#and by different language I don’t mean jargon or code itself

[dykesynthezoid]

Ahh I get why I never got into computer stuff now. Think we may have a fundamental difference in learning styles, modes of processing information, and structural perspectives on our hands

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 117: The Zoo

“Can you blame ‘em?”

Every Western story about a return journey can be compared to The Odyssey if you squint hard enough, and while Steven’s rescue of Greg has already featured poor decisions and a cyclops, The Zoo is our most obvious reference point to a trial of Odysseus: in this case, the Lotus Eaters. 

Does it make sense that such a small population could genetically reproduce this long? Let alone that distinct races would still be a thing in this inevitably incestuous family tree spanning millennia? Does it make sense that everyone here is roughly the same age, with barely any old people or children? Or that they’re speaking English, a language thousands of years younger than the last human abducted for the Zoo before Greg? Of course not, this is a nonsensical system. But if the choice was eleven minutes going over hyper-realistic minutia of how this system works (most likely, these folks are divided into small packs and we’re just seeing one of many groups) versus an interesting fable about free will and the conflict between hedonism and responsibility, I’m good ignoring the massive leaps required for the Zoo to hold logical water.

A thorny ethical question presents itself here: if the Zoomans are eternally happy and safe, to the point where they don’t understand the concept of “hurt,” is it such a bad thing that they lack free will? To us, freedom is such an obviously good thing that its value is taken as a given, but all choice does here is make the Zoomans unhappy for the first time since an incident long ago enough to be the stuff of legend. This is a group of people whose culture predates Ancient Greece and is still going strong, outlasting any human civilization that’s ever existed on Earth by an impossibly huge degree, so what right do we have to think our moral code is superior to theirs?

The Zoo is dystopia by way of Dora the Explorer, a perfect prison that has babied its inhabitants for so many lifespans that they can’t even fathom disrupting the system. A friendly voice tells them what actions to take to have fun (Smell the flowers! Go to bed! Swiper, no swiping!) and the Zoomans obey without hesitation; they are essentially to humans what modern dogs are to wolves, a domesticated and perpetually juvenile version of the original model. But they certainly aren’t a different species in that way (dogs diverged from wolves genetically tens of thousands of years ago, rather than a paltry 5,000); we see that the Zoomans are quickly capable of making choice when the idea is planted, but they choose to listen to the little voice. Is it ethical to give them the information to make a more informed choice? My gut says yes, but that’s based on a moral code developed by a society that, like English, is much younger than Zooman society.

The second question that arises from the first is the morality of Pink Diamond’s actions. From a Gem perspective, it’s a no-brainer: free will isn’t a societal good to them, so even if Earth wasn’t destroyed as originally planned when the Zoo was built, bringing people to a paradise whose only cost is freedom is an obvious win. This matters a lot for Blue Diamond, who’s still patronizing in her “saving” of Greg but clearly means well by her own alien metrics of good and bad. And in that way, on first viewing, Pink’s behavior becomes far less ambiguous than “evil alien kidnaps humans.” If she’s anything like Blue, she considered it a favor, and that alone characterizes her more than anything else we know at this point.

In retrospect, the Zoo is more clearly a half-measure taken when Pink was trying and failing to stop the colonization she began. This conflict wasn’t short, and it’s great to see evidence of Pink trying smaller ways to help humans before realizing that more drastic actions were necessary, rather than her just jumping straight to full revolution. The fact that the Zoo is still a thing after her permanent shift to Rose Quartz, however, is one of many indicators of Pink’s childish selfishness. She didn’t release the humans she abducted, just as she didn’t think of how her faked murder might have more violent consequences than a freed Earth. I call the selfishness childish because it comes not from malice, but seemingly not knowing any better. This is the self-centeredness of somebody who’s never had any reason to not be self-centered, which doesn’t absolve the harm she causes, but makes her more interesting than a true monster.

While the Gem perspective is clear, Steven provides an ardent opposition to the concept of paradise without choice. At no point is he tempted by a life free of worries, valuing his ties to an existing life despite its many warts. And while Greg shows a few hints of falling for the Lotus Eater trap in his more relaxed attitude towards captivity, it’s crucial that his support of Steven trumps the comfort of this new reality; an entire episode about Greg measuring an easy life versus his son’s happiness, while in keeping from the weird shitty version of Greg we met in House Guest, would’ve been ruinous to his actual character. He’s still chill, and encourages Steven to chill as well for his own well-being, but never goes further in trying to stay at the Zoo; we even know that he tried to escape before Steven arrived.

While their long-awaited reunion is sweet, my favorite Steven'n’Greg moment is the realization that amethysts will likely arrive in response to pain. Steven’s insistence that Greg hit him comes from both impatience and the knowledge that he can take a punch, but Tom Scharpling perfectly captures how insane this sounds to Greg. Even though he’s physically weaker than his superhumanly powerful son, Greg’s willing to get hurt in his kid’s place. And still, Steven hesitates, because neither of these people wants to hit the other despite the circumstances. Finally, after Steven’s punch sends Greg flying, I appreciate his idea to try punching him again; to me, it’s representative of how much Steven thinks of his dad, because he just assumes this middle aged dude is tough enough to shrug off such a blow.

The two lead Zooman representatives sorta blend together, but I think that’s the point: in a society where conformity is the only option, everyone’s bound to act similarly. They’re both portrayed well enough to avoid boring tropes associated with characters like this (we don’t get airy hippies or droning disciples): Cristina Vee’s Jay-Ten and Lamar Abrams’s Wy-Six are delightfully dopey and just a little bit self-superior when things they find obvious are a mystery to our heroes. Vee doubles as the Little Voice, which is correctly played without a hint of menace, and while Abrams has already proven himself as Buck Dewey, I’m impressed by his ability to play a fully different character just as well (he’s also Garbanzo, who also sounds distinct, but he only says his own name so there’s not much room to measure differences).

While I have no idea whether the pun is intentional, I am all about these people raised beyond the stars being spacier than our more grounded Earthlings. Still, their one-note nature means that my favorite Zooman moments are actually Steven’s reactions to them. His quick decision to escape after being told to do “the bits” bit is low key hilarious, as is his bewilderment at their tiny splashes. These aren’t people that are going to make jokes or clever observations on their own, at least in a way that can match what their terrestrial counterparts can accomplish, but at least I never feel bored with the routine in a way that detracts from the episode.

In contrast to the mundane hedonism of daily life, the Choosening is just the sort of cultish jargon that one might expect from a society like this, and I love the familiarity implied in Greg’s world-weary comment that there’s always a catch with this sort of thing. We have no way of knowing how arbitrary the Choosening is, but considering Greg gets chosen Choosened right after arriving, it certainly seems random. While arranged marriage is obviously a thing on Earth as well, the power dynamics on the Zoo are more akin to forced marriage. But even this is colored by an earthly glimpse at an alien culture, because we don’t have any societies with an all-powerful overclass and a genuinely content and cared-for underclass. Is it really forced marriage if the parties involved are happy about it? Even if this is due to them being happy about everything that happens in this society? Are they really capable of true happiness when they’ve experienced no alternate emotions?

This is where the theme of choice versus happiness comes to a head, and it’s so important that we don’t get a tidy ending where free will is presented as a liberating alternative to a peaceful life of following orders. Choices allow for more meaningful happiness, but can lead to sadness as well; while this might seem obvious, I’m always down for children’s media explaining why negative emotions can be okay sometimes (see: Inside Out) and that a life free of pain isn’t necessarily good. It would be disingenuous for real choice to be presented without backlash to a society without free will, and we don’t even get to see how the situation resolves in the original series.

The amethysts march in to help, and Michaela Dietz wonderfully captures gruff warriors helping with emotional wounds. But we end the episode with the Zoomans in turmoil, abandoned by our heroes without a second thought. Based on how the system works, all it takes to reject the Little Voice is just deciding not to listen, and it hadn’t been done before because the Zoomans wanted to listen; again, it’s a tricky situation, because perhaps they do have free will and have chosen obedience. .

As in the last few episodes, we get a cliffhanger ending, but The Zoo bounces back from Gem Heist by having an actual complete story within the chapter. Steven and Greg make a meaningful impact on the Zoomans, but whether it’s for better or worse is up in the air. Our heroes gain the option to eat lotuses in peace for the rest of their days, but choose freedom instead. And they reinforce their bond by sticking together through it all. Now they just have to escape a space station crawling with Gems and find their missing friends and fly home, and that will be all!

Future Vision!

The Zoomans finally return in Steven Universe Future, where their utopia has been expanded to include the Famethyst and Holly Blue. They may be running the station, but they choose to live the way they always have. They’re also petty as hell, which is an excellent development for their passive society.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

While I appreciate the moral questions prompted by The Zoo, and enjoy the episode itself, it’s not quite something that I’d say I love. There’s nothing I find wrong with it, but it lacks a certain amount of oomph that might make it worthy to stand alongside the likes of Alone at Sea or Maximum Capacity in my rankings; this is a high concept episode that has decent character work, but ratio of focus on concept to character doesn’t align with what I love about Steven Universe.

It’s weird to put it in the same category as Gem Heist, because I like The Zoo a lot more, but this is what I get for not having way too many categories. Enh, I can live with it.

Top Twenty

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

Last One Out of Beach City

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Mindful Education

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

Steven’s Dream

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Chille Tid

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Catch and Release

When It Rains

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Buddy’s Book

Gem Harvest

Three Gems and a Baby

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Adventures in Light Distortion

Gem Heist

The Zoo

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

Future Boy Zoltron

No Thanks!

     6. Horror Club      5. Fusion Cuisine      4. House Guest      3. Onion Gang      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

[anth-seeing2019]

-CLIMBING CODES: ASSIGNMENT 2- For this assignment, I chose to analyze the role of language within the climbing community–an expert form of seeing. Some questions I had going into my two-hour observation and interviews included: What is climber jargon? and, how does it work to unify members and/or alienate nonmembers? As a member of the larger outdoor community, I have many friends who rock climb, boulder, and builder. This afforded me a great opportunity to observe relatively unnoticed and allowed those climbing around me to speak freely and without restraint. It should be noted that I am not a climber. Interviews included six members of the community, varying in gender and time within said community (experience), and took place at a popular climbing spot in the Red River Gorge. Having been around climbers for years, I have never ceased to be amazed by the way they speak to one another. They are so quick, using words so goofy sounding that you’re hard-pressed to believe they aren’t speaking a different language in front of you entirely. If you aren’t familiar with the extensive jargon that the community uses, let me spit out a few words that are very common to hear if you’re spending time at a climbing wall or at your local crag: beta, bomber, crimp, chock, dyno, gumby, send, jug, mono, slopper, and whipper. In addition to this, there are technical terms, too. For routes, classification systems exist that boast names like 5.10b and 8c. Other technical terms deal with gear and the process of climbing. An example of this type of language is the term belay (also: belaytionship), which, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, means “to control a rope that a climber is attached to and keep it tight, so that if the climber falls, they do not fall very far”. With jargon playing such an important role in the sport of climbing, it’s either get with it or get left behind. Observation was full of laughs and huffs and puffs. New routes were sent, and old ones resent. There was a complex feeling of fun and focus in the air, with the latter making itself more apparent during sketchy pitches and when routes could not be completed. An overwhelming sense of camaraderie was seen and felt. Everyone around us was friendly, willing to offer up advice (known as “beta”), comments, and jokes. Members spoke to each other using loads of “in-group” language, which backed up Goodwin’s idea that, “human action and cognition are socially situated phenomena, activities accomplished through ongoing, contingent work within the historically shaped settings of the lived social world”. I couldn’t help wondering if they would act differently if I arrived alone, without my friends–my connection to their community, to observe. It made me think of Stranger with A Camera. Interviews were informal and took a casual, conversational tone. I spoke to two women, at different times, and they both had similar responses when I asked them their thoughts on climber language as a bond strengthening mechanism and/or as an alienation device. In short, they said that they still feel pressure to use jargon to sound “cool” and “right” when talking to others about climbing, and that even if they do not know if they are using the term correctly/what it mean, that they are still a bit afraid to ask for clarification because then they could be perceived as inexperienced (even though they both have been climbing for 2+ years). They noted that the vocabulary used is “useful, but definitely exclusionary”. The four men I spoke to never made mention of personally fearing exclusion/inexperience for not knowing terms, and rather all of their responses to the same question focused more on the shared language creating identities: ingroup members and outgroup members. They all said that it can come across as a hurdle/barrier to newcomers, but that it is a bar that establishes entry to and helps to create social bonds with the group. The concept of identity creation brought to mind Strassler. In the same way that photographs in Java were employed to create personal and historical identities, language is being used within the climbing community to establish it. In this community, it denotes status and experience. How well you know and can use the language presents how well you know and are involved within the community. Having the correct identity, or “looking right”, as we have seen from our reading of Garland-Thomas and critiques on staring, has immense power to strengthen bonds and interpersonal relationships. Looking wrong, however, has the same power to alienate. Language in the climbing community also conveys your professional vision, it allows you to present yourself as expert testimony, which then works to reinforce your membership, experience, and place within the group, to reference Goodwin. Analyzing how six climbers, ranging in gender and experience, was more insightful than I anticipated. It has been worthwhile to dig deeper into the mechanics behind such a seemingly commonplace thing that has been around me for years: their language. From observation and interviews, it is clear to me that the climbing community is complex. That it can look cold and hard as rock from the outside, and to outsiders. Once the façade is climbed, so to speak, the people are warm, friendly, and kind. They don’t mean to be exclusionary when they speak, it’s just the lay of the land. It’s unplanned code. If you can stick around long enough to begin to understand it, you can use it to establish your identity within the community, and to make friends. References: Refracted Visions, Karen Strassler Professional Vision, Charles Goodwin Staring: How We Look, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

[dndeviants]

Vasili’s Townhouse

Linda pulled out the journal and began reading it... trusting Ruki to guide them to the right address. Her heart pounded as she walked, reading through Strahd’s perspective of rulership of Barovia... 

While she expected to read the depraved thoughts of a devious and evil man, what she found was more unsettling...

He was like her.

She read as he described the aftermath of war, the tiredness... resigning to duty... trying to return to a normal life... Boredom... 

A brother? Sergei... happiness... Family...

What happened? She read and read... A girl, Tatayana...Sergei’s beloved... he loved her. Jealousy... delving into magic... Her heart ached with pity as she read his descent into obsession... Death...

Murder. He murdered his friend, Alek, hardly even thinking... Murder of his brother... Tatayana would be his... She leapt to her death. Then betrayal...

Leo Dilisnya. She flipped through and read about his attack on the wedding guests... So it turned out that Strahd did not murder them after all... Leo escaped. Years passed, Strahd returned to his duty- then Lovina Wachter told him where Leo was... she paused at a passage:

She took both sheets of parchment and read the introduction right through. As the head of an important house, she would know my writing well enough by now from past documents. This one told her that I was Lord Vasili Von Holtz (I had combined the given name of my great-grandfather with that of his wife's maiden name) and that she was to consider my voice the voice of Strahd in all matters and render me every reasonable assistance for my errand. The bottom of the sheet was properly stamped, and it carried a wax seal impressed with the Von Zarovich coat of arms. She studied it all at length, making me glad I had prepared things so fully.

Her heart pounded as she read, and re-read... Vasili... Vasili is Strahd! She felt a small fury... mostly at herself. So that is what Rictavio meant. She beat herself up... How could she? No, how dare he make her care about him that way! How dare he lie to her...

Why did she still care? She shook her head and forced herself to calm. She’d get to the bottom of this better with a level head. 

She looked to her companions, thinking. She couldn’t trust the native Barovians... Strahd was masquerading as Vasili for a reason, and she didn’t want to risk angering the vampire by revealing the truth... better to have some kind of leverage over him... Ruki surely knew already, and she didn’t want to alert her to her discovery. 

The other outsiders... She looked over to Aric and Jeeves, and tried something on a hunch... They seemed the type to be heavily involved with criminals and criminal activities, despite Aric’s noble heritage. She too was well versed in the ways of the underworld, and spoke the coded language of rogues and rapscallions:

Thieves Cant.

She walked over to the boys, "Do you guys know what I'm saying? I am not sure if you know Thieves Cant."

Aric startled and nodded, replying in the same, "Of course, we wouldn't be very good at what we do if we didn't know, now would we?"

Jeeves inclined his head, "What's the troubling news? We have a bit of our own..."

"I have another of those journal fragments...” she looked to Ruki and back to them,  “Vasili is not who he says he is."

Ruki paused, tilting her head back to listen to them. It was Common, it seemed... but it was filled with so much slang, jargon, and gibberish that she could hardly understand. She shook her head and focused on making sure the rest of the group didn’t get themselves lost.

Aric looked to Linda and nodded, grimly, "I've had my suspicions for a while, but he has had solid answers to my concerns, until just now at least,” Aric lowered his voice, “We caught Ruki and Vasili speaking in Infernal."

Linda raised her brow, "Oh, what was it about?

“A curse placed on a woman,” Aric replied, “And apparently, The Holy Symbol of Ravenkind belonged to Vasili's brother.”

"That's interesting,” Linda replied sarcastically, bitterness creeping into her voice, “considering that he is actually Strahd."

"As in the ruler of this place?” Aric allowed himself a moment of disbelief before nodding, “I did find it strange that 'Vasili' traveled around and tended to the business of Strahd. I guess my suspicions were correct."

Jeeves folded his arms, "Yeah, it was suspicious that he gave him permission to do as he pleased and gave him a writ."

Aric decided that he trusted Linda, "I wanted to know more about the pendant, so I stole it from Ruki and was planning on confronting them anyway, I vote we do it together."

“Sounds good,“ Linda replied, glad that Aric was on the same page as her. She held out a hand, “Though, I suggest pulling them away from the others. Don’t want to cause too much of a scene.”

They wound the corner and walked straight north... It was a quieter part of town. It didn’t seem like most of the buildings here were inhabited. Ruki turned to her companions:

“We will be approaching the manor soon.“

Ruki led them to the manor and looked up at the house. The two story manor had a good view of Lake Zarovich. She nodded to herself fondly. She remembered working on this house when she was a child... It was humble, but well equipped to deal with any threat, and was a favorite hideout of Strahd’s whenever Vasili had any business that needed to be attended to. It wasn’t as grand as the castle, nor as extravagant... but it was a central location for both her vampire friends and Vistani relatives.

It didn’t seem that much changed about the house... save for that Mina’s trips to maintain the house were less frequent than usual. She shook her head at the sad, wilted tulips.

Linda looked to the house... The windows were covered by red-painted shutters, the house itself was that of a gray white. It seemed modest enough, but the location was telling to her: far away from the crowds, and with quick access to the lake, it seemed like a perfect place for a country retreat...

Or a convenient murder. She put her hand on her revolver for comfort.

Aric glanced at the house. Vasili- or Strahd- has good taste. Shame about the tulips...

Linda walked to the front door... she heard movement on the other side. She knocked. There was a pause, but then Vasili came to the door.

Vasili looked over everyone and smiled with closed lips, "Ah, you made it. Please, by all means, come in..."

He bowed to them and stepped to the side, gesturing for them to come in. 

Linda hesitated, and peered around him... She heard the sound of kitchen tools, saw a broom sweeping the floors on its own-

And a large wolf walking down the hall toward them.

Aric saw the wolf in the house and immediately jumped back, nearly knocking Jeeves down. Jeeves stumbled and caught Aric in his arms.

“OOF! Um... my Pasha?“ Jeeves inquired of Aric’s skittish behavior.

“Harald!“ Ruki called out in happy recognition of her favorite pet, “How are you, boy?“

The wolf bounded up to Ruki, wagging its tail.

Linda gestured down to it, “Why do you have a wolf?”

Vasili- or Strahd- seemed genuinely surprised at the question. He laughed, “A wolf? There are no wolves here. This is my dog, Harald.”

Suddenly, everyone gathered was unsure of the dog being a wolf... It looked surprisingly like a wolf, and still did.

Linda blinked, and removed her hand from her revolver, “That’s just a really big dog, then.”

Jeeves nodded, “It must be one of those husky dogs I have heard about...”

Aric slowly lowered himself, “Sorry Jeeves, he just surprised me.”

“You may pet him if you wish,“ Vasili granted them permission.

Linda, always an animal lover, reached down and pet the beast, “Hello, Harald.”

Harald wagged his tail at the attention. Vasili took Harald away from the door.

“Come on boy, let them in...“ He moved to the side, “Warm yourselves by the fire."

Linda ventured in first, followed by Ireena and Ismark, Victor not too long after. Ruki went in as well. Aric and Jeeves lingered in the back, but ultimately came in as well. Vasili locked the door behind them.

The Barovians went immediately to warm themselves by the fire, but the outsiders lingered in the hall with Vasili.

 "Thank you for having us Vasili,” Aric said, “I hope we won't be too much trouble."

Vasili shook his head, "Not at all. My home is your home."

Aric peered around Vasili and saw a young woman hard a work, cooking in the kitchen. His heart skipped a beat. He wasn’t actually expecting anyone else to be there...

Linda turned to Aric, speaking in the Cant, "Should we talk to him now? In another room maybe?"

Aric nodded, "I think that would be best, there is someone in the kitchen and I wasn't expecting someone here besides him."

They silently nodded to each other, and turned to face Vasili. Vasili quirked his head at the odd slang.

Aric stepped forth, “Lord... Holtz,” he ventured, “Linda, Jeeves, and I were wondering if there is someplace private that we may talk with you and Ruki. I have some concerns over my current state, and seeing as you two know this place better than we do, I was hoping for some advice. Linda also has some concerns to run by you.”

Vasili paused, then nodded thoughtfully, "My study is right here. Would that be sufficient?" Vasili indicated a door in the hallway, away from the main living space.

"That will be perfect," Aric replied.

Vasili unlocked the study door. The small space was crammed with bookcases and different tomes of study. Everything was organized and in order. A little writing desk sat in the middle of the room with a chair on one side. A window looked to the outside from behind the desk. The night was pitch black. 

Ruki stepped in and stood by the desk. Jeeves leaned against a side wall.

Vasili closed the door behind them, “What questions do  you have?”

Aric looked to Linda.

Linda stepped to Vasili, "You have some kind of spell so that no one overhears us?”

Vasili quirked a brow, but responded, “Certainly. Do you wish for me to cast it?”

“Yes, please, Vasili.“ Linda held her eyes level with his.

