Internet Tip - Honor Your Viewers

If you own a web site, you never know who has saved a page from your site to their favorites file (bookmarked it). It might be your home page, a great article, or a terrific resource. And since you don't know, every time you remove a page, you run risk of people getting that annoying "page not found" error when they click on their favorites link.

You can always find out later how many visits your "removed pages" have had by viewing your site statistics and examining your error log (if you have one)-but by then its maybe too late.

When you remove a page, honor your viewers by providing them with an option. Take page you want to remove and turn it into a redirected page. Redirect it to your home page or another page on your site that contains similar information. How do you do this? Let me give you an example.

I had a page on my site called www.coachmaria.com/coachability.html. The information originally on that page is no longer useful, so I removed it and inserted HTML code below. Now when someone goes to old page, they are "redirected" to another page. Try it www.coachmaria.com/coachability.html The HTML code I used on page below for you to view.or use. The number "2" in "meta tag" represents number of seconds it will take to redirect page. Change this number as you see fit. The "meta tag" information takes page directly to another page (in this case contest.html). I use other information "just in case" meta tag redirect doesn't work. It gives viewer option of tapping on a link to move directly to redirected page. Your webmaster would also have to remove dot I put into each of HTML tags below. (If I didn't add them here, you wouldn't be able to view code below).

"Let Your Little Website Shine" Part 5

Thanks for joining me again. In this part of series, we’ll talk about trying to keep from looking like a clone. 9. Presents an appearance in keeping with what you're selling: This step just takes a few minutes of objective observation on your part to make sure your website presents personality of your company and has kind of image you intended to project. If you have a very serious service to offer, such as financial services, your website should have very little fun stuff on it. It should present a very professional image. In most cases, it should contain no moving gifs, no cartoons, and no goofy stuff. If your site sells toys, its image can be completely fun. This is, like some of other elements, subject to opinion, so just do what your heart tells you. If you have any doubts at all about appearance of your site, change it until you feel right about it. Check out other sites of your biggest competitors to get an idea what is selling in way of website presence. There will probably be a lot of things about their sites you do not like. Use your creative sense to make a site that is uniquely yours. One financial services company had a lot of success by offering a calculator utility on their site that allowed visitor's to figure out how many years and at what interest rate it would take them to save kind of money they wanted to have available at retirement time. 10. Sells in a very subtle way: There's nothing more annoying than to go to a site to read up on some information you really need to brush up on, and every other paragraph is a CLICK HERE or to buy it, go here. I can understand an FAQ area where this goes on, but not your main page, please! The most effective sites on Internet are those that provide a lot of free information, but they might have a banner at top or a click through on side of page in case reader is interested. Most of really bad sales letters I see on Internet are nothing but that -sales letters with no real redeeming value to reader. If you're not willing to give away any of your knowledge on your website, how can you expect to sell