<META DESCRIPTION> tag lost its shine after the emergence of off-page factors (like link popularity) for rankings in SERPS. In fact it lost its purpose to a great extent when Google started using contextual content from within the page as the description of the URL in its SERPS.

However in an interesting turn of events, <META DESCRIPTION> is back in business!

Most search engines, including Google are now using the <META DESCRIPTION> content as the description of the URL in their SERPS. The page <TITLE> is now being shown as the listing title with <META DESCRIPTION> as the description of the URL. If you compare it with Google AdWords, you can consider the <TITLE> as the Headline and <META DESCRIPTION> as the Description. Therefore, you must use it to outline your strength, your unique selling proposition and if possible your offer.

Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal mentioned cited this interesting Meta Description used by NextStudent.com in his article,

Looking for federal or private student loans for School? Get up to 40k Fast: Call 877-680-9879. Student loan consolidation? Call 800-299-4639. NextStudent- College Funding Made Simple.

You can also include your phone number (as cited in the above advertisement - description) for the prospect who is in a hurry! May be you will end up prospecting without having the visitor hit your website! In fact, with the latest version of IE and the FireFox plugins, the phone numbers listed in this description become hot-links, which a visitor can simply click and get connected on a voice call through Skype. And you can close a sale!

And yes, many SEO specialists believe that higher CTR on your SERPS listing (due to improved <TITLE> and <META DESCRIPTION>) can help you further improve your rankings.

BTW, I forgot to mention that some expert copywriters may like to even put in their headlines and teasers to pre-sell the product / services!

Lisa Ditlefsen says:

Basically if you think about it the meta description tag is your FREE ad! If you have experience in running a pay per click campaign I’m sure you have put a lot of thought into what the PPC ad says. The ad is what distinguish you from all the other PPC ads right? So why should it be any different in the organic SERPs? The title tag is your free headline and the meta description tag is your FREE ad, this is where you have a chance to ad hook someone in. How many times have you searched for something, got to the results and been put off by the description, it can’t possibly be what you were looking for!!?

May be people do not give so much importance to this FREE ad, because it is FREE! It is never late. Give proper attention to your website <META DESCRIPTION> tags and turn your organic traffic to a highly targeted FREE traffic.

I regularly hear about terms like Manager, Managing, Management, Management Team, etc. The dictionary term for manage is "cope: come to terms or deal successfully with" and "pull off: be successful; achieve a goal"

In my opinion, the word ‘manage‘ makes me think about:

• Control,
• Status Quo,
• Monitoring
• Come to terms

Somewhere it reflects a sense of compulsion, where someone else is setting the goal for you. It sounds like "ensure that it stays on track". I somehow find managing limits a person and his role to retain the lead.

Therefore, to get the lead, you need leaders!
Leaders are a different breed. They manage less. Instead, they lead.

The word ‘lead’ makes me visualize

• Energy,
• Execution,
• New,
• Inspiration.

When I think of a leader, I visualize someone who:

• Set the vision and inspire people.
• Set long term goals.
• Does not control the outcome.
• Trust people around him.
• Win trust of team members by setting examples
• Manages less.

So, to build / grow a company, you need leader(s). And to manage one, you need managers! Mostly, leaders are not good managers and they should not overstretch themselves for that role.  

Leaders are like creators.
Managers are like Accumulators.

You cannot run a company without either. So make sure that your company has both!

Attractive designs do get attention. It can also get good visitor-customer conversion if some best-practices are followed. But the question is - how can attractive designs get traffic to your website?

They can! or,
They can at least help your site in getting good traffic.

Here is a simple technique posted by Daniel on his blog.

• Design an attractive web site. Or get it designed through one of the many web design agencies around. Make sure that the site is coded in XHMTL/CSS2.
• Now, submit these websites to several CSS galleries which has sprung all over the Internet. If your design is decent enough, you will surely get accepted. However, if your design is outstanding, you may get featured sending in hundreds of visitors!
• Now, design enthusiasts may not be your target audience (BTW, if they are, then you have struck a goldmine). Still, you get multiple listings and they link to your website, which ultimately helps you in getting better link-popularity and therefore higher rankings in search engines. In my opinion, you should not miss any opportunity to improve your link-popularity.
• Here are some links to the "List of CSS galleries"

• http://www.themoleskin.com/archives/the-definitive-css-galleries-list/
• http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2008/inspiration-overload-100-css-galleries-you-need-to-check-out/
• http://css-tricks.com/examples/WebsiteGalleryRoundup/
• http://www.nuff-respec.com/technology/css-gallery-roundup
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2006/12/21/creme-de-la-creme-of-css-list-of-css-galleries/

Now, if it looks like a daunting task (frankly speaking, it is!), do not give up.

