the sephone blog

Last night, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of marketing students about YouTube, and its viability as a marketing vehicle for your brand, or for yourself. We talked about the importance of becoming involved in the growing communities fostered by YouTube, and other social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Participation in these kinds of sites, as well as blogs, gives you the opportunity to either meet others who do what you do, or who need what you offer.

Many of the students I spoke with hadn’t realized the impact of YouTube. A few numbers, courtesy of Wikipedia.org:

• In June of 2006, people watched an estimated 2.5 billion videos on YouTube.
• In May of ’06, about 50,000 videos per day were uploaded, a number which increased to 65,000 by July 2006.
• There are currently an estimated 72 million videos on YouTube, and over five million user accounts (which doesn’t include the number of YouTube visitors without accounts)
• In November 2006, Google acquired YouTube for the cool sum of $1.65 billion in Google stock.

And those numbers are growing.

Of course, the reasons people watch online video are numerous. Oh, sure, if you want to watch cute videos of bulldogs skateboarding, or otters holding hands, you certainly can, and millions do. However, as a Brand, or as a Marketer, you must know two immutable facts: First, online video is RAPIDLY becoming an information source – a place to learn about politics (Remember the CNN YouTube debates?), keep up with current events, discover new music, and so on. Second, it’s still pretty young. It’s a new idea for many, who don’t yet see the possibilities it presents as a bona fide medium.

YouTube’s slogan is “Broadcast Yourself.” So, if you’re selling yourself, or you’re selling a product or service, why not? It’s free, it’s pretty easy, and you don’t have to be a professional videographer to post your own videos, comment, interact with the community, and be visible to millions. But you don’t have to reach millions. You don’t have to be worldwide. You can post a video to YouTube, and very easily embed it onto your own website, or your company’s, or your MySpace or Facebook page, where your customers, contacts, or colleagues already are. You can post a video, and link to it when you blog, or when you comment on other blogs. In fact, if your laptop has one of those little video cameras, create and post your vlog (video blog). You can be more visible for free.

Best of all, that increased visibility can be targeted to the people you want to reach. Say you’re a hotelier in a New England resort town, interested in attracting vacationers. You can produce a short video* about your hotel or your town, post it on YouTube, and then put that video on your website, maybe the town’s Chamber of Commerce website, as well as link to it through travel blogs, and so on. Plus, YouTube allows you to add searchable keywords to your video so that viewers who are searching for, say, “Maine vacations” can find your video more easily. In short, your product, your service, your Brand, can be placed online where it’s easy for people who are looking can find you. Compared to ad campaigns through traditional media, it’s an extremely cost-effective way to add a facet to your marketing, and “fish where the fish are.”

To see what a YouTube “channel” looks like, I invite you to visit my SlatersGarage channel: Try it. Explore. You can set up a free YouTube account without having to upload videos. You can simply watch, comment, add favorites, and participate within the community. If you’re a business owner, search YouTube for similar businesses, and see what others are doing. As you read blogs, notice how many have YouTube videos embedded in order to augment content.

I’ll sum up with the same words I spoke to those students last night: Get involved online. If you’re marketing a business, blog about your own, and contribute to others. If you’re marketing yourself, do the same. Your YouTube, MySpace, or Facebook pages are like living, breathing resumes that are always visible to future employers and future colleagues. It’s interactive marketing in an interactive medium.

So, interact.

* Look for future posts soon on how to inexpensively produce your own videos, as well as more on consumer-generated advertising, viral marketing, and online video concepts and strategies

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The obvious and not so obvious things you can do to make your site more searchable without spending money on search engine marketing & How to apply to datAvenger and dALite.

The following may be basic, or obvious- but sometimes overlooked. People used to say computers were dumb. They can only spit out what they are given. So are Search Engines. They can only know so much about your website, but what your ‘tell’ them.

The responsibility falls with the site owner, because that is who knows the most about their business, but if the site isn’t built right or doesn’t support current methodologies, then that is our responsibility.

datAvenger 4.0 CMS and daLite both have META and content features that allow content editors the ability to manage and optimize what a Search Engine can see about a business or organization to assist in indexing and ranking a site when it gets crawled.

By no means are we stating that this is the end-all/save-all to having your site rank in the top 10; but not doing these basic things can almost guarantee that you will not be in the top 10.

OK-

Here are some OBVIOUS guidelines.