Vasili opened the door and put a finger to his lips, muttering a small spell. When he was done, he turned around and walked past the desk, leaning on the wall near the window, “It is done...” He crossed his arms over his chest.

Aric turned to Linda, "Do you want to go first about his identity, or me about what we overheard?"

Linda faced Vasili and put her hands on her hips. She replied to Aric, "What you overheard."

Aric nodded and faced Vasili, "I guess I'll be honest now, since that is what we are going to ask of you...” he paused to clarify, “We asked you here away from everyone else because we have some concerns about you and Ruki. Earlier, Jeeves and I overheard you and Ruki discussing a curse on a woman named Tatayana, the Ba'al Verzi, and the fact that this pendant...”

Aric reached into his pack and pulled out the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, flashing it in front of the man, “This pendant belonged to your brother..."

Vasili’s eyes widened, and he flinched almost instinctively. It seemed to take every bit of effort to stand his ground. He snarled and hissed, "Put... that... damn... thing... away!"

That confirmed it. Linda put one hand on her revolver and another out in front of her, in a stopping motion. She held her eyes evenly with Strahd, and did her best to keep her voice calm, "We just want to chat, with the Lord of this place."

The man who called himself Vasili, that she now knew to be Strahd glared at her... his eyes glowing red. He seemed to calculate and weigh his options. 

Aric was surprised and confused by the man’s response. He turned to Linda for guidance, holding the symbol still. Linda nodded to Aric, not breaking eye contact with the creature before her. Aric slowly put the symbol away. 

Strahd seemed to calm and regain his composure.

“That is a powerful holy artifact!” Ruki was infuriated, “How dare you take that from my care?!”

Ruki pulled out her staff in anger, but Strahd stepped forward and held out a hand in front of her, reminding her of her place. She lowered her staff and took a small step back.

Strahd silently looked over them, his voice becoming a soft purr,  "Very well. I will admit, that you found me out rather quickly with the aid of my journals...” he bit back the venom that slipped into his voice, resuming his civil demeanor, “I appreciate the consideration in not outing me to the people there. So, let me formally reintroduce myself...”

Strahd stood tall and put his hand over his heart, “I am Strahd von Zarovich, Lord of Barovia. Now..." He glanced over to Aric, "You wanted to know about the artifact, the Ba'al Verzi, and Tatayana?"

Aric met his gaze evenly. He wouldn’t be fazed by the murderous intent in Strahd’s eye. He wanted answers...

“My lord,” Ruki protested, “they are mere outsiders!”

Strahd’s mind touched Ruki’s, "That I understand. It infuriates me so that they had access to my journals... but regardless, I need them. If they betray me or run out of usefulness... we can deal with it then."

"We are outsiders who are trying to help and don't appreciate being lied to!" An edge crept into Linda’s voice. She forced herself to calm down, as she stared at the man who had lied to her- and probably manipulated her. Yelling or getting frustrated wouldn’t help. As dangerous as Strahd probably was, it would only succeed in getting them killed if she couldn’t control her anger.

“Yes we would,” Aric replied to Strahd. “You have kept your true identity from us, and now these things as well. We wish to get home...” Aric paused, “But I, at least, am more than willing to help you, and the citizens of Barovia,” he looked to Strahd, earnestly, “But we need to know that we can trust you.”

Strahd remained silent. Ruki folded her arms. She knew that they would have to demonstrate that themselves. 

“How do you prove your willingness, then?“ Ruki demanded.

Linda was silent. She took her hand off her revolver and removed the weapons belt around her waist. She removed her monster hunting kit off of her back and tossed both of them into the middle of the room. She held up her hands, “There. I’ve taken off my weapons. Your journal is in that bag. Do what you will with that.”

Aric crossed his arms, “I admit we are strangers to you and to this place, but you are the ones who have proven yourselves untrustworthy...” he held up his hand, and indicated the Battleblade Ring, “But, I do believe that my use of this ring to prevent the burgomaster’s escape is proof enough of our intent. We just want to help you, and go home.”

Strahd examined the strangers before him, and wrapped his cloak around him. His face was expressionless, but a sad, tired tone betrayed his feelings in his voice.

"Very well,” he relented, “I will speak of what I know. You already have access to my journals, and my most private thoughts to the events in my life...” He looked over to Linda, “I have not lied to you. Though, admittedly, I may have omitted some information.... "

Linda frowned at the man. Strahd met her gaze briefly, then averted it.

Strahd fixed his gaze on Aric, and sighed, "First... The Ba'al Verzi... an ancient group of assassins, a guild of evil intent. Murderers...” He made a gesture, “I was their target once, long ago, when I became the ruler of this land. What made them so different from other assassin guilds however... was their cultist ways...”

Strahd listed, “They had to kill someone they loved to make a sheathe from the flesh, and used magic to pursue their targets... sometimes that magic was necromantic. The old Ba'al Verzi had undead to serve them. Ghosts, specters... things of that nature. Their signature weapon was a long dagger, with a hilt of gold, red, and black. All of their artifacts were marked similarly so... It seems that their guild has not died after all, and that I am still a target."

Linda blinked at the information, processing. She turned to Ruki, "Wait, so that mirror that you destroyed in the Burgomaster's house was a Ba'al Verzi artifact, Ruki?"

Strahd looked to Ruki, questioningly. He wasn’t aware of any Ba’al Verzi artifact in the Vallakovich mansion- but then again, that mansion didn’t always belong to them. “Well... then certain things begin to make sense...” he grew lost in his thoughts. 

Ruki nodded to Linda, “Indeed...” she withdrew her trophies, all Ba’al Verzi daggers, “This is the dagger I confiscated from the coffin shop, and this is on old dagger that lost its magic.”

Strahd glanced at the daggers and returned to the conversation, "Indeed. True Ba'al Verzi will always have them upon their person. Henrik seems to have been a high ranking member... he also had this..." 

Strahd held up Henrik’s cane, "I did some magical investigation, and this is a Rod of Golem Control. With it, he could have manipulated the golems to do certain things and exceed their own boundaries... fortunately, he perished before he got the chance to use it."

Strahd set down the cane on the study table and paused...

"Next issue... Tatayana...."

Strahd pulled his cloak back around him and gripped it a little more tightly than he had before. He spoke softly, "She was the only woman I ever loved. But... she did not love me. She loved my brother, Sergei.”

 “I was overcome with jealousy... and tried to turn to magical study to turn her affections to me. It seemed... unfair that I had to give up everything- my childhood, my youth, my life... in order to survive and to meet my father’s expectations. But Sergei had to make no such sacrifices.”

An edge crept into his voice, “Everything he had was given to him... and it made me bitter. He didn't have to earn my father's pride, or love... It seemed unfair,” he repeated, “that he could naturally have anything he wanted, where I had to fight just to survive! I wanted Tatayana for my own.”

 He grew quiet again, “It seems so naive and foolish now... to think that someone so innocent and pure could ever come to love someone- something- like me..."

Strahd turned away from them and walked to the window, staring out into the bleak night, "I began to blame my age, my lack of faith in humanity... and my approaching death for her disinterest in me. I... was dying. I knew the feeling... I felt it every time we fought.” 

He paused, “Do you know how it is to feel Death at your back every day you wake? Every night you sleep? I did not fear death, mind you. I feared dying before I ever had the chance to live. Tatayana was the only one who made me feel... like I meant something. Who saw the goodness in me...”

Strahd looked back at them coldly, “I proved her wrong."

He turned to face them fully, "Death himself approached me the night before my brother's wedding. Offering me a chance to take what had been denied me. Coaxing me, threatening me... I debated doing anything. But... unhappy circumstances...” 

“My only friend, Alek had been spying on me, trying to warn me... warn me of an attack, but all I saw was a possible betrayal. Instinctively we fought, and we mortally wounded each other. But I emerged victorious... at what cost?"

Strahd looked back to the window, "I murdered my best friend of over three decades. If I was capable of such an atrocity... surely a brother I hardly knew would be no different. But... I was lied to. I did not get what I wanted. I murdered them... for nothing. Tatayana fled from me... and killed herself.”

 “I died too, that night. Truly died...” he huffed a small laugh, “Betrayed and murdered by the Ba'al Verzi. But it appears that my stubbornness triumphs even over death. I avenged myself... and was cursed to watch Tatayana live and die over and over and over again..."

Strahd put a hand over his chest, letting his cloak fall from his hands. He pat over his heart, "This... is numb now. I feel hardly anything in regards to it. I don't even care if she loves me anymore. I just want to stop watching her die so cruelly...” 

“Ireena..." he murmured. Strahd faced the party, "She is Tatayana reborn."

Linda nodded, the pieces of the puzzle finally clicking together. "That's why you bit her," she stated.

"Yes,” Strahd answered. “It may have been misguided, but I was trying to save her, in the only way I know how...” he held out his hands, pain in his voice, “I meant her no harm. I was tricked... and she was used...” 

He raised a finger, “But I kept my word! I have not bitten her, and I will not make any more such advances...” he paused, “...not until I figure out what is going on here.”

He shrugged, “Truthfully... there are many things that I am just as confused about as you are."

Linda folded her arms, accepting his answer, “Alright.”

Strahd looked to Aric, "I suppose this brings us to the Artifact..."

Aric nodded attentively.

"Sergei...” Strahd sighed, “was the youngest of us all. My homelands had a tradition where the eldest was a war child. The middle was the estate child, and the third and after... were clergymen.”

He made a bleak gesture,”Sturm and I each performed our duties... and Sergei was meant to take over the place of the Most High Priest... solidify the von Zarovich control over our Homelands and territories... each of us controlling portions of our culture's way of life. Sergei was entrusted with the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, the pendant of the High Priest."

Strahd shook his head, "He should have stayed with tradition. He would have never met her, I would have never met her... none of...this... would have happened if he just... did what he was supposed to.” He all but snarled, “But no, apparently Father never wanted him to follow the priest path."

Strahd forced the bitterness from his voice, and shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant, "In any case... it is a tool to banish creatures of the night. Destroy them. Creatures like me. The very sight of it... pains me in ways you can't even imagine... I have come up with a few ways to stave off the effects of holy auras... but nothing compares to the strength of that pendant."

Linda raised a brow. She didn’t think that vampires could work around holy auras.

Strahd noticed her response and huffed, "You let me ramble..."

Ruki humphed and folded her arms.

Linda smirked, “Of course,” she leaned against a bookshelf, "Though, I knew some of that from reading your journals. It's good to have the blanks filled in. Thank you for telling us. This was all very insightful. Aric do you have anything else to ask Strahd?"

Linda looked over to Aric.

Aric shook his head no.

Ruki glared, “If you knew, then why this underhanded interrogation?”

Linda looked to her evenly, "As I said, I knew some of it. Not all."

Strahd looked over Aric, Linda, and Jeeves, measuring their reaction. He expected anger, fear, accusation... He pinched the bridge of his nose. This was too much of a headache.

"I'm...” Strahd paused, and rethought his phrasing, “I extend my apologies to you for the deception for my true identity...” he let go of his face and looked to them, tiredly, “Please, understand that it is a danger for both me and Ruki if the general populace knew that Vasili von Holtz is not the man they think he is. The fear of my name is so... deep set in the culture. I don't know if I will ever recover."

Linda looked over to Strahd. She had been upset at his deception before, but she understood the reasons why. She couldn’t hold on to her anger, and sighed, "Even though I don't like it, I understand why you did it."

Aric clasped his hands respectfully, "Thank you for telling us all of this, I understand that it can be hard to trust those around you, especially when they are effectively strangers...” he looked over to Linda, then back to Strahd, “I guess it is only fair to say if there is anything more you want to know about us, now is the time to ask.”

“How about their boring life stories?” Ruki barely muttered.

Strahd smiled slyly and steepled his fingers.

Aric’s heart lurched, Oh dear, I didn’t actually think he was going to take me up on that.

"I want to know more about this business with rings...” Strahd tilted his head, “I sensed objects of great power entering my realm, and a mage... You bear one of those items... I want to know more about them, and this... mage."

Jeeves and Aric exchanged glances. Aric shrugged. There was no point in hiding what they were after.

Ruki turned to Aric, “And I want to know more about your servant.”

Jeeves turned to Ruki, “What about me? I'm simply a butler. Well, a mameluk technically," he pointed to Aric, "And this is my Pasha."

Ruki wasn’t buying it, “You seem to have a myriad of knowledge on many topics for a mere butler. Particularly, poisons.”

Jeeves shrugged innocently, "Well, keeping my master safe from assassins happens to be a hobby of mine...” He held out his hand, "Most of the time my job is repairing clothes that he damages either by fighting or with one of his... bouts. You see, he can have a volatile temper, and can flare up at times."

Aric flared up, “I do not have a 'volatile temper,' I just feel my aggression very strongly!"

"Of course, my lord. I apologize for my mistake," Jeeves batted off a little steam that was flaring from Aric’s shoulders.

Aric muttered about being a fire genasi to himself before turning back to Strahd, who was staring at him, waiting.

"Anyway, I am effectively the crown prince of my people,” he made a dismissive gesture, “I won't bore you with the exact details of how our social and political systems work, but I believe my cousin is working with people who wish to overthrow my father's reign. While this would be difficult to do normally there are many magical items that can help, like the Qysari rings.”

Strahd blinked and tilted his head, "So these rings are part of a set?"

Aric nodded, "Yes, there are twelve in total, at least the legends say... They were crafted by various rulers of my land for the purpose of maintaining- or overthrowing- someone’s rule. It has been a long time since all twelve were possessed by a single person,” Aric looked to Strahd, “and I want that person to be me."

Strahd looked into Aric’s eyes, and laughed, but not mockingly. "Admirable,” he purred, “I like your ambition. Now, tell me about this mage."

 "You must mean my cousin, Mehmet...” Aric paused and thought, “Honestly I don't know as much as I would like. Until now, I never saw him as a threat. He's a bit of an outcast of the family, but he never seemed to have the stomach for anything dark or sinister. That’s what kept him from being afforded any power, he would have been killed almost immediately for it...” 

Aric folded his arms, “At least that is what I thought. I believe he has joined up with a rival family and that's how he ended up with the rings. That is the only explanation I can come up with, he certainly didn't track all of them down himself."

Strahd pondered the information, "Thank you. In any case, I regard any mage that enters my realm as a possible threat. So I will aid you with your quest. If these are items of power, I would prefer a non magic user have them. I have no interest in them myself...."

Strahd looked over to Linda, then glanced at her weapons on the floor. He approached them and knelt next to her belt and pack. He lifted up her speedloaders, "These seem a little too specialized for a dabbler to be carrying about... silver ammunition?"

He turned to her pack and opened it. He raised a brow at the contents and tisked, "A stake, holy water... my, my..."

Linda crossed her arms across her chest, "It's a standard kit."

Strahd raised his brow at her, "For monster hunters?"

She sighed. So much for keeping that a secret from the vampire, "Yes,” she admitted. She uncrossed her arms, "I'm more of a bounty hunter, but I specialize in beasts and monsters."

Linda leaned back against the wall, "Go ahead, look through everything if you want. The stuff in there isn't meant for you."

Strahd hesitated, then smirked at her, "I'm now curious in what a kit designed to put me down would look like..."

Strahd looked through a little more of the kit. Linda called out to him, "You should be careful though, there is silver in there."

Strahd waved off her concern and stood up, walking away from her weapons, "I can touch silver. I just can't allow it to pierce my flesh.” He frowned, “But perhaps that is too much information for you... Or others..."

Strahd looked over them. He folded his cloak around him, "All I ask is to keep my true name a secret. If there is any of the same you want to ask of me, then say what secrets we are keeping. Or keep them for yourselves. I care not."

Linda walked over to her weapons and started to put her belt back on, stating, "We all have our secrets. I'm not going to pry for any more."

She secured everything to her person and walked back to her place near the bookshelf.

Strahd nodded, appreciative of Linda’s sentiment. He paused, "If there is anything pertinent, I will share.” He chuckled, “But we simply don't have the time for us to go over four hundred years worth of my secrets. You know the most pertinent of them. Anything else...” He grew serious, “ I'm not deliberately keeping from you. It's just... not important right now. Is that clear?"

Linda nodded and crossed her arms, "One last thing, though,” she looked to Strahd, “Will you still help us with our missions here? In exchange for helping you?"

"I gave you my word, didn't I?” Strahd spoke quietly, “The name I gave it under doesn't matter. It is still my word."

Linda felt a wave of relief, "Alright. Thank you."

Strahd smiled slightly at Linda, then stood straight, “I think we should return... Mina should be nearly done cooking, by the smell of it... and the rest of my guests may be worried that they’ve not heard nor seen their host in some time...”

He gestured toward the door, “Shall we?”

They nodded in agreement and fell out of the study, the savory aroma of a hardy meal greeted them. They walked into the living room and saw that the other Barovians were none the wiser to the confrontation that just happened behind them. The woman Aric saw working the kitchen had just finished setting the small table.

The woman sighed and brushed off her apron, brushing a stray streak of blonde hair from her face, “Alright, Lord Vasili. Everything is done...” She glanced over to Ruki, “Oh, Lady Ruki... I didn’t know you were coming either.”

"Actually,” Ruki replied, “I have business to attend to at the castle. I was only here to make sure things were in order."

Ruki bowed, and left the room, relieved that things were finally righting themselves.

The woman blinked at Ruki’s odd manner, “Ah, ok... bye, then.”

Strahd resumed his Vasili mannerisms, "It is alright,” he told the woman. He looked to the party, “Everyone, this is Mina. Wilhemina Harper. She is my maid, and a part time bounty hunter."

Mina frowned petulantly, "A part-time maid, and a full-time bounty hunter!"

Vasili smiled. 

Linda blinked, curious. It was clear from their manner that they knew each other well... But the remark about being a bounty hunter as well...?

“Makes two of us,“ Linda said.

Vasili turned to Linda with playful shock, "Oh? You do maid work as well?"

Linda pursed her lips, trying not to show that she found his remark funny. "I do apprentice a teenager..." she finally chuckled.

Ismark rose from his chair, "Pleasure to meet you!"

Ireena nodded, "Good to meet you, Mina."

Victor waved awkwardly.

Aric nodded, “It's a pleasure, Mina, thank you for the meal.”

"You're welcome. I hope you enjoy it, even if it was... short notice... " Mina shot a small glare at Vasili.

"Again, I do apologize. It was on a whim. I appreciate the help, and will compensate you for your trouble..." Vasili seemed embarrassed.

Mina put her hands on her hips, "Good."

Vasili pulled out a seat at the table, "Let us sit together. The day has been long and... harrowing."

Everyone gathered around the table. Vasili invited Mina to sit with them. She obliged. Linda sat across from Vasili, and Aric boldly sat next to the disguised vampire.

Mina listed her dishes, "So I have some traditional dumplings with a beef roast, a tomato and basil soup, and rutabagas and turnip greens. We have some Vistani wine, water, and tuika for you. Everyone can help themselves."

Everyone gathered began to help themselves to the food, save for Strahd, who opted to drink from a flask...

It’s blood. Linda berated herself, It’s so obvious now... why didn’t I catch it?

"Not hungry, my lord?" Mina looked over to Vasili, questioningly.

"Not particularly," he replied, "I was attacked twice today. That puts a slight damper on my appetite."

Mina snorted, "Ah, pity. That makes me hungrier. I was about to ask if you ruined your appetite by smoking."

Ireena nodded and spoke with mild disapproval, "Oh, Lord Vasili was smoking. Outside of the church."

Mina pouted at Vasili.

Jeeves uncorked a small flask, and poured a purple fluid into his food, "No one eat after me."

Aric looked over knowingly. Jeeves regularly worked on his poison immunity. 

"Why?" Linda asked.

"I think you'd find my seasoning disagreeable."

Linda realized he was poisoning his own food, and left well enough alone. She turned to Strahd, "So... Vasili, why did you bring us to dinner?"

"I wanted to treat my guests...” Vasili replied, “And have some place for you to stay, where you wouldn't have to pay for lodging. And also to discuss in a more private setting what our next course of action would be. Along with... getting to know everyone a little bit better... outside of a life or death situation."

Keep us from an Inn? Probably to assess if our knowledge of him would be a threat... He knew we would find out... Linda found herself impressed by his ability to think so far ahead, "I think we may have touched on the last on that list a little already."

"So... what happens now?” Ireena questioned, “I've gotten rid of the taint of vampirism in my blood... what are all of you going to do next?"

"I still need to find Timothy,” replied Linda, “and I thought we were going to help out Urwin."

Jeeves curtly nodded, "Seeing the state of the Wizard of the Wines is in our best interests."

Vasili set aside his flask, "I have agreed to not further any of Lord Strahd's other interests at the moment... a 'vacation', was it? I have decided to aid these strangers with their own ends. So, we will be on the way to Krezk."

Victor looked to Vasili, "Krezk? I think I heard that there is some strange magical happenings over there. I think I would like to investigate... and... just get a little further away from Vallaki..."

Ireena looked to everyone and thought to herself for a moment. 

"I think... I will have to decline...” She sighed, “I feel like I am a bit of a handicap to everyone here... I've been kidnapped and nearly died twice. I think Ismark and I should return to Barovia Village, check in on Papa, and get back to our responsibilities."

Ismark seemed relieved, "While I would love to see more of Barovia, Ireena is right. I can't leave her alone while there are dark things after her."

"Ah, is this another reason why you called me to help? Is there someone that needs to be tracked down?" Mina looked to Vasili.

Vasili nodded, "Yes, there is a kidnapped teenager we are looking for. Timothy, I believe the boy is called. There are other cases of missing children I have been looking into. Your help would be much appreciated. But it is up to you."

"I'll help,” she raised a brow, “But I will be charging the usual."

Vasili nodded, "Of course..."

Ireena folded her hands, "Alright. So I suppose we will head back in the morning..."

Linda looked to Mina, overwhelmed by curiosity. "Mina, how did you come to know Vasili?" she asked.

Mina seemed surprised that Linda took interest, "Oh. Well I've known him basically all my life. He rescued me when my village was slaughtered by bandits. I was only nine at the time... But bandits had taken over my village and beheaded our burgomaster... then when they got bored, they burned our village to the ground. I... was the only survivor. My mother threw me into the well when they started slaughtering everyone..."

