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jpat82 · 5 years

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Beautiful

My bestie requested Steve with the numbers 1, 4, & 25.

1.) Can I bother you with something?- You generally do but what's up?

4.) I need to.. go.. iron my cat.

25.) did I ever tell you that you make the moonlight beautiful?

You had been sitting staring at the computer screen for six hours, sure when you sat down you had grand plans to pump out chapter after chapter of the story you had been writing. First though you had to check your email, and then you had check Facebook in case mom was trying to get ahold of you, or Becky from accounting. Then Instagram cause you had posted a photo of you and your bestie sunning yourselves on the beach, not that you were anything on Instagram but it was amazing shot. After that it was Pinterest to check on some prompt ideas, cause those were also a great resources when getting the creative juices flowing.

Then you noticed you had a notification on reddit, not that it was from anything you posted, no just one of the sub-Reddit’s that you frequented. You checked Twitter just for shits and giggles, you knew what you doing though, stalling. You wanted to write, you really did but you also wanted to do everything but write as well. And here you were six hour and fifteen minutes later, you had to check your text messages, with seventeen sentences added to your document. You sighed with annoyance as you stared at the screen, the floor creaked slightly behind.

“I swear God Peter if that’s you.” You stated out loud, even though the interruption would be fine.

“No, it’s me, Steve.” The Caps smooth voice called out making you feel slightly mushy inside. “Can I bother you with something?”

“You generally do but what’s up?” You asked, swiveling the rolly chair around to face him. He rolled his eyes at your remark as he fully entered the room, god that body frame took up most of your room.

“Did I ever tell you that you make the moonlight look beautiful?” He stated, making your heart beat a million miles per hour, it caught you off guard. Sure, you had always fantasized about Steve but you were just you, no one special, nothing extraordinary about you. And yet here he was saying that, while your heart did double time your brain raced even faster.

How should you respond to something like that, do you say thanks and move on? Do you say I know and risk sounding conceded? Or do you tell him that you didn’t think he felt that way, minutes were ticking and it would be even more awkward if you didn’t say a thing so you said the first thing that came to your mouth.

“What?” You almost stammered, pretty sure your eyes were bugging out of your skull.

“It’s what you wrote on the computer. Sorry, I happened to look over your shoulder and it caught my attention, didn’t peg you as a romantic type.” Steve stated, you felt your cheeks flush and all your hopes come crashing down around you. Over course he wouldn’t say something that to you, why would he. You should of recognized that line.

“I’m not, but my bestie challenged me to writing something sappy and to use that line specifically. Well she didn’t exactly say sappy but the the lines she gave me were pretty ‘romantic’.” You replied turning slightly and hitting save on the document before closing it. “What did you want though?”

“Oh, I have an banquet that I more or less have to attend to it is one for the commemoration of some of the guys that was part of Howling Commandos and I needed a plus one.” He explained. “I was wondering if you like to join me?”

“Me? I’m sure Sharon would be much better candidate then me.” You replied, looking down at your hands in your lap.

“Sharon?” He asked back like he hadn’t even thought about her.

“Yes, Sharon, she would have a better understanding of the lingo and she is way more social then me.” You sighed before muttering, “and prettier.”

“Did you just say prettier?” Steve ask walking closer to you.

“Uh, no.” You responded quickly, hoping to hell he didn’t catch it.

“Then what did you just say?” He asked, the corner of his mouth pulling back with his eye brow raised. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that you weren’t making eye contact with him.

“I said, I have to.. go... iron my cat?” You finally managed to reply, it was the best you could come up with while being put in hot seat.

“Iron your cat?” He chuckled.

“Yes?” Yeah, there was no bull shitting your way out of this one. Nope, not a change.

“Yeah, you know I’m go to call you out on that?” Steve chuckled again as he leaned again the desk next you. “For one, people don’t iron cats.”

“Maybe not in the 1940’s but it’s totally the rage these day.” You added, biting your bottom lip while looking at the floor.

