#lesson learnt always check your volume

[biscuitsandwaterx13x]

I forgot I had music playing when I clicked on "heavymedic dance but it's edited by me" so having Unworthy of Your Love absolutely BLASTED away by a bass boosted "MOSCOW MOSCOW" certainly took me off guard

[yamagucji]

Embarrassing moments

warnings. just for shits n giggles, 14+ readers preferably, mentions of vomit, poop, choking, etc.

HINATA was extremely constipated and needed to use the bathroom quick. but there’s a long line to the mens bathroom (what’s the occasion anyway??) and he’s standing all the way at the back. poor hinata felt a fart coming so he just couldn’t... hold it in. mans SHARTED. shitted and farted at the same time. it stunk so bad that the guys in front of him said, “damn, you need the toilet more than me,” and let him cut in line.

USHIJIMA and tendou stopped to pet this dog during their walk. tendou’s conversing with the owner while toshi’s petting the dog. dog likes it, it’s all good. until... it got bored and decided that toshi’s butt smelled good. dog just wouldn’t stop sniffing his ass. “please, stop smelling me,” toshi says with desperation, which now catches the others’ attention. the owner has to pry their dog away from toshi’s ass cheeks, please. the awkward tension kinda dies down until tendou utters, “so, what’s your secret? what product are you using?”

YAMAGUCHI drank water in the middle of silent class reading. this boy started choking— and i mean choking on his water. you can hear his muffled coughs in the distance and when you turn around to look at him, his face is all red and his cheeks are puffy. none of his classmates say anything but you can practically feel second-hand embarrassment oozing around. the assistant teacher even has the audacity to say, “drink some water.”

KENMA’s calling this one his last try. he sticks his remaining coins into the slot and tries to get the brand new nintendo box thats in the machine. mf has been going at this for over twenty minutes now. his pouch is empty and there’s a crowd of kids waiting for him. no miracle happens in his last try (shit got stuck!!) so he has to move away only to watch in horror— as the kid after him manages to get it. you’re gonna have to hold kenma down before he hunts that kid with every bit of his soul.

DAICHI had a fat one coming in, that’s for sure. thought it was a free real estate just because everyone else in the camp seemed asleep. so he let that monster fart come out (even partly stuck out his thigh for better airway). whole team was awake in a matter of seconds. nishinoya’s jumped off his sleeping bag and asking everyone if they heard that “loud bang.” tanaka’s over here sniffing around because he knows that no one has got some kind of bomb that stinks.

SAKUSA’s not gonna admit to this one. but one time he opened a bathroom stall (it was unlocked) only to find that it was occupied. there are no words to accurately describe just how horried the sight was. sitting on the toilet was a man taking a shit, with his dick on full boner mode, staring back at sakusa. they only made eye contact for just 2 seconds but sakusa’s seen enough. he’s heard enough too, when said stranger asked him, “you wanna join me?”

ASAHI projectile vomited at the theaters. you should’ve known it was a bad idea to take him out to dinner before going to watch a scary movie. man had no courage to tell you he had an upset stomach nor tell you he’s not a fan of horror. it’s twenty minutes into the movie and he’s poking your arm— but you don’t notice because you’re too engrossed. another twenty minutes, and a jumpscare comes on. man beside you vomits like there’s no tomorrow. ya’ll spend the rest of the movie secretly trying to clean his throw-up.

TENDOU was watching anime in his dorm peacefully. until... the whole shiratorizawa team opened the door just in time for the show to switch up to an inappropriate scene. out of all the times they could’ve walked in, they really had to come when 2d clown man was moaning and fighting a kid? tendou scrambled to close his laptop but now he’s just staring back at his teammates; silent, except for the fact that his show is still playing and you can still hearing moaning in the background.

TSUKISHIMA turned his house upside down and still couldn’t find his glasses, nor his extra pair. he was about to leave bare eyed until his mom caught him and forced him to wear his sports glasses. yeah, the one with the whole strap and everything. mans looked like a fool coming to school with it on. people who didn’t know it was his sports glasses mistook it for swimming goggles. he’s so utterly humiliated now, he can’t even bite back when hinata or kageyama says something.

GOSHIKI... i don’t even know what to tell you. who let this kid go further into the lake by himself? it’s all fun and games for everyone until you hear an ear-defeaning shriek by your one and only goshiki. he’s yelling out, “help me! please! help!!” the lifeguards start kicking in and everyone’s trying to make way. is he drowning? is there something there? no for god’s sake. you find out he just made it 5 ft deep and happened to swim over a bunch of seaweed. never take him swimming again.

ATSUMU decided to check himself out using someone’s car window. he’s fixing his hair, picking at his teeth, and even checking to see if he has any boogers. all of a sudden the window rolls down and there’s a senior citizen staring back at him. “boy do you think my car is your mirror?” the man says in a gruffy voice. atsumu’s knees nearly buckle from how scary this man is and how embarrassed he is of all the four minutes he probably spent with this stranger.

SACHIRO’s job as a vet sometimes makes him do really questionable shit (from an outsider perspective). once he had to ejaculate someone’s dog in front of their owner. uh huh... jack them off, for the sole purpose of examining the dog’s semen. he’s never felt such a wave of regret wash through his body during that whole procedure. it didn’t help when the owner was looking at him mortified, nor the fact that it took such a long time.

OIKAWA does this thing were he shows up unexpectedly behind iwaizumi and slaps his ass. everytime he does it iwa always hits him back (but not the ass). today he learnt his lesson when he mistook a stranger for iwa and slapped the guys ass from the moon and back. when i tell you just how quick all the blood drained from oikawa’s body when the man turned around— you can hear a bag of chips fall at the other end of the aisle and it’s the iwa, who had to witness that whole ass-slap event.

ARAN is gonna knock the shit of the miya twins one day, he swears to god. they sent him a mysterious video during his morning walk, where he stopped at a busy street. it starts off quiet, so he goes to turn the volume up full blast. damn video suddenly started blaring ‘lick my pussy and my-’ please... he’s shaking. passerby’s are looking at him with distaste. aran’s now flushed from embarrassment and running towards the miya house. you can guess what happens next.

BOKUTO walked into the wrong house. spent a whole ten minutes rummaging around the kitchen because his friend said to “make yourself comfortable, i’ll be on my way.” little did this man know that there’s a whole family upstairs waiting for the cops to arrive because they think it’s a robbery. poor bokuto, dragged out of the house by some cops but had no idea what was going on. man was literally just vibing— thinking he was in his friends house.

OSAMU swore this size pants still fit him (hint: it doesn’t). he’s walking through the snack section of the store, lightly limping because damn his dick can’t breath. his truth is tested when he goes to pick something off the lowest shelf and his pants literally go, ‘let er rip.’ fabric tore, and what’s worse is that he was wearing onigiri undies. osamu goes to check if there’s anyone else in the aisle and there is— a group of underclassmen girls from his high school.

KUROO tried to make his chemistry presentation more interesting by putting in jokes. he thought they were funny; kenma even huffed a breath. kuroo’s at his third joke by now and literally no one has laughed. not a single one. except for kuroo himself, who’s awkwardly laughing in a dead-silent room. man was embarrassed. other people are getting second-hand embarrassment by the way they avoided eye contact with him. he vented to kenma later only for kenma to say, “it wasn’t funny. it was just stupid.” poor kuroo.

SUNA accidentally connected his bluetooth to the bus. you know, the one that drives all of inarizaki to their games. wanna guess what the fuck he might’ve been listening to? it’s porn. he’s watching porn in broad daylight. suna doesn’t realize what the issue is until he goes to turn up the volume and notices that the sound is off. he take his airpods off and that’s when he hears pure moaning sounds blaring inside the bus. everyone’s laughing— except for kita and their coach who’s still outside. mf calls himself lucky for that.

[littlemisssquiggles]

I love your blog, and i love how you go in depth with your content. Can i ask: Why do you love RoseGarden so much? What made you start shipping Ruby and Oscar so hard (From a fellow Rosegarden shipper to another)?

Hiya Sparrow. Thank you bunches for enjoying my RWBY content, fam. Means a lot. Why do I love Rosegarden so much? Whelp, to ask myself why I’m a bonafide Rosegardener is like asking me why I’m proud Pinehead whose favourite RWBY character is the precious freckled farm boy turned little barn prince XD

I guess I can start off my answer by explaining how I started shipping Rosegarden in the first place.

Unlike other gardeners who were shipping our two smaller, more honest souls from as early as Oscar’s introduction back in RWBYV4, this squiggle meister didn’t until Oscar met Ruby in V5. I didn’t even know about Rosegarden until that season. The way how Oscar looked at Ruby from the moment he first laid eyes on her—his expression of sheer awe of her; his little ‘whoa’ as he stepped forward and said the infamous ‘You have silver eyes’ line— that was the hook that got me intrigued by this ship. That’s how the CRWBY got me. 

Up until that point in the series, I always felt as if Ruby was omitted having any potential romantic relationships between herself and other characters. I’d like to think that part of the rationale for that was due to our little red rose being the youngest of the main cast and at Beacon as well. While we’ve seen the other RWBY girls catch the attention of probable suitors—y’know for Weiss, it was Jaune, Neptune and to some extent Henry Marigold. With Blake, it was her previous messy relationship with Adam followed up by Sun and later Ilia. Not to mention her and Yang being paired together.

There hasn’t been anyone shown to look at Ruby in such an alluring way. No prospective gentlemen or lady callers ever came a knocking at Ruby’s door. At least not until Oscar entered the picture.

From my perspective, Oscar is the first character I’ve seen give Ruby that look—the look that clearly tells the audience that “Yup, this character definitely has a crush on our little red rose and will probably fall head over heels in love with her at some point down the line when the timing is appropriate”.

That’s what made me like Rosegarden. I like Oscar a lot as character and seeing him take an interest in Ruby was a refreshing sight for me, not to mention adorable. Oscar’s little mini-stroke after Ruby first smiled and giggled at him in V5 will always bring a smile to my face whenever I see it. It’s such a cute wholesome moment. So yeah, like I said, that’s what made me first intrigued by the Rosegarden pair. However I didn’t completely fall in love with the ship until I observed all the interactions between these two kids that followed afterwards.

Watching Ruby look out for Oscar during the events of V5 made me appreciate her a lot more as a character. From Ruby’s time with Oscar, it’s hard to believe that this was the same introverted young girl who once told her big sister Yang that she didn’t really need to make friends. 

Ruby has come such a long way since her Beacon Days so it was really nice watching her doing everything she could to chum up to Oscar and ensure that he was comfortable being with the group. I’d like to believe that part of the reason Ruby took an interest in Oscar is because she saw a lot of herself in him; y’know what I’m saying? Ruby more than anyone within the hero team understands what Oscar is currently going through—being the youngest member amongst at team of people working together to protect humanity and save the world from the forces of evil. On top of that, Ruby knows what it’s like having to work harder to prove yourself as a worthy asset to the team rather than a liability.

Ruby relates to Oscar so much since she’s been in his shoes before. Heck she’s still in those shoes. That’s another reason why I like these two. They have quite a few things in common. Not only are Ruby and Oscar the babies of the hero team  but they both share in the burden of responsibility that’s been thrusted into their laps. 

Both share the badge of leadership—Oscar for being the successor to Ozpin who was originally the voice of wisdom and Ruby as the unquantifiable spark that keeps everyone moving forward, even when she might not have all the answers or know better when it comes to her own actions.

But beyond even this, Ruby and Oscar are the only two people within their team who share in the God of Light’s power. As a descendant of Ozma, Oscar has inherited his magic—the Gods’ gift to humanity—and has the potential to unlock it and make use of it when the PLOT decides he’s ready to become a Wizard of Light. 

Not to mention that the God of Lights’ power has been what has kept the Ozma Reincarnation Cycle going for so many centuries and that power is what courses through Oscar’s veins. Same for Ruby. Ruby is a Silver Eyed Warrior and while the true origins of these warriors are still an enigma, what we do know is that the Silver Eyes originated from the God of Light just like the Ozma Cycle. 

Rosegarden is a bond that has the potential to be a really strong friendship built on trust just as much as it has the golden chance to become a romance and loving relationship that feels like it was a match made by Gods themselves. A part of me would like to believe that romance will be in the cards for Ruby and Oscar. There are one or two noteworthy signs that hints that this is a strongpossibility to me.

First there is the connection to the Little Prince. You’ve probably noticed meaddress Oscar as the little barn prince a lot. That’s because many Pineheads believe that part of Oscar’s character and story os being influenced by that fairy-tale. And in the Little Prince story, his one true love was a single red rose that the prince met firstly on his planet. 

Part of the Prince’s journey was him learning to realize that he is responsible for his rose because according to the lesson that the Prince learnt from the Fox,it doesn’t matter if the Prince discovered many other beautiful roses or flowers in his travels, the Rose back on his home world was his one true rose and the one that was most unique to him in all the universe.

It is for this reason why most of us gardeners are banking on Oscar ultimately falling in love with Ruby.She will be his one true rose. The girl Oscar loves and sees himself as responsible for by providing her his support.

Despite only knowing each other shortly, Ruby and Oscar have been shown to care about each other a lot these past few seasons as evidenced by the way they support one another.

Then there is the connection to Lost Fable. A couple of RWBY theorists; myself included, are under the impression that Oscar and Ruby will parallel Ozma and Salem since the two share elements to their character that reflect the Fairy-tale pair. If you would to read my more in depth thoughts on that, check out this musing post of mine. Rosegarden do share elements to them in common with Fairy-tale. The only difference is the prospect of Rosegarden having a happier ending than Fairy-tale. 