She shook her head, "I don't remember how long I waited. But Lord Vasili came to our village, and rescued me from the well. I don't remember much of it, because I fell asleep. When I woke up, it was raining, and the fire was gone. I told him what happened, and he put me in his carriage, and sent me to Vallaki. He told me to tell the people at the Inn that Lord Vasili demanded I be taken care of. So I stayed there. I told everyone what happened, and they were worried that he was going to be killed by bandits."

She nodded, "But he came back. Helped me get adopted. By the old owners of the inn. The Von Dran Family. I lived with them, and knew them to be my family too. I learned how to track and hunt from them. But one day, Papa Dran... didn't come back from the hunt. I went out and saw that he had been murdered by bandits when he was out hunting. I took up arms to find his killers, and ran into Lord Holtz again."

Vasili folded his hands over his lap, "I was also tracking down the same group of bandits. When we ran into each other, I welcomed the assistance."

Mina scoffed, "You told me to not get in your way."

Vasili corrected her, "I told you that if you were to join me, you couldn't hesitate at the critical moment."

Mina was defiant, "I didn't hesitate, did I?"

"No, you didn't.” Vasili smirked, “I was impressed. Which is why I offered you employment."

Mina was indignant, "As a maid!"

Vasili chuckled, "As a bounty hunter, and a maid. Did you refuse?"

Mina grumbled, "I needed a job."

Jeeves mused, "A maid and a bounty hunter? Those are two wildly different occupations."

"Not really. Both clean up other people's messes..." Linda looked to Vasili.

Vasili laughed, "Finally, I've waited years for someone to get the joke."

No one else at the table seemed to get that humor.

Linda was the exception, she found herself laughing with him, "You have to admit, that is one good joke."

Aric mused and looked at Jeeves, “I never looked at it that way but I guess it is true.”

Jeeves thought about it, "Oh no, that is my entire job..." he held his hands to his head, "I'm a maid...A maid who also kills people who try to harm my master and break laws. And who eats poison."

Victor pat Jeeves on the back in sympathy, "And I'm a wizard that was living in an attic for years. Reanimating cat skeletons."

Ireena tried to be encouraging, "If you think about it, Lord Vasili is also like a maid. He's cleaning up after Lord Strahd's failings."

Linda burst out laughing... Oh, it was so funny to see the look on Strahd’s face as he tried to be civil and disguise his hurt at the same time... the irony...

"I'm... trying my best..." Vasili choked out.

Ismark shrugged, sipping tuika,  "I mean, there isn't much you can do."

Vasili frowned at Ismark, "I don't think it's... hopeless.Where is your sense of pride and optimism?"

“At the bottom of this cup," Ismark took a swig of the plum brandy.

Victor adjusted his glasses, "Well, I don't think I have any pride or optimism, so that makes it easy."

Linda didn’t buy it, "What about your cat, Mr. Whiskers? Aren't you proud that you reanimated him?"

Victor looked to her, "I was more relieved, actually. I didn't want to go through trying to raise another cat and go through the same pain all over again. So reanimating Mr. Whiskers was a relief."

Victor pet the cat. Mr. Whiskers purred with an unearthly echo.

Mina raised a brow,  "I thought it was illegal for people to reanimate the dead..."

Vasili made a dismissive gesture, "I'll let it pass. The boy is hardly a threat, and the reanimated cat is not exactly worthy of an undead horde."

Victor held Mr. Whiskers close, "Oh no, not part of an undead horde at all. He's just here to help with my nerves is all."

Linda nodded, "Everyone has something that keeps them calm. And for some, that thing is dangerous. For others, it's an undead cat."

Jeeves looked to Linda, "For me, it is my short sword. I don't like being without it."

Aric put his arm around Jeeves’ shoulder, “For me its Jeeves,” he declared, “Nobody wants to get in the way of someone who eats poison.”

Jeeves grinned smugly.

Linda smirked, “See? Dangerous.”

Ireena pondered and took out a handkerchief with embroidery on the edges, "For me, it is this handkerchief. It was mom's, and even though I never met her, It still makes me think of her."

Ismark set down his drink, "I have a lucky coin. It's a counterfeit gold piece, that is actually a gold plated copper, and has two tail ends, instead of a head and tail. I keep it with me. Can't spend it, but it feels lucky."

Mina held out a bracelet with charms, "I have a charm bracelet. Each charm is from a family member. My first Morninlord symbol from my birth mother, a chest key from Mama Dran, an arrowhead from Papa Dran, and a nail from Georg Dran, my little brother."

Linda paused and pulled out a small puzzle box, "This is the hardest to solve puzzle box I have ever made. No one else has ever solved it. It holds my mother's wedding ring."

Everyone looked to Vasili expectantly. Vasili returned their stares with suspicion: "Well? Why are you looking at me?"

Linda looked to him, "You don't carry around anything that means something to you?"

Vasili looked to her and hesitated. He finally relented and reached into his component pouch and took out a small bone.

"A white raven's wishbone,” he explained, “It is supposed to be lucky, and grant a wish when broken. It's said the longer you keep it without breaking it, the more likely the wish will be granted.”

He paused, “It was a gift from my brother when I was... out fighting. I've had it for a very long time. And keep it in my pouch of spell components."

Vasili put away the small wishbone with care.

Linda noticed the gesture... Once more he wasn’t lying... 

Linda nodded,  "See even Vasili has something."

Ireena mused, "How interesting. I've never seen a white raven."

"Neither have I," Vasili admitted.

They enjoyed the rest of their meal and rested. Once everyone was comfortably full, Vasili rose from his chair, "Thank you, Mina, everything was wonderful. Now, my guests, let me show you the rest of the house and you can choose where you stay. I have a few guest rooms, if you would follow me..."

The party obliged him, and followed him to the guest room by the front door.

"All these guest rooms can accommodate two people per bed, but if you would like, I can provide bedrolls. There is a water table, bathtub, and vanity, and drawers for your use here... "

Vasili walked to the kitchen, "Over here is the kitchen and over here is the pantry, if you are still hungry, feel free to help yourselves."

Vasili led them upstairs, "Here is the sitting room, if we need to convene in a more comfortable space. This way..." 

He unlocked a hallway with a piano and music cabinet. Linda looked wistfully to the piano.

"This is my piano room,” Vasili was brief, “Nothing much else to say. The other two bedrooms are this way."

He opened the doorway to a long hall, "At the end there is the water closet, should you need to use it. Here are the other two bedrooms."

He walked to back to the last room, which was much more spacious and had a fireplace, "This is the master bedroom. I don't care if any of you use it, my preferred place of rest is the study."

Vasili steepled his fingers and turned to face them, "So which rooms do you lay claim to?"

 "Dibs on master," Linda was aching for a large bed to herself, and the fireplace would be convenient for her tinkering.

Jeeves looked to his master, "Well, my lord?"

Aric pointed to the room behind him, across from the master bedroom, “I was thinking this one.”

Jeeves nodded, "It will do."

Jeeves and Aric watched as Strahd walked into the piano room, Linda curiously lingering on the corner of the hall. 

Aric closed the door to the room, and Jeeves began to scout it. Bed, dresser, mirror... window... bat? 

Aric looked up at the corner above the bed, and saw a very tiny bat resting in the corner. It was hardly noticeable... but it was certainly there, watching him-

No, it was cleaning its own face.

"So... a bat..." Jeeves looked up to it and crossed his arms.

Aric knew of vampires’ affinity for bats. Not wanting to take chances, he switched to Alzhedo, "You ever get the feeling you’re being watched?"

Jeeves nodded and responded in turn, “You think this is insurance of some kind?” He tilted his head toward the bat.

Aric was cautious, "Maybe. Best to just be aware of it for now. As far as anyone knows, we speak this language when we are alone."

Jeeves nodded and crawled on the bed, "Of course,” he took off his boots, “So, impressions on this vampire fellow?" 

"As much as he told us, we still don't really know him,” Aric crawled on the bed and stood, “But he does seem to want things to change. If nothing else he is our best lead to getting the rings and returning home. At best, I can say I don't distrust him..."

Aric reached out and coaxed the tiny bat into his hand. It nestled its head in his hand. Aric mused, sitting down and petting the bat with the barest touch, "You seem friendly..."

Jeeves looked to the bat and back to Aric, "He hasn't made any overt or threatening gestures. I suppose we should compile what we know, or think we know about Vampires. Worst case scenario, we use those weaknesses against him. Or best case, we tailor our knowledge so that his weaknesses don't hinder us either...” Jeeves paused, “There is also that charm we need to get from Luvash in regards to your... condition."

Aric paused in his petting of the bat, "Yes, my... condition,” he looked to Jeeves, “Luvash said it would be ready tomorrow correct?”

Jeeves nodded. Aric refocused on the previous conversation, “As for Strahd... we know that holy symbol hurt him, but he can apparently set foot in a church... those things seem to contradict each other."

Jeeves agreed, "Completely contradictory. Also... walking in daytime... How do you think that is possible?"

Aric was grim, "He may be more powerful than we realize..."

Aric thought back to everything they had observed Vasili doing... the smoking... He realized then that it was a cleverly designed spell. Vasili only smoked before stepping on holy ground, and when confronted with the holy bones of St. Andral... each time it was dismissed as being his “nerves...”

Aric did give him credit... It would have been impossible for them to discover that it was a spell without knowing that Vasili was actually Strahd in disguise... However, the issue of walking in broad daylight was even more troubling, and he had no idea how any vampire could do that... Aric came to a realization...

Whatever Strahd was, he was far more powerful than any ordinary vampire.

Jeeves brought him out of his thoughts, "Aren't vampires already powerful? How much more power are we talking?”

"A vampire that can walk in daylight must be extremely powerful,” he admitted, “We also don't know how old he really is. I don't know much else about vampires... or werewolves for that matter, I need more information before coming to any conclusions."

Jeeves nodded and thought back to the conversation with Strahd, "Perhaps we can speak with that Linda person. She is knowledgeable about monsters. Her insight may be helpful. We should use any resource we have."

"True,” Aric nodded, “We will ask her after Strahd returns to his study and we are alone."

"An excellent suggestion, Lord Aric..." Jeeves paused, looking at the bat in Aric’s hand, "Can I have a turn petting the bat?"

Aric handed the bat over to Jeeves. Jeeves pet the tiny creature, asking, "Do you think the dog down there is really a dog? It looked like a wolf... but everyone was insistent it was a dog... Vampires have affinity for wolves, right? Wolves, bats, rats, bugs... Eh, I suppose as long as there is no rats or roaches in this place I will be fine..."

--------------------------

Strahd let the guise of Vasili fall, no longer putting on the act, the masquerade of humanity. With Ireena and Ismark on the first floor, Victor resting in the living room, Aric and Jeeves in their room, and Linda in the master...

Why not indulge?

He removed the gloves from his hands and folded them into his pocket, before sitting down at the piano bench. He lifted the protective wood slat off of the keys, revealing the ebony and ivory underneath. His hands reached out to their positions...

He had no song in mind. He had no wish to perform either. Just to take a moment and create something... Just notes, a simple melody... a few harmonies...

Linda peered around the corner, watching Strahd play. She felt herself drawn to the simple chords, the somber melody... Melancholy, with a slight twinge of hope...

She felt herself twitch her fingers, greedily wanting to play as well...

Strahd finished his song, holding down the pedal and letting the final notes ring out...

Linda breathed in and walked into the piano room. Strahd paused, and turned to look at the intrusion.

Linda paused in her approach, then gently gestured to the piano, “May I?” she spoke quietly.

Strahd looked to her. He moved over on the bench to make room for her, "Of course, be my guest.” He paused and moved his cloak out of the way, “You did say that you enjoyed piano... didn't you?"

She nodded and slid into the seat next to him. She stretched her hands, and wiggled her fingers... She relaxed her hands over the keys, and rested her fingers...

Notes fell from her fingers, as she began to test her memory of how to play. It had been years since she played. Slowly, gently... like a lullaby.

Strahd listened carefully, leaning forward to watch her play. She was lost in it... as if she were letting the music guide her.

She overreached, brushing against his arm. Strahd was startled by the unexpected touch. Linda awoke from her trance and retreated her hand, flushing in embarrassment.

“I’m sorry, I got carried away,“ she blurted.

 "It's alright. I was enjoying the music,” Strahd reassured. “I'll give you more room..." He retreated his hands into his lap.

Linda nodded, and put her hands back on the keys... She would play a song from her childhood... something she could remember.

Strahd watched her play. It wasn’t the same euphoric trance that she had earlier... her notes seemed to be missing something...

Not one to leave something incomplete, Strahd marked the pattern she played in and the key... then played chords to compliment her...

“You know the song already?” Linda questioned, still playing, “That's part of the other player's part."

"I was just playing what sounded appropriate...” Strahd paused, “I used to be a virtuoso on this instrument. Do you know the part I should be playing?"

"I do. Here.." Linda paused to teach him the pattern of the notes.

Strahd echoed her notes and dutifully played the part. Linda returned to playing the melody, smiling, "Now the piece is whole..."

Strahd and Linda played the piece to completion, letting the final notes linger in the air, both reluctant to end the small joy of playing music. 

Strahd nodded to himself in satisfaction, and looked to the woman sitting at his side, "Thank you. That was enjoyable...” 

A new feeling gripped him as he looked at Linda’s features. The strange look in her eyes as she held his gaze just a little too long...

He stood, “Now, I ought to let you rest. I will retire to my study. I have to make sure affairs are in order before we leave tomorrow," he bowed his head respectfully.

Linda smiled at him with closed lips and nodded her head. She stood, “I enjoyed playing as well...”

They stared at each other just a moment longer, before Strahd turned and walked slowly down the stairs... Linda watched him leave, before turning herself, and walking back toward the master...

But Jeeves looked out of his room at Linda, expectantly.

Linda raised a brow. Jeeves silently gestured for her to come to the room. She sighed and walked over to him, “Yes?”

Aric poked his head out from around the corner, speaking in the Cant,  "If I remember correctly, you know Thieves Cant?"

She spoke dryly in the same, "You remember correctly."

Aric looked to Jeeves holding the bat, and back to Linda. Linda looked at the bat in confusion, before shaking her head and walking fully into the room.

"Forgive us, but we are in need of your expertise,” Aric explained, “We don't know as much about vampires and werewolves as we would like, and were hoping you might help us. Also, forgive the caution, we found this guy-” he pointed to the bat, “-and, well, in our line of work, being distrustful keeps us alive a little longer..."

Jeeves pet the bat, “He’s cute, though.”

Linda nodded, "I completely understand. What did you want to know? I have a great deal of knowledge on those creatures in particular."

Aric paused, "I guess to start with, could this guy be used to spy on us?” he pointed to the bat.

Linda nodded, "Yes, he can be used to spy on us, but it has to be consciously done. Much like a wizard's familiar.”

Aric took note, “Secondly, I figured that the 'smoking' habit is some spell that allows Strahd to walk into churches and such.. but how does he walk in daylight?"

Linda paused. Aric had a point, and it was a concerning one to her, “I'm not quite sure of the walking in daylight,” she admitted, “Vampires shouldn't be able to, though it has been shown that as vampires age they lose their aversions... though no record has been made of any that could withstand sunlight- and there are vampires that are thousands of years old.”

Linda wrinkled her face, "So either he is older than that... or has come up with another spell for it, like being able to set foot on holy ground.”  She paused, “And history books say that Strahd is four hundred and twenty-eight... And is having a birthday soon, so almost four hundred and twenty-nine, which is still... not that old in terms of known vampires."

Jeeves folded his arms,"So... incredibly powerful."

"Apparently so," Aric replied.

"Unusually so," agreed Linda.

Aric paused, thinking again about his own situation, "As for werewolves,” he looked to Linda, “You may remember that I was bitten by one during our first fight. I really don't know much. Apparently, the curse doesn't fully set in until the first full moon. The medicine man, Luvash, is making a charm for me, but I feel just some general knowledge would help in this world."

Jeeves nodded, "Just want to know what to expect."

Linda looked between the two young men. She didn’t blame them for being so concerned. She held out her hand, explaining, "I know that werewolves can either shapeshift into a hybrid form on the full moon... or at will. And that they can retain their personality and awareness while transformed. That they are in full control of their actions, but are driven to hunt. Werewolves can be created by curses, from an untreated bite from a lycanthrope, or hereditarily. They have a normal human lifespan. Werewolves are weak to silver and magic... and they tend to stay in packs.Werewolves tend to avoid vampires on principal. It is possible to remove lycanthropy through a special herbal blend.That is most of what I know."

Aric listened intently. Any bit would be useful... "Thank you for all the information, you have been very helpful.”

Aric paused, “One last question though; do you trust Strahd?"

The question hit Linda like a brick. She thought about the moment she just shared with the vampire and sighed. She spoke truthfully, "I have no problem with him yet. I can't say that I trust him, but I can say that I am trying to understand him...”

She shook her head, “He drives me crazy with how shady and sketchy he is, but... I know I'm one to talk. So I kinda understand why.” She folded her arms, “I just take it in stride, if he isn't trustworthy, or betrays us...” she paused, “I'll kill him."

Regardless of her feelings... she knew how manipulative and cunning vampires were. Strahd was no exception. There is a reason no vampires get mercy calls in the field, she reminded herself...Though, part of her pained at the thought of it.

Aric nodded, “Seems we three are all in agreement then. Thank you for your time, Linda."

Linda nodded, "It's not any trouble. You boys get some rest."

She pat Aric and Jeeves on their heads and walked over to her room, letting them have privacy.

She walked over to the master, and immediately searched for Strahd’s little spy, finding a small bat in the corner of the room. She walked over and reached up, letting the bat flutter onto her hand.

She smiled and cooed as she pet it in her hand, "You're a good little sky puppy."

The bat squeaked and paused, its eyes glazed over for a brief moment... but then it continued to flutter its ears and lick its face.

Linda was well-versed in vampire capabilities. She sighed,  "Ah, not so good sky puppy now. Hello, Strahd.”

Linda pet the bat in her hand anyway. The bat seemed to be surprised. Strahd’s voice came through to her head:

“You are... very attentive. I am surprised.“

Linda spoke dryly, "Well, you see. I love bats, and it seemed weird when it paused and it's little eyes glazed over. So, I knew."

Strahd’s voice replied, "Ah... apologies. I was just... skirting through each of my minions to check on things. I'll make myself scarce..."

Linda shook her head, "Well you have my attention now, and I am alone. Did you want to talk with just me?"

The bat perked its ears up.

Linda sighed, "I am sorry that we confronted you like we did,” she looked to the bat, “But it had to be done. I just didn't want it to be so... open. It's not my place to reveal your secret."

She had no idea why she was telling him that... Perhaps she just wanted him to trust her more... But the truth was that she couldn’t hold on to her anger at him. Even though everyone, and especially she had good reason to...

The bat blinked, "I... appreciated it not being open, but I am... admittedly uneasy at everyone's... lack of a reaction to my confessions.” He explained, “I have... nothing to go off of, as far as expectation. To have everyone act as if nothing happened... and then be friendly towards me, when others have tried to destroy me or plant a stake in my heart...” He paused, “Admittedly, this... calm... Is more alarming to me than outright anger or shouting, which is what I expected."

"Sorry to burst your bubble,” Linda chuckled, “We aren't exactly like most people...” 

She opened up to him, “I’d like to explain myself a bit more. I'm not just a monster hunter. I'm closer to a bounty hunter like Mina. I just got really good at tracking down vampires and werewolves, so that is what I was hired to do. And I don't do it to just to hunt and kill. I don’t kill the misunderstood. Those I protect and help. So... I'm helping you.”

She hid the fact that she was the leader of a monster hunting order from him. He didn’t need to know... She looked at the bat examining her curiously.

She blushed, “What, I'm trying to say is. You haven't done anything to make me sway one way or the other... Sure, you are said to be this devil, this monster, but all I've seen is just a man.”

She pet the bat more, “One that frustrates me because you go from making threats, and being suspicious of me, to playing the piano with me. So.. I am just going to continue to observe you and try to find Timothy. And maybe find out how I can help you while I'm here."

The bat’s ears twitched, "I suppose that is fair. Do you... have any questions of me that you weren't able to ask, or were uncomfortable asking in the presence of the young lord and his... manservant?"

Linda nodded, seriously, "How do you go onto holy ground, and go out in sunlight? Also,” she pursed her lips, “is it really coming up on your birthday?"

Strahd paused, weighing whether or not to trust her...

"I made a spell very early into my vampirism that would allow me to bypass the holy auras for a short period of time.” He revealed, “Over time, I have gotten really adept at disguising magic work as simple gestures or habits. Because that spell requires a certain bastard incense burned... I turned it into a smoking habit. As for being able to walk in sunlight...”

The bat locked eyes with her, “I made an artifact that absorbed my damage from sunlight. It is stored in Castle Ravenloft... but it is more of a relic now. I no longer need it to walk in the sun... so now its use is just to absorb some damage that I take from battle.”

Strahd seemed to sigh, “And yes, my birthday is on the seventeenth, four days from now. I do not usually celebrate it, but rather mark it, as it is a day where I grow more powerful, or lose a weakness."

Linda blinked, stunned, "I didn't expect a straight answer, though I appreciate it,” she regarded him curiously, “So are you really just turning four hundred and twenty-nine? How can you do things that vampires way older than you can't do?"

The bat tilted its head, "It may have something to do with the fact that... I am...” his voice paused, hesitating, “...The First Vampire..."

Linda furrowed her brows. It didn’t make sense, "You are the first. But not the oldest... how?"

"Nine Hells if I know...” He listed his facts, “I know that I made the term, I created others like me... accidentally...” He added, “But I know that time is... off here. I have had visitors from the same world claim that it was different dates, centuries apart when they arrived. I can only assume Barovia's time is independent from your world or others... and that the Mists do as they please to bring in visitors."

Linda made a face of deep thought, "So you actually have no idea how old you are outside of Barovia's timeline.... you could be centuries older if you lived in my world.” She blinked, “Speaking of... what world are we in?"

"I forget the name of the world Barovia was once a part of. Only that it now rests in the Shadowfell because of my dark pact with Death."

Linda was shocked, "The Shadowfell.... we should not exist right now."

Very few who ever ventured into the Shadowfell ever returned... or came back utterly insane from the experience.

"And yet, here we are...” Strahd replied, “There are others like Barovia. All of them ruled by a creature of darkness."

Linda thought back to the journals, "What about this Death? Do the other rulers also have pacts or is that not something you could know?"

