#ok i was going to tag all the sites but i've changed my mind | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

asexual-means-no-attraction · 2 years ago

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Ok. I'm only gonna reply once. After that we can talk via pm if you want. But I feel like if we talk online no one's actually gonna listen to anyone and we're both just gonna get more defensive. No one likes to admit they might of gone too far in a public space, be it irl or online.

1. Everything you're both saying is also an opinion so that's a mute point. You can ask 100 different asexuals what the definition is and get 100 different answers. Cuz the word really does just mean what ever people want it to in most cases ("what does this mean for you" vs "what does this actually mean"). Which is one of the major issues. Sexuality is supposed to explain who you're attracted in broad terms. Ie. What gender do you like? That's it.

When you try to get hyper specific and include whether you do or don't enjoy sex, if you want something serious or not, if you're comfortable with certain things you fall into a major rabbit hole. Because first, these boundaries may change. You might find yourself liking sex now and then hating it later. That doesn't mean your sexuality changed. You might need time to be intimate now, but in a few years you might get crushes fairly easily. Again, not a new sexuality. If your sexuality changed every time you developed into a new person with new boundaries then you're encouraging conversation therapy and the likes. "You can just stop being gay since sexuality can change." It's homo/lesbiphobic, biphobic, and aphobic.

You also shove yourself into a box. This is dangerous and makes it really hard when you grow out of said box. Sexuality is supposed to be broad enough that you're able to be fluid and free within that label while being specific enough that it doesn't include everyone. It includes a large variety of people that may not have anything in common besides who they like. It doesn't hold you back from anything and you don't have to think about it all the time to feel free. If a sexuality is too specific it becomes confiding. I've seen many people force themselves to act within the bounds of the sexuality they claim to be instead of being themselves and finding there sexuality naturally. Ie. Putting the sexuality before themselves.

2. This is Tumblr. It's an online website. There is no boosting voices here. Chill. This ain't activism and it ain't anything worth shit. On my end or yours.

3. You can't validate everyone. Some people are going to be invalidated and thats not a bad thing. Ex: you're invalidating mine and many others experiences withing the ace community. But thats ok. Cuz your allowed to speak your mind as am I. I purposely didn't tag the original post because I was aware it would make others upset. But I'm allowed to post it. I'm still allowed to say it. As are you allowed to respond. It's a public website. If you don't like it, you can leave.

4. You're taking from another post because in this original one I talk about the dangers of having specific labels and how things aren't a spectrum. It doesn't mention that aces can't have sex. I'll briefly summarize what I said in the post I'm assuming your getting that from: I didn't deny that people have sex. Nothing is stopping anyone from having sex. My issue stems from the dangers of having sex with someone you are unattracted to. It's an insult to your partner and it will create a lot of problems for you in the long run. The source for that again, is in my FAQ. And again, is from other asexuals not within my group of mutuals irl or online. It is in fact a site I found while researching things back when I thought the same as you. And it's part of why I started to realize that encouraging people to have sex with someone they don't like is actually pretty shitty and not supportive in the least.

5. Since it bears repeating. A gay man who doesn't like sex is still gay. He likes men. I know a straight women who hates sex. She hates masterbation. She's very sex positive for others. But she still is into men. She's very clear that she's not asexual. She still finds people attractive, she just doesn't like sex. These things are called boundaries. And someone's boundary is not a sexuality.

6. In that same vein that chart isn't asexual exclusive. I could apply that to any sexuality and it'll still work. We all know the stereotypical Christian white women who's ridiculously sex negative and can't stand the idea of people even kissing in public. Everyone knows that one guy who's an absolute manwhore and is sex positive and favorable to the max. I myself used to be sex positive but repulsed for a long time before I worked thru trauma (note not all sex repulsion is caused by trauma). We all hear about the incels who are sex negative but also favorable. None of the above are asexual. Because anyone can have a complicated relationship to the actual physical action of sex. And if you really wanna uplift voices and spread positivity about letting people be happy with or without sex, you gotta actually accept that it's not an asexual exclusive deal.

7. You can talk about how people have made a spectrum all you want. It's the same as the split attraction model. It causes more harm then good-- info for which can be found in my FAQ. It's not the first time people have tried to make a distinction between types of attraction and it won't be the last. People have tried to make sexualities out of it for with good and bad intentions for decades. I should really post the list of all that info I have. But the actual history of asexuality has it changing meaning a lot, and it often being referred to by other names. But sexuality isn't supposed to be a spectrum. It's just word to describe what gender you are attracted to. The fluidity and fun comes from just being yourself and exploring your boundaries. You're not supposed to put yourself into a bunch of categories.

Having a name for your sexuality is sexuality is supposed to be freeing and show your not alone. It can't do that when people add a billion and one more rules about how you are to experience that attraction. It can't do that when people try to over examine themselves to a point where they stop letting themselves just be. It can't do that when people try to tell others "um actually you're not gay you're an homoromanric demisexual asexual." It can't do that when people have to learn so many words that seem to change meaning every day so they have to constantly redefine themselves. It can't do that when no one knows what your talking about. It can't do that when you make things so specific that there's so few people that have the exact same words to define them that you've effectively alienated yourself. The whole point is to just be yourself. The sexuality itself is supposed to be broad and encompass people of all walks of life under one single thing. Who the love. Not how, not how much, not in what ways. Just who.

Also, just on an activist side of things. It's a lot harder to find support groups, raise money, give out money, raise awareness, find enough people for support groups, organize people, etc etc when there's so many different speciic sexualities that you're trying to support. Having more broad terms means you can read more people. You can help more people that need it. The only thing the specific labels help is selling merch cuz people eat up pride merch and when you have so many different labels you need merch for each one.

8. I'd like to repeat that this is just Tumblr, but also you both came here. To an untagged post. I am not an expert. Neither are either of you. We are just humans on Tumblr. Not only did I never go to anyone's face and tell them they can't ID a certain way, but you turned around and ordered me around. I have a blog to express my thoughts and opinions. That's is the entire point of blogs. You have every right to respond, and I won't stop you. But I think you should step back and breath.

