#not to say there were NO good bloggers or metas over those 3 years just that they usually came in a package with stuff i didn't want to see

[orionsangel86]

Hey All, 

So yeah I’ve been neglecting this blog big time since the season finale and I want to give an explanation. Which is more for my own benefit than anyone elses actually since sometimes writing things down can really help even if you don’t think anyone is gonna read it...

I’ve been running this blog for two and a half years now. Before this blog, I had never involved myself in online fandom or even internet communities in general. I just didn’t do that kind of thing because I didn’t even know about it. I have thoroughly enjoyed the majority of the time spent here. I have enjoyed building online friendships and getting to know this community - a community I have always seen as being honest and friendly and full of bloggers I respect and would hope also respect me. 

Because I am relatively new to online fandom, I guess I have also been extremely naive. When I first started this blog I didn’t do it because I wanted to validate my own opinion of this show, I didn’t do it because I wanted to be a big blogger with lots of followers and posts that gained a lot of notes either. None of that stuff has ever really bothered me too much, I’m not looking for fandom fame here, never have. At first I wasn’t really even seeking out friendships to bleed over into my real life - I was depressed and a bit of a hermit at the time so any idea of making friends outside of the online space just wasn’t on the agenda. My whole reason for joining fandom was because I had previously spent around a year lurking on certain meta writers blogs reading their stuff and thinking “wow” and “I want to interact with these people because this is all awesome”. I wanted to share my opinion and bounce ideas off of those bloggers who I respected and thought were funny and intelligent and kind people. I wanted to get to know them and discuss the show with them.

That was all I ever wanted. End of story. No fame, no massive following myself. No viral posts. Just communication with people I respected.

I got that. For a long time. I still have in a lot of ways. Along the line, I also somehow found myself meeting up with some of these people in real life, and getting closer to them, to the point that now some of them are people I consider my best friends. Others I may have only met for the first time recently, whose blogs I have followed since the beginning, and who I hope I will continue to meet and remain friends with for the foreseeable future - because they are awesome too.

I don’t regret those friendships for one second. But what I do regret is the mess caused by getting close to people who you also interact with in fandom. Because with fandom comes the wank, and when that wank then bleeds into your real life, it really fucks you up. 

So this is where I have been, not just for the past few weeks since I have been MIA, but in fact for around 3 months now. Mentally and emotionally exhausted because of drama that started in fandom that bled over into my real life, and has caused me more emotional upset and heartache than falling out with a former “best friend” a few years back ever did. It is actually shocking how much this former fandom drama has effected me, so much so, that even the people closest to me, who are aware of all the details, probably still don’t know just how much this has fucked with my head and caused me to regress into a shell. It’s really fucking bad and has been effecting my life in more ways than one. 

I don’t think people realise how much all this shit affects us. It was easier when I could separate it. Fandom in one box, real life in a different box. Use each one to escape the other. For the past 3 months there has been no fucking escape for me.

Why am I telling you all this? I guess because I feel like it could help others who are overwhelmed by fandom, by being in a community where it is possible for anyone to suddenly find themselves with a huge following and influence others. It's so fucking easy for that kind of thing to go to people's heads, and there are people in this community who will abuse that and use their status and power to abuse people and generally be shitty human beings because no matter what they do there will be others who will support them and think the sun shines out their ass.

Anyway. I'm not here to talk specifics. I did consider it, but I won't. Though some people in this fandom have really hurt me, I know they will never truly apologise for their actions, or even admit to being responsible. They don’t give a shit about me and in some cases barely know who I am. Doesn’t mean they didn’t hurt me and fuck up my life for a period of time. Others have sat at the side lines and watched as I slowly lost myself to all this shit and instead of being a friend and give me the support I desperately needed, have been complicit in the wank, and let themselves be influenced by the very assholes who started this crap.

Regardless, I wanted this post to be a lesson to those newer to fandom, perhaps there are people out there who have been in a position where they have been hurt by supposed "big name fans" and also get sick in their stomachs when people continue to sing their praises, and can't avoid those people no matter what they do since Tumblr doesn't give us the ability to truly avoid other bloggers even with block and blacklist available. That is my situation now. I cannot continue enjoying this community whilst I am constantly having to be reminded of what I have gone through over the past few months, and because of that, before I come back properly, I need to drastically curate my dash, utilise the unfollow, block and blacklist options, and I suppose carve myself out a new space. A fresh start perhaps. I am still so terribly disappointing in everything. I used to adore our corner of fandom, but it has become so fucking toxic if I don’t try to shelter myself from it I’ll never heal, and I don’t yet want to leave completely.

Nevertheless, I shall persist, because believe it or not, this show we all love still brings me joy, and I want to talk about it again, to my hearts content, with people I care about in this space. But I will be extra careful in future about those who try to connect with me. I have learned my lessons, and I am done. Shitty behaviour online won’t be taken lightly, and I won’t have any hesitation calling people out for it in future.

So here are some lessons I have learned and try to remind myself of every day when dealing with fandom:

If you have been hurt by something, no matter how small, your emotions are valid and you deserve a sincere apology.

People who are truly your friends will stand by you. Those who don't stand by you are not worth your time.

Emotional manipulation is cruel. Don't let people do it. Don't let anyone invalidate your pain by making a situation about them.

Especially when you are then forced into impossible choices.

Especially when your feelings are ignored and you are put in situations that make you extremely uncomfortable.

Just because someone has a big following and comes across sweet and nice online doesn't mean they are. We all have online personas. A lot of people are fake. Take them off their pedestals before you watch them fall off.

Don't believe nasty rumours about people, but understand that blindly singing people's praises is just as bad. No one is fucking perfect no matter how much people may try to portray perfection.

Learn the difference between someone who genuinely wants your friendship and people who want to use you for online validation and popularity. This is important.

Even the smartest people can be emotionally manipulated. it’s not a flaw. It’s a product of someone elses cruelty. It’s not an insult for someone to try to tell you this either. It just means they care about you. 

If you are ever made to feel like your feeling don’t matter, or that you should get over your feelings, get those who tell you that out of your life.  Your feelings matter. You matter. You matter a hell of a lot more than the people who would try to deny you.

Social Justice issues are important, but social justice cannot be an excuse for nasty behaviour. Be wary of those that use social justice as a front for treating people badly. 

Be fucking kind to each other. Treat people with respect, and you will have their respect in return.

Lastly, I want to say that I know I’m not perfect. I can sometimes be pretty fucking horrible, especially when I’m feeling hurt and emotionally vulnerable. I have written the above lessons for me and that last point? To be kind to each other? I need to remind myself of that. To be kind to people I don’t agree with, even if those people attack me. Even if those people have caused me severe emotional stress. Sometimes I fail at being kind. Sometimes I am gonna hurt people including myself. I am sorry for that. I truly am. I do try to recognise my own flaws here and try to be sincere in my message.  I have been so stressed and I just can’t deal anymore. I’m not a bad person, but I know that some of you will read this post and seriously disapprove of it. Perhaps you feel it wasn’t necessary for me to post such a public message. Or that I am just trying to cause unnecessary drama (I’m really not). Or that I want attention (I don’t). I expect people to unfollow me because of this, and I’m okay with that. You do what you have to do. 

From my perspective I HAD to get it all down. I had to pour it all out of me like drawing poison from a wound. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. It’s been eating me alive. It was the only way I could bring myself to get back onto here because this place used to be my passion. I want my passion back.

What I don’t want is anyone asking me to tell them specifics. I want to put everything behind me and start afresh now. I need to rid myself of that negativity and just focus on the good stuff, on the stuff I came here for to begin with. I’ve got a lot going on in my real life separate to fandom drama and I want this to be my escape from that once again, I need this to be a happy place once more and will do whatever necessary to find that happy place.

I’m sorry guys, I know this was super long and prob super confusing for some people to read. I guess just know that I’m gonna try to be back and much more positive and happy than I was before now that this shit is behind me. I’m gonna keep this blog a happy place, ignore and block any sources of wank and negativity, and only post fun stuff about the show going forward. (Aside from the standard show related wank that may crop up here every now and again thanks to Bucklemming) If you are still with me after this long emotional essay, I hope you’ll still be with me going forward, and god knows I could use some actual real friends right now. 

Thanks for reading.

:)

[wesleybates]

11 Real Uncommon Ways to Increase Website Traffic to eCommerce

Getting more users to come to your website can be a challenge if you don’t know what to do. Maybe you have tried some of the common ways to increase your website traffic. Having an eCommerce store may even complicate the process.

Let’s take a look at some more uncommon ways to increase website traffic.

In order to get web traffic to your eCommerce website, several things need to be in place. You need to make sure your site is built properly and employs a solid site structure and layout.

It should also be responsive, mobile-friendly, and optimized for search engines. That being said, we all know the common ways at your disposal for driving traffic to a website.

Yes, you can post on social media and run advertisements everywhere. However, what if you wanted to employ some of the more uncommon ways to increase website traffic?

Believe it or not, some of these techniques will actually give you a pretty nice boost in if they are implemented correctly.

What is Website Traffic?

Simply put, website traffic is the number of people that are visiting your website over a specific amount of time. This can be measured daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Perhaps the best baseline of measurement is to track monthly visitors. Google Analytics is a great way to track this data.

The idea behind driving traffic to a website is that the more traffic a website gets, the more likely it is to increase conversions. Whether those conversions are sales, link clicks, ad clicks, or affiliate marketing, the concept is the same.

Website owners try all sorts of things to increase website traffic. Some of these techniques fall flat because they are not implemented correctly or because they were the wrong process to use.

Another big problem that website owners face is gaining traffic but not conversions. A good example of this is an eCommerce website that posts on social media and gains visitors, but does not increase sales.

You see, an increase in website traffic doesn’t matter if you are not able to increase website conversions and make money.

What is eCommerce?

The term eCommerce means that you are selling a product online. Over the years, online stores have become wildly popular because it makes it easy for people to shop for products from anywhere.

There are several ways to set up an online store. The process you take will be based on the type of CMS platform you are using. One of the most popular options is WooCommerce.

This is a hugely popular online store platform that plugs directly into your WordPress website and gives you the ability to sell physical and digital products online.

One of the biggest issues online storeowners run into is trying to both increase website traffic and increase conversions. As stated above, you can try some of the more common techniques available to drive traffic to a website.

However, there are also some more uncommon methods you can use to help drive traffic to your eCommerce website and help with conversions. Even better, is most of the methods below will help you do this for free.

Let’s take a look at 11 uncommon ways to increase website traffic to your eCommerce website.

1. Build a Resource Page

A resource page is always a good thing to have on a website. However, this is also a great way to increase website traffic. You can do this in a few different ways. Add resources to the page, add thank you blurbs to companies you admire and have done work with, or add your favorite products and services.

A resource page just isn’t a good move for SEO purposes, though. It also keeps your current website users and customers engaged because it is considered new content going up. This leads to repeat visitors and an increase in conversion rates.

2. Overhaul and Restructure Your Old Blog Posts

If you have a business website, eCommerce site, or both, it is always a good idea to have a blog section. Starting a blog on your website gives you an outlet to post fresh new ideas. These can be product or service related, news and updates, stories, and other articles you may want to publish.

Over time, your blog posts can become stale, outdated, and may need some content and statistical updates. Things like new screenshots, new images in general, and specific content revamps can really help increase traffic.

If you add other SEO specifics like keyword optimization and meta descriptions, your old blog posts have a chance to skyrocket.

3. Guest Blog on Other Websites

Another uncommon and often overlooked way to increase website traffic is to guest blog. Guest blogging on other websites has a bunch of benefits for you.

Not only does it get your name out to people who would have otherwise not seen it, but it also gives you the chance to get important links going back to your site from other solid industry websites.

It is a good idea to guest blog on sites that are at least somewhat like your own. You want to hit an audience that will have an interest in what you are selling on your site.

Never be afraid to approach other website owners either. The worst answer you will get is a simple “no.” At which point you have lost nothing. More often than not though you will get a resounding “yes” because it is basically free content for other sites.

Remember, this will give you a backlink to your website, which is excellent in regards to SEO purposes.

4. Optimize Your Site for LSI Keywords

In order to do this, you need to know what an LSI keyword is. Once you do, you can put this practice into place. You see, LSI keywords are words and phrases related to your target keyword.

And don’t get me wrong, it isn’t exactly easy to rank high for any keywords without putting in the work. However, using an LSI keyword strategy is a fantastic way to help your article rank higher and increase website traffic.

If you are still a little confused regarding this technique, then take a look at this example.

Say you are writing a post or building a page about social media. Obviously “social media” or something close to that will be your main keyword. The LSI keywords would be words like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

5. Start Doing Content Transformation

Content transformation is simple. Basically you take your current content and transform it into another type of format. There are several different formats to choose from. Take that content and transform it into an eBook, video, infographic, or podcast.

When you transform the content and repurpose, it gives your audience more ways to interact with it and gives them several different ways to view and use the material.

These days, video content is extremely popular. Oftentimes, transforming or converting your text to a video piece will help increase website traffic right away.

6. Properly Submit Website to Search Engines

A common mistake website owners make is not getting their site properly indexed and submitted on the big search engines. Yes, once your website is up you can perform all types of search engine and website optimizations.

However, getting your website properly submitted to the big search engines if often overlooked. You want to make sure you have a proper XML Sitemap on your website.

Using tools like Google Search Console and submitting to Yahoo and Bing the right way will increase your website traffic because it helps the search engines properly index and list your site.

This is the next step to take after the common website SEO moves have been made.

7. Require Users to Share for Bonus Content

You should always have social sharing buttons on your website. This is a fantastic way to increase website traffic because it allows site users to share your content across social networks.

In order to take this a step further, you can also require users to share content in order for them to get more bonus content. The bonus content needs to be something that your users will want.

Something like an informative eBook, or maybe a file they might want. Maybe a specific file or audio download or other relevant info that will make them share.

This means your content is being shared by your users, and others are seeing it and getting interested as well.

8. Start a Podcast

Three simple words, Podcasts are exploding! As a matter of fact, 36% of Americans listen to a podcast every month. This number continues to rise as well, as both creating a podcast and submitting it for listeners gets easier and easier.

Not a lot of people who do podcasts create them specifically to increase website traffic. However, in this case, it is a great idea because whenever you gain a listener you will also garner interest in your website and other content.

Going on podcasts that others have created is also a good option. You can be the guest and plug your own website and gain traffic that way as well.

9. Ad Swap With Another Website

One of the more uncommon ways you can increase website traffic is to do an ad swap with another website. Ad swapping is exactly what you think it is…a relevant website runs an ad for you that links back to where you want, and you do the exact same thing for said website.

No money switches hand, but it is a great way to market your site on other websites and help increase traffic back to you. You can actually do this with as many other relevant sites as you want.

The more ad swapping you do, the greater potential you have to increase website traffic.

The best thing about ad swapping is it won’t cost you anything. So you can get some good online marketing in place for no cost to you.

10. Promote Your Site Using the Blogger Outreach Method

Okay, before we dig into blogger outreach for a second, it is important to remember that yes, oftentimes this can come off as spam (initially) and may not be your first option to increase website traffic.

However, if handled correctly, this can be a very powerful and personal way to get more traffic flowing to your website.

Basically, blogger outreach is a way of putting your content, product, service, website, etc, in front of relevant bloggers and journalists by sending them personalized emails.

The main goal here is, of course, to get these people talking about what you have sent them. This, if done correctly, will lead to increased website traffic.

The main problem here is that sometimes these emails can come off as spammy for some. But, if you take the time to personalize them (even if you are using an email template), then these emails can be very powerful.

