Visit the Web Professionals site - again! The site has a whole new look, with an easy-to-navigate front page. Check out all the resources page, look at this issue on-line or get some pointers on creating a successful Internet presence.

Let us know what you think!

If the Web is part of your company's marketing future, or if you need some help with your Internet Marketing plan, the following article is a must-read:

~ Top Tips for Selecting an Internet Marketing Agency
http://www.sddt.com/reports/sellers/bayne.html

Want to add some graphics to liven up your site? Here are some places to go to learn about GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) basics

~ Graphics: GIF
http://WWW.Stars.com/Authoring/Graphics/GIF.html

A summary of GIF's history and abilities

~ The GIF Foundry
http://www.imagine.co.uk/foundry/

Everything you ever wanted to know about GIF, including pointers for Photoshop and PaintShop Pro users

~ Graphics formats for the World Wide Web
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/Overview.html (scroll down for GIF)

Getting a Web site listed in various search engines and directories is one of the most important aspects of Internet Marketing. If a link to your site does not come up within the first 3 results pages when prospects enter relevant keywords into Lycos or Alta Vista (or one of the other many listings sites), they won't know your site is out there, and won't be stopping in for a visit.

The first step to promoting your site on the Web is to make sure you have meta tags on all main Web pages in your site. A meta tag is a line of text embedded in the section of a Web page. They provide hidden data to servers, search engines and web browsers. These tags allow you to include keywords and a site description in a Web page, along with some other information useful for indexing.

The following URLs will help you gain a better understanding of meta tags and how to use them.

How to use "Meta Tags" within your webpage http://www.webcreation.com/design/meta.html

This pages offers a good overall description of the main meta tags, with some dos and don'ts of usage.

META builder
http://vancouver-webpages.com/VWbot/mk-metas.html

Looking for innovative ways to use the ‘Net? What about this:

Poetry Daily (http://www.poems.com/), the premier web site for professionally published poetry, passed one-million hits at the end of August after less than 5 months in operation. Founded in April of this year, the online anthology offers a new poem every day from more than 50 poetry book and journal publishers.

In addition to the daily poem, Poetry Daily offers daily poetry news, an extensive poetry archive, an event calendar, and special features on new publications. Regular registration contests offer prizes such as a newly released audio CD featuring Billy Collins, and copies of the popular print anthology The Best American Poetry 1997.

Oh yeah, you can order books on-line, too!