• Intro
  
• Article - Should I get a counter for my website? By Will Johnson, Search Engine Optimizations Specialist
  
• The Office Corner
  
• Grammar Question of the Month - When do I use dashes in text?
  
• Tech Tips by Terence Kierans - Excel & Word
  
• Tech Corner
  
• Writing Corner
  
• Word of the Month - Impinge
  
• Recommendations
  
• Judy's Corner
  

* Although my guest article revolves around search engine optimization, it might be interesting for you to read it even if you don't have a website. If you own or operate a business, try reading the article from marketing and advertising perspectives. See if there aren't some interesting parallels for brick and mortar businesses to consider.

* Recently one of my clients asked the following: "Would having a website counter help us keep track of visitors?" They'd recently employed a Search Engine Optimization company I'd recommended: Net Profit Now, and wanted a way to keep in close touch with visitors.

I contacted www.netprofitnow.com owner, Will Johnson, and asked him to address the issues brought up by this question. His response is immediately below:

By Will Johnson, Search Engine Optimizations Specialist and owner of www.netprofitnow.com.

Wanting to know how many people visit your site is normal and it is important to know. A counter can do that.

However, knowing what your prospects do (and don't do) while on your site is crucial information, such as:

-- Did they leave right away?
-- Did they visit several pages?
-- Are most of them leaving the site from the same page?
-- Which pages are getting the most visits?

Also crucial is knowing how your prospects found your site:
-- Did they click a link in an ad? (which ad?)
-- Did they click a link from another site? (which site?)
-- Was the other site an organization you belong to, an industry directory, a local directory, a Search Engine?

If from a Search Engine, what keywords did they use?
-- Did they search on keywords that we currently target?
-- Did they search on keywords that we should target?

To get this important information, you need one of the tracking tools which have been developed in the past 2-3 years. My personal favorite is ClickTracks, http://www.clicktracks.com, because it presents the tracking data in an easy-to-understand visual form, which can turn dry statistics into actionable information; News You Can Use!

The counter tells you NONE of that important information, information upon which you can make decisions and budget money. Not only that, but a counter doesn't know the difference between a machine and a person.

All websites get visits from computer programs (called spiders, crawlers, robots, agents, bots--not to mention the many unnamed hacker programs out there. Each time one of these probes your site, the counter marks it up as another visitor, but a sophisticated tracking tool knows the difference between a human visitor and a software program.

Besides all that, a counter screams "1995!" and I don't think that is the image you want to project from your website.

1. EMBEDDING YOUR PHONE NUMBER IN A DOCUMENT: by Allen Wyatt
http://tinyurl.com/d8yb7

2. ADOBE TYPEFACES WITH MATHMETICAL FUNCTIONS:
http://store.adobe.com/type/browser/C/C_mathematical.html

3. FROM RAW TEXT TO FINE TYPE (AND BACK):
http://www.fontsite.com/Pages/WritingStyle/W&S0398.html

Prentice Hall Reference Guide to Grammar and Usage says dashes are considered somewhat informal, and that they can add emphasis and clarity. Author Muriel Harris suggests that you do not overuse dashes, especially as substitutes for commas or colons.

1. Use dashes at the beginning or end of sentences to set off added explanation or illustration, or to add emphasis or clarity. Example: Fame, fortune, and a Ferrari--these were his goals in life. (Harris suggests that you use parentheses if the added explanation is less important than the rest of the sentence.)

2. Use dashes to mark an interruption (a sudden break in thought, a surprise, or a deliberate pause). Example: According to her perception--but not mine--this was a worthwhile cause.

3. Use dashes to set off a phrase or a clause. When a phrase or clause already has commas within it, you can use dashes to set off the entire word group. Example: Hildy always finds interesting little restaurants--such as Lettuce Eat, that health food place, and Ho Ming's Pizza Parlor--to take us to after a concert.

For more information on dashes, including the different types, go to: http://www.editingandwritingservices.com/Dashes.html

EXCEL

SHORTCUT FOR SHOWING FORMULAE

1.	Save your worksheet.
2.	Press Ctrl+~, (Ctrl plus the tilde character). When you do this, Excel 97 and higher will display all the functions that have been entered instead of the results returned by those functions. You can now browse through the formulae onscreen, or print the sheet and do your proofreading on the hard copy.

