Another Lesson On Google

Here is an attempt to help in how you may speak for yourself when Google comes looking for you.  You also may want to think about this when it comes to your children also.

Online Profiles are important.

Here are 3 tips to help keep things under control:

#1.  Keep track of where you have Profiles listed-on paper, maybe tacked to your bulletin board.
They often include:

• A photo (the “cool kids” all call them Avatars)
• A description – who you are what you stand for, what products you sell.
• Contact Information.

#2. Check these frequently. Update when necessary and update them all or at least look at them all to make sure they are accurate.

#3. Review your privacy settings.

These all may seem to be simple, very simple things.  But lately many of the most popular social media sites, which where your profiles are, change the privacy settings and can start sharing things you didn’t plan on.  Or better yet, many of these social media sites “cross-pollinate” one another.  It is easy to miss that you have allowed that to happen, or that you may need to go “check” (or “uncheck”) some box so your political tweets don’t show up on your Linked-In Account. You may not want everybody in your office to know that you are on Match.com. Unfortunately, they don’t change your Profiles for you, they just may report entries that you made in regard to status.

The more things you sign up for and as your eyes glaze over trying to read the Acceptable Use Policy which also includes THEIR Acceptable Use of YOUR information, you just check the box and little did you know, “all hell broke loose.”   So looking at this information is really important and keeping track of all these sites can be unmanageable, overwhelming and frustrating if you don’t have a list somewhere other than inside your computer.

We don’t post things like this to scare you.  We post these things to inform you.  Once you have gone through it once or twice, you will see, it isn’t all that bad and you will be the person or business both Google and YOU like on the internet!

Well normally I would chime right in and say something like, “Well you know him, he thinks he is ‘all that and a bag of chips!’ “  BUT I actually was on the other side this time.

Google-ing yourself, your name and your company is what people do all the time.  You need to know what Google thinks of you, how it ranks you, I Googled myself one day and to my surprise Google found a white paper I co-authored back in the early 90’s!  Hey that was even before Al Gore invented the internet, right?

If you are looking for a job or your business is looking for customers, you want to make sure that you know what Google finds.  Large portal sites like Facebook, Linked-In and even Twitter can possibly be higher on the list than your own business website.  Why?  Because they get LOTS and LOTS of traffic from LOTS and LOTS of people and Google LOVES to “hang-out” with the popular gang, just like we do.

If you have a Facebook page, you’ll want to make sure that your privacy settings are set the way you want them to be, so you aren’t sharing information to people that you don’t know or don’t know you.  If your business has a Facebook FAN page,  you will want to make sure there are new posts about your business and that it presents your business just like it would if you put a new coat of paint on the outside of your building.

If you have a Linked In Page, make sure that is accurate and up to date.  Personally I don’t really use all the features that Linked In has, but I do have a profile and I do keep it as up to date as I can.

So dont think that Google-ing yourself or your business is vain.  It is the way people find people and people find businesses.  Shouldn’t you want to know what they are looking at?

So this year we made reservations in Old Orchard Beach.  OOB for native Maine-ahs.

OOB is the quintessential New England beach community complete with a Pier, Amusement Park and all the rest that goes with what you have in your mind of a summer beach community.

We have been to OOB a few times over the last 3 years.  But never for more that a weekend or so.  But when we began our planning for the 2010 Family Vaca, we had just been there and had a great time.  The year before we were there around the same time when the biggest Storm of the season was coming-  waves were breaking so close to the shore that the water was almost up to the floorboards on the Pier.
For those that know, the Pier at OOB is about 20 feet above the water at high tide!

Anyway- OOB it was.

Searching for a place to stay wasn’t too difficult-  being in the web business we have several client sites, (did you think I’d write this without a shameless plug for our valuable clients?, really!) like the Maine Tourism Association (http://www.mainetourism.com) and our own Maine Events (http://www.maineevents.com).   After searching and viewing the lodging section and reading about the accommodations we selected the Waves Oceanfront right on the beach.  Adjoining rooms so the kiddies could visit non-stop and so that my bro and I could enjoy a brew and cigar on the patio at night.   It was a very pleasant week.  Oh, did I mention that the Waves were part of the Lafayette chain (another shameless plug!)  But I did not know that at the time and was pleasantly surprised upon check-in that this was a recent acquisition along with the SeaView just up the block.  Danny-  nice place, cant wait to see what you do with the new properties-  Next year we may take the ‘Governors’ “mansion” and have the entire DiStefano clan drive up!