I don't go around irl and tell asexuals what I think about them. It's not my place to ID anyone for them. And if you had read my blog you'd of seen that when people have come to me for advice. I don't tell strangers what they can't and can't do. All I've done is talk about actual problems I've seen irl on my Tumblr blog. That's literally it. When I'm at LGBT meetups/meetings/etc I don't tell people they can't be there. Because ultimately I do agree we are a community built and reliant on letting people be free to love themselves and others. Others self journey is not mine to comment on unless they are actively going to harm myself or someone else. But I'm still allowed to voice concerns in my own space-- in this case my own blog. Again, you can go. I'm going to keep living my life. And I hope you all the best for yours.

Not really in the mood for “you’re invalidating me” conversations cuz they never actually end with any understanding or listening so sorry for not replying directly. But let me just make something clear real quick: asexuality is the furthest thing you can get from a spectrum. Bisexuality is the closest to one but I’d still avoid calling it one.

Your sexuality shouldn’t be labeled in such detail that you need a chart, spectrum, and a whole as paragraph to explain it. You’re sexuality only needs one word, not ten. All it says is what gender your attracted to. That’s it. It doesn’t say if you have sex, if you like sex, if you want something serious or not, if you need time to develop feelings, etc. That’s all a personal preference outside of sexuality. And I got plenty of posts in my FAQ that talk about why it’s dangerous to treat preferences/boundaries as whole separate sexualities.

#also not an exclusionist #not sure why that was relavent??#i wont reply to this chain again fyi #long post #response #i hope at least one point i made didnt make you angry

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mariska · 3 years ago

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i have been trying to investigate into & acquire accessibility tools to help me with my constant 24/7 state of anxiety and sensory overload and autistic shutdown because im going to be 25 in two months and have reached the lowest point in my life so far of just. no ability to function at all because im just living at 150% overstimulated and shut down as my base level of normalcy now and because of health reasons im going to have to start seriously looking into possible ways of living independently from the house im in right now (because it is not at all accessible to my safety needs mostly physically, not cuz of my moms they are rad and i love them though i also would enjoy adult independence in general just like. because i am almost 25 lol)

ANYWAYS one of the things i've been trying to focus on first is securing ways to help prevent myself from completely shutting down in the first place or even just reducing the amount of sensory related stress i live with from things like fridge humming noises/laundry/static/tv buzz/neighbors music or hammering etc etc. so i ordered some prescription sunglasses for myself from the site i get my seeing glasses from since i know it works well for me and its way less expensive than big chain places, and the other thing i did was look into good quality/comfortable noise canceling headphones suggestions from people in the 'actually autistic' tags on diff social media places i use (tiktok was extremely helpful with this which was not the place i assumed i'd find the most help from so that was a pleasant surprise lol) and eventually settled on a specific headphone model that was hundreds of dollars less expensive than most of the Best Quality™️ suggestions i saw (it feels very disappointing and frustrating to see so many genuinely great and helpful headphone suggestions and then look them up and find out they sell for 300-500 actual us dollars at retail price and not much cheaper pre-owned like.....my god. ok. not getting those i guess LMAO 😭) and long story short.

i am. in shock legitimately rn. they came in the mail like an hour or so ago and as soon as i turned them on and turned the noise canceling on it made me gasp out loud because it was just QUIET. there was peace???? no buzzing??? no tv noises, no dripping from sinks, no neighbors music blasting thru the walls, no hammering or buzzsaw noises from people outside???? i am not even slightly kidding when i say in 25 years of being forced to try and live with my brain and its triggers i have never experienced or felt or heard so little noise in my life. i cant fathom being this unbothered by every day things happening around me. it's legitimately life changing much in the same way my adhd medication felt to me the first time i took it back in like the end of 2019 and i could actually kind of focus on my thoughts for the first time ever.

its just wild. they're not like the worlds most incredible headphones or whatever but the noise canceling alone is just so mind blowing to me. i have never ever known peace like this. it makes me want to cry lol??

#theyre called cowin se7 headphones for anyone curious #also mine are like bright magenta which is just fun i picked the color out myself hee hee 💖

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r-romanoff · 5 years ago

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Photon Blasts & Spider Webs

Chapter: 1 Part 1

Peter Parker x Male Reader

Master list

September, 23, 2019

"I don't want to, take me home." I pout siting in the back seat of the black car. "Well you definitely are your mother's son." Fury starts looking over at Maria to say something, "It'll be good for you, you'll get to make friends your age bud." She smiles unlocking the doors from the passenger seat.

"Mom was supposed to be here, can't I just stay with Wanda, or Roadie? What about Sam?" I question not wanting to move from my seat. The leather seat that felt warm as the car had been sitting in the sun for an hour before the two coaxed me into leaving the house. "Look you know that if she could be here she would, now that the Avengers base has been arguably repaired you'll get to see everyone afterschool. Now get out, first period is in 5." Fury explains the already memorised memo in my head.

"I just-" "HONK!!!!!!" I'm interrupted by the blazing sound of someone honking in the silver car behind us. "Out!" Fury and Maria almost yell in unison, turning to look at me with hints of annoyance. Seeing as I've been difficult to handle as of late. Taking a breath of air allowing the smell of the car to enter and exit my lungs I let out a small noise; "Fine." The faint sound that is barely audible escapes. Opening the door I step outside of the car taking in all of my surroundings, taking my first step onto the sidewalk. "HONK!!!!!!" I jump at the same car that was honking at me before, running into the crowded hallway trying to avoid attention. "First period" I whisper to myself to keep my brain focused in this sea of endless students. The noise of their voices crashing against my ears, like waves to the cliffs. All of them clearing down the hallway to look for their class. After a while of navigating the ocean of teenagers, the halls have almost dried up in people and noise allowing me to finally find my physics room.

As I walk in to the full room the students all turn to look at me as well as the teacher, an array of confused looks head my way. Until of course I'm able to utter out a small sentence; "I-I'm new!" I look around waiting for a response. At that I see a boys head from all the way in the back shoot up and give me a strange glance, almost as if he'd been waiting or looking for me. I stand and think about it for a split second until my attention is drawn away, by the teachers voice. "Oh right! Class I would like to introduce you to Y/N Danvers. He will be joining us for the remainder of the year." He explains as the same boy's expression changes, as if he has some sort of objective or motive. "So, who will volunteer to be his partner for the rest of the semester? Extra credit will be granted." At the teachers announcement two people out of the entire class raise their hand. The first was a blonde girl with blue/green eyes, sitting two rows from the front on the right side of the class. The second being the burnett boy in the back left corner of the class.