 And yeah, that’s pretty much why I love Rosegarden. I know Ruby and Oscar have other ships but for me, their pair is the most interesting one. These two complement each other a lot and although the series hasn’t shown them talking one on one since V5, each time these two do interact it feels so genuine and…right.Overall I’m excited to see what becomes of this pair’s relationship over the course of the show. 

Some folks believe that Rosegarden may be a slow burn ship and I’d like agree with them. If romance is indeed in the cards for these two then the last thing I’d want is for the PLOT to rush it (or introduce it sloppily as I’ve noticed it do with certain other ships). I do, however, still have a feeling that this volume may light the match to Ruby and Oscar ultimately falling for one another by having them learn to trust each other first. 

Afterall, love and trusting in love seems to be the theme for V7. And in regards to our budding rosebuds, learning to trust in each other completely will open the door to them learning to love each other. First as friends and then as something so much more. 

 ~LittleMissSquiggles(2019)

[helloalycia]

your secret // kara danvers

summary: It wasn't difficult to put two and two together - Kara was an alien and you knew that. Hiding the fact that you knew she was hiding this was much more difficult however...

warning/s: none.

masterlist

          Kara Danvers was strange ever since I first met her. University was full of weirdos (as I was kindly warned by my parents), but Kara was more 'strange' than 'weird'. Don't get me wrong, she was an amazing person, but certain things about her were... odd.

         We were roommates at National City University and I remember meeting her and thinking "wow, this girl is always happy". As time went on, we became closer and closer and suddenly, we were best friends. But it was in all of that time, and more, that I noticed the little things about her that were different.

         She could lift things heavier than herself, which certainly caught my attention. Then there was the fact that she would never wear oven gloves when taking things out of the oven. Or the fact that I sometimes witnessed her heating up her hot drink with lasers from her eyes.

         Honestly, at first, it was shocking, mind-blowing, unbelievable and– well, you get the hint. I was very confused (to say the least), but I eventually got over that confusion and kinda got used to it. I never asked her about it because she was obviously trying to keep this power a secret. But I did have so many questions. Mostly along the lines of "is she even human?"

         Despite the many pressing questions I had, I never pressured her or even made it noticeable that I knew of her powers. She was keeping them a secret for a reason and she would tell me when she was ready. If anything, it made her kind of adorable. She was this bundle of sunshine that was my best friend who I may or may not have had feelings for and she had powers that were beyond imaginable. Hm.

         That brought me to now. Three years later and we were roommates, again. Except this time, we lived in an apartment in National City. She was a journalist at CatCo Media and I was an English teacher at our local high school. We kept each other sane in this grown up world and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

         "Y/N, I'm leaving now!" I heard Kara call from the front door, and I immediately dropped my pencil and called back.

         "Wait! Lemme see you!"

         I jumped off my bed and went to the living-area. Our apartment was an open space, so I could see her from here, hovering by the front door. She was wearing black skinny jeans, a blue jumper and a white leather jacket that made her look very attractive.

         "Do I look okay?" she asked, biting her lower lip and glancing down at her outfit. "I'm hoping this won't be my first and last Tinder date."

         I chuckled at her uneasiness and smiled reassuringly. "You look beautiful, Kara. I'm sure this Kevin guy will say the same."

         Kara smiled bashfully and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose – a nervous habit of hers.

         "Thanks, Y/N," she said, her blue eyes meeting mine. "I honestly don't know what I'd do without you."

         I glanced at the watch on my wrist before stepping forward and opening the door for her. "You'd be late. Now go on, Danvers. You don't wanna keep Kevin waiting!"

         Her melodious laughter echoed around me and I felt the butterflies in my stomach swirl a storm at the sound of it. She leaned in to give me a quick hug before waving goodbye and leaving me alone in our apartment. When she was gone, I released a heavy sigh.

         I was happy for her, I really was... but it didn't mean it didn't hurt me a little to know that she was going on a date with somebody else. She never was good with the whole dating thing. Even in university, she didn't really find anyone she connected with. That's why this was a big deal to her now and why I was showing my utmost support. But even so, I still wished I could suck it up and ask her out.

         Barely an hour had passed when I saw something completely unexpected. I was sat in the living-room, on my laptop, planning a lesson. The TV was on, the news playing in the background. The sound of a presenter narrating a flight crashing caught my attention as I recognised the flight number as the same number Alex (Kara's sister) was flying on.

         I fumbled around for the volume button on the remote before turning it up and watching the screen with wide eyes.

         "It seems that the plane is slowing down and... wait a minute. That's a person holding it!"

         The camera zoomed in on an individual directing the plane into the water. The crash didn't look like it had hurt anyone because it was slowed down. The same figure who seemed to be strong enough to carry it down emerged from the water and stepped onto the wing of the plane. Helicopters were flying above, directing spotlights on the anonymous girl. The news reporter was babbling on about a new superhero, meanwhile, my jaw had dropped.

         It was Kara.

         The picture wasn't clear and it was dark outside, so it was hard to make out her face, but I knew it was her. She was wearing the same outfit, I recognised her hair and she was the only person I knew with super strength!

         "Holy shit," I said, unable to believe my eyes. The whole world now knew that she existed. Maybe not who she was, but they knew she was there.

         I stayed up that evening, until Kara returned from her date. As I was pacing, I realised how amazing Kara was. She saved all of those people, including Alex, and risked her life in the process. But she did it and now everything was okay. Nobody got hurt. She truly was a hero. And I was so proud of her.

         I wondered if she would share with me who she really was when she came home. Maybe she knew that I knew? Would this be when she would finally reveal her secret?

         When I heard keys rattling in the door, I sat at the kitchen counter and pulled out my phone, pretending to be using it. Kara soon walked in and squeaked with surprise when she saw me up.

         I smiled and looked up, only to act confused when I saw her soaking wet from head to toe. Though, that confirmed my thoughts of her being the girl on our TV. She was the hero.

         "Erm... bad date?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. I secretly hoped she would finally tell me the truth.

         As she closed the door, I saw her smile awkwardly. "Yeah... the guy was an ass. So, I walked it home and it, uh, rained."

         I stifled the urge to laugh at her bad excuse. I figured she wasn't going to share the truth with me just yet, and I respected that, so I allowed her to come up with an excuse, despite how terrible it was.

         "Okay, well, I'll let you get cleaned up," I said, offering a small smile before heading to my room. It wasn't really private seeing as it was all open space, but it gave Kara time to think about everything.

         After she sorted everything out, I remembered the two of us watching the news and talking about this 'mysterious saviour'. Kara obviously tried her best to hide the fact that it was her, but she was just so darn excited and I couldn't help but let her ramble freely about how amazing this 'person' must have felt.

         She was bad at hiding things from me, but I let her have it because it was her secret to keep. Plus, I liked seeing her eyes light up with excitement as she recalled the events. She looked beautiful.

         Alex stopped by that evening, too, probably to check on Kara. From the looks of it, she wasn't too happy with Kara's actions. I said I'd give them some space to talk, so I never actually heard their conversation, but I could only presume it was good. I mean, why wouldn't it be?

         As time went on, Supergirl became the hero of National City. Everywhere I went, I saw the superhero that was my best friend, plastered on billboards, in magazines, on my television. She was saving people left, right and centre and I felt so proud of her. Though, she still hadn't told me the truth.

         Everything I learnt about the real her was through interviews with 'Supergirl'. I learnt she was Kryptonian and Superman's cousin when Kara interviewed, well, herself, and accidentally revealed that information. It did hurt to learn these amazing things about her through secondary sources. It made me question whether she trusted me just as much as I trusted her. Did she really think I didn't know? But I wouldn't let that bother me because something was holding her back and I had to respect that and wait until the time was right. If it ever was.

         A lot of things added up, though. She was adopted, which made sense because she was a literal alien. Whenever we were at university, she would get homesick and I would try to comfort her and make her feel better. That made sense now though. She didn't miss her home. She missed Krypton.

         I remember coming home from work one evening and finding her curled up on the couch, staring ahead at nothing. I left my coat and bag by the door and headed towards her, sitting on the couch. She was wrapped in her fluffy blanket, and barely acknowledged my presence.

         "Kara, you okay?" I asked gently, resting a hand on her lap.

         She glanced at me before moving forward and laying on my lap. A shaky sigh escaped her lips and I frowned at her discomfort. I moved her hair from her eyes and ran my hands through it soothingly. I felt her shoulders relax as I did so.

         "I miss home," was all she said.

         I knew she was talking about Krypton. About her family there. I wondered what happened. Why she came here. How old she was when she came. If she wasn't too young, then having some memories of what she once had must have been hurting her inside. And so it hurt me.

         But she didn't know I knew who she was. She didn't know, so I had to play dumb.

         "You can visit anytime, Kara," I feigned reassurance, only causing her to sigh quietly. She thought I didn't understand. I wished she knew I did.

         "It doesn't matter," she mumbled quietly.

         I frowned and looked down at her. I wished she would talk to me and not bottle everything up. I truly wished she would trust me enough to share this important part of her life with me. Not for me, but for her.

         I just wanted her to be okay.

         Surprisingly, we still remained as close as we were. She skirted the topic of discussing Supergirl and managed to avoid slipping the truth out to me. We would hang out, spend time together (which we kind of had to since we lived together), but not once did she tell me the truth about her.

         At this point, admittedly, I was growing self-conscious to our friendship. I was eighty percent sure that her close friend from work, Winn Schott, knew about her powers. There were times when I'd see the two privately discussing matters, acting secretive around me and blatantly hiding a secret which I could only presume was about her superhero status. James Olsen, another friend from her workplace, would sometimes be involved in their discussions, too. She began to spend a lot more time with the two, which made me feel a bit left out.

         Okay, a lot left out.

         I figured she trusted them more than me, but it was when she returned home late in the evening when I realised that maybe she didn't tell me because she wanted at least one person to be just Kara around.

         I was reading a book on the couch, settling in for the evening, when I heard the front door open. Presuming it was Kara, I called out to her, not looking up from my book.

         "There's some leftovers in the fridge if you're hungry."

         There was no response, so I looked up and saw the blonde hanging up her coat. It was unusual for her to not say anything; she was usually so outspoken and bubbly, so I tried to get her attention.

         "How was work?"

         She finally turned around, managing to give me a forced smile and a little thumbs up. I instantly noticed the sadness in her red eyes. She'd been crying.

         "Kara..." I dropped my book in a heartbeat and went to her, wanting to get a closer look and see if my eyes were betraying me. But no. Her eyes were glassy and the smile on her lips only showed sadness and regret.

         "I'm okay," she lied, her voice hoarse and her hand shaking slightly as she tried to motion for me to step back. "I'm–"

         "You're not okay," I breathed out, stepping forward.

         She tried to shake her head, but obviously her emotions got the best of her and she covered her mouth with a shaking hand. Tears escaped her eyes and I couldn't help but move forward and pull her into a hug. She finally let it out, no longer hiding how she felt, and my heart ached as she sobbed into my arms.

         "You're okay," I consoled her, rubbing circles on her back. "Everything is okay."

         I never did find out why she was crying that night. What could have possibly been so horrible that it caused the girl of steel to crack? To break down horribly? But it did make me realise that at that moment, she wasn't the girl of steel at all. Not Supergirl.

         She was Kara Danvers, my best friend, and she needed comforting.

***

         As time went on, Supergirl's shifts at saving the world happened to be more and more frequent. Kara was rarely around, and when she was, she was tired or had to come up with some lame, unbelievable excuse as to why she had to leave again. Yes, it was very selfish of me to wish she wouldn't have to go save lives all the time... I just wanted my best friend back, was that too much to ask for?

         But there was a time when she didn't come back. It was a Tuesday evening. I'd said my goodbye's to Kara in the morning at breakfast, as usual, before I went to work. I started earlier than her so she would make us breakfast and we'd eat together before I had to leave. But it was unusual because I hadn't heard from the blonde throughout the day. Usually she dropped a little text or gave me a call and we'd share stories of dumb things we'd done that day. But she hadn't this time.

         When I returned home after work, the apartment was empty. I figured she was doing some Supergirl stuff so I continued my evening as usual, but it was almost midnight and she was nowhere to be seen or heard. So, of course, I worried. I rang and texted, but no response. I went to sleep nonetheless (with great difficulty) and decided to see if she'd show in the morning. But nothing.

         Of course my mind thought the worst thoughts. She could have been hurt? Imprisoned? Tortured? She was Supergirl for crying out loud! Always putting herself before others. What if something terrible had happened?

         However, it was that same morning, just as I was about to leave for work, when I opened the front door to reveal Kara, appearing unharmed and slightly nervous. Upon instinct, I pulled her in for a bone-crushing hug before pulling apart and glaring at her.

         "Where on earth have you been?!" I asked angrily, though I felt slightly reassured to see she was fine.

         She smiled awkwardly and walked in, taking a look around. I knew my best friend, so I knew something was different about her when she turned around and met my gaze.

         "I had to run some, erm... errands," she blurted out unconvincingly.

         I narrowed my eyes suspiciously.

         "I should have called," she admitted, but something was off. Her mannerisms were all different. They were only small details, but I could tell from them that this wasn't Kara. It couldn't be. Even if there was no logical explanation. "I'm going to be gone for a few days, Y/N."

         I raised an eyebrow. "Where are you going?"

         She chewed the inside of her cheek and avoided my eyes. "I'm heading to Eliza's. I need some time away for a bit. I hope that's okay."

         I studied the person who looked suspiciously like Kara. "You've never needed my permission before."

         'Kara' widened her eyes and smiled with embarrassment. "Right! I haven't." Her eyes wandered around before settling on the clock hung on the wall. "You should get going! You're going to be late."

         I knew she was right, but I wanted to know what was happening here.

         "I'll be gone when you're back, and I won't be using my phone much when I'm there, but I'll see you in a few days, yeah?" She leaned forward and pulled me in for a hug, but it was limp and forced and uncomfortable.