Create a solid one and hit the right people, and your website or product will get more eyes on it in no time at all.

11. Run a Contest or a Giveaway

Running a contest or a giveaway is a good way to not only drum up some interests because users have a chance at something for free, but it is a great way to interact with site users and gain increased traffic.

You will notice that most of your favorite brands and other websites have certain contests and giveaways.

There is a simple reason for this. They work. They build brand recognition and build website traffic over time. There are several great ways to run a contest or giveaway from your website.

Whichever way you choose to go with it, simply interacting and offering something of value to your website users increases their interest in most everything else you do as well.

Final Thoughts

There are multiple ways to increase website traffic, both quickly and over time. Many of the more popular ways to increase website traffic are used by everyone, and oftentimes, you have to pay for them to be relevant.

By trying out some new, more uncommon ideas, you give your eCommerce website a chance to increase traffic and gain popularity over time. Furthermore, these ideas will not only increase website traffic, but will also increase website conversion rates.

Go over and try some of the ideas above. See what works for you and what may not. I hope the ideas are helpful and that over time, you see a significant increase in website traffic and conversions.

At Advanced Digital Media Services, our team of Web Designing Arvada, CO has some of the best e-commerce website builders to make your website clean, organized, and visually appealing to the customer. Get in touch with us now to learn how we can improve your e-commerce website!

[webbygraphic001]

10 Popular Design Trends It’s Time to Let Die

If you’ve ever moved from one home to another, you know how difficult it can be to get rid of things you’ve owned for years. While digging through your closet, you find an old pair of pants you used to wear all the time despite the growing holes in the knees. But you tell yourself, “Maybe I’ll wear them around the house when it gets warmer” or “I bet the grunge look will come back in style”.

It’s easy to make these kinds of justifications in web design and development, too. You think:

“I’ve used the keyword meta tag for as long as I can remember. What can it hurt to keep doing so?”

Similar to how your clothes may become outdated or your appliances obsolete over time, the same thing happens with design and development trends. Rather than hold onto techniques that no longer serve you and only add more to your workload, it’s a much better idea to clear them out and make way for modern trends that’ll have a greater impact.

10 Popular Design Trends It’s Time to Let Die

When we talk about outdated web design trends, we’re not just talking about ones that have been obsolete for years. We’re also referring to trends and techniques that we know for a fact compromise the user experience and need to go away ASAP.

1. Cheesy Stock Photos

There’s nothing inherently bad about using stock photos. Many clients don’t have the budgets or wherewithal to create their own company photos and stock photos are a viable alternative.

That said, there was a time when “bad” (i.e. super cheesy and unrealistic) stock photos were all the rage. Even today, you’ll find websites that use these kinds of photos because there’s still an assumption that two people shaking hands in a well-lit conference room signals trust. (It doesn’t.)

Image via DepositPhotos.

2. Hero Sliders

Image slider technology was pretty great in its heyday. It allowed web designers to conserve space while displaying a number of promotional offers at once. In addition to sliders often slowing down page speeds, they also have a tendency to slow users down as they distract them from moving onto other parts of a website.

Verizon Wireless, for instance, has a great example of a strong but simple hero image design in 2019:

This is vastly different from the image slider it used back in 2013:

For the most part, we’ve learned to be more efficient with this space, though there are still some websites that can’t make up their minds about which offer to show above the fold… which only makes it more difficult for visitors to decide next steps. Take the initiative and do it for them with a single hero banner.

3. Autoplay

It’s not common to find websites with background audio, let alone autoplay audio, these days. That said, what you do occasionally find are websites that automatically play videos or ads with audio. Needless to say, this needs to stop. If your video (or audio) players don’t allow your visitors to take control of when they start, change that up now.

4. The 3-Click Rule

Over the years, web designers have looked for ways to decrease friction in the user experience. The three-click rule was meant to be one of the ways to do this. However, according to a recent report from the Nielsen Norman Group, there’s never been any data to back up this claim:

“In fact, a study by Joshua Porter has debunked it; the study showed that user dropoff does not increase when the task involves more than 3 clicks, nor does satisfaction decrease. Limiting interaction cost is indeed important, but the picture is more complicated than simply counting clicks and having a rule of thumb for the maximum number allowed.”

Rather than minimize for minimization’s sake, consider the complexity of the task or funnel you’re designing when determining quantity of steps.

5. (External) Links That Open in the Same Tab

There are a number of reasons to add links to your content: for navigational purposes, promotional purposes, and referential purposes. But when you add a hyperlink to your text, consider the following: Is it okay if the link directs visitors to a page in this same browser tab?

External links, for instance, should always open in a new browser tab. Your goal in designing a website is to get more visitors to convert. Letting an external link replace your website in the open tab will only decrease the chances of that happening. In some cases, internal links shouldn’t be opened in the same tab either. So, be sure to think about this the next time you add a link to your site.

6. Non-Traditional Scrolling

Although we’ve become accustomed to swipe gestures in mobile apps, horizontal and other non-traditional scrolling isn’t something that’s caught on with websites. While it’s definitely a design trend that helped many businesses set themselves apart from the pack a few years back, it’s just too gimmicky to use these days.

Robby Leonardi’s interactive resume website was one of the first I remember seeing and it was a brilliant way to capture attention — especially from those of us who grew up with Mario.

But today? Any sort of non-traditional scrolling is just impractical and unnecessary. Even Robby’s current website has broken up this side-scrolling design and turned it into a vertical-scrolling page:

If you want to keep visitors engaged with your website in this day and age, don’t make them figure out how to scroll through your website. 

7. Keyword Meta Tag

For years (we’re talking nearly a decade), the keyword meta tag has not been supported by popular search engines. Despite knowing that the meta tag is useless, some designers still take the time to add it in. But why bother if it’s an extra step that gets you nothing in return?

8. Bad Pop-ups

Although pop-ups have undergone an evolution over the years — from the super-annoying pop-up ads that appeared outside the browser to the ever-present privacy notices we now see thanks to GDPR. While there is certainly some value in using pop-ups on a website, there are just too many kinds of bad pop-ups that need to disappear.

“Bad” pop-ups are ones that:

Show up too early on a website (like the second someone enters it);

Appear too many times during a single or return visit;

Send users to Facebook Messenger to collect their lead magnet and then bombard them with messages there;

Contain two buttons. Users that accept the offer, get a friendly message. Those that don’t are served up aggressive or shame-inducing language;

Repeat an offer that’s already designed into the website as a promotional banner.

9. Slow-Loading Websites

Mobile websites are notoriously difficult to optimize for speed when compared to their desktop counterparts. Unlike in years past where you could’ve rationalized away speed optimizations for mobile, today, it needs to be a priority with Google’s mobile-first indexing. PWAs are one way to give your mobile site an instant speed boost.

On a related note, by designing a PWA instead of a mobile-responsive website, you’d be able to cater to users with poor or no wi-fi connectivity — a segment that’s often been overlooked in web design.

10. Flash

I cannot believe I’m having to include this last one in 2019, but it seems there are still websites using the Flash Player.

Adobe has already told us that it would be cutting support for Flash next year. Web browsers are starting to remove their support for Flash players as well. And good riddance. Flash has long had issues with security flaws and usability issues.

If you’re trying to hold out on this (or your clients are dragging their feet), keep in mind that this is what visitors will see on many browsers in 2020 and beyond:

Bottom line: If the creator of Flash is pulling support, you need to do the same for any of your websites that still use it.

Wrap-Up

It’s easy to get wrapped up in what the next big thing is in web design — AR tech, typography trends, color gradients, etc. But what about all of those trends and techniques that have become a habit over the years?

Rather than hold onto outdated design strategies that will only hinder your progress as a web designer and hold your clients’ websites back, start shedding these obsolete (or soon-to-be obsolete) practices now.

Source from Webdesigner Depot https://ift.tt/35F5F4K from Blogger https://ift.tt/34zbnVB

[kitashiwrites]

I'm sorry my post was really aggressive. I still stand by my point that it ISN'T fair to dismiss Mor's romantic feelings (or lack thereof) towards Az, but how I acted was really awful. You don't have to post this publicly, but I hope you know I'm very sorry. My intention wasn't to try to start drama, but just receive an explanation over WHY you still ship Moriel. My way of going about it was TERRIBLE. I know sorry is just a word, but I'M SORRY.

2/2 I didn’t send you three asks. I only sent you one? Just to clear that up.3/3 I also didn’t send more than one ask. :/ 

Okay Anon. While I find it extremely hard to believe because of the timing (especially because for as long as I have been on here, I have RARELY gotten asks, let alone 3 in such quick succession that are so similar), as well as the fact that you clearly don’t stand behind your words because you felt the need to do this all on anon/have to make sure we know that you still think we are wrong, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt & accept your apology.In regards to your question, why I still ship Moriel, @sarahviehmann honestly said it best in her original answer to you: “ACOMAF was written in a way that intended for them to be shipped. So those people spent a year building up their fanon and meta and so forth, only to have the rug pulled out from under them.”

(For the sake of everyone, I’m putting this under a cut. It got way long.)

I hated ACOWAR. I’ve made no secret of that. I’ve also made no secret as to WHY. I’ve been writing fic for this series for over a year, & heavily focused on ACOMAF. I started when there were literally 7 fics posted to Ao3. Basically all of my free time at home & all of my breaks at work were spent either writing fic, discussing the series/meta with people here/talking my poor friends’ ears off over dinner, or planning fic for characters I wanted to explore in POV fics like Rhys, Tamlin, & Tarquin. Hell, I still have a 10 chapter Amarantha POV pre-ACOTAR through ACOTAR fic that’s over half written at 16k that I originally wanted to try as a surprise for my readers. I read ACOMAF enough times that I honestly would have said that I knew those characters as well as my own family, knew exactly what happened in which chapters, & got many comments here & on Ao3 from people who felt I’d captured the characters correctly, so I felt pretty good about what to expect going forward.

When ACOWAR spoilers came out, absolutely nothing made sense with what we knew or had been prior established canon. Most of all in regards to Mor, Rhys, Feyre, & Lucien, but I’m going to specifically focus on Mor, since she’s at the crux of the issue at hand. In Mor’s case, we took a woman who is described in ACOMAF as “a queen who owned her body, her life, her destiny, and never apologized for it” & says to Feyre, “I once lived in a place where the opinion of others mattered. It suffocated me, nearly broke me. So you’ll understand me, Feyre, when I say that I know what you feel, and I know what they tried to do to you, and that with enough courage, you can say to hell with a reputation. You do what you love, what you need”, & in ACOWAR made her a victim in circumstances that make absolutely no sense for the character we had known up until that date. Queen of the Hewn City? She wasn’t even treated with enough respect to be prepared to go into a meeting with her abusers, let alone shown that she is in charge. The first real female friend Feyre has ever had? Regulated to acting like a jealous girlfriend around Cassian whenever Nesta got too close. And speaking of Cassian, it was pointed out in another post (I’m sorry I don’t have the link right now) that the Cassian & Mor moments read like they were originally Az & Mor moments & were hastily changed when suddenly they weren’t supposed to be even friends. Nothing in this book read like it had been edited for continuity.

There are many bloggers who are far more qualified than I am to speak on Mor’s coming out scene, & while there was a divide, there were quite a few I know & follow who felt it was poorly written/bad rep, & I agree with their reasoning. Besides the fact that I don’t believe for one dang second that no one in the Inner Circle at a minimum would have picked up on something bothering Mor in 500 years or that she wouldn’t have at least told them even if she hid everything from Keir, there is the fact of Azriel. Azriel is in love with her, no disputing it. But it is mentioned by Rhys that Az has always thought himself unworthy of her, & Mor says that she could take her clothes off in front of him & he wouldn’t do anything. Does that sound like someone who is trying to avoid him because she isn’t interested, or someone who is creepily stalking her? In the Nessian short Wings & Embers, Cassian speaks on their relationship as well: “He wasn’t stupid. He knew she and Azriel were … whatever they were. Knew Azriel had been in love with Mor from the moment she’d strutted into the war-camp five centuries ago. And Cassian had been jealous—of Mor’s shy glances at Azriel in those first few weeks, and the fact that his dearest friend and brother … was looking at someone else.”

I’m not going to rehash Wings & Embers or ACOMAF for you. But as Sarah said, it was clearly written with them as a ship in mind, & this is from the POV of a character that has known them since the beginning, not just a few months like Feyre.

Why I still ship Moriel at this point? Because I ship it in any form. I love her & Az together period, even as friends. This ship was one of the ways @illyriantremors & I bonded originally, before we found out how much else we had in common & she became as good as a biological sister to me (I call her my Threadsister for a reason), because we shipped it back in the beginning before there was really any fic for it because it was overshadowed by Feysand, Nessian, & Elucien. Moriel was our Nessian; the unconfirmed side-ship with so much potential & evidence to back it up. When Sierra met SJM at San Diego Comic Con last summer, SJM dedicated Sierra’s copy of ACOMAF to Moriel. Why the af would an author do that if they planned to destroy a ship in the next book from the beginning?

We still love Moriel because it is hard to let go of something you’ve loved that much after you’ve been strung along & then had the rug pulled out from under you with no actual basis in ACOMAF to say “oh, it was there all along”; like when rereading ACOTAR through the ACOMAF filter, as I like to say to people, & seeing the clues that were left to the deeper story for Rhys. For me, those were not in ACOMAF upon reading it again after ACOWAR. I noticed you using my tags in your defense of yourself to Sarah regarding why I wanted to ignore ACOWAR &, by your interpretation, erase Mor’s sexuality. If you had read any of my blog at all after ACOWAR, you would have read that isn’t true, but I’ll spell it out for you: I want to ignore ACOWAR & what it did to my favorite characters’ personalities/their interactions with each other. I want to forget that Mor’s agency was taken away from her & that she was regulated to a plot twist. I want to forget that Az has been made out to be a creepy stalker. I want to forget Rhys treating Mor like she would be too emotional to deal with the negotiations with Kier & Eris & so he & Az didn’t tell her. I want to forget Feyre using Lucien to make Tamlin jealous in the Spring Court while she dismantled it from within & putting him in danger. And so much more.

I personally hate the book for multiple reasons, ranging everywhere from inconsistent characterization to grammar/editing issues. But I’m stuck with the facts it gave us, which is why writing fic is so hard to even consider anymore. It made everything about the series, not just Mor & Az, something I no longer can love with the intensity I once did, & the fandom diminishes that love more & more everyday with their bullying of people for not believing exactly the way they do, which is exactly what you contributed to when you sent those asks to myself & Sierra. And honestly, I couldn’t care less what you think of me. But if you had even looked at one of Sierra’s actual written posts/answers to asks—just one—you would have seen how quiet she’s been about her love for them as a ship & how determined she’s been to not to offend people while she’s been trying to come to terms with losing something that has been a lifesaver for her, to the point she has mostly stopped contributing to the fandom at all. She posted two Moriel drabbles during her birthday week because she was inspired by the Azriel candle I got her for her birthday, & as she said to you in her response to your original message, they were her way of saying farewell to Moriel. And guess what: even though it isn’t canon, people liked them.

I view Mor as bi, & if she’s given a healthy, happy female love interest in a future installment, then awesome. I want Moriel at least as close friends because I genuinely don’t think Az (at least the one from ACOMAF that actually made sense) would begrudge her if he knew the truth. Would he be sad? Sure, but I think he would support her nonetheless, just as the rest of the Inner Circle would. But I have absolutely no faith that SJM will give Mor anything good because she can milk the drama and turmoil she’s created, & I have no desire to see the characters & ships (across the board) I have loved so much destroyed any further.

