#THIS IS SO NICHE ONLY LIKE 5 PEOPLE MIGHT FIND THIS VAGUELY ENTERTAINING

[luobingmeis]

taz balance as dragon age inquisition and dragon age inquisition as taz balance

i spent too much time on this and leaned real into the dark fantasy for balance

(some names have been adjusted!!)

taz balance as dragon age inquisition:

the hunger: “beg that i succeed, for i have seen the throne of the gods and it was empty”

magnus burnsides: “that's the world. everything you build, it tears down. everything you've got, it takes—and it's gone forever. the only choices you get are to lie down and die or keep going. he kept going. that's as close to beating the world as anyone gets”

merle highchurch: “let those who would destroy us step into the light”

taako: “you let it keep hurting, because you think hurting is who you are. why would you do that?”

lucretia: “in the end, you are always alone in your actions”

lup: “forget you know this about me”

barry bluejeans: “that's what i do. fall out of the sky, make bad decisions, and somehow everyone still follows me"

davenport: "selfish of me, i guess. not wanting to spend my entire life screaming on the inside"

johann: “i don't want to die”

jeffandrew: "all of this happened because of fanatics and arguments about the next world. it's time we start believing in this one"

taz balance: "truth is not the end. it is merely the beginning"

the mcelroys: “if you love a character, you give them pain, ruin their lives, make them suffer. maybe even throw in a heroic death”

dragon age inquisition as taz balance:

the inquisitor: “i’ve decided the inquisitor is an idiot”

corypheus: “that’s it? it’s just a guy!”

cassandra: “we need a competent woman to come save us!”

varric: the author of caleb cleveland, kid cop

josephine: “we’re going to pull your ass out of the fire this time but we’re going to have a nice long talk about ethical- about your fiery ass when this one’s… over and out. dammit. dammit, i could’ve done way better there

leliana: “everything’s for keepsies if you’re sneaky about it”

cullen: “my password is turkey boy, ok? varric saw me eating a turkey sandwich on my first day and he wouldn’t shut up about it. it doesn’t even make any sense, it’s not even a good slam!”

the inquisitor and cullen in their canonical chess game: “thanks for the chess game and... kiss my ass, you sanctimonious bastard”

dorian: “you know, it doesn’t always have to be goof-goof dildo machines over here, okay? i’m travelling around with the boner squad, and i never get to just say what i’m feeling!”

iron bull: “i got too horny from the killing, and i-i’m jerking off”

solas: “bad news, compadres, this place is magic as hell”

solas 2.0 even though in my eyes he doesn’t deserve two: “it’s a record of my life’s work so far, the seven habits of highly effective elves, and i carry it around with me”

sera: "sera just finds a gun! and she’s like, hey inquisitor! count the shells!”

cole: "i'll be having my body back, you undead fuck"

vivenne: "i cast prestidigitation, shoot sparks out of my fingers, cast minor illusion, put myself in a dope outfit, and start walkin' down the catwalk with all the style and panache i can muster, which is - i should note - a fuckin' lot"

the inquisition: “wait a minute. i need to clarify something. just so i’m clear: your whole organization... so far the score is zero? i couldn’t get out of a jizz-cave without nearly dying, and i— i destroyed one!”

[airlock]

airlock grades the Punchable archetype

so far, a majority of the Fire Emblem villains I’ve covered in this series are the sort who are meant to be liked, forgiven, sympathized with... these here are not those ones. these are the ones whose singular purpose in the narrative is to piss you the hell off. so, which of them played that role to excellence?

(do note: under cut are spoilers for… everything, and also a significant amount of me criticizing or blamming characters that you might- okay, yeah, no, you probably don’t like anybody on this list, but you may still strongly disagree with my opinions of them. you’ve been warned! ha, no way these fools would set about reading the whole post now... what!? impossible!)

a foreword

so, to be very specific, I’m not rating every flatly irritating miniboss here; the definitive aspect here is that the character has to be a recurring one, whose extended screentime never quite ends up giving them a chance to be something other than vile. but more important than the hair-splitting here is giving some consideration to how exactly I’ll be doing the rating; after all, I’m not supposed to like any of these people, but there’s still better and worse ways to be despicable as a character.