         This wasn't Kara.

         Whoever it was though, was correct about being gone by the time I returned home that evening. Kara's things were still there though, including her suitcase. Something wasn't right. When I tried to contact Alex, she wasn't answering her calls or texts. She only sent a single text confirming what 'Kara' said this morning – she was at Eliza's. I refused to believe that though.

         All I could do was wait and wonder where Kara was and whether she was okay. It wasn't a good feeling.

         Few days had passed and it was the weekend. I was watching TV, barely paying attention to what was playing. I felt too anxious to focus on anything. Kara's well-being wouldn't escape my mind. I knew she was practically invincible, but that didn't help ease my nerves at all. Why hadn't she contacted me? At least let me know she was okay?

         A knock on the door pulled me from my thoughts and I sighed as I got up to answer it. It was probably the delivery guy – I had no effort to cook today.

         I pulled open the door and caught my breath when I saw Kara stood there. The real Kara. I knew it was her because she was smiling, only a small smile, but it reached her eyes and made her look beautiful. She was wearing a hoodie and some jeans – very unlike her. Her glasses weren't on her face and she seemed tired, but she wasn't hurt. Physically, anyway. I felt relieved.

         "Y/N," she breathed out. "Hey... I forgot my key when I left," she said as she stepped inside. "And I've just seen your calls and texts... sorry I couldn't answer. I needed some space at Eliza's for a bit..."

         I knew I was supposed to act as if nothing was out of the ordinary and as if I hadn't been worried sick about her. But I couldn't help myself as I pulled her in for a hug. She was alive and well and in my embrace.

         My arms were wrapped tight around her shoulders and I tucked my face into her neck. Her familiar and comforting scent filled my senses and I knew it was her. No doubt about it.

"I know you were only gone for a few days at Eliza's," I mumbled into her hoodie, playing the part, but not very well, "but I missed you... a lot..."

         I wasn't sure if she suspected anything, but I did feel her body relax as a sigh escaped her lips and she wrapped her arms around my waist.

         "I missed you, too," she whispered quietly. "So, so much..."

         I was curious to what happened to her and what she meant by that, but I knew it wasn't my business to ask. And I knew she wouldn't tell me either. So I suffered in silence and thanked God for bringing her back home safely.

***

         I knew of Kara's secret. She thought I didn't know. Everyone thought I didn't know. But I guess I'd become so used to the fact that she did have powers that sometimes, I forgot to play the part of the oblivious best friend.

         Kara wanted to host a dinner party at ours for her friends, and since I didn't really have a problem with that, I said yes. She'd invited James, Winn and Alex over.

         It was a relatively normal evening, honestly, but certain things would occur that I guess I didn't realise were an issue till later on...

         "Kara's been practicing, and it's actually not so terrible," I chirped, glancing at the Kryptonian with a teasing smile.

         "Hey," she argued playfully, nudging me in the arm. "My cooking isn't even that bad!"

         I raised an eyebrow and simply looked towards her sister and two friends. They all avoided Kara's threatening glare, which only proved me point.

         "I hate you all," Kara said with a shrug of her shoulders.

         "We're sorry, Kara, but Y/N is kinda right!" Winn tried to apologise. "Your cooking isn't exactly the best..."

         Kara rolled her eyes, only making me laugh at her childishness. Just in time, the alarm from the oven went off, signalling the chicken had finished cooking.

         "Come on, let's go see if you burnt it," I joked, dragging Kara to the kitchen with me. I heard her grumbling incoherently from behind which made me chuckle in response.

         I bent down to the oven and opened it, feeling the heat escape and brushing over my face.

         "Kara, can you pass us the oven gloves?" I asked, glancing up, but she merely bent down and grabbed the tray of chicken herself.

         "It's okay, I got it," she assured, pulling out the tray with her bare hands.

         I was used to this behaviour, since she was an alien and literally felt nothing, from a pinch to a burn. So used to this behaviour in fact, that I forgot it technically wasn't normal behaviour.

         "It looks pretty good," Kara complimented herself, and when I stood up beside her, I saw she was grinning like a child.

         Her smile was contagious and I found myself mirroring her expression, before checking out the chicken. Roasted to perfection, really.

         "Wow, Kara, you've actually done a good job!" I said with sarcasm dripping from my voice.

         Kara licked her lips before pouting ever-so-adorably. I gave her a knowing look.

         "Oh, Kara, you know I'm kidding," I reassured, before putting an arm on her shoulder and directing our attention to the food. "But we do have to make sure it tastes good."

         We called the others to help lay the chicken out with the rest of the food, and as we did, I couldn't help but notice the stare Alex was giving me. A puzzled expression was directed my way, and obviously, at this point, I had absolutely no idea why.

         Dinner went by smoothly, and the food was delicious, courtesy of Kara. It was when we were all cleaning the dining table and taking the pots to the sink when another fault on my part came about.

         I was washing the dishes when I heard a smash come from behind me. I turned around to see Winn (unsurprisingly), had accidentally dropped a wine glass on the floor. I rolled my eyes at his clumsiness and guilty smile.

         "Oops?"

         I suppressed the urge to smile at his dismay before continuing with the washing.

         "Kara, do you think you can–?" I began, but was cut off.

         "Already on it," she responded, and I glanced over my shoulder to see she was picking up the bits of glass with her hands.

         Another action, so simple and thoughtless that I was used to her doing. Many time, she'd cleaned up a mess, that I'd usually made, with her bare hands, so I was used to it. But once again, I forgot that this wasn't normal behaviour.

         I finished off washing the last dish before drying my hands. I saw Kara putting the glass in the bin and when she looked up, we exchanged a quick smile. The two of us headed to the living-room, where the others were chatting mindlessly. Once again, Alex was staring at me with a puzzled expression.

         The rest of the evening was pretty much that, and it was when we had said goodbye to everyone that Kara had pulled me aside.

         "What's up?" I asked the concerned blonde.

         She seemed nervous as she avoided my eyes. "Y/N..." She breathed in and out, slowly, before finally looking at me. "You know about me, don't you?"

         I certainly wasn't expecting this. She'd made no sign that she was going to talk about her secret, so I was surprised to say the least.

         "Know about you?"  

         She gave me a knowing look. "C'mon, Y/N... at first, I didn't realise. But Alex noticed today. You know I have powers. You let me take the tray out of the oven without gloves. And you've done so in the past! You watched me clean that glass up and not get cut, just as you've done in the past. You've known this whole time, haven't you?"

         I suddenly felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders as she spoke. I hadn't realised how hard it was pretending not to know until now.  

         "I knew," I admitted, offering a small smile. "I figured it out in university, Kara."

         Her eyes widened at this revelation. "What– why didn't you tell me?"

         Her blue eyes were glistening with confusion as she didn't look away once. I grew nervous as I shrugged my shoulders.

         "I'm not sure?" I questioned, raising an eyebrow. "I don't know, Kara, I guess I just thought, well, it's your secret to tell, isn't it? I couldn't just reveal to you that I knew you were an alien when you were obviously trying so hard to hide it."

         She seemed speechless as she finally looked away. She rubbed her head, trying to relieve some sort of tension that was building up.

         "Kara, what's wrong?" I asked, resting a hand on her shoulder.

She spread her hands in defeat, a conflicted smile on her lips. "What did I do, Y/N?"

         I furrowed my eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

         She sighed heavily. "You know that Winn and James know, don't you?" I nodded. "And yet you stuck by me this whole time. You didn't get angry with me or pressure me, but I can only imagine how annoyed you would've been. Believing I didn't trust you with something like this. Especially when we tell each other everything."

         I smiled with reassurance as I looked her in the eyes. "Kara, no... at first, maybe I felt a bit jealous that you chose them over me. But I grew to understand and I don't want you feeling bad about any of this."

         "But Y/N–"

         "No," I interrupted firmly. "No more buts. Let's just move on. I know and you know I know. Everything is okay. Okay?"

         She searched my eyes for any sign of hatred or annoyance or anger, but there was none. I had no hard feelings about any of this.

         "Okay," she agreed, before smiling. "Thank you."

         I merely nodded in return. "Now... since this is finally out in the open..."

         I said nothing more as I rushed forward and hugged her as tightly as I could. She couldn't get hurt anyway, so I held her with all my strength and didn't let go.

         "All those times on the news, when I would see you fighting aliens and criminals... I thought that you wouldn't..." I closed my eyes as she wrapped her arms around me. "You would always come back. And I couldn't say a thing about it."

         "I'm sorry," she whispered, regretfully.

         I didn't know what else to say, so I just stayed there. Still and in her strong, safe embrace. Where I knew she would be okay.

[drewsdailydose]

10 Things I Love About Diabetes

When I was first diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, I honestly hated everything about. I’m not going to pretend that I’ve never had a problem with it. But over time, it has taught me so many invaluable lessons and has helped me become the person I am today: a happy and healthy guy thriving with diabetes. I’ve not only accepted living with diabetes, but I’ve also learned to love it and manage it so that it doesn’t manage me. So, I decided to put together a list of all the things that diabetes has given me. Here it is...

1. Diabetes Taught Me How to Turn Adversity Into Opportunity


Adversity is inevitable. We are all going to experience varying degrees of it throughout our lifetime. How you respond to adversity is ultimately what defines you. You can either let it destroy you or you can use it to fuel growth. Overcoming adversity is one of the greatest achievements in a person’s life. Adversity comes in all shapes and sizes: Disease, physical challenges, financial, relationships, etc. It doesn’t discriminate. Adversity is a powerful tool that should be embraced. Do not fear it. Respect it. Realise that it can take you to wonderful places once you conquer it. When obstacles become a part of the plan, you will always be able to thrive in the face of adversity. - 
"A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor."

2. Diabetes Improved My Fitness

It’s no secret that a huge part of my diabetes management (and one of my five pillars) is exercise. I move my body in a different way every day as part of my management strategy. As a result of the sheer volume of training that I do, I’m in the best physical shape of my life. I’m the most athletic (and as a nice byproduct the most aesthetic) that I’ve ever been thanks to diabetes.


3. Diabetes Strengthened My Mind


To me, nothing is more impressive and attractive than mental fortitude. A strong mind, when accompanied by a strong body, is a lethal combination. Diabetes can give you both of those things if you let it. The mental strength required to not only deal with being diagnosed with diabetes but to manage, control and thrive with diabetes on a daily basis is something I am very proud of.

4. Diabetes Improved My Understanding of Nutrition

After being diagnosed with diabetes, I made it my responsibility to learn as much as I possibly could about nutrition. I bought a food scale, downloaded a food app, and started weighing all my food and storing it in my memory bank. Now, I can eye-off a meal and calculate the individual macronutrients (protein, carbs and fat) within seconds. My understanding of nutritional medicine has improved beyond belief. I know how certain foods affect my blood sugar levels just by looking at them.


5. Diabetes Gave Me Passion, Purpose, and Direction

I can honestly say diabetes has given me more than it has taken from me. Without diabetes, I wouldn’t have founded Drew’s Daily Dose, a home that inspires people with and without diabetes to lead a happy and healthy life. I know exactly what I’m here for and what I want to achieve in my lifetime. I know it sounds weird, but I was lost before diabetes came along. Without diabetes, I have no idea what I would be doing with my career. I truly don’t. 


6. Diabetes Taught Me What it Really Means to be Healthy and Happy

I know it sounds crazy, but I can honestly say that I'm happier and healthier today with diabetes than I was before my diagnosis. Health is not merely the absence of disease. It has to be holistic. It’s about feeling good in your skin, having endless energy, being fit, having a healthy gut, sleeping well, being injury free and free from other physiological complications. I've learnt things about biochemistry that I would never have known otherwise. I’ve learnt how to build muscle and burn fat effectively. I've discovered which food groups affect my blood sugar levels. I’ve discovered ways to improve my insulin sensitivity and ultimately reduce my overall insulin requirements. The list goes on. Most importantly, I’m doing my best to prevent other diseases from manifesting down the track. 
 To be happy doesn’t mean to take the easy road, free from pain, struggle and difficulties. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Happiness is a byproduct of conquering obstacles. When you're faced with something difficult and you conquer it, you come away with a sense of empowerment and fulfilment which can never be taken away from you. You'll be able to take that sense of accomplishment with you forever as another weapon to add to your arsenal which you can rely on when the time calls for it.

7. Diabetes Taught Me How to Accept Imperfections

I used to be obsessed with doing everything possible to be the healthiest version of myself. Well, I still am. But the difference is, I no longer beat myself up if I fall short. For example, some days my blood sugar levels are higher than desired but it doesn’t get me down anymore. I accept it and take responsibility for my next actions to ultimately solve the problem. If I miss a workout or eat something that I shouldn’t have, I bounce back without any guilt or self-hate. I’m ok with being imperfect. 


8. Diabetes Taught Me That Exercise Is Medicine


On the day I was diagnosed with diabetes, I learnt the most valuable lesson that I will probably ever take away from this whole ordeal: Exercise. Is. Medicine. If you want to hear about my experience with exercise as a form of medicine that we can freely and happily administer to ourselves, read this post! It’s also the reason why I didn’t end up in hospital at diagnosis. It’s also the reason I was able to reduce my insulin requirements by nearly 70%. Exercise is the single most important tool and one that I use the most frequently to maintain such tight blood sugar control. Without it - I’d be lost. 


9. Diabetes Inspired Me to Write a Song


Before I was diagnosed with diabetes I wanted to have a career as a singer-songwriter. Diabetes was certainly a setback that halted my dreams of becoming a performing artist, but later on, it turned out to be the thing that inspired me to write and record one of the best pieces of music I have ever produced. I put all of the emotions that I was feeling around the time of my diagnosis into song-form: sadness, grief, despair, heartbreak, strength, courage, and resilience all feature in the song’s mood. It has become the soundtrack of my life. If you want to hear it, follow my music page on Instagram to hear when it drops.