I think @my-name-is-fireheart put it perfectly in her chime in on Sarah’s post: “Also, we should keep in mind that Mor expresses sexual attraction to men, she just prefers women. How she feels about men romantically is also blurred, though it’s slightly more clear. She says she doesn’t think she loves Az romantically but she doesn’t want to try it just to see.” SJM didn’t even know how to break her own ship apart properly to fit what you suggested, which is a good chunk of why we are even having this discussion right now.

I know Moriel is no longer canon. Cazigan (Cassian/Azriel/Mor) isn’t canon either, but I still love that. I have enjoyed their interactions with each other more than anything else since they were introduced in ACOMAF. The entire Inner Circle made me so happy for their closeness & how much of a family they were. I feel for a plot twist & a couple extra Benjamin Franklins, SJM destroyed everything that made one of my favorite characters in the entire series who she was (a strong, independent woman who didn’t let her circumstances break her & showed Feyre how not to let hers break her) & made her a poor caricature of herself, & made Az something he never has been before either because SJM hastily had to make her new & poorly executed addition work.

I shouldn’t be surprised though. This is the woman who attempted to retcon Eris of all characters into a decent person. And also took away any modicum of being able to read Tamlin as the multifaceted antagonist he had been & just turned him into a completely hateful ass with no loyalty to anyone to further drive home how perfect Rhys is supposed to be (which he definitely is not in ACOWAR, & I say that as someone who loved the morally grey character of Rhys).

TL;DR I ship Mor with Az in any form, even as friends, Mor being bi is not an issue, & I have lost all respect for SJM as an author after ACOWAR for giving us a poorly written/poorly edited product after the anticipation/hype this book had. Make of that what you will; I don’t care. I’m out of effs to give, & your ask & the other Az one I received, no matter who it was from or what your intentions were, pretty much tipped the scale in favor of me wanting to step back even further & have nothing to do with this fandom ever again.

I would ask that next time you think you have a problem with someone (because I doubt Sierra & I will be the last people you do this to), please think about how it comes across & think about your target. Your original ask was terribly hateful, & there is no amount of apology that can take that hurt away. And you would be amazed how far a little kindness & grace when asking a question instead of an accusatory message can go.

This explanation is more than you probably bargained for when you started this yesterday, but that’s the last I’ll say on any of this.

[orionsangel86]

Hey tumblr people, friends, SPN family,

You may have realised that my blog has become the virtual version of tumbleweed rolling through a desert in recent weeks/months. I noticed on checking my blog recently that I have had an influx of new followers which I think is predominantly thanks to a shout out from Shirley (@destieldrabblesdaily) which I am infinitely grateful for because I consider her one of the best blogs in the SPN fandom. It is for that reason among others that I feel pretty damn bad about not being around recently to share in your speculation, meta and general love for the show.

I haven’t said much since the finale, or even about the finale. I never wrote an episode review for any of the last 3 episodes of season 12. (still haven’t seen 12x21 and don’t plan to) I guess I just want to explain why.

In the past few months SPN has been losing its grip on me, I guess I always thought this would happen one day as it always has in the past with other things that I have falling in love and obsession with until I just… well… get over it. Usually its when a show finishes or movie franchise ends though, rather than whilst it’s still going on. I haven’t felt that itchy desire to constantly check my dash, or write meta or obsess over speculation for the show lately at all. I tried re-watching season 12 and I just couldn’t maintain my concentration. I instead started watching other shows – American Gods is fantastic – and getting out a bit more as well. Tumblr kinda sucked me into this pit where my social life pretty much dried up and became non-existent. Though in all fairness, tumblr also got me through a pretty nasty stint of depression.

I keep hoping that this will be temporary, that perhaps when season 13 comes to our screens that I’ll jump right back in, but I’m not so sure. I guess I’ll watch it, but I don’t know how much I’ll participate in fandom in the future. I want to, I still have that desire to get involved but I don’t have the energy or desire to write meta about the actual show right now. I guess I kinda feel like everything is already being said by the other fantastic meta writers on tumblr and my opinion isn’t really needed.

The thing is, I am tired of SPN. I am tired of the game they are playing with us. I say this, knowing full well that they are dangling destiel in front of us like a carrot dangled in front of a donkey, so close but still so far. Eventually we will get our carrot – of this I am almost certain – but they sure as hell will continue to put us through a bunch of utter crap before we get there.

This is what I am fed up with. I did start re-watching season 12 and I just can’t fathom some things that drove me crazy. Like why when we were first introduced to the British men of letters, it was two strong women who ruled the screen, but by the end, it was another two generic white men to add to our already generic white guy cast. They could have written it in so many different ways to how they did.

Billy’s death pissed me off, so did Alesha’s and Tasha’s. By the time they took Eileen from us I was fuming. Then when they went and wrote off Rowena with an off screen death only told to us in description form I had given up.

On top of this they continued to write scenes of non-con, scenes of violence against POC and women that could easily be avoided whilst maintaining suspense and drama, a dodgy plot point centering around a women fighting her right to choose against the white men trying to take that choice away from her, and on top of it all, fucking Lucifer still being a big part of the show when his character should have died at the end of season 11. His entire story this season was so boring I wanted to skip most of his scenes. I hated HATED his character.

I’m sorry to be negative. The show did some wonderful things this year that I am so happy about. Dean’s story arc was wonderful. His confrontation with Mary in 12x22 had me in tears and I screamed FINALLY out loud as he opened up and admitted things that he has kept inside for his whole life. Dean held this whole season together he really did. The emotional plot was wonderful, it’s what kept me around until the finale because I could see Dabb’s plan for the characters emotional development so clearly in the subtext and later text. Well, until 12x19 for Cas because after 12x19 I don’t understand a fucking thing Cas did and I bloody hope he really has been mind wammied by Jack all this time because otherwise it doesn’t make a lick of sense for his character development.

Ultimately, what season 12 did that was GREAT was threefold:

It built up Dean’s emotional development to its climax where he has finally let Sam ‘go’ and admit the years of abuse he suffered under John, as well as admitting that he was a parent to Sam rather than a brother. Dean’s entire story throughout the whole series has been building to this point and it was WONDERFUL to see.

It built up Sam’s story in the same way, in that he was able to finally break free from under Dean’s wing and accept his own responsibility and place in the world as a whole – as a leader and hero – rather than something tainted and wrong. Season 12 signalled the end of Winchester toxic co-dependency and I was HERE FOR THAT.

It gave us destiel. Now, I say this with certainty guys, although I know it is still contested. Consider it my parting gift to you. Destiel is real and we are going there. Season 12 basically gave it to us because it did things that it cannot now backtrack on. I have never been more certain. Even AFTER 8x17, after Dean’s confession, after “He’s in love… with humanity” and “it was all about saving one human” even after 11x19 and our Hunting Husbands, I still had a whole bunch of doubt on the topic. Now though? I don’t see how it is possible to watch 12x10, 12x12, 12x19 and now, the end of 12x23 without being like “hang on a freaking second – what the hell actually is going on with these guys?” Destiel is gonna happen. This is my speculation for you. Cas will be brought back but he will be brought back wrong and probably under Jack’s control and will walk away from Dean – still crying at his feet – all cold and emotionless as if Dean was nothing to him. Dean will then stop at nothing to get him back. I predict that will happen around the mid-season finale and it will be a big moment for destiel. Another 8x17 but more intense perhaps? Another ‘crypt scene’ but this time with a love confession from both sides? Guys I see it. I can’t not see it now. The one thing season 12 did was take away my doubts. Destiel is real and it is happening and I am pretty sure we will get there by end of season 13.

The problem is, this is no longer enough for me. Even if Season 13 starts with Cas coming back to life in some spectacular beauty and the beast moment which ends in a kiss and a cut to their wedding day… its still not enough anymore. I can’t watch this series just for a ship. I can’t keep going for the fucking carrot dangling in front of me when my hoofs are bleeding and raw and my back is breaking from the weight of all the shit I’ve been forced to carry. The carrot isn’t worth it.

I used to adore this show. Not for destiel, but for the stories, the mythology, the characters and their colourful world of Supernatural things. Now, the characters are slowly reaching peak development and I am getting fed up of watching them get beat down. I want them to have their peace, their happy ending. The stories are no longer fresh and exciting. They are Lucifer and his ridiculous Nephilim baby/not baby.

I am also so fed up of Cas’s story not making sense, of him being controlled or brainwashed or forced to do things he hates. Of his absence when it makes no sense (like when Claire is involved and not a word is spoken about him) or of writers writing him so off key that he comes across idiotic. (thanks Bucklemming). I can’t keep watching the writers butcher this character I adore with all my heart.  

I am so so happy for Wayward Sisters and I will support it with all my might. If only because these writers need to UNDERSTAND that they cannot keep killing off the female characters on this show like they mean nothing. Its just heartbreaking to think that we will never get Charlie, Eileen, Rowena, Billy, Alesha or any of the other female characters who have been wrongly killed off in Supernatural join the female cast of this spin off. I’m excited for Wayward Sisters more than I am for Supernatural right now, because Supernatural is just a massive disappointment for me.

I am sorry I feel this way, its been eating at me for a while. I think it’s the reason I have taken this break. I just can’t put all my time and energy into something that feels toxic to me. I live in fanfic at the moment because it is the characters I adore without the awful truth of canon – even if occasionally canon does still give us those fanfic moments – it’s the other moments that are the issue.

*sigh*

I’m sorry. Part of me desperately wants to hold on with all my might, to come back and throw myself into speculation and meta and all the stuff you guys are so awesome at, but another part of me is so so bitter its preventing me from feeling any joy from it.

Maybe when season 13 comes on I’ll forget this post and just start this blog up again. I certainly miss talking to the bloggers on here I consider my friends, I just feel that without contributing to anything I have no purpose on Tumblr, and I don’t want my negativity to affect anyone else. So in the meantime, this is goodbye. I may still visit and reblog stuff occasionally, but I won’t be writing anything for a while. A long while probably.

It’s been fun Tumblr, but from now on consider this an extended hiatus. Perhaps I’ll see you in the Autumn… perhaps this fleeting romance is over for good. I won’t know until I know. As for Supernatural, I have said my bit. Expect Destiel along with a side of bitter disappointment. Wayward Sisters will be amazing though. So long as they don’t let Bob Singer or Bucklemming anywhere near it that is.

[contemporarysex-blog]

Epistemics for Changemakers

If you want to change the world, you need to know about the world. Specifically, you need to know:

which things you can likely change and which ones you probably can't;

which changes are likely to have the greatest effect (and the fewest unwelcome side effects); and

which of these changes you personally can effect, and in what way (e.g. through direct action, working with a movement, convincing people, donating, symbolic action, ...).

In other words, you need to look at the world, and the mechanisms that are at work in it, with an eye for the gaps: for the places where you can put a lever, push, and then keep watching to see if what you intended is actually happening.

Sound easy? Let's take a look at some failure modes:

FAILURE MODE 1: Wishful Thinking

Say you want to fight obesity. You're good at writing and debating, so you have this idea that you just have to explain to people, in a way that they can understand, that they need to eat right and exercise. (I wish I was making this up.) So you write Tweets, blog posts, essays, maybe eventually even a book. Some people come to you with success stories, saying that you inspired them to slim down, and you feel really good. 

Then some scientist does a randomly controlled trial (by having one group of people read your book and a control group read, say, "How To Win Friends And Influence People") and it turns out that the peope in the control group lost just as much weight as those that read your book. She concludes that your assumptions about what causes obesity are fundamentally flawed and points to research suggesting that much of the BMI variation within a population may be explained by genetics.

Of course you don't buy that biodeterminist bullshit. All this means is that we need more explanations, even better explanations, start raising awareness earlier, etc. You become an advocate for fitness and nutrition classes in school, you help develop workshops and holiday camps, you collaborate with an awesome illustrator on a picture book aimed at three-year-olds that becomes an instant bestseller. Once again, you feel good. Whatever nagging doubt that insidious study managed to raise in you is rinsed away by the new wave of success.

But you're still wrong. You should have held on to that doubt. Not rolled over and accepted all the conclusions that the study's author drew from her data (for that, see the next failure mode), but you should have made an effort to find out if your basic assumption (here: that obesity is caused by a lack of information and motivation, and will go away if you supply those two) is sound enough for you to point all of your efforts in that direction. Especially if you are building your life and career about a project that's supposed to make the world a better place -- especially if you're a change maker, that is -- you need to listen to that odd noise coming from the engine; you need to actively look for indications that what you're doing might not work as intended, rather than shy away from them.

So the first rule is: Want to know the truth. If you want to change things, you need to know how things actually stand and how they work. Not necessarily in excessive detail (see below), but well enough so that you can be reasonably certain that you aren't operating off fundamentally flawed assumptions.

FAILURE MODE 2: Stopping Too Soon.

So you've seen people being burned by contact with Science, and you're determined to do better. This time around, when your anti-obesity program falls flat under scrutiny, you stop, take a step back, breathe deeply, and admit you were wrong. This is a scientist with a PhD from Oxbridge; you are just an upjumped blogger. If she says that people become obese because of genetics, then who are you to argue? So instead of denying the science (motivated reasoning!) you embrace it, pivot, and go focus on something else instead. If obesity is genetic and thus unchangeable (well, for now, and your talents don't really go the way of CRISPR &co), then all you're doing with your books and tweets is fighting windmills and -- even worse -- giving people false hope.

Wrong again. If you really think obesity is a problem, if fighting obesity is really valuable to you (see the next point about values), you don't just stop like that. You're halfway up a mountain, you really want to get to the top, and then ahead of you there's this sheer wall of ice. what do you do?

You don't turn back. First you see if the ice is solid, or if maybe a hit from your icepick could shatter it. In terms of science, that means you look if the results reproduce, if there are other explanations for the observation (confounders and selection effects are the biggies; if you're not sure what that means, take a statistics class or ask me later), or if the data is good at all. Ideally, you won't have to do all of that work yourself -- statistics is hard, especially in fields such as sociology and health where correlations tend to be frustratingly mushy -- because that's what scientists from the field are doing all the time anyway. Look for replies, rebuttals, reviews, other studies that cite this one, meta-analyses, the works. Find a recent textbook about the subject to see if whatever your critics were throwing at you is an accepted mainstream position or a fringe development. (I'm not saying the mainstream is always wrong, but it deserves more up-front credence -- stronger priors, if that tells you anything -- than whatever new radical notion just came along.)

But what if the ice holds? You still don't give up. So maybe a large part of who becomes obese is explained by genetics; but what about the rest? Are there any places in the mechanism (yes, we're moving beyond the ice metaphor now) that leads from "genetic propensity" to "actual obesity" that you can influence in any way? If so, what are they? If explaining doesn't work, maybe focus on willpower instead? If neither explaining nor willpower training work, try changing what food is available, changing financial incentives (e.g. through taxes), attack the supply side (e.g. corn syrup subsidies)... look for places where you might get leverage, and find out where you personally can have the greatest impact. Find out where you can dig your fingers in and pull.

The second rule, then, is: Keep looking for the movable parts. More often than not, those who tell you that something can't be changed have a vested interest in things staying the way they are; and in nearly all cases, they're probably wrong. (Warning signs for less-than-good faith in that regard include someone claiming that your field of expertise is worthless because their discipline has all the answers, or saying that you can't possibly have an opinion unless you know all of the literature on the matter.) Most things that have to do with humans can be influenced by humans, at least in small but valuable ways; we just need to figure out where to place the lever.

FAILURE MODE 3: Confusing Facts And Values

Science, when done right, tells us about the way things are. It does not, and cannot, tell us what things should be like.