I’m running pretty much on two central critteria: is this character entertaining, and is that character satisfying to take down. it’s more important to hit one than to hit both; a character who hits neither is significantly more likely to be a pure waste of bile, however.

without further ado, let’s start gritting those teeth!

fuck this guy

(9/10)

directly enabling the single most badass scene in all of Book II obviously lands you on the upper echelons of this here character type. but that’s just the effect; we should peer into the cause of what makes him work so well!

of the critteria I mentioned, Lang goes for the latter: he’s not only quite satisfying to defeat, it’s also great anytime someone finally talks back to him and puts him in his place. that’s because he’s not the sort of character for whom this sort of thing is a given. a lot of the ones we’ll see ahead of him are incompetent toadies on top of being amoral, but not this guy; he knows exactly what he’s doing, relying on the backing of the most powerful nation in the continent to plunder, raze, and oppress to his heart’s content. the business of doing something about this dipshit gets severely delayed by the dire consequences of crossing him -- until Marth finally decides that enough is enough.

and THEN Jagen tells him to meet him 9 PM at the Grustian denny’s parking lot for an old man brawl-

fuck this chin

(3/10)

I struggle to understand ol’ Kaga’s obssession with jealousy as a villainous character motivation, I really do. it’s one entirely realistic thing to envy someone for having riches, fame, status, influence, the attention of one’s crush, or other such things that are more or less objective and palpable. it’s also entirely a thing to have an inferiority complex and fear or spite people one perceives as being more talented, better looking, stronger, smarter than oneself. but the way these characters are written tends to come across like they’re furious because they’re underwritten gonk and not everyone else is.

... which hey, would be a pretty upsetting thing if it happened to a real person, but I don’t think meta-commentary is the point here, is it? I sincerely hope it isn’t...

fuck this lady

(7/10)

the second leg of Genealogy of the Holy War finds you facing the same sorts of enemies most of the time: half of them are Satanists, and the other half are unfortunate innocents trapped in the crossfire of courtly intrigue. it’s exactly because of this that the arc desperately needs a villain like Hilda.

Hilda is just someone who doesn’t particularly mind if the most effective path up the social ladder involves destroying her relatives, daughter included, or capturing children and forcing them into murder tournaments. how is the imperial machinery of tragedy and death supposed to run without someone like her cranking a couple of the levers? er, I mean, you don’t really crank levers unless you’re doing something weird, but... okay, moving on

amidst all of the battles you might struggle to feel were worth fighting, Hilda here serves as a reminder, as a face of every reason why the Empire is the enemy and must be defeated.

and yes, making Tinny kill her rocks

fuck this guy IN AMERICA

(2.5/10)

not too long ago I would have dropped him a straight zero, but I’ve recently been reading through the Project Exile text dumps for a new Thracia 776 fanslation and what can I say, they put good work into making him tick properly and I essentially have no choice but to keep that sort of thing in consideration when making the ratings, being that all of the other villains are also characters I only have indirect contact with through a translation that may have improved or worsened things.

but the good work is no miracle -- although given much-needed entertainment value, this guy is still who he is: practically a standard-fare asshole miniboss who ends up getting three whole chapters to chirp into. and to make matters worse, you only actually get the payoff to him in one of two possible routes!

I am strong, I am clever, I am handsome, and most importantly, fuck me

(4/10)

I can’t possibly deny that his antics are some of the most hilarious on this list; the ridiculous speeches, the facial expressions from the manga, the fact that he gets demoted on screen... and I mean, they got Kaiji Tang to put voice to his high drama on Heroes, on top of it all!

alas, it just really spoils the fun to a significant extent that his very introduction in Binding Blade sees him macking on a captive prepubescent girl. however entertaining it may be that she snatches his wig on that occasion anyway.

fuck this morph

(5/10)

yeah, some people wish. notably including Brendan Reed-

the thing with Sonia is that she’s a little less believable than most folks in this archetype -- specifically because she’s not, like, working within the structures of power that would let her get away with being as much of a dip as she wants to; she’s earned her influential position by seducing the boss, which is hard to buy when, however attractive she may be, she never has a single positive interaction with anyone and nobody trusts her (barring Ursula on both counts, but she’s not the one who needs to be brought on board anyway). I realize what a phenomenon it is to think with one’s dick, but come on; surely, you don’t let your new friend with benefits tell you how to do your job just because she’s that good in bed or something.

