#both of which were basically just a bunch of copy-pasting for the first few ranks cuz they're the same lksfjdfssjfdkfjds-

[kumakuma-circus]

i love being a writer.

[1apple-fox1]

card technology and how LDS basically owns the market on not only real solid vision systems but also cards

this is gonna be a wordy post and i apologize in advance. ok first off i just wanna say i am probably the only person who thinks about this shit but i find world stuff and the like interesting to think about. call me obsessed, idc, ive watched arc v 5 times and i just really wanna share this.

it is canon that standard did not start with the other summoning methods, that they are relatively new. we arent ever told what cards are made out of specifically- but considering past shows and their connection to spirits we can assume they arent just simply cards. EX- gx and the crystal beast cards being made from actual gems.

for arc v, id say its the ‘energy signature’ of a card. reiji is shown to have technology that is able to read energy and also tell what kind of energy it is. He also uses a machine to copy pendulum monster cards and they are similar to the originals but not exactly the same. so either the ‘energy’ is the monster spirit itself, or its the magic nonsense that allows it to summon said spirit. either way- a card is not simple to make in the universe.

so that begs the question- how did LDS manage to get the other summoning methods?

well its shown that LDS actually has dimension hopping technology, though it seems rough and unfinished, i have no doubt reiji tried to use it again after his initial teleport to academia. whether he went there physically or not idk, but i theorize he was able to capture or hone in on the cards of those dimensions and copy them the same way he copied yuyas pendulum monsters.

except the LDS fusion/xyz/synchro cards are all weaker than the originals because he probably had limited data.

for fusion its easy to back this up since, anyone from standard who uses fusion doesnt actually use a regular ‘polymerization’ card- because reiji wasnt able to copy it one for one... (your probably thinking- what about kachidoki? well ill get back to that)

Even other characters like yuya, yuzu, and reiji himself are shown to not actually be able to use ‘polymerization’ more than once. standard users who have fusion monsters rely on other methods such as deck themed fusion cards, monster effects, or in the case of reiji: contract cards

this extends to the other methods too but in more subtle ways. hokuto is only able to xyz summon after changing his monsters levels, yaiba can only synchro summon using effects that treat monsters like tuners (both him and gon only have one tuner in their decks at the start) you could also argue that the fact they are missing ‘rank up’ cards or any support magic cards for synchro monsters as another way in which standard made xyz/synchro are weaker.

so- where the fuck am i going with this? well LDS is shown to be the only thing with access to these other cards. its not clear, but it looks like using the method can take a toll on the users body and i do not know if thats a matter of energy needed to summon a monster and having to train ones body or what but-

these cards are not easy to make, and there are limited copies in stock.

other summoning method cards are expensive to buy in standard. why am i saying this? well one- yu show duel school is shown to not have access to any, shuzo himself says hes never used the cards, and its possible that its because he cant afford it. none of the other schools in the tournament use other summoning methods. that is except...

kachidoki and his school.

not only that, but they also have a regular ‘polymerization’ card. your probably thinking this is where all this falls apart. but think about it- ryozanpaku is shown to be probably the second most popular and highest grossing duel school. its not a stretch to think they PAID LDS a hefty sum of money for their own stock of cards. and what did LDS give them? their first copies of the ‘polymerization’ cards. they are weaker but relatively work the same- but most of the students still rely on it AND monster effects.

but if thats the case- if these cards cost so much and only LDS has access to them... not only do they now own that market, theyve basically created a huge gap and money cap for players of the game in standard. people arent gonna wanna go to a duel school that does not have the means to teach them these other methods of play. standard summoning becomes a laughing stock- no one can win with just standard summoning! duel schools start going out of business because they simply lack students. LDS and only a FEW other schools remain and all of them focus on those methods- not standard summoning...

LDS has complete and total control of the market.

of course arc v doesnt show us if anywhere else in the standard dimension has this tech but if we’ve seen anything from reira- its quite likely japan is the most advanced in this field, as weapons and cards seem to go hand in hand because of their innate power to destroy... ANYWAYS

what does this mean for the game in standard? well if things kept going how they were its quite possible the level of entry into the game becomes so high that you have to be born with privilege to even have a chance at grabbing a spot and not being immediately kicked out.

but something more interesting- and the real like theory part i guess is... when something becomes too expensive to get- ppl start making knock offs. people start making fake cards, some of them work on the duel disk- others do not, but the older the card the easier to copy and cheat the duel disk code. suddenly theres a bunch of copies of strong ishijimas cards, or even yusho’s cards. (thats how the bully managed to make an exact replica of strong ishijimas deck)

theres just a group of people now who just dont even use duel disk and just play on mats- denounce the new summoning method and actively hate what the game has become- but its still seen as lesser... and still other methods cannot be copied.

theres no real end to this theory beyond the fact that this shit is kinda messed up and mirrors shit in our world to an eerie point but like... uh i hope you enjoyed this? i like thinking of the game duel monsters in the world of arc v instead of the normal ass card game that it is irl so-- uh yeah pls tell me what you think about this and add on to it if you have something to share! sorry for the long post--

[danse-or-farkas]

For Fanfic Friday:

What do you suppose a pre "new blood" birthday for Farkas would entail?

How would that change once the "new blood" joined?

How would it change once the "new blood" became harbinger?

What do you suppose a pre "new blood" birthday for Farkas would entail?

This topic is something I’ve actually put in a fanfic so I’ve thought about it quite a bit.

I’ve always though that Farkas and Vilkas don’t know their actually date of birth, Jergen basically keeping everything about their life before the Companions quiet. Instead they celebrate the day they were brought into the Guild. I’ve always had this thought that they were born on the edge of a month and a firmament which nudged their temperaments apart even as twins. It would be either Lord to Mage, Steed to Apprentice, or Apprentice to Warrior.

Their earlier birthdays I think may have been quieter affairs, small trinkets handed over from those within The Circle with little fanfare. I always thought the Companions were a rather grim bunch not often given to celebration, going from 500 strong in ancient times to a handful in the present making it clear that they may be the last generation to bear the name.

How would that change once the "new blood" joined?

Not terribly much, but I do think Adrian tries to find something for both twins they will appreciate. He tries his best, throwing a little of his own coin to Tilma to nudge the Halls food and drink order to what they would like most.

How would it change once the "new blood" became harbinger?

I personally wrote my way around Harbinger by having the Dragonborn sidestep the rank in favour of letting The Circle guide the Companions path forward, and in that timeline The Companions get an influx of new recruits and jobs lined up using the Dragonborns fame that really seems to turn their fortunes around. I think in such a timeline they might be more willing and wanting to celebrate, to revel in the good times, even if there is still a lot of pain and tragedy in the life of a mercenary company.

I have a snippet of fic too that's on topic from during those good times, grabbed from CH20 of Rise and Fall on AO3:

Farkas had not seen Eorland so at ease in quite some time, at least not since the disappearance of his son. Now that he thought about it Fralia had been in good spirits too when Adrian had dragged him down to the market to show what gift he had gotten Vilkas. Adrian had gone out of his way for their birthday, or at least the day they celebrated it on, their true day of birth now long lost, so they took the day they had been brought into the Companions instead.

Vilkas' gift had been a ring of carved dragonbone based on one Adrian himself had come across in his adventures. Farkas had not asked just how he had acquired the original, but when he had showed it to Aela her eyes had gone wide. He didn't ask if it was what he thought it was, but the way the beast blood trembled in its presence made it more than obvious. Fralia had copied the design wonderfully, though she had a few small issues with not being allowed to touch the original ring even with gloves on.

Adrian made a dramatic sweeping motion past Eorland, signalling Farkas to step forward. Eorland stood aside with a smug look of pride at his creation, revealing a long box of plain wood.

Cautiously Farkas approached, heart in his throat. When he opened it his breath caught, his jaw falling open. It was beautiful.

He thought it was ebony at first, the colour just slightly too silvery to be that. He discovered later when Eorland told him the story of a less than easy forging that it was some kind of ebony-skyforged steel-silver mix that had to be precise down to the droplet. There were several failed attempts that had shattered like ice before they had gotten it quite right.

He lifted it almost reverently, finding a matching bandolier and sheathing loop beneath.

[thesummerstorms]

Rev Recaps Hard Contact (Chapter 7)

CW: mass execution

TL;DR Recap: Niner & Omega watch the Separatists murder Hokan’s old militia. Etain and Darman meet and it’s incredibly awkward. Hokan takes time to gloat. The truth finally comes out about Atin.

Beginning Kal Count: 10 Ending Kal Count: 12 (or 12.5)

THIS RECAP IS THE LONGEST YET. Everything seems to happen in this chapter.

So we open with Niner being bored, Fi being Fi, and Atin being cheerful because he’s up to his elbows in electronic guts. The scene starts pretty quiet before a massive tonal change, but it’s honestly the front half that’s my favorite, just for character reasons.

Niner is bored and grumpy, so logically he’s thinking about how to revise the training manual. Plus his little “if one precaution was good, two were better.” Good old Niner.  Fi being amused that Atin is made content by shredding a computer to pieces. I don’t know, it’s just the little things about their dynamic that makes me happy.

Niner is still upset with Atin, but he’s also curious. He doesn’t have long to think about it though, because the Separatist troops assigned to Uthan along with some of the battle droids assigned to the planet start approaching Hokan’s old Weequay militia. The squad watches as the Separatist officer and the droids proceed to murder every single one of Hokan’s old “associates” in visual range with no warning then retreat back to their base, which Niner finds understandably worrying. 

We switch then to Etain, who is frustrated and paranoid and is building herself an emergency exist by loosening the boards in the back wall of the barn where Jinart has been hiding her. She’s yet again frustrated that she can’t do more with her Force powers, and her lack of self-esteem really comes out in full measure.

“She wondered why Jedi blood had bothered to manifest itself in someone who was so fallible.” Sweetheart...

Jinart arrives to take her somewhere and lets Etain finally feel her presence in the Force. But when Etain mistakes Jinart for a Jedi and asks why Jinart didn’t tell her what she was... Jinart tells Etain to shut up.

“And given your competence, I’m the one who’s most at risk. Now, silence.”

Okay, listen, if you could give her even like three seconds of genuine explanation rather than just attacking her for not trusting you after her teacher was literally sold out and then tortured to death, then you wouldn’t need to tell her to STFU. I’m just saying, Jinart.

Anyway, Jinart tells Etain that there’s a soldier waiting up ahead for her, so Etain heads in that direction, despite Jinart still being extremely shady. She’s about to meet Darman, and while I love them both dearly, while this ship is my OTP, it’s... really fucking awkward.

Listen. This is just weird as hell, okay? I’m gonna admit it. I also pretend it ... wasn’t written like this. Because while Darman is naive and inexperienced, he still has enough neurological development (and enough experiences that go beyond the pale of normal adulthood even) that this weird framing of him as “childlike” just comes off creepy. So I ignore it. That’s really all I have to say about it.

Etain feels Darman’s scope or his attention through the scope or whatever, and decides “well, I’m going to fuck someone up before I die, if I can”, which to be fair, is a very Etain thing to do.

Darman sees her lighstaber is like “oh, finally a Jedi”, and tries to greet her politely. Except this is Etain, who really has no idea what the fuck is going on except that she’s been on this planet for three or more months, the only person she trusted was murdered, and there’s an evil Mandalorian somewhere who wants to hurt her badly.

So naturally when her vision clears (Darman blinded her with some kind of light), she see his helmet, assumes Jinart’s shadiness was in fact the prelude to a betrayal and that this is Hokan...

Darman getting worried now:

And Etain being Etain,she launches herself at him.  (ง'̀-'́)ง(ง'̀-'́)ง(ง'̀-'́)ง

It... doesn’t go well. Darman deflects most of her attacks pretty easily and literally dumps her in the river, continuing to try and calm her down to no avail, but she’s reached her breaking point and is pretty much in a blind rage.

“and when she was frightened and desperate and angry that was very hard indeed. She hadn’t know it until now.”

Listen, it’s a very un-Jedi-like but very Etain thing to do, and also who can really blame her given what she thought was happening and the kind of time she’s had on this planet so far. But Darman is exasperated, and I’m pretty Etain was embarrassed looking back at this for the remainder of her very short life.

Anyway, Darman finally manages to calm her down enough to let him talk, and in the process, he tries to smooth things over by taking the blame. He didn’t identify himself, it’s his fault, etc. He introduces himself (with the wrong designation- KT uses CC 1136, which would make him a Commander, rather than RC 1136) but in doing so, he uses terms of ranks, confusing the hell out of her. She asks when they got a Grand Army and-

We get the iconic “handing her back her lightsaber from the river” scene, except the official art for that picture always neglects to depict the fact that as gentlemanly as he’s trying to be, she’s dripping wet with her hair plastered in her face and desperately trying to politely ask her not to either get herself shot or go after him with a lightsaber again.

Instead of “meet cute” it’s more of a “meet extremely awkward”.

Anyway, this is all coming on the heels of several really bad months for Etain and the utter dismissal she just got from Jinart, so her insecurity really comes out in this conversation. It’s not really pretty.

(Side note, for once I do have to give KT some points on effectively carrying a tiny world building thing: Dar was embarrassed when Jusik asked for his name, he’s embarrassed that Etain is doing it now, and he’s going to be embarrassed again when she asks the rest of his squad.)

“talking army gibberish” lmao.

Again, self-esteem issues. But to be honest, as embarrassed as I am for Etain in this scene (she really doesn’t give her best here) it’s probably because I can relate a hell of a lot to her emotions?

Like, imagine. You’ve already got major issues with your self-worth from a lifetime of not being good enough for the people and the system that raised you, you just got dragged by an old woman after months of struggling behind enemy lines, you failed in your mission to protect the one person who gave a shit about you, and some (to your knowledge) regular human just successfully took you down without too much struggle when Jedi are supposed to be more than human, the best of the best. Then he turns to you with wide-eyed confidence and insists you are now his commanding officer, and you almost feel worse because he’s trying to absolve you of any fault. 

I’d be kind of prickly and asshole-ish, too, if I’m honest.

Again, we start with her having trouble with some wounded pride. But... we end on that bomb shell, and I would not blame Etain for short-circuiting at being told a 10 year old had been “bred to serve [her]. It’s a hell of a lot.

Anyway, I’m aware I copied and pasted almost the entire scene, but there’s a lot there, okay? But next comes more Hokan, and he’s basically just gloating that he’s now more powerful than Ankkit.

*long, exasperated sigh*

Listen, I could write a college essay about characterization just focusing on this man’s use of the word decadent, holy fuck. Also, the gloating is “vulgar” but all he does for pretty much his entire appearance in this chapter is gloat.

You know who Hokan would have gotten on with? Vizsla. Wait- no. Even Vizsla kicked him out. Anyway, Hokan finishes gloating and then goes off to murder a farmer for not divulging important information quickly enough/trying to trade it for booze.

This chapter is long and I know I’ve made this post really long, but we cut back to Niner and Fi again. They’ve made their way to one of the rendezvous points, only to find the trees that should be there aren’t. Fi eventually guesses that they’ve been logging and makes a disparaging comment about intel. Niner gives a little bit more exposition on how terrible the Kaminoans were, including a rumor about clones with impaired eyesight who disappeared and a comment about how Jedi giving orders is different from Kaminoans because Kaminoans are the only things he fears.

Fi is sighing, and eventually Niner prods at him:

And we get our biggest Kal Count yet. Technically this is one continuing remembrance, but it’s also long as hell and includes lots of little memories, so I almost want to include it as 1.5 towards our Kal Count, bringing us to a total of 11 (or 11.5). I’m way more interested in their conversation before Kal is brought up than after, honestly. But the reminiscing gets broken up when Omega is suddenly shot at by a few Separatist officers and a bunch of battle droids:

Please, please imagine this moment with the cartoon B1 battle droid voices from The Clone Wars. Please, I’m begging you.

Atin saves Niner’s life, which is honestly the most positive thing that has happened between the two of them so far and marks a turning point for them in general. It’s also the first time we get to see Fi jump in as squad medic, but he’s super efficient about it. Also, he snarks at Atin as he’s actively trying to decide if Atin is dying or not:

Niner offers to carry Atin’s pack for him until he’s doing better, which means he’s probably carrying something like 300 lbs now, even if Atin did save his life. And I know my screenshots for this post have been ridiculously long, but Niner finally, finally reconciles with Atin enough to figure out why Atin has been an asshole about Darman this whole time (minus the Vau thing):

It’s a pretty nice closing line to the scene, honestly. Also, technically speaking our Kal Count just jumped to 12.

I’ll spare you most of the closing scene because it’s just Hokan being pissed and thinking it’s impossible clones could have done this, but:

a) Mandalorian. Honor. Complex. You’d think Mandalore the Ultimate had been in charge for the last few years instead of Jango.

b) seriously. What is it with the word “decadent”??????

But it’s over quickly with Hokan making the wry observation that if he didn’t know better he would think he was being haunted by Jango’s ghost.

[commandertheory]

Amonkhet Commander Set Review

For each new set, I write an article discussing the new legendary creatures and the nonlegendary cards that I think will be relevant in Commander. This review is obviously a bit late, as I was taking a hiatus from the blog when Amonkhet got released, but the review might benefit from having a few months to play with the set and get a more accurate impression of the cards.

The Commanders of Amonkhet

The token generation is pretty inefficient compared to some other white commanders, and although double strike will help her get to 21 commander damage, the limitation on her ability to attack keeps her from reaching her potential as a Voltron commander.

Seems like a strong commander for monoblue control. He allows you to hold up counterspells and cash in your unused mana for cards right before you untap, while also potentially serving as a late-game threat once you’ve got a full grip of answers.

The relatively low power and the weak effect of her activated ability makes me think that the payoff for building around her is not worth the effort. That being said, she’s easily one of the best commanders for breaking symmetry on The Abyss, Magus of the Abyss, and Spreading Plague.

Like Bontu, the rewards aren’t really worth the trouble of activating Hazoret or bringing her online. The life totals in Commander are way too high to waste time dealing damage 2 at a time (Purphoros notwithstanding).

His activated ability is not much of a reason to run this guy as a commander, and the Voltron potential implied by his power-to-cost ratio is, of course, diminished by his requirement that you commit to playing other creatures instead of focusing on dealing 21.

I try to keep an eye out for potential themes in need of a commander, but BG -1/-1 counters wasn’t really on my radar. Hapatra ended up being a pleasant surprise, as it turns out there was enough tech available for her that she added a new archetype to the Commander metagame.

Most effective tribal commanders are ones that take a tribe with a lot of borderline playable creatures and give them just enough of a boost to create a viable deck. The problem with Neheb is that most Minotaurs are not on the borderline; they are unplayable. +2/+0 and first strike is not going to be enough to make Cursed Minotaur and Gnarled Scarhide playable in a 40-life multiplayer format with tons of board wipes.

However, Neheb might do some good work as a discard outlet for madness/reanimator strategies and as a way to repeatedly trigger things like Geth’s Grimoire or Waste Not. Here’s a rough list.

Double strike and haste make for a strong Voltron Commander, so throw together some ramp to get her down early and some decent auras/equipment (Hero’s Blade, Grafted Exoskeleton, and any saboteur equipment will probably be good in this deck) and call it a day.

He can’t use his ability to help deal commander damage (even when he’s embalmed), so you’re stuck trying to eliminate multiple opponents with giant tokens (or ones with brutal saboteur abilities) sliding past their blockers. Overall, the plan seems kinda weak, but there are a few cute things you can do to make the unblockability more relevant.

The Maindeck Cards

In this set review, I’ll be using two five-point rating scales to evaluate the nonlegendary cards, one that measures how many decks a card is playable in (we’ll call that “spread”), and one that measures how powerful it is in those decks (”power”). Here’s a brief rundown of what each rank on the two scales means:

Spread

1: This card is effective in one or two decks, but no more (ex: The Gitrog Monster). 2: This card is effective in one deck archetype (ex: self-mill decks). 3: A lot of decks will be able to use this card effectively (ex: decks with graveyard interactions). 4: This card is effective in most decks in this color. 5: Every deck in this color is able to use this card effectively.

