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altarwaiting · 4 years

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How to gif without photoshop (second method)

Hello! A couple months ago I made a tutorial on how to gif without photoshop using the website ezgif. I got a really great response for it and received some requests for the other giffing program I use when I don’t have access to photoshop. The program is called instagiffer; this is a software so it needs to be downloaded but I have never had any trouble with my version.

Warning that this is VERY text and image heavy because I know how frustrating it can be when a tutorial feels like it’s skipping steps and I want this to be as clear as possible. Also please read this on desktop, tumblr mobile kills the quality of gifs inside text posts.

Please reblog if you found this helpful!

This is the video I will be giffing and here is the gif I will be making!

What you need:

Instagiffer

This program has been around since 2013 and I have used it since 2016. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated since 2016 and the download link on the official website is broken. That being said, there are a few other websites that still have a working download, which is what I linked to above.

ezgif

Although we aren’t going to use this website to make the gif, we are going to use it to add more color and brightness to the gif.

A video downloader

This is the video downloader I use but basically any youtube/video download website works. There are two ways to gif on instagiffer; using a video and using the built in screen recorder. I will show you how to use both.

A video to gif

This program is a lot more forgiving about video quality than ezgif is, but for best results 720p or 1080p is still the standard. Scenes with good lighting and bright colors turn out the best, but you can still make good looking gifs from darker or unsaturated scenes if you know what you’re doing.

1. Making a gif with a downloaded video

Step One: Getting the frames

First, you download the video you want to gif. Then you open up instagiffer and click on “load video.” Scroll down until you find the video you want to gif and click on it.

The video will appear on the screen in the right hand side. Go ahead and put “smoothness” up as high as it can go. This increases the frames per second and makes the gif look smoother. It also makes the gif longer, so you may have to bring it down later so it doesn’t go over tumblr’s size limit, but I always start as high as possible then work down.

Next, find the moment in the video you want to gif. You can either use the sliding bar or just type in the start time (you can use hours, minutes, seconds, and millisecond). You also want to put how long the clip you want to gif is. 3 seconds is the default but I usually bump it up to at least 4 (unless I know it’s a really short clip) just because it’s a lot easier to delete frames than add them.

If you do this, you’ll quickly realize your gif has extra frames that appear slightly before and slightly after the moment you want to gif. It’s really easy to get rid of those frames; just click on them until you only see the frames you want in the gif. Use the scroll bar at the bottom of the gif to move around the frames, and use it to make sure the only thing on screen is the clip you want included in the gif.

Step Two: Resize the gif, brighten the gif, change the speed and add captions

Now, it’s time to size, brighten, and color your gif! First look at the “frame size” option. Using the correct gif size for tumblr is one of the easiest ways to make sure the gif looks good. For gifs that take up a whole row, the size should be 540p wide. For two gifs in one row, the size is 268p each. For three gifs in one row, the sizes are 177p, 178p, and 177p in that order. Here is a visual of it. You can see what the width/height of the gif is in the bottom right hand corner of the gif screen. I am making this gif 268p. Get the frame size as close to the width you want as possible; right now, it is 269x151. To get it down to 268 exactly, go up to the top of the program, click on “frame” > “manual crop”. This little box will pop up. Just set the width to 268 and make sure the size is listed as 268 under the gif as well. The height can stay the same.

Keep quality up to 100 obviously. I almost always brighten by 2. Unless you’re giffing something with a huge spot of light, 2 is basically standard. Going up any higher usually makes the gif just look grainy, but if the scene is REALLY badly lit, you can go up to 3. Playback rate is usually -1, just to make the gif look smoother. Unless it’s a super long gif or a super short gif, I don’t mess with it further.

Captions are obviously optional but if you want to add one, click on “click here to add a new caption.” A box will pop up with options of how you want the text to look. I only use this to “caption” gifs (aka add dialogue). The settings I use are 12pt font, calibri, white, bold italic, bottom of gif, outline up to 3. You can also chose what frame you want the caption to start/end on if you want. Since this gif doesn’t have talking, I’m not going to include the caption in the final gif, but I wanted to show how to use this function.

Step Three: Color the gif

There are two parts to this. The first place I color the gif is on instagiffer, and then I use ezgif to add more effects. The second part is totally optional but they have more choices for coloring there.

Click on the “open effects panel”. A window will open showing what the gif currently looks like, along with a variety of filters you can use. Ignore how grainy it looks, it won’t look that way when it’s finished.

