Internet Marketing

Write useful, information-rich content. Most of your prospects who are entering keyword
phrases in the search engines are looking for information. If you want to earn a top search
engine ranking, your goal is to provide plenty of useful, well-written content.

Notice the emphasis on ?written?. Search engines cannot read the text that is embedded in
images or Flash. If your site has a dearth of written content, you are invisible to the search
engines. And notice the emphasis on ?information-rich? -- search engines like to see
hundreds of pages of highly organized, themed content about your particular topic of expertise.

Here are four of the most important basic writing tips to attract search engines (and customers!):

Write plenty of thoughtful 100-1,500 word articles about the keyword phrases you have
researched. Be sure to effectively use these keywords on your web pages. No garbage, please!
Simply repeating keyword phrases a few hundred times on one page to try to trick the engines
is likely to get a site banned altogether....and prospects hate being tricked into visiting a low
quality, low-information page, as well.

Make sure your title and meta tags reflect the content of your page. Keep your title tags
(in your page header) short, descriptive, and snappy....after all, the title tag is what a searcher
will click to come to your site. And many search engines will use the keyword meta tag
description as the subhead in the link. This means developing short, keyword rich titles for
every page in your website.

Rule of Thumb

Many webmasters simply use their company name or the same title for every
page in their site. Not only does this lazy approach to marketing negatively
effect search engine ranking, but it also inhibits the click-through rate.

Think about it: why would a searcher click on a company name? If a searcher is looking for,
say ?golf PowerPoint templates? -- they are more likely to click on a title that says
?golf PowerPoint templates? than a site that says ?Maniactive? (see Image below).

Give your keywords prominence. Keyword prominence is an important search engine
optimization factor. This means using your keyword phrases at the top of the page, as well
as in headlines and subheads. Think of your keyword phrases as the ?lead? in your article.
Don't bury the lead a few hundred words into your article...your first few sentences should
contain your keyword phrase at least once...and should also be in your headlines, titles,
meta tags, and title.

Supply descriptive alt tags. An alt tag provides alternative text for people...and search
engines...that cannot see your site's graphics. Search engines do not ?see? graphics...
but they CAN read a graphic's alt tag. Write a few words in your alt tags to describe your
graphics.

Consider blogging. Blogging lets you quickly and easily post written content to your
website. Blogs also give you a whole host of other business and marketing benefits --
you can learn more about blogging for business elsewhere on this site.