Power

1: This card is always going to be on the chopping block. 2: This card is unlikely to consistently perform well. 3: This card provides good utility but is not a powerhouse. 4: This card is good enough to push you ahead of your opponents. 5: This card has a huge impact on the game.

Spread: 1

Power: 3

Banishing Light is good because it’s cheap and hard to get rid of. Angel of Sanctions trade those two advantages for the ability to deal three in the air and return once after it gets killed, which I think is a pretty raw deal. It also compares really unfavorably with Admonition Angel.

However, embalm does work well with populate, so Trostani ought to get more value out of it than most commanders.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

If your deck has a heavy token theme or your Commander makes tokens, this should be an easy inclusion.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

This card is great in token decks, hate bear decks, decks with lots of mana dorks, and Doran builds. 3+ power kills most of the threats in the format while protecting your little dudes. Plus, even if your (nontoken) weenies get killed later, the second half of this card regrows them for you. Great value.

Spread: 1

Power: 1

Maybe in some Ad Nauseam combo deck as the third copy of Angel’s Grace (with Phyrexian Unlife being the second)? He doesn’t do much since he’s pretty easy to remove later on in the game when people are actually winning.

Spread: 1

Power: 3

It’s obviously most effective in Kemba and Raksha. You might be tempted to run it in a token list or a blink deck, but I think in those situations it fares poorly compared to other options at the same price point.

Spread: 2

Power: 1

These types of effects often create combo potential, but the combination of an end step return and a limited scope of targets handicaps the Vizier to the point of unplayability.

Spread: 1

Power: 1

Assists with Persist combos and generates infinite mana in combination with Devoted Druid. Unfortunately, it doesn’t accomplish anything by itself, which makes it less appealing than other combo pieces in the same colors that are effective in isolation.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

It acquires counters too slowly to be of much use outside of decks with extremely low average CMCs, and only getting one free spell per turn is likewise pretty limiting. However, decks with lots of cheap counterspells that frequently cast them on their opponents’ turns ought to be able to milk much more mana out of this card than the other decks in the format. In Baral, Azami, etc, this could easily end up producing a great deal of mana if you can manage to get two or more counters on it.

Spread: 4

Power: 2

Commit can keep just about anything from killing you and is basically an Utter End when you’re responding to a shuffle effect. I’m not sure how often you’ll pull the trigger on Memory, but having the option to refill your hand is sweet.

Spread: 1

Power; 3

There aren’t a whole lot of Blue decks that discard often enough to make Drake Haven worthwhile, but Baral control might be one of them.

Spread: 4

Power: 4

The strongest X mana draw spell in monoblue ever printed. I would play this in any deck already running Blue Sun’s Zenith and Stroke of Genius.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

Sift is far too weak for most Commander decks, but this could do good work in Brago decks that were already blinking Oath of Jace.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

In decks that have enough self discard this card is comparable to Elesh Norn. It even cycles which makes it easy to reanimate and smooths out draws. Plus, if you’re playing it in a green deck, you can find it with Survival of the Fittest, cast it, and then use Survival to cycle through a bunch of creatures and pile counters on your opponents’ stuff.

Spread: 4

Power: 1

Very expensive, only hoses one person, and 5 life per turn cycle is not the fastest clock.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

She's a Zombify with a couple of tokens attached. That’s probably good enough for a Zombie tribal deck but I don’t think she’s good enough for decks that aren’t interested in Zombie synergies since cheaper reanimation exists.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

Lumping these together because both of them are limited to Zombie tribal decks. I think both cards are a little on the weak side, but it’s not like Zombies were a strong tribe to begin with, so they ought to fit in just fine.

Spread: 1

Power: 3

Hapatra can use it to generate more bodies to power her sac outlets or swing with, while The Scorpion God can keep stinging scarabs to farm cards.

Spread: 5

Power: 2

If you want this effect, Hero’s Downfall is just a much better card, since being able to interact with your opponents on their turn is way more relevant to most games than a smidgen of graveyard hate and a 2/2.

Spread: 4

Power: 3

This is a decent card that suffers from an abundance of strong competitors. It’s probably the fourth-best mono-Red artifact destruction spell (after Fiery Confluence, Vandalblast, and Shattering Spree), but that might be too low on the totem pole to make it into most decks.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

Joins the long list of cards that infinite combo with Kiki-Jiki. Also goes infinite with other copy effects and is serviceable in aggro decks, as well.

Spread: 1

Power: 1

It’s flashy, but it’s mostly worse than Final Fortune, and it’s not like anybody was playing that card.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

Repeatable red removal, even if every other turn.

Spread: 1

Power: 3

The only deck I can think of that would be interested in both the haste and the sacrificing would be Marchesa, the Black Rose.

Spread: 1

Power: 3

It’s a little reductive to call this a Cleaver Riot, but that’s the easiest point of comparison for evaluating this effect. I think most Red decks will pass on this card, but Heartless Hidetsugu needs damage doublers so he can eliminate any player foolish enough to let their life total settle on an even number. 

Spread: 5

Power: 3

Really good in metagames with lots of mana dorks and utility creatures. Plus, cycling means that it’ll never be a dead card. High ceiling + high floor = probably worth running.

Spread: 3

Power: 2

It mostly seems worse than Elvish Piper (and it’s not like Elvish Piper is that great), since it requires you to risk it in combat, it only works every other turn, and you can’t surprise anyone by dropping fatties in during combat/at end of turn. It's probably also worse than Frontier Siege in terms of total mana generation.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

There are plenty of Green decks that are dependent on mana dorks, and a decent number with token themes, but I still wouldn’t expect this to regularly ramp out more than two lands until you get to the late game (at which point the ramp is not very impactful).

Spread: 4

Power: 3

Comparable to Reclamation Sage. Manglehorn is stronger in metas where fast artifact mana is prevalent since it greatly slows down development in exchange for flexibility and a superior creature type. It’s pretty reasonable to run both. Also relevant is how it shuts off Winter Orb the turn it comes in, removing the surprise factor.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

I think this card could have legs in Enchantress builds. Enchantress builds tend to be Pillowfort-y and have a lot of mana lying around, so paying 8 mana to shut out flyers isn’t far outside of what those decks were already doing. Plus, Enchantress decks tend to be low on win conditions, which a steady stream of 5/5s ought to ameliorate.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

Only good in creature-heavy decks, and especially strong in Animar and Momir Vig. Unlike Oracle of Mul Daya, you might not get immediate value out of him in the early game since the creatures will cost mana that you might not have and it’s harder to chain together multiple creatures. Solid in Monogreen since the creature density tends to be higher and ramp spells shuffle the deck for a redraw.

Spread: 4

Power: 1

Doesn’t protect itself, and it’s not guaranteed to get you card advantage unless you go through the trouble of setting it up. The ultimate is also pretty weak in this format.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

There aren’t a whole lot of Red/White Voltron commanders that don’t already have double strike, but I think Zurgo will be eyeing this as a means of shortening his clock.

Spread: 4

Power: 2

Every new cycle of duals with basic land types makes fetches that much better, and obviously cycling makes these lands more useful in the late game than most other mana fixers. I’d consider these a staple part of a Commander manabase, although I’d be wary about running them in decks that desperately need all their lands to come into play untapped (decks with really tight curves and/or decks that need to get a lot done in the first few turns of the game, for example).

Wrapping Up

Let me know if you think I’ve misjudged any of these cards or if you’ve discovered any other cool uses for cards from Amonkhet that I didn’t think of. Thanks for reading!

[notspoondere]

The End of an Era - September 2017 Banlist

Longform analysis of the previous format and banlist under the cut.  I haven’t read any other analyses of the banlist prior to writing this, so the material underneath is all original.  It’s also my first impressions, so bear with me if I forgot a few details here and there.

The past few formats of the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG have been extremely diverse and creative, with a great number of decks competing for the #1 spot... of being the second best deck after Zoodiacs, who, according to Yugiohtopdecks, are now the most represented deck of all time in terms of topping tournaments. It would not be an understatement to say that it is possibly the strongest non-FTK deck ever created, and by far the most consistent. In case you missed that somehow, here's a list of just some of the ways Zoodiacs have impacted the metagame (Take a shot every time I mention a unique support card for an entirely different archetype if you want to get wasted really quickly):

It was figured out fairly quickly that any Rank 3 engine would be able to summon any Zoodiac from the deck through M-X-Saber Invoker. There are a few good 1-card Rank 3 engines in the game right now, but all of the unlimited generic ones use a normal summon--because the only one that didn't, Speedroid Terrortop, got limited as a result of its use in this deck.  (Note that Speedroid Taketomborg, the monster which Terrortop searches to make a rank 3, is not a “Garnet” in the sense that the entire engine fails if you draw it. Drawing both still makes the Rank 3 without eating your normal summon.)

In addition, Fire Fromation - Tenki could search any monster in the deck, since Zoodiacs were also all level 4 Beast-Warriors. This got the card briefly Limited in the OCG.  (Note that the deck already had three copies of Ratpier and three copies of Barrage, which could pop itself to summon Ratpier from the deck, so in effect, the deck ended up with 12 cards that searched or summoned Ratpier before Ratpier was Semi-Limited on the next list after the archetype’s release.)

Upon release, a Rank 8 spam variant was discovered with Coach Captain Bearman. Zoodiacs had access to an 8-axis and it turned out to be suboptimal.  Keep in mind the once-per-turn 1-material summon for each of the Zoodiac Extra Deck monsters does not mention Level; it only has to be a Zoodiac monster.

Elder Entity Norden was used in most decks (including Zoo for a time) as an Instant Fusion target to make a quick Rank 4. Later variants after Chakanine's release used Zoodiac Broadbull to search Lunalight Black Sheep, which you could discard to search Fusion Substitute and repeatedly Fusion Summon Elder Entity Norden in order to repeatedly make Daigusto Emeral, which, in so many words, allowed Zoodiacs to draw 5 cards off of one Speedroid Terrortop (or plus similarly hard off of Barrage), which would surely include powerful hand traps like Maxx “C”/Ash Blossom/Ghost Ogre/etc. This was finally the tipping point for Norden in the TCG, as he was Forbidden on the June 2017 emergency banlist soon after. Note that the OCG had already banned him by the time Zoodiacs were released. (Also note that this would not stop players from griping about drawing Speedroid Taketomborg.)

Even after Norden was banned, the deck was by far the most powerful deck in the format. Paleozoics had a decent matchup, but fell by the wayside as True Draco appeared, towering over Zoodiacs in terms of raw power but not in terms of consistency (and eventually a hybrid of both took first at the NAWCQ). Forgotten cards like Shuffle Reborn and My Body as a Shield saw serious play in preparation for the Zoodiac mirror, while cards like Dimensional Barrier and Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit fell off and quickly reappeared once people figured out the deck wasn’t going anywhere. Targeted destruction was considered powercrept until this deck appeared. They even started appearing as engines in rogue top decks like Lightsworn and Pendulum Magicians. Even after getting banlisted twice, even after people started maindecking Droll & Lock Bird, and even after Links, the deck prevailed. (In the OCG, it still managed to appear after Barrage and Drident got banned and Ratpier got Limited by abusing the card advantage off of Broadbull to work as a stun deck. Or so I heard.)  Eventually, and without question, Zoodiacs created a Tier 0 format.

Until today, that is. Took them long enough! Let’s get into the cards.

Forbidden:

Dinomight Knight, the True Dracofighter

I’ll mention this alongside Ignis Heat, the True Dracowarrior since they both have similar effects, although the latter was Limited. This is a fairly straightforward hit to the True Draco deck’s access to quick and cheap card advantage on the opponent’s turn. Ignis and Dinomight were not the strongest cards in the deck, but they added a lot to the deck’s consistency.

Grandsoil The Elemental Lord

This card creates a bunch of FTKs off of Firewall Dragon and is played in virtually no other decks. Dino FTK got Top 32 at YCS Toronto recently, and Konami has never been kind to FTK decks ever since they let Frog Burn win worlds. Ugh.

True King Lithosagym, The Disaster

The True Kings were not exactly the new-age Dragon Rulers people expected them to be. In fact, they (mostly Lithosagym) only saw play in one deck: True King Yang Zing Dinosaurs, which eventually won Worlds this year. And we all know how Konami feels about decks that manage to win Worlds.

There was a pretty long combo that let you consistently pop two Babycerasaurus to summon this thing, letting you banish cards from your opponent’s Extra Deck for doing something you would have happily done already. It also made up half of the materials for True King of All Calamities, a boss monster that actually has no hand trap counter short of Psy-Framegear Gamma, which saw play for partially this reason (and for other handtraps, but...). I’m glad to see this gone.

Denglong, First of the Yang Zing

Denglong was usually the other part of True King of All Calamities, since you could change his level to 9 by dumping any of the True Kings into your Graveyard. He also led to a 1-card double Quasar negate combo off of one Souleating Oviraptor (or Fossil Dig, or basically any way to summon Oviraptor). I really doubt Yang Zings will be playable after this, but Yang Zing Dinos needed to get hit for sure and I guess this is one way to do it.

Daigusto Emeral

Wait, what the fuck?

...

Seriously? Gusto have a banned card now? Who thought they had it in them.

The Gusto archetype has never made much of a splash competetively, but they eventually got a generic Rank 4 (that they can barely use) in the form of Daigusto Emeral, which was a key part of the Zoodiac Fusion Substitute combo... which was totally wiped out last banlist. The deck still ran two copies for a while after, but eventually once Link Summoning came around, the space just wasn’t there. Few decks run it at all nowadays.

Which makes its appearance here all the more confusing. Seriously, Konami, what the fuck?

Zoodiac Broadbull/Zoodiac Drident

The era is over. Broadbull was a free +1 and Drident added another threat to any board. The best cards in the best deck ever are gone. Or so we hope.

Limited:

Ignis Heat, the True Dracowarrior

See Dinomight Knight.

Miscellaneousaurus

A monster that gives Dinos protection during the Main Phase, recursion from grave, a free engine to summon a level 1 Tuner from deck, and an easy way to build up a huge Tyranno Infinity when needed. Miscellaneousaurus did all this and more. The OCG hit Oviraptor instead, so I’m surprised this got hit, but either one hurts the deck a lot (although I think Oviraptor is the stronger of the two).

Zoodiac Ratpier

A card that summons itself as an engine was just a great idea, wasn’t it? Now the material effect is completely unusable, so Ratpier is just an archetypal Foolish Burial on legs. How the mighty have fallen.

Dark Hole/Interrupted Kaiju Slumber

This is an interesting one. Slumber was obvious because it was another two copies of Dark Hole that synergized with the Kaijus that everyone would have run regardless, but Dark Hole at 2 has been a thing for a while. For what it’s worth, getting hit by this hurt a lot if your board consisted of the only Link Monsters your deck had the space for, but if that was that huge of a concern, they’d have hit Raigeki too. Hmm.

Gateway of the Six

Six Samurai managed to top at a Portland regional some time last year. I don’t know how, but the guy who did is an absolute hero. Otherwise, the deck has done nothing for years, and this card is at 3 in the OCG and Six Sams are doing nothing there.

True King’s Return

Archetypal Monster Reborn on a deck that seriously didn’t deserve it.

Semi-Limited:

BLS Envoy of the Beginning

It is weird to say that this card is now completely irrelevant, but here we are.  BLS Envoy has been power crept. What a game. (It’s probably still fun to play around with, though.)

Luster Pendulum, the Dracoslayer

Luster Pendulum was a free reoccurring +1 after a Pendulum Summon, but that hardly matters now that Extra Deck Pendulum Summons are restricted by the new format. He’ll probably still turn up in Pendulum decks, though; do not take this to mean that the card is bad now.

Mathematician/El Shaddoll Fusion

This got limited because of Shaddolls a long time ago, and that deck has been dead since they hit Construct.

Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier

I have literally only seen this card played in Mermails since its errata. It’s doing nothing at 1 and will do nothing at 2.

T.G. Hyper Librarian

Synchro spam is also more-or-less dead, so this is probably fine coming back as well. Level Eater is still creeping in the distance, however...

Brain Control

Same story as Brionac, has seen no play since its errata.

Burial From a Different Dimension

This has been at 1 for a long time, hasn’t it? I think it was hit because of Zombies or DAD or something.

Keep in mind that Zombies are still quite good right now. This is flirting with danger, Konami... I say as I order two copies for Zombiesworn.

Preparation of Rites

Nekroz hype? That’s the deck that got this limited, and they’re almost playable now that nearly every other deck has been nerfed. We’ll see.

EDIT: This is for Vendreads, don’t know how I didn’t realize this immediately.

EDIT 2: Vendreads don’t use this card, what am I saying.  This is for other decks.

Unlimited:

Debris Dragon/Dragon Ravine

Remnants from the Dragon Rulers banlist. These haven’t seen play in a while at 2, probably won’t at 3.

Honest

This used to be quite the hand trap, but battle hand traps, much like battle traps other than Mirror Force, have fallen by the wayside.

It’s still worth considering for the surprise factor, IMO. Who still runs Honest in 2017!?

Rescue Cat/Witch of the Black Forest

More cards that have seen no play since their erratas.

Rescue Rabbit

Holy shit.

This card is still way too good.

I think this is supposed to tell us to go buy World Chalice, but this is the nuttiest way to go about doing that I could possibly imagine.

Konami, are you feeling alright?

Summoner Monk

Rank 4 spam card that’s seen less and less play lately.

Charge of the Light Brigade

This has been Semi-Limited for a long time due to its use as a mill engine with Lumina/Raiden. Putting it at 3 helps Lightsworns, obviously, but it also helps Infernoids, too. Not significantly enough for either of them to become tier 1 again (probably), but still, it’s appreciated.

Wavering Eyes

Hardly relevant, since Pendulum mirrors don’t happen much and decks aren’t so focused on popping their own scales. Back in the day, though, Konami made a huge mistake printing this as a common.

EDIT: I could not possibly have been more wrong. This card should not have been unhit, holy shit. Pendulum mirrors are actually everywhere since the deck’s only expensive card is Duelist Alliance and this card is too fucking good.

EXTRA:  Cards That Did Not Get Hit, Somehow

Master Peace, the True Dracoslaying King

The True Draco boss monster, often cited for his poor design, is still obscenely powerful.

Dragonic Diagram

The True Draco Field Spell, which let you pop a card in hand or on field to search a True Draco spell/trap once per turn and gives Tribute Summoned True Draco monsters battle protection once per turn. This card seriously does too much.

Did you know that Diagram dropped to $20 per copy in anticipation that it would get hit by the banlist? It used to be $60.

EDIT: There is currently a listing for a $1 copy of this card, but you have to buy a $420 Ghost Beef in order to get it. Now that’s value.

Maxx “C”

This card is the sackiest card in the game right now. It singlehandedly wins games going second, and has done so so many times in high-level tournament play that I was sure it’d get hit. Even the OCG put it to 2. It looks like it’s still around, but who knows for how long.

Card of Demise

A key draw card of some Chain Burn and some True Draco variants, Card of Demise is a nearly free +2 for any deck that doesn’t Special Summon during their turn, or any deck with a lot of backrow. Many players, myself included, are frustrated with this card’s design and the playstyle it promotes, but Konami didn’t hit it at all here.

Trickstar Reincarnation

Independent of any synergies with the rest of the archetype, comboing this with Droll & Lock Bird makes your opponent banish their entire hand and draw nothing in return. This is still legal; Konami has decided that this is totally okay.

Kill me.

EDIT:  Extra 2:  Cards That Did Not Get Unhit, Somehow

Ritual Beast Ulti-Cannahawk

Please, Konami, my family is dying. This deck’s opening combo is a hard draw of two cards and it only goes +2.