This may be the most important point in this post, and it's the one that most people who point to science in policy debates get wrong. "Look here," they say, "science tells us things just are like that, so who are you want them to be any different?" Sometimes this still comes in the classic form of "everything else would be unnatural", though this seems to be on its way out; I guess "naturalistic fallacy" is becoming enough of a household term that people realize they might not get away with this.

Still, if you're talking about how people should or should not behave, about measures to reach a certain goal, in short, about ethics or policy, and someone comes along and says "but FACTS! and SCIENCE!" -- then it's very likely that you're dealing with one of those vested interests I mentioned earlier: someone who profits from the status quo and feels threatened by efforts to change it.

Facts are important. They tell us what we are dealing with, if we're able to grasp them and arrange them without distorting them too much. The better we are at reading the data, at creating and testing hypotheses about how things work, the more of a chance we have to really change things. But what direction we want to change them in; whether we approve of an aspect of the status quo or not; in short: where we want to go from here -- that's up to us. Once the facts are established, policy is not a matter of science but of ethics; and that is a whole other debate.

If someone tells you that some people can't help being obese because it's in their genes, that's fine; look into it, and if you find it's true and relevant, incorporate that information into your strategy. (As per Failure Mode 2, of course it's not the whole story.) But if that same person then makes the leap to saying "so you should stop trying to fight obesity", they are going beyond the reach of science into ethics, where the genetics argument just does not hold any more. Yes, you can argue that we shouldn't fight obesity but rather make sure that obese people are accepted, not made fun of, and not used as examples in epistemics blog posts. There is a fair point to be made for that, but it is an ethical point and does not depend on whether obesity is genetic or not. I for one would argue that we can fight obesity and not discriminate against obese people at the same time, just as we try to cure paraplegia and make sure that paraplegics can safely navigate public spaces at the same time. But that, again, is not a question of fact or science; it's a question of ethics.

This, then, is our third rule: Let no one persuade you that is equals ought. In any argument, try to figure out what your own terminal goals are, what values you are not ready to compromise; and if someone attacks you on that with scientism, ask them about their own values. Speaking from my own experience, the most aggressive "fact"-wielders either get very uncomfortable and bow out of the conversation at that point, or they quickly reveal themselves as assholes. In that case, you should still look into whatever "facts" they threw at you; but you'll be justified in not expecting much of use behind them.

So let's be curious. Let's listen to people who have information that might be relevant to our endeavors. Let's experiment with different approaches and invite data-based criticism on which of them work and which don't. (Yes, I mean "invite", not just "welcome".) Let's be on the lookout for alternative explanations of the same things, alternate mechanisms and models that might have more predictive power, that might be more accurate, but most of all more useful, because they tell us where to push, pull, or turn the dial. But most of all, let's stay true to our values and goals, and persevere in trying to reach them, across this hard-to-navigate cliff face we call reality.

[isearchgoood]

SEO Negotiation: How to Ace the Business Side of SEO — Best of Whiteboard Friday

Posted by BritneyMuller

SEO has become more important than ever, but it isn't all meta tags and content. A huge part of the success you'll see is tied up in the inevitable business negotiations. In this helpful Whiteboard Friday from August of 2018, our resident expert Britney Muller walks us through a bevy of smart tips and considerations that will strengthen your SEO negotiation skills, whether you're a seasoned pro or a newbie to the practice.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. So today we are going over all things SEO negotiation, so starting to get into some of the business side of SEO. As most of you know, negotiation is all about leverage.

It's what you have to offer and what the other side is looking to gain and leveraging that throughout the process. So something that you can go in and confidently talk about as SEOs is the fact that SEO has around 20X more opportunity than both mobile and desktop PPC combined.

This is a really, really big deal. It's something that you can showcase. These are the stats to back it up. We will also link to the research to this down below. Good to kind of have that in your back pocket. Aside from this, you will obviously have your audit. So potential client, you're looking to get this deal.

Get the most out of the SEO audit

☑ Highlight the opportunities, not the screw-ups

You're going to do an audit, and something that I have always suggested is that instead of highlighting the things that the potential client is doing wrong, or screwed up, is to really highlight those opportunities. Start to get them excited about what it is that their site is capable of and that you could help them with. I think that sheds a really positive light and moves you in the right direction.

☑ Explain their competitive advantage

I think this is really interesting in many spaces where you can sort of say, "Okay, your competitors are here, and you're currently here and this is why,"and to show them proof. That makes them feel as though you have a strong understanding of the landscape and can sort of help them get there.

☑ Emphasize quick wins

I almost didn't put this in here because I think quick wins is sort of a sketchy term. Essentially, you really do want to showcase what it is you can do quickly, but you want to...

☑ Under-promise, over-deliver

You don't want to lose trust or credibility with a potential client by overpromising something that you can't deliver. Get off to the right start. Under-promise, over-deliver.

Smart negotiation tactics

☑ Do your research

Know everything you can about this clientPerhaps what deals they've done in the past, what agencies they've worked with. You can get all sorts of knowledge about that before going into negotiation that will really help you.

☑ Prioritize your terms

So all too often, people go into a negotiation thinking me, me, me, me, when really you also need to be thinking about, "Well, what am I willing to lose?What can I give up to reach a point that we can both agree on?" Really important to think about as you go in.

☑ Flinch!

This is a very old, funny negotiation tactic where when the other side counters, you flinch. You do this like flinch, and you go, "Oh, is that the best you can do?" It's super silly. It might be used against you, in which case you can just say, "Nice flinch." But it does tend to help you get better deals.

So take that with a grain of salt. But I look forward to your feedback down below. It's so funny.

☑ Use the words "fair" and "comfortable"

The words "fair" and "comfortable" do really well in negotiations. These words are inarguable. You can't argue with fair. "I want to do what is comfortable for us both. I want us both to reach terms that are fair."

You want to use these terms to put the other side at ease and to also help bridge that gap where you can come out with a win-win situation.

☑ Never be the key decision maker

I see this all too often when people go off on their own, and instantly on their business cards and in their head and email they're the CEO.

They are this. You don't have to be that, and you sort of lose leverage when you are. When I owned my agency for six years, I enjoyed not being CEO. I liked having a board of directors that I could reach out to during a negotiation and not being the sole decision maker. Even if you feel that you are the sole decision maker, I know that there are people that care about you and that are looking out for your business that you could contact as sort of a business mentor, and you could use that in negotiation. You can use that to help you. Something to think about.

Tips for negotiation newbies

So for the newbies, a lot of you are probably like, "I can never go on my own. I can never do these things." I'm from northern Minnesota. I have been super awkward about discussing money my whole life for any sort of business deal. If I could do it, I promise any one of you watching this can do it.

☑ Power pose!

I'm not kidding, promise. Some tips that I learned, when I had my agency, was to power pose before negotiations. So there's a great TED talk on this that we can link to down below. I do this before most of my big speaking gigs, thanks to Mike Ramsey who told me to do this at SMX Advanced 3 years ago.

Go ahead and power pose. Feel good. Feel confident. Amp yourself up.

☑ Walk the walk

You've got to when it comes to some of these things and to just feel comfortable in that space.

☑ Good > perfect

Know that good is better than perfect. A lot of us are perfectionists, and we just have to execute good. Trying to be perfect will kill us all.

☑ Screw imposter syndrome

Many of the speakers that I go on different conference circuits with all struggle with this. It's totally normal, but it's good to acknowledge that it's so silly. So to try to take that silly voice out of your head and start to feel good about the things that you are able to offer.

Take inspiration where you can find it

I highly suggest you check out Brian Tracy's old-school negotiation podcasts. He has some old videos. They're so good. But he talks about leverage all the time and has two really great examples that I love so much. One being jade merchants. So these jade merchants that would take out pieces of jade and they would watch people's reactions piece by piece that they brought out.

So they knew what piece interested this person the most, and that would be the higher price. It was brilliant. Then the time constraints is he has an example of people doing business deals in China. When they landed, the Chinese would greet them and say, "Oh, can I see your return flight ticket? I just want to know when you're leaving."

They would not make a deal until that last second. The more you know about some of these leverage tactics, the more you can be aware of them if they were to be used against you or if you were to leverage something like that. Super interesting stuff.

Take the time to get to know their business

☑ Tie in ROI

Lastly, just really take the time to get to know someone's business. It just shows that you care, and you're able to prioritize what it is that you can deliver based on where they make the most money off of the products or services that they offer. That helps you tie in the ROI of the things that you can accomplish.

☑ Know the order of products/services that make them the most money

One real quick example was my previous company. We worked with plastic surgeons, and we really worked hard to understand that funnel of how people decide to get any sort of elective procedure. It came down to two things.

It was before and after photos and price. So we knew that we could optimize for those two things and do very well in their space. So showing that you care, going the extra mile, sort of tying all of these things together, I really hope this helps. I look forward to the feedback down below. I know this was a little bit different Whiteboard Friday, but I thought it would be a fun topic to cover.

So thank you so much for joining me on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I will see you all soon. Bye.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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[geneshaven]

Fantasy World vs Real World

I wanted to talk about a couple of things today that intruded into my life over the weekend. One concerns the fantasy world of Arrow. The other is about the real world (my dog was injured.)

So first, Arrow. Like many of you, I am excited for the handful of episodes left this season. And also like most of you, I’ve been waiting for the payoff I hope is coming, a reward for all the patience and diligence we’ve had to endure while the show runners weaved their tale this season.

I’ve read that some are thinking the show is getting good again. Personally, I’ve felt the show has always been good, even when it was bad. Sure, it had some bumps in the road along the way, but I’ve been tuning in for over five years now, and despite those bumps, I’ve been holding on, not letting them shake me loose. Since the show started, I’ve gone through some upheaval and tragedy and loss in my personal life, and having a place to channel some of that, a place to go where I can maybe find some hope and acceptance---it brings me some small comforts. I do this not only by watching the show, but also through writing fanfiction and metas and following all the other wonderful bloggers out there that are so talented and inspiring.

I have always been a protective person. This was ingrained in me by caring for my wife for so many years and also by working in law enforcement. I was taught how to laugh and love and dream about beauty and joy and grace. So when I read some of the things our esteemed Executive Producer and Creator of Arrow, MG had to say about the fans of his show, (Olicity to be more exact) that protectiveness in me came alive. It almost feels as if I have to defend my love of the show.

Two things MG mentioned just recently, (and I’m paraphrasing) 1.) Olicity fans will eventually accept the swill being dished out and fall in line with what they’re given, and 2.) All the blather about poor ratings is the fault of the fans, the actors, global warming, the price of gold on the open market---add any reason you like.  As I’ve read and agree with, the low ratings and bad acting  and whatever---it can be laid at the feet of MG and his stable of writers, and perhaps even the powers that be at CW.

It’s a cold, hard slap in the face to all of us. Arrow was not created in a vacuum. It was and is written for the fans, for us; the ones who bring in those ratings, good or bad. It is written to invest ourselves, and sometimes lose ourselves in the story being told, in the characters that play it out. It tugs at our heart strings. It makes us laugh and cry. It makes us angry, afraid, compassionate and fulfilled. It becomes our story.

I didn’t ask for or expect this show to creep in to my life the way it has. I simply tuned in and was introduced to this damaged, driven, angry and lonely man who returned from hell, trying to find some purpose in his life. I connected with him in a way I sometimes can’t with real people. I wanted to watch each week to see Oliver (and later Diggle and Felicity) overcome adversity and tragedy and find their way back home.

But here’s the thing, and which brings me back to MG and his comments. He is the one who created and developed the show. He shaped the characters and breathed life into them. He gave us the hope for love and redemption, for justice and a happily ever after. He started this journey and took us on the ride. We trusted in him and believed he would not steer us wrong.

Which is why I am having problems with Marc’s current attitude and views. I’m sorry, but I can’t feeling that as a fan, I’ve become a piece of shit clinging to the bottom of his shoe and he is trying to scrape me off, as if somehow I’ve offended him. Again, I didn’t create Oliver, Diggle, Felicity, Thea or Lance. I assume when Marc did, he wanted me to care about them, to root for them, to fall in love with them---not to feel guilty because I do.

I can only shake my head at the absurdity of it all. Do we want Oliver to be victorious? Do we want him to be a hero? Do we want his flaws and imperfections? Do we want him to be happy and in love? Do we want Olicity?

Does Marc?

Of course, he could be holding his cards close to the vest. All this could just be his way of creating more drama and angst and doubt. After all, he is a TV show writer on the CW. If this is true---well done Mr. G. I hope it pays off and we all have huge smiles splashed on our faces at the end of the season.

Still, some of the things he said about us fans were a little uncalled for and not deserving. We are loyal, dedicated fans who believe what MG gave us at the start of this journey. We want to feel like we’ve made the right decision to follow the show, not like someone waiting for a taxi after a meaningless one night stand. The money is on the night stand, Marc. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

**

As I mentioned at the start of this post, one of my dogs was injured over the weekend, something that turned off the fantasy world and put me front and center in the real one.

Briefly:

I was starting to come awake early Saturday morning, around 3:00am when I heard a thump on the floor at the foot of my bed. This was followed by a squeal and a cry that pierced my heart. My 8 year old Corgi, Civi had jumped off the bed, like he does every morning to get a drink of water and go potty. The room was dark, and I’m guessing Civi maybe misjudged his landing. Apparently, he ended up falling on his head. When I got to him, he was lying on his side, panting and dazed. I immediately thought---a broken neck or some sort of spinal damage.

I am not yet ready to go through another tragedy of loving someone that gives me so much joy and love. There is an emergency vet hospital about twenty minutes from my house. I was scared to move Civi because I didn’t want to cause him more pain or damage. But I didn’t want to leave him on the floor unattended and suffering either. I grabbed a blanket and wrapped him in it and both of us got in my car and drove to the doggy hospital.

After some X-rays (I didn’t have the $3000.00 dollars for the MRI the vet wanted) the diagnosis was a sprained back. The doctor gave me pain meds and muscle relaxers to take home and told me to keep Civi quiet and non-mobile for a couple of days. All this cost $800.00, but I didn’t flinch pulling out my credit card. Civi is family, like one of my children. The cost of making sure he was cared for was one I would pay any amount, (except for the $3000.00 MRI apparently.) It could have been more expensive---I could have lost him.

 Anyway, there are bumps and bruises we all have to go through in our real lives. Just like the ones we sometimes get in the fantasy world. But what is real and what is fantasy? ---there is no realistic comparison between the two. When Arrow is over, I can turn off the TV and hope things get better next week. When a loved one out there in the real world gets hurt or even dies, next week becomes a lifetime.

So here’s hoping we get the happy ending we all want in the fantasy world.  And here’s hoping we all get it in the real world as well.

