#but that term literally dropped like a week after i changed my url

[the-acid-pear]

what's a p.e.a.r.?

P.E.A.R. means Pro Expression Anti Repression and it was the new word pedophiles were used bc ppl already got used to terms like pro ship, anti anti and others.

#luly talks #asks #i didnt see them use it very often #but that term literally dropped like a week after i changed my url #and i didnt want ppl thinking i was a p*do bc of that awful coincidence and terrible timing so i left that there #anyway i think it has become pretty obvious by now lol 🥴 #but yeah i guess its more of a twitter thing #some users put pear emojis on their names and stuff too #again idk how popular it was so maybe it died off already!!

[yukipri]

So I’m back from the dead (literally). A Goodbye Message.

Hey there. Some of you may remember me.

Some of you may have wondered why I suddenly stopped posting, but the vast majority of you probably didn’t even notice, as is how it is. ^ ^;

I’m finally back, and it wasn’t an easy journey getting back.

Here’s what happened.

(Slightly long post, but please forgive me for not putting it under a cut, it’s sorta important)

On November 19th, I checked my blog as I always do, to learn that my blog was terminated.

No warning, no reason, suddenly BOOM gone. I’ve had this blog since spring 2012. It’s almost entirely sfw, I’ve always been hyper careful with tagging, and any questionable content has always been hosted on other platforms. Yet for some reason, I was one of many blogs caught up in what’s come to be known as the #TumblrPurge.

I followed all the steps. I emailed staff, first desperately, then more rationally, making my case. I figured that a bot had caught my blog, as I knew plenty of other more suspicious content blogs that were unharmed. At first there was hope, it’s just a glitch, it’s happening to a lot of people, they’ll give it back right away, some people have already gotten theirs back!

Nothing.

My methods of contacting followers were limited to my Patreon and Twitter, neither of which has much of a base. Followers who knew me on there were incredibly kind and supportive, and sometimes even reached out to staff on my behalf.

I didn’t want to spam, but I also was desperate. I emailed staff once a week. I tried using different categories. I tried adding attachments. My messages ranged from simple and succinct, to deeply personal and desperate.

I was honestly devastated. I spiraled into the worst depression I’ve ever been in. I could barely eat and vomited nonstop for a week. I gained 20 pounds in 2 weeks. I was completely out of control mentally, and even reached out to a psychiatrist friend in case I couldn’t handle it myself. I couldn’t draw, and thinking about projects that I once loved only hurt me more.

Talk about social media addiction, but I’ve legit never gone longer than a week without posting something for years, and especially since becoming a content creator, it felt sickening to not have the place where I drove myself to post constantly and consistently. It broke my schedule. It made me feel cut off from the world, and I felt claustrophobic and uncomfortable in my own skin.

I lost so many things with this blog. Yes, I was primarily a content creator, and while of course I had backups of all my art and some of my longer text posts, I lost so much more.

I lost, perhaps most importantly, all my interactions with my followers. I lost connections to so many people, people I hadn’t contacted in years and may not have even been active anymore, but who I always believed I would have this route back to. I lost memories, both online and of my personal life that I had recorded on here.

And as someone who unfortunately put so much of my identity and self-validation on my social media experience, I suddenly felt like I was absolutely nothing.

For the longest time, I thought I was su*cidal as a result of my depression (word bleeped out bc who knows what can get you flagged now). I certainly thought about death and dying daily.

But then, I realized what I was feeling wasn’t quite that. I didn’t feel like I wanted to die.

I felt like I was already dead.

Which, may sound like an exaggeration, but in terms of tumblr at least, it’s exactly the same. If I had died in rl, I would have dropped off the map, just like this. Suddenly stopped posting, no warning in advance. My blog may have existed, but in this case, no record of my existence even remained. To people who came looking for my url, I may as well have been dead. You wouldn’t have known any better.

Or who knows, maybe I was a criminal or had done something awful that resulted in my blog being removed. Maybe I had just had it with this site and had chosen to leave. Maybe I was just taking a much needed break. It would have been odd, since I prioritized communicating and always said when I needed a break, which was rarely ever. But either way, I had no way of telling any of you what had happened to me. My voice was gone.

Feeling like I was dead, after I recognized what I was feeling, was...disturbing, I guess. Kinda explained why I always felt like a corpse though.

(of course, feeling like I was dead contributed to thinking other things like maybe it’d be better if I really wasn’t around at all, but that’s a result, and not the main feeling.)

Anyway, I kept emailing staff, and I finally managed to come back. It took ten emails and over 2 months of waiting and wasting away and trying to come to terms with how I’m unlikely to get it back. I didn’t get my blog back until TODAY.

Now that I have come back, the landscape’s changed, as I had heard it had. They hadn’t even announced the adu*t content policy change when they terminated me. I honestly feel like I’m back in a world that’s moved on without me, and it’s made me feel very strongly how insignificant I was in the first place.

During my time being dead, I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do. I regretted not doing my 25K follower giveaway sooner. I regretted not getting this or that content out. I regretted having kept certain long text posts and ask responses in my drafts yet unpublished.

But more than anything, I regretted not being able to say goodbye, and thank you all for my time here.

Yes, it’s had ups and downs, but tumblr was where I first found myself as an artist. Tumblr was what first made me interact with and find a group of people interested in what I created. Tumblr was where I was able to interact with those people, you. And I know I’ve had my ups and downs too, and different fandoms and different moods, but I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for letting me be a part of your experience here, however big or small that experience may have been.

I also learned the dangers of immersing myself too deeply on one online platform. So much of myself had been poured into this one blog, this one blog that can disappear with a legit snap of staff’s fingers. (my twitter handle was “Got Thanos’d on Tumblr” for a good month lol) I used to think that’s what made my content valuable, that I poured so much love and thought and everything personal into it, that’s what made it special, but in the end oh so very damaging when it was ripped away. As someone who spent almost all my time online creating content, it was an awful reality pill I had to swallow, and I don’t want ANYONE experiencing the same thing I did.

So please. The takeaway here, if I can be a cautionary tale, is to be aware that an online identity is more unstable than you think it is. It can go POOF. I’m lucky to be here, and that staff finally responded, and that I had the masochism to continue emailing staff weekly no matter how much I felt like I should stop breathing afterwards.

Also, please, if you have people on this site you care about, whether it be a friend or someone you think is neat, anyone you will miss if they suddenly disappeared, please go connect with them in other places beyond this site, which may become increasingly unstable. This can be another social media if they have it, an email, a chatting platform, anything. Even if you personally don’t use it yet, create an account so you can find them when you can no longer access your account, or they can’t access theirs and they can find you. Don’t regret it like I did.

As for me, after all of this, I don’t know if I can post content on here again.

I’d gone well beyond hoping for another chance at this community. All I’ve been thinking about these past two months was how I would have wanted to say goodbye.

Now that I have my account back, I’m currently filled with more numbness and bitterness than any joy or relief. I don’t know if I can create content anymore for a platform that has hurt me so deeply, no matter how much its community means to me. This experience changed me, and I’ve taken damage that isn’t going to go away so easily.

As I think about what to do moving forward, for now, you can find me on my accounts that I WAS active on these past two months. They aren’t the same, but they were all I had.

If you read this message until the end, thank you.

Again, I might decide to post on here again. I might not. But for now, here’s again what I’ve been wanting to say for two months:

Thank you, Tumblr. And goodbye.

-Kazu

(yukipri.tumblr.com)

https://twitter.com/YukiPri_Art

https://www.patreon.com/YukiPri

#personal #TumblrPurge #longpost #long post #yukipri #I didn't stop posting because I wanted to ^ ^; #i had posts in my drafts waiting to be queued for the day i got terminated #it feels so long ago now though and i feel so detached #Also kinda random but i was feeling like this really weird affinity with ghosts #i kept coming up with dead people AUs AHAHAHHAHAHA #like currently I'm super into Banana Fish right #and pre-termination I was all about everyone lives happy AUs #post termination suddenly I was a lot more interested in people staying dead but like lingering around and having regrets #it felt a lot more relatable all of a sudden AHAHAHAHA

[rkxblue]

happy #rkfifth !

i told myself i wasn’t going 2 do this b/c ... i’m lazy bean, but here we are anyway! let’s get it!

but anyways starting off rookies was kind of like a vacation to me, rp wise. before rk i had my own rp that lasted a while but during 2013, there was just some drama between members that i constantly had 2 deal with and honestly it was like ... dragging me down, making admining seem like a chore and i loathed logging on to the main b/c i knew there would be some shit w/ these certain people that i had to deal with. so seeing rk in the tags being a different kind of idol roleplay ( and shout out rk for being a trendsetter ) /and/ the fact that reserves were filling up so quickly for a new rp, i quickly sent in a muse.

and it was a little ... idk at first. i did feel out of place considering most came from a different rp in the beginning and i wasn’t, and on top of me being v awkward w/ talking 2 people on instant messengers, there was a bit of time where i felt like i didn’t fit in and almost dropped like 2 weeks after i joined, LOL. luckily at the time a lot of things were going on which helped w/ plotting and meeting new muses, and everyone was super friendly and nice and that’s what kept me here!!!

so then rk turned from a vacation you didn’t want to leave from -- i ended up slagging off p majorly on my responsibilities as an admin at my own rp for a while because i was having such a good time at rk -- it rly brought back my love for rp and muse and tbh if you look back at rksunyoung’s archive back in 2013 - early 2014, i don’t think i’ve ever written as much on tumblr as i did back then, LOL. rk has definitely had it’s ups and downs and i’ve dropped both of my muses before -- but it wasn’t too long before i was bringing them back because there really isn’t a place like rk within krp. that, along with the dedication between both members and admins, is why it’s lasted so long and is still thriving with a super active dash after five fucking years. that’s crazy!! i think i remember mei saying something similar on twitter -- but when i see old rp friends and they ask “omg ur /still/ at rk???”

so it’s obvious to see why this rp went from feeling like a vacation to a home, right?? it’ll always have a special place in my heart  ♡

anyways moving on to my characters too -- when i first brought rksunyoung, now miss rkxblue, i never thought that she would last more than a couple of months, much less be involved with so many things within rk’s history!! it’s ... p wild to think about, especially since i’m someone that has a hard time committing to hobbies and such. it’s been a fun ride watching her go from someone who was wild and reckless and had a problem with love and a little bit of anger issues to someone whos a lot more well rounded, a soft idiot LOL. she even finally got herself the sweetest boyfriend after four years of being shipless on the rp, which i still can’t wrap my head around because denying herself love and believing that it doesn’t exist was one of her /things/ for the longest time. the list of stuff she’s done is so long and now that it’s lead to her finally debuting it’s ... scary yet exciting for her, to be honest, she thought she’d be a trainee forever!! i’ve had a lot of ups and downs with her muse as well, to the point where there was like years ( i think ) of inactivity on my end and she should have 4238972389 more points than she does atm because of that. i do feel sorry for her b/c that was just me being lazy ofc, but in the end i’ve gotten my shit together on her and have been pumping out replies p consistently this year and plotting w/ trainees which has done wonders for her muse. and although hyomin was literally /the/ perfect fc for her considering her personality, the fc change 2 yura has also helped majorly with my muse and it’s been so much easier to plot and reply and even with her characterization too.

as for miss rknvna!! she hasn’t had as much development as sun, aside from her tumultuous rls with a former song minho and being a royal trainee during her first run, and that’s mainly been due to my laziness again jfkafl;a. the good thing tho is that i’ve finally been able to experience life as a rookie with her, considering the times my girls have become trainees were v quick ( sun’s first time was like a week or two after the rp opened, then 3 months after i rejoined w/ her, and nana became a trainee only a month after she joined the first time ) so it was nice to experience the freedom that came with being a rookie!! since 2018 has been sun’s year, i’m going to focus on nana for 2019 so that she can branch out more!!

i guess before i move on i should give shoutouts to all my other rkmuses throughout the years whose lives were so short that i can’t even remember their urls LOL -- my song jieun, park kyungri, goo hara, and choi jinri muses!! i’m sure there’s at least one more that i’m forgetting, but they all lasted around 2 weeks so...

but i also want 2 thank rk for allowing me to be more social as well!! i’ve said this in the last anniversary post i wrote 25238957 years ago but i used 2 have a phobia of sorts when it came 2 instant messengers, so i didn’t rly have one when msn was popping and therefore, didn’t talk 2 many people ooc wise in rps. i made an aim when i came to rk and just ... diving in and talking to people helped out a lot with that, even if i do still get anxious from time to time w/ just simply messaging people. :(

i’m a shy individual ( and for some reason its only exacerbated online??? idk fam ) and unconsciously rather private as well, so that definitely hinders me from making friends as much as i would like to, but it’s a day by day process!! it’s something i’ve come 2 terms w/ as of late and will seriously work on within the next year! but even w/ me being the way that i am, i’ve been able 2 meet a couple of people that have made my experience in rk just a little bit brighter so a ( very brief ) shout out 2 them ~

to maria ( @rkjinkis ) : my sweet angel!!! i’m so glad that rk brought us together because you’ve honestly become one of my closest friends from this rp and in general tbh!! ur so super sweet and caring and a blessing 2 my life, just as much as jinki is to ahyoung’s!! i’m sorry that sun is too independent for her own good but she’s working on it okay!! baby steps!! i love how genuine u are and how we can rely on each other through thick and then, and honestly i want the world for u and more. i love love love LOVE u so much, and i’ll make sure u never forget it!! thank u for being my friend and my source of happiness!!!  ♡ ♡ ♡ 

to hamin ( @rksoohyun ) : despite the fact that we knew each other from snu it was rk that actually got us 2 start talking and i’m so grateful for that!! u literally are the cutest girl in the entire world and ur just as outgoing irl as u are online; seeing morning musume ( a group i thought i would never see live ) w/ u was truly a highlight in my life!!! and ofc soohyun will forever be nana’s fuckin child and she’ll always be rooting for her happiness!! i love u u sweet buttercup and i can��t wait until ur back so i can talk 2 u again!!!  ♡ ♡ ♡ 

to mei ( @rkariel ) : man i admired u for the longest b/c i’ve always loved the way u write and ur characterization of tiffany / ariel, so when years ago nick told me that u were actually paying attention to the minana plot and threads i was so shook i nearly tripped over myself LMFAO. i’m happy that we actually started talking b/c of that tho!!! it’s so easy 2 write w/ u and i honestly have so much fun regardless if we’re just talking about our characters, getting carried away on dash or twitter, or hurting each other w/ headcanons!! ariel has become nana’s rock p much and w/o her i’m not sure how she would of fared her time w/ mino w/o her and their discussions!!! i hope that we can become closer in the future!!

to razel ( @rkcheri ) : hiya boo!!! ik we don’t rly talk anymore but i still wanted 2 mention u b/c u were one of my first friends in rk when i felt kinda lonely, and that was definitely one of the reasons i was able to stick around!! i loved writing w/ u b/c ur writing style was always so unique that i could actually point u out whenever we were in past rps together and it’s an honor 2 even write w/ u fjkalf;a. i’m sorry that sun is such a shitty friend and i’m looking forward 2 the day jihyun kicks her ass about not telling her about jinki b/c she deserves it LOL. but just, thank u!!!!

to amy ( @yienrk ) : are u surprised ur on here?? HAHA we don’t talk too much either but i do appreciate u checking up on me whenever i’m down and just generally being supportive and nice!!! also i’m in awe about how knowledgeable u are about idols in general ( i remember one of our first convos being about how sixteen came 2 be and the collapse of all of jype’s trainees and such ) and i love yien and nana’s supportive relationship too!! i can’t wait 2 see how they develop, and i hope 2 get closer 2 u in the future!! ; u ;

to eclipse girls ( @rkariel , @rkaudrey , @rkhaseul , @rkjennie , @rkyeri ) sun couldn’t of asked 2 debut w/ a better group of girls and i’m so glad that they harmonize w/ each other so well!! i’m excited 2 see what debuting brings for them!!  ♡ ♡ ♡

and a shoutout 2 snu crew too ( piper / hoonji, nanu, @rksang, @rktomu, @rksoohyun , @rkjinhwan94, @rkpcy ) : even tho ik majority of u probably won’t see this i’m still tagging and talking about y’all anyway!!! i have so much fun reminiscing w/ u guys whenever we can, and i’m happy that i’ve grown closer too u all as well!! i’m sorry i was such a shit admin back in the day, and what brought y’all together was bad circumstances, but i’m glad it’s something that we can all look back on and laugh at now. i miss being together w/ all of u at once but i hope y’all are doing okay!!!!  ♡ ♡ ♡

and naturally, the admods too!!! thank u guys for putting up w/ all my shit whenever i was in a slump or i sent in points late or fucked up the points ( honestly kyle u are such an angel for real LOL ), and for just keeping the rp in tip top shape!!! ur the back bone of rk and we couldn’t of made it this far w/ each and every one of u and ur contributions and dedication 2 the rp!!! i’m super proud of u guys and am proud 2 call u my admins!!!!  ♡

and ofc shoutout 2 everyone that i’ve ever plotted and threaded w/ in the past and present -- i’m super shit at replying 2 those in general so thank u for being patient w/ me even though i don’t deserve it. i don’t know how else 2 end this b/c i’m also super shit at ending things so uh.... happy fifth year anniversary rk!!! here’s to many more!!!

#❛ ▼ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‹‹ misc • OOC ›› #rkfifth #* this is a hot mess but i hope y'all can follow fjkalfja;

[thederivativeofrad]

Update

It’s that time of year when the new years thing happens and I make a post that has something to do with either what happened or what I want to happen and honestly I don’t know if I have the energy for it

It’s really surreal to think that some of you won’t have your blags anymore after whenever that drop date is. There will be writings lost to the void, a lot of... meaning just kind of snuffed out, and I couldn’t really have anticipated that. I was worried that mine would be gone, but I don’t believe that will be the case. I’m pretty sure hers will be, though, and even though I haven’t looked at it in two months and hardly at all before that back to July, I can’t help but be pained by the realisation that soon it might just not be there anymore. It’s nice to have that ability to look for a moment and go “ah, you’re still here”, but now that’s being taken away, and it’s not even by the choice of the author.

That sounds awfully dramatic for a blag being erased, but it’s more than just a blag I suppose. I have a lot of important writings here about college politics, about drugs, rambling about how lightsabers work and if computers can think, and I think I’d be pretty devastated to attempt to log in here again after however long I go without looking only to find it just... wasn’t there anymore.

There’s a reason why I just kind of stopped using the site rather than deactivating. It’s an archive, as well as somewhere to kind of peek back at, somewhere to put an update here and there or poke around and see if I can give myself an existential crisis by digging too far back into the personal tags. Albums are still alive here, little jokes that grew into whole developments, a large digital footprint of myself and friends and all the trends we were a part of. It’s a bit like losing family photos in a fire, flood, or to a strange person who comes over to party and steals the photos to put in a personal collection in a secret room off his room. There wasn’t much current for me here any longer, but... there [is] plenty to look back at, or to check in on to see if it’s still moving, and I think the sentiment of that is very powerful and is making me very ramble-prone. 

There are some blags that I just like knowing they still exist, that something will pop up once in a great while, that they still exist in a friendly way, and now, soon, they may not be here any longer. There are some blags that put out little things that are important to people who mean a lot to me, and those may soon be gone, as well. It’s just difficult to come to terms with, and even more difficult to tell what sort of impact it may have. Maybe something good comes of the purge, maybe nothing changes [for me] at all. It’s something to ponder nonetheless, especially as I look recently at some URLs frozen in time, unflinching, unsuspecting, unafraid. All qualities I want but know better than to wish for, because what’s a life without that little buzz of stress and adventure? I just wish there was less of it from time to time--much different than having it all taken away.

So there’s that...

And then there’s life stuffs.

For better or worse, no matter how much I wanted to, I didn’t give up on my secondary education, yet. I joined the CIS department board for the community college I’m currently attending and helped with a partnership between our college and a four-year university that has a degree program that I was thinking about doing about five or six years ago. Computer security and forensics is one of three majors available to our students in our program, two of those majors (aforementioned included) can be taken on-site rather than having to travel to the university. This development has cancelled my plan for a break between my Associate’s and Bachelor’s, but it’ll only be... sigh... it’ll only be one(?) extra year, supposedly, so I guess it’s worth it. See “so, this college thing” for the roots of my scepticism about this whole system. I guess I’m a part of the system, now. I guess I literally made this for myself. 

Academia is hell; what’s new?

I’ve been at my place of work for just a couple weeks over a year. I love my job as a whole, but things are not ideal. 

Y’see, I work in the IT department, under IT managers. I work for the surgery department, alongside surgery managers. I really despise my team, my direct coworkers, the people I’m supposed to be able to count on--the rest of the deskside team. Slackers, painfully inefficient and unobservant, power hungry, whiny, back stabbing; they’re those little goblins that computer people turn into when they develop a complex, when they’re so full of themselves or so apathetic about what they do that they are not only arrogant, but horrifically lazy. My manager and coordinators aren’t any better. I’m convinced the coordinators are called that as some sick joke that I’m not in on, as they do very little coordinating at all. I’m not sure they know how to coordinate, because most of the plans they put together fall through very rapidly due to poor planning or no follow through. They’re worse together, they somehow become so much worse. Exception to that? One of them is a buffer, likes to keep the peace. The other is a hothead, and he’s shown me that side of himself before. That went straight to the manager after I cried about it and was convinced by one or two of my worth-something coworkers to talk to her. That’s when I first began to notice she does nothing but placate. She lies and panders and says just about anything to everyone to make it look like she’s doing something, like she’s worth something, like her department is excelling and deserves more. 

It doesn’t.

One good thing about her is that she helped me to realise that I do that, too. That perspective and some other relevant thoughts running through my head around the same time brought that picture together for me. The last month I’ve been actively trying to do better with that. I think I’m beginning to make progress breaking that habit of trying not to disappoint people by making promises and giving time estimates that are unlikely if not impossible to fulfil. What a weird way to spell that...

The department I work for is filled with new friends. I know so many people, even by name. Someone as horrible with names as me actually recognising people, remembering things about them, holding conversation, it’s brilliant! It makes me feel like I belong there. They feel like family, I feel like a part of their team. I am a part of their team. I’m the IT guy there, if they need anything worked on they know they can count on me to be right there and take care of it effectively, even if it’s not our department’s equipment. If I’m comfortable with it at first glance I’ll try at it, because there’s a person on the table right now and we don’t have the sort of time to wait for biomed or Stryker or M.E. or someone on a different team in IT to come in and fix the issue. I have tools, I have knowledge, I don’t give a fuck what my coordinator says is and isn’t my job. The other teams are okay with me punching cables, moving connections in the closets, modifying group policy, playing with AV equipment, and resetting oxygen monitors, Spiro devices, x-ray imaging devices, and EKGs. I have access to applications I never knew existed because other teams recognised that I could do those things, saving them a trip not only downtown into the hospital, but into a sterile area where they’d need to be wearing special attire. Let me stroke my ego: I am a goddamn miracle worker. 

I am an ambassador. I am not the leader of my department, but I speak with leaders of other departments as a present part of my own. I have knowledge they don’t, I have something that they need, and for that they place me on-par with them. I smile so much walking down the manager hallway no matter how I’m actually feeling and it brightens their day. I know everyone’s personalities well enough to make the right jokes and ask about the right things, to be careful with Dan because this is the time of year he gets depressed because he misses his family, to avoid talking about certain things with Kerry because she raised family near Hopkins and she knows some people I’ve been in awkward situations with, to come to Jenny with all the juicy gossip from surgery, my life, or the office, and to not send Jess hearts on Skype because she just finds it weird. I have so many phone numbers, they ask me so many questions, they trust me so much it just feels good to be so open with people and to be able to help them and provide a necessary service without them having to be worried about how long they’re going to wait. I love my job. I love that I get to work with my hands, that I get to work with such amazing people, that I get to go into rooms where people are getting cut open, where just the most unimaginable procedures take place with such a wide array of instruments that I get to watch be cleaned and repackaged for use. I get to see every step of a surgery from check in to PACU, and all the behind the scenes parts that patients wouldn’t even think of on their own. Every call is exhilarating, a positive stress, I feel so comfortable in a room shoved with millions of dollars in equipment and random tables topped with liner you can’t touch or you botch it all. It’s a time trial on a rope course with a hostage in the middle. It adds another layer to the challenge. It keeps me utterly focused out of necessity. 

