#genius api let me in

[vanillaxoshi]

I just got this idea after reading Zi-lings au on what Kaizo thinks of Cahaya during Boboiboy original. I loved her au and then it actually made me think that how would have Cahaya reacted during savage trial, toughness test and Gur’latan arc and thought to draw out an au on it 

This au is on savage trial (Boboiboy galaxy s1 episode 10 - I will soon think of episode 11 too)

So let’s start from the time it was lunch break…

Yea we are not ignoring the fact that the Api and Gopal kinda faced the wrath of Admiral in morning (I have made Trio ori get one room and Air, Daun and Cahaya have one room while Api and Gopal share a room well after Solfang I love Api’s and Gopal’s friendship) which only Tanah liked while Air gulped after knowing it. We could see Yaya, Ying, Cahaya, Petir and Tanah were well prepared for the written test and other’s condition….not explainable 

Time’s up….after facing another round of Admiral’s wrath it was finally break time!! 

When the Admiral leaves for getting a drink, Ying and Yaya questions Fang about Admiral’s extraordinary behaviour, while Fang answers them to think about it, Cahaya’s the one who explains them how Admiral is in actual, fierce during duty hours and gentle during breaks or when he’s off duty. 

“How do you know about it?” 

“I thought to research about it! As his behaviour with you four kinda surprised me!” 

Cahaya answers Petir while thinking about yesterday’s incident and how he and his brothers agreed to give exam. He really did spend his time researching about Admiral, members of Tapops and about the test they are gonna give, he wasn’t much satisfied with his results due to short duration of time but that was what he could do for now until he noticed Fang sneaking away and followed him. He felt lucky he did that when he heard Admiral shouting back in his fierce tone and heard a sound which felt like slamming the table.

“The second test is SURVIVAL TEST”

“Cooking in groups!”

Tables with different weird looking alien foods appeared in front of them. It automatically made them in separate groups, with one group having Ying and Yaya, one with Gopal, Tanah, Petir and Daun, last one with Api, Air, Angin and Cahaya

“Yeesh! What do these things have got to do with survival?” Ying questions the Admiral

“These ingredients will save you if you ever become stranded on an alien planet” Admiral answers

“BEGIN NOW!!!”

They all begin looking at the ingredients 

“Eh! How do we cook these things?” Tanah questions while picking up a purple ingredient 

“Exactly they look so strange” said Petir eyeing on some purple-blue ones 

“Heh! Not a problem!” Gopal rubs his nose in proud and changes the ingredients on earthy-vegetables 

“Hey! You can’t use your powers!” exclaims Yaya earning nods from Angin and Api

“Yes we can! We can use our powers in it until we change the ingredients into complete dishes!” Answers Cahaya while looking at the vegetables 

Admiral looks at Cahaya and nods in agreement 

Petir smirks at this while Tanah turns at Gopal, “Ok Gopal tell us what to do!” 

Tanah knew even though he is good at cooking, Gopal’s skills will be the best in here who is slightly better than him

Gopal gives them instructions and they start their work, Ying and Yaya starts their work and arguing too while Api and Angin turns at the vegetables not knowing what to cook or most importantly how to cook

“You do know you have a genius here” Cahaya exclaims proudly who was met with a deadpan expression from his brothers

“Oh yeah! So tell mr. genius how are we cook these strange looking vegetables?” asks Api

Cahaya states the properties of the vegetables which were very similar to earthy vegetables making them understand. Air and Angin takes the initiative to cook as Angin knew a dish very well taught to him by Tok Aba when only he was at home getting bored while his siblings were not around. They nod and start their work, assist each other, cook together while keeping an eye on Api so that he doesn’t mess around and finally they were able to make a dish. 

Fang was smiling proudly after seeing Air’s group more specifically on one person.

Finally Admiral, Commander and Fang starts reviewing the dishes. They started with their table first.

“Hmm” they smell the dish which smelled delicious

“What dish is it?” Asked Admiral

“Tom Yum” answered Angin

“Tom Yum?” Admiral and Commander were kinda surprised hearing the dish name as it reminded them of the galactic Tom Yum of Master Gahurum (I hope that was his name)

“Yes a dish Tok Aba taught us!” said Air calmly, “Yeah! I don’t know how it would taste though as we never tried it with alien vegetables” whispered Api which was only heard by his brothers (-Angin, Air and Cahaya) and Fang

Commander and Admiral tasted the dish which turned out to be great

“DELICIOUS!! It’s simple and great! Reminds me of the galactic Tom Yum! 90 POINTS!!!” said Admiral after tasting the dish. Cahaya really wanted to ask what did he mean by the term ‘Galactic Tom Yum’ but he let it slide while Fang smiled at his friends more specifically at Cahaya for his knowledge on the alien food

Petir, Daun and especially Tanah was happy on their brother’s success 

Admiral moves on to the next table and tastes the dish, grades them with a hundred points 

While Gopal’s group was happy, getting appreciation from Air’s group as well; Api and Angin laughs at Admiral’s reaction, “Of course Admiral will remember his mother after all the dish was also prepared by the mother of the group!”

Unfortunate to them Admiral heard that, “What do you mean?” 

The duo did not expect Admiral to hear them, they tried to give him some lame excuse which he did not bought but let it slide and they huffed in relaxation. It lasted only a minute as Tanah had kept his hands on their shoulders, smiling gently and a dark was defecting behind his calm figure, sending shivers down on everyone who saw that. Others were wise enough to leave them and moved forward to see Commander shouting in pain after drinking Ying’s soup. 

Cahaya already had rolled his eyes after seeing their dishes as they had clearly not followed the rules but it was something he would careless about 

All were looking at the score board (Yaya, Ying and Gopal’s grades are as shown in the show)

Player           Writing Test          Cooking Test         Focus Test         Total

Petir  80 100 0 180

Angin 40 90 0 130

Tanah 90 100 0 190

Api 15 90 0 105  

Air 70 90 0 160

Daun 30 100 0 130

Cahaya 100 90 0 190

Cahaya knew he has to get a hundred in next test to get Tapops level qualifying marks but he was little nervous on it because how focused he might be he was not sure on doing a rhyming song dance with a gorilla

“ARE YOU READY FOR THE FOCUS TEST?!?” Asked the Admiral 

“Yes! We are Admiral”

“RELEASE TAPOPS GORILLA NOW!!!”

“Tapops Gorilla?!??” exclaimed everyone except Cahaya he knew where this was going 

The Gorilla was released on the stage like area in front of them. Api looks at it with shining eyes thinking are we gonna fight him? While Gopal gets scared and hides behind Tanah, “Do we need to fight that thing??” 

All were confused on what to do, “What’s a gorilla got to do with focusing?” Asks Yaya

“Do we have to feed him with poisonous cookies while looking straight into his eyes?” asks Angin who was doing a thinking pose until he noticed everyone’s stare on him 

“Where do you get such ideas?” asks Petir in disbelief 

“TV show” answers Angin

Tanah shakes his head thinking now he gotta keep an eye on what they are watching 

“Fang show them how it’s done!” orders Commander breaking them out of their trance

“Yes Commander!” Fang straightens up and follows the order while jumping in front of the Gorilla 

The Gorilla roars at him

“Be careful Fang!” said a worried and nervous Cahaya

Fang tilts his head back giving Cahaya a reassuring smile and focuses back at the Gorilla while starring at him intensely 

“BEGIN!!”

And a show of pat-a-cake begins (I swear I was laughing the whole time) 

Cahaya was seeing Fang admiringly while all were just stunned who later were filled in by Admiral on what they had to do

After it was done everyone says, “Wow! So cool Fang!” 

Fang smiles at them

“You were truly awesome Fang!” Cahaya smiles at Fang who had come to stood near him

Fang pats his shoulder, “You can do it Haya! Don’t be nervous”

Cahaya widens his eyes after hearing that, “How did you-“ 

“I know you long enough to tell what you are thinking” Fang smirks

“-your turn!” Admiral finished his statement 

Both of them turns to listen Admiral’s further sentence, “Points will be given on the length of the rhyme”

Before anyone could say Cahaya raises his hand, “Can I do it first Admiral?”

“Yes!” Admiral agrees while nodding his head

“Cahaya-“ Daun hold Cahaya’s sleeves, his eyes were clearly showing how worried he was about his brother 

“I will be fine Daun” Cahaya pats Daun’s hand while giving him a re-assuring smile and moves towards the Gorilla

“Be careful!” said Petir slowly which was heard only by Cahaya, he nods at the eldest septuplet and looks towards the Gorilla, intensely starring at him how Fang did

“BEGIN” 

And that’s where he got the call from Commander 

A new round of Pat-a-cake starts, which ends smoothly with Cahaya singing the lyrics correctly, dancing with the Gorilla and intensely focusing at it 

“- for Gorilla and me!” and that’s how it ended

He turned back to get proud glances from his brothers, awe from his friends and TTM and a proud smile and thumbs up from Fang, he runs and stands beside him

“Good! 100 POINTS!!” exclaimed Admiral

Cahaya’s chest puffs up hearing that while Fang just rolls his eyes playfully. Air and Tanah congratulates the youngest septuplet 

Now Gopal enters thinking it to be easy after seeing Cahaya and Fang who was proven wrong by being slammed in no less time for singing wrong lyrics 

Now it was Yaya and Ying’s turn who turned out to have done a great job, their idea happened to have inspired Angin and Daun who did the same, paired up together and sang the lyrics well because in between Angin said Sat-a-cake which Daun corrected on proper time before Gorilla could slam them away. Cahaya was confused at first why did Angin say Sat-a-cake until he realised that the eldest trio had spent their most of the time with Tok Aba and due to his voice he mispronounced Pat as Sat and that was what they had learnt 

Before he could say anything, Tanah had already went in the ring, he face palmed hoping him (Tanah) to be safe which was proven wrong as Tanah was immediately slammed by the Gorilla. The siblings including him did got enraged after seeing Tanah getting hurt like that but they did know they couldn’t do anything. 

“It’s Pat-a-cake”

“Huh?!”

“Be careful while you are singing because I know just like Tanah and Angin even you have learnt it as Sat-a-cake”

Petir nods at Cahaya’s warning 

Next was Api who surprisingly did the test correctly while making the Gorilla as his friend too and after him Air did who also received 100 points well! He’s well known for his patience and focus

Now it was Petir’s turn, who sang the first half well but when it came to second half by reflex he said Pat as Sat and before he could correct it he was slammed by the Gorilla. Cahaya shakes his head after seeing that, he did predict something like that might happen

“Let’s see if your points are enough to pass!”

“Commander”

“Here are your overall points!”

(Same for Gopal, Ying and Yaya)

Player           Percentage         Grade 

Petir 76% C

Angin 66% D

Tanah  63% D

Api 68% D+

Air 86% B

Daun 66% D

Cahaya 96% A

Gopal 40% E

Ying 53% E

Yaya 53% E

(I followed American grading system that’s why Yaya, Ying and Gopal’s grades are different)

“WHAT WE GOT ONLY 53 POINTS?!?”

“I GOT 96!! AWESOME”

“WE GOR MORE THAN YAYA AND YING!!!”

“JUST 63 POINTS?!”

“Your marks are higher than us!”

“Sorry I didn’t do on purpose” apologised Daun

“Heh! We finally beat you” 

“Yeahhh! Our marks are better than- owww”

“Owww Tanahhhhh”

Tanah pulls Angin and API’s ears, “I never taught you guys to be rude”

“I…got….an E?”

“YAY! I PASSED!!”

‘But isn’t passing marks 80 above?’ Thought Cahaya while sweat dropping at Gopal

“PASSED?!!”

“SINCE WHEN?!”

“Isn’t 40 and above considered pass?” Asked Angin

“THE PASSING MARK IS ABOVE 80%”

“WHAT?!?” shouted the whole group who were shocked (except Air and Cahaya)

“Heh! You guys thought you passed” said Fang with a smirk on whom Cahaya rolls his eyes

“Wait! So you mean all of us failed?” asked Petir

“But didn’t Cahaya and Air got above 80? So they passed” said Daun innocently 

“Yeah well except them!! What will happen to us?!?” said Angin slightly scared

“What a disappointment!”

“ALL OF YOU ARE….”

“…Passed”

“What?!?”

“This is getting confusing” said Api holding his head

“This isn’t a joke right?” Said Gopal while rubbing his both eyes in confusion 

“It’s true! Congratulations to all of you” said Admiral

All were confused while looking at Admiral’s sudden change in behaviour while Air points at the clock 

“Oh! It’s after 7 already!” mumbles Gopal to Api

“Pheww…Lucky us” said Api sighing in relief

“I thought for a moment we wouldn’t make it through the Tapops Toughness Test” exclaimed Tanah sighing in relief too, getting nods from others except Cahaya

Before Cahaya could speak or bring him back to the reality the Admiral asked, “What’s the thing about Tapops Toughness Test?”

“You said we all passed right?” said Gopal

“Exactly that means we have cleared this toughness test!” said Petir continuing Gopal’s statement 

“Huh? Oh no I think you misunderstood! These tests right now weren’t the part of Tapops Toughness Test” said Admiral calmly 

“What?” shouted everyone except Cahaya

“Those tests were just to qualify you for toughness test!” 

“That means we haven’t taken the Toughness Test yet?” asked Air now with a hint of horror in his voice 

“That’s right. The toughness test will begin Tomorrow morning!” said Commander 

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!” everyone except Cahaya who happened to close his ears shouted in horror

I will try to write episode 11 too!! I always wanted to imagine these two episodes as septuplets au! I never thought about solfang before but this became my one of the favourite friendship after reading Captain Sunshine and reading different stories here!! I never thought of them romantically (though I still enjoy reading their stories here especially I loved the pick-up lines one) but yes I m big supporter of their platonic relationship

This is AMAZING

This is a great adaption of that episode into a septuplet version, and i think its smart to have the ori trio be the ones who mess up the gorilla test

And poor api and daun with the written test, they got low scores, feeling Yaya and ying very infuriated for the brothers who got higher than them

I would love to see how you plan to adapt episode 11 into this au version of yours

[taylorswiftandx]

heyy i was trying to do some taylor swift lyric analysis but i cant seem to create a dataset. i tried using genius api with its python library but they have a limit in its data retrival and they have all those interviews, speeches in them too so cant collect just the song lyrics within its limit.

i wasted my whole day in this. do u collect your dataset manually? or is there any other way?

Yes, I have done it manually. There very well could be a more automated way of doing it, but unfortunately I have next to zero coding skills so I wouldn't know where to start!

When I started this blog in 2018 there were only six albums, so I actually used lyric booklets from my physical copies and typed them out myself. Now, I usually copy/paste from genius, and then listen to each song cross checking the genius lyrics with Apple Music lyrics.

If it would help, I can send you my lyric document -- as a heads up it only contains songs Taylor has a writing credit on. And it's been.... let's say "streamlined" a little for readability, which pretty much just means I've deleted exactly-repeated lyrics. Feel free to message me if you're interested.

[jpchathamandfriends]

All right so I've been thinking a bit more about this. You know what might actually work? Crabs. Hear me out. Tagging @staff because I legit think this is a good idea.

First let's consider what people don't like about algorithms in social media feeds. Algorithms take away our feeling of control, turning us into passive consumers of whatever the algorithm chooses for us to see. They're inscrutable, choosing posts based on some occult machine learning model that either can't be comprehended by humans or is kept a jealously guarded secret. They usually are optimized to maximize things that can be measured, like clicks or time spent staring at something, instead of things that matter like enjoyment or dialogue. And they're really not that great at the end of the day, they tend to settle on showing someone the same sort of thing over and over again, and that thing tends toward nazism more often than it really should.

There are benefits to algorithms too! A few of them are beneficial to both users and corporate overlords, and many are beneficial to corporate overlords but hostile to users. With all the nonsense that the overlords of other social media sites are getting themselves into these days, it really makes sense that tumblr users are worried that our own overlords are going to mess things up unrecoverably. Fortunately the benefits in @staff's original post look beneficial to users as well, but a competent evil marketing genius could easily try and sneak something horrible in there too.

So here is my proposed solution!

Don't mess with our feeds at all. Our followers' posts should still come up chronologically like they always have. But, what if there were some algorithm bots that we could follow *if we wanted to*? We'd interact with them the same way we interact with user-created bots: follow them if we want, unfollow them if they get annoying. They'd put posts in our feeds. The user experience doesn't change, there's just more stuff there.

The reason I'm suggesting multiple bots is that I think they should be a) cute, b) comprehensible, and c) stupid. And, d) they should be tumblr crabs. Imagine: There are twenty or so crab bots out there. They all have names, and their profile pictures are the same pixelated crab emoji except all in different colors with a different hat or thing in their claw. But each one has a different algorithm. Maybe there's a green one named Sally The Crab and she has a flower. Her page is titled "I'll bring you pictures of landscapes!" and if I follow her, then whenever it's time for her post to show up on my feed, I get a photo that someone else recently posted, that has been somehow determined to be a landscape photo. Maybe Ivan The Crab shows me literally the most recent post that anyone posted to the site. Maybe Rodrigues The Crab randomly chooses a reblog of a random post that's at least 1 year old and has at least 1,000 reblogs, or Maureen The Crab shows me a random user's 10th post. Or, I can go to any of their pages, and I can see an entire blog full of whatever their specialty is. Or, I can choose not to follow any of them and my user experience remains unchanged.

But here are some very important notes:

- These bots choose different things for different people. When it comes time for Ivan The Crab to post to my feed, he chooses a post based on his algorithm. When Ivan posts to your feed, his algorithm will almost certainly choose a different post. When I go to Ivan's page, it will almost certainly not show me the post he put on my feed, or on yours. In this way, they don't behave like real users - they have the complete tumblr database and API available to them. This way, it's not like winning the lottery when a crab finds your post, and it's much more likely that a given post will end up in front of *someone*.

- I would still like a slider or something to control how often a crab posts to my feed. If I have my slider set to 1/30 posts (or whatever), then on the 30th post I see, one of the crabs I follow will run its algorithm and show me something. I probably won't use tumblr for the purpose of seeing what the crabs have to show me, I just want to see them stop by every once in a while. If I have my slider set to more than 0 crab posts but I'm not following any crabs, I should probably get an error message.

- The algorithms should be simple and comprehensible! "Algorithm" is a scary word these days. In popular culture it really does have connotations of a huge inscrutable neural network/ machine learning model that's trying to influence culture to some nefarious end. Don't do that. Maybe one or two crabs can try and guess posts that I might like based on my likes and/or reblogs, but I honestly probably won't follow those. Instead, go for something that's non-threatening, fun or interesting or a bit bizarre, and easy for someone who's not a coder to understand. It's all about the accessibility and the feeling of control.

- Crab posts should probably be marked specially, like the "Sponsored" or "Blazed" posts are. Just for maximum transparency. Tumblr users are scared of algorithms, and they're not entirely wrong to be scared of them since algorithms tend to destroy community and tumblr is all about community. Please be transparent.

- If I reblog a crab post, I don't think the reblog chain should show that. If someone likes one of my posts enough to reblog it, I don't really want to know whether they found it organically or from a crab putting it in their feed.

- Maybe new users should automatically start out following some crabs - either all of them or a curated selection. Maybe the curated selection should even include a very annoying one, so people are motivated to figure out how to use the unfollow feature early?

Anyway that's what I think :) 🦀

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[neverheardnothing]

hello. over my tumblr break a few months ago i got bored enough to count the frequencies of every word in joe iconis songs and i don’t know what else to do with this info so here y’all go. every word in joe iconis songs with 10+ occurrences in descending order but i also factored out the 250 most common words in the english language badly (warning, this is a 484 item long list).