Between all of the different places to eat, we really enjoyed Jimmy the Greeks on Route 5- Nice selection of beers from around the world, brick oven pizza and a fantastic spread of Greek food I haven’t been exposed to in a long time.  Uppa!  My 7 year old had her fill of spanakopita (SPINACH!) and I had a Gyro-  YUM.  But wait, there is more!

Breakfast at the Beach Street Cafe was interesting-  the owners(?), very attractive eastern European women, were very friendly  who know how to make breakfast AND by noon are closed and on the beach(we think)!  Tom’s breakfast shack was also an experience (BINGO!)-  we at there al fresco and enjoyed it as well as Joseph’s By the Sea!  Very nice.

Ok-  you think all I did was eat breakfast and drink beer and smoke cigars all week, right?  Nope-  we went to the beach of

course, Fun Town Splash Town USA, too (there were 3 kids 7,9,14); walked up and down Grand Avenue (a lot) and went for assorted drives to get ice cream, dinner and a trip to Portland for lunch at DiMillo’s.  And on Thursday night there were Fireworks on the beach with the amusement park all lit up -  very picturesque and fun.

There was more to do than we had time for, although my brother and I did steal away to Westbrook to visit the Victory dealer-  unfortunately- by the time we got there it was a little late for a test drive on a new 2011 Vegas.  A boy and his toys!

The weather was perfect, even though we got a bit of a scare from Todd, Jarrod and Co -  (WABI-TV) The rain we heard was coming our way only arrived for the drive down from Veazie, and disappeared in the afternoon on Monday-  Even WeatherBug had it wrong the whole way down.  Thank you Mother Nature for changing your mind!

Now with any family vacation, there were ‘those times’ too, where one kid was making too much noise for the other, or someone was being a nudge to a sibling, you know, that’s what being a family is all about.  But all in all we had a great time, and we were sad to see it go by way too fast.

Cant wait to plan for next summer-  Maybe the Seaview, maybe the Governors mansion.

But Maine for sure (pronounced “Shore”)!  And we are back just in time for the American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront! and some  Waterfront Concerts to see Tim McGraw and Jason Mraz.

What a summer!

disclaimer:

If any of my comments are incorrect, or mis-leading- I am sorry- All comments are mine (Joe DiStefano) and I thoroughly enjoyed our time in OOB.   All comments were meant in the most positive way and no disrespect was intended!

I know you are tired about hearing about Facebook.  It is on national news, it is written about in publications, it is discussed at pubs all over the place and of course it is talked about at most of our kitchen tables.

One thing that cannot be overstated is to remember that you need to always be aware of your Privacy Settings.  AND be sure that your profile photo doesn’t show something less flattering about you. (Friends and non-friends can always see these.) Since we are in the “web business” and social media is all about web and marketing, we are always poking around making sure we know what is “coming down the Pike.”  Our last post discusses privacy and not really realizing who may or may not be aware of where you are and what you (or your kids) may be telling to whom.

There is a blog I read frequently by a man named Peter Shankman.  He recently posted this very cool screen shot step by step instructions  “How to Avoid Being Checked In by Your Friends on Facebook’s Places.”

Peter recounts amusing (because they didn’t happen to me) tales from Gawker.com and the trials of Facebook’s NEW location finder – Gawker always has great headlines, so here is one definitely worth a look.  It is about etiquette and Facebook – not enough posts about that either.

Facebook’s often makes changes and you really need to make sure you are up to date on your Privacy Settings.  This customized one just slipped in and if you check your account you may find you haven’t disabled it. Just like you may not want the world to see your photo with a beer bottle in your hand, or in a picture where something may be taken out of context, you probably don’t want someone of your 300+ friends tell the Facebook world of 500,000 that you were at the gym, when your office thinks you were at a meeting.   Here is another reminder.