El Shaddoll Construct

#FreeHim

Evilswarm Exciton Knight

Why did you even reprint this if you weren’t going to unban it?

Shurit, Strategist of the Nekroz

Hahaha just kidding. Fuck this card.

That about wraps it up. This next format is going to be crazy. Or maybe it’ll just be True Draco again, who knows.

The next set, Circuit Break, comes out in the TCG on October 20th (Sneak Peek on 14th/15th), and the next banlist comes in November at the soonest.  If True Draco doesn’t come back from this, it will be an interesting month until SPYRALs take over the meta entirely (as is likely to happen, given their results in the OCG.)

Until next time.

[gordonlearllc-blog]

Top 6 Reasons Not to Trust a Top 10 Ranking List

I have been online longer than Google, Yahoo and Bing so to say I have seen it all and then some when is accurate.  In college I would sit in front of the lab terminal and access my email account using a command line program called Pine and search for information on another one called Gopher.  At the time, the “internet” was basically for scholars and user friendly wasn’t even part of the dialect.  Stuff like page ranking and SEO didn't even exist. But for a small-town New Hampshire kid having the world at his fingertips was mind-blowing.  I was instantly hooked and have spent the last two decades looking for the next next.  Keeping up with the newest trends (good and bad) is just part of who I am and lately I have seen some that really make me wonder where the internet is going…. If you search anything these days the top results will always have some form of Top 10 list.  It might be 5 or 15, maybe even say the “Best” or “Greatest” but the idea is always the same.  These ranking pages have exploded over the last few years due to search engines affinity to deem such a page useful to the user mostly because when they first started showing up they appeared to be genuine and provided the consumer value.  But like anything good on the internet it has become overridden with folks exploiting the system trying to make a buck. It is sad to say that pretty much any ranking page you find out there these days are junk. These sites have two goals;  First, get a high ranking in search engine results on a certain keywords and phrases; Second, get you to visit their page and click a link that will generate revenue.  Informing you about the product or service is nowhere in their agenda.  As a matter of fact many of these pages just a copy and paste right from the site they are promoting.  There is no commentary or analysis or a breakdown of the good and bad.  There is just the basic marketing polish found on the original site. Here is what to watch out for when looking at ranking si

1.) Affiliate Marketing

So you find a top 10 site that has a clear list of products and services and the top one lists all the great reasons why it is number one.  Then right next to it in a big pretty button with “get more info” or “Click for Price” in bold letters.  These buttons are called CALL-TO-ACTIONS  or CTAs. More often than not it is an Affiliate Marketer (AM).  Which is a “professional” marketing someone else’s goods and services for a commission.  An AM’s only loyalty is around the commission they get if you click the link they provide and it converts into a sale. SO what do you think this does to the quality of their ranking list?  Well just ask yourself this; If an AM gets $5 per sale for one product and $8 for another which one do you think they will rank higher? The catch with these commissions is the sale doesn’t have to be that day and many times it doesn’t even have to be that product.  As an example, you click an Amazon.com affiliate link and then leave that page only to find yourself on Amazon the next day to by something completely unrelated the AM gets a commission on that sale. So all the motivation behind their rankings is most likely monetary and you can forget about  finding rich thoughtful feedback or some deep product research that requires hard work and insight.  So, you basically find a horrible site that provides you no value.  It persuades to leave their site through an affiliate link and you reward them with a sale the following day having no idea it kicked them back a commission.  No wonder AM is a billion-dollar industry and more importantly why the internet is flooded with these Top pages. The good news here is reputable companies require affiliates to identify themselves as such.  So check out the page, most likely on the very bottom in small font you will find a disclaimer. If you do understand you are not reading unbiased content and be cautious its only purpose is to persuade you into clicking an AM link.

2.) Clickbait

Sites make money by displaying advertising on their sites. They can be AM links or just straight up Click Ads. When you come to a page full of Ads its hard not to argue the author’s only motivation all around the revenue they get paid per click or what is called PPC. Their pages are not designed for the user to easily and quickly read the article maximizing the value to the reader but to maximize the ad space, the click thru’s and value to their bank account. The classic overdone PPC sites are those that are almost impossible to read because so much stuff is loading and everything on the page keeps moving and stuff flies at you from all directions.  This of course is by design, they want you to accidently click an Ad as you navigate the page.  This not only tricks the user but it is also screwing over the advertiser because they are paying for bad clicks and traffic from users that never wanted to be there. These sites are nothing less than annoying.  You can’t trust anything they write seeing half the time they are trying to bore you to death so you leave their page through one of their ads.  The entire page is just one piece of click bait and should not be encouraged.  So unless you stop clicking they are not going away anytime soon.

3.) Slide Shows and Galleries

This is arguably the most arduous page of the web.  Its right there with Fake News so it is not uncommon to see both together.  These sites are the worst of the worst and often take the Top list to the extreme. The top 50 places to will be no less than 50 pages loaded full of advertising to get through.  They will even have “Next” buttons as Affiliate or Click-Throughs. Which drive me nuts.  You think you are going to the next slide but then you find yourself in the middle of pop-up-palooza!  They will throw flyout ads at you, imbed ads in between slides and the info on what that slide is even on the list is non-existent.  They are nothing but a time-thief and provide little to no value for the reader.  If you find yourself on one of these sites and you don’t know the source just leave because all you are doing is setting a cookie that tells advertisers you’re a sucker for click bait.  Just stay away from slideshows.

4.) Pseudo Sites

Some ranking sites are written by the company selling one of the items on the list. But they do it on a site that appears to be someone other than themselves.  It is common practice for a product manager to deploy many sites with content about their product and work like hell to get them all ranked high and basically push the competition to the second page of search results.  As the user you think you have found a bunch of different sources and after reading them you are impressed with the overall consensus across all these top sites and feel well informed to make a buying decision.  However, you have been duped! The product assessments on these pages are aligned because they were all created by the same marketing department! Its sad, you think you are reading separate perspectives from unconnected sources however you just spent the majority of your morning in one big sales funnel.  If you don’t know who owns the site you really should question the validity of the information they present.  Always always know you source.

5.) Lead Generation Sites

Have you ever looked online for car insurance and found a “Top X List” that was covered in “get free quote” buttons, you read their rankings and are impressed about the offer promising to save you money so you decide to click one?  Well I hope you read the fine print because there is a good chance your information was sent to EVERYONE on the list resulting in robo calls and junk mail.  On top of that your information gets sold over and over as someone “interested in car insurance” resulting in more calls and spam.  A site that seemed useful has now made the sound of your phone cringe-worthy and your inbox full of distractions and refuse.

6.) Fake Buying Guides

These are just another form of “Top 10” sites that are just as bad for all the same reasons.  They just use another important part of the search engines weighting calculation…  Age.  By putting the Year in the title it tells Google, Yahoo and Bing this list is relevant to NOW (or last year) so you should show it first.  Sites use this to exploit the system and give their pages an instant boost.  Most of the time these pages are recycled from the previous year.  I strongly suggest you stick to buying guides by reputable places like Consumer Reports and ConsumerSearch.com To sum things up, AM and other types of passive income are all the rage so the internet is getting saturated with these pages. I get those that want to create an online stream of cash with the flexibility to work from anywhere whenever they want.  Unfortunately, there are many just looking for a quick buck and will stop at nothing to keep the clicks coming.  So be an informed surfer.  Understand the motivation behind the info you are reading and be skeptical of all those pretty buttons and links that trigger that impulse to click. Only user behavior will change how these sites go about things. So if you’re sick of seeing these pages littering the front pages of your search pages don’t feed the frenzy by rewarding them with a visit. Read the full article

[pepperpaprika]

About Leader Keith (and other paladins)

Initially Inspired by this post which I’m sure a good bunch of you have seen and posting because surprisingly, this topic hasn’t died down yet and I felt like putting a few ideas down.

I should probably preface this by saying that I have no idea what will happen but I still hope for Shiro to come back and continue leading Voltron eventually-  mostly because the Lions and Pilots seem quite attached to each other. 

“The Blue Lion’s with me! And we’re very happy together! Very Happy.” 

Shiro’s Bond with Black, not only in the early training exercises but when he went for Zarkon’s (his) Bayard.

Red Saving Keith (happens 3x in s2 but I couldn’t find a still that worked) 

Pidge and Hunk also bonded more with their lions, discovering new powers of their own. 

It just feels odd for me that they took the time to develop all that only to rip it all away, perhaps permanently. 

But assuming a new Black Paladin must be chosen again from the current pool of Paladins, then let’s go with that.  

So, the nice thing about Voltron’s characterisation is, a case could justifiably be made for just about any paladin possessing some leadership qualities.

Hunk, for example, has the kind of empathy and social awareness that would inspire loyalty and trust. Not to mention when he gets serious, he is utterly serious. He has good instincts and he takes responsibility when he feels strongly enough. E.g. He took the lead introducing themselves in the mermaid episode. 

“...Your excellence, I’m Hunk and me and my buddy here we crash landed on your lovely planet, but we really need to get back in touch with our friends who are in space.”

And saving the Balmerans, anyone? Or the way that he casually brings people together? 

What do you think? Do we roll up and like start blasting or do we land and have some kind of public address system like “Attention Galra, this is Voltron, turn yourselves in.” 

Him being the one to remind Keith that logic isn’t everything or reminding Allura that Keith shares the credit, too? Hunk is very fair. 

Pidge is fully capable of planning and executing a strategy, as well as come up with tactics on the fly. She snuck into the Garrison, a presumably high-tech military base, not once, but twice. She had a plan to save her family, even if it meant leaving Voltron, all by herself, and that takes initiative. Plus she has the advantage of being highly creative and tech-capable in a technologically advanced space war.

Lance has vision, and like many leaders, he’d also make a good, if unorthodox, diplomat. As a friend puts it, he’s ambitious and personable (Keith seems to be his exception). Both qualities actually are found in many successful politicians. 

We have a lot of great times ahead, so we should probably start bonding now.

As Paladins, each and every one of them will eventually be called on to lead. Maybe not Voltron, but they are the saviors of the universe and they will be relied upon by prisoners or refugees that they save. 

But if there’s something they currently lack to sit effectively in the Black Lion, it’s resolve- the will to get things done and to cut away everything else. The Mission has to be the priority. Not that other things are unimportant, but for the leader, he needs to be focused on the mission and what is good for it. Even if that means not looking for family or not getting any glory or being in danger.

“So that means your other crew members, they might be held captive here.”

“Pidge we don’t have time. We have to get the Red Lion and get back to Arrus.“

As another example, Allura even prioritized Voltron over her own safety when she tossed Shiro into the escape pod first. 

And that cold-blooded resolve? That, Keith has in spades. It’s not quite the same as stubbornness, though it can be that, too. Keith is the guy who won’t quit. Keith is the guy who got kicked out, completely lost and alone, and decided to find a mythical lion that kickstarts their destiny. Who drove in to save Shiro with a plan that worked?  Who spent nearly 40 vargas fighting a losing battle against the Blades of Mamora and to find out the truth... and only gave up because his priorities had shifted. 

And you can’t lead without that, especially in a war. 

A war means you have to fight and you have to keep fighting even when you might be losing. 

Remember when Allura told the Paladins to keep fighting in S2E13? Or when Shiro rallied the others to have heart and try again? You need a will of steel, an unbreakable spirit, to keep fighting despite insurmountable odds. 

Fight! This cannot end now.

Everybody, listen.We have to fight!

And the guy we see recovering his composure first:

That aside, when Shiro was chosen to pilot Black, Allura basically listed the requirement of being the one people will follow without question. A large part of Shiro’s aptitude for the position is that he has everyone’s de-facto respect, tying into his reputation, since none of them except Keith really knew him. Ergo the respect was most likely built on a reputation of his abilities and his pilot rank. If Keith had stayed in the Garrison, I think that wouldn’t be so far fetched for him to have. He was explicitly considered the top pilot and the casual way Shiro defers to his flying skills suggests its common knowledge. Abilities inspire reliability and that leads to trust and respect. 

And despite his awkwardness and his lone wolf persona, Keith does show he cares a lot about teamwork and saving people (Voltron’s cause), even if he’s not kind about it. He’s just immensely practical. Who got angry about Pidge leaving? Keith. Who was first upset about meditation exercise failure? Keith. Who thinks about safety first when there’s an unexpected visitor?And who was the first to give a suggestion on how to form Voltron when just flying around didn’t work? He might not have the best strategy, but he does have the best intentions at heart.

Maybe we should be building Voltron from the ground up... Like stacking on top of eachother.

Friendly reminder that this would not have happened without Keith. He tried.

In S1, he actually seemed pretty Voltron-oriented. Occasionally, he was Shiro-oriented (saving Shiro when he has PTSD or when he’s taken). But in S2 we see that expanding. He agrees on a strategy mid-fight with Pidge through eye contact and subsequently protects her landing. He praises Hunk for a good job. Despite the two steps back on his relationship with Lance, they worked together more closely than they have before (much to their chagrin). 

Despite his awkwardness with people, the fact that Keith made an effort to connect with Hunk, that he understood that Allura’s feelings about him being Galra were valid (and he never speaks up about the way she treats him either), actually also shows a surprising empathy for others for a guy who can’t get a cheer right. He also brought back his ‘cold-blooded’ decision making when he took the Olkari king hostage and when he voted to not trust Ulaz, despite Shiro vouching for him. 

“Should we go after him?”

“No, whatever the Galra are planning won’t matter after we defeat Zarkon.”

“Copy that.”

“By the way Hunk, you really came through in a clutch back there. Without you the mission would have been a failure..”

There’s a lot about this exchange that showed Hunk does look up to Keith somewhat as an authority figure but also that he was accessible since he then proceeded to needle him about being “Galra!Keith” again after that. 

Perhaps most importantly, we saw how he smacked up against the most personal moral dilemma of his life. His past and heritage, a question that he’s wanted answered since he was little or saving people. Prior to the trial, he was short-tempered and irrationally angry- that was how important his past was to him, besides the times when he’d stare at his knife at length. You see him struggle with this decision when he rejects Shiro , only to chase after him, and when he falls silent when his father warns him that this is his only chance. 

It wasn’t an easy choice. But he chose the right path, to work for the team, to work to defeat Zarkon. For the Mission, above all else.

“If you walk out that door, you’ll never find out who you are.”

“Goodbye, dad.”

Keith might be a loner- an introvert who prefers peace and solitude, but he is more than willing to work past that for their cause. While passionate, he isn’t acting selfishly, because everything he does can be traced back to an unselfish reason and to the Mission. Do some recon? Be useful to the team while Allura and Shiro risk their lives.  Defeat Zarkon 1:1? Save the universe even if it costs him his life. Take himself and Allura out of the Castle? Stop endangering the rest of the paladins and Voltron. He left Red behind. He was prepared to leave his team, his new family, behind. His only problem with it was that Allura was needed to pilot the Castle. All he wants, for some reason or another, somehow almost personally, is to save the universe. 

Like he has something to prove to himself by it. But that’s a topic for another day. 

All this doesn’t mean that Keith is the perfect or easiest leader to have- he won’t be able to take command the way Shiro did simply because he will have to work for everything Shiro gets by being Shiro and because he thinks differently from him. Shiro’s way of analysing the situation and coming up with a good strategy is something that seems to be innate to him- probably since it was a matter of life and death to use his head for a year. 

Keith on the other hand, does think and plan but tends to also be far more morally grey (taking the olkari king hostage, sneaking around, being suspicious of everything, etc.). He doesn’t even want to lead- not only because that means Shiro, the person who literally changed his life, is gone, but  because he is very acutely aware of his own shortcomings in the area. That’s why he apologises for his behaviour when Shiro calls him out. 

Maybe he’ll make up for it. Maybe not. Regardless of his flaws, he is unyielding and he took being Defenders of the Universe seriously from day one. 

Moreover, we already see that when it’s crunch time, Keith recovers quickly and thinks on his feet. While the others were processing that not only has Allura been taken out but Shiro might have been too, Keith was the first to speak up. 

 That mentality only gets stronger if Shiro’s in trouble. If what the Mission needs is a Black Paladin; if Shiro needs someone to cover for him, the first person to step up to the plate is always going to be Keith.

Shiro! ...Shiro?! Something’s wrong with Shiro. Guys. We can’t let Zarkon get the Black Lion.

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Ahrefs vs Majestic SEO – 1 Million Reasons Why Ahrefs Is Better [Updated for 2018]

HUGE NEW UPDATE! If you don’t have time to read this post terminate your Majestic account immediately and take out the Ahrefs trial without hesitation.

Back in 2013, I conducted an experiment to see which is the best backlink checker.

Long story short, Ahrefs won…

This really upset the Majestic team at the time and sparked a lot of controversy, but they did make some valid points-

The test was done with 3 of my personal sites I would not disclose That makes the entire test biased in Majestic’s opinion The data set was very small with just 3 sites analysed and compared The results could not be independently verified

And they were right!

So then re-conducted the experiment on an altogether BIGGER scale (1 million domains vs. the original 3). Ahrefs won again.

Now it’s 5 years later.

So I thought it would make sense to re-run the numbers this year for all 1 million domains AND compare the functionality of the tools.

But…

I’m also going to reveal how Majestic essential cheat on backlink counts (you won’t believe this one!)

Ahrefs vs. Majestic SEO – Huge New Update

Before we get to the experiment, let me talk about my data source.

For those that don’t know, the Majestic team publish what is called the Majestic Million.

The Majestic Million is a list of the top 1 million website in the world, based on the number of referring IP’s found for that domain in their Fresh index.

So with this, Majestic SEO are outright telling us these are the sites they know the most about in terms of backlinks.

You can download a copy for yourself free of charge and it will tell you the total number of linking subnets (RefSubNets) and the total number of linking IPs (RefIPs) for each domain in the top million.

To compare Majestic SEO with Ahrefs, I’m going to look up the total number of linking subnets and IP’s for all of the domains in the Majestic Million.

To give you an example with this blog-

Majestic SEO – This report shows 3,533 IP’s & 2,475 subnets Ahrefs – This report shows 3,214 IP’s & 2,438 subnets

So in that specific instance, Majestic wins the test.

But:

Now imagine doing the same – but for 1 million sites.

That is the test I have done based on what Majestic say are the top 1 million sites in the world in terms of links.

This is what the CSV data looks like in its raw form-

And you can download a copy of the data that is used in this test.

The Results

Before I get to the results, I need to mention that both Majestic and Ahrefs maintain multiple indexes.

Majestic have two indexes: Fresh and Historic indexes.

Ahrefs have three: Live, Recent, and Historical.

You can learn more about these indexes here.

But for the sake of this article, I’ll be comparing the following indexes:

Majestic’s Fresh index vs. Ahrefs’ Recent index Majestic’s Historic index vs. Ahrefs’ Historical index Majestic Fresh Versus Ahrefs Recent Index

Let’s start with a comparison of the Fresh vs. Recent index.

With such a huge amount of data, I decided to split the results into 10 groups of 100,000 URLs (by Majestic GlobalRank) and then compare those groups.

This is what the group numbers look like (refer to by_groups.csv in the data pack)–

GlobalRank Ahrefs Wins (IP) Majestic Wins (IP) Ahrefs Wins (Subnet) Majestic Wins (Subnet) 1-100,000 85,228 14,762 86,095 13,896 100,001-200,000 69,953 30,029 72,114 27,860 200,001-300,000 74,074 25,902 77,035 22,928 300,001-400,000 78,264 21,709 82,075 17,904 400,001-500,000 74,708 25,264 79,389 20,582 500,001-600,000 66,252 33,710 71,124 28,846 600,001-700,000 75,530 24,427 81,426 18,512 700,001-800,000 76,733 23,221 81,346 18,583 800,001-900,000 79,243 20,705 85,624 14,279 900,001-1,000,000 79,261 20,687 85,696 14,187

Just looks like a bunch of meaningless numbers right?