“Uh huh, and two, you don’t have a cat.” Steve added, crossing his arms. You could see him staring at you from the corner of your eye. Heart pounding, you were surprised that he didn’t add that into his list.

“Cat is the new slang for... coat?” You should of just given up, maybe just admitted what you had said but that stubborn voice in the back of your head was determined not to give up so easily.

“And three, that didn’t even sound close to what you muttered. Super soldier? Remember? I have a lot better hearing then your average man.”

“Fine, that’s what I said.” You stated, standing up quickly almost knocking over the computer chair in the process. You spun to face him, soft blue eyes staring back at you, the corner of his mouth still pull back in a coy smile. “Sharon is prettier, or why not Captain Marvel not only would she understand everything they were talking about, but the two of you have way more in common, she is really pretty and she isn’t socially awkward like myself! Or Wanda, or Natasha, why would you ask em?!”

Steve looked down and nodded, a full smile on his face. He pushed himself off the desk and stood to his full height, his eyes met yours again, making your heart flutter. He took a step toward you bridging the gap.

“I asked you, because I like you. Your funny, smart, usually quick witted, and you are way more beautiful then you give yourself credit for.” Steve explained grabbing your hand. “So would you come with me?”

“Uh...” You just stared at him dumbfoundedly for a moment before your brain kicked back on from the sudden Steve overload. “Yes.”

“I’ll pick you up at seven.” He told you before bring your hand to his lips.

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lovehaswonangelnumbers · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/astrology-december-2-2019-jupiter-enters-capricorn/

Astrology December 2, 2019 ~ Jupiter Enters Capricorn

By Patrice Thompson

It’s moving day, today! 🙂

Jupiter, symbolizing the urge for growth or expansion, exits enthusiastic, visionary Sagittarius (the sign that it rules) and moves into more serious, Saturn-ruled Capricorn (1:20 pm), the sign of the “tried-and-true,” where it will reside until December of next year.

Ideally, Jupiter in earthy, frugal Capricorn (the sign of career, reputation, and status) will help us to grow in 2020 by showing us myriad ways to better manage, conserve, or reuse our available resources. The keywords for Capricorn are “I Use” – and there’s a distinctly utilitarian flair or approach to this sign.

Jupiter in Saturn’s “restricted” space may also make us more aware of the “power of focus” as a trusty way of realizing our dreams. Again, this plays into the whole idea or philosophy of setting a reasonable limit or boundary (Saturn) on what we hope to accomplish or achieve (Jupiter) so we don’t get too far ahead of our skis. Too, often when we make the actual overtures of turning a dream or two into reality we soon realize that it’s often much harder than we first thought it was going to be. Which is also another good reason to take small baby steps, at least, in the beginning.

I also wanted to add here that, for some of us, who are perhaps more “free-floating” in nature or style, this shift of “big-picture” Jupiter into “self-containing” Capricorn can, initially, at least, possibly be more challenging for us to know how to wrap our arms around this energy.

For instance, I had a whole series of very vivid, powerful dreams, last night, in which I was needing to quickly shift into playing or assuming different roles, and I had an internal struggle with being able to confidently do this. When I woke up this morning, I also immediately knew that the dreams were likely in conjunction with Jupiter crossing over and conjuncting my Capricorn Midheaven now. I’m intuitively feeling like I’m needing to possibly make some notable, but very necessary changes in how I’m showing up in the world (the 10th house), including maybe changing or scaling back on some of my priorities to make them more doable. I’m also sensing that others, perhaps like me, are maybe facing, or will be facing, the same kind of scenario? Just a guess on my part, but when we are in transitions, we often need to give ourselves some time to adapt to, or to learn new behaviors, adopt new practices or habits.

Anyway, archetypally, Jupiter in Capricorn represents, among other things, the marathon or long-distance runner. So an emphasis, again, is on reaching or pursuing our long-term goals now versus focusing on garnering more immediate rewards. Also, with Jupiter’s shift out of “spontaneous” Sagittarius, we’re likely aware, “the party’s over!” There could also be some relief with that acknowledgment!