We are big proponents of Social Media and cell phones and we have posted many things on this blog that encourages people to use these tools.  We tell people to “Try it, you’ll like it.” How you can build your business, reconnect with friends, stuff like that.  Maybe you haven’t started, maybe your kids have-so please listen to this.

Whether you know it or not, a cell phone can be a “spy” and can track your every move if you let it.  I am not going to repeat all the great posts I have read about this, but I will link a few here so you can read what they have said better than I can. From the Daily Beast,  I LOVED this post! It tells it all.

If you are telling people where you are and what you are doing using applications like foursquare or twitter others can know where you are or where you are NOT.  Like you aren’t at home and you are taking a family vacation — this is a great way to get your home broken into -did you know your phone may tag a location where you took the picture if you have the right (or wrong) setting?

I Can Stalk U really is a wake up call and it has very helpful tips with multiple cell phone interfaces so you can disable the most often default geotagging features.

We aren’t saying don’t use social media sites or your cell phone, we aren’t saying be AFRAID of social media sites.  Heck, we use them all the time, but just keep in mind what you provide and that you may be providing it to more people than you thought you were – and if you have kids at home, they maybe providing information to a predator.  Predators know how to use these tools better than you do and certainly bring a whole new level to “stranger danger.”

Here’s what our Google Analytics reports showed for six of our most-visited sites in real estate, tourism, news, education, and other markets:

It’s been another eventful period for browsers. The largest shift we saw in the first half of the year was a continued adoption of Internet Explorer 8, most likely due to upgrades from previous versions of IE (6 and 7). The market shares of those versions dropped across the board. IE 7’s share now ranges between 16.7 and 21.7%; IE 6 has dropped to between 4.7 and 8.6% (last December, it ranged from 7.0 – 10.3%; a year ago, 15.3 – 17.1%).

The percentage of users on Firefox either dropped or remained constant over the last six months on every site we surveyed. That’s likely due to gains by the WebKit family of browsers. There were modest Safari increases on most sites (Safari includes browsing on iPhones, iPods, and iPads), but the real story is Chrome. Google’s advertising campaign seems to have sparked some interest, and its browser share leapt around 50% over the last six months on some sites.

We posted these links back in December, but we think they’re important. We’ve previously introduced each of the major browsers and have explained our position on Internet Explorer 6 support. Please consider reading those posts for more information.

Read on to see the full report data with percentages and methods, or read our reports of traffic from December 2009 and June 2009.

We collected data from each of six Google Analytics accounts for sites that we develop and maintain at Sephone. The figures represent the percentage of traffic over the month indicated; for example, reports from June 2010 show percentages of traffic between June 1 and 30, 2010.

The graph shown above is a simple average of each of the six figures shown below and does not represent the relative popularity of the six sites and the effects of that on the percentages.

That is true and if you have made your own facebook fan page, then you know just how easy it is. (We are making the assumption here that you have your own personal Facebook page, because you need one in order to make a Fan Page.)  Here is a direct link to Facebook’s explanation on how to do it.  It is listed under “Advertising” so many people get spooked and don’t bother to go there.  If you are more of a video watcher here is a good one (they are talking about restaurants, but it fits for anyone).  It is well worth the 10 minutes to see the step by step using screenshots – so you can see exactly what to do!

Why should my business have a Facebook Fan Page?

Marketers are talkers and of course they are all talking about why your business should have one, it is the RAGE!  Here is  a great post about it, there are tons of great posts about it, but I like this one because it is concise and doesn’t use a lot of $10 words. The meat and potatoes of this post is this and I quote: *

• Facebook has more than 350 million active users
• 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook

*numbers as of 2/10

Your business wants to have as much “eye” time and be “top of mind” to as many people/perspective or current clients as possible.

Why you don’t want a FACEBOOK Fan Page?

