Dear Client:

I’d be happy to explain the different considerations when choosing a platform or service to deliver your email newsletters. As we discussed, it’s possible to use your blog or a third-party email newsletter marketing service.

In many ways the technology behind a blog and an email newsletter management service are the same. They both contain a back-end database to store data like addresses and names and a front-end website component to collect the data. Both offer a way to deploy emails, but a specialty email newsletter service will allow for highly stylized html emails.

The major divide between the two platforms comes in the email delivery and management process. Third-party email newsletter services, like Constant Contact and Email Labs (more listed below), specialize in meeting all the technical hurdles involved in successfully delivering email. Some of these hurdles include spam filters, ip blocking, and so on. Another difference is the ability to deliver a high volume of email and track usage and overall campaign effectiveness.

It’s worth noting that email marketing is a highly monetized segment of the industry and generally carries a hefty price tag (est. $25-100+/month). There are different fee structures used by the third-party services – i.e. pay by the number of subscribers, pay be the number of emails sent, and everything in between. Knowing how large your database is or will be and how often you intend to send e-newsletters will help to select a service.

So should you use the blog or a third-party email newsletter service? If the newsletter is a simple, text email and you’re subscriber database is under 5,000, then I would recommend starting with the blog. For a stylized, html email and a database to exceed 5,000 subscribers, I would recommend a third-party service to use from the start.

Here is an expanded list of email newsletter and e-marketing third-party services:

• http://www.constantcontact.com/
• http://www.benchmarkemail.com/
• http://www.boomerang.com/
• http://www.emaillabs.com/
• http://campaigner.com/
• http://www.myemma.com/
• http://www.graphicmail.com/
• http://www.icontact.com/
• http://www.mailbuild.com/
• http://sendloop.com/

I hope this was helpful in your decision making process. Please feel free to reply with any questions or comments.

Regards,
Dominic

Dominic Taverniti is the owner of Applied Web Vitals, a web design and development company specializing Dreamweaver templates and the Adobe Contribute CMS. Please feel free to contact us any time to explore your next web design or development project.

I’m writing to recap our conversation yesterday regarding improving your website’s visibility in the search engines. The following is a detailed description of SEO (search engine optimization) techniques as they apply to your website and practices in general.

As we discussed, efforts in SEO can be broken into two basic categories, external and internal. External efforts are those actions that take place outside of the website and are designed to drive traffic to the site. Internal efforts include structural and contextual changes on the website that are designed to improve the relevance of the site to search engines and subsequently, pull traffic into the site.

External SEO Efforts

Also known as SEM, or search engine marketing, external efforts take shape in a broad comprehensive marketing campaign that targets other websites, directories, news agencies, etc. Several examples of external marketing efforts include:

• Press releases written for and distributed to online PR channels – these are specific to online media in that they contain dynamic web content that may not necessarily translate to print.
• Content contributions to popular, high traffic, relevant websites – an example would be contributing articles to a legal blog, where the topic is specific to a choice keyword/key term (i.e. real estate law) and the article contains a link back to a corresponding website page that is geared towards the same keyword/key term.
• Utilizing social media outlets like facebook.com and linkedin.com (among many others) to create additional traffic channels to the site from other high traffic sites.

Internal SEO Efforts

We covered all the internal page structure elements that need to be in place to best position a page for search engine relevance. Regarding specialty SEO pages, it’s important to remember that no single page can perform well for many keywords/key terms. To that end, each page will be built around a single word or term. The page we looked closely at was for real estate. Following are the page elements that need to be in place and revolving around the single keyword or term. [some specific instructions are for Adobe Contribute website template, but can be applied universally]