Numerologically, it’s a “2” day, representing the union, and the Divine Feminine. Two days are normally positive for seeking out cooperation.

*All times EST.

Born on This Day: Italian fashion designer, Gianni Versace (d. 1997).

I try to contrast; life today is full of contrast… We have to change. Gianni Versace

Hope it’s a good one!

Patrice Thompson

~~~~~~~~~

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mariemary1 · 5 years

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The Meme-ification of Instagram

Social networks change and evolve, rapidly.

We’re seeing this happen on Instagram today: less polish, more authenticity.

In particular, we’re noticing an embrace of memes — that historically unpolished, yet highly relatable category of social media content.

Recently, we’ve picked up on the proliferation of memes across many major Instagram profiles, and we’d love to share how brands are making the most of this form of visual marketing and what it could look like for you to give it a try with your brand.

Keep reading for examples, inspiration, and directions on the meme-ification of Instagram and how to ride the wave.

The Trend on Instagram: Less Polish, More Authenticity

Especially at scale, there is an art to noticing the trends as social media moves.

One trend on the horizon: A shift in Instagram’s style.

Taylor Lorenz in The Atlantic wrote about the decline of the “Instagram aesthetic:” those images that look well-staged, highly-produced, and dripping with polish. In their place, a new style has taken over, and it’s largely moving in the opposite direction. Instagram seems to be embracing more raw, organic, and natural images on the platform.

According to an Instagram user quoted in the article:

“It’s not cool anymore to be manufactured.”

And Lynsey Eaton who co-founded an influencer marketing agency added this:

“Previously, influencers used to say, ‘Oh, that’s not on brand,’ or only post things shot in a certain light or with a commonality. For the younger generation, those rules don’t apply at all.”

There are a few reasons behind this:

As highly-polished photos have proliferated, the “Instagram aesthetic” has come to feel bland and cookie-cutter.

We’ve spoken before about the red vs. blue ocean strategies, picking a strategy where there is less competition. Staged Instagram photos are achieving mass scale, and it’s harder to compete for attention.

We’ve reached “peak perfection.” Ugly Drinks’ social media and community manager Brittany Zenner calls it “influencer saturation.” There can be too much of a good thing.

The “standard” way to post to Instagram with your very best pictures of your very best self is no longer the only way to get engagement. And with this lowering of the bar comes a welcome to many different types of content.

Memes included.

Having seen memes pop up across social media before, we’ve found there to be a few defining characteristics of what makes this type of social media content so engaging. Memes are …

Relatable. This is a core element of a successful meme. They summarize a widespread feeling that everyone can relate to.

Witty. Memes are clever. They have a way of putting obvious things succinctly in a way that we hadn’t thought of before.

Entertaining. With the combination of relatability and cleverness, memes can be an incredibly fun piece of content, like being in on an inside joke shared with thousands of others.

For example:

The famous “This is fine” meme

It’s especially important to note:

Not all memes need to get a laugh.

And you can use memes in your feed and in your Stories, in DMs, and anywhere else you communicate with your customers.

Like a customer service interaction with an MVP customer?

Because of these factors and more, brands have began experimenting with memes on their Instagram profiles. Here are some examples of memes in the Instagram feeds of top brands.

10 On-Brand Examples of Memes in the Instagram Feed

1. Glossier

The beauty brand has over two million followers and often sprinkles in memes among its standard posts about beauty tips and products. Often times, you’ll see Glossier highlighting messages from its community, like in this tweet-turned-Instagram-post:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Glossier (@glossier) on Apr 10, 2019 at 12:00pm PDT

2. BarkBox

BarkBox delivers subscription boxes of dog toys, treats, and chews. Their Instagram feed is almost all memes. They’ll often add captions to photos of dogs, and these captions speak from the dog’s perspective. BarkBox has taken advantage of trending topics, too, posting memes related to the latest Taylor Swift song or Avengers movie.

Here’s an example of their capitalizing on a popular Instagram meme and featuring user-generated content:

View this post on Instagram

so get your likes in now

⁣ ⁣ @tikatheiggy

A post shared by BarkBox (@barkbox) on Apr 11, 2019 at 9:05am PDT

3. Curology