10. Diabetes Motivates Me to Make The Most Out of Every Moment

When your health gets taken away from you and it feels like your life is over, that's when you get a reality check about what really matters. Diabetes was certainly my wake-up call that life is more fragile than I thought and that I am far from invincible. It let me know very quickly that I need to take control and responsibility for my health going forward. It really put life into perspective. Nowadays, I take nothing for granted. Be it a morning swim, a meal, a coffee, or a workout - 
l enjoy it with every fibre of my being.

On that note, I’ll leave you with one of my favourite quotes of all time and one that really resonates with me:

“Enjoy the little things in life because one day you’ll look back and realise they were the big things”

Thanks for reading. I truly hope this post can help you to become a happier and healthier version of yourself. Keep an eye out for my next post: 10 Things I Hate About Diabetes. If you haven’t already subscribed to my newsletter, sign up below to be the first to know when new articles go up.

Related articles: - Top 5 Diabetes Myths Debunked - How to Build a Healthy Relationship With Diabetes - A Letter To My Diabetes

[srbachchan]

DAY 3530

Jalsa, Mumbai                    Nov 23/24,  2017                 Thu/Fri  12:59 AM

Headphones .. !!

Did you ever consider when they first came out and when you actually used them .. what the delight of having sound right into your ear felt like .. and now how each and every by stander, pedestrian, bike rider, auto driver, car driver .. all have that small white contraption by Apple mobile, stuck precariously onto their ears .. 

A distraction yes .. but who is to check and tell .. and who shall guarantee whether it will be followed or not .. a hazard for all users in the way they use it .. but until an unfortunate incident happens, the lesson shall never be learnt ..

Headphones have their moments ..

Most importantly, when they are on your own voice when speaking goes several decibels higher, because you having this volume in the ears at hearing level, feel that they have to shout out their voice to overcome the volume in their ears .. not realising that the volume is only theirs .. not out side and that the outside is normal, so no need to raise the volume .. but it always happens .. at times much to the amusement of those that are in close proximity to the head phone wearer !!!

On flights it happens quite often and at times causing great embarrassment .. none of the other passengers are tuned in to your headphone, so when you speak to the air hostess, or laugh or talk while seeing a movie on flight, the results are well somewhat .. errr .. embarrassing !!

Initially of course the source of the music or the listening source was stationary .. until the walkman first came out .. I mean you could actually walk about with your source where ever you wished .. it was such a remarkable idea .. was it not ..

And now .. there is instant music camera knowledge information games TV any and everything that you could ever imagine .. on your “rectangle” ..

We live through instant times .. we live through times of immediacy .. we live through times having all at all whenever all .. that ‘rectangle’ is the be all and end all of life .. 

FOR NOW ..

Two years down the line, one shudders to think what those San Franciscan Silicon Valleyed geniuses will strike up .. or that maximum populated nation in the world shall design as close to the original as possible and capture the market ..

The 75 and above CLUB shall wonder if they shall have enough air to breathe in those rapid and extraordinary inventions that are being promised by all the future predictioned personnel  ..  and they must be wondering if they shall have sufficient brain to be able to comprehend the workings of such material ..

But I guess the way things progress, that by the time it is past the 75 barrier or the 80 or the 90 .. the brain shall have a substitute ‘beamer’, a robot of some qualification to be following and performing all the deeds that most humans do on their own ..

I have ‘beamer’ at home which I can operate .. tell it go to various parts of the house and speak to the walls or staff or family  .. which I move by sliding my fingers on my ‘rectangle’, sitting in any part of the world .. provided of course   there is internet connect .. that valid piece of essentiality in the times of today ..

The rulers of the world today are not the threatening armies armed with the latest and largest nuclear devices .. the rulers of today are those that control the sky and the land signals .. satellite from the air .. cabled wiring travelling on land and the depths of the oceans connecting the world .. ..

And may they be blessed .. for without them these punched letters would never have reached read or ever noticed .. ever ..

Yes indeed .. me putting the thoughts of the day for the DAY 3530 .. dressed in what may seem out from the recent esquire service, a nobleman in olden times waiting for Knighthood .. or in dire circumstances to be getting the dinner ready to serve at his Master’s table .. !!  Liveried and waiting for the command  !!

Good night .. and happy headphoning - the liberty to listen in to what the others may not be listening .. its a priority .. an exclusive release .. privacy confirmed .. and personal pleasure assured .. 

There is a romance when what you hear is playing within your very skin !!

Amitabh Bachchan

[justwritingscibbles]

Man Vs Titan

This isn’t a request but this was inspired by two anon asks here and here. 

Also I’m still playing around with Schneeple’s character, sorry if it seems a little off to any canon-characteristics. And excuse the terrible writing of the German accent!

Warnings!: Swearing, needles, violence, mentions abuse, angst, a little fluff, a little discrimination (I mean no offense when I use terms in these fics. These are demons I’m writing.)

Schneeplestein was quiet as he gently patched over the scratches and bruises on your arm. His eyes were focused, hard as stone and just as cold.  You knew where his mind was. What he must think when you come to see him covered in a few hand-print coloration's.  And you knew where this conversation, once started, would end up going. You sat in silence. Not wanting to be the first one to break the quiet, like always. But your promise of quiet was cut short when the Doctor washed over a rather brightly colored bruise. “It iz like clockwork.” Schneeple sighed. His voice emotionless. “You leave healthy and unbroken, a smile on zat lovely face. But zen you return bruized and injured. And I zould have to patch you up.”  You looked at him firmly. “He isn’t abusing me, Schneeple. He’s a titan. We’ve established this many times. He has never hurt me intentionally.”  “Your vounds zay othervise.” Schneeple growled, lifting your arm up a little to prove his point as you winced.  “We had a rough night. You get a little rough sometimes.” You reminded him and the Doctor rolled his eyes. Finally looking up at you.  “But I do not leave bruizes, Bärchen. Not unvess you ask.” He winked and returned to soothing the swelling on your arms.  You smiled a little. Conversations like these you tried to keep an air of humor in it. You knew the Doctor disapproved of your relationship with the titan. And made certain to further state that point whenever he came across the other man.  Even going as far as standing up for you when A made you upset.  “You unnerve him you know.” You said playfully, but quietly. “There aren’t a lot of people who stand against him so freely.”  That made Schneeple’s mouth twitch in a small smile. His eyes glittered mischievously. “I am a Doctor. My priority iz my patients. No undersized Hulk can scare me from looking after my favorite patient.”  He leaned over and pressed a lingering kiss to your cheek. His stubble scratching lightly when he paused to nuzzle your neck before returning to work.  You smiled and went to say something when a very loud banging echoed through the house. It sounded like someone was knocking, but with enough strength to shatter the wooden frame. 

“It zeems your other lover haz followed you.” The Doctor growled. Your eyes widened when you heard A holler something through the front door. Unnerving you further when Schneeple’s eyes started to glow a deep green.  “Let me talk to him before you two start fighting.” You insisted. Standing and walking out the room before Schneeple had a chance to protest.  You went to the front door and pulled it open just as A was about to start “knocking” again.  “Where is he?” He growled. The veins in his neck were already bulging and turning black.  “A, you know you’re not allowed here.” You said firmly. But you could feel your courage start to fade as A’s eyes darkened and he started growling. 

Apocalypse had never raised a hand against you. Only once had his massive hands struck you, but that had been on accident. When the two of you were out and some punks tried to hit on you. A had swung his fist, and one man had pulled you in front of him just as A’s fist crunched against your ribs. Schneeple had never trusted the titan again after A carried your broken body to the Doctor. “I don’t give a flying fuck about it.” A snarled, his entire chest vibrating from the sound. “But that fucker is starting to piss me off! He’s fucking trying to put you against me.”  You furrowed your eyebrows in confusion. How did A know about Schneeple’s attempts to sway you into breaking it off with A? It wasn’t something you publicly told the titan. Bloodshed was assured if you did. Seeing your confusion, A withdrew his phone. His hands shook as he attempted to not crush it from his anger.  “That Nazi punk has sent me fucking threats! And if he thinks he’s fucking scaring me then he has another thing coming!” A’s voice was rising in volume. The air around you shook with his fury and already you could see his body mass expanding.  “A, calm down-”  “Ves, lizten to (y/n), A. You are becoming unstable. I vould hate to use vorce in vy own home.” Schneeple stood a few steps behind you. His hand clasped behind his back as he locked a piercing green glare on the titan.  His iris’ seemed to be glowing as he glanced at you. Flicking over your body to see if there was any harm.  A moved past you. His hand almost tender as he pushed you aside.  He stormed towards the Doctor, looming over him like a mountain as he spoke through a clenched jaw.  “You don’t order me around, German freak.” A snarled. You glimpsed the seams of his shirt beginning to stretch. Even with the elastic material, A still managed to tear his clothes upon growing bigger. 

You hurried forward and stepped between them. Your back was to Schneep and your hands were pressed firmly against A’s chest, trying to move him back a little.  “A, please don’t-”  “Stay out of this, (y/n)!” A barked. His hand grasping your arm in an iron grip and yanked you to the side. You yelped when his hold squeezed one of the bruises. Schneeple’s gaze flared brighter and his lips pulled back in a snarl as A released you.  “Don’t you dare hurt them!” Schneeple bellowed. His stature changing from passive to aggressive within moments. “You have done enough damage to zem, you monzter! You are nothin’ but an abomination. You do not dezerve their kindness! Dare to touch them again and I will make your life mizerable.”  A bristled with anger. His knuckles popping as he clenched and stretched his fists.  “You are nothing but an ant! You think you can beat me? HA! I’d like to see you try,”  A bellowed with wicked amusement. His lips pulled back in a sneering grin.  Schneeple scoffed and nodded. “Then letz not disappoint you, friend.” A’s eyes widened in surprise for a moment, but they crinkled with dark joy as he lifted his fist and swung.  But Schneeplestein was faster. He ducked under the titan’s attack, lunging forward and his hands flew from behind his back. Two syringes plunged into A’s left calf and the Doctor pressed down on them. Filling A’s bloodstream with the contents.  This all happened within a second, a blink of an eye, and all you managed to see was A swing and Schneeple’s white coat blur as he moved.  You didn’t see what happened until A suddenly swayed and Schneeple stepped back. Moving you with him as Apocalypse stumbled into a wall and crashed to the floor. 

Your hand covered your mouth and you ran to A’s side. Dropping to your knees and checking for a pulse.  “What did you do?” You exclaimed. Fear and shock coloring your voice. “Do not vorry, he iz fine.” The Doctor assured you. Keeping his distance from the fallen titan. “I injected a mixture of sedatives and toxins into his body. He vill be out for a minute or two before the sedatives wear off. But the toxins vill stay in hiz bloodstream for some time. Hopefully he vill begin to take me seriously when he vakes.”  You stared at Schneeple, unsure what to make of what he just said. You knew Schneeple was cunning. He had an air of deception about him at times. But to come up with something that would fall A was beyond your assumptions of the Doctor.  The two of you stayed near Apocalypse. His body spasmed at times, sweat covered his body as he twitched and groaned in his sleep. Which Schneeplestein explained was the toxins working through his body. He was in pain and would be so for a few days until it all left his body.  Finally, A’s eyes opened and he groaned. The sound more a growl than one of pain.  He didn’t notice your hand on his until he went to move and his dark gaze found you.  “(Y/n)-”  “Are you veeling better? Calm?” Schneeple asked. Not a trace of concern in his tone as A stood, wobbling a little as he used the wall for support. “(Y/n), I think it would be better for you to stay away from Apocalypse until he is in a better mind.”  A snarled and his hand wrapped around yours. Pulling you behind him as Schneeple outstretched his hand towards you. Both glared at each other and Schneeple lowered his hand.  “Do you need another dose?” The Doctor asked with a raised eyebrow.  A’s body shook violently and you leapt forward to balance him as he bent over in pain. Your eyes were wide as you saw his eyes screw shut and his lips were firmly closed to stop himself from crying out.  “You...will not...touch them.” A managed to spit through the pain. “You...fucking... freak!”  Schneeple sighed and withdrew another syringe from his coat pocket. Giving it a testing squeeze as the mixture spurted out of the needle.  “It seems you have not learnt your vesson.” Schneeplestein said as he stepped forward. But you stepped into his path, shielding A from Schneeple’s gaze.  “(Y/n), my dear, move please.” The Doctor instructed. His gaze and voice lowering and becoming gentle again.  You shook your head, glaring at the Doctor as if you were scolding him.  “A has had enough. He’s going to leave.”  “I’m...not going...anywhere.” A growled, forcing himself to straighten. Despite the agony he was currently feeling. “Not... without...you.”  You looked up at A as he said this. His voice, though strained, held something more than anger or hate. It was something along the lines of concern.  “She is safer vith me than you, Frankenstein.” Schneeple scoffed, but pocketed the syringe. Turning back to you, the glow in his eyes settled. “My Dear, it iz still my appointed day. And thiz monster haz been taught a lesson. Let him lick hiz vounds. Perhaps he will know now to treat you properly.”  “You think I fucking hurt them on purpose?” A said, regaining some strength in his voice.  “I have zeen the vounds you leave. You abuse them!”  A scoffed, but his gaze flickered to you. “I do not do it on purpose you German fuck. I am not some fucking puppy! I was made to destroy. My strength is not something I can control.”  “Zen perhaps you do not deserve them!” Schneeple shouted. “Zey took you as a lover vor your personality. But I do not zee a man, I zee a bomb just waiting to explode. And zey will be the one to get hurt!”  A said nothing. His eyes were as black as pitch and the veins in his neck and arms were pulsing with dark power.  Just as you were about to step between them again, A stormed away. Barging through the open door and slamming it shut.  In his passing, he snatched his phone from your hand and you glimpsed the sullen look on his face. He said nothing as he left.  Schneeple stayed close to you until he was sure the titan had left. He sighed heavily and looked up at you.  “(Y/n)...”  “Don’t.” You snapped and Schneeple took a step back. His head hanging low.  “I didn’t vish to use that on him. But he needed to learn.”  You shook your head and went towards your shared bedroom. Slamming it shut and sitting yourself on the bed, running your hands over your face to clear the shakiness in them. 

