Scribe Software Blog

Security for Scribe Insight

I would like to discuss the various security considerations when using Scribe Insight. As a long time veteran of Scribe, I have found that as Scribe is integrated into enterprise environments, access to various resources within the customer's network and the cloud becomes increasingly more difficult due to security measures taken by network administrators.

In addition to Insight, it is important to understand any additional security models around specific applications that you will be connecting to, such as Microsoft Dynamics products (CRM, GP, NAV, AX), or any of the many applications for which Scribe provides an adapter. Understanding Insight security should allow an application administrator to easily connect Scribe products to their applications.

Understanding how Insight interacts with the various security systems is critical to troubleshooting. Today I will discuss the core Insight security items. These include…

• Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
• Scribe Internal Database
• Scribe Services
• Message Queues
• Scribe Console User Group (SCUG)
• Scribe Console

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008

The introduction of UAC (user Access Control) in these operating systems, has made it very difficult for enterprise applications such as Insight to function without heavily customizing the UAC permissions settings. This is because applications like Insight touch so many facets of your operating system… ODBC, SQL Server, directories with DTS files and scripts, MSMQ, IIS, Services, etc….

At this time Scribe does not support using the application with UAC enabled. UAC must be disabled prior to installing Insight.

Stay tuned for information on how to leave UAC enabled with some custom settings in future releases of Insight.

Scribe Internal Database

After creating the Scribe Internal Database (ScribeInternal), you will notice that the objects created in the database are created within a schema called 'Scribe'. This schema exists regardless of whether you chose to use SQL Authentication or Windows Authentication during the setup of ScribeInternal. All of the tables in this database will be prefixed with the schema name. Underneath the covers, Scribe Workbench and Scribe Console reference this prefix heavily.

SQL Authentication

If you installed ScribeInternal using SQL Authentication, you can view the properties of the Scribe schema and see that the 'Scribe' schema is owned by a SQL user named 'Scribe'. The 'scribe' user is created during a SQL Authentication install with a default password 'integr8!'. These screenshots show the properties of the schema and the user.

It is important to note that the Scribe schema is owned by the Scribe user. This may seem obvious, but this is very important to remember if you ever wish to revert from 'Windows Authentication' back to 'SQL Authentication'. After making the changes, some admins forget to actually make the new user an owner of the Scribe schema.

Changing the Default User and Password

For obvious security reasons, SQL admins may wish to change the default password of the Scribe user from 'integr8!'. In order to continue to have access to the internal database, Scribe must be made aware of this change. To do this, there is an executable in the Scribe program files directory called 'InternalDB.exe'. This program allows pointing Scribe to the correct ODBC source containing the internal database, as well as changing the password that Scribe uses to access it.

On the second tab, hit the 'Change Password' button to access the password change dialog.

This screen is self explanatory. If your db admin has already changed the password in SQL, you need only change the password locally for the sake of Scribe. If the password has not yet been changed on SQL Server, you may make the change in one fell swoop by also providing an admin login and password.

Windows Authentication

If you installed ScribeInternal using Windows Authentication, the Scribe schema will still exist, but the owner of the schema will be 'dbo'. The Scribe user is not created.

When using the Workbench, access to the internal database will be under the permissions of the user that is logged into Windows. You will not be able to run the workbench unless your Windows user has been given explicit access to ScribeInternal within SQL server. By default, the installer user is mapped to the 'dbo' user in the database.

If you ever wish to disable Windows Authentication on ScribeInternal, make sure you create a Scribe user that has privileges as outlined in the SQL Authentication section above.

Scribe Services

Workbench vs. Console

As I stated earlier, when using the Workbench with Windows Authentication, access to the internal database will be under the permissions of the user that is logged into Windows. If you are using SQL authentication, ScribeInternal will be accessed using the Scribe user permissions. Accessing directories with scripts and DTS files will be based on the permissions of the user that is logged into Windows.

But what about the Scribe Console? If the collaboration folder containing scripts and DTS's exists on a network share, how does the console gain access to the files if the user with permissions to the folder is not logged in? It is important to understand that although YOU may be able to run a DTS from the Workbench, the console may not. The console operates under its own security context.