1 ('i', 2375) 2 ("i'm", 708) 3 ("it's", 366) 4 ('oh', 312) 5 ('gonna', 204) 6 ('yeah', 175) 7 ('got', 163) 8 ("you're", 160) 9 ('am', 160) 10 ('na', 149) 11 ('wanna', 130) 12 ('hey', 129) 13 ('love', 127) 14 ('feel', 122) 15 ("i'll", 117) 16 ('things', 111) 17 ('really', 97) 18 ("i'd", 97) 19 ('bang', 93) 20 ('girl', 87) 21 ('ever', 86) 22 ("can't", 84) 23 ('better', 78) 24 ("there's", 78) 25 ("she's", 78) 26 ("i've", 75) 27 ('whoa', 74) 28 ('baby', 73) 29 ("that's", 70) 30 ('gotta', 69) 31 ("we're", 68) 32 ("ain't", 63) 33 ("won't", 63) 34 ('cool', 61) 35 ('song', 58) 36 ('away', 57) 37 ('anymore', 56) 38 ('because', 55) 39 ('ya', 55) 40 ('always', 54) 41 ('remember', 54) 42 ('gone', 51) 43 ('guess', 51) 44 ('person', 51) 45 ('woman', 49) 46 ('sing', 49) 47 ('blood', 49) 48 ('stay', 48) 49 ('care', 48) 50 ('into', 47) 51 ('mind', 46) 52 ('whatever', 46) 53 ('jeremy', 45) 54 ("didn't", 45) 55 ('wish', 45) 56 ('feeling', 43) 57 ('ooh', 43) 58 ('cuz', 43) 59 ("you'll", 43) 60 ('ribbit', 43) 61 ('everything', 42) 62 ("you've", 42) 63 ('done', 41) 64 ('nothing', 41) 65 ('fine', 41) 66 ('girls', 41) 67 ('something', 40) 68 ('please', 40) 69 ('hate', 40) 70 ('walk', 40) 71 ('nanana', 40) 72 ('going', 39) 73 ('maybe', 39) 74 ('hear', 39) 75 ('used', 39) 76 ('fall', 39) 77 ('wrong', 38) 78 ('fire', 37) 79 ('rather', 37) 80 ('around', 36) 81 ('shit', 36) 82 ('ba', 36) 83 ('heart', 36) 84 ('leave', 36) 85 ('ah', 36) 86 ('being', 36) 87 ('oh-h', 36) 88 ("he's", 35) 89 ('till', 35) 90 ('fight', 35) 91 ('face', 35) 92 ('la-la-la', 35) 93 ('da', 35) 94 ("let's", 34) 95 ('sure', 34) 96 ('hope', 34) 97 ('nana', 34) 98 ('guy', 33) 99 ('knew', 33) 100 ('wanted', 33) 101 ('shoot', 33) 102 ('em', 32) 103 ('rich', 32) 104 ('together', 32) 105 ('looking', 32) 106 ('myself', 32) 107 ('knock', 32) 108 ('chop', 32) 109 ('makes', 31) 110 ('since', 31) 111 ('whiskey', 31) 112 ('uh', 30) 113 ("they're", 30) 114 ('gimme', 30) 115 ('rick', 30) 116 ('somebody', 29) 117 ('those', 29) 118 ("doesn't", 29) 119 ('red', 29) 120 ('totally', 29) 121 ('hell', 29) 122 ("what's", 29) 123 ('hall', 29) 124 ('die', 29) 125 ('annie', 29) 126 ('bad', 28) 127 ('stop', 28) 128 ("you'd", 28) 129 ('listen', 28) 130 ('mamma', 28) 131 ('la-la-la-la', 28) 132 ('do-do', 28) 133 ('tonight', 27) 134 ('okay', 27) 135 ('hair', 27) 136 ("c'mon", 27) 137 ('roll', 27) 138 ('without', 27) 139 ('michael', 27) 140 ('christine', 27) 141 ('bounty', 27) 142 ('almost', 26) 143 ('another', 26) 144 ('kinda', 26) 145 ('mine', 26) 146 ('rock', 26) 147 ('records', 26) 148 ('music', 26) 149 ('lonely', 25) 150 ('words', 25) 151 ('heard', 25) 152 ('yo', 25) 153 ('madeline', 25) 154 ('says', 25) 155 ('band', 25) 156 ('lots', 25) 157 ('alive', 25) 158 ('god', 24) 159 ('times', 24) 160 ('battle', 24) 161 ('skin', 24) 162 ('dada', 24) 163 ('revolution', 24) 164 ('institution', 24) 165 ('broke', 23) 166 ('talk', 23) 167 ('eyes', 23) 168 ("who's", 23) 169 ('hold', 23) 170 ('burned', 23) 171 ('morning', 23) 172 ('chill', 23) 173 ('pretty', 23) 174 ('car', 23) 175 ('young', 23) 176 ('la-la', 23) 177 ('tired', 23) 178 ('nation', 23) 179 ('friend', 22) 180 ('everybody', 22) 181 ('rehearsal', 22) 182 ('true', 22) 183 ('inside', 22) 184 ('squip', 22) 185 ('ready', 21) 186 ('best', 21) 187 ('understand', 21) 188 ('else', 21) 189 ('lot', 21) 190 ('party', 21) 191 ('ignore', 21) 192 ('bit', 21) 193 ('cut', 21) 194 ('gets', 20) 195 ('sometimes', 20) 196 ("isn't", 20) 197 ('whole', 20) 198 ("everybody's", 20) 199 ('starts', 20) 200 ('feels', 20) 201 ('everyone', 20) 202 ('room', 20) 203 ('dry', 20) 204 ('nice', 20) 205 ('juvie', 20) 206 ('sleep', 20) 207 ('wonder', 20) 208 ('size', 20) 209 ('ass', 20) 210 ('welcome', 20) 211 ('seen', 19) 212 ('weird', 19) 213 ('soon', 19) 214 ('yourself', 19) 215 ('alone', 19) 216 ('flame', 19) 217 ('taking', 19) 218 ('friends', 19) 219 ('enough', 19) 220 ('born', 19) 221 ('lordy', 19) 222 ('hunter', 19) 223 ('relate', 19) 224 ('yai', 19) 225 ('today', 18) 226 ('loser', 18) 227 ('bitch', 18) 228 ('until', 18) 229 ('arm', 18) 230 ('comes', 18) 231 ('dead', 18) 232 ('told', 18) 233 ('ow', 18) 234 ('honey', 18) 235 ('years', 18) 236 ('whack', 18) 237 ("we'll", 18) 238 ('n', 18) 239 ('nerd', 18) 240 ('fell', 18) 241 ('dad', 17) 242 ('pants', 17) 243 ('huh', 17) 244 ('nobody', 17) 245 ('mad', 17) 246 ('getting', 17) 247 ("wasn't", 17) 248 ('scared', 17) 249 ('wait', 17) 250 ('body', 17) 251 ('quite', 17) 252 ('hands', 17) 253 ('ohh', 17) 254 ('hurt', 17) 255 ('deserve', 17) 256 ('ride', 17) 257 ('game', 17) 258 ('survive', 17) 259 ('upgrade', 17) 260 ('free', 17) 261 ('certain', 17) 262 ('wha-oh', 17) 263 ('cigarettes', 17) 264 ('writer', 17) 265 ('bands', 17) 266 ('hunters', 17) 267 ('hang', 16) 268 ("wouldn't", 16) 269 ('age', 16) 270 ('cry', 16) 271 ('sky', 16) 272 ('past', 16) 273 ('behind', 16) 274 ('someone', 16) 275 ('saying', 16) 276 ('black', 16) 277 ('job', 16) 278 ('la', 16) 279 ('fix', 16) 280 ('alright', 16) 281 ('shot', 16) 282 ('bar', 16) 283 ('deal', 16) 284 ('respect', 16) 285 ('dog', 16) 286 ('flicks', 16) 287 ('strong', 15) 288 ("haven't", 15) 289 ('glad', 15) 290 ('next', 15) 291 ('escape', 15) 292 ('fun', 15) 293 ('though', 15) 294 ('promise', 15) 295 ('hide', 15) 296 ('ammonia', 15) 297 ('likes', 15) 298 ('thinks', 15) 299 ('yes', 15) 300 ('nurse', 15) 301 ('looks', 15) 302 ('halloween', 15) 303 ('twice', 15) 304 ('bout', 15) 305 ('sight', 15) 306 ('along', 15) 307 ('forget', 15) 308 ('voices', 15) 309 ('bathroom', 15) 310 ('master', 15) 311 ("shiro's", 15) 312 ('badass', 15) 313 ('rosalie', 15) 314 ('setting', 15) 315 ('road', 14) 316 ('dude', 14) 317 ('brain', 14) 318 ('kid', 14) 319 ('drink', 14) 320 ('means', 14) 321 ('guys', 14) 322 ('bed', 14) 323 ('doing', 14) 324 ('breathe', 14) 325 ('happy', 14) 326 ('scream', 14) 327 ('mistakes', 14) 328 ('anything', 14) 329 ('goes', 14) 330 ('blue', 14) 331 ('pretend', 14) 332 ('social', 14) 333 ('shout', 14) 334 ('geek', 14) 335 ('buddy', 14) 336 ("everything's", 14) 337 ("helen's", 14) 338 ('golden', 14) 339 ('movin', 14) 340 ('st', 14) 341 ("anne's", 14) 342 ('finally', 13) 343 ('choose', 13) 344 ('smoke', 13) 345 ('voice', 13) 346 ('terrible', 13) 347 ('happened', 13) 348 ('pass', 13) 349 ('street', 13) 350 ("couldn't", 13) 351 ('wall', 13) 352 ('instead', 13) 353 ('clear', 13) 354 ('tight', 13) 355 ('damn', 13) 356 ('susannah', 13) 357 ('smile', 13) 358 ('waiting', 13) 359 ('ground', 13) 360 ('remind', 13) 361 ('coolness', 13) 362 ('sad', 13) 363 ("things'll", 13) 364 ('brother', 13) 365 ("it'll", 13) 366 ('somewhere', 13) 367 ('veins', 13) 368 ('cat', 12) 369 ('weather', 12) 370 ('children', 12) 371 ("weren't", 12) 372 ('fucking', 12) 373 ('sorry', 12) 374 ('clean', 12) 375 ('pour', 12) 376 ('different', 12) 377 ('singing', 12) 378 ('coming', 12) 379 ('thinking', 12) 380 ('trying', 12) 381 ('sick', 12) 382 ('bone', 12) 383 ('least', 12) 384 ('lisa', 12) 385 ('nothin', 12) 386 ('dear', 12) 387 ('white', 12) 388 ('hot', 12) 389 ('charlie', 12) 390 ('family', 12) 391 ('door', 12) 392 ('korean', 12) 393 ('dodo', 12) 394 ('c-c-c', 12) 395 ('yours', 12) 396 ('c-c-c-come', 12) 397 ('wants', 11) 398 ('bloody', 11) 399 ('called', 11) 400 ('forever', 11) 401 ('sweet', 11) 402 ('soul', 11) 403 ('swear', 11) 404 ('touch', 11) 405 ('easy', 11) 406 ('days', 11) 407 ('stage', 11) 408 ('across', 11) 409 ('woah', 11) 410 ('crazy', 11) 411 ('town', 11) 412 ('dress', 11) 413 ('top', 11) 414 ('loves', 11) 415 ('rage', 11) 416 ('phone', 11) 417 ('super', 11) 418 ('feet', 11) 419 ('mess', 11) 420 ('penny', 11) 421 ('stars', 11) 422 ('supposed', 11) 423 ('miss', 11) 424 ('college', 11) 425 ('hates', 11) 426 ('quit', 11) 427 ('history', 11) 428 ('cage', 11) 429 ('falling', 11) 430 ('mcfly', 11) 431 ("i'mma", 11) 432 ('played', 11) 433 ('touching', 11) 434 ('band-aids', 11) 435 ('fox', 11) 436 ('thank', 11) 437 ('pitiful', 11) 438 ('covered', 11) 439 ('open', 10) 440 ("they'll", 10) 441 ("we've", 10) 442 ('feelings', 10) 443 ('gun', 10) 444 ('living', 10) 445 ('wow', 10) 446 ('book', 10) 447 ('wonderful', 10) 448 ('blame', 10) 449 ('brooke', 10) 450 ('space', 10) 451 ('slow', 10) 452 ('longer', 10) 453 ('naked', 10) 454 ("he'd", 10) 455 ('star', 10) 456 ('shirt', 10) 457 ('looked', 10) 458 ('i’m', 10) 459 ('standing', 10) 460 ('break', 10) 461 ('lame', 10) 462 ('ten', 10) 463 ('york', 10) 464 ('met', 10) 465 ('dreadfuls', 10) 466 ('mountain', 10) 467 ('push', 10) 468 ('two-player', 10) 469 ('war', 10) 470 ('talkin', 10) 471 ('throw', 10) 472 ('normal', 10) 473 ('hat', 10) 474 ('christmas', 10) 475 ('silver', 10) 476 ('freak', 10) 477 ('mom', 10) 478 ('garage', 10) 479 ('become', 10) 480 ('flesh', 10) 481 ('bastard', 10) 482 ('broadway', 10) 483 ('amphibian', 10) 484 ('outlaw', 10)

[alexseanchai]

first lines of your last 20 fics!

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favourite authors!

.

I ain't tagging nobody, tag yourself if you want to play, but I do appreciate @rosethornewrites​ tagging me!

(I decided three-sentence fics and drabbles are too short for this game, and I have now queued up this year's 3 Sentence Ficathon fills to date; I also decided chapters count separately, because counting fics individually would take me to stuff posted over a year ago!)

Unless marked otherwise, these are all Miraculous Ladybug fanfics. In reverse chronological order:

.

1) Émilie has looked more alive in the past few years than Gabriel looks in this hospital gown right now.

(more like spears than hearts chapter 3 "might open for the right tools")

2) Adrien's phone chimes. "Don't mess up my hard work," Chloé snaps before Adrien can do more than twitch toward his jeans pocket.

("when the stars silhouette me")

3) Chloé sweeps into the classroom as a queen to her throne.

(nine lives, snake's eyes "under the rose water")

4) Mylène's not—brave. Not really. She can raise her protest signs at rallies because Ivan is with her, a solid wall of stubborn between her and anyone who'll insult her for her age or size or opinions: that's as far as her courage goes.

(yo-leven at midnight chapter 1 "ace-deuce")

5) Rechecking the account books doesn't change the numbers: the bakery revenue has dropped compared to last month. Again.

(more like spears than hearts chapter 2 "ciabatta and currant jam")

6) The texture of the rose-red denim is still screamingly wrong.

("j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)")

7) "Really? I would never have noticed," Ladybug told her text app, annoyed.

("At The Present Time")

8) And the stakes remain too high, the Mumford & Sons vocalist sings, for this silent mind, steady strengthening drumbeat behind the lyrics. Nino's pretty sure the song is supposed to be about a toxic romantic relationship, or possibly a gambling addiction—the Genius annotators certainly think so—but…it's been disturbingly quiet the past two months.

(nine lives, snake's eyes "the compromise of truth")

9) Thérèse unlocks the apartment with an armful of groceries around seven.

("words cannot espresso")

10) "Trixx, let's pounce," Alya murmurs in the shelter of two pairs of legs and Carapace's shield, and Rena Rouge stands up for Pegasé to take their place, so no one will see more of him recharging than a flare of blue light or, likely, hear more of it than his whispered "Kaalki, dismount!"

(where the firelight fades chapter 13 "a half-familiar tune")

11) Someone's sobbing.

("burning wishes at both ends (the cold wind and long loud wail remix)")

12) hot lonely singles wives partners in your area

("post-it pornbot")

13) Flavia weaves her way through Catius's bakery, jug under her arm, purse swinging against her leg, and cup in hand.

("sī sapis, sīs apis", a Pompeii Graffiti RPF fanfic)

14) "Chat Noir?" asks Sabine Cheng: a worried shiver of handbells.

(where the firelight fades chapter 12 "a bitter smile")

15) Adrien slips his hand in his pocket again, thumbing the four-leaf clover carved into the square jade bead, clinking his ring off the other beads so quietly that possibly not even Rena Rouge could hear it, even if they were as close to Adrien as Lila is right now.

(more like spears than hearts chapter 1 "sweet on the verge of spoiling")

16) He doesn't know where he's going till he's there: Marinette's bedroom, Marinette's bed, soft optimistic pink accented with black.

(where the firelight fades chapter 11 "carry me home")

17) Alya drapes her jacket over the chair opposite Marinette's at the café table and leans over to see what's on the tablet Marinette and Adrien are squished together to bend over: an awful lot of Chinese characters, apparently, which at least—unlike Marinette's top-speed babble about some jewelry box—doesn't leave Alya feeling she should understand it.

("ring the bells that still can ring")

18) Mmm, so warm. Cozy, too: the faint scent like her partner's skin, the gentle pressure as of his holding her, the light thu-thump thu-thump reminding her of his heartbeat, as if she'd fallen asleep in Chat Noir's arms.

("we ground love in a hopeless place")

19) "—Chat Noir! Chat Noir!"

(where the firelight fades chapter 10 "can't quite hold, but can't let go")

20) There is a walk of shame joke to be made here, Chat Noir thinks, and it's only partly because he transformed while wearing sticky tee and boxers, not clean tee and jeans.

(where the firelight fades chapter 9 "for I've been here before")

[thehierophage]

Holy Day Meditation for April 5, 2020 æ.v.

April 5, 2020 æ.v. Dies Solis, Sol 16° Aries, Luna 11° Virgo An Vvi æ.n.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

The Day of Vav, the Day of the Hierophant

Hebrew Letter: Vav

Numerical Value as Letter: 6

Numerical Value as Word: 12 / 13 / 22 (Vav+Vav or Vav+Aleph+Vav or Vav+Yod+Vav)

Meaning: A holdfast, Nail, Hook.

Thoth Card: The Hierophant (Atu V)

Alternate Title: The Magus of the Eternal.

Image:

Correspondences:

Tree of Life Path Association: Key 16 - Chesed to Chokmah (from Sephira 4-2)

Astrological Sign: Taurus

Element: Earth

Egyptian Godforms: Asar/Osiris, Ameshet, Apis

Geomantic Figure: Amissio

Gemstones:Topaz, Sapphire, Garnet, Cornelian

Perfumes: Costus, Storax

Plants: Mallow, Myrtle

Animals: Ox, Rhinoceros, Bull

Colors:

King Scale – Red orange

Queen Scale – Deep indigo

Prince Scale – Deep warm olive

Princess Scale – Rich brown

The Secret Instruction of the Master:

Offer thyself Virgin to the Knowledge and Conversation of thine Holy Guardian Angel! All else is a snare. Be thou athlete with the eight limbs of Yoga; for without these thou are not disciplined for any fight.

Mnemonic:

Wisdom to each apportioned to his want

By modes of Light, shed forth, great Hierophant!

Liber Arcanorum Verse:

5. Also is the Star of the Flame exalted, bringing benediction to the universe.

Genius of the House of Mercury

Vuaretza - (a secret name follows)

Genius of the Prison of the Qliphoth

Uriens

Recommended Text for Meditation:

Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente Sub Figura LXV, cap. 5

Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente

A.˙.A.˙. Publication in Class A. Imprimatur: N. Fra A.˙. A.˙.

V

1.  Ah! my Lord Adonai, that dalliest with the Magister in the Treasure-House of Pearls, let me listen to the echo of your kisses.

2. Is not the starry heaven shaken as a leaf at the tremulous rapture of your love? Am not I the flying spark of light whirled away by the great wind of your perfection?

3. Yea, cried the Holy One, and from Thy spark will I the Lord kindle a great light; I will burn through the great city in the old and desolate land; I will cleanse it from its great impurity.

4. And thou, O prophet, shalt see these things, and thou shalt heed them not.

5. Now is the Pillar established in the Void; now is Asi fulfilled of Asar; now is Hoor let down into the Animal Soul of Things like a fiery star that falleth upon the darkness of the earth.

6. Through the midnight thou art dropt, O my child, my conqueror, my sword-girt captain, O Hoor! and they shall find thee as a black gnarl'd glittering stone, and they shall worship thee.

7. My prophet shall prophesy concerning thee; around thee the maidens shall dance, and bright babes be born unto them. Thou shalt inspire the proud ones with infinite pride, and the humble ones with an ecstasy of abasement; all this shall transcend the Known and the Unknown with somewhat that hath no name. For it is as the abyss of the Arcanum that is opened in the secret Place of Silence.

8. Thou hast come hither, O my prophet, through grave paths. Thou hast eaten of the dung of the Abominable Ones; thou hast prostrated thyself before the Goat and the Crocodile; the evil men have made thee a plaything; thou hast wandered as a painted harlot, ravishing with sweet scent and Chinese colouring, in the streets; thou hast darkened thine eyepits with Kohl; thou hast tinted thy lips with vermilion; thou hast plastered thy cheeks with ivory enamels. Thou hast played the wanton in every gate and by-way of the great city. The men of the city have lusted after thee to abuse thee and to beat thee. They have mouthed the golden spangles of fine dust wherewith thou didst bedeck thine hair; they have scourged the painted flesh of thee with their whips; thou hast suffered unspeakable things.

9. But I have burnt within thee as a pure flame without oil. In the midnight I was brighter than the moon; in the daytime I exceeded utterly the sun; in the byways of of thy being I inflamed, and dispelled the illusion.

10. Therefore thou art wholly pure before Me; therefore thou art My virgin unto eternity.

11. Therefore I love thee with surpassing love; therefore they that despise thee shall adore thee.

12. Thou shalt be lovely and pitiful toward them; thou shalt heal them of the unutterable evil.

13. They shall change in their destruction, even as two dark stars that crash together in the abyss, and blaze up in an infinite burning.

14. All this while did Adonai pierce my being with his sword that hath four blades; the blade of the thunderbolt, the blade of the Pylon, the blade of the serpent, the blade of the Phallus.

15. Also he taught me the holy unutterable word Ararita, so that I melted the sixfold gold into a single invisible point, whereof naught may be spoken.

16. For the Magistry of this Opus is a secret magistry; and the sign of the master thereof is a certain ring of lapis-lazuli with the name of my master, who am I, and the Eye in the Midst thereof.

17. Also He spake and said: This is a secret sign, and thou shalt not disclose it unto the profane, nor unto the neophyte, nor unto the zelator, nor unto the practicus, nor unto the philosophus, nor unto the lesser adept, nor unto the greater adept.

18. But unto the exempt adept thou shalt disclose thyself if thou have need of him for the lesser operations of thine art.

19. Accept the worship of the foolish people, whom thou hatest. The Fire is not defiled by the altars of the Ghebers, nor is the Moon contaminated by the incense of them that adore the Queen of Night.

20. Thou shalt dwell among the people as a precious diamond among cloudy diamonds, and crystals, and pieces of glass. Only the eye of the just merchant shall behold thee, and plunging in his hand shall single thee out and glorify thee before men.

21. But thou shalt heed none of this. Thou shalt be ever the heart, and I the serpent will coil close about thee. My coil shall never relax throughout the æons. Neither change nor sorrow nor unsubstantiality shall have thee; for thou art passed beyond all these.

22. Even as the diamond shall glow red for the rose, and green for the rose-leaf; so shalt thou abide apart from the Impressions.