Just because it is free doesn’t mean it is right for you, right now.  When a “FAN” opens up their Facebook account in their “News Feed” section, there is the latest news from their friends, the causes they follow, and POOF! there you are with your latest special event or feature that you want to share with the world – unless of course you haven’t updated your page for 6 months and therefore it doesn’t post anywhere.

When people plan to come to visit your store, restaurant or whatever, if they look thru Facebook they can find you, but they also find that your last post was from December 2009.  They figure you don’t think it’s important, so neither do they and perhaps they don’t search for you at all, they choose to do business with the business that is in their “News Feed” once or twice a week.

Managing Facebook Fan Pages is bigger than just making one.  They don’t take long, but they do take doing. Make somebody accountable for doing it, just like you do when you have someone answer your business phone.  There are many companies out there (Sephone included), that can help you do this.  It doesn’t have to be expensive, once you see how it goes for a few months you can decide if you would like to take over the reigns!

Everyone you know is on Facebook, people on TV are asking you to follow them on Twitter, you email inbox is full, your kids text you when they need a ride home – yes, it is okay if you want to scream — we get it (covering our ears).

We can help.

Twitter

If you are a larger business, you need to know what your clients, customers or former customers are saying about you.  Because believe us they are saying it.  Just because you dont hear it, doesnt mean it isnt being blasted about the internet, perhaps a TV station or newspaper has a story about you or your company.  It is being tweeted all over and you have no control over it spreading.  You do have control over it, IF you know what is being said and how you can communicate to address it.

If you are a smaller business – even tho you know that Facebook is FREE, how do you fold that into your all ready full day of work?  You are out there trying to generate revenue or wait on customers – this is the last thing you want to mess with, right?

We are social media JUNKIES.  We know that every social media strategy isn’t the same, just like all businesses and situations aren’t the same.  What works for one, may not work for another.  One size NEVER fits all. And maybe it isn’t even Facebook that you need (gasp!)

Let us help.
Give us a call, we love to hear your dreams and your goals.
Then of course, help you on the road to get there!

So email consumes us and with good connectivity it arrives instantly at its intended destination.  And then there is SPAM! SPAM you may not have known you asked for by subscribing to a newsletter and SPAM that you never asked for in the first place!

But where is this all going?  Do you want all your emails going to your blackberry (or other smart phone?)  Our clients send me large files that can be completely unusable to see on my blackberry so why do it?  AND sometimes I need thinking time for when people ask me questions and I need to talk to others in order to answer it.  These people (our team at Sephone),  don’t work 24/7 they actually have a life!

Is it really that important to be THAT available to EVERYONE you know in all facets of your life ALL the time (weekends, holidays, etc.) ? AND how do the people you are WITH physically all the time feel when you are constantly looking down, checking that flashing red light?  It is only going to get worse.

Then when you reply to those emails from your phone, are you really saying it how you really want it to be received? Or  you may not have your glasses on, you feel rushed to respond with an incomplete answer and have to go back and redo it and in the meantime you have an email out there that is misspelled and maybe not really what you meant it to say.  All in the name of our 24 hour “news” cycle! “We’ve come a long way baby,”right?

The solution is different for everybody.  But managing IT without IT managing YOU is the biggest challenge.  I struggle with it all the time.  In fact I find if I lose my blackberry or have a poor signal (we are in Maine after all),  I feel pretty stressed AND I don’t have all my email going to it!  I am really trying hard not to be run by technology.

What are your thoughts and ideas?

Would love to hear (and share) them!

• A monthly sizable cable bill or perhaps satellite
• A netflix account
• A bank of movies stashed someplace for a rainy weekend.

I know for me, there is nothing more frustrating in cruising through the channels and seeing nothing interesting or even worse those darned infomercials!

If you have a computer, smartphone*  and a connection to the internet, then I have a couple things to share with you.

Hulu.com describes itself as “Watch your favorites. Anytime. For Free.”  Alex Baldwin had done some commercials around superbowl time, so you may have heard of it.  There are a variety of channels, Home and Garden, Games, Sports and lots more.  There is even a tab where you can see the most popular ones.  You create a profile, (user name – which is your email address) and a password and it is free.  After you tell it your interests, (during the profile process), it will even suggest things for you to make your search easier and you may get a suggestion of something you never thought of!