that said, although her overall spot on the plot feels weakly implemented, she still makes for a tremendous bulwark to overcome specifically within Nino’s subplot. what a powerful confrontation against a lifelong abuser she provides in the end!

do not fuck this guy what is wrong with you

(3/10)

Valter is just uncomfortable as a character, which is limbo as far as emotion-inducing goes; it’s not particularly entertaining, and nor is it artfully terrifying in the way that Orson is. furthermore, I normally praise Sacred Stones’s antagonists for averting the way of behaving like a plot device, but this guy is the exception; he seems to primarily show up to cause trouble because trouble needs to be caused.

I feel like he’d have made for a far stronger character concept if his backstory had been handled differently, being more specific in what part of his mind broke when he held the cursed lance, instead of just being “now he does bad things and talks like he’s vaguely horny throughout”.

at least he’s quite a bit entertaining in Heroes where he gets voiced lines and no particular characters or plots to interact with -- but if that’s what it takes to make the character shine, it doesn’t really say good things about him.

fuck beauty

(5.5/10)

so, the truth come out: does this guy is deserve becoming the absolute teacher’s pet he’s been since Radiant Dawn? my verdict on the matter is: not really.

I mean, Path of Radiance actually writes him into a solid niche; for all the big words he emits about being a patron of beauty, he’s ultimately just the same kind of petty, ostentatious garbage that poisons the governance of Begnion, and finally taking him down for good and all makes for an excellent dive after all the work it takes to set the light of justice on him -- not just in Day Breaks (oh gooooooooddd) but over the course of the several chapters it takes.

it’s all downhill from there, though. his appareance in Radiant Dawn is not only unecessary, but also a deviation from the established writing to focus on pallid, ineffective jokes, like someone invented Heroes writing before the thing itself happened. he fights on your side because now he genuinely cares about beauty and art to the point he’ll fight a goddess over it? yeah, that’s not who he was.

and seriously, one strongly gets the impression that, in that appearance onwards, the punchline is just supposed to be that he’s fat, bald, wordy, and has a shitty mustache -- which, besides being blatant fatphobia, is seriously stale; “it’s funny because he’s ugly” is, like, at least two random minibosses per game, usually more.

fuck the senate

(2/10)

although he jabs a lot of the buttons that should make for an entertaining and stalwart hate sink, it ends up not really working.

his narcisism lacks the performatic grandeur of the likes of Narcian; it lands as pastiche at best, and common annoying smugness at worst. and although he’s powerful and influential enough to cause a bunch of problems, he’s introduced at a weird time that fails to make his specfic capabilties relevant to opposing the protagonists, and he ends up not doing a lot more than severely inconveniencing Zelgius (who is on his team) a couple times.

at least, the battle dialogue against him in Part 4 still provides some of the most fierce drags in Radiant Dawn

fuck the valm arc

(0/10)

seriously, fuck it

but ahem, onto the guy in question: he’s an annoying waste of writing space that doesn’t seem to be intended for any reason other than making the rest of Team Bad Guy look good, plain and simple.

you might be thinking, airlock, this is the third Awakening villain you blammed in four posts, are you just biased? the answer is: yes, but even if I were being perfectly fair, let’s be real, antagonists are just not one of that game’s strengths, overall. that just happens sometimes; I can really say the same thing of like Thracia 776, y’know?

fuck playing f- yeah, okay, that’s just low-hanging fruit

(??/10)

honestly, from this distance, none of Fates’s fixed antagonists bar Anankos really give me the impression of not just being despicable pastiche, but I’m guessing he’s supposed to be the one who actually intended to take it as a niche?

so, I’m just going to assume you hated this, but how was it? are you glad it’s over, or do you regret having read it at all? we’re probably not going to be spared from one of these characters on Three Houses, but specifically how much would you like to hate the one that comes along? to be honest, your thoughts aren’t remotely as good as mine, so I wouldn’t bother replying or reblogging to share them, worm. what? you’ll do it anyway!? how dare you! do you know what I’m capable of!?

[oumakokichi]

Could Korekiyo and Angie being the least popular characters in NDRV3 be purposely set as part of the game show? I feel that this is kind of the case to entertain viewers and give them something to hate.