23. I am thou, and the Pillar is 'stablished in the void.

24. Also thou art beyond the stabilities of Being and of Consciousness and of Bliss; for I am thou, and the Pillar is 'stablished in the void.

25. Also thou shalt discourse of these things unto the man that writeth them, and he shall partake of them as a sacrament; for I who am thou am he, and the Pillar is 'stablished in the void.

26. From the Crown to the Abyss, so goeth it single and erect. Also the limitless sphere shall glow with the brilliance thereof.

27. Thou shalt rejoice in the pools of adorable water; thou shalt bedeck thy damsels with pearls of fecundity; thou shalt light flame like licking tongues of liquor of the Gods between the pools.

28. Also thou shalt convert the all-sweeping air into the winds of pale water, thou shalt transmute the earth into a blue abyss of wine.

29. Ruddy are the gleams of ruby and gold that sparkle therein; one drop shall intoxicate the Lord of the Gods my servant.

30. Also Adonai spake unto V.V.V.V.V. saying: O my little one, my tender one, my little amorous one, my gazelle, my beautiful, my boy, let us fill up the pillar of the Infinite with an infinite kiss!

31. So that the stable was shaken and the unstable became still.

32. They that beheld it cried with a formidable affright: The end of things is come upon us.

33. And it was even so.

34. Also I was in the spirit vision and beheld a parricidal pomp of atheists, coupled by two and by two in the supernal ecstasy of the stars. They did laugh and rejoice exceedingly, being clad in purple robes and drunken with purple wine, and their whole soul was one purple flower-flame of holiness.

35. They beheld not God; they beheld not the Image of God; therefore were they arisen to the Palace of the Splendour Ineffable. A sharp sword smote out before them, and the worm Hope writhed in its death-agony under their feet.

36. Even as their rapture shore asunder the visible Hope, so also the Fear Invisible fled away and was no more.

37. O ye that are beyond Aormuzdi and Ahrimanes! blessèd are ye unto the ages.

38. They shaped Doubt as a sickle, and reaped the flowers of Faith for their garlands.

39. They shaped Ecstasy as a spear, and pierced the ancient dragon that sat upon the stagnant water.

40. Then the fresh springs were unloosed, that the folk athirst might be at ease.

41. And again I was caught up into the presence of my Lord Adonai, and the knowledge and Conversation of the Holy One, the Angel that Guardeth me.

42. O Holy Exalted One, O Self beyond self. O Self-Luminous Image of the Unimaginable Naught, O my darling, my beautiful, come Thou forth and follow me.

43. Adonai, divine Adonai, let Adonai initiate refulgent dalliance! Thus I concealed the name of Her name that inspireth my rapture, the scent of whose body bewildereth the soul, the light of whose soul abaseth this body unto the beasts.

44. I have sucked out the blood with my lips; I have drained Her beauty of its sustenance; I have abased Her before me, I have mastered Her, I have possessed Her, and Her life is within me. In Her blood I inscribe the secret riddles of the Sphinx of the Gods, that none shall understand, -- save only the pure and voluptuous, obscene, the androgyne and the gynander that have passed beyond the bars of the prison that the old Slime of Khem set up in the Gates of Amennti.

45. O my adorable, my delicious one, all night will I pour out the libation on Thine altars; all night will I burn the sacrifice of blood; all night will I swing the thurible of my delight before Thee, and the fervour of the orisons shall intoxicate Thy nostrils.

46. O Thou who camest from the land of the Elephant, girt about with the tiger's pell, and garlanded with the lotus of the spirit, do Thou inebriate my life with Thy madness, that She leap at my passing.

47. Bid Thy maidens who follow Thee bestrew us a bed of flowers immortal, that we may take our pleasure thereupon. Bid Thy satyrs heap thorns among the flowers, that we may take our pain thereupon. Let the pleasure and pain be mingled in one supreme offering unto the Lord Adonai!

48. Also I heard the voice of Adonai the Lord the desirable one concerning that which is beyond.

49. Let not the dwellers in Thebai and the temples thereof prate ever of the Pillars of Hercules and the Ocean of the West. Is not the Nile a beautiful water?

50. Let not the priest of Isis uncover the nakedness of Nuit, for every step is a death and a birth. The priest of Isis lifted the veil of Isis, and was slain by the kisses of her mouth. Then was he the priest of Nuit, and drank of the milk of the stars.

51. Let not the failure and the pain turn aside the worshippers. The foundations of the pyramid were hewn in the living rock ere sunset; did the king weep at dawn that the crown of the pyramid was yet unquarried in the distant land?

52. There was also an humming-bird that spake unto the horned cerastes, and prayed him for poison. And the great snake of Khem the Holy One, the royal Uræus serpent, answered him and said:

53. I sailed over the sky of Nu in the car called Millions-of-Years, and I saw not any creature upon Seb that was equal to me. The venom of my fang is the inheritance of my father, and of my father's father; and how shall I give it unto thee? Live thou and thy children as I and my fathers have lived, even unto an hundred millions of generations, and it may be that the mercy of the Mighty Ones may bestow upon thy children a drop of the poison of eld.

54. Then the humming-bird was afflicted in his spirit, and he flew unto the flowers, and it was as if naught had been spoken between them. Yet in a little while a serpent struck him that he died.

55. But an Ibis that meditated upon the bank of Nile the beautiful god listened and heard. And he laid aside his Ibis ways, and became as a serpent, saying Peradventure in an hundred millions of millions of generations of my children, they shall attain to a drop of the poison of the fang of the Exalted One.

56. And behold! ere the moon waxed thrice he became an Uræus serpent, and the poison of the fang was established in him and his seed even for ever and for ever.

57. O thou Serpent Apep, my Lord Adonai, it is a speck of minutest time, this travelling through eternity, and in Thy sight the landmarks are of fair white marble untouched by the tool of the graver. Therefore Thou art mine, even now and for ever and for everlasting. Amen.

58. Moreover, I heard the voice of Adonai: Seal up the book of the Heart and the Serpent; in the number five and sixty seal thou the holy book.

As fine gold that is beaten into a diadem for the fair queen of Pharaoh, as great stones that are cemented together into the Pyramid of the ceremony of the Death of Asar, so do thou bind together the words and the deeds, so that in all is one Thought of Me thy delight Adonai.

59. And I answered and said: It is done even according unto Thy word. And it was done. And they that read the book and debated thereon passed into the desolate land of Barren Words. And they that sealed up the book into their blood were the chosen of Adonai, and the Thought of Adonai was a Word and a Deed; and they abode in the Land that the far-off travellers call Naught.

60. O land beyond honey and spice and all perfection! I will dwell therein with my Lord for ever.

61. And the Lord Adonai delighteth in me, and I bear the Cup of His gladness unto the weary ones of the old grey land.

62. They that drink thereof are smitten of disease; the abomination hath hold upon them, and their torment is like the thick black smoke of the evil abode.

63. But the chosen ones drank thereof, and became even as my Lord, my beautiful, my desirable one. There is no wine like unto this wine.

64. They are gathered together into a glowing heart, as Ra that gathereth his clouds about Him at eventide into a molten sea of Joy; and the snake that is the crown of Ra bindeth them about with the golden girdle of the death-kisses.

65. So also is the end of the book, and the Lord Adonai is about it on all sides like a Thunderbolt, and a Pylon, and a Snake, and a Phallus, and in the midst thereof he is like the Woman that jetteth out the milk of the stars from her paps; yea, the milk of the stars from her paps.

Love is the law, love under will.

[gargaj]

A breakdown of the Revision 2020 Threeway Battle shader

Those of you who have been following this year's edition of Revision probably remember the unexpected twist in Sunday's timeline, where I was pitted in a coding "battle" against two of the best shader-coders in the world to fend for myself. Admittedly the buzz it caused caught me by surprise, but not as much as the feedback on the final shader I produced, so I hope to shed some light on how the shader works, in a way that's hopefully understandable to beginners and at least entertaining to experts, as well as providing some glimpses into my thought process along the way.

Recorded video of the event

But before we dive into the math and code, however, I think it's important to get some context by recounting the story of how we got here.

A brief history of demoscene live-coding

Visual coding has been massively opened up when graphics APIs began to introduce programmable fragment rendering, perhaps best known to most people as "pixel shaders"; this allowed programmers to run entire programmable functions on each pixel of a triangle, and none was more adamant to do that than a fellow named Iñigo Quilez (IQ), an understated genius who early on recognized the opportunity in covering the entire screen with a single polygon, and just doing the heavy lifting of creating geometry in the shader itself. His vision eventually spiraled into not only the modern 4k scene, but also the website ShaderToy, which almost every graphics programmer uses to test prototypes or just play around with algorithms. IQ, an old friend of mine since the mid-00s, eventually moved to the US, worked at Pixar and Oculus, and became something of a world-revered guru of computer graphics, but that (and life) has unfortunately caused him to shift away from the scene.

His vision of single-shader-single-quad-single-pass shader coding, in the meantime, created a very spectacular kind of live coding competition in the scene where two coders get only 25 minutes and the attention of an entire party hall, and they have to improvise their way out of the duel - this has been wildly successful at parties for the sheer showmanship and spectacle akin to rap battles, and none emerged from this little sport more remarkably than Flopine, a bubbly French girl who routinely shuffled up on stage wearing round spectacles and cat ears (actually they might be pony ears on second thought), and mopped the floor up with the competition. Her and a handful of other live-coders regularly stream on Twitch as practice, and have honed their live-coding craft for a few years at this point, garnering a considerable following.

Just a sample of insanity these people can do.

My contribution to this little sub-scene was coming up with a fancy name for it ("Shader Showdown"), as well as providing a little tool I called Bonzomatic (named after Bonzaj / Plastic, a mutual friend of IQ and myself, and the first person to create a live coding environment for demoparties) that I still maintain, but even though I feel a degree of involvement through the architectural side, I myself haven't been interested in participating: I know I can do okay under time pressure, but I don't really enjoy it, and while there's a certain overlap in what they do and what I do, I was always more interested in things like visual detail and representative geometry aided by editing and direction rather than looping abstract, fractal-like things. It just wasn't my thing.

Mistakes were made

But if I'm not attracted to this type of competition, how did I end up in the crossfire anyway? What I can't say is that it wasn't, to a considerable degree, my fault: as Revision 2020 was entirely online, most of the scene took it to themselves to sit in the demoscene Discord to get an experience closest to on-site socializing, given the somber circumstances of physical distancing. This also allowed a number of people who hasn't been around for a while to pop in to chat - like IQ, who, given his past, was mostly interested in the showdowns (during which Flopine crushed the competition) and the 4k compo.

As I haven't seen him around for a while, and as my mind is always looking for an angle, I somehow put two and two together, and asked him if he would consider taking part in a showdown at some point; he replied that he was up for it - this was around Saturday 10PM. I quickly pinged the rest of the showdown participants and organizers, as I spotted that Bullet was doing a DJ set the next day (which would've been in a relatively convenient timezone for IQ in California as well), and assumed that he didn't really have visuals for it - as there was already a "coding jam" over Ronny's set the day before, I figured there's a chance for squeezing an "extra round" of coding. Flopine was, of course, beyond excited by just the prospect of going against IQ, and by midnight we essentially got everything planned out (Bullet's consent notwithstanding, as he was completely out of the loop on this), and I was excited to watch...

...that is, until Havoc, the head honcho for the showdowns, off-handedly asked me about an at that point entirely hypothetical scenario: what would happen if IQ would, for some reason, challenge me instead of Flopine? Now, as said, I wasn't really into this, but being one to not let a good plan go to waste (especially if it was mine), I told Havoc I'd take one for the team and do it, although it probably wouldn't be very fun to watch. I then proceeded to quickly brief IQ in private and run him through the technicalities of the setup, the tool, the traditions and so on, and all is swell...

...that is, until IQ (this is at around 2AM) offhandedly mentions that "Havoc suggested we do a three-way with me, Flopine... and you." I quickly try to backpedal, but IQ seems to be into the idea, and worst of all, I've already essentially agreed to it, and to me, the only thing worse than being whipped in front of a few thousand people would be going back on your word. The only way out was through.

Weeks of coding can spare you hours of thinking

So now that I've got myself into this jar of pickles, I needed some ideas, and quick. (I didn't sleep much that night.) First off, I didn't want to do anything obviously 3D - both IQ and Flopine are masters of this, and I find it exhausting and frustrating, and it would've failed on every level possible. Fractals I'm awful at and while they do provide a decent amount of visual detail, they need a lot of practice and routine to get right. I also didn't want something very basic 2D, like a byte-beat, because those have a very limited degree of variation available, and the end result always looks a bit crude.

Luckily a few months ago an article I saw do rounds was a write-up by Sasha Martinsen on how to do "FUI"-s, or Fictional User Interfaces; overly complicated and abstract user interfaces that are prominent in sci-fi, with Gmunk being the Michael Jordan of the genre.

Image courtesy of Sasha Martinsen.

Sasha's idea is simple: make a few basic decent looking elements, and then just pile them on top of each other until it looks nice, maybe choose some careful colors, move them around a bit, place them around tastefully in 3D, et voilà, you're hacking the Gibson. It's something I attempted before, if somewhat unsuccessfully, in "Reboot", but I came back to it a few more times in my little private motion graphics experiments with much better results, and my prediction was that it would be doable in the given timeframe - or at least I hoped that my hazy 3AM brain was on the right track.

A bit of math

How to make this whole thing work? First, let's think about our rendering: We have a single rectangle and a single-pass shader that runs on it: this means no meshes, no geometry, no custom textures, no postprocessing, no particle systems and no fonts, which isn't a good place to start from. However, looking at some of Sasha's 3D GIFs, some of them look like they're variations of the same render put on planes one after the other - and as long as we can do one, we can do multiple of that.

Rough sketch of what we want to do; the planes would obviously be infinite in size but this representation is good enough for now.

Can we render multiple planes via a single shader? Sure, but we want them to look nice, and that requires a bit of thinking: The most common technique to render a "2D" shader and get a "3D" look is raymarching, specifically with signed distance fields - starting on a ray, and continually testing distances until a hit is found. This is a good method for "solid-ish" looking objects and scenes, but the idea for us is to have many infinite planes that also have some sort of alpha channel, so we'd have a big problem with 1) inaccuracy, as we'd never find a hit, just something "reasonably close", and even that would take us a few dozen steps, which is costly even for a single plane and 2) the handling of an alpha map can be really annoying, since we'd only find out our alpha value after our initial march, after which if our alpha is transparent we'd need to march again.

But wait - it's just infinite planes and a ray, right? So why don't we just assume that our ray is always hitting the plane (which it is, since we're looking at it), and just calculate an intersection the analytical way?

Note: I would normally refer to this method as "raytracing", but after some consultation with people smarter than I am, we concluded that the terms are used somewhat ambiguously, so let's just stick to "analytical ray solving" or something equally pedantic.

We know the mathematical equation for a ray is position = origin + direction * t (where t is a scalar that represents the distance/progress from the ray origin), and we know that the formula for a plane is A * x + B * y + C * z + D = 0, where (A, B, C) is the normal vector of the plane, and D is the distance from the origin. First, since the intersection will be the point in space that satisfies both equations, we substitute the ray (the above o + d * t for each axis) into the plane:

A * (ox + dx * t) + B * (oy + dy * t) + C * (oz + dz * t) + D = 0

To find out where this point is in space, we need to solve this for t, but it's currently mighty complicated. Luckily, since we assume that our planes are parallel to the X-Y plane, we know our (A, B, C) normal is (0, 0, 1), so we can simplify it down to:

oz + dz * t + D = 0

Which we can easily solve to t:

t = (D - oz) / dz

That's right: analytically finding a ray hit of a plane is literally a single subtraction and a division! Our frame rate (on this part) should be safe, and we're always guaranteed a hit as long as we're not looking completely perpendicular to the planes; we should have everything to start setting up our code.

Full disclosure: Given my (and in a way IQ's) lack of "live coding" experience, we agreed that there would be no voting for the round, and it'd be for glory only, but also that I'd be allowed to use a small cheat sheet of math like the equations for 2D rotation or e.g. the above final equation since I don't do this often enough to remember these things by heart, and I only had a few hours notice before the whole thing.

Setting up the rendering

Time to start coding then. First, let's calculate our texture coordinates in the 0..1 domain using the screen coordinates and the known backbuffer resolution (which is provided to us in Bonzomatic):

vec2 uv = vec2(gl_FragCoord.x / v2Resolution.x, gl_FragCoord.y / v2Resolution.y);

Then, let's create a ray from that:

vec3 rayDir = vec3( uv * 2 - 1, -1.0 ); rayDir.x *= v2Resolution.x / v2Resolution.y; // adjust for aspect ratio vec3 rayOrigin = vec3( 0, 0, 0 );

This creates a 3D vector for our direction that is -1,-1,-1 in the top left corner and 1,1,-1 in the bottom right (i.e. we're looking so that Z is decreasing into the screen), then we adjust the X coordinate since our screen isn't square, but our coordinates currently are - no need to even bother with normalizing, it'll be fine. Our origin is currently just sitting in the center.

Then, let's define (loosely) our plane, which is parallel to the XY plane:

float planeDist = 1.0f; // distance between each plane float planeZ = -5.0f; // Z position of the first plane

And solve our equation to t, as math'd out above:

float t = (planeZ - rayOrigin.z) / rayDir.z;

Then, calculate WHERE the hit is by taking that t by inserting it back to the original ray equation using our current direction and origin:

vec3 hitPos = rayOrigin + t * rayDir;

And now we have our intersection; since we already know the Z value, we can texture our plane by using the X and Y components to get a color value:

vec4 color = fui( hitPos.xy ); // XY plane our_color = color;

Of course we're gonna need the actual FUI function, which will be our procedural animated FUI texture, but let's just put something dummy there now, like a simple circle:

vec4 fui ( vec2 uv ) { return length(uv - 0.5) < 0.5 ? vec4(1) : vec(0); }

And here we go:

Very good, we have a single circle and if we animate the camera we can indeed tell that it is on a plane.

So first, let's tile it by using a modulo function; the modulo (or modulus) function simply wraps a number around another number (kinda like the remainder after a division, but for floating point numbers) and thus becomes extremely useful for tiling or repeating things:

We'll be using the modulo function rather extensively in this little exercise, so strap in. (Illustration via the Desmos calculator.)

vec4 layer = fui( mod( hitPos.xy, 1.0 ) );

This will wrap the texture coordinates of -inf..inf between 0..1:

We also need multiple planes, but how do we combine them? We could just blend them additively, but with the amount of content we have, we'd just burn them in to white and it'd look like a mess (and not the good kind of mess). We could instead just use normal "crossfade" / "lerp" blending based on the alpha value; the only trick here is to make sure we're rendering them from back to front since the front renders will blend over the back renders:

int steps = 10; float planeDist = 1.0f; for (int i=steps; i>=0; i--) { float planeZ = -1.0f * i * planeDist; float t = (planeZ - rayOrigin.z) / rayDir.z; if (t > 0.0f) // check if "t" is in front of us { vec3 hitPos = rayOrigin + t * rayDir; vec4 layer = fui( hitPos.xy, 2.0 ); // blend layers based on alpha output colour = mix( colour, layer, layer.a ); } }

And here we go:

We decreased the circles a bit in size to see the effect more.

Not bad! First thing we can do is just fade off the back layers, as if they were in a fog:

layer *= (steps - i) / float(steps);

We have a problem though: we should probably increase the sci-fi effect by moving the camera continually forward, but if we do, we're gonna run into a problem: Currently, since our planeZ is fixed to the 0.0 origin, they won't move with the camera. We could just add our camera Z to them, but then they would be fixed with the camera and wouldn't appear moving. What we instead want is to just render them AS IF they would be the closest 10 planes in front of the camera; the way we could do that is that if e.g. our planes' distance from each other is 5, then round the camera Z down to the nearest multiple of 5 (e.g. if the Z is at 13, we round down to 10), and start drawing from there; rounding up would be more accurate, but rounding down is easier, since we can just subtract the division remainder from Z like so:

float planeZ = (rayOrigin.z - mod(rayOrigin.z, planeDist)) - i * planeDist;

And now we have movement! Our basic rendering path is done.

Our little fictional UI

So now that we have the basic pipeline in place, let's see which elements can we adapt from Sasha's design pieces.

The first one I decided to go with wasn't strictly speaking in the set, but it was something that I saw used as design elements over the last two decades, and that's a thick hatch pattern element; I think it's often used because it has a nice industrial feel with it. Doing it in 2D is easy: We just add X and Y together, which will result in a diagonal gradient, and then we just turn that into an alternating pattern using, again, the modulo. All we need to do is limit it between two strips, and we have a perfectly functional "Police Line Do Not Cross" simulation.

return mod( uv.x + uv.y, 1 ) < 0.5 ? vec4(1) : vec4(0);

So let's stop here for a few moments; this isn't bad, but we're gonna need a few things. First, the repetition doesn't give us the nice symmetric look that Sasha recommends us to do, and secondly, we want them to look alive, to animate a bit.

Solving symmetry can be done just by modifying our repetition code a bit: instead of a straight up modulo with 1.0 that gives us a 0..1 range, let's use 2.0 to get a 0..2 range, then subtract 1.0 to get a -1..1 range, and then take the absolute value.

vec4 layer = fui( abs( mod( hitPos.xy, 2.0 ) - 1 ) );

This will give us a triangle-wave-like function, that goes from 0 to 1, then back to 0, then back to 1; in terms of texture coordinates, it will go back and forth between mirroring the texture in both directions, which, let's face it, looks Totally Sweet.