The bat blinked and paused, "As far as I am aware, I am the only one who has made a pact with Death... or the Dark Powers that rule the Shadowfell. Others were simply brought here. Not only was I the First Vampire, but Barovia was the first... Dread Realm of the Shadowfell. There was a point where entire nations merged themselves to Barovia's border, but I went through great pains to separate them."

"So are these Dark Powers what keep you from leaving? They control everything?"

The bat folded its ears back, nodding,  "They are the wardens to my prison. I have some influence over the Mists, yes, but the Dark Powers ultimately decide what crosses my borders. Only the Vistani can freely travel. Their people weave an old magic I have yet to understand."

Linda raised a brow, "Have you thought about killing the Dark Powers?"

The bat’s eyes widened, "Does one normally entertain thoughts of killing godlike beings?!"

Linda nodded, "It's happened before. Some of the gods in Faerun have been killed."

The bat seemed stunned, "Then... it is a possibility? That sounds like good news, but also blasphemy. In which case, as a blasphemous creature, I am open to...” he mused, “But I don't know how one would go about challenging a god, much less actually destroying one."

Linda offered, "I can do some research into how the gods were killed where I'm from."

"In any case, it is an interesting idea, and one I haven't tried yet...” His voice seemed skeptical and uncertain, “It is something to think about.” He had the bat look up to Linda, “I think I will let this poor creature go, and let you rest."

Linda watched as the bat’s eyes glazed over again, and Strahd’s presence left the creature. She put it back in the top corner of the room and slunk into the bed, dimming the candlelight to rest.

[a-room-with-a-mew]

SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh

‘The funniest novel ever written about journalism’… I don’t know; is it just me or does this not really sell it? Is journalism a natural place we go to for laughs? I mean.. Yeah, there are comic-features writers, and journos who write books and scripts and maybe even do stand up. But in terms of fiction, of stories, I’d almost always think of journalism as high drama, a noble pursuit like in All the President’s Men or Superman. Waugh is interested in hackism. Okay he is indulging in a little self-parody here, as a writer himself, but for quite a time, this book feels like a long in-joke, a nudge to a colleague. While it works well as a series of jokes, sketches, and odd-ball characters in crazy situations, the fact that this is a novel means that we are invited to rest our feet upon the rocky conceit of a war in a far-off, fictional foreign land, which may or may not reflect a real war/ place. And additionally, as the place and people aren’t real, only ‘inspired by’, Waugh can say whatever he bally likes about them with impunity. A bit like The Life of Brian, only well – not as funny! Tall order though of course.

Let’s dive in. I managed to stick with and read SCOOP on my third attempt after owning the novel for years. Like a lot of books, the cover mystifies. Who are these? Mrs Stitch presumably? There’s only two watery female characters in the book so must be her. She doesn’t figure much so the cynic in me thinks the publishers are attempting to glam up the story.. With her fur and hat and the moody black and white. Reminds me of an edition of Brideshead I saw once in a shop – the cover had a cartoon slinky flapper girl – the hat, the stole, elbow-length gloves, cigarette holder, diamonds and whatnot. Missing the point a bit I think! So! Here we have two snoots getting on a plane. This doesn’t happen in the book. Natch.

Story

Likely the appeal or not of this story will depend upon whether you like action / adventure stories and seek thrills and fantastic places and daring endeavours. Of course you do! Well, I don’t. Or at least – I don’t tend to read them. Give me Indiana Jones on the big screen – but I don’t know if I’d read Alexander Fleming or the da Vinci Code (again). In the books I read, people tend to sit around thinking, or drive thinking, or potter around the kitchen, thinking, or fall in love but not realize it or declare it, or holiday and develop the self, but very subtly, or befall intensely personal disasters,  make human connexions that you have to squint to see.

Suffice to say I loved, say, A Handful of Dust to distraction. Brilliant book. What actually happened? What was the plot? Ahm… Well.. Hard to describe, the slow, tragic dissolution of a marriage. That makes it sound boring. It isn’t!! SCOOP kind of is, and yet the action doesn’t let up for a paragraph.

Waugh – probably joyfully – breaks the golden rule of writing by NOT introducing his main character in the first page / chapter. Tries to fox us, he does. Very clever – in fact the whole book is, very clever: maybe that’s why it left me behind in the dust. Okay, so though some administrative cock-up, our hero, William Boot - a very sheltered country-squire sort who generally never leaves his decaying mansion full of ancient relatives – he’s never described physically, but go ahead and imagine the plus-fours, Norfolk jacket, pristine boots, hunting hat, moustache - finds himself sent, as a foreign correspondent, to a war-torn country of which he has never heard. Promising premise.  

What follows is William’s whirlwind adventure of being summoned to his new post, preparing to go to Africa, complete with the bare essentials - collapsible boat and hockey-sticks and back-street passports. Everything is charged back to the paper – The Beast – and so there is a real consumer-fetish going on here too! As William is one of those old-fashioned toffs who own great estates but are somehow stony broke.

Much of the novel is taken up with travelling – to this fabled Ishmaelia, which was initially founded by an American family called the Jacksons, and various in-fighting and coups have taken place within the dynasty for generations. Now they’re out of power, and socialism is threatening to sneak in via the Russians. I do believe? And there’s much interest in this particular country from other well-to-do nations. Of course this doesn’t come about for a while, and for most of the mission, William wanders around hearing snippets and spending the paper’s money. Is Waugh indulging in a little revenge fantasy? William is incapable as a journalist, but just happens to be in the right place at the right time and know the right people, and comes through with the climactic glory of the story – not the exposure of the truth, but a good story with lots of COLOUR.

Characterization

Okay well, as I’ve mentioned somewhere, Waugh is not a writer whose strongest suit is characterization – it’s his writing, wording that shines, and we’ll get to that in a minute. And yet the characters are the reason we generally love a story, no? Or at least – if you are interested in the human psyche, the intricacies of human relations, the effect of surroundings upon the humans therein. But for Waugh, his love is words and the ways he can string them beautifully: he sees the novel "not as an investigation of character, but as an exercise in the use of language.” An exercise! Like you do at school.

William Boot, the protagonist, is so wan and inconsequential that his mistaken namesake is introduced first, and more memorably. He reminds me of Paul Pennyfeather from Decline and Fall – he is only there to go along with the plot, adding nothing to it with his own input, but only to observe the zany characters around him. And Paul annoyed me so much! The way the others were breaking curfew in college, and Paul blandly took the blame without a fight. And he floats through the rest of it. Although William differs from Paul in one way – though William is rather pushed into this job, and takes the glamour and action in his stride, he retains a strong and immovable affection for his dreary old homestead, and that is the true love of the story – his affection for the country-side and desire to walk “feather-footed through the plashy fen.” William says no – and he’s such a blah character that it truly surprises and delights when he does.

At one stage he purports to be in love with a woman – she does him out of a load of money and a boat, in which he helps her and her husband escape. It’s not as noble as it sounds! Each and every character in this story is out for themselves. If they can’t see past their nose, why ought we invest?

SCOOP has memorable caricatures – larger-than-life, humorous, and distinctive, but they are there to portray ideas, not to have their own agency and accountability and foibles. They run around building and holding in place Waugh’s ideas, they exist to show the deftness of his pen, they are satire, they are text.

Writing

Brilliant as always, and makes the reader wish that Waugh’s themes and characters were as wonderful and satisfying as his prose.

“The immense trees which encircled Boot Magna Hall, shaded its drives and rides, and stood (tastefully disposed at the whim of some forgotten, provincial predecessor at Repton), singly and in groups about the park, had suffered, some from ivy, some from lightening, some from the various malignant disorders that vegetation is heir to, but all principally from old age. Some were supported with trusses and crutches of iron, some were filled with cement; some, even now, in June, could show only a handful of green leaves at their extremities. Sap ran thin and slow; a gutsy night always brought down a litter of dead timber.”

Now who else is going to describe a group of trees so well? Not only are they so very clear to picture, he has given them history, and in doing the history of the house, the family, and possibly the decaying aristocracy itself. I bet the fields are thick with meadowsweet and all!

Waugh has lots of fun with the journalistic jargon; the idea that an article must have news, but to sell, it must have colour – love that term: it must have some literary merit, some artistic verve, really appeal to the reader. Elsewhere William keeps getting increasingly frantic and mysteriously coded cables from the newspaper offices in London, going to despair because he’s not providing any stories he promised and running up enormous bills. Finally he manages: “Please don’t worry quite safe and well in fact rather enjoying things weather improving will cable again if there’s any news Yours Boot.” And later “Nothing much has happened except the president who has been imprisoned in his own palace.” The downplaying is so dry and delightful. I wish I knew what was going on. Maybe that’s the point!

[andrewdburton]

How to Ace an Interview With These Psychology-Backed Tips

While landing the interview is rewarding, the job interview is where you win or lose the offer. It’s time to impress. 

Even the world’s best resume and cover letter won’t save you if you commit some common critical mistakes. The REAL way to win an interview is by taking just a few extra steps before it even starts.

With some simple job interview preparation, you can get in the right mindset, reduce your nervousness, and also improve your confidence. To be fully prepared, you’ll want to cover all bases, such as:

Research on the company and recruiter

Preparing for the types of questions they’ll ask and how you’ll answer them

Working on your body language and voice

Here, we share some top ways to prepare for your interview, beyond just thinking of the questions. 

Bonus: Want to know how to make as much money as you want and live life on your terms? Download my FREE Ultimate Guide to Making Money

1. Research your interviewer

The first step in how to nail an interview is to research, research, research. Make sure you’re doing plenty of research on your interviewer and the company you’re applying for on sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google.

It’s one of the top job interview tips, but most people only research the company itself. The problem is this might not give you all the information you need, especially if it’s a huge company. While it’s a good place to start, if you have the name of the interviewer, dig into their background a little as well. Get to know them before you get in a room with them.

The goal is NOT to stalk them or memorize everything they’ve ever done. Instead, it’s to learn:

Their background (What schools did they go to? What clubs have they been a part of?)

Their position with the company (Are they in a new role? Were they recently promoted?)

Common interests you both share (Are they into volunteer work, sports, hobbies, etc?)

With these details, you can spark deeper discussions and stand out by subtly bringing them up during the interview — you’ll position yourself as someone who goes the extra mile, who’s proactive, and who cares. What’s the result? 

A great job offer.

2. Find the question behind the question

When someone asks you, “Can you tell me a little about yourself?” it seems simple and very straightforward, but the reality is, “tell me about yourself” has dozens of questions behind the question.

A great way to uncover the question behind this question is to think:

What do they need to know about my background?

What would they be concerned about?

How will this answer reflect what type of worker I am?

Are they testing to see if you’ve done your research on the role?

Always take time to pause and think about what they want. If you jump into answering their question or trying to sound good, you can miss what’s really being asked. 

Remember, the interviewer isn’t interested in your dog’s name or your favorite flavor of ice cream. They want to know more about you as a professional. And the best way to do this successfully is to think of the answer before you step in the interview room.

Make some notes on potential answers, such as your educational background and how it led you to this industry. Add in some color when you describe this, mentioning the skills and experience you picked up along the way. Bonus points if you can describe a specific situation that made you want to pursue this field/learn more/train for a new role. 

To recap, don’t just give a random answer, think about the question and:

Figure out the question behind the question

Write out a plain English answer

Polish your answer and give it some color

Once you’ve got that down, practice giving the answer in a mirror. Do it a few times, and work on making it seem less robotic and more conversational. It still needs to sound natural, especially when you’re talking about yourself. 

To help you search for the true meaning behind the question, come up with a list of 10 potential job interview questions. Run them through the criteria above to uncover the hidden meaning behind what the interviewer could really be asking. 

While you won’t be able to always guess what questions they will ask, this exercise can help you disassemble what questions are really asking. This is all great practice for when you sit in front of an interviewer.

3. Avoid using too much jargon

If we try too hard to sound smart and professional, we end up sounding like idiots: “Yes, the occupation filled me with immense joy as I interacted with my supervisor on a day-to-day basis to execute the financial…”

HUH?

A better strategy is to first translate what we’re trying to say into plain English. Then, if our response is compelling, we can polish the exact language to make the answer interview-worthy.

Imagine the interviewer asks “Why do you want this job?”

Before blurting out something about how you really “love their corporate values” or how you’re “so passionate” about the job, come up with something more realistic.

Here are some real reasons you might want to work at Company X:

The company does great work

There are a lot of smart people here

I think I can do a good job

So here’s what your answer might look like in plain English:

“I want to work here because the company does great work in the local tech community and I’d love to be a part of a growing industry.”

Tip on how to use this in your interview: With the questions you deconstructed earlier, come up with your plain English responses to them. Be sure to also address the question behind the question.

Take some time to write these down. But don’t worry about sentence structure, finding the perfect words, or sounding smart. Just keep it simple and natural. 

An answer in plain English is already better than most. Why? Because interviewers aren’t looking for a robot who can give a perfect, rehearsed answer. They want something genuine, an insight into your personality. They want to see how you explain complex issues and your approach to communication.

Remember, these are people you may have to work with every day. They want someone they can get along with, someone who is professional but also has a personality. The plain English answer shows that you’re not simply reading from a script or memorizing what the internet told you was a great answer. You’re explaining things in a simple way that people understand.

Another thing to think about is using jargon. Before jumping into a jargon-filled monologue about why you’d be the perfect hire, take a step back. The interviewer may or may not know what you’re talking about. 

If it’s the first round of interviews, you may not be interviewed by someone from the department you’re applying for. It may be someone in recruitment or HR. If you start mentioning technical language they’re not familiar with, it could go over their heads. 

A good rule of thumb is to listen to how the interviewer speaks. You can usually get a good idea of whether someone’s on the same page by their job title, the questions they ask, and whether they use jargon themselves. 

For example, say you’re applying for a digital marketing role. If they mention things like AdWords, SEO, and bounce rate, you’re safe to use that same type of jargon.

Bonus: Want to work from home, control your schedule, and make more money? Download my FREE Ultimate Guide to Working from Home.

4. Master your body language

Your mouth may be moving and saying all the right things, but is your body saying something different?

Interviews are nerve-wracking experiences for most of us, and that can cause us to tense up. With hunched shoulders, crossed arms, and eyes on the floor, your body language can use some serious work. 

There are tons of resources, studies, and books out there to help you master your body language, but here are some quick tips.

Show your palms

According to the authors of “Crazy Good Interviewing,” John B. Molidor, Ph.D., and Barbara Parus, showing your palms is a simple way to show sincerity. This gesture signals to the interviewer that you are honest and open. 

Press your fingertips to each other

This gesture makes your hands look like a church roof. It’s considered a way to show confidence and you may recognize it from speeches that politicians, CEOs, or lecturers give.

It’s also a good way to steady your hands if you’re nervous.

Don’t conceal your hands

One thing to avoid is to conceal your hands. Putting your hands in your lap, beneath the table may feel most comfortable for you. But body language experts suggest that this unconsciously signals that you have something to hide. More likely, it’s just because you’re just nervous but we don’t want a hint of doubt in the interviewer’s mind.

The same goes for if you place your hands downwards. Instead, keep your palms facing up to show you’re open and honest.

5. Speak with enthusiasm

It’s not all about what you say, it’s about how you say it. Interviewers don’t want to hire someone who sounds bored to be there. They want someone who is enthusiastic and full of energy. 

Being monotone can, at best, mean you don’t stand out, or at worst, put the interviewer off the idea of hiring you at all. Passion and enthusiasm help you stand out. 

If you know your voice is a bit monotonous or nervous during interviews, spend some time practicing speaking. Stand in front of a mirror and practice answering questions. Maybe even record yourself doing it and play it back. Try repeating it with a higher inflection and more enthusiasm so it won’t feel as weird or fake when you come to do it for real. 

6. Dress slightly better than the job you want

It doesn’t matter where you’re interviewing, play it safe and dress slightly better than the job you want. 

Lots of companies now have casually dressed employees. T-shirts and jeans are the new suit and tie in some places. 

But does that mean you should whip out the old Levi’s for your interview? Probably not. 

Figuring out the dress code can be a bit tricky. You may have to do some investigating or just straight up ask. Once you know the dress code, aim to dress slightly smarter than that. You’re aiming to impress, not just with your words but also with a non-verbal first impression. Interviewers can already tell a lot about you as soon as you step through the door, so make that first impression a good one. 

Bonus: Want to finally start getting paid what you’re worth? I show you exactly how in my Ultimate Guide to Getting a Raise and Boosting Your Salary

7. Use a story whenever you can

A common style of interview question is the “tell us an example of when you handle X” or “tell us about a time you handled a challenging situation at work.”

Before blurting out a factually correct (yet boring) answer, take some notes from the novelists in the world. Show don’t tell is the number one rule in any kind of fiction writing. And you can apply that to interview questions as well.

Instead of telling the interviewer what you did, try to show it instead. Illustrate a more detailed picture of the situation, the challenge, the steps you took, and then the result. This works with any type of question the interviewer asks, including the dreaded “tell me about yourself,” question.

A story, when told well, is the easiest way to deconstruct an answer and elevate yourself in the eyes of the interviewer.

Here’s what to say in an interview when you’re asked, “Why do you want to work here?”

Start with a broad opening: Set the stage with some high-level background to let the interviewer know what you’re going to talk about before diving into the details. For example: “I want to work at ACME Company for three key reasons. First, you’re doing amazing, life-changing work in the field of X. Second, I’m confident I can make a huge contribution, given my experience in Y. And third, you have some of the smartest people in the world working for you. That really excites me from an intellectual perspective.”

Then, get really specific. Now, transition into a short story with only the relevant details. For example: “Working with the smartest people is a big deal for me. You’ll notice that I have a history of actively seeking out and working with the top people in my field, such as John Smith and Jane Doe, who really pushed me to accomplish Z.”

Highlight the important takeaways. Lastly, get broad again and highlight the key takeaways. For example: “The bottom line, I thrive in environments filled with smart, ambitious people, and that’s why I’d love to be a part of the ACME team.”

Notice how different this is from what most people say in interviews. It’s crisp and concise with no fluff and packed with details that are engaging and impressive.

Filter your responses to common interview questions through this step-by-step system and you’ll give the perfect answer every time.

8. Don’t trash talk your current workplace

It should go without saying … but don’t trash talk. Anyone. If you’re asked why you left your previous job, you may be able to rant all day and all night. But resist the urge. It’s not a good look. 

Honesty is the best policy in job interviews, but when answering the question “Why are you looking for another job?” it’s safer to give a more filtered answer.

The best way to spin it is to deflect and say something positive about the job you’re interviewing for and (if you can) say something positive about your current/previous role. You could phrase it like “I learned a lot in my current role, but I’m looking for a new challenge/the next step/a bigger team.”

This is a much more professional response that also highlights why you want this role, not just that you’re desperate to leave your current one.

Do you know your earning potential?

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How to Ace an Interview With These Psychology-Backed Tips is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Finance https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/3-tips-to-dominate-your-job-interview-and-give-the-perfect-answers/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[maryanntorreson]

What Is A Sociolect?

Language is a topic that will never get boring because everyone single one of us speaks differently. We talk a lot about how where we live affects how we speak — those maps that show where people say “soda” and where people say “pop” are endlessly fascinating — but there’s more to your dialect than geography. Even within a specific area, people can talk in very different ways; you probably don’t even speak the same exact way as the people you live with. The study of how social factors influence the way you speak is called sociolinguistics, and one of these dialects, fittingly, is called a sociolect. 

The Definition Of ‘Sociolect’

A sociolect is, to put it simply, a social dialect. Right away, this phrase can cause some confusion. Some people, including linguists, use “dialect” to refer only to ways of speaking that are geographically defined. We have a whole series looking at American dialects, for example, from sea (California English) to shining sea (New England English). And of course, there’s enough confusion about what separates a “language” from a “dialect,” but that’s a discussion for another article. To make it obvious what you’re referring to, it’s best to qualify “dialect” by specifically calling it either a “geographical dialect” or a “social dialect.”

Since their conception, though, sociolects have been put in opposition to (geographical) dialects. The original concise definition given by linguist Peter Trudgill in A Glossary of Sociolinguistics stated that it’s “‘a variety or lect which is thought of as being related to its speakers’ social background rather than geographical background.” If “social background” sounds a bit loose, that’s because it is. It needs to be flexible because sociolinguistics is a relatively new field — Trudgill’s Glossary came out in 2003 — and so our ideas of what factors can affect language are constantly changing. 

What Factors Make Up A Sociolect?

Saying that a “sociolect” is determined by a social group is one thing, but what does that mean? Is your social group your friends, your generation, your gender, your class? Well, it turns out it can be any of those things. Here are some of the factors that can affect your language, along with examples that demonstrate each one.

Age

The clearest example of how age affects the language you speak is slang. Young people are constantly inventing new terms and abandoning old ones, which is why nobody says “groovy” anymore. There is also the eternal cycle of adults blaming teenagers for “ruining” the language, even though those adults were once teenagers who were also blamed for “ruining” language. 

Age differences are about more than the hip lingo, though. Pronunciation can differ depending on your age, too. One popular example of this is with the gerund ending -ing. If you listen when people say words like “working,” some people say “workin’” and some clearly pronounce it “working.” While there are many variables that go into whether someone says one or the other, age does have an impact. One study found younger people (teenagers and 20-somethings) were more likely to say “workin’” than people in their 30s and 40s. Interestingly, once you get to even older groups (60s and 70s), people start saying “workin’” again, meaning that this might have to do with social expectations of “professionalism.”

Profession

Speaking of professionalism, your profession is also a factor in your sociolect. There is a somewhat disheartening fact that based on the way adult life works, you might spend more time with your coworkers than you do with your friends and family. So it will come as no surprise that your job has a pretty strong impact on the way you speak. This can come through in a few different ways. Most obviously, your profession requires you to adopt a job-specific jargon, which can be anything from journalism slang to diner lingo. This is true for pretty much any job. If you work in an office, you’re probably well-acquainted with phrases like “key learnings” and “let’s circle back to this,” which might now be part of your sociolect.

Jobs also vary in their formality, which will affect your language quite a bit. There’s a difference between, say, how lawyers speak to each other and how truckers speak to each other. Using the same example as in the last section, lawyers are more likely to enunciate the full “working,” while truckers are more likely to say “workin’.” It all ties into social expectations for what people consider “correct” English.