Curology, a skincare company, has the best of both worlds on its Instagram. In addition to a collection of beautiful photography and professional graphics, they sprinkle in the occasional meme:

View this post on Instagram

Acne can be a stage 5 clinger.

Time to cut the cord.

A post shared by Curology (@curology) on May 9, 2019 at 7:00pm PDT

Curology is a good example of a mix of social media content types. They cross-post community tweets as testimonials, they show before-and-after images of their customers, they have marketing graphics and staged photos. And they use the occasional meme.

4. Ritual

Like Curology, Ritual places memes right alongside the more polished studio photography in its feed. Here’s a view of their feed at the moment:

The vitamin company uses memes to get across messages like “take your vitamins” along with empathizing with its audience when you’re just not feeling yourself.

5. Hims

Hims does a LOT of memes on their account. One of their specialties is reposting tweets:

View this post on Instagram

make

future

you

proud

A post shared by hims (@hims) on May 5, 2019 at 10:35am PDT

Hims does a great job of finding tweets that are relevant to its brand message: Use Hims products to protect your skin, prevent hair loss and erectile dysfunction, and sleep better. These health problems are rife for memes because they’re relatable. As you can see from the Hims accounts, there are lots of examples to choose from.

6. Burrow

This example from Burrow combines the meme trend with user-generated content. The post is a reshare from @meme_love_you_long_time’s account, and it fits with Burrow because the furniture company sells fancy furniture like leather couches.

View this post on Instagram

Tag a friend that needs a leather sofa.

#MyBurrow #StayOnTheSofa #NeverNormal #Memes #DailyMemes #MemeSlayer (via: @meme_love_you_long_time)

A post shared by Burrow (@burrow) on Apr 30, 2019 at 6:08am PDT

7. Ugly Drinks

Ugly Drinks has a really stellar approach to brand-building and creating a unique voice on social media. Part of that unique voice is sprinkling in memes to their Instagram content. Alongside pictures of their product (cans of flavored, carbonated water), Ugly adds memes with captions related to bottled water:

View this post on Instagram

You know there's a subscription service for that, right?

#glugugly

A post shared by Ugly Drinks (@uglydrinks) on Mar 10, 2019 at 11:30am PDT

8. Slim Jim

The entire Slim Jim account is memes, many of which reference their snack foods directly. Slim Jim has a strong focus on many of its branded hashtags and communities like the #LongBoiGang. This meme below is one of the more obvious Slim Jim CTAs:

View this post on Instagram

Boom shakalaka

A post shared by Slim Jim (@slimjim) on Feb 20, 2019 at 1:09pm PST

9. SparkNotes

SparkNotes understands its core audience: students and learners who can resonate with pop culture memes. The company creates study guides for a variety of topics, and their Instagram content is rife with empathy for the experience of the student: what it feels like to study, to pass a test, etc.

The majority of SparkNotes’s memes are related to TV shows like The Office, Arrested Development, and Parks and Rec. Here’s one from The Office:

View this post on Instagram

EVERYBODY DANCE NOW.

#sparknotes

A post shared by SparkNotes Official (@sparknotes_) on May 10, 2019 at 12:54pm PDT

10. Bustle

Bustle, a premium publisher reaching millennial women, has built its Instagram audience with a content stream full of memes. This includes their primary Instagram Feed as well as Instagram Stories, where they routinely get 90%+ completion rates on their Stories content.

Much of their feed is full of Twitter memes or photos that resonate with their audience, like this Monday post:

View this post on Instagram

i am Leslie & Leslie is me

A post shared by Bustle (@bustle) on Jun 3, 2019 at 6:00am PDT

Resources for Meme-ifying Your Instagram Profile

If you want to hop on this trend, first consider:

Do memes resonate with my target audience?

Are memes a fit with my brand’s voice and tone?

We’ve found that the majority of brands who make memes work are speaking to a younger demographic of consumers and that the brands themselves have a more personable, casual voice and tone. It’s more rare to see memes used with B2B brands or with brands that have an older demographic … at the same time, it could be interesting to evaluate as a competitive advantage.

Regardless, if you’re interested in getting started with memes, here are a few of the resources we’ve found to help make your meme-finding fast and efficient:

1. Source memes from popular tweets

Twitter can be a useful space to hear about the latest memes as well as find content that you can repurpose for Instagram (note how brands like Glossier do the latter with user-generated content and testimonials). One of the best places to begin is by looking at a list of popular tweets from sites like Zeitgeist.