For animation, first I needed some sort of random value, but one that stayed deterministic based on a seed - in other words, I needed a function that took in a value, and returned a mangled version of it, but in a way that if I sent that value in twice, it would return the same mangled value twice. The most common way of doing it is taking the incoming "seed" value, and then driving it into some sort of function with a very large value that causes the function to alias, and then just returning the fraction portion of the number:

float rand(float x) { return fract(sin(x) * 430147.8193); }

Does it make any sense? No. Is it secure? No. Will it serve our purpose perfectly? Oh yes.

So how do we animate our layers? The obvious choice is animating both the hatch "gradient" value to make it crawl, and the start and end of our hatch pattern which causes the hatched strip to move up and down: simply take a random - seeded by our time value - of somewhere sensible (like between 0.2 and 0.8 so that it doesn't touch the edges) and add another random to it, seasoned to taste - we can even take a binary random to pick between horizontal and vertical strips:

The problems here are, of course, that currently they're moving 1) way too fast and 2) in unison. The fast motion obviously happens because the time value changes every frame, so it seeds our random differently every frame - this is easy to solve by just rounding our time value down to the nearest integer: this will result in some lovely jittery "digital" motion. The unison is also easy to solve: simply take the number of the layer, and add it to our time, thus shifting the time value for each layer; I also chose to multiply the layer ID with a random-ish number so that the layers actually animate independently, and the stutter doesn't happen in unison either:

vec4 fui( vec2 uv, float t ) { t = int(t); float start = rand(t) * 0.8 + 0.1; float end = start + 0.1; [...] } vec4 layer = fui( abs(mod(hitPos.xy, 2.0)-1), fGlobalTime + i * 4.7 );

Lovely!

Note: In hindsight using the Z coordinate of the plane would've given a more consistent result, but the way it animates, it doesn't really matter.

So let's think of more elements: the best looking one that seems to get the best mileage out in Sasha's blog is what I can best describe as the "slant" or "hockey stick" - a simple line, with a 45-degree turn in it. What I love about it is that the symmetry allows it to create little tunnels, gates, corridors, which will work great for our motion.

Creating it is easy: We just take a thin horizontal rectangle, and attach another rectangle to the end, but shift the coordinate of the second rectangle vertically, so that it gives us the 45-degree angle:

float p1 = 0.2; float p2 = 0.5; float p3 = 0.7; float y = 0.5; float thicc = 0.0025; if (p1 < uv.x && uv.x < p2 && y - thicc < uv.y && uv.y < y + thicc ) { return vec4(1); } if (p2 < uv.x && uv.x < p3 && y - thicc < uv.y - (uv.x - p2) && uv.y - (uv.x - p2) < y + thicc ) { return vec4(1); }

Note: In the final code, I had a rect() call which I originally intended to use as baking glow around my rectangle using a little routine I prototyped out earlier that morning, but I was ultimately too stressed to properly pull that off. Also, it's amazing how juvenile your variable names turn when people are watching.

Looks nice, but since this is such a thin sparse element, let's just... add more of it!

So what more can we add? Well, no sci-fi FUI is complete without random text and numbers, but we don't really have a font at hand. Or do we? For years, Bonzomatic has been "shipping" with this really gross checkerboard texture ostensibly for UV map testing:

What if we just desaturate and invert it?

We can then "slice" it up and render little sprites all over our texture: we already know how to draw a rectangle, so all we need is just 1) calculate which sprite we want to show 2) calculate the texture coordinate WITHIN that sprite and 3) sample the texture:

float sx = 0.3; float sy = 0.3; float size = 0.1; if (sx < uv.x && uv.x < sx + size && sy < uv.y &&uv.y < sy + size) { float spx = 2.0 / 8.0; // we have 8 tiles in the texture float spy = 3.0 / 8.0; vec2 spriteUV = (uv - vec2(sx,sy)) / size; vec4 sam = texture( texChecker, vec2(spx,spy) + spriteUV / 8.0 ); return dot( sam.rgb, vec3(0.33) ); }

Note: In the final code, I was only using the red component instead of desaturation because I forgot the texture doesn't always have red content - I stared at it for waaaay too long during the round trying to figure out why some sprites weren't working.

And again, let's just have more of it:

Getting there!

At this point the last thing I added was just circles and dots, because I was running out of ideas; but I also felt my visual content amount was getting to where I wanted them to be; it was also time to make it look a bit prettier.

Post-production / compositing

So we have our layers, they move, they might even have colors, but I'm still not happy with the visual result, since they are too single-colored, there's not enough tone in the picture.

The first thing I try nowadays when I'm on a black background is to just add either a single color, or a gradient:

vec4 colour = renderPlanes(uv); vec4 gradient = mix( vec4(0,0,0.2,1), vec4(0,0,0,1), uv.y); vec4 finalRender = mix( gradient, vec4(colour.xyz,1), colour.a);

This added a good chunk of depth considerably to the image, but I was still not happy with the too much separation between colors.

A very common method used in compositing in digital graphics is to just add bloom / glow; when used right, this helps us add us more luminance content to areas that would otherwise be solid color, and it helps the colors to blend a bit by providing some middle ground; unfortunately if we only have a single pass, the only way to get blur (and by extension, bloom) is repeatedly rendering the picture, and that'd tank our frame rate quickly.

Instead, I went back to one of the classics: the Variform "pixelize" overlay:

This is almost the same as a bloom effect, except instead of blurring the image, all you do is turn it into a lower resolution nearest point sampled version of itself, and blend that over the original image - since this doesn't need more than one sample per pixel (as we can reproduce pixelation by just messing with the texture coordinates), we can get away by rendering the scene only twice:

vec4 colour = renderPlanes(uv); colour += renderPlanes(uv - mod( uv, 0.1 ) ) * 0.4;

Much better tonal content!

So what else can we do? Well, most of the colors I chose are in the blue/orange/red range, and we don't get a lot of the green content; one of the things that I learned that it can look quite pretty if one takes a two-tone picture, and uses color-grading to push the midrange of a third tone - that way, the dominant colors will stay in the highlights, and the third tone will cover the mid-tones. (Naturally you have to be careful with this.)

"Boosting" a color in the mids is easy: lucky for us, if we consider the 0..1 range, exponential functions suit our purpose perfectly, because they start at 0, end at 1, but we can change how they get here:

So let's just push the green channel a tiny bit:

finalRender.g = pow(finalRender.g, 0.7);

Now all we need is to roll our camera for maximum cyberspace effect and we're done!

Best laid plans of OBS

As you can see from the code I posted the above, I wrote the final shader in GLSL; those who know me know that I'm a lot more comfortable with DirectX / HLSL, and may wonder why I switched, but of course there's another story here:

Given the remote nature of the event, all of the shader coding competition was performed online as well: since transmitting video from the coder's computer to a mixer, and then to another mixer, and then to a streaming provider, and then to the end user would've probably turned the image to mush, Alkama and Nusan came up with the idea of skipping a step and rigging up a version of Bonzo that ran on the coder's computer, but instead of streaming video, it sent the shader down to another instance of Bonzo, running on Diffty's computer, who then captured that instance and streamed it to the main Revision streaming hub. This, of course, meant that in a three-way, Diffty had to run three separate instances of Bonzo - but it worked fine with GLSL earlier, so why worry?

What we didn't necessarily realize at the time, is that the DirectX 11 shader compiler takes no hostages, and as soon as the shader reached un-unrollable level of complexity, it thoroughly locked down Diffty's machine, to the point that even the video of the DJ set he was playing started to drop out. I, on the other hand, didn't notice any of this, since my single local instance was doing fine, so I spent the first 15 minutes casually nuking Diffty's PC to shreds remotely, until I noticed Diffty and Havoc pleading on Discord to switch to GLSL because I'm setting things on fire unknowingly.

This is fine.

I was reluctant to do so, simply because of the muscle memory, but I was also aware that I should keep the show going if I can because if I bow out without a result, that would be a colossal embarrassment to everyone involved, and I only can take one of those once every week, and I was already above my quota - so, I quickly closed the DX11 version of Bonzo, loaded the shader up in a text editor, replaced "floatX" with "vecX" (fun drinking game: take a shot every time I messed it up during the live event), commented the whole thing out, loaded it into a GLSL bonzo, and quickly fixed all the other syntax differences (of which there were luckily not many, stuff like "mix" instead of "lerp", constructors, etc.), and within a few minutes I was back up and running.

This, weirdly, helped my morale a bit, because it was the kind of clutch move that for some reason appealed to me, and made me quite happy - although at that point I locked in so bad that not only did I pay absolutely not attention to the stream to see what the other two are doing, but that the drinks and snacks I prepared for the hour of battling went completely untouched.

In the end, when the hour clocked off, the shader itself turned out more or less how I wanted it, it worked really well with Bullet's techno-/psy-/hardtrance mix (not necessarily my jam, as everyone knows I'm more a broken beat guy, but pounding monotony can go well with coding focus), and I came away satisfied, although the perhaps saddest point of the adventure was yet to come: the lack of cathartic real-life ending that was taken from us due to the physical distance, when after all the excitement, all the cheers and hugs were merely lines of text on a screen - but you gotta deal with what you gotta deal with.

A small sampling of the Twitch reaction.

Conclusion

In the end, what was my takeaway from the experience?

First off, scoping is everything: Always aim to get an idea where you can maximize the outcome of the time invested with the highest amount of confidence of pulling it off. In this case, even though I was on short notice and in an environment I was unfamiliar with, I relied on something I knew, something I've done before, but no one else really has.

Secondly, broaden your influence: You never know when you can take something that seems initially unrelated, and bend it into something that you're doing with good results.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, step out of your comfort zone every so often; you'll never know what you'll find.

(And don't agree to everything willy-nilly, you absolute moron.)

[sweetswesf]

65.  YOU GUYYYSSS!!! I’m A Software Engineer Now!

Oh my gosh, friends, I am so sorry I have not kept you all updated!  The last time I got off track and came back, I promised to stay committed.  Life happens though.  I have been busy!  

The last time we spoke, I was talking about how excited I was to finally build my app...well...I made it!  It was hard, took me four weeks, and I literally shed blood, sweat and tears over it!  The blood: letting my nervousness take over and biting my nails, cuticles, and lips when I was anxious about getting a certain feature to work.  The sweat: again, from nervousness about getting certain features to work.  Tears: these were minimal because I enjoyed almost all of the process.  Although it was hard, I am doing what I love.  I never let myself get so distracted, worried or frustrated to cry.  Most of these tears were happy tears that I was doing what I always dreamed of doing...in my own way...and authoring it...

My mentors were helpful.  Many of them distracted me from doing features I wanted to do, but I stayed the course and got them DONE!  That feeling of doing what they said I couldn’t do was AMAZING!

What did I do, you ask?

Well...I created a web app for a music almanac that gave users an innovative way to explore the creation of their favorite music.

How did I do it?

I:

Wrote a Python script to gather data from Genius’ API using only a list of 300 producers

Built a PostgreSQL database of 70k rows of that music data gathered from that list

Established relationships between my tables in that database

Built a Python backend

Created data visualizations in D3 and Chart.js 

Implemented a k-means to provide users recommendations of similar artists to the ones they were searching

Prayed a lot for my sanity and thanked God for the opportunity to express myself and have fun learning.

For future implementation, I hope to:

Cache pages to enable a better user experience (because the queries that are run per page are so grand, it’s a bit slow)

Add the k-means to album pages

I would love to drop it here guys for you to check out, but then my identity would be EXPOSED since I have a “Hire Me!” page that outlines my contact info.  You’ll hear about it in my autobiography or when I’m giving a talk that gets national attention or SOMETHING in the future and hopefully you will remember that you heard it first here!! 

[xaydungtruonggia]

Day Two Learnings From the Three-Ring MozCon Circus

Day one of MozCon Virtual gave us a great start to this year’s conference – from surviving the COVID news agenda, to the science of purchasing power, to game-changing ways to use the Google Search Console API. If day one was a preview of things to come, I knew we were all in for a treat as we headed into day two!

With that said, day two has arrived!

Me, rolling into #MozCon Day 2. I'll need to catch up on Day 1 in the recordings. Hey @dodgejd -- thanks for taking notes pic.twitter.com/4IlOxaGJna

— 👋 SEO Patti 💉 💪 (@SEOPatti) July 13, 2021

Oh, and before I forget, remember that dance breaks are not just okay, but encouraged at MozCon.

Dance breaks are not just okay at #MozCon, but encouraged. 💃 Make sure you take some time to get out of your chair and dance it out to our MozCon playlist: https://t.co/srXl8pm8gZ

— Moz (@Moz) July 13, 2021

Ross Simmonds – Why Marketers Should Think More Like Investors To Drive Content Results

In this session, Ross talked about the parallels between content marketing/SEO and the world of investing. I am a lover of analogies, so I was excited to see how Ross was going to show us how an investment mindset can be applied to content marketing and SEO. As someone who loves SEO, and investing, I was pumped for this one.

Ross began by telling a story about his investment in General Motors stock. He put a lot of money into the stock…and it crashed. Ross had not done enough research into GM before making his investment.

The lesson: you need to invest time into doing your homework! You need to understand the market before you jump in. The same applies to SEO.

We all hope that our investments will deliver a return, but in 2020 we were all tested during the pandemic. Many companies put the investment of SEO on pause...and that was a mistake. Even during a recession, people still have a strong desire for content and information.

As Ross explained, every piece of content you create is an asset, and to see the most from our investments, we need to “invest more — guess less”.

There are so many types of content you can create but it's so important to recognize the risk and reward for each type of content. 💸 What is your goal? What kind of return do you want? "Invest more, guess less" — @TheCoolestCool#MozConpic.twitter.com/cQU0g1DdXM

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

Content presents money printing capabilities, and major companies are starting to realize this.

@TheCoolestCool is showing us why content marketers should think more like investors. Genius. #MozConpic.twitter.com/vxUmOp48Bv

— Tiffany Gilkey (She/Her) (@TiffanyLG23) July 13, 2021

Needless to say, Ross left us all wanting to diversify our content portfolios!

When @TheCoolestCool tells you to use more memes #MozConpic.twitter.com/XTwRzB7f3E

— Matthew Kaminsky (@m5kaminsky) July 13, 2021

Areej AbuAli — Taking Charge of Your Indexability: How to Optimize and Prioritize Your Technical Work

If you’re ready to take control of your website indexing, this session is for you! With a focus on aggregators and classifieds, Areej shared advice on how to best reduce index bloat for large websites.

Love listening to @areej_abuali talk about the ultimate head-scratcher in SEO: where to draw the line between which pages should/should not be indexed on very largescale sites where many URLs risk not being crawled/indexed. Tip: focus on actual business KPIs!#MozConpic.twitter.com/1UXi2f6Bht

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) July 13, 2021

She acknowledged that, while we are fully in control of how Google crawls and indexes our site, it can feel scary!

"It's okay to feel overwhelmed when working on something new..." I love how open and honest @areej_abuali is - ALWAYS. This is why she's a great friend, industry leader and her techSEO talks are the best @Moz#MozConpic.twitter.com/5SB5TOo9mx

— Shannon McGuirk (@ShannonMcGuirk_) July 13, 2021

So if we’re suggesting audits, let’s focus on recommendations that can have an impact. Let’s “drop the 100-page audit!”. Websites do not (and most probably should not) need to have every single page indexed. Instead, focus on indexing pages that have the potential to provide good search results.

Honestly, there were so many amazing insights from this presentation, this is one you’ll want to revisit!

Always love watching @areej_abuali share her insights. So many tips ! - Manage expectations before, during and after !! - Under-promise and Over-deliver - Be honest and transparent - share the progress#Mozcon@Moz Thank you Areej ! pic.twitter.com/vunXizDH6W

— J Turnbull (@SEOJoBlogs) July 13, 2021

Joy Hawkins — To Post or Not to Post: What We Learned From Analyzing Over 1,000 Google Posts

What value do Google Posts have, and how should the average SMB prioritize them? Joy Hawkins dove headfirst into the data from two studies to answer these questions.

Joy opened up by sharing a Mario Kart analogy. Joy is a super competitive person. She shared how she followed a similar approach for this study as she did when she was working towards beating Dave DiGregorio at Mario Kart. Let’s just say that it required a lot of research, tracking, and analysis.

Nothing better than hearing @SarahBird say this at #MozCon cc: @deegs20pic.twitter.com/Rs9jhlwGkf

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) July 13, 2021

Joy shared a disclaimer and some initial considerations for the presentations data:

The data set only had a total of 36 conversions

Clicks in Google Analytics DO NOT equal clicks in Google My Business Insights

Study #1

The first study Joy covered analyzed over 1,000 Google Posts to see what types perform better based on clicks and conversions while measuring the impact of various features such as stock photos, emojis, titles, and more. Here are the types of Google Posts that Joy analyzed:

Offer Posts

COVID Posts

Event Posts

Update Posts

Joy also summarized the worst-performing post types. And the winners are:

Reviews

Seasonal/Holiday

Products (or services)

Who We Are (bios)

Study #2

The second study looked at whether posting on Google has any influence on where your business ranks in the local pack. The conclusion? Google Posts had no measurable impact on rankings.

Joy summarized by providing a “Successful Google Post Blueprint” — this is one to save for later!

🧐 Everything you need to know about Google Posts but were afraid to ask...here's the blueprint from @JoyanneHawkins 🔗 https://t.co/9VblFLqgpn #localu#smallbiz@SterlingSkyInc#MozConSwag#mozcon#mozcon2021pic.twitter.com/05rgk3ymhQ

— Andy Simpson (@ndyjsimpson) July 13, 2021

Joyce Collardé — Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing Full-Funnel Optimization for B2B Success

In this session, Joyce covered the long sales cycles for B2B businesses that pose a unique set of challenges for converting visitors into coveted users. Success requires a strategic approach that goes beyond the landing page to include your entire site.

"CRO should be a conversation with your users. They ask a question and we provide an answer."#mozcon@JoyceCollardepic.twitter.com/OtAcHUxdN1

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Joyce walked through strategies for three tried-and-true methods for increasing your conversion rate and winning more business:

Goal #1: Attracting users to your website

Goal #2: Giving users the best experience and leading them to conversion points

Goal #3: Tracking success and encouraging return visitors

Some actionable tips from @JoyceCollarde's talk - Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing full-funnel optimization for B2B success: - Keep user journey in mind - Test and track everything - There's no content-cutter approach - Honesty & transparency wins#mozconpic.twitter.com/a2rGdu5BqP

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Casie Gillette — Counterintuitive Content: How New Trends Have Disrupted Years of Bad Advice

I love the honesty in this tweet from Casie!

What the heck?! My presentation has already been recorded...why am I still nervous? 😬 It's not too early for a beer right... #MozCon

— Casie Gillette (@Casieg) July 13, 2021

In her presentation, Casie looked at content from an entirely different perspective and talked about how you can start creating content on your own terms, because really, there's no one way to do content marketing.

According to Casie, counterintuitive marketing is “the idea of bucking trends to do what is right for YOUR site”. Casie showed that more content is NOT always best. Sometimes optimizing existing content can be far more powerful than creating new content.

@Casieg#mozcon the effects of optimizing existing content and adding more CTAs throughout the site: pic.twitter.com/7x8lvm8yUB

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

There is no one size fits all solution to content marketing. Things change and sometimes you need to think counterintuitively.

Fantastic advise on how to evaluate your content goals and strategy!🙂@Casieg#MozCon@Mozpic.twitter.com/iSKIQSbQsk

— Laura Green (@GreenLauraV) July 13, 2021

How do we do this? Casie suggests a few focus areas:

Performance

What were your goals and did you hit them?

Utilize Google Search Console to find opportunities

Competitors

Don’t copy competitors, but pay close attention to what they are doing for ideas. What is working well that we can do better?

Utilize social media platforms, such as LinkedIn where you can gather intel on the ads that your competitors are running.

Search and keywords

Don’t forget to go back each year and re-evaluate the keywords that you are targeting

Remember, that just because something is driving traffic, it doesn’t mean that it’s the right traffic.

📢📢📢"Just because something is driving traffic doesn't mean it's the right traffic." — @Casieg Re-evaluate your keywords to make sure intent matches your goals.#MozCon

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

“All content should have a goal.” @Casieg#MozCon

— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 13, 2021

Brie E Anderson — Reporting for Duty: Why You Need to Start Using GA4 TODAY

Despite some pre-conference nerves, Brie absolutely blew us away with all her insights!

Me 10 minutes before my presentation goes live at #MozCon: - reevaluating EVERYTHING - do I know anything? - I should have put my dog photos in my slides - what would @BritneyMuller do? - pops a buspirone - stares at screen Okay... let’s do this I guess 😅 pic.twitter.com/jzJmi0XXSQ

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 13, 2021

She also challenged us to get started with GA4 now — before we have to.

Why You Need to Start Using GA4 today by @brie_e_anderson - Collect pre-defined events - Event-specific dashboards - Track micro, macro events & conversions - Better, more visual graphs - Identify outliers fast - Predictive analytics & AI Start by using both GA4 & UA#mozconpic.twitter.com/VPjsHr7jaE

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Brie told us that in GA4 we’ll find:

EASY, ADVANCED, TRACKING

BADASS (& CUSTOM) VISUALS

GOOGLE MAY TELL US SECRETS

But also highlighted that it is NOT a replacement for Universal Analytics, so you need to track both.

