"Silent and listen are spelled with the same letters!"

 
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The OnLine Exchange E-ZINE...
"MarketingTrendz" Edition
http://www.marketingtrendz.com
ISSN: 1528-3992
(c)Online Exchange...August 29, 2001
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The OnLine Exchange is a Free Publication
of MarketingTrendz. We are an award winning,
top rated ezine, providing informative tools
and resources for all businesses.
Over 20,000 webmasters, opportunity seekers,
and small business owners depend on this Ezine week after week.
 
Please, forward this ezine to all your friends
and co-workers who might be interested!
 
Tune into Effective & Affordable Ezine Advertising Information:

http://www.marketingtrendz.com/advertising.htm
 
 
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IN THIS ISSUE:
_____________
 
 
1. Our Top Star Sponsor
 
2. Featured Article - What's Wrong with My Website?
 
3. "TOP Pick" Classified Ads
 
4. COOL BIZ Site -- Format-It
 
5. IMPORTANT E-Zine Advertising Information
 
6. HOT BIZ TIP - Calculator Tip
 
7. A Word From The Editor
 
8. OnLine Exchange Information Data
 
 
______________________________________________________
 
 
1.) TOP STAR SPONSORS
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Our Top Sponsor:
 
 
YOU read email all the time.
Get paid cash every time you receive email!
Sign up FREE at:
http://www.MintMail.com/?m=1339



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2.) FEATURED ARTICLE
_______________
 
 
----------------------
'What's Wrong With My Website?'
by Michael Southon
----------------------


I ask myself that question about once a month.
My website looks fine to me, but what are other
people seeing? And what are the Search Engines
seeing? Here's a checklist of 10 ways to keep your
website at peak performance:




 1. Browser Compatibility

The first thing is to look at your website through
other people's browsers. I do this regularly and I've
sometimes been shocked at what I saw!

ANYBROWSER
http://www.anybrowser.com




 2. Broken Links

About 5% of all links on the Internet are broken. A
site that contains broken links gives a bad impression
to visitors and is a frequent cause of lost sales.
Also, the major Search Engines and Directories will not
list your page if it contains any broken links or missing images.

Here are some free link validators:

LINK SCAN
http://www.elsop.com/linkscan/quickcheck.html

NET MECHANIC
http://www.netmechanic.com/maintain.htm

WEBSITE GARAGE DEADLINK CHECK
http://websitegarage.netscape.com/O=wsg/tuneup_plus/index.html




 3. Web Safe Colors

Are the colors on your web site displaying properly on
other people's browsers? You may have a beautiful
shade of lilac on your index page but it could look
very strange on someone else's computer.

There are only 216 colors that you can safely use on
the Web. These colors display solid and consistent on
any computer monitor or web browser that is able to
display at least 8-bit color.

The Web Safe Palette contains six groups of colors
with 36 colors per group. These 216 web safe colors
can have any combination of the following RGB (Red
Green Blue) values: 0, 51, 102, 153, 204, 255 (each
RGB value must be divisible by 51).

Here's a good palette of web safe colors:

WEB-SOURCE SAFE COLORS
http://www.web-source.net/216_color_chart.htm




 4. ALT Tags

ALT Tags allow you to give an alternative to people
who have the 'view images' function turned off in
their browser. Let's say the navigation system on your
website is a series of buttons that link to other
pages on your site. If you don't have ALT Tags, people
who have the 'view images' function turned off will
be unable to navigate through your site - in place
of your button they will just see an empty space.

But an ALT Tag allows you to tell those people what
that button does. For example, if the button is a link
to your 'Site Map' you could insert the following ALT
Tag: <IMG SRC=sitemap.gif BORDER=0 ALT="Click here to
view Site Map">

ALT Tags also allow you to raise your keyword density.
For every image that is not hyperlinked you could
insert your main keywords. For example: <IMG
SRC=bullet.gif BORDER=0 ALT="airfares cheap discount
flights">




 5. Meta Tags

Meta Tags are so important they deserve a whole
article on their own. The most important Meta Tags are
the Title Tag, the Keywords Tag and the Description Tag.

The Title Tag should be no more than 64 characters
(longer than that and it will be cut off in some
Search Engines).

The Keyword Tag should contain about 5 to 10 keywords
that appear on your page. Never include  words that do
not appear on that page - in some Search Engines your website
will be penalized for this. Do not repeat the same keyword -
this is called 'keyword stuffing' and is also frowned upon
by the Search Engines.