First thing is keep “enhance” up to 100. This is basically a sharpening function and without it the gif will get super blurry. There are a ton of filters you can play around with, but the only two I focus on usually are “color fade” and “colorize.” For color fade, I click it on and set it at 10. Obviously, if you’re trying to make a desaturated gifset, you can raise it up for a faded color effect, but I use it more for color balance than desaturation. Next click on colorize, and then color picker.

I almost always pick a light shade of blue, purple or pink; it brings out the color in the gif and tends to keep skin tones from being washed out. This is usually my default:

Then, I bring the “colorize” option down to 90 to increase the effects of shadows.

Last thing to do is click create gif! It’ll take a few seconds, especially for longer gifs, so be patient. ALSO there is a good chance you’re going to get a message saying something to the effect of “this gif is too big for tumblr’s photo limit.” Feel free to ignore that; the software being old means it still has the photo limit as 2gb when now it is 5-6gb so almost any gif you make will be considered “too big.”

Your gif now shows up in a preview tab! It should also show up as a file labeled “insta” on your desktop.

Here is the gif so far.

You can end here if you want. But when using instagiffer, I always go to ezgif to brighten up the colors further.

This part is basically the same as how you would color a gif you made in ezgif (see this tutorial) but I’ll quickly walk through what I do.

Go to ezgif.com/effects. Click chose file and upload your gif. First, you’re going to want to up the saturation, brightness, and contrast. You have to play around with these functions a lot because every scene is different, but in general, I have my saturation up pretty high and my brightness and contrast at at least 8. For a scene as dark and desaturated as this, I put saturation at 200, brightness at 12, and contrast at 16.

Afterwards, you want to go down to “color presets” and select “tint.” In my other tutorial, I recommended tinting with a light red or light blue, but for gifs made on instagiffer, I tend to use a light yellow/gold. I already tinted the gif purple in instagiffer so adding yellow in ezgif tends to balance it out. The shade I used for this gif is #fffcf0.

If the gif ends up looking too yellow, either decrease saturation, or click the “effects” button under the gif and add a layer of light purple to balance the colors more.

Your final gif should look like this.

2. Making a gif with the “capture screen” feature

This only changes the method of how you get gif frames. Everything related to resizing, coloring/effects, and adding captions is the same as above.

What if you don’t have a download of the thing you want to gif? The great thing about instagiffer is it has a built in screen recorder so you can gif any video you want, even if you can’t download it (or if you’re like me and don’t want to deal with downloading a 45 minute episode of something just to gif one scene).

To use this tool, click on the “capture screen” button on the top right corner next to “load video.” Then this screen will pop up.

You’re going to want to take this blue screen over to the screen you want to capture. I’m going to put it over the youtube video I am giffing. Adjust it so the only thing it’s focused on is the video and set the length in seconds. I usually set it for longer than the clip is just because it’s easier to remove extra frames than rerecord a scene. There is also sometimes a lag so starting it right before the scene you want to gif helps with that. For example, if the clip I’m giffing is 3 seconds long, I set it to 3.5. Then start running the video and click “start” on the screen!

Your frames will now show up on instagiffer. Everything is the same, except you can’t change the frame rate or timing. Go ahead and delete frames that you don’t need by clicking on them. After that, just use the same resizing, and coloring method I outlined above.

Some notes:

When using the video download option, the effects you use will save, as will the size of the gif. So if you gif one part of a video, then move the time stamp to another part, it will stay in whatever size you put the gif as. However, when using screen capture, you have to resize the gif and go to the effects menu each time because they reset after each use of the screen recorder.

You can also just paste a youtube link into the white bar at the top of instagiffer to gif it, but I’ve found that the quality is much better if you download or use the capture screen.

To crop a gif, move the red box around (just make sure it stays the right width size!)

If you are using the screen recorder and only want to record part of the video (like just a characters outfit) size the gif recorder so it’s just surrounding the part of the video you want to see.

I hope this made sense lol, it took me a few days to write it all so please let me know if you have questions or need anything clarified! Support me on Ko-Fi if you’d like and are able 💕💕💕

#gif tutorial #giffing tutorial #giffing #gifmaking #mine #my gifs #blood //#long post #@ anon hope this helps!

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fatphobiabusters · 5 years

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Mobile Version: Submissions Policy

[Please Don’t Reblog this Post. Thanks.]