That’s a really interesting thing to think about! I think it’swithin the realm of possibility, to some degree, though there’s no way to besure. As long as we don’t know exactly how much of what Tsumugi said was trueor not, the line between what she planned for the characters to do and how muchwas their own free will in the matter gets pretty blurry.

For instance, we definitely know that it’s not as if theirpersonalities pulled a 180. Even Ouma, whose in-game self is the most notablydifferent from what we see of his pre-game self, likely had some of thesequalities under the surface.

Other characters who we hear speak in the prologue quite alot, such as Miu and Tenko, act extremely similar to their in-game selves: Miu’slanguage and behavior is just as crass, only lacking her boasts about being agreat inventor, and Tenko’s reactions are just as hilariously over-the-top. Sowe can tell from this that they don’t seem to have been changed much at allfrom their original personalities.

It all comes down to a question of how much influence theremember lights actually had, or how much drastically changing someone’sbackstory could prompt them to act or behave in a certain way. For instance,characters like Kaede who had a relatively normal backstory even in-game andgrew up in a loving family environment, probably weren’t impacted all that muchby the remember lights. Kaede is certainly more go-getting and optimistic as aleader than her pre-game self seems to have been, but her thought processes andbehaviors are largely the same.

Maki, however, might serve as a different example. It’s hardto know what pre-game Maki was like, since she hardly speaks at all in theprologue. But we know that her in-game backstory provided her with quite a hugeinfluencing factor. It’s hard to grow up thinking of yourself as someone who’sbeen trained to be a ruthless killer and had all the emotions stomped out ofyou and say, “oh that’s just fiction though, it’s just a remember light, itdoesn’t impact me much.”

Just as Maki’s actions are heavily influenced by the in-gamebackstory she was provided (including trying to overcome it), I wouldn’t besurprised if other characters were similarly influenced. The remember lightsseem to hold their highest degree of influence when the people they’re used ontrust them blindly and have no idea how they work. Since no one but Ouma seemsto have doubted the credibility of the remember lights prior to Chapter 5, wecan assume that any other characters probably did trust their own backstory andin-game memories pretty thoroughly.

In that case, it’s definitely possible that Korekiyo andAngie being provided their particular kinds of backstories and personalitiescould well have been an attempt on Tsumugi’s part to try and make them into acertain kind of character.

While Tsumugi definitely didn’t have control over all thethings she said she did in the epilogue, I don’t doubt there were developmentsshe wanted to happen in-game. Forexample, she had no influence over Maki and Momota’s feelings for one another,but it’s true that I think she liked the idea of their potential relationshipbecause it was something that would “make the killing game more exciting” (inthe same way that Peeta and Katniss’ relationship made the Hunger Gamesexciting). She even at one point tried to ask Saihara if he was involved in atriangle relationship with the two of them, getting pretty excited at the idea.

Clearly, she liked the idea of dramatic developments orcharacters following a certain “script” that would read right out of a soapopera or cliché story. Any time characters go against these particularscenarios or expectations she has for them, she gets pretty notably displeased.When Himiko begins living much more strongly, excitedly, and getting angry andenergetic about everything, Tsumugi is one of the only characters I can thinkof who doesn’t seem to like it much. Unlike most of the other characters whosupport Himiko in her endeavor to be more open about her feelings, I thinkTsumugi definitely wanted Himiko to remain the “quiet, lazy witch girl” rolethat she had in store for her.

Korekiyo and Angie definitely involve aspects to theirbackstories which I wouldn’t be surprised if Tsumugi had thrown in to try andcaricaturize them or make them into a parody of themselves. It’s entirelypossible that their pre-game selves had aspects vaguely in common with them:for instance, perhaps Korekiyo did have a sister who he cared about, and maybeAngie was openly religious. But I think it’s definitely possible that thesetraits were taken and amped all the way up for the sake of “making the killinggame show more exciting” and taking otherwise normal qualities and trying totwist them into something exaggerated and over-the-top, as is the tendency inDR.