"Ah... Ms Brant, thank you so much for volunteering, as for you Mr Parker thanks for the effort. Y/N please take a seat over there thank you very much." The teacher said pointing next to the blonde girl as he continued the lesson. While taking my seat the girl next to me smiled, "Hi I'm Betty!" She introduced herself, whispering very enthusiastically. "I'm Y/N but you already know that by now." I smiled back "So what brings you to midtown high? If you don't mind me asking." She asks politely. "Well I have always lived kinda near, it wasn't until recently though after the blip that my family wanted to stop homeschooling me. Then my mom was like 'You are going to normal school to socialise and whatnot' so sorry if I come off a bit strange." I nervously began to ramble. "No way that I so cool, so you've never been to a real school before?" Betty sports a grin on her face. "Well no... is that a bad thing?" I nervously question. "Huh? Oh no. It's not a big deal at all don't worry stick with me and everything will be just fine." She gives a sturdy response, yes go me making new friends... I think. "Thanks, so how long have you been going here?" I ask directing the attention towards her. "Well this is my third year, so I'm finally a junior." She begins to laugh.

After a while of talking back and forth the entire first period is officially over, and I officially have a new friend. The the rest of the day however begins to move slowly as not many seemed as interested in me as Betty. That or I'm actually doing something wrong and everyone thinks I'm weird. Besides that, lunch has officially begun and I am officially lost, again. Walking down what looks like the same hallway over and over again, trying to navigate the maze of lockers and trophy cases while also passing the occasional water fountain and bathroom. Eventually giving up I collapse onto the floor crisscrossing in the middle of the hallway allowing a loud groan to escape my lips; "AAAAAhhh!!!" I cried out not expecting anyone to have heard. "Is anyone there?" An unexpected response is shot back at me. Not wanting anyone to see me in my miserable state I immediately stand up. As I begin to turn away from the cold spot on the floor under an air vent, the same voice speaks again only this time closer.

"Were you just sitting on the floor?" Turning around greet who ever was there my face had officially turned pink with embarrassment. "Y/N, right?" I see the same strange boy from my physics class. What is his deal why does something seem so off to me about him. He always has this look on his face I can never exactly, recognize. He seems to be either expecting something, planning, or carrying something out. I just don't know what. "Yes, Parker???" I reply quickly as possible hoping I wasn't thinking for to long. "Peter, Peter Parker. Nice to meet you" he holds out his hand, unsurely I take it and we shake hands. Feeling a small tingle as I pull away, "So are you lost, or... what are you doing i-if you don't mind me asking." He says almost nervously, quickly admitting defeat I decide to explain my situation. "Yes I- There's a lot of hallways." I smiled earning a small chuckle from my strange acquaintance. "I can help you get to where you're going if-" "Y/N!!!" Peter is cut of by a familiar booming voice coming from the other end of the hall. "I was looking for you everywhere, and then I was like 'wait he's new so he must have gotten lost' and I couldn't have my new friend lost after I said I would stick with him." Turning to see Betty is the one who was speaking, I smile at the thought that my new friend came looking. "Sorry, Peter was just about to help me out with that. Uh see you around?" You ask Peter as you being to walk towards Betty. "Uh, yeah see you around." Peter waves as he begins to walk away to the opposite side of the hall.

"So where we headed?" I ask Betty. "I want to introduce you to a couple of my friends, and show you around of course." As the day went on I had the rest of my periods with Betty, and a couple of them with Peter although we didn't really speak to each other. We just sort of acknowledged each one another. When the day was finally over I was making my way to the front of the school to get picked up, still thinking about how I survived the day. "Got any plans this Wednesday?" Betty greets walking beside me. "Not that I'm aware of." I shoot a look wondering what's to fallow. "Good I'm going to the mall with a couple people from school, so I wanted to know if you wanna come. You know because you're new just wanna make sure you find everything well here. Aka get the full teenage experience." She elaborates. "That actually sounds pretty fun, but I'm gonna have to check in with my family first." "That's alright, just text me. Also we're wearing pink, just a heads up." The enthusiastic blonde informs. As we had finally made it to the parking lot Betty waved goodbye as she got in the passengers seat of a red sports car and zoomed. Leaving me to wait for my ride, all alone.

*Buzz*

My cell vibrates Indicating that I've received a message. Looking to see who it was that texted me the name on the text says Wanda. However before I get a chance to open, it she begins to call. "Hello." I greet as I slide the green button. "Hey Y/N/N, how was the first day?" "Better than anticipated." "Told you!" I could hear her giggle through the phone. "I'm gonna picking you up a block away, ok." My sister figure spoke. "Coolness see you in a bit then." "In a bit."

An: I'm going to admit I was not expecting chapter 1 to be anything but short, but there will be a part two up by next week to this chapter. Before finishing the deadline was reached sorry. Ps the next part will probably also be filler

Also sorry for the prologue I wasn't happy with it, I'm not sure on whether or not I'll end up posting it though

Feel free to comment, also what's up with Peter he's acting weird.