What about now-

Wins By IP Address (Majestic Fresh vs. Ahrefs Recent)

Wins By Subnets (Majestic Fresh vs. Ahrefs Recent)

Pretty brutal to look at if you are a current Majestic SEO customer right?

Now might be the right time to switch to Ahrefs – click here to claim a 7-day trial account.

But before you do let’s look at the totals-

Total Wins – Majestic Fresh vs Ahrefs Recent

It’s worth noting that Ahrefs has actually pulled even further ahead of Majestic (by ~7% for IP wins, and ~11% for subnet wins) since 2013. Which is when I first ran this experiment.

So those are the results of the Majestic Fresh vs. Ahrefs Recent index comparison, but what about Majestic’s Historic vs. Ahrefs’ Historical?

Majestic Historic Versus Ahrefs Historical Index

This test is particulary interesting because-

Well:

It presents an altogether different story.

GlobalRank Ahrefs Wins (IP) Majestic Wins (IP) Ahrefs Wins (Subnet) Majestic Wins (Subnet) 1-100,000 15,424 84,555 14,789 85,187 100,001-200,000 20,320 79,606 19,873 80,047 200,001-300,000 18,081 81,855 17,613 82,309 300,001-400,000 13,645 86,317 13,177 86,770 400,001-500,000 11,990 87,976 11,675 88,275 500,001-600,000 9,186 90,778 8,973 90,976 600,001-700,000 11,219 88,674 11,003 88,870 700,001-800,000 11,167 88,627 9,120 90,819 800,001-900,000 10,515 89,433 9,857 90,036 900,001-1,000,000 10,796 89,139 10,346 89,580

I think the results become super clear when displayed in graph format:

Wins By IP Address (Majestic Historical vs. Ahrefs Historical)

Wins By Subnets (Majestic Historical vs. Ahrefs Historical)

Based on this data, Majestic absolutely crush Ahrefs when it comes to the historical index test.

This is even more apparent if we look at the totals-

So, Majestic clearly wins the historic index comparison.

But what does this really mean?

Well, historic indexes serve as records of the backlinks that have existed in their respective tools index at some point in the past, but aren’t live today.

When you take this into account, it comes as no surprise that Majestic won this test.

They’ve been saving (probably) links to their Historic index since they launched in 2009.

Ahrefs, on the other hand, has only been saving dead links to their Historical index since 2015, so Majestic has a 6 year head start here!

Bottomline: Majestic has a larger index of dead links than Ahrefs.

That’s all I’m going to say about that one.

I’ll let you decide which index is more important to you.

A Few Potential Flaws with this Experiment

My methodology for this experiment is far from perfect.

So I thought I’d briefly explain what I see as some potential flaws with this data.

Flaw #1 – “Wins” != Absolute Numbers

The graphs above show the number of “wins” rather than absolute numbers.

Because of this, the difference between the bars on the graphs is not really indicative of index size.

I’ll try to illustrate what I mean with an example:

Let’s say we have two sites:

Site A: 100 Ref.IPs (reported in Majestic); 101 Ref.IPs (reported in Ahrefs) Site B: 100 Ref.IPs (reported in Majestic); 200000 Ref.IPs (reported in Ahrefs)

(Yes, it’s an extreme example, but bare with me!)

Ahrefs “wins” for both of these sites, but it’s clear that there’s a much larger difference between reported numbers from each tool for Site B.

With Site A, Ahrefs only wins because they report one extra Ref.IP.

This means that the “number of wins” doesn’t give any insight into how much bigger one database is than the other.

So what does “number of wins” tell us?

It tells us that Ahrefs finds more links for any given website than Majestic, and that it’s rare for Majestic to show links than Ahrefs (links = IPs/Subnets).

FYI, if you’re wondering why I chose to compare IPs/Subnets over links, check out this article co-authored by Dixon Jones from Majestic.

Flaw #2 – Each Tool Picks Up Different Links

It’s important to remember that we’re dealing with two totally different indexes here.

Which means that some links that Majestic reports may not exist in Ahrefs’ Index, and vice-versa.

Once again, let me offer an example.

This time we only need one hypothetical site, for which we’ll assume that both Ahrefs and Majestic report the same number of links: 3.

Here are the three hypothetical links reported by each tool:

Ahrefs Majestic domain.com/webpage domain.com/webpage domain.com/webpage2 domain.com/webpage2 anotherdomain.com/webpage someotherdomain.com/blog

Do you see my point?

Just because we have the same number of reported links from each tool doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re the same links.

You can see in our hypothetical example that only two of the links are common to both indexes.

This brings me on to an important point:

If you desperately need a full picture of your link profile, you’ll have to pay for both tools and cross-reference data.

BUT!

And this is a BIG BUT!

Even if you do that you need to understand that Majestic’s backlink stats are almost always inflated.

Why?

Because of the absolutely absurd way Majestic count and report backlinks.

I am going to talk about that more in the next section, but seriously – make sure you are sitting down for this one because I am going to show you how Majestic essentially cheats on backlink counts.

Ahrefs VS Majestic: Comparing Features & Functionality

Now we’ve talked about backlink data and whatnot, I want to make an important point:

Majestic and Ahrefs are VERY different tools.

Majestic is essentially one tool: a backlink checker.

But Ahrefs is a suite of tools. Alongside Site Explorer (for checking backlink data), they also have:

Site Audit Rank Tracker Content Explorer Keywords Explorer Alerts

Another big differentiator is the addition of “Competitive intelligence” in Ahrefs, which is basically search traffic data.

In other words, you can see how much traffic any domain or website receives from Google, and the keywords it ranks for.

See my full review of Ahrefs here.

How Majestic Cheat On Backlink Counts

But let’s get back to backlink data for a moment…

It’s important to realise that index size means nothing unless you’re able to extract actionable data and insights from it.

Both Majestic and Ahrefs do have an API for doing this at scale (this is what I used for this study), but most of us don’t pay for access to that.

So, let’s quickly compare the on-site backlink research features that exist in Ahrefs and Majestic.

Let’s start by plugging this same URL (the beginners guide to SEO from Moz) into both tools to see what kind of insights we can get from them.

NOTE. I’m using the “exact URL” setting, because I only want to analyze backlinks pointing directly at that URL.

A few comparable metrics right off the bat:

Backlinks: 628,437 (Majestic) vs. 111,000 (Ahrefs) Referring domains: 1,840 (Majestic) vs. 11,300 (Ahrefs)

So Majestic reports more backlinks in total, but Ahrefs reports (a lot) more referring domains.

That’s a win for Majestic, right?

Not so fast.

(This is something I really feel the need to highlight!)

Majestic’s backlink stats are almost always inflated because of the absolutely absurd way they report backlinks.

Let me illustrate by going to the Referring Domains tab in Majestic.

Majestic is reporting 370K+ backlinks from just one referring domain.

That accounts for nearly 60% of all reported backlinks!

Let’s see how many backlinks Ahrefs reports from this domain-

Just 4!

So why does Majestic report 373,004 backlinks from that domain while Ahrefs only reports 4?

This happens because Majestic fail to strip URL parameters from URLs, which results in the same backlink being duplicated hundreds, sometimes even thousands of times.

This also happens when you export the data from Majestic.

Take a look at this backlink export from my blog and you’ll see that digitalphillipines.net is linking to me nearly 700,000 times-

But when we export the data and look at the links, you’ll see they are mostly duplicate links with different UTM parameters on the end-

For example Majestic counts the below as 4 separate backlinks-

domain.com/page/ domain.com/page/?utm_source=twitter domain.com/page/?utm_source=facebook domain.com/page/?utm_source=pinterest

But the reality is they are just one backlink – but Majestic is reporting them as 4.

In my opinion, this is total madness.

Especially when the vast majority of the 700,000 links coming from digitalphillipines.net are duplicates.

Ahref’s on the other hand, only counts 17 links-

Why?

Because Ahrefs understands that those additional URL parameters do not make them all unique links so filter them out accordingly.

Here’s Another Mad Thing!

If you go from the Summary page in Majestic to their Ref.Domains and Backlinks reports, you’ll notice that the total numbers of ref.domains and backlinks that you just saw on that “Summary” page now completely disappear.

That’s because these reports are limited to 30k rows of data – 600 pages, 50 results per page.

This makes every report in Majestic somewhat useless because you can only see a sample of the data!

Sure you can view the first 30,000 rows – but after that, they cut you off.

That is a huge limitation and I feel like it really goes against the grain of Majestic’s core mission.

What’s the point of building a huge database of links if you are going to limit access to it?

It’s the same when you try to export this data too – it defaults to a max of 30K rows.

However you can export more than 30k rows if you request an “advanced report” by clicking the tiny link highlighted in the screenshot below:

But even when you click this, you’re taken to quite a puzzling page where you seemingly have to tick a bunch of boxes in order to do what you want to do.

So bottomline-

You can export more than 30K rows from Majestic – it’s just not a fun experience All of Majestics reports are useless if you are working on a site that has more than 30,000 backlinks And thats assuming the backlink numbers arent inflated, it could have 4 links but Majestic counts 370K+

In comparison, Ahrefs shows full data in both their Ref.Domains and Backlinks reports.

And exporting FULL DATA is super easy – just hit the “export” button.

Much nicer!

However, one downside of this is that reports sometimes load slower in Ahrefs than Majestic, especially when analysing big sites.

This is because Ahrefs has to work to pull all data, whereas Majestic just has to show a cached sample of 30K pages/ref.domains.

To be honest:

Any further comparison here makes no sense because Majestic’s on-site tools only works with a sample of data whereas Ahrefs lets you work with FULL data.

However, I do want to compare and highlight a few things in these reports.

But first, I want to talk a bit about indexes.

Majestic Indexes vs Ahrefs Indexes – What Do They Mean?

So you may have noticed that Majestic has two different indexes for you to choose from, while Ahrefs has three.

Majestic: Fresh, Historic Ahrefs: Live, Recent, and Historical

You may have noticed in the screenshots above that Majestic defaults to their Fresh index, whereas Ahrefs defaults to their Live index.

Let me try to explain the deal with all of these indexes.

Ahrefs Indexes Explained

So Ahrefs Live index is updated every 15 minutes, and I know they put a lot of effort into re-crawling all links in their Live index pretty regularly.

But as Ahrefs recrawls links, they naturally come across some that are no longer there.

Like, sometimes the page will still be live, but the link will be gone. Or maybe the actual linking page can no longer be found.

In this case, Ahrefs removes the link from their Live index, but it remains in their Recent index, where this backlink stays for 90 more days. Quite often the pages disappear because of server downtime, so when Ahrefs next re-crawls the page, they may see that the link is still there.

If this happens, it gets moved back to the Live index.

If Ahrefs don’t see the link going live again within 90 days of it being moved to the Recent Index, it gets moved to the Historical index. This is basically a graveyard for all backlinks that they’ve once seen as live, but the subsequent recrawls confirmed their death.

To summarise (for Ahrefs):

Live = All links that were live during the most recent re-crawl Recent = Live + links that were “lost” within the past 90 days Historical = Live + Recent + all links that were ever seen to be “live” Majestic Indexes Explained

Unlike Ahrefs, they don’t maintain a Live index. They only have their Fresh index, which is kind of the same as Ahrefs’ Recent index as it contains all links that were seen live in the last 90 days, regardless of their status at the present moment.

They also have their Historic Index, which is comparable to Ahrefs Historical index. However, it is vastly bigger than Ahrefs’ Historic index because they started saving deleted links years before Ahrefs did.

To summarise (for Majestic):

Fresh = All links that were seen as live during the past 90 days Historic = Fresh + all links that were ever seen to be live

Having used both tools on and off for a good few years, I know that Ahrefs only started adding links to their Historic index around mid-2015, whereas I’d say Majestic has been doing that for at least 5 years.

That’s exactly why Majestic’s is bigger right now.

Either way, these tools historic indexes are essentially graveyard of links, so most of the links in both Majestic and Ahrefs Historic indexes are no longer live.

But anyway, now we’ve tackled the technicalities, I can move on to some features.

Before I do that, I want to stress something:

I much prefer Ahrefs over Majestic.

So most of the stuff I discuss below will be reasons why that is the case.

But let’s start with a brief comparison of the summary/overview reports in Ahrefs and Majestic.

Summary / Overview Report Comparison

To start, I’ll highlight a couple of super useful graphs that I absolutely love on the Overview tab in Ahrefs Site Explorer: Referring Domains and Organic Traffic.

These show how the number of referring domains and amount of organic traffic has changed to a site (or URL) over time.

Here’s the referring domains graph:

Here’s the organic search traffic one:

Unfortunately, Majestic have no such graph for backlink data, and they don’t have any data on search traffic at all.

They do show you two graphs that they call “URL backlink history” and “Referring domains” – but these are entirely different.

In Majestic’s own words, these charts show “the number of Referring Domains [or backlinks] reviewed every day.”

So this graph mostly refers to how fast Majestic crawls the web, rather than showing how fast your target acquired backlinks.

As a result, these graphs don’t tell you anything about how a target’s backlink profile has changed over time, so I don’t really understand why they’re useful.

If anyone does happen to have a good use case, feel free to let me know in the comments!

And it’s also an image, it’s not an interactive graph. So I can’t hover my mouse over a specific date and get the precise number, like I can in Ahrefs.

As for the other numbers that you can see in Ahrefs “Overview” report and in Majestic “Summary” report, they’re more or less comparable.

Pretty standard stuff, no striking differences there.

I’d say the only major difference is the fact that each tool shows their proprietary metrics.

In Majestic’s case, these are TF/CF.

And in Ahrefs these are UR/DR.

Comparing them is a different story, so I’m not even going to attempt that but I do use both sets of metrics to evaluate expired domains.

Let’s move on to the referring domains reports.

Comparing Referring Domain Reports

Majestic has quite a few data points in their Ref.domains report, so they had to introduce a few different views.

Here’s the one they default to: Links.

For me, the most useful data points here are:

Trust Flow / Citation Flow Backlinks Referring domains

I think it’s really cool how they include the number of ref.domains and backlinks to each ref.domain – that’s something Ahrefs doesn’t do.

I also like their Geo report.

This shows things like the domain language(s), TLD, IP, IP location (cool!), TF/CF.

In fact, a lot of these reports are quite cool – I recommend playing around with them.

But what about filtering and sorting options?

Unfortunately, these don’t really exist (I guess their different reports kind of count of filters?) but they do have “Order by” and “Then” sorting options, which are quite confusing.

I think the biggest letdown here is that many of these reports end up being kind of pointless, simply due to the fact that Majestic only lets you work with sample data.

Sure, you have 30K rows to play with, which admittedly is plenty for most sites. But for some sites it just doesn’t cut it.

Here’s another thing:

Although Majestic have a column with a number showing the number backlinks, they don’t differentiate between dofollow and nofollow links.

This means it’s only possible to sort by the number of backlinks from a ref.domain – you can’t sort by the referring domains with the most dofollow backlinks, for example.

Ahrefs, on the other hand, absolutely shines when it comes to filtering and sorting.

For a start, there’s a column highlighting dofollow/nofollow links, and it’s easy to sort a list of referring domains by that metric.

And once again, Ahrefs will sort the entire list of ref.domains – not just a sample of the data like in Majestic.

Here’s another notable feature Ahrefs has in this report:

You can easily filter referring domains by the backlink type, and can instantly see how many referring domains of each type there is.

So if you want to export dofollow ref.domains only, simply filter and click export. Easy as that.

Back to Majestic, it looks like the domain with the most backlinks to this Moz guide is ryangum.com.

It has almost 378K backlinks. Let’s click on that number and see what they are.

Aaaannnndddd… I see only 10.

Useless.

It’s a completely different story in Ahrefs, as they show everything – it’s even downloadable.

And again, I’ll reiterate the point I touched on earlier – some of the backlink numbers are absolutely crazy in Majestic thanks to the duplicated backlinks with URL parameters.

Case in point:

Majestic shows 376K backlinks Ahrefs shows 4 backlinks

(I guess Majestic doesn’t care about URL parameters?)

But anyway… let’s move on.

Ahrefs vs Majestic Backlink Reports

Let’s start with Majestic.

In the Ref.domains report, there was at least some sorting options – here there are none.

All they give you is option to show/hide deleted links and display 1/3/10/all backlinks per domain.

I can see how one backlink per domain is useful, but three and ten… c’mon!

It almost feels like someone was desperate to come up with some kind of useful functionality here, but failed miserably.

Regardless, none of these restrictions matter anyway because this report (like the rest) only shows a sample of 30k rows out of almost 100k. That means Majestic are hiding 70% of the links they know about from you.

Luckily, things are more logical in Ahrefs.

First things first, their Backlinks report doesn’t show sampled data – it’s full data.

You can also choose to show either Similar links, One link per domain, or All links.

This report defaults to Group similar links. This makes sense, as it groups sitewide and duplicated links, but still shows unique links from unique pages of the same domain. Which is pretty cool.

Is this report perfect? No. I’ve seen a few bugs here and there, but the usability and convenience of this filter still beats Majestic’s useless “3/10 links per domain” filter by a wide margin.

You probably already spotted those other filters too – Link type, Platform, and Language.

I recommend playing around with these – they’re really cool!

There are also some sorting options, including:

Sort by DR Sort by UR Sort by number of external links on the page

Combining sorting AND filtering is when you really start to do some cool stuff.

For example, you could filter by dofollow links only, from English sites only, and then sort by DR.

Seriously, play around this this report – you can do TONS.

Here’s one final report I want to briefly highlight (this one is specific to Ahrefs):

The Best Report That Majestic Doesn’t Have…

Ahrefs is MUCH MORE than just a backlink checking tool. They have world-class search traffic data too.

Yes, there are other tools have one of the two (e.g., Majestic with their backlink data) but Ahrefs does an amazing job of merging backlink and search traffic data together.

I don’t think there’s a better example of this than in their Top Pages report.

This shows the “top pages” on a domain by search traffic.

But this report is super cool because it also shows:

The percentage of all search traffic that goes to that page Referring domains Top keyword (the keyword that drives the most search traffic to that page) The search volume for the top keyword The current ranking position for the top keyword

There’s also a keywords dropdown which unveils ALL the keywords each page is ranking for.

Majestic has nothing like this, so there’s nothing to compare here.

Where Else Do These Tools Shine?

I mentioned earlier that Ahrefs is much more than a backlink checking tool.

It’s actually a suite of SEO tools.

Content Explorer is one tool I want to highlight here – this is a database of almost a billion web pages complete with backlinks and traffic data.

Basically, you enter a keyword and it’ll return any content containing (in either the title or body of the article, depending on your selection).

Here are the results for “SEO”:

The highlighted region shows some of the cool data that Content Explorer shows for each and every results – there’s Domain Rating, referring domains, and organic traffic.

I’m not aware of any other tool that can do this and honestly, it’s super-useful! And let’s not forget the “who tweeted” button which is useful for any content marketers out there.

But what about Majestic? Where does that shine?

Well there are some cool things that I like, such as their Trust Flow and Citation Flow metrics.

If you’ve read my guide to finding expired domains, you’ll already know that I look at a ratio of these two metrics to find decent domains.

I’m also a fan of Majestic’s Topical Trust Flow metric, which is super useful for getting a sense of how relevant a backlink profile is.

However, I’ve found that this isn’t always particularly accurate.

You can see in the screenshot above that mythemeshop.com (a website selling premium WordPress themes including my theme) falls into the ‘Health’ category when looking at Topical Trust Flow.

That doesn’t seem right to me.

So as you can see, the tool that’s most useful for you will depend on the kind of data that you’re trying to access.

I have to be honest though:

For me, Ahrefs is my go-to tool for almost everything these days. I’d say Majestic does maybe 10-20% of what Ahrefs does, and that’s being generous!

Ahrefs VS Majestic SEO Conclusion

Irrespective of opinion, bias and discreditation – the data does not lie.

