Several people have asked me recently, “How can I add Hebrew to my Word or PowerPoint documents?”. (You may not know, but I was part of the Microsoft team that wrote the RTL code for its operating system). If you use Microsoft, you have full Hebrew support right now at your fingertips!

Enjoy my easy step-by-step process on how to add Hebrew to your documents, presentations and spreadsheets:

After following my Blog you will be able to do the following:

If you feel the post was useful, I need small favor from you guys. Please go over my other posts and contribute grammer/better English Comments and Suggestions below the post. TODA!

Sample One - Hebrew on Excel (Yartzheit dates)

Sample Two - Hebrew on Outlook E-Mail

Sample Three - Hebrew on YouTube

INSTRUCTIONS TO ENABLE HEBREW IN WINDOWS

Click START -> CONTROL PANEL

Switch to Classic View

Click on REGIONAL AND LANGUAGE OPTIONS
You may need your Windows CD, so have it handy.

Click on the middle tab “Languages”
In “Supplemental Language Support”, make sure “INSTALL FILES FOR COMPLEX SCRIPT AND RIGHT TO LEFT LANGUAGES is checked.

Click on “Details” button

Add the Input Language
“Default Input Language” on top should be ENGLISH (UNITED STATES).
Click on “Add” button

Find Hebrew in the Language List
On the “Add Input Language” Dialogue Box (Input Language) find Hebrew in the listing and press OK.

Set your Language Bar
Your “Text Services” box should appear like the diagram on the left with HE Hebrew etc.
Go to “Preferences” on the bottom of the box and click on “Language Bar”.

SHOW TEXT LABELS ON THE LANGUAGE BAR
Check the first box SHOW LANGUAGE BAR ON DESKTOP and SHOW TEXT LABELS ON THE LANGUAGE BAR.

Switching between English and Hebrew

You may toggle between English and Hebrew by pressing ALT-SHIFT.
Another way is to click with on the EN or HE icon on the Formatting Toolbar.

If it is not present, click on the down arrow on the last item on the Formatting Toolbar and then ADD OR REMOVE BUTTONS and then choose FORMATTING. Place a check next to EN KEYBOARD LANGUAGE. Do not confuse with another similar sounding item LANGUAGE. (That will indicate the language in use but you cannot switch languages by using it).

If the KEYBOARD LANGUAGE Switch is not found using the above method, go to the TOOLS menu and choose CUSTOMIZE. Using the COMMANDS tab (2nd tab), go to FORMAT and find EN KEYBOARD LANGUAGE in the right side box. Highlight it and then drag it to the top toolbar.

Maintaining Correct Typing when Switching Languages
To Switch from English to Hebrew (when using Left to Right orientation)

….when you type the last letter in English, press space while still in English and then switch to HE (Hebrew) by method 1 or 2 above and continue typing in Hebrew. Since this sentence is basically an English sentence (LTR) to place a period, switch to EN and type the (English) period (on key top is >).

When switching from Hebrew to English (when using Left to Right orientation).when you reach the last letter in Hebrew, switch to EN (English) by method 1 or 2 and press space, (English) comma or period and continue typing in English. Put an English period to end the sentence.

To switch from Hebrew to English (when using Right to Left orientation)

…when you type the last letter in Hebrew, press space while still in Hebrew and then switch to EN (English) by method 1 or 2 above and continue typing in English. Since this sentence is basically a Hebrew sentence (RTL) to place a period, switch to HE and type the (Hebrew) period (on key top is ?).

When switching from English to Hebrew (when using Right to Left orientation)

….when you reach the last letter in English, switch to HE by method 1 or 2 and then press space, (Hebrew) comma or period and continue typing in Hebrew. Put a Hebrew period to end the sentence.

Hebrew Vowels Nikud

For the most part, vowels are not used (”ketiv Maleah” usually makes words recognizable). You can, however, place Hebrew vowels in their proper places by using the method described below. Although it can be done after typing each letter, it is easier to it after all the letters were typed.

1. Type all your text without vowels
2. Place your cursor after the first letter at the beginning of the document
3. Press CAPS LOCK and SHIFT KEY together. You may activate CAPS LOCK and then you only need to hold the SHIFT KEY.
4. The row with the number keys (only one exception) contain the vowels according to the table below
5. When you finished typing the vowel for the first letter release the SHIFT KEY, use the arrow key to advance to the end of the next letter –repeat steps 3 and 4 etc.
6. If you are using a RTL orientation, use the left arrow key; if you are using a LTR orientation, use the right arrow key.
7. When typing a letter with several nikkud entries, do it in the following order: first put in the Dagesh (if required), the Cholam Haser or the indicator for ? and then the vowel. (i.e., in the word below, after typing the Patach under the Hey, move the cursor to the Shin- place the Dagesh Hazak, put the right mark over the Shin and then type the Kamatz.

Using On Screen Keyboard (Hebrew or English)

Using On Screen Keyboard (Hebrew or English):
• To open On-Screen Keyboard, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to Accessibility, and then click On-Screen Keyboard.

