Inviting a prospective client to come to a website is one of the most important first steps in having a successful website. When inviting a guest home for dinner or other social interaction the invitation is given in such a way as to make the offer attractive and desirable. Inviting a prospective client to spend time at a website should create similar feelings of invitation.

There are certain formats in which invitations can be extended socially these include verbal or a written invitations. When inviting some one to visit a website the invitation method is through the anchor text link and the description.

There are two places where people would normally see a websites invitation. The one area is text links on different sites. The other is through the search engines.

Controlling the invitation wording in search engines is possibly by paying attention to the title and description meta tags which are found in the code of each web page between the and tags.

There general format is as follows

A few years ago webmasters used these tags as an opportunity to add keywords to the site to try and influence the search engines in ranking the site higher. With search engines becoming more advanced using the meta tags in this way has become redundant and can be a disadvantage and cause a drop in rankings.

Meta tags are more suitable to be used as the way in which a prospective is invited to visit the website. In writing effective title and description tags it is good to treat them similar to Pay per Click advertising. Both Google and Yahoo have pointers in writing effective adverts and should be used as resources in crafting website invitations.

The procedure of writing an effective title and description can be summarized in five steps

Step one:

Identify who the websites potential customers are and what it is that the visitors will get by coming to the site or what solution is being offered or what problems are being solved by the website.

Step two:

Identify the keywords or hot words that will attract the potential visitor. Every problem will have words that relate directly to the problem. These words are not descriptive words like ‘best’ or ‘amazing’. An example would be ‘Home builder’ or ‘DIY’ when addressing the problem of an owner building a house.

Step three:

Write down all the features and benefits that will be provided by the website. While writing this list, remember that features and benefits are different. Not everything that is written down will be used straight away but it will give a resource for writing other areas of copy for the website as well as crafting the invitation.

Step four:

Write out a 20 word advert or invitation using hot words in the title, load it using the benefits identified. Make sure that the advert delivers the message that is intended.

Step five:

Test what has been written and monitor the number of visitors coming through the advert or invitation. If a winner head line is found don’t stop trying new ones as there may be an even better headline and description out there that will drive more traffic to the website.