Marketing on the Internet

by the World's First Web-Dancing Frog™, - ElJay C.

"Build It and They Will Come!"

Not exactly!

This is virtual reality, sweetie, - not baseball, - as in "Field of Dreams" where they built a stadium . . . and everyone came!

The truth is, even if you hire someone else to create your website, you have to decide what you want it to do, and how it should work to do that. (You wouldn’t let someone create a tri-fold brochure for you without telling him what you want.) Just because you don’t know much (or anything) about webspeak or software, doesn’t mean you can leave it all up to someone else.

Do you drive a car? Did you buy a work-horse (a truck or a van, etc. ) or a passenger car? If you bought the right car for the job, and you make sure it gets regular maintenance, it does what you want it to do, and you don’t need to know about the little explosions in the cylinders, etc. Websites are kind of like that. If they are built right in the first place, they work, - but they do need regular ‘maintenance.’

Is it ‘Built Right?’

“How would I know if this is the right kind of website for me? They all look very nice!”

Mon cher’ petite, believe me when I tell you that beauty is only skin deep, - n’est pas? What you see is the outside, the skin. I look under the pretty skin, - so deep, I can tell you why you have no sales. Your source code needs the right keywords and descriptions .

Right click your mouse on a webpage, (away from the graphics, on text or an empty spot on the page.) On the drop-down menu, choose “View Source.” Voila! What you see is the source code. (You can save this to your Desktop, choose File, Save As: webpage.html, - or whatever.) Look at the source code in the heading. (The first few lines are the heading, it includes everything between the two tags: <HEAD> . .. . . . . . and the </HEAD>.

Does Each Web Page Have Keywords and a Description?

Search engines need keywords and description to find your site. They should be in this order near the top of your source code:

<HEAD><TITLE>The words that you insert here will appear in the field at the top left of your web page in the color bar . </TITLE>

<META name= "description"< /FONT> content="This is where your description goes: one good sentence, or two short ones describing your site, product, or webpage < /FONT> .">

</HEAD> <- That means " This is the end of the Heading."

Your most important keywords should be in the beginning of the statement, then along about the middle add your business name. If it might be misspelled, also put it in your keyword list misspelled just the way you think someone might spell it if he were looking for your site on a search engine!

There may be other ‘meta-tags’ in the heading; e.g.: your software automatically sets a statement, e.g. if you use MS FrontPageä it will have a meta-tag that says “FrontPage.” It’s kind of like “Kilroy was here, ” or "I made this!"

If someone else creates your website, YOU must create your own keyword list, and also the description. Get out on the web, even if you’re a newbie, and have someone help you search for sites of products similar to yours.

Look at the search-engine’s description of their site. The description is taken directly from their source-code’s heading. Go to these sites, right click, view their source code, and look at their keywords!

After you’ve seen five or six different sets of keywords you’ll get a feel for what to include in your own keywords and description. You needn’t copy theirs, this is research, - it only points the way.

The important thing is to figure out how would someone search for your product? What words would they use? That’s what you need to put in your source code. The description should be condensed but interesting enough to take them to your site .

The Keywords Must be "True"

What does that mean? Well, I can put "Louisiana Fried Country Chicken & Sprouts" in my source code, but if the words don’t appear on the page, that mean old search engine will decide that I lie, - me: the great green frog. Sacre bleu.

So, what do you do? You make it a heading: Louisiana Fried Country . . .etc . Then describe the chicken, under a mouth-watering picture, repeating some of the keywords: “This wonderful recipe is from my mother who grew up in Louisiana. She used to help aunt Sara fry up the best, mouth-watering Country Fried chicken . . . . Our chickens are plump and juicy, country-bred . . .” Repeat as many of the primary keywords as possible.

Keywords should be optimized for each page: if you have Sweet Country Pickles on another page, you wouldn’t use the "chicken" keywords in that page’s heading.

Repeat your Keywords in the graphics code. There is a place in the code when graphics are inserted on the page for one to put an alternative description, e.g. “alt= etc.”. It can describe the graphic, or you can use it to repeat keywords. You can describe it as ‘chicken’ or “Louisiana Fried Country Chicken & Sprouts” in the alternate description to echo your most important keywords on the page, or tell your website designer to do this for you.

There you have it my little tadpoles. One of the best-kept secrets in the industry, from your very own green friend. Just between us, - maintenance is easy, (hint: you can register your site on 30 top search engines, free—on http://www.addme.com .) Do it every 60 days, or 3,000 miles, whichever comes first. We will talk again, cherie.

Your hopping green friend,

ElJay, the World's First Webdancing Frog™

Marketing on the InterNet

"Build It and They Will Come!"

Is it ‘Built Right?’

Does Each Web Page Have Keywords and a Description?

The Keywords Must be "True"