The data never lies, its why I love working with data so much. Want to settle which design is better? Test it.

Want to see which is the best backlink checker? Test it.

Data does not lie.

Ahrefs is clearly the winner here by a huge margin – a much larger margin than my initial test with just 3 domains highlighted.

In the Wins by IP test, Ahrefs finds 216% more than Majestic SEO. They are winning on ~76% of domains compared to Majestic SEO’s ~24%.

In the Wins by Subnets test, Ahrefs is also the clear winner finding 306% more links than Majestic SEO. They are winning on ~80% of domains compared to Majestic SEO’s ~20%.

So quite clearly, the best backlink checker is Ahrefs. PERIOD.

Even if the source data is Majestic SEO’s very own Majestic Million – Ahrefs still knows more about them than Majestic does.

Unless you only care about who has the biggest database of dead links of course.

And let’s not forget about all of the other awesome tools Ahrefs has – it is so much more than a backlink checker.

BONUS – How To Verify The Data For Yourself

In an effort to be unbiased and transparent, I have 2 seperate ways for you to independently verify the data yourself.

All of the data used in this test is available to download here.

Verification Method #1 – Easy

This is the easiest way to spot check the data.

Download the source data Open the by_domains.csv file Select a line at random Enter the domain from column A into the search box at Majestic SEO and Ahrefs For Majestic SEO look at Referring IP addresses and Referring Class C subnets: For Ahrefs look at Referring IPs and Referring subnets

You can manually spot check these at random!

Verification Method #2 – Hard

What if you want to verify the data for all million domains though?

Well for that you will need a linux server with shell access, an Ahrefs API key and these files.

WARNING: Before you do this be aware that 1,000,000 API credits with Ahrefs costs $10,000.

For full transparency’s sake Ahrefs gave me an API key with 1,000,000 credits so I could run this test.

If any established bloggers want to confirm these results themselves and publish on their blog then please get in touch with me.

Anyway here is how to do it-

Download this & you will find 2 files, get_stats.php and load.sh Open get_stats.php and update it with your Ahrefs API key on line 3 Download the Majestic Million CSV Upload get_stats.php, load.sh & majestic_million.csv to your server Make sure all of the files are in the same folder Connect to your server with an SSH client and execute the load.sh script Wait a few hours This will output a file called by_domains.txt, rename to by_domains.csv Wrapping It Up

Remember folks regardless of all of the controversy the data does not lie.

The simple fact is Ahrefs knows 216% more about Majestic SEO’s Majestic Million than they do (compared to 57% when I first ran this test in April 2013)

And if you haven’t checked out Ahrefs for a while you might be surprised, because it has evolved from a simple backlink checker to a complete SEO tool.

You can sign up for a free Ahrefs account here to check it out for yourself.

Next time you see this topic in a forum – feel free to use this post to instantly win the argument.

Ahrefs vs Majestic SEO – 1 Million Reasons Why Ahrefs Is Better [Updated for 2018] was originally published on Matthew Woodward

Read more: feedproxy.google.com

[iceepsy]

More Foreteller Headcanons

Invi and her greenhouse of plants; Ira and his perpetual smell of old paper and glue; Aced and his soup kitchen; Ava and her growing collection of foliage and dreams; Gula and his quiet croon of olden tunes.

Invi:

Invi is the most magically inclined of the bunch, with a particular flair for traps, like Blizzaga in KH Days. She came up with Seeker Mines for her Proof of Mastery exam. Besides traps, Invi uses predominately Blizzard magic. As the eldest, she feels responsible for helping the others and taught them the basic elements.

Invi has the most plants in her room because the Master mentioned offhand how she’d be good at taking care of them. A small list of the variety include large palms, hanging vines and pots, succulents, and cacti. Her room is always warm, which works out well as Invi gets cold easily. 

Invi’s favorite plants are named after the other foretellers. In the past, she would talk to her plants before any foreteller meeting as preparation. 

Background.

Word got out that the Master was looking for apprentices. Invi’s family heard and you couldn’t tell if they were pitiable or shrewd or generally wished a well future for their daughter. They brashly knocked on the base door of the clock tower and attempted to convince the Master to take their daughter in. The Master saw the darkness in their hearts and decided, though the girl didn’t show potential, he would take her in. 

After having done so, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with her. She was of preschool age and he basically became a single parent. Invi was quiet and didn’t interact much, such as with the brooms he had enchanted to clean the vast tower. She did like reading books and watching him train. 

The Master decided to start her keyblade training when he saw her grab the thickest book in the library and attempt to copy his magic. Mind you, this was a six year old. Invi’s light and potential grew and the Master never regretted his decision.

Ira

Ira’s forte is in Aero magic. He also has a knack for defensive barriers and developed Reflect for his Proof of Mastery. (Actually, Ira was really flustered in the beginning and ended up performing the wrong spell, casting Balloon instead. The Master was so amused that he let Ira pass anyways.) Ira tried making up for it my casing Cyclone.

Background

Ira came from a poor family.. He was the middle child among eight other brothers and sisters, all living in a squashed room in the more sketchy part of town. The Master, having seen his potential, immediately asked his parents to let Ira train with him. Ira’s parents were grateful for the opportunity and accepted.

Ira loves books; he almost had a heartattack when he saw the library in the clock tower. He and Invi are avid readers. 

As a kid, (probably around 6?), he begged a local book store owner to let him help out with dusting. The normal routine was that Ira would dust a bit; find a book of interest; get distracted and read it; get yelled at; and start dusting again. Rinse and repeat. The owner didn’t have the heart to fire him.

Ira, having seen the sorry state of many of the library books, eventually learned how to repair books and rebind them manually. He says magic can be used for many things, but some tasks are better without it. As such, he’d constantly smell of book glue and old paper.

80% sure that Ira likes books more than he likes people.

Aced

Aced is the least magically inclined of the bunch, preferring physical skills over magic. He initially showed off the technique Brutal Blast but was told by the Master to develop a magical skill as well. Aced was the first to cast Quake and managed to destroy a good portion the the eastern wall.

Background

Aced was an orphan who, before he got sent to an orphanage, was taken in by a local kids gang. He quickly rose the ranks and overturned the past leader for his dishonesty. And also the fact that he, as an eight year old, towered over the past header. Aced was a dreamer and wished the best futures for his motley crew. To get food, he would dumpster dive behind bakeries and do odd jobs to receive leftovers of the night or odd crops that no one wanted to buy. Really, the idealized version on a street kid.

The Master came across him, having heard rumors of the gang leader, and decided to take him in. Aced initially refused, but was convinced by his friends that this was the chance for the better life he had always spoken about.

As an early apprentice, Aced would sneak food out of the clock tower to feed his friends. The Master knew but decided to see if Aced would stop on his own. When he didn’t the Master reprimanded Aced (not much of a lecture but Aced was still embarrassed) and talked about how didn’t Aced wanted to strive to be the best person? Aced countered saying this is what his hearts says he should do. Immediately, the Master gave him a small allowance that he can use to buy food. (”Just…Try to tell me next time, ok?”)

Aced uses the money to by fresher food for a local soup kitchen and ends up learning to be a decent cook.

Ava

Ava has a flair for Fire and Healingmagic. She showed off the KH Days version of Curaga, which sets a HP recovery field. Ava’s talents are in regenerative magic and esuna. Ava showed off Mega Flare on a later portion of the exam.

Background

Ava comes from a well-off family. Her father was friends with the Master and the Master agreed to take her on as an apprentice if her heart deemed it so. Ava grew up privileged, and it took her much of her childhood to realize that. Aced and Ira were both keen on teaching her. When being told wrong, she used to puff her face up. Ava always took any comments in stride and grew tremendously from that experience.

Ava does a bit of everything: she takes care of some plants, she cooks a bit, she sings a little. This is mostly her way of being connected to everyone. 

Ava flower presses. Whenever she goes to a new world, she brings back leaves and windflowers to press them. She particularly loves the smells and enchants the book to preserve the woodland smell.

Most importantly, Ava’s favorite hobby is making dream catchers, something her grandparents talked about as part of their heritage. Wanting to continue, she makes many and her ceiling is lined with them. She makes small ones for the other foretellers and pocket-sized ones for her union members. Before the Mask Ceremony, Ava gave Gula a larger and more elaborate dream catcher. The beads used were yellow, and pink, or the sunset. Gula treasured it.

Ava likes to hear Gula sing. His voice has a soothing characteristic different from Invi’s. But Invi doesn’t speak much and Gula speaks much more.

Gula

Gula specializes primarily in Thuder magic, dabbing more into Light magic than the other foretellers at times. He performed Thundaga Shot for his portion of the Proof of Mastery.

Background

Gula, like Aced, is an orphan. He has given up as a baby and raised in an orphanage. As Gula grew, he was unfortunate to have not been adopted and decided to run away when he saw old enough (about age six). Gula lived as a loner and unlike Aced, stole and pick-pocketed. Gula justified it as he only took spare change and only from the rich. He preferred to no interact with the other local kid gangs, keeping to himself. 

At times, Gula would sneak around the orphanage, listening to the songs the caretakers sang.

Aced saw him a few times at the soup kitchen and something just spoke out to him. He asked the Master to consider taking Gula in. The Master, having examined Gula, agreed. Gula knew of the opportunity provided and too the Master’s offer. 

Gula was still not trusting of most people until Ava felt that it was her duty to get him to open up more.

Gula, in times of softness, would humfolk songs he picked up from the orphanage and around town. He has memorized hundreds from not just Daybreak Town, but also other worlds. He always gets embarrassed if anyone hears him sing because he thinks he’s not that good. “Invi’s better,” is his constant reply.

Gula sings louder when he is with Ava.

(Bonus)

Luxu

Luxu specializes in stop, gravity, and magnet magic.The spell he came up with for his mastery test was Transcendence.

Background

No one knows Luxu’s background. He doesn’t talk much about it. There were rumors that Luxu was the Master’s secret son, but those have never been proven or disproven.

Luxu, despite not interacting with them much, considers all the foretellers his family and was really sad to have to leave. 

He is rather clumsy and the main reason he learned stop magic was to catch plates before they broke. 

He’s a big fan on mundane magic tricks, like the disappearing coin, or pulling a bunny out of a hat. He one time managed to lose Aced’s mask ears as a trick. Boy, that was a day.

[leonawriter]

The Blade of Marmora Will Be With You - part 3

Read it on AO3 - This chapter on AO3 - Voltron fanworks directory

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Characters: Keith, Lance, Pidge, others.

Pairings: If you squint. Still gen if you don’t want to.

Chapter summary: Keith begins to let things slip. This could have been a lot worse than it actually ends up being.

...

He had to admit - keeping watch over a hangar of Galra drones and fighters that weren't going anywhere anytime soon as long as they did what they'd come here for and Lance's plan actually worked, was pretty damn boring. 

He could work with boring, though. He'd essentially relearned the baby-step basics of how to fly from the ground up, and he wouldn't have even bothered if he couldn't be patient. So maybe it could be improved on, but-

More beeps and assorted other noises from the system that suggested that all Lance was doing was hitting a bunch of random buttons just to see if it did anything at all. 

"What," he asked, losing that tightly held grip on his precious patience, "do you even think you're doing over there?"

Bzzt, went the console again, refusing... whatever it was that Lance had apparently tried.

"I don't know what I'm doing here," Keith rolled his eyes. Well, that part's obvious. "It's all Galra gibberish."

He blinked. Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about that. I guess the tables have turned since being on Earth.

"Well, of course it is. What, you think they'd just put everything in some kind of Galactic Basic? It's not like we can understand anything on the Castle either. That's all in Altean." Nevertheless, he started moving over toward the console and Lance, trying to not make himself an obvious target if he was spotted from the outside. "Here, let me have a look. Before it starts thinking you're an escaped Balmeran or something," he added under his breath.

"Hey, I heard that!" Lance, now affronted, started poking the air in front of his face. 

Well, that controls the air con, I think this one's got something to do with the tannoy, that one there's  connected to the- oh. Of course it was the big one at the top all along. Of course it was.

"Keith, what did you mean? Was that you being serious, or you trying to have me on, because right now we don't have time for-"

He put his hand on the print, finding relief in the fact that the hangar doors immediately started to close, but Lance kept on his ramble of trying to figure out where the insult had been.

"I wasn't trying to- I was being serious, all right? The Empire doesn't let anyone other than Galra into their ranks, so they make sure their equipment is bio-locked, so prisoners and non-Galran rebels can't-"

He cut himself off, his head turning slowly, eyes locked onto his hand, which was still resting against the console. The hangar doors were still obediently closing.

Lance was staring at him, eyes wide and confused. 

"Shit."

Their Blue Paladin might be a dumbass sometimes, but he wasn't stupid. He'd even just proven that by coming up with this plan in the first place.

C'mon, breathe. Let's just deal with one thing at a time. As long as Lance didn't choose to broadcast what'd just happened to the rest of the team over their comms and leave him there. It wasn't as though there was even all that much love between them in the first place. He'd tried - really, he had. 

But he couldn't make something work. He couldn't make people trust him.

"They're drawing us into an ambush, but we don't have a choice if we want to save Shay." Their helmets suddenly started carrying Shiro's voice. "We have to follow. Lance, Keith - get to the core. I think we're gonna need everyone together to get through this firefight."

Keith held his breath, watching as the doors closed the last few inches or so.

"Copy that, we're on our way!"

And they were alone again - at least, as much as they ever were on a mission. The others were only a shout away, but given they weren't trying to get through, they weren't listening.

"Lance, I-"

"Later, all right?" And there's something in Lance's eyes that says that there will be a later. That he isn't just dropping the issue. "Right now we've got a Balmera to save."

He nods mutely, not fully trusting his voice, and slashes at the console - both to make sure that nothing can re-open the doors while they're gone, and to get rid of the one piece of damning evidence he can actually destroy.

...

He keeps expecting it to come up.

There's the fact that Galrans are the ones to blame for the state the Balmera is in, the doors that trap them in, forming Voltron and having the worry in the back of his mind that Lance is going to not want to when he knows that someone on the team is Galran. 

None of it happens. It reaches the point where they're back on the castle and having a meal of food goo, and still Lance hasn't said anything.

...

Allura and Coran say that the repairs to the castle should take a few more days at least before it's safe to do more than just float at a pace he could've matched the speeder he'd built himself back home, and although that's great for being able to wind down after the non-stop stress of the past few days, Keith also wishes that things would happen faster.

Whenever he sees Lance in the corridors, or at mealtimes, or in training, he just remembers the look on his face when he'd realised what Keith had been saying, and the fact that at some point, it was going to come back to bite him.

He saw Lance meeting his eyes, saying Later, all right? as his eyes closed before he could sleep, and woke up from nightmares where 'later' had been forgotten, everyone knowing already and talking about him as if he weren't even there as they made plans to head a raid on a Galran base - the base of the Blade - his home-

He throws off his sheets, gasping for air, just about able to remind himself that even it wasn't true of any of the others, Shiro at least knew of the Blade, and that Keith had family there. Shiro wouldn't let that sort of thing happen.

...

He's fighting the gladiator again, the rhythm of movement and the need to react and not think being enough to force himself to focus on something other than his latest mess up. Fighting was like that - you couldn't think of anything else, or the next thing you knew, you'd be flat on the floor. 

It was a lot like the way they formed Voltron, really - they had to be focused. In the moment. 

He rushed again, bayard clashing against the blade the gladiator wielded and sending shockwaves up his arm from the angle he'd been hit at, but a few more strikes and he's run the thing through, watching as it dissolves back into the training room floor.

The last thing he expects to see when he looks up is Lance, leaning against the wall by the door, watching him with an unreadable expression.

He can't quite stop a sigh from escaping as he dismisses his weapon - the last thing he wants is anyone thinking he needs to be armed to have a discussion like this.

"So. Um. I guess now's 'later', then."

Lance blinks, owlishly. 

"Huh? Later what? I don't- oh. Oh. That later."

"Don't tell me you forgot-"

"I'll have you know I did not forget! Absolutely not! There was just a lot going on and then we had to be Voltron and save the day and then-" Lance deflated. "Okay, fine, so I forgot a bit. Sometimes. But it's not like you can blame me. And the rest of the time, I was trying to figure out when would be a good time to ask something like, 'Oh, hi, Keith, about that one time you started saying weird things like how maybe you're an alien.' Yeah. That would've gone down really well."

It was as though something had been out of balance, and now the world had righted itself. It was as though the tension from the past few days, the paranoia, the feeling of impending doom, had washed away. 

"You know, for a while there, I'd forgotten I was dealing with you."

"I have a distinct feeling you weren't thinking nice thoughts about me," Lance says with a hunch of his shoulders, expression caught somewhere between attempting to imitate a kicked puppy and being stern, and not succeeding too well at either, "and to be honest, I'm insulted, Keith. Deeply insulted. What did you think I was gonna do, tell Shiro and have you kicked off the team?"

"Shiro.... Shiro already knows."

"And you somehow decided it was a great idea to, what? Not tell anyone else? Or am I the last to know. Like with pidge being a girl."

Keith blinked. Shook his head. 

No, this is definitely Lance I'm dealing with here. 

"What are you even on about? Shiro, and now you - you're the only ones who know. I just spent several days not knowing what you were going to do with that, so if you could maybe not start broadcasting it to everyone else on the castle now?!"

Lance's eyes grew wide at something he'd said - or maybe all of it, how was he to know what went on in Lance's head - and this time, the puppy dog impression was a fair bit more spot on, though at least he also looked less kicked this time, too.

"Really? No one else knows?"

"Well, would you like to be the one who tells Allura?" He shifted his feet, his arms coming up to cross in front of his chest defensively at the various memories that said 'telling Allura is a bad idea' that kept coming back to haunt him. "Or Pidge. Who had her family taken from her. Or Hunk - you saw what he was like heading back to the Balmera. We all did. For that matter, you nearly died not all that long ago because of the Empire, I don't get why you're not more-"

Lance held his hands up, stopping him mid-sentence.

"Okay, okay - I get it. You're freaking out. And, uh, not entirely without reason. Allura's scary. Actually, yeah, so's Pidge. So maybe - just maybe - you have a point. A bit of a point. But-"

"Guys." Pidge's voice carried over from the control area overlooking the training room, making them both jump. Keith thought that either his heart had just stopped for a moment or he was going to puke. "Although it's great seeing you not at each others' throats, I need to run some experiments on the tech here and if you're done training or whatever it is you're doing, you're in my way."

...

Things are more or less back to normal by the time they're all together again to eat in what's something like an approximation of evening in Earth time. Or, to be more precise, what was becoming more and more like a mix between Earth and Altean time slices, which- it was definitely weird realising that what he'd always thought was a universal Galran system was actually Altean. 

Then again, maybe not so weird. Zarkon had warped just about everything else, after all.

"Is it just me," Hunk says at the table between bites, "or is Keith looking better today?"

He blinks, spoon halfway to his mouth, wondering where that had come from.

"Y'know, you're right. He does look less jumpy today."

"I- I haven't been jumpy."

Hunk puts an arm around his shoulders, only making him more confused, not less. He tried to send a look at Lance to see if he had any idea what was going on, but Lance either didn't notice, or wasn't being cooperative. 

"Dude, it's okay. We've all been on edge since we nearly got blown to pieces by weird laser lizard thing that wouldn't die. It'd be weird if we weren't."

Oh, he realised. That's what they think it is. 

"Uh, yeah. Thanks. It... was something like that. Definitely."

...

"So." Lance is sat cross-legged on his bed, with his shoes off and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees to look up at Keith, who's leaning against the wall opposite him, arms crossed and frowning. "Let me get this straight. Not only are you not human, but you're Galran," he says, starting to tick off the points on his fingers, "you belong to some super secret rebel cell, and you were sent to Earth on a mission. A mission involved you and Blue. And other than me, Shiro's the only one who knows. Is that everything?"