🚨#GA4 does not bring in retrospective data! And it's not a replacement for Universal Analytics!🚨 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

You might ask, then what are the benefits of using GA4? I’ll let some of Brie’s fans outline some highlights:

Let's talk about badass & custom visuals, please! @brie_e_anderson#MozConpic.twitter.com/SCUwcWWsL8

— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 13, 2021

Wow!!! Go @brie_e_anderson Go!!! Hand this over to your CEO #mozconpic.twitter.com/waWszEMvc7

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

Holy analytics, Batman - #GA4 lets you *make your own line graphs* with *built-in anomaly detection*!!! This is perfect for those of us who only trust the visuals we create ourselves 😂 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

What are you waiting for? Get your website into GA4!

Rob Ousbey — Beyond the Basics: 5 SEO Tricks for Uncovering Advanced Insights from Your SEO Data

In this session, Rob showed us how to breathe new life into our standard SEO data, and we walked away with more advanced insights — and new tools — that are sure to impress our team (and our boss!)

We all get to play with the new tool? @RobOusbey is like Oprah right now, y'all!#mozconpic.twitter.com/Z8hqH880gX

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 13, 2021

And what are the five SEO tricks?

1. Find link opportunities from the SERP

2. Group ranking keywords to spot split opportunities

3. Tag URLs to find real issues

4. Tag GA for category-level insights

5. Tag competitors’ top URLs for ideas

Be sure to check out Rob’s presentation in the MozCon video bundle when it’s out on Friday for even more amazing tips!

He's a JavaScript Wizard!! 🧙 Thanks for such an eye opening #mozcon presentation @RobOusbey and some AWESOME #seotools . Looking forward to honing my keyword, topic, and URL clustering skills to scope out #SEO wins even faster 💨 https://t.co/GxRrKvseQp

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Britney Muller — The Cold Hard Truth about CTR and Other Common Metrics

Britney closed out day two by showing us how to quash our reporting woes and make easy work of identifying exactly why your website’s performance changed.

She asked us what makes superforecasters — a group that has predicted future events with a great deal of accuracy — so successful. Before giving us the answer, she reminded us that it’s really easy to be led astray by data — but had some tips and tools to share to help make sure we don’t get too off track.

So, what made superforecasters so successful? Their ability to rethink everything. To do the same, Britney challenged us to:

Think like a scientist

Define our identity in terms of values, not opinions

Seek out information that goes against our views

@BritneyMuller I am currently rethinking everything #mozcon

— Chase Freezman (@ChaseFreezman) July 13, 2021

"seek out info that challenges your views and find joy in being wrong!!" @BritneyMuller#MozCon AMAZING. Best quote by far. Already blown away by this talk. pic.twitter.com/5s0Zznee0g

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Absolutely love that @BritneyMuller's prez brought this quote from Austin Knight to mind - "The road to mediocrity is paved with best practices." #MozCon

— Taylor Murchison (@TaylorMurchison) July 13, 2021

Day two — done!

Wow! Only one more day left for this year's MozCon! What stood out the most for you on day two? Tell us on Twitter with #MozCon!

[camerasieunhovn]

Day Two Learnings From the Three-Ring MozCon Circus

Day one of MozCon Virtual gave us a great start to this year’s conference – from surviving the COVID news agenda, to the science of purchasing power, to game-changing ways to use the Google Search Console API. If day one was a preview of things to come, I knew we were all in for a treat as we headed into day two!

With that said, day two has arrived!

Me, rolling into #MozCon Day 2. I'll need to catch up on Day 1 in the recordings. Hey @dodgejd -- thanks for taking notes pic.twitter.com/4IlOxaGJna

— 👋 SEO Patti 💉 💪 (@SEOPatti) July 13, 2021

Oh, and before I forget, remember that dance breaks are not just okay, but encouraged at MozCon.

Dance breaks are not just okay at #MozCon, but encouraged. 💃 Make sure you take some time to get out of your chair and dance it out to our MozCon playlist: https://t.co/srXl8pm8gZ

— Moz (@Moz) July 13, 2021

Ross Simmonds – Why Marketers Should Think More Like Investors To Drive Content Results

In this session, Ross talked about the parallels between content marketing/SEO and the world of investing. I am a lover of analogies, so I was excited to see how Ross was going to show us how an investment mindset can be applied to content marketing and SEO. As someone who loves SEO, and investing, I was pumped for this one.

Ross began by telling a story about his investment in General Motors stock. He put a lot of money into the stock…and it crashed. Ross had not done enough research into GM before making his investment.

The lesson: you need to invest time into doing your homework! You need to understand the market before you jump in. The same applies to SEO.

We all hope that our investments will deliver a return, but in 2020 we were all tested during the pandemic. Many companies put the investment of SEO on pause...and that was a mistake. Even during a recession, people still have a strong desire for content and information.

As Ross explained, every piece of content you create is an asset, and to see the most from our investments, we need to “invest more — guess less”.

There are so many types of content you can create but it's so important to recognize the risk and reward for each type of content. 💸 What is your goal? What kind of return do you want? "Invest more, guess less" — @TheCoolestCool#MozConpic.twitter.com/cQU0g1DdXM

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

Content presents money printing capabilities, and major companies are starting to realize this.

@TheCoolestCool is showing us why content marketers should think more like investors. Genius. #MozConpic.twitter.com/vxUmOp48Bv

— Tiffany Gilkey (She/Her) (@TiffanyLG23) July 13, 2021

Needless to say, Ross left us all wanting to diversify our content portfolios!

When @TheCoolestCool tells you to use more memes #MozConpic.twitter.com/XTwRzB7f3E

— Matthew Kaminsky (@m5kaminsky) July 13, 2021

Areej AbuAli — Taking Charge of Your Indexability: How to Optimize and Prioritize Your Technical Work

If you’re ready to take control of your website indexing, this session is for you! With a focus on aggregators and classifieds, Areej shared advice on how to best reduce index bloat for large websites.

Love listening to @areej_abuali talk about the ultimate head-scratcher in SEO: where to draw the line between which pages should/should not be indexed on very largescale sites where many URLs risk not being crawled/indexed. Tip: focus on actual business KPIs!#MozConpic.twitter.com/1UXi2f6Bht

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) July 13, 2021

She acknowledged that, while we are fully in control of how Google crawls and indexes our site, it can feel scary!

"It's okay to feel overwhelmed when working on something new..." I love how open and honest @areej_abuali is - ALWAYS. This is why she's a great friend, industry leader and her techSEO talks are the best @Moz#MozConpic.twitter.com/5SB5TOo9mx

— Shannon McGuirk (@ShannonMcGuirk_) July 13, 2021

So if we’re suggesting audits, let’s focus on recommendations that can have an impact. Let’s “drop the 100-page audit!”. Websites do not (and most probably should not) need to have every single page indexed. Instead, focus on indexing pages that have the potential to provide good search results.

Honestly, there were so many amazing insights from this presentation, this is one you’ll want to revisit!

Always love watching @areej_abuali share her insights. So many tips ! - Manage expectations before, during and after !! - Under-promise and Over-deliver - Be honest and transparent - share the progress#Mozcon@Moz Thank you Areej ! pic.twitter.com/vunXizDH6W

— J Turnbull (@SEOJoBlogs) July 13, 2021

Joy Hawkins — To Post or Not to Post: What We Learned From Analyzing Over 1,000 Google Posts

What value do Google Posts have, and how should the average SMB prioritize them? Joy Hawkins dove headfirst into the data from two studies to answer these questions.

Joy opened up by sharing a Mario Kart analogy. Joy is a super competitive person. She shared how she followed a similar approach for this study as she did when she was working towards beating Dave DiGregorio at Mario Kart. Let’s just say that it required a lot of research, tracking, and analysis.

Nothing better than hearing @SarahBird say this at #MozCon cc: @deegs20pic.twitter.com/Rs9jhlwGkf

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) July 13, 2021

Joy shared a disclaimer and some initial considerations for the presentations data:

The data set only had a total of 36 conversions

Clicks in Google Analytics DO NOT equal clicks in Google My Business Insights

Study #1

The first study Joy covered analyzed over 1,000 Google Posts to see what types perform better based on clicks and conversions while measuring the impact of various features such as stock photos, emojis, titles, and more. Here are the types of Google Posts that Joy analyzed:

Offer Posts

COVID Posts

Event Posts

Update Posts

Joy also summarized the worst-performing post types. And the winners are:

Reviews

Seasonal/Holiday

Products (or services)

Who We Are (bios)

Study #2

The second study looked at whether posting on Google has any influence on where your business ranks in the local pack. The conclusion? Google Posts had no measurable impact on rankings.

Joy summarized by providing a “Successful Google Post Blueprint” — this is one to save for later!

🧐 Everything you need to know about Google Posts but were afraid to ask...here's the blueprint from @JoyanneHawkins 🔗 https://t.co/9VblFLqgpn #localu#smallbiz@SterlingSkyInc#MozConSwag#mozcon#mozcon2021pic.twitter.com/05rgk3ymhQ

— Andy Simpson (@ndyjsimpson) July 13, 2021

Joyce Collardé — Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing Full-Funnel Optimization for B2B Success

In this session, Joyce covered the long sales cycles for B2B businesses that pose a unique set of challenges for converting visitors into coveted users. Success requires a strategic approach that goes beyond the landing page to include your entire site.

"CRO should be a conversation with your users. They ask a question and we provide an answer."#mozcon@JoyceCollardepic.twitter.com/OtAcHUxdN1

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Joyce walked through strategies for three tried-and-true methods for increasing your conversion rate and winning more business:

Goal #1: Attracting users to your website

Goal #2: Giving users the best experience and leading them to conversion points

Goal #3: Tracking success and encouraging return visitors

Some actionable tips from @JoyceCollarde's talk - Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing full-funnel optimization for B2B success: - Keep user journey in mind - Test and track everything - There's no content-cutter approach - Honesty & transparency wins#mozconpic.twitter.com/a2rGdu5BqP

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Casie Gillette — Counterintuitive Content: How New Trends Have Disrupted Years of Bad Advice

I love the honesty in this tweet from Casie!

What the heck?! My presentation has already been recorded...why am I still nervous? 😬 It's not too early for a beer right... #MozCon

— Casie Gillette (@Casieg) July 13, 2021

In her presentation, Casie looked at content from an entirely different perspective and talked about how you can start creating content on your own terms, because really, there's no one way to do content marketing.

According to Casie, counterintuitive marketing is “the idea of bucking trends to do what is right for YOUR site”. Casie showed that more content is NOT always best. Sometimes optimizing existing content can be far more powerful than creating new content.

@Casieg#mozcon the effects of optimizing existing content and adding more CTAs throughout the site: pic.twitter.com/7x8lvm8yUB

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

There is no one size fits all solution to content marketing. Things change and sometimes you need to think counterintuitively.

Fantastic advise on how to evaluate your content goals and strategy!🙂@Casieg#MozCon@Mozpic.twitter.com/iSKIQSbQsk

— Laura Green (@GreenLauraV) July 13, 2021

How do we do this? Casie suggests a few focus areas:

Performance

What were your goals and did you hit them?

Utilize Google Search Console to find opportunities

Competitors

Don’t copy competitors, but pay close attention to what they are doing for ideas. What is working well that we can do better?

Utilize social media platforms, such as LinkedIn where you can gather intel on the ads that your competitors are running.

Search and keywords

Don’t forget to go back each year and re-evaluate the keywords that you are targeting

Remember, that just because something is driving traffic, it doesn’t mean that it’s the right traffic.

📢📢📢"Just because something is driving traffic doesn't mean it's the right traffic." — @Casieg Re-evaluate your keywords to make sure intent matches your goals.#MozCon

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

“All content should have a goal.” @Casieg#MozCon

— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 13, 2021

Brie E Anderson — Reporting for Duty: Why You Need to Start Using GA4 TODAY

Despite some pre-conference nerves, Brie absolutely blew us away with all her insights!

Me 10 minutes before my presentation goes live at #MozCon: - reevaluating EVERYTHING - do I know anything? - I should have put my dog photos in my slides - what would @BritneyMuller do? - pops a buspirone - stares at screen Okay... let’s do this I guess 😅 pic.twitter.com/jzJmi0XXSQ

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 13, 2021

She also challenged us to get started with GA4 now — before we have to.

Why You Need to Start Using GA4 today by @brie_e_anderson - Collect pre-defined events - Event-specific dashboards - Track micro, macro events & conversions - Better, more visual graphs - Identify outliers fast - Predictive analytics & AI Start by using both GA4 & UA#mozconpic.twitter.com/VPjsHr7jaE

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Brie told us that in GA4 we’ll find:

EASY, ADVANCED, TRACKING

BADASS (& CUSTOM) VISUALS

GOOGLE MAY TELL US SECRETS

But also highlighted that it is NOT a replacement for Universal Analytics, so you need to track both.

🚨#GA4 does not bring in retrospective data! And it's not a replacement for Universal Analytics!🚨 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

You might ask, then what are the benefits of using GA4? I’ll let some of Brie’s fans outline some highlights:

Let's talk about badass & custom visuals, please! @brie_e_anderson#MozConpic.twitter.com/SCUwcWWsL8

— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 13, 2021

Wow!!! Go @brie_e_anderson Go!!! Hand this over to your CEO #mozconpic.twitter.com/waWszEMvc7

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

Holy analytics, Batman - #GA4 lets you *make your own line graphs* with *built-in anomaly detection*!!! This is perfect for those of us who only trust the visuals we create ourselves 😂 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

What are you waiting for? Get your website into GA4!

Rob Ousbey — Beyond the Basics: 5 SEO Tricks for Uncovering Advanced Insights from Your SEO Data

In this session, Rob showed us how to breathe new life into our standard SEO data, and we walked away with more advanced insights — and new tools — that are sure to impress our team (and our boss!)

We all get to play with the new tool? @RobOusbey is like Oprah right now, y'all!#mozconpic.twitter.com/Z8hqH880gX

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 13, 2021

And what are the five SEO tricks?

1. Find link opportunities from the SERP

2. Group ranking keywords to spot split opportunities

3. Tag URLs to find real issues

4. Tag GA for category-level insights

5. Tag competitors’ top URLs for ideas

Be sure to check out Rob’s presentation in the MozCon video bundle when it’s out on Friday for even more amazing tips!

He's a JavaScript Wizard!! 🧙 Thanks for such an eye opening #mozcon presentation @RobOusbey and some AWESOME #seotools . Looking forward to honing my keyword, topic, and URL clustering skills to scope out #SEO wins even faster 💨 https://t.co/GxRrKvseQp

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Britney Muller — The Cold Hard Truth about CTR and Other Common Metrics

Britney closed out day two by showing us how to quash our reporting woes and make easy work of identifying exactly why your website’s performance changed.

She asked us what makes superforecasters — a group that has predicted future events with a great deal of accuracy — so successful. Before giving us the answer, she reminded us that it’s really easy to be led astray by data — but had some tips and tools to share to help make sure we don’t get too off track.

So, what made superforecasters so successful? Their ability to rethink everything. To do the same, Britney challenged us to:

Think like a scientist

Define our identity in terms of values, not opinions

Seek out information that goes against our views

@BritneyMuller I am currently rethinking everything #mozcon

— Chase Freezman (@ChaseFreezman) July 13, 2021

"seek out info that challenges your views and find joy in being wrong!!" @BritneyMuller#MozCon AMAZING. Best quote by far. Already blown away by this talk. pic.twitter.com/5s0Zznee0g

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Absolutely love that @BritneyMuller's prez brought this quote from Austin Knight to mind - "The road to mediocrity is paved with best practices." #MozCon

— Taylor Murchison (@TaylorMurchison) July 13, 2021

Day two — done!

Wow! Only one more day left for this year's MozCon! What stood out the most for you on day two? Tell us on Twitter with #MozCon!

[ductrungnguyen87]

Day Two Learnings From the Three-Ring MozCon Circus

Day one of MozCon Virtual gave us a great start to this year’s conference – from surviving the COVID news agenda, to the science of purchasing power, to game-changing ways to use the Google Search Console API. If day one was a preview of things to come, I knew we were all in for a treat as we headed into day two!

With that said, day two has arrived!

Me, rolling into #MozCon Day 2. I'll need to catch up on Day 1 in the recordings. Hey @dodgejd -- thanks for taking notes pic.twitter.com/4IlOxaGJna

— 👋 SEO Patti 💉 💪 (@SEOPatti) July 13, 2021

Oh, and before I forget, remember that dance breaks are not just okay, but encouraged at MozCon.

Dance breaks are not just okay at #MozCon, but encouraged. 💃 Make sure you take some time to get out of your chair and dance it out to our MozCon playlist: https://t.co/srXl8pm8gZ

— Moz (@Moz) July 13, 2021

Ross Simmonds – Why Marketers Should Think More Like Investors To Drive Content Results

In this session, Ross talked about the parallels between content marketing/SEO and the world of investing. I am a lover of analogies, so I was excited to see how Ross was going to show us how an investment mindset can be applied to content marketing and SEO. As someone who loves SEO, and investing, I was pumped for this one.

Ross began by telling a story about his investment in General Motors stock. He put a lot of money into the stock…and it crashed. Ross had not done enough research into GM before making his investment.

The lesson: you need to invest time into doing your homework! You need to understand the market before you jump in. The same applies to SEO.

We all hope that our investments will deliver a return, but in 2020 we were all tested during the pandemic. Many companies put the investment of SEO on pause...and that was a mistake. Even during a recession, people still have a strong desire for content and information.

As Ross explained, every piece of content you create is an asset, and to see the most from our investments, we need to “invest more — guess less”.

There are so many types of content you can create but it's so important to recognize the risk and reward for each type of content. 💸 What is your goal? What kind of return do you want? "Invest more, guess less" — @TheCoolestCool#MozConpic.twitter.com/cQU0g1DdXM

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

Content presents money printing capabilities, and major companies are starting to realize this.

@TheCoolestCool is showing us why content marketers should think more like investors. Genius. #MozConpic.twitter.com/vxUmOp48Bv

— Tiffany Gilkey (She/Her) (@TiffanyLG23) July 13, 2021

Needless to say, Ross left us all wanting to diversify our content portfolios!

When @TheCoolestCool tells you to use more memes #MozConpic.twitter.com/XTwRzB7f3E

— Matthew Kaminsky (@m5kaminsky) July 13, 2021

Areej AbuAli — Taking Charge of Your Indexability: How to Optimize and Prioritize Your Technical Work

If you’re ready to take control of your website indexing, this session is for you! With a focus on aggregators and classifieds, Areej shared advice on how to best reduce index bloat for large websites.

Love listening to @areej_abuali talk about the ultimate head-scratcher in SEO: where to draw the line between which pages should/should not be indexed on very largescale sites where many URLs risk not being crawled/indexed. Tip: focus on actual business KPIs!#MozConpic.twitter.com/1UXi2f6Bht

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) July 13, 2021

She acknowledged that, while we are fully in control of how Google crawls and indexes our site, it can feel scary!

"It's okay to feel overwhelmed when working on something new..." I love how open and honest @areej_abuali is - ALWAYS. This is why she's a great friend, industry leader and her techSEO talks are the best @Moz#MozConpic.twitter.com/5SB5TOo9mx

— Shannon McGuirk (@ShannonMcGuirk_) July 13, 2021

So if we’re suggesting audits, let’s focus on recommendations that can have an impact. Let’s “drop the 100-page audit!”. Websites do not (and most probably should not) need to have every single page indexed. Instead, focus on indexing pages that have the potential to provide good search results.

Honestly, there were so many amazing insights from this presentation, this is one you’ll want to revisit!

Always love watching @areej_abuali share her insights. So many tips ! - Manage expectations before, during and after !! - Under-promise and Over-deliver - Be honest and transparent - share the progress#Mozcon@Moz Thank you Areej ! pic.twitter.com/vunXizDH6W

— J Turnbull (@SEOJoBlogs) July 13, 2021

Joy Hawkins — To Post or Not to Post: What We Learned From Analyzing Over 1,000 Google Posts

What value do Google Posts have, and how should the average SMB prioritize them? Joy Hawkins dove headfirst into the data from two studies to answer these questions.

Joy opened up by sharing a Mario Kart analogy. Joy is a super competitive person. She shared how she followed a similar approach for this study as she did when she was working towards beating Dave DiGregorio at Mario Kart. Let’s just say that it required a lot of research, tracking, and analysis.

Nothing better than hearing @SarahBird say this at #MozCon cc: @deegs20pic.twitter.com/Rs9jhlwGkf

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) July 13, 2021

Joy shared a disclaimer and some initial considerations for the presentations data:

The data set only had a total of 36 conversions

Clicks in Google Analytics DO NOT equal clicks in Google My Business Insights

Study #1

The first study Joy covered analyzed over 1,000 Google Posts to see what types perform better based on clicks and conversions while measuring the impact of various features such as stock photos, emojis, titles, and more. Here are the types of Google Posts that Joy analyzed:

Offer Posts

COVID Posts

Event Posts

Update Posts

Joy also summarized the worst-performing post types. And the winners are:

Reviews

Seasonal/Holiday

Products (or services)

Who We Are (bios)

Study #2

The second study looked at whether posting on Google has any influence on where your business ranks in the local pack. The conclusion? Google Posts had no measurable impact on rankings.

Joy summarized by providing a “Successful Google Post Blueprint” — this is one to save for later!

