Thursday, June 8, 2006

06/08/06 - SEO, FTC Policing Claims, SUS Updates


06/08/06 - VITAMIN LAWYER UPDATE e-MEMO

1. Search Engine Optimization
2. FTC to Police Vitamin Claims
3. Citizen's Health Freedom Petition
4. Site Use Statement Updates

This memo is going out to the Vitamin Lawyer eList. If you do not want to receive occasional information from me, please let me know. The purpose of the Vitamin Lawyer Update Memo is to keep my client base and others involved in the nutritional and complementary markets up-to-date on developments.

1. SEO - Search Engine Optimization - Since many recipients are Internet marketers, I often provide information about optimizing search engine ranking. At the end of this email is a copy of a recent piece from Entire Web that I think you will find interesting. Link to Article.

2. The FTC is getting more active in the vitamin world - "Lee Peeler, Deputy Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said [in Congressional testimony], “Although many supplements offer the potential for real health benefits to consumers, unproven products and inaccurate information can pose a threat to the health and well-being of consumers and cause economic injury.”

“The Commission has focused its enforcement priorities on national advertising claims for products with unproven benefits; products promoted to treat or cure serious diseases; products that may present significant safety concerns to consumers; and products that are deceptively marketed to or for children and adolescents,” the testimony stated. The FTC has filed fourteen complaints in the past year against companies making allegedly unsubstantiated or false advertising claims for dietary supplements and other natural healthcare products, including oral sprays, creams, and patches. Also, in the past year, the Commission obtained orders against forty companies and forty-four individuals, which prohibited the unlawful practices and required the defendants to pay a total of $35.5 million in consumer redress, disgorgement, and civil penalties."

Please read the above , again, carefully… “a word to the wise…”

3. Health Freedom – Here’s a link to the Citizen’s Petition pending before the FDA on certain health freedom issues.

http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/05p0433/05p-0433-sup0002-vol1.pdf

4. Note to clients: If you haven't had your web Site Use Statement (Disclaimer / Disclosure / Privacy statements) reviewed in over a year, you should consider having it reviewed. I've added several paragraphs to my standard SUS format to cover recent changes in the law, including the recent Food Allergens Notification law and some even more esoteric developments.

www,SiteUseStatement.com

Ralph Fucetola JD
www.vitaminlawyer.com

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Basic On-Page Search Engine Optimization - www.entireweb.com

There are 2 different types of search engine optimization, on-page and off page. Here you'll learn the differences between them, and basic tips to getting your website optimized for the search engines.

What Is The Difference Between On-Page And Off-Page Search Engine Optimization

The difference is that on-page optimization involves changing elements of your actual webpages that most visitors to your site wont even notice. For example, having your keywords in specific places or writing the title a certain way. Basically it's tweaking all elements of a page which are a factor for ranking well in the search engines.

Where as off-page optimization , is partially out of your control. You do have some control over it, but it's largely dependant on what others think about your website, unless you take an active role in off-page optimization. Off page optimization is quite a large topic, so I'll talk about it in a separate article.

Basic On-Page Elements You Need To Tweak:

For starters , you need to give your pages a title between the <> - < /title > tags in the head section of the page. Make it a descriptive title with at least 1 keyword. 4 words maximum is usually enough. Please don't leave the title as "untitled", and don't set it to "home" or "Page 1" or anything like that. Doing so won't help your search engine rankings one bit.

Next you need to write a description using the description meta tag i.e. < name= "Description" content= "yourdescriptionhere">. This should go in the head part of the html, after the <>

Now You need to use the keyword meta tag . Just as a side note, most search engines don't often use meta tags anymore, but it certainly wont hurt your rankings. Here's what the keyword meta tag looks like, < name= "Keywords" content= "your,keywords,here">. Include each keyword / keyphrase once. Do not repeat your keywords over and over in the keywords tag, once each is fine.

Ok now we need to change elements of the page than people will actually see. The stuff you just typed in will only be readable by search engine spiders when they crawl your pages, apart from the title of your page of course.

First you need to have a header in a
"tag." It doesn't look particularly pretty, but it's effective. It lets the search engine spider know, that the piece of test in the

tag is important. Now you need to write a header in the

that contains your keywords. It's pretty similar to just having the page title on the actual page. Doesn't need to be long, just a few descriptive words about what the following page is about.

This next one is the part I'm going to have to leave in your hands. If you haven't got any content on the page, then you need to write it. Try to include the keywords about 3 times in the top third of the page. Only put them where it will read correctly. For example don't put them all in one sentence because it will sound silly. Try to make your content an absolute minimum of about 400-500 words.

Do you have images on your webpage ? Then you need to give them "alt" tags. These are just incase a user cannot display or chooses to not display images for whatever reason. Instead, they will see whatever you place into your alt tag. Only put in your keyword as part of the alt tag if it is relevant. The alt tag should be descriptive to the image.

Make the above changes to your webpages and you should see a nice rise in your search engine ranks when they next index your site. It will definately pay off in the end. Best of luck!

About the Author: Stephen Warren is the creator of www.MakeAGreatSite.com. There you'll learn how to make a great site and turn it into a money making machine in no time. Your free to publish this article on any website, providing it is unedited and complete, t