Keith sighed. He hadn't wanted to give up all of that information so easily, and especially not to Lance, but somehow Lance was good at dragging things out of him - piece by piece if he had to, apparently - and picking up on slips of the tongue that weren't as obvious as the one he'd made back on the Balmera.

"Pretty much, yeah."

Silence falls for a few precious, awkward ticks, and then Lance shrugs, looking away slightly. 

"I guess that explains how you knew how to find Blue back then out in the desert, huh. You'd already had some kind of connection."

He shifts against the wall, frown turning into one of confusion. 

"I knew where Blue was because I'd landed her there, remember? Yeah, there was a bit of something left, but mainly I was just playing it up to get you guys to follow me. And hoping we could find a way back in. Because of the rockfall."

"Oh, right." Keith can't help but roll his eyes with a smile at the slow realisation of the obvious. "Well, uh..."

Lance scratches at his head, looking serious for a change, which actually makes him worry, for a moment.

"What?"

"Just - thanks, I guess?" Keith blinks, and Lance continues. "I mean, apparently if you weren't there and you hadn't done what you did, we wouldn't have Blue. Blue and I would never have met. So, thanks. For saving and looking after her."

This time it was his turn to shrug and look away, although partly it was to hide the fact that his face was turning red.

"I was just doing my job. There's no reason to thank me for that."

"Psh. That's what you say. I'm entitled to my own opinion. And my opinion right now says 'thank you'."

"Oh. Well, uh... you're welcome?"

"That's better," Lance says, giving him a half-smile, half-smirk that he finds himself far more comfortable with than the serious look from before. It was closer to what he'd come to think of as 'normal' without even realising.

...

As much as it is a relief to not have to hide himself from even just one other person, it causes as many problems as it fixes. Though given how easily he'd slipped up with Lance, things could have gone much worse than walking in on Pidge as she's trying to decode some of the logs she'd been able to download from the ship she and Shiro had investigated back on Arus.  

"Pidge, what... what are you doing."

"Trying to figure out where they keep the logs on prisoners. Given I haven't exactly had a lot of free time to do this since grabbing what we could off the system. First there was that Myzax thing, then there was Sendak and Lance nearly getting killed, and then there was the Balmera, and then there was Coran getting held hostage. Or should I say, pretending to be held hostage. Not that I don't appreciate the training, or saving people, but I really don't have time for fake hostage situations when my family's still out there."

He sighed, watching as she continued to work on the glowing computer screen, hunched over it. He'd figured that much out. He'd known what her personal mission was at the same time as she'd told Shiro, after all, and it wasn't like any of them'd had much of a real rest.

"No, I meant... what is that. You're not going to get far learning about prisoners if you're looking at the captain's log."

Pidge blinked, turned to look up at him from where he'd angled himself in order to point at the screen, and then blinked again.

"How... do you know that? I don't know that. How do you know that?"

He stared, until looking back at the screen, silently hoping for something he could use as an excuse.

"Uh. That word there? It keeps repeating. Which probably means it's either important or common. But because it's literally all over this page, and it's usually followed only by specific words, so..." She was still staring at him, which if he was honest, was making him worried. Not that he could admit that. But she was the smartest one of the entire group. He shrugged awkwardly, backing away. "What can I say? I've had to be good at picking up languages."

Like, for instance, picking up that humans have more than one to begin with, and figuring out how to sound fluent in English, and then realising I'd accidentally started learning Korean instead at one point. 

That, as well as the way he'd modelled his glamour after a ridiculous amount of trial and error, had left a lot of people finding it easy to assume he was some kind of mixed race. He hadn't exactly said he wasn't, thinking that anything that many people made up about his past was probably more believable than anything he could come up with on his own.

"Keith. Please. You have to help me. I can create a program to translate and even hack into the Galran servers, but if you help me, I can finish it in like, half the time. And it'll be even better."

He hesitates. Unsure if this is a good idea, because if he says something wrong - hell, if he recognises something he really shouldn't if he's just finding patterns - then it could spell trouble. A lot of trouble.

But she's looking at him like that, and he's reminded again of the kids he'd grown up with who'd lost parents and siblings to the Empire themselves. The way he'd been, when his father had gone the first time. When Shiro had disappeared.

He sighed, and collapsed onto the sofa next to her.

"All right, fine. Count me in."

...

He's woken up a few quintants later in the middle of the night by the unmistakable sound of someone being in his room, and it's reflex that has him reaching under his pillow for his Marmora blade, ready to defend himself just on the off chance that they had an intruder.

It isn't an intruder, he realises when his eyes adjust to the lights that have come on. It's just Lance. 

Lance, still in the Altean pyjamas and Blue Lion slippers he wore to bed. 

Keith groaned. And put his knife away again.

"Sorry," he hears Lance mumble out. "Couldn't sleep."

"What, so you decided you'd interrupt my sleep? Gee. Thanks." It wasn't like he could tell Lance to just go away, though. Tempting though it might be. "What's wrong."

Half sat up on one elbow, he watches blearily as Lance slides softly onto the floor, eyes on the ceiling. 

"Have you ever wondered what it'd be like if you just - disappeared? If everything'd be the same, but you're not there?"

Okay, maybe that's more than a little concerning. Especially coming from Lance. 

"People go missing all the time, and they're always missed somehow, Lance. I knew people back at base. They'd go, and sometimes they never came back at all, and life went on, and... yeah, I miss 'em sometimes. What brought this on, anyway?"

He sees an odd shoulder movement that he can only assume is still meant to be a shrug.

"Coran didn't even notice I was gone when I got stuck in that freezing cold cryotube. He was all like, 'why did you want to go and do that for, that wasn't very smart of you'." Lance's imitation of Coran was tempered somewhat by his obviously bleak mood, and the fact that he was probably still half asleep himself. "And then I was nearly sucked out into space. It made me think."

"It's the middle of the night, Lance. No one thinks straight in the middle of the night."

He had a feeling he should probably say something else, but it's hard enough just focusing on staying awake, let alone trying to figure out what to say when he doesn't even think he'd know how to deal with the situation when he wasn't half asleep.

Time ticks on. He starts to wonder if Lance is planning on sleeping on his floor, which isn't a very Lance thing to do.

"Keith?"

"Yeah?"

It came out more as a half-hearted mumble than he'd been aiming at, but then he had been just on the cusp of drifting off again.

"Be honest with me here. D'you think I'm not cut out for Blue and she just took pity on me or something? If anyone'd know, you would. Right?"

His first thought was is he joking right now? but then, remembering everything that'd happened in the last.... however long it'd been since Lance had woken him up, he realised that no, Lance probably wasn't joking.

"Lance," he said flatly, staring at nothing in particular, "your Lion went on a half-hour long tangent about stars while we were barely evading the empire. You're made for each other. And no, I'm not being sarcastic, before you accuse me of that. No, no. I'm pretty sure that if she took pity on anyone, it was me."

There's a pause, about the span of just a couple of breaths, and then he hears Lance snort, clearly amused.

"You're kidding."

"No, I'm not. You remember the rockfall I told you about? I shouted. At rocks. I think I stubbed my toe. It hurt. I somehow don't think she'd let you shout at rocks."

Lance starts laughing. After so long hearing him being so damn serious, it was a amazing sound, even if it was one he hadn't thought he'd ever miss that much.

"I'm- I'm going to remember that one, you know," Lance manages to get out, still laughing.

Keith groans, unsure how much he regretted his decision to share that particular bit of information just yet.

"Go back to sleep, Lance. And go back to your own room, because you aren't staying in mine."

He's back to drifting off before Lance is gone, not even hearing the door slide shut behind him.

...

There's a sort of closeness that comes from sharing secrets with people, he comes to realise. It's similar to what things were like with the Blade, but different at the same time.

With the Blade, no one really had a choice - everyone all knew that if you let something slip, then hundreds - even thousands, or more - lives were at stake. Everyone was trusted. But it was an automatic responsibility as much as it was something that was entrusted to anyone.

With his team now, though... it was starting to feel, bit by bit, more possible that he could open up like this to the rest of them. Maybe not soon. Maybe not now. The idea still scared him, if he was honest with himself. 

But it was getting increasingly more a matter of maybe instead of if.

[top1course]

😍 GET YOUR AMAZON KEYWORDS TO PAGE 1 USING HOW TO RANK AMAZON FBA THREE SIMPLE HACKS!

What is up ninjas it is Kevin back again with that lifestyle ninja and today I’m going to teach you how to do Amazon back, back-end keywords the right way, so I think we can all agree that backend keywords on Amazon are bitcom, complicated people always ask me what should I include what should I leave out, how many keywords should I put in, do I have to have keywords in my title and my back in, thank you words in my product, prescription or just once, and don’t let that complexity to tell you guys, cuz right now today I’m going to make it, incredibly simple from hundreds of hours of, iterative testing I’m going to lay it out for you simple what you need to include it to have, the best keywords in the head on all the long-tail phrases that you need for your product, all right. So let’s Jump Right In soap for today the tools that we’re going to be using our, Merchant words, keyword inspector, and Microsoft Excel, so the example product a time to be doing for you guys today and I’m going to walk you through eggs, exactly how I’m generating these back-end keywords from start, to finish right so, the first Potter going to take a look at is an acrylic sign holder, this is one of the products that I was interested in the past, so I know a little bit about it and so I hope that it’ll, shed some insight on, exactly how we’re actually generating is back, so the first thing I do is head over to merchantwords. Com, ryan Toby type in acrylic sign, i’m in as you can see there’s some long-tail phrases here acrylic sign holder wall mount, acrylic sign holder, outlook sign 5 x 7 some of the long tails for the actual sizes, So go ahead and download this is a CSV, now let’s get a little bit, different right so what is an acrylic sign holder mainly used for, so it’s mainly used, for a restaurant, sign, right because, this designs that are used in restaurants to kind of show the menu at the front desk so here you go a hundred and six, 55000 searches a month, and we wouldn’t have originally seen that, unless we had typed in, an indirect usage of our products, so let’s try a few others, plastic sign, plastic sign holders plastic sign board blank wall sign with 8 and 1/2 by 11, alright let’s take this one too, menu sign holder, nothing there, tri menu holder, 3 up menu restaurant menu holder that a lot of great stuff right here, so then once you have, pretty much all of your bases covered for the usages of your of your product, And all the different ways that people could actually be typing these you should just end.

They were going to go ahead and jump into Excel, i got so the next thing I do, and this is a tip that I learned from a buddy that’s doing about a million a month on on Amazon that I hadn’t thought of myself so I’m going to give him a gift, credits of Brock out there you know who you are, is it take a look at the highest, traffic per month keywords right so you can, you know if you want to include your first 10 of your first 20, whatever it is right just, make a choice, then go ahead and head back into our trusty tool to remove duplicates, so these are the top volume of all of our searches right guys, So let’s take a look at these, menu holder restaurant Mexican signs clear acrylic corrugated maybe mini corrugated in the best warrior, for us, blanks with Siri 11, trespassing, wampler’s bored, card back poster, but Livingston rights of these all make, perfect sense right these are our biggest volume guys, send take, this, this, collection of words with no duplicates, and go ahead and run it into a Spanish translator, i have to go the number to language spoken in America guys is Spanish so leaving these key word. It’s really doing yourself, a big disturbance, so take these key words here, and let’s throw them into our Master list that we have, generated here guys, so go ahead and count the characters and then from here I basically just copy and paste, groupings of remember this is a few go manually through it and make sure that anything that snuck in, In like you know, lawn probably doesn’t deserve to be there any answer this is after the manual go through you add your Spanish, words and then, you take groupings of 1000 characters and copy and paste them into your back and keyword guys and then, you are, done, alright so what you have this master-list, we go ahead and, copy and paste, i’m just holding shift command down, go ahead and, copy and paste all of these in a column, then head over to tracemyip. Org tools remove duplicate words in text that this is the key guys, silver copy and pasting all of our different keywords all the unique long-tail phrases that we found, and when you compiled in that Master list, composed The Four merchantwords, excel files and then also the one that we got from keyword inspector, taking a look at some of the key words that are competitors right, I meant so then go ahead and press the original order, so what this does, is it remove all duplicate words right because Amazon the Amazon search algorithm how it works, is you only need a keyword, one time, in your title, your description, which is your ability your paragraphs that you’re actually describing what your product is, and you’re back in keywords it only needs to appear once and so what this does, is it removes all of the duplicate words, unless you really get the most bang for your buck in the character space that Amazon allows Junior back-end keywords, i’m so, we have, 3925 characters here, so I usually go through this, this is kind of the tedious part but trust me. It’s worth it, i go through and make sure, that anything that might not necessarily be related to my, a listing that just kind of snuck in there somehow I go ahead and, Take care of manually.

Rights of leather, might not be a good one for us, people could use it for parking signs, maybe in a police station, the suction cups, price of we’re not offering that in our listing it’s not a bundle or anything like that so I might take, they take that out, and the sizes are good right so you can head for all these long tail phrases when people, search for a specific size, sizes, neon might not be for us right because we’re kind of just doing the generic, acrylic, plastic cases, on bearings might not be good right. So goes through this kind of manually and make sure, that you know anything that snuck in that isn’t necessarily related to your keyless, do your keywords list you manually remove, and once you’re done with that then I’ll show you what to do next, All right. So what the next step once you have those, 4cs vs downloaded the next thing I do is get them all aggregated into one Excel sheet, right so this is the first one we did, this is the second one we did starting at Mexican restaurant signs, i’m at Exedra so there’s four in here, then the next thing I do, is go ahead and, filter by volume, it’s a Once you have is filtered by volume then we’re going to go into, keyword inspector, right into the thing we do here is, do a reverse and search, so what this does is show you the exact key phrases, that your competitors are renting, 4, as well as far as long tails and they sometimes give you PCS while depending on which option you choose, so the thing I do for identifying which listing I’m going to use my reverse and search on, Is by checking out the one that appears in the number one organic search results so these are the sponsored ones right side., not the ones that are actually appearing for, our main keyword which is acrylic sign, so go ahead and click into this listing, copy the a sin, go into New River Station search, they sit here, instart reverse and search and I usually use the USA extensive, 3 credits for AC, so once you have that downloaded, you can take a look at what your competitors are right, so this is showing the keyword phrase itself, on the ranking on Amazon pages, the keywords of her example of someone search clear frame holder, they would appear in the organic position 1, for this this keyword phrase, that’s what I normally do here, is go ahead and hide or delete this right here, And then copy and paste the keyword, and the estimated search, volume, and if there’s a lot right so there’s, 2800 here, and a lot of these there’s a zero search volume, so when you have one with a bunch of key words like that sometimes I like to go ahead and filter out, the ones that have zero Amazon estimated monthly search volume, because you don’t really care if your ranking for words that have, no searches, so let’s put, this group in here, the bottom of our previously generated Excel she writes of this is the one that we generated from Merchant words, pS4, on different Excel sheets, and then let’s go ahead and sort this one more time, by descending, so now we have our Master list guys write so then, the Next Step here is to get rid of any do, Duplicates.

So in Excel this is pretty easy just head over to data, remove duplicates, do you want to make sure both are highlighted so that if there is duplicated also deletes the volume, remove duplicates from column a ride cuz this is where they would be so it looks like this 26 duplicates, go ahead and remove them, and then we’ll head to tracemyip guys in this is the key, alright ninjas I hope that was a really helpful kind of look into how I’m generating my back-end keywords and getting the most, most possible longtail key phrases that I can get, set a time ranking for no long tail key phrases that I may not even thought of, burton more content on how I’m generating keywords, how to identify common misspellings, right and so I know that sounds weird but trusting guys typos work people make mistakes all the time and you want to make sure that you’re hitting, For those mistakes, i’m for the key word errors, for a lot more info for a ton more on keywords back-end keywords and for advanced FBA strategies in general, make sure you check out our FB a Facebook page, is the only Facebook page for advanced seller so make sure you check it out, and please please please make sure that you’re subscribing right. Because I’m putting this out all for free and I’m doing that, because I want to make sure that everybody grinding every single day to become financially independent, has all the help that they deserve, and make sure you’re checking out my other video of guys I promise you they’re packed with, nothing but Advanced FBA content that is going to make you money, and take your Amazon business, to the next level.

from WordPress https://top1course.com/%f0%9f%98%8d-get-your-amazon-keywords-to-page-1-using-how-to-rank-amazon-fba-three-simple-hacks/

[thrashermaxey]

Ramblings: Karlsson Trade Impact on Senators, Blackhawks Injuries, Keeper Decisions (Sept 16)

Karlsson Trade Impact on Senators, Blackhawks Injuries, Keeper Decisions

Don’t forget to purchase your Fantasy Guide before your draft comes and goes! And if you purchased it a while ago, download the latest copy from the Downloads page. Read through some of the articles. Have a look at the projections, including the updates made to Ottawa and San Jose as a result of the Erik Karlsson trade.

Speaking of which, you’ll want to check out Mike’s piece on the fantasy impact of the Karlsson deal for both teams. From the Ottawa side, I’ll agree with Mike that I don’t think this deal itself helps anyone outside of Thomas Chabot, although another injury will help another player heading to Ottawa. More on that shortly.

Chabot might end up with a plus-minus of about minus-100 playing for a dreadful Ottawa team (yes, I’m exaggerating on that number, but you get the idea). The Senators lack veteran d-men that can take on the tough minutes. But I believe the Karlsson trade adds about 5-10 points to his projected point total and 3-4 minutes of icetime per game while vaulting him onto the first power-play unit. Whether he’s ready or not, he’ll be jumping head first into the water this season. He should already be owned in keeper leagues, while he’s worth drafting in the later rounds in single-season leagues.

The Jean-Gabriel Pageau injury (out six months with a torn Achilles) likely moves Chris Tierney up to the second line. Tierney was a bottom-6 forward for the Sharks, but he’ll be leaned on heavily and seems a good bet that he’ll start the season on the second line, although Colin White could work his way up into that role. Drake Batherson’s changes of making the Senators should also improve because of this injury. All three forwards’ fantasy values improve with the injury news, as Pageau could be out all season.

Some news on Karlsson: He’s expected to receive an eight-year contract offer from the Sharks (NHL.com).

*

We finally know more about Corey Crawford’s injury, and the news isn’t good. Crawford has been sidelined with a concussion, and it doesn’t look like he’ll be ready for the start of the season. This isn’t good news for fantasy owners who drafted him at a discount hoping that his ability would outperform his draft ranking, which had already fallen with the speculation that he still hadn’t recovered from a concussion. Crawford was having an impressive season (16-9-2, 2.27 GAA, .929 SV%), so this also isn’t good news for the Blackhawks’ playoff chances.

Cam Ward is worth taking a flier on in the later rounds of your draft, but how effective will he be? Ward hasn’t had a save percentage above .910 over his past six seasons, so your expectations shouldn’t be high. This included a .906 save percentage in 43 games last season, which came in spite of the Canes allowing the fewest number of shots per game (28.9) of any team. The Hawks were a top-10 team in terms of shots allowed in 2017-18. With a defense that is led by the aging Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook, Ward will be in tough for improved numbers with his new team.

Connor Murphy’s injury (out eight weeks with a back injury) improves the chances that 2017 first-round pick Henri Jokiharju makes the Blackhawks out of training camp. Keep in mind that Gustav Forsling is also expected to miss the start of the season with a wrist injury. Jokiharju scored 71 points in 63 games last season for the Portland Winterhawks of the WHL. Check out his Dobber Prospects profile here.

*

Keeper decisions are fast approaching, so I’m going to take you through my thought process in one of mine. It’s a 12-team league in which the categories are Goals (G), Assists (A), Plus/Minus (+/-), Powerplay Points (PPP), Shots on Goal (SOG), Hits (HIT), Blocks (BLK), Wins (W), Goals Against Average (GAA), and Save Percentage (SV%). These are relatively common settings in multicategory leagues.