Tag List (ask to be put on)

@klanceiscannon14 @wiitchy-wooo @multifandom-slytherin @jonnyjay2413 @lazerman217

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holytheoristtastemaker · 5 years ago

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Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for almost every kind of website, but its finer points remain something of a specialty. Even today SEO is often treated as something that can be tacked on after the fact. It can up to a point, but it really shouldn’t be. Search engines get smarter every day and there are ways for websites to be smarter too. The foundations of SEO are the same as they’ve always been: great content clearly labeled will win the day sooner or later — regardless of how many people try to game the system. The thing is, those labels are far more sophisticated than they used to be. Meta titles, image alt text, and backlinks are important, but in 2020, they’re also fairly primitive. There is another tier of metadata that only a fraction of sites are currently using: structured data. All search engines share the same purpose: to organize the web’s content and deliver the most relevant, useful results possible to search queries. How they achieve this has changed enormously since the days of Lycos and Ask Jeeves. Google alone uses more than 200 ranking factors, and those are just the ones we know about. SEO is a huge field nowadays, and I put it to you that structured data is a really, really important factor to understand and implement in the coming years. It doesn’t just improve your chances of ranking highly for relevant queries. More importantly, it helps make your websites better — opening it up to all sorts of useful web experiences. Recommended reading: Where Does SEO Belong In Your Web Design Process? What Is Structured Data? Structured data is a way of labeling content on web pages. Using vocabulary from Schema.org, it removes much of the ambiguity from SEO. Instead of trusting the likes of Google, Bing, Baidu, and DuckDuckGo to work out what your content is about, you tell them. It’s the difference between a search engine guessing what a page is about and knowing for sure. As Schema.org puts it: By adding additional tags to the HTML of your web pages — tags that say, "Hey search engine, this information describes this specific movie, or place, or person, or video" — you can help search engines and other applications better understand your content and display it in a useful, relevant way. Schema.org launched in 2011, a project shared by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex. In other words, it’s a ‘bipartisan’ effort — if you like. The markup transcends any one search engine. In Schema.org’s own words, “A shared vocabulary makes it easier for webmasters and developers to decide on a schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts.” It is in many respects a more expansive cousin of microformats (launched around 2005) which embed semantics and structured data in HTML, mainly for the benefit of search engines and aggregators. Although microformats are currently still supported, the ‘official’ nature of the Schema.org library makes it a safer bet for longevity. JSON for Linked Data (JSON-LD) has emerged as the dominant underlying standard for structured data, although Microdata and RDFa are also supported and serve the same purpose. Schema.org provides examples for each type depending on what you’re most comfortable with. As an example, let’s say Joe Bloggs writes a review of Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel Catch-22 and publishes it on his blog. Sadly, Bloggs has poor taste and gives it two out of five stars. For a person looking at the page, this information would be understood unthinkingly, but computer programs would have to connect several dots to reach the same conclusion. With structured data, the following markup could be added to the page’s code. (This is a JSON-LD approach. Microdata and RDFa can be used to weave the same information into content): { "@context" : "http://schema.org", "@type" : "Book", "name" : "Catch-22", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Joseph Heller" }, "datePublished" : "1961-11-10", "review" : { "@type" : "Review", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Joe Bloggs" }, "reviewRating" : { "@type" : "Rating", "ratingValue" : "2", "worstRating" : "0", "bestRating" : "5" }, "reviewBody" : "A disaster. The worst book I've ever read, and I've read The Da Vinci Code." } } This sets in stone that the page is about Catch-22, a novel by Joseph Heller published on November 10th, 1961. The reviewer has been identified, as has the parameters of the scoring system. Different schemas can be combined (or tiered) to describe different things. For example, through tagging of this sort, you could make clear a page is the event listing for an open-air film screening, and the film in question is The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou by Wes Anderson. Recommended reading: Better Research, Better Design, Better Results Why Does It Matter? Ok, wonderful. I can label my website up to its eyeballs and it will look exactly the same, but what are the benefits? To my mind, there are two main benefits to including structured data in websites: It makes search engine’s jobs much easier.They can index content more accurately, which in turn means they can present it more richly. It helps web content to be more thorough and useful.Structured data gives you a ‘computer perspective’ on content. Quality content is fabulous. Quality content thoroughly tagged is the stuff of dreams. You know when you see snazzy search results that include star ratings? That’s structured data. Rich snippets of film reviews? Structured data. When a selection of recipes appear, ingredients, preparation time and all? You guessed it. Dig into the code of any of these pages and you’ll find the markup somewhere. Search engines reward sites using structured data because it tells them exactly what they’re dealing with. (Large preview) Examine the code on the websites featured above and sure enough, structured data is there. (Large preview) It’s not just search either, to be clear. That’s a big part of it but it’s not the whole deal. Structured data is primarily about tagging and organizing content. Rich search results are just one way for said content to be used. Google Dataset Search uses Schema.org/Dataset markup, for example. Below are a handful of examples of structured data being useful: Recipes Reviews FAQs Voice queries Event listings Content Actions. There are thousands more. Like, literally. Schema.org even fast-tracked the release of markup for Covid-19 recently. It’s an ever-growing library. In many respects, structured data is a branch of the Semantic Web, which strives for a fully machine-readable Internet. It gives you a machine-readable perspective on web content that (when properly implemented) feeds back into richer functionality for people. As such, just about anyone with a website would benefit from knowing what structured data is and how it works. According to W3Techs, only 29.6% of websites use JSON-LD, and 43.2% don’t use any structured data formats at all. There’s no obligation, of course. Not everyone cares about SEO or being machine-readable. On the flip side, for those who do there’s currently a big opportunity to one-up rival sites. In the same way that HTML forces you to think about how content is organized, structured data gets you thinking about the substance. It makes you more thorough. Whatever your website is about, if you comb through the relevant schema documentation you’ll almost certainly spot details that you didn’t think to include beforehand. As humans, it is easy to take for granted the connections between information. Search engines and computer programs are smart, but they’re not that smart. Not yet. Structured data translates content into terms they can understand. This, in turn, allows them to deliver richer experiences. Resources And Further Reading “The Beginner's Guide To Structured Data For SEO: A Two-Part Series,” Bridget Randolph, Moz “What Is Schema Markup And Why It’s Important For SEO,” Chuck Price, Search Engine Journal “What Is Schema? Beginner‘s Guide To Structured Data,” Luke Harsel, SEMrush “JSON-LD: Building Meaningful Data APIs,” Benjamin Young, Rollout Blog “Understand How Structured Data Works,” Google Search for Developers “Marking Up Your Site With Structured Data,” Bing Incorporating Structured Data Into Website Design Weaving structured data into a website isn’t as straightforward as, say, changing a meta title. It’s the data DNA of your web content. If you want to implement it properly, then you need to be