There are 5 Scribe services installed in the Windows Services Control Panel. These services run all of the features that you have set up in the Scribe Console (Monitors, Alerts, Publishers, and Integration Processes). By default these services log themselves in as 'Local System'. If you r database server and all of your collaboration files exist on the same server as Scribe, 'Local System' most likely has access to everything it needs to run your console integrations. If you find that you receive errors indicating that DTS's files don't exist or SQL scripts can't be run, it is a very good bet that you need to change the log on user associated with these services.

This user should be an Active Directory user with all of the appropriate network permissions. A good troubleshooting technique is to start with domain admin privileges and move backwards from there. This allows you to see immediately that domain admin allows the Scribe processes to run, and that you are experiencing permissions issues. Conversely, you may be chasing a red herring if you attempt to 'baby step' the permissions up until you have liftoff. (If you call Scribe Support, you WILL be asked to log these services with domain admin privileges to troubleshoot)

Always change all 5 services to use the same log on. You will cause way too much confusion if you try to get cute with the services permissions.

Windows Authentication

If you chose to use Windows Authentication when you installed ScribeInternal, you MUST immediately change the 5 Scribe services to log on as an Active Directory user with 'dbo' permissions to the ScribeInternal database. The Scribe services will not have access to the internal database as 'Local System'

Message Queues

The use of Microsoft Message Queues is what allows Insight to multithread large scale integrations, up to 64 simultaneous processes for enterprise licenses.

After installing Scribe Insight, you will see 3 new message queues appear in the Message Queuing control panel. ScribeDeadMessage, ScribeIn, and ScribeRetry.

If for some reason, you installed MSMQ after you installed Scribe Insight, these message queues will not be present. You can manually create these queues and set the 'SYSTEM' permissions as they appear here.

Security on these queues is already set for use by the system. If your integration is having trouble accessing message queues, check the properties of these queues and add the Active directory user that the 5 Scribe services uses, and add 'Full Control' permissions.

Scribe Console User Group (SCUG)

After installing Insight, you will notice that there is a new user group on the Scribe server. The Scribe Console User Group allows the members to access and control the Scribe Console.

The Scribe Console is used to automate your entire integration solution. So while your organization may have several 'workbench users' who create integration packages, you will probably want to restrict access to the automation tools to administrators.

After adding a user to this Windows group, they must log off of their session and log back in for the permissions to be enabled.

This is a very common initial install step that is skipped, resulting in an unnecessary call to Scribe Support.

Scribe Console

Once your user has been added to the SCUG, you should be able to open the Scribe Console without being prompted to create a site. Here, there are two main areas that deal with security.

Security Settings

Browse to '(server name)>Administration>Security'. Here you will see 3 tabs which allow the Console and Services access to areas of the server.

File Management

Here is where you allow your Console and Services access to files in your environment. You may need your DTS's and integration process to access SQL scripts, Source text and XML files, and batch scripts in addition to the DTS files. By default, this setting is set to allow the console access to all of the files on the Scribe server. Notice that mapped drives are NOT listed here. The Scribe Console has no access to mapped drives by drive letter. This default setting is thus limited because it cannot access network resources.

To limit the Scribe Console access to certain areas of the file system, choose the option to select specific folders. Select only those folders on the Scribe server to which your integrations will need access. Keep in mind any ODBC sources that utilize text file drivers. The directories needed by these ODBC source will have to be included here.

Once you have selected all of your server directories, you may also add a list of network resources by using the UNC path option. Simply type the fully qualified path to the shared resource and add it to the right side of the screen.

Keep in mind that although you are setting up resources the Scribe Console can manage, the console is still limited further by the permissions of the account that the 5 Scribe services are logged in as. When setting up access to network resources, make sure you think about network shares, permissions on the network shares, domain trusts, one way trusts, and time limited accounts. Active Directory Accounts can be limited to access during certain times of the day. So although you may be able to set up and run your tests during the work day, the Scribe Services may not be able to access the necessary resources at midnight on Saturday due to corporate security policies. It is always best to ensure that the services account has access 24/7 for maintenance reasons.