Below is the contents of our Submissions Policy page, but for mobile users. To find this page again, please use the search bar to search either for “Submission Policy,” “Ask and Submission Guidelines,” or “Mobile Submission Policy.”

Please pay attention as this page will likely be updated regularly. You should review the guidelines and look for changes whenever a new update is available.

Last Updated in February, 2019.

Dear Current and Future Followers,

Thank you for taking the time to grace our blog with your presence. We appreciate you being here.

Below are all of the guidelines for sending submissions to our blog. Please review these guidelines carefully before sending us a submission.

We want to make sure everyone’s experience on our blog is as pleasurable as possible, and having people send submissions that are upsetting, are repeats of previous questions, or are full of unnecessary/offensive language make people’s experiences on our blog less delightful.

We want to be as useful of a resource to people as possible, but we cannot do that under negative conditions. Both the way you say something and what you specifically say are important, and can make a huge difference in how we perceive your ask or how we answer it, so please be aware of that and follow these guidelines closely. In short, we have guidelines for your benefit. So please do your best to follow them.

Most of our guidelines for submissions are exactly the same as the guidelines for our asks, so please review our Ask Policy before you send us a submission as well! This page will only focus on the guidelines that are unique to submissions, but the guidelines in both pages apply at all times. Please keep that in mind when you write your submission.

If any of the guidelines are unclear to you (for example, if you don’t understand what a specific rule is asking or aren’t sure what would qualify as breaking that rule), or if you need further elaboration on any of the guidelines, please let us know. We are more than happy to help you with this.

Thank you for making an effort to learn our guidelines, for following them, and for being so thoughtful and understanding.

Submission Guidelines:

One: If the submission you are sending is in response to a post or ask already on our blog, please do not send us a submission. Reblog the post/ask or comment on the thread instead.

You can see our Ask Policy for more details about this rule, and for an explanation of why this rule is in place.

Two: For text submissions, please keep your submission as organized and as well written as possible so we can understand it. Make sure you use paragraphs, proofread, and explain things in detail, especially if your submission is long.

We cannot respond to you if we do not understand you, so making sure we can easily read what you wrote needs to be your priority. We need to know why you are sending this submission and what your submission is trying to say. Otherwise, we won’t know how to react to it.

Three: Please do not send anything even vaguely close to NSFW if you are under 18, even if you will be 18 soon.

We are so serious about this; this is not okay with us. No exceptions.

Note: This also applies to asks.

Four: Please remember before you submit something that this is not a porn blog and that minors follow us. If you are an adult, do not submit fully nude or sexual photos of any kind, or images with sexual captions.

This blog is not meant for your sexual gratification, and it is not meant for making sexual content or finding sexual partners. Please do not attempt to use the blog that way.

This is especially important given the new Tumblr guidelines. We do not want our blog to get in trouble because of you, and we do not want to put any of our followers in danger. Please consider this before you submit something.

Five: Include your age and gender pronouns in your selfie submissions so that we can compliment you properly. This only applies to pictures of yourself; we don’t need this for other things unless you feel it is relevant or important for us to know it.

Six: Please be respectful of other people’s selfie submissions. No bullying or body shaming, no sexual harassment, no misgendering, etc.

We will block you for this. Do not do it.

Note: This applies to replies, reblogs, and asks. Please don’t send asks mocking other people’s selfie submissions, or reblog them to add mean comments in any way! Make sure you don’t tag your reblogs with anything offensive or inappropriate, either!

Seven: If you are submitting screenshots of something you want us to address, such as a post you want us to debunk, please make sure you don’t leave out any context, and try to provide us with names and sources.

Do not submit someone else’s words or images as if they were your own, do not submit art or written work without credit, etc. We will not tolerate plagiarism of any kind.

On that note, do not take screenshots of posts if you know the person who wrote it would not be okay with that. Please do not violate anyone’s boundaries here.

Also, please try to include image descriptions if you can (we understand if, for longer screenshots or a collection of many screenshots, you find that difficult), and please explain to us why you are submitting this screenshot so that we know how to respond to it. This also goes for any links you submit to us as well. Be specific, please!

Eight: If you are submitting something to let us know someone has been mocking or speaking badly about the blog or its moderators, don’t. We don’t want to hear it. We get enough drama without you bringing more to us; if people do not like us, that is their problem. Please do not make it ours.

Nine: If we are not comfortable with a submission you have sent us, do not want to deal with that submission, do not understand your submission, or do not know how to respond to your submission, it is possible we will either ignore it for a while or delete it. Please remember this as you are writing your submission.