• The program in which you want to type characters must be active while you are using On-Screen Keyboard. Also be sure the cursor is showing (blinking) in the document where you want to type text.
• To change languages click the EN or HE icon on the Formatting Toolbar. When you move the mouse pointer over the keyboard, the pointer will become a hand shape and the characters will change to the appropriate language

• When using the On-screen keyboard, it is advisable not to use ALT-SHIFT to change languages. Also, the on-line keyboard must be in lower case English letters before you can switch to Hebrew.

On-Screen Keyboard has several typing modes you can use to type data. The 2 most useful are:
• In clicking mode, you click the on-screen keys to type text.
• In hovering mode, you use a mouse or joystick to point to a key for a predefined period of time, and the selected character is typed automatically.
• Use Click Sound to add an audible click when you select a key.
• Use Always on Top to keep your keyboard displayed on your screen when you switch programs or windows

If you feel the post was useful, I need small favor from you guys. Please go over my other posts and contribute grammer/better English Comments and Suggestions below the post. TODA!

You asked about ReachLocal business model. This is what I’ve found about their business model. The name of the CEO I was speaking with is Zorik Gordon. Actually, he didn’t buy my product but he did ask for my advice!

From their site:

Q: What factors determine whether my ad will be seen on search engines?

A: The keywords chosen will also influence your ad appearances. ReachLocal chooses the best keywords that will drive target customers to your site. The daily budget of your campaign will determine how often your ad will show, and its positioning.

Q: How do you charge?

A: We put a margin on the advertising fees charged by the search engines we use i.e. Google, Yahoo!…

From Blogs:

Q: Hi, I’ve been looking at a company called Reach Local and wonder if anyone has any experience of working with them. I’m concerned that, whilst they may return good results, their reach or ability to generate volume is limited. Also, how do the search engines view the fact that they “mirror” the actual web-page? Thanks in advance

A: I’ve tested Reach Local out since January and was not happy with it. It was fairly easy and quick to implement and it was great being able to forward reports on to clients in the way of email. Whatever keywords you provide them with, they will expand into thousands of completely irrelevant keywords to generate a high volume of clicks - not necessarily focus on highly targeted, relevant keywords on your most profitable products / services.
They do not share their keyword lists with you to determine results on a keyword level to make optimizations.

In my experience with ReachLocal, my clients and I were very upset with the results we received and when handled manually, we saw a 90% decrease in costs, a significant jump in positioning, double the amount of clicks, and huge ROI. With Reachlocal, we were wasting money, getting few clicks, and no sales. We also got a significant amount of traffic from outside the state and country we were targeting.

Susan: Banned by Google. No idea why. It’s been banned for nearly a year.
I’ve owned … since about 2000. I did a few pet events and advertised mostly through traditional advertising “not online”. The site was indexed then. Then I stopped doing anything with … and it parked for about a year (with Sedo or some other 3rd party company - can’t really remember which one).

I brought it back online and made it an affiliate sales type of site, and it was still indexed in Google. But out of the blue it became unindexed. I then changed the site layout by making it a blog with all of the affiliate type stuff on the back pages.

My only SEO efforts have been to have it submitted to directories. Other than that, I really haven’t done anything with it. Which is why I’m so puzzled as to why it became unindexed.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your help.

Martin: Hi Susan,

I have checked your site, and indeed you’re banned from Google but not from MSN and not from Yahoo!
You did few mistakes causing to have poor ranking on MSN & Yahoo though and to not be forgivable by Google as they’re just too tough.

Please tell me:

When exactly did you “brought it back online”?

Susan: Hi Martin,

I know I’m banned, I just don’t know why.

I’m not exactly sure when I made the site active again. Probably about 2 years ago.
I did a lot of directory listings. I know these type of links don’t add a lot to a web site but I didn’t think they would negatively effect the domain. According to Google I have about 179 links that go to …com.

Here are some of the directories I submitted to ( if you type search …com on google you will see a lot of them):

seo-friend.com
aaawebdirectory.com
directory.searchwarp.com
viesearch.com
hlnk.com
abigdir.com

The affiliate sites were all pet related sites that I joined in Commission Junction. Sites like animalden.com, petsmart.com, and sitstay.com.

Thanks for your help.

Sincerely, Susan

Martin: Susan,
These days Google very much care on your SEO tempo (one day, I will write a blog post about this…). You can’t get hundreds of links out of the blur especially from sites that are banned themselves (!) or sites that are related to SEO. Google is not stupid.

CJ is the best affiliate program, no problem with them.

Okay. I can try to take you out of banning if it worth you 4 hours of my time. It can take something from 3 weeks to 3 months to put you back on Google.

Yes, take this free tip: Ask the directories above to move your listing out right away.

Hope it helps.

Read More SEO Q&A >>

Sherry: Currently, we have a very limited budget… We recently hired a company to assist us with our site/Yahoo store - with terrible (no) results. Your company appears to be very knowledgeable in SEO/Yahoo stores so we considered we’d inquire with you as to whether you might offer any “budget” services to help us with our site - particuarly with search engine rankings - can you evaluate our site and let us know?
Thank you.