I get to keep four players, with maximum one goalie. Brad Marchand will be my first keeper based on his high goal total and preseason ranking (currently 5th in Yahoo leagues).

So I might as well get right to the goalies. I need to pick between Tuukka Rask, Ben Bishop, Antti Raanta, and Craig Anderson. Let’s compare their numbers from last season.

  W

GAA

SV%

Rask

34

2.36

.917

Bishop

26

2.49

.916

Raanta

21

2.24

.930

Anderson

23

3.32

.898

I think we can eliminate Anderson right off the bat given his numbers last season the Sens’ current state. That leaves Rask, Bishop, and Raanta. The Coyotes’ goalie had the lowest win total of the bunch (even lower than Anderson), although he missed portions of the first half due to injury. This might fly in the face of conventional wisdom, but I would actually rank Raanta ahead of Bishop and put him close to Rask in this format. Two of the three goaltending categories are GAA and SV%, and Raanta has the top GAA (2.20) and SV% (.927) for the 46 goalies that have played at least 100 games over the past four seasons.

Bishop’s ADP is 54.7, which I could only justify if he plays enough games to make his way off the Band-Aid Boy Trainee list. Raanta’s is criminally low at 135.1. I would be tempted enough to reach for Raanta within the top 100, as there are a number of goalies with an ADP higher than Raanta that I would definitely not draft before him. This group includes Henrik Lundqvist, Mike Smith, Corey Crawford, Semyon Varlamov, Cory Schneider, and Roberto Luongo.

Yet I’m going to keep Rask, and here’s why. First, I’m almost certain that Rask’s win total will be higher than Raanta’s (barring injury). Ratios aren’t always as predictable. Also, if I leave Rask unprotected, I know he’ll get drafted in the first round (technically the fifth round, as the first four rounds are the keepers). However, I’m going to bet that Raanta will probably fall at least another round or two. The experts in this league might be on to how strong a goalie Raanta really is, so he might also get scooped up quickly. But not as early as Rask, who is universally perceived as the better fantasy option.

Yes, perception from other owners of where a player is ranked should affect where you should draft the player.

*

I’ll lump the rest of my players together. I can keep two of the following players: Drew Doughty, Dougie Hamilton, Torey Krug, Jakub Voracek, Ryan Getzlaf, Brayden Schenn, and Clayton Keller. Let’s list out their numbers from last season:

  G

A

+/-

PPP

SOG

HIT

BLK

Doughty

10

50

23

20

205

127

128

Hamilton

17

27

1

12

270

83

80

Krug

14

45

0

24

197

79

73

Voracek

20

65

10

35

228

23

32

Getzlaf

11

50

20

13

117

96

57

Schenn

28

42

10

19

210

154

37

Keller

23

42

-7

20

212

7

28

With the exception of Getzlaf (who played just 56 games), almost all of the players in the list played a full 82 games, while the lower games played total was 76. So this should be a fairly accurate representation of each player.

Out of the group of defensemen, I would go with Doughty. His point total and power-play totals should be relatively similar to that of Hamilton and Krug, but where he really stands out is in the physical categories of hits and blocked shots. I realize I can easily fill those categories later in the draft, but if you’re stuck between two or more similar players scoring-wise, the tiebreaker should be the peripherals. Hamilton has the high SOG total and should take on first-unit power-play minutes in Carolina, but his highest PPP total in a season is 16. Doughty simply does everything when he’s on the ice, which pays off in multicategory leagues.

You could argue that I could pick two forwards over Doughty, but I like balancing out my positions (G, D, F) over the first few rounds anyway. That way I’m not left high and dry at any one position, unless I’m extremely confident in my later-round picks (which depending on what’s left over after the keepers, I might not be). So I’ll basically go process of elimination for the remainder.

Keller might have the highest scoring upside of the bunch. But his scoring total is rather assist-heavy, his plus-minus might not be strong playing for Arizona, and his hits and blocked shots remind me of Phil Kessel (who I decided not to keep in a previous season for that reason, although that was a decision I came to regret later).

Schenn is the multicategory beast in this league. But his projections are somewhat similar (or are not much higher) than Keller’s across the board, except for in hits. I’d rather load up on scoring than on hits in the earlier rounds because I know that scoring will be harder to find in the later rounds. I wouldn’t hesitate to draft Schenn in the early rounds, though. I mentioned him as the one guy that I’d be willing to reach for in fantasy drafts in multicategory leagues. By and large I wasn’t disappointed by doing that, although he cooled off significantly after the first quarter of the season (26 points over his first 21 games, but 44 points over his last 61 games).

That leaves me to pick between two other assist-heavy scorers in Getzlaf and Voracek. Both averaged over a point per game last season, with Getzlaf’s total slightly higher (1.09) than Voracek’s (1.05). In spite of the fewer games played, Getzlaf was easily the more physical player as well, topping Voracek in both hits and blocked shots in spite of playing fewer games.

Yet Getzlaf isn’t overly strong in several scoring-related categories. Over the past three seasons, Getzlaf has never scored more than 15 goals, although he has recorded at least 50 assists in those three seasons. As well, he hasn’t recorded 25 power-play points in his past seven seasons. That’s not a terrible number, but it’s not elite either. But something else that concerns me is his lack of shots. Getzlaf has taken fewer than 200 shots over each of the past four seasons. To compare, 87 players took at least 200 shots last season. For those reasons, I’d be more tempted to draft Getzlaf higher in a pure points league than a multicategory league.

That leaves me with Voracek. He’s been a bit of an up-and-down scorer throughout his career, but he consistently takes over 200 shots, finished 13th in scoring and 9th in power-play points last season. He’s also less of an injury risk and will probably play around a higher-scoring group than Getzlaf. Plus the hits and blocked shots that I would have gotten from Getzlaf I can easily pick up with Doughty, though I know I’ll need to fill all categories later in my draft. As well, if a center and a winger are similarly ranked, and my league uses separate center and winger positions, I’ll take the winger, everything else remaining equal (unless I’m already thin at center).

So there you have it. Marchand, Voracek, Doughty, and Rask are my keepers.

*

For more fantasy hockey information, you can follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-karlsson-trade-impact-on-senators-blackhawks-injuries-keeper-decisions-sept-16/

[uniteordie-usa]

It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 2 (Unschooling)

http://uniteordie-usa.com/its-time-to-rethink-education-part-2-unschooling/ https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Screen-Shot-2017-12-14-at-12.04.46-PM.jpg It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 2 (Unschooling) Michael Krieger | Posted Thursday Dec 14, 2017 at 12:57 pm There are several components, but the real shocker is that more of us aren’t embracing the current age of access to mastery of any topic. But that may not be so surprising—most of us were taught to be passive learners, to just “get throu...

Michael Krieger | Posted Thursday Dec 14, 2017 at 12:57 pm

There are several components, but the real shocker is that more of us aren’t embracing the current age of access to mastery of any topic. But that may not be so surprising—most of us were taught to be passive learners, to just “get through” school. It’s easy to be lazy. The rewards of becoming an autodidact, though, include igniting inner fires, making new connections to knowledge atnd skills you already have, advancing in your career, meeting kindred spirits, and cultivating an overall zest for life and its riches.

One good reason to dive head first into self-initiated learning is that much of what you were taught is already obsolete. “Knowledge workers succeed not based on what they know, but rather how they learn,” writes James Marcus Bach in his book, Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar. He dropped out of school when he was 14 and, in the early days of home computing, taught himself enough to become a software tester for Apple. He’s now an independent consultant.

Bach’s philosophy is rebellious yet inclusive: “Intellectual buccaneering is about self-education, but schools are OK, too. I’ve learned in schools, and I’ve learned from people who were trained in schools. I happily plunder knowledge wherever I find it. I don’t seek the destruction of schools. I am out to dismantle something else—the popular belief that schooling is the only route to a great education and that the best students are those who passively accept the education their schools offer.”

– From the Psychology Today article: The Golden Age of Teaching Yourself Anything

While some of you will be familiar with the educational concept of unschooling, it’ll probably be new to most of you. Personally, I never looked into the concept until I became a parent a couple of years ago, and it was my wife who first became fascinated with the idea and bought a bunch of books on the topic. I’m really glad she did.

The book we’re currently reading is by a fascinating individual named Ben Hewitt, titled Home Grown. Back in 2014, Ben wrote an excellent article for Outside Magazine in which he provided a concise description of what unschooling is. It’s quite distinct from home-schooling, which most people are already familiar with.

In the piece, We Don’t Need No Education, he explains:

There’s a name for the kind of education Fin and Rye are getting. It’s called unschooling, though Penny and I have never been fond of the term. But “self-directed, adult-facilitated life learning in the context of their own unique interests” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, so unschooling it is.

It is already obvious that unschooling is radically different from institutionalized classroom learning, but how does it differ from more common homeschooling? Perhaps the best way to explain it is that all unschooling is homeschooling, but not all homeschooling is unschooling. While most homeschooled children follow a structured curriculum, unschoolers like Fin and Rye have almost total autonomy over their days. At ages that would likely see them in seventh and fourth grades, I generously estimate that my boys spend no more than two hours per month sitting and studying the subjects, such as science and math, that are universal to mainstream education. Not two hours per day or even per week. Two hours per month. Comparatively speaking, by now Fin would have spent approximately 5,600 hours in the classroom. Rye, nearly three years younger, would have clocked about half that time.

If this sounds radical, it’s only because you’re not taking a long enough view, for the notion that children should spend the majority of their waking hours confined to a classroom enjoys scant historical precedent.

Even to someone like me, an individual who finds the concept of authority and involuntary activity revolting, unschooling seemed a bit radical for our family when I first read about it. Nevertheless, as I’ve considered it in more over the past few months, it’s become more and more appealing. To get an even better sense of what it’s all about, let’s read some more excerpts from the Outside article referenced above:

The boys will pay the bus no heed because its passing is meaningless to them. Maybe they have never ridden in a school bus, and maybe this is because they’ve never been to school. Perhaps they have not passed even a single day of their short childhoods inside the four walls of a classroom, their gazes shifting between window and clock, window and clock, counting the restless hours and interminable minutes until release.

Maybe the boys are actually my sons, and maybe their names are Fin and Rye, and maybe, if my wife, Penny, and I get our way, they will never go to school.

Hey, a father can dream, can’t he?…

The first incidence of compulsory schooling came in 1852, when Massachusetts required communities to offer free public education and demanded that every child between the ages of 8 and 14 attend school for at least 12 weeks per year. Over the next seven decades, the remaining states adopted similar laws, and by 1918, the transition to mandated public education was complete.

It was not long before some parents and even educators began to question the value of compulsory education. One of those was John Holt, a Yale graduate and teacher at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School who published his observations in How Children Fail in 1964. Ultimately selling more than a million copies, it was an indictment of the education system, asserting that children are born with deep curiosity and love of learning, both of which are diminished in school.

Holt became a passionate advocate for homeschooling, which existed in a legal gray area, but he quickly realized that some parents were simply replicating the classroom. So in 1977, in his magazine, Growing Without Schooling, he coined a new term: “GWS will say ‘unschooling’ when we mean taking children out of school, and ‘deschooling’ when we mean changing the laws to make schools noncompulsory and to take away from them their power to grade, rank, and label people, i.e. to make lasting, official, public judgments about them.”

In addition to fundamental curricular differences, there is also something of a cultural schism between the two styles. Home-schooling is popularly associated with strong religious views (in a 2007 survey by the National Center for Education Statistics, 83 percent of homeschooling parents said that providing “religious or moral instruction” was part of their choice), while unschooling seems to have no such association. “Unschooling has always been sort of code for being secular,” explains Patrick Farenga, who runs the unschooling website JohnHoltGWS.com. “It’s about understanding that learning is not a special skill that happens separate from everything else and only under a specialist’s gaze. It’s about raising children who are curious and engaged in the world alongside their families and communities.”

I can almost hear you thinking, Sure, but you live in the sticks, and you both work at home. What about the rest of us? And it’s true: Penny and I have made what most would consider an extreme choice. I write from home, and we both run our farm, selling produce and meat to help pay the bills. Everyone we know who unschools, in fact, has chosen autonomy over affluence. Hell, some years we’re barely above the poverty line. But the truth is, unschooling isn’t merely an educational choice. It’s a lifestyle choice.

Unschooling is also perfectly legal in all 50 states, so long as certain basic stipulations—from simple notification to professional evaluations, “curriculum” approval, and even home visits—are met. But many unschoolers have been reticent to stand up and be counted, perhaps because the movement tends to attract an independent-thinking, antiauthoritarian personality type.

Of course, unschooling is not the only choice. Increasingly, families are turning to options like Waldorf, the largest so-called alternative-education movement in the world. It was founded in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919, based on the teachings of Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, who believed that children learn best through creative play. In 1965, there were nine Waldorf schools in the U.S.; today there are 123.

Still, perhaps the best answer I can give to the question of what price my children might pay is in the form of another question: What price do school-going children pay for their confinement? The physical toll is easy enough to quantify. Diabetes rates among school-age children are sky-high, and the percentage of 6-to-11-year-olds who qualify as obese has nearly tripled since 1980. And what do children do in school? Exactly.

They sit.

So what prompted me to shift from, “this seems interesting, but it’s probably not for us,,” to “this might work for our family,” in just a matter of months? For one thing, I have a fundamental issue with forcing kids to sit in a classroom all day with other kids of the exact same age, while being forced to learn in the same way and at the same pace. Second, with all the information currently available online, the resources for thoughtful parents and curious kids is simply extraordinary and unprecedented. Typical schooling seems very outdated in this reality, and I’m not the sort of person who just does things because it’s what everybody else does. Finally, I started to ponder some less obvious downsides to traditional schooling. What if we want to go on an adventure as a family. Whether desert camping in Morocco, or a drive up to Montana, our ability to do such trips would be confined by school schedules. We’d have to take trips at the same time as all the other kids, which just rubs me the wrong way.

Ultimately, my wife and I haven’t decided on exactly what we’re going to do, and we plan on keeping an open mind about all options and taking cues from our kids themselves as they are each unique individuals with their own desires and needs. This post isn’t about making the case for a particular type of educational path, but to get people aware of the various options out there and inspire everyone to think outside of the box.

From a societal perspective, the reality is unschooling necessitates at least one person to be a stay at home parent. In the case of Ben Hewitt, he works from home and his wife is also there. That’s the ideal situation in my opinion, and it’s simply not an option for the overwhelming majority of U.S. families. In fact, most households consist of two parents working full-time just to make ends meet. This is a tragedy since it stifles household creativity and forces everybody into a stressed out box where family becomes an afterthought.

My wife and I are in a fortunate position which gives us options, and we will explore them all. That said, the choice to potentially unschool is not something I take lightly. If we decided to go down that route, I’d have to change a lot about how I do things. At the moment I spend most of my day reading and writing for the purposes of this website. If we accepted the enormous responsibility that comes with having kids at home, I’d want to dedicate far more time during the day to interacting with our children. My everyday life would be affected in a very significant way.

Parenthood is a tremendous honor and responsibility, and it saddens me that so many parents don’t have the opportunity we do to be so engaged with our children on daily basis. Given this reality, it’s important that those of you fortunate enough to be home with your kids think deeply about the options available before doing something just because everybody else does. The world’s changing fast and it’s crucial we raise as many children as possible who can think independently and ensure the future looks very different in a positive way from the one we’re living in. Humanity depends on it.

Finally, here are a few resources readers pointed me to on the subject of unschooling. If you have any other good ones, please share in the comment section.

Lazy Mill Farm

John Taylor Gatto

Living Joyfully

Dayna Martin

[wisejellyfishcrown]

Here’s the situation.  You run a startup. You have a website. And your website has basically no traffic.  

Except your mom. (Thanks, mom.)

Like any savvy founder, you’re clear on one thing — you need traffic to your website.

Somehow, someway, a viable online business requires humans seeing, using, or buying the widget or service you’re selling. So, how do you get that online traffic, especially if you’re starting in at ground zero?

You have a few options. Facebook ads. Google Adwords. A big PR stunt.

Oh, and content marketing.

Most of the time, content marketing takes a lot of time and a lot of money. Many startup founders I’ve consulted with tell me that they want to grow fast, so content marketing is not their growth method of choice.

Why? Because, they say, content marketing is a long, slow ride to building traffic.

Au contraire.

There is a way to massively boost your website traffic fast by publishing a single blog article.

Here’s the quick and dirty:  By creating one powerful, linkable, long-form article, your website can, in two weeks, receive a massive traffic spike, a high volume of social shares, and a steady influx of unique visitors.

And this is where I need to address those “too good to be true” eyebrow raises that you’re giving me right now.

Yes, it sounds like an incredible claim — take your website traffic from zero to thousands of visitors in the course of two weeks.

You have every right to be skeptical because you’ve probably read sensational, clickbaity pablum like this before.

Give me twenty minutes of your time. I’ll show you how I this did in the past, provide you with proof that it works, and explain exactly how you can make it happen.

Here’s Some Quick Summary Stuff That You Should Know

This article isn’t a “10 amazing tactics you have to try!” Listicles are fun, but they’re not always helpful.

I’m giving you one way.Just one.

Why? Because it works.You don’t have to throw mud at the wall. You just have to follow these steps.

Let me show you how this method has worked in the past. One example is an ecommerce startup selling swim gear. They experienced a 1,600% traffic increase in just one week.

On August 2, they had 575 website visitors. Over the course of a week, they soared to 16,543 visitors.

Here’s another startup that had an upsurge in traffic over about the same period of time. They went from a few hundred visitors a week to nearly 2,000. Modest gains, but gains nonetheless.

The startup below had some existing traffic from some low-level blogging that they were doing. Notice how their traffic began to pick up in January with the launch of the method that I’ll explain. They were able to sustain the high level of traffic for the long term.

Traffic is nice. But what about other KPI improvements?

Let’s use backlinks as an example of a significant KPI. One startup I worked with, a marketing automation SaaS, launched their blog with an ultra long-form linkable piece, just like I’ll show you below.

Notice what happened in late 2014 when they started this initiative. Inbound link acquisition soared.

The results were so positive that they maintained a steady output of content throughout all of 2015, which kept their backlink velocity high. (They now have over 31 million backlinks.)

Why the charts and graphs? To show you that this works.

I’m holding nothing back here. I’m handing over step-by-step detail. I explain where to go, what to click, and how to roll this plan out on your website.

You have nothing to lose by trying.

Step 1. Figure Out What Your Target Audience Is Searching For

Overview:  In this step, you will identify what your ideal customer searches for when they are interested in your product or service.

Yes, it’s kind of basic marketing stuff, but this is important.

To get started, let’s start with a simple exercise. Answer these three questions.

What is your product?

Who wants or needs it?

What will they search for (i.e., Google) to find it?

As an example, consider a startup that provides translations of Shakespeare plays. High school or college students can purchase full translations or study guides to help them in their literature classes.

(Disclaimer: I am a growth consultant for LitCharts, a startup that creates literary guides and Shakespeare translations, which is why I have selected this as an example.)

Let’s go through the three-question process with this Shakespeare product in mind.

What is your product? Translations of Shakespeare’s works.

Who wants or needs it? Jed. Jed is an Internet-using, English-speaking high school senior who cares about getting good grades in his literature class.

What will they Google to find it? Um….

This is where you might feel stuck. Usually, there are dozens of things that a potential customer would search for.

Here is what Jed might search for:

Macbeth study guides, Macbeth plot summary, do my Macbeth homework, how to ace a test on Macbeth, , how to understand Macbeth, how to write a Macbeth essay, Macbeth modern English, Macbeth in plain English, how to read Macbeth, Macbeth translation, Macbeth translator, Macbeth to English translator, translate Macbeth to modern English, Macbeth modern English pdf, Macbeth summary, Macbeth plot, Macbeth synopsis, understanding Macbeth, Macbeth for high school, Macbeth dictionary

Open up a Google Sheet for yourself, and write down anything and everything that comes to mind.