1. Have a somewhat recognizable URL. Abbreviations are not the best when dealing with the web. www.cooc.com is quick to say but www.coloradooutdoorcenter.com (if available) is better.
2. Find and arrange to have sites that are relevant to yours link to you. And link to them. By having this in place- you tell SE’s that your site is relevant in this category when they see that other sites related to yours link to you. SE’s actually find you through those links and then if you have a link back to that site- it is even more relevant. These links should be done with individual contact with each site owner.
3. Submit your site to DMOZ, Yahoo, Google, etc. and other industry sites if applicable.
4. Add a crawl-able site map to your site. The Google Site Map is great and is used by SE’s to learn about the sites architecture/navigation and adds exposure to all your pages.
5. Maintain the site content regularly. Doing this not only shows regular visitors that you maintain the site with current/timely information, but also demonstrates to SE’s that you are in fact still around.
6. Domain Registration- If you can- renew your domains for as long as you can. Domain names registered for a long time demonstrates legacy and longstanding meaning that adds to your ranking. Renewing a domain 1 year at a time for the last 8 years is less effective than renewing a domain for 5 or 10 years into the future at a time. Having an 8 year old domain name IS fantastic- but give it more value- renew it for longer periods if you can.

For datAvenger 4.x and daLite users-

We have already taken care of clear text page names and paths for SE’s to be able to index. Again, though, refrain from Cryptic abbreviations or extra long page names when creating them.

1. Title all your pages from within the Admin area look for the <M> icon for META data. Then review all pages for a good Page Title. Titles should be more than “Home” or “Contact US”. A better Page title contains your primary category for your business or Organization and the name of this page;
2. When including images, make sure they all have meaningful names AND you include alt-text for ADA assisted browsers. A typical photo from a digital camera may be given the name DSC0001.jpg. Only YOU know what it is and therefore you should rename it to “snowmobiling_in_maine_08.jpg before uploading it; and include an alt-tag for ‘Snowmobiling in the North Maine Woods, Maine - Colorado Outdoor Center- 2008″
3. Add links within content to other relevant sites
4. Add links to associations Rotary, Professional Associations, etc.
5. Have relevant, current and orginal content
6. Avoid tricks and other “Sure ways to get ranked”
   1. hidden links or text to attempt to trick SE’s
   2. unnecessary or duplicate content
   3. doorway pages created just for search engines
7. Fresh Home page content that includes links to your internal pages with in the context of the content- Whew- what does that mean - Try to have the pages linked within the actual text of the home page. This aids in showing SE’s that the site has relevance; re-using the navigation terms, which is also relevant, that is keyword density. The higher the relevance and density, the higher the rank. That’s why you dont place popular/trendy keywords on a site if they have nothing to do with the site. At one time this was a big trick. Placement of these terms almost guarenteed SE’s would rank the site- Now they know better.
8. Keywords placed in the Admin Area for <Meta data> should be ordered by the relevance to the actual services provided. IF you sometimes serve lunch- dont put it # 1.
9. Description should be detailed but NOT more than a sentence or two. A paragraph or marketing tagline is not what this should be.

Periodically- we will update this and share insight on the do’s and don’ts- If you have any questions please send them to support@sephone.com

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Welcome to the first of many datAvenger tips & tricks from the gals in the front office! This week we’ll be going over how to re-order and re-organize navigation points (for datAvenger users only).

Start by clicking on the Architecture tab at the top of your screen. Your pages are organized in a hierarchy. Pages at the top level of the hierarchy are called “Parent pages”, and those one level lower are called “Children pages” or “Child pages”.

Click on a page title to select it, then on the pencil to edit.

To move a page above or below another page at the same level in the hierarchy, use the dropdown next to “Order”. To change the current page’s parent page (the page one level higher in the hierarchy), you’ll first need to click on the plus sign next to “Advanced Information”.

A new section will appear with a dropdown menu called “Parent Page”. Any page can be a parent page. This dropdown contains a list of every page on your website. The page that you select will become the current page’s parent, meaning that the current page will be one level beneath it.

Once you have selected the new parent page, you might need to revisit the “Order” dropdown at the top of the screen if there are multiple “children” pages. When you are done, don’t forget to click on “Save Changes”!

Was this topic helpful to you? Do you have any questions? Feel free to leave us a comment!