willing to get into the weeds — at least a little bit. Below are a few simple steps developers can take to weave structured data into the design process. Note: I personally subscribe to a holistic approach to design, where design and substance go hand in hand. Juggling a bunch of disciplines is nothing new to web design, this is just another one, and if it’s incorporated well it can strengthen other elements around it. Think of it as an enhancement to your site’s engine. The car may not look all that different but it handles a hell of a lot better. Start With A Concept I’ll use myself as an example. For five years, two friends and I have been reviewing an album a week as a hobby (with others stepping in from time to time). Our sneering, insufferable prose is currently housed in a WordPress site, which — under my well-meaning but altogether ignorant care — had grown into a Frankenstein’s monster of plugins. We are in the process of redesigning the site which (among other things) has entailed bringing structured data into the core design. Here, as with any other project, the first thing to do is establish what your content is about. The better you answer this question, the easier everything that follows will be. In our case, these are the essentials: We review music albums; Each review has three reviewers who each write a summary by choosing up to three favorite tracks and assigning a personal score out of ten; These three scores are combined into a final score out of 30; From the three summaries, a passage is chosen to serve as an ‘at-a-glance’ roundup of all our thoughts. Some of this may sound a bit specific or even a bit arbitrary (because it is), but you’d be surprised how much of it can be woven together using structured data. Below is a mockup of what the revamped review pages will look like, and the information that can be translated into schema markup: Even the most sprawling content is packed full of information just waiting to be tagged and structured. (Large preview) There’s no trick to this process. I know what the content is about, so I know where to look in the documentation. In this case, I go to Schema.org/MusicAlbum and am met with all manner of potential properties, including: albumReleaseType byArtist genre producer datePublished recordedAt There are dozens; some exclusive to MusicAlbum, others falling under the larger umbrella of CreativeWork. Digging deeper into the documentation, I find that the markup can connect to MusicBrainz, a music metadata encyclopedia. The same process unfolds when I go to the Review documentation. From that one simple page, the following information can be gleaned and organized: { "@context": "http://schema.org/", "@type": "Review", "reviewBody": "Whereas My Love is Cool was guilty of trying too hard no such thing can be said of Visions. The riffs roar and the melodies soar, with the band playing beautifully to Ellie Rowsell's strengths.", "datePublished": "October 4, 2017", "author": [{ "@type": "Person", "name": "André Dack" }, { "@type": "Person", "name": "Frederick O'Brien" }, { "@type": "Person", "name": "Marcus Lawrence" }], "itemReviewed": { "@type": "MusicAlbum", "@id": "https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/7f231c61-20b2-49d6-ac66-1cacc4cc775f", "byArtist": { "@type": "MusicGroup", "name": "Wolf Alice", "@id": "https://musicbrainz.org/artist/3547f34a-db02-4ab7-b4a0-380e1ef951a9" }, "image": "https://lesoreillescurieuses.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/a1320370042_10.jpg", "albumProductionType": "http://schema.org/StudioAlbum", "albumReleaseType": "http://schema.org/AlbumRelease", "name": "Visions of a Life", "numTracks": "12", "datePublished": "September 29, 2017" }, "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": 27, "worstRating": 0, "bestRating": 30 } } And honestly, I may yet add a lot more. Initially, I found the things that are already part of a review page’s structures (i.e. artist, album name, overall score) but then new questions began to present themselves. What could be clearer? What could I add? This should obviously be counterbalanced by questions of what’s unnecessary. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. There is such a thing as ‘too much information’. Still, sometimes a bit more detail can really take a page up a notch. Familiarize Yourself With Schema There’s no way around it; the best way to get the ball rolling is to immerse yourself in the documentation. There are tools that implement it for you (more on those below), but you’ll get more out of the markup if you have a proper sense of how it works. Trawl through the Schema.org documentation. Whoever you are and whatever your website’s for, the odds are that there are plenty of relevant schemas. The site is very good with examples, so it needn’t remain theoretical. The step beyond that, of course, is to find rich search results you would like to emulate, visiting the page, and using browser dev tools to look at what they’re doing. They are often excellent examples of websites that know their content inside out. You can also feed code snippets or URLs into Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper, which then generates appropriate schema. Tools like Google’’s Structured Data Markup Helper are excellent for getting to grips with how structured data works. (Large preview) The fundamentals are actually very simple. Once you get your head around them, it’s the breadth of options that take time to explore and play around with. You don’t want to be that person who gets to the end of a design process, looks into schema options, and starts second-guessing everything that’s been done. Ask The Right Questions Now that you’re armed with your wealth of structured data knowledge, you’re better positioned to lay the foundations for a strong website. Structured data rides a fairly unique line. In the immediate sense, it exists ‘under the hood’ and is there for the benefit of computers. At the same time, it can enable richer experiences for the user. Therefore, it pays to look at structured data from both a technical and user perspective. How can structured data help my website be better understood? What other resources, online databases, or hardware (e.g. smart speakers) might be interested in what you’re doing? What options appear in the documentation that I hadn’t accounted for? Do I want to add them? It is especially important to identify recurring types of content. It’s safe to say a blog can expect lots of blog posts over time, so incorporating structured data into post templates will yield the most results. The example I gave above is all well and good on its own, but there’s no reason why the markup process can’t be automated. That’s the plan for us. Consider also the ways that people might find your content. If there are opportunities to, say, highlight a snippet of copy for use in voice search, do it. It’s that, or leave it to search engines to work it out for themselves. No-one knows your content better than you do, so make use of that understanding with descriptive markup. You don’t need to guess how content will be understood with structured data. With tools like Google’s Rich Results Tester, you can see exactly how it gives content form and meaning that might otherwise have been overlooked. Resources And Further Reading “Getting Started With Schema.org Using Microdata,” Schema.org “Schema.org Project Repository,” GitHub community “Structured Data Markup Helper,” Googe Webmasters “Add Structured Data To Your Web Pages,” Google Developers Codelabs “Rich Results Test,” Google Quality Content Deserves Quality Markup You’ll find no greater advocate of great content than me. The SEO industry loses its collective mind whenever Google rolls out a major search update. The response to the hysteria is always the same: make quality content. To that I add: mark it up properly. Familiarize yourself with the documentation and be clear on what your site is about. Every piece of information you tag makes it that much easier for it to be indexed and shared with the right people. Whether you’re a Google devotee or a DuckDuckGo convert, the spirit remains the same. It’s not about ranking so much as it is about making websites as good as possible. Accommodating structured data will make other aspects of your website better. You don’t need to trust tech to understand what your content is about — you can tell it. From reviews to recipes to audio search, developers can add a whole new level of sophistication to their content. The heart and soul of optimizing a website for search have never changed: produce great content and make it as clear as possible what it is and why it’s useful. Structured data is another tool for that purpose, so use it.