🧐 Everything you need to know about Google Posts but were afraid to ask...here's the blueprint from @JoyanneHawkins 🔗 https://t.co/9VblFLqgpn #localu#smallbiz@SterlingSkyInc#MozConSwag#mozcon#mozcon2021pic.twitter.com/05rgk3ymhQ

— Andy Simpson (@ndyjsimpson) July 13, 2021

Joyce Collardé — Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing Full-Funnel Optimization for B2B Success

In this session, Joyce covered the long sales cycles for B2B businesses that pose a unique set of challenges for converting visitors into coveted users. Success requires a strategic approach that goes beyond the landing page to include your entire site.

"CRO should be a conversation with your users. They ask a question and we provide an answer."#mozcon@JoyceCollardepic.twitter.com/OtAcHUxdN1

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Joyce walked through strategies for three tried-and-true methods for increasing your conversion rate and winning more business:

Goal #1: Attracting users to your website

Goal #2: Giving users the best experience and leading them to conversion points

Goal #3: Tracking success and encouraging return visitors

Some actionable tips from @JoyceCollarde's talk - Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing full-funnel optimization for B2B success: - Keep user journey in mind - Test and track everything - There's no content-cutter approach - Honesty & transparency wins#mozconpic.twitter.com/a2rGdu5BqP

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Casie Gillette — Counterintuitive Content: How New Trends Have Disrupted Years of Bad Advice

I love the honesty in this tweet from Casie!

What the heck?! My presentation has already been recorded...why am I still nervous? 😬 It's not too early for a beer right... #MozCon

— Casie Gillette (@Casieg) July 13, 2021

In her presentation, Casie looked at content from an entirely different perspective and talked about how you can start creating content on your own terms, because really, there's no one way to do content marketing.

According to Casie, counterintuitive marketing is “the idea of bucking trends to do what is right for YOUR site”. Casie showed that more content is NOT always best. Sometimes optimizing existing content can be far more powerful than creating new content.

@Casieg#mozcon the effects of optimizing existing content and adding more CTAs throughout the site: pic.twitter.com/7x8lvm8yUB

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

There is no one size fits all solution to content marketing. Things change and sometimes you need to think counterintuitively.

Fantastic advise on how to evaluate your content goals and strategy!🙂@Casieg#MozCon@Mozpic.twitter.com/iSKIQSbQsk

— Laura Green (@GreenLauraV) July 13, 2021

How do we do this? Casie suggests a few focus areas:

Performance

What were your goals and did you hit them?

Utilize Google Search Console to find opportunities

Competitors

Don’t copy competitors, but pay close attention to what they are doing for ideas. What is working well that we can do better?

Utilize social media platforms, such as LinkedIn where you can gather intel on the ads that your competitors are running.

Search and keywords

Don’t forget to go back each year and re-evaluate the keywords that you are targeting

Remember, that just because something is driving traffic, it doesn’t mean that it’s the right traffic.

📢📢📢"Just because something is driving traffic doesn't mean it's the right traffic." — @Casieg Re-evaluate your keywords to make sure intent matches your goals.#MozCon

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

“All content should have a goal.” @Casieg#MozCon

— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 13, 2021

Brie E Anderson — Reporting for Duty: Why You Need to Start Using GA4 TODAY

Despite some pre-conference nerves, Brie absolutely blew us away with all her insights!

Me 10 minutes before my presentation goes live at #MozCon: - reevaluating EVERYTHING - do I know anything? - I should have put my dog photos in my slides - what would @BritneyMuller do? - pops a buspirone - stares at screen Okay... let’s do this I guess 😅 pic.twitter.com/jzJmi0XXSQ

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 13, 2021

She also challenged us to get started with GA4 now — before we have to.

Why You Need to Start Using GA4 today by @brie_e_anderson - Collect pre-defined events - Event-specific dashboards - Track micro, macro events & conversions - Better, more visual graphs - Identify outliers fast - Predictive analytics & AI Start by using both GA4 & UA#mozconpic.twitter.com/VPjsHr7jaE

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Brie told us that in GA4 we’ll find:

EASY, ADVANCED, TRACKING

BADASS (& CUSTOM) VISUALS

GOOGLE MAY TELL US SECRETS

But also highlighted that it is NOT a replacement for Universal Analytics, so you need to track both.

🚨#GA4 does not bring in retrospective data! And it's not a replacement for Universal Analytics!🚨 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

You might ask, then what are the benefits of using GA4? I’ll let some of Brie’s fans outline some highlights:

Let's talk about badass & custom visuals, please! @brie_e_anderson#MozConpic.twitter.com/SCUwcWWsL8

— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 13, 2021

Wow!!! Go @brie_e_anderson Go!!! Hand this over to your CEO #mozconpic.twitter.com/waWszEMvc7

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

Holy analytics, Batman - #GA4 lets you *make your own line graphs* with *built-in anomaly detection*!!! This is perfect for those of us who only trust the visuals we create ourselves 😂 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

What are you waiting for? Get your website into GA4!

Rob Ousbey — Beyond the Basics: 5 SEO Tricks for Uncovering Advanced Insights from Your SEO Data

In this session, Rob showed us how to breathe new life into our standard SEO data, and we walked away with more advanced insights — and new tools — that are sure to impress our team (and our boss!)

We all get to play with the new tool? @RobOusbey is like Oprah right now, y'all!#mozconpic.twitter.com/Z8hqH880gX

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 13, 2021

And what are the five SEO tricks?

1. Find link opportunities from the SERP

2. Group ranking keywords to spot split opportunities

3. Tag URLs to find real issues

4. Tag GA for category-level insights

5. Tag competitors’ top URLs for ideas

Be sure to check out Rob’s presentation in the MozCon video bundle when it’s out on Friday for even more amazing tips!

He's a JavaScript Wizard!! 🧙 Thanks for such an eye opening #mozcon presentation @RobOusbey and some AWESOME #seotools . Looking forward to honing my keyword, topic, and URL clustering skills to scope out #SEO wins even faster 💨 https://t.co/GxRrKvseQp

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Britney Muller — The Cold Hard Truth about CTR and Other Common Metrics

Britney closed out day two by showing us how to quash our reporting woes and make easy work of identifying exactly why your website’s performance changed.

She asked us what makes superforecasters — a group that has predicted future events with a great deal of accuracy — so successful. Before giving us the answer, she reminded us that it’s really easy to be led astray by data — but had some tips and tools to share to help make sure we don’t get too off track.

So, what made superforecasters so successful? Their ability to rethink everything. To do the same, Britney challenged us to:

Think like a scientist

Define our identity in terms of values, not opinions

Seek out information that goes against our views

@BritneyMuller I am currently rethinking everything #mozcon

— Chase Freezman (@ChaseFreezman) July 13, 2021

"seek out info that challenges your views and find joy in being wrong!!" @BritneyMuller#MozCon AMAZING. Best quote by far. Already blown away by this talk. pic.twitter.com/5s0Zznee0g

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Absolutely love that @BritneyMuller's prez brought this quote from Austin Knight to mind - "The road to mediocrity is paved with best practices." #MozCon

— Taylor Murchison (@TaylorMurchison) July 13, 2021

Day two — done!

Wow! Only one more day left for this year's MozCon! What stood out the most for you on day two? Tell us on Twitter with #MozCon!

[gamebazu]

Day Two Learnings From the Three-Ring MozCon Circus

Day one of MozCon Virtual gave us a great start to this year’s conference – from surviving the COVID news agenda, to the science of purchasing power, to game-changing ways to use the Google Search Console API. If day one was a preview of things to come, I knew we were all in for a treat as we headed into day two!

With that said, day two has arrived!

Me, rolling into #MozCon Day 2. I'll need to catch up on Day 1 in the recordings. Hey @dodgejd -- thanks for taking notes pic.twitter.com/4IlOxaGJna

— 👋 SEO Patti 💉 💪 (@SEOPatti) July 13, 2021

Oh, and before I forget, remember that dance breaks are not just okay, but encouraged at MozCon.

Dance breaks are not just okay at #MozCon, but encouraged. 💃 Make sure you take some time to get out of your chair and dance it out to our MozCon playlist: https://t.co/srXl8pm8gZ

— Moz (@Moz) July 13, 2021

Ross Simmonds – Why Marketers Should Think More Like Investors To Drive Content Results

In this session, Ross talked about the parallels between content marketing/SEO and the world of investing. I am a lover of analogies, so I was excited to see how Ross was going to show us how an investment mindset can be applied to content marketing and SEO. As someone who loves SEO, and investing, I was pumped for this one.

Ross began by telling a story about his investment in General Motors stock. He put a lot of money into the stock…and it crashed. Ross had not done enough research into GM before making his investment.

The lesson: you need to invest time into doing your homework! You need to understand the market before you jump in. The same applies to SEO.

We all hope that our investments will deliver a return, but in 2020 we were all tested during the pandemic. Many companies put the investment of SEO on pause...and that was a mistake. Even during a recession, people still have a strong desire for content and information.

As Ross explained, every piece of content you create is an asset, and to see the most from our investments, we need to “invest more — guess less”.

There are so many types of content you can create but it's so important to recognize the risk and reward for each type of content. 💸 What is your goal? What kind of return do you want? "Invest more, guess less" — @TheCoolestCool#MozConpic.twitter.com/cQU0g1DdXM

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

Content presents money printing capabilities, and major companies are starting to realize this.

@TheCoolestCool is showing us why content marketers should think more like investors. Genius. #MozConpic.twitter.com/vxUmOp48Bv

— Tiffany Gilkey (She/Her) (@TiffanyLG23) July 13, 2021

Needless to say, Ross left us all wanting to diversify our content portfolios!

When @TheCoolestCool tells you to use more memes #MozConpic.twitter.com/XTwRzB7f3E

— Matthew Kaminsky (@m5kaminsky) July 13, 2021

Areej AbuAli — Taking Charge of Your Indexability: How to Optimize and Prioritize Your Technical Work

If you’re ready to take control of your website indexing, this session is for you! With a focus on aggregators and classifieds, Areej shared advice on how to best reduce index bloat for large websites.

Love listening to @areej_abuali talk about the ultimate head-scratcher in SEO: where to draw the line between which pages should/should not be indexed on very largescale sites where many URLs risk not being crawled/indexed. Tip: focus on actual business KPIs!#MozConpic.twitter.com/1UXi2f6Bht

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) July 13, 2021

She acknowledged that, while we are fully in control of how Google crawls and indexes our site, it can feel scary!

"It's okay to feel overwhelmed when working on something new..." I love how open and honest @areej_abuali is - ALWAYS. This is why she's a great friend, industry leader and her techSEO talks are the best @Moz#MozConpic.twitter.com/5SB5TOo9mx

— Shannon McGuirk (@ShannonMcGuirk_) July 13, 2021

So if we’re suggesting audits, let’s focus on recommendations that can have an impact. Let’s “drop the 100-page audit!”. Websites do not (and most probably should not) need to have every single page indexed. Instead, focus on indexing pages that have the potential to provide good search results.

Honestly, there were so many amazing insights from this presentation, this is one you’ll want to revisit!

Always love watching @areej_abuali share her insights. So many tips ! - Manage expectations before, during and after !! - Under-promise and Over-deliver - Be honest and transparent - share the progress#Mozcon@Moz Thank you Areej ! pic.twitter.com/vunXizDH6W

— J Turnbull (@SEOJoBlogs) July 13, 2021

Joy Hawkins — To Post or Not to Post: What We Learned From Analyzing Over 1,000 Google Posts

What value do Google Posts have, and how should the average SMB prioritize them? Joy Hawkins dove headfirst into the data from two studies to answer these questions.

Joy opened up by sharing a Mario Kart analogy. Joy is a super competitive person. She shared how she followed a similar approach for this study as she did when she was working towards beating Dave DiGregorio at Mario Kart. Let’s just say that it required a lot of research, tracking, and analysis.

Nothing better than hearing @SarahBird say this at #MozCon cc: @deegs20pic.twitter.com/Rs9jhlwGkf

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) July 13, 2021

Joy shared a disclaimer and some initial considerations for the presentations data:

The data set only had a total of 36 conversions

Clicks in Google Analytics DO NOT equal clicks in Google My Business Insights

Study #1

The first study Joy covered analyzed over 1,000 Google Posts to see what types perform better based on clicks and conversions while measuring the impact of various features such as stock photos, emojis, titles, and more. Here are the types of Google Posts that Joy analyzed:

Offer Posts

COVID Posts

Event Posts

Update Posts

Joy also summarized the worst-performing post types. And the winners are:

Reviews

Seasonal/Holiday

Products (or services)

Who We Are (bios)

Study #2

The second study looked at whether posting on Google has any influence on where your business ranks in the local pack. The conclusion? Google Posts had no measurable impact on rankings.

Joy summarized by providing a “Successful Google Post Blueprint” — this is one to save for later!

🧐 Everything you need to know about Google Posts but were afraid to ask...here's the blueprint from @JoyanneHawkins 🔗 https://t.co/9VblFLqgpn #localu#smallbiz@SterlingSkyInc#MozConSwag#mozcon#mozcon2021pic.twitter.com/05rgk3ymhQ

— Andy Simpson (@ndyjsimpson) July 13, 2021

Joyce Collardé — Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing Full-Funnel Optimization for B2B Success

In this session, Joyce covered the long sales cycles for B2B businesses that pose a unique set of challenges for converting visitors into coveted users. Success requires a strategic approach that goes beyond the landing page to include your entire site.

"CRO should be a conversation with your users. They ask a question and we provide an answer."#mozcon@JoyceCollardepic.twitter.com/OtAcHUxdN1

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Joyce walked through strategies for three tried-and-true methods for increasing your conversion rate and winning more business:

Goal #1: Attracting users to your website

Goal #2: Giving users the best experience and leading them to conversion points

Goal #3: Tracking success and encouraging return visitors

Some actionable tips from @JoyceCollarde's talk - Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing full-funnel optimization for B2B success: - Keep user journey in mind - Test and track everything - There's no content-cutter approach - Honesty & transparency wins#mozconpic.twitter.com/a2rGdu5BqP

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Casie Gillette — Counterintuitive Content: How New Trends Have Disrupted Years of Bad Advice

I love the honesty in this tweet from Casie!

What the heck?! My presentation has already been recorded...why am I still nervous? 😬 It's not too early for a beer right... #MozCon

— Casie Gillette (@Casieg) July 13, 2021

In her presentation, Casie looked at content from an entirely different perspective and talked about how you can start creating content on your own terms, because really, there's no one way to do content marketing.

According to Casie, counterintuitive marketing is “the idea of bucking trends to do what is right for YOUR site”. Casie showed that more content is NOT always best. Sometimes optimizing existing content can be far more powerful than creating new content.

@Casieg#mozcon the effects of optimizing existing content and adding more CTAs throughout the site: pic.twitter.com/7x8lvm8yUB

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

There is no one size fits all solution to content marketing. Things change and sometimes you need to think counterintuitively.

Fantastic advise on how to evaluate your content goals and strategy!🙂@Casieg#MozCon@Mozpic.twitter.com/iSKIQSbQsk

— Laura Green (@GreenLauraV) July 13, 2021

How do we do this? Casie suggests a few focus areas:

Performance

What were your goals and did you hit them?

Utilize Google Search Console to find opportunities

Competitors

Don’t copy competitors, but pay close attention to what they are doing for ideas. What is working well that we can do better?

Utilize social media platforms, such as LinkedIn where you can gather intel on the ads that your competitors are running.

Search and keywords

Don’t forget to go back each year and re-evaluate the keywords that you are targeting

Remember, that just because something is driving traffic, it doesn’t mean that it’s the right traffic.

📢📢📢"Just because something is driving traffic doesn't mean it's the right traffic." — @Casieg Re-evaluate your keywords to make sure intent matches your goals.#MozCon

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

“All content should have a goal.” @Casieg#MozCon

— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 13, 2021

Brie E Anderson — Reporting for Duty: Why You Need to Start Using GA4 TODAY

Despite some pre-conference nerves, Brie absolutely blew us away with all her insights!

Me 10 minutes before my presentation goes live at #MozCon: - reevaluating EVERYTHING - do I know anything? - I should have put my dog photos in my slides - what would @BritneyMuller do? - pops a buspirone - stares at screen Okay... let’s do this I guess 😅 pic.twitter.com/jzJmi0XXSQ

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 13, 2021

She also challenged us to get started with GA4 now — before we have to.

Why You Need to Start Using GA4 today by @brie_e_anderson - Collect pre-defined events - Event-specific dashboards - Track micro, macro events & conversions - Better, more visual graphs - Identify outliers fast - Predictive analytics & AI Start by using both GA4 & UA#mozconpic.twitter.com/VPjsHr7jaE

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Brie told us that in GA4 we’ll find:

EASY, ADVANCED, TRACKING

BADASS (& CUSTOM) VISUALS

GOOGLE MAY TELL US SECRETS

But also highlighted that it is NOT a replacement for Universal Analytics, so you need to track both.

🚨#GA4 does not bring in retrospective data! And it's not a replacement for Universal Analytics!🚨 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

You might ask, then what are the benefits of using GA4? I’ll let some of Brie’s fans outline some highlights:

Let's talk about badass & custom visuals, please! @brie_e_anderson#MozConpic.twitter.com/SCUwcWWsL8

— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 13, 2021

Wow!!! Go @brie_e_anderson Go!!! Hand this over to your CEO #mozconpic.twitter.com/waWszEMvc7

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

Holy analytics, Batman - #GA4 lets you *make your own line graphs* with *built-in anomaly detection*!!! This is perfect for those of us who only trust the visuals we create ourselves 😂 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

What are you waiting for? Get your website into GA4!

Rob Ousbey — Beyond the Basics: 5 SEO Tricks for Uncovering Advanced Insights from Your SEO Data

In this session, Rob showed us how to breathe new life into our standard SEO data, and we walked away with more advanced insights — and new tools — that are sure to impress our team (and our boss!)

We all get to play with the new tool? @RobOusbey is like Oprah right now, y'all!#mozconpic.twitter.com/Z8hqH880gX

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 13, 2021

And what are the five SEO tricks?

1. Find link opportunities from the SERP

2. Group ranking keywords to spot split opportunities

3. Tag URLs to find real issues

4. Tag GA for category-level insights

5. Tag competitors’ top URLs for ideas

Be sure to check out Rob’s presentation in the MozCon video bundle when it’s out on Friday for even more amazing tips!

He's a JavaScript Wizard!! 🧙 Thanks for such an eye opening #mozcon presentation @RobOusbey and some AWESOME #seotools . Looking forward to honing my keyword, topic, and URL clustering skills to scope out #SEO wins even faster 💨 https://t.co/GxRrKvseQp

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Britney Muller — The Cold Hard Truth about CTR and Other Common Metrics

Britney closed out day two by showing us how to quash our reporting woes and make easy work of identifying exactly why your website’s performance changed.

She asked us what makes superforecasters — a group that has predicted future events with a great deal of accuracy — so successful. Before giving us the answer, she reminded us that it’s really easy to be led astray by data — but had some tips and tools to share to help make sure we don’t get too off track.

So, what made superforecasters so successful? Their ability to rethink everything. To do the same, Britney challenged us to:

Think like a scientist

Define our identity in terms of values, not opinions

Seek out information that goes against our views

@BritneyMuller I am currently rethinking everything #mozcon

— Chase Freezman (@ChaseFreezman) July 13, 2021

"seek out info that challenges your views and find joy in being wrong!!" @BritneyMuller#MozCon AMAZING. Best quote by far. Already blown away by this talk. pic.twitter.com/5s0Zznee0g

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Absolutely love that @BritneyMuller's prez brought this quote from Austin Knight to mind - "The road to mediocrity is paved with best practices." #MozCon

— Taylor Murchison (@TaylorMurchison) July 13, 2021

Day two — done!

Wow! Only one more day left for this year's MozCon! What stood out the most for you on day two? Tell us on Twitter with #MozCon!

https://ift.tt/2UbcFq1

[thehierophage]

Holy Day Meditation for April 7, 2020 æ.v.

April 7, 2020 æ.v. Dies Martis, Sol 18° Aries, Luna 9° Libra An Vvi æ.n.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

The Day of Daleth, the Day of the Empress

Hebrew Letter: Daleth

Numerical Value as Letter: 4

Numerical Value as Word: 434 (Daleth+Lamed+Tav)

Meaning: A Door.

Thoth Card: The Empress (Atu III)

Alternate Title: The Daughter of the Mighty Ones.

Image:

Correspondences:

Tree of Life Path Association: Key 14 - Binah to Chokmah (from Sephira 3-2)

Astrological Sign: Venus

Element: -

Egyptian Godforms: Hathoor

Geomantic Figure: Heptagram

Gemstones: Emerald, Turquoise

Perfumes: Sandalwood, Myrtle, all Soft Voluptuous Odors

Plants: Myrtle, Rose, Clover, Fig, Peach, Apple

Animals: Sparrow, Dove, Sow

Colors:

King Scale – Emerald green

Queen Scale – Sky blue

Prince Scale – Early spring green

Princess Scale – Bright rose of cerise rayed pale yellow

The Secret Instruction of the Master:

This is the Harmony of the Universe, that Love unites the Will to create with the Understanding of that Creation: understand thou thine own Will! Love and let love! Rejoice in every shape of love, and get thy rapture and thy nourishment thereof!

Mnemonic:

Beauty, display thine Empire! Truth above

Thought's reach: the wholeness of the world is Love.

Liber Arcanorum Verse

3. The Virgin of God is enthroned upon an oyster-shell; she is like a pearl, and seeketh Seventy to her Four. In her heart is Hadit the invisible glory.