If you’re thinking about repurposing tweets as Instagram content, then you can rely on a feed of your brand mentions via an engagement tool like Buffer Reply.

2. Source memes from meme aggregators and Reddit

Memebase and Memedroid are just a couple of the sites that collect popular memes. You can get a good overview of what’s trending by looking here. In addition, some of the biggest communities on the Internet are also home to the latest memes. If you check out Imgur and Reddit, you’re likely to find a good pulse on which memes are popular now.

3. See what the top Instagram meme accounts are sharing

Instagram meme channels are a thing, too. You can find a solid list of these IG accounts in this story from Media Kix.

And the number one rule we’ve seen with memes: Tie the meme back to the product.

This can be a direct tie-in like the Slim Jim sample above, or it can be a subtle, emotional one like how SparkNotes does it. Either way, it can be tempting to use memes for the sake of using memes (they are quite enjoyable); the best brands find ways to make memes that engage with the audience and build brand loyalty.

Over to you

What are some of your favorite meme accounts on Instagram?

Do you find the meme strategy to be effective for brands?

It’d be great to hear your perspective on this. Feel free to leave a comment below or come find us on social media!

Thank The Meme-ification of Instagram for first publishing this post.

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savetopnow · 7 years

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2018-03-10 04 SOCIAL MEDIA now

SOCIAL MEDIA

Adweek Social Pro Daily

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How to Create Engaging Short Videos for Social Media (Including 7 Excellent Examples)

A Simple 6-Step Framework for Running Social Media Experiments (with 87 Ideas Included)

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#social media

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wjwilliams29 · 7 years

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Everything You Need to Know About Spammy Structured Markup Penalty

Used correctly, structured markup data is a good decision to help websites display correct information on searches and increase the organic search visibility. But what happens if you use it incorrectly?

As we all know it, Google is not a fan of websites that don’t comply with quality guidelines and don’t offer the best user experience. So it may be that the structured data abuse to mark irrelevant content can potentially hurt your site. If you’ve been hit by a spammy structured markup penalty, you know what I’m talking about. If not, you’ll understand what you need to do in the following lines.

All your questions will be answered today. You’ll find out how a spammy structured data looks like, how to remove and avoid a penalty and if there are any repercussions.

It all started with a question on Google Webmaster Central office hours hangout. Plus, we’ve seen a lot of discussions many times before from people around the internet saying their structured data is removed from search engine results. You can find questions on Twitter, Reddit or social media in general, forums (including Google Webmaster Forum), blog post comments and so on.

We decided to take the matter into our own hands and find out if there is such thing as spammy structured markup penalty, how to avoid it, and if it has any impact on rankings.

How Does Structured Data Work?

Do Spammy Structured Markup Penalty Really Exists?

What to Do If You’re Hit by a Structured Data Penalty?

How to Avoid a Spammy Structured Markup Penalty?

Will Structured Markup Action Kill My Rankings?

1. How Does Structured Data Work

Structured markup data is used by a website to make Google understand better the content on a page. Furthermore, it can improve the appearance of a page on search. The main purpose of the structured markup data is to offer an organized search experience to the user. Google Search also uses structured data to show rich result display, as you can see in the following screenshot.

Nonetheless, on Google Developers there is an explanatory note, saying that:

Google does not guarantee that your structured data will show up in search results, even if your page is marked up correctly according to the Structured Data Testing Tool.

There is the situation where your rich snippets might not appear even if they are set up correctly. That happens because Google knows the users might not be interested in that information.

Nonetheless, every now and then there is someone who wants to exaggerate and take a lot of space in SERP with redundant information. And that’s why we probably have so many Google guidelines.

Basically, if you want to display rich snippets in Google, you need to observe the Structured Data Guidelines and your site needs to comply with the Webmaster Guidelines.