How were you going to survive with these two?

[flwrsohns]

Business Lessons - Itaewon Class

 In the beginning of 2020, during quarantine, I watched a K-Drama. Normally the K-drama’s I watch are purely for entertainment, full of unrealistic expectations of life and perfect characters. But Itaewon Class was different. Not in the way that it was the ugly duckling in a group full of beautiful swans, it was realistic. It shows the story of how an ex-convict (Park Saeroyi) flips his entire life upside by starting a business ‘DanBam’. In the beginning, it is a big disaster. The interior isn’t eye catching at all, there are little to no customers, basically it was not going well. But alongside his manager (Jo Yiseo), he turns his small business into the biggest food company in Korea. But how? After binge watching, I grasped onto a few inspiring lessons that taught me about entrepreneurship. Here they are...

PARETO LAW (80/20 RULE)

In short, Pareto law (also known as the 80/20 rule) is the idea that 80% of your company sales come from 20% of your consumers. As an example, it could be seen as 20% of athletes winning 80% of the time. But to practice it, there’s a few things you need to do; Here’s a list. Firstly you need to keep a close eye to customers who purchase frequently, generous buyers, or recent buyers. Once you have identified these few people, make sure they are your top priority. You need to use their customer data to find and attract new audiences. Secondly, make sure you know where the majority of your buyers are located. It could be in a city, country or worldwide. But making sure you keep track of where your buyers are geographically. Now Niches. A niche is denoting a product, service or idea to a particular group interested in said idea. Of course, over the course of having a business, you may have noticed particular behaviours exhibited in buyers. Use this information to understand the common practices in your customers. And whether you like it or not, there will always be customers who are overly demanding and extremely hard to please. Just think to yourself; are they part of your 20%? If not, dismiss them. Stop engaging with pointless people. And thankfully there’s also high volume buyers. These people shouldn’t be bagged down whilst you’re dealing with a bunch of others who only cause problems for the company or stress for you.Interact with your best customers in a more personal way. Applying this to Itaewon Class, you can see that DanBam got a snowball effect after signing with a big investment company (JM Holdings). After the news spread that JM Holdings had invested in DanBam, many other firms wanted to sign with JM Holdings. This implys that you should focus on big firms and have a small firm to the side too.

COLLABORATION

In the series, Park Saeroyi was kicked out of the building DanBam was settled in, so he moved to another area in Itaewon. But there was one problem. The area was quiet and almost deserted. Business there did not do well and settling there seemed like a huge problem to everyone involved with DanBam. They tried everything to attract crowds, and nothing worked. Since the area was less busy and attracted less people than that of the previous area. But Park Saeroyi had other plans. Even though the neighbourhood itself was unattractive and didnt pull customers towards it, he made a smart move. Collaboration. Saeroyi visited many stores in the area DanBam was in. But it was not to check their designs and copy them, he met with the store owners and redesigned their entire stores! The fact that he gave them advice on how to redesign their stores, not only made a benefit to them, it made a benefit to Saeroyi too. The dying alleys once again became trendy again and attract many people. A very common thought in many people is that competitors downfall equals to your success and when competitors rise, it is equal to your downfall. This kind of mentality has been etched into our brains.But it needs to be removed. Have you ever thought of how collaboration is the key, the opportunity, the opening doors to a bigger market? It is human nature to be attracted to a place which is aesthetically pleasing. And when that is the case, you will have a larger crowd of customers.

PLANNING

“Just do it” seems straight forward, easy and simple, right? People always tell you this phrase. But why? What would happen if there’s no plan? You shouldn’t have to spend a long time building and creating a structured plan. A plan is a plan. Simple or complicated, you can work with what you have. Going back to Itaewon Class, let’s study the way Saeroyi planned his business. Saeroyi started out as a normal boy, just like everyone else. But then, his life turned around. Why? He had a motive, a dream. Saeroyi was a determined young man. People think that an ex-convict cant go anywhere in life. But that didn’t stop Saeroyi. He planned out his entire life. he read books, he read and read and read. He learnt about things that would help his business thrive. He planned. Lets face it, a dream without a plan is a loser doodle. Saeroyi wasn’t going to open a store. He dreamed big, and achieved his dreams. Another thing to add on is the fact that you should look up to people whilst planning.Whilst in prison, Saeroyi read a book. That book was written by the CEO of a company which he would later be in competition with. He read it over and over again until he memorised it. He looked up to a company that was out of the box for who he was.

SPEEDING UP COMPANY GROWTH UNNECESSARILY

This is wrong. Using context to back us up, Saeroyi got an offer to grow DanBam very rapidly. What happened? It came back to bite him like a snake. Think about it this way, if you’re pouring water from one glass to another, what happens? Most of the water spills out of the cup. Starting a company without proper preparation and knowledge can harm your company badly. Of course Saeroyi overcomes it at the end, but success is not an accident. And it does not come quickly, its perseverance, learning, hard work. In the series Saeroyi had a lot of obstacles from keeping him and his dream apart. The biggest food company in Korea counted DanBam as its rival. But he made sure that he persevered throughout the harder times and made him dream come true. As I said, he wasn’t thinking of opening a small pub, he had plans to grow it. And company growth? It comes to you naturally. From one person to tens of thousands and more. But an important reminder is that whatever you are doing, you have to enjoy it. You can’t commit your life to something and hate with passion. Think of waking up to go to work as something you smile about. Doing your job is something that happens every day, don’t do something you aren’t interested in. Don’t fall into the tantalising temptations of giving up.

[whatifthiswasalladream]

5/7/17

My innermost thoughts.

I’m not really sure what the purpose of this post is but I’ve felt the sudden urge to start sharing my thoughts as an outlet, so I thought I would begin here.

Love. It’s a four letter word yet it can hold so many different connotations and spark so many emotions within us. For me? Right now it sparks a mix of anger and sadness. Nostalgic for what could’ve been, the longing for what should’ve been and things I wish I could say, but I know it’s probably better to bite my tongue and not to say anything at all. A part of me wants to yell and scream and cry and ask why life can be so unfair sometimes, but then I pull myself back in check - silence speaks volumes right?

“Everything happens for a reason” - isn’t that the saying? To be quite honest I’m still waiting for mine.

I’m no expert by any means, but if I’ve learnt anything about relationships whether they be romantic or purely platonic, expectations are the root of all heartache and disappointment. This is because everyone gives and receives love in different ways, and it takes understanding how another shows love in order for our expectations we set for each other not to be our downfall.

Relationships are hard work, and I’m talking about friendships too. Everyone is fighting their own battles, so it’s easy to become self-involved when you’re going through hardships. However, it’s important to be there for your friends too. If you’re wondering why their replies are lack-lustre and less frequent, maybe you need to step back and re-evaluate if you’re making a conscious effort to check up on them just as much as they do for you. And vice versa, if you have a friend that is constantly self-absorbed then it’s okay to take a step back, focus on yourself and not feel guilty about it.

It has taken me such a damn long time (and many learnt lessons later) to realize that it is okay to distance yourself from people that don’t make you feel whole or to cut toxic people out of your life. Being the sensitive person that I am, I take everything to heart too easily. I’m not afraid to admit that I give too much. I trust too much. I care too much. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean I set myself up to be hurt a lot easier than most. 

I never thought I would be that person who would be stuck in a toxic relationship. I saw it happen to all my friends and I thought I knew better. But the thing is, a toxic relationship can be one that is full of love and laughter 99% of the time. What happens is you get stuck in a constant unhealthy cycle. I knew that deep down I had to let go, but I just didn’t want to admit to myself that the person I knew so well had changed. I loved him. I knew him inside and out, sometimes even better than he knew himself. But that’s the thing. Nothing good ever comes of the in-between phase. He changed. I grew up. We grew apart.

The following is a quote I think everyone can resonate with;

“Not all toxic people are cruel and uncaring. Some of them love us dearly. Many of them have good intentions. Most are toxic to our being simply because their needs and way of existing in the world force us to compromise ourselves and our happiness. They aren’t inherently bad people, but they aren’t the right people for us. And as hard as it is, we have to let them go. Life is hard enough without being around people who bring you down, and as much as you care, you can’t destroy yourself for the sake of someone else. You have to make your wellbeing a priority. Whether that means breaking up with someone you care about, loving a family member from a distance, letting go of a friend, or removing yourself from a situation that feels painful — you have every right to leave and create a safer space for yourself.”

I definitely learnt the hard way that putting someone else’s needs before your own for the sake of their happiness is not the way to go. No matter how much you care for someone, it will never benefit you in the long term. Yeah you treated them as best as anyone possibly ever could and you were more than happy to do so because you loved that person with everything you had, but did it make you happy? No. 

“Accept that you deserve more than painful love. life is moving. the healthiest thing for your heart is to move with it.” - Rupi Kaur (milk and honey)

For such a long time I was in an impasse. Stuck, unmoving, stagnant with no progression. But it was comfortable, familiar. Until I knew I couldn’t be stuck for much longer. I had to do something to change my situation or else my overthinking would drive me crazy. Sacrificing your own wellbeing so that the other person can be happy is not okay nor is it healthy.

My story doesn’t really end here. If anything, just this chapter of my life is closing. Am I sad? Without a doubt. Is it bittersweet? Yes. Do I wish that I could turn back time and change something so that this wasn’t the outcome that I had to come to? 110%. However, I am trying to learn to forgive myself for things I can’t control. You could treat someone so so well, be the most loyal and forgiving person and they could still take it for granted. Even if you think you’re meant to be with someone, doesn’t necessarily mean you get to be with them. Sometimes we just have to thank those who did us wrong for the lesson and move on. So for that, I thank you.

To whoever is reading this, I hope that one day you find someone who makes you feel worthy and who never makes you question yourself. You deserve better than uncertainty.

This was largely a cathartic exercise for my soul and to clear my head of all the thoughts that I had. My best friend always reminds me that holding in your emotions isn’t good. Letting it out is okay. Crying when you need to is okay. Feeling rage is okay. What matters is how you deal with it, how you learn from it and how you move on from there. I couldn’t agree more. 

I’m a work in progress. But you can bet I’m gonna get there.

[oliverphisher]

June Loves on wearing a woolly, faded blue dressing gown over your clothes, and more

