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, I had a few people moaning about how they won’t read my book online, so Mark gave me the heads up on Lulu.

You can now buy the seo book as a proper paperback directly online for just £9.99

Lulu is a great website. Upload your print-ready PDF, chose a format and decide on your price.

So, as you may have guessed, I think content is important on your website. What you say and how you say it relating to what you are selling is important.

Another area of content generation that is just as important is when you post something, especially relevant with Blogging and news websites.

Google seem to becoming more focussed on time based results. I have found when Blogging, my posts are very searchable in Google within hours then tail off after about a week. They are even looking at future based search.

It seems like an extra chore to creating topical content, but with a little bit of focus on keyword relevant articles, you can create the opportunity for traffic. Don’t put it off though, you may just miss the boat.

Aaron Wall has an interesting post today about the value of a website visitor and the non-focus of investment by marketers into actually making the sale.

It’s an interesting point. Should we, as many marketers do, continue to spend thousands of pounds in attracting traffic, or thousands of pounds improving our sales process online? Surely, the benefit comes in the conversion.

When you are one in a hundred thousand choices in Google you not only need to attract your website visitor, you need to engage them and drive them to sale. Windows shoppers may be great for attracting more business through popularity, but unless someone buys something, the shop doesn’t stay open very long.

I’m reading a book by Dan Ariely called Predictably Irrational - well worth a read. I’m only a couple of chapters in but already I am raring to go on a marketing experiment about pricing.

In the book Dan talks about how people need at least two products to gauge a price. The example he uses, to great effect, is for magazine subscription with three options:

• 12 months Internet only - £59
• 12 months print only - £165
• 12 months print and Internet - £165

He ran an experiment to see which option people would go for and most went for the third option (84%), because they had two points of reference. By repeating the same experiment but removing option two, this came down to 32%.

His visual demonstration of this phenomena works well also:

Like I said, well worth a read.

I promise not to rip too much out of the e-book but I was told that this analogy works quite well (and I do like it myself) and I wanted to share.

Have you seen the new movie with Daniel Day-Lewis?

It’s 11 o’clock on a bright and crisp morning as I look out of the window. It’s 24th February 2008 and tonight it’s Oscar Award night. There is lots of coverage in the media about Daniel Day-Lewis and his performance in the movie “There Will Be Blood”.

This film has been heaped with critical acclaim and an Oscar for the leading actor seems a cert. Of course, he is a well known and respected actor, who has already received an an academy award for his role in ‘My Left Foot’ and has appeared in a string of films such as “Gangs of New York” and “The Last Of The Mohicans”. (more…)

So, for the past couple of months I have been writing a book about basic SEO for small business and I am giving it away free…

Find out more about the Free SEO Book for Small Business here.

The premise is simple. I’ve read a lot of stuff; used various techniques and refined the whole SEO package to a few simple rules.

These aren’t my rules by the way. These are things I use on a daily basis to get results for my business, and my clients’ businesses.

I’m not planning to get into authoring books so it’s a freebie… enjoy.

So, I have been a busy boy over the past couple of weeks with two new Blogs.

Candlebox is the result of buying and domain (for quite a bit of cash) with a view to some e-commerce, before realizing I wouldn’t have the time. So, I took a lazier, less lucrative option.

My NLP Diary is a pet project that has a duel reason. One is to prove a point about Blogs to someone who’s opinion I respect. The other is that it allows me to notice more about behaviours.

For all you web marketing guys though… I have a special treat for you… should be up over the weekend….

Two things happened to me this week to do with need (in relation to a product).

I have had Sky TV for about seven years. Then Sky Plus came out and let’s face it, it’s a great product. In fact, the only issue I had with it was the ongoing cost, which for me was up to £45 a month.

The problem was, I thought I needed it, so I never got rid of it. Then a couple of weeks ago my Sky Plus box broke (the second one) and before I knew it I realised I didn’t actually need it at all, especially when it was costing me £540 per year.

On Thursday I missed a TV programme because I was out and have no way to record programmes anymore, but hey, BBC iPlayer allowed me to sit and watch it this morning.

Secondly this week, I did a client a favour. I had mentioned in a meeting that I didn’t understand what their product (telephone headsets) did exactly and why I would ever need one. So they sent me a GN9350 to write about and to be honest, I love it.

This sounds like a contradiction because in reality I don’t need a headset. But, the cost isn’t prohibitive compared to the value.

This raises two further questions for me from a business marketing perspective.

Buy-in

Getting initial buy-in to your product or service has barriers. How can you break them down? What if, for instance, you had qualifying statements, video, instructions, case studies, peer-to-peer communication to allow people to understand why they need your product in the first place?

I think we have done that really well recently for a company call Magic Mitre. They sell a unique mitre box DIY product. But people need to know they need it in the first place, when they are investigating their problem. They may not be looking for the product, they may just want to fit coving, or skirting board, etc. We achieved this well with Top Tips and a You Tube Video channel, which is drawing traffic.

Choice

Any business or industry faces fresh challenges. I think very few of us are immune. Sky used to have a monopoly, but how long for with things like iPlayer and video streaming on the web? It’s one thing getting people to buy in long-term but what if the price doesn’t continue to offer perceived value and a new kid on the block turns up?

Route to market and choice could make a lot of middle industries (the deliverers) redundant.

I may have mentioned before that I have a villa in Pervolia, Cyprus.

As part of my web strategy, I have created a content-rich website with advice on things to do and lots of local information. That’s stage one. That could be enough - it’s optimized.

I have focussed my content on one small village rather than the country and I have added in the largest local town of Larnaca as part of the overall strategy, although I would be naive to think I could attack that market as well.

I have focussed on one smaller market with a view to dominating a niche.

So, as the next steps I have:

• Created a Squidoo page.
• More recently created a Facebook group. This requires log-in, perhaps I should have created a Facebook Page?
• I have engaged locally to create a community website.

I have created the web offering with a real intention of offering value for everyone, especially the village where my villa is. I’m not looking to make money out of that in itself, but what this approach will allow me, if I can deliver my intention of filling rental weeks, is additional local leverage.

I will take the Google approach - let’s work out how to monetize it later.