Over at Chris Malta’s Blog he mentions about an issue most of us could potentially overlook. If you use a word processor like Microsoft Office you will want to read this.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the most important things you can do for your online business. It’s critical to place search engine Keywords not only on your home page, but on all the pages of your site. However, even people who do this religiously and do a good job of it could be unwittingly sabotaging their own sites by overlooking something very simple.
The problem is this: text editors (word processing programs) and site-builder programs don’t all recognize the characters on your computer keyboard in the same way. You can end up with extra or unexpected characters in your site’s Keywords that you don’t realize are there, and those characters can ruin your SEO efforts.
In a recent Chris Malta Personal EBiz Workshop here in Orlando, we were analyzing one of the attendee’s web sites. We took a look at her web site’s Keywords and found that she had used apostrophes in some of the words. Her site builder program misinterpreted those apostrophes, and inserted slashes before each one, which rendered those keywords unrecognizable to the search engines, and useless to her site.
The word was “Children’s”. As far as she knew, and as far as her web site builder software showed her, the word “children’s” showed up properly in her keywords. However, when we looked at them outside of her software, the keyword was actually showing up as “children/’s”.
Not good.
So, do yourself a favor and do a View Source on your web site’s Keywords when you publish your pages. In Internet Explorer, all you have to do is go to your page, click the “Page” tool in the upper right hand corner of your browser, and click “View Source”. You’ll be able to see the “code” behind your web page. Look for your Keywords and double-check them. This could save you a lot of wondering and worrying about why your site isn’t making sales!
Hey, keep in mind that Registration is now open for my June and July Personal EBiz Success Workshops. Check it out Here now!
There is a way to still use your favourite word processor. And remove the chance of the issues above from happening. On the windows operating system there is a great tool called notepad. There are a number of ways of accessing this tool. The quickest way that I know is to go to your start menu and then run. Type in notepad into the box and click ok. You should now have notepad open.
What you need to do now is open the document, that you plan to publish. In your favourite you need to copy all of the content. Assuming you’re using Word or Open Office the following keyboard short cut will make it quicker. Use Ctrl+A to select all content. Then Ctrl+C to copy the content. Now select the open notepad document and paste(Ctrl+V). Now since Notepad ignores all formatting that you may have applied you have plain text. You should probable save the file at this point Ctrl+S.
Once you have read it over in notepad just to make sure that you copied everything and nothing has changed or been edited. You should copy and paste the content of notepad into you publishing software. Such as www.ezinearticles.com, www.wordpress.com. Not only will this sort out you search engine optimization: it will also make your site more user friendly for users of screen readers.
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