Then there is another thing that I really enjoy and that is called USTREAM.tv.  These are LIVE feeds that you can watch on a variety of things one of those things is that awful oil leak that is spewing nearly 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean.  But not all of it is bad, there are some great wildlife LIVE cams, one of my favorites are the Peregrine Falcons that are up here in Maine it is managed by the Biodiversity Research Institute. Now, keep in mind there is no editing, these are live cameras.  AND there is the opportunity to chat in a chat room next to what you are watching if you want.  But again, there is no censorship, so keep this in mind, if you are watching with kids. I can honestly say, there hasn’t been anything too bad, except this BP Oil gusher seems to have “unleashed the hounds”  in the chat rooms.

AND if you would like a LIVE Broadcast of your own, your son or daughter’s soccer game or recital, you can have your own shows.  For those of you with iPhones, you can film right from the event and tell your distant family members and friends and they can enjoy what is happening LIVE!  Once you stop filming it stops broadcasting.

So give it a try, there will be a lot of summer events worth sharing and rainy days may make for some down time to check out Hulu and USTREAM.tv

*check your plan for potential data charges.

Is there something you’ve heard about lately that’s piqued your interest? How about something you’ve always wondered about the web or social media but haven’t had the chance to ask? Here’s your chance. We’re going to start a series of posts with answers about using the web and social media in business, and we want your questions!

It’s simple. Just add a comment to this blog post or mention @Sephone on Twitter with a question about the web, social media, search, or anything else, really. We’ll do our best to answer right here on the blog. We’d love to hear all kinds of questions, from the very basic (”why is Twitter important for a business?”) to the more technical (”how can I add my Facebook page’s updates to my site?”).

Let the questions begin!

At Sephone we believe it’s important for you to be able to talk with a real, live person about any questions or thoughts you have at any time: while we work together to help you decide what you need, while your site is being developed, and after your site is launched. Over the life of your web project, there’s a good chance that you’ll work with a few different people here at Sephone who can help you move to the next level on your project.

When you first get in touch with us, we’ll introduce you to a project planner – the person in charge of scheduling and budgeting for your project. For most projects your planner will sit down with you and discuss what you’d like to do and give you a rough schedule of how long your project will take to complete.  The planner is always available to answer a question or to point you in the right direction.

Once we’ve straightened out all the details and started development, you’ll meet the project leader for your project. The leader is your contact for the life of the project; he or she will make sure everything is done as you like.  And when it’s time to launch your site, your project leader will do a final run-through to make sure everything matches what you wanted to accomplish.

If you think of a new idea that you’d love to see included in your site while it’s being developed, the project leader and the project planner will talk with you and will let you know how the change will affect the time-line of the project.

Your relationship with us doesn’t end when your site launches. Whenever you need to reach us, one of our site specialists will answer your questions quickly via our online support center at support.sephone.com or over the phone.

We’d love to help your company. Give us a call and we’ll talk about what we can do to help you do business better.

What’s changing and why

Since our inception in 2001, we have owned and managed our own datacenter in Maine. Most of our clients host with us, and some host elsewhere, and that’s o.k.!   Today we have two hosting environments for our sites, one here in Orono, Maine and the other at another datacenter through another service provider that we trust explicitly.   Over the next several months we’ll be moving the sites and email from our Orono datacenter to our other environment.

We’re doing this for a couple of reasons. Our #1 reason is pretty simple: we want to do everything we can to make sure your site serves as fast and as reliably as possible. By using a separate service for hosting, we partner with a devoted team of people who continue to ensure that your site is up and running all day, every day. We’re also able to use some advanced tools to make sure everything is serving correctly, and if something does happen, we can normally resolve the problem much more quickly. Finally, our tests have shown that sites serving at the new location are as responsive or serve much more quickly thanks to the additional resources available.  And if you need more space or computing power, we can more readily accommodate your sites needs.

What this means for your site…  It’s all good!