Google Developer is the place where you should find all the answers. There you have instructions, a list of all the featured snippets, errors, and guidelines. There are a lot of common causes of structured data manual actions. Let’s take into consideration the next examples of good practice and bad practice.

Spammy Structured Data Examples

Reviews are a widespread practice, maybe one of the most used rich snippets. If you search on Google for “best vacuums reviews” at some point will find this site:

At first sight, it doesn’t send a spammy signal, but if you take a second look at the reviews and the title tag, you’ll find out that there might be more products on the page. After you enter the site, you’ll find a list of vacuums. Each of them has a different set of 5-star rating.

That’s not making any sense. How are those five stars from the SERP calculated? At the bottom of the page there is some sort of an explanation box:

But in the end, what do the 5 star ratings in SERP exactly mean? Because the explanation box shows only 3/5 stars, not 5/5 as featured on Google. It abuses the rich snippets reviews, it is misleading, and it violates the Structured Data Guidelines.

The page mentioned above has a lot of bad snippets integration:

The first one is the fact that the site wrote those reviews (as you could see in the title – “We rated this vacuums”). Google explains very well that the reviews must come from customers or unpaid users and under no circumstances by the site.

Snippets must not be written or provided by the business or content provider unless they are genuine, independent, and unpaid editorial reviews.

Another one is the fact that the reviews need to be assigned for a single product/service, not for all of them. For example, “hotels in Madrid,” “summer dresses,” or “cake recipes” are not specific items. And of course “pet hair vacuums” is not very specific.

Provide review and/or rating information about a specific item, not about a category or a list of items.

Structured Data Testing Tool is the easiest way to view a result from your data and check if you set them right.

Groupon has some bad usage of markup data for a page with Amazon coupons. For example, if we use the testing tool, we can see that a link was marked instead of the name of the offer.

The guidelines assert very clearly that the name of the product has to be text, the name of the product itself, not the name of the company, the manufacturing, the description of URL.

Correct Structured Data Examples

After all these bad examples we deserve to see a good implementation of structured data markup as well.

Booking.com has good implementations for the accommodations. In the screenshot below, you can see that we’ve searched for a specific hotel, and it has 4 stars out of 5, the number of reviews and the price.

If we look on TripAdvisor, we will see the same number of stars and reviews. For the price, TripAdvisor gives an average value based on the aggregator websites mentioned as partners.

2. Do Spammy Structured Markup Penalty Really Exists?

According to Google, spammy structured markup penalty exists. On Webmasters Forum there are a lot of people that received a message in Search Console; Manual actions saying that the website’s schema code is spammy and it violates Google’s quality guidelines.

In the screenshot below you can see an example of such a message:

In June 2017, Jonh Mueller talked about spammy structured markup penalty. See below the message he received in the hangout:

Recently, we’ve been hit with a penalty for spammy structured data and we’d like some advice so we can adhere to the guidelines going forward. The guidelines are a little fuzzy in this area, as most of our pages are service categories.

youtube

The viewer also mentioned that he tried to fix the problem using Google‘s guidelines and searched for advice from experts and agencies to get the penalty removed and featured snippets on SERP once again.

Some other thing he did was to look at other sites that have implemented the structured markup successfully. It confused him even more because some of these other sites seemed to be further away from the guidelines than him.

John Mueller’s recommendation for all topics regarding structured data was to ask help from the experts on Google Webmaster Forum. There are a lot of them with more experience regarding the policy for structured data. If there is somebody to offer some good piece of advice, it would be them, for sure.

He adds:

I wouldn’t look how other sites are implementing structured data. If you think they’re getting away with spammy structured markup, doesn’t mean you could do too. Rather think what you could do to comply with our policies. John Mueller Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google / @JohnMu

We searched for the user on Google Webmaster Forum after we identified his question in the hangout comments area on Google +. We saw his question on the forum and found what experts were suggesting.