@hope-for-olicity @almondblossomme @louiseblue1 @tdgal1 @swordandarrow @ibelievenu @it-was-a-red-heeler @geemarie @dmichellewrites @miriam1779

[shutdownld50-blog]

ABOUT LD50'S REACTIONARY TURN

The LD50 gallery in Dalston, London last year ran this series of talks featuring 6 high profile far right reactionary speakers:

#9 Sunday – 7th August 2016– 12pm NICK LAND on Techno-Commercial NRx

#8 Saturday – 6th August 2016 – 6pm MARK CITADEL [as virtual avatar] 'Christianity, Progressivism, and the Occidental Soul' watch here

#7 Saturday – 6th August 2016 – 6pm BRETT STEVENS [as virtual avatar] ���The Black Pill’ watch here

#6 Sunday – 31st July 2016– 6pm PETER BRIMELOW on Imigration, Ethnicity and Economics listen here

#5 Sunday – 24th July 2016 – 6pm IBEN THRANHOLM on The Sanctuary of Traditionalism in Russia and the West listen here

#4 Saturday – 28th May 2016 – 6pm Dr PETER SAUNDERS ‘Epigenetics and Evolution Theory’ screening: The Monk and the Honeybee (1989) listen here #3 Saturday – 21st May 2016 – 6pm Dr FLORIAN PLATTNER ‘Can we enhance memory?’ screening: TransHumanism ( h+) / Genetic Modification of Life (2010) listen here

#2 Wednesday – 18th May 2016 – 6pm ‘Autoimmunity’ (hosted by Goldsmiths university) watch here

#1 Saturday – 7th May 2016 – 6pm Dr SILVIA CAMPORESI ‘CRISPR Genome Editing Technologies: Which possible futures?’ screening: Gattaca (1997) listen here

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.ld50gallery.com%2Ftalks%2F

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

The talks programme mixes straight up fascists and reactionaries with other innocuous seeming figures with no known right wing affiliation or convictions.

Peter Brimelow is hardcore fascist: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/peter-brimelow

As is Brett Stevens: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2011/07/26/american-blogger-praises-oslo-shooter

Mark Citadel seems to be part of the 'Return of Kings' manosphere blog, so is clearly another reactionary voice. (‘Return Of Kings is a blog for heterosexual, masculine men. [...] men should be masculine and women should be feminine.’ – to quote their own philosophically self-undermining self-description.)

Iben Thranholm is a proponent of racist, anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, homophobic and misogynist politics. She routinely discourses on the need to resurrect strong ‘european' gender binaries and ‘strong men’ to ‘protect women’ from 'male immigrants' who she presents as a violent sexual threat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaOLgy3YKtA

Nick Land: One can split hairs by saying that Nick Land isn't a white supremacist and is just into eugenic selection for intelligence so we can survive the coming AI singularity. However, a close reading of his recent writing reveals he just doesn't like immigrants and black people. He likes Asians because they are deemed to be smart and polite, and he likes Japanese because they've resisted immigration. Racism is an aura around all his other pronouncements.

The first three named speakers in the talks series – Peter Saunders, Silvia Camporesi, and Florian Plattner – are all reputable scholars. The topic of epigenetics (Saunders’ subject) is a hot button one for the new biological racists, because it shortens timelines over which evolutionary change can potentially happen, meaning that changes in historical time can have significant effects on human populations. This is usually used to argue that evolution within NW European populations has led to the wonders of the Enlightenment and enhanced IQ, while everyone else are just cousin-marrying knuckle draggers who are resistant to democracy because they haven't selected for non kin altruistic behaviour. The fact that HBD (human biodiversity) proponents use and sometimes misuse epigenetics doesn't mean anyone talking about it is necessarily fascist.

Considering the rest of the line up, however, it seems these figures fulfilled a kind of legitimating function for LD50’s project. Openly reactionary speakers could enjoy credibility by association with reputable academics. However innocent, they became tools in what appears to be a conscious and extended attempt to promote extremely reactionary ideas by introducing them, uncritically and indeed enthusiastically, to an art world and art educational context.

The live streams still available on the gallery’s blog testify to LD50’s gushing reception of and advocacy for racist, white supremacist, misogynist and homophobic views. If we can learn one thing from the above, it is the need to stop assuming everything programmed by small or large galleries is at worst ‘exploratory’, ironic or even critical – either an intellectual provocation or contribution to ‘discussion’. This programme appears to have been part of a wider far right push to infiltrate academic institutions, and to normalise and promote extremely reactionary ideas.

THE ART OF ENTRYISM

As well as the talks programme, LD50 also mounted a gallery show, 'Amerika'. Dedicated to the so called alt-right, and featuring wall to wall Pepe memes, kek, 'neoreactionary' esoterica, and misogyny, the same structure of plausible deniability allowed some at least to view the show as a kind of enquiry into a cultural phenomenon rather tha a direct act of political infiltration. Any illusions about the disinterested or critical ambitions of the gallery have been dispelled by the recent public revelation of the gallery's politics. A brief review of the gallery's blog reveals a show brimming with sympathy for affluent white male mass murderers of of women and muslims, but nothing that would pass for actual critique – let alone the visceral disgust this material evokes in those who side not with abstractions ('free speech') but human victims of violent oppression.

A similar standard of fascist entryism is seen in artwork still displayed on the gallery's website: a pseudo-critique of consumerism by replication (look, Taylor Swift!) exuding a will to distinction and superiority, at the same time functions to run fascist ideas (text by Hitler) and symbols (the Afrikaner white supremacist flag) past the un/knowing art consumer:

https://www.ld50gallery.com/exhibitions/

Some further background and analysis from the Horrible Gif blog's piece on the LD50 debacle:

'LD50, a small project space in dalston junction, had some exhibitions of questionable taste and arrangement in recent months. The alt-right exhibit it staged using scavenged parts of the aesthetic and philosophical matter online wasn’t immediately partisan on the surface. It could have been bad satire, it could have been one of those things many adult-child digital artists do where they incorporate the very thing they critique. Obviously the depraved chasm which 4chan and allotments of reddit are located in is morbidly fascinating, to someone who feels they’re on an important media archaeology tip even moreso. Despite the Hitler quotes coupled with anime motifs and other bizarre conflations of alt-right imagery, the show itself didn’t offer a concrete position. This is a commonplace exhibition model that allows “racy” subject matter to be presented with critical immunity, because the art moves to within a viewers praxis. More often this is used with cultural appropriation, where a white artist will extract reference points and framing devices from culture they do not belong to and situate the art itself on the intersection of their gaze, etc etc. So the art is about the white gaze on other culture, that way it removes itself from, at best, being accused of ignoring postcolonial theory or, at worst, just being mildly racist. Very meta though, and you can extract 2000 words from meta quite easily. With the benefit of hindsight plus a screenshot of a private fb conversation, it became obvious the curiosity with the alt-right wasn’t coolly detached in the LD50 show. Given the social media output of LD50 runs along moaning lines about the apolitical nature of net artists and glib rejoinders to political/social occurances, strangely they might have found the blazing political net art they were looking for… just the bad kind of politics. HEY, bad is a construct in art that is irrelevant after postmodernism and pop art, so who is to say it is bad? It’s just neo-reactionary. Sounds like the working title of a group of Final Fantasy rebels. These dodgy politics weren’t always so clear, even in that classic uncertain/ironic way, so it’s possible it was a slippery slope slodden down.

As said in the beginning of this longform rant, the social media microdramas of the art cottage industry aren’t very interesting in themselves beyond the sorry online appearances of calculated hostility and contrived artjoke acumen. But with artist Sophie Jung posting in a public way a ‘call-out’ to a curator of a gallery holding quite dodgy fascist views, the fallout is more interesting than the usual bruised/inflated egos or comment flame wars. The gallery itself has responded by “archiving” the post and all the comments on the main page, as doxing (a strategy of online shaming perfected by the alt-right) bait to sentient pepe memes and twitter eggs. It’s an obfuscatory and aloof reaction, one that shows particular acumen to online psychological skirmishing. Take away the veneer of irony and you see only a few slimy individuals toying with repugnant ideas that most good artists would give no merit, even as illusory discourse.

Is it right to call out someone by posting private convos? Well, check the gallery events and talks - they were pretty public (albeit small and within purposely obfuscating platforms) call outs to those neon genesis authoritarians. A lighter discourse than “is it ok to punch a nazi?” but no less annoying. Of course the answer is yes. Do you argue the inverse that the alt-right should be given platforms? Do you agree with the BBC giving airtime to UKIP but not the Green Party, who have existed for longer/have more members/more elected MPs/have actually run a fucking area of the country? Logic has associations, and while you can spin them away, we fucking see you. The alt-right would legislate for the structural, hidden bureaucratic violence against non-white/foreign people but it is not OK to punch them? They’d happily punch you. It can be so easy if it doesn’t affect you, or to think it wouldn’t, to think that exposing their bullshit is better. Hindenburg thought Hitler wouldn’t be as evil when he finally was given power, the tories seemed to think appeasing the UKIP types was the best way to keep themselves in power. Fuck m9, punch tories AND nazis if you can get away with it. Yeah, if you can back it up, calling people out on something as basic as nazi sympathies is OK. Why did it take so long to be called out on? The alt-right are super zeitgeisty right now and net art dorks are into that because it can be processed into smug “political” diatribe and gestural academica. Things within the art gallery mechanica are afforded un-anchored critical protection at least until the management are revealed to think the muslim ban is fine.'

http://horriblegif.com/post/157189463814/level-drama-50

[andrewysanders]

I’m Nine Years Old – Old Age

As party week comes to its conclusion, we look at the final year – 2018 – and acknowledge that Life of an Architect is now an old man. 

Life of an Architect – Year Nine (2018)

Year nine in most ways was just like year’s seven and eight. One thing that non-blog writing people (otherwise known as “regular” people) can’t truly understand is the constant need for something interesting to write about in a serial manner. In short, for the last two years, I have a few fairly large projects that I’ve been working on but I don’t have a lot to show for it. The thing that feeds me, and in turn feeds this website, is having things that I think are worth sharing with others. This typically means projects of mine are under construction and I can talk about sorts of construction techniques, details that were developed as I show the executed product, amusing anecdotes from job site visits, my love/hate relationship with the software Procore … in other words, tons of what I think would be interesting posts.

The two commercial projects that I should be able to focus on in 2019 basically sat in building department purgatory all of 2018 – and while complaining about the building department is fun, nobody really cares. Another project that I will most likely be spending time on in 2019 is a massive renovation and addition to a Robert A.M. Stern house here in Dallas – and that project will be full of potential blog posts.

Other than that, there is the podcast – which quite honestly might be the lifeline to keeping Life of an Architect interesting and worth reading.

My favorite blog post of 2018 is:

Life of an Architect – The Inevitable has Arrived Since I have become bored with blogging, it is time to turn my attention towards something that will allow me to recapture that creative spark – and it’s just what the world needed … another podcast

That’s right – my favorite post is when I broke up with my website and confessed that I was stepping out with a podcast. Trying to figure out how to podcast was almost as much of the attraction as anything else, but I am happy to say that I much prefer talking over sitting in front of the computer and typing for hours on end. Interestingly, I received a few messages from people who were actually really irritated that I was not going to be blogging as much. Little did they know that finding this outlet might be just the thing I needed so that I would still continue to blog at all.

After four days and 8 previous images of site metrics, I think we can all take a moment and relish in the fact that this is the last image you are going to see for awhile where site traffic is concerned.

So here it is … living proof that the website has been slowly killed by constant attacks. While there has been a steady erosion of traffic once the hacking began, this was the year when there were about 3 precipitous drop-offs that occurred. After a high of  8.2 million page views in 2016, things have hit rock bottom, at least rock bottom for me. Whenever I complain about how bad my traffic has become my blogger friends are still quick to point out that they would kill for what I am currently getting – but there’s no comfort in that. What I see is an erosion of 8 years of ridiculously hard work and sacrifice being wiped out by people hitting me with constant DDoS attacks.

The good news is that as of this writing, it seems as if the latest round of precautions and systems seem to be working and the traffic appears to be returning. While I might not want to admit it, that would certainly help my motivation to continue putting in the effort of writing blog posts.

2018 – Year Nine Page Views – 2,547,200 Year Nine Countries/ Territories – 237 2018 – Year Six Top Five Cities – New York, London, Dallas, Sydney, Boston

The Popular Post

2018 saw my lowest post count since I started – a bucolic total of 46 articles were written. Since I didn’t have any work that was under construction, a recurring theme for my entries is that they were technical in their nature. I also started the podcast in June and the practice of writing a blog post one week, and the world’s most extensive podcast show notes the next was born.

Here is the most viewed post from 2018:

Just Draw it Up (96,370 year nine page views) Calling an architect to draw up plans can be the wrong first step in certain circumstances. If all you need is someone to take your plans and turn them into serviceable documents, who should you call?

This was one of those “Don’t blog when you’re angry” sort of posts (is that a saying? I bet it is). I wrote this post after having a long chat on the phone with someone who was just looking for some help, and they wanted it from me. Normally I am on board with that – if I can help someone I will typically try to do just that. The issue with this particular call, and the one or two just like it I receive each month, is that the people calling don’t care who I am or what I do, they’ve already solved all their problems and some building department has told them that they need to hire an architect to prepare drawings, so all they want from me, is for someone to “just draw it up.”

As I sit in my chair writing this post, reflecting back on the narratives for 2018, there are really super positive things that come to mind.

I have three amazing projects that will be built this year

I have amazing clients that I truly like and feel blessed to collaborate with them on their project.

I am really enjoying the podcast and while it has experienced some challenges, it’s still early, it’s getting better with each recording, and a lot of people are listening to it. If you haven’t checked it out yet – give it a chance and go here

2018 was probably the best year I’ve ever had as a professional and 2019 is shaping up for a repeat performance

I have nothing to complain about and I realize that I am blessed in so many ways that even when things aren’t going right, they aren’t going left. All we can ask for is a chance to work with people we like, projects that enrich us and look for outlets that feed our souls. If we are lucky we might get one or two of those things, to hope for all three … well, let’s just say that I know just how lucky I am.

So that’s it – 5 consecutive days that tell the tale of the Rise and Fall of the website Life of an Architect. What does the future hold for me?

Cheers,

This is the last in a series of 5 articles. If you want to know the whole story, I think it’s best if you start at the beginning.

The Birth Year covers the first year of the site (2010) The Early Years is a closer look at years two and three (2011 and 2012) The Teenage Years is a look at years four and five (2013 and 2014) Middle Age is a look at years six, seven, and eight (2015 – 2017)

from Home https://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/im-nine-years-old-old-age/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[jaigeddes]

I’m Nine Years Old – Old Age

As party week comes to its conclusion, we look at the final year – 2018 – and acknowledge that Life of an Architect is now an old man. 

Life of an Architect – Year Nine (2018)

Year nine in most ways was just like year’s seven and eight. One thing that non-blog writing people (otherwise known as “regular” people) can’t truly understand is the constant need for something interesting to write about in a serial manner. In short, for the last two years, I have a few fairly large projects that I’ve been working on but I don’t have a lot to show for it. The thing that feeds me, and in turn feeds this website, is having things that I think are worth sharing with others. This typically means projects of mine are under construction and I can talk about sorts of construction techniques, details that were developed as I show the executed product, amusing anecdotes from job site visits, my love/hate relationship with the software Procore … in other words, tons of what I think would be interesting posts.

The two commercial projects that I should be able to focus on in 2019 basically sat in building department purgatory all of 2018 – and while complaining about the building department is fun, nobody really cares. Another project that I will most likely be spending time on in 2019 is a massive renovation and addition to a Robert A.M. Stern house here in Dallas – and that project will be full of potential blog posts.

Other than that, there is the podcast – which quite honestly might be the lifeline to keeping Life of an Architect interesting and worth reading.

My favorite blog post of 2018 is:

Life of an Architect – The Inevitable has Arrived Since I have become bored with blogging, it is time to turn my attention towards something that will allow me to recapture that creative spark – and it’s just what the world needed … another podcast

That’s right – my favorite post is when I broke up with my website and confessed that I was stepping out with a podcast. Trying to figure out how to podcast was almost as much of the attraction as anything else, but I am happy to say that I much prefer talking over sitting in front of the computer and typing for hours on end. Interestingly, I received a few messages from people who were actually really irritated that I was not going to be blogging as much. Little did they know that finding this outlet might be just the thing I needed so that I would still continue to blog at all.