• Page name: “keyword or term”.php – for example “realestate.php” or “real-estate-closing-negotiation.php”
• Found in Template Properities
  • Page title: titleBar_pageName – “keyword or term” i.e. “real estate”
  • Page title (extra optional): title_pageMsg – short message, perhaps an abbreviated versions of the meta description, including keyword or term
  • Meta Description: meta_description – a summary of the page under 250 characters, including the keyword or term. This description can be pulled and displayed in search results
  • Meta Keywords: meta_keywords – “keyword or term” and synonyms, along with other relevant terms like South Carolina or private practice, under 200 characters. Remember that plural forms aren’t necessary.
• Found in the body or content of the page
  • Page Title: This is the first editable region on the page. It is significant in that it is a Header 1(code <h1>), telling the search engine that the text here is the header for the content to come. You can think of this in terms of an outline. Header 1, Header 2, Header 3
  • Section Title: These editable regions have been set to be Headers 2. To continue with the outline idea, break the content of the page into sections and give them each a Section Title that contain the keyword or term or a synonym. If you’d like to subdivide the page further, manually enter a Header 3, 4 and so on within the Section Text region of the page. Be sure to keep the outline logical without skipping a header, for example Header 2 then Header 4. This structure is significant because it meets the accessibility guidelines of the Section 508 and enable text readers to better deliver the information.
  • Use of keyword or term in the copy: consider using each the following styles or forms at least once
    • Bold
    • Italic
    • Hyperlink
      • to an external, popular, relevant site – do not use “click here” use “keyword” as it appears in the natural flow of a sentence
      • also link back to internal pages, such as the Practices page
    • Header – covered above
    • Image name and image alternate text (alt text)
• Site map: after creating the page, be sure to edit the site map (sitemap.php) to include the new special SEO page just created. The significance of this is to make sure the page isn’t buried deep in the site where search engines assign a lesser value to the page. Note that the sitemap link in the footer of the home page (and every page) makes each link just two levels away from the root domain.

Blog

Internally, we also discussed the value of a blog. Blogs (derived from “web log”) is a database-driven, server-side application that allows for the easy creation and distribution of editorial content. Blogs are built to catalog articles or posts chronologically and have been constructed to syndicate the content automatically. An example of syndication is the use of RSS (real simple syndication, also known by other names), whereby anyone out on the web can subscribe to receive real-time updates of content on your site. This content can be received by an individual users’ pc or automatically published to another website. For this reason, it’s important to include a link back to your site inside each article.

A great deal of the value of a blog lies in the frequency of updates. Search engines record how frequent content on your site is updated and adjusts their return frequency accordingly. Frequently updated sites are crawled by search engine spiders more frequently and are subsequently considered more relevant than sites that sit stagnant. So the combination of frequent updates and the cumulative mass of relevant content on the site is a powerful tool to improve the site’s ranking with search engines over time.

Per adding a blog to the site, I would purpose customizing the design to match the site and integrating special features to maximize the reach and functionality of the blog. Again, the real value of a blog is frequent content contributions. So someone or several people within the organization would need to commit to a frequent or semi-frequent updates to get the most out of it. Publishing an article a week would be advised, even if just two paragraphs centered around a single keyword.

I hope this was helpful and please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments.

Best regards,
Dominic

Dominic Taverniti is the owner of Applied Web Vitals, a web design and development company specializing Dreamweaver templates and the Adobe Contribute CMS. Please feel free to contact us any time to explore your next web design or development project.

While on the topic of freeware though, some other thoughts have come to mind…

The reality of open and free technology catches up with us eventually. PodPress was developed and is maintained by a gracious individual who doesn’t profit from his work and offers it free to the public. Thousands (141,380 to be exact) have benefited and profited from this great tool. And at the same time, when it stops working, the same number of users come to a screeching halt. While some users like myself are occasional to frequent users, I know that others include large news syndications. What a great deal of faith and operating efficiencies we put into freeware!

Man, it hurts when your tools stop working! But if I tallied up the potential cost of all the freeware tools that I use, my business wouldn’t be able to afford them and wouldn’t be anywhere near where it is now.

…And so we appreciate the great benefits of the latest information revolution

Applied Web Vitals is a web design and development company. Please feel free to contact us to explore your next design, redesign or site enhancement project.

Go to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/podpress/

Audio recording
Recording audio will require an additional piece of software. We recommend the audio recording software Audacity (free). The process is pretty streamlined and shouldn’t be too cumbersome. You may even find the additional features with this software to be useful for editing and polishing your audio. Following are the links and steps:

Go to http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/windows

1. Audacity application:
Under Recommended Download, click Audacity 1.2.6 installer (or whatever the lastes version is)
Install the application (remember to disable your antivirus software if possible – generally a good idea whenever install an application)

2. Mp3 encoder:
Under Optional Downloads, click LAME MP3 encoder
This will download a zip file. You will need to extract the files to a location that you won’t change in the future. If you have access to the Audacity folder in the Programs folder on your C drive, you may put them there. I’m not sure what Vista will give you access to.

3. The first time you export a recorded audio file as an MP3, Audacity will ask you location the LAME MP3 decoder file on your computer. You’ll need to navigate to wherever you saved it in step 2 above. This will only happen the first time, provided the decoder file is never moved.