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How can you keep up on everything these days? With the 24 hour news cycle, your business and personal life (what’s that?) all going full tilt, how do you keep on top of it all?

As a small business owner, the thought of even having to try to learn something new is just mind boggling. EVEN if it means that in the long run you know it is a time saver.

Well, enter a “feed reader.” Rather than go to individual web sites to see what is new about them, like foxnews.com, espn.com, maine.gov, blog.sephone.com, or whatever other sites you are interested in, what if those sites came to you in one location for you to look at there new content.

That’s exactly what a feed does. A “feed” is a way for a website, to get new information to you, without plugging up your email inbox or worse your computer with junkie software.

In your browser (that’s what you look at the Internet with, like Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari), have you ever seen that little orange icon that looks like the one to your right?

That little icon means that the website provides a feed for you. Sometimes you will see abbreviations like ATOM, RSS, or XML, don’t worry about what all of those mean. Sometimes the icon may even appear in your address bar, like it does for my browser.

See below:

Feeds are best delivered through a website that you log into, I prefer GOOGLE READER. It is what they call “web based” and it is FREE!! Enter your email address, put in a password and start grabbing information from sites you look at all ready. The reader just puts them all in one place so no more surfing, no more downloading .pdf’s, etc.

We would like you to subscribe to blog.sephone.com so you can look at our updates. AND we are not trying to sell you anything! Just as a Sephone client, as we learn, you can learn with us! Also the others, you won’t have to remember all the sites you like. The headlines are on your screen and you can manage them when you are able to catch up on the news!

Feeds are only going to grow and you can eliminate all those “newsletters” to your mailbox!

Below is a simple screencast of adding maine.gov news feed to my Google Reader.

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Whenever you talk about technology, you’re likely to get an earful of abbreviations and acronyms. We know it’s confusing - we deal with it every day! Here’s a little “geek glossary” to help you navigate some of the more common things you might hear us mention.

• dA / dA lite: dA and dA lite refer to Sephone’s content management systems, datAvenger and datAvenger lite. The content management system is the administrative area where you can edit your site.
• HTML: HTML is really the language of the Web. Just like Word documents are used for word processing and PowerPoint is used for presentations, HTML is used to display Web pages within a browser. When the browser reads the HTML, it adds the right colors, links, text sizes, and more to create a readable Web page (like this one!). (It stands for “hypertext markup language”, which is a really complicated way of saying that HTML pages can use text formatting and can link to other pages.)
• PHP: Most of the sites we create use another programming language known as PHP. PHP allows us to build sites that change based on what the site owner tells the site to do: display an image gallery, post press releases, or allow you to check out on an e-commerce site. All of these happen before the page even reaches your Web browser.
• SEO: Short for “search engine optimization”, SEO is an ever-changing study of how to make your sites look their best in search engines like Google and Yahoo. This is done through a combination of stuff that we control (easy-to-read page addresses, clean programming, and more) and a bunch of things that are up to the site owner to control (page titles, meta data, and most importantly, the actual content of the site).
• WYSIWYG: Many of our products use a tool known as a WYSIWYG, or “what you see is what you get” editor. A WYSIWYG editor looks like a stripped-down version of a word processing program like Word; it will give you the ability to boldface, italicize, or resize text, as well as a number of other functions. Some WYSIWYGs even let you insert links or images into your text. The WYSIWYG in datAvenger, for example, has over 25 different actions built right in.

Is there anything else that you think should be a part of this list? Leave a comment and let us know.

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Microsoft has placed a bid to buy Yahoo for 44 billion, Microsoft’s largest acquisition so far. Read more at Fox News. Here are a few Sephone opinions on the announcement.

Alan:

It’s going to be really good or really bad. It could be good because yahoo/MS together can compete with Google, and both will get better. It could be bad because their cool things like del.icio.us and flickr could get bad because Microsoft has a rep for being bland, bloated and generic; Delicious and Flickr are lightweight and personal. It’s good that somebody is going to try to keep Google from running away with the show.

Joe:

It better not happen.

Kelly:

If the quality of Microsoft services will affect Yahoo and their services, then we are really in trouble.

Scott:

Good for Microsoft, bad for Yahoo.