What we are comfortable answering may change on a given day. Some days, we are more willing to argue and to debate than others. Some days, we find it easier to understand the things in our inbox and find it easier to respond to them than others. There are times when we aren’t going to be sure how to deal with things, or where we just don’t feel up to it, and we need you to understand that.

We have gotten submissions before where we honestly had no idea what was being said. We didn’t know if it was pro fat or anti fat. We didn’t know if it was asking a question or making a statement. Etc. And sometimes, those kinds of submissions are easier to deal with than others.

Basically, what I’m asking is that you be considerate when you send submissions. Consider whether or not your submission is necessary. Consider whether or not it might cause us distress or discomfort. Consider whether or not we can understand it.

And be considerate when waiting for us to post it. If we don’t post it, be understanding about that and accept it.

Note: This also applies to asks. Please remember this when sending us asks instead of submissions.

***

For now, that’s all you need to know about sending submissions. Let us know if you have any questions, or if anything was confusing for you. We are always happy to help you.

Please make sure you check out our Ask Policy, Blog Rules, Do Not Interact List, and other important pages before attempting to interact with our blog.

Remember: the rest of the rules for our submissions are the same as what is in our Ask Policy. You have to read that page too before sending us a submission. Just because we didn’t repeat ourselves a bunch by copying the rules from there that apply here too does not mean that you get a pass on breaking the rules.

It should be pretty obvious which rules apply to both asks and submissions, but feel free to ask us if you are not sure.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and we hope you have a lovely day! Sincerely,

The Fatphobia Busters Team

#Submission Policy #Submissions Policy #Mobile Submission Policy #Ask and Submission Guidelines #Submission Guidelines #Important #For Our Followers #Formerly Mod Bella #Formerly Mod V #Aria Announces

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sieben9 · 6 years

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“dreamcatcher” impressions

{Quick request to anyone reading: I’m watching OUaT for the first time, and I want to avoid spoilers. So, if you want to discuss something spoilery, I’d be grateful if you could start a new post for that. Thank you!}

OK, just putting it out there: this was a good episode. Like, really, really good. I loved it, even the bits that I definitely should not have. Looking at you, Emma.

seriously, what the hell, woman?

I mean, there were many good parts to this episode, obviously, but the bit pictured above in particular hit so well. That moment of "oh, yeah, right, she's the Dark One" could not have been set up and executed any better. Because it's not a huge over-the-top thing. It's quiet, almost unnoticable, and utterly horrifying. She's a thirteen-year-old girl, Emma. What the hell?

More shouting under the cut.

To continue the bit from above for a little: Obviously I don't think what Emma did was good on a human-being level. Obviously. But man, was it a good story move, and did it ever show off the breakdown of Emma's moral compass. Because outwardly, she seemed to be doing OK so far, only now we know that nope, she absolutely isn't. Someone keep an eye on her or before you know it there will be snails everywhere.

ok, i can see the upside, but he isn't worth it, i guess

Speaking of the whole heart-fiasco, I adored that storyline in Camelot where Emma and Regina got to work together on 1) performing a dark spell to free a centuries old wizard who got turned into a tree with his own tear and 2) help their son with his first foray into romance. ...honestly, they sound equally stressful.

Of course, it turned out that Emma was being The Worst parent, but everything before that reveal was solid, immensely enjoyable family-relationship development, and I loved it. Just... look at all these wonderful people and how far they've come since "stay away from my son or I will destroy you, if it's the last thing I do." ::happy sigh::

nobody in this conversation knows what they're doing and it's adorable

I also thought the reveal was set up rather nicely with the other Emma/Regina plot--specifically the bit where Emma gets to see Daniel's death. When Regina said that Cora "thought she was doing what was best", you could see Emma sit up and take notice. Which, Emma, m'dear, was 100% the wrong takeaway from that scene. Just... damn, woman. (Also tells you something about Cora, who managed to sink to that depth with absolutely no curse to help her along.)

there are SO many things wrong with this scene...

The worst thing is that it worked, too. They did get the tear they needed, Emma did get Merlin out of that tree (and was that just me or did she enjoy using that much magic wayyyy too much?) and they made a huge step towards their original goal and also in whatever they're planning to do with Arthur, now. (I mean, they're hardly going to let him just rule his fake kingdom via roofie-dust, are they?)

And if Robin and Regina hadn't found that dreamcatcher, nobody would ever have known. Least of all Henry...

might have been better for his peace of mind, though. just saying.