I’ve talked about it before in another post I think, but it’sentirely possible that Angie’s pre-game self might not even be foreign. She waswearing an extremely ordinary school uniform in the prologue, and her one ortwo lines of Japanese didn’t really suggest any reason to guess that it wasn’ther native language.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the reason she was writteninto being the “quirky foreign occult girl” trope was specifically because of underlyingracism and gross assumptions heavily associated with otaku like Tsumugi (andlike the rest of the producers at Team Danganronpa, probably). Angie wasprobably written into the kind of character she was, with the speech habits and“weird scary foreign girl” behavior becauseof her darker skin. Throw in the possibility that she might have been openlyreligious and it’s easy to see the ways in which Tsumugi probably felt she couldcaricaturize the scenario.

Just as there were characters who Tsumugi clearly intendedto try and steer the audience into liking right from the start (such as Kaede,arguably even Kiibo), there were probably characters who she wanted to bemassively disliked too. While the role she had in store for Ouma was probablymore of the “villain so horrible and antagonistic he’s actually massivelypopular” sort of trope, not every single character can fill that niche. Justlike on any reality show, she probably felt there needed to be characters whowere more unpopular on purpose, in order to highlight the good points andpopularity of the other characters. So in that sense, it would make sense toassume that some of the characters, like Angie and Korekiyo, got stuck in thissort of role.

Of course, it’s dangerous to assume that everything they didor felt or thought was just as a result of Tsumugi’s scenario. She clearly wanted them to act and behave in acertain way, but doing so was ultimately up to them. Remember lights aredefinitely not infallible like Junko’s brainwashing in dr3, and the amount ofinfluence or control they have seems to vary depending on the individual.

Just the fact that so many characters in ndrv3 seem to havebroken away from the initial “script” prepared for them and changed intosomething else entirely proves that it was definitely possible to avoid fallinginto these pitfalls and “roles” Tsumugi wanted them to fall into. Saihara andHimiko both changed their outlook and behaviors drastically. Even Maki, who was relatively easy for Tsumugi tomanipulate because of how much hold her backstory had over her, eventually cameto develop past that backstory and find her own sense of autonomy and controlover her own life.

If it was possible for so many characters to go against whatTsumugi had planned for them, then the potential was probably there for everycharacter—it then just became a matter of whether the characters in particular wantedto go against those roles or not. But I do like the fact that there’sdefinitely a heavy degree of free will and choice involved in the rememberlights, because it makes trying to analyze each character’s behavior andchoices so much more interesting than it would be if this were dr3 brainwashingall over again.

Anyway, this was a very interesting question! Thank youagain for asking!

[onlinemarketingcourses]

There’s no shortcut to authority: Why you need to take E-A-T seriously

Recently, I was talking to a client about a new project when he raised an interesting question. He was curious to know how I measured E-A-T, or “expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness,” in relation to SEO.

If you’re unfamiliar with E-A-T, it’s a term taken from Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines, a set of instructions that Google’s army of many thousands of human reviewers (known internally as “raters” or “Search Quality Evaluators”) use to assess the quality of web content manually.

Although it is sometimes difficult to understand Google’s internal processes, from what I’ve heard from reliable sources at Google, E-A-T is applied specifically to YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) websites, that is, to sites that offer medical or financial advice.

As you might expect, Google would rather not serve up misleading or unreliable advice that could affect your financial or physical well-being, so paying particular attention to the information touted on these types of websites is very important.

Now, my client’s website was not in a financial or medical niche, so technically these guidelines do not affect him directly. After all, Google – so they say – are not applying E-A-T across the board. But I didn’t tell the client not to worry about E-A-T.

Far from it.

In my opinion, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness are things that every business should be looking to build both online and offline. What business wouldn’t want to be recognized and trusted within (and beyond) their industry?

I asked my co-author on The Art of SEO, Eric Enge, to weigh in on this issue of E-A-T and whether it’s applied to YMYL only or more globally across the Web. He responded “Google is very technical and precise in how they use various terms. Within Google, as I understand it, E-A-T refers to something that they apply specifically to YMYL sites. But that doesn’t mean that the general ideas that we all associate with E-A-T aren’t likewise applied to other sites.”

In this excellent article, Chris Silver Smith argues that Google partly uses a numerical score to calculate E-A-T. When I emailed him, he replied that “If Quality (the combined E-A-T) is partly a numerical score as I’ve long theorized, then that factor is weighted much heavier for YMYL pages/sites than for things like entertainment pages, or articles about non-YMYL topics, etc. But, E-A-T still applies to things like e-commerce pages, even when those are not as high-priority as YMYL.”