It is recommended that you save your work before you print because when you display the formulae, Excel adjusts the column widths to fit. If you tweak the column widths before you generate your hard copy, you can close the file without saving changes; your original column widths will remain intact.

WORD

LESSER KNOWN SHORTCUT

There are several keyboard shortcuts to help you move around a document, which is important when you are into serious editing. MS Word also includes commands to move from sentence to sentence. These commands are not mentioned in MS Word's Help file, and neither are they assigned to any shortcut keys. The commands are:

"SentRight", which will move to the next sentence, and "SentLeft", which will move to the previous sentence.

To assign them to shortcut keys:

1.	Click the "Tools" menu.
2.	Click "Customise".
3.	Click the "Keyboard" tab or button.
4.	In the Categories list, find and click "All Commands".
5.	In the Commands list, find and click the command, such as "SentRight."
6.	With your cursor in the "Press New Shortcut Key" box, press the key combination you are going to use. I suggest CTRL + ALT + RIGHT ARROW for "SentRight" and CTRL + ALT + LEFT ARROW for "SentLeft". They are probably not already in use on your computer.
7.	Make sure the "Save Changes In" box shows "Normal.dot".
8.	Click the "Assign" button.
9.	Click the "Close" button.

Terence Kierans
Cyberspace Virtual Services
tkierans@virtualservices.com.au
http://www.virtualservices.com.au/
We keep your project on the boil, while you sleep

1. MOZILLA MYCROFT PAGE: Mycroft project offers a rich collection of Search Plugins for Mozilla-based browsers.
http://mycroft.mozdev.org/index.html

2. HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK: Recommended by Will Johnson of Net Profit Now--amd this month's guest writer.
http://www.searchengineguide.com/cosme/004489.html

3. FILE TOO BIG TO SEND BY REGULAR EMAIL?
http://www.yousendit.com/

1. FICTIONFINDER PROTOTYPE: FictionFinder provides a work-based approach to fiction. You can search by place (New Orleans, for example); by character (Nancy Drew), and more. When you find an item you are interested in, you can then learn whether your library has it.
http://fictionfinder.oclc.org/

2. TEN MISTAKES WRITERS DON'T SEE (BUT CAN EASILY FIX WHEN THEY DO): PAT HOLT
http://www.holtuncensored.com/ten_mistakes.html

3. WRITING TECHNIQUES AND REVISION FOR MAGAZINE ARTICLES
http://www.writersdigest.com/tipoftheweek.asp?id=2123

Main Entry:im£pinge
Pronunciation:im-*pinj
Function:intransitive verb
Inflected Form:im£pinged ; im£ping£ing
Etymology:Latin impingere, from in- + pangere to fasten, drive in — more at PACT
Date:1605

1 : to strike or dash especially with a sharp collision *I heard the rain impinge upon the earth — James Joyce*
2 : to have an effect : make an impression *waiting for the germ of a new idea to impinge upon my mind — Phyllis Bentley*
3 : ENCROACH, INFRINGE *impinge on other people's rights* –im£pinge£ment \-*pinj-m*nt\ noun

*By permission. From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary at www.m-w.com by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated.

1. YOUR WEBSITE NEEDS A CALL TO ACTION: by Gerry McGovern
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2005/nt_2005_05_16-call-to-action.htm

2. VIRTUAL GUMSHOES: Free resources for investigators. It calls itself the #1 source for links to free public records.
http://www.virtualgumshoe.com/

3. VIRTUAL SALT: Contains definitions and examples of more than sixty traditional rhetorical devices that can still be useful today to improve the effectiveness, clarity, and enjoyment of your writing.
http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm

Traditionally, June is a month for weddings. My family is no exception. One of my nieces will soon be married, and another will be married in July. They are so cute. And young. But so was I when I got married, although at the time I thought I knew everything. Yeah right.

Have you noticed the tendency of interviews to go something like this, "She married her husband in the summer of 1983," or "He married his wife in September." I thought people married people who THEN became husbands or wives. Comments?

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