All that you need to do in this step is figure out what people are looking for online.

Be super specific. No one is searching for “hats.” Instead, people are searching for “polo ralph lauren men’s twill classic ball cap.”

Be willing to write down a whole bunch of ideas. Don’t hold back. Let it all out. We’ll sort everything out in step 2.

Once you’ve written down a list of ways that people might be searching for your product or service, it’s time to move on to the next step.

Step 2. Find Out Which Of Those Searches Is Most Valuable For You

Overview: In step two, we’ll find out exactly what your single article is going to be about. But we don’t pick anything at random. We do a data-driven search for the absolute best.

At this point, you should have a list of things your customers might search for. These are called search queries.

Now, I’m going to recommend that you use an SEO tool called Ahrefs.

It’s worth the $99/month, but you can sign up for a free trial for the purposes of this article.

Click “Keywords explorer.”

Copy and paste your list of possible customer searches or queries (from step 1).

Click the orange magnifying glass button.

Sip coffee, and wait for it….

DATA!

Looks good, huh? But what exactly are you looking at? And why? And what do you do next? (After all, you’re not exactly an SEO. You’re a startup founder.)

The data you see is called keyword data. It provides all the relevant information about who, when, where, and how many people are searching for those terms.

All the information can be bewildering but don’t freak out. I’ll tell you exactly what to look for.

First, click “Metrics.”

In the chart that appears, identify every keyword that contains a volume over 1,000. The “volume” column shows you how many times per month people search for that specific keyword.

Pick only the keywords that have a volume of more than 1,000. Everything else is irrelevant.

But what if you don’t have any keywords that have a 1k+ volume?

Then go back to step one and try a different angle. Produce a bigger or broader list of keywords.

If you have a few keywords with a search volume of more than 1k, you’re ready for the second part of this step.

Find a keyword that has both a volume over 1k and a keyword difficulty below 20.

In the chart, Keyword difficulty is denoted by ���KD.” According to Ahrefs, “it is an estimate of how hard it would be to rank in Top10 Google search results for a given keyword. 0 is easy. 100 is freaking hard.

If you’re somewhere in the 0-20 range, you’re in the sweet spot.

But what if I don’t have any keywords that have a keyword difficulty of less than 20?

Start back at step 1, generate a new list and try again.

If you have more than one option like I do above, then you can simply choose one. You must choose a keyword. Everything in the plan below is built upon this keyword.

Based on this single keyword, you are going to blow the top off your web traffic and create a content piece that will position your website for success.

I’m going to choose “Macbeth summary.” Even though the keyword difficulty is a bit higher than the other two options, I also know that the traffic potential is more than five times greater. This method is so darn effective that I’m confident I’ll be able to rank in the top 10.

Let’s go on to step 3.

Step 3. Write Down What Your Article Needs In Order To Rank

Overview:  In this step, your article takes shape. Using Ahrefs, you’ll figure out exactly what you need to include in the article, how many backlinks you need, and what kind of traffic you can expect.

Still, in Ahrefs, click on your selected keyword.

On the following page, you’ll see a lot more data. This time, the data is specific to your selected keyword. (I smell money.)

Take a look at the keyword difficulty gauge.

Notice the sentence beneath the gauge: “You’ll need backlinks from ~20 websites to rank in top 10 for this keyword.”

Boom. This is valuable information.

So, pull up a Google Drive document.

Write down the following:

Backlinks needed:  20 (or whatever number your selected keyword requires)

Next, you’ll need to write down the keywords that your article should contain. Take a look at the column titled “having same terms.”

Click “View all 1,217.”

Click “Export,” then click “Quick export.”

Open up the file. Copy the top 20 keywords.

Paste these into your Drive document under the heading “Keywords to Include.”

Back to Ahrefs. Return to the keyword date page (click back on your browser), and scroll down to the SERP overview section.

If your SERP overview contains “Related question,” click on it.

Copy these related questions.

Then paste them into your Drive document under the heading “Issues to address.”

Your article is basically writing itself. But there are several more important steps ahead.

Step 4. Create An Outline For Your Article

Overview:  In this step, you will develop the framework for structuring your article. If you’re not a writer, you can get some help on this step.

Other than giving you some high-level pointers, I’ll let you run with this step.

Here are those high-level pointers:

Create a title that your audience will want to click on. No snoozers here. Aim for some excitement factor without going all clickbaity.

Try to use some of the “keywords to include” in your main points. Eventually, these will turn into headings (i.e., H2s), so this is a strategic SEO angle.

Don’t stress over the finer points of the article. However, you should know enough to draft a rough outline.

Armed with this outline, you’re ready to dig in and do the incredibly important next step.

Step 5. Reach Out To Niche Authorities For Quotes, Input, And Feedback

Overview:  Find the movers and shakers in your industry (maybe you already know about them) and make contact with them. You will ask them for help on your project.

This step might feel tedious, but it’s going to be one of the most powerful actions in your traffic explosion plan.

Of all the steps outlined in this article, this step has the most power to turn your article into a traffic-generating machine.

You have control over how much power you’ll derive in this step. I’ll show you how to ratchet up the power below.

Remember how in our research above (step 3) we wrote down the number of backlinks you’ll need to rank?

How are you going to create those backlinks? Where do they come from?

They start with this step.

You’re going to reach out to as many people as you can and ask for their help. Whose help do you want? Ideally, you’re going after people who are in the same niche that you’re in. These aren’t competitors. They’re simply people who are knowledgeable and/or interested in what you’re writing about.

Why are you reaching out to them?

You’re letting them know you exist.

You’re establishing touch #1 (out of three that I’ll discuss).

You’re asking them for a favor, which will make them likely to respond to your second ask (more on that later).

How do you find such authorities in your niche? There are plenty of ways, but I’ll show you two that I like to use.

One way is with Buzzsumo.

If you’re not using Buzzsumo, you’re missing out. If you want to sign up for a free trial, it could change your life.

Once you log in, click “influencers” in the top menu.

Click “Search Content Shared,” and type in your keyword. There’s no need to enter any information in “Domain(s).”

Click “Search,” and you should see a list of “People that shared content related to Macbeth summary.”

Ideally, this is a list of people who are likely to share content like you are about to create. Another quick-and-easy way of curating a list of influencers is through a simple Google search.

Google your keyword plus blog. For my example, I search for “Macbeth blogs.” A search like this brings up a variety of likely candidates for outreach.

Combing through the list and finding contact information can take some time, but it will pay off. Trust me.

How many influencers should you reach out to? The cliche answer is as many as possible. And this is where you can ratchet up the power of this step. Simply put, the more people you reach out to, the more successful your article will be.

Some of the most successful efforts I’ve spearheaded involved outreach to thousands of potential participants. I’ve hired small armies of assistants from Upwork to help with the workload.

You haven’t gone to all this work only to play small on the most important step. Reach out to as many people as possible. Don’t second guess whom you’re reaching out to. Don’t vet their credentials. Don’t stalk them on Facebook. Just get their name, get their info, and make contact.

What’s the minimum number of people you should reach out to? As an absolute basement number, I recommend that you reach out to four times as many influencers as the number of backlinks you need.

Back in Step 2, I found out that I need 18 backlinks. Thus, at the very least, I should reach out to 72 influencers.

Yes, that’s a lot of people and a lot of outreach time. But keep in mind that some people aren’t going to respond, some will forget, and some will deny your requests.

The greater number of people you ask, the greater your chance of getting replies and eventual backlinks.

Create a list of all the influencer you’ve identified and write down their contact information (email address, Twitter handle, LinkedIn, website contact form, etc.).

Then, you’re going to ask them for a favor. You are going to ask for help on your project, the long-form article that you are writing.

The details of your outreach will vary, but here’s a sample template that you can use:

Hi [name of influencer],

I noticed [reference their influence in the niche] and wanted to see if you could help me [reference the nature of your project].

I’m working on an article discussing [your selected topic]. What are your thoughts on [salient point about topic]?

I’m reaching out to other authorities and influencers in the field and would be honored to share your insights when I publish the article. I will, of course, mention you by name and link to your website unless you prefer otherwise.

Please let me know if you’re able to provide some quick thoughts. I’d like to publish the article in [a date one week in advance]

Best,

[you]

Customize accordingly, and send away!

Step 6. Write Your Article

Summary:  This step is pretty straightforward. You’re going to create some epic content.

As the responses from authorities trickle in, it’s time for you to channel your inner Hemingway and create an amazing work of art.

The world is about to be introduced to the awesomeness that is your article.

Obviously, I’m not going to tell you exactly what to say. However, I do want to provide a few handy insights that will give you the most mileage from this content.

Consider these to be your editorial requirements:

Use the keywords from the list you generated above. Don’t stuff the article with keywords, of course. Focus on giving value to the reader.

Make the article a minimum of 5,000 words. No, not five hundred. Five thousand. If you just choked on your coffee, I’m sorry. Be reminded, this is an epic piece. It’s the best the interwebz has seen on the subject, and it needs to shine.

Use images. Make it easy on the eyes (and brain). How many images? In five-thousand words, I’d go for a minimum of ten. Twenty or thirty is even better.

Use plenty of subheadings and a few bullet point lists for good measure.

Add quotes from influencers as they come in.

Link out to at least 20 authoritative websites. Linking out is just as important as getting inbound links. Seek out some of the most influential websites in your industry, glean some value from them, and then link to them. The purpose of these links is to validate the trustworthiness of your content, furnish your readers with additional resources, and gain cocitation value from the links. Find relevant stuff on Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, or wherever else you can.

Include your bio and contact information at the end of the article. When you create an article, you’re not simply posting great information. You’re also putting yourself out there as a founder, authority in the field, and influencer in the industry. By including information about yourself, you’re laying the foundation for even greater momentum from the article.

Most importantly, just write some great content.

Step 7. Publish And Promote

Summary: In this step, you will publish your article. In releasing your article, however, your work is not done.

Once you’ve hit “publish,” it’s time to get to work. You want to tell as many people about your article as possible. Go to all the obvious channels first.

Tell your mom.

Share on Facebook.

Share on Twitter.

Share on Instagram.

Share on LinkedIn.

Share wherever else you are socially.

Ask your team to do steps 1-6 above.

If you have an email newsletter, share it there.

Do several live broadcasts (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) to talk about your new article and point people to it.

Wherever you have an audience, talk about the epic article you’ve just published.

In the next step, we’re going to take this promotion thing to the next level.

Step 8. Reach Out To Your Influencers And Ask Again

Summary:  When you created your list of influencers in step 5, you were laying the groundwork for what is going to happen in step 8. You will use that list again to reach out to influencers and request an incredibly valuable favor.

Open up the list of influencers you created, and get ready to do some more outreach. You will create two email templates for this step:

An email template for the influencers who provided feedback.

An email template for the influencers who did not respond.

In your initial round of outreach, you may have had bounced emails or invalid email addresses, in which case you can simply remove those from your list.

Let me share a sample email you can send to both those who responded and who did not respond.

Email template for the influencers who responded and provided feedback.

Hi [name],

Thank you very much for your valuable feedback. The information you gave me was instrumental in making my project successful.

You can look at the article here. You’ll notice I linked to [mention the page on their website], and your Twitter profile.

Would you please link to the article from your website? Also, I’d be honored if you would share the article on social media. Your followers may find it valuable.

Thank you again for your help!

[Your name]

An email template for the influencers who did not respond.

Hi [name],

I reached out to you a week ago requesting some help on an article I was working on.

I’d still love to hear from you. If you have something to share, I’ll update the article accordingly.

Your social media followers may find value in the article. Would you be willing to share it? You can read the article here.

Kind Regards,

[Your name]

Keep track of who responds to your email or shares your content.

Allow a week to pass.

After one week, reach out to those who haven’t responded or shared your article. Provide a polite “by way of reminder” email to make your request again.

Don’t underestimate the potential impact of this step.

There is a good chance that your article will reach a tipping point. As more influencers share your article, as more websites link to your article, and as more organic traffic reaches your article, it begins to take on a power of its own.

Here are some of the most common advantages that articles like this will gain.

Organic traffic for the article increases month over month.

Inbound links build up even without outreach.

Social shares climb even without outreach.

Brand mentions increase even without outreach.

These are additional benefits, all of which I or my clients have experienced in the past:

Podcast invitations

Guest post invitations

Syndication of the article by high-profile websites

Invitation to appear on television or talk shows

A single well-placed, highly-leveraged article is all it takes.

Conclusion

If you approached this article with some hesitation, I can understand why.

But if you’ve read the article in its entirety, I’m sure you can envision the upside.

This tactic is completely free. It does, of course, take time. It is time well spent.

The investment of 1-2 weeks of preparation and writing can pay off. You will earn months of increasing traffic, inbound links, social shares, and thought leadership recognition.

If you’re starting at a traffic level of zero, this tactic is guaranteed to jumpstart traffic and put your startup in a position of recognition within just two weeks.

That’s definitely worth giving a try.

Have you tried a technique like this in the past? What kind of successes or failures did you experience? Let me know in the comments.

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The post Any Startup Can Blow Up Their Website Traffic for Free With a Single Blog Post. Here’s Exactly How To Do It appeared first on elgibborsms.com blog.

[maryharrisne]

Climb your way to Page 1 (for free!) with these 5 DIY SEO hacks

Getting your own practice up and running — attracting new patients, balancing the books and maintaining a welcoming atmosphere — can be challenging for even the most experienced dentists.  Add to that list post-graduation debt that needs to be paid off, and it’s no wonder why many practice-owners are scrambling to get their practices on the map as soon as possible. But attracting new patients and retaining them isn’t as easy as it sounds. Marketing professionals don’t come cheap, and many dentists don’t think they have the know-how to market their practice themselves. In this blog post, I’m going to lay out some quick and easy hacks I’ve successfully used to rank higher on search engines and make my practice more visible.

Search engines have become smarter over the years. Gone are the days when you could simply stuff a page with the same keyword over and over and rank on the first page. All major search engines now weigh a multitude of factors when ranking pages — and it isn’t just about keywords. They’re also considering things like age of domain; keywords within domain name; and, behind the scenes, things like HTML and CSS codes. Some of these factors are within our control (like keywords), some aren’t, and some are too technical for just about everyone except those with a high degree of technical expertise.

Over the years, I’ve developed and tested a handful of free and easy hacks that will boost your search engine ranking. I personally used these strategies to help my own practice’s website make it from a distant Page 6 all the way to Page 1 of Google results for many different keywords. These DIY hacks require no special technical knowledge — any dentist out there can do them! Best of all, they saved me a bunch of money along the way. If you follow these steps, I believe you’ll have primed your practice’s site for the top spot on Page 1 of Google. The groundwork will be laid out and you’ll be ready to hire a professional to help with the final summit to Position 1.

Hack #1: Focus on NAP

This one sounds really simple, but you’d be surprised how many practices miss out on high rankings because they neglect to take care of this simple task.

Your business’ name, address and phone number (NAP) should be consistent across the numerous online directories and websites. Online directory information comes from four major directories: Axciom, Infogroup, Localeze, and Factual. Those four directories then propagate your contact information to numerous smaller directories. Check your listing information on the four major directories and confirm that the information is both correct and consistent. If corrections are needed, you can call their 800 number to edit your information.

The easiest way I found to go about this particular tip was to buy an annual package from Yext, which takes all my contact information and distributes across it vast network of online directories so that it’s consistent across the web. Claim your business listing on major sites so that you can edit information as and when needed.

Hack #2: (Original) Content Is King

Having a flashy, modern website certainly makes an impression on site visitors, but it pales in comparison to the importance of content. Your content is the key to distinguishing yourself from your competition. Furthermore, original content is valued far more by search engines than cookie-cutter, pre-made, copy-pasted sections.

Many dentists feel overwhelmed by the task of creating original written content for their sites — after all, a dentistry degree is a lot different than an English degree! But writing content for your site isn’t as hard as you may think. Friends and family can be particularly helpful for this task. Spend some time asking them what they like and dislike about their current dentist — use their feedback to drive your content. See for example how Definition Dental makes an emotional yet meaningful statement to connect with the local community in Beaverton OR. Think about your own practice philosophy — what makes your practice unique? What are the key principles you and your team follow in your day-to-day work?

Once you’ve gathered these thoughts, I suggest you sit down, write out a draft and get some feedback. Ask your friends and family to read your ideas and tell you what they think. If they were a new patient, what kind of impression would your content have on them? Were there any unanswered questions? You may also ask for feedback from current patients, as well.

As a general rule of thumb, you should have at least 1,000 words of content on each of the major pages on your site.

Hack #3: Build Links to Your Website

The term “information highway” gets thrown around a lot when referring to the internet, but many people don’t know what it really means. The “information highway” refers to the way information flows across the internet — how people talk, share, discuss, and distribute information. Using the information highway the right way can get your site seen by huge numbers of people on a continual basis. Knowing how the information highway runs is some of the most valuable knowledge you can have when it comes to building your visibility — but it can also seem daunting.

I suggest starting out by making a small goal: challenge yourself to get one backlink  per week. It may seem like a drop in the bucket, but trust me, this strategy will build momentum fast. Start today — go out there and answer questions people have on social forums like Quora and Reddit. Make guest posts and comment on other people’s blogs. Create and share an infographic or short informational video with your iPhone and educate people about something they’d like to know. You might even consider describing an interesting and challenging case that could intrigue your colleagues. There are a huge range of options here that can meet your goal, but the basic idea is this: generate or share information that people value, information that people are specifically looking for, so that they’ll link your website as source.

Generating backlinks is going to give you a twofold edge. First, the backlinks alone will increase your SEO ranking. The other advantage is lesser-known. There are so many practices out there that don’t use backlinks at all. That’s a huge source of visibility that they’re missing out on — and YOU aren’t. Even just a few backlinks that you can gather will catapult you ahead of your competition. This is a crucial exercise, and the rate at which you build links and the relevant websites will make a difference. One last tip: be patient and consistent with your backlink goals. Search engines take their time in rewarding the links, but the results will payoff.

Hack #4: Build Your Online Reputation with Reviews

Not only do reviews bring an independent perspective from your patient base, but they also serve as signal in search engines. A steady stream of reviews from your patients can work like magic in moving you up in the ranks. Employing this tip doesn’t have to be arduous; there are vendors out there that can integrate into your practice software and automate the process of asking reviews from your patients. These services prompt your patients for a review via text messages, increasing the chances of getting a review. You don’t need a ton — aim for one review for every five requests. The quantity doesn’t matter as much as the consistency. Keep the reviews flowing and you’ll slowly start to move up.

Hack #5: Get Active on Social Media

Full disclosure: this strategy has a smaller contribution compared to the points above.

However, we can’t ignore the fact that social media has completely changed the landscape of things. Everyone and their mother (literally) are on social media these days, and it will most likely not hurt your business to have a presence on Facebook or Twitter. Their importance is growing everyday — why not get a headstart and establish yourself as the social media king/queen? Posting a weekly infograph, your latest blog post, or a picture of staff lunch are great ways to stay connected with your current patient base and connect with prospective clients.

If you create an account on Semrush or Brightlocal (they’re both free), you can track how your website is faring week over week. The software tracks your ranking and your site visitors. It’s a handy tool and I bet you’ll quickly become addicted to watching your site climb the ranks after implementing our hacks.

I’d love to hear from you! Have you tried any of my hacks? How did you do? Do you have any of your own hacks to share? Comment below!

Dr. Rohini Agarwal is New Dentist Now guest blogger and a member of the American Dental Association. She graduated from Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine in 2014 and has since been practicing in suburbs of Portland Oregon. Dr. Agarwal is passionate about oral health education among kids and loves to be involved in local community events.

Editor’s note: The purpose of this article is to promote awareness of issues that may affect dentists and dental practices, and is not intended to provide either legal or professional advice. Dentists are urged to consult directly with a properly qualified professional or with an attorney admitted to practice in their jurisdiction for appropriate legal or professional advice.

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