After four days and 8 previous images of site metrics, I think we can all take a moment and relish in the fact that this is the last image you are going to see for awhile where site traffic is concerned.

So here it is … living proof that the website has been slowly killed by constant attacks. While there has been a steady erosion of traffic once the hacking began, this was the year when there were about 3 precipitous drop-offs that occurred. After a high of  8.2 million page views in 2016, things have hit rock bottom, at least rock bottom for me. Whenever I complain about how bad my traffic has become my blogger friends are still quick to point out that they would kill for what I am currently getting – but there’s no comfort in that. What I see is an erosion of 8 years of ridiculously hard work and sacrifice being wiped out by people hitting me with constant DDoS attacks.

The good news is that as of this writing, it seems as if the latest round of precautions and systems seem to be working and the traffic appears to be returning. While I might not want to admit it, that would certainly help my motivation to continue putting in the effort of writing blog posts.

2018 – Year Nine Page Views – 2,547,200 Year Nine Countries/ Territories – 237 2018 – Year Six Top Five Cities – New York, London, Dallas, Sydney, Boston

The Popular Post

2018 saw my lowest post count since I started – a bucolic total of 46 articles were written. Since I didn’t have any work that was under construction, a recurring theme for my entries is that they were technical in their nature. I also started the podcast in June and the practice of writing a blog post one week, and the world’s most extensive podcast show notes the next was born.

Here is the most viewed post from 2018:

Just Draw it Up (96,370 year nine page views) Calling an architect to draw up plans can be the wrong first step in certain circumstances. If all you need is someone to take your plans and turn them into serviceable documents, who should you call?

This was one of those “Don’t blog when you’re angry” sort of posts (is that a saying? I bet it is). I wrote this post after having a long chat on the phone with someone who was just looking for some help, and they wanted it from me. Normally I am on board with that – if I can help someone I will typically try to do just that. The issue with this particular call, and the one or two just like it I receive each month, is that the people calling don’t care who I am or what I do, they’ve already solved all their problems and some building department has told them that they need to hire an architect to prepare drawings, so all they want from me, is for someone to “just draw it up.”

As I sit in my chair writing this post, reflecting back on the narratives for 2018, there are really super positive things that come to mind.

I have three amazing projects that will be built this year

I have amazing clients that I truly like and feel blessed to collaborate with them on their project.

I am really enjoying the podcast and while it has experienced some challenges, it’s still early, it’s getting better with each recording, and a lot of people are listening to it. If you haven’t checked it out yet – give it a chance and go here

2018 was probably the best year I’ve ever had as a professional and 2019 is shaping up for a repeat performance

I have nothing to complain about and I realize that I am blessed in so many ways that even when things aren’t going right, they aren’t going left. All we can ask for is a chance to work with people we like, projects that enrich us and look for outlets that feed our souls. If we are lucky we might get one or two of those things, to hope for all three … well, let’s just say that I know just how lucky I am.

So that’s it – 5 consecutive days that tell the tale of the Rise and Fall of the website Life of an Architect. What does the future hold for me?

Cheers,

This is the last in a series of 5 articles. If you want to know the whole story, I think it’s best if you start at the beginning.

The Birth Year covers the first year of the site (2010) The Early Years is a closer look at years two and three (2011 and 2012) The Teenage Years is a look at years four and five (2013 and 2014) Middle Age is a look at years six, seven, and eight (2015 – 2017)

[lawrenceseitz22]

On-Page SEO for 2019 - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by BritneyMuller

Whew! We made it through another year, and it seems like we're past due for taking a close look at the health of our on-page SEO practices. What better way to hit the ground running than with a checklist? In today's Whiteboard Friday, the fabulous Britney Muller shares her best tips for doing effective on-page SEO in 2019.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we're going over all things on-page SEO, and I've divided it into three different sections:

How are crawlers and Googlebot crawling through your site and your web pages?

What is the UX of your on-page content?

What is the value in the content of your on-page content?

So let's just jump right in, shall we?

Crawler/bot-accessible

☑ Meta robots tag allows crawling

Making sure your meta robots tag allows crawling is essential. If that's blocking Googlebot from crawling, your page will never be in search. You want to make sure that's all panned out.

☑ Robots.txt doesn't disallow crawling

You want to make sure that let's say this page that you're trying to get to rank in search engines, that you're not disallowing this URL from your robots.txt.

☑ URL is included in sitemap

Similarly you want to make sure that the URL is in your site map.

☑ Schema markup

You also want to add any schema markup, any relevant schema markup that you can. This is essentially spoon-feeding search engines what your page is about and what your content is about.

☑ Internal links pointing to your page with natural anchor text

So let's say I am trying to rank for chakra stones. Maybe I'm on a yoga website and I want to make sure that I have other internal pages linking to chakra stones with the anchor text "chakra crystals" or "chakra stones" and making sure that I'm showing Google that this is indeed an internally linked page and it's important and we want to give it some weight.

☑ HTTPS - SSL

You want to make sure that that is secure and that Google is taking that into consideration as well.

User experience

☑ Meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Does it meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines? Definitely look into that and make sure you check all the boxes.

☑ Responsive mobile design with same content and links

Is it responsive for mobile? Super important with the mobile-first indexing.

☑ Clear CTA

Is there one clear call to action? A lot of pages miss this. So, for this page, maybe I would have a big "Buy Chakra Crystals Here" button or link. That would be a clear CTA. It's important to have.

☑ Multimedia: Evaluate SERP and add desired media

Are you providing other desired media types? Are there images and video and different forms of content on your page?

☑ Page speed: utilize CDNs, compress images, use reliable hosting

Are you checking the page speed? Are you using CDNs? Are you compressing your images? You want to check all of that.

☑ Integrate social sharing buttons

It's the easiest thing. Make sure that people can easily share your content.

Content and value

This is where it gets really fun and strategic too.

☑ Unique, high-quality content

Are you providing high-quality content? So if you go to Google and you search "chakra stones" and you take a look at all of those results, are you including all of that good content into your page? Then are you making it even better? Because that should be the goal.

☑ Optimize for intent: Evaluate SERP and PPC, note which SERP features show up

You want to also optimize for intent. So you want to evaluate that SERP. If that search result page is showing tons of images or maybe videos, you should be incorporating that into your page as well, because clearly that's what people are looking for.

You also want to evaluate the PPC. They have done so much testing on what converts and what doesn't. So it's silly not to take that into consideration when optimizing your page.

☑ Title tags and meta descriptions

What are those titles? What are those descriptions? What's working? Title tags and meta description are still so important. This is the first impression to many of your visitors in Google. Are you enticing a click? Are you making that an enticing call to action to your site?

☑ Header tags

H1, H2, and H3 header tags are still super important. You want to make sure that the title of your page is the H1 and so forth. But just to check on all of that would be good.

☑ Optimize images: compress, title file names, add alt text

Images are the biggest source of bloat of on-page site speed. So you want to make sure that your images are compressed and optimized and keeping your page fast and easily accessible to your users.

☑ Review for freshness

You want to review for freshness. We want to make sure that this is up-to-date content. Maybe take a look at popular content the last year or two of your site and update that stuff. This should be a continual wash and repeat. You want to continue to update the content on your site.

☑ Include commonly asked questions

It's such an easy thing to do, but it's commonly overlooked. AnswerThePublic does a great job of surfacing questions. Moz Keyword Explorer has a really great filter that provides some of the most commonly asked questions for a keyword term. I highly suggest you check that out and start to incorporate some of that.

Find common questions now

These help to target featured snippets. So if you're incorporating some of that, not only do you get the extra traffic, but you find these opportunities of getting featured snippets, which is great. You're expanding your real estate in search. Awesome. PAA boxes are also a great way to find commonly asked questions for a particular keyword.

☑ Add summaries

Summaries are also hidden gems. We see Google seeking out summaries for content all of the time. They are providing summaries in featured snippets and in different SERP features to help sort of distill information for users. So if you can do that, not only will you make your content more easily scannable, but you're also making it more accessible for search, which is great.

☑ TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency)

TF-IDF stands for "term frequency-inverse document frequency." It sounds a little intimidating. It's actually pretty simple. What's the number of times that "chakra stones" is mentioned in this particular page divided by the number of times it's mentioned anywhere? This is basically just a calculation to determine relevance for the term "chakra stones." Really cool and commonly used by Google. So if you can do this on your on-page, it will just help you in the long term.

☑ LSI (latent semantic indexing) for relevance

Similarly LSI or LSA, it sometimes referred to, is latent semantic indexing, and it's also for relevance. This helps determine, okay, if I'm talking about chakra stones, it may also incorporate those other topics that are commonly related to this topic. Relevant.

☑ Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test

What is the readability of this page? The easier it is to read the better, but you just want to keep an eye on that in general.

Bonus tip!

One final tip that Kameron Jenkins put on Twitter, that I love so much, and Kameron is a world-class writer —she's one of the best I've ever had the privilege of working with — mentioned this on-page SEO trick. Find the top three ranking URLs for your target keyword.

KW research tip 1. Search your target kw & pull the top 3 ranking URLs 2. Compare URLs in @Moz KWE 3. Click on the areas of most overlap 4. See KWs that top-ranking URLs for target KW also rank for 5. Use ideas to optimize your own page! pic.twitter.com/FxJjOxn7DJ — Kameron Jenkins (@Kammie_Jenkins) November 7, 2018

So if I were to put in "chakra stones" in Google and pull the top three URLs, put them into Moz Keyword Explorer and I see what they're ranking for, I see what those three URLs are specifically ranking for, and I look at what they're commonly ranking for in the middle here. Then I use those keywords to optimize my page even better. It's genius. It's very similar to some of the relevant stuff we were talking about over here.

Discover new keyword ideas

So definitely try some of this stuff out. I hope this helps. I really look forward to any of your comments or questions down below in the comments section.

Thank you so much for joining me on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I look forward to seeing you all again soon, so thanks. Have a good one.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from Blogger http://bit.ly/2CPjeTQ via IFTTT

[swunlimitednj]

On-Page SEO for 2019 - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by BritneyMuller

Whew! We made it through another year, and it seems like we're past due for taking a close look at the health of our on-page SEO practices. What better way to hit the ground running than with a checklist? In today's Whiteboard Friday, the fabulous Britney Muller shares her best tips for doing effective on-page SEO in 2019.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we're going over all things on-page SEO, and I've divided it into three different sections:

How are crawlers and Googlebot crawling through your site and your web pages?

What is the UX of your on-page content?

What is the value in the content of your on-page content?

So let's just jump right in, shall we?

Crawler/bot-accessible

☑ Meta robots tag allows crawling

Making sure your meta robots tag allows crawling is essential. If that's blocking Googlebot from crawling, your page will never be in search. You want to make sure that's all panned out.

☑ Robots.txt doesn't disallow crawling

You want to make sure that let's say this page that you're trying to get to rank in search engines, that you're not disallowing this URL from your robots.txt.

☑ URL is included in sitemap

Similarly you want to make sure that the URL is in your site map.

☑ Schema markup

You also want to add any schema markup, any relevant schema markup that you can. This is essentially spoon-feeding search engines what your page is about and what your content is about.

☑ Internal links pointing to your page with natural anchor text

So let's say I am trying to rank for chakra stones. Maybe I'm on a yoga website and I want to make sure that I have other internal pages linking to chakra stones with the anchor text "chakra crystals" or "chakra stones" and making sure that I'm showing Google that this is indeed an internally linked page and it's important and we want to give it some weight.

☑ HTTPS - SSL

You want to make sure that that is secure and that Google is taking that into consideration as well.

User experience

☑ Meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Does it meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines? Definitely look into that and make sure you check all the boxes.

☑ Responsive mobile design with same content and links

Is it responsive for mobile? Super important with the mobile-first indexing.

☑ Clear CTA

Is there one clear call to action? A lot of pages miss this. So, for this page, maybe I would have a big "Buy Chakra Crystals Here" button or link. That would be a clear CTA. It's important to have.

☑ Multimedia: Evaluate SERP and add desired media

Are you providing other desired media types? Are there images and video and different forms of content on your page?

☑ Page speed: utilize CDNs, compress images, use reliable hosting

Are you checking the page speed? Are you using CDNs? Are you compressing your images? You want to check all of that.

☑ Integrate social sharing buttons

It's the easiest thing. Make sure that people can easily share your content.

Content and value

This is where it gets really fun and strategic too.

☑ Unique, high-quality content

Are you providing high-quality content? So if you go to Google and you search "chakra stones" and you take a look at all of those results, are you including all of that good content into your page? Then are you making it even better? Because that should be the goal.

☑ Optimize for intent: Evaluate SERP and PPC, note which SERP features show up

You want to also optimize for intent. So you want to evaluate that SERP. If that search result page is showing tons of images or maybe videos, you should be incorporating that into your page as well, because clearly that's what people are looking for.

You also want to evaluate the PPC. They have done so much testing on what converts and what doesn't. So it's silly not to take that into consideration when optimizing your page.

☑ Title tags and meta descriptions

What are those titles? What are those descriptions? What's working? Title tags and meta description are still so important. This is the first impression to many of your visitors in Google. Are you enticing a click? Are you making that an enticing call to action to your site?

☑ Header tags

H1, H2, and H3 header tags are still super important. You want to make sure that the title of your page is the H1 and so forth. But just to check on all of that would be good.

☑ Optimize images: compress, title file names, add alt text

Images are the biggest source of bloat of on-page site speed. So you want to make sure that your images are compressed and optimized and keeping your page fast and easily accessible to your users.

☑ Review for freshness

You want to review for freshness. We want to make sure that this is up-to-date content. Maybe take a look at popular content the last year or two of your site and update that stuff. This should be a continual wash and repeat. You want to continue to update the content on your site.

☑ Include commonly asked questions

It's such an easy thing to do, but it's commonly overlooked. AnswerThePublic does a great job of surfacing questions. Moz Keyword Explorer has a really great filter that provides some of the most commonly asked questions for a keyword term. I highly suggest you check that out and start to incorporate some of that.

Find common questions now

These help to target featured snippets. So if you're incorporating some of that, not only do you get the extra traffic, but you find these opportunities of getting featured snippets, which is great. You're expanding your real estate in search. Awesome. PAA boxes are also a great way to find commonly asked questions for a particular keyword.

☑ Add summaries

Summaries are also hidden gems. We see Google seeking out summaries for content all of the time. They are providing summaries in featured snippets and in different SERP features to help sort of distill information for users. So if you can do that, not only will you make your content more easily scannable, but you're also making it more accessible for search, which is great.

☑ TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency)

TF-IDF stands for "term frequency-inverse document frequency." It sounds a little intimidating. It's actually pretty simple. What's the number of times that "chakra stones" is mentioned in this particular page divided by the number of times it's mentioned anywhere? This is basically just a calculation to determine relevance for the term "chakra stones." Really cool and commonly used by Google. So if you can do this on your on-page, it will just help you in the long term.

☑ LSI (latent semantic indexing) for relevance

Similarly LSI or LSA, it sometimes referred to, is latent semantic indexing, and it's also for relevance. This helps determine, okay, if I'm talking about chakra stones, it may also incorporate those other topics that are commonly related to this topic. Relevant.

☑ Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test

What is the readability of this page? The easier it is to read the better, but you just want to keep an eye on that in general.

Bonus tip!

One final tip that Kameron Jenkins put on Twitter, that I love so much, and Kameron is a world-class writer —she's one of the best I've ever had the privilege of working with — mentioned this on-page SEO trick. Find the top three ranking URLs for your target keyword.