http://damianfallon.blogspot.com/2020/04/baking-structured-data-into-design.html

#SEO #Local SEO training

0 notes

riichardwilson · 5 years ago

Text

Baking Structured Data Into The Design Process

About The Author

Frederick O’Brien is a freelance journalist who conforms to most British stereotypes. His interests include American literature, graphic design, sustainable … More about Frederick …

Retrofitting search engine optimization only gets you so far. As metadata gets smarter, it’s more important than ever to build it into the design process from the start.

search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for almost every kind of website, but its finer points remain something of a specialty. Even today SEO Company is often treated as something that can be tacked on after the fact. It can up to a point, but it really shouldn’t be. Search engines get smarter every day and there are ways for websites to be smarter too.

The foundations of SEO Company are the same as they’ve always been: great content clearly labeled will win the day sooner or later — regardless of how many people try to game the system. The thing is, those labels are far more sophisticated than they used to be. Meta titles, image alt text, and backlinks are important, but in 2020, they’re also fairly primitive. There is another tier of metadata that only a fraction of sites are currently using: structured data.

All search engines share the same purpose: to organize the web’s content and deliver the most relevant, useful results possible to search queries. How they achieve this has changed enormously since the days of Lycos and Ask Jeeves. Google alone uses more than 200 ranking factors, and those are just the ones we know about.

SEO Company is a huge field nowadays, and I put it to you that structured data is a really, really important factor to understand and implement in the coming years. It doesn’t just improve your chances of ranking highly for relevant queries. More importantly, it helps make your websites better — opening it up to all sorts of useful web experiences.

Recommended reading: Where Does SEO Belong In Your Web Design Process?

What Is Structured Data?

Structured data is a way of labeling content on web pages. Using vocabulary from Schema.org, it removes much of the ambiguity from SEO Company. Instead of trusting the likes of Google, Bing, Baidu, and DuckDuckGo to work out what your content is about, you tell them. It’s the difference between a search engine guessing what a page is about and knowing for sure.

As Schema.org puts it:

By adding additional tags to the HTML of your web pages — tags that say, “Hey search engine, this information describes this specific movie, or place, or person, or video” — you can help search engines and other applications better understand your content and display it in a useful, relevant way.

Schema.org launched in 2011, a project shared by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex. In other words, it’s a ‘bipartisan’ effort — if you like. The markup transcends any one search engine. In Schema.org’s own words,

“A shared vocabulary makes it easier for webmasters and developers to decide on a schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts.”

It is in many respects a more expansive cousin of microformats (launched around 2005) which embed semantics and structured data in HTML, mainly for the benefit of search engines and aggregators. Although microformats are currently still supported, the ‘official’ nature of the Schema.org library makes it a safer bet for longevity.

JSON for Linked Data (JSON-LD) has emerged as the dominant underlying standard for structured data, although Microdata and RDFa are also supported and serve the same purpose. Schema.org provides examples for each type depending on what you’re most comfortable with.

As an example, let’s say Joe Bloggs writes a review of Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel Catch-22 and publishes it on his blog. Sadly, Bloggs has poor taste and gives it two out of five stars. For a person looking at the page, this information would be understood unthinkingly, but computer programs would have to connect several dots to reach the same conclusion.

With structured data, the following markup could be added to the page’s <head> code. (This is a JSON-LD approach. Microdata and RDFa can be used to weave the same information into <body> content):

This sets in stone that the page is about Catch-22, a novel by Joseph Heller published on November 10th, 1961. The reviewer has been identified, as has the parameters of the scoring system. Different schemas can be combined (or tiered) to describe different things. For example, through tagging of this sort, you could make clear a page is the event listing for an open-air film screening, and the film in question is The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou by Wes Anderson.

Recommended reading: Better Research, Better Design, Better Results

Why Does It Matter?

Ok, wonderful. I can label my website up to its eyeballs and it will look exactly the same, but what are the benefits? To my mind, there are two main benefits to including structured data in websites:

It makes search engine’s jobs much easier. They can index content more accurately, which in turn means they can present it more richly.

It helps web content to be more thorough and useful. Structured data gives you a ‘computer perspective’ on content. Quality content is fabulous. Quality content thoroughly tagged is the stuff of dreams.

You know when you see snazzy search results that include star ratings? That’s structured data. Rich snippets of film reviews? Structured data. When a selection of recipes appear, ingredients, preparation time and all? You guessed it. Dig into the code of any of these pages and you’ll find the markup somewhere. Search engines reward sites using structured data because it tells them exactly what they’re dealing with.

(Large preview)

Examine the code on the websites featured above and sure enough, structured data is there. (Large preview)

It’s not just search either, to be clear. That’s a big part of it but it’s not the whole deal. Structured data is primarily about tagging and organizing content. Rich search results are just one way for said content to be used. Google Dataset Search uses Schema.org/Dataset markup, for example.

Below are a handful of examples of structured data being useful:

There are thousands more. Like, literally. Schema.org even fast-tracked the release of markup for Covid-19 recently. It’s an ever-growing library.

In many respects, structured data is a branch of the Semantic Web, which strives for a fully machine-readable Internet. It gives you a machine-readable perspective on web content that (when properly implemented) feeds back into richer functionality for people.

As such, just about anyone with a website would benefit from knowing what structured data is and how it works. According to W3Techs, only 29.6% of websites use JSON-LD, and 43.2% don’t use any structured data formats at all. There’s no obligation, of course. Not everyone cares about SEO Company or being machine-readable. On the flip side, for those who do there’s currently a big opportunity to one-up rival sites.

In the same way that HTML forces you to think about how content is organized, structured data gets you thinking about the substance. It makes you more thorough. Whatever your website is about, if you comb through the relevant schema documentation you’ll almost certainly spot details that you didn’t think to include beforehand.