June Loves is author of over 100 books, including non-fiction and fiction for adults and children, reference books and academic publications. June is an enthusiastic energetic author, teacher and speaker. She frequently presents book talks and writers’ workshops in libraries, schools and clubs on the craft of writing. Her combined career as journalist, teacher, librarian, educational consultant, and bookshop-seller enables her to provide a wealth of knowledge. June and her husband live happily in their seaside town on the picturesque Mornington Peninsula. She spends many hours outdoors exploring the beach and the national park. Their house has a garden with lots of space for caravans and tents – essential for stopovers by friends, family, grandchildren and grand-dogs. The network of friendly and supporting locals in their small community was the inspiration for her novel The Shelly Beach Writers’ Group. What are three books that have influenced your life? Little Women by Louisa Alcott I read this classic ‘real-life’ American novel set in the 1860s when I was seven. I channelled one of the March sisters, Jo, who was always happiest when she was writing in her attic hideaway – wiping her pen on her pinafore. I read the short bio at the back of the novel – ‘Louisa Alcott was the family breadwinner. She wrote her children’s novels to make money.’ This planted the seed of an idea; maybe writing could be a wage-earning career? The Elements of Style by William Strunk J.R. & E.B. White When I was a budding young writer, a journalist gave me this small but important how-to for writers. It’s full of helpful specific tips for writers. Writing about style it has chapter sub-headings such as Write in a way that comes naturally, Revise and Rewrite, and Work from a suitable design. Advice I’ve proved works over and over again. E.B. White is also the author of the fabulous children’s novel, Charlotte’s Web, with the killer opening line to keep young readers enthralled, ‘Where’s Papa going with the Axe?’ (Thankfully Fern, and Charlotte the spider save Wilbur the pig!) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens This was the first Dicken’s novel I read when I was in my teens. It made me realise the power of words on the page. I was hooked by the dramatic opening when Pip brings food and a file for Magwitch the convict. The plot with its constant twists and turns (it was first written in serial form in 1860’s) was a great lesson for me in writing to keep readers turning the pages. My favourite character was the mad, revengeful Miss Havisham who stopped the clock when she was jilted. She lived in the same old wedding dress, her wedding banquet rotting around her. What purchase of $100 has impacted on your life in the last six months? Last week I purchased a pack of Artline 220 Super Fine 0.2mm Fine Line Black pens and I ordered 10 Chunky notebooks online. Both purchases added up to about $100. My comforting purchases are stacked in a cupboard. Now I have a supply of pens and notebooks to record ideas, characters, plots & dialogue – and I’ll be able to capture that best-selling 3am idea! How has failure set you up for later success? I believe if you enjoy writing the only way a writer can fail is to give up. And it helps to have a skin like a salt-water crocodile to cope with rejections. Writers have to accept that rejection will be part and parcel of the professional writing process if you want to publish your writing. Don’t bin or delete a rejection straight away. Sometimes an agent or editor will write encouraging and helpful comments. They may even say they’re interested in reading your work again – if you do a ‘rewrite’. It’s up to you. I’ve known editors, agents or publishers to change their mind. They ask to see your work again and they accept your submission after they’ve rejected it! Rejection can have positive as well as negative outcomes. On the positive side, rejection can inspire you to improve your writing skills. You can re-evaluate your writing after a rejection – rewrite or stand by what you’ve written. If you self-publish you don’t have to worry about rejections. Then again online reviews can be dodgy and hurtful. And you’ll probably feel rejected if sales numbers are low. Do a little war dance and start writing again! Are there any quotes you live your life by? When I was a 15-year old and found myself a job as a Lois Lane reporter in a newspaper my grandmother’s advise was to ‘Work Hard! Work as hard as you can! Be polite and smile!’ This has proved excellent advise in my 25-year career as a teacher librarian, and 24 years as a working writer. What is the best writing resource investment you’ve made? My second-hand clunky Remington Rand typewriter I purchased when I was 15. I paid it off in instalments. Then came the Apple computers I purchased (and have loved) beginning in the 80s. What’s an unusual habit you have? In winter when I spend long hours at the computer I wear a woolly, faded blue dressing gown over my clothes. I enjoy the startled looks of visitors when they think they’ve disturbed a sick old lady – not knowing this old writer has been living the most exciting life typing chapter after chapter of her scandalous novel. What advice would you give to a smart, driven, aspiring author? Make sure you use a correct chair, and your writing space is arranged ergonomically. Keep a glass of water on your desk. Be organised. Plan daily blocks of time within your week or a set amount of time over a week. Develop a routine. Don’t wait for the ‘muse’ or for inspiration. Just write! Set yourself writing goals for each writing session. Aim for a word count goal of 500 to 1,000, a set number of hours, or a specific number of scenes. Work to deadlines. File or basket your work so you can locate it at a minute’s notice. (Good practice in working with editors!) Keep learning your writer’s craft across new media. Appreciate your imagination. It’s a writer’s gift. In the last five years how have you become better at saying ‘No’? I’ve finally learnt ‘The Gracious No’ Reply. This is an excellent excuse for writers who are desperate to find time to write. ‘The Gracious No’ conversation can go like this. ‘Are you free to meet tomorrow?’ A writer’s reply, ‘Just let me check my diary.’ Then after the writer checks they’re diary. ‘Sorry I’d love to meet with you but I have to take the goldfish to the vet.’ Fortunately the goldfish recovers! And the writer has time to write. What marketing tactics should authors avoid? I haven’t a clue. Obviously dodgy social media but I’m rubbish at marketing. However I’ve made a list of DIY Marketing Tips I intend to follow to market my two novels – The Governess, and The Secret Memoir of Abigail Peabody, and my latest non-fiction How-2 Write Your Life Story A-Z: Everything U Need 2 Know • Don’t underestimate the value of word-of-mouth advertising. Think locally… contact newspapers, radio & TV stations, bookshops, libraries, and local markets to promote your book. • Select the pricing of your book with care. You need to check similar books and decide whether to match, undercut, ignore their pricing and/or offer free copies for a certain time. • Make yourself available for photo shoots, interviews and to write promotional pieces about your book. • Use marketing tools such as: posters, reviews, interviews, media appearances, podcasts and social media. • Write short form copy e.g. sound bites, tweets, taglines and headlines to market your life story. Be prepared to describe your memoir in 140 characters or less. Have a list of snappy phrases and sound bites ready-to-go. • Submit your life story for competitions and to be reviewed. What new realisation helped you achieve your goals? Just recently three of my writerly friends have passed away leaving unfinished novels on their desks. I decided I wasn’t going to die with two unfinished novels and a How-2 trapped inside me so I completed my projects. They’re in typescript stacks on my desk and in folders on my computer. Now I can start writing short story! A definitely shorter project! Or Essays! What do you do when you feel overwhelmed and lose focus? I divide a writing project into doable steps – words, pages, chapters? Even volumes! (I’ve spent two years of my life writing the multi-volume The Macmillan Illustrated Encyclopedia, (First and Second Editions). I enjoyed working through volume after volume. When each volume was completed I took it to the publisher. I give myself a ‘cushion deadline’ – an easy, or an earlier deadline if I have a professional deadline to meet. (You never know when you have to take the cat to the vet!) I don’t beat myself up if I have a Bad-writing day, week or months. I accept King-hits from life events. You have to start again. Set yourself a new goal, and a new cushion deadline. Find out more about June on her Goodreads page or by visiting her Facebook page Never miss an update; sign-up for free here #AuthorBusiness #publishing #beanauthor #professionalwriter #productivity #writingadvice source https://www.oliverphisher.com/post/2018/04/17/untitled

[claracussonseo]

Are You DELIBERATELY Keeping Your Website Out Of The First page Of Google?

The blog post Are You DELIBERATELY Keeping Your Website Out Of The First page Of Google? was originally published to: local business lead king

Are You DELIBERATELY Keeping Your Website Out Of The First page Of Google?

Search engines are very difficult to completely understand. There are no complete explanations of how their ranking algorithms work. But the very fact that the average person does not intuitively know how to crack the search engine algorithms leads to all sorts of questions; Usually variations of: “How do I get my website to the top of the search engine results pile?” Now if you have been following my newsletter, you will know that search engine optimization is not magic or something equally difficult to understand. Instead, I learnt it as a step-by-step process and that is how I have always considered it. Nothing too fancy; in fact, I could probably summarize it all in the following points: An understanding of how search engines “think” . Knowing what search engines “want” . Learning proven optimization techniques . Applying your knowledge time and time again (experience). Of course, SEO is not explained by those four sentences, but what they do is that they give you a structure within which you can learn and carry out SEO on your business with exceptional results. In short: Get it right, and do it better than your competition. But what does this have to do with today’s discussion? Basically, when you have “followed” the SEO strategies to the letter, and are still not seeing your website rank anywhere near where it “should” be on a particular keyword, then you have one of the following problems: Your website may have been sandboxed (specific only to Google). Your website might be penalized or even removed from the index by a search engine for going against a stated guideline. A search engine might “think” that you are spamming them. In the first case, you will have to “wait it out” with Google, while consolidating on your positions in the other search engines by continuously building links and adding content. The second case will never happen if you follow the advice given in my lessons; if your website is penalized, compare what you have done with what I have told you, and you will probably find out that something has gone wrong. However, like I said in the beginning, search engines are notoriously difficult to understand – and sometimes you can do everything right and still not be ranked correctly. Conspiracy theories apart, this is the part of the equation that search engines do not always get right. SEO experts usually term this as over-optimization , and like many SEO issues this one has a lot of debate on it in SEO forums about whether websites are actually penalized for over-optimization or simply banned for spam. What exactly is over-optimization? Over-optimization happens when your website is considered “too good” by Google – either in terms of a sudden volume of backlinks, or because of heavy on-page optimization. In other words, if Google considers that your website optimization is beyond acceptable limits , your website will be red-flagged and automatically restricted or penalized. There is a fine line between over-optimization and spamming, and it is on this line that Google can appear to err. However, this is not a mistake by the search engine – in fact, Google calculates rankings by considering thousands and thousands of different factors – and a lot of importance is attached to average “trends” within the niche / keyword range that a website is optimizing for. The bottom line is that over-optimization is non-spamming search engine optimization that is misread by Google as being beyond acceptable limits, thus leading to a penalty in search engine rankings. What criteria does Google use? To understand why Google can consider certain websites over-optimized, it is important to factor in the criteria that Google uses to rank websites. When fully indexing a website, Google does not just look at the optimization of the target website; it also compares the website with all the other websites that belong to the same niche / category / keyword range. Through this comparison, Google can then figure out the following: Is this website “way more” optimized than the current top ranking websites? In the past, have over-optimized websites been discovered as spam websites? What are the trends / acceptable limits for well-optimized websites in this niche/keyword range? Since Google is automated, it cannot do what we do – look at the webpage and determine if the purpose is spam or delivering truly useful information. Instead, the search engine uses historical trends to predict what the acceptable limits of over-optimization are, and how likely over-optimized websites are to be found out as spam. In other words, your website may be red flagged as being a potential spamming website even though your only fault might be that you were “perfect” in optimizing your website while your competition was left far behind. Google takes both on-page and off-page optimization into account when checking for over-optimization / spam, and as such it watches out for over-optimization in all ranking factors – your backlinks and your tag optimization (meta tags, title tags, header tags) being most important. A lot of what I am talking about becomes invalid if one tries any overt search engine spamming technique , such as stuffing your pages with keywords, white on white text (something I talked about in the first few lessons) or backlink spamming (building too many backlinks with the same anchor text in a short period of time. But it is also possible that you have followed advice and still have your website penalized for over-optimization. The real question then is: How can you avoid such penalties ? Avoiding the trap of over-optimization As I mentioned at the start of this lesson, search engine optimization can be boiled down to two simple steps: Getting it right and… Doing it better than everyone else. In the context of over-optimization and avoiding unnecessary penalties, this rings especially true. If you optimize your website within search engine guidelines and according to proven optimization practices, you have it right. While putting too little time on SEO is a serious mistake, the search for perfection within SEO is a time-wasting and fruitless effort. Too much focus on getting the page structure “just right” can divert attention away from the more mundane but equally more important tasks – such as adding more content or monetizing the website. The next step is to eschew perfection and find out what your competition has done. Suppose that you are optimizing your website for the term “landscaping”. Which of the following approaches would you realistically choose? Go full-throttle on your search engine optimization, spending as much time as necessary to get maximum value out of each word, link and page in your website, so that you can get the highest ranking possible. Analyze the top 10 webpages for the term “landscaping” and understand what optimization has been performed on them (natural or artificial). Calculate the number of backlinks, check for authority inbound links – and once you have figured out what your competition is doing, and do exactly the same – only a bit more . The first approach might mean that you are guaranteed a top position on the search engines, but has two problems – you will waste a lot of time and resources in this search for perfection and more importantly, your website may be flagged for over-optimization. On the other hand, the second approach does just enough to beat the competition – without pushing you or your budget to the limit. Over-optimization is a phenomenon that is particularly difficult to figure out – how does a SEO expert really determine whether his new website is in the sandbox, penalized for over-optimization or just doing badly in the search engines? While trying to find out the real cause for your poor rankings may satisfy curiosity, you would be better served by following the “second approach” above. Search engine optimization is a long-term, low-intensity process. You keep building links and adding content, so that eventually your website not only escapes the infamous sandbox but it also starts to rank really well on the search engines. And as for over-optimization – as long you follow search engine guidelines and don’t go too far above your competition, you will be fine.

The following review Are You DELIBERATELY Keeping Your Website Out Of The First page Of Google? read: Chicago Website Design SEO Company

[gobacktothe-classics-blog]

Surprising SEO A/B Test Results - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by willcritchlow

You can make all the tweaks and changes in the world, but how do you know they're the best choice for the site you're working on? Without data to support your hypotheses, it's hard to say. In this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday, Will Critchlow explains a bit about what A/B testing for SEO entails and describes some of the surprising results he's seen that prove you can't always trust your instinct in our industry.

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

Video Transcription

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another British Whiteboard Friday. My name is Will Critchlow. I'm the founder and CEO at Distilled. At Distilled, one of the things that we've been working on recently is building an SEO A/B testing platform. It's called the ODN, the Optimization Delivery Network. We're now deployed on a bunch of big sites, and we've been running these SEO A/B tests for a little while. I want to tell you about some of the surprising results that we've seen.

What is SEO A/B testing?

We're going to link to some resources that will show you more about what SEO A/B testing is. But very quickly, the general principle is that you take a site section, so a bunch of pages that have a similar structure and layout and template and so forth, and you split those pages into control and variant, so a group of A pages and a group of B pages.

Then you make the change that you're hypothesizing is going to make a difference just to one of those groups of pages, and you leave the other set unchanged. Then, using your analytics data, you build a forecast of what would have happened to the variant pages if you hadn't made any changes to them, and you compare what actually happens to the forecast. Out of that you get some statistical confidence intervals, and you get to say, yes, this is an uplift, or there was no difference, or no, this hurt the performance of your site.

This is data that we've never really had in SEO before, because this is very different to running a controlled experiment in a kind of lab environment or on a test domain. This is in the wild, on real, actual, live websites. So let's get to the material. The first surprising result I want to talk about is based off some of the most basic advice that you've ever seen.

Result #1: Targeting higher-volume keywords can actually result in traffic drops

I've stood on stage and given this advice. I have recommended this stuff to clients. Probably you have too. You know that process where you do some keyword research and you find that there's one particular way of searching for whatever it is that you offer that has more search volume than the way that you're talking about it on your website right now, so higher search volume for a particular way of phrasing?

You make the recommendation, "Let's talk about this stuff on our website the way that people are searching for it. Let's put this kind of phrasing in our title and elsewhere on our pages." I've made those recommendations. You've probably made those recommendations. They don't always work. We've seen a few times now actually of testing this kind of process and seeing what are actually dramatic drops.

We saw up to 20-plus-percent drops in organic traffic after updating meta information in titles and so forth to target the more commonly-searched-for variant. Various different reasons for this. Maybe you end up with a worse click-through rate from the search results. So maybe you rank where you used to, but get a worse click-through rate. Maybe you improve your ranking for the higher volume target term and you move up a little bit, but you move down for the other one and the new one is more competitive.

So yes, you've moved up a little bit, but you're still out of the running, and so it's a net loss. Or maybe you end up ranking for fewer variations of key phrases on these pages. However it happens, you can't be certain that just putting the higher-volume keyword phrasing on your pages is going to perform better. So that's surprising result number one. Surprising result number two is possibly not that surprising, but pretty important I think.

Result #2: 30–40% of common tech audit recommendations make no difference

So this is that we see as many as 30% or 40% of the common recommendations in a classic tech audit make no difference. You do all of this work auditing the website. You follow SEO best practices. You find a thing that, in theory, makes the website better. You go and make the change. You test it.