KW research tip 1. Search your target kw & pull the top 3 ranking URLs 2. Compare URLs in @Moz KWE 3. Click on the areas of most overlap 4. See KWs that top-ranking URLs for target KW also rank for 5. Use ideas to optimize your own page! pic.twitter.com/FxJjOxn7DJ — Kameron Jenkins (@Kammie_Jenkins) November 7, 2018

So if I were to put in "chakra stones" in Google and pull the top three URLs, put them into Moz Keyword Explorer and I see what they're ranking for, I see what those three URLs are specifically ranking for, and I look at what they're commonly ranking for in the middle here. Then I use those keywords to optimize my page even better. It's genius. It's very similar to some of the relevant stuff we were talking about over here.

Discover new keyword ideas

So definitely try some of this stuff out. I hope this helps. I really look forward to any of your comments or questions down below in the comments section.

Thank you so much for joining me on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I look forward to seeing you all again soon, so thanks. Have a good one.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from Blogger http://bit.ly/2AwKLaX via SW Unlimited

[tranlinhlan]

On-Page SEO for 2019 - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by BritneyMuller

Whew! We made it through another year, and it seems like we're past due for taking a close look at the health of our on-page SEO practices. What better way to hit the ground running than with a checklist? In today's Whiteboard Friday, the fabulous Britney Muller shares her best tips for doing effective on-page SEO in 2019.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we're going over all things on-page SEO, and I've divided it into three different sections:

How are crawlers and Googlebot crawling through your site and your web pages?

What is the UX of your on-page content?

What is the value in the content of your on-page content?

So let's just jump right in, shall we?

Crawler/bot-accessible

☑ Meta robots tag allows crawling

Making sure your meta robots tag allows crawling is essential. If that's blocking Googlebot from crawling, your page will never be in search. You want to make sure that's all panned out.

☑ Robots.txt doesn't disallow crawling

You want to make sure that let's say this page that you're trying to get to rank in search engines, that you're not disallowing this URL from your robots.txt.

☑ URL is included in sitemap

Similarly you want to make sure that the URL is in your site map.

☑ Schema markup

You also want to add any schema markup, any relevant schema markup that you can. This is essentially spoon-feeding search engines what your page is about and what your content is about.

☑ Internal links pointing to your page with natural anchor text

So let's say I am trying to rank for chakra stones. Maybe I'm on a yoga website and I want to make sure that I have other internal pages linking to chakra stones with the anchor text "chakra crystals" or "chakra stones" and making sure that I'm showing Google that this is indeed an internally linked page and it's important and we want to give it some weight.

☑ HTTPS - SSL

You want to make sure that that is secure and that Google is taking that into consideration as well.

User experience

☑ Meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Does it meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines? Definitely look into that and make sure you check all the boxes.

☑ Responsive mobile design with same content and links

Is it responsive for mobile? Super important with the mobile-first indexing.

☑ Clear CTA

Is there one clear call to action? A lot of pages miss this. So, for this page, maybe I would have a big "Buy Chakra Crystals Here" button or link. That would be a clear CTA. It's important to have.

☑ Multimedia: Evaluate SERP and add desired media

Are you providing other desired media types? Are there images and video and different forms of content on your page?

☑ Page speed: utilize CDNs, compress images, use reliable hosting

Are you checking the page speed? Are you using CDNs? Are you compressing your images? You want to check all of that.

☑ Integrate social sharing buttons

It's the easiest thing. Make sure that people can easily share your content.

Content and value

This is where it gets really fun and strategic too.

☑ Unique, high-quality content

Are you providing high-quality content? So if you go to Google and you search "chakra stones" and you take a look at all of those results, are you including all of that good content into your page? Then are you making it even better? Because that should be the goal.

☑ Optimize for intent: Evaluate SERP and PPC, note which SERP features show up

You want to also optimize for intent. So you want to evaluate that SERP. If that search result page is showing tons of images or maybe videos, you should be incorporating that into your page as well, because clearly that's what people are looking for.

You also want to evaluate the PPC. They have done so much testing on what converts and what doesn't. So it's silly not to take that into consideration when optimizing your page.

☑ Title tags and meta descriptions

What are those titles? What are those descriptions? What's working? Title tags and meta description are still so important. This is the first impression to many of your visitors in Google. Are you enticing a click? Are you making that an enticing call to action to your site?

☑ Header tags

H1, H2, and H3 header tags are still super important. You want to make sure that the title of your page is the H1 and so forth. But just to check on all of that would be good.

☑ Optimize images: compress, title file names, add alt text

Images are the biggest source of bloat of on-page site speed. So you want to make sure that your images are compressed and optimized and keeping your page fast and easily accessible to your users.

☑ Review for freshness

You want to review for freshness. We want to make sure that this is up-to-date content. Maybe take a look at popular content the last year or two of your site and update that stuff. This should be a continual wash and repeat. You want to continue to update the content on your site.

☑ Include commonly asked questions

It's such an easy thing to do, but it's commonly overlooked. AnswerThePublic does a great job of surfacing questions. Moz Keyword Explorer has a really great filter that provides some of the most commonly asked questions for a keyword term. I highly suggest you check that out and start to incorporate some of that.

Find common questions now

These help to target featured snippets. So if you're incorporating some of that, not only do you get the extra traffic, but you find these opportunities of getting featured snippets, which is great. You're expanding your real estate in search. Awesome. PAA boxes are also a great way to find commonly asked questions for a particular keyword.

☑ Add summaries

Summaries are also hidden gems. We see Google seeking out summaries for content all of the time. They are providing summaries in featured snippets and in different SERP features to help sort of distill information for users. So if you can do that, not only will you make your content more easily scannable, but you're also making it more accessible for search, which is great.

☑ TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency)

TF-IDF stands for "term frequency-inverse document frequency." It sounds a little intimidating. It's actually pretty simple. What's the number of times that "chakra stones" is mentioned in this particular page divided by the number of times it's mentioned anywhere? This is basically just a calculation to determine relevance for the term "chakra stones." Really cool and commonly used by Google. So if you can do this on your on-page, it will just help you in the long term.

☑ LSI (latent semantic indexing) for relevance

Similarly LSI or LSA, it sometimes referred to, is latent semantic indexing, and it's also for relevance. This helps determine, okay, if I'm talking about chakra stones, it may also incorporate those other topics that are commonly related to this topic. Relevant.

☑ Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test

What is the readability of this page? The easier it is to read the better, but you just want to keep an eye on that in general.

Bonus tip!

One final tip that Kameron Jenkins put on Twitter, that I love so much, and Kameron is a world-class writer —she's one of the best I've ever had the privilege of working with — mentioned this on-page SEO trick. Find the top three ranking URLs for your target keyword.

KW research tip 1. Search your target kw & pull the top 3 ranking URLs 2. Compare URLs in @Moz KWE 3. Click on the areas of most overlap 4. See KWs that top-ranking URLs for target KW also rank for 5. Use ideas to optimize your own page! pic.twitter.com/FxJjOxn7DJ — Kameron Jenkins (@Kammie_Jenkins) November 7, 2018

So if I were to put in "chakra stones" in Google and pull the top three URLs, put them into Moz Keyword Explorer and I see what they're ranking for, I see what those three URLs are specifically ranking for, and I look at what they're commonly ranking for in the middle here. Then I use those keywords to optimize my page even better. It's genius. It's very similar to some of the relevant stuff we were talking about over here.

Discover new keyword ideas

So definitely try some of this stuff out. I hope this helps. I really look forward to any of your comments or questions down below in the comments section.

Thank you so much for joining me on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I look forward to seeing you all again soon, so thanks. Have a good one.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

via Blogger http://bit.ly/2Ax6YFP

[gus-the-icreamman]

How SEO 2019 Can Help You Improve Your Health

Businesses ought to use 2018 in order in order to the bad habit of seeing aspects of an SEO marketing and advertising strategy like a one-time exercise. Search engines regard metadata plus meta keywords as less essential than they used to, thanks a lot to many years of dark hat misuse, however the name of your page and the relevancy towards the content will certainly always be a highly essential factor in SEO. SEO is important because this helps you get found simply by improving your ranking online lookup results. Inorganic SEO is usually good for populating links with regard to your website, even on additional websites which signed up with regard to online ads to be demonstrated on their web pages. Of course, finding the period for you to write your own SEO articles each day can become difficult in light of the particular fact that you still possess a company to run. Social media offers its very own perks aside from SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION value. So in case you think about it, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is really just a procedure of proving to find engines that will you are the best web site, one of the most authoritative, the most reliable, the most unique and fascinating site that they can provide to their customer - the particular searcher. SEO professionals employ the variety of different ways associated with make websites appear higher within your list of results and create it much more likely that will you'll click on them in order to find what you're looking regarding. SEO more usually talk regarding domain trust and domain power in line with the amount, type and quality of inbound links to a site. SEO entails attaining a higher ranking within search engines via changes in order to your site content and program code to make it more appropriate and therefore more search motor compatible.

This particular SEO model is called the "topic cluster, " and contemporary search engine algorithms rely upon them to connect users along with the information they're looking regarding. Your own SEO strategy likely involves articles designed to be shared upon social media. Take this article with regard to example, if you search regarding reverse engineer Google, ” seo secrets, ” reverse engineering seo, ” this informative article is on the particular first page for every associated with those search terms. Social media marketing and SEO ought to be working together, sharing content material or utilizing engagement metrics since data for future article advertising. Simply put, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is marketing through an knowing of how search algorithms function combined with a knowledge associated with what human users might research for. The results furthermore underscore the value of creating new content with your SEO online marketing strategy. Once you create new content structured on your priority keywords, a person have several advantages with the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION marketing strategy. Both SEO and content material marketing converge in several places; they will do not work in seclusion. Free to show up at SearchLeeds covers everything from technological SEO and analytics, to ADVERTISING, content marketing, paid media and even more. Following technical mobile SEO greatest practices (e. g., image marketing, redirects, JavaScript and CSS) is usually a necessary barrier to access in today's digital world.

There is definitely no magic wand in your own hands to regulate or manage your competitors' strategies or administration, Google analytics update, or client's behavior communicate business but a person can manage your SEO. In this particular new environment, the digital marketing expert who views SEO in the broader context will definitely come out there ahead of the competition within 2018 and beyond. Good SEO publications explain in detail how greatest to use keywords and exactly how to structure your entire internet site to attract the attention associated with search engine spiders and associated with human visitors, and a posting such as this cannot perform the topic justice. While businesses begin on an SEO advertising strategy, they should realize that a good entire marketing campaign can drop flat on its face in the event that a business is unable in order to reach the masses, that is definitely, their target audience. If your own pages were designed to obtain the most out of Search engines, with commonly known and today outdated SEO techniques chances are usually Google has identified this plus is throttling your rankings within some way. A lot of business people find keeping upward with the "moving target" associated with SEO distracts them from day-to-day priorities more than they actually imagined, so it's good in order to appear closely at what can make sense for every business. The software process for the SocialSEO Electronic Marketing and SEO Scholarship is definitely done 100% electronically and needs the next list of materials. But definitely, the acronym many people ask about is SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, or search engine optimization. Between this plus 2017's Best SEO Campaign prize from the UK Search Honours, it's clear the world will be starting to recognize Elephate because one of the most trustworthy SEO and Content Marketing companies in Europe. To understand how SEO functions to improve search rankings, we're going have to break it lower a little. Whichever way you choose in order to categorize keywords, one of the particular most important steps in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION does keyword research. Some good examples of White Hat SEO consist of optimizing META tags, putting key phrases in URLs, submitting sites in order to directories, making sitemaps, obtaining hyperlinks on related sites, and generating keyword-optimized content. An SEO Executive optimizes internet sites for making them show up increased on search engines like search engines and gain more website website visitors. Nevertheless, the brand-new trend in SEO is ideal for long-tail keywords and even more conversational searches. SEO is the great marketing tool for the particular websites promoting their businesses on-line. Still, the keyword factor of SEO is becoming progressively difficult with Google Adwords concealing volume data. Making use of advanced Search engines semantic search algorithms, we link the gap between old college SEO and the new articles marketing. Tug has been appointed specifically to roll out a multi-lingual internet marketing campaign using its experience in international SEO and PAY PER CLICK. Ultimately, simply by the end of 2018 or even mid-2019, we'll see a golf swing back to natural” content created by real humans who may produce valuable content that really provides value. Hiring experienced SEO experts will certainly ensure that your website climbs the search engine ranks without having using any illegal practices or even short cuts that could generate temporary spikes in the cyberspace ranking, but eventually lead in order to your website having to spend penalties. Official Site Associated with BlowFish SEO - Professional Search Motor Optimization Services operated by Robert DiSalvo SEO Located in Hand Beach Gardens, Florida. The takeaway here will be that if you might possess LOTS of location pages offering A SINGLE business in one particular location, then those are really probably classed as some type of doorway pages, and most likely old-school SEO techniques for these types of type of pages will discover them classed as lower-quality : or even - spammy web pages. CRAWL this, like Google does, with (for example) Screaming Frog SEO spider, plus fix malformed links or items that result in server errors (500), broken links (400+) and unwanted redirects (300+). SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION gives you a go at rating for the terms which your own customers use, so you may do better business. The job of the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is to create high-quality articles after which win the attention, the particular love as well as the particular link from a blogger or even editor. The keyword difficulty or even keyword SEO difficulty is the very useful metric for key phrase research. All of us wished to look at a massive group that included businesses of most sizes and in all sectors so we could really notice how SEO traffic increased whenever the only common denominator was including reviews to their site. In truth, this is section of the SEO technique we have used to gradually grow our organic traffic throughout the last 12 months right here at SnapApp: #3. Mobile will certainly account for 72% of ALL OF US digital ad spend by 2019. This workshop will be designed to help business proprietors implement Digital Marketing techniques with regard to their business including social press, organic SEO as well since paid channels. The Beginner's Guide in order to SEO continues to be go through over 3 million times plus offers comprehensive information you require to get on the road to professional quality Search Motor Optimization, or SEO. Whether it's using web analytics for carrying out research or even conversion tools that monitor plus report the usage of essential keywords, SEO agencies know exactly how and where you can obtain the information they need in order to save time furthermore lessen your in-house price. Generally there is probably no more fundamental strategy for SEO than the particular integration of internal links directly into your site - it is definitely an easy way to increase traffic to individual pages, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Consult says. SEO SERVICES Generally there are a number of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION services which can help enhance the organic search engine ratings of a website.