We’ll be moving sites and email from Orono to our new environment between now and July.  We’ll update our Status Dashboard at status.sephone.com with dates and times of upcoming moves as we migrate our servers between environments.

There may be a short amount of downtime on some servers as we move each one.  But, as we will be doing most of the moves during off-peak hours and will provide updates on the Status Dashboard as we work., we’ll try to limit downtime as much as possible during the process.

As always, if you have any concerns – or if you would like more information about this change – please contact us via our support center or give us a call. We’ll do everything we can to provide you with the best answer we can.

Sephone has and always will be a solutions provider.  Our solutions are software based and they all need a place to live.  Owning a datacenter is nice, but managing  the hardware isn’t nor is it necessary.   That’s why we decided to reconsider where we want our services like datAvenger.com, maine-shop.com, broadcasternow.com, resourcemls.com, hulacart.com, happenings.us.com (maineevents.com, njhappenings.com, flhappenings.com, mahappenings.com, pahappenings.com & more coming),  and niteclerk.com; that you have become to depend on to reside here too.   This move allows us to focus on our software development – and leave the hardware maintenance in the hands of those who focus on that.

Rest assured, Sephone is very involved in the operations of the environment, we are able to manage the servers and respond to conditions as needed. Your sites are your business and we are committed to providing the best environment possible.  The biggest difference is that we are not the first to respond to networking, routing, A/C, power and other hardware failures that may happen.  This is the responsibility of dedicated partner resources who are on-site 24×7x365 and are committed to US to provide the best environment possible!

Sephone has and will maintain a presence in Orono to support existing co-location clients who manage their own servers and bandwidth.  We provide remote hands services and space in these cases and no changes in these agreements are to be experienced.

Lastly- this is a growing trend.  Most design and development firms in the area (& the U.S.)  have done this already or are also going through the same steps.  With companies like RackSpace and Amazon making highly accessible and robust facilities available where it is extremely efficient in both time and costs to scale up capacity- there is no doubt this is a good move for Sephone and our clients.  Beginning our 10th year and looking forward to the next 10, Sephone is excited for what is in store for us and our clients.

Recently, MREIS has made some changes to their offerings, like more images per listing and a few other perks-  Well, RE/SourceMLS has some too-

This service is available now to sponsoring clients!

Coming Soon to RE/SourceMLS
Reflecting the only non-MREIS map search web-based MLS listings engine around, RE/SourceMLS now supports the ability to override map coordinates.  Available in July 2010 ALL RE/SourceMLS subscribers will be able to override push-pin coordinates to make viewers aware of properties as they are closer to water frontage, roads or other notable areas.

For more info on this product, visit the website !

In the passed 3 weeks we have had 3 clients that have had ideas about “getting their word out”, interestingly enough 2 of them were not specifically related to their businesses, but to causes that they find dear to them.  They want to do something good, share an experience, raise some money for their cause.

Many people that use social media tools like Facebook and Twitter all ready have had success creating buzz, getting people to attend an event, raise cash for a cause, this is nothing new and the people using these tools, in a few clicks they have spread the word to people that want to listen rather than to waste time with those less interested.

You can do this with girl scout cookies or a PTO event, saves lots of time and money on the phone.

If you have a long term project or cause that you are working on, perhaps a blog may work. (Here’s a “How To” Link) Blogs can keep people engaged over the long haul. Friends and family far and wide.  One of my friends used “Caring Bridge” while his wife was in the hospital and in treatment for breast cancer.  Hearing the perspective from a husband with a family struggling through this time was inspiring and was so different from many others having these experiences.  A young husband, with twin boys helping mom (and wife) through the fight of their lives, the good news is they are winning the fight now!

Even if you haven’t embraced these tools quite yet, people that have are seeing results.  You may be amazed at how many folks you know are and how “out of the loop” you may be by not participating!

This is the same as our friend from Nigeria who is looking for a trusting soul to move his uncles money-  Only this time it is a “a supposed Captain” in the United States Marine Corp.