Services

If you have a need to restart any services that your DTS's or integration processes may need, for instance the NAV NAS service when using the Scribe Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, this tab allows you to select services that can be controlled from within Scribe Console rather than moving to your Services Control Panel.

Message Queues

This tab allows you to add MSMQ queues for use with the publisher feature. You need to make sure that all 3 Scribe queues are added to the Shared Message Queue side of this screen. Any additional queues that you wish to manage from within the console will need to be added as well. I.E. Microsoft Dynamics CRM or NAV queues.

Site Settings

Browse to '(server name)>Administration>Site Settings'.

Collaborations and Queues

Here on the General tab you may need to change the Collaborations root. This path should exist in the list of Shared Folders you set up under the File Management Security tab. As long as you are using the default queues suggested by Scribe for input, retry, and dead messages, the Site Main Queues settings will be automatic.

Note: You can change these queues around for troubleshooting and recovery purposes. For instance, if you have thousands of messages in ScribeDeadMessage, you may want to set the 'input queue' to ScribeDeadMessage temporarily in order to process those messages without having to manually transfer every message to ScribeIn.

Conclusion

Understanding how Insight interacts with the various systems on the Scribe server and the network domain will prevent a lot of unnecessary panic and allow you to save that call to Scribe Support for a more pressing matter.

Upcoming Webcast: Inside the Scribe Marketing Machine with John Gravely

Join Scribe Software Vice President of Marketing and Product Marketing John Gravely on March 24 at 11 AM EST as he discusses the multi-channel strategies and tactics used by his marketing team at Scribe, and how you can take these same strategies and incorporate them into actionable items for your company. Topics will include Scribe's use of:

• Social Media
• Blogging
• Search Engine Optimization
• Paid Search
• Event Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Web Capture
• Marketing Automation
• Branding
• And more…

Click here to register for the webcast

Please follow Scribe on Twitter. What’s so great about Twitter you ask?

 Please follow Scribe on Twitter. Why? Because Twitter doesn't have to be about what Ashton Kutcher had for breakfast or who John Mayer is offending. For Scribe, Twitter is the single stream you can monitor to be informed of all important news and events. And that is really what is so great about Twitter. Forget bookmarking pages, checking RSS feeds and readers; if it is important we'll let you know via Twitter. At Scribe we use Twitter to announce the following types of information:

• Blog posts
• Upcoming webcasts
• System outages
• Significant technical support updates
• Press releases
• Product releases (typically these are links to blog posts providing details on the new release)
• Re-tweets of information of interest to our audiences

Currently, Scribe averages about one Tweet every 2 or 3 days so by following us on Twitter you won't be drowned in Tweets. To follow us on Twitter go to http://twitter.com/scribesoft

Scribe releases VPC image for Dynamics AX

I am pleased to announce the release of a new demonstration VPC image. This VPC image, the "AX and CRM Edition," features Scribe Insight being used to integrate Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM. The VPC also includes demonstration scripts you can use as a guide to explore the integration or as a guide to give your own demonstration.

The VPC image is available for download from the Resource Library on www.scribesoft.com. This VPC image is available to Scribe certified consultants and you will need a login to Scribe OpenMind to get to the download pages.

If you want a VPC image physically mailed to you on DVD, please click here to provide your postal mailing address.

The VPC image comes with a user guide and with demo scripts for each of the demos included.

This "AX and CRM Edition" image includes the following demonstrations:

• Integration between Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM
• Web leads integration with Dynamics CRM

We hope you will find this VPC image a helpful resource. If you need assistance setting up a demo, please contact Scribe's pre-sales engineering team.

Guest Post: CRM/SAP Integration using Scribe

This post is a continuation and expansion on the original blog post published on the personal blog (http://www.mohamedibrahim.net/blog/tag/scribe) of Mohamed Ibrahim Mostafa of CIBER UK.

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My name is Mohamed Ibrahim Mostafa and I work as a senior consultant for CIBER UK, a Microsoft Gold Partner, SAP Gold partner and Scribe Reseller based in the UK specialising in systems integration and implementations of a wide range of solutions based on Microsoft technologies among others. In one of our projects, we were required to implement an integration solution to connect a SAP system with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4. There are many ways to achieve such integration but we finally made the decision to use Scribe for several reasons among which is the fact that Scribe Insight provides the interfaces and full control for the client to carry on supporting their own system once we complete the integration.