You've added even more relevant content to your site article and increased the on-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION targeted against your focus keyword(s). Before my first ISS, My partner and i had always thought I may just learn everything by personally about global online marketing matters like International SEO just by simply doing online investigation and testing, but honestly nothing beats typically the efficiency of attending a meeting like ISS where one may share your experiences and rapidly gain a treasure trove involving learnings and best practices coming from other international marketers. That method, you and your SEO may ensure that your site is usually designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. Nonetheless, a good SEO can furthermore help improve a current web site. If you need to know what kind associated with SEO trends are going in order to develop in 2019, look simply no further than the trends that will are developing in search within both 2017 and 2018. Webmasters are usually going to remain competitive within the online business when these people stick with SEO experts. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and social media marketing make sure that one's site has the particular best SEO Online marketing, which usually means that their company may remain competitive in the on-line market. An SEO ("search engine optimization") expert is somebody trained to improve your presence on search engines. From an SEO perspective, anyone want to have more inner links pointing to your almost all important content. SEO organizations are able to track almost every aspect of their technique, like increases in rankings, visitors and conversions. The methods which were the simplest (reciprocal links or directory submissions) perform not work anymore, therefore the particular SEOs spend a lot associated with time trying different approaches. The particular Moz Pro is another collection of Tools that check the particular important factors related to your own website's search ranking. Selection of key phrases or phrases plays an essential component in an SEO campaign considering that it saves you the pictures in the dark. In 2019 the particular digital marketing companies can anticipate a lot of voice queries, and by 2020, about 50 percent of the searches will become either voice searches or image-based searches. Read our Mobile SEO 2019 Checklist before you decide in order to implement. Typically the first element of optimizing images is definitely including your keywords in this image file name (seo_guide. jpg). The inevitable modifications that will occur in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in the near future are usually abolition of keywords stuffing plus spam backlinks, real-time personalized customer support by online marketers, improvement within the quality of visual content material as a result of advancement of video SEO, optimization associated with websites with conversational keywords plus generating massive quantity of current data. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION remains one of the lengthy term marketing strategies that function best for companies that are usually looking to improve their on-line visibility. Siteimprove SEO incorporates sixty six unique SEO checks, including tests for missing meta descriptions, punctuational mistakes, broken links, outdated data files, poor readability, and links in order to unsafe domains. But in case we're looking for a larger trend it's that SEO plus what we call real marketing” will continue to blur the particular lines between them as the particular job of the SEO gets that of a traditional internet marketer - having to understand the particular user, the competitors, the market place and also the implementation part. Thanks for going to the world of Search Motor Optimization (SEO). For example, we regularly produce content on the topic associated with "SEO, " but it's nevertheless very hard to rank nicely on Google for such the popular topic on this acronym alone. What can this industry shifts show about the particular future of SEO and content material marketing? Search engine optimisation (SEO) is on a move. Whether a person are an SEO Professional, Electronic Marketing Agency, SMB or Brand name, looking to increase your visitors or to monitor your website's evolution, this SEO software can provide you with best within class digital marketing strategy evaluation and insights for your company. Their expertise is definitely incredibly valuable because there is definitely lots of science to SEO, plus it is constantly changing because search engines like Google carry on to update their algorithms. From a content viewpoint, I'd say one of the particular best ways to get SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION value out of video is usually to focus your efforts upon addressing your customer's pain factors. We cover every topic within the digital marketing sphere which include SEO, technical SEO, local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION, PPC, SEM, content marketing, CRO, analytics, backlink, marketing strategy, cellular marketing, social media marketing plus much more. Any SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION company has to be capable to create high quality content material on an ongoing basis. SEO is the method for making changes to the website to be able in order to improve its position in the particular search engines like google. Robert feels that by 2019 most cellular searches will be conducted simply by voice by mobile devices or even virtual assistants in fact this is very important to obtain your positioning in the lookup engine ranking positions as shortly as possible. As the particular factors search engines like Search engines, Bing, and Yahoo use in order to rank sites are kept magic formula Ten Taboos About SEO 2019 You Should Never Share On Twitter and change frequently, we create all known SEO best methods into every Squarespace site. Black hat SEO may get you to the best of SERP in a brief time, however, search engines such as google will most probably punish and ban the website more rapidly or later. If you might have read from the beginning, a person know that links are the key SEO ranking factor. Generally there are 2 types of research engine optimization or SEO. Now, pay shut attention to the components the fact that make up on-page SEO, since this is where non-SEO professionals will be able to help to make the most meaningful impact in their search engine rankings. Based on SEO software program company Moz's bi-yearly survey upon search engine ranking factors, the particular titles on your page are usually one of the nine almost all important considerations a search motor makes. Having an SEO technique that effectively promotes your digital photography business, driving new traffic in addition to taking into consideration the requires of the site visitors while you concentrate on perfecting your own art is a really strong tool. SEO is Research Engine Optimization and it is definitely required for make a site view-able. And you will see the section on exactly where to use keywords for even more information on integrating these key phrases into your SEO content technique. 22. Use social media in order to boost local SEO. SEO is the acronym for Seo. Even though certain techniques of SEO content material Blog9T remain the same, like not really compromising on quality; there are usually definitely techniques which have developed from the past and a person should find out whether your own SEO articles writing services are usually very well aware of that will or not. SEO service suppliers are specialized in increasing the particular traffic to your site simply by increasing your position in the particular search engine ranking positions. Bring in international people to your sites with these SEO tips. The top challenges within organic SEO are link creating (easy-to-get links no more possess much value) and keyword analysis (the low-hanging fruit is lengthy gone). For illustration, the phrase ‘SEO tips' is furthermore included inside the less competing phrase ‘SEO tips 2019', which usually is searched for too.

Keep in mind that will links, content, and user knowledge are all major SEO rating factors. Could holistic approach will ultimately eliminate a lot of the particular issues created by some SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION practitioners over the years, We suspect that search engines' technicians will initially overestimate the accuracy of their AI, resulting within Penguin-level collateral damage. SEO (Search Motor Optimization) is the process associated with making a website more noticeable in search results, also called improving search rankings. Siteimprove SEO furthermore provides in-tool tips on where to start as well as how to get the most out associated with your keyword research and supervising. We've already been operating in the SEO plus content marketing industry since last year and know how search motors work. Right now there are a great number associated with resources out there surrounding competing link analysis (and a great deal that have been authored simply by me! ) but whenever I actually speak with people that are usually working on SEO projects, really always one of those "yeah, I understand I should do this more" tasks. Amy Kilvington, Marketing Executive at Custom Drapes, believes that SEOs are heading to have to optimize social media marketing more as Google indexes this and prioritizes it over their particular sites' pages. Social media will be the easiest and most efficient way to push the SEO-based content. However, right now there are some easy adjustments that will you can make to the particular search engine optimization (SEO) component of it, which will ideally provide you with fantastic results. Link building is a type of off-site SEO where some other sites link back to your own site if they feel a person offer something of value in order to their audience. In many essential areas they overlap; if SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is more technical and provides to a narrow sphere, content material marketing takes a holistic technique. Equally, right now there is no point in losing your SEO marketing efforts simply by delivering lots of traffic in order to your website from highly appropriate search queries, when the consumer experience upon landing on that will website is poor quality. On web page, SEO relates to keywords. In addition to the over search engine optimization solutions, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION services provide other Internet advertising services, which includes: search-friendly internet design, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising strategies, backlink programs, SMO services, blog site optimization and marketing, targeted regional search engine marketing, and cellular marketing optimization. A successful SEO effort demands to move beyond building delighted to rank on highly looked keywords and should have the heavy focus on providing solutions for genres of unique concerns that many people might research by voice. Learn the particular strategy behind great SEO, which includes keyword planning, content optimization, hyperlink building, and SEO for e-commerce, local search, and mobile viewers. Seo or SEO is definitely the simple process of making sure a website can be discovered in search engines for phrases and phrases relevant to exactly what the site is providing. Let's confirm our knowing of SEO basics with the one question quiz about the particular factors in search rankings: web pages, links and keyphrases. When it comes in order to Google SEO, the rel=canonical hyperlink element has become VERY IMPORTANT over the yrs and NEVER MORE SO. To place the particular focus on the website website visitor, it has been suggested that will acronym SEO should indicate lookup experience optimization. It's important to remember in order to share content from your internet site or blog socially to provide it an SEO boost as well. Some Webmasters will pay out thousands of dollars to a few so-called professional SEO expert in order to get their Websites on best in the rankings. It is usually preferable to ask questions upon their SEO procedures and find out whether they have knowledge associated with keyword density or if they will have information about the most recent keyword research strategies and equipment. This combined expertise makes all of us uniquely qualified to present a good ethics-based, search engine-friendly SEO guide to teach you guidelines that will reflect the latest developments looking. They protect important subjects like search motor success factors and how SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION relates to social media advertising. In order in order to make web pages appear in high positions in the search outcomes, SEO tries to shape the website according to Google's protocol. The major problem of SEO is the reality that there are billions associated with pages in the internet research engine indexes and your place in the SERPS is reliant on a constantly changing formula which is not published. Without the doubt, one of the greatest trends that has already started to take place and may continue well into 2018 may be the consolidation of niche MarTech gamers by larger content cloud suppliers, with the role and significance of SEO increasing significantly all through this transformation. SEO Internet marketing provides major components, which develop the particular website traffic, and top research engine rankings. SEO is brief for Seo, and there will be nothing really mystical about this particular. You might have heard the lot about SEO and just how it works, but basically exactly what is a measurable, repeatable procedure which is used to send out signals to search engines that will the pages are worth displaying in Google's index. Topic clusters have got been lauded since the future associated with SEO and content strategy, yet are widely underreported on (so now's the time to hit! ) 93% of B2B companies use content marketing. Teresa Walsh, Marketing Professional at automobile site, Cazana, forecasts that hyper organic targeting will probably increase its importance in 2019 with more location search plus more voice search. We get to the particular bottom of on-page SEO troubles in order for search motors to clearly see what your own website is all about. SEO requires you to continuously be considered a student because of just how quickly the algorithms of research engine companies change. Google's punishing methods probably class pages as some thing akin to a poor UX if they meet certain detectable criteria e. g. lack associated with reputation or old-school SEO stuff such as keyword stuffing a site.

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On-Page SEO for 2019 - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by BritneyMuller

Whew! We made it through another year, and it seems like we're past due for taking a close look at the health of our on-page SEO practices. What better way to hit the ground running than with a checklist? In today's Whiteboard Friday, the fabulous Britney Muller shares her best tips for doing effective on-page SEO in 2019.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we're going over all things on-page SEO, and I've divided it into three different sections:

How are crawlers and Googlebot crawling through your site and your web pages?

What is the UX of your on-page content?

What is the value in the content of your on-page content?

So let's just jump right in, shall we?

Crawler/bot-accessible

☑ Meta robots tag allows crawling

Making sure your meta robots tag allows crawling is essential. If that's blocking Googlebot from crawling, your page will never be in search. You want to make sure that's all panned out.

☑ Robots.txt doesn't disallow crawling

You want to make sure that let's say this page that you're trying to get to rank in search engines, that you're not disallowing this URL from your robots.txt.

☑ URL is included in sitemap

Similarly you want to make sure that the URL is in your site map.

☑ Schema markup

You also want to add any schema markup, any relevant schema markup that you can. This is essentially spoon-feeding search engines what your page is about and what your content is about.

☑ Internal links pointing to your page with natural anchor text

So let's say I am trying to rank for chakra stones. Maybe I'm on a yoga website and I want to make sure that I have other internal pages linking to chakra stones with the anchor text "chakra crystals" or "chakra stones" and making sure that I'm showing Google that this is indeed an internally linked page and it's important and we want to give it some weight.

☑ HTTPS - SSL

You want to make sure that that is secure and that Google is taking that into consideration as well.

User experience

☑ Meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Does it meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines? Definitely look into that and make sure you check all the boxes.

☑ Responsive mobile design with same content and links

Is it responsive for mobile? Super important with the mobile-first indexing.

☑ Clear CTA

Is there one clear call to action? A lot of pages miss this. So, for this page, maybe I would have a big "Buy Chakra Crystals Here" button or link. That would be a clear CTA. It's important to have.

☑ Multimedia: Evaluate SERP and add desired media

Are you providing other desired media types? Are there images and video and different forms of content on your page?

☑ Page speed: utilize CDNs, compress images, use reliable hosting

Are you checking the page speed? Are you using CDNs? Are you compressing your images? You want to check all of that.

☑ Integrate social sharing buttons

It's the easiest thing. Make sure that people can easily share your content.

Content and value

This is where it gets really fun and strategic too.

☑ Unique, high-quality content

Are you providing high-quality content? So if you go to Google and you search "chakra stones" and you take a look at all of those results, are you including all of that good content into your page? Then are you making it even better? Because that should be the goal.

☑ Optimize for intent: Evaluate SERP and PPC, note which SERP features show up

You want to also optimize for intent. So you want to evaluate that SERP. If that search result page is showing tons of images or maybe videos, you should be incorporating that into your page as well, because clearly that's what people are looking for.

You also want to evaluate the PPC. They have done so much testing on what converts and what doesn't. So it's silly not to take that into consideration when optimizing your page.

☑ Title tags and meta descriptions

What are those titles? What are those descriptions? What's working? Title tags and meta description are still so important. This is the first impression to many of your visitors in Google. Are you enticing a click? Are you making that an enticing call to action to your site?

☑ Header tags

H1, H2, and H3 header tags are still super important. You want to make sure that the title of your page is the H1 and so forth. But just to check on all of that would be good.

☑ Optimize images: compress, title file names, add alt text

Images are the biggest source of bloat of on-page site speed. So you want to make sure that your images are compressed and optimized and keeping your page fast and easily accessible to your users.

☑ Review for freshness

You want to review for freshness. We want to make sure that this is up-to-date content. Maybe take a look at popular content the last year or two of your site and update that stuff. This should be a continual wash and repeat. You want to continue to update the content on your site.

☑ Include commonly asked questions

It's such an easy thing to do, but it's commonly overlooked. AnswerThePublic does a great job of surfacing questions. Moz Keyword Explorer has a really great filter that provides some of the most commonly asked questions for a keyword term. I highly suggest you check that out and start to incorporate some of that.

Find common questions now

These help to target featured snippets. So if you're incorporating some of that, not only do you get the extra traffic, but you find these opportunities of getting featured snippets, which is great. You're expanding your real estate in search. Awesome. PAA boxes are also a great way to find commonly asked questions for a particular keyword.

☑ Add summaries

Summaries are also hidden gems. We see Google seeking out summaries for content all of the time. They are providing summaries in featured snippets and in different SERP features to help sort of distill information for users. So if you can do that, not only will you make your content more easily scannable, but you're also making it more accessible for search, which is great.

☑ TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency)

TF-IDF stands for "term frequency-inverse document frequency." It sounds a little intimidating. It's actually pretty simple. What's the number of times that "chakra stones" is mentioned in this particular page divided by the number of times it's mentioned anywhere? This is basically just a calculation to determine relevance for the term "chakra stones." Really cool and commonly used by Google. So if you can do this on your on-page, it will just help you in the long term.

☑ LSI (latent semantic indexing) for relevance

Similarly LSI or LSA, it sometimes referred to, is latent semantic indexing, and it's also for relevance. This helps determine, okay, if I'm talking about chakra stones, it may also incorporate those other topics that are commonly related to this topic. Relevant.

☑ Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test

What is the readability of this page? The easier it is to read the better, but you just want to keep an eye on that in general.

Bonus tip!

One final tip that Kameron Jenkins put on Twitter, that I love so much, and Kameron is a world-class writer —she's one of the best I've ever had the privilege of working with — mentioned this on-page SEO trick. Find the top three ranking URLs for your target keyword.

KW research tip 1. Search your target kw & pull the top 3 ranking URLs 2. Compare URLs in @Moz KWE 3. Click on the areas of most overlap 4. See KWs that top-ranking URLs for target KW also rank for 5. Use ideas to optimize your own page! pic.twitter.com/FxJjOxn7DJ — Kameron Jenkins (@Kammie_Jenkins) November 7, 2018

So if I were to put in "chakra stones" in Google and pull the top three URLs, put them into Moz Keyword Explorer and I see what they're ranking for, I see what those three URLs are specifically ranking for, and I look at what they're commonly ranking for in the middle here. Then I use those keywords to optimize my page even better. It's genius. It's very similar to some of the relevant stuff we were talking about over here.

Discover new keyword ideas

So definitely try some of this stuff out. I hope this helps. I really look forward to any of your comments or questions down below in the comments section.

Thank you so much for joining me on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I look forward to seeing you all again soon, so thanks. Have a good one.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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