Gender

The most popular story about the difference between men’s and women’s language is that women speak far more words per day than men do. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, that claim is misleading at best and a sexist stereotype at worst. Yet there are ways that gender may affect the way you speak. For example, one study found men are more likely to use vulgar language than women, and also found that men are more likely to interrupt women than vice versa.

To be clear, a study of men’s and women’s language does not define the difference between genders. It might be tempting to take the expletive example and make grand statements that “men are more brash” or “women are more polite.” But really, all it says is that our English-speaking society encourages men to swear more and women to swear less because of a number of gendered standards. The language we use is always going to be a reflection of the society around us.

Socioeconomic Class

This is probably a somewhat unexpected factor in language, but socioeconomic class can indeed have an effect on your speech. The first study to prove this was done by William Labov, one of the most famous sociolinguistics to have worked in the United States. To do this research, Labov went to department stores in New York City that served people of different social classes: Saks for upper class, Macy’s for middle class and S. Klein for lower class (his class terminology is a bit dated today). He was specifically looking at the use of the “r” at the end of syllables, like saying “car” instead of “cah.” At the time of his work in the 1980s, it was considered “prestigious” to pronounce the “r,” but omitting the “r” was a feature of the New York accent. His research showed that the employees of Saks were more likely to pronounce the “r,” while those at Macy’s and S. Klein were more likely to omit it, indicating that people did consider pronouncing the “r” to be prestigious.

The way Labov approached the study itself may sound weird. Why would the way employees talk in department stores show anything about social class? But the point of the study is that these employees are trying to serve the social class of their clientele. This all goes back to societal expectations. It’s not that your money makes you speak a different way, but people with more money tend to speak in a way that reflects what is considered “prestigious.”

Race

Of the factors that determine sociolects on this list, race may be the most complicated. And because sociolinguistics itself is such a young field, there is still plenty to learn about the many ways race and language intersect. In the United States, one of the most prevalent examples of a racial sociolect is African American Vernacular English. While for many years, many (white) people treated AAVE as “broken English,” it has always been a fully formed sociolect with its own set of consistent rules.

It’s also important to note that race isn’t a factor that only affects some people. Too often, people treat “white” English as a neutral version of the language, but there’s no such thing as neutral. Each of the factors in this list so far affect every single one of us.

And More

There are potentially endless social groups we could look at if we really wanted to examine all the factors that can affect your sociolect. The problem is, they start to get a bit granular. A famous study by sociolinguist Penelope Eckert, for example, looked at high schoolers at a school near Detroit, Michigan. In the study, she was able to identify two major social groups — jocks and burnouts — and she found that burnouts pronounce their vowels differently from the jocks. This may sound silly, but it drives home the point that any community you participate in will change the way you talk. Your friend group, your family members and your coworkers all form their own sociolects that both influence you and are influenced by you.

How Do I Know What Sociolect I Use?

As the last section made clear, you don’t speak a single “sociolect.” Any number of factors will determine the way you speak. And this isn’t even taking into account geographical dialects. If everything in your life was the same except that you were born somewhere else, you’d speak differently.

The most important thing to know about all of this, though, is that sociolects are probabilistic, not deterministic. That means you’re just more likely to speak a certain sociolect if you are part of a certain social group, but it doesn’t mean you have to. Men might be more likely to swear than women in certain parts of the world, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t men who never swear and women who curse like a sailor. Also, you speak differently depending on where you are and who you’re speaking to, which is a phenomenon called code-switching. With all of this complexity, there are no hard-and-fast rules to the way any specific person speaks. The best that sociolinguistic studies can do is find overall patterns in the way groups of people communicate.

Humans are trapped in a constant feedback loop with language. We use ways of talking to convey who we are, but we also are the ones who make up the rules for what it means to talk a certain way. We all use sociolects both consciously and unconsciously, and too often use them to shove other people into demographic boxes. Language is an important part of identity, but we could all do a better job of seeing the difference between how we speak and who we really are.

The post What Is A Sociolect? appeared first on Babbel.

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[relatewithrelations]

Week 1 Journal Entry 6/17-6/23

My first week at my internship was more of a transitioning period for not only myself but also the people that I'll be working with. This company is really just the two brothers I work side by side with every day, Pablo and Nacho. I think the idea of bringing in a new member for them was a little daunting as they have to teach me everything they know but at an accelerated rate. This is only made more difficult by the fact that Nacho can't speak very much English and Pablo's English, while proficient, sometimes falters with the technical business jargon. The first few days were the most difficult as I hadn't truly adjusted to hearing Spanish all the time so I was processing most information in English. After the second day or so though I was able to comprehend better because I was better acclimated to constantly thinking in Spanish. I was also able to communicate better because sometimes language is like a switch for me, it takes a second to jumpstart it but once I do I can process a lot quicker. I think the biggest struggle of the language barrier wasn't actually the barrier itself, it was how mentally exhausting it can be to sit and translate all day. My main task over the next few months is to help streamline the company so they can enter the UK and American market and to do that I have to take everything that Pablo pitches and teaches me in Spanish and transfer it to English that is easy to understand. This isn't very hard in theory, but I didn't realize the mental drainage it takes to listen to an hour and a half pitch, translate it in my head, understand it in my head, and then take cohesive and understandable notes that in a few months I will be able to use and do the same thing in English.

My main project for my first week was helping our outbound sale strategies while Pablo focused on inbound work. That involved building a landing page for our new AdWords campaign that should be launching the 25th/26th. It has been a very interesting process because I've never done something like this before. I started the process with doing research on what makes a good landing page, how they function, different design options and the pros/cons. From there I sketched out a layout that I felt would be most effective with vague general points that I could ask about to get more specific answers. After getting the initial approval and information from Pablo, I continued on in designing the website itself. I was able to find a website that made the process a bit easier because it was a drag and drop process vs coding (which I haven't done since my freshman year of university when I was still a BME major). After finishing the draft, I went to Pablo once more, made some fixes, and got the final approval. From this final approval I then had to translate my now English landing page to a Spanish landing page. This part of the process was a bit more difficult just because I don't know a lot of the technical terms for things. The irony of it is that this following semester I am taking Spanish for Business, which would be very helpful right now. After translating it to Spanish and getting it fixed (extensively) by Pablo the site was complete. From there I had to research how AdWords works on Google, efficient ad styles, how to create profitable ads, etc. I now have 3 drafts of ads with corresponding keywords. For me this project was fascinating, but not very challenging. I enjoy this type of work because I am able to be creative and also work within my own time. I think the most difficult part of this process was actually for Pablo. I believe in his mind this project was going to take me about 2 weeks or so to finish, but it took me about 3 days. What I've come to find in Spain is that work is not very efficient. There's lots of breaks and dull time of not doing anything. Not only is this very strange coming from the US where we are known to "work through lunch", but personally I'm a very efficient person. I. rather work really hard for 3 hours and be done then work inefficiently for 6 hours, it is hard for me to process getting to work at 9am, taking a coffee break at 10:30 until 11, having a two hour lunch from 1-3, then leaving work at 6. Because of this difference in society, I spent a lot of time idle my first week.

Despite all of this I think the biggest challenge I have faced so hard is the difference in the definition of professionalism in Spain. Now part of this difference is because this a tech company so they follow different rules from a "normal" corporate scheme. My three biggest struggles have been:

greetings

speech

dress

To start with greetings, everyone in Spain greets each other with two cheeks. This was an adjustment in it of itself, but I didn't think that practice would transfer to the business world. But it does. I find it highly unprofessional that I greeted my boss and new business meetings with kisses. It didn't seem the proper place for me, but it is extremely common here and it's also considered extremely rude not to. On a few occasions my boss would have to give me a little push to remind me of the practice when I would instinctively stick my hand out. Next was the speech here during business meetings or encounters. In the USA meetings are very formal and require proper jargon and proper speech. I mean there's people that are actually paid to just teach business's how to speak properly during a pitch. Here everything is very laid back. It would not be uncommon for someone to swear or use slang. When I first heard this I was a little taken aback at how informal everything was. In Spanish there is the tu form which is very informal and the usted form which is more formal. Every meeting is discussed in the tu form as if everyone has been friends for ages and not discussing 100000$ deals. Finally is the dress code and how informal it is in as opposed to the usa. So I believe there's 2 main causes of this, first being this is a tech company on the google campus so most things are informal dress wise; and the second being that it is almost 100 degrees every day here so I imagine it's difficult to dress super formally all the time. But my first few days here I was definitely one of the most dressed up person in my building, only really rivaled by the German company downstairs who I imagine have similar codes to the USA. But even then I'm not that dressed up, currently I'm wearing dress slacks, a dressy blouse, and flat sandals (I know scandalous) while Nacho sits besides me in jean shorts and a ragged t-shirt. It was a bit strange my first few days trying to define what was appropriate and what wasn't. I've pretty much defined I'll dress to the formals standards I would be expected of at home minus the things that might cause heat stroke. This would include a blazer, it's way to hot and sunny to be covered up; long sleeve shirts; tights, for the days I wear a dress or skirt I don't need to keep having to worrying about tears; makeup, I still wear some sometimes but I just sweat it off and feel gross and I work with 2 guys so they don't notice the difference anyway; and heels, I have a 30 minute walk to work every day and don't need to break and ankle in the process. Even with these "relaxed" rules I have created for myself I'm still far to formal for the workplace. But some habits die hard.

[seo75074]

10 Things to Check When Setting up an Internet Presence for a Small Business

10 Things to Check When Setting up an Internet Presence for a Small Business

Preface: This blog post is one in a series of articles that Portentites produced in a pair-writing experiment. It’s a little more broad than usual because it represents two subject matter experts from different practice areas, coming together to combine their knowledge for a broader look at the internet marketing topics that face real businesses. If you’re not familiar with pair writing, GatherContent does a great job of introducing the topic. We hope you enjoy it.

Alright, deep breath. It’s time to set up your business’s internet presence. And while you aren’t a Porg, that doesn’t mean you can’t make the internets love you too.

You win, Disney. I can't even with this thing.

1: HTTPS: Security and Trust for Prospective Customers

A question: “Should my site be HTTP or HTTPS?“ There are a number of compelling reasons to pick HTTPS. First, think of that extra “S” at the end as security in the mind of your customer. Your customers, just like you, want to be secure when they visit a website. Google, with its Chrome browser, overtly labels whether a website is secure or not both in the address bar and on SERPs.

If you have login functionality, accept credit cards, or even form submissions, HTTPS is essential. Google very publicly considers this a best practice, but really what do they know…oh right we want to rank there!

So Google likes it, it keeps your info private, it keeps your users’ info private, and it future-proofs your site. Winner, winner.

2: Robots.txt & Sitemap

Stick with me, we’re going to get a little technical. But don’t worry we’re not going to write code together, yet…maybe. Instead, you’re simply going to help search engines find your site.

Honestly, you’re just being really nice and giving them directions to where on the site they’re allowed to go. A handy little map of your site.

First, we’re going to create a file on your root domain (like a tree down in the roots). That map is going to tell search engines if we have any pages or areas on the site we don’t think they should go, so we minimize the search engine’s chance of getting lost. And we’re going to tell them where to find the map.

It will look something like this:

http://ift.tt/2ATToeC

We have a robots.txt guide with best practices and several common mistakes. This should help you troubleshoot any errors you find. Better yet, you might learn how to avoid the most common mistakes before making them.

Next up is the sitemap! There are a lot of free sitemap generator tools out ther. Most will only crawl 500 pages and generate a map from what they find. The xml sitemap file will live at the root just like the robots.txt file, but it will also be listed in your robots.txt:

http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

And the location will be spelled out in your robots.txt file like so:

User-agent: * Sitemap: http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

3: Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools

Now you have a sitemap living on your site and recorded in your robots.txt file, so search engines will be falling all over themselves to get traffic to your site. Right??

Well…not quite. Search engines are getting smarter but they still need a little help finding the front door. Or any door really. Just like making the map itself with robots.txt, you are going to be very kind and let the search engines know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you gave them a map.

Setting up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools is the perfect nexus of easy and free. While both search engines provide guides to site owners on how to get started and fully set-up, they are best summed up as:

Sign up for free account

Submit your website

Use the free tools

Once you’ve signed up for both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, you’ll need to upload your sitemap to both as well. For Google you’ll use a separate, handy-dandy submission tool while Bing has you submit your site the same way that you submitted your robots.txt file above.

4: Make Sure Your Site is Blazing Fast

One of the most important and often-overlooked facets of your website’s performance is site speed. Site speed can make or break your website, and a slow website can be disastrous for both converting prospective customers, and convincing search engines to show you in their results.

But you don’t have to take our word for it alone. According to Kissmetrics, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Forty Percent. That is a massive amount of potential traffic lost to a single, solvable problem.

Some improvements are incredibly easy to do such as image compression. By compressing your images to be a smaller file size, there will be less to load on each page. Less to load = faster site. It’s that simple.

If you haven’t checked out any of the other links, we wrote a massive guide to site speed and page speed. That’s broken down into chapters depending on what kind of technical support you have on staff or on retainer.

5: Site Navigation

Time for another easy win. Well..mostly easy but definitely all win. Navigation is used by prospects, customers, and search engines to get around your site. The ultimate test: it should make it easier for users to find what they are looking for.

Navigation doesn’t just magically do that though!

Global Navigation which is at the top of each page sends really strong signals to both users and to search engines of what your site is about. What questions they could answer by visiting. If you use vague, interchangeable language that tells people little about what you offer or what makes your business special, you’re wasting a great opportunity to increase qualified traffic.

Order your navigation links and anchor text by importance from left to right. Ensure the text of the link is highlydescriptive. (Psst “Products” is not descriptive. However, “LandSpeeder Cars” is!)

6: Set Up Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Once you have your website ready to rock, it’s time to get it in front of the eagerly awaiting populace. But before your site’s going to show up on a Google results page, you’ll have to decide what you want that to look like, and what kinds of searches you want to show up for.

The different parts of the listing are called the title tag and the meta description.

Title Tags are exactly what they sound like: The title of the listing on the Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

The “meta description” is that brief description or preview of your site content that shows up under the clickable title. Title tags especially are incredibly important as they play a huge part in determining how your website ranks for any given Google search.

For example: say you’re making a website that sells lightsabers.

When writing the title tags and meta descriptions, you’ll want to make sure you include words that make it crystal clear what you are selling. Ideally, you’ll match the language and jargon of your title as closely as possible to the language your customers would use to search for your product.

For instance, your customers might head to Google and type something like “jedi lightsabers” or “sith lightsabers” more than “sith saber”. Using the terms that most align with your customers’ thinking and language is a great way to improve visibility and clicks.

An important distinction: While you want to be descriptive and clear, do not stuff your title tags and meta descriptions with the keywords just because you know that the word shows up in a lot of searches. Doing spammy things like this can reflect negatively on your brand to prospective customers. And Google’s been wise to this trick for many years, so there’s literally no upside to shoe-horning in a dozen instances of the same word.

7: N.A.P. in your schema

Remember when we said we weren’t writing code yet, but maybe later? Well we got there finally. Cringe away, but don’t stop reading.

It’s a truly teeny amount of code, and we’re going to use a tool to help you do it. (Tell no one and take all the credit!)

Put simply, “Structured Data” lets search engines understand your website better. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex agreed on a shared vocabulary to use a while back. We’re simply going to use that specific vocab to help them understand your site better.

This is where our secret weapon comes in, Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper (long name for such a helpful tool).

You’ll be given two different options for the output: Microdata (the tool defaults to this) and JSON-LD.

Microdata will be attached to your html. Google will give you back the html code and highlight it so you (or a helpful developer) can see exactly where it goes in the code for your site. If you use JSON-LD, the code is also provided and goes into the “head” section of your page.

(Pssst, we also have a guide to implementing JSON-LD on your site. What can we say, we like to be helpful too.)

I’m using my current restaurant obsession in Seattle’s International District as our example. (I have a serious dumpling addiction)

I’ll be giving you the JSON-LD code because it is smaller and easier honestly. We could fill the entire article with html code and just highlight where the microdata would go…

Looks scary, until you realize that it's all done for you in the tool. Copy & Paste time.

8: Google My business

One of the most important determinants of success with search engines is maximizing the amount of space you occupy on a results page. This sounds over-simple, but it’s true. Beyond giving more specific information to suit all the different questions users might have had from store hours to available inventory, the more space on a search results page that you occupy, the less space there is for the next competitor to show up.

One product that helps in this regard is Google My Business. Now, you may not recognize “Google My Business” by its formal tool name (I didn’t either), but you most certainly have seen it in the wild.

When you search for a business on Google, it’s powering that great big name and logo on the right side of the screen.

Taking the time to use this tool and effectively claim your business gives you much more real estate to work with than just traditional search listings, so it is incredibly helpful when setting up an internet presence. This is especially true for cases where people are already familiar enough to search for your business by name.

Fortunately, setting up a Google My Business account is incredibly easy. All you have to do is go to the My Business home page, create an account, enter your businesses information, and voila! You now have My Business Page.

People will now be able to see core information about your business right on the results page, which will help increase your visibility and qualified traffic.

9: Fully Set Up Social Media Accounts

After you’ve got your website setup and are heading down the path of optimization (SEO is a long game), it’s time to think about social if you haven’t already. If you ask a random sample of people what social media sites are “the best”, you may get a random sample of answers: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest.

We’d like to make this easy and effective for you, not to mention that this is a massive topic, so for now we’ll stick with just one recommendation: only use social media that you will actually use.

Social media can be a fantastic tool to help expand your reach and grow your business, but only when it is actually used as the communication tool that it is. Meaning if you don’t manage it, you’re creating just another empty space that can distract from channels where you’re keeping information current, engaging with customers, etc. You start to see how setting up a social media account for your business and not using it can actually take away from your bottom line.

10: Set-up Google Analytics

Once you have the raw material of your site, your social media accounts, and perhaps some paid search or other ads, it’s time to evaluate what’s paying off, and how much.

Maybe you notice your phone ringing a little more, but if you have many new promotional efforts running at once, it’s impossible to know which are working without the proper measurement tools. That’s where Google Analytics comes in.

Google Analytics is a free (!!) platform that allows you to track just about every aspect of your website. Did that spike in visitors come from an ad or an organic search engine result? What site referred that great customer to you? What did the rest of your visitors do once they hit your site?

Whether it’s pageviews, conversions, or referral source, Google Analytics tracks everything. This allows you to make much more informed decisions regarding your website, your marketing, and improving your results proactively.

For a platform that can show you so much, and which costs literally $0.00, it takes next to nothing to get it set up. After setting yourself up with a Google Analytics account, there are only three broad but basic steps remaining:

On the Admin page, under the Properties tab, click on “Create a New Property”

Enter all of your website data to get your custom GA tracking code

Paste the following snippet right after the head tag on each page you would like to track.

Do make sure to replace “GA_Tracking_ID” with the custom ID you got in step two above. And if you’d like a more detailed walkthrough, Moz provides a great 101-level intro to Google Analytics including sample business questions you might want to answer.

Where to From Here?

You’ve got a site that’s far more visible than it was when you started. Your site is loading in half the time it was before. You’ve picked out a social media platform that fits your style and your schedule. And you know where the heck all that traffic is coming from, not to mention which parts of the traffic is converting into leads or customers.

When you’re ready to lean into that faster, more effective site, looking at how to advertise successfully in paid search (PPC) or paid social media is a great way to show up at the moments your prospective customers are considering a product or service like yours.

Until next time, happy Marketing from all of us here at Portent!

The Portent team, if were were George Lucas characters.

http://ift.tt/2Alizpp

[anth-seeing2019]

Taking the Plunge

Material/Discursive Practices of Seeing Alyssa Maurer

October 27, 2019

All names used in this article are factual. All participants gave consent for their names and likeness to be published for educational and informational purposes.

Manifest: “Hey Steve,” she raised her voice to get Steve’s attention and then continued,

“that guy with the, uh--prosthetic leg called again about his dive coming up on the 8th”

Steve: “Yeah, I’d say take it off. Anything, I mean anything he doesn’t wanna lose, he should keep here, especially the leg,” he smiled amused, “that’s a new one though for sure”.

Skydiving, as a form of seeing, involves a bold and enriched culture broadened by historical relevance in contemporary, day to day occurrences. Though, a reasonably new exploit, parachuting, and skydiving are sports classified as extreme for their proximity to danger. This danger is heightened by the convergence of available technology. Without advancements in airplane transit, jet engine technology, and durable, levitation material this sport could not be made available to the general public. Not only does this sport embolden the visual plane, but it trespasses on grounds of comfort by way of ‘floating’. Individuals who subject themselves to this practice experience sensations of weightlessness and conquer fears of height. Here we will explore the discursive practices involved in this form of seeing as vernacular.

The dropzone is a large industrial shed beside the grass airport. Inside and two the left is the check-in counter. In front, is the ‘chute and suit’ area. Then, directly to the left, is the waiting area equipped with couches, vending machines, and hanging memorabilia.

I sit at one of the four-seated tables in front of the benches and beside the vending machines to sign my life away in preparation for the actual skydive. To my left and on the benches, is a thin, young man seated with his phone in his face. After filling out the paperwork, and while waiting for the skies to clear, I began to make casual conversation with the other divers and my parents. Steve gets up to tell us that the skies won’t be clearing until 2 pm and that we should start the brief training course now while we wait.

Among the many positions and free-fall techniques a solo diver can choose to execute, first-time divers are tasked with one position that they need to execute, the ‘arch’. This is to facilitate the optimal position for first-time flyers. The belly-to-earth, freefall position is one of the easiest to achieve mid-dive and functions to not only stabilize the decent, but it also deaccelerates velocity. Graduating from tandem into independent, instructor supervised dives means that the student graduates into performing what is known as ‘box man’. Boxman is the ideal formation position where the body is in a neutral position with the arms and legs forming right angles.

In Refracted Visions, Karen Strassler breaks down photography into genres to better understand each as not only a particular frame for seeing, but to observe its social practice in an area, its depth of visibility, and symbolism as refracting ideologies and narratives. Strassler elaborates further on her strategy in the following quote. “The six genres explored in this book—amateur photography, studio portraiture, identity photographs, family ritual photography, student photographs of demonstrations, and photographs of charismatic political figures—guide people to see themselves and others in particular ways”(Strassler, Refracted Visions). Her approach shaped my analysis by specifying the ways in which Skydiving, as a vernacular form of seeing, is also an ‘alien’ sport that people are motivated to seek out. Skydiving functions as a practice that also distorts and transforms a participant’s ideologies of fear, sport, and sensory experience.