Scribe provides a native business application adapter for Microsoft Dynamics CRM as well as standard connectivity adapters for Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), SQL Server, OLE DB, Web Services and XML. Hence, whatever your SAP setup is, you should be able to access it smoothly from within Scribe. Scribe's CRM adapter also offers a great feature which is the possibility to access partner hosted CRM 4 implementation even in the case of a shared CRM implementation where each CRM organisation on the same server belongs to a different client of the partner host.

To connect to a hosted CRM you should use the Web Form (IFD) authentication option in the CRM adapter connection option. You can input details in the login similar to the example below:

Figure: Connecting Scribe to remote CRM hosted server

In our project, we had SAP as the data source and Dynamics CRM as the target of the integration. Configuring the source fields is very important for the mapping process between source and target fields later. You can always edit the source field names, data type and lengths by editing the QETEXT.INI file. So in case of text source files, if the field names are not meaningful and data types need to be changed (such as NUMERIC to VARCHAR), you have full control of adjusting these from the QETEXT.INI file. Just close the Scribe workbench window and open the file in notepad or any similar text editor.

To plan and perform this integration, Scribe identifies 5 major steps required for such integration in this white paper. These are: Data extraction, Translation, data update, automation and then monitoring and management of the ongoing integration (usually using Scribe Console). The figure below shows the various steps for this integration.

1. Data Extraction: This will require direct access to the source applications via a database or a proprietary application programming interface ("API",) from enterprise applications such as Dynamics GP, JD Edwards, SAP which is our case here, MAS 90/200/500, and Siebel. This will also require the ability to capture net changes either through source queries or via published messages from the source where available.

    

2. Data Mapping and Translation: It is most likely that the semantics and format of many fields from the source data will be different than those in Dynamics CRM. Important required tasks include parsing and concatenating text fields, performing date and numeric calculations, executing conditional logic, and performing lookups to resolve synonym values. There will be also the need to maintain a cross reference of primary key values in order to apply updates from one record in your source to the corresponding record in Dynamics CRM. We will discuss some of these data manipulation examples with sample formulas for your Scribe workbench project (DTS).

    

3. Data Update: This capability is the most crucial, yet complex area of the integration task. Capabilities we should look for include (i.) avoiding duplicates using fuzzy logic (like comparing elements of the company name and zip code to look for an Account match) for record lookup, you can also use CRM duplicate detection rules to prevent duplicates, (ii.) performing insert and update operations against multiple objects within Dynamics CRM when processing a single source record, and (iii.) performing all target processing against the Dynamics CRM integration API to ensure that all data imported has been validated by Dynamics CRM's application rules.

    

4. Automation: This is where utilising a customisable template model that incorporates a one-step process from source to target is very useful. Once we have designed the business process, we will need to implement an automated event detection mechanism to initiate an update to Dynamics CRM.

    

5. Monitoring and Management: Once we have developed and implemented our data aggregation solution, we need to consider the ongoing management of the solution as well. We need to be able to (i.) remotely support the solution (including start and stop processes, diagnose errors, etc.) via a web browser, (ii.) automatically alert an administrator via email when processes fail, error, or produce abnormal data conditions, and (iii.) scale across multiple processors to support high volume data scenarios.

This summarizes the steps that you will need to take and follow to be able to achieve the full integration between the two SAP and CRM systems.

The following diagram depicts Scribe's open architecture for data interchange between CRM and SAP.

This open architecture enables a broad range of SAP customers, regardless of what version of SAP they are running or how they have configured their implementation, to be able to use Scribe to integrate with Dynamics CRM system.

Sample Data Manipulation Formulas:

Data coming from SAP could be of various types and forms depending on the SAP architecture and the configuration carried out during implementation. To integrate and upload this data to CRM, you will need to carry out various data translation, mappings and manipulation to be able to correctly update CRM fields, create new records and performing lookups to capture CRM's update records unique identifiers (GUID's) based on information received from Scribe.