Posting Podcast
On the “Write Post” page (when you’re actually writing a new post) in your blog admin

1. Scroll down to the Upload section, current just below the Podcasting section
2. Browse for a file on you local computer, enter title and description if you want, and click the Upload botton [*Alternate upload option for large files below]
3. The next view that comes up automatically will have the name of the file – i.e. test1.mp3.
4. Right click on the file name and select Copy Link Location
5. Now go to the Podcasting section and click the Add Media File button
6. Paste (Ctrl+v or right click paste) inside the Location field – the url will look something like http://yourdomain.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/test1.mp3
7. That’s it, unless you want to position the flash player in the post. Insert “” where you want inside the Post body to position the player.

*Uploading large audio files
Depending on the server setting and restriction for your hosting account, you may find the WordPress file upload option to error, indicating that the file size exceeds the maximum allowed size. In this case, you will need to FTP your file to the server and manually enter the URI when adding the podcast to your post.

We recommend the FTP client FileZilla. Once downloaded and installed from the following location, you will need to establish a connection with your server. File > Site Manager > click the New Site button > enter the appropriate login and connection setting for your hosting server account.

Go to http://filezilla-project.org/

Podcast Topic: Blog Plugin Recommendations

Akismet: A discussion anti-spam plugin that utilizes a central and ever growing database. You will need to create a user account at wordpress.com to gain an API KEY that is required to activate the plugin.
All in One SEO Pack: Create custom page titles, meta description & meta keywords
- Also enable Permalinks in your blog settings and be sure to include the post name (%postname%). Permalinks in tandem with the All in One SEO Pack will produce keyword rich posts with keywords appearing in the page title, url, meta data, and of course the post body.
podPress: This plugin is a must-have for podcasting. It ads a flash audio (and video) player to your post when attaching a media file. In addition, it handles the RSS podcast feed options, including iTunes settings.
Ultimate Google Analytics: Track your blog site traffic with Google Anayltics. You’ll need to create an Analytics account at http://www.google.com/analytics/

Podcast Topic: Blog basics

• Hosting your own blog vs. free blog sites (like blogger.com and wordpress.com)
• Moderating comments
• Creating user accounts

Please return for future podcast episodes. We look forward to coving topics such as web design, content management systems, Internet marketing, search engine optimization, blogging and more…

Fundamentals
For those just getting up to speed, you’re reading a blog now. The term blog was derived from the term “web log.” The blog as an application or platform has evolved quickly over time, but the primary format continues to be a chronological arrangement of editorial articles. The software applications behind blogs serve as a content management system, allowing users to edit, contribute and customize the front-end or user-end of the blog via a simple web-based administration panel.

Blog Options
Internal blog – If you’re interested in hosting your own blog, the major blog software applications out there are free themselves (We recommend WordPress, the platform being used for this blog). If you aren’t a developer or aren’t comfortable with digging into the server side of things, having a professional set your blog up won’t break the bank either. Blogs are generally quite simple to install – it’s the customization of design and functionality that starts to expand a blog installation project. It is worth noting that specific hosting features and capabilities are required and depend on which blog software application you choose.

External blog – Conversely, going with a free hosted blog option, like Google’s Blogger, is a great way to reach a large audience. These greater communities consisting of thousands of other blogs, giving you instant exposure to highly searched and search engine indexed networks.

Internal & External – Concurrently, running both an internal and external blog will provide the best of all worlds. This broad Internet marketing mix will take advantage of the blogging community exposure as well as improving your own website. Keep in mind though, search engines provide little or no value to syndicated content that appears identically in multiple places on the web. Consider rewriting or even posting unique copy in each of your blog channels.

Benefits of a blog
Blogs offer a number of fantastic benefits to the small business.

1. SEO: When operating a blog on your own website, the volume, relevance and frequency of content gives your site a shot of search engine optimization adrenaline. Search engines will increase the frequency at which they crawl your site for updates as you reciprocate with those updates. As your archive of blog articles—with relevant content—accumulate, so increases the relevance of your site for those keywords and terms that your articles are about.
2. Reputation: Demonstrate your expertise by writing about your industry, market or product. At the same time, this self imposed regimen of copy writing will continually advance your knowledge in the field.
3. Site Accessibility: If your site isn’t already built on a content management system, the built-in CMS functionality of blog software gives you quick and easy access to posting content on your site. Most blogs even come with the ability to post content by email – it doesn’t get any easier than that!

Start Blogging
Take one of the above recommendations and run with it—you’ll be glad that you did. You can’t make up for lost time, so get started!

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