Search3w: We have heard many stories like yours. The way Yahoo store works is very different than you can imagine.
Let’s face the facts. Yahoo has absolutely no ambition to let you success with organic Google ranking. Did you know that Google dislike to rank many sites that runs on same server (like Yahoo) and on the very same category?

Typically this is what you want to do:

You asked me about the budget. Search3w offering plans that range from $200 introductory service through to full service. On some plans our Recurring Usage Charge is $1 only.

Read More SEO Q&A >>

Barry: Can you look at our site and re : Converting dynamic web pages into static ones…Is that a solution to better SEO or can you make a proposition overall with our site and give us a creative idea of price. Currently, we are with Monster Commerce ( Network Solution ) and quite unhappy after spending good sums of money with poor results.
Thank you so much.

Search3w: Your site has zero PageRank, zero incoming links and suffers from poor indexing. Online jewelry is one of the highest competitive markets, and if you don’t have $100,000 for the 1st year your best bet is to do SEO yourself.

Static pages (and I mean real static pages, not tricks) will cost you too much at this point.
We can help you with only 5 hours to push your site forward and to do SEO yourself for the next 6 months. You’ll be ready for static conversion by then.

Read More SEO Q&A >>

My collegeaus and competitors have been writing about their website performance on 2007. Now it’s my turn.

These days if you are not on the first page of a Google search you might not be invisible. Research has shown that people rarely go beyond the first page of a Google search. The Internet offers a rapid and extremely low cost way to perform test price/products, measure, change cycle and compare the effects immediately, even for different geographic spots - at almost zero advertising cost.

Search3w has a proven solution and seven years of experience that will do 3 things for your business:

Increase your web visibility - People will be able to find your website easily when they are searching Google, MSN and Yahoo!

Increases sales - Once they do, the site will provide what they are looking for, quickly and easily, results with more conversions (sales).

Increase walk-in traffic - web visibility increases in-store traffic by 60% according to a Jupiter Media study (and proved by our client’s data).

Usability Process

We propose a two-part Usability process:
1. Search Engine Optimization, to get more people to your site, and
2. Usability Testing, to ensure they have a good experience once they are there.

“Improving the customer experience increases the number of buyers by 40% and increases order size by 10%.” Creative Good – The actual ROI from a usability test can vary dramatically, but it is rare to find a website that does not experience a positive return from this investment if they actually implement the changes recommended.

Usability testing done at Staples.com, for example, produced the following results:

- 67% more repeat customers - 31- 45% reduced drop off rates
- 10% better shopping experience - 80% increased traffic

A common web owners’ mistake is to think “Build it, and They Will Buy”. The fact is “Build it, and They Will Compare”. Online shoppers start by comparing not buying. Usability outputs will be published on Search3w Site Wizard pages so almost no effort needs to make by your staff.

Because of the way your current content management system has set up your site, Google will never rank your website well as it stands. However, Search3w uses proprietary technology to boost Web page rankings for sites such yours. With one client, for example, Search3w technology was responsible for:

- 33 TIMES more revenue in 1 month - $64,000 more sales in 1 month
- Increasing the web site visibility by a factor of 5
- Increasing walk-in customers by 60%

Read More on Usability >>

Mr. Pollard: Declined account, about 1 year ago, no particular reason given, just a short list and told it could one or more of the reasons.
Subsequent requests to join up declined, as URL is “associated with banned site.” I really don’t understand and have given up trying to get a straight answer. Does this make any sense to you? Site averages is about 15M unique a day, and about 80M page views, due to lots of unique content, which is added and up-dated all the time. Help!

Search3w: Thank you for contacting Search3w Search Engine Solutions.
In one hand we can’t any signs of banning for your website, but in the other hand your traffic volume does not match the fact that you have only ONE link on Google, low pagerank and zero related sites.

Something is WRONG HERE!

Please provide me with more details especially about:

“Declined account” -> declined by whom? Google adwords, Google organic, MSN…?

“just a short list” -> Can you FWD the list to my preview?

Read More SEO Q&A >>

Ksatish: One website has 5 domains all are opening separately without any redirect. In those domains one was optimised now a client asking another domain in those 5 to optimize is it possible or not?

Search3w: Dear Ksatish,

I prefer one big website divide into “areas”.
Be sure that Google knows about your brother/sister sites connections, and I can have proof it to you.
In and of itself that Google didn’t harm your site until the present time doesn’t mean it wouldn’t do it from here on.

Read More SEO Q&A >>

Geanie: I used google key words for several months but didn’t get one call. Now rankings are extremely low. Not sure if I am effected by Googles attack on Realtors (non authority sites). Can you tell me if it was and can it be improved. Thanks.

Search3w: Your landing page is a flash introduction. This explains all.
Point your visitors to a REAL page, with text content!

Read More SEO Q&A >>