After establishing the areas and ideologies that are challenged through skydiving, I conducted a series of interviews and formulated questions that addressed each. Among the call list of divers that I interviewed was Andreas W, 24. He had booked his call slot just the night before.

“I mean, I’m new to the area and I was looking for something to do,” he said, “I don’t really know what it’s going to be like up there”. I then asked him about the dangers and whether or not he had any fears.

“I don’t really think about it,” he laughed, “but I’m definitely doing it to test my will power. I mean, some people will never do this in their lifetime”.

Out of all the people participating, myself included, nobody felt in danger. In fact, while I was interviewing Kate E, jumping for her fifth consecutive time that day, she confessed something strange in the context of skydiving.

“I’m scared of heights,” she laughed, “which makes the plane ride horrible, but once you’re like out [of the plane] it’s super peaceful, surrea--” Kate’s friend Nesha interrupts her midthought.

“--Yeah! Woah, it’s gotta be like, what did I just do!”, Nesha laughs and then Kate chimes back in.

“Yeah! Like, holy shit I just jumped out of a plane!”, she exclaims.

While Strassler offers an interpretive avenue for writing about discursive practices, Goodwin constitutes the schema and organization of practice to define its boundaries. This is an essential aspect of conducting fieldwork because perspective implies a differentiation of observable phenomena between people of different backgrounds. Therefore, it is essential to simplify the attributes of any given practice by applying a coding schema. This organizes events in any given situation. Goodwin elaborates on this methodology in the following quote. “Applying a category such as highlighting, graphic representation[,] or coding scheme to diverse practices in different environments is itself an example of how coding schemes are used to organize disparate events into a common analytical framework. ll is thus relevant to note briefly why I made the representational choices that I did”(Goodwin, pg 607).

Many of the participants jumping that day, including myself, were first-timers and unfamiliar to any jargon, slang, or practice-oriented definitions. Regardless, there was a shared appreciation for skydiving terminologies between instructors, staff, and ‘currents’. I made a point to discuss this with Steve, the Drop Zone Safety Organizer or DZSO for that day. He spoke to me on the use of this language, its origins, and how the materials/apparatuses used in Skydiving are almost, if not, exclusive to the practice. This all corresponds to the idea that this practice is centered in a unique community with cultural impacts and innovations that have developed because of its existence. Steve elaborates on the coding in the following conversation.

“Well, many of the terminologies we use are exclusive because of uh--they were made to talk about the things we use while diving”, Steve pauses to check on the computer monitor for weather updates and then continues.

“And, the things we have here for skydiving were made solely for body-in-air. We wouldn’t even have half of this stuff if it weren’t for people wanting to jump out of perfectly good airplanes,” Steve raises his arms and lowers them to emphasis the range of equipment in the surrounding area. I then asked him to explain some of the more common terminologies and their corresponding items. In response to this request, he smiled and told me that I was in luck because it was time to suit up and start ‘dirt diving’ or practice diving. While gearing up, Jump Master and tandem instructor, Greg, elaborated on some of the highlights of skydiving: Altimeter- a device used for establishing distance off the ground while airborne. It is worn on the wrist opposite of the cute deployment pull arm. Jumpsuit-Garment designed explicitly for skydiving applications. Some variations have grip padding for instructors to hold on to students while in freefall.

If the students or I did not understand something or needed more elaboration, there was no stress in asking. In fact, the instructors more than often could read our expressions and knew when to supply more explanation. I think this interaction further exemplifies how/why skydiving is a diverse practice; there’s a margin of risk that requires respect for every aspect of its faculties. The instructors are more than willing to help others follow their passions and the divers are grateful for the opportunity--and they want to come back alive so of course, they’re going to be respectful! This distinguishment from ‘mere’ experience to ‘an’ experience, expedites any notions of bias or prejudice. Put simply, if you don’t like the folks you’re with, “You don’t have any business at the DZ”.

While ascending to 9,000ft in the WB212Z plane, I started to understand why divers and hopefuls save their money and jump as often as they can. The view and serenity are remarkable. Most divers take an accelerated course to acquire their initial license (A License) by the USPA (United States Parachute Association) before they can make their 200 jumps to get certified.

 I remarked loudly, 

“I can’t believe you guys get to do this every day!” Shouting was the only way to hear over the engine. 

“It’s not every day,” Greg replied with a smile. Then Steve chimed in while strapping Andreas to his harness. We had reached 7,000ft in altitude. That’s around the time JM’s and their tandem divers begin preparations. 

“Y’know,” Steve started, “your first-day diving is like your wedding day. You’re either gonna show up and shut up or you’ll dip out and never understand what you’re missing in your life”. He laughed and continued strapping Andreas to his harness. Five minutes later, I watched them fall out the side of a perfectly functioning airplane and my heart could not have been happier to follow. 

Skydiving is a very different form of seeing.  Not only does this form of seeing embolden the visual plane, but it trespasses on individual comfort. Individuals who subject themselves to this practice gain a wealth of understanding. Staring, as a form of seeing, comes close in comparison to this practice. Both require vulnerability and the ability to trust others.

Strassler, Karen. Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and the Indonesian Culture of Documentation in Postcolonial Java. 2003.

Goodwin, Charles. “Professional Vision.” Cato At Liberty, American Anthropologist, Sept. 1994.

[inetmrktng75247]

10 Things to Check When Setting up an Internet Presence for a Small Business

10 Things to Check When Setting up an Internet Presence for a Small Business

Preface: This blog post is one in a series of articles that Portentites produced in a pair-writing experiment. It’s a little more broad than usual because it represents two subject matter experts from different practice areas, coming together to combine their knowledge for a broader look at the internet marketing topics that face real businesses. If you’re not familiar with pair writing, GatherContent does a great job of introducing the topic. We hope you enjoy it.

Alright, deep breath. It’s time to set up your business’s internet presence. And while you aren’t a Porg, that doesn’t mean you can’t make the internets love you too.

You win, Disney. I can't even with this thing.

1: HTTPS: Security and Trust for Prospective Customers

A question: “Should my site be HTTP or HTTPS?“ There are a number of compelling reasons to pick HTTPS. First, think of that extra “S” at the end as security in the mind of your customer. Your customers, just like you, want to be secure when they visit a website. Google, with its Chrome browser, overtly labels whether a website is secure or not both in the address bar and on SERPs.

If you have login functionality, accept credit cards, or even form submissions, HTTPS is essential. Google very publicly considers this a best practice, but really what do they know…oh right we want to rank there!

So Google likes it, it keeps your info private, it keeps your users’ info private, and it future-proofs your site. Winner, winner.

2: Robots.txt & Sitemap

Stick with me, we’re going to get a little technical. But don’t worry we’re not going to write code together, yet…maybe. Instead, you’re simply going to help search engines find your site.

Honestly, you’re just being really nice and giving them directions to where on the site they’re allowed to go. A handy little map of your site.

First, we’re going to create a file on your root domain (like a tree down in the roots). That map is going to tell search engines if we have any pages or areas on the site we don’t think they should go, so we minimize the search engine’s chance of getting lost. And we’re going to tell them where to find the map.

It will look something like this:

http://ift.tt/2ATToeC

We have a robots.txt guide with best practices and several common mistakes. This should help you troubleshoot any errors you find. Better yet, you might learn how to avoid the most common mistakes before making them.

Next up is the sitemap! There are a lot of free sitemap generator tools out ther. Most will only crawl 500 pages and generate a map from what they find. The xml sitemap file will live at the root just like the robots.txt file, but it will also be listed in your robots.txt:

http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

And the location will be spelled out in your robots.txt file like so:

User-agent: * Sitemap: http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

3: Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools

Now you have a sitemap living on your site and recorded in your robots.txt file, so search engines will be falling all over themselves to get traffic to your site. Right??

Well…not quite. Search engines are getting smarter but they still need a little help finding the front door. Or any door really. Just like making the map itself with robots.txt, you are going to be very kind and let the search engines know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you gave them a map.

Setting up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools is the perfect nexus of easy and free. While both search engines provide guides to site owners on how to get started and fully set-up, they are best summed up as:

Sign up for free account

Submit your website

Use the free tools

Once you’ve signed up for both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, you’ll need to upload your sitemap to both as well. For Google you’ll use a separate, handy-dandy submission tool while Bing has you submit your site the same way that you submitted your robots.txt file above.

4: Make Sure Your Site is Blazing Fast

One of the most important and often-overlooked facets of your website’s performance is site speed. Site speed can make or break your website, and a slow website can be disastrous for both converting prospective customers, and convincing search engines to show you in their results.

But you don’t have to take our word for it alone. According to Kissmetrics, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Forty Percent. That is a massive amount of potential traffic lost to a single, solvable problem.

Some improvements are incredibly easy to do such as image compression. By compressing your images to be a smaller file size, there will be less to load on each page. Less to load = faster site. It’s that simple.

If you haven’t checked out any of the other links, we wrote a massive guide to site speed and page speed. That’s broken down into chapters depending on what kind of technical support you have on staff or on retainer.

5: Site Navigation

Time for another easy win. Well..mostly easy but definitely all win. Navigation is used by prospects, customers, and search engines to get around your site. The ultimate test: it should make it easier for users to find what they are looking for.

Navigation doesn’t just magically do that though!

Global Navigation which is at the top of each page sends really strong signals to both users and to search engines of what your site is about. What questions they could answer by visiting. If you use vague, interchangeable language that tells people little about what you offer or what makes your business special, you’re wasting a great opportunity to increase qualified traffic.

Order your navigation links and anchor text by importance from left to right. Ensure the text of the link is highlydescriptive. (Psst “Products” is not descriptive. However, “LandSpeeder Cars” is!)

6: Set Up Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Once you have your website ready to rock, it’s time to get it in front of the eagerly awaiting populace. But before your site’s going to show up on a Google results page, you’ll have to decide what you want that to look like, and what kinds of searches you want to show up for.

The different parts of the listing are called the title tag and the meta description.

Title Tags are exactly what they sound like: The title of the listing on the Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

The “meta description” is that brief description or preview of your site content that shows up under the clickable title. Title tags especially are incredibly important as they play a huge part in determining how your website ranks for any given Google search.

For example: say you’re making a website that sells lightsabers.

When writing the title tags and meta descriptions, you’ll want to make sure you include words that make it crystal clear what you are selling. Ideally, you’ll match the language and jargon of your title as closely as possible to the language your customers would use to search for your product.

For instance, your customers might head to Google and type something like “jedi lightsabers” or “sith lightsabers” more than “sith saber”. Using the terms that most align with your customers’ thinking and language is a great way to improve visibility and clicks.

An important distinction: While you want to be descriptive and clear, do not stuff your title tags and meta descriptions with the keywords just because you know that the word shows up in a lot of searches. Doing spammy things like this can reflect negatively on your brand to prospective customers. And Google’s been wise to this trick for many years, so there’s literally no upside to shoe-horning in a dozen instances of the same word.

7: N.A.P. in your schema

Remember when we said we weren’t writing code yet, but maybe later? Well we got there finally. Cringe away, but don’t stop reading.

It’s a truly teeny amount of code, and we’re going to use a tool to help you do it. (Tell no one and take all the credit!)

Put simply, “Structured Data” lets search engines understand your website better. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex agreed on a shared vocabulary to use a while back. We’re simply going to use that specific vocab to help them understand your site better.

This is where our secret weapon comes in, Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper (long name for such a helpful tool).

You’ll be given two different options for the output: Microdata (the tool defaults to this) and JSON-LD.

Microdata will be attached to your html. Google will give you back the html code and highlight it so you (or a helpful developer) can see exactly where it goes in the code for your site. If you use JSON-LD, the code is also provided and goes into the “head” section of your page.

(Pssst, we also have a guide to implementing JSON-LD on your site. What can we say, we like to be helpful too.)

I’m using my current restaurant obsession in Seattle’s International District as our example. (I have a serious dumpling addiction)

I’ll be giving you the JSON-LD code because it is smaller and easier honestly. We could fill the entire article with html code and just highlight where the microdata would go…

Looks scary, until you realize that it's all done for you in the tool. Copy & Paste time.

8: Google My business

One of the most important determinants of success with search engines is maximizing the amount of space you occupy on a results page. This sounds over-simple, but it’s true. Beyond giving more specific information to suit all the different questions users might have had from store hours to available inventory, the more space on a search results page that you occupy, the less space there is for the next competitor to show up.

One product that helps in this regard is Google My Business. Now, you may not recognize “Google My Business” by its formal tool name (I didn’t either), but you most certainly have seen it in the wild.

When you search for a business on Google, it’s powering that great big name and logo on the right side of the screen.

Taking the time to use this tool and effectively claim your business gives you much more real estate to work with than just traditional search listings, so it is incredibly helpful when setting up an internet presence. This is especially true for cases where people are already familiar enough to search for your business by name.

Fortunately, setting up a Google My Business account is incredibly easy. All you have to do is go to the My Business home page, create an account, enter your businesses information, and voila! You now have My Business Page.

People will now be able to see core information about your business right on the results page, which will help increase your visibility and qualified traffic.

9: Fully Set Up Social Media Accounts

After you’ve got your website setup and are heading down the path of optimization (SEO is a long game), it’s time to think about social if you haven’t already. If you ask a random sample of people what social media sites are “the best”, you may get a random sample of answers: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest.

We’d like to make this easy and effective for you, not to mention that this is a massive topic, so for now we’ll stick with just one recommendation: only use social media that you will actually use.

Social media can be a fantastic tool to help expand your reach and grow your business, but only when it is actually used as the communication tool that it is. Meaning if you don’t manage it, you’re creating just another empty space that can distract from channels where you’re keeping information current, engaging with customers, etc. You start to see how setting up a social media account for your business and not using it can actually take away from your bottom line.

10: Set-up Google Analytics

Once you have the raw material of your site, your social media accounts, and perhaps some paid search or other ads, it’s time to evaluate what’s paying off, and how much.

Maybe you notice your phone ringing a little more, but if you have many new promotional efforts running at once, it’s impossible to know which are working without the proper measurement tools. That’s where Google Analytics comes in.

Google Analytics is a free (!!) platform that allows you to track just about every aspect of your website. Did that spike in visitors come from an ad or an organic search engine result? What site referred that great customer to you? What did the rest of your visitors do once they hit your site?

Whether it’s pageviews, conversions, or referral source, Google Analytics tracks everything. This allows you to make much more informed decisions regarding your website, your marketing, and improving your results proactively.

For a platform that can show you so much, and which costs literally $0.00, it takes next to nothing to get it set up. After setting yourself up with a Google Analytics account, there are only three broad but basic steps remaining:

On the Admin page, under the Properties tab, click on “Create a New Property”

Enter all of your website data to get your custom GA tracking code

Paste the following snippet right after the head tag on each page you would like to track.

Do make sure to replace “GA_Tracking_ID” with the custom ID you got in step two above. And if you’d like a more detailed walkthrough, Moz provides a great 101-level intro to Google Analytics including sample business questions you might want to answer.

Where to From Here?

You’ve got a site that’s far more visible than it was when you started. Your site is loading in half the time it was before. You’ve picked out a social media platform that fits your style and your schedule. And you know where the heck all that traffic is coming from, not to mention which parts of the traffic is converting into leads or customers.

When you’re ready to lean into that faster, more effective site, looking at how to advertise successfully in paid search (PPC) or paid social media is a great way to show up at the moments your prospective customers are considering a product or service like yours.

Until next time, happy Marketing from all of us here at Portent!

The Portent team, if were were George Lucas characters.

http://ift.tt/2Alizpp

[seo90210]

10 Things to Check When Setting up an Internet Presence for a Small Business

Preface: This blog post is one in a series of articles that Portentites produced in a pair-writing experiment. It’s a little more broad than usual because it represents two subject matter experts from different practice areas, coming together to combine their knowledge for a broader look at the internet marketing topics that face real businesses. If you’re not familiar with pair writing, GatherContent does a great job of introducing the topic. We hope you enjoy it.

Alright, deep breath. It’s time to set up your business’s internet presence. And while you aren’t a Porg, that doesn’t mean you can’t make the internets love you too.

You win, Disney. I can't even with this thing.

1: HTTPS: Security and Trust for Prospective Customers

A question: “Should my site be HTTP or HTTPS?“ There are a number of compelling reasons to pick HTTPS. First, think of that extra “S” at the end as security in the mind of your customer. Your customers, just like you, want to be secure when they visit a website. Google, with its Chrome browser, overtly labels whether a website is secure or not both in the address bar and on SERPs.

If you have login functionality, accept credit cards, or even form submissions, HTTPS is essential. Google very publicly considers this a best practice, but really what do they know…oh right we want to rank there!

So Google likes it, it keeps your info private, it keeps your users’ info private, and it future-proofs your site. Winner, winner.

2: Robots.txt & Sitemap

Stick with me, we’re going to get a little technical. But don’t worry we’re not going to write code together, yet…maybe. Instead, you’re simply going to help search engines find your site.

Honestly, you’re just being really nice and giving them directions to where on the site they’re allowed to go. A handy little map of your site.

First, we’re going to create a file on your root domain (like a tree down in the roots). That map is going to tell search engines if we have any pages or areas on the site we don’t think they should go, so we minimize the search engine’s chance of getting lost. And we’re going to tell them where to find the map.

It will look something like this:

http://ift.tt/2ATToeC

We have a robots.txt guide with best practices and several common mistakes. This should help you troubleshoot any errors you find. Better yet, you might learn how to avoid the most common mistakes before making them.

Next up is the sitemap! There are a lot of free sitemap generator tools out ther. Most will only crawl 500 pages and generate a map from what they find. The xml sitemap file will live at the root just like the robots.txt file, but it will also be listed in your robots.txt:

http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

And the location will be spelled out in your robots.txt file like so:

User-agent: * Sitemap: http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

3: Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools

Now you have a sitemap living on your site and recorded in your robots.txt file, so search engines will be falling all over themselves to get traffic to your site. Right??

Well…not quite. Search engines are getting smarter but they still need a little help finding the front door. Or any door really. Just like making the map itself with robots.txt, you are going to be very kind and let the search engines know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you gave them a map.

Setting up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools is the perfect nexus of easy and free. While both search engines provide guides to site owners on how to get started and fully set-up, they are best summed up as:

Sign up for free account

Submit your website

Use the free tools

Once you’ve signed up for both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, you’ll need to upload your sitemap to both as well. For Google you’ll use a separate, handy-dandy submission tool while Bing has you submit your site the same way that you submitted your robots.txt file above.

4: Make Sure Your Site is Blazing Fast

One of the most important and often-overlooked facets of your website’s performance is site speed. Site speed can make or break your website, and a slow website can be disastrous for both converting prospective customers, and convincing search engines to show you in their results.

But you don’t have to take our word for it alone. According to Kissmetrics, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Forty Percent. That is a massive amount of potential traffic lost to a single, solvable problem.

Some improvements are incredibly easy to do such as image compression. By compressing your images to be a smaller file size, there will be less to load on each page. Less to load = faster site. It’s that simple.

If you haven’t checked out any of the other links, we wrote a massive guide to site speed and page speed. That’s broken down into chapters depending on what kind of technical support you have on staff or on retainer.

5: Site Navigation

Time for another easy win. Well..mostly easy but definitely all win. Navigation is used by prospects, customers, and search engines to get around your site. The ultimate test: it should make it easier for users to find what they are looking for.

Navigation doesn’t just magically do that though!

Global Navigation which is at the top of each page sends really strong signals to both users and to search engines of what your site is about. What questions they could answer by visiting. If you use vague, interchangeable language that tells people little about what you offer or what makes your business special, you’re wasting a great opportunity to increase qualified traffic.

Order your navigation links and anchor text by importance from left to right. Ensure the text of the link is highlydescriptive. (Psst “Products” is not descriptive. However, “LandSpeeder Cars” is!)

6: Set Up Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Once you have your website ready to rock, it’s time to get it in front of the eagerly awaiting populace. But before your site’s going to show up on a Google results page, you’ll have to decide what you want that to look like, and what kinds of searches you want to show up for.

The different parts of the listing are called the title tag and the meta description.

Title Tags are exactly what they sound like: The title of the listing on the Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

The “meta description” is that brief description or preview of your site content that shows up under the clickable title. Title tags especially are incredibly important as they play a huge part in determining how your website ranks for any given Google search.

For example: say you’re making a website that sells lightsabers.

When writing the title tags and meta descriptions, you’ll want to make sure you include words that make it crystal clear what you are selling. Ideally, you’ll match the language and jargon of your title as closely as possible to the language your customers would use to search for your product.

For instance, your customers might head to Google and type something like “jedi lightsabers” or “sith lightsabers” more than “sith saber”. Using the terms that most align with your customers’ thinking and language is a great way to improve visibility and clicks.

An important distinction: While you want to be descriptive and clear, do not stuff your title tags and meta descriptions with the keywords just because you know that the word shows up in a lot of searches. Doing spammy things like this can reflect negatively on your brand to prospective customers. And Google’s been wise to this trick for many years, so there’s literally no upside to shoe-horning in a dozen instances of the same word.

7: N.A.P. in your schema

Remember when we said we weren’t writing code yet, but maybe later? Well we got there finally. Cringe away, but don’t stop reading.

It’s a truly teeny amount of code, and we’re going to use a tool to help you do it. (Tell no one and take all the credit!)

Put simply, “Structured Data” lets search engines understand your website better. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex agreed on a shared vocabulary to use a while back. We’re simply going to use that specific vocab to help them understand your site better.

This is where our secret weapon comes in, Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper (long name for such a helpful tool).

You’ll be given two different options for the output: Microdata (the tool defaults to this) and JSON-LD.

Microdata will be attached to your html. Google will give you back the html code and highlight it so you (or a helpful developer) can see exactly where it goes in the code for your site. If you use JSON-LD, the code is also provided and goes into the “head” section of your page.

(Pssst, we also have a guide to implementing JSON-LD on your site. What can we say, we like to be helpful too.)

I’m using my current restaurant obsession in Seattle’s International District as our example. (I have a serious dumpling addiction)

I’ll be giving you the JSON-LD code because it is smaller and easier honestly. We could fill the entire article with html code and just highlight where the microdata would go…

Looks scary, until you realize that it's all done for you in the tool. Copy & Paste time.

