging and then abandon their projects too soon, unaware...
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Harmonize Elements for High Ranking
Ranking high in search engines is like a carefully balanced high-wire act:
you can't tip too far to either side or you will not reach your goal. When
creating a website, you must use both content and meta tags effectively, but
not excessively. There are four main elements that you must harmonize: Meta
Tags, Description, Title and Content.
Meta Tags
By now, most people know that a meta tag is a word or group of words
included in the web site's hidden HTML code and includes a description of
the web site, or a set of keywords that reflect the site's content. Search
engines use the meta tags to retrieve content about your site. But do you
know how to place them? Do you know how to use them effectively? There are
several websites that offer tools to help you create meta tags such as
and .
These sites will walk you through the process of listing keywords and
placing the code inside the tag, just after the tag. This is
most important! Proper placement of the Meta tags is crucial to being found
by search engine spiders as they travel the web. There are three things
that you should never do when creating meta tag keywords:
* Never repeat keywords needlessly just to include more
keywords.
* Never hide keywords by using text of the same color as the
background
* Never use keywords that have nothing to do with your website
Description
The description of your website will appear in your meta tag, name="description" content="Brief description of your website">, as well as
in the listing that the search engine returns. Choose descriptive words
carefully, ensuring that at least some of them are repeated in the content
on your site, your meta tag keywords, and in your title. Now add a little
clever marketing pizzazz! "Click Here for ___", is a great phrase to add to
your description. Fill-in the blank so that the user is inspired to click
for details, promotions, demos, online orders, etc. For instance, "Click
here for free samples" is appropriate, but don't overuse "hype" words such
as "free" or they could actually lower your ranking.
Title
Your website title is truly the crown of your page and should harmonize with
your meta tags
and content. It is picked-up by spiders, displayed in search
engines and on the title bar of the browser. Make this descriptive but not
too long; anything over 100 characters needs to be re-thought. Remember
55-65 characters is about all that the user will see on the title bar,
depending on their screen size and resolution. After that, the site title
will truncate and they will see the browser name and version. So make those
first characters count! If your company name is long, try to shorten it to
just one or two key words; enough so that the user knows who it is, but more
importantly what it is. What your site is about is imperative. Sure you know
your company name and what you do, but will the user? Many people only look
at the title first. Then if the title fits their need, they will bother to
read the description, or better yet, to make the click and jump to your
site. Remember, this is online reading, not print. There is a big difference
in how the user approaches the process of reading for information on the
web.
Content
Content is still king and it reigns supreme over any other clever tactics
anyone can come up with. Your site must have verbiage to back up the title,
tags and description that you have already created. Repeating keywords or
phrases from your description boosts your rankings as well as your
credibility. This demonstrates that you are what and who you say you are.
Say something substantive about your product or service. You can place
little tidbits on the page to reflect these statements if you can't seem to
work them into other paragraphs. Don't use an image of text use actual words
instead. Using text in an alternative image tag is also a great complement,
but it won't replace what you actually say within the website. You want to
confirm to your viewers that while you may have used clever marketing
techniques to get them there, their click won't be wasted.
About the Author
Bet Cox is the owner of Creative Sols, http://www.creativesols.com, an
information development company that specializes in delivering targeted
business content for print, presentations, training and the web. You can
reach her by email at bcox@creativesols.com.
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