For those who are already savvy- please excuse me as it is my obligation to inform the others…

DO NOT BELIEVE “capt.” Collin Lachappelle!  THIS IS NOT REAL, NEVER WAS REAL and WILL NEVER BE REAL!

From: IMCEAEX-_O=BRIDGEWATER+20STATE+20COLLEGE_OU=BSC_CN=
RECIPIENTS_CN=CLACHAPELLE@bridgew.edu
Subject: Personal
Date: February 8, 2010 8:17:52 AM EST
To: noreply@contact.com

I am Captain. Matthew Stamford with the United States Marine Corps (USMC). Hard to believe but, I have $900,000.00, found at the start of Operation Khanjari on July 4 2009, in Poshteh Afghanistan. I need to move this money out to a safer place. Can I trust you to receive it on mybehalf upon its evacuation from Kabul? Contact me on matstamford@admin.in.th

Thanks, I needed to do that-

It is a repeating effort that these low-life’s are using-
hoping that an unsuspecting individual, usually a senior citizen who is unlucky to receive this notice and thinks they are helping- will respond.

My first thought is, “Why did it take so long to retire that guy, the former Prime Minister, Prince, Son of the Prime Minister, Nephew to the Sultan? ”

The fact that they have moved on to US “soil” is disturbing, can they really believe that Americans are that gullable?
Again, unfortunately there are some that are, especially since it relates to patriotism and $900,000.00
So-

Pass this along, share it with your web-connected family and friends. If they want to help someone, donate to the USO, find their local Troop Greeters organization, or send $10 to Haiti;

Karma will know.

Sephone Resource Center - for people who feel like this when editing their website. (Photo from http://lolcatz.wordpress.com)

And so the Sephone Resource Center was born! We often have similar questions about the “how-to’s” for the person that is just learning, or if there is a new person doing the job.

The Resource Center is a collection of tutorials for how to do common (and some uncommon) tasks in services like our content management system, datAvenger and datAvenger pro. This list of tutorials will continue to grow with new text and video tutorials and will continue to cover even more Sephone services.

Here are some examples of tutorials that are currently available:

• Adding links
• Adding images
• Uploading images and documents
• Managing User Accounts
• Reordering navigation

Check it out! Visit sephone.com and click on ‘help’.

It’s been six months, and we wanted to go back and look how the usage stats in December compared to those in June. As we did in our first report, we looked through our Google Analytics reports for six of the most-visited sites we developed and maintain in real estate, tourism, news, education, and other markets.

Here’s a look at the trends of browsers over the last six months:

And a look at market share by reporting period:

The past six months have seen an overall loss of market share for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 and a gain across the board for Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. In addition, Internet Explorer 8 usage more than doubled over the last six months on all of the six sites we surveyed. Safari’s spike in market share may be due to the popularity of iPhones, which run a mobile version of the browser. Google released a version of Chrome for Mac and Linux systems which may have contributed to its increase in usage in December. And web developers everywhere can rejoice: in our survey, the Internet Explorer 6 market share we found ranged from 7.0 – 10.3% as compared to 15.3 – 17.1% in June.

We’ve published an introduction to the major web browsers in the past as well as a post about our views on Internet Explorer 6 support. Please consider reading those posts for more information.

Read on to see the full report data with percentages and methods.

We collected data from each of six Google Analytics accounts for sites that we develop and maintain at Sephone. The figures represent the percentage of traffic over the month indicated; for example, reports from December 2009 show percentages of traffic between December 1 and 31, 2009.

The graph shown above is a simple average of each of the six figures shown below and does not represent the relative popularity of the six sites and the effects of that on the percentages.

Let’s think about Google for just a minute.   100 Million servers means web servers, database servers, application servers, file servers; lots of different computers all working together to serve all of Google’s web properties, Search, GMail, YouTube, GoogleDocs,  etcetera, etcetera.  Some fast facts gathered from doing a Google search:  1.  Google claims it takes 1 kJ of energy to answer a typical search query.  2. Their data center in The Dalles, Oregon uses enough energy to power Tacoma, Washington  3.  Google’s estimated monthly bandwidth usage is 184 petabytes (a petabyte is 1000 terabytes or if your counting 1 Million gigabytes) and 4.  Google’s annual bandwidth cost is 344 Million… about a 1 million dollars a day.  These are really, really big numbers.