So, if you believe me and these two highly regarded SEO practitioners, following E-A-T guidelines is good for SEO no matter your niche. In my view, even if E-A-T only applied to certain industries, the techniques used to build authority should be a part of every SEO strategy.

The problem is, E-A-T is notoriously difficult to measure.

How does Google measure authority?

If you talk to different people in the SEO industry, they will have different theories about the signals that Google uses to assess the authority of your site and assign rankings. We know that backlinks from authoritative sites are one way. CTR (Click Through Rate) is theorized as another, although Gary Illyes of Google contradicted that recently in his Reddit AMA. We also know that content quality is important. Online reviews may also have some impact.

Exactly how Google uses all these factors to make a decision is somewhat of a mystery, even to Google engineers. That’s because machine learning algorithms are opaque as to which signals they use. No one can see inside the black box – even the programmers who originally coded the AI.

In the aforementioned article, Chris Silver Smith argues that, rather than weighing one particular signal above all others, Google’s approach to assessing authority is more “holistic.” Google’s algorithms almost certainly use a wide range of signals and metrics to evaluate where a page might rank, meaning simply focusing on one signal while ignoring others is not a shortcut to results. Backlinks are crucial; but acquiring high-quality links to a site with shoddy coding, poor online reviews and spammy content won’t work.

Instead of looking for a “silver bullet” to achieve rankings and traffic, it’s important to pay careful attention to how you present your brand online. Overall, from the way your site is coded right up to your branding and PR strategies.

Holistic SEO

I’ll admit, saying that Google’s approach to rankings is “holistic” may sound a little vague and unsatisfying. It begs the question: what do you focus on if you want to optimize your site?

Thankfully, it’s not that difficult.

For the most part, building authority in your niche is common sense. If you’ve been working hard on gaining backlinks from quality sites, creating remarkable content, and ensuring your site is free from errors and thin content, then you’re well on your way.

But what can you do beyond the basics to ensure that Google sees you as a trusted site in your niche?

The answer is simple, but not easy. That is, do whatever it takes to ensure you have a solid reputation both online and offline.

On your site, be completely transparent about who you are. Create detailed “about” pages that put a human face to your company and tell your story (see mine as an example of such). Provide an excellent customer experience and respond to negative reviews online. Be open and honest about your processes and provide expert advice to your clients whenever you get the chance.

Link building is still a cornerstone of SEO; but gone are the days when you can simply spam people with generic emails offering content for guest posts. Instead, aim high and focus on quality over quantity. For example, I recently published an article in Harvard Business Review. Since this is a prestigious outlet that is very discerning about who it publishes, the link is incredibly powerful in the eyes of Google.

Building authority online takes time, but the payoff is huge. Start with the obvious questions. Is there an expert at your company who might be willing to do a TEDx talk? What’s the most respected publication in your industry, and how can you get published there? What about industry groups? What kind of connections do you have in the media that might be able to help you? Do you do any noteworthy charity/nonprofit work that has a powerful message that might be of interest to journalists?

If you’re not sure where to start, hire a PR agency or better yet, buy a book on PR and teach yourself.

Trust metrics

Fine, you might say. All this is good stuff, but (getting back to my client’s question) how do I measure the impact of this kind of work?

For one thing, a successful PR/link building campaign that lands you links from high authority sites will definitely begin to impact your traffic and rankings.

If you’re looking for more quantifiable metrics, then consider investing in tools like Majestic and LinkResearchTools. I find that Majestic’s “Trust Flow” and LinkResearchTools’ “LRT Trust” metrics still give the best indication of how trusted a particular page is.

Both these scores are based on your link profile. Although this is just one aspect of all the elements Google takes into account, it’s still the best indication that we in the SEO community have available to us on how much trust you are endowed with. In Majestic, I recommend aiming for a Trust Flow score of 50 or above (the highest score is 100) and an LRT Trust score of 5 or above (the highest score is 10). Make sure that you are looking at these metrics at the page level, not just the domain level.