Nothing, flatlines. You get the same performance as the forecast, as if you had made no change. This is a big deal because it's making these kinds of recommendations that damages trust with engineers and product teams. You're constantly asking them to do stuff. They feel like it's pointless. They do all this stuff, and there's no difference. That is what burns authority with engineering teams too often.

This is one of the reasons why we built the platform is that we can then take our 20 recommendations and hypotheses, test them all, find the 5 or 6 that move the needle, only go to the engineering team to build those ones, and that builds so much trust and relationship over time, and they get to work on stuff that moves the needle on the product side.

So the big deal there is really be a bit skeptical about some of this stuff. The best practices, at the limit, probably make a difference. If everything else is equal and you make that one tiny, little tweak to the alt attribute or a particular image somewhere deep on the page, if everything else had been equal, maybe that would have made the difference.

But is it going to move you up in a competitive ranking environment? That's what we need to be skeptical about.

Result #3: Many lessons don't generalize

So surprising result number three is: How many lessons do not generalize? We've seen this broadly across different sections on the same website, even different industries. Some of this is about the competitive dynamics of the industry.

Some of it is probably just the complexity of the ranking algorithm these days. But we see this in particular with things like this. Who's seen SEO text on a category page? Those kind of you've got all of your products, and then somebody says, "You know what? We need 200 or 250 words that mention our key phrase a bunch of times down at the bottom of the page." Sometimes, helpfully, your engineers will even put this in an SEO-text div for you.

So we see this pretty often, and we've tested removing it. We said, "You know what? No users are looking at this. We know that overstuffing the keyword on the page can be a negative ranking signal. I wonder if we'll do better if we just cut that div." So we remove it, and the first time we did it, plus 6% result. This was a good thing.

The pages are better without it. They're now ranking better. We're getting better performance. So we say, "You know what? We've learnt this lesson. You should remove this really low-quality text from the bottom of your category pages." But then we tested it on another site, and we see there's a drop, a small one admittedly, but it was helping on these particular pages.

So I think what that's just telling us is we need to be testing these recommendations every time. We need to be trying to build testing into our core methodologies, and I think this trend is only going to increase and continue, because the more complex the ranking algorithms get, the more machine learning is baked into it and it's not as deterministic as it used to be, and the more competitive the markets get, so the narrower the gap between you and your competitors, the less stable all this stuff is, the smaller differences there will be, and the bigger opportunity there will be for something that works in one place to be null or negative in another.

So I hope I have inspired you to check out some SEO A/B testing. We're going to link to some of the resources that describe how you do it, how you can do it yourself, and how you can build a program around this as well as some other of our case studies and lessons that we've learnt. But I hope you enjoyed this journey on surprising results from SEO A/B tests.

Resources:

SEO Split-Testing: How to A/B Test Changes for Google

Do it Yourself SEO Split Testing Tool With Causal Impact

Case studies:

SmokyMountains.com

iCanvas

ConcertHotels.com

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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

[coloss-us-blog]

Surprising SEO A/B Test Results - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by willcritchlow

You can make all the tweaks and changes in the world, but how do you know they're the best choice for the site you're working on? Without data to support your hypotheses, it's hard to say. In this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday, Will Critchlow explains a bit about what A/B testing for SEO entails and describes some of the surprising results he's seen that prove you can't always trust your instinct in our industry.

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

Video Transcription

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another British Whiteboard Friday. My name is Will Critchlow. I'm the founder and CEO at Distilled. At Distilled, one of the things that we've been working on recently is building an SEO A/B testing platform. It's called the ODN, the Optimization Delivery Network. We're now deployed on a bunch of big sites, and we've been running these SEO A/B tests for a little while. I want to tell you about some of the surprising results that we've seen.

What is SEO A/B testing?

We're going to link to some resources that will show you more about what SEO A/B testing is. But very quickly, the general principle is that you take a site section, so a bunch of pages that have a similar structure and layout and template and so forth, and you split those pages into control and variant, so a group of A pages and a group of B pages.

Then you make the change that you're hypothesizing is going to make a difference just to one of those groups of pages, and you leave the other set unchanged. Then, using your analytics data, you build a forecast of what would have happened to the variant pages if you hadn't made any changes to them, and you compare what actually happens to the forecast. Out of that you get some statistical confidence intervals, and you get to say, yes, this is an uplift, or there was no difference, or no, this hurt the performance of your site.

This is data that we've never really had in SEO before, because this is very different to running a controlled experiment in a kind of lab environment or on a test domain. This is in the wild, on real, actual, live websites. So let's get to the material. The first surprising result I want to talk about is based off some of the most basic advice that you've ever seen.

Result #1: Targeting higher-volume keywords can actually result in traffic drops

I've stood on stage and given this advice. I have recommended this stuff to clients. Probably you have too. You know that process where you do some keyword research and you find that there's one particular way of searching for whatever it is that you offer that has more search volume than the way that you're talking about it on your website right now, so higher search volume for a particular way of phrasing?

You make the recommendation, "Let's talk about this stuff on our website the way that people are searching for it. Let's put this kind of phrasing in our title and elsewhere on our pages." I've made those recommendations. You've probably made those recommendations. They don't always work. We've seen a few times now actually of testing this kind of process and seeing what are actually dramatic drops.

We saw up to 20-plus-percent drops in organic traffic after updating meta information in titles and so forth to target the more commonly-searched-for variant. Various different reasons for this. Maybe you end up with a worse click-through rate from the search results. So maybe you rank where you used to, but get a worse click-through rate. Maybe you improve your ranking for the higher volume target term and you move up a little bit, but you move down for the other one and the new one is more competitive.

So yes, you've moved up a little bit, but you're still out of the running, and so it's a net loss. Or maybe you end up ranking for fewer variations of key phrases on these pages. However it happens, you can't be certain that just putting the higher-volume keyword phrasing on your pages is going to perform better. So that's surprising result number one. Surprising result number two is possibly not that surprising, but pretty important I think.

Result #2: 30–40% of common tech audit recommendations make no difference

So this is that we see as many as 30% or 40% of the common recommendations in a classic tech audit make no difference. You do all of this work auditing the website. You follow SEO best practices. You find a thing that, in theory, makes the website better. You go and make the change. You test it.

Nothing, flatlines. You get the same performance as the forecast, as if you had made no change. This is a big deal because it's making these kinds of recommendations that damages trust with engineers and product teams. You're constantly asking them to do stuff. They feel like it's pointless. They do all this stuff, and there's no difference. That is what burns authority with engineering teams too often.

This is one of the reasons why we built the platform is that we can then take our 20 recommendations and hypotheses, test them all, find the 5 or 6 that move the needle, only go to the engineering team to build those ones, and that builds so much trust and relationship over time, and they get to work on stuff that moves the needle on the product side.

So the big deal there is really be a bit skeptical about some of this stuff. The best practices, at the limit, probably make a difference. If everything else is equal and you make that one tiny, little tweak to the alt attribute or a particular image somewhere deep on the page, if everything else had been equal, maybe that would have made the difference.

But is it going to move you up in a competitive ranking environment? That's what we need to be skeptical about.

Result #3: Many lessons don't generalize

So surprising result number three is: How many lessons do not generalize? We've seen this broadly across different sections on the same website, even different industries. Some of this is about the competitive dynamics of the industry.

Some of it is probably just the complexity of the ranking algorithm these days. But we see this in particular with things like this. Who's seen SEO text on a category page? Those kind of you've got all of your products, and then somebody says, "You know what? We need 200 or 250 words that mention our key phrase a bunch of times down at the bottom of the page." Sometimes, helpfully, your engineers will even put this in an SEO-text div for you.

So we see this pretty often, and we've tested removing it. We said, "You know what? No users are looking at this. We know that overstuffing the keyword on the page can be a negative ranking signal. I wonder if we'll do better if we just cut that div." So we remove it, and the first time we did it, plus 6% result. This was a good thing.

The pages are better without it. They're now ranking better. We're getting better performance. So we say, "You know what? We've learnt this lesson. You should remove this really low-quality text from the bottom of your category pages." But then we tested it on another site, and we see there's a drop, a small one admittedly, but it was helping on these particular pages.

So I think what that's just telling us is we need to be testing these recommendations every time. We need to be trying to build testing into our core methodologies, and I think this trend is only going to increase and continue, because the more complex the ranking algorithms get, the more machine learning is baked into it and it's not as deterministic as it used to be, and the more competitive the markets get, so the narrower the gap between you and your competitors, the less stable all this stuff is, the smaller differences there will be, and the bigger opportunity there will be for something that works in one place to be null or negative in another.

So I hope I have inspired you to check out some SEO A/B testing. We're going to link to some of the resources that describe how you do it, how you can do it yourself, and how you can build a program around this as well as some other of our case studies and lessons that we've learnt. But I hope you enjoyed this journey on surprising results from SEO A/B tests.

Resources:

SEO Split-Testing: How to A/B Test Changes for Google

Do it Yourself SEO Split Testing Tool With Causal Impact

Case studies:

SmokyMountains.com

iCanvas

ConcertHotels.com

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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

[eve-evi-blog]

Surprising SEO A/B Test Results - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by willcritchlow

You can make all the tweaks and changes in the world, but how do you know they're the best choice for the site you're working on? Without data to support your hypotheses, it's hard to say. In this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday, Will Critchlow explains a bit about what A/B testing for SEO entails and describes some of the surprising results he's seen that prove you can't always trust your instinct in our industry.

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

Video Transcription

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another British Whiteboard Friday. My name is Will Critchlow. I'm the founder and CEO at Distilled. At Distilled, one of the things that we've been working on recently is building an SEO A/B testing platform. It's called the ODN, the Optimization Delivery Network. We're now deployed on a bunch of big sites, and we've been running these SEO A/B tests for a little while. I want to tell you about some of the surprising results that we've seen.

What is SEO A/B testing?

We're going to link to some resources that will show you more about what SEO A/B testing is. But very quickly, the general principle is that you take a site section, so a bunch of pages that have a similar structure and layout and template and so forth, and you split those pages into control and variant, so a group of A pages and a group of B pages.

Then you make the change that you're hypothesizing is going to make a difference just to one of those groups of pages, and you leave the other set unchanged. Then, using your analytics data, you build a forecast of what would have happened to the variant pages if you hadn't made any changes to them, and you compare what actually happens to the forecast. Out of that you get some statistical confidence intervals, and you get to say, yes, this is an uplift, or there was no difference, or no, this hurt the performance of your site.

This is data that we've never really had in SEO before, because this is very different to running a controlled experiment in a kind of lab environment or on a test domain. This is in the wild, on real, actual, live websites. So let's get to the material. The first surprising result I want to talk about is based off some of the most basic advice that you've ever seen.

Result #1: Targeting higher-volume keywords can actually result in traffic drops

I've stood on stage and given this advice. I have recommended this stuff to clients. Probably you have too. You know that process where you do some keyword research and you find that there's one particular way of searching for whatever it is that you offer that has more search volume than the way that you're talking about it on your website right now, so higher search volume for a particular way of phrasing?

You make the recommendation, "Let's talk about this stuff on our website the way that people are searching for it. Let's put this kind of phrasing in our title and elsewhere on our pages." I've made those recommendations. You've probably made those recommendations. They don't always work. We've seen a few times now actually of testing this kind of process and seeing what are actually dramatic drops.

We saw up to 20-plus-percent drops in organic traffic after updating meta information in titles and so forth to target the more commonly-searched-for variant. Various different reasons for this. Maybe you end up with a worse click-through rate from the search results. So maybe you rank where you used to, but get a worse click-through rate. Maybe you improve your ranking for the higher volume target term and you move up a little bit, but you move down for the other one and the new one is more competitive.

So yes, you've moved up a little bit, but you're still out of the running, and so it's a net loss. Or maybe you end up ranking for fewer variations of key phrases on these pages. However it happens, you can't be certain that just putting the higher-volume keyword phrasing on your pages is going to perform better. So that's surprising result number one. Surprising result number two is possibly not that surprising, but pretty important I think.

Result #2: 30–40% of common tech audit recommendations make no difference

So this is that we see as many as 30% or 40% of the common recommendations in a classic tech audit make no difference. You do all of this work auditing the website. You follow SEO best practices. You find a thing that, in theory, makes the website better. You go and make the change. You test it.

Nothing, flatlines. You get the same performance as the forecast, as if you had made no change. This is a big deal because it's making these kinds of recommendations that damages trust with engineers and product teams. You're constantly asking them to do stuff. They feel like it's pointless. They do all this stuff, and there's no difference. That is what burns authority with engineering teams too often.

This is one of the reasons why we built the platform is that we can then take our 20 recommendations and hypotheses, test them all, find the 5 or 6 that move the needle, only go to the engineering team to build those ones, and that builds so much trust and relationship over time, and they get to work on stuff that moves the needle on the product side.

So the big deal there is really be a bit skeptical about some of this stuff. The best practices, at the limit, probably make a difference. If everything else is equal and you make that one tiny, little tweak to the alt attribute or a particular image somewhere deep on the page, if everything else had been equal, maybe that would have made the difference.

But is it going to move you up in a competitive ranking environment? That's what we need to be skeptical about.

Result #3: Many lessons don't generalize

So surprising result number three is: How many lessons do not generalize? We've seen this broadly across different sections on the same website, even different industries. Some of this is about the competitive dynamics of the industry.

Some of it is probably just the complexity of the ranking algorithm these days. But we see this in particular with things like this. Who's seen SEO text on a category page? Those kind of you've got all of your products, and then somebody says, "You know what? We need 200 or 250 words that mention our key phrase a bunch of times down at the bottom of the page." Sometimes, helpfully, your engineers will even put this in an SEO-text div for you.