The page he gave as an example with a spammy markup data is a list of multiple businesses (mechanics). As mentioned before, he violates the guidelines, and that’s probably why Google marked the review snippets as spammy.

An expert on the forum even gives him an example of good integration:

Create reviews snippets for a specific service provided by the business (mechanic in this case). You could mark up Service type and then you could nest LocalBusiness (AutoRepair) via the provider property.

We’d recommend creating a dedicated page for each service and then mark up the reviews. It is very important to use product schema markup format with caution.

When using review markup, the main topic of the page needs to be about a specific product or service. You should absolutely not use review markup on a list of products/services, articles, a list of items, etc.

It might create a misleading or deceptive search experience to the user if the markup is not visible on the page. Here’s what Google says:

Marking up content that is invisible to users, marking up irrelevant or misleading content, and/or other manipulative behavior that is outside Google’s structured data guidelines will bring you a Manual penalty. Google support

In case Google sees structured data doesn’t comply with the standard, then it reserves the right to take manual actions. As a result, Google has applied actions to the affected portions of your site, which may affect how your site is displayed in search results.

Actions that affect how your whole site is displayed are listed under Site-wide matches. Actions that affect how only part of your site is displayed are listed under Partial matches.

Google support

3. What to Do If You’re Hit by a Structured Data Penalty

An ideal solution would be to have no manual webspam actions found on your site.

Yet, if you do have spammy markup data, you’ll most likely receive a manual penalty. In this case, there are some things you should know.

Firstly, look for a ray of light, keep your fingers crossed, knock on wood and carry real rabbits’ feet on your keychains.

Leaving the joke aside, the first thing you need to do is set up the markup on your site according to Google’s structured data guidelines.

After you check your markup to see if there are any errors or warnings, you need to fix them. Mostly the errors are about incorrect schema markup.

The process is relatively simple; it requires changing your markup data on the appropriate page, updating or deleting it if it’s not applicable. The final step is to submit a reconsideration request.

After that, you should wait for Google’s answer is. If you follow their recommendations, Google’s penalty should be removed.

It really depends on whether Google will show the rich content or not. Google doesn’t show all “rich cards” of all websites. It has to be relevant for the user and related to the search query.

Use a checklist to make sure you don’t forget any step for a well-structured data usage:

Open the Manual Actions page in Google Search Console;

Expand the Site-wide matches and Partial matches sections to see exactly where the problem is;

Follow Google’s general quality guidelines and Google’s structured data guidelines;

Check the most common causes of structured data manual actions to understand what you need to resolve;

Fix the issue and republish the page;

Submit a reconsideration request.

Wait for results and follow the Manual Actions page for updates.

4. How to Avoid a Spammy Structured Markup Penalty

I know I’ve said it before but the easiest way to avoid a structured markup penalty would be to observe Google’s guidelines and stay off the spammy radar. But as we all know it this doesn’t happen all the time.

Another suggestion would be to test, test and once again test. Google Structured Data Testing Tool is the one and only help to determine the accuracy of your schema used on your site. Lastly, if you have a hint of a possible unnatural Schema markup send a message to Webmaster Central Help Forum and seek for guidance.

Some of the things you could do to avoid a spammy structured markup penalty are:

Have relevant, engaging answer/result for user’s search queries;

Use structured data for visible content only;

Check and fix any warnings with Google’s testing tool;

Use different markup for the pages within your website;

Integrate mark up data for events only, not non-events (for example Last minute trip to Niagara Falls);

Have reviews written by genuine customers or unpaid reviewers and not by the site or business.

5. Will Structured Markup Action Kill My Rankings?

Another hot topic regarding the spammy rich snippets is “ranking drops”. Is it for real? Does spammy structured markup kill Google rankings?

In the same hangout, I mentioned before, John Mueller said that, in most cases, the site’s ranking might not get affected by the loss of structured markup data.

His exact answer was:

In practice, if the structure data team takes action on a site it will get affected only the rich snippets. So, the spammy structured data doesn’t affect the rankings of a site. The rest of your site is still normally shown in search. JOHn Mueller Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google / @JohnMu

John explained in another hangout that Google turns off the rich snippets until they can be trusted again. The penalty won’t downgrade the site’s traffic.

Rich snippet themselves don’t give you ranking boosts. So it wouldn’t kind of make sense to demote a site in rankings if they are doing something wrong with rich snippets. JOHn Mueller Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google / @JohnMu

HOWEVER, the tricky part is that losing the rich snippet might lead to losing traffic as well.

A business owner said in the hangout that his site experienced 10% dip in search traffic because he lost the rich snippets.

Another example of a ranking loss after the manual action for spammy markup was discovered by two digital marketers, Daniel Rapoport Porat & Doron Wolffberg, and posted on YellowHead.

They said it all happened because of a wrong implementation of the markup data when they had no background about how to do it right. That’s how they got a manual penalty and left without the rich snippets. And they say that because of the penalty, the traffic suffered:

Source: yellowheadinc.com

After they resolved the issue and updated the code once with the help of users from Google’s forum, their traffic worked its way to the normal level, rising up from the dead. They had a beautiful penalty recovery.

Source: yellowheadinc.com

Is it a smoke gun or it is for real? For sure we should listen to what Google says and trust the rankings of a site won’t drop because of spammy structured data. This doesn’t mean that someday Google won’t change the statement.

Conclusion

Following our guidelines will help you avoid Google’s dance and have relevant answers in SERP for users’ search queries. If by mistake or by any chance you wanted to fool Google without being caught, expect not less than having rich snippets removed from SERP. If implemented correctly, Google’s rich snippets can improve the user experience on site, giving additional information, it can lower the bounce rate and sometimes improve conversion rates.

The road to correctly used markup data is easy, but you have to do your work first. Read Google’s documentation, seek for guidance on the forum, if you have troubles implementing the schema.org. Follow Google’s guidelines and mark up the content correctly. Then wait for Google to read it and decide whether it will go live or not.

The post Everything You Need to Know About Spammy Structured Markup Penalty appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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t-baba · 7 years

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How Writers & Bloggers Can Make the Most of Markdown in WordPress

This article is part of a series created in partnership with SiteGround. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.

Markdown is a quick and easy way to add formatting to a document. Most articles on SitePoint (including this one) started life that way. In fact, all submissions must be posted in Markdown format. Why is that?

Consider using Markdown for your own blog or website. You’ve organised some hosting—perhaps through SiteGround, our preferred web host—and installed WordPress. Now you have the task of filling your blog with quality content. Markdown promises to make the process faster and simpler.

I use Markdown a lot, and that use is increasing. There’s something about it that I enjoy, that makes writing easier and faster. I write in it professionally using Ulysses, take notes in it using Bear, and I’m even considering outlining in it using Outlinely. It’s becoming a big part of my online life, and I’m not alone.

What benefits does Markdown bring to writers and bloggers? How can it improve your writing workflow? What does it have to do with WordPress? Read on to find out.

What Is Markdown?

Markdown is not new. It was created by John Gruber way back in 2004. Since then it has really caught on—it’s key feature of many new apps, and is used by default on Reddit, GitHub, StackOverflow and a number of CMSs.

It’s a format for writing for the web. In fact, at its foundation, Markdown is a faster, cleaner way to create HTML. Well, not all of HTML, but the subset of it commonly used when writing posts and articles.

Gruber introduces the concept with these words:

Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).

Rather than using complex (and ugly, hard-to-read) markup language, Markdown uses punctuation characters, with the goal of making writing (and reading) easier.

Here are a few examples, and you can learn more from John Gruber’s Syntax page.

# This is a H1 header ## This is a H2 header ### This is a H3 header This is *emphasized text* and this is **strong text**. - This is a line from an unordered list. 1. This is a line from an ordered list. > This is a blockquote.