Separate your keywords with spaces (not commas). This
allows the Search Engines to combine your keywords into phrases,
for people who do 'phrase searching'.

The Description Tag should be no more than 200 characters.
Include as many of your keywords as you can.
Remember also that your Description Tag must be enticing -
it must make people want to visit your site.

Here are some programs that will generate your Meta
Tags for you:

WEBSITE GARAGE
http://websitegarage.netscape.com/turbocharge/metatag/

META MEDIC
http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html

MULTI-META-MAKER
http://www.multimeta.com/tools/multimetamaker.html




6. Load Time

A slow-loading index page is one of the main reasons
for lost sales. The generally accepted maximum time
for a page to load is around 15 seconds. Here is a
free service that tells you how long your web page
takes to load:

NetMechanic
http://www.netmechanic.com/cobrands/FutureQuest/load_check.htm

Your pages should be no more than about 30Kb in size.
To calculate the size of your web page, highlight the
HTML document and then click on 'File' and
'Properties' and note down the file size. Then do the
same for any graphics you have on that page. Then add
those figures together to get your page size.

If your page is less than 30Kb and takes more than 15
seconds to load, the problem is most likely with your
web host. The solution is to change web host. Here are
2 services that will check the speed of your web host's
server and compare it with other web hosts:

HOST COMPARE
http://www.hostcompare.com/testtools.htm

CNET WEBSERVICES
http://webservices.cnet.com/ping/




7. GIF (or JPEG) Cruncher

Shrinking the size of your images is one of the best
ways to get a faster-loading web page. You can usually
reduce a GIF or JPEG image by 40% to 50% without
losing any significant definition or sharpness.

SPINWAVE
http://www.spinwave.com/crunchers.html




8. HTML Optimizer

Another way to make your page load faster is to
compress (or optimize) your HTML code. An HTML
Optimizer removes all blank spaces in your HTML code
and also removes certain unnecessary tags.

On average, an HTML optimizer will reduce the size of
your page by 15% to 20%. That percentage may not seem
much, but the saving in load time is much higher, as
your visitor's browser will parse your page much more efficiently.

A word of caution: in most HTML Optimizers you will
find an 'Options' menu that tells the program to
ignore certain parts of your code. Make sure your
Optimizer does not compress embedded script tags - if
they get compressed, the script will usually not work.

ADVANCED HTML OPTIMIZER
http://www.pcbit.com/htmlopt/




 9. WIDTH, HEIGHT and BORDER Tags

The WIDTH, HEIGHT and BORDER attributes are essential
for each image that you have on your website.
When you hyperlink an image, always make sure that
the BORDER attribute is set to zero (BORDER=0).
If you don't do this, your hyperlinked image will have
an ugly blue border around it.

The WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes allow your page to
load faster, as the browser knows in advance how
much space the image requires. To find out the width
and height of any image, just double click on the
image file. This will automatically open 'Microsoft
Photo Editor' - your image will appear, with the width
and height of your image (in pixels) displayed on the
tool bar.




10. HTML Validator

Always check the validity of your HTML. Some Search
Engines give lower rankings to pages that have poor
quality HTML (such as incorrect nesting of elements).

Here are some free online validators:

HTML HELP
http://www.htmlhelp.org/tools/validator/

SITE INSPECTOR
http://www.siteinspector.com/

BOBBY
http://www.cast.org/bobby/

WATSON
http://watson.addy.com/



 (c) 2000 by Michael Southon


----------------------------------------
Michael Southon is the author of the popular new
E-Book, 'Ezine Writer!'. Discover the #1 Secret of
Ezine Marketing - More Traffic, More Sales:
http://www.ezine-writer.com/
----------------------------------------


______________________________________________________
 
 
3.) TOP PICK CLASSIFIED ADS
________________
 
 
 
............

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......


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.......

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......

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......

Millionaire Mail Order Guru Jeff Sands Creates
Easiest Home-Based Business Ever! No Selling!
No Handling Products! No Follow-Up! No Monthly Purchases!
Just Make Our Phones Ring! Go to
http://www.mailordermarketplace.com
Use ID 3148

.......

Why is Big Dogs such a Phenomenon? Bottom line? It WORKS!
Market your own product to up to 20,000 targeted pre-qualified
leads a day - that's 600,000 a Month! Don't have a product?
Market OURS! It's a multi-income-stream package! You gotta
check it out! Be an Alpha Dog - leader of the pack!
http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R38491_109

.......

Teachers, Professionals, Businesspeople, Executives

http://www.YourFutureWaits.com

It can CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

.......