I even have my own locker. Not even Damon had a locker. I didn’t even ask for it. People have handshakes with me in the hallway. They all know my name, they all know I’m someone they can trust, that I’m someone that can help them. It’s absolutely glorious. It makes me proud to be a part of the surgery department, to be a staple to them, to be someone they are legitimately worried about not being there for a week because the department I’m under is forcing me to cross train at a location that doesn’t need any help and won’t ever need more than the people who are trained to go there already in order to take care of it. Brian and I do BSH. Nolan and James to BLH. D, Sujith, and Andrew do BMH. Mike and Jim do BBC. There is no need for any more trained techs off main campus. There never will be a need until one person quits, moves up, or dies and that position needs to be refilled. Then we train one more and we call it a day. We shouldn’t waste time and money sending every tech to every other location just so they can stick their hands under their butts for five full workdays while they aren’t at a location long enough to learn people places and things but are there long enough to realise that they’re there for no reason because everything is already handled just fine by one person and the backup person would be just fine on their own since they were cross trained using a much more thorough process. I feel like that sentence was never going to stop. 

Regardless of the positives and negatives, I don’t plan on staying here. After my education is finished I’ll open myself back up to possibilities of finding work elsewhere. I already get job offers, but I’m not uprooting myself again until I finish what I’ve started/continued here. It won’t be that much longer until I have what I’ve been trying to get for twenty years or I surrender to the fact that I’m just not cut out for college. Overall, career-wise, I’m not happy being here permanently, I have no interest in moving up the chain. I’d rather move on.

So here I suppose I can talk about the new years thing since that is what this was supposed to be about, anyway. It’s pretty ironic that the first year I’m actually able to have a place to myself and would be able to be with someone special to kiss at midnight that the only person I’d care to do that with won’t be there. I’ll probably be asleep, anyway, as I work holidays--the ORs are closed so I can pop in and out of them as I please without interrupting cases. I take those opportunities to update the place. They’re the only days I can actually plan work projects.

I have my love-hate relationship with school, my love-hate relationship with work, now I need a bit more time working out the love-hate relationship with myself. I’ve been doing well with most things. I wake up at 0400, listen to the news for about 15 minutes while I am rudely shoved awake by the fact that all of the other countries in the Paris Agreement mk 2 signed it besides guess who, I do some stretches and I hop in the shower. I prep myself for the day in various ways, take some time to read or watch a video, finish up homework or write crap like this in a more private manor, and I get to work around 0600 after an only approximately 10 minute commute. 

Moving was only lovely for half as many reasons as it was going to be in my head, but that half has been more than worth it. I’ve been getting a good amount of sleep despite waking up so early, I drink plenty of water (not that I’ve ever had an issue with that), I remember to eat... sometimes... okay that one is kind of a work in progress. My finances are stable, and in six months I’ve raised my credit score from 560 to 770, which is basically from “I don’t even know if I can rent a decent apartment if they’re going to run a credit check” to “yeah you’re sending me offers in the mail because I can pick whichever one I want and you’d be lucky to have me”. I’m where I wanted to be on an individual financial basis by the time I moved out, I’m just occasionally sorry I couldn’t get there sooner.

Things are much better here, it’s just lonely. 

So the goal for whatever year is coming up is to focus on keeping my environment positive and to keep up and improve the work I’m attempting to do on myself, whatever that means. It probably means finding ways to make me not want to hurt myself over homework, remembering to eat semi-regularly, and learning. Really just learning. 

Here goes nothing:

I want to learn more about myself, what I like and don’t like, and how to continue this positive change into someone that I’m proud of so that I won’t feel like people are lying to me when they say they’re proud of me, too. 

I want to compliment myself without feeling conceited.

I want to convince myself that this impostor syndrome is only a collection of intrusive thoughts. 

I want to be how my families make me feel. 

I want to be the best me that I can be when it’s time for me to move on, however many seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years out that is.

I want to know that we all need room to grow, and that forcing my help onto others, by putting everything into them that I can to keep them comfortable with where they are instead of allowing them to grow is not helpful.

I want to see that we all came from somewhere different, and that we all need to figure things out in different ways that can’t be forced, but can be guided subtly, all from love, never from manipulation.

I want to remember that we all can take all the time we need, and that sometimes we need longer than we thought.

So let’s do a silly little thing: let’s help ourselves to remember those things by writing them down somewhere safe, somewhere personal like a blag, somewhere that your digital footprint lives on and can be theoretically investigated by anyone. Let’s see if it stands the test of time, or if it gets wiped away like marked profiles on a shitty blue website. 

Happy New Year.

#personal #here comes 2019 #let's see how things get turned around this time

[jjpocketbook]

The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time

When I first got into the world of SEO, you could literally optimize your site for any term and rank at the top of Google within a month or two.

But of course, that was ages ago.

Now with Google’s ever-evolving algorithm, it takes more time and effort to get results.

But what happens if you don’t have the luxury of time? Or you don’t have the financial resources to put in the effort that is truly needed.

What should you do?

Just forget about SEO?

Of course not. Today, I want to call out 11 tools that will help you get an edge over your competition. But unlike most lists, I am going to get very specific on the feature I want you to use within each tool to make your life easier and help you get results faster with less effort.

Let’s dive right in.

Tool #1: Ubersuggest Projects

You probably already know about Ubersuggest, but do you really have time to spend hours and hours each week to do your SEO?

Chances are you don’t.

So how do you improve your traffic with the least amount of effort?

You set up a project in Ubersuggest.

As you can see, it shows your SEO traffic over time. It will let you know if your rankings are going up or down, your link growth, and your SEO issues.

With so many things going on in marketing, you don’t have time to manually check your rankings or if things are going up or down or even what you need to fix.

Ubersuggest will do it for you all automatically and even notify you of what needs to happen through email. That way you don’t have to constantly check your SEO. Ubersuggest will do it all automatically.

More so, you’ll get notified of what you need to focus on each week to maximize your traffic.

All you have do is head to the dashboard and click on “Add Your First Project.”

It’s as simple as adding in your URL.

Then select the locations you do business in and want traffic from.

Then add in the keywords you currently rank for or want to go after.

And of course, set up your traffic preferences.

And then you’ll be good to go.

Then when things go great, you’ll be notified. And when things are going wrong, you’ll also be notified. Ubersuggest will even tell you what to fix.

That way you get the maximum results in the least amount of time.

Tool #2: Google Analytics Alerts

You have Google Analytics set up on your site, but how often do you log in?

And when you do log in, do you know what to focus on or what to look at?

And if you do, do you know what to do with that data?

Google Analytics is a great tool, but you don’t want to waste hours and hours looking at reports. Instead, you want to spend your time doing and getting results.

But if you set up alerts in Google Analytics, you can save tons of time.

If you watch from the 6:33 mark, it will show you how to set up alerts. I added the whole video as it will teach you how to set up Google Analytics in general in case you don’t have goal tracking set it place.

Once you set up alerts, you’ll again get notified when anything good or bad happens. I usually have alerts set up for only when things go bad, so I know when I need to focus on fixing my marketing.

Tool #3: Trello

You’re probably thinking how the heck is Trello a marketing tool. It really isn’t, but it is a good project management tool.

And with your SEO, you may have a team helping you out and Trello will help streamline the process, make you more efficient, and get your results faster.

I keep my Trello board simple by breaking it into 3 sections.

To do – what needs to be done over time.

Prioritized – what I need to be done now (tasks at the top are the most important)

Done – tasks that need to be double-checked to ensure they were done right.

It’s that simple. That way you don’t have to micromanage your team.

Some people have more complex Trello boards, but something simple like I have worked too.

If you want to create a Trello board for your content marketing, assuming you want to write lots of content (such as 10 posts a week), this process works well.

The columns I use for content writers are:

Topics – this is where writers add topics they want to write about.

Outline review – writers submit their outline before they write for approval.

Draft – writers submit their rough draft.

Draft review – editors review each draft.

Uploaded, prepared, and ready to review – this is where the editor adds the post to your CMS (like WordPress).

Scheduled – this is where you schedule the content to go live.

Done – the content is now live.

We’ve found it effective if you are managing dozens of writers at once.

Tool #4: Content Decay Tool

Can you guess how many articles I write each week?

1.

Seriously, that’s it. 1 article a week which is roughly 4 to 5 per month (depending on how many weeks in the month).

And can you guess how many articles my team and I update each week?

21.

That’s roughly 90 a month.

Just think about it… why would I have a team of 3 people updating 90 articles per month when I only write 1 a week.

It’s because updating old content is an easier way to get more SEO traffic than it is to create new content.

But what content should you update?

The content decay tool will tell you that.

It breaks down in order which articles you should update first, second, third… based on what will generate you the most traffic.

If you are wondering what is involved with updating content, just think of it this way:

Is there anything outdated within your post – if so, either update the outdated information and make it relevant again. If you can’t, then delete that part from your article.

Can you use media to improve the experience – do you need to embed videos, add more pictures, maybe even add an infographic? Use media to better tell your story and message.

Are you including the right keywords – a simple way to get more traffic is to integrate other popular related keywords within your article. Whatever your article is about, insert it into Ubersuggest and head to the “Keyword Ideas” report in the left-hand navigation.

Is there anything missing – try to poke holes within your content. What could you have done to make it better? What do your competitors talk about that you forgot to mention? What questions didn’t you answer that the reader might have? By asking yourself these simple questions, you’ll be able to make it better.

Tool #5: Ubersuggest Chrome Extension

If you haven’t installed the Ubersuggest Chrome extension, make sure you do so.

I’m not going to bore you with all of the features of the extension… instead, I am going to give you one thing that will save you time.

You know when you Google for information to learn more on any subject?

Chances are, sometimes you are Googling to learn something related to your space. And when you do, you’ll find that your site usually won’t be at the top of those search results.

And that’s ok.

But when you do a search, you’ll notice “monthly searches” in the Google search bar.

This shows you how often that keyword is searched.

So anytime you are looking up anything in your space, pay attention to that number. If you see a keyword with over 5,000 searches, it may be worth targeting.

And as you scroll down and start going through the sites that rank at the top, you’ll notice metrics under each site.

If you notice a web page with thousands of social shares and hundreds of links, it should reaffirm that you probably want to go after that term. And the listing that has thousands of social shares and hundreds of links is a good benchmark of a page that is high in quality and what people in your space prefer.

Ideally, you want to create something better than that one, as that is the main way you beat them over time.

Tool #6: Hello Bar

SEO is very different than paid traffic.

With paid traffic, you can drive people to a landing page with very little content, which makes it easier to generate sales or leads.

With SEO, Google prefers to rank content-rich sites.

But when someone lands on a page full of educational-based content, they are less likely to convert into a customer.

There’s a simple fix… Hello Bar.

Hello Bar has a lot of features, but I just want you to use the top bar like I do on NeilPatel.com.

And as you scroll it moves along with you.

That one little thing allows me to improve my conversion rate from my SEO traffic.

You can easily adjust what you show with a few simple clicks within Hello Bar or you can even show people different messages based on where they are coming from.

Although SEO traffic doesn’t convert as well as paid traffic, it is much cheaper in the long run and does have a better overall ROI. And that one little Hello Bar will improve your numbers.

It’s responsible for 9.4% of revenue from NeilPatel.com.

Every little bit adds up.

Tool #7: Mozcast

Google makes over 3,200 algorithm changes a year.

Are you really going to keep up to date with all of them?

If you followed the first tool and set up a project in Ubersuggest, you’ll get notified when your rankings go down.

And if you set up alerts in Google Analytics (tool number 2) you’ll also get notified when your traffic drops drastically.

What you’ll find is that it’s overwhelming to keep up with all of Google’s updates and it could be confusing to figure out what you need to fix to get your traffic back.

This report on Moz keeps track of all of the algorithm updates and gives you an overview of what has changed or what the update is about. On top of that, you’ll want to check out the Mozcast if you get a notification of ranking or traffic drops as this tool confirms if other people are also seeing changes from a Google update.

Keep in mind that Google doesn’t announce each update, hence you’ll want to cross-reference what you are seeing with the Mozcast.

That way you don’t have to spend hours researching each update.

Tool #8: Detailed

Link building is a pain. There are so many link tools like this one… but let’s not kid ourselves… you just don’t have the time to spend 10 to 20 hours a week doing link building.

So, each minute you spend, you have to make sure it counts.

There’s a tool called Detailed that breaks down the best links for every industry.

All you have to do is select an industry and a site and it shows you all of the good links that are going to your competition.

You can then focus your efforts on reaching out to those sites to get links.

Sure, you will still need to have amazing content or a good product or service in order to convince those sites to link to you, but hey, if you don’t have any of that it’s going to be hard to do well in the first place.

So, don’t waste your time trying to search for links when Detailed will give you a list of hundreds of amazing sites to get links from within your space.

Tool #9: Site Speed Audit

Speed impacts rankings.

Google doesn’t want to rank slow websites anymore.

It doesn’t matter that technology has become better and you can now purchase satellite Internet. Not every location has blazing fast Internet.

For that reason, Google has an Accelerated Mobile Pages framework that helps with mobile load time.

But that’s not enough, you also need your website to load fast.

So, go here and put in your URL.

You’ll then be taken to a report that looks like this:

What’ll you want to focus on is site speed. That Ubersuggest report pulls from Google Lighthouse.

So, send that to your developer and tell them to get you in the green mark for both mobile and desktop load times.

As your speed goes up, so will your SEO rankings and traffic over time.

Tool #10: Supermetrics

Are you tired of having your data everywhere?

Why would you want to log into four of five different apps to get your SEO and marketing data when you could log into one.

And no, I am not talking about Google Analytics. I am talking about Google Data Studio.

If you haven’t used it yet, sign up for it… it’s free.

Google Data Studio is a business intelligence tool that will show you all of your data in one place.

So how do you get all of your SEO data into Google Data Studio? You use Supermetrics.

It passes all of your SEO data from different sources into Data Studio, so you no longer have to log into multiple tools, including Google Analytics.

My favorite feature in Supermetrics is you can automate your marketing reporting, so you no longer have to create your reports manually.

Tool #11: VidIQ

Google is the most popular search engine.

But do you know what the second most popular search engine is?

It’s not Bing… it’s actually YouTube, which Google actually owns.

If you haven’t done YouTube SEO yet, you should reconsider. Just look at how much search traffic I get from YouTube each month.

This article will break down how to do YouTube SEO if you want to learn how it works.

But to make things easier, install this Chrome extension.

Whenever you perform a search on YouTube it will show you what’s popular, what keywords are being searched that are related to each video, and which tags people are using to get more SEO traffic.

I wanted to end this post with VidIQ because it’s not competitive.

See, unlike traditional SEO, it doesn’t take months to see results. YouTube SEO is the opposite in which it isn’t as competitive (yet) and you can rank at the top within 24 to 48 hours of releasing a video (seriously!).

Conclusion

They say SEO is hard and time-consuming. And I am not going to lie, you won’t get results unless you put in some effort.

But who says it has to be as time-consuming?

By using some of the tools I mentioned above you’ll save time. It really is that simple.

I know there is a lot and it can be overwhelming. So if you don’t have time to use all of the tools it is fine… just start at the top and work your way down (I put them in order based on what will save you the most time).

What other ways do you save time on your SEO?

The post The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/seo-tool-kit/ via https://neilpatel.com

The original post, The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time, has been shared from https://imtrainingparadise.wordpress.com/2020/06/16/the-seo-tool-kit-11-tools-thatll-save-you-time/ via https://imtrainingparadise.wordpress.com

[marketingcomcaio]

The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time

When I first got into the world of SEO, you could literally optimize your site for any term and rank at the top of Google within a month or two.

But of course, that was ages ago.

Now with Google’s ever-evolving algorithm, it takes more time and effort to get results.

But what happens if you don’t have the luxury of time? Or you don’t have the financial resources to put in the effort that is truly needed.

What should you do?

Just forget about SEO?

Of course not. Today, I want to call out 11 tools that will help you get an edge over your competition. But unlike most lists, I am going to get very specific on the feature I want you to use within each tool to make your life easier and help you get results faster with less effort.

Let’s dive right in.

Tool #1: Ubersuggest Projects

You probably already know about Ubersuggest, but do you really have time to spend hours and hours each week to do your SEO?

Chances are you don’t.

So how do you improve your traffic with the least amount of effort?

You set up a project in Ubersuggest.

As you can see, it shows your SEO traffic over time. It will let you know if your rankings are going up or down, your link growth, and your SEO issues.

With so many things going on in marketing, you don’t have time to manually check your rankings or if things are going up or down or even what you need to fix.

Ubersuggest will do it for you all automatically and even notify you of what needs to happen through email. That way you don’t have to constantly check your SEO. Ubersuggest will do it all automatically.

More so, you’ll get notified of what you need to focus on each week to maximize your traffic.

All you have do is head to the dashboard and click on “Add Your First Project.”

It’s as simple as adding in your URL.

Then select the locations you do business in and want traffic from.

Then add in the keywords you currently rank for or want to go after.

And of course, set up your traffic preferences.

And then you’ll be good to go.

Then when things go great, you’ll be notified. And when things are going wrong, you’ll also be notified. Ubersuggest will even tell you what to fix.

That way you get the maximum results in the least amount of time.

Tool #2: Google Analytics Alerts

You have Google Analytics set up on your site, but how often do you log in?

And when you do log in, do you know what to focus on or what to look at?

And if you do, do you know what to do with that data?

Google Analytics is a great tool, but you don’t want to waste hours and hours looking at reports. Instead, you want to spend your time doing and getting results.

But if you set up alerts in Google Analytics, you can save tons of time.

If you watch from the 6:33 mark, it will show you how to set up alerts. I added the whole video as it will teach you how to set up Google Analytics in general in case you don’t have goal tracking set it place.

Once you set up alerts, you’ll again get notified when anything good or bad happens. I usually have alerts set up for only when things go bad, so I know when I need to focus on fixing my marketing.

Tool #3: Trello

You’re probably thinking how the heck is Trello a marketing tool. It really isn’t, but it is a good project management tool.

And with your SEO, you may have a team helping you out and Trello will help streamline the process, make you more efficient, and get your results faster.

I keep my Trello board simple by breaking it into 3 sections.

To do – what needs to be done over time.

Prioritized – what I need to be done now (tasks at the top are the most important)

Done – tasks that need to be double-checked to ensure they were done right.

It’s that simple. That way you don’t have to micromanage your team.

Some people have more complex Trello boards, but something simple like I have worked too.

If you want to create a Trello board for your content marketing, assuming you want to write lots of content (such as 10 posts a week), this process works well.

The columns I use for content writers are:

Topics – this is where writers add topics they want to write about.

Outline review – writers submit their outline before they write for approval.

Draft – writers submit their rough draft.

Draft review – editors review each draft.

Uploaded, prepared, and ready to review – this is where the editor adds the post to your CMS (like WordPress).

Scheduled – this is where you schedule the content to go live.

Done – the content is now live.

We’ve found it effective if you are managing dozens of writers at once.

Tool #4: Content Decay Tool

Can you guess how many articles I write each week?

1.

Seriously, that’s it. 1 article a week which is roughly 4 to 5 per month (depending on how many weeks in the month).

And can you guess how many articles my team and I update each week?

21.

That’s roughly 90 a month.

Just think about it… why would I have a team of 3 people updating 90 articles per month when I only write 1 a week.

It’s because updating old content is an easier way to get more SEO traffic than it is to create new content.

But what content should you update?

The content decay tool will tell you that.

It breaks down in order which articles you should update first, second, third… based on what will generate you the most traffic.

If you are wondering what is involved with updating content, just think of it this way:

Is there anything outdated within your post – if so, either update the outdated information and make it relevant again. If you can’t, then delete that part from your article.

Can you use media to improve the experience – do you need to embed videos, add more pictures, maybe even add an infographic? Use media to better tell your story and message.

Are you including the right keywords – a simple way to get more traffic is to integrate other popular related keywords within your article. Whatever your article is about, insert it into Ubersuggest and head to the “Keyword Ideas” report in the left-hand navigation.

Is there anything missing – try to poke holes within your content. What could you have done to make it better? What do your competitors talk about that you forgot to mention? What questions didn’t you answer that the reader might have? By asking yourself these simple questions, you’ll be able to make it better.

Tool #5: Ubersuggest Chrome Extension

If you haven’t installed the Ubersuggest Chrome extension, make sure you do so.

I’m not going to bore you with all of the features of the extension… instead, I am going to give you one thing that will save you time.

You know when you Google for information to learn more on any subject?

Chances are, sometimes you are Googling to learn something related to your space. And when you do, you’ll find that your site usually won’t be at the top of those search results.

And that’s ok.

But when you do a search, you’ll notice “monthly searches” in the Google search bar.

This shows you how often that keyword is searched.

So anytime you are looking up anything in your space, pay attention to that number. If you see a keyword with over 5,000 searches, it may be worth targeting.

And as you scroll down and start going through the sites that rank at the top, you’ll notice metrics under each site.

If you notice a web page with thousands of social shares and hundreds of links, it should reaffirm that you probably want to go after that term. And the listing that has thousands of social shares and hundreds of links is a good benchmark of a page that is high in quality and what people in your space prefer.

Ideally, you want to create something better than that one, as that is the main way you beat them over time.

Tool #6: Hello Bar

SEO is very different than paid traffic.

With paid traffic, you can drive people to a landing page with very little content, which makes it easier to generate sales or leads.

With SEO, Google prefers to rank content-rich sites.

But when someone lands on a page full of educational-based content, they are less likely to convert into a customer.

There’s a simple fix… Hello Bar.

Hello Bar has a lot of features, but I just want you to use the top bar like I do on NeilPatel.com.

And as you scroll it moves along with you.

That one little thing allows me to improve my conversion rate from my SEO traffic.

You can easily adjust what you show with a few simple clicks within Hello Bar or you can even show people different messages based on where they are coming from.

Although SEO traffic doesn’t convert as well as paid traffic, it is much cheaper in the long run and does have a better overall ROI. And that one little Hello Bar will improve your numbers.

It’s responsible for 9.4% of revenue from NeilPatel.com.

Every little bit adds up.

Tool #7: Mozcast

Google makes over 3,200 algorithm changes a year.

Are you really going to keep up to date with all of them?

If you followed the first tool and set up a project in Ubersuggest, you’ll get notified when your rankings go down.

And if you set up alerts in Google Analytics (tool number 2) you’ll also get notified when your traffic drops drastically.

What you’ll find is that it’s overwhelming to keep up with all of Google’s updates and it could be confusing to figure out what you need to fix to get your traffic back.

This report on Moz keeps track of all of the algorithm updates and gives you an overview of what has changed or what the update is about. On top of that, you’ll want to check out the Mozcast if you get a notification of ranking or traffic drops as this tool confirms if other people are also seeing changes from a Google update.

Keep in mind that Google doesn’t announce each update, hence you’ll want to cross-reference what you are seeing with the Mozcast.

That way you don’t have to spend hours researching each update.

Tool #8: Detailed

Link building is a pain. There are so many link tools like this one… but let’s not kid ourselves… you just don’t have the time to spend 10 to 20 hours a week doing link building.

So, each minute you spend, you have to make sure it counts.

There’s a tool called Detailed that breaks down the best links for every industry.

All you have to do is select an industry and a site and it shows you all of the good links that are going to your competition.

You can then focus your efforts on reaching out to those sites to get links.

Sure, you will still need to have amazing content or a good product or service in order to convince those sites to link to you, but hey, if you don’t have any of that it’s going to be hard to do well in the first place.

So, don’t waste your time trying to search for links when Detailed will give you a list of hundreds of amazing sites to get links from within your space.

Tool #9: Site Speed Audit

Speed impacts rankings.

Google doesn’t want to rank slow websites anymore.

It doesn’t matter that technology has become better and you can now purchase satellite Internet. Not every location has blazing fast Internet.

For that reason, Google has an Accelerated Mobile Pages framework that helps with mobile load time.

But that’s not enough, you also need your website to load fast.

So, go here and put in your URL.

You’ll then be taken to a report that looks like this:

What’ll you want to focus on is site speed. That Ubersuggest report pulls from Google Lighthouse.

So, send that to your developer and tell them to get you in the green mark for both mobile and desktop load times.

As your speed goes up, so will your SEO rankings and traffic over time.

Tool #10: Supermetrics

Are you tired of having your data everywhere?

