Hello (again) Joe,

While I was at it today (Sunday, that supposed day of rest that often ain't), I finally remembered to pay attention to the "META tags." Some of those "tags" are one of the keys to people making it to your web site from (the giant) search engines... The long and short of it is the answer to the question of, "How do those web pages pop up on search engine lists after we type in things like, 'Sports cars,' 'Reality,' 'Ancient history of the Palenazoans near Africa,' 'International shipping rates and contracts,' etc.."

"META tags" are (a big part of) that answer... Essentially, what they are (or contain), are "key words" the search engine "web crawlers" pick up and store when they visit your site (and every other site on the internet), once every 3 weeks to a month, or so...

Here are the "keywords" (and actual code) I typed into the META tags on the (revised) MFMC home page today:

[meta name="keywords" content="mortgage, Mortgage, Real Estate, real estate, home buying, home financing, North Dakota, ND, Minnesota, MN, North Dakota real estate, Minnesota real estate, mortgage interest rates, lake homes, lake property, lakes country, Fargo, Bismarck, Jamestown, Grand Forks, Moorhead, Dillworth, Detroit Lakes, Cormorant, Park Rapids, Wadena, walleye fishing."]

If there are others you'd like added, taken out, etc., please just head for the forum, click the "META tags: Continuing web site construction education" link, and then the "Contribute an answer" button at the bottom of the page this is on, and type them in...

Remember: The object is to think of the kind of things the person sitting in Texas, Alaska, London, Hong Kong, etc., who's thinking about moving to North Dakota, or the lakes country of Minnesota, will type into the "Search" field (or box) at Google, AltaVista, or any of the other major search engines...

Seeya,

-- Anonymous, August 11, 2002