Genius of the House of Mercury

DhnaⲜartarωθ

Genius of the Prison of the Qliphoth

Dagadgiel

Recommended Text for Meditation:

Liber VII Liberi vel Lapis Lazuli, Cap. 7

Liber VII Liberi vel Lapis Lazuli

Being the Voluntary Emancipation of a certain Exempt Adept from his Adeptship. These are the Birth-Words of a Master of the Temple. A.˙. A.˙. Publication in Class A. Imprimatur: N. Fra A.˙. A.˙.

VII

1. By the burning of the incense was the Word revealed, and by the distant drug.

2. O meal and honey and oil! O beautiful flag of the moon, that she hangs out in the centre of bliss!

3. These loosen the swathings of the corpse; these unbind the feet of Osiris, so that the flaming God may rage through the firmament with his fantastic spear.

4. But of pure black marble is the sorry statue, and the changeless pain of the eyes is bitter to the blind.

5. We understand the rapture of that shaken marble, torn by the throes of the crowned child, the golden rod of the golden God.

6. We know why all is hidden in the stone, within the coffin, within the mighty sepulchre, and we too answer Olalam! Imal! Tutulu! as it is written in the ancient book.

7. Three words of that book are as life to a new aeon; no god has read the whole.

8. But thou and I, O God, have written it page by page.

9. Ours is the elevenfold reading of the Elevenfold word.

10. These seven letters together make seven diverse words; each word is divine, and seven sentences are hidden therein.

11. Thou art the Word, O my darling, my lord, my master!

12. O come to me, mix the fire and the water, all shall dissolve.

13. I await Thee in sleeping, in waking. I invoke Thee no more; for Thou art in me, O Thou who hast made me a beautiful instrument tuned to Thy rapture.

14. Yet art Thou ever apart, even as I.

15. I remember a certain holy day in the dusk of the year, in the dusk of the Equinox of Osiris, when first I beheld Thee visibly; when first the dreadful issue was fought out; when the Ibis-headed One charmed away the strife.

16. I remember Thy first kiss, even as a maiden should. Nor in the dark byways was there another: Thy kisses abide.

17. There is none other beside Thee in the whole Universe of Love.

18. My God, I love Thee, O Thou goat with gilded horns!

19. Thou beautiful bull of Apis! Thou beautiful serpent of Apep! Thou beautiful child of the Pregnant Goddess!

20. Thou hast stirred in Thy sleep, O ancient sorrow of years! Thou hast raised Thine head to strike, and all is dissolved into the Abyss of Glory.

21. An end to the letters of the words! An end to the sevenfold speech.

22. Resolve me the wonder of it all into the figure of a gaunt swift camel striding over the sand.

23. Lonely is he, and abominable; yet hath he gained the crown.

24. Oh rejoice! rejoice!

25. My God! O my God! I am but a speck in the star-dust of ages; I am the Master of the Secret of Things.

26. I am the Revealer and the Preparer. Mine is the Sword - and the Mitre and the Winged Wand!

27. I am the Initiator and the Destroyer. Mine is the Globe - and the Bennu bird and the Lotus of Isis my daughter!

28. I am the One beyond these all; and I bear the symbols of the mighty darkness.

29. There shall be a sigil as of a vast black brooding ocean of death and the central blaze of darkness, radiating its night upon all.

30. It shall swallow up that lesser darkness.

31. But in that profound who shall answer: What is?

32. Not I.

33. Not Thou, O God!

34. Come, let us no more reason together; let us enjoy! Let us be ourselves, silent, unique, apart.

35. O lonely woods of the world! In what recesses will ye hide our love?

36. The forest of the spears of the Most High is called Night, and Hades, and the Day of Wrath; but I am His captain, and I bear His cup.

37. Fear me not with my spearmen! They shall slay the demons with their petty prongs. Ye shall be free.

38. Ah, slaves! ye will not - ye know not how to will.

39. Yet the music of my spears shall be a song of freedom.

40. A great bird shall sweep from the abyss of Joy, and bear ye away to be my cup-bearers.

41. Come, O my God, in one last rapture let us attain to the Union with the Many!

42. In the silence of Things, in the Night of Forces, beyond the accursed domain of the Three, let us enjoy our love!

43. My darling! My darling! away, away beyond the Assembly and the Law and the Enlightenment unto an Anarchy of solitude and Darkness!

44. For even thus must we veil the brilliance of our Self.

45. My darling! My darling!

46. O my God, but the love in Me bursts over the bonds of Space and Time; my love is spilt among them that love not love.

47. My wine is poured out for them that never tasted wine.

48. The fumes thereof shall intoxicate them and the vigour of my love shall breed mighty children from their maidens.

49. Yea! without draught, without embrace: - and the Voice answered Yea! these things shall be.

50. Then I sought a Word for Myself; nay, for myself.

51. And the Word came: O Thou! it is well. Heed naught! I love Thee! I love Thee!

52. Therefore had I faith unto the end of all; yea, unto the end of all.

Love is the law, love under will.

[kjt-lawyers]

Day Two Learnings From the Three-Ring MozCon Circus

Day one of MozCon Virtual gave us a great start to this year’s conference – from surviving the COVID news agenda, to the science of purchasing power, to game-changing ways to use the Google Search Console API. If day one was a preview of things to come, I knew we were all in for a treat as we headed into day two!

With that said, day two has arrived!

Me, rolling into #MozCon Day 2. I'll need to catch up on Day 1 in the recordings. Hey @dodgejd -- thanks for taking notes pic.twitter.com/4IlOxaGJna

— 👋 SEO Patti 💉 💪 (@SEOPatti) July 13, 2021

Oh, and before I forget, remember that dance breaks are not just okay, but encouraged at MozCon.

Dance breaks are not just okay at #MozCon, but encouraged. 💃 Make sure you take some time to get out of your chair and dance it out to our MozCon playlist: https://t.co/srXl8pm8gZ

— Moz (@Moz) July 13, 2021

Ross Simmonds – Why Marketers Should Think More Like Investors To Drive Content Results

In this session, Ross talked about the parallels between content marketing/SEO and the world of investing. I am a lover of analogies, so I was excited to see how Ross was going to show us how an investment mindset can be applied to content marketing and SEO. As someone who loves SEO, and investing, I was pumped for this one.

Ross began by telling a story about his investment in General Motors stock. He put a lot of money into the stock…and it crashed. Ross had not done enough research into GM before making his investment.

The lesson: you need to invest time into doing your homework! You need to understand the market before you jump in. The same applies to SEO.

We all hope that our investments will deliver a return, but in 2020 we were all tested during the pandemic. Many companies put the investment of SEO on pause...and that was a mistake. Even during a recession, people still have a strong desire for content and information.

As Ross explained, every piece of content you create is an asset, and to see the most from our investments, we need to “invest more — guess less”.

There are so many types of content you can create but it's so important to recognize the risk and reward for each type of content. 💸 What is your goal? What kind of return do you want? "Invest more, guess less" — @TheCoolestCool#MozConpic.twitter.com/cQU0g1DdXM

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

Content presents money printing capabilities, and major companies are starting to realize this.

@TheCoolestCool is showing us why content marketers should think more like investors. Genius. #MozConpic.twitter.com/vxUmOp48Bv

— Tiffany Gilkey (She/Her) (@TiffanyLG23) July 13, 2021

Needless to say, Ross left us all wanting to diversify our content portfolios!

When @TheCoolestCool tells you to use more memes #MozConpic.twitter.com/XTwRzB7f3E

— Matthew Kaminsky (@m5kaminsky) July 13, 2021

Areej AbuAli — Taking Charge of Your Indexability: How to Optimize and Prioritize Your Technical Work

If you’re ready to take control of your website indexing, this session is for you! With a focus on aggregators and classifieds, Areej shared advice on how to best reduce index bloat for large websites.

Love listening to @areej_abuali talk about the ultimate head-scratcher in SEO: where to draw the line between which pages should/should not be indexed on very largescale sites where many URLs risk not being crawled/indexed. Tip: focus on actual business KPIs!#MozConpic.twitter.com/1UXi2f6Bht

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) July 13, 2021

She acknowledged that, while we are fully in control of how Google crawls and indexes our site, it can feel scary!

"It's okay to feel overwhelmed when working on something new..." I love how open and honest @areej_abuali is - ALWAYS. This is why she's a great friend, industry leader and her techSEO talks are the best @Moz#MozConpic.twitter.com/5SB5TOo9mx

— Shannon McGuirk (@ShannonMcGuirk_) July 13, 2021

So if we’re suggesting audits, let’s focus on recommendations that can have an impact. Let’s “drop the 100-page audit!”. Websites do not (and most probably should not) need to have every single page indexed. Instead, focus on indexing pages that have the potential to provide good search results.

Honestly, there were so many amazing insights from this presentation, this is one you’ll want to revisit!

Always love watching @areej_abuali share her insights. So many tips ! - Manage expectations before, during and after !! - Under-promise and Over-deliver - Be honest and transparent - share the progress#Mozcon@Moz Thank you Areej ! pic.twitter.com/vunXizDH6W

— J Turnbull (@SEOJoBlogs) July 13, 2021

Joy Hawkins — To Post or Not to Post: What We Learned From Analyzing Over 1,000 Google Posts

What value do Google Posts have, and how should the average SMB prioritize them? Joy Hawkins dove headfirst into the data from two studies to answer these questions.

Joy opened up by sharing a Mario Kart analogy. Joy is a super competitive person. She shared how she followed a similar approach for this study as she did when she was working towards beating Dave DiGregorio at Mario Kart. Let’s just say that it required a lot of research, tracking, and analysis.

Nothing better than hearing @SarahBird say this at #MozCon cc: @deegs20pic.twitter.com/Rs9jhlwGkf

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) July 13, 2021

Joy shared a disclaimer and some initial considerations for the presentations data:

The data set only had a total of 36 conversions

Clicks in Google Analytics DO NOT equal clicks in Google My Business Insights

Study #1

The first study Joy covered analyzed over 1,000 Google Posts to see what types perform better based on clicks and conversions while measuring the impact of various features such as stock photos, emojis, titles, and more. Here are the types of Google Posts that Joy analyzed:

Offer Posts

COVID Posts

Event Posts

Update Posts

Joy also summarized the worst-performing post types. And the winners are:

Reviews

Seasonal/Holiday

Products (or services)

Who We Are (bios)

Study #2

The second study looked at whether posting on Google has any influence on where your business ranks in the local pack. The conclusion? Google Posts had no measurable impact on rankings.

Joy summarized by providing a “Successful Google Post Blueprint” — this is one to save for later!

🧐 Everything you need to know about Google Posts but were afraid to ask...here's the blueprint from @JoyanneHawkins 🔗 https://t.co/9VblFLqgpn #localu#smallbiz@SterlingSkyInc#MozConSwag#mozcon#mozcon2021pic.twitter.com/05rgk3ymhQ

— Andy Simpson (@ndyjsimpson) July 13, 2021

Joyce Collardé — Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing Full-Funnel Optimization for B2B Success

In this session, Joyce covered the long sales cycles for B2B businesses that pose a unique set of challenges for converting visitors into coveted users. Success requires a strategic approach that goes beyond the landing page to include your entire site.

"CRO should be a conversation with your users. They ask a question and we provide an answer."#mozcon@JoyceCollardepic.twitter.com/OtAcHUxdN1

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Joyce walked through strategies for three tried-and-true methods for increasing your conversion rate and winning more business:

Goal #1: Attracting users to your website

Goal #2: Giving users the best experience and leading them to conversion points

Goal #3: Tracking success and encouraging return visitors

Some actionable tips from @JoyceCollarde's talk - Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing full-funnel optimization for B2B success: - Keep user journey in mind - Test and track everything - There's no content-cutter approach - Honesty & transparency wins#mozconpic.twitter.com/a2rGdu5BqP

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Casie Gillette — Counterintuitive Content: How New Trends Have Disrupted Years of Bad Advice

I love the honesty in this tweet from Casie!

What the heck?! My presentation has already been recorded...why am I still nervous? 😬 It's not too early for a beer right... #MozCon

— Casie Gillette (@Casieg) July 13, 2021

In her presentation, Casie looked at content from an entirely different perspective and talked about how you can start creating content on your own terms, because really, there's no one way to do content marketing.

According to Casie, counterintuitive marketing is “the idea of bucking trends to do what is right for YOUR site”. Casie showed that more content is NOT always best. Sometimes optimizing existing content can be far more powerful than creating new content.

@Casieg#mozcon the effects of optimizing existing content and adding more CTAs throughout the site: pic.twitter.com/7x8lvm8yUB

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

There is no one size fits all solution to content marketing. Things change and sometimes you need to think counterintuitively.

Fantastic advise on how to evaluate your content goals and strategy!🙂@Casieg#MozCon@Mozpic.twitter.com/iSKIQSbQsk

— Laura Green (@GreenLauraV) July 13, 2021

How do we do this? Casie suggests a few focus areas:

Performance

What were your goals and did you hit them?

Utilize Google Search Console to find opportunities

Competitors

Don’t copy competitors, but pay close attention to what they are doing for ideas. What is working well that we can do better?

Utilize social media platforms, such as LinkedIn where you can gather intel on the ads that your competitors are running.

Search and keywords

Don’t forget to go back each year and re-evaluate the keywords that you are targeting

Remember, that just because something is driving traffic, it doesn’t mean that it’s the right traffic.

📢📢📢"Just because something is driving traffic doesn't mean it's the right traffic." — @Casieg Re-evaluate your keywords to make sure intent matches your goals.#MozCon

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

“All content should have a goal.” @Casieg#MozCon

— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 13, 2021

Brie E Anderson — Reporting for Duty: Why You Need to Start Using GA4 TODAY

Despite some pre-conference nerves, Brie absolutely blew us away with all her insights!

Me 10 minutes before my presentation goes live at #MozCon: - reevaluating EVERYTHING - do I know anything? - I should have put my dog photos in my slides - what would @BritneyMuller do? - pops a buspirone - stares at screen Okay... let’s do this I guess 😅 pic.twitter.com/jzJmi0XXSQ

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 13, 2021

She also challenged us to get started with GA4 now — before we have to.

Why You Need to Start Using GA4 today by @brie_e_anderson - Collect pre-defined events - Event-specific dashboards - Track micro, macro events & conversions - Better, more visual graphs - Identify outliers fast - Predictive analytics & AI Start by using both GA4 & UA#mozconpic.twitter.com/VPjsHr7jaE

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Brie told us that in GA4 we’ll find:

EASY, ADVANCED, TRACKING

BADASS (& CUSTOM) VISUALS

GOOGLE MAY TELL US SECRETS

But also highlighted that it is NOT a replacement for Universal Analytics, so you need to track both.

🚨#GA4 does not bring in retrospective data! And it's not a replacement for Universal Analytics!🚨 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

You might ask, then what are the benefits of using GA4? I’ll let some of Brie’s fans outline some highlights:

Let's talk about badass & custom visuals, please! @brie_e_anderson#MozConpic.twitter.com/SCUwcWWsL8

— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 13, 2021

Wow!!! Go @brie_e_anderson Go!!! Hand this over to your CEO #mozconpic.twitter.com/waWszEMvc7

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

Holy analytics, Batman - #GA4 lets you *make your own line graphs* with *built-in anomaly detection*!!! This is perfect for those of us who only trust the visuals we create ourselves 😂 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

What are you waiting for? Get your website into GA4!

Rob Ousbey — Beyond the Basics: 5 SEO Tricks for Uncovering Advanced Insights from Your SEO Data

In this session, Rob showed us how to breathe new life into our standard SEO data, and we walked away with more advanced insights — and new tools — that are sure to impress our team (and our boss!)

We all get to play with the new tool? @RobOusbey is like Oprah right now, y'all!#mozconpic.twitter.com/Z8hqH880gX

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 13, 2021

And what are the five SEO tricks?

1. Find link opportunities from the SERP

2. Group ranking keywords to spot split opportunities

3. Tag URLs to find real issues

4. Tag GA for category-level insights

5. Tag competitors’ top URLs for ideas

Be sure to check out Rob’s presentation in the MozCon video bundle when it’s out on Friday for even more amazing tips!

He's a JavaScript Wizard!! 🧙 Thanks for such an eye opening #mozcon presentation @RobOusbey and some AWESOME #seotools . Looking forward to honing my keyword, topic, and URL clustering skills to scope out #SEO wins even faster 💨 https://t.co/GxRrKvseQp

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Britney Muller — The Cold Hard Truth about CTR and Other Common Metrics

Britney closed out day two by showing us how to quash our reporting woes and make easy work of identifying exactly why your website’s performance changed.

She asked us what makes superforecasters — a group that has predicted future events with a great deal of accuracy — so successful. Before giving us the answer, she reminded us that it’s really easy to be led astray by data — but had some tips and tools to share to help make sure we don’t get too off track.

So, what made superforecasters so successful? Their ability to rethink everything. To do the same, Britney challenged us to:

Think like a scientist

Define our identity in terms of values, not opinions

Seek out information that goes against our views

@BritneyMuller I am currently rethinking everything #mozcon

— Chase Freezman (@ChaseFreezman) July 13, 2021

"seek out info that challenges your views and find joy in being wrong!!" @BritneyMuller#MozCon AMAZING. Best quote by far. Already blown away by this talk. pic.twitter.com/5s0Zznee0g

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Absolutely love that @BritneyMuller's prez brought this quote from Austin Knight to mind - "The road to mediocrity is paved with best practices." #MozCon

— Taylor Murchison (@TaylorMurchison) July 13, 2021

Day two — done!

Wow! Only one more day left for this year's MozCon! What stood out the most for you on day two? Tell us on Twitter with #MozCon!

[thanhtuandoan89]

Day Two Learnings From the Three-Ring MozCon Circus

Day one of MozCon Virtual gave us a great start to this year’s conference – from surviving the COVID news agenda, to the science of purchasing power, to game-changing ways to use the Google Search Console API. If day one was a preview of things to come, I knew we were all in for a treat as we headed into day two!

With that said, day two has arrived!

Me, rolling into #MozCon Day 2. I'll need to catch up on Day 1 in the recordings. Hey @dodgejd -- thanks for taking notes pic.twitter.com/4IlOxaGJna

— 👋 SEO Patti 💉 💪 (@SEOPatti) July 13, 2021

Oh, and before I forget, remember that dance breaks are not just okay, but encouraged at MozCon.

Dance breaks are not just okay at #MozCon, but encouraged. 💃 Make sure you take some time to get out of your chair and dance it out to our MozCon playlist: https://t.co/srXl8pm8gZ

— Moz (@Moz) July 13, 2021

Ross Simmonds – Why Marketers Should Think More Like Investors To Drive Content Results

In this session, Ross talked about the parallels between content marketing/SEO and the world of investing. I am a lover of analogies, so I was excited to see how Ross was going to show us how an investment mindset can be applied to content marketing and SEO. As someone who loves SEO, and investing, I was pumped for this one.

Ross began by telling a story about his investment in General Motors stock. He put a lot of money into the stock…and it crashed. Ross had not done enough research into GM before making his investment.

The lesson: you need to invest time into doing your homework! You need to understand the market before you jump in. The same applies to SEO.

We all hope that our investments will deliver a return, but in 2020 we were all tested during the pandemic. Many companies put the investment of SEO on pause...and that was a mistake. Even during a recession, people still have a strong desire for content and information.

As Ross explained, every piece of content you create is an asset, and to see the most from our investments, we need to “invest more — guess less”.

There are so many types of content you can create but it's so important to recognize the risk and reward for each type of content. 💸 What is your goal? What kind of return do you want? "Invest more, guess less" — @TheCoolestCool#MozConpic.twitter.com/cQU0g1DdXM

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

Content presents money printing capabilities, and major companies are starting to realize this.

@TheCoolestCool is showing us why content marketers should think more like investors. Genius. #MozConpic.twitter.com/vxUmOp48Bv

— Tiffany Gilkey (She/Her) (@TiffanyLG23) July 13, 2021

Needless to say, Ross left us all wanting to diversify our content portfolios!

When @TheCoolestCool tells you to use more memes #MozConpic.twitter.com/XTwRzB7f3E

— Matthew Kaminsky (@m5kaminsky) July 13, 2021

Areej AbuAli — Taking Charge of Your Indexability: How to Optimize and Prioritize Your Technical Work

If you’re ready to take control of your website indexing, this session is for you! With a focus on aggregators and classifieds, Areej shared advice on how to best reduce index bloat for large websites.

Love listening to @areej_abuali talk about the ultimate head-scratcher in SEO: where to draw the line between which pages should/should not be indexed on very largescale sites where many URLs risk not being crawled/indexed. Tip: focus on actual business KPIs!#MozConpic.twitter.com/1UXi2f6Bht

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) July 13, 2021

She acknowledged that, while we are fully in control of how Google crawls and indexes our site, it can feel scary!

"It's okay to feel overwhelmed when working on something new..." I love how open and honest @areej_abuali is - ALWAYS. This is why she's a great friend, industry leader and her techSEO talks are the best @Moz#MozConpic.twitter.com/5SB5TOo9mx

— Shannon McGuirk (@ShannonMcGuirk_) July 13, 2021

So if we’re suggesting audits, let’s focus on recommendations that can have an impact. Let’s “drop the 100-page audit!”. Websites do not (and most probably should not) need to have every single page indexed. Instead, focus on indexing pages that have the potential to provide good search results.

Honestly, there were so many amazing insights from this presentation, this is one you’ll want to revisit!