Why would you want to log into four of five different apps to get your SEO and marketing data when you could log into one.

And no, I am not talking about Google Analytics. I am talking about Google Data Studio.

If you haven’t used it yet, sign up for it… it’s free.

Google Data Studio is a business intelligence tool that will show you all of your data in one place.

So how do you get all of your SEO data into Google Data Studio? You use Supermetrics.

It passes all of your SEO data from different sources into Data Studio, so you no longer have to log into multiple tools, including Google Analytics.

My favorite feature in Supermetrics is you can automate your marketing reporting, so you no longer have to create your reports manually.

Tool #11: VidIQ

Google is the most popular search engine.

But do you know what the second most popular search engine is?

It’s not Bing… it’s actually YouTube, which Google actually owns.

If you haven’t done YouTube SEO yet, you should reconsider. Just look at how much search traffic I get from YouTube each month.

This article will break down how to do YouTube SEO if you want to learn how it works.

But to make things easier, install this Chrome extension.

Whenever you perform a search on YouTube it will show you what’s popular, what keywords are being searched that are related to each video, and which tags people are using to get more SEO traffic.

I wanted to end this post with VidIQ because it’s not competitive.

See, unlike traditional SEO, it doesn’t take months to see results. YouTube SEO is the opposite in which it isn’t as competitive (yet) and you can rank at the top within 24 to 48 hours of releasing a video (seriously!).

Conclusion

They say SEO is hard and time-consuming. And I am not going to lie, you won’t get results unless you put in some effort.

But who says it has to be as time-consuming?

By using some of the tools I mentioned above you’ll save time. It really is that simple.

I know there is a lot and it can be overwhelming. So if you don’t have time to use all of the tools it is fine… just start at the top and work your way down (I put them in order based on what will save you the most time).

What other ways do you save time on your SEO?

The post The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time appeared first on Neil Patel.

The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time Publicado primeiro em https://neilpatel.com

[remelitalia]

The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools Thatll Save You Time

When I first got into the world of SEO, you could literally optimize your site for any term and rank at the top of Google within a month or two.

But of course, that was ages ago.

Now with Google’s ever-evolving algorithm, it takes more time and effort to get results.

But what happens if you don’t have the luxury of time? Or you don’t have the financial resources to put in the effort that is truly needed.

What should you do?

Just forget about SEO?

Of course not. Today, I want to call out 11 tools that will help you get an edge over your competition. But unlike most lists, I am going to get very specific on the feature I want you to use within each tool to make your life easier and help you get results faster with less effort.

Let’s dive right in.

Tool #1: Ubersuggest Projects

You probably already know about Ubersuggest, but do you really have time to spend hours and hours each week to do your SEO?

Chances are you don’t.

So how do you improve your traffic with the least amount of effort?

You set up a project in Ubersuggest.

As you can see, it shows your SEO traffic over time. It will let you know if your rankings are going up or down, your link growth, and your SEO issues.

With so many things going on in marketing, you don’t have time to manually check your rankings or if things are going up or down or even what you need to fix.

Ubersuggest will do it for you all automatically and even notify you of what needs to happen through email. That way you don’t have to constantly check your SEO. Ubersuggest will do it all automatically.

More so, you’ll get notified of what you need to focus on each week to maximize your traffic.

All you have do is head to the dashboard and click on “Add Your First Project.”

It’s as simple as adding in your URL.

Then select the locations you do business in and want traffic from.

Then add in the keywords you currently rank for or want to go after.

And of course, set up your traffic preferences.

And then you’ll be good to go.

Then when things go great, you’ll be notified. And when things are going wrong, you’ll also be notified. Ubersuggest will even tell you what to fix.

That way you get the maximum results in the least amount of time.

Tool #2: Google Analytics Alerts

You have Google Analytics set up on your site, but how often do you log in?

And when you do log in, do you know what to focus on or what to look at?

And if you do, do you know what to do with that data?

Google Analytics is a great tool, but you don’t want to waste hours and hours looking at reports. Instead, you want to spend your time doing and getting results.

But if you set up alerts in Google Analytics, you can save tons of time.

If you watch from the 6:33 mark, it will show you how to set up alerts. I added the whole video as it will teach you how to set up Google Analytics in general in case you don’t have goal tracking set it place.

Once you set up alerts, you’ll again get notified when anything good or bad happens. I usually have alerts set up for only when things go bad, so I know when I need to focus on fixing my marketing.

Tool #3: Trello

You’re probably thinking how the heck is Trello a marketing tool. It really isn’t, but it is a good project management tool.

And with your SEO, you may have a team helping you out and Trello will help streamline the process, make you more efficient, and get your results faster.

I keep my Trello board simple by breaking it into 3 sections.

To do – what needs to be done over time.

Prioritized – what I need to be done now (tasks at the top are the most important)

Done – tasks that need to be double-checked to ensure they were done right.

It’s that simple. That way you don’t have to micromanage your team.

Some people have more complex Trello boards, but something simple like I have worked too.

If you want to create a Trello board for your content marketing, assuming you want to write lots of content (such as 10 posts a week), this process works well.

The columns I use for content writers are:

Topics – this is where writers add topics they want to write about.

Outline review – writers submit their outline before they write for approval.

Draft – writers submit their rough draft.

Draft review – editors review each draft.

Uploaded, prepared, and ready to review – this is where the editor adds the post to your CMS (like WordPress).

Scheduled – this is where you schedule the content to go live.

Done – the content is now live.

We’ve found it effective if you are managing dozens of writers at once.

Tool #4: Content Decay Tool

Can you guess how many articles I write each week?

1.

Seriously, that’s it. 1 article a week which is roughly 4 to 5 per month (depending on how many weeks in the month).

And can you guess how many articles my team and I update each week?

21.

That’s roughly 90 a month.

Just think about it… why would I have a team of 3 people updating 90 articles per month when I only write 1 a week.

It’s because updating old content is an easier way to get more SEO traffic than it is to create new content.

But what content should you update?

The content decay tool will tell you that.

It breaks down in order which articles you should update first, second, third… based on what will generate you the most traffic.

If you are wondering what is involved with updating content, just think of it this way:

Is there anything outdated within your post – if so, either update the outdated information and make it relevant again. If you can’t, then delete that part from your article.

Can you use media to improve the experience – do you need to embed videos, add more pictures, maybe even add an infographic? Use media to better tell your story and message.

Are you including the right keywords – a simple way to get more traffic is to integrate other popular related keywords within your article. Whatever your article is about, insert it into Ubersuggest and head to the “Keyword Ideas” report in the left-hand navigation.

Is there anything missing – try to poke holes within your content. What could you have done to make it better? What do your competitors talk about that you forgot to mention? What questions didn’t you answer that the reader might have? By asking yourself these simple questions, you’ll be able to make it better.

Tool #5: Ubersuggest Chrome Extension

If you haven’t installed the Ubersuggest Chrome extension, make sure you do so.

I’m not going to bore you with all of the features of the extension… instead, I am going to give you one thing that will save you time.

You know when you Google for information to learn more on any subject?

Chances are, sometimes you are Googling to learn something related to your space. And when you do, you’ll find that your site usually won’t be at the top of those search results.

And that’s ok.

But when you do a search, you’ll notice “monthly searches” in the Google search bar.

This shows you how often that keyword is searched.

So anytime you are looking up anything in your space, pay attention to that number. If you see a keyword with over 5,000 searches, it may be worth targeting.

And as you scroll down and start going through the sites that rank at the top, you’ll notice metrics under each site.

If you notice a web page with thousands of social shares and hundreds of links, it should reaffirm that you probably want to go after that term. And the listing that has thousands of social shares and hundreds of links is a good benchmark of a page that is high in quality and what people in your space prefer.

Ideally, you want to create something better than that one, as that is the main way you beat them over time.

Tool #6: Hello Bar

SEO is very different than paid traffic.

With paid traffic, you can drive people to a landing page with very little content, which makes it easier to generate sales or leads.

With SEO, Google prefers to rank content-rich sites.

But when someone lands on a page full of educational-based content, they are less likely to convert into a customer.

There’s a simple fix… Hello Bar.

Hello Bar has a lot of features, but I just want you to use the top bar like I do on NeilPatel.com.

And as you scroll it moves along with you.

That one little thing allows me to improve my conversion rate from my SEO traffic.

You can easily adjust what you show with a few simple clicks within Hello Bar or you can even show people different messages based on where they are coming from.

Although SEO traffic doesn’t convert as well as paid traffic, it is much cheaper in the long run and does have a better overall ROI. And that one little Hello Bar will improve your numbers.

It’s responsible for 9.4% of revenue from NeilPatel.com.

Every little bit adds up.

Tool #7: Mozcast

Google makes over 3,200 algorithm changes a year.

Are you really going to keep up to date with all of them?

If you followed the first tool and set up a project in Ubersuggest, you’ll get notified when your rankings go down.

And if you set up alerts in Google Analytics (tool number 2) you’ll also get notified when your traffic drops drastically.

What you’ll find is that it’s overwhelming to keep up with all of Google’s updates and it could be confusing to figure out what you need to fix to get your traffic back.

This report on Moz keeps track of all of the algorithm updates and gives you an overview of what has changed or what the update is about. On top of that, you’ll want to check out the Mozcast if you get a notification of ranking or traffic drops as this tool confirms if other people are also seeing changes from a Google update.

Keep in mind that Google doesn’t announce each update, hence you’ll want to cross-reference what you are seeing with the Mozcast.

That way you don’t have to spend hours researching each update.

Tool #8: Detailed

Link building is a pain. There are so many link tools like this one… but let’s not kid ourselves… you just don’t have the time to spend 10 to 20 hours a week doing link building.

So, each minute you spend, you have to make sure it counts.

There’s a tool called Detailed that breaks down the best links for every industry.

All you have to do is select an industry and a site and it shows you all of the good links that are going to your competition.

You can then focus your efforts on reaching out to those sites to get links.

Sure, you will still need to have amazing content or a good product or service in order to convince those sites to link to you, but hey, if you don’t have any of that it’s going to be hard to do well in the first place.

So, don’t waste your time trying to search for links when Detailed will give you a list of hundreds of amazing sites to get links from within your space.

Tool #9: Site Speed Audit

Speed impacts rankings.

Google doesn’t want to rank slow websites anymore.

It doesn’t matter that technology has become better and you can now purchase satellite Internet. Not every location has blazing fast Internet.

For that reason, Google has an Accelerated Mobile Pages framework that helps with mobile load time.

But that’s not enough, you also need your website to load fast.

So, go here and put in your URL.

You’ll then be taken to a report that looks like this:

What’ll you want to focus on is site speed. That Ubersuggest report pulls from Google Lighthouse.

So, send that to your developer and tell them to get you in the green mark for both mobile and desktop load times.

As your speed goes up, so will your SEO rankings and traffic over time.

Tool #10: Supermetrics

Are you tired of having your data everywhere?

Why would you want to log into four of five different apps to get your SEO and marketing data when you could log into one.

And no, I am not talking about Google Analytics. I am talking about Google Data Studio.

If you haven’t used it yet, sign up for it… it’s free.

Google Data Studio is a business intelligence tool that will show you all of your data in one place.

So how do you get all of your SEO data into Google Data Studio? You use Supermetrics.

It passes all of your SEO data from different sources into Data Studio, so you no longer have to log into multiple tools, including Google Analytics.

My favorite feature in Supermetrics is you can automate your marketing reporting, so you no longer have to create your reports manually.

Tool #11: VidIQ

Google is the most popular search engine.

But do you know what the second most popular search engine is?

It’s not Bing… it’s actually YouTube, which Google actually owns.

If you haven’t done YouTube SEO yet, you should reconsider. Just look at how much search traffic I get from YouTube each month.

This article will break down how to do YouTube SEO if you want to learn how it works.

But to make things easier, install this Chrome extension.

Whenever you perform a search on YouTube it will show you what’s popular, what keywords are being searched that are related to each video, and which tags people are using to get more SEO traffic.

I wanted to end this post with VidIQ because it’s not competitive.

See, unlike traditional SEO, it doesn’t take months to see results. YouTube SEO is the opposite in which it isn’t as competitive (yet) and you can rank at the top within 24 to 48 hours of releasing a video (seriously!).

Conclusion

They say SEO is hard and time-consuming. And I am not going to lie, you won’t get results unless you put in some effort.

But who says it has to be as time-consuming?

By using some of the tools I mentioned above you’ll save time. It really is that simple.

I know there is a lot and it can be overwhelming. So if you don’t have time to use all of the tools it is fine… just start at the top and work your way down (I put them in order based on what will save you the most time).

What other ways do you save time on your SEO?

The post The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/seo-tool-kit/ via https://neilpatel.com

See the original post, The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools Thatll Save You Time that is shared from https://imtrainingparadise.weebly.com/home/the-seo-tool-kit-11-tools-thatll-save-you-time via https://imtrainingparadise.weebly.com/home

#IM TRAINING PARADISE - Home

[jimmyjohnsmnm]

The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time

When I first got into the world of SEO, you could literally optimize your site for any term and rank at the top of Google within a month or two.

But of course, that was ages ago.

Now with Google’s ever-evolving algorithm, it takes more time and effort to get results.

But what happens if you don’t have the luxury of time? Or you don’t have the financial resources to put in the effort that is truly needed.

What should you do?

Just forget about SEO?

Of course not. Today, I want to call out 11 tools that will help you get an edge over your competition. But unlike most lists, I am going to get very specific on the feature I want you to use within each tool to make your life easier and help you get results faster with less effort.

Let’s dive right in.

Tool #1: Ubersuggest Projects

You probably already know about Ubersuggest, but do you really have time to spend hours and hours each week to do your SEO?

Chances are you don’t.

So how do you improve your traffic with the least amount of effort?

You set up a project in Ubersuggest.

As you can see, it shows your SEO traffic over time. It will let you know if your rankings are going up or down, your link growth, and your SEO issues.

With so many things going on in marketing, you don’t have time to manually check your rankings or if things are going up or down or even what you need to fix.

Ubersuggest will do it for you all automatically and even notify you of what needs to happen through email. That way you don’t have to constantly check your SEO. Ubersuggest will do it all automatically.

More so, you’ll get notified of what you need to focus on each week to maximize your traffic.

All you have do is head to the dashboard and click on “Add Your First Project.”

It’s as simple as adding in your URL.

Then select the locations you do business in and want traffic from.

Then add in the keywords you currently rank for or want to go after.

And of course, set up your traffic preferences.

And then you’ll be good to go.

Then when things go great, you’ll be notified. And when things are going wrong, you’ll also be notified. Ubersuggest will even tell you what to fix.

That way you get the maximum results in the least amount of time.

Tool #2: Google Analytics Alerts

You have Google Analytics set up on your site, but how often do you log in?

And when you do log in, do you know what to focus on or what to look at?

And if you do, do you know what to do with that data?

Google Analytics is a great tool, but you don’t want to waste hours and hours looking at reports. Instead, you want to spend your time doing and getting results.

But if you set up alerts in Google Analytics, you can save tons of time.

If you watch from the 6:33 mark, it will show you how to set up alerts. I added the whole video as it will teach you how to set up Google Analytics in general in case you don’t have goal tracking set it place.

Once you set up alerts, you’ll again get notified when anything good or bad happens. I usually have alerts set up for only when things go bad, so I know when I need to focus on fixing my marketing.

Tool #3: Trello

You’re probably thinking how the heck is Trello a marketing tool. It really isn’t, but it is a good project management tool.

And with your SEO, you may have a team helping you out and Trello will help streamline the process, make you more efficient, and get your results faster.

I keep my Trello board simple by breaking it into 3 sections.

To do – what needs to be done over time.

Prioritized – what I need to be done now (tasks at the top are the most important)

Done – tasks that need to be double-checked to ensure they were done right.

It’s that simple. That way you don’t have to micromanage your team.

Some people have more complex Trello boards, but something simple like I have worked too.

If you want to create a Trello board for your content marketing, assuming you want to write lots of content (such as 10 posts a week), this process works well.

The columns I use for content writers are:

Topics – this is where writers add topics they want to write about.

Outline review – writers submit their outline before they write for approval.

Draft – writers submit their rough draft.

Draft review – editors review each draft.

Uploaded, prepared, and ready to review – this is where the editor adds the post to your CMS (like WordPress).

Scheduled – this is where you schedule the content to go live.

Done – the content is now live.

We’ve found it effective if you are managing dozens of writers at once.

Tool #4: Content Decay Tool

Can you guess how many articles I write each week?

1.

Seriously, that’s it. 1 article a week which is roughly 4 to 5 per month (depending on how many weeks in the month).

And can you guess how many articles my team and I update each week?

21.

That’s roughly 90 a month.

Just think about it… why would I have a team of 3 people updating 90 articles per month when I only write 1 a week.

It’s because updating old content is an easier way to get more SEO traffic than it is to create new content.

But what content should you update?

The content decay tool will tell you that.

It breaks down in order which articles you should update first, second, third… based on what will generate you the most traffic.

If you are wondering what is involved with updating content, just think of it this way:

Is there anything outdated within your post – if so, either update the outdated information and make it relevant again. If you can’t, then delete that part from your article.

Can you use media to improve the experience – do you need to embed videos, add more pictures, maybe even add an infographic? Use media to better tell your story and message.

Are you including the right keywords – a simple way to get more traffic is to integrate other popular related keywords within your article. Whatever your article is about, insert it into Ubersuggest and head to the “Keyword Ideas” report in the left-hand navigation.

Is there anything missing – try to poke holes within your content. What could you have done to make it better? What do your competitors talk about that you forgot to mention? What questions didn’t you answer that the reader might have? By asking yourself these simple questions, you’ll be able to make it better.

Tool #5: Ubersuggest Chrome Extension

If you haven’t installed the Ubersuggest Chrome extension, make sure you do so.

I’m not going to bore you with all of the features of the extension… instead, I am going to give you one thing that will save you time.

You know when you Google for information to learn more on any subject?

Chances are, sometimes you are Googling to learn something related to your space. And when you do, you’ll find that your site usually won’t be at the top of those search results.

And that’s ok.

But when you do a search, you’ll notice “monthly searches” in the Google search bar.

This shows you how often that keyword is searched.

So anytime you are looking up anything in your space, pay attention to that number. If you see a keyword with over 5,000 searches, it may be worth targeting.

And as you scroll down and start going through the sites that rank at the top, you’ll notice metrics under each site.

If you notice a web page with thousands of social shares and hundreds of links, it should reaffirm that you probably want to go after that term. And the listing that has thousands of social shares and hundreds of links is a good benchmark of a page that is high in quality and what people in your space prefer.

Ideally, you want to create something better than that one, as that is the main way you beat them over time.

Tool #6: Hello Bar

SEO is very different than paid traffic.

With paid traffic, you can drive people to a landing page with very little content, which makes it easier to generate sales or leads.

With SEO, Google prefers to rank content-rich sites.

But when someone lands on a page full of educational-based content, they are less likely to convert into a customer.

There’s a simple fix… Hello Bar.

Hello Bar has a lot of features, but I just want you to use the top bar like I do on NeilPatel.com.

And as you scroll it moves along with you.

That one little thing allows me to improve my conversion rate from my SEO traffic.

You can easily adjust what you show with a few simple clicks within Hello Bar or you can even show people different messages based on where they are coming from.

Although SEO traffic doesn’t convert as well as paid traffic, it is much cheaper in the long run and does have a better overall ROI. And that one little Hello Bar will improve your numbers.

It’s responsible for 9.4% of revenue from NeilPatel.com.

Every little bit adds up.

Tool #7: Mozcast

Google makes over 3,200 algorithm changes a year.

Are you really going to keep up to date with all of them?

If you followed the first tool and set up a project in Ubersuggest, you’ll get notified when your rankings go down.

And if you set up alerts in Google Analytics (tool number 2) you’ll also get notified when your traffic drops drastically.

What you’ll find is that it’s overwhelming to keep up with all of Google’s updates and it could be confusing to figure out what you need to fix to get your traffic back.

This report on Moz keeps track of all of the algorithm updates and gives you an overview of what has changed or what the update is about. On top of that, you’ll want to check out the Mozcast if you get a notification of ranking or traffic drops as this tool confirms if other people are also seeing changes from a Google update.

Keep in mind that Google doesn’t announce each update, hence you’ll want to cross-reference what you are seeing with the Mozcast.

That way you don’t have to spend hours researching each update.

Tool #8: Detailed

Link building is a pain. There are so many link tools like this one… but let’s not kid ourselves… you just don’t have the time to spend 10 to 20 hours a week doing link building.

So, each minute you spend, you have to make sure it counts.

There’s a tool called Detailed that breaks down the best links for every industry.

All you have to do is select an industry and a site and it shows you all of the good links that are going to your competition.

You can then focus your efforts on reaching out to those sites to get links.

Sure, you will still need to have amazing content or a good product or service in order to convince those sites to link to you, but hey, if you don’t have any of that it’s going to be hard to do well in the first place.

So, don’t waste your time trying to search for links when Detailed will give you a list of hundreds of amazing sites to get links from within your space.

Tool #9: Site Speed Audit

Speed impacts rankings.

Google doesn’t want to rank slow websites anymore.

It doesn’t matter that technology has become better and you can now purchase satellite Internet. Not every location has blazing fast Internet.

For that reason, Google has an Accelerated Mobile Pages framework that helps with mobile load time.

But that’s not enough, you also need your website to load fast.

So, go here and put in your URL.

You’ll then be taken to a report that looks like this:

What’ll you want to focus on is site speed. That Ubersuggest report pulls from Google Lighthouse.

So, send that to your developer and tell them to get you in the green mark for both mobile and desktop load times.

As your speed goes up, so will your SEO rankings and traffic over time.

Tool #10: Supermetrics

Are you tired of having your data everywhere?

Why would you want to log into four of five different apps to get your SEO and marketing data when you could log into one.

And no, I am not talking about Google Analytics. I am talking about Google Data Studio.

If you haven’t used it yet, sign up for it… it’s free.

Google Data Studio is a business intelligence tool that will show you all of your data in one place.

So how do you get all of your SEO data into Google Data Studio? You use Supermetrics.

It passes all of your SEO data from different sources into Data Studio, so you no longer have to log into multiple tools, including Google Analytics.

My favorite feature in Supermetrics is you can automate your marketing reporting, so you no longer have to create your reports manually.

Tool #11: VidIQ

Google is the most popular search engine.

But do you know what the second most popular search engine is?

It’s not Bing… it’s actually YouTube, which Google actually owns.

If you haven’t done YouTube SEO yet, you should reconsider. Just look at how much search traffic I get from YouTube each month.

This article will break down how to do YouTube SEO if you want to learn how it works.

But to make things easier, install this Chrome extension.

Whenever you perform a search on YouTube it will show you what’s popular, what keywords are being searched that are related to each video, and which tags people are using to get more SEO traffic.

I wanted to end this post with VidIQ because it’s not competitive.

See, unlike traditional SEO, it doesn’t take months to see results. YouTube SEO is the opposite in which it isn’t as competitive (yet) and you can rank at the top within 24 to 48 hours of releasing a video (seriously!).

Conclusion

They say SEO is hard and time-consuming. And I am not going to lie, you won’t get results unless you put in some effort.

But who says it has to be as time-consuming?

By using some of the tools I mentioned above you’ll save time. It really is that simple.

I know there is a lot and it can be overwhelming. So if you don’t have time to use all of the tools it is fine… just start at the top and work your way down (I put them in order based on what will save you the most time).

What other ways do you save time on your SEO?

The post The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://ift.tt/2YAJL0G via https://neilpatel.com The post, The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time, has been shared from https://ift.tt/2ULC7zh via https://ift.tt/2r0Go64

[rwt-mystic-corner]

I’m sick from equal parts stomach bug and emet*phobia (basically: Phobia of Exactly what the Stomach Bug Does to you, for days on end... i’m finishing up day 6 at this point)... Figured, while I’m resting I’d pass some time filling one of these out. 

Questions from here: https://prettyalice13.tumblr.com/post/125172483728/witchcraft-asks-1-105

1. Are you solitary or in a coven? Solitary. I've tried to find a coven, but Wicca has a pretty firm grasp on witchcraft in the area. (They even opened a "Witchcraft Museum" about 20 minutes away, and it's literally all entirely dedicated to Gardenian Wicca. I refuse to go in because I haven't figured out how to tactfully point out just how badly they're misinforming everyone...)