Indus Net Technologies has a special service to help you focus on your core business and take care of different kind of manual submission (including CSS gallery submission) for a small fees. It is called Submit2Please.

Contact one of our sales representative / your account manager at Indus Net Technologies to get started. Or drop us a line at info@submit2please.com

It is a true incident about, how a cookie shop messed up its sales!

CookieMan is a fast growing cookie brand in India. They have a small outlet at Chennai airport. Till recently, before boarding the flight, I used to buy some delicious cookies from that outlet to keep myself indulged for the evening.

Now, the real shocker! On my recent visit to Chennai, the store guy told me - "that the minimum you can purchase is 250 grams!"

I could not help, but smile at this "strategic" move of the company!

This is how they are messing up their own marketing:

• They are losing an opportunity to connect with their consumers and wow them! An airport lounge can be the best place to get into their minds.
• They are missing an opportunity to identify which product has high shelf-appeal. In fact, they can utilize this opportunity to implement interesting means to do market survey among the middle and upper-middle class of consumers who will be the most frequent buyers of such confectionaries.
• Above all, they are losing sales.

I fail to understand the reason. The only obvious reason that come to my mind:

• They were trying to reduce the work load of their sales guy (Who was sitting idle!)
• They were not interested in consumers who buy less than 250 grams. (Unfortunately, trust is won one step at a time. In fact some of the biggest customers of Indus Net Technologies initially signed up for a simple logo design service and then they kept increasing their exposure with us. Targeting for large sale does work, but nothing works like small experiences that builds relationship one step at a time.)

Besides fixing the obvious issue, this is what they could have done (some random ideas):

• Put a mail-order form and hand it over with every money receipt they give out. Most travelers who experience the cookies might like to mail-order the cookie (in fact on a subscription basis - every month). This can give them an opportunity to sell in decent quantities every month.
• Put a "self help" literature on "history of cookies" & "interesting combos". Indians like to eat in combination (mostly). When people have leisure time at an airport lounge, it is best to make them interested in the product (if not the brand).

And I hope you never repeat this mistake in your business. Give your prospects to try yourself out, one step at a time. Give them great experiences and build relationship one step at a time. They last longer.

BTW, if you have more ideas for them, do contribute. I will update my post with your input.

Among all the social-business networking sites, I find Ecademy and LinkedIn to be the best ones. Ecademy is my favorite since it has very nicely integrated offline networking in its system which results in creating trusted networks.

I experienced a very nice group-problem-solving technique called Virtual Tables during an offline networking event organized by Ecademy. I found it to be very effective. It can be extremely beneficial if practiced in a trusted network.

What you need:

• People who are interested in helping each other
• Ninety minutes (1 1/2 hour) 
• Paper / Pen to take notes

This is how it works:

Group together

It works best in a group of six-seven participants. If there are many more members, they should arrange themselves in group of six participants. I feel that it works best when the group is of people from diversified field (different businesses, departments, etc.). I think (not yet tested) that it will work best if people with same kind of responsibilities participate together (all business owners, all managers, all programmers, etc.).

All participants sit around a table. Every participant has 12-15 minutes by turn.

Now its your turn

When your turn comes, you can table your problem. Generally people table their biggest concern, dilemma, situation, issue they are facing in few minutes. The other participants of your group come up with their own solutions, point-of-views and ideas to help you. Since different people come from different backgrounds and have different ways to solve a problem, it is amazing to see how many fantastic ideas pops up. These sessions are generally filled with why-i-did-not-think-of-this-before sighs. This collective brainstorming delivers a list of suggestions that are diverse in nature and gives a new approach to solve the same problem.

It is like having five consultants serving you for fifteen minutes with their subject matter knowledge and common sense with an honest intention coming from an absolutely independent chair to help you out!

Take notes & rotate

You should take notes of the ideas. I suggest you note down all the ideas and spend some time back home thinking over them and considering the solutions offered by different people on the table. For the time being, you shall rotate the strike and the next guy should now table his/her problem and you should become a part of the elite panel of consultants who will help bail him/her out!

An important note:

It is utmost importance to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of the discussion. The purpose of the virtual tables is to help and get help. It may take time for members to trust each other, but once a trust network is formed, the effectiveness just multiplies and it keeps growing with the speed of trust.

So, go out and try this to discover a stress-free way of solving your problems (and others’ too)!

I often hear from people:

• I hate my job.
• I don’t feel like going to work.
• I have no excitement in my career. It is the same old grind.