As both of these scores are relatively high-level, it’s not possible to measure the incremental changes in E-A-T my client was interested in, as in every link he acquired and every piece of content he updated. Still, tracking your trust scores over time will give you a sense of whether your site is increasing or decreasing in trust. Some of the tools even provide a history of trust scores; Majestic, for example, goes back 18 months with their Trust Flow History Tool.

In addition, it is worthwhile to conduct regular surveys of your customers and reviewing brand sentiment metrics to get a sense of how people view your brand. If you see a lot of negative sentiment, you’ll want to take action to remedy it quickly.

As with most things SEO-related, it won’t be a single link or a piece of viral content that suddenly launches you into the pole position. It takes a sincere and sustained effort over months, even years, to get to the top.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Stephan Spencer is the creator of the 3-day immersive SEO seminar Traffic Control; an author of the O’Reilly books The Art of SEO, Google Power Search, and Social eCommerce; founder of the SEO agency Netconcepts (acquired in 2010); inventor of the SEO proxy technology GravityStream; and the host of two podcast shows Get Yourself Optimized and Marketing Speak.

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[mercureehg]

It’s Been A Long Time....

Hey there Guys and Gals!!! I know I shouldn’t have left you all for as long as I did, however there has been a great reason for my absence... Before I get into the wonderful surprise, I want to offer my sincerest apologies to all of you who were actively checking on this site to see if I showed up. I haven’t neglected this page for no reason... I have been building and working on my brand: Mercuree The Personality and The Break Room Talk Show!!! I am 2 years into this venture and doing very well. The talk show has been picked up for the 3rd quarter.. I have had my 1st year anniversary for it’s debut air date: January 14th, 2016!!! I am in my 2nd year and 3rd season (based on how the quarters go and how many times I come on a month. The Break Room airs on Bric TV’s public access cable network: Brooklyn Free Speech Network 3, every 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month at 10pm est., on channels 56 Time Warner, 69 Cablevision/Optimum, 84 RCN, 44 Verzion Fios (this channel airs in all 5 boroughs). It also streams live on the internet at www.bricartsmedia.org for those who do not live within the 5 boroughs or do not have those channels; all they have to do is click BRICTV, then scroll down to the box with the 3 in it. I have been working on airing valuable content for the viewers, as well as learning hands-on how to edit. I taught myself how to produce, direct, edit and host a whole talk show, so that is why I haven’t been here in a while.

I took one year to learn everything, then spent a year doing it...now this next year coming I am learning how to brand myself and market myself to these other networks. I have made plenty mistakes along this journey, cursed a few people out as well and cried a few rivers too, yet essentially everything has been going smooth. I have the best team at the tv studio/network and I am building a very strong team behind the scenes as well. My circle has switched around dramatically... the people I thought had my back, have proven that they liked me when I was down and literally want no parts of me now that I am back on my square stronger than ever. Some people can only deal with you when you are down and out...they can not deal with you when you are on your feet for reasons that are in their own head and reasons I wish never to have to figure out ever again. I spent enough time in my life trying to figure out why people this and why people that... man phuck all that... let people be people is my final answer from now on. I can only know what I’m doing and figure my own stuff out.. I can only work on and change myself...not these other humans that come in and out of your life for their own benefits and if you are not beneficial then you are out anyway.. Might as well be the one to do the kicking out... I learned that at a great time in my life and so glad that I am taking heed.. see... taking heed is what learning truly is... not the mere knowing of a thing.. you must apply what you know in order to fully learn it and it’s effects of application.

I never mean to preach or act like I’m giving sermons from the mound...it will always appear that way because I am authentic and only speak when I have something to say as well as know that what I am saying is tried and true. I only wish to steer the people in the right direction and show myself in the most honest light possible. I had to start my life over three times along my journey, and the first two times my focus was not in the right place yet in the right place (if that makes sense), I just wanted in the music industry by any righteous means necessary, yet I was surrounded by the wrong people (that’s where the displaced focus was), so I got stomped on and kicked around... That threw me for a loop, there goes me having to start over for the second time... bad marriage was my third time and that is when I switched up everything after I escaped with my life and clothes on my back. Took me 5 years to figure so many things out... and nope.. I do not have it all figured out, yet what I did was I removed all the stuff off the table that did not belong to me to figure out much less rent space in my humble abode.