2. Do you consider yourself Wiccan, Pagan, witch, or other? Pagan and a witch!~ Though the term I like most is "mystic", because it's the Forces of the Universe that I play with, more than personal forces or tools. (I did start out as a Wiccan 12 years ago, though.)

3. What is your zodiac sign? Which zodiac? Chinese: Water Rooster. (And I absolutely claim that.) Greek: Aries Sun, Scorpio Ascendant, Cancer Moon.

4. Do you have a Patron God/dess? I have two, actually! Mielikki, and, well... the other one is one I'd rather keep under wraps. It involves pop culture paganism, astral travel, and something kind of, vaguely?, fiction-kin adjacent, but not like My ID, so even that technically isn't it? It's wild. Ask off anon if you'd like to talk about it, we prefer that she's only discussed in private.

5. Do you work with a Pantheon? No, the deities that have spoken to me come from all sorts of pantheons.

6. Do you use tarot, palmistry, or any other kind of divination? Rarely, anymore. I mostly go in with meditation (I think the term for it nowadays is "Accessing the Akashic Record"?), though I used to use tea leaves, scrying into teacups and rivers, and asked for Clues from the Universe when I'm out and about, and I read signs from whatever's around me. I had a serious knack for tarot when I was using it, though.

7. What are some of your favorite herbs to use in your practice? (if any) Oh, definitely lemon balm! I love that little mint. I've had it growing in my room twice. The first time, the chinchillas got to it, and for some reason it never grew back? The second time, it got hit with aerial blight when all the rest of the houseplants did. :c That little plant had hung in a lot longer than the others, but eventually it succumbed, and no amount of coaxing would bring it back.

8. How would you define your craft? "Shadow witchcraft", because I do a lot of the "confronting personal stuff that's really hard but necessary to grow", AND the "working with energies of the shadows, feeling safer in the dark, and using darkness as an energy source to recuperate, divine, and move energies for spells".

9. Do you curse? If not, do you accept others who do? Yes (but I've only actually done it once), and I accept others who do, yes. (I do not, however, accept those who only do it for selfish, malicious reasons. I recognize that there's a gray area, and I won't bother you for that, because it's your craft to do whatever you want with, not mine to judge. But if you're cursing just for the hell of it, I don't want you anywhere near me. Also, any kind of curse that could be considered Hate Speech or Incitement gets you blacklisted and blocked in my book.)

10. How long have you been practicing? Ooh, this one's complicated. See, consciously, intentionally, while calling it "energy work" or "witchcraft"? Since I was 14, so that's 12 years. But well before then, I was sensing energies, from plants and animals, I was acutely aware of others' emotions, sometimes even accidentally manipulating them. For as long as I can remember, I would lean against trees and "listen" to them, or wonder how I knew what it felt like to have your heart broken, when I'd never even been in a relationship? (Because I felt it from others!) So, I guess, I've been "practicing" without knowing there was a word for anything I did my whole life.

11. Do you currently or have you ever had any familiars? Not many, considering the sheer numbers of pets I've had, but: ~ I had a ring-necked dove once, who would come sit with me, in the dark attic half of my room, when I was meditating. Sometimes he'd drop in during a ritual, and join me in the circle until it was complete, and then he'd leave the room. He brought me feathers. Once, when his foot was injured, he stood absolutely still to let me perform a healing session on it for a week or two until it healed, and if you know doves, you know it's very rare for them to hold still for ten or fifteen minutes at a time. ~ I'm convinced my chinchilla Dusty is becoming a familiar. I don't practice nearly as often as I used to, but he always goes very still, and seems to be watching over me, whenever I'm meditating or energy-working. He always knows when I'm upset, and if I go near the cage when I'm depressed or in pain or struggling with chronic health issues, he'll sit at the door until I open it, and then he'll put his paws on me in this very specific way, and he just sits there for a minute. And when he finally goes to scamper off, I feel much more calm and able to cope with things.

12. Do you believe in Karma or
Reincarnation? With all the memories I've had? There's no way I CAN'T believe in reincarnation. (As for Karma, I do believe there's a sense of balance the universe must keep, but I don't believe reincarnation is, at least not entirely, dictated by your other lives. There are too many errant patterns in the people I know to believe that.)

13. Do you have a magical name? Yes, a very personal one. "RWT" is the abbreviation, hence my URL.

14. Are you “out of the broom closet”? For most people, yes. I try to remain open and honest whenever the subject comes up, mostly due to a lack of fear. So what if people disapprove? It's my practice, not theirs. I don't go around totally advertising it to everyone I meet, but all of my friends and the closest members of my family know I practice.

15. What was the last spell you performed? Oh gosh, probably a healing to try soothing my stomach cramps? It worked... temporarily.

16. Would you consider yourself knowledgeable? More in a "jack of all trades" way, but yes.

17. Do you write your own spells? I rarely "write" them; to be honest I've always just kind of... improvised. I performed a couple rituals guided by Scott Cunningham's suggestions, but after that I was building my own meditations and doing whatever felt Right and Useful with the energies.

18. Do you have a book of shadows? If so, how is it written and/or set up? Closest thing I have is a "mirror book". I don't have the attention span to Compile Everything I know, I kinda just... act like a walking healing / empathic / meditation / astral projection / herbal medicine encyclopedia. 8F

19. Do you worship nature? What kind of pagan would I be if I didn't? "Nature" is such a broad term, but for me it involves wonderment and awe at the Earthly creations, receiving energies from celestial bodies, delighting in my connection to all forms of life, and even animism (though that one's more of a Venn Diagram with nature, where there just so happens to be some overlap.)

20. What is your favorite gemstone? Lapis lazuli! (It was my favorite long before SU personified it into such a relatable character. ;P) Sodalite is a close second, I really love larimar (but gosh it's expensive), obsidian has been the best grounding stone for me since I was a baby bat, it's not technically a gem but still a favorite-- actually, I don't think any of these are, oops. My favorite Actual Gem is probably Aquamarine. (Just so happens to be my birthstone.)

21. Do you use feathers, claws, fur, pelt, skeletons/bones, or any other animal body part for magical work? I use a lot of feathers (legally obtained from my own birds, don't worry-- being an ex-wildlife rehabilitator, I learned ALL about the MBTA), though I've collected fur from other pets just in case.

22. Do you have an altar? I used to. Now I kind of just... have a shelf, and a portable mental altar. Mielikki prefers to meet in a forest, and my other Goddess basically requires astral projection to get ahold of.

23. What is your preferred element? Water, far and away.

24. Do you consider yourself an Alchemist? No, since alchemy is the transformation of materials using tools, and the only "transformation" I get involved with is the transformation of negative energy or injuries into a production or "packet" of positive energy in healing.

25. Are you any other type of magical practitioner besides a witch? ....I don't know any other terms, what else would you call a magical practitioner? Energy worker, perhaps? Astral traveler? Does empathy count as magic (since, though I never use it on people, I DO have the ability to, basically magically, change someone's mood?)

26. What got you interested in witchcraft? I've been interested in it my whole life. No matter what kind of fantasy I was reading, I'd compare the kind of magic THEY do to the kind of magic I'D like to do. I just didn't know how to make it a part of my practical life back then.

27. Have you ever performed a spell or ritual with the company of anyone who was not a witch? ...Well there was ONE time... but it's a little ns//fw.

28. Have you ever used ouija? Multiple times. Always warding carefully, before and after, mostly at the behest of others.

29. Do you consider yourself a psychic? Yes. Well I'm an empath and I have a very strong sense of precognitive intuition, and I've interacted with spirits, so of course I do.

30. Do you have a spirit guide? If so, what is it? I do. It's... more of a "who" than a "what". But she's another one I'd rather discuss in private. (Equal parts my own inability to explain it, exactly, and her comfort.)

31. What is something you wish someone had told you when you first started? Don't be afraid of your own power.

32. Do you celebrate the Sabbats? If so which one is your favorite? Oh, Samhain, far and away with certainty! Making peace with the past, and letting it guide your future, has always been a huge theme in my life. Sensing the different kinds of spirits that wander around, being more able to detect the subtler energy layers of the world, the minimizing of energies that overwhelm me at times, while the quieter and gentler energies abound... And I've always had such wonderful meditations on Samhain, whether it was in astral travel, spirit work, or prayer.

33. Would you ever teach witchcraft to your children? I wouldn't force them to learn, but if they asked, I would answer. (I'm not very sure that I want kids at all, though...)

34. Do you meditate? It's essential to me. Used to do it every day. Now I kind of use it as an as-needed grounding tool, or to reach out to That Goddess who's Harder to Get Ahold Of.

35. What is your favorite season? Winter. ~<3 I pass out in 75F, I'm that bad with the heat. Winter, when it's below freezing every day? Winter, the season when the whole world goes just a little bit quieter? When everything outside either leaves or hibernates, and everyone inside does their best to lift their own spirits? It's the time of the year I'm most comfortable.

36. What is your favorite type of magick to perform? Astral projection, with empathic healing as a close second.

37. How do you incorporate your spirituality into your daily life? My (secret?) goddess's teachings help guide my decisions, big and small. My connection to others, human and animal and spirit alike, are highlighted by my empathy. Whenever I eat or drink, I can feel the energies of whatever touches my tongue, it's clairgustance, I've been told. I don't so much actively incorporate it, as passively revel in it.

38. What is your favorite witchy movie? Ooh, that's a hard one. Does The Crow count? I also liked The Covenant. And there's this heart-wrenching very-obscure movie called Powder, that deals with psychism and energy and psychic-level empathy as it relates to an outcasted anomaly. And THEN there's Justice League Dark, which nailed John Constantine's character far better than the Keanu Reeves movie and explored almost-- almost-- every single one of my favorite mystical heroes. i'll probably ALWAYS be saying Raven should join the JLD at some point, but we'll see if that ever happens.

39. What is your favorite witchy book, both fiction and non-fiction. Why? ~ Well fiction is, obviously, gestures vaguely at my avatar, practically anything with Raven in it. The comic series New Teen Titans was phenomenal, the Raven miniseries from 2008 was a story about empathy and compassion and struggling with these through high school, so of course I loved it, and the most recent Raven miniseries (2018 I believe?) harkened back to another comic series I absolutely LOVED, the 80's Night Force. (Again: featuring Mystical Heroes! That is EXACTLY my jam!) The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman incorporated a lot of metaphysical elements, so I'll count that one too. And for propriety, I suppose I'd better include a novel: The Winter Oak, by James A. Hetley. I did absolutely LOVE Harry Potter as a kid, and the entire Sevenwaters series by Juliet Mariller is probably my favorite novel series. ~As far as nonfiction, though? Honestly, don't laugh, but there's this book published by Llewellyn (I know, I know) called The Shadow Magick Compendium, by Raven Digitalis. His first book Goth Craft really resonated with me (a practicing ~"casual RomantiGoth"~) in middle school, and through all of high school and adulthood, I had a lot of personal struggles that shadow magic helped me pull through. Reading Shadow Magick helped me find the strength to admit that yes, I had flaws, fears, horrors, imperfections, but it also helped me find strength in who I am, flaws and all. I have a habit of being pretty divorced from my emotions, but that book... moved me to tears, more than once.

40. What is the first spell you ever preformed? Successful or not. That's... really freaking hard to trace back. I was sending out wishes to the world and sincerely expecting it to Change Things from a very, very young age. At age 14, I was performing energy exchanges / communions maybe? with plants in our backyard. My first intentional fully-craft-based Spell had to have been at 14, and I think it was a divination? I got the answer I needed, though I'd need to dig out my first mirrorbook to see what it was actually about. It must have been the answer I needed though, because I kept divining for years.

41. What’s the craziest witchcraft-related thing that’s happened to you? Well I didn't ASK for that blizzard thunderstorm, though that was pretty crazy! (Ohio weather, everyone. It was the most powerful weather I’ve ever lived through!) A lot of crazy things have happened to me though. The time I accidentally influenced the emotions of everyone in a ten-foot radius at school (before I even knew I could do that). The time I knew my doves needed me, and came to find that the cat was in the room chasing them around. The time I was helping give a back-massage to a very firm and outspoken nonbeliever in magic, bolstering it with healing/soothing magic, and he said "Where [RWT] is touching, it feels very warm, and it feels very good". The way that, as a teen, whenever I would get too emotional, and specifically when I was emotional, I'd static-zap anything I touched, and the way that, as a child, I could touch magnet-operated toys and they'd activate. The revelation of who my spirit guide is. My energies have always been an undeniably strong magic ride, guys.

42. What is your favourite type of candle to use? Well I do keep birds, and candles are very terribly dangerous for them! So I haven't used a candle in YEARS, unless I was outside or in another room (like the bathroom-- candles and baths are lovely together). I really love using beeswax candles, especially if I can find them made by a local apiary. Candles with an earthy, herbal, floral, or delicate scent are very nice too!-- as long as it's not overpowering.

43. What is your favorite witchy tool? My mind. If I have to choose a physical one, though, probably stones?

44. Do you or have you ever made your own witchy tools? Yep! I've wildcrafted and dried my own herbs, cooked my own foods for post-ritual recovery, and I guess it counts if I've set up crystal grids of my own design?

45. Have you ever worked with any magical creatures such as the fea or spirits? I met a animal-spirit guide the very first time I meditated, at least with Magical Intentions! I do a lot more encountering various spirits than "working with" them, meeting them and sometimes learning a bit before thanking them and leaving.

46. Do you practice color magic? Not really? I'm not a very visual person. Though I do perceive colors from certain spirits /places /people, and sometimes associate those colors with those things, I don't intentionally focus on the color as the backbone of the spell.

47. Do you or have you ever had a witchy teacher or mentor of any kind? Oh, absolutely. My spirit guide took it upon herself to help me work with my abilities, and every now and again my goddess will actually guide me in practice, if it's desperately needed. As far as humans go: I did, sort of, once, for a brief time. But he lived an hour and a half away, so we could really only meet on certain weekends, and then we sort of... lost touch.

48. What is your preferred way of shopping for witchcraft supplies? In person! I have to touch it, hold it, and feel out its energy myself before I take it home.

49. Do you believe in predestination or fate? I believe the universe only steps in when it Absolutely Must, and that there are certain... guideposts? that will be pre-ordained in your life, but how you deal with it and where it takes you from there is entirely up to you.

50. What do you do to reconnect when you are feeling out of touch with your practice? My goddess, my spirit guide, an assortment of crystals/stones, whatever I feel I need most-- but most importantly, I use them to connect with MYSELF.

51. Have you ever had any supernatural experiences? Oh, SO many. I've visited so many astral worlds, I've lost count. I've encountered (and... basically "consumed"?) parasitic entities at the park. I've viscerally FELT the energies of what I work. Empathy is a daily occurrence for me. The reason I went vegetarian is the vividness of what I'd sense from what I was eating. I've sent healing to people and watched the spring come back in their step, healed lethargic puppies and watched them go from dragging around to bounding away happily, taken terrified birds at a pet store and soothed them until they relax in my hands. It's an integral part of my life at this point.

52. What is your biggest witchy pet peeve? People telling others that the way they practice their craft is wrong, just because they don't believe, or they follow a different set of rules, or morality? Like, that’s all subjective. (Except, like I said before, where hate speech and incitement are concerned. Nobody has the right to harm others just because of the color of their skin, their gender, their religion, and such.)

53. Do you like incense? If so what’s your favorite scent? Oh sweet stars, I absolutely love incense. I found it at a local metaphysical shop that closed, and the last time I found it was when I visited New England for a high school field trip, but it's called "Spiritual Guide" by Padmini, and it smells JUST sweet and JUST soft and JUST earthy enough, with JUST the right balance of mid- and high notes that it simultaneously grounds me and lifts my spirit to the higher realms. Incense has so many applications and such a variety, I love picking and choosing which one to use (away from the birds, of course). I even use (unlit) incense as air fresheners in front of the air conditioner.

54. Do you keep a dream journal of any kind? Sort of. When my dreams are worth remembering, I used to write them down in my mirrorbook, but now I log them on my personal blog. 8P

55. What has been your biggest witchcraft disaster? ...Not knowing the way my spells affected others in the beginning. I'd rather not talk about that.

56. What has been your biggest witchcraft success? Learning to control it? Learning how to turn that terrifying power into something beautiful and healing? Taking ownership of MY power, and deciding how I WANTED to use it? Finding beneficial outlets for it?

57. What in your practice do you do that you may feel silly or embarrassed about? Mmmmh, worshipping the Other Goddess that I do, and who my spirit guide is. It's very complicated, and even I don't understand how it works, so I couldn't possibly explain it to people... but that's certainly who they are, and it's just... I know there are Many People who would be hostile to the idea of their existence.

58. Do you believe that you can be an atheist, Christian, Muslim or some other faith and still be a witch too? Absolutely! Your god can bestow gifts unto you, even gifts of personal power. First of all, God giving people the power to perform miracles in his name is all over the Old Testament. Secondly: King James added in lines of the bible that weren't there originally, so fearing witches isn't actually in God's Instructions to Mankind. Third of all, mind that I'm saying this as an ex-Christian, if the Abrahamic God gives you a GIFT, who are you to ignore it or suppress it? Are you going to say God made a mistake in giving this power to an individual of his creation? All that aside: Witchcraft doesn’t have to be associated with any gods at all!

59. Do you ever feel insecure, unsure or even scared of spell work? Not spell work itself. Just... the way things can go awry if I'm not very, very careful.

60. Do you ever hold yourself to a standard in your witchcraft that you feel you may never obtain? Nah, honestly I'm glad to do what I can do, and there's really no way to quantify the "success" of magic to me.

61. What is something witch related that you want right now? Rocks! I keep seeing these onyx crow/raven carvings, and gosh would I absolutely LOVE one, but alas: Finances. Rainbow fluorite! Amber! Ametrine! Azurite! So many stones I really feel drawn to, but just haven’t encountered at a small enough price tag.

62. What is your rune of choice? ...Iiiii actually don't use Futhark or Ogham runes, and the ones I do use are more... geometric? Specific? There's one I keep drawing, especially when I need to find peace or get in touch with my goddess, but it's for Personal Use Only. If I had to pick one from an established system though, it'd be Futhark "Isa".

63. What is your tarot card of choice? High Priestess.

64. Do you use essential oils? If so what is your favorite? Oh yes (but again, never around the pets). My favorites are pine, lavender, jasmine, and sandalwood. I once found this blend called MotionEaze or something, for motion sickness. Which didn't help much for that (my stomach is really touch and stubborn), but it DID help immensely with headaches, and keeping calm.

65. Have you ever taken any kind of witchcraft or pagan courses? I wanted to go to Sacred Mists college for awhile! But I don't have the money for that, even at $200/class, and right now it's on my dreambuilding list. I've always followed my books and my heart, and thus far it hasn't led me astray.

66. Do you wear pagan jewelry in public? Oh yeah. I used to wear either a pentacle necklace (usually under my shirt) or pentacle earrings (when I felt especially vulnerable) every day to high school. I even wore the necklace to my AP exams-- which were taken in a Catholic private school, so that was interesting. (I kept it hidden carefully the whole time. But one of the priests I encountered still watched me Uncomfortably Closely for the whole three minutes I was in that hall... I always wondered if he Suspected Anything.)

67. Have you ever been discriminated against because of your faith or being a witch? Well no, but I don't exactly make it public knowledge. I did wear a cloak as a jacket for several years (the only reason I don't anymore is that, A, it's tattered and badly needs mended, and B, I'm trying to get a Fancy Professional^tm Job). So of course I got a lot of questions like "Are you a witch?" "Are you a Wiccan?" And I got attempted evangelism just for wearing the cloak, but that was usually it. I tend to just say "I don't go to church because I work weekends", and when people ask what my religion is, I usually say "I'm nondenominational".

68. Do you read or subscribe to any pagan magazines? No, but one of my pictures was published in a pagan magazine! (I'd love to, but I don't think there are any local publications, and also those Cost Money. So... again, it's on the dreambuilding list.)

69. Do you think it’s important to know the history of paganism and witchcraft? Oh, absolutely. Mostly because of all the misinformation that's out there; you have to shield your mind against lies, and the best way to do that is to know the truth. It's also essential to respect where practices come from, because that's the only way to know if it's a closed practice, or even if it's the kind of practice you want to engage in. (Like if you're looking to divine truth without any bias or bells, the last place you should probably look is a sensationalizing LaVeyan Satanism spell...)

70. What are your favorite things about being a witch? It gives this strange, powerful aspect of myself a safe outlet.

71. What are your least favorite things about being a witch? That strange, powerful aspect can be downright terrifying sometimes.

72. Do you listen to any pagan music? If so who is your favorite singer/band? Not exclusively "pagan", but I've used Elvenpath by Nightwish to worship Mielikki, Mother Earth by Within Temptation to worship nature, and I believe Disturbed has a Wiccan member, and I've always loved their music.

73. Do you celebrate the Esbbats? If so, how? I used to! Nowadays I kind of just, bask in the glow of the moon through an open window, and take in the energy when I have the time, or when I need it. (But that's not even exclusive to Esbats, just... whenever I feel like I can use a little bit of a lunar touch in my life.)

74. Do you ever work skyclad? I sleep skyclad, so while the answer is Yes, Occasionally, that's not exclusive to my working.

75. Do you think witchcraft has improved your life? If so, how? Oh gods, YES, in SO many ways! It helped me understand, shape, and take control of a big part of my daily experience. It helped me make sense of this entire world of experience that nothing before had ever explained. It gave me a safe outlet for the energies blazing through me, and of course that outlet gave me a sense of fulfillment through healing and protecting myself AND those I love.

76. Where do you draw inspiration from for your practice? Honestly... anything I encounter that inspires me. Even mundane, non-witchy things-- a puppy's energy at work! The flight of my doves through the room! The wind whispering promises through the trees! The resilience of trodden grass, the gentle tug of a forest brook, the gradual yet ready shift in the trees every autumn. Things people say. Quotes that spark a sense of Purpose within me. And of course, my guides have given me a lot of inspiration, too.

77. Do you believe in ‘fantasy’ creatures? (Unicorns, fairies, elves, gnomes, ghosts, etc) Some, yes (ghosts for sure), others I think may be real things taken to a creative extreme, and other still, I believe, if they're not on Earth, not on THIS Earth, they probably exist purely through the creation of thoughtforms by now.

78. What’s your favorite sigil/symbol? That personal one I mentioned awhile ago? It's an intricate symbol with many layers, large and small components, straight and round, extremely powerful as a protective symbol, and it always makes me feel so peaceful, free, alive and well. It connects me with my goddess, my purpose, my sense of self amongst the world, and yet helps me block out those things in the world that destroy those things.

79. Do you use blood magick in your practice? Why or why not? Not really? I've just never needed to. I can trace my energies' destination by either empathy or intuition, I don't need blood to personalize, attach, or anchor anything.

80. Could you ever be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t support your practice? Well, I'm already in a very close and trusting familiar relationship with my mother like that. I'm okay with it, as long as they respect my boundaries about what I don't want to be told, how I don't want to be talked to, and that they respect that my experience is my own to name, not theirs.

81. In what area or subject would you most like your craft to grow? Ooh, uhhm... My ability to heal myself? It's this very bittersweet kind of irony that I can provide almost instant relief to others so EASILY, but when it comes to soothing my stomach or bolstering my own energy levels, I really just can't seem to do it for some reason.

82. What’s your favorite candle scent? Do you use it in your practice? Ooh, well there's this big candle warehouse in Medina, Ohio called "Root" that has SO MANY lovely scents! Their candles burn clean, their scenes are satisfyingly determinable without being overwhelming, and they have pine! They also have a very nice "bamboo" one. I've used a lot of scents from there that I really like.

83. Do you have a pre-ritual ritual? (I.e. Something you do before rituals to prepare yourself for them). If so what is it? Typically meditation, and on special occasions it’s in a bath.

84. What real life witch most inspires your practice? Probably Scott Cunningham. Though @ breelandwalker is a great source of modern witch tips!

85. What is your favorite method of communicating with deity? Astral projection and meeting them in an in-between space that we can both access easily.

86. How do you like to organize all your witchy items and ingredients? Shelves, boxes, and not too particularly, heh.

87. Do you have any witches in your family that you know of? My dad is sort of a witch (he mostly uses protective folk magic), and my paternal grandmother has a connection to animals and nature but doesn't practice witchcraft.