As humans, it is easy to take for granted the connections between information. Search engines and computer programs are smart, but they’re not that smart. Not yet. Structured data translates content into terms they can understand. This, in turn, allows them to deliver richer experiences.

Resources And Further Reading

“The Beginner’s Guide To Structured Data For SEO: A Two-Part Series,” Bridget Randolph, Moz

“What Is Schema Markup And Why It’s Important For SEO,” Chuck Price, Search Engine Journal

“What Is Schema? Beginner‘s Guide To Structured Data,” Luke Harsel, SEMrush

“JSON-LD: Building Meaningful Data APIs,” Benjamin Young, Rollout Blog

“Understand How Structured Data Works,” Google Search for Developers

“Marking Up Your Site With Structured Data,” Bing

Incorporating Structured Data Into Website Design

Weaving structured data into a website isn’t as straightforward as, say, changing a meta title. It’s the data DNA of your web content. If you want to implement it properly, then you need to be willing to get into the weeds — at least a little bit. Below are a few simple steps developers can take to weave structured data into the design process.

Note: I personally subscribe to a holistic approach to design, where design and substance go hand in hand. Juggling a bunch of disciplines is nothing new to web design, this is just another one, and if it’s incorporated well it can strengthen other elements around it. Think of it as an enhancement to your site’s engine. The car may not look all that different but it handles a hell of a lot better.

Start With A Concept

I’ll use myself as an example. For five years, two friends and I have been reviewing an album a week as a hobby (with others stepping in from time to time). Our sneering, insufferable prose is currently housed in a WordPress site, which — under my well-meaning but altogether ignorant care — had grown into a Frankenstein’s monster of plugins.

We are in the process of redesigning the site which (among other things) has entailed bringing structured data into the core design. Here, as with any other project, the first thing to do is establish what your content is about. The better you answer this question, the easier everything that follows will be.

In our case, these are the essentials:

We review music albums;

Each review has three reviewers who each write a summary by choosing up to three favorite tracks and assigning a personal score out of ten;

These three scores are combined into a final score out of 30;

From the three summaries, a passage is chosen to serve as an ‘at-a-glance’ roundup of all our thoughts.

Some of this may sound a bit specific or even a bit arbitrary (because it is), but you’d be surprised how much of it can be woven together using structured data.

Below is a mockup of what the revamped review pages will look like, and the information that can be translated into schema markup:

Even the most sprawling content is packed full of information just waiting to be tagged and structured. (Large preview)

There’s no trick to this process. I know what the content is about, so I know where to look in the documentation. In this case, I go to Schema.org/MusicAlbum and am met with all manner of potential properties, including:

albumReleaseType

byArtist

genre

producer

datePublished

recordedAt

There are dozens; some exclusive to MusicAlbum, others falling under the larger umbrella of CreativeWork. Digging deeper into the documentation, I find that the markup can connect to MusicBrainz, a music metadata encyclopedia. The same process unfolds when I go to the Review documentation.

From that one simple page, the following information can be gleaned and organized:

And honestly, I may yet add a lot more. Initially, I found the things that are already part of a review page’s structures (i.e. artist, album name, overall score) but then new questions began to present themselves. What could be clearer? What could I add?

This should obviously be counterbalanced by questions of what’s unnecessary. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. There is such a thing as ‘too much information’. Still, sometimes a bit more detail can really take a page up a notch.

Familiarize Yourself With Schema

There’s no way around it; the best way to get the ball rolling is to immerse yourself in the documentation. There are tools that implement it for you (more on those below), but you’ll get more out of the markup if you have a proper sense of how it works.

Trawl through the Schema.org documentation. Whoever you are and whatever your website’s for, the odds are that there are plenty of relevant schemas. The site is very good with examples, so it needn’t remain theoretical.

The step beyond that, of course, is to find rich search results you would like to emulate, visiting the page, and using browser dev tools to look at what they’re doing. They are often excellent examples of websites that know their content inside out. You can also feed code snippets or URLs into Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper, which then generates appropriate schema.

Tools like Google’’s Structured Data Markup Helper are excellent for getting to grips with how structured data works. (Large preview)

The fundamentals are actually very simple. Once you get your head around them, it’s the breadth of options that take time to explore and play around with. You don’t want to be that person who gets to the end of a design process, looks into schema options, and starts second-guessing everything that’s been done.

Ask The Right Questions

Now that you’re armed with your wealth of structured data knowledge, you’re better positioned to lay the foundations for a strong website. Structured data rides a fairly unique line. In the immediate sense, it exists ‘under the hood’ and is there for the benefit of computers. At the same time, it can enable richer experiences for the user.

Therefore, it pays to look at structured data from both a technical and user perspective. How can structured data help my website be better understood? What other resources, online databases, or hardware (e.g. smart speakers) might be interested in what you’re doing? What options appear in the documentation that I hadn’t accounted for? Do I want to add them?

It is especially important to identify recurring types of content. It’s safe to say a blog can expect lots of blog posts over time, so incorporating structured data into post templates will yield the most results. The example I gave above is all well and good on its own, but there’s no reason why the markup process can’t be automated. That’s the plan for us.

Consider also the ways that people might find your content. If there are opportunities to, say, highlight a snippet of copy for use in voice search, do it. It’s that, or leave it to search engines to work it out for themselves. No-one knows your content better than you do, so make use of that understanding with descriptive markup.

You don’t need to guess how content will be understood with structured data. With tools like Google’s Rich Results Tester, you can see exactly how it gives content form and meaning that might otherwise have been overlooked.

Resources And Further Reading

Quality Content Deserves Quality Markup

You’ll find no greater advocate of great content than me. The SEO Company industry loses its collective mind whenever Google rolls out a major search update. The response to the hysteria is always the same: make quality content. To that I add: mark it up properly.

Familiarize yourself with the documentation and be clear on what your site is about. Every piece of information you tag makes it that much easier for it to be indexed and shared with the right people.

Whether you’re a Google devotee or a DuckDuckGo convert, the spirit remains the same. It’s not about ranking so much as it is about making websites as good as possible. Accommodating structured data will make other aspects of your website better.

You don’t need to trust tech to understand what your content is about — you can tell it. From reviews to recipes to audio search, developers can add a whole new level of sophistication to their content.