Always love watching @areej_abuali share her insights. So many tips ! - Manage expectations before, during and after !! - Under-promise and Over-deliver - Be honest and transparent - share the progress#Mozcon@Moz Thank you Areej ! pic.twitter.com/vunXizDH6W

— J Turnbull (@SEOJoBlogs) July 13, 2021

Joy Hawkins — To Post or Not to Post: What We Learned From Analyzing Over 1,000 Google Posts

What value do Google Posts have, and how should the average SMB prioritize them? Joy Hawkins dove headfirst into the data from two studies to answer these questions.

Joy opened up by sharing a Mario Kart analogy. Joy is a super competitive person. She shared how she followed a similar approach for this study as she did when she was working towards beating Dave DiGregorio at Mario Kart. Let’s just say that it required a lot of research, tracking, and analysis.

Nothing better than hearing @SarahBird say this at #MozCon cc: @deegs20pic.twitter.com/Rs9jhlwGkf

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) July 13, 2021

Joy shared a disclaimer and some initial considerations for the presentations data:

The data set only had a total of 36 conversions

Clicks in Google Analytics DO NOT equal clicks in Google My Business Insights

Study #1

The first study Joy covered analyzed over 1,000 Google Posts to see what types perform better based on clicks and conversions while measuring the impact of various features such as stock photos, emojis, titles, and more. Here are the types of Google Posts that Joy analyzed:

Offer Posts

COVID Posts

Event Posts

Update Posts

Joy also summarized the worst-performing post types. And the winners are:

Reviews

Seasonal/Holiday

Products (or services)

Who We Are (bios)

Study #2

The second study looked at whether posting on Google has any influence on where your business ranks in the local pack. The conclusion? Google Posts had no measurable impact on rankings.

Joy summarized by providing a “Successful Google Post Blueprint” — this is one to save for later!

🧐 Everything you need to know about Google Posts but were afraid to ask...here's the blueprint from @JoyanneHawkins 🔗 https://t.co/9VblFLqgpn #localu#smallbiz@SterlingSkyInc#MozConSwag#mozcon#mozcon2021pic.twitter.com/05rgk3ymhQ

— Andy Simpson (@ndyjsimpson) July 13, 2021

Joyce Collardé — Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing Full-Funnel Optimization for B2B Success

In this session, Joyce covered the long sales cycles for B2B businesses that pose a unique set of challenges for converting visitors into coveted users. Success requires a strategic approach that goes beyond the landing page to include your entire site.

"CRO should be a conversation with your users. They ask a question and we provide an answer."#mozcon@JoyceCollardepic.twitter.com/OtAcHUxdN1

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Joyce walked through strategies for three tried-and-true methods for increasing your conversion rate and winning more business:

Goal #1: Attracting users to your website

Goal #2: Giving users the best experience and leading them to conversion points

Goal #3: Tracking success and encouraging return visitors

Some actionable tips from @JoyceCollarde's talk - Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing full-funnel optimization for B2B success: - Keep user journey in mind - Test and track everything - There's no content-cutter approach - Honesty & transparency wins#mozconpic.twitter.com/a2rGdu5BqP

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Casie Gillette — Counterintuitive Content: How New Trends Have Disrupted Years of Bad Advice

I love the honesty in this tweet from Casie!

What the heck?! My presentation has already been recorded...why am I still nervous? 😬 It's not too early for a beer right... #MozCon

— Casie Gillette (@Casieg) July 13, 2021

In her presentation, Casie looked at content from an entirely different perspective and talked about how you can start creating content on your own terms, because really, there's no one way to do content marketing.

According to Casie, counterintuitive marketing is “the idea of bucking trends to do what is right for YOUR site”. Casie showed that more content is NOT always best. Sometimes optimizing existing content can be far more powerful than creating new content.

@Casieg#mozcon the effects of optimizing existing content and adding more CTAs throughout the site: pic.twitter.com/7x8lvm8yUB

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

There is no one size fits all solution to content marketing. Things change and sometimes you need to think counterintuitively.

Fantastic advise on how to evaluate your content goals and strategy!🙂@Casieg#MozCon@Mozpic.twitter.com/iSKIQSbQsk

— Laura Green (@GreenLauraV) July 13, 2021

How do we do this? Casie suggests a few focus areas:

Performance

What were your goals and did you hit them?

Utilize Google Search Console to find opportunities

Competitors

Don’t copy competitors, but pay close attention to what they are doing for ideas. What is working well that we can do better?

Utilize social media platforms, such as LinkedIn where you can gather intel on the ads that your competitors are running.

Search and keywords

Don’t forget to go back each year and re-evaluate the keywords that you are targeting

Remember, that just because something is driving traffic, it doesn’t mean that it’s the right traffic.

📢📢📢"Just because something is driving traffic doesn't mean it's the right traffic." — @Casieg Re-evaluate your keywords to make sure intent matches your goals.#MozCon

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

“All content should have a goal.” @Casieg#MozCon

— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 13, 2021

Brie E Anderson — Reporting for Duty: Why You Need to Start Using GA4 TODAY

Despite some pre-conference nerves, Brie absolutely blew us away with all her insights!

Me 10 minutes before my presentation goes live at #MozCon: - reevaluating EVERYTHING - do I know anything? - I should have put my dog photos in my slides - what would @BritneyMuller do? - pops a buspirone - stares at screen Okay... let’s do this I guess 😅 pic.twitter.com/jzJmi0XXSQ

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 13, 2021

She also challenged us to get started with GA4 now — before we have to.

Why You Need to Start Using GA4 today by @brie_e_anderson - Collect pre-defined events - Event-specific dashboards - Track micro, macro events & conversions - Better, more visual graphs - Identify outliers fast - Predictive analytics & AI Start by using both GA4 & UA#mozconpic.twitter.com/VPjsHr7jaE

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Brie told us that in GA4 we’ll find:

EASY, ADVANCED, TRACKING

BADASS (& CUSTOM) VISUALS

GOOGLE MAY TELL US SECRETS

But also highlighted that it is NOT a replacement for Universal Analytics, so you need to track both.

🚨#GA4 does not bring in retrospective data! And it's not a replacement for Universal Analytics!🚨 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

You might ask, then what are the benefits of using GA4? I’ll let some of Brie’s fans outline some highlights:

Let's talk about badass & custom visuals, please! @brie_e_anderson#MozConpic.twitter.com/SCUwcWWsL8

— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 13, 2021

Wow!!! Go @brie_e_anderson Go!!! Hand this over to your CEO #mozconpic.twitter.com/waWszEMvc7

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

Holy analytics, Batman - #GA4 lets you *make your own line graphs* with *built-in anomaly detection*!!! This is perfect for those of us who only trust the visuals we create ourselves 😂 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

What are you waiting for? Get your website into GA4!

Rob Ousbey — Beyond the Basics: 5 SEO Tricks for Uncovering Advanced Insights from Your SEO Data

In this session, Rob showed us how to breathe new life into our standard SEO data, and we walked away with more advanced insights — and new tools — that are sure to impress our team (and our boss!)

We all get to play with the new tool? @RobOusbey is like Oprah right now, y'all!#mozconpic.twitter.com/Z8hqH880gX

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 13, 2021

And what are the five SEO tricks?

1. Find link opportunities from the SERP

2. Group ranking keywords to spot split opportunities

3. Tag URLs to find real issues

4. Tag GA for category-level insights

5. Tag competitors’ top URLs for ideas

Be sure to check out Rob’s presentation in the MozCon video bundle when it’s out on Friday for even more amazing tips!

He's a JavaScript Wizard!! 🧙 Thanks for such an eye opening #mozcon presentation @RobOusbey and some AWESOME #seotools . Looking forward to honing my keyword, topic, and URL clustering skills to scope out #SEO wins even faster 💨 https://t.co/GxRrKvseQp

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Britney Muller — The Cold Hard Truth about CTR and Other Common Metrics

Britney closed out day two by showing us how to quash our reporting woes and make easy work of identifying exactly why your website’s performance changed.

She asked us what makes superforecasters — a group that has predicted future events with a great deal of accuracy — so successful. Before giving us the answer, she reminded us that it’s really easy to be led astray by data — but had some tips and tools to share to help make sure we don’t get too off track.

So, what made superforecasters so successful? Their ability to rethink everything. To do the same, Britney challenged us to:

Think like a scientist

Define our identity in terms of values, not opinions

Seek out information that goes against our views

@BritneyMuller I am currently rethinking everything #mozcon

— Chase Freezman (@ChaseFreezman) July 13, 2021

"seek out info that challenges your views and find joy in being wrong!!" @BritneyMuller#MozCon AMAZING. Best quote by far. Already blown away by this talk. pic.twitter.com/5s0Zznee0g

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Absolutely love that @BritneyMuller's prez brought this quote from Austin Knight to mind - "The road to mediocrity is paved with best practices." #MozCon

— Taylor Murchison (@TaylorMurchison) July 13, 2021

Day two — done!

Wow! Only one more day left for this year's MozCon! What stood out the most for you on day two? Tell us on Twitter with #MozCon!

[drummcarpentry]

Day Two Learnings From the Three-Ring MozCon Circus

Day one of MozCon Virtual gave us a great start to this year’s conference – from surviving the COVID news agenda, to the science of purchasing power, to game-changing ways to use the Google Search Console API. If day one was a preview of things to come, I knew we were all in for a treat as we headed into day two!

With that said, day two has arrived!

Me, rolling into #MozCon Day 2. I'll need to catch up on Day 1 in the recordings. Hey @dodgejd -- thanks for taking notes pic.twitter.com/4IlOxaGJna

— 👋 SEO Patti 💉 💪 (@SEOPatti) July 13, 2021

Oh, and before I forget, remember that dance breaks are not just okay, but encouraged at MozCon.

Dance breaks are not just okay at #MozCon, but encouraged. 💃 Make sure you take some time to get out of your chair and dance it out to our MozCon playlist: https://t.co/srXl8pm8gZ

— Moz (@Moz) July 13, 2021

Ross Simmonds – Why Marketers Should Think More Like Investors To Drive Content Results

In this session, Ross talked about the parallels between content marketing/SEO and the world of investing. I am a lover of analogies, so I was excited to see how Ross was going to show us how an investment mindset can be applied to content marketing and SEO. As someone who loves SEO, and investing, I was pumped for this one.

Ross began by telling a story about his investment in General Motors stock. He put a lot of money into the stock…and it crashed. Ross had not done enough research into GM before making his investment.

The lesson: you need to invest time into doing your homework! You need to understand the market before you jump in. The same applies to SEO.

We all hope that our investments will deliver a return, but in 2020 we were all tested during the pandemic. Many companies put the investment of SEO on pause...and that was a mistake. Even during a recession, people still have a strong desire for content and information.

As Ross explained, every piece of content you create is an asset, and to see the most from our investments, we need to “invest more — guess less”.

There are so many types of content you can create but it's so important to recognize the risk and reward for each type of content. 💸 What is your goal? What kind of return do you want? "Invest more, guess less" — @TheCoolestCool#MozConpic.twitter.com/cQU0g1DdXM

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

Content presents money printing capabilities, and major companies are starting to realize this.

@TheCoolestCool is showing us why content marketers should think more like investors. Genius. #MozConpic.twitter.com/vxUmOp48Bv

— Tiffany Gilkey (She/Her) (@TiffanyLG23) July 13, 2021

Needless to say, Ross left us all wanting to diversify our content portfolios!

When @TheCoolestCool tells you to use more memes #MozConpic.twitter.com/XTwRzB7f3E

— Matthew Kaminsky (@m5kaminsky) July 13, 2021

Areej AbuAli — Taking Charge of Your Indexability: How to Optimize and Prioritize Your Technical Work

If you’re ready to take control of your website indexing, this session is for you! With a focus on aggregators and classifieds, Areej shared advice on how to best reduce index bloat for large websites.

Love listening to @areej_abuali talk about the ultimate head-scratcher in SEO: where to draw the line between which pages should/should not be indexed on very largescale sites where many URLs risk not being crawled/indexed. Tip: focus on actual business KPIs!#MozConpic.twitter.com/1UXi2f6Bht

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) July 13, 2021

She acknowledged that, while we are fully in control of how Google crawls and indexes our site, it can feel scary!

"It's okay to feel overwhelmed when working on something new..." I love how open and honest @areej_abuali is - ALWAYS. This is why she's a great friend, industry leader and her techSEO talks are the best @Moz#MozConpic.twitter.com/5SB5TOo9mx

— Shannon McGuirk (@ShannonMcGuirk_) July 13, 2021

So if we’re suggesting audits, let’s focus on recommendations that can have an impact. Let’s “drop the 100-page audit!”. Websites do not (and most probably should not) need to have every single page indexed. Instead, focus on indexing pages that have the potential to provide good search results.

Honestly, there were so many amazing insights from this presentation, this is one you’ll want to revisit!

Always love watching @areej_abuali share her insights. So many tips ! - Manage expectations before, during and after !! - Under-promise and Over-deliver - Be honest and transparent - share the progress#Mozcon@Moz Thank you Areej ! pic.twitter.com/vunXizDH6W

— J Turnbull (@SEOJoBlogs) July 13, 2021

Joy Hawkins — To Post or Not to Post: What We Learned From Analyzing Over 1,000 Google Posts

What value do Google Posts have, and how should the average SMB prioritize them? Joy Hawkins dove headfirst into the data from two studies to answer these questions.

Joy opened up by sharing a Mario Kart analogy. Joy is a super competitive person. She shared how she followed a similar approach for this study as she did when she was working towards beating Dave DiGregorio at Mario Kart. Let’s just say that it required a lot of research, tracking, and analysis.

Nothing better than hearing @SarahBird say this at #MozCon cc: @deegs20pic.twitter.com/Rs9jhlwGkf

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) July 13, 2021

Joy shared a disclaimer and some initial considerations for the presentations data:

The data set only had a total of 36 conversions

Clicks in Google Analytics DO NOT equal clicks in Google My Business Insights

Study #1

The first study Joy covered analyzed over 1,000 Google Posts to see what types perform better based on clicks and conversions while measuring the impact of various features such as stock photos, emojis, titles, and more. Here are the types of Google Posts that Joy analyzed:

Offer Posts

COVID Posts

Event Posts

Update Posts

Joy also summarized the worst-performing post types. And the winners are:

Reviews

Seasonal/Holiday

Products (or services)

Who We Are (bios)

Study #2

The second study looked at whether posting on Google has any influence on where your business ranks in the local pack. The conclusion? Google Posts had no measurable impact on rankings.

Joy summarized by providing a “Successful Google Post Blueprint” — this is one to save for later!

🧐 Everything you need to know about Google Posts but were afraid to ask...here's the blueprint from @JoyanneHawkins 🔗 https://t.co/9VblFLqgpn #localu#smallbiz@SterlingSkyInc#MozConSwag#mozcon#mozcon2021pic.twitter.com/05rgk3ymhQ

— Andy Simpson (@ndyjsimpson) July 13, 2021

Joyce Collardé — Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing Full-Funnel Optimization for B2B Success

In this session, Joyce covered the long sales cycles for B2B businesses that pose a unique set of challenges for converting visitors into coveted users. Success requires a strategic approach that goes beyond the landing page to include your entire site.

"CRO should be a conversation with your users. They ask a question and we provide an answer."#mozcon@JoyceCollardepic.twitter.com/OtAcHUxdN1

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Joyce walked through strategies for three tried-and-true methods for increasing your conversion rate and winning more business:

Goal #1: Attracting users to your website

Goal #2: Giving users the best experience and leading them to conversion points

Goal #3: Tracking success and encouraging return visitors

Some actionable tips from @JoyceCollarde's talk - Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing full-funnel optimization for B2B success: - Keep user journey in mind - Test and track everything - There's no content-cutter approach - Honesty & transparency wins#mozconpic.twitter.com/a2rGdu5BqP

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Casie Gillette — Counterintuitive Content: How New Trends Have Disrupted Years of Bad Advice

I love the honesty in this tweet from Casie!

What the heck?! My presentation has already been recorded...why am I still nervous? 😬 It's not too early for a beer right... #MozCon

— Casie Gillette (@Casieg) July 13, 2021

In her presentation, Casie looked at content from an entirely different perspective and talked about how you can start creating content on your own terms, because really, there's no one way to do content marketing.

According to Casie, counterintuitive marketing is “the idea of bucking trends to do what is right for YOUR site”. Casie showed that more content is NOT always best. Sometimes optimizing existing content can be far more powerful than creating new content.

@Casieg#mozcon the effects of optimizing existing content and adding more CTAs throughout the site: pic.twitter.com/7x8lvm8yUB

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

There is no one size fits all solution to content marketing. Things change and sometimes you need to think counterintuitively.

Fantastic advise on how to evaluate your content goals and strategy!🙂@Casieg#MozCon@Mozpic.twitter.com/iSKIQSbQsk

— Laura Green (@GreenLauraV) July 13, 2021

How do we do this? Casie suggests a few focus areas:

Performance

What were your goals and did you hit them?

Utilize Google Search Console to find opportunities

Competitors

Don’t copy competitors, but pay close attention to what they are doing for ideas. What is working well that we can do better?

Utilize social media platforms, such as LinkedIn where you can gather intel on the ads that your competitors are running.

Search and keywords

Don’t forget to go back each year and re-evaluate the keywords that you are targeting

Remember, that just because something is driving traffic, it doesn’t mean that it’s the right traffic.

📢📢📢"Just because something is driving traffic doesn't mean it's the right traffic." — @Casieg Re-evaluate your keywords to make sure intent matches your goals.#MozCon

— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021

“All content should have a goal.” @Casieg#MozCon

— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 13, 2021

Brie E Anderson — Reporting for Duty: Why You Need to Start Using GA4 TODAY

Despite some pre-conference nerves, Brie absolutely blew us away with all her insights!

Me 10 minutes before my presentation goes live at #MozCon: - reevaluating EVERYTHING - do I know anything? - I should have put my dog photos in my slides - what would @BritneyMuller do? - pops a buspirone - stares at screen Okay... let’s do this I guess 😅 pic.twitter.com/jzJmi0XXSQ

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 13, 2021

She also challenged us to get started with GA4 now — before we have to.

Why You Need to Start Using GA4 today by @brie_e_anderson - Collect pre-defined events - Event-specific dashboards - Track micro, macro events & conversions - Better, more visual graphs - Identify outliers fast - Predictive analytics & AI Start by using both GA4 & UA#mozconpic.twitter.com/VPjsHr7jaE

— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021

Brie told us that in GA4 we’ll find:

EASY, ADVANCED, TRACKING

BADASS (& CUSTOM) VISUALS

GOOGLE MAY TELL US SECRETS

But also highlighted that it is NOT a replacement for Universal Analytics, so you need to track both.

🚨#GA4 does not bring in retrospective data! And it's not a replacement for Universal Analytics!🚨 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

You might ask, then what are the benefits of using GA4? I’ll let some of Brie’s fans outline some highlights:

Let's talk about badass & custom visuals, please! @brie_e_anderson#MozConpic.twitter.com/SCUwcWWsL8

— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 13, 2021

Wow!!! Go @brie_e_anderson Go!!! Hand this over to your CEO #mozconpic.twitter.com/waWszEMvc7

— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021

Holy analytics, Batman - #GA4 lets you *make your own line graphs* with *built-in anomaly detection*!!! This is perfect for those of us who only trust the visuals we create ourselves 😂 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon

— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021

What are you waiting for? Get your website into GA4!

Rob Ousbey — Beyond the Basics: 5 SEO Tricks for Uncovering Advanced Insights from Your SEO Data

In this session, Rob showed us how to breathe new life into our standard SEO data, and we walked away with more advanced insights — and new tools — that are sure to impress our team (and our boss!)

We all get to play with the new tool? @RobOusbey is like Oprah right now, y'all!#mozconpic.twitter.com/Z8hqH880gX

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 13, 2021

And what are the five SEO tricks?

1. Find link opportunities from the SERP

2. Group ranking keywords to spot split opportunities

3. Tag URLs to find real issues

4. Tag GA for category-level insights

5. Tag competitors’ top URLs for ideas

Be sure to check out Rob’s presentation in the MozCon video bundle when it’s out on Friday for even more amazing tips!

He's a JavaScript Wizard!! 🧙 Thanks for such an eye opening #mozcon presentation @RobOusbey and some AWESOME #seotools . Looking forward to honing my keyword, topic, and URL clustering skills to scope out #SEO wins even faster 💨 https://t.co/GxRrKvseQp

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Britney Muller — The Cold Hard Truth about CTR and Other Common Metrics

Britney closed out day two by showing us how to quash our reporting woes and make easy work of identifying exactly why your website’s performance changed.

She asked us what makes superforecasters — a group that has predicted future events with a great deal of accuracy — so successful. Before giving us the answer, she reminded us that it’s really easy to be led astray by data — but had some tips and tools to share to help make sure we don’t get too off track.

So, what made superforecasters so successful? Their ability to rethink everything. To do the same, Britney challenged us to:

Think like a scientist

Define our identity in terms of values, not opinions

Seek out information that goes against our views

@BritneyMuller I am currently rethinking everything #mozcon

— Chase Freezman (@ChaseFreezman) July 13, 2021

"seek out info that challenges your views and find joy in being wrong!!" @BritneyMuller#MozCon AMAZING. Best quote by far. Already blown away by this talk. pic.twitter.com/5s0Zznee0g

— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021

Absolutely love that @BritneyMuller's prez brought this quote from Austin Knight to mind - "The road to mediocrity is paved with best practices." #MozCon

— Taylor Murchison (@TaylorMurchison) July 13, 2021

Day two — done!

Wow! Only one more day left for this year's MozCon! What stood out the most for you on day two? Tell us on Twitter with #MozCon!