This happens more so often because most people are doing things that they never wanted to do in their professional life. I have written about this problem in my post - Are you what you always wanted to be?

I suggest a three step solution for people who are stuck in such a situation!

1. Take a positive attitude to work.

Even if you want to change the big picture, you got to do what you are expected to do on the given day when you reach your workplace. You may hate the work, but you have to do it. Now, if you can take a positive attitude towards your current job and enjoy the same, you will have a good day at your workplace and you will feel satisfied and happy at the end of the day. If you keep cursing the world for putting in that position, you will end up feeling more frustrated and probably mess up the work that you are doing.

So, cheer up and take a positive attitude to work. Think of the ways your work makes a difference to others. It does. Else you would not have been doing it and your boss / client would not have been paying you to do the same. 

2. Visualize the value chain

Once you know, how your work helps the company / social setup in the bigger context, try to visualize the value chain. So you might like to find out what happens before and/or after you do your job. What is the value that the end consumer gets? Try to visualize the entire value chain and see where you fit in based on what you will like to do and the profile which can have maximum impact on the company / social setup where you want to contribute.

3. Make your moves

Once you have learnt to live your daily workday in a positive way and have visualized the area where you will like to see yourself in you can start making moves towards achieving the same. Please note that this should be closer to what you always wanted to be or should be able to derive similar level of satisfaction, else you may not feel the drive to achieve this new position.

You can start training yourself appropriately. Gather knowledge through books, Internet, friends, professional gatherings, etc.

With the appropriate knowledge, show your organization that you are capable of doing something better or more valuable than what you are currently doing. Everyone wants a proof-of-concept! Once you have proved your credibility and capability, you can surely find you way to reach your goal.

Take action.

I have often seen people struggling with their business plan. I have a bit unconventional take on the subject. May be, because it has worked well for me till now. So here is what I sugget:

A quick tip for budding entrepreneurs:

If your business starts at the right time, you can extract maximum growth by getting ready when the industry segment gets the peak demand. I strongly suggest that a new business should be started during the "low-tide", i.e. when markets are not doing well and industry sentiments are not positive. It helps in many ways:

1. You can get the best talent available in the industry due to lay off by major players.

2. You will not have major competition and you can prepare your competitive edge "in hiding" to give surprise to your competitors.

3. Tough times results in innovation. It is highly probable that your company will have the "innovation" advantage as you try to come up the adversities of a low-lying market. This innovation can become a catalyst when the markets are strong and can become the deciding factor.

4. You can concentrate in building the right processes, measurements, quality control systems and genetic-composition of your company which will result in its rapid growth when the right time comes.

5. Your expenses will be lower in building the fundamental framework for the company.

It will well known that markets have both the ups and downs. I feel "downs" should be well utilized to prepare the company for taking maximum advantage of the "ups". It makes much more business sense and also keep your spirits up!

Note: It is important to be patient. It is very important to know that you are preparing for the "good days" and, it is most important to know that you should not blow up all your money, since capital is another thing that you need to scale up your company fast when the right time comes.

Eoghan McCabe has covered some good conversion tips in his blog post - User Interface Simplicity Gone Wrong.

He has explained how website conversion rate can shoot up if the contact forms are simple and to-the-point. Everyone is in a hurry and people hate filling in long forms. Web site visitors are impatient and one should not expect them to fill in long forms. They get frustrated very easily and messages like “Zip code has been left blank. Kindly provide the same and re-submit the form” can simply put them off! They are doing a favor to you by getting in touch with you and not the other way round. I have been a strong advocate of a simple form, so that the initial contact can be made without much effort in few seconds.

I have been using the simple contact form for few years now and I have experienced the jump in conversion since then

However, I would additionally suggest that -

1. Include couple of contact fields as well like Name, Email, Project Details (Phone number is optional as many people may not like to disclose their phone number to an unknown person)

2. Include a link to the privacy policy or at least make the visitor feel safe enough that his information will not be sold out!

3. Put this contact form in every page of the website

4. When a contact form has been filled and submitted, a feedback must be generated in form of a “Thank you message”. This make the user confident that his action has yielded a positive result.

5. DO NOT put a “Reset” button below the form. I have seen countless websites where they have a stupid “Reset” button which gets pressed by a person-in-a-hurry and results in wiping out the entire effort of filling up the form.

6. Set a “tab” preference in the correct order, so that when a user presses “tab” after filling in one field, he is taken to the next field. the sequence must be correct and end with the “Submit” button.

It do a lot of good to your website and conversion!

Abhishek