This is the DIET Hollywood Stars Use.
THE REAL THING!!! NO MORE Dead End Diets!
Are you fed up with trying every diet on the planet
that does not work???
NOW it is time to Get serious and do it the right way.
Guaranteed results or your money back. For Details visit me at:
http://www.teamstarlight.com/StarDietWorks

........
 

 
_____________________________________________________
 
4.) COOL-BIZ SITE
________________
 

FORMAT-IT

It's a formatting tool for email.

http://www.jbmckee.com/formatit/formatit.html

 
 
______________________________________________________
 
 
5.) ONLINE EXCHANGE ADVERTISING INFORMATION

 ______________________
 
 
 
Do You Have a Business or Website?
Then you NEED ADVERTISING!
 
 
If you want to have a successful business --
You Need a Successful Advertising Campaign.
 
Without Targeted Exposure your business has no
chance of making a profit.
You can have the most Informative Service, a Quality Product
and a Dynamite Website ,but without advertising,
you will get the results you are looking for.
 
YOU NEED... Successful Advertising, The Cutting Edge kind,
and Plenty of it!
The OnLine Exchange is here to assist you
with Advertising that gets results!
 
Your success starts right here:
 
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Our team of publishers work around the clock to give
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Take advantage of our Established Ezine and YOUR AD
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Start YOUR Success Story Today!
 
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TIME IS RUNNING OUT FOR AUGUST ADVERTISING SPECIALS!
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it's a Summer Sizzler and the discounts are really HOT!
 
For pricing and details:
 
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______________________________________________________
 
 
6.) HOT BIZ TIP
__________
 
 
**NOTE: These tips apply to MICROSOFT OFFICE products.
That is, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc.


Since Excel IS a numbers crunching program, a calculator
is often needed to check that formulas are working correctly
or simply to add some numbers up BEFORE you enter them into
your Excel spreadsheet.  Sure, you can use Excel to do this,
but sometimes you want to use your Windows Calculator.

So, every time you want to use your Windows Calculator,
you have to go to your Start button and go to Programs, then
Accessories, then Calculator.  What a pain!

Aha......Excel 2000 lets you add the Windows Calculator to
your toolbar inside Excel.  And it's simple:

Launch  Excel and go to the Tools menu at the top of your screen. 
Choose "Customize". In the Customize dialog box,
click the "Commands" tab. Now, under "Categories" click on
Tools. Scroll down through the "Commands" list and locate
the icon that looks like a calculator (it's one of the ones
labeled "Custom"). Drag the icon up to your toolbar and
release the mouse button when you see the black line where
you want to put it. Now, you can simply click the new toolbar icon
to open the calculator.


So, now you are in the know!

Hang in there,

Linda

Tutorials by MS Office expert Linda Johnson.
Her site is located here: http://personal-computer-tutor.com




______________________________________________________
 
7.) WORD FROM THE EDITOR
_________________
 
 
We hope you have enjoyed this issue of the
Online Exchange E-zine.
We would like to welcome all of our New Subscribers.

If you have not had a chance to check out our
Web Based Sunday Classifieds Edition, there is
no time like the present.  Some great opportunities,
joint ventures, and marketing tools are available here:

http://www.online-exchange.com/classifieds.htm

There is a Top sponsor Spot available for this
weekend- Sunday, September 2, 2001.  For a top
position, in bold lettering of The Sunday Classifieds
Edition for only $30, you will get massive exposure:

http://www.marketingtrendz.com/advertising.htm


Don't forget that we run a weekly contest every
Friday in our Biz Talk Edition.  If you want
FREE exposure, we encourage you to participate.


Until Next Time!
 
Best Regards,
Debbie Solomon
editor@marketingtrendz.com
 
______________________________________________________
 
 
8.) ONLINE EXCHANGE INFORMATION DATA
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PRIVACY POLICY -
 
ONLY subscribers who have personally and voluntarily
subscribed to this Ezine will Receive it. We are 100% Opt-In.
We will NEVER provide our subscriber list to ANYONE.
We respect the privacy of our readers.
 
_________________
 
 
CONTACT INFORMATION -
 
Editor: Debbie Solomon
Publisher: Sara Hardy
http://www.marketingtrendz.com
 
MarketingTrendz
1640 West Sandpiper Circle
Pembroke Pines, FL 33026
 
editor@marketingtrendz.com
 
_________________
 
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The information contained in this document represents
the current view of MarketingTrendz on the issues discussed
as of the date of publication. Because MarketingTrendz
must respond to change in market conditions,
it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the
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