88. How have you created your path? What is unique about it? This is going to sound so contrived, but genuinely just following my instincts. "Okay, I heard about using light to heal... that seems to work alright, but I think it works better for me if I visualize motion instead of light." The most unique thing is... hard to put into words. My past lives have been rather powerful, so I believe I came into this life with a lot of insight and stronger memories on how to use the abilities that followed me into this body. I haven't seen a whole lot of shadow witches around-- literally, just ONE other! So maybe that's unique, too.

89. Do you feel you have any natural gifts or affinities (premonitions, hearing spirits, etc.) that led you toward the craft? If so what are they? Oh GODS yes. Empathy, the capacity for healing, past life memories, precognitive dreams, energy-sensing in general, easily getting connected to people and nature, it's just... less that I was "led toward the craft", and more like "I was led to the realization that this is, in fact, what I've actually been doing my whole life, and here's how to do it BETTER".

90. Do you believe you can initiate yourself or do you have to be initiated by another witch or coven? That depends entirely on what you're being initiated into. Jewish or Hindu practice? Absolutely, you have to convert. Like really convert, with a leader in that practice. But Wicca? That's open as hell, the Wiccan God and Goddess are really the only initiators you need.

91. When you first started out in your path what was the first thing or things you bought? A gold pentacle censar with celtic knottery and jewels. (Not, like, real gold and real jewels, but it’s a gorgeous thing nonetheless.)

92. What is the most spiritual or magickal place you’ve been? Two words: Astral Travel. ~<3 (If I gave specifics, it just... wouldn't be something I can explain HOW.)

93. What’s one piece of advice you’d give someone who is searching for their matron and patron deities? If you need them and they want you, you'll find them. They'll make sure of it.

94. What techniques do you use to ‘get in the zone’ for meditation? Meditation IS how I "get in the zone". 8F But I use the "empty mind" technique-- you know, "clear your mind" and "let your thoughts float away". Hold still and focus on your breaths. Personally, I revel in the silence, and it makes a great headspace where I can focus on clearing out my filters, strengthening my shields, and projecting much clearer and more Exactly Directed energy.

95. Did visualization come easily to you or did you have to practice at it? I've been visualizing things intentionally since before I knew what magic really WAS (whether it was in prayer, trying to get the world to do what I willed it, or just visualizing fantasy/fiction stories), so it definitely came easily.

96. Do you prefer day or night? Why? Night, absolutely night. Unless we're comparing a winter day to a summer night, in which case I'll take a cool calm day over a warm active night. The energies of a world awake can be overwhelming to me. At night, people and animals and plants all go to sleep. (At least, enough of them that it quiets around my empathy.) I love the feeling of moonlight on my skin. The sun's energy is too hot, too bright, too active for me to handle sometimes. But I have never once been overwhelmed by the night. In fact, I've always felt safer, more alert, more ALIVE at night. I'm a lunar child, what can I say.

97. What do you think is the best time and place to do spell work? For me? When I have the energy. When I was in public school, it was Saturday nights, because I had been able to sleep in, and would be able to sleep in the next day! I always do my best workings around midnight.

98. How did you feel when you cast your first circle? Did you stumble or did it go smoothly? It went so smoothly, and I felt so safe. Energy work was something I didn't... exactly struggle to PROJECT, so much as I struggled to form it into what I needed. But I got it in the right shape, anchored with some stones and some candles, and

99. Do you believe witchcraft gets easier with time and practice? Oh yes. There will always be things that come easier than others, but with practices even the difficult things become easier.

100. Do you believe in many gods or one God with many faces? Many Gods. "Everything is one god" just doesn't make sense to me. That's like saying humanity is "one person with many faces".

101. Do you eat meat, eggs and dairy? Technically I'm pescatarian, and I really shouldn't eat dairy (lactose intolerant, possibly allergic?), and I do avoid heavily-dairy foods like yogurt (unless it's kefir) and straight-up milk, but some things, like ice cream, can't feasibly be replaced by non-dairy when you're on such a tight budget! Eggs and fish are the only Protein Foods I can eat that actually feel okay in my stomach. (Clairgustance with fish is usually pretty peaceful and calming, actually. Eggs kind of just taste like energy.)

102. What is your favorite color and why? Oh, indigo! I have a heavy bias towards blue, it's such a nice color. Calm, dark, cool. Serene. Indigo is a very dark blue with a sort of richness that reminds me of the night sky.

103. What is the one question you get asked most by non-practitioners or non-pagans? How do you usually respond? "Have you ever read the bible?" (Yes, yes I have. Book by book, chapter by chapter. I remained unconvinced.) I usually tell them "I have, cover to cover. It just didn't make my top 10 books list."

104. Which of your five senses would you say is your strongest? Touch, I absolutely experience the world through tactile touch-dominance. (I see you mentioned "five", though I believe there are nine? Empathy can be so strong it's debilitating sometimes, but it's not as constant as Touch.)

105. What is a pagan or witchcraft rule that you preach but don’t practice? I'm honestly not sure. I'm of the opinion that spirituality and a personal craft like witchcraft don't have any Hard and Fast "Rules" At All, and it's different for everyone. I do make a lot of recommendations for practices that might help other people though, even if it's not something I practice myself. The most common? Meditation styles. I come across a lot of witchlings wanting to practice meditation, but the kind I've always used, for 14 years and with immense success personally, was your classic "empty mind" meditation. But that doesn't help everyone. So I recommend other forms for them to try, like with mudras and mantras, using a fidget toy as mala beads, walking meditations, prayer/divinity meditations, ways to incorporate sonomancy or vision quests or logic puzzles (a la Zen). I've never tried them myself, because I've never needed to.

#rwt personal posts #IRL canon

[bbhl-incporated]

what happened in 2014? what was that post about?? (Btw I only now just noticed ur url is "goth"chanbaek not "got"chanbaek...)

L O L don’t worry about the url… I haven’t changed it since summer 2016 (when Monster came out and my mutuals made “goth” urls falsdk;jfaldsf)

So 2014 basically got hit by a huge shitstorm. The Sewol Ferry sinking of course was a national tragedy and left many idols devastated; some kids on the ship were very much fans of different idol groups and relatives / friends reached out to the idols to tell them so. I cried during the whole fiasco and I wasn’t even in the country …. the debacle just made my heart ache.

Related to the actual kpop industry itself, Kris did leave EXO in May of 2014 and opened the flood gates for the biggest SM scandal since the breakup of DB5K into 2VXQ and JYJ. (DBSK had the largest fandom to date, called Cassiopeia, and it had fans in China, Korea, Japan…. they were especially known for how big they were in Japan. Breakout and steady success in what was considered Asia’s largest music market, by foreign and non-American artists was absolutely amazing. For the record, it has names specific to each language: Tong Vfan Xien Qi = TVXQ, the Mandarin name; DBSK = Dong Bang Shing Ki, Korean name; and Tohoshinki is the Japanese name. They technically debuted as a Japanese act and not a Korean act releasing things in Japanese which adds some nuance important for considering record breaking and setting, money, etc which are not important for our purposes here.) Kris’s sudden departure opened wounds older kpop fans had considered closed since the breakup of Kpop’s largest act (BigBang wasn’t shit in comparison for quite some time and even LeeSooMan apparently considered SJ throwaways from DBSK) and cast yet another huge, negative, ugly spotlight on the abuses of SM Entertainment in the past. The sticky part is how people started to analyze why this departure was not so sudden, and I will return to that in a bit.

This departure itself was ugly because Kris left in the middle of Overdose promotions and a few weeks before EXO’s first tour would commence. For context, Overdose came as a follow up to EXO’s smashing 2013 success with Growl Repackage and Miracles in December. They became the first artists to become million-album sellers in years with Growl and they won Album of the Year at the Mnet Asian Music Awards, when G Dragon had won pretty much every thing else that night (lmao) and SHINee was also up for the award. So they, a rookie group less than 2 years old, managed to win that award despite the STIFF sunbae competition on top of becoming million sellers… All eyes were on them no doubt and the public and fans were looking forward to their next promotions and their first concert tour… … SO you can imagine the laser focus this drew to the group and to the company. I will tell you right now: Not. A. Pleasant. Experience. The fandom was l i t e r a l l y imploding and people were taking pro-Kris and anti-Kris stances everywhere and calling him a traitor and calling fans fake and — and there was the part where only Suho was on stage to receive EXO’s award right after the news came out and my soul broke in half and the days you could tell EXO had been crying before coming onstage and and and – THERE WAS JUST SO MUCH SAD AND ANGRY IN THE FANDOM I hated it.

There are many bloggers who were around, who I followed during that time who aren’t around anymore. T_T

If I tell and explain everything wrong that happened in 2014 I could be here quite a while, so I’ll keep it short and jump to Baek’s instagram post. He made that post (xx) and one or two others I think, in response to the vicious and heinous reactions he and Taeyeon received after Dispatch revealed they were dating. Yes, this happened even in the aftermath of Kris’ departure. Yes, this only made things worse. Why? Well to add fuel to the fire, Baek had made a sort of cheeky promise that he wouldn’t date until EXO had made it, weren’t rookies anymore… basically he “promised” not to date until around 5 years after EXO debuted. That would be this year… so you know …. those deluded fans who took him seriously flipped out. Add on to that the fact that Taeyeon is many years his sunbae in terms of activity in the industry and the leader of the Nation’s Girl Group ™ and both jealousy of her and resentment of the fact he was in a relationship caused fans to make vicious posts and comments on Instagram–BOTH of their Instagrams, though his was far worse–and many other social media sites and forums. (Twitter comes to mind too.) THEN to top it all off, Baek was an MC on a music show (Inkigayo maybe?) and YOU COULD SEE HE HAD BEEN STRESSED, SLEEP DEPRIVED AND CRYING on many days and so-called “””fans””” had the nerve to shout and call him a traitor–among other things–ON LIVE BROADCAST like h o l y  s h i t this was bad. Baek should not have had to ~apologize~ for dating Taeyeon, as he did in the post.

Okay now winding back to what I mentioned earlier: rumor theories. Theories about every damn thing started floating around. There was a big theory about how Kris had wanted out of EXO since before Wolf (Wolf preceded Growl, but both were in 2013) and that Kris fabricated his visa issue. I have that on my blog and can hunt it down for you if you want to read the full body of “Evidence ™” but it’s actually plausible. Another theory was that Taeyeon and Baek were not actually dating–and this has many strains. One strain indicates that the entire relationship was fabricated as a distraction from the Kris departure and lawsuit , while the other states that they did date at one time but broke up way before any of the drama started–SM just used them since they had been together before as an easy cover up. These kinds of theories did not help a damn thing and just seeded further distrust and resentment within fandoms. Like seriously you had SONEs and EXOL screeching at other over this relationship, and even though they were not majority or mainstream fandom members / opinions, they still became pretty vocal. Many bad egg EXOL attacked both Baek and Taeyeon, and fewer SONEs attacked one or both. The theories that surrounded their relationship, including that they gave “hints” with couple items and that Taeyeon gave Baek a fan gift just . It was so ugly. Kpop fans showed their ugliest side. There were venomous comments for weeks. Baek and Tae even left Instagram for a while and Baek stopped being energetic and talkative when with EXO. I hated it so. fucking . much.

Let me tell you. Within SM? It only gets worse. Outside of SM? It gets much worse.

Within SM… Luhan also leaves EXO in October of that year. That’s TWO members, both Chinese, leaving the SAME up-and-coming and ~spectacular~ group, in the SAME year. Boy did that get media attention. Oh, and SM’s stocks took a much bigger dip after Luhan left than when Kris left. Oh, and Luhan’s deteriorating condition was much more visible than Kris’s and just stoked the flames of hatred against SM all over again.  Oh, and Luhan was EXO’s biggest China connection and most popular member in China … hence the stock drop. A few months later, Luhan was making literally millions on his own, which reinforced the premise that the dude was worth wayyyy too valuable for SM to give up willingly. Which of course they didn’t , which is why the main lawsuit lasted for about 2 years. But yeah now the forever-12 group with 4 Chinese members was down to 10 and only 2 Chinese members (bad for connecting to the Chinese music market which is full of $$$$) and media was losing its mind ! So was the fandom! Now the definition of traitor had shifted and you were a traitor and YOU were a traitor and we’re all traitors !!!! 

And JESSICA LEFT SNSD TOO !!! The only way I can characterize everyone’s emotions at the time is: WHAT  T HE F UC K ??? Luhan and Jessica’s respective departures literally happened within two weeks of each other !!! What were we supposed to d o ??? Between all three departures, you felt like you were getting punched in the gut, then the face, then the genitalia, then kicked on the ground. SNSD was forever nine man, nation’s girl group, biggest Kpop girl group ever and suddenly a main vocalist is gone ??? B O Y !

Oh, I forgot to mention how Tao posted on his Instagram very …. resentful things when Kris left . Mmmmm yeah it was bad, not gonna elaborate too hard but … he took it back later in 2015. You probably know that he, too, is now a former EXO member by now.

2014 was good in that you had groups GOT7, Mamamoo, RedVelvet, WINNER, Akdong Musician, Lovelyz, JJCC, etc debut that year. But it was bad due to circumstances surrounding some of  those debuts. 

Notably, Red Velvet was accused of having their debut rushed because SM wanted to cover up the ongoing lawsuit news. Now I know this sounds ridiculous: a dating scandal AND debuting an entire group early just to cover up some bad publicity about an idol leaving your company? Well given how persistent the press was and how bad the lawsuit and allegations made SM look … it’s not that difficult to believe and it most definitely was not hard to gobble up as reliable gossip at the time. At the time, it was considered the norm that SM covers up bad news by Any Means Necessary, and to generate positive publicity. The BaekYeon thing backfired tremendously in that it gave hatred to artists instead of positivity but it sure as hell kept folks’ minds off the lawsuit for a bit. (Also there’s the whole strain of thinking corporations and business control and influence the media, which is something many of us can relate to and why this can appeal so strongly.)

I believe the fact that Yeri joined RV later and was going to be a permanent addition, and the only addition, only helped this theory. After all, apparently she was intended to be with the group from the start, but she was too young when RV debuted. This seems to imply that RV debuted sooner than they were supposed to. ~X files music plays in the background~

WINNER also got shafted pretty hard. They won the big reality idol-elimination show WIN: Who’s Next? hence the title WINNER (formerly Team A) and then YG highkey neglected them because  …well honestly YG wanted the Next Big Bang ™ and WINNER’s ballad style wasn’t going to do that–no matter how much Mino you throw in the song. Plus he demonstrated obvious favoritism to Mino, Bobby and B.I. in general and once WINNER highkey disappeared after they dropped their release (as rookies you are supposed to do follow up promotions the same year and within a decent time frame – EXO did not do this like they were supposed to, again because of Kris visa issue [hey that theory’s looking mighty Fresh again]) it became clear that YG wanted the next group out of the WIN cycle to get the spotlight–that group became iKon (formerly known as Team B). 

Lovelyz had an issue with one of their to-be-debuted members name Jisoo. Jisoo was accused of … well have you heard of the things the boy trainees under Produce 101 are being accused of ? If so, think along those lines. If not: suffice to say it involved manipulation, lesbianism and abuse within the relationship…. bad stuff to be accused of in South Korea lmao so the group was involved in scandal before even debuting! In the end, Jisoo did not debut on account that the allegations were being investigated and taken seriously–in addition to claims that she was ill due to the drama on the internet and within her live as a result of the accusations, and that she needed to recover.

I will end with those three examples of debut issues. Let’s go back to a group that debuted the same year as EXO: B.A.P. 2014 was the year B.A.P sued over “slave contracts” with TS Entertainment. According to the suit, since debuting in 2012, B.A.P had earned over 9 million dollars, yet the company had only given each member $16,000 on top of forcing members to perform to the point of hospitalization and fainting.

ZE:A, which debuted in 2010, also revealed issues with their company (shocking!!! at this point) and the group leader Junyoung (Lee Hoo) took to Twitter  to criticise his managing company’s, Star Empire’s CEO Shin Joo Hak for allegedly mistreating idol groups and their unfair contracts. He also alleged that CEO Shin Joo Hak both abused him and lost the company money. So there were accusations of financial and human capital abuses. He even posted income receipts on Twitter. You can read through (reliable!) translations of the events here: xx.

I want you to imagine hearing about all this shit throughout the year and thinking things are “over” and then just getting whacked whacked whacked whacked all about because you care about all these groups at the same time . J US T . :~)))))) I was fine : ^) everything : ^) was fine : ^) Nothing bad :~) was happening at all :~)

Oh and let’s add to this list, another thing that got negativity and didn’t deserve it: Super Junior’s Sungmin marrying Kim Sa-eun in 2014. ELF (SJ fandom name) were f u r i o u s at him for marrying so suddenly. ELF were trending #SungminOUT on Twitter because they wanted him kicked out of SJ for marrying. I was a pretty big SJ fan at the time so between everything !!! I WAS SCREAMING what the hell was wrong with people ???? Mad about a marriage ! They weren’t even mad at the lady (which doesn’t make it better), but purely the fact that he was getting married and didn’t give … idk some kind of prior notice? I knew he was enlisting soon after, but that wasn’t the source of the anger… anyway, other ELF counter-trended the #SungminOUT thing with a positive tag instead, and sent him lots of love, so it worked out…. but still many ELF were mad at him. If memory serves correctly, it was primarily K-ELF (korean SJ fans) who felt this sort of entitlement to him that led to the anger and it was …. yikes.

What else is there to say about that year? Of course people re-examined previous abuses by companies, including SM Entertainment’s maltreatment of DBSK, Hangeng of SJ (SJ’s former Chinese member who sued, won, and left the  group and the company due to mistreatment), disbandment of H.O.T., Shinhwa’s departure from SM, etc etc etc so you had layers of SM stan pain. SHINee and f(x) became known as SM’s only groups to not lose a member or disband … and then f(x) lost Sulli in 2015 … :| 

This is the most I remember or came to light when I looked up different issues I had thought of. If anyone wants to add to this list of catastrophe then please, go ahead. .-. I’m not even proofreading or else I’ll just get emotional for the umpteenth time. Hope this answers your (and 3 other folks’) question well! 

#long post #k pop #2014 #baekhyun #baekyeon #ZE:A #EXO #B.A.P #DBSK #TVXQ #Super Junior #OT 12 #sm entertainment #kris lawsuit #luhan lawsuit #b.a.p lawsuit #sungmin marriage #k pop drama #anonymous #replies

[reputationiseverything]

The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time

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When I first got into the world of SEO, you could literally optimize your site for any term and rank at the top of Google within a month or two.

But of course, that was ages ago.

Now with Google’s ever-evolving algorithm, it takes more time and effort to get results.

But what happens if you don’t have the luxury of time? Or you don’t have the financial resources to put in the effort that is truly needed.

What should you do?

Just forget about SEO?

Of course not. Today, I want to call out 11 tools that will help you get an edge over your competition. But unlike most lists, I am going to get very specific on the feature I want you to use within each tool to make your life easier and help you get results faster with less effort.

Let’s dive right in.

Tool #1: Ubersuggest Projects

You probably already know about Ubersuggest, but do you really have time to spend hours and hours each week to do your SEO?

Chances are you don’t.

So how do you improve your traffic with the least amount of effort?

You set up a project in Ubersuggest.

As you can see, it shows your SEO traffic over time. It will let you know if your rankings are going up or down, your link growth, and your SEO issues.

With so many things going on in marketing, you don’t have time to manually check your rankings or if things are going up or down or even what you need to fix.

Ubersuggest will do it for you all automatically and even notify you of what needs to happen through email. That way you don’t have to constantly check your SEO. Ubersuggest will do it all automatically.

More so, you’ll get notified of what you need to focus on each week to maximize your traffic.

All you have do is head to the dashboard and click on “Add Your First Project.”

It’s as simple as adding in your URL.

Then select the locations you do business in and want traffic from.

Then add in the keywords you currently rank for or want to go after.

And of course, set up your traffic preferences.

And then you’ll be good to go.

Then when things go great, you’ll be notified. And when things are going wrong, you’ll also be notified. Ubersuggest will even tell you what to fix.

That way you get the maximum results in the least amount of time.

Tool #2: Google Analytics Alerts

You have Google Analytics set up on your site, but how often do you log in?

And when you do log in, do you know what to focus on or what to look at?

And if you do, do you know what to do with that data?

Google Analytics is a great tool, but you don’t want to waste hours and hours looking at reports. Instead, you want to spend your time doing and getting results.

But if you set up alerts in Google Analytics, you can save tons of time.

If you watch from the 6:33 mark, it will show you how to set up alerts. I added the whole video as it will teach you how to set up Google Analytics in general in case you don’t have goal tracking set it place.

Once you set up alerts, you’ll again get notified when anything good or bad happens. I usually have alerts set up for only when things go bad, so I know when I need to focus on fixing my marketing.

Tool #3: Trello

You’re probably thinking how the heck is Trello a marketing tool. It really isn’t, but it is a good project management tool.

And with your SEO, you may have a team helping you out and Trello will help streamline the process, make you more efficient, and get your results faster.

I keep my Trello board simple by breaking it into 3 sections.

To do – what needs to be done over time.

Prioritized – what I need to be done now (tasks at the top are the most important)

Done – tasks that need to be double-checked to ensure they were done right.

It’s that simple. That way you don’t have to micromanage your team.

Some people have more complex Trello boards, but something simple like I have worked too.

If you want to create a Trello board for your content marketing, assuming you want to write lots of content (such as 10 posts a week), this process works well.

The columns I use for content writers are:

Topics – this is where writers add topics they want to write about.

Outline review – writers submit their outline before they write for approval.

Draft – writers submit their rough draft.

Draft review – editors review each draft.

Uploaded, prepared, and ready to review – this is where the editor adds the post to your CMS (like WordPress).

Scheduled – this is where you schedule the content to go live.

Done – the content is now live.

We’ve found it effective if you are managing dozens of writers at once.

Tool #4: Content Decay Tool

Can you guess how many articles I write each week?

1.

Seriously, that’s it. 1 article a week which is roughly 4 to 5 per month (depending on how many weeks in the month).

And can you guess how many articles my team and I update each week?

21.

That’s roughly 90 a month.

Just think about it… why would I have a team of 3 people updating 90 articles per month when I only write 1 a week.

It’s because updating old content is an easier way to get more SEO traffic than it is to create new content.

But what content should you update?

The content decay tool will tell you that.

It breaks down in order which articles you should update first, second, third… based on what will generate you the most traffic.

If you are wondering what is involved with updating content, just think of it this way:

Is there anything outdated within your post – if so, either update the outdated information and make it relevant again. If you can’t, then delete that part from your article.

Can you use media to improve the experience – do you need to embed videos, add more pictures, maybe even add an infographic? Use media to better tell your story and message.

Are you including the right keywords – a simple way to get more traffic is to integrate other popular related keywords within your article. Whatever your article is about, insert it into Ubersuggest and head to the “Keyword Ideas” report in the left-hand navigation.

Is there anything missing – try to poke holes within your content. What could you have done to make it better? What do your competitors talk about that you forgot to mention? What questions didn’t you answer that the reader might have? By asking yourself these simple questions, you’ll be able to make it better.

Tool #5: Ubersuggest Chrome Extension

If you haven’t installed the Ubersuggest Chrome extension, make sure you do so.

I’m not going to bore you with all of the features of the extension… instead, I am going to give you one thing that will save you time.

You know when you Google for information to learn more on any subject?

Chances are, sometimes you are Googling to learn something related to your space. And when you do, you’ll find that your site usually won’t be at the top of those search results.

And that’s ok.

But when you do a search, you’ll notice “monthly searches” in the Google search bar.

This shows you how often that keyword is searched.

So anytime you are looking up anything in your space, pay attention to that number. If you see a keyword with over 5,000 searches, it may be worth targeting.

And as you scroll down and start going through the sites that rank at the top, you’ll notice metrics under each site.

If you notice a web page with thousands of social shares and hundreds of links, it should reaffirm that you probably want to go after that term. And the listing that has thousands of social shares and hundreds of links is a good benchmark of a page that is high in quality and what people in your space prefer.

Ideally, you want to create something better than that one, as that is the main way you beat them over time.

Tool #6: Hello Bar

SEO is very different than paid traffic.

With paid traffic, you can drive people to a landing page with very little content, which makes it easier to generate sales or leads.