1. Unique Identifier Lookup sample formula:

   For Scribe to lookup the GUID of a record, a unique Identifier is needed to return this value. So for example, to get the GUID representing a CRM Account record, we can use the account number as the unique identifier:

   DBLOOKUP (S1, "T", "account", "SAP_AccountNumber", "accountid" )

    

   Where S1 is the first Source field, T= Target, SAP Account number has the unique account number for the customer from SAP and accounted is the CRM GUID for the account record.

1. Country Lookup sample formula:

   If SAP is sending the country value as a two digit code such as GB for Britain and US for USA, etc. You will need to create a new entity in CRM called countries that can act as your lookup table that corresponds to SAP's country lookup table with at least two fields in each record: country code and Country Name (country friendly name. Attribute name is usually the default "name" attribute with any new entity). The formula can look like this:

   DBLOOKUPCached(S2, "T", "SAP_country", "SAP_name", "SAP_countryid")

   This will return the lookup to the country that corresponds to the country code in the source field.

    

   You can do the same for language for example where your formula returns a pointer to the language entity record that has the language code corresponding to what SAP has passed on in the source fields.

   DBLOOKUPCached(S3, "T", "SAP_language", "SAP_languagecode", "SAP_languageid")

    

2. Picklist sample formula:

   To update a CRM picklist based on data coming from SAP, you need to use a text file which you can call it whatever you want (such as: sap_picklist.txt) but you must ensure the file is in the same folder as your scribe dts project file. So if we have a list of department codes coming from SAP, our picklist file can look like that:

   /*Contact Person Department */

   [Department]

   1=1

   2=18

   3=53

   4=4

    

   So if SAP sends a record with department = 1, this will correspond to the CRM picklist item with id = 1. If it is department 2 in SAP, then this will be CRM picklist item with id = 18, etc. This is all of course depending on your CRM picklists configuration.

    

   The formula in this case will simply look like this and Scribe will do the rest for you:

   FILELOOKUP(S4, "cp_picklist.txt", "Department" )

3. Radio button sample formula:

   Cases where SAP is sending a Boolean value (e.g. true/false, yes/no or 1/0). For example, if data coming from SAP represents the value of "send marketing material" field in CRM Contact entity, the following formula can map the value to CRM:

   IF((S5="Yes")=FALSE, 1, 0)

   i.e. if SAP sends Yes in the record, select the "yes" value for the CRM attribute.

    

   SAP might be also sending "1" or "true", so the formula can be:

   IF((S5="1")=FALSE, 1, 0) OR IF((S5="True")=FALSE, 1, 0)

    

   You can also add a small check if the value is sent blank, to set it to true by default then:

   IF(ISERROR(S5) , 0, IF((S5="Yes")=FALSE, 1, 0))

    

4. Checkbox sample formula:

   If a check box value is coming from SAP is sent as 1/0 then the formula to map to CRM should be: IF( S6="1", 1, 0 ) or in case of True/False: IF( S6="True", 1, 0 )

    

This post is a continuation and expansion on the original blog post published on the personal blog (http://www.mohamedibrahim.net/blog/tag/scribe) of Mohamed Ibrahim Mostafa of CIBER UK.

CIBER is an international IT provider supplying high quality solutions to customers in the private and public sectors all over the globe. Operating in 18 countries, with 8,000 employees and annual revenues of approximately $1 billion, CIBER serves its customers from 20 offices in Europe, 60 in the US and 4 in the Asia Pacific region. For enquiries about CIBER services please email: enquiry@ciber-uk.com or contact +44 (0) 870 000 0204.

 

 

Recorded Webcast: Using Scribe Insight to integrate Microsoft Dynamics NAV to Web Services, SharePoint and Salesforce.com

Scribe Insight is the ideal tool for connecting Dynamics NAV to your organization's data sources and applications. In this recorded webcast you will see demonstrations of integrations from Microsoft Dynamics NAV to Web Services, SharePoint and Salesforce.com

Click here to view the recorded webcast

Cool Marketing Tricks: Do you know who is surfing your site?

Since this blog was started by the marketing team here at Scribe we like to provide our customers and partners tips when we find them. Here is one that is free, easy and powerful. Our Marketing Automation vendor, Pardot, has come out with a free Visitor ID service that gives you reports, email notifications and web activity detail of visitors to your site. This differs from free analytics services like Google Analytics in that, while those services tell you about the amount and type of traffic you receive, they don't tell you which companies and organizations are visiting your site and what pages they are viewing (and for how long).

