That being said, I thought the best way I could honor her would be to arrange a version of her favorite hymn, Teach Me To Pray. Here it is.  We miss you, Memommy.

Teach Me To Pray

Teach me to pray, Lord, teach me to pray;
This is my heart-cry day unto day;
I long to know your will and your way;
Teach me to pray, Lord, teach me to pray.

Power in prayer, Lord, power in prayer!
Here ‘mid earth’s sin and sorrow and care,
Men lost and dying, souls in despair;
O give me power, power in prayer!

Refrain
Living in you, and you in me
Constant abiding, this is my plea;
Grant me your power, boundless and free,
Power with men and power with Thee.

My weakened will, Lord, you can renew;
My sinful nature you can subdue;
Fill me just now with power anew;
Power to pray and power to do!

Teach me to pray, Lord, teach me to pray;
You are my pattern day unto day;
You are my surety, now and always
Teach me to pray, Lord, teach me to pray.

Instead, I have for you a song from my album.  It has resonated with me recently, so I thought I’d share it.

Hit and Miss

Never knew what it felt like to be a wreck
Always lived safe and slow
Swerved to miss a dead possum dead in my tracks
Hit a telephone pole

I never believed that someone like me would ever end up in this kind of shape
But who am I, anyway?

Never knew what my blood tasted like till today
It’s all over my face
And it’s all over my formerly white linen self
What ironic disgrace

I never believed that someone like me would ever end up in this kind of shape
But who am I, anyway?

I thought I was strong enough
I guess I was wrong enough

I never believed that someone like me would ever end up in this kind of shape
But who am I, anyway?

Never knew what it felt like to be a wreck
Never knew what it felt like to live so slow

Love Dies Slowly

You wonder if it’s love or some other affection
Well if you’ll shed some blood, then there is one sure way to know

Love dies slowly, love dies slowly

Shoot it with a gun, or stab it with a shovel
No matter how you get it done, love’s got a stubborn will to live

And that’s why love dies slowly, love dies slowly

So if you want the facts and if you’ve got the courage
Go on and swing the axe and kill your curiosity

Remember: love dies slowly, love dies slowly

Today’s song is New-Years-Day-appropriate for two reasons:  1. It’s about change, and  2. it’s proof that you can accomplish something with a little resolve, even if it takes forever.  I started writing this almost two years ago, sharing an unfinished version in a previous post.  Since then I’ve revisited it a few times.  And this is where I landed.  Hope you enjoy.  And Godspeed with your resolutions (or hopefuls).

1999

It was so long ago
We barely can remember what we said
The pain, it pierced too deeply to forget
But we barely can remember what we said

It was so long ago
We wonder why forgiveness is so far
Why all that seems to grow are all these scars
We wonder why forgiveness is so far
Is it so far?

We’re stuck in 1963
The start of our shattered history
And I want out of here
Fast forward, it’s 1999
And we can change this story line
Start it over here

It was so long ago
We don’t believe it’s ever gonna change
We think we’ll live forever in these chains
We don’t believe it’s ever gonna change
But it can change

We can’t win unless we lose our victory rights
Forgiveness hurts, forgiveness kills and brings new life

It’s not worth living life this way
It’s not worth living life this way
It’s not worth holding onto pain
If it means losing one more day

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory over the grave.

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Why should I care? You will spread your “link juice” thin. Let’s take, for example, the homepage of yourdomain.com. Let’s say you have 10 sites linking into your homepage: 5 to yourdomain.com and 5 to www.yourdomain.com. Rather than your homepage receiving 10 ounces of “link juice,” each version of your homepage will only receive 5. This could have a substantial negative impact on your homepage’s PageRank and rankability in general.

How can I fix it? Fortunately, there is an easy fix via the .htaccess file. Add the following two lines (replacing yourdomain.com with your actual domain name):

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The first line says, “look for yourdomain.com without a leading subdomain.” The second line says, “301 redirect the non-WWW version to the WWW version.” Simple as that.

Of course, any edit to your .htaccess file can have big implications, so make sure you test it out before you leave it up on the server. Generally, this edit doesn’t cause problems.

Now you can call yourself the Bruce Wayne of SEO.

Yahoo offers two match types: Advanced and Standard, with Advanced being the default:

Unlike Google’s rather meaningful match type terminology (Broad, Phrase, Exact), “Advanced” and “Standard” don’t tell us much of anything at first glance. So what do they mean?

Yahoo’s Advanced match type is analogous to Google’s Broach match. Choose Advanced match and your ad will be displayed for variations of your keywords, including:

• Singular/plural variations
• Common misspellings
• Phrases containing your keyword
• Reordered versions of your multi-word keywords

Yahoo’s Standard match type is fairly similar to Google’s Exact match. However, Yahoo Standard will display your ads not just for your exact keywords, but also for singular/plural variations and common misspellings.

Which match type should you use? If you need tight control over what phrases display your ads, use Standard. If you only require loose control, you might try Advanced match + Excluded Words.

That’s Yahoo match types in a nutshell. For more information, check out Yahoo’s reference guide.

Log into your Facebook account and you’ll most likely see this notification:

What exactly does this mean? The Facebook blog explains that users who choose a username will essentially gain a vanity URL for their profile pages.  Instead of http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=28300932&ref=profile, my new profile link might be http://www.facebook.com/jordan.teague.

Why secure a username? Here are a few reasons to jump on the bandwagon.

1. Controlling/protecting your online identity.  If you’re a high-profile public figure, business person, or celebrity, snag your username before someone else does.  There are obvious problems that can otherwise ensue.  Twitter is a great example of a social media space with a lot of fakers who reserved well-known usernames early in the game.
2. Effectively marketing yourself or business on Facebook.  Take advantage of the opportunity to gain a vanity URL for your profile or your company’s profile.  The new vanity URLs will be much more memorable than the current URL format.  And memorable URL means more-likely-to-be-visited URL.
3. Search engine optimizing your Facebook profile.  Facebook public profiles already incorporate your first and last name into public profile URLs, but I imagine we’ll end up observing that the new vanity URLs trump the old format in terms of ranking (all other things being equal).

If you didn’t already mark June 13th on your calendar, do it now.  Especially you, John Smith!

SEO tends to focus on increasing the quantity of traffic to a website.  Through landing page optimization–that is, making adjustments to key entry pages to improve the user experience–we can actually increase the value of the traffic gained through SEO.  Here’s how.

1. Identify your most popular landing page.  Start with baby steps and identify the landing page that attracts the most organic search traffic.  If you’re using Google Analytics, turn on the “Search Traffic” segment and view the “Landing Pages” report under “Content.”

Here’s an example from Searchability’s analytics.  Our blog article about Facebook ads is clearly our big winner.

2. Determine your audience’s intent.  The best place to start is by looking at the actual keywords/phrases that your visitors typed before they arrived at your page (in Google Analytics, it’s the “Keywords” report under “Traffic”).  Are they looking for an answer to a question?  Do they need a product or service?

In the case of our Searchability example, we see a number of keywords driving traffic to the landing page.  Interestingly, many of the keywords are formed as questions (i.e. “cpm or cpc on facebook?”).  Our audience is looking for advice on how to implement a successful Facebook ad campaign or improve their existing campaign.

3. Analyze your page.  Could your landing page offer a more complete solution to your visitor’s problem?  Could it more effectively encourage your visitors to become customers?

Back to our example: what if we modified our landing page to include a mention of Searchability’s social media management services?  While many of the article readers may intend to manage their own Facebook ad campaign, others may be overwhelmed after their research, and may ultimately prefer the idea of delegating their social media campaign to a specialist.

4. Implement and observe. Put some of your optimization ideas into action and observe whether they succeed.  For you, “success” could mean a number of things: less phone calls to customer support, more widgets sold, more Diggs.  It just depends on what your objectives are.

We’re working on practicing what we preach.  If you go to our article on Facebook ad bidding, you’ll notice that we’ve made a small change for the time being.  Once we can get it in the development queue, we plan on adding a form on this page, giving a reader the opportunity to contact us without even leaving the page.  Any ideas on other changes we might make to this page to better-promote our social media management services?

Make the most of your SEO investment; optimize your landing pages!