With SEO, Google prefers to rank content-rich sites.

But when someone lands on a page full of educational-based content, they are less likely to convert into a customer.

There’s a simple fix… Hello Bar.

Hello Bar has a lot of features, but I just want you to use the top bar like I do on NeilPatel.com.

And as you scroll it moves along with you.

That one little thing allows me to improve my conversion rate from my SEO traffic.

You can easily adjust what you show with a few simple clicks within Hello Bar or you can even show people different messages based on where they are coming from.

Although SEO traffic doesn’t convert as well as paid traffic, it is much cheaper in the long run and does have a better overall ROI. And that one little Hello Bar will improve your numbers.

It’s responsible for 9.4% of revenue from NeilPatel.com.

Every little bit adds up.

Tool #7: Mozcast

Google makes over 3,200 algorithm changes a year.

Are you really going to keep up to date with all of them?

If you followed the first tool and set up a project in Ubersuggest, you’ll get notified when your rankings go down.

And if you set up alerts in Google Analytics (tool number 2) you’ll also get notified when your traffic drops drastically.

What you’ll find is that it’s overwhelming to keep up with all of Google’s updates and it could be confusing to figure out what you need to fix to get your traffic back.

This report on Moz keeps track of all of the algorithm updates and gives you an overview of what has changed or what the update is about. On top of that, you’ll want to check out the Mozcast if you get a notification of ranking or traffic drops as this tool confirms if other people are also seeing changes from a Google update.

Keep in mind that Google doesn’t announce each update, hence you’ll want to cross-reference what you are seeing with the Mozcast.

That way you don’t have to spend hours researching each update.

Tool #8: Detailed

Link building is a pain. There are so many link tools like this one… but let’s not kid ourselves… you just don’t have the time to spend 10 to 20 hours a week doing link building.

So, each minute you spend, you have to make sure it counts.

There’s a tool called Detailed that breaks down the best links for every industry.

All you have to do is select an industry and a site and it shows you all of the good links that are going to your competition.

You can then focus your efforts on reaching out to those sites to get links.

Sure, you will still need to have amazing content or a good product or service in order to convince those sites to link to you, but hey, if you don’t have any of that it’s going to be hard to do well in the first place.

So, don’t waste your time trying to search for links when Detailed will give you a list of hundreds of amazing sites to get links from within your space.

Tool #9: Site Speed Audit

Speed impacts rankings.

Google doesn’t want to rank slow websites anymore.

It doesn’t matter that technology has become better and you can now purchase satellite Internet. Not every location has blazing fast Internet.

For that reason, Google has an Accelerated Mobile Pages framework that helps with mobile load time.

But that’s not enough, you also need your website to load fast.

So, go here and put in your URL.

You’ll then be taken to a report that looks like this:

What’ll you want to focus on is site speed. That Ubersuggest report pulls from Google Lighthouse.

So, send that to your developer and tell them to get you in the green mark for both mobile and desktop load times.

As your speed goes up, so will your SEO rankings and traffic over time.

Tool #10: Supermetrics

Are you tired of having your data everywhere?

Why would you want to log into four of five different apps to get your SEO and marketing data when you could log into one.

And no, I am not talking about Google Analytics. I am talking about Google Data Studio.

If you haven’t used it yet, sign up for it… it’s free.

Google Data Studio is a business intelligence tool that will show you all of your data in one place.

So how do you get all of your SEO data into Google Data Studio? You use Supermetrics.

It passes all of your SEO data from different sources into Data Studio, so you no longer have to log into multiple tools, including Google Analytics.

My favorite feature in Supermetrics is you can automate your marketing reporting, so you no longer have to create your reports manually.

Tool #11: VidIQ

Google is the most popular search engine.

But do you know what the second most popular search engine is?

It’s not Bing… it’s actually YouTube, which Google actually owns.

If you haven’t done YouTube SEO yet, you should reconsider. Just look at how much search traffic I get from YouTube each month.

This article will break down how to do YouTube SEO if you want to learn how it works.

But to make things easier, install this Chrome extension.

Whenever you perform a search on YouTube it will show you what’s popular, what keywords are being searched that are related to each video, and which tags people are using to get more SEO traffic.

I wanted to end this post with VidIQ because it’s not competitive.

See, unlike traditional SEO, it doesn’t take months to see results. YouTube SEO is the opposite in which it isn’t as competitive (yet) and you can rank at the top within 24 to 48 hours of releasing a video (seriously!).

Conclusion

They say SEO is hard and time-consuming. And I am not going to lie, you won’t get results unless you put in some effort.

But who says it has to be as time-consuming?

By using some of the tools I mentioned above you’ll save time. It really is that simple.

I know there is a lot and it can be overwhelming. So if you don’t have time to use all of the tools it is fine… just start at the top and work your way down (I put them in order based on what will save you the most time).

What other ways do you save time on your SEO?

Google

[reviewandbonuss]

The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time

When I first got into the world of SEO, you could literally optimize your site for any term and rank at the top of Google within a month or two.

But of course, that was ages ago.

Now with Google’s ever-evolving algorithm, it takes more time and effort to get results.

But what happens if you don’t have the luxury of time? Or you don’t have the financial resources to put in the effort that is truly needed.

What should you do?

Just forget about SEO?

Of course not. Today, I want to call out 11 tools that will help you get an edge over your competition. But unlike most lists, I am going to get very specific on the feature I want you to use within each tool to make your life easier and help you get results faster with less effort.

Let’s dive right in.

Tool #1: Ubersuggest Projects

You probably already know about Ubersuggest, but do you really have time to spend hours and hours each week to do your SEO?

Chances are you don’t.

So how do you improve your traffic with the least amount of effort?

You set up a project in Ubersuggest.

As you can see, it shows your SEO traffic over time. It will let you know if your rankings are going up or down, your link growth, and your SEO issues.

With so many things going on in marketing, you don’t have time to manually check your rankings or if things are going up or down or even what you need to fix.

Ubersuggest will do it for you all automatically and even notify you of what needs to happen through email. That way you don’t have to constantly check your SEO. Ubersuggest will do it all automatically.

More so, you’ll get notified of what you need to focus on each week to maximize your traffic.

All you have do is head to the dashboard and click on “Add Your First Project.”

It’s as simple as adding in your URL.

Then select the locations you do business in and want traffic from.

Then add in the keywords you currently rank for or want to go after.

And of course, set up your traffic preferences.

And then you’ll be good to go.

Then when things go great, you’ll be notified. And when things are going wrong, you’ll also be notified. Ubersuggest will even tell you what to fix.

That way you get the maximum results in the least amount of time.

Tool #2: Google Analytics Alerts

You have Google Analytics set up on your site, but how often do you log in?

And when you do log in, do you know what to focus on or what to look at?

And if you do, do you know what to do with that data?

Google Analytics is a great tool, but you don’t want to waste hours and hours looking at reports. Instead, you want to spend your time doing and getting results.

But if you set up alerts in Google Analytics, you can save tons of time.

If you watch from the 6:33 mark, it will show you how to set up alerts. I added the whole video as it will teach you how to set up Google Analytics in general in case you don’t have goal tracking set it place.

Once you set up alerts, you’ll again get notified when anything good or bad happens. I usually have alerts set up for only when things go bad, so I know when I need to focus on fixing my marketing.

Tool #3: Trello

You’re probably thinking how the heck is Trello a marketing tool. It really isn’t, but it is a good project management tool.

And with your SEO, you may have a team helping you out and Trello will help streamline the process, make you more efficient, and get your results faster.

I keep my Trello board simple by breaking it into 3 sections.

To do – what needs to be done over time.

Prioritized – what I need to be done now (tasks at the top are the most important)

Done – tasks that need to be double-checked to ensure they were done right.

It’s that simple. That way you don’t have to micromanage your team.

Some people have more complex Trello boards, but something simple like I have worked too.

If you want to create a Trello board for your content marketing, assuming you want to write lots of content (such as 10 posts a week), this process works well.

The columns I use for content writers are:

Topics – this is where writers add topics they want to write about.

Outline review – writers submit their outline before they write for approval.

Draft – writers submit their rough draft.

Draft review – editors review each draft.

Uploaded, prepared, and ready to review – this is where the editor adds the post to your CMS (like WordPress).

Scheduled – this is where you schedule the content to go live.

Done – the content is now live.

We’ve found it effective if you are managing dozens of writers at once.

Tool #4: Content Decay Tool

Can you guess how many articles I write each week?

1.

Seriously, that’s it. 1 article a week which is roughly 4 to 5 per month (depending on how many weeks in the month).

And can you guess how many articles my team and I update each week?

21.

That’s roughly 90 a month.

Just think about it… why would I have a team of 3 people updating 90 articles per month when I only write 1 a week.

It’s because updating old content is an easier way to get more SEO traffic than it is to create new content.

But what content should you update?

The content decay tool will tell you that.

It breaks down in order which articles you should update first, second, third… based on what will generate you the most traffic.

If you are wondering what is involved with updating content, just think of it this way:

Is there anything outdated within your post – if so, either update the outdated information and make it relevant again. If you can’t, then delete that part from your article.

Can you use media to improve the experience – do you need to embed videos, add more pictures, maybe even add an infographic? Use media to better tell your story and message.

Are you including the right keywords – a simple way to get more traffic is to integrate other popular related keywords within your article. Whatever your article is about, insert it into Ubersuggest and head to the “Keyword Ideas” report in the left-hand navigation.

Is there anything missing – try to poke holes within your content. What could you have done to make it better? What do your competitors talk about that you forgot to mention? What questions didn’t you answer that the reader might have? By asking yourself these simple questions, you’ll be able to make it better.

Tool #5: Ubersuggest Chrome Extension

If you haven’t installed the Ubersuggest Chrome extension, make sure you do so.

I’m not going to bore you with all of the features of the extension… instead, I am going to give you one thing that will save you time.

You know when you Google for information to learn more on any subject?

Chances are, sometimes you are Googling to learn something related to your space. And when you do, you’ll find that your site usually won’t be at the top of those search results.

And that’s ok.

But when you do a search, you’ll notice “monthly searches” in the Google search bar.

This shows you how often that keyword is searched.

So anytime you are looking up anything in your space, pay attention to that number. If you see a keyword with over 5,000 searches, it may be worth targeting.

And as you scroll down and start going through the sites that rank at the top, you’ll notice metrics under each site.

If you notice a web page with thousands of social shares and hundreds of links, it should reaffirm that you probably want to go after that term. And the listing that has thousands of social shares and hundreds of links is a good benchmark of a page that is high in quality and what people in your space prefer.

Ideally, you want to create something better than that one, as that is the main way you beat them over time.

Tool #6: Hello Bar

SEO is very different than paid traffic.

With paid traffic, you can drive people to a landing page with very little content, which makes it easier to generate sales or leads.

With SEO, Google prefers to rank content-rich sites.

But when someone lands on a page full of educational-based content, they are less likely to convert into a customer.

There’s a simple fix… Hello Bar.

Hello Bar has a lot of features, but I just want you to use the top bar like I do on NeilPatel.com.

And as you scroll it moves along with you.

That one little thing allows me to improve my conversion rate from my SEO traffic.

You can easily adjust what you show with a few simple clicks within Hello Bar or you can even show people different messages based on where they are coming from.

Although SEO traffic doesn’t convert as well as paid traffic, it is much cheaper in the long run and does have a better overall ROI. And that one little Hello Bar will improve your numbers.

It’s responsible for 9.4% of revenue from NeilPatel.com.

Every little bit adds up.

Tool #7: Mozcast

Google makes over 3,200 algorithm changes a year.

Are you really going to keep up to date with all of them?

If you followed the first tool and set up a project in Ubersuggest, you’ll get notified when your rankings go down.

And if you set up alerts in Google Analytics (tool number 2) you’ll also get notified when your traffic drops drastically.

What you’ll find is that it’s overwhelming to keep up with all of Google’s updates and it could be confusing to figure out what you need to fix to get your traffic back.

This report on Moz keeps track of all of the algorithm updates and gives you an overview of what has changed or what the update is about. On top of that, you’ll want to check out the Mozcast if you get a notification of ranking or traffic drops as this tool confirms if other people are also seeing changes from a Google update.

Keep in mind that Google doesn’t announce each update, hence you’ll want to cross-reference what you are seeing with the Mozcast.

That way you don’t have to spend hours researching each update.

Tool #8: Detailed

Link building is a pain. There are so many link tools like this one… but let’s not kid ourselves… you just don’t have the time to spend 10 to 20 hours a week doing link building.

So, each minute you spend, you have to make sure it counts.

There’s a tool called Detailed that breaks down the best links for every industry.

All you have to do is select an industry and a site and it shows you all of the good links that are going to your competition.

You can then focus your efforts on reaching out to those sites to get links.

Sure, you will still need to have amazing content or a good product or service in order to convince those sites to link to you, but hey, if you don’t have any of that it’s going to be hard to do well in the first place.

So, don’t waste your time trying to search for links when Detailed will give you a list of hundreds of amazing sites to get links from within your space.

Tool #9: Site Speed Audit

Speed impacts rankings.

Google doesn’t want to rank slow websites anymore.

It doesn’t matter that technology has become better and you can now purchase satellite Internet. Not every location has blazing fast Internet.

For that reason, Google has an Accelerated Mobile Pages framework that helps with mobile load time.

But that’s not enough, you also need your website to load fast.

So, go here and put in your URL.

You’ll then be taken to a report that looks like this:

What’ll you want to focus on is site speed. That Ubersuggest report pulls from Google Lighthouse.

So, send that to your developer and tell them to get you in the green mark for both mobile and desktop load times.

As your speed goes up, so will your SEO rankings and traffic over time.

Tool #10: Supermetrics

Are you tired of having your data everywhere?

Why would you want to log into four of five different apps to get your SEO and marketing data when you could log into one.

And no, I am not talking about Google Analytics. I am talking about Google Data Studio.

If you haven’t used it yet, sign up for it… it’s free.

Google Data Studio is a business intelligence tool that will show you all of your data in one place.

So how do you get all of your SEO data into Google Data Studio? You use Supermetrics.

It passes all of your SEO data from different sources into Data Studio, so you no longer have to log into multiple tools, including Google Analytics.

My favorite feature in Supermetrics is you can automate your marketing reporting, so you no longer have to create your reports manually.

Tool #11: VidIQ

Google is the most popular search engine.

But do you know what the second most popular search engine is?

It’s not Bing… it’s actually YouTube, which Google actually owns.

If you haven’t done YouTube SEO yet, you should reconsider. Just look at how much search traffic I get from YouTube each month.

This article will break down how to do YouTube SEO if you want to learn how it works.

But to make things easier, install this Chrome extension.

Whenever you perform a search on YouTube it will show you what’s popular, what keywords are being searched that are related to each video, and which tags people are using to get more SEO traffic.

I wanted to end this post with VidIQ because it’s not competitive.

See, unlike traditional SEO, it doesn’t take months to see results. YouTube SEO is the opposite in which it isn’t as competitive (yet) and you can rank at the top within 24 to 48 hours of releasing a video (seriously!).

Conclusion

They say SEO is hard and time-consuming. And I am not going to lie, you won’t get results unless you put in some effort.

But who says it has to be as time-consuming?

By using some of the tools I mentioned above you’ll save time. It really is that simple.

I know there is a lot and it can be overwhelming. So if you don’t have time to use all of the tools it is fine… just start at the top and work your way down (I put them in order based on what will save you the most time).

What other ways do you save time on your SEO?

The post The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time appeared first on Neil Patel.

[adventuresaroundasia]

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info. 

After five years of living in China, and two years of This Beijing Life, things have changed. I left my job as a college counselor in China, and now I’m living a life on my terms. I’m my own boss, I travel when I want, and live where I want. I’m FINALLY living my dream of location independence.

I hope you’ll all follow me along on my new journey: The Freedom Life.

Pin Me!

What I Was Up to This Fall

As you can see, I was a bit slack on the Monthly Recap front last September but it was for two very good reasons. Firstly, I was traveling with my parents all around Vietnam during that time, and secondly, I launched my first online course!!!!

This monthly recap is going to be a big one, so get ready!

Lang Co Beach near Hai Phong pass!

Where I Went in September + October

Hoi An

Ho Chi Minh City

Hanoi

Ha Long Bay/ Lan Ha Bay

Hue

Danang

Hoi An Old Town lookin�� nice

Highlights

For the most part, these last two months were really great! From traveling all around Vietnam with my family to FINALLY launching my course, to days of straight sunshine (until recently), I don’t have much to complain about.

I Launched My Course!!!!!

YAY!! I’ve been hinting at this course for a solid year now and working on it practically full-time for the last 7 months, and it’s FINALLY DONE.

In case you didn’t see on social media or via email, I launched a premium course and community called the Teach Abroad Squad! The whole goal of the course is to make teaching abroad in China easy. Find an incredible high-paying job, learn how to actually teach to Chinese students, and survive in China once you get there.

Basically, I can’t go back in time and give myself a better first year in China, but I CAN be there for other new teachers. I made this course to help people have an incredible first year, avoid all the scams and not-so-great deals, and arrive in China feeling prepared to teach to Chinese students. Basically, everything I WISH was in my TEFL and then some.

I’m honestly so proud of this course, and I couldn’t be happier that it’s FINALLY out in the world. I just had my VIP launch in the last week of October, and I’ve already received a ton of great feedback. While the VIP launch is over, the plan is to open back up again at the beginning of 2019!

If Teach Abroad Squad sounds like something you need in your life, I highly suggest signing up for my FREE Teach Abroad Mini Course where you can learn some awesome basics (for free), and then you’ll be the first to be notified when we open back up again!

[button url=”https://www.adventuresaroundasia.com/mini-course/&#8221; label=”Enroll Now!” size=”large” target=”_blank”]

Enjoying a food tour in Hanoi!

My Parents Visited Vietnam

In early October my parents flew down to Vietnam for a 2 week trip to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Hanoi, Ha Long Bay, Hue, and Hoi An! I had a great time showing them around, and it was fun to visit many of the places in Vietnam I didn’t have enough time in the first time around. Seriously, when I lived in China I’d been to Vietnam TWICE but only for a week each time!

It was especially fun to show my parents around Hoi An. We had some fun clothes tailored, went to all my favorite restaurants, relaxed on the beach, and rested after a busy trip!

Chris relaxing on the top deck

Fancy Ha Long Bay Cruise

One of my favorite moments of the trip with my parents was the fancy Ha Long Bay 2-day cruise we took with Mon Cheri cruises! The ship went through Ha Long and Lan Ha bay, where we had the opportunity to kayak through caves, swim in the bay, and have some fancy egg and coconut coffee while admiring the view!

This was my THIRD time in the area, and I definitely recommend Mon Cheri if you want to do a fancy overnight cruise without dropping a ton of money (we got a good deal on Booking.com). Previously I’d done a cheap day trip cruise from Hanoi (don’t recommend it), and a multi-day trip to Cat Ba island where I went rock climbing and kayaking (my go-to budget recommendation, it was amazing!).

Next time, I definitely want to spend more time in the area. I’ll do the 3-day 2-night cruise with Mon Cheri, and then spend some time on Cat Ba island to do some more adventure kayaking!

Elliot loving the trip!

Motorbike Ride Around Sun Peninsula

Last week my fiance Chris and his brother’s family and I took a motorbike trip around the Sun Peninsula just near Danang. We rode our bikes to Danang, which is only about 30-45 minutes away, grabbed a cheap central hotel called San Marino with an ice cold, but very beautiful rooftop pool (only $40!), and then embarked on a motrobike adventure that next morning!

The group of us took our bikes around the peninsula, seeing the famous pagoda and Lady Buddha statue, all the way down to the Heritage Banyan tree. The views of the coastline were INCREDIBLE, and we had such a good day.

Sure, my motorbike’s back tire exploded while going up a steep hill, but that’s part of the adventure right? Thankfully there was a handyman literally 5-minutes push away (suspicious…) so we were able to get our bike fixed after waiting our turn since we apparently weren’t the only ones having flat tires in the area. Is someone putting tacks in the road or something??

Now I can take tons of these shots!

YUM

Challenges

While these last two months were really fun, there were a few major mishaps too!

No Phone For Almost a Month!!

So.. my phone battery randomly exploded a few weeks ago. I grabbed my phone out of my bag and the entire thing was swollen to the point that the screen had started coming off.

Long story short, I was told to go to Danang to fix it. Couldn’t find the Apple authorized store anywhere because we were given the wrong address by Apple (thanks). After 2 hours and multiple taxis we finally found it, waited for another hour, and then were told that my battery wasn’t an Apple battery and they couldn’t replace it.

Cue a huge argument with Apple, who had told me to get a new battery a few months back when all the iPhones were having battery problems. The guy at Apple told me to go to a Staples because they were out of batteries at all of the Apple stores up until I had to leave the US. What he didn’t tell me was that it would void my warranty. Cool. Good service strikes again.

So after approximately 5 phone conversations with Apple, I was out of luck. I needed to buy a new smartphone, but they’re all at least $200 more expensive in Vietnam compared to the US. Since my parents were coming in 2 weeks, I decided to hold out and wait for them to bring me one.

With the new iPhone announcement in the US, I was able to get the iPhone 8 for over $300 less than I would’ve paid in Vietnam. I just had to go without a phone for about…. 3 weeks. It was awful.

For those of you wondering, YES I did look into other brands. Samsung is even more expensive and doesn’t have an international warranty (aka if it breaks I have to mail it to the US), and I didn’t love the other cheaper Asian brands like Huawei, especially not for all the social media, photography, and work stuff I do on my phone.

So, long story short, I love my new phone but I kind of hate Apple.

My parents relaxing in Ha Long Bay

Trying to Launch My Course RIGHT After My Parents Left

Once upon a time, I made a deal with myself that I would launch my course in October 2018. This made sense, because I wanted to avoid the holidays, and get everything done with my course before heading to Australia.

However, with my parents visiting in early October, this meant that I needed to get almost everything done before they arrived, so that I could launch my course 2 weeks after they left. Talk about stressful!

I was working all day every day trying to put the finishing touches on a 12-module course with 25 videos, plus 4 bonuses. My course is also hosted on its own website (too much of a control freak for Teachable or Udemy), so I had a lot of tech stuff to do as well.

Once my parents left, it was a mad dash to launch day! AHhhhhhhHHhh

Thankfully these guys took me on a motorbike trip to distract me

My 5-Day Launch: Stress City!

For those of you who don’t already know, I took a program called Create Awesome Online Courses to learn how to create the most epic course ever. One of the things they teach you in this course is how to create a 5-day VIP launch to get the ball rolling.

In this process, you have a free 3-part video series (some of you may have seen this), and after a week you open up your cart for ONLY 5 days. This means you spend that time doing a lot of promoting, and then you wait with bated breath to see how many people join.

In my head, I thought I needed to get everything done before the cart opened, including pre-scheduling all of my emails. So during the 5-day launch, I had nothing to do but obsessively refresh my email every 5 minutes.

Of course, as is typical, everyone signed up at the absolute last minute. Which meant for the first few days I had ZERO signups. I was totally depressed. Every few hours I’d check my email and see nothing. After a solid 7 months of working on this course pretty much full-time, I was basically having an existential crisis.

While I really love my blog and will always keep writing and sharing, I wanted this course to be my full-time job. I really do enjoy teaching, and love helping people achieve their goals and dreams. I also love being creative and designing something completely my own, so creating an online course has been one of my major goals for a few YEARS.

Thankfully, sales started rolling in on the last two days. Thank god, because I was really two-seconds away from heart failure. We now have a cozy tight-knit group over in our private Facebook group, and I can’t wait to add more teachers to our community in a few months!

Here’s a nice photo of cao lau

Food Poisoning On a Plane

On the day I was set to fly from Hanoi to Hue, I woke up feeling REALLY sick with some form of food poisoning. I knew it couldn’t have been the food from our food tour the night before since we all had the same things, so I’m assuming I touched some bacteria and then ate something with my hands? No idea. But whatever it was, it was BAD.

I tried making myself throw up, but couldn’t get anything up. I tried taking Imodium, drinking tea (I couldn’t get it down), but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get out of bed at all. My parents and Chris were all pacing around my bed trying to figure out what to do. Should I just miss my flight, forfeit my hotel in Hue and then pay for another night in Hanoi??

Eventually, I made it out of the house and into a taxi to the airport, but seriously… I was not okay. I felt like absolute death at the airport and almost threw up in front of security. I also almost keeled over on the packed bus to board the airplane, and literally almost died as people shoved me out of the way to board the plane.

When we got onto our budget flight, it wasn’t much better. Chris gave me the window seat so I could relax, but the flight was so crammed, I honestly couldn’t handle it. Thank god it was a short flight because that was the most miserable transit experience I’ve ever had (and this is coming from a girl who literally pooped her pants while waiting for a bus in the Philippines).

When we finally got to Hue I slept for the rest of the day while my parents took in the sights. The lovely owners at Hue Riverside Villa even made me plain porridge to eat that night! Thankfully I was well enough the next morning to go on our countryside motorbike tour. I only had to miss out on the famous salt coffee and most of our lunch.

Cheap views from Marble Mountain

Hello Danang!

Stressing About Money

This last month was the first time in my entire life that I couldn’t pay off my credit card in full. I know most of you are rolling your eyes right now, but I’m pretty conservative with my money, and I love having my credit card fully paid off every month.

While I do have a few thousand dollars, it’s all in China, so I can only access it via ATM here in Vietnam. I usually have all of my blogging income paid into my US account or Paypal, which is what I use to pay off my credit card. But with a bunch of travel, international flights, and investments in getting my course set up, my bill has been a bit too large these last two months to pay off fully.

While the interest isn’t too bad, this is definitely NOT a habit I want to get into.

For those who are interested, the Curly Girl Method WORKS.

Monthly Finances

September Income Breakdown

Advertising – $0

Blogging Partnerships – $681

Freelancing – $0

Affiliate Sales – $381.50

Teaching Referrals – $0

Total Revenue – $1062.50

Total Profit (Minus Blog Expenses) – $352.50

In September I bought a few major things for my course that really added up!

October Income Breakdown

Advertising – $0

Blogging Partnerships – $0

Freelancing – $500

Affiliate Sales – $422

Teaching Referrals – $0

Total Revenue – $922

Total Profit (Minus Blog Expenses) – $688

Most of what I spent in October went towards Facebook ads for my course, as well as my new Virtual Assistant!

On the way from Hue to Hoi An!

What I Wrote in September and October

With all the traveling and the launch of my course, I didn’t have much time to write, and the posts I DID create mostly centered around teaching abroad to drum up some excitement and interest for my new course!

What if Your Chinese School Doesn’t Pay On Time? 

Am I Legal to Teach in China?

The Freedom Life: August 2018 

Best Instagram Shots

This first shot is from the rooftop of the apartment we rented in Ho Chi Minh! We decided to have a nice glass of wine and enjoy the sunset!

  View this post on Instagram

  Good evening Saigon!

A post shared by Richelle (@adventuresaroundasia) on Sep 28, 2018 at 5:44am PDT

This second photo was actually from a photoshoot I stumbled on in Hoi An’s old town. The girls looked so beautiful in their ao dais, how could I not take my own photo too?

  View this post on Instagram

  I’m a little obsessed with the traditional Vietnamese ao dai dress. Not only is it super flattering, it’s also comfy with flowing pants underneath! Fun Fact: in Vietnam most high schools require girls to wear the ao dai to school on either Mondays or Fridays (or both). One girl I met in Hue said that a major reason she became a teacher was so that she could wear an ao dai to work a few times a week!

A post shared by Richelle (@adventuresaroundasia) on Oct 12, 2018 at 12:02am PDT

Travel Product I Can’t Live Without

Not necessarily a product, but a travel SERVICE I can’t live without is my travel insurance with World Nomads! I realized when I was sick in Hanoi that my insurance had actually expired and I’d forgotten to renew it, otherwise I could’ve actually stayed in my bed and skipped out on that horrible, horrible day of flying where I almost threw up all over everyone a hundred times.

Seriously there are a million reasons you need travel insurance when you go abroad. Remember when Chris broke his arm and we almost missed 4 flights, or when I stepped on a sea urchin in Cambodia and got blood poisoning? Yeah.

I personally use World Nomads which covers both getting sick abroad, and other important things like stolen phones (they reimbursed me for mine!), missed flights, lost luggage, and more!

[button url=”http://www.adventuresaroundasia.com/worldnomads&#8221; label=”Get a Quote!” size=”large” target=”_blank”]

Chris and I in Hanoi’s Note Cafe

Best Reads of October

Here are my favorite blog posts of the month!

Top 40 Things to Do in Hong Kong – PS I’m On My Way

As someone who has been to Hong Kong approximately 8 times, I can attest that this list is actually really good. I thought I’d done everything in Hong Kong but I guess I have to go back!

Tsurutokame: The Only All Female Kaiseki Restaurant in Tokyo – Be My Travel Muse

While on our Kumano Kodo Pilgrimage, Chris and I had the opportunity to try an AMAZING kaiseki meal. These multi-course Japanese delicacies should not be missed, and I love that this one is run by women!

My 6 Worst Dates Ever on the Road – Teacake Travels

As someone who has had their fair share of dating mishaps while living abroad, I really, really appreciated this.

Saying goodbye to this little girl is NOT going to be fun

What’s Next for November?

In just a few short days I’ll be flying to Australia for the holidays! Then three days later I’ll turn right back around for a partnership in Japan. Leaving Hoi An is really bittersweet (especially giving my cat back to her owner!!), but we plan to come back in April once the rain dies down!

The Freedom Life: September + October 2018 This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.  After five years of living in China, and two years of 

#Hoi An #monthly recap #the freedom life #Vietnam

[tweetadvise]

Migrating your Website from HTTP to HTTPS

This post lays out the procedures associated with migrating a site from HTTP to HTTPS. HTTPS means Hyper Text Transfer Method Secure, which is the safe and secure version of the Hyper Text Transfer Method (http). HTTPS is normally used on sites to secure ecommerce purchases, such as electronic banking sites, email applications as well as ecommerce check out areas.

When a user connects to a website by means of HTTPS, the web site encrypts the session with a Digital SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Certification. A user could tell if they are linked to internet site that has a valid SSL certificate if the internet site URL begins with https:// as opposed to http://.

I have formerly composed a comprehensive post that explains much more about HTTPS, as well as a lot more particularly the benefits of migrating from HTTP to HTTPS. Basically, HTTPS has actually come to be a major talking factor within the SEO sector because Matt Cutts of Google revealed that using SSL file encryption will certainly give sites a small ranking boost within Google's internet search engine results pages. Her' es his tweet back in August in 2013:

From a SEO point of view, there are literally hundreds of various other points you could be doing to improve your web site which have much more prospective to raise the visibility of your website in Google's search results page. There is an ever expanding checklist of factors why you may want to take into consideration relocating your website over to HTTPS. Google have actually lately released their strategies to advise individuals browsing sites by means of Google chrome of the safety and security risks in visiting HTTP websites, which they refer to as ' non-secure' websites. If you do not desire users seeing your website to be placed off by a visible warning of an insecure connection, you ought to begin intending the migration of your website to HTTPS.

Popular internet browsers like Chrome, Firefox as well as Web Explorer already make use of a padlock icon in the navigation bar to indicate if a website makes use of HTTPS or not. Google's strategy is for their Chrome internet browser to indicate via a turn up message that a web site is insecure since it makes use of HTTP, which is a far more noticeable (some may say over the top) technique of encouraging the adoption of HTTPS.

Considerations when relocating to HTTPS

Moving your internet site from HTTP to HTTPS is very much like migrating your internet site to a new LINK framework, or a new domain name. In my experience, there's a lot of traits that can go wrong if the migration isn't really handled efficiently, which could have a destructive influence on a site's rankings. To stay clear of as little disruption as feasible to your internet search engine rankings, you ought to guarantee you intend each stage of the movement carefully, as I'll go on to explain.

Firstly, you'll have to choose the best degree of certification for your internet site (i.e. 2,048 bit certificate) from an accredited/trusted company. You'll discover a comprehensive explanation of all the different degrees of qualification right here. One point to note is that you'll just obtain the eco-friendly padlock bar in the browser if you mount an extensive SSL certificate. A lot of providers include a complimentary installation company with the acquisition of an SSL certification, so the preliminary phase is frequently made sure of.

Once you have actually installed a suitable SSL certification for your site, there are a numerous actions you'll have to take to guarantee your website operates as it should, and that online search engine are informeded of the change in your website structure.

1. Check Internal Links

Ensure all your inner web links indicate the new HTTPS Links - this includes navigation/menu web links, images, css references on the internet site and so on. If the website still recommendations http documents, it will certainly break. On WordPress web sites, it is usually simply a case of doing a locate (http) and also change (https) in the data source to resolve this issue.

2. Change External Links

Ensure any type of outside links as well as regional directory site listings are edited to indicate your brand-new HTTPS website, consisting of web links from your social media profiles.

3. Check Canonical references

Ensure that rel= approved references indicate the brand-new HTTPS variation. When you conform to HTTPS these tags frequently still indicate the HTTP version, resulting in Google ending up being confused over just what web page ought to be indexed.

4. Implement 301 redirects

Ensure that you execute a long-term 301 redirect on a page by web page basis - suggesting every HTTP web page ought to be redirected to it's HTTPS equivalent. You must not 301 redirect everything (either by means of international or via a wild card redirect) to the residence web page as this could have a negative effect on rankings.

5. Set up HTTPS site in Webmaster Tools

Add the HTTPS web site as a brand-new residential property in your webmaster devices account, and send sitemaps accordingly. Presently, the change of address device does not support http > https demands, so Google will rely upon the correct application of 301 redirects to understand your new website framework. When set up, watch on your Web designer Tools account and keep track of any kind of problems Google may be having with your brand-new HTTPS website.

HTTP to HTTPS 301 redirects

Implementing 301 redirects from your HTTP pages to the new HTTPS variations is a vital to preserving your online search engine positions and also website traffic. Transferring to HTTPS is not as simple as merely acquiring the certificate and also relying upon Google to index your new HTTPS website - you rather require to show that your URLs have altered with making use of 301 redirects.

Google will certainly expect to see a straight replacement for the content on the HTTP URL if you make use of 301 redirects to a HTTPS URL, so if you redirect all HTTP Links to the HTTPS homepage, you run the risk of affecting the rankings of all the web pages on your site. It is consequently highly advised that you reroute all HTTP web pages straight to their HTTPS counterparts.

If your website is working on an Apache web server, you could implement a site broad redirect from all HTTP web pages to their HTTPS counterparts by adding a bit of code to your.htaccess file. Brian K Ross has actually given some excellent advice below on making use of rewrite policies to reroute any kind of http demands to their https equivalent on your website.

It ought to be kept in mind that this is not the W3C recommended approach of redirecting to SSL. Their advised approach of executing website large redirects (using digital hosts) could be discovered here.

If you're a little not sure the best ways to implement these redirects on your website, I 'd suggest calling a skilled internet designer or Search Engine Optimization specialist to avoid any type of issues.

Potential negative impacts

I have so far chatted concerning the pros of relocating over to HTTPS, however I must warn you it is not constantly an uncomplicated process.

The factor I state this is since with Google, any type of major modifications to a web site's framework, also if done correctly as outlined above, could still cause a short-term drop in positions. It typically takes a few days (weeks also) for Google to understand intricate changes in internet site structure, and also it could take some time for these modifications to be mirrored in their results. This often depends upon just how typically Google creeps your site, but you could make their life much easier by submitting up to date XML sitemaps for your HTTPS pages to web designer tools as I have suggested.

The essential point to keep in mind is that you must deal with the migration from HTTP to HTTPS similar to you would certainly a movement to a brand-new domain. Helping Googlebot to discover the new HTTPS pages on your internet site by updating your navigating web links as well as getting rid of any type of referrals to your HTTP content will certainly reduce any complication as well as accelerate the time it takes for Google to update your website listings in their search results.

Conclusion

The issue of HTTPS is not surprisingly complex and also there's a great deal of info to take on board, however it is coming to be clear that there may be adverse effects to those businesses who do not make the switch to HTTPS in 2015. Many web based companies have actually already executed the button to HTTPS, as well as much more are preparing making the switch because of Google's current announcements. However, I can not stress enough that conforming to HTTPS isn't really without danger, and also excellent treatment should be taken when rerouting website traffic from the non-HTTPS to the HTTPS version of your website.

I 'd be interested to hear your experience with moving from HTTP to HTTPS in the comments below - have you made the dive currently? Was it a success? Did you have any kind of issues? And also a lot of remarkably, did your internet site maintain it's rankings throughout the process?

If you've not yet moved to HTTPS and would like our advice, after that please feel cost-free to obtain in touch,

#business #business plan #internet marketing #marketing #marketing companies #marketing consultant #seo #social media

[jjpocketbook]

30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors

As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve driven 30 million visitors to my website from SEO.

Technically it’s more, but who’s counting.

What’s funny, though, is I barely look at my traffic, even as Google continually rolls out algorithm updates.

I know that sounds contradictory because if you are an SEO, why wouldn’t you obsess about traffic, right?

Well, it’s because I’ve learned some hard lessons over the year… mainly because I’ve made a lot of mistakes.

So today, I wanted to share them with you so that you can learn from my mistakes… so here goes:

Lesson #1: Don’t obsess over rankings, obsess over conversions

I used to check my rankings every single day. Literally.

On top of that, I would log into Google Analytics 4 to 5 times a day and continually check my traffic.

That’s all I cared about back in the day… boosting my organic traffic.

But here is the thing: As my rankings and traffic went up over the years, my revenue didn’t go up proportionally.

For example, during one quarter in 2017, my SEO traffic went up 39.52%, but my revenue from SEO went up only 4.29%.

I quickly learned that traffic isn’t everything. If you can’t convert the traffic into revenue it doesn’t matter.

That taught me that you need to focus on the right keywords that drive conversions and continually optimize your site for conversions.

An easy first step for you to take is to install Crazy Egg and run a heatmap to see where people click so you adjust your design and copy to get more sales.

Lesson #2: The easiest way to grow your SEO traffic is international expansion

You already know that I get a lot of SEO traffic, but do you know what country drives most of my traffic?

If you guessed United States, you are wrong.

Brazil is my most popular region, followed by India.

International SEO is the easiest way to expand and grow your traffic. Here are a few posts that you should read before you expand your SEO globally:

How to create a global SEO strategy

Fundamentals of international SEO

How to correctly setup your site for international SEO

How to profitably expand your SEO globally

Lesson #3: Keywords are very, very, very, very important

When I used to write my content, I didn’t obsess about the keywords when I should have.

My team actually proved me wrong on this.

I used to focus on writing content for humans and didn’t worry about search engines. My team, on the other hand, obsesses about keywords.

Just look at the growth of our traffic in Brazil because of our obsession with the right keywords.

One simple thing I do before writing that has really helped is I head over to Ubersuggest and type in a few of the keywords that I want to go after.

Once it loads, you’ll see a report like the one above. I want you to then click on “Keyword Ideas” in the left-hand navigation.

You’ll see a report that contains a list of keywords that you could potentially be targeting.

Make sure you click on the “Related” tab, as well as “Questions” and “Comparisons” … scroll through the list. You’ll see hundreds of keywords. Pick all of the ones that are relevant and ideally have a high cost per click (CPC). These are the keywords that’ll not only drive traffic but revenue as well.

Whenever I write a blog post, I go through this step. Every single time.

Lesson #4: AMP pages can drive more SEO traffic

AMP pages load faster on mobile devices than non-AMP pages.

If you aren’t familiar with the AMP framework, read this.

What most people won’t tell you about AMP pages is that:

In regions like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, countries with decent Internet infrastructure, you won’t see much of an increase in traffic.

In regions with poor Internet infrastructure, like Brazil, you’ll see a 10 to 15% lift in mobile SEO traffic by having AMP pages.

AMP pages don’t convert visitors into customers as well as normal responsive web design. So, you’ll have to work on testing your AMP pages so you can boost your conversion rates.

Lesson #5: SEO will never convert as well as paid ads

When I started off with SEO, I would run projections on how much the traffic would make me.

But the numbers were always off, even if I was able to get the rankings.

Here’s the main reason: If you are bidding on terms like auto insurance through ads, you can drive people to a landing page that looks like this:

But if you want to rank organically, you’ll have to do it through content. So, your page that ranks well will look more like this and convert less…

It doesn’t mean SEO is bad. In reality, it’s much cheaper in the long run than paid ads and will produce a better ROI. But don’t just assume that if you get 100 visitors from paid ads and 3 purchases that you’ll have the same conversion rate with your SEO traffic.

Chances are it will be significantly lower by maybe 2 or 3x, but because SEO is cheaper, it will be much more profitable.

Lesson #6: Remarketing is one of the best ways to generate an ROI from SEO

If you get a ton of traffic from SEO, there is a simple strategy you can implement to boost your conversions.

Remarket everyone on Facebook, Google, and YouTube.

That way people come to your site, read your content, and build trust with you and your brand.

Then you remarket them throughout the web with ads that prompt your products or services and send them to a landing page that will drive sales.

I’ve been doing this for years, just look at my old remarketing ad…

For the regions I use remarketing in, it is responsible for 46% of my leads.

Lesson #7: Don’t forget to update your old content

I publish one new blog post a week. I’m working on increasing this as I get more time, but for now, it is one a week.

Can you guess how many blog posts I update on a daily basis? Technically it is 0 (me at least), but my team focuses on updating at least 3 old blog posts per day. That’s roughly 90 a month.

Once you have a few hundred pages, make sure you focus on updating your old content or else your traffic will quickly drop.

You can use this content decay tool to see which posts you should update first.

This will help you continually grow your SEO traffic instead of hitting plateaus or seeing your traffic take massive drops.

Lesson #8: Don’t forget to optimize your title tags

One of the easiest ways to grow your rankings is to optimize your title tags.

If you can write persuasive copy and get more clicks, you’ll quickly move up on Google.

In Brazil, we spend more time doing this than we do in the United States.

We get a similar amount of impressions in Brazil, but we have more people focusing on improving our title tags and testing. Hence, we get 95% more SEO traffic in Brazil.

If you want tips on boosting your clicks, check out this article.

Another simple hack is to use the “Content Ideas” report in Ubersuggest.

On the right side of that report, you can see social share counts from Facebook and Pinterest. And on the left side, you see titles of articles.

Typically, if people like a title they share it more. So, look for titles that have a lot of shares as it will give you ideas on what you can use on your website to get more clicks and boost your rankings.

Lesson #9: Don’t put dates in your URL

I used to put dates in my URLs like:

Neilpatel.com/2017/12/title-of-post/

This causes search engines to assume that your content is related to a specific date. And after that date gets old, search engines assume your content is irrelevant and outdated.

The moment I removed the date from my URLs, I grew my SEO traffic by 58% in 30 days.

If you have dates in your URL, make sure you 301 redirect your old URLs to your new ones once you make that change, or else your rankings will drop.

Lesson #10: Don’t be afraid to use popups

Don’t you hate popups? Well, who doesn’t?

But people use them because they work.

The majority of your pages that will rank are blog-related content. And blog posts tend to drive fewer direct conversions because people are on your site to read the content.

In order to maximize your conversions from SEO, you should consider using exit popups so you can convert more of those visitors into customers as they leave.

When you leave this site in most cases, you’ll see a popup that looks like:

And it drives you to this quiz, which allows me to convert SEO visitors into customers.

You can easily copy me by using Hello Bar. It works for all industries including B2B and ecommerce and even lead generation sites.

Lesson #11: Brand queries affect rankings

Everyone talks about how you need links to boost rankings.

But very few people talk about brand queries.

As Google’s ex-CEO and ex-head of web spam both emphasized how brands are important.

One of the big reasons for my growth in SEO traffic is the growth in my brand. I’ve seen a direct correlation in which the more people who find me from my name, the more SEO traffic I get.

Just look at my brand growth over time:

I’ve received over 1.9 million visitors over the last 16 months from people typing in variations of my name in Google.

Lesson #12: Don’t waste your money on paid links

I’ve been doing SEO since I was 16 years old. That’s a long time…

When I started off as a kid, I dabbled in paid links and I used to dominate Google for terms like online casino, online poker, web hosting, auto insurance, and even credit cards.

And I was making a killing off of affiliate income from these sites.

But it was all short lived.

Why?

Because I bought links. And eventually Google penalized all of those sites.

If I never purchased links, those sites would have taken longer to rank, but they would have been around today, and I would have generated more income overall.

Don’t buy links, it’s bad and shortsighted.

Lesson #13: Guest post to build a brand, not to build links

I already covered the importance of branding above.

A great way to build your brand and indirectly boost your SEO traffic is through guest posting.

But don’t use guest posting to build links.

Most sites that offer guest posts, nofollow them (which they should), and Google is smart enough to know what a guest post is, hence they ignore guest post links from sites like Forbes.

It’s pretty easy to spot a guest post for both a human and algorithm…

But if you are using it to build a brand, great. Focus on the content quality and not links.

Lesson #14: Don’t forget to interlink

Do you know what some of my highest ranked pages are?

The ones that are interlinked.

It takes anywhere from 6 months to a year for many of the interlinks to kick in, but it is still effective none-the-less.

Every time I wrote content, I used to make sure I link out to my older pieces of content when it made sense. But I made a big mistake… I wasn’t going into my older pieces of content and then adding links to my newer pieces of content.

That one change was game-changing for me. It took time to see the results but it worked exceptionally well.

It’s how I rank high for terms like “email marketing”.

Lesson #15: Google isn’t the only game in town

Although Google is the most popular search engine, it isn’t the only one you need to focus on.

Did you know that YouTube is the second most popular search engine?

Even Bing gets a lot of traffic.

If you want to rank high on Bing, follow this.

Or if you prefer video, watch this:

As for YouTube, this guide will teach you YouTube SEO. It works really well, just look at my YouTube SEO traffic:

Over the last 28 days, I received 429,501 video views through YouTube SEO.

Lesson #16: Speed is everything

The faster your server and the more optimized your site, the more traffic you’ll get.

Years ago, my friend Otis added more servers to his site GoodReads.

Within a month, his SEO traffic went up over 20%.

Speed is part of Google’s algorithm, so optimize it for both web and mobile.

A quick way to see your site’s speed is to enter your URL here.

You’ll see a report that breaks down your mobile and desktop load times as well as what you can do to improve them.

Lesson #17: Quality over quantity

SEO used to be a game of quantity over quality.

That isn’t the case anymore. With over a billion blogs, Google has its fair share of sites to choose from.

Just look at About.com. Eventually they renamed it Dotdash and changed their strategy.

They took all of their About.com content and moved it over to 6 vertical based sites and deleted 900,000 pages of junk content.

This grew their traffic and revenue by a whopping 140%.

Focus on writing high-quality content. It’s why I blog less and try to make my content amazing.

Lesson #18: Tools are better than content marketing

I used to focus all of my energy on content marketing because it drove a lot of links and SEO traffic.

But over time, I realized that creating free tools builds more natural links than anything else I have ever tested.

Just look at Ubersuggest. I spent years creating it and look at how many links it has generated…

30,603 backlinks! That’s a lot of links.

If you don’t have the resources to build a custom tool like me, you can always start with buying a white label tool from Code Canyon for $10 or $20. They literally have tools for almost all industries.

Lesson #19: Don’t rely only on SEO

When I first got started in SEO, all I could think about was SEO.

To me, it was the best marketing channel out there because it allowed me to compete with large companies.

Even to this day, I still love SEO more than any other channel.

But it doesn’t stop me from leveraging other marketing channels.

See, years ago you could build a business off of one marketing channel.

Yelp was built through SEO. Dropbox through social media referrals. Facebook through email invites…

Those days don’t exist anymore. You can’t just build your traffic from one channel.

Although you should do SEO, you should also try paid ads, social media marketing, email marketing, push notifications, and anything else that comes out.

Diversify your traffic sources and don’t just rely solely on SEO.

Lesson #20: People love linking to data

Spending money and time to gather your own unique data is an easy way to build links.

Check out my posts on content marketing trends and social media trends.

I’ve added tons of unique data, stats, and charts to each of those posts.

The end result? Extra backlinks.

The content marketing trends post received 447 backlinks.

If you don’t have the time to gather custom data you can always find someone on Upwork to help you out.

Lesson #21: Don’t forget about Infographics

One of my favorite SEO strategies that still works well today is infographics.

I have tons of them on the NeilPatel.com blog.

I didn’t start off with infographics here… I used to do them on my old blog Quick Sprout and KISSmetrics.

Here’s an interesting stat for you when I used to crank out infographics on KISSmetrics.

Within a two-year period, from 2010 to 2012, 47 infographics generated 2,512,596 visitors and 41,142 backlinks from 3,741 unique domains. They also generated 41,359 tweets and 20,859 likes.

If you don’t have money to hire a designer, you can use Infogram or Canva to create one on your own.

Lesson #22: Google doesn’t penalize for duplicate content

You don’t want to post tons of duplicate content on your site as it’s not the best user experience, but keep in mind that Google doesn’t penalize you for duplication.

They may not just rank the duplicate content as well.

So, if you spend all of this time producing amazing, unique content, why not publish it FIRST on your own website.

Then after a few hours or days if you want to be safe, take that exact content and publish it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and anywhere else that will accept your content.

Literally, take all of the words and paste them onto those social channels.

It will get you extra awareness and branding. Plus, the content should already be indexed on your site, so Google knows it came from your first… and I doubt you care if the duplicated version on LinkedIn ranks. That’s still great branding.

In other words, don’t be afraid to repurpose your content even if it causes duplication.

Just look at this post, for example. I’m also repurposing it into a 4-part podcast series.

Lesson #23: Don’t recreate the wheel

I used to spend hours a week doing keyword research trying to figure out what new terms to rank for.

Eventually, I figured out an easier and better way to find new content topics and keywords to go after.

Go to Ubersuggest, type in your competitor’s domain name and hit search.

In the left-hand navigation click on Top Pages.

You’ll see a report that shows you all of the popular pages on your competition’s website. This will give you ideas for the type of pages you should create on your website.

Then I want you to click “View All” under Est. Visits (estimated visits). This will show you all of the keywords that drive traffic to that page.

You now have a list of topics and keywords for each topic to go after.

Lesson #24: Don’t pick a generic domain name

Remember how in Lesson 11 I talked about brand queries and how they helped rankings?

After I learned that, I decided to go buy exact match domain names where the domain name was the keyword.

That way I would get lots of brand queries without trying.

Well, there’s an issue… even if you rank high, what you’ll find is you will have a low click-through rate in most cases.

If you have a low click-through rate, it tells Google your brand isn’t strong and people don’t prefer it, which can hurt your ranking.

So instead of focusing on exact match domains, unless you have millions to spend on branding like Hotels.com, focus on building a memorable brand.

Pick something that is unique, easy to spell, and easy to remember.

Lesson #25: Learn from blackhat SEOs, but don’t go over to the dark side

Blackhat SEOs come up with some interesting data and experiments.

Many of them don’t work for long, but they are interesting none-the-less.

Although I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, I do recommend following them.

The easiest way you can learn from them is by reading Blackhat World.

People there share some interesting insights, especially every time there is a major Google algorithm update.

Again, I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, but following them may help you uncover “white hat” techniques that can increase your rankings. Not everything they do is bad… many of them use legitimate tactics as well.

Lesson #26: Short URLs rank better than long ones

My URLs used to be the title of my blog post.

For example, with this post I would have used this URL in the past…

Neilpatel.com/blog/30-lessons-after-30-million-seo-visitors/

Eventually I switched to short URLs.

Google just prefers them. And I’ve seen it firsthand. That’s why I use short ones now.

URLs at position #1 are on average 9.2 characters shorter than URLs that rank in position #10. So, keep them short.

Lesson #27: The power’s in the list

If you want your content to rank high on Google, you need more people to see it.

Whether it is from social shares, or from push notifications or email blasts… the more people that see your content, the more engagement it will get, and the more people that will link to it.

I used to do a ton of manual outreach every time I published a new blog post and I would email people asking them to link to me.

And it works, it’s just time consuming and a pain.

These days, I have a better strategy… send out an email blast every time I publish a new post.

I can now get anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 clicks per email I send out.

Now of course you won’t get that from day one as it took me years to build up my email list.

But you can start today by collecting emails. You can easily do that through Hello Bar.

And as your list grows, so will the clicks to your blog and the number of links you get, which in turn will increase your rankings.

Lesson #28: Don’t let your foot off the peddle

This was one of the hardest lessons I learned.

It’s exhausting to continually blog and do your own SEO. Sometimes you just want a break.

With my old blog, Quick Sprout, I used to publish 12 blog posts a month and I did that consistently for 3 years.

One day I decided that I wanted to stop for a month. So, I took a 30-day break.

Guess what happened to my traffic?

It tanked by 32%.

So, then I started blogging again. And guessed what happened to my traffic after I started blogging?

It didn’t come right back.

It took me 3 months to get back to where I was.

When things are working for you, don’t slow down. Keep pushing harder, even if you are exhausted. Because the moment you stop, you’ll drop, and it is a lot of work to get back to where you were.

Lesson #29: The best SEO advice comes from conferences

The best SEO advice I have ever learned over the years has come from conferences.

And no, I don’t mean by sitting in on the sessions, although you can learn from those too.

The best SEO secrets and advice I learned came from networking. When you go to these conferences, hundreds if not thousands of other SEOs are there. And when you go to the bar after hours and mingle with people, you’ll quickly pick stuff up.

You’ll be shocked at what people tell you. It’s how I learned a lot of the good tactics that I still use today.

Lesson #30: Never stop learning

This one may sound obvious but when things are going well, people get complacent.

Google makes on average 3,234 updates per year and that count has been increasing over time.

Just think about that for a bit… that’s roughly 9 algorithm updates per day.

Because they are changing so quickly, you won’t survive if you don’t stay up to date.

Yes, the ideal strategy is to do what’s best for your users or visitors as in the long run, Google wants to promote those sites, but it doesn’t mean that you can ignore the changes happening in the industry.

Read all of the SEO blogs out there, attend conferences as I mentioned above… experiment on test sites… push yourself to be better.

That drive of always improving and always wanting to learn more has helped me tremendously. It’s one of the reasons for my growth in rankings over the years.

Conclusion

There are a lot of lessons that you will learn as your rankings grow and as you spend more time on SEO.

But hopefully, you don’t have to waste time and go through the same mistakes I made. You don’t want to learn these lessons the hard way.

That’s why I decided to share them. I want to save you the time and help you achieve your traffic goals faster.

Which SEO lessons have you learned?

The post 30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/seo-visitors/ via https://neilpatel.com

The original post, 30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors, has been shared from https://imtrainingparadise.wordpress.com/2020/05/19/30-lessons-after-30-million-seo-visitors/ via https://imtrainingparadise.wordpress.com

[marketingcomcaio]

30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors

As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve driven 30 million visitors to my website from SEO.

Technically it’s more, but who’s counting.

What’s funny, though, is I barely look at my traffic, even as Google continually rolls out algorithm updates.

I know that sounds contradictory because if you are an SEO, why wouldn’t you obsess about traffic, right?

Well, it’s because I’ve learned some hard lessons over the year… mainly because I’ve made a lot of mistakes.

So today, I wanted to share them with you so that you can learn from my mistakes… so here goes:

Lesson #1: Don’t obsess over rankings, obsess over conversions

I used to check my rankings every single day. Literally.

On top of that, I would log into Google Analytics 4 to 5 times a day and continually check my traffic.

That’s all I cared about back in the day… boosting my organic traffic.

But here is the thing: As my rankings and traffic went up over the years, my revenue didn’t go up proportionally.

For example, during one quarter in 2017, my SEO traffic went up 39.52%, but my revenue from SEO went up only 4.29%.

I quickly learned that traffic isn’t everything. If you can’t convert the traffic into revenue it doesn’t matter.

That taught me that you need to focus on the right keywords that drive conversions and continually optimize your site for conversions.

An easy first step for you to take is to install Crazy Egg and run a heatmap to see where people click so you adjust your design and copy to get more sales.

Lesson #2: The easiest way to grow your SEO traffic is international expansion

You already know that I get a lot of SEO traffic, but do you know what country drives most of my traffic?

If you guessed United States, you are wrong.

Brazil is my most popular region, followed by India.

International SEO is the easiest way to expand and grow your traffic. Here are a few posts that you should read before you expand your SEO globally:

How to create a global SEO strategy

Fundamentals of international SEO

How to correctly setup your site for international SEO

How to profitably expand your SEO globally

Lesson #3: Keywords are very, very, very, very important

When I used to write my content, I didn’t obsess about the keywords when I should have.

My team actually proved me wrong on this.

I used to focus on writing content for humans and didn’t worry about search engines. My team, on the other hand, obsesses about keywords.

Just look at the growth of our traffic in Brazil because of our obsession with the right keywords.

One simple thing I do before writing that has really helped is I head over to Ubersuggest and type in a few of the keywords that I want to go after.

Once it loads, you’ll see a report like the one above. I want you to then click on “Keyword Ideas” in the left-hand navigation.

You’ll see a report that contains a list of keywords that you could potentially be targeting.

Make sure you click on the “Related” tab, as well as “Questions” and “Comparisons” … scroll through the list. You’ll see hundreds of keywords. Pick all of the ones that are relevant and ideally have a high cost per click (CPC). These are the keywords that’ll not only drive traffic but revenue as well.

Whenever I write a blog post, I go through this step. Every single time.

Lesson #4: AMP pages can drive more SEO traffic

AMP pages load faster on mobile devices than non-AMP pages.

If you aren’t familiar with the AMP framework, read this.

What most people won’t tell you about AMP pages is that:

In regions like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, countries with decent Internet infrastructure, you won’t see much of an increase in traffic.

In regions with poor Internet infrastructure, like Brazil, you’ll see a 10 to 15% lift in mobile SEO traffic by having AMP pages.

AMP pages don’t convert visitors into customers as well as normal responsive web design. So, you’ll have to work on testing your AMP pages so you can boost your conversion rates.

Lesson #5: SEO will never convert as well as paid ads

When I started off with SEO, I would run projections on how much the traffic would make me.

But the numbers were always off, even if I was able to get the rankings.

Here’s the main reason: If you are bidding on terms like auto insurance through ads, you can drive people to a landing page that looks like this:

But if you want to rank organically, you’ll have to do it through content. So, your page that ranks well will look more like this and convert less…

It doesn’t mean SEO is bad. In reality, it’s much cheaper in the long run than paid ads and will produce a better ROI. But don’t just assume that if you get 100 visitors from paid ads and 3 purchases that you’ll have the same conversion rate with your SEO traffic.

Chances are it will be significantly lower by maybe 2 or 3x, but because SEO is cheaper, it will be much more profitable.

Lesson #6: Remarketing is one of the best ways to generate an ROI from SEO

If you get a ton of traffic from SEO, there is a simple strategy you can implement to boost your conversions.

Remarket everyone on Facebook, Google, and YouTube.

That way people come to your site, read your content, and build trust with you and your brand.

Then you remarket them throughout the web with ads that prompt your products or services and send them to a landing page that will drive sales.

I’ve been doing this for years, just look at my old remarketing ad…

For the regions I use remarketing in, it is responsible for 46% of my leads.

Lesson #7: Don’t forget to update your old content

I publish one new blog post a week. I’m working on increasing this as I get more time, but for now, it is one a week.

Can you guess how many blog posts I update on a daily basis? Technically it is 0 (me at least), but my team focuses on updating at least 3 old blog posts per day. That’s roughly 90 a month.

Once you have a few hundred pages, make sure you focus on updating your old content or else your traffic will quickly drop.

You can use this content decay tool to see which posts you should update first.

This will help you continually grow your SEO traffic instead of hitting plateaus or seeing your traffic take massive drops.

Lesson #8: Don’t forget to optimize your title tags

One of the easiest ways to grow your rankings is to optimize your title tags.

If you can write persuasive copy and get more clicks, you’ll quickly move up on Google.

In Brazil, we spend more time doing this than we do in the United States.

We get a similar amount of impressions in Brazil, but we have more people focusing on improving our title tags and testing. Hence, we get 95% more SEO traffic in Brazil.

If you want tips on boosting your clicks, check out this article.

Another simple hack is to use the “Content Ideas” report in Ubersuggest.

On the right side of that report, you can see social share counts from Facebook and Pinterest. And on the left side, you see titles of articles.

Typically, if people like a title they share it more. So, look for titles that have a lot of shares as it will give you ideas on what you can use on your website to get more clicks and boost your rankings.

Lesson #9: Don’t put dates in your URL

I used to put dates in my URLs like:

Neilpatel.com/2017/12/title-of-post/

This causes search engines to assume that your content is related to a specific date. And after that date gets old, search engines assume your content is irrelevant and outdated.

The moment I removed the date from my URLs, I grew my SEO traffic by 58% in 30 days.

If you have dates in your URL, make sure you 301 redirect your old URLs to your new ones once you make that change, or else your rankings will drop.

Lesson #10: Don’t be afraid to use popups

Don’t you hate popups? Well, who doesn’t?

But people use them because they work.

The majority of your pages that will rank are blog-related content. And blog posts tend to drive fewer direct conversions because people are on your site to read the content.

In order to maximize your conversions from SEO, you should consider using exit popups so you can convert more of those visitors into customers as they leave.

When you leave this site in most cases, you’ll see a popup that looks like:

And it drives you to this quiz, which allows me to convert SEO visitors into customers.

You can easily copy me by using Hello Bar. It works for all industries including B2B and ecommerce and even lead generation sites.

Lesson #11: Brand queries affect rankings

Everyone talks about how you need links to boost rankings.

But very few people talk about brand queries.

As Google’s ex-CEO and ex-head of web spam both emphasized how brands are important.

One of the big reasons for my growth in SEO traffic is the growth in my brand. I’ve seen a direct correlation in which the more people who find me from my name, the more SEO traffic I get.

Just look at my brand growth over time:

I’ve received over 1.9 million visitors over the last 16 months from people typing in variations of my name in Google.

Lesson #12: Don’t waste your money on paid links

I’ve been doing SEO since I was 16 years old. That’s a long time…

When I started off as a kid, I dabbled in paid links and I used to dominate Google for terms like online casino, online poker, web hosting, auto insurance, and even credit cards.

And I was making a killing off of affiliate income from these sites.

But it was all short lived.

Why?

Because I bought links. And eventually Google penalized all of those sites.

If I never purchased links, those sites would have taken longer to rank, but they would have been around today, and I would have generated more income overall.

Don’t buy links, it’s bad and shortsighted.

Lesson #13: Guest post to build a brand, not to build links

I already covered the importance of branding above.

A great way to build your brand and indirectly boost your SEO traffic is through guest posting.

But don’t use guest posting to build links.

Most sites that offer guest posts, nofollow them (which they should), and Google is smart enough to know what a guest post is, hence they ignore guest post links from sites like Forbes.

It’s pretty easy to spot a guest post for both a human and algorithm…

But if you are using it to build a brand, great. Focus on the content quality and not links.

Lesson #14: Don’t forget to interlink

Do you know what some of my highest ranked pages are?

The ones that are interlinked.

It takes anywhere from 6 months to a year for many of the interlinks to kick in, but it is still effective none-the-less.

Every time I wrote content, I used to make sure I link out to my older pieces of content when it made sense. But I made a big mistake… I wasn’t going into my older pieces of content and then adding links to my newer pieces of content.

That one change was game-changing for me. It took time to see the results but it worked exceptionally well.

It’s how I rank high for terms like “email marketing”.

Lesson #15: Google isn’t the only game in town

Although Google is the most popular search engine, it isn’t the only one you need to focus on.

Did you know that YouTube is the second most popular search engine?

Even Bing gets a lot of traffic.

If you want to rank high on Bing, follow this.

Or if you prefer video, watch this:

As for YouTube, this guide will teach you YouTube SEO. It works really well, just look at my YouTube SEO traffic:

Over the last 28 days, I received 429,501 video views through YouTube SEO.

Lesson #16: Speed is everything

The faster your server and the more optimized your site, the more traffic you’ll get.

Years ago, my friend Otis added more servers to his site GoodReads.

Within a month, his SEO traffic went up over 20%.

Speed is part of Google’s algorithm, so optimize it for both web and mobile.

A quick way to see your site’s speed is to enter your URL here.

You’ll see a report that breaks down your mobile and desktop load times as well as what you can do to improve them.

Lesson #17: Quality over quantity

SEO used to be a game of quantity over quality.

That isn’t the case anymore. With over a billion blogs, Google has its fair share of sites to choose from.

Just look at About.com. Eventually they renamed it Dotdash and changed their strategy.

They took all of their About.com content and moved it over to 6 vertical based sites and deleted 900,000 pages of junk content.

This grew their traffic and revenue by a whopping 140%.

Focus on writing high-quality content. It’s why I blog less and try to make my content amazing.

Lesson #18: Tools are better than content marketing

I used to focus all of my energy on content marketing because it drove a lot of links and SEO traffic.

But over time, I realized that creating free tools builds more natural links than anything else I have ever tested.

Just look at Ubersuggest. I spent years creating it and look at how many links it has generated…

30,603 backlinks! That’s a lot of links.

If you don’t have the resources to build a custom tool like me, you can always start with buying a white label tool from Code Canyon for $10 or $20. They literally have tools for almost all industries.

Lesson #19: Don’t rely only on SEO

When I first got started in SEO, all I could think about was SEO.

To me, it was the best marketing channel out there because it allowed me to compete with large companies.

Even to this day, I still love SEO more than any other channel.

But it doesn’t stop me from leveraging other marketing channels.

See, years ago you could build a business off of one marketing channel.

Yelp was built through SEO. Dropbox through social media referrals. Facebook through email invites…

Those days don’t exist anymore. You can’t just build your traffic from one channel.

Although you should do SEO, you should also try paid ads, social media marketing, email marketing, push notifications, and anything else that comes out.

Diversify your traffic sources and don’t just rely solely on SEO.

Lesson #20: People love linking to data

Spending money and time to gather your own unique data is an easy way to build links.

Check out my posts on content marketing trends and social media trends.

I’ve added tons of unique data, stats, and charts to each of those posts.

The end result? Extra backlinks. 🙂

The content marketing trends post received 447 backlinks.

If you don’t have the time to gather custom data you can always find someone on Upwork to help you out.

Lesson #21: Don’t forget about Infographics

One of my favorite SEO strategies that still works well today is infographics.

I have tons of them on the NeilPatel.com blog.

I didn’t start off with infographics here… I used to do them on my old blog Quick Sprout and KISSmetrics.

Here’s an interesting stat for you when I used to crank out infographics on KISSmetrics.

Within a two-year period, from 2010 to 2012, 47 infographics generated 2,512,596 visitors and 41,142 backlinks from 3,741 unique domains. They also generated 41,359 tweets and 20,859 likes.

If you don’t have money to hire a designer, you can use Infogram or Canva to create one on your own.

Lesson #22: Google doesn’t penalize for duplicate content

You don’t want to post tons of duplicate content on your site as it’s not the best user experience, but keep in mind that Google doesn’t penalize you for duplication.

They may not just rank the duplicate content as well.

So, if you spend all of this time producing amazing, unique content, why not publish it FIRST on your own website.

Then after a few hours or days if you want to be safe, take that exact content and publish it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and anywhere else that will accept your content.

Literally, take all of the words and paste them onto those social channels.

It will get you extra awareness and branding. Plus, the content should already be indexed on your site, so Google knows it came from your first… and I doubt you care if the duplicated version on LinkedIn ranks. That’s still great branding.

In other words, don’t be afraid to repurpose your content even if it causes duplication.

Just look at this post, for example. I’m also repurposing it into a 4-part podcast series.

Lesson #23: Don’t recreate the wheel

I used to spend hours a week doing keyword research trying to figure out what new terms to rank for.

Eventually, I figured out an easier and better way to find new content topics and keywords to go after.

Go to Ubersuggest, type in your competitor’s domain name and hit search.

In the left-hand navigation click on Top Pages.

You’ll see a report that shows you all of the popular pages on your competition’s website. This will give you ideas for the type of pages you should create on your website.

Then I want you to click “View All” under Est. Visits (estimated visits). This will show you all of the keywords that drive traffic to that page.

You now have a list of topics and keywords for each topic to go after.

Lesson #24: Don’t pick a generic domain name

Remember how in Lesson 11 I talked about brand queries and how they helped rankings?

After I learned that, I decided to go buy exact match domain names where the domain name was the keyword.

That way I would get lots of brand queries without trying.

Well, there’s an issue… even if you rank high, what you’ll find is you will have a low click-through rate in most cases.

If you have a low click-through rate, it tells Google your brand isn’t strong and people don’t prefer it, which can hurt your ranking.

So instead of focusing on exact match domains, unless you have millions to spend on branding like Hotels.com, focus on building a memorable brand.

Pick something that is unique, easy to spell, and easy to remember.

Lesson #25: Learn from blackhat SEOs, but don’t go over to the dark side

Blackhat SEOs come up with some interesting data and experiments.

Many of them don’t work for long, but they are interesting none-the-less.

Although I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, I do recommend following them.

The easiest way you can learn from them is by reading Blackhat World.

People there share some interesting insights, especially every time there is a major Google algorithm update.

Again, I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, but following them may help you uncover “white hat” techniques that can increase your rankings. Not everything they do is bad… many of them use legitimate tactics as well.

Lesson #26: Short URLs rank better than long ones

My URLs used to be the title of my blog post.

For example, with this post I would have used this URL in the past…

Neilpatel.com/blog/30-lessons-after-30-million-seo-visitors/

Eventually I switched to short URLs.

Google just prefers them. And I’ve seen it firsthand. That’s why I use short ones now.

URLs at position #1 are on average 9.2 characters shorter than URLs that rank in position #10. So, keep them short.

Lesson #27: The power’s in the list

If you want your content to rank high on Google, you need more people to see it.

Whether it is from social shares, or from push notifications or email blasts… the more people that see your content, the more engagement it will get, and the more people that will link to it.

I used to do a ton of manual outreach every time I published a new blog post and I would email people asking them to link to me.

And it works, it’s just time consuming and a pain.

These days, I have a better strategy… send out an email blast every time I publish a new post.

I can now get anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 clicks per email I send out.

Now of course you won’t get that from day one as it took me years to build up my email list.

But you can start today by collecting emails. You can easily do that through Hello Bar.

And as your list grows, so will the clicks to your blog and the number of links you get, which in turn will increase your rankings.

Lesson #28: Don’t let your foot off the peddle

This was one of the hardest lessons I learned.

It’s exhausting to continually blog and do your own SEO. Sometimes you just want a break.

With my old blog, Quick Sprout, I used to publish 12 blog posts a month and I did that consistently for 3 years.

One day I decided that I wanted to stop for a month. So, I took a 30-day break.

Guess what happened to my traffic?

It tanked by 32%.

So, then I started blogging again. And guessed what happened to my traffic after I started blogging?

It didn’t come right back.

It took me 3 months to get back to where I was.

When things are working for you, don’t slow down. Keep pushing harder, even if you are exhausted. Because the moment you stop, you’ll drop, and it is a lot of work to get back to where you were.

Lesson #29: The best SEO advice comes from conferences

The best SEO advice I have ever learned over the years has come from conferences.

And no, I don’t mean by sitting in on the sessions, although you can learn from those too.

The best SEO secrets and advice I learned came from networking. When you go to these conferences, hundreds if not thousands of other SEOs are there. And when you go to the bar after hours and mingle with people, you’ll quickly pick stuff up.

You’ll be shocked at what people tell you. It’s how I learned a lot of the good tactics that I still use today.

Lesson #30: Never stop learning

This one may sound obvious but when things are going well, people get complacent.

Google makes on average 3,234 updates per year and that count has been increasing over time.

Just think about that for a bit… that’s roughly 9 algorithm updates per day.

Because they are changing so quickly, you won’t survive if you don’t stay up to date.

Yes, the ideal strategy is to do what’s best for your users or visitors as in the long run, Google wants to promote those sites, but it doesn’t mean that you can ignore the changes happening in the industry.

Read all of the SEO blogs out there, attend conferences as I mentioned above… experiment on test sites… push yourself to be better.

That drive of always improving and always wanting to learn more has helped me tremendously. It’s one of the reasons for my growth in rankings over the years.

Conclusion

There are a lot of lessons that you will learn as your rankings grow and as you spend more time on SEO.

But hopefully, you don’t have to waste time and go through the same mistakes I made. You don’t want to learn these lessons the hard way.

That’s why I decided to share them. I want to save you the time and help you achieve your traffic goals faster.

Which SEO lessons have you learned?

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