Who is visiting?	What pages are they visiting?	Notification Emails

Here at Scribe we are heavy users of Marketing Automation. In conjunction with Search Engine Optimization that Heather blogged about in her posts 5 reasons Scribe partners should care about SEO and SEO on your website in 5 (relatively) easy steps our Marketing Automation package handles our email marketing, web forms, nurture programs, landing pages, visitor tracking, lead scoring, data de-de-duplication and more. This is fully integrated to our CRM package so we can keep our sales team spending time on the most promising leads that have displayed buying behavior based on their web activity. We even have rules in place to notify sales when a silent prospect suddenly comes back to life on our site.

You can try out the free Visitor ID service at http://visitorid.pardot.com/.

            

Using Command Line switches to reuse existing work

Did you know that you can change which database you are integrating to via command line parameters? Or how about set values of variables you’ve created right from the command line? ;The command line switches available to you can allow you some very flexible options that will make creation and maintenance of your integration solutions much easier… I’m going to outline a few scenarios here – but please feel free to suggest others by adding comments to this post.

Supporting Multi-Company Scenarios

In some ERP systems (like Microsoft Dynamics GP), each company’s data is kept in separate databases (usually on the same server). It’s not uncommon for an integration to be applied to each company; however many folks resort to copying their integration and changing the connection information for each. ;However… any changes to the integration must be manually applied to all the copies, which can be a hassle. Enter Command Line parameters!

Using command line parameters, you can direct your integration (e.g. DTS file) to connect using different connection parameters. For example, the /TD= switch will change the database parameter for the “target” connection. Similarly, /SD= would change the “source” connection. Using this feature will allow you to create and maintain one DTS file; and run the same integration against different company databases:

 C:\>TWorkbench.exe “C:\Data\MyIntegration.dts” /TD=TWO
 C:\>TWorkbench.exe “C:\Data\MyIntegration.dts” /TD=ABC
 C:\>TWorkbench.exe “C:\Data\MyIntegration.dts” /TD=OB1

Voila! One DTS & multi-company support all through a few simple keystrokes. In this example, the same integration will be run against all 3 company databases (TWO, ABC and OB1).

But what if the company name is actually part of the XML document I am integrating?

You can combine some predefined keywords available to integration processes with command line switches to support a wide scenario of situations. In this case, the %XPath keyword can be combined with command line switches to leverage content in an XML document with a command line switch:

 C:\>TWorkbench.exe “C:\Data\MyIntegration.dts” /TD=%XPath=//Root/@CompanyID

This XPath expression “//Root/@CompanyID” will be evaluated on the source xml document and applied as the target database via the /TD switch.

What was the file that started the integration?

With the Scribe Console, you can set up your integration solution to start when a file is added to a certain folder (by using an integration process of type “File”). If your integration process uses wild cards for the name or type of file (e.g. *.pdf) that trigger this event, it may be useful to know what the file name actually was as part of your integration solution.

For example, suppose that orders are created in a .pdf file –where the name of that file was the order number (e.g. Order1501.pdf). Your integration solution should start once the any pdf is added to a specific folder – however you want to know the name of the pdf file (for obvious reasons). Never fear – you can pass the name of the file to your integration through the use of - - you guessed it - - command line parameters. In this example, I’ll assume that you’ve created a user variable of type “Prompted” called PDFFileName. In your DTS file, you should expect the fully qualified file name that triggered the integration. You can then use the /V command line switch to set the value of a prompted variable; and the %Filename variable available to integration processes to send the name of the file to the PDFFileName variable:

 /VPDFFileName=%Filename

Using prompted variables to allow you to capture the name of the file with you can then parse to find the order number within the DTS itself.

Integration processes and command line switches

Usually, you will be using command line switches as part of an integration process vs. running the integration through the workbench. When you create your integration process, there is a spot available for you to define any command line switches:

 

In these cases, there is no need to specify the DTS file or the workbench executable (TWorkbench.exe). Only the switches themselves are needed (e.g. “/TD=ABC” or “/VPDFFileName=%Filename”).