8: Google My business

One of the most important determinants of success with search engines is maximizing the amount of space you occupy on a results page. This sounds over-simple, but it’s true. Beyond giving more specific information to suit all the different questions users might have had from store hours to available inventory, the more space on a search results page that you occupy, the less space there is for the next competitor to show up.

One product that helps in this regard is Google My Business. Now, you may not recognize “Google My Business” by its formal tool name (I didn’t either), but you most certainly have seen it in the wild.

When you search for a business on Google, it’s powering that great big name and logo on the right side of the screen.

Taking the time to use this tool and effectively claim your business gives you much more real estate to work with than just traditional search listings, so it is incredibly helpful when setting up an internet presence. This is especially true for cases where people are already familiar enough to search for your business by name.

Fortunately, setting up a Google My Business account is incredibly easy. All you have to do is go to the My Business home page, create an account, enter your businesses information, and voila! You now have My Business Page.

People will now be able to see core information about your business right on the results page, which will help increase your visibility and qualified traffic.

9: Fully Set Up Social Media Accounts

After you’ve got your website setup and are heading down the path of optimization (SEO is a long game), it’s time to think about social if you haven’t already. If you ask a random sample of people what social media sites are “the best”, you may get a random sample of answers: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest.

We’d like to make this easy and effective for you, not to mention that this is a massive topic, so for now we’ll stick with just one recommendation: only use social media that you will actually use.

Social media can be a fantastic tool to help expand your reach and grow your business, but only when it is actually used as the communication tool that it is. Meaning if you don’t manage it, you’re creating just another empty space that can distract from channels where you’re keeping information current, engaging with customers, etc. You start to see how setting up a social media account for your business and not using it can actually take away from your bottom line.

10: Set-up Google Analytics

Once you have the raw material of your site, your social media accounts, and perhaps some paid search or other ads, it’s time to evaluate what’s paying off, and how much.

Maybe you notice your phone ringing a little more, but if you have many new promotional efforts running at once, it’s impossible to know which are working without the proper measurement tools. That’s where Google Analytics comes in.

Google Analytics is a free (!!) platform that allows you to track just about every aspect of your website. Did that spike in visitors come from an ad or an organic search engine result? What site referred that great customer to you? What did the rest of your visitors do once they hit your site?

Whether it’s pageviews, conversions, or referral source, Google Analytics tracks everything. This allows you to make much more informed decisions regarding your website, your marketing, and improving your results proactively.

For a platform that can show you so much, and which costs literally $0.00, it takes next to nothing to get it set up. After setting yourself up with a Google Analytics account, there are only three broad but basic steps remaining:

On the Admin page, under the Properties tab, click on “Create a New Property”

Enter all of your website data to get your custom GA tracking code

Paste the following snippet right after the head tag on each page you would like to track.

Do make sure to replace “GA_Tracking_ID” with the custom ID you got in step two above. And if you’d like a more detailed walkthrough, Moz provides a great 101-level intro to Google Analytics including sample business questions you might want to answer.

Where to From Here?

You’ve got a site that’s far more visible than it was when you started. Your site is loading in half the time it was before. You’ve picked out a social media platform that fits your style and your schedule. And you know where the heck all that traffic is coming from, not to mention which parts of the traffic is converting into leads or customers.

When you’re ready to lean into that faster, more effective site, looking at how to advertise successfully in paid search (PPC) or paid social media is a great way to show up at the moments your prospective customers are considering a product or service like yours.

Until next time, happy Marketing from all of us here at Portent!

The Portent team, if were were George Lucas characters.

from FEED 9 MARKETING http://ift.tt/2Alizpp

[vidmktg30245]

10 Things to Check When Setting up an Internet Presence for a Small Business

10 Things to Check When Setting up an Internet Presence for a Small Business

Preface: This blog post is one in a series of articles that Portentites produced in a pair-writing experiment. It’s a little more broad than usual because it represents two subject matter experts from different practice areas, coming together to combine their knowledge for a broader look at the internet marketing topics that face real businesses. If you’re not familiar with pair writing, GatherContent does a great job of introducing the topic. We hope you enjoy it.

Alright, deep breath. It’s time to set up your business’s internet presence. And while you aren’t a Porg, that doesn’t mean you can’t make the internets love you too.

You win, Disney. I can't even with this thing.

1: HTTPS: Security and Trust for Prospective Customers

A question: “Should my site be HTTP or HTTPS?“ There are a number of compelling reasons to pick HTTPS. First, think of that extra “S” at the end as security in the mind of your customer. Your customers, just like you, want to be secure when they visit a website. Google, with its Chrome browser, overtly labels whether a website is secure or not both in the address bar and on SERPs.

If you have login functionality, accept credit cards, or even form submissions, HTTPS is essential. Google very publicly considers this a best practice, but really what do they know…oh right we want to rank there!

So Google likes it, it keeps your info private, it keeps your users’ info private, and it future-proofs your site. Winner, winner.

2: Robots.txt & Sitemap

Stick with me, we’re going to get a little technical. But don’t worry we’re not going to write code together, yet…maybe. Instead, you’re simply going to help search engines find your site.

Honestly, you’re just being really nice and giving them directions to where on the site they’re allowed to go. A handy little map of your site.

First, we’re going to create a file on your root domain (like a tree down in the roots). That map is going to tell search engines if we have any pages or areas on the site we don’t think they should go, so we minimize the search engine’s chance of getting lost. And we’re going to tell them where to find the map.

It will look something like this:

http://ift.tt/2ATToeC

We have a robots.txt guide with best practices and several common mistakes. This should help you troubleshoot any errors you find. Better yet, you might learn how to avoid the most common mistakes before making them.

Next up is the sitemap! There are a lot of free sitemap generator tools out ther. Most will only crawl 500 pages and generate a map from what they find. The xml sitemap file will live at the root just like the robots.txt file, but it will also be listed in your robots.txt:

http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

And the location will be spelled out in your robots.txt file like so:

User-agent: * Sitemap: http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

3: Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools

Now you have a sitemap living on your site and recorded in your robots.txt file, so search engines will be falling all over themselves to get traffic to your site. Right??

Well…not quite. Search engines are getting smarter but they still need a little help finding the front door. Or any door really. Just like making the map itself with robots.txt, you are going to be very kind and let the search engines know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you gave them a map.

Setting up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools is the perfect nexus of easy and free. While both search engines provide guides to site owners on how to get started and fully set-up, they are best summed up as:

Sign up for free account

Submit your website

Use the free tools

Once you’ve signed up for both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, you’ll need to upload your sitemap to both as well. For Google you’ll use a separate, handy-dandy submission tool while Bing has you submit your site the same way that you submitted your robots.txt file above.

4: Make Sure Your Site is Blazing Fast

One of the most important and often-overlooked facets of your website’s performance is site speed. Site speed can make or break your website, and a slow website can be disastrous for both converting prospective customers, and convincing search engines to show you in their results.

But you don’t have to take our word for it alone. According to Kissmetrics, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Forty Percent. That is a massive amount of potential traffic lost to a single, solvable problem.

Some improvements are incredibly easy to do such as image compression. By compressing your images to be a smaller file size, there will be less to load on each page. Less to load = faster site. It’s that simple.

If you haven’t checked out any of the other links, we wrote a massive guide to site speed and page speed. That’s broken down into chapters depending on what kind of technical support you have on staff or on retainer.

5: Site Navigation

Time for another easy win. Well..mostly easy but definitely all win. Navigation is used by prospects, customers, and search engines to get around your site. The ultimate test: it should make it easier for users to find what they are looking for.

Navigation doesn’t just magically do that though!

Global Navigation which is at the top of each page sends really strong signals to both users and to search engines of what your site is about. What questions they could answer by visiting. If you use vague, interchangeable language that tells people little about what you offer or what makes your business special, you’re wasting a great opportunity to increase qualified traffic.

Order your navigation links and anchor text by importance from left to right. Ensure the text of the link is highlydescriptive. (Psst “Products” is not descriptive. However, “LandSpeeder Cars” is!)

6: Set Up Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Once you have your website ready to rock, it’s time to get it in front of the eagerly awaiting populace. But before your site’s going to show up on a Google results page, you’ll have to decide what you want that to look like, and what kinds of searches you want to show up for.

The different parts of the listing are called the title tag and the meta description.

Title Tags are exactly what they sound like: The title of the listing on the Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

The “meta description” is that brief description or preview of your site content that shows up under the clickable title. Title tags especially are incredibly important as they play a huge part in determining how your website ranks for any given Google search.

For example: say you’re making a website that sells lightsabers.

When writing the title tags and meta descriptions, you’ll want to make sure you include words that make it crystal clear what you are selling. Ideally, you’ll match the language and jargon of your title as closely as possible to the language your customers would use to search for your product.

For instance, your customers might head to Google and type something like “jedi lightsabers” or “sith lightsabers” more than “sith saber”. Using the terms that most align with your customers’ thinking and language is a great way to improve visibility and clicks.

An important distinction: While you want to be descriptive and clear, do not stuff your title tags and meta descriptions with the keywords just because you know that the word shows up in a lot of searches. Doing spammy things like this can reflect negatively on your brand to prospective customers. And Google’s been wise to this trick for many years, so there’s literally no upside to shoe-horning in a dozen instances of the same word.

7: N.A.P. in your schema

Remember when we said we weren’t writing code yet, but maybe later? Well we got there finally. Cringe away, but don’t stop reading.

It’s a truly teeny amount of code, and we’re going to use a tool to help you do it. (Tell no one and take all the credit!)

Put simply, “Structured Data” lets search engines understand your website better. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex agreed on a shared vocabulary to use a while back. We’re simply going to use that specific vocab to help them understand your site better.

This is where our secret weapon comes in, Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper (long name for such a helpful tool).

You’ll be given two different options for the output: Microdata (the tool defaults to this) and JSON-LD.

Microdata will be attached to your html. Google will give you back the html code and highlight it so you (or a helpful developer) can see exactly where it goes in the code for your site. If you use JSON-LD, the code is also provided and goes into the “head” section of your page.

(Pssst, we also have a guide to implementing JSON-LD on your site. What can we say, we like to be helpful too.)

I’m using my current restaurant obsession in Seattle’s International District as our example. (I have a serious dumpling addiction)

I’ll be giving you the JSON-LD code because it is smaller and easier honestly. We could fill the entire article with html code and just highlight where the microdata would go…

Looks scary, until you realize that it's all done for you in the tool. Copy & Paste time.

8: Google My business

One of the most important determinants of success with search engines is maximizing the amount of space you occupy on a results page. This sounds over-simple, but it’s true. Beyond giving more specific information to suit all the different questions users might have had from store hours to available inventory, the more space on a search results page that you occupy, the less space there is for the next competitor to show up.

One product that helps in this regard is Google My Business. Now, you may not recognize “Google My Business” by its formal tool name (I didn’t either), but you most certainly have seen it in the wild.

When you search for a business on Google, it’s powering that great big name and logo on the right side of the screen.

Taking the time to use this tool and effectively claim your business gives you much more real estate to work with than just traditional search listings, so it is incredibly helpful when setting up an internet presence. This is especially true for cases where people are already familiar enough to search for your business by name.

Fortunately, setting up a Google My Business account is incredibly easy. All you have to do is go to the My Business home page, create an account, enter your businesses information, and voila! You now have My Business Page.

People will now be able to see core information about your business right on the results page, which will help increase your visibility and qualified traffic.

9: Fully Set Up Social Media Accounts

After you’ve got your website setup and are heading down the path of optimization (SEO is a long game), it’s time to think about social if you haven’t already. If you ask a random sample of people what social media sites are “the best”, you may get a random sample of answers: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest.

We’d like to make this easy and effective for you, not to mention that this is a massive topic, so for now we’ll stick with just one recommendation: only use social media that you will actually use.

Social media can be a fantastic tool to help expand your reach and grow your business, but only when it is actually used as the communication tool that it is. Meaning if you don’t manage it, you’re creating just another empty space that can distract from channels where you’re keeping information current, engaging with customers, etc. You start to see how setting up a social media account for your business and not using it can actually take away from your bottom line.

10: Set-up Google Analytics

Once you have the raw material of your site, your social media accounts, and perhaps some paid search or other ads, it’s time to evaluate what’s paying off, and how much.

Maybe you notice your phone ringing a little more, but if you have many new promotional efforts running at once, it’s impossible to know which are working without the proper measurement tools. That’s where Google Analytics comes in.

Google Analytics is a free (!!) platform that allows you to track just about every aspect of your website. Did that spike in visitors come from an ad or an organic search engine result? What site referred that great customer to you? What did the rest of your visitors do once they hit your site?

Whether it’s pageviews, conversions, or referral source, Google Analytics tracks everything. This allows you to make much more informed decisions regarding your website, your marketing, and improving your results proactively.

For a platform that can show you so much, and which costs literally $0.00, it takes next to nothing to get it set up. After setting yourself up with a Google Analytics account, there are only three broad but basic steps remaining:

On the Admin page, under the Properties tab, click on “Create a New Property”

Enter all of your website data to get your custom GA tracking code

Paste the following snippet right after the head tag on each page you would like to track.

Do make sure to replace “GA_Tracking_ID” with the custom ID you got in step two above. And if you’d like a more detailed walkthrough, Moz provides a great 101-level intro to Google Analytics including sample business questions you might want to answer.

Where to From Here?

You’ve got a site that’s far more visible than it was when you started. Your site is loading in half the time it was before. You’ve picked out a social media platform that fits your style and your schedule. And you know where the heck all that traffic is coming from, not to mention which parts of the traffic is converting into leads or customers.

When you’re ready to lean into that faster, more effective site, looking at how to advertise successfully in paid search (PPC) or paid social media is a great way to show up at the moments your prospective customers are considering a product or service like yours.

Until next time, happy Marketing from all of us here at Portent!

The Portent team, if were were George Lucas characters.

http://ift.tt/2Alizpp

[realtor10036]

10 Things to Check When Setting up an Internet Presence for a Small Business

10 Things to Check When Setting up an Internet Presence for a Small Business

Preface: This blog post is one in a series of articles that Portentites produced in a pair-writing experiment. It’s a little more broad than usual because it represents two subject matter experts from different practice areas, coming together to combine their knowledge for a broader look at the internet marketing topics that face real businesses. If you’re not familiar with pair writing, GatherContent does a great job of introducing the topic. We hope you enjoy it.

Alright, deep breath. It’s time to set up your business’s internet presence. And while you aren’t a Porg, that doesn’t mean you can’t make the internets love you too.

You win, Disney. I can't even with this thing.

1: HTTPS: Security and Trust for Prospective Customers

A question: “Should my site be HTTP or HTTPS?“ There are a number of compelling reasons to pick HTTPS. First, think of that extra “S” at the end as security in the mind of your customer. Your customers, just like you, want to be secure when they visit a website. Google, with its Chrome browser, overtly labels whether a website is secure or not both in the address bar and on SERPs.

If you have login functionality, accept credit cards, or even form submissions, HTTPS is essential. Google very publicly considers this a best practice, but really what do they know…oh right we want to rank there!

So Google likes it, it keeps your info private, it keeps your users’ info private, and it future-proofs your site. Winner, winner.

2: Robots.txt & Sitemap

Stick with me, we’re going to get a little technical. But don’t worry we’re not going to write code together, yet…maybe. Instead, you’re simply going to help search engines find your site.

Honestly, you’re just being really nice and giving them directions to where on the site they’re allowed to go. A handy little map of your site.

First, we’re going to create a file on your root domain (like a tree down in the roots). That map is going to tell search engines if we have any pages or areas on the site we don’t think they should go, so we minimize the search engine’s chance of getting lost. And we’re going to tell them where to find the map.

It will look something like this:

http://ift.tt/2ATToeC

We have a robots.txt guide with best practices and several common mistakes. This should help you troubleshoot any errors you find. Better yet, you might learn how to avoid the most common mistakes before making them.

Next up is the sitemap! There are a lot of free sitemap generator tools out ther. Most will only crawl 500 pages and generate a map from what they find. The xml sitemap file will live at the root just like the robots.txt file, but it will also be listed in your robots.txt:

http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

And the location will be spelled out in your robots.txt file like so:

User-agent: * Sitemap: http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

3: Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools

Now you have a sitemap living on your site and recorded in your robots.txt file, so search engines will be falling all over themselves to get traffic to your site. Right??

Well…not quite. Search engines are getting smarter but they still need a little help finding the front door. Or any door really. Just like making the map itself with robots.txt, you are going to be very kind and let the search engines know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you gave them a map.

Setting up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools is the perfect nexus of easy and free. While both search engines provide guides to site owners on how to get started and fully set-up, they are best summed up as:

Sign up for free account

Submit your website

Use the free tools

Once you’ve signed up for both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, you’ll need to upload your sitemap to both as well. For Google you’ll use a separate, handy-dandy submission tool while Bing has you submit your site the same way that you submitted your robots.txt file above.

4: Make Sure Your Site is Blazing Fast

One of the most important and often-overlooked facets of your website’s performance is site speed. Site speed can make or break your website, and a slow website can be disastrous for both converting prospective customers, and convincing search engines to show you in their results.

But you don’t have to take our word for it alone. According to Kissmetrics, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Forty Percent. That is a massive amount of potential traffic lost to a single, solvable problem.

Some improvements are incredibly easy to do such as image compression. By compressing your images to be a smaller file size, there will be less to load on each page. Less to load = faster site. It’s that simple.

If you haven’t checked out any of the other links, we wrote a massive guide to site speed and page speed. That’s broken down into chapters depending on what kind of technical support you have on staff or on retainer.

5: Site Navigation

Time for another easy win. Well..mostly easy but definitely all win. Navigation is used by prospects, customers, and search engines to get around your site. The ultimate test: it should make it easier for users to find what they are looking for.

Navigation doesn’t just magically do that though!

Global Navigation which is at the top of each page sends really strong signals to both users and to search engines of what your site is about. What questions they could answer by visiting. If you use vague, interchangeable language that tells people little about what you offer or what makes your business special, you’re wasting a great opportunity to increase qualified traffic.

Order your navigation links and anchor text by importance from left to right. Ensure the text of the link is highlydescriptive. (Psst “Products” is not descriptive. However, “LandSpeeder Cars” is!)

6: Set Up Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Once you have your website ready to rock, it’s time to get it in front of the eagerly awaiting populace. But before your site’s going to show up on a Google results page, you’ll have to decide what you want that to look like, and what kinds of searches you want to show up for.

The different parts of the listing are called the title tag and the meta description.

Title Tags are exactly what they sound like: The title of the listing on the Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

The “meta description” is that brief description or preview of your site content that shows up under the clickable title. Title tags especially are incredibly important as they play a huge part in determining how your website ranks for any given Google search.

For example: say you’re making a website that sells lightsabers.

When writing the title tags and meta descriptions, you’ll want to make sure you include words that make it crystal clear what you are selling. Ideally, you’ll match the language and jargon of your title as closely as possible to the language your customers would use to search for your product.

For instance, your customers might head to Google and type something like “jedi lightsabers” or “sith lightsabers” more than “sith saber”. Using the terms that most align with your customers’ thinking and language is a great way to improve visibility and clicks.

An important distinction: While you want to be descriptive and clear, do not stuff your title tags and meta descriptions with the keywords just because you know that the word shows up in a lot of searches. Doing spammy things like this can reflect negatively on your brand to prospective customers. And Google’s been wise to this trick for many years, so there’s literally no upside to shoe-horning in a dozen instances of the same word.

7: N.A.P. in your schema

Remember when we said we weren’t writing code yet, but maybe later? Well we got there finally. Cringe away, but don’t stop reading.

It’s a truly teeny amount of code, and we’re going to use a tool to help you do it. (Tell no one and take all the credit!)

Put simply, “Structured Data” lets search engines understand your website better. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex agreed on a shared vocabulary to use a while back. We’re simply going to use that specific vocab to help them understand your site better.

This is where our secret weapon comes in, Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper (long name for such a helpful tool).

You’ll be given two different options for the output: Microdata (the tool defaults to this) and JSON-LD.

Microdata will be attached to your html. Google will give you back the html code and highlight it so you (or a helpful developer) can see exactly where it goes in the code for your site. If you use JSON-LD, the code is also provided and goes into the “head” section of your page.

(Pssst, we also have a guide to implementing JSON-LD on your site. What can we say, we like to be helpful too.)

I’m using my current restaurant obsession in Seattle’s International District as our example. (I have a serious dumpling addiction)

I’ll be giving you the JSON-LD code because it is smaller and easier honestly. We could fill the entire article with html code and just highlight where the microdata would go…

Looks scary, until you realize that it's all done for you in the tool. Copy & Paste time.

8: Google My business

One of the most important determinants of success with search engines is maximizing the amount of space you occupy on a results page. This sounds over-simple, but it’s true. Beyond giving more specific information to suit all the different questions users might have had from store hours to available inventory, the more space on a search results page that you occupy, the less space there is for the next competitor to show up.

One product that helps in this regard is Google My Business. Now, you may not recognize “Google My Business” by its formal tool name (I didn’t either), but you most certainly have seen it in the wild.

When you search for a business on Google, it’s powering that great big name and logo on the right side of the screen.

Taking the time to use this tool and effectively claim your business gives you much more real estate to work with than just traditional search listings, so it is incredibly helpful when setting up an internet presence. This is especially true for cases where people are already familiar enough to search for your business by name.

Fortunately, setting up a Google My Business account is incredibly easy. All you have to do is go to the My Business home page, create an account, enter your businesses information, and voila! You now have My Business Page.

People will now be able to see core information about your business right on the results page, which will help increase your visibility and qualified traffic.

9: Fully Set Up Social Media Accounts

After you’ve got your website setup and are heading down the path of optimization (SEO is a long game), it’s time to think about social if you haven’t already. If you ask a random sample of people what social media sites are “the best”, you may get a random sample of answers: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest.

We’d like to make this easy and effective for you, not to mention that this is a massive topic, so for now we’ll stick with just one recommendation: only use social media that you will actually use.

Social media can be a fantastic tool to help expand your reach and grow your business, but only when it is actually used as the communication tool that it is. Meaning if you don’t manage it, you’re creating just another empty space that can distract from channels where you’re keeping information current, engaging with customers, etc. You start to see how setting up a social media account for your business and not using it can actually take away from your bottom line.

10: Set-up Google Analytics

Once you have the raw material of your site, your social media accounts, and perhaps some paid search or other ads, it’s time to evaluate what’s paying off, and how much.