The heart and soul of optimizing a website for search have never changed: produce great content and make it as clear as possible what it is and why it’s useful. Structured data is another tool for that purpose, so use it.

(ra, yk, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/baking-structured-data-into-the-design-process/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/614974130235785216

0 notes

laurelkrugerr · 5 years ago

Text

Baking Structured Data Into The Design Process

About The Author

Frederick O’Brien is a freelance journalist who conforms to most British stereotypes. His interests include American literature, graphic design, sustainable … More about Frederick …

Retrofitting search engine optimization only gets you so far. As metadata gets smarter, it’s more important than ever to build it into the design process from the start.

Recommended reading: Where Does SEO Belong In Your Web Design Process?

What Is Structured Data?

As Schema.org puts it:

“A shared vocabulary makes it easier for webmasters and developers to decide on a schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts.”

With structured data, the following markup could be added to the page’s <head> code. (This is a JSON-LD approach. Microdata and RDFa can be used to weave the same information into <body> content):

Recommended reading: Better Research, Better Design, Better Results

Why Does It Matter?

It makes search engine’s jobs much easier. They can index content more accurately, which in turn means they can present it more richly.

(Large preview)

Examine the code on the websites featured above and sure enough, structured data is there. (Large preview)

Below are a handful of examples of structured data being useful:

There are thousands more. Like, literally. Schema.org even fast-tracked the release of markup for Covid-19 recently. It’s an ever-growing library.

As humans, it is easy to take for granted the connections between information. Search engines and computer programs are smart, but they��re not that smart. Not yet. Structured data translates content into terms they can understand. This, in turn, allows them to deliver richer experiences.

Resources And Further Reading

“The Beginner’s Guide To Structured Data For SEO: A Two-Part Series,” Bridget Randolph, Moz

“What Is Schema Markup And Why It’s Important For SEO,” Chuck Price, Search Engine Journal

“What Is Schema? Beginner‘s Guide To Structured Data,” Luke Harsel, SEMrush

“JSON-LD: Building Meaningful Data APIs,” Benjamin Young, Rollout Blog

“Understand How Structured Data Works,” Google Search for Developers

“Marking Up Your Site With Structured Data,” Bing

Incorporating Structured Data Into Website Design

Start With A Concept

In our case, these are the essentials:

We review music albums;

Each review has three reviewers who each write a summary by choosing up to three favorite tracks and assigning a personal score out of ten;

These three scores are combined into a final score out of 30;

From the three summaries, a passage is chosen to serve as an ‘at-a-glance’ roundup of all our thoughts.

Some of this may sound a bit specific or even a bit arbitrary (because it is), but you’d be surprised how much of it can be woven together using structured data.

Below is a mockup of what the revamped review pages will look like, and the information that can be translated into schema markup:

Even the most sprawling content is packed full of information just waiting to be tagged and structured. (Large preview)

albumReleaseType

byArtist

genre

producer

datePublished

recordedAt

From that one simple page, the following information can be gleaned and organized:

Familiarize Yourself With Schema

Tools like Google’’s Structured Data Markup Helper are excellent for getting to grips with how structured data works. (Large preview)

Ask The Right Questions

Resources And Further Reading

Quality Content Deserves Quality Markup

(ra, yk, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/baking-structured-data-into-the-design-process/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/04/baking-structured-data-into-design.html

0 notes

scpie · 5 years ago

Text

Baking Structured Data Into The Design Process

About The Author

Frederick O’Brien is a freelance journalist who conforms to most British stereotypes. His interests include American literature, graphic design, sustainable … More about Frederick …

Retrofitting search engine optimization only gets you so far. As metadata gets smarter, it’s more important than ever to build it into the design process from the start.

Recommended reading: Where Does SEO Belong In Your Web Design Process?

What Is Structured Data?

As Schema.org puts it:

“A shared vocabulary makes it easier for webmasters and developers to decide on a schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts.”

With structured data, the following markup could be added to the page’s <head> code. (This is a JSON-LD approach. Microdata and RDFa can be used to weave the same information into <body> content):

Recommended reading: Better Research, Better Design, Better Results

Why Does It Matter?

It makes search engine’s jobs much easier. They can index content more accurately, which in turn means they can present it more richly.

(Large preview)

Examine the code on the websites featured above and sure enough, structured data is there. (Large preview)

Below are a handful of examples of structured data being useful:

There are thousands more. Like, literally. Schema.org even fast-tracked the release of markup for Covid-19 recently. It’s an ever-growing library.

Resources And Further Reading

“The Beginner’s Guide To Structured Data For SEO: A Two-Part Series,” Bridget Randolph, Moz

“What Is Schema Markup And Why It’s Important For SEO,” Chuck Price, Search Engine Journal

“What Is Schema? Beginner‘s Guide To Structured Data,” Luke Harsel, SEMrush

“JSON-LD: Building Meaningful Data APIs,” Benjamin Young, Rollout Blog

“Understand How Structured Data Works,” Google Search for Developers

“Marking Up Your Site With Structured Data,” Bing

Incorporating Structured Data Into Website Design

Start With A Concept

In our case, these are the essentials:

We review music albums;

Each review has three reviewers who each write a summary by choosing up to three favorite tracks and assigning a personal score out of ten;

These three scores are combined into a final score out of 30;

From the three summaries, a passage is chosen to serve as an ‘at-a-glance’ roundup of all our thoughts.

Some of this may sound a bit specific or even a bit arbitrary (because it is), but you’d be surprised how much of it can be woven together using structured data.

Below is a mockup of what the revamped review pages will look like, and the information that can be translated into schema markup:

Even the most sprawling content is packed full of information just waiting to be tagged and structured. (Large preview)

albumReleaseType

byArtist

genre

producer

datePublished

recordedAt

From that one simple page, the following information can be gleaned and organized:

Familiarize Yourself With Schema

Tools like Google’’s Structured Data Markup Helper are excellent for getting to grips with how structured data works. (Large preview)

Ask The Right Questions

Resources And Further Reading

Quality Content Deserves Quality Markup

(ra, yk, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/baking-structured-data-into-the-design-process/

0 notes