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To flash, or not to flash? That is the question. Weather it is better to meet the user requirements for entertainment or to take arms against overly flashy sites. Flash is one of the most commonly used applications, however lets review. It has been used since the 90’s, evolving into what is now used in many bundle programs. Most web sites today use flash in one way or another.

When you open a site you are most likely to see some kind of flash animation on the site. Some of these animations can be annoying, while others informational and interesting. The common uses for flash applications are:

•  Small “eye candy” animations
• Banner Advertising
•  Corporate presentations
• CD business cards
• Demos and tutorials for web and CD applications

When using flash you can intertwine:

• Animation
• video,
•  sound
• music
•  voice over’s
•  And connect to a database for personalized interactivity or calculations.

Some benefits of flash pieces are that flash be designed for both CD and web applications, this allows for the piece to be used for direct mail and online. If you decided that your site was going to be a full flash site it would be more streamlined, and the look of the site would be more cohesive. It is harder to emulate the same look and feel/ interface using flash and HTML.

However, not everyone has the flash application and so some users may be required to download this application or they could have the wrong version of flash. Sometimes to much flash and music can be distracting and will make the site load slow when the flash is streaming. Also, the search engines won’t be able to properly read a flash intro and unless you have a link to the home page on this flash peice the search engine won’t be able to rate your site.  There are also a lot of sites with flash intro’s that have no purpose, Just because you CAN do it doesn’t mean you SHOULD do it!

When you are creating a website it is an option to use meta tags. Meta Tags are placed on the header of the site after the title tag. These tags are used by search engines so that they can more accurately list your site in their list. Although you do not have to use these tags, I suggest it so that your site can be better ranked in the search engines search and list. When people refer to meta tags they are often referring to meta description tag and meta keyword tag.

 These types of tags (meta description and meta keyword) are not seen by the users of your website. Rather they are read by the search engines, for the purpose of providing meta document data.  There are some important tags that you should know:

• meta http-equiv tag
• meta refresh tag
• the meta robots tag
• the meta copyright tag
• meta author tag

These tags are used to give search engines “spider directions” to other parts of your site or other sites.

The next question on your mind might be what do meta tags look like? There are a lot of different types of meta tags, a general tag may look something like this:

<META name=”something” content=”something else”> 

However you do not need the</META> at the end of this tag, like some HTML requires such as a <B> BOLD </B>. Just make sure that there are no breaks because some search engines are a bit testy with breaks. 

Remember that there is no need to file every single page of your website, you only need to do the important or relevant ones. Also, make sure that your description tag does not simply restate your title page, but what the page is about almost like a summary in just a couple of words. Finally, a tag can be in the creation of dynamic documents.

When deciding that you are going to market you product or website online, there a few things to consider first before deciding if online marketing is the best way for you.  I stress that you should not put all of your marketing “eggs” into one basket, sometimes it’s best to use multiple marketing strategies.  People tend to be more attracted to cyberspace marketing opposed to other market areas because it requires less attention span, it’s younger, hipper, and easily accessible.  Companies use marketing online for several reasons,  the top five include  rapid presentation, easy modifications, low cost, buyer involvement and no limits to space or time. Marketing in a journal or newspaper can take weeks, or even months to get designed, printed and published. When creating an advertisement for the Internet it can be create fairly quickly. Normally you can have the ad designed and posted on the Internet the very same day.  Making a rapid presentation is a major advantage for getting your product/company name out there. When you want to change you ad that is online, it can be very simple. Usually much is not involved with these types of changes other than typing in some new copy info or uploading and positioning a new graphic image on a digital page. If you wanted to change something like a four color ad or Direct mail pieces it can be very expense, as well as time consuming.When thinking about marketing, cost is one of the largest concerns that people consider. For a magazine or journal cost given to reach a certain number of readers is measured by a formula known as CPM (cost per thousand) meaning the cost to reach one thousand people. However, for Internet advertising it is measured differently. In various cases when advertising online it can be essentially free, if you build your own BBS (bulletin board system). If you decide to go through an advertiser they may charge you as little as $50 a month for placement of your ad. Then after placement your ad may be hit (viewed) hundreds of times a day!!! Online ads offer more buyer involvement than a Direct mail campaign or magazine would.  Typically, it offers several levels of information in which prospected viewers can interact more to find the information that is of interest to them and retrieve this information immediately.  Magazines and Direct mail can also have people interact by having a reply mail letter for people to fill out or having a number for people to call to get more information.  Finally, there are no limits on space or time when your ad is online. You won’t necessarily pay more for more space online, like you would for Radio, TV or Magazines.  Some advertisers may change you buy the megabyte or according to how many pages are in your presentation. If you create you own Internet server you can place as much info as its hard drive can/will hold. 

In essence, advertising online is the new way to go. It’s faster, cheaper, and easier to update than advertising over the radio, TV, or in magazines. However like I mentioned earlier, don’t put all your money into one type of advertising. It would be in your best interest to try all different types of marketing to see what kind best fits your market.  

In recent decades, the World Wide Web became the hottest new venue for marketing and selling products. It provides ease of use and increased competition, which makes for the convenience and low prices that appeal to the millions of consumers who use it. Most of these consumers search the internet using a few major search engines; Google and Yahoo! are the most commonly used. For this reason, many businesses seek to exploit the search engines as an online marketplace. There are two key approaches typically taken in Search Engine Optimitization (SEO).

The first approach is referred to as “Organic” SEO. The biggest advantage with Organic SEO is that it is free. It uses the search engines’ metacrawlers, which are commonly available to everyone. All a business has to do is post their site and the search engine robots will find it. However, there are drawbacks - the search engine’s indexing tool can take up to a year to start ranking your site and it may not rank very high with out the proper key words, inbound links for other sites etc. So hiring an SEO company or reading up on how to position your site is very important.

The second approach is called “Pay-Per-Click” (PPC). With PPC, you pay the search engine to attach your website’s advertisement to relevant searches. The price per click can vary between  $0.10 and $10.00, depending on the industry, the particular keyword, and the rank given to the advertisement. 

 How can a business decide which approach is better? There are, of course several factors to be taken into account. First of all, are the basic requirements in place - does the business have a website, and the necessary budget? Next, the budget must be compared with the business’s online marketing needs. Typically, a combination of Organic and PPC plans is desirable, and packages start as low as $500.00. However, even with more expensive packages, monthly payment plans are available which make SEO and Online Marketing affordable for a large variety of businesses.