So we see this pretty often, and we've tested removing it. We said, "You know what? No users are looking at this. We know that overstuffing the keyword on the page can be a negative ranking signal. I wonder if we'll do better if we just cut that div." So we remove it, and the first time we did it, plus 6% result. This was a good thing.

The pages are better without it. They're now ranking better. We're getting better performance. So we say, "You know what? We've learnt this lesson. You should remove this really low-quality text from the bottom of your category pages." But then we tested it on another site, and we see there's a drop, a small one admittedly, but it was helping on these particular pages.

So I think what that's just telling us is we need to be testing these recommendations every time. We need to be trying to build testing into our core methodologies, and I think this trend is only going to increase and continue, because the more complex the ranking algorithms get, the more machine learning is baked into it and it's not as deterministic as it used to be, and the more competitive the markets get, so the narrower the gap between you and your competitors, the less stable all this stuff is, the smaller differences there will be, and the bigger opportunity there will be for something that works in one place to be null or negative in another.

So I hope I have inspired you to check out some SEO A/B testing. We're going to link to some of the resources that describe how you do it, how you can do it yourself, and how you can build a program around this as well as some other of our case studies and lessons that we've learnt. But I hope you enjoyed this journey on surprising results from SEO A/B tests.

Resources:

SEO Split-Testing: How to A/B Test Changes for Google

Do it Yourself SEO Split Testing Tool With Causal Impact

Case studies:

SmokyMountains.com

iCanvas

ConcertHotels.com

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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

[tvrdojezgreno-blog]

Surprising SEO A/B Test Results - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by willcritchlow

You can make all the tweaks and changes in the world, but how do you know they're the best choice for the site you're working on? Without data to support your hypotheses, it's hard to say. In this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday, Will Critchlow explains a bit about what A/B testing for SEO entails and describes some of the surprising results he's seen that prove you can't always trust your instinct in our industry.

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

Video Transcription

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another British Whiteboard Friday. My name is Will Critchlow. I'm the founder and CEO at Distilled. At Distilled, one of the things that we've been working on recently is building an SEO A/B testing platform. It's called the ODN, the Optimization Delivery Network. We're now deployed on a bunch of big sites, and we've been running these SEO A/B tests for a little while. I want to tell you about some of the surprising results that we've seen.

What is SEO A/B testing?

We're going to link to some resources that will show you more about what SEO A/B testing is. But very quickly, the general principle is that you take a site section, so a bunch of pages that have a similar structure and layout and template and so forth, and you split those pages into control and variant, so a group of A pages and a group of B pages.

Then you make the change that you're hypothesizing is going to make a difference just to one of those groups of pages, and you leave the other set unchanged. Then, using your analytics data, you build a forecast of what would have happened to the variant pages if you hadn't made any changes to them, and you compare what actually happens to the forecast. Out of that you get some statistical confidence intervals, and you get to say, yes, this is an uplift, or there was no difference, or no, this hurt the performance of your site.

This is data that we've never really had in SEO before, because this is very different to running a controlled experiment in a kind of lab environment or on a test domain. This is in the wild, on real, actual, live websites. So let's get to the material. The first surprising result I want to talk about is based off some of the most basic advice that you've ever seen.

Result #1: Targeting higher-volume keywords can actually result in traffic drops

I've stood on stage and given this advice. I have recommended this stuff to clients. Probably you have too. You know that process where you do some keyword research and you find that there's one particular way of searching for whatever it is that you offer that has more search volume than the way that you're talking about it on your website right now, so higher search volume for a particular way of phrasing?

You make the recommendation, "Let's talk about this stuff on our website the way that people are searching for it. Let's put this kind of phrasing in our title and elsewhere on our pages." I've made those recommendations. You've probably made those recommendations. They don't always work. We've seen a few times now actually of testing this kind of process and seeing what are actually dramatic drops.

We saw up to 20-plus-percent drops in organic traffic after updating meta information in titles and so forth to target the more commonly-searched-for variant. Various different reasons for this. Maybe you end up with a worse click-through rate from the search results. So maybe you rank where you used to, but get a worse click-through rate. Maybe you improve your ranking for the higher volume target term and you move up a little bit, but you move down for the other one and the new one is more competitive.

So yes, you've moved up a little bit, but you're still out of the running, and so it's a net loss. Or maybe you end up ranking for fewer variations of key phrases on these pages. However it happens, you can't be certain that just putting the higher-volume keyword phrasing on your pages is going to perform better. So that's surprising result number one. Surprising result number two is possibly not that surprising, but pretty important I think.

Result #2: 30–40% of common tech audit recommendations make no difference

So this is that we see as many as 30% or 40% of the common recommendations in a classic tech audit make no difference. You do all of this work auditing the website. You follow SEO best practices. You find a thing that, in theory, makes the website better. You go and make the change. You test it.

Nothing, flatlines. You get the same performance as the forecast, as if you had made no change. This is a big deal because it's making these kinds of recommendations that damages trust with engineers and product teams. You're constantly asking them to do stuff. They feel like it's pointless. They do all this stuff, and there's no difference. That is what burns authority with engineering teams too often.

This is one of the reasons why we built the platform is that we can then take our 20 recommendations and hypotheses, test them all, find the 5 or 6 that move the needle, only go to the engineering team to build those ones, and that builds so much trust and relationship over time, and they get to work on stuff that moves the needle on the product side.

So the big deal there is really be a bit skeptical about some of this stuff. The best practices, at the limit, probably make a difference. If everything else is equal and you make that one tiny, little tweak to the alt attribute or a particular image somewhere deep on the page, if everything else had been equal, maybe that would have made the difference.

But is it going to move you up in a competitive ranking environment? That's what we need to be skeptical about.

Result #3: Many lessons don't generalize

So surprising result number three is: How many lessons do not generalize? We've seen this broadly across different sections on the same website, even different industries. Some of this is about the competitive dynamics of the industry.

Some of it is probably just the complexity of the ranking algorithm these days. But we see this in particular with things like this. Who's seen SEO text on a category page? Those kind of you've got all of your products, and then somebody says, "You know what? We need 200 or 250 words that mention our key phrase a bunch of times down at the bottom of the page." Sometimes, helpfully, your engineers will even put this in an SEO-text div for you.

So we see this pretty often, and we've tested removing it. We said, "You know what? No users are looking at this. We know that overstuffing the keyword on the page can be a negative ranking signal. I wonder if we'll do better if we just cut that div." So we remove it, and the first time we did it, plus 6% result. This was a good thing.

The pages are better without it. They're now ranking better. We're getting better performance. So we say, "You know what? We've learnt this lesson. You should remove this really low-quality text from the bottom of your category pages." But then we tested it on another site, and we see there's a drop, a small one admittedly, but it was helping on these particular pages.

So I think what that's just telling us is we need to be testing these recommendations every time. We need to be trying to build testing into our core methodologies, and I think this trend is only going to increase and continue, because the more complex the ranking algorithms get, the more machine learning is baked into it and it's not as deterministic as it used to be, and the more competitive the markets get, so the narrower the gap between you and your competitors, the less stable all this stuff is, the smaller differences there will be, and the bigger opportunity there will be for something that works in one place to be null or negative in another.

So I hope I have inspired you to check out some SEO A/B testing. We're going to link to some of the resources that describe how you do it, how you can do it yourself, and how you can build a program around this as well as some other of our case studies and lessons that we've learnt. But I hope you enjoyed this journey on surprising results from SEO A/B tests.

Resources:

SEO Split-Testing: How to A/B Test Changes for Google

Do it Yourself SEO Split Testing Tool With Causal Impact

Case studies:

SmokyMountains.com

iCanvas

ConcertHotels.com

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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

[bruised-barbie-blog]

Surprising SEO A/B Test Results - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by willcritchlow

You can make all the tweaks and changes in the world, but how do you know they're the best choice for the site you're working on? Without data to support your hypotheses, it's hard to say. In this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday, Will Critchlow explains a bit about what A/B testing for SEO entails and describes some of the surprising results he's seen that prove you can't always trust your instinct in our industry.

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

Video Transcription

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another British Whiteboard Friday. My name is Will Critchlow. I'm the founder and CEO at Distilled. At Distilled, one of the things that we've been working on recently is building an SEO A/B testing platform. It's called the ODN, the Optimization Delivery Network. We're now deployed on a bunch of big sites, and we've been running these SEO A/B tests for a little while. I want to tell you about some of the surprising results that we've seen.

What is SEO A/B testing?

We're going to link to some resources that will show you more about what SEO A/B testing is. But very quickly, the general principle is that you take a site section, so a bunch of pages that have a similar structure and layout and template and so forth, and you split those pages into control and variant, so a group of A pages and a group of B pages.

Then you make the change that you're hypothesizing is going to make a difference just to one of those groups of pages, and you leave the other set unchanged. Then, using your analytics data, you build a forecast of what would have happened to the variant pages if you hadn't made any changes to them, and you compare what actually happens to the forecast. Out of that you get some statistical confidence intervals, and you get to say, yes, this is an uplift, or there was no difference, or no, this hurt the performance of your site.

This is data that we've never really had in SEO before, because this is very different to running a controlled experiment in a kind of lab environment or on a test domain. This is in the wild, on real, actual, live websites. So let's get to the material. The first surprising result I want to talk about is based off some of the most basic advice that you've ever seen.

Result #1: Targeting higher-volume keywords can actually result in traffic drops

I've stood on stage and given this advice. I have recommended this stuff to clients. Probably you have too. You know that process where you do some keyword research and you find that there's one particular way of searching for whatever it is that you offer that has more search volume than the way that you're talking about it on your website right now, so higher search volume for a particular way of phrasing?

You make the recommendation, "Let's talk about this stuff on our website the way that people are searching for it. Let's put this kind of phrasing in our title and elsewhere on our pages." I've made those recommendations. You've probably made those recommendations. They don't always work. We've seen a few times now actually of testing this kind of process and seeing what are actually dramatic drops.

We saw up to 20-plus-percent drops in organic traffic after updating meta information in titles and so forth to target the more commonly-searched-for variant. Various different reasons for this. Maybe you end up with a worse click-through rate from the search results. So maybe you rank where you used to, but get a worse click-through rate. Maybe you improve your ranking for the higher volume target term and you move up a little bit, but you move down for the other one and the new one is more competitive.

So yes, you've moved up a little bit, but you're still out of the running, and so it's a net loss. Or maybe you end up ranking for fewer variations of key phrases on these pages. However it happens, you can't be certain that just putting the higher-volume keyword phrasing on your pages is going to perform better. So that's surprising result number one. Surprising result number two is possibly not that surprising, but pretty important I think.

Result #2: 30–40% of common tech audit recommendations make no difference

So this is that we see as many as 30% or 40% of the common recommendations in a classic tech audit make no difference. You do all of this work auditing the website. You follow SEO best practices. You find a thing that, in theory, makes the website better. You go and make the change. You test it.

Nothing, flatlines. You get the same performance as the forecast, as if you had made no change. This is a big deal because it's making these kinds of recommendations that damages trust with engineers and product teams. You're constantly asking them to do stuff. They feel like it's pointless. They do all this stuff, and there's no difference. That is what burns authority with engineering teams too often.

This is one of the reasons why we built the platform is that we can then take our 20 recommendations and hypotheses, test them all, find the 5 or 6 that move the needle, only go to the engineering team to build those ones, and that builds so much trust and relationship over time, and they get to work on stuff that moves the needle on the product side.

So the big deal there is really be a bit skeptical about some of this stuff. The best practices, at the limit, probably make a difference. If everything else is equal and you make that one tiny, little tweak to the alt attribute or a particular image somewhere deep on the page, if everything else had been equal, maybe that would have made the difference.

But is it going to move you up in a competitive ranking environment? That's what we need to be skeptical about.

Result #3: Many lessons don't generalize

So surprising result number three is: How many lessons do not generalize? We've seen this broadly across different sections on the same website, even different industries. Some of this is about the competitive dynamics of the industry.

Some of it is probably just the complexity of the ranking algorithm these days. But we see this in particular with things like this. Who's seen SEO text on a category page? Those kind of you've got all of your products, and then somebody says, "You know what? We need 200 or 250 words that mention our key phrase a bunch of times down at the bottom of the page." Sometimes, helpfully, your engineers will even put this in an SEO-text div for you.

So we see this pretty often, and we've tested removing it. We said, "You know what? No users are looking at this. We know that overstuffing the keyword on the page can be a negative ranking signal. I wonder if we'll do better if we just cut that div." So we remove it, and the first time we did it, plus 6% result. This was a good thing.

The pages are better without it. They're now ranking better. We're getting better performance. So we say, "You know what? We've learnt this lesson. You should remove this really low-quality text from the bottom of your category pages." But then we tested it on another site, and we see there's a drop, a small one admittedly, but it was helping on these particular pages.

So I think what that's just telling us is we need to be testing these recommendations every time. We need to be trying to build testing into our core methodologies, and I think this trend is only going to increase and continue, because the more complex the ranking algorithms get, the more machine learning is baked into it and it's not as deterministic as it used to be, and the more competitive the markets get, so the narrower the gap between you and your competitors, the less stable all this stuff is, the smaller differences there will be, and the bigger opportunity there will be for something that works in one place to be null or negative in another.

So I hope I have inspired you to check out some SEO A/B testing. We're going to link to some of the resources that describe how you do it, how you can do it yourself, and how you can build a program around this as well as some other of our case studies and lessons that we've learnt. But I hope you enjoyed this journey on surprising results from SEO A/B tests.

Resources:

SEO Split-Testing: How to A/B Test Changes for Google

Do it Yourself SEO Split Testing Tool With Causal Impact

Case studies:

SmokyMountains.com

iCanvas

ConcertHotels.com

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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