Once I removed all the stuff on the table that did not belong to me I was left with three things to rid myself of that belonged to me, three things to figure out about me, and three things to accomplish before my last day on this beautiful cursed earth... during those 5 years I learned all about me again.. I use the word ‘again’ because I got reminded of some great stuff during this period of my life; and I don’t mean “great” in a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ way.. I just mean great.. plentiful, intriguing, lovely and humbling. I found everything I was looking for and just went to work. I began working on it all...and came out with these two things: I always been a Personality and I have to pay it forward even though I never “made it”. One day, in 2013, I was taking a shower and “The Break Room” popped in my head.. At the time, I needed a name for my next venture... had no clue what it would be...so I would keep thinking of names... until that day in the shower when the best name on earth came to me mid lather!!! 

The Break Room Talk Show started out as a showcase called: ‘The Break Room Showcase’, for all up and coming artists’ in the Hip Hop and R&B scene...then I kept getting hit with all these club prices and walk-thru prices and I felt like everyone was being so greedy and showing that it’s still not about talent and helping this dying art gain exposure in a more positive light and higher frequency... That’s when I decided to turn my showcase into a talk show and expand it to feature guest that are not only gifted and talented artists in music, but all spectrums of entertainment and fashion, as well as entrepreneurs with their own businesses and such. I started out interviewing enterprising people with no network behind me... I was filming people with my handheld camcorder in McDonald’s fast food restaurants.. .club hallways... classrooms... wherever I could get my shine on...and I just held on to all the footage... held onto it for 2 years... then something wonderful fell in my lap!

I was doing someone else’s talk show (being a model for a fashion designer friend of mine), and the producer of the young ladies show told me that I need my own show... that my energy and conversation needs it’s own spotlight and that they would like to sponsor my first couple of shows, but first he’d like to interview me on his own show. I was way excited... I got all dolled up, had my other designer friend lend me one of his top of the line designs and I came there dressed to the 9′s... him and his co-host, however, came in looking like they just rolled out of bed.. I was mortified and I tried to bite my tongue... I even tried to sit through the interview, convinced myself that the interviewer can look the way they want.. I am the one that should look decent... that’s what got me on camera with them...I sit down and the interview was dry...they were sucking my energy right from out of me...they had zero energy... not one question.. nothing.. I kindly got up and walked out...I was livid.. On my way out I signed up for classes so I can be my own producer, my own director, my own editor and host, until I find people that are as passionate about this brand as I am.

The Break Room is all about the creative, the entrepreneur and the enterprising human, we cater to them, we inspire them, we motivate them, we empower them to give it their all, to keep going, to begin...we are here for them. Through each featured guest, they get to hear the journey’s and stories and advice from their own mouths. The viewers get to see them at work, at play, at the negotiating tables, at the clubs, restaurants and even barbershops too. I take my film equipment outside the networks studios and get footage up close and even more personal. I give candid shots from my first time editing to my 100th time because I want the viewing public to see my growth from start to finish of my career in television. I want you to see me do this from scratch, from a zero budget, from a one man crew, to veteran status, to million dollar plus budgets, to a 100 man crew... I want the people to see what it takes, how lonely it is, the true struggle of how no one sees you until you get seen by that one popular person, then all of a sudden the whole world sits up and takes notice to you now...yet that you must go hard until your last day, no matter who is watching.

In closing, I just want you guys and gals to know that I will have more to blog about in the months to come because I have to go over these last two years... who was on the show, what it was like filming each guest, etc., etc.. I do not want to hold back by being vague about the building of the brands, just wanted to give you all an overview of what has been going on. I found my niche, I am working on it...and even named it and myself.. I always been a personality, so why not be Mercuree The Personality, since I already been both my entire life might as well make it official and marry the two for business...also I always wanted to pay it forward...always wanted to help others gain exposure...and so there I have it... both templates laid down and being built up strong. Stay tuned for another excerpt in the coming weeks...pictures and links and all... And don’t forget to tune into The Break Room talk show every 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month at 10pm est., on channels 56, 69, 84, 44(all 5 boroughs for channel 44), and if you aren’t in NYC then log onto www.bricartsmedia.org, click BRICTV then scroll to the box with the 3 in it, it streams live at the same time it airs on television so you won’t miss a beat! 

Thanks Guys and Gals...stay loyal!