Searching the Insight help on “Command Line” and “DTS Parameters” will outline the supported parameters and related keywords. Happy scripting!

SEO on your website in 5 (relatively) easy steps

In my previous article on SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, I shared why our partners should care about it, and how it can positively impact attracting new leads. The next step is to figure out how to quickly get started, so you can begin to see returns on your SEO efforts.

Disclaimer: As before I must note that I am by no means an expert on SEO, but would like to share highlights, getting you started quickly, and relatively painlessly.

#1 Begin with your Page Titles. The page title is the text that will appear in the titlebar of the browser window, and is one of the first items a search engine uses to determine what the content of your page is about. In Google, it is also the title of the entry of your page.

 

 

 

 #2 Next, modify (or create) your Description Tag.  Not only is the description tag important for SEO in that search engines use this to determine the content of your page, but it is the first chance you have to tell the reader what you do, but keep it simple and brief! The Description Tag should be relevant for each page, so it probably won't make sense to use the same description for every page in your site.

#3a Keywords. This may seem like a no-brainer, but what you believe your prospects are searching on in order to find your products or services isn't always the reality. Begin this step with some research. Start with your top 5 or 10 keywords that you believe people are using to find you. Now try expanding those keywords with different keyword tools, such as Google's Keyword Tool or their latest tool for keyword research, the Sktool.

#3b Which keywords should be used in the Keyword Tag? When choosing keywords for your website, you should consider the keyword popularity and the keyword competitiveness. Some keywords are more competitive than others, meaning after doing your research, you could still find yourself on the 15^th page on a search, rather than the first few pages. It will require a lot of time and energy to make your website rank for a highly competitive keyword. Assuming you don't have a lot of time to invest, it is always wise to target less popular keywords and phrases and get a higher ranking on those keywords.

#3c How many times to use a keyword? Before you dive in and stuff each keyword tag with the same 2 or 3 words over and over, you need to know that search engines caught onto this trick years ago. Now it will more likely harm your site rather than help it to use the same keywords more than a few times in the Keyword Tag for any individual page.

What do Steps 1-3 look like in HTML? See below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#4  Content needs to be relevant. If you want to attract someone who is looking for your "Widget", be sure to use the word "Widget" at least a few times throughout the page, but don't overdo it. While it is very important to get the keywords a minimum of 2 – 4 times on the page if possible, it needs to read well. Once you've modified the content of your page, step away for a bit, then go back and re-read it. Does it make sense, or does it feel "stuffed" with your keywords?

#5  Use Heading Tags in page titles. The heading tags (H1, H2, H3, which are the different html content title tags) play another important role in Google's search spider to determine the structure and the topic of your webpage. So, structure your page well by making sure your keywords are in these header tags. Also, set up your page in such a way, that one can see what the page is about, by only reading the text between the header tags.

Now you're ready to roll! Almost.

If you haven't yet set up Google Analytics on your site, you need to. There are other traffic tools, but Google Analytics is free and about as robust as it gets. Remember #3(a & b) above? With GA, you can see what keywords are successfully drawing visitors to your site, and which pages are most clicked and which aren't.  You may decide to focus on the most clicked pages, and update that copy.  Or focus on pages that aren't visited often, and rewrite the copy to attract more visitors.

Remember, this is just a start for getting SEO up and running on your site. As Bill Murray says, take Baby Steps. Every little bit that you can do will help your business bring in more, relevant, leads.

Introducing the Scribe Insight Free Trial

Scribe is pleased to introduce the introduction of free 30-day trials of Scribe Insight. Visitors to our web site may now click the free trial link on the home page to request a 30-day free trial of our data migration and integration software. Within seconds of requesting the trial the visitor will receive a step-by-step email explaining where to download our software and how to get the most out of their trial. This email includes links to our easy to follow migration tutorial document which walks the user through setting up a simple data migration job. If visitors need support for the free trial they are directed to a dedicated free trial support site to post questions and search the knowledgebase.

We've made the trial experience as easy as possible for anyone interested in trying our software and comparing it to more expensive competitive offerings. Give it a try.