Justin:

If the deal ends up going through, it will be up to Microsoft to decide how much freedom to give Yahoo’s properties like del.icio.us and Flickr to allow them to innovate and grow. Yahoo has a major place in the Web’s history, and it’s still the top site in terms of traffic. What would the combination of Live Search and Yahoo mean for Google and the Web in general?

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With the growing features of Google Maps and the interest it is generating, we have been asked “How to get added?”- Here are the instructions, straight from the mouth of Google!

We gather business information from numerous websites, Yellow Pages directories, and other sources to populate Google Maps search results. If you’d like to be included, you can easily enter your information into our online Local Business Center for free. Here’s how:

• Visit the Local Business Center.
• If you already have a Google Account, sign in with your email and password.
• If you don’t have a Google Account, click Sign up for an account now.
• Follow the instructions to create a listing.

Please remember these points:

• The street address you enter will be shown in the Google Maps search results.
• If you already have an AdWords login address and password, you can use it to log in to the Local Business Center.
• Once you’ve submitted your business information, you’ll need to verify the listing before it goes live. You can verify using a touch-tone phone, SMS, or a PIN that will be sent via regular mail to your business address. Once the listing is verified, your information will normally appear in our results within six weeks.
• You must be able to receive regular mail at your business address if you are unable to verify by phone or SMS. A post office box can be used to register. The address you enter in the Google Local Business Center will be the address to which your PIN mailer is sent, and it will also be the address displayed in Google Maps results.

Want to add more than 10 business locations? You’re welcome to submit your information as a bulk upload through the Local Business Center. For information on creating a bulk upload, please select ‘Upload a Data File’ in your Local Business Center account and then follow our bulk upload instructions.

• The Google Local Business Center is currently available only for businesses in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, China, and Japan.
• For information about adding your website to Google, please review the Webmaster Help Center.
• There’s no charge for Local Business Center listings. Google doesn’t accept payment to include listings or sites in our search results. However, we do offer locally-targeted advertising through our AdWords program. With AdWords, you can run your paid ads near our unpaid search results, and your ads will be clearly marked as sponsored advertising.

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If you have a website, I am sure that you have heard of “SEO” (search engine optimization). One of the very best search engine enhancements that you can have is have a site that just follows the guidelines correctly. Google has a whole set of guidelines here. Here is a very simple summary of the most important things that google recommends you do.

• Make pages for users, not for search engines.
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
• Make sure that your TITLE tags and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.
• Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
• Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
• Have other relevant sites link to yours.
• Make sure your site is crawlable without javascript, cookie or image support.

So there are some simple things that can help your site to be seen by search engines.

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One of the easy ways to change how your site appears in search engine results is to change the metadata for your site’s pages. Sephone’s content management systems (datAvenger and datAvenger lite) allow you to change this information for any page on your site.

There are three main pieces of metadata for every page: the title, the description, and the keywords.

The page’s title is what appears in your browser’s title bar when you visit the page, and it also appears as the default title if you create a bookmark for the site. In the search engine world, the page’s title is what appears as the link to your site in the search results.

The page’s description is a short summary of what visitors would find on the page. This is often the text that appears underneath the page’s title in search engine results pages.

The keywords are a set of comma-separated words that describe the content of the page. Keywords used to play a major role in where your site appeared within search engine results, but now search engines rarely (if ever) look at keywords when visiting a page.

Setting meta data in datAvenger

datAvenger 4 gives you complete control over sitewide and page-specific metadata. To change the metadata on any page, edit the page in the Architecture tab and then click on the + button next to “Metadata”. datAvenger automatically generates a page title for you, but you’re free to change this if you like. You can also add keywords and a description in this space.

You also have the ability to specify sitewide meta data for any pages that do not have page-specific meta information. In the Globals tab, click on the blue META tab. Here you can specify a default title or a sitewide title prefix or suffix. datAvenger will show you a live preview of how your title will appear as you change these fields. You’re also able to change default keywords or the default description in this section.

Unless you’ve been given meta data from an external service, you can leave the “Custom Tags” field blank. This field is for advanced users who receive HTML meta data tags, and it can cause your page to display incorrectly if it is not entered in the right way!

Setting meta data in datAvenger lite

datAvenger lite 3.5 gives you the ability to edit meta data for any of your pages. Click on the <M> button after selecting any page in the Content tab. You’ll then have the option to specify a title, keywords, or a description. Like in datAvenger, leave the “Custom” box empty unless you’ve been given HTML meta data tags to enter!

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