Maybe you notice your phone ringing a little more, but if you have many new promotional efforts running at once, it’s impossible to know which are working without the proper measurement tools. That’s where Google Analytics comes in.

Google Analytics is a free (!!) platform that allows you to track just about every aspect of your website. Did that spike in visitors come from an ad or an organic search engine result? What site referred that great customer to you? What did the rest of your visitors do once they hit your site?

Whether it’s pageviews, conversions, or referral source, Google Analytics tracks everything. This allows you to make much more informed decisions regarding your website, your marketing, and improving your results proactively.

For a platform that can show you so much, and which costs literally $0.00, it takes next to nothing to get it set up. After setting yourself up with a Google Analytics account, there are only three broad but basic steps remaining:

On the Admin page, under the Properties tab, click on “Create a New Property”

Enter all of your website data to get your custom GA tracking code

Paste the following snippet right after the head tag on each page you would like to track.

Do make sure to replace “GA_Tracking_ID” with the custom ID you got in step two above. And if you’d like a more detailed walkthrough, Moz provides a great 101-level intro to Google Analytics including sample business questions you might want to answer.

Where to From Here?

You’ve got a site that’s far more visible than it was when you started. Your site is loading in half the time it was before. You’ve picked out a social media platform that fits your style and your schedule. And you know where the heck all that traffic is coming from, not to mention which parts of the traffic is converting into leads or customers.

When you’re ready to lean into that faster, more effective site, looking at how to advertise successfully in paid search (PPC) or paid social media is a great way to show up at the moments your prospective customers are considering a product or service like yours.

Until next time, happy Marketing from all of us here at Portent!

The Portent team, if were were George Lucas characters.

http://ift.tt/2Alizpp

[lxryrestate28349]

10 Things to Check When Setting up an Internet Presence for a Small Business

10 Things to Check When Setting up an Internet Presence for a Small Business

Preface: This blog post is one in a series of articles that Portentites produced in a pair-writing experiment. It’s a little more broad than usual because it represents two subject matter experts from different practice areas, coming together to combine their knowledge for a broader look at the internet marketing topics that face real businesses. If you’re not familiar with pair writing, GatherContent does a great job of introducing the topic. We hope you enjoy it.

Alright, deep breath. It’s time to set up your business’s internet presence. And while you aren’t a Porg, that doesn’t mean you can’t make the internets love you too.

You win, Disney. I can't even with this thing.

1: HTTPS: Security and Trust for Prospective Customers

A question: “Should my site be HTTP or HTTPS?“ There are a number of compelling reasons to pick HTTPS. First, think of that extra “S” at the end as security in the mind of your customer. Your customers, just like you, want to be secure when they visit a website. Google, with its Chrome browser, overtly labels whether a website is secure or not both in the address bar and on SERPs.

If you have login functionality, accept credit cards, or even form submissions, HTTPS is essential. Google very publicly considers this a best practice, but really what do they know…oh right we want to rank there!

So Google likes it, it keeps your info private, it keeps your users’ info private, and it future-proofs your site. Winner, winner.

2: Robots.txt & Sitemap

Stick with me, we’re going to get a little technical. But don’t worry we’re not going to write code together, yet…maybe. Instead, you’re simply going to help search engines find your site.

Honestly, you’re just being really nice and giving them directions to where on the site they’re allowed to go. A handy little map of your site.

First, we’re going to create a file on your root domain (like a tree down in the roots). That map is going to tell search engines if we have any pages or areas on the site we don’t think they should go, so we minimize the search engine’s chance of getting lost. And we’re going to tell them where to find the map.

It will look something like this:

http://ift.tt/2ATToeC

We have a robots.txt guide with best practices and several common mistakes. This should help you troubleshoot any errors you find. Better yet, you might learn how to avoid the most common mistakes before making them.

Next up is the sitemap! There are a lot of free sitemap generator tools out ther. Most will only crawl 500 pages and generate a map from what they find. The xml sitemap file will live at the root just like the robots.txt file, but it will also be listed in your robots.txt:

http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

And the location will be spelled out in your robots.txt file like so:

User-agent: * Sitemap: http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

3: Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools

Now you have a sitemap living on your site and recorded in your robots.txt file, so search engines will be falling all over themselves to get traffic to your site. Right??

Well…not quite. Search engines are getting smarter but they still need a little help finding the front door. Or any door really. Just like making the map itself with robots.txt, you are going to be very kind and let the search engines know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you gave them a map.

Setting up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools is the perfect nexus of easy and free. While both search engines provide guides to site owners on how to get started and fully set-up, they are best summed up as:

Sign up for free account

Submit your website

Use the free tools

Once you’ve signed up for both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, you’ll need to upload your sitemap to both as well. For Google you’ll use a separate, handy-dandy submission tool while Bing has you submit your site the same way that you submitted your robots.txt file above.

4: Make Sure Your Site is Blazing Fast

One of the most important and often-overlooked facets of your website’s performance is site speed. Site speed can make or break your website, and a slow website can be disastrous for both converting prospective customers, and convincing search engines to show you in their results.

But you don’t have to take our word for it alone. According to Kissmetrics, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Forty Percent. That is a massive amount of potential traffic lost to a single, solvable problem.

Some improvements are incredibly easy to do such as image compression. By compressing your images to be a smaller file size, there will be less to load on each page. Less to load = faster site. It’s that simple.

If you haven’t checked out any of the other links, we wrote a massive guide to site speed and page speed. That’s broken down into chapters depending on what kind of technical support you have on staff or on retainer.

5: Site Navigation

Time for another easy win. Well..mostly easy but definitely all win. Navigation is used by prospects, customers, and search engines to get around your site. The ultimate test: it should make it easier for users to find what they are looking for.

Navigation doesn’t just magically do that though!

Global Navigation which is at the top of each page sends really strong signals to both users and to search engines of what your site is about. What questions they could answer by visiting. If you use vague, interchangeable language that tells people little about what you offer or what makes your business special, you’re wasting a great opportunity to increase qualified traffic.

Order your navigation links and anchor text by importance from left to right. Ensure the text of the link is highlydescriptive. (Psst “Products” is not descriptive. However, “LandSpeeder Cars” is!)

6: Set Up Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Once you have your website ready to rock, it’s time to get it in front of the eagerly awaiting populace. But before your site’s going to show up on a Google results page, you’ll have to decide what you want that to look like, and what kinds of searches you want to show up for.

The different parts of the listing are called the title tag and the meta description.

Title Tags are exactly what they sound like: The title of the listing on the Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

The “meta description” is that brief description or preview of your site content that shows up under the clickable title. Title tags especially are incredibly important as they play a huge part in determining how your website ranks for any given Google search.

For example: say you’re making a website that sells lightsabers.

When writing the title tags and meta descriptions, you’ll want to make sure you include words that make it crystal clear what you are selling. Ideally, you’ll match the language and jargon of your title as closely as possible to the language your customers would use to search for your product.

For instance, your customers might head to Google and type something like “jedi lightsabers” or “sith lightsabers” more than “sith saber”. Using the terms that most align with your customers’ thinking and language is a great way to improve visibility and clicks.

An important distinction: While you want to be descriptive and clear, do not stuff your title tags and meta descriptions with the keywords just because you know that the word shows up in a lot of searches. Doing spammy things like this can reflect negatively on your brand to prospective customers. And Google’s been wise to this trick for many years, so there’s literally no upside to shoe-horning in a dozen instances of the same word.

7: N.A.P. in your schema

Remember when we said we weren’t writing code yet, but maybe later? Well we got there finally. Cringe away, but don’t stop reading.

It’s a truly teeny amount of code, and we’re going to use a tool to help you do it. (Tell no one and take all the credit!)

Put simply, “Structured Data” lets search engines understand your website better. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex agreed on a shared vocabulary to use a while back. We’re simply going to use that specific vocab to help them understand your site better.

This is where our secret weapon comes in, Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper (long name for such a helpful tool).

You’ll be given two different options for the output: Microdata (the tool defaults to this) and JSON-LD.

Microdata will be attached to your html. Google will give you back the html code and highlight it so you (or a helpful developer) can see exactly where it goes in the code for your site. If you use JSON-LD, the code is also provided and goes into the “head” section of your page.

(Pssst, we also have a guide to implementing JSON-LD on your site. What can we say, we like to be helpful too.)

I’m using my current restaurant obsession in Seattle’s International District as our example. (I have a serious dumpling addiction)

I’ll be giving you the JSON-LD code because it is smaller and easier honestly. We could fill the entire article with html code and just highlight where the microdata would go…

Looks scary, until you realize that it's all done for you in the tool. Copy & Paste time.

8: Google My business

One of the most important determinants of success with search engines is maximizing the amount of space you occupy on a results page. This sounds over-simple, but it’s true. Beyond giving more specific information to suit all the different questions users might have had from store hours to available inventory, the more space on a search results page that you occupy, the less space there is for the next competitor to show up.

One product that helps in this regard is Google My Business. Now, you may not recognize “Google My Business” by its formal tool name (I didn’t either), but you most certainly have seen it in the wild.

When you search for a business on Google, it’s powering that great big name and logo on the right side of the screen.

Taking the time to use this tool and effectively claim your business gives you much more real estate to work with than just traditional search listings, so it is incredibly helpful when setting up an internet presence. This is especially true for cases where people are already familiar enough to search for your business by name.

Fortunately, setting up a Google My Business account is incredibly easy. All you have to do is go to the My Business home page, create an account, enter your businesses information, and voila! You now have My Business Page.

People will now be able to see core information about your business right on the results page, which will help increase your visibility and qualified traffic.

9: Fully Set Up Social Media Accounts

After you’ve got your website setup and are heading down the path of optimization (SEO is a long game), it’s time to think about social if you haven’t already. If you ask a random sample of people what social media sites are “the best”, you may get a random sample of answers: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest.

We’d like to make this easy and effective for you, not to mention that this is a massive topic, so for now we’ll stick with just one recommendation: only use social media that you will actually use.

Social media can be a fantastic tool to help expand your reach and grow your business, but only when it is actually used as the communication tool that it is. Meaning if you don’t manage it, you’re creating just another empty space that can distract from channels where you’re keeping information current, engaging with customers, etc. You start to see how setting up a social media account for your business and not using it can actually take away from your bottom line.

10: Set-up Google Analytics

Once you have the raw material of your site, your social media accounts, and perhaps some paid search or other ads, it’s time to evaluate what’s paying off, and how much.

Maybe you notice your phone ringing a little more, but if you have many new promotional efforts running at once, it’s impossible to know which are working without the proper measurement tools. That’s where Google Analytics comes in.

Google Analytics is a free (!!) platform that allows you to track just about every aspect of your website. Did that spike in visitors come from an ad or an organic search engine result? What site referred that great customer to you? What did the rest of your visitors do once they hit your site?

Whether it’s pageviews, conversions, or referral source, Google Analytics tracks everything. This allows you to make much more informed decisions regarding your website, your marketing, and improving your results proactively.

For a platform that can show you so much, and which costs literally $0.00, it takes next to nothing to get it set up. After setting yourself up with a Google Analytics account, there are only three broad but basic steps remaining:

On the Admin page, under the Properties tab, click on “Create a New Property”

Enter all of your website data to get your custom GA tracking code

Paste the following snippet right after the head tag on each page you would like to track.

Do make sure to replace “GA_Tracking_ID” with the custom ID you got in step two above. And if you’d like a more detailed walkthrough, Moz provides a great 101-level intro to Google Analytics including sample business questions you might want to answer.

Where to From Here?

You’ve got a site that’s far more visible than it was when you started. Your site is loading in half the time it was before. You’ve picked out a social media platform that fits your style and your schedule. And you know where the heck all that traffic is coming from, not to mention which parts of the traffic is converting into leads or customers.

When you’re ready to lean into that faster, more effective site, looking at how to advertise successfully in paid search (PPC) or paid social media is a great way to show up at the moments your prospective customers are considering a product or service like yours.

Until next time, happy Marketing from all of us here at Portent!

The Portent team, if were were George Lucas characters.

http://ift.tt/2Alizpp

[seo53703]

10 Things to Check When Setting up an Internet Presence for a Small Business

10 Things to Check When Setting up an Internet Presence for a Small Business

Preface: This blog post is one in a series of articles that Portentites produced in a pair-writing experiment. It’s a little more broad than usual because it represents two subject matter experts from different practice areas, coming together to combine their knowledge for a broader look at the internet marketing topics that face real businesses. If you’re not familiar with pair writing, GatherContent does a great job of introducing the topic. We hope you enjoy it.

Alright, deep breath. It’s time to set up your business’s internet presence. And while you aren’t a Porg, that doesn’t mean you can’t make the internets love you too.

You win, Disney. I can't even with this thing.

1: HTTPS: Security and Trust for Prospective Customers

A question: “Should my site be HTTP or HTTPS?“ There are a number of compelling reasons to pick HTTPS. First, think of that extra “S” at the end as security in the mind of your customer. Your customers, just like you, want to be secure when they visit a website. Google, with its Chrome browser, overtly labels whether a website is secure or not both in the address bar and on SERPs.

If you have login functionality, accept credit cards, or even form submissions, HTTPS is essential. Google very publicly considers this a best practice, but really what do they know…oh right we want to rank there!

So Google likes it, it keeps your info private, it keeps your users’ info private, and it future-proofs your site. Winner, winner.

2: Robots.txt & Sitemap

Stick with me, we’re going to get a little technical. But don’t worry we’re not going to write code together, yet…maybe. Instead, you’re simply going to help search engines find your site.

Honestly, you’re just being really nice and giving them directions to where on the site they’re allowed to go. A handy little map of your site.

First, we’re going to create a file on your root domain (like a tree down in the roots). That map is going to tell search engines if we have any pages or areas on the site we don’t think they should go, so we minimize the search engine’s chance of getting lost. And we’re going to tell them where to find the map.

It will look something like this:

http://ift.tt/2ATToeC

We have a robots.txt guide with best practices and several common mistakes. This should help you troubleshoot any errors you find. Better yet, you might learn how to avoid the most common mistakes before making them.

Next up is the sitemap! There are a lot of free sitemap generator tools out ther. Most will only crawl 500 pages and generate a map from what they find. The xml sitemap file will live at the root just like the robots.txt file, but it will also be listed in your robots.txt:

http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

And the location will be spelled out in your robots.txt file like so:

User-agent: * Sitemap: http://ift.tt/2C32aWT

3: Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools

Now you have a sitemap living on your site and recorded in your robots.txt file, so search engines will be falling all over themselves to get traffic to your site. Right??

Well…not quite. Search engines are getting smarter but they still need a little help finding the front door. Or any door really. Just like making the map itself with robots.txt, you are going to be very kind and let the search engines know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you gave them a map.

Setting up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools is the perfect nexus of easy and free. While both search engines provide guides to site owners on how to get started and fully set-up, they are best summed up as:

Sign up for free account

Submit your website

Use the free tools

Once you’ve signed up for both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, you’ll need to upload your sitemap to both as well. For Google you’ll use a separate, handy-dandy submission tool while Bing has you submit your site the same way that you submitted your robots.txt file above.

4: Make Sure Your Site is Blazing Fast

One of the most important and often-overlooked facets of your website’s performance is site speed. Site speed can make or break your website, and a slow website can be disastrous for both converting prospective customers, and convincing search engines to show you in their results.

But you don’t have to take our word for it alone. According to Kissmetrics, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Forty Percent. That is a massive amount of potential traffic lost to a single, solvable problem.

Some improvements are incredibly easy to do such as image compression. By compressing your images to be a smaller file size, there will be less to load on each page. Less to load = faster site. It’s that simple.

If you haven’t checked out any of the other links, we wrote a massive guide to site speed and page speed. That’s broken down into chapters depending on what kind of technical support you have on staff or on retainer.

5: Site Navigation

Time for another easy win. Well..mostly easy but definitely all win. Navigation is used by prospects, customers, and search engines to get around your site. The ultimate test: it should make it easier for users to find what they are looking for.

Navigation doesn’t just magically do that though!

Global Navigation which is at the top of each page sends really strong signals to both users and to search engines of what your site is about. What questions they could answer by visiting. If you use vague, interchangeable language that tells people little about what you offer or what makes your business special, you’re wasting a great opportunity to increase qualified traffic.

Order your navigation links and anchor text by importance from left to right. Ensure the text of the link is highlydescriptive. (Psst “Products” is not descriptive. However, “LandSpeeder Cars” is!)

6: Set Up Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Once you have your website ready to rock, it’s time to get it in front of the eagerly awaiting populace. But before your site’s going to show up on a Google results page, you’ll have to decide what you want that to look like, and what kinds of searches you want to show up for.

The different parts of the listing are called the title tag and the meta description.

Title Tags are exactly what they sound like: The title of the listing on the Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

The “meta description” is that brief description or preview of your site content that shows up under the clickable title. Title tags especially are incredibly important as they play a huge part in determining how your website ranks for any given Google search.

For example: say you’re making a website that sells lightsabers.

When writing the title tags and meta descriptions, you’ll want to make sure you include words that make it crystal clear what you are selling. Ideally, you’ll match the language and jargon of your title as closely as possible to the language your customers would use to search for your product.

For instance, your customers might head to Google and type something like “jedi lightsabers” or “sith lightsabers” more than “sith saber”. Using the terms that most align with your customers’ thinking and language is a great way to improve visibility and clicks.

An important distinction: While you want to be descriptive and clear, do not stuff your title tags and meta descriptions with the keywords just because you know that the word shows up in a lot of searches. Doing spammy things like this can reflect negatively on your brand to prospective customers. And Google’s been wise to this trick for many years, so there’s literally no upside to shoe-horning in a dozen instances of the same word.

7: N.A.P. in your schema

Remember when we said we weren’t writing code yet, but maybe later? Well we got there finally. Cringe away, but don’t stop reading.

It’s a truly teeny amount of code, and we’re going to use a tool to help you do it. (Tell no one and take all the credit!)

Put simply, “Structured Data” lets search engines understand your website better. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex agreed on a shared vocabulary to use a while back. We’re simply going to use that specific vocab to help them understand your site better.

This is where our secret weapon comes in, Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper (long name for such a helpful tool).

You’ll be given two different options for the output: Microdata (the tool defaults to this) and JSON-LD.

Microdata will be attached to your html. Google will give you back the html code and highlight it so you (or a helpful developer) can see exactly where it goes in the code for your site. If you use JSON-LD, the code is also provided and goes into the “head” section of your page.

(Pssst, we also have a guide to implementing JSON-LD on your site. What can we say, we like to be helpful too.)

I’m using my current restaurant obsession in Seattle’s International District as our example. (I have a serious dumpling addiction)

I’ll be giving you the JSON-LD code because it is smaller and easier honestly. We could fill the entire article with html code and just highlight where the microdata would go…

Looks scary, until you realize that it's all done for you in the tool. Copy & Paste time.

8: Google My business

One of the most important determinants of success with search engines is maximizing the amount of space you occupy on a results page. This sounds over-simple, but it’s true. Beyond giving more specific information to suit all the different questions users might have had from store hours to available inventory, the more space on a search results page that you occupy, the less space there is for the next competitor to show up.

One product that helps in this regard is Google My Business. Now, you may not recognize “Google My Business” by its formal tool name (I didn’t either), but you most certainly have seen it in the wild.

When you search for a business on Google, it’s powering that great big name and logo on the right side of the screen.

Taking the time to use this tool and effectively claim your business gives you much more real estate to work with than just traditional search listings, so it is incredibly helpful when setting up an internet presence. This is especially true for cases where people are already familiar enough to search for your business by name.

Fortunately, setting up a Google My Business account is incredibly easy. All you have to do is go to the My Business home page, create an account, enter your businesses information, and voila! You now have My Business Page.

People will now be able to see core information about your business right on the results page, which will help increase your visibility and qualified traffic.

9: Fully Set Up Social Media Accounts

After you’ve got your website setup and are heading down the path of optimization (SEO is a long game), it’s time to think about social if you haven’t already. If you ask a random sample of people what social media sites are “the best”, you may get a random sample of answers: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest.

We’d like to make this easy and effective for you, not to mention that this is a massive topic, so for now we’ll stick with just one recommendation: only use social media that you will actually use.

Social media can be a fantastic tool to help expand your reach and grow your business, but only when it is actually used as the communication tool that it is. Meaning if you don’t manage it, you’re creating just another empty space that can distract from channels where you’re keeping information current, engaging with customers, etc. You start to see how setting up a social media account for your business and not using it can actually take away from your bottom line.

10: Set-up Google Analytics

Once you have the raw material of your site, your social media accounts, and perhaps some paid search or other ads, it’s time to evaluate what’s paying off, and how much.

Maybe you notice your phone ringing a little more, but if you have many new promotional efforts running at once, it’s impossible to know which are working without the proper measurement tools. That’s where Google Analytics comes in.

Google Analytics is a free (!!) platform that allows you to track just about every aspect of your website. Did that spike in visitors come from an ad or an organic search engine result? What site referred that great customer to you? What did the rest of your visitors do once they hit your site?

Whether it’s pageviews, conversions, or referral source, Google Analytics tracks everything. This allows you to make much more informed decisions regarding your website, your marketing, and improving your results proactively.

For a platform that can show you so much, and which costs literally $0.00, it takes next to nothing to get it set up. After setting yourself up with a Google Analytics account, there are only three broad but basic steps remaining:

On the Admin page, under the Properties tab, click on “Create a New Property”

Enter all of your website data to get your custom GA tracking code

Paste the following snippet right after the head tag on each page you would like to track.

Do make sure to replace “GA_Tracking_ID” with the custom ID you got in step two above. And if you’d like a more detailed walkthrough, Moz provides a great 101-level intro to Google Analytics including sample business questions you might want to answer.

Where to From Here?

You’ve got a site that’s far more visible than it was when you started. Your site is loading in half the time it was before. You’ve picked out a social media platform that fits your style and your schedule. And you know where the heck all that traffic is coming from, not to mention which parts of the traffic is converting into leads or customers.

When you’re ready to lean into that faster, more effective site, looking at how to advertise successfully in paid search (PPC) or paid social media is a great way to show up at the moments your prospective customers are considering a product or service like yours.

Until next time, happy Marketing from all of us here at Portent!

The Portent team, if were were George Lucas characters.

http://ift.tt/2Alizpp