Call to Action
SEO, like every other industry, is full of buzz words. In advertising, "Call to Action" is going to be one of the most popular and most important buzz words to consider and even design your website for.
Most of the websites concerned with "Call to Action" are looking at selling product, but any website should consider getting a visitor's attention; why else be online than to get people's attention.
The misconceptions are there and to be avoided. For instance, how many times have you been inundated with popups, music or in-your-face obnoxiousness only to have to close the site or close your browser to escape? Popups can be done tastefully, but the technology to block popups may be enough to consider not using them.
If you are selling product then your best option is the "Add to Cart" link next to the product. Commonly used related phrases would be "doing words" such as "Click here", "Buy Now", "Enter Now" or "Click to download."
The page title tag, the text that appears at the very top of the browser window, is undoubtably the most important area to consider as it also appears before the descriptions on the search engine result pages. The description meta tag is also important as is good wording on the Open Director (DMOZ.org) which is often used instead of the description meta tag. The page description is what appears just below the title of the search engine result page listings.
In all cases, no matter the nature of the website, let your message make the sale. If your site pages are well written then you will be shown to be an authority and the visitor will want to contact you for more information or to purchase your services or product. Remember to make sure that every page on your website includes either your contact information or a link to it. Visitors must be able to contact you easily or else they will move on to your competition.
The worst thing that you can do is drive someone from your site before they can contact you.
That said it should be noted that obnoxious spam techniques do work for many, but do you really want to have one of those kind of sites?
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