Your meta title and meta description are quite important aspects of your web page and can help you make better web pages.

A specific Title tag and Description tag for each important web page is essential. Not only for optimization, but also for what displays in the search results. Your Title and Description effectively work as an advert - yes, you have been found and your listing still comes up but there nine other natural search listings and up to 11 paid for adverts - you need to stand out.

It’s something I always wondered about and often had to refine some tags a month in after they had listed and I knew what they looked like.

But now, some guys I work with have created a neat tool for checking how your meta title and description will look in a search engine…

It’s simple and cute but does the business.

So, you’re sitting at your computer to find a product or service. You open up Google and get ready to type in your search query.

I can bet you didn’t type in “integral solutions” or “peace of mind”. In fact, I would suggest it was quite specific.

Where a lot of businesses go wrong with their websites is the use of marketing speak and non-specific content.

This video highlights common mistakes when it comes to web page content and shows you what you can do to make them better.

There are a multitude of tools out there that do simple things very well, saving you so a lot of time.

A point in case is the keyword list generator from SEO Book’s Aaron Wall.

Using a combination of Wordtracker and this smart little tool, you can quickly create some keyword specific advertising with hundreds of combinations.

I’m not sure on the use for this tool, but it amused me for five minutes.

Seriously though, there probably are reasons or uses for adding a computer ‘voice’ to a web page and this tool - VozMe - does just that, creating MP3s from free text entered in the box.

Found through Stumbling… Sidewalk

I love our web page analyzer tool on The Escape site for individual overviews of pages. It’s simple and to the point.

I also love the new tool on Aaron Wall’s SEOBook website - The website health check tool for browsing an entire site.

Combine the two together and you can optimise your pages pretty rapidly.

Another online services for creating forms in HTML - Wufoo - discovered via Drew McLellan.

Life is getting so much easier when it comes to building websites.

I have been playing heavily with Google Analytics last week and I like what I see. I last looked at it some time ago and wasn’t impressed but it has come on a hell of a lot and I think I may be converted from Hitslink, which does cost, compared to the Free Analytics, but stays right up to the second, which Analytics doesn’t.

I intend on highlighting some of the better features of Google Analytics in future posts as I get historical data, but this article on Search Engine Land is a good introduction in terms of this Google tool and three others. They are definitely worth investing some time into learning for your small business online marketing:

1. Google Analytics
2. Google Maps / Local
3. Google Base
4. Google Web Optimizer

I have toyed with all but the Optimizer so far as I haven’t had the right website to do it on. The others, however, all have their place.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is great for measuring your traffic, sources, etc. but the real initial benefit I am seeing is the goal setting feature.

Basically you can set various goals and measure how well they do. Most of us need people to do certain things when they get to our websites.  I need conversions into leads or sales, for instance. By goal setting we can get a better picture of how that process is (or isn’t) working for us and, if necessary, change it.

Google Maps / Local

I only see a real benefit to this feature for businesses looking for geographical customers. eg. a retail outlet, or local business (hence the name Google Local - doh!).

I have used this for the beauty salon in Farnborough, although I still don’t think Google Maps has really taken off yet. I certainly don’t see a noticeable amount of link-throughs to the website. That said, it’s free and easy to get in there and localises your offering.

Google Base

Google Base is a database of content within Google. This could be any data and is used a lot for products in Product Search (formerly Froogle).

I have played around with this for both articles and beauty products, but to be honest, have not had the time or patience to create enough. It does create quality links into your website though and it is an area I need to spend more time on making effective for my sites.

With the product side of thing, many shopping directories interact directly with Product Search, enabling you to put your catalogue of products into the Google Base directories to create links and sales.

Google Website Optimizer

Imagine changing one little thing to a page that could transform the amount of conversions you make when someone lands on your web page (landing page). Then imagine how you could test different versions to find out what the tweaks could be that would make the difference.

Through Adwords, you can use Google Website Optimizer, that lets you test your landing pages automatically and measure the results.

Conclusion

Investing a little of your own time and doing some of the basics tactics, can make a difference. You won’t necessarily see the benefits for a few months, but if you have the patience, and more importantly a longer term vision, you can make the value work.Also, if you find out where your business is really coming from online, the benefits may even surprise you further.

Feedburner is a great tool for sharing your blog feeds and allowing subscribers to read your articles the way they want.

I have also discovered by accident (it’s probably been there for months) one of the Publicize tools within Feedburner called BuzzBoost,which allows you to take that feed and simply insert it onto another website as HTML.

A bit like I have with my own…

I love this headline tool at the Advanced Marketing Insitute that allows you to enter a headline and find out the emotional marketing value (EMV) of the words you use.

This headline gets 50% with me having tweaked it from it’s original 16.67% of “Write headlines that draw people in”