That was an interesting turn in Regina's attitude towards Emma, too. Because until then she was absolutely convinced that Emma could still be "brought back". The moment Emma hurt Henry, that optimism all but vanished. The supportive streak definitely did. I wonder if she knew from the start that it had been Emma who let the horse go so that she and Henry could "find" him, but didn't say anything because it seemed like such a harmless "misdeed", compared to what else Emma might do. There's no in-text evidence for this (except for the fact that Regina realised immediately that Emma had released the horse when the conversation turned that way, so she had probably been suspicious for a while), but it seems likely enough.

Barely related, but still worth mentioning: Henry and Violet continue to be adorable together. Even if the first date was something of an evil-mom-induced disaster, and even if Henry thinks that "Harold and Maude" is a good date movie. (I mean, I love that movie to bits, but still.)

Alright, after all that gushing, I have to take a moment to bring up a bit of the episode that I did not like. At all. Careful, here there be ranting.

"All you need is a sword and one good hand"

Well, fuck you, Merida. And fuck you, show, for presenting this as uncritically as you did.

Look, no matter how he got by the injury in the first place, Rumplestiltskin is permanently disabled. The fact that he literally cannot walk has nothing to do with his "attitude" or how "brave" he is. It's something that his body cannot do.

Even if he put aside his very rational misgivings and decided to fight, any fully mobile opponent could beat him easily. And listening to Merida berate him for minutes on end for having a disability was... deeply unpleasant.

Teaching the guy how to swing a sword seems like a shitty way to "make" him brave, even if you can ignore the ableist writing in this part of the plot, is what I'm saying here.

::deep breath::

That said, Merida's actions do make sense from her in-universe perspective. This is the main kind of "bravery" she knows, and she's not exactly in a good spot herself, what with Emma holding her heart, and all that.

Though if you do something to that cup, lady, I will find you and I will personally stick a bunch of hornets under your bedsheets. I know where to get them, they keep flying into my room all the time...

I also really did like the plot around Rumple's disappearance. Both on his end (minus the points mentioned above), and on that of the people looking for him. That part came as a surprise, to be honest, because I really didn't expect anyone besides Belle to care.

there is no caption that could make this picture more hilarious

Seeing them all work together was a nice touch, too. The cast tends to get a little entrenched in established pair-ups, so seeing them pool their resources and talents like this felt like a good change of pace. Bonus points for Regina's satisfied little smirk when she conjured up Henry's scarf to open the door. Just... some good old-fashioned teamwork on display. I liked it.

And, in closing news... they got Merlin back! Yay!

still unreasonably attractive, tbh

Naturally, I am deeply suspicious, because this is far too early in the season to get to any solutions, and also Emma is still the Dark One in Storybrooke, with no sign of Merlin anywhere. So either 1) he's a fake or 2) things are about to get exponentially worse.

I'm guessing 2, by the way.

#ouat #once upon a time #ouat dreamcatcher #sieben watches ouat #swearing cw #i mean i tend to swear in all of these #but it's not particularly jokey this time #so if you don't like that #proceed with caution

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margaretbeagle · 3 years

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How to Optimize Content for Maximum Traffic in 2021

With over four billion daily searches, Google continues to dominate the search engine market in 2021. More than that, its first SERP page is enough for 90% of users to find the desired results.

Source

What does it mean for content marketers and SEO specialists?

If you want potential leads to come across your website, do your best to rank high enough for them to see it.

Searching habits change, and Google changes the criteria of what your content should look like to drive more organic website traffic and rank higher. Even the slightest modifications to content can influence your SEO and overall marketing efforts. All you need to do is play by Google’s rules and ensure that you make full use of your marketing content in 2021.

In this article, you’ll find actionable tips on how to optimize content for maximum traffic and higher ranks in search engines.

What Google Wants from Your Content in 2021

To rank high and bring traffic in 2021, your content needs to meet user search intent. While it’s not a new concept, it enjoys a new lease on life after 2020, when searcher behavior changed so rapidly.

As you know, search intent is the reason behind a user’s search. Three main types of search intent are:

informational (when a user looks for answers to how, what, or when queries);

navigational (when a user looks for a specific URL or brand);

transactional (when a user looks to purchase, download something, start a trial, etc.)

Your task is to define the search intent and optimize your content with related keywords accordingly.

