Yogi Land

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7 (New International Version)

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Ephesians 2:10 (New International Version)

As the population with internet access explodes, and more and more people are using search engines to find what they need, the usage of local search also continues to rise. For any sites servicing a local or specific geographic audience, submission to local search based engines is becoming more and more important.

What is it?

In a nutshell local search involves the use of specialized search engines specifically created to focus on a selected geographic region to find local businesses and websites focused on your area. Local search is commonly utilized as a directory, where users select their location, and narrow their search by categories till they find the listing they want. In many cases local search engines also guess at the users' location by using their IP, so when you visit the site and search, for example, "Chinese restaurants" you automatically see results specific to your location. Google has been doing this for a while to one degree or another. When you perform a search in Google using a geographic modifier the map comes up with results specific to that location. You can also take it one step further and search Google Local specifically. But Google isn't the only engine out there focused on local search. There are several of these directories ranging from the better known Best of the Web, right down to small town specific websites offering local search options. You even may find a web directory or guide specifically created for your city, and chances are, it will be a great place for you to submit your site. Many local directories are free for basic listings along with paid advanced listing options.

Who needs it?

Local search is ideal for anyone serving a specific region, especially those with brick and mortar stores. While you do not necessarily need a physical location, some local search directories, including Google Local, require that you do. Only recently have small local businesses realized the need to be found in the major search engines. I know that if I am personally looking for a bike tune-up, the first place I turn to is online, to find the various bike shops in my area, if at very least, I search online to find their contact info. I can't remember the last time I picked up a phone book. As the internet grows in popularity, there are more and more people like me who use it exclusively to find what they want, local or otherwise. For businesses not found within the various local search sites, they are missing out on a growing piece of their market. Considering the limited expense in getting listed in local search directories, traditional brick and mortar business can't afford to not be listed, it's quickly becoming a necessity.

Why bother?

With more people using these directories, and the incredibly low cost of "free" involved in being listed in many of them, it only makes sense to get listed. These directories, even the lower traffic ones, are a great free source of relevant traffic and the few minutes required to submit to them (usually around 10 minutes or so) only needs to result in a very small handful of site visitors to make it worthwhile.

Where to get listed?

When it comes to local search there are a few places you don't want to miss such as Google Local. Many local search directories are country specific, so try your searching by using your country name; such as, "Canadian business directory". Try to focus your efforts on finding local directories that not only focus on your geographic region, but also offer you something in return.

How to decide if a directory is worthwhile

There are 5 main factors you need to consider when choosing to submit to a local search directory. 1. Location What geographic regions does the directory serve? Do they serve your location? 2. Relevance Does a relevant category exist? When you navigate to your appropriate category, are the other business listings relevant to your business? Some local directories may focus only on one industry, such as hotels. If the theme of the directory will not cater to your industry, you certainly don't need to be listed there. 3. Price How much does the directory charge? If it is free, it's most likely worthwhile. If there is a cost associated with the listing, you need to know more to find out if it's money well spent (which is where the next two points come in). 4. Traffic Does this directory have much traffic? The quickest way to get a rough idea on this is to check their Alexa rating. Alexa is a rough indicator of how busy a site is, the busier the site, the closer their ranking will be to 1. If the site looks like it has very limited traffic, then you need to find out if the listing will have any SEO benefits if you are to spend any money here. (A low traffic free directory is likely still worthwhile however.) 5. SEO Will your listing help you with your organic rankings? This is relatively simple to find out. You want to first check the Google Page Rank for their home page. If it is low (less than 5) then this is not one of the major directories. If it is between 5 and 10, then they likely have some authority. Next check the page your listing will actually reside on. Is this page indexed by Google, and does it have any Page Rank? If so, is the link back to your site search engine friendly? Many local search directories may link to your site using the rel=nofollow tag, or by redirecting through a variety of tracking methods, which can cause your link to have no value in terms of SEO. However, some of them will give you a straight link fully readable by Google, so you will also get the added benefit of increased link density from many of these links. Some directories will also create a brand new page just for you. In that case, your page will not be indexed by Google and will have no Page Rank, but in time, it will. If this is the case, check a few of the listings to see if their pages are indexed. If Google can not see this link, it has no SEO value. If the directory has no SEO value, and no traffic, it is not worthwhile to pay for this submission. (That said, if it's a free listing, you may as well list your site there.)

How can I get listed?

Unlike organic SEO, getting listed in a local directory is often as simple as finding the local directories that are relevant and submit your site. Once you have decided that a directory is worthwhile, filling in a few online forms and submitting payment where applicable is all it takes. Most paid local directories will have your listing posted within a few days, if not immediately. Free directories can take anywhere form a couple of days to several weeks, depending on their policies, etc. StepForth will soon be offering a Local Search service, so stay tuned to see what we can do for you.

Scott Van Achte is the Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Scott's articles and those of the veteran StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com/ , Tel – 250-385-1190, Toll Free – 877-385-5526, Fax – 250-385-1198

When you hear the word "bounce", you're probably more inclined to associate it with a checking account, not your website. But for those who study and understand website statistics, they understand that "bounce rate" is an important measure of your website's effectiveness. Bounce rate, simply put, is the percentage of people who come to your site, then immediately leave without viewing any of the inside content pages. Think of it like window shopping. Say you browse by a shop and don't really care to enter based on what you saw at first glance through the window. The window in this case is your home page. A bad first impression, or irrelevant content, can chase away a visitor and stop them from freely investigating the full content of your site. Google Analytics defines bounce rate as:

"The percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors."

Therefore, a high bounce rate is bad but a low bounce rate is a positive sign that your visitors are engaging and exploring your website. So what constitutes a good rate? This is a very hard question to answer, but if you do some research, most say it needs to be under 50%. It also will depend on the type of site that you have. For example, if you're a blogger, many times a visitor will come to your blog to read the latest updates then leave. Thus more often a blog will have a higher bounce rate than a "normal" site as there is no need for them to go any deeper. How do you know what your bounce rate is? One free program that makes it easy is "Google Analytics". Register, list your sites and paste some HTML code on your pages and you're ready to go. You'll clearly see your bounce rate go up and down as you view the in-depth reports. So, how can you improve your bounce rate? First, you'll need to track the rate over time, and also look at the amount of time your visitors are sticking around. Also, take note of the traffic sources. Where is the majority of the traffic coming from? Search engines, direct links, social networking sites like Stumble Upon or Twitter, etc. The source of the traffic and the quality of that traffic will contribute to the overall bounce rate being higher or lower for the week. Some traffic, depending on the source will naturally convert better than others. Once you know your statistical rate, you'll need to start making small changes, then run tests to see if it improves over time. It all starts with trying to improve the usability of your site's landing page. Translation: what people see when they come to your home page. You can make changes to the design, look and feel of your site. Make sure there are other links readily available to peak the visitor's interest so they'll want to dive further into your content. Of course, you always want to make sure your site's navigation is user friendly, and that the site itself is easy to use and well organized. Another trick is to play around with different headlines, even change your website's copy. Another big problem is a heavy load time. Make sure your site loads quickly so the visitor isn't reaching for their back button before it even finishes loading. Change one thing at a time, and keep your eye on the bounce rate to see if it improves. If you're not doing so already, have Google Analytics email your site reports weekly in PDF format. This will make your homework a little easier. As you can see, bounce rate is an important statistical measure and says a lot about the "stickiness/effectiveness" of your website. There are also those who believe it plays a role in search engine algorithms and how they rank your site. If this is true or not, I don't know – but if it is true it gives you some extra motivation in working on improving it. By studying your site's bounce rate, you really can learn a lot as to what's working and what's not with your website. It really is an important number to know and one you'll want to continually strive to improve upon. Like costly heated air leaking out a drafty window, you'll want to do what you can to plug those leaks and try to keep visitors at your site a little longer. It's only when they are fully engaged that they'll make a purchase, subscribe to your ezine or do whatever action you consider a conversion. In the end, isn't that what it's all about? If your site's been losing visitors as fast as they enter, it's time to follow the "bounce rate" and make some much needed changes.

From month to month I have the opportunity to present 4 different webinars on different topics related to Internet marketing to brand new online business owners. The reason I bring this up is because no matter what the topic I am presenting on, I usually get asked the same question by completely different random people. They are all wanting me to “look at their site” and give them a “quick, what do you think?”. These people are wanting to know if their site is ready to “go live” (although I never really understand why people ask that question) but for these people, and this post – I have come up with what I’d like to call “The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist”. If you have a brand new site, and haven’t done any kind of SEO before, this will be a great list of reminders that will set you off on the right foot.

URL canonicalization and 301 re-dirs

One of the first things I look for on any domain I am giving a health check on is the URL canonicalization. In My Opinion it does not matter if you pick proper URL canonicalization pointing to the www’s or non-www’s, but you need to pick one and stick to it. I personally always choose the www’s because more people (from my experience) tend to link to you with the full URL. So you need to get into your .htaccess file and make a few edits. Any variation of the homepage URL needs to be done this way too – for example you need to have the /index.php also re-direct to the main URL (however you have it set up) Bottom line here, you need to make sure all variations of your URL point to the same way you set it up. Any extension of your URL like:

• http://www.example.com/index.php
• http://www.example.com/index.htm
• http://www.example.com/default.html
• http://www.example.com/default.php
• http://www.example.com/anything (that goes to homepage)

All need to be pointed to the main – http://www.example.com (without any extensions). You also need to make sure that you don’t have any dev links that need to be 301-ed to their new addresses so you don’t have any bad or dead links on the site. You can handle all these changes via the .htaccess file. Here is a little more in depth look into 301 re-directs via a post I did on it a few months back. Here’s the code:

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

(Make sure your Apache installation has mod_rewrite enabled.) As long as your Apache installation has mod_rewrite enabled then you should be able to use this fix on almost any host.

Unique Title Tags and Meta Data

I will go to Google and run a site: command and see all of the pages that are indexed just to make sure that there are no duplicate content issues and that all pages seem to be individual and unique with their own title tags and meta data. If your site is not right – all results that come back will look exactly the same, and if the title and data that comes back is all the same – you have a problem!

Search Engine Friendly

Check to make sure the CMS you are using is search engine friendly. Are your URLs search engine friendly? Are you using keywords in the naming structure of your URLs or just automatically created jibberish by the builder? Are you able to include header tags? Alt Tags?

Has the site been submitted to Google Webmaster Central?

By submitting your site to Google you are able to get your whole site indexed properly on Google, and they are able to show you any errors your site may have. There are so many tools that are offered here that you need to become aware of, but for the sake of “The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit” I just want to make sure the site has been submitted.

Check for Duplicate Content

If you are selling products and are using a supplier with their descriptions and info, I am going to make sure there is no duplicate content issues. If you are using the same content that 1,000 other people are using, there might be a problem. I would always suggest making sure you do everything you can to make sure that you have no duplicate content of any kind on your site.

In Conclusion

Again, this is just a quick “What I would do” SEO Audit checklist of what I look for when “checking out” brand new sites. These are a few of the steps that I would recommend anyone new to Internet business and SEO should check out before really thinking they are ready to make money with their website. I know this info may seem basic to a lot of us that have been doing it “forever”, but you woul be surprised how many people still do the simple things wrong!

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

2 Corinthians 12:9 (New International Version)

In Christ, We are forgiven, saved, healed and blessed without even asking. We are used for His Kingdom without even knowing. We are sowing without even losing. All we need to do is just believing. Yet we are choosing the hard ways… To get secular approvals, To work hard for insecurities and uncertainties To find unachievable temporary rewards.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become a new trend on the Web world. The demand is so high that it even creates a new title in jobs. Why is it so powerful? What does it do? How can it benefit us as a company or person? According to Wikipedia, Search Engine Optimization, or many called SEO, is

the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. The acronym "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

A Website can have the best design in the whole Internet universe, but if it is "hidden" within layers of "black holes", it becomes the "trash" of the Internet universe. I believe, before creating a Website, we should ask ourselves, why do I need a Website? If the purpose of the Website is to promote a company, one should have, at least, the contact information, the services and/or products descriptions of the company. A personal Website is not so much different, one should also has a profile and "selling" information. After all, who does not want to be visible? SEO is our only way to be visible in the Internet universe. When we do it right, we will be on top of its "mountains". Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not the easiest nor the hardest thing to do in marketing, yet it is tidies. There are many components involved in the process. From editing HTML codes to its contents. I believe, the most important key of SEO is useful contents, useful contents and useful contents. We can illustrate one as a car that is going downhill. If the car has more contents and its tires are properly installed, the car will get to the bottom of the hill faster than a car with less contents and improperly installed tires. Therefore, more useful contents and better HTML tags are better for SEO. Once the Website is "visible", now it is time to maintain its position. It is not easier task, but it is not hard. Again, it is tidies. At the end of the day, we always need to ask ourselves if "the juice is worth the squeeze". How far are we willing to go to keep our rank on top? We can accomplish this by keeping the "audience" interested in its contents. Provide more useful contents.  Better yet, post more fresh interesting contents daily. People will keep coming back for more when they like what they see and read. Generally, Websites which provide news, reviews or personal blogs are the ones with more traffics. All in all, a Website with no audience can be considered as a "trash" of the Internet universe. It takes many working hours to be visible on Search Engines, but it requires more work to stay on top. It is wining a battle to be visible in a search engine, but keeping up the position is an on going war.

He replied, "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."

Matthew 17:20 (New International Version)

"Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

Matthew 11:28-30 (New International Version)