So, aside from just being astounded at the enormity of Google (or Microsoft, or Facebook) there is a very practical reason for talking about it.   Today’s websites demand much more server horsepower then in days past.  Not long ago, at the beginning of the decade, it was quite possible to host hundreds of websites on a couple of reasonably powerful web servers.  But web servers up until then were merely file servers doling out images and HTML as simple independent HTTP requests, a really simple task.   And remember that web servers are just computers and can only do so many things at one time.  When they try to do too many things at once, they slow down… or worse.

The last five years has seen an explosion of complexity in websites with much more intricate designs, increased functionality, improved user experience and enriched media.  All of those things that we now take for granted when we shop online, update our Facebook status, or pay our Credit Card bills online.  Today’s websites need need to talk to database servers to deliver dynamic content, or talk to media servers to deliver video, or talk to Ad servers to delver banner ads, or talk to external websites to grab RSS feeds, Tweet streams, or Facebook status updates.  As users we expect more.. in fact we demand more from the websites we visit.  All of this means that web servers have to work extra hard to deliver what are now considered basic sites.    Multiply that by ever-increasing Internet traffic and all of the sudden you might actually need a dedicated server to support just a handful websites or in some cases several servers to support just one website.   If your website is complex and gets a fair amount of traffic, you just might need your own server.   Think about it… Google has over 1 Million web servers, Facebook 30,000.  Those are WOW numbers.

Here are just 3 quick reasons why this may be so:

1. The site was designed several years ago and doesn’t conform to Google’s latest search engine practices.
2. The content doesn’t change on it very often.
3. Your company has changed and the look and feel of your site just doesn’t match what goals you have in your mind for your recent marketing efforts.

These are all easy things to have happen. And these things are all things that can happen to anybody.  Looking at your site objectively is just as challenging as looking at your business objectively.  It is like a parent thinking, “My child is ugly.” – that just doesn’t happen!

A website needs a “facelift” using SEO and most often a new design if any of these 3 things are the case.  Oftentimes you can do all the perfect SEO things and still your web traffic isn’t what you want it to be.

Why?

Is it because your website may be “ugly?”  I don’t mean “ugly” from the definition of “ugly,” but I mean Google can rate you top on the list all day long, but if people continue to get to your site and decide it wasn’t what they thought it may be, or it was frustrating to find their way around, Google finds out and you will slip in your rankings. 

This is because your website no longer makes the user engaged when they get there. They have no reason to care to learn more.

And hey, that’s good information to have!  If your business isn’t growing or changing with the challenges of the times, then you are not doing business!  One way this can really pop out at you is to be engaged in marketing your company online, you insert a link to it, once people get to the site, they “BOUNCE” off it.  (Maybe you are doing some social media, Facebook fan pages, etc.) The visitor doesn’t like it, it isn’t what they thought it might be, they could be confused by your message.

Who was the person that said, “Part of the problem is recognizing there is one” ?  No one is telling you, your business is bad, your company is bad, you don’t even know who these people are!  But they are telling you something needs to change.  Either a new look and feel, spruce up your logo, change the content on the front page, add some new things that draw them in .  What is your competition doing? When you change the message so it reflects how your company is NOW. – Depending on your company perhaps people want to interact with your website?

A website isn’t meant to look the same, be the same, act the same for eternity.  How people are using the internet today is different than they were 5 or even 3 years ago.  You probably are too!  So spice it up a bit.  If you are marketing a site that isn’t really who you are or isnt being found, all the programming your web developer can do to get your ranking in Google better may not matter because once your potential customer gets there he may be saying, “Ewwww.”

We talk about Search Engine Optimization on this blog all the time.

Here are some links if you would like to read more:  Click here

Here is one about Site Measurements

Remember “Search Engine Optimization” is like painting a house. A fresh coat of paint looks nice from the outside, but if the house is falling down and in bad repair, then you need to look at the HOUSE (your website) itself.