Another crucial detail to consider:

Draw on Google’s E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust) guidelines when publishing your content. Google mentions E-A-T in its Quality Raters Guidelines; and while it’s not a technical ranking factor itself, appealing to E-A-T in content can help you optimize it much better to outrank competitors.

Do your best to create longer-form content in 2021. First, it allows you to meet the above-mentioned E-A-T guidelines easier. And second, it’s your chance to outperform websites publishing shorter and vague articles on their blog.

As Ron Lieback, CEO at ContentMender mentioned lately, “Throughout 2020, blogs over 2,000 words dramatically outperform blogs of 1,000 words or less. Expect this long-form content trend to continue in 2021.”

Plus, longer content will earn more quality backlinks for your website, influencing its ratings and overall traffic too:

Source

Content Formats That Are Working Now

Sure thing, there’s no single type of content that would appeal to every user. That’s the reason marketers vary the content formats and submit them to resources with corresponding user preferences.

And yet, some formats are more popular and traffic-potential than others. In 2021, they are as follows:

White papers. It’s your chance to engage the audience with useful information and show that you’re not just about selling but authority and trust too. White papers are about in-depth and research-based content, so corresponding writing apps can help you organize it the best way possible.

Checklists. One of the easiest content formats to create, checklists are extremely popular among the audience because of their usability.

Videos. 72% of people prefer video over text, and it makes landing pages 86% more convertible. If you don’t have video content in your marketing strategy yet, it’s high time to start.

Webinars. They help you show off expertise and demonstrate products or services at work. After the pandemic of 2020, when all the communication went online, webinars have become a must-have of most marketing strategies.

Email newsletters. Not only does it help you highlight other content formats, but it can also be an independent source of traffic and conversion. Given the email’s huge ROI of 40%, you can’t ignore this content format in 2021.

“Be the Source” blog posts and content hubs. These are in-depth, research-backed content pieces that bring new, useful information to readers. According to statistics, such posts bring more traffic and get more backlinks and shares. A great reason to start a blog in 2021, don’t you agree? Just focus on validity and visualize your data for better perception. (You’ve probably noticed that all the images of this article are data visualization, haven’t you?)

Case studies. One of the most effective content formats, case studies allow highlighting your competitive advantage. They are your instrument to build authority and trust, as well as publish niche-specific content that will bring value to your target audience.

Content Optimization Strategies:

And now, for the most interesting part: Your steps to content optimization for maximum traffic.

1) Optimize for Video- and Email Marketing

When creating video content, make sure its intro is engaging: You have only 15 seconds to make viewers decide whether they want to continue watching.

When on Youtube, remember about proper optimization:

Add keywords to titles and descriptions.

Think of eye-pleasing YouTube banners and engaging thumbnails.

Add closed captions, subtitles, and tags.

Promote your content with email newsletters. Optimize their content so that subscribers won’t have any chance to miss it. Backlinko’s Brian Dean suggests sending them exclusive content, using a blog post newsletter formula:

2) Optimize for Mobile and Voice Search

More than half of Internet traffic comes from mobile devices today, making a mobile-friendly website a must for those willing to succeed. We know that Google rewards mobile-optimized platforms with higher visibility and traffic, so do your best to produce mobile-optimized content this year:

Stay concise, write in short sentences and paragraphs, and avoid overly complicated lexical items. It will serve for more comfortable content consumption from small mobile screens.

Use mobile-optimized keywords.

Place the more engaging information to the page-top so that it would load first.

And now, for voice search. Two words:

It grows.

More than 40% of users perform at least one voice search every day, so why not optimize your content accordingly? Therefore, you’ll help them find your website and attract more traffic to it.

Include relevant questions to your content and answer them as clearly as possible. Organize content into sections with a title for each to help Google understand what’s in there.

3) Optimize for Snippets

We know snippets as Position Zero in Google. They can take the form of a paragraph, list, video, or table, and they steal tons of clicks from the first position in SERPs.

Featured snippets look like this:

By optimizing your content accordingly, you can increase your chances of getting there. For that:

Make it well-structured: use headings, subheads, step-by-step instructions, concise descriptions, etc.

Optimize for a keyword you already rank in the top 10 but not a snippet.

Design a content block on your page, looking like a snippet: add a list, draw a table, or write a definition.

4) Optimize for Common Questions

Google’s algorithms become smarter with every passing year. Not only do they understand questions and feature them in SERPs, but they also consider related concepts to answer too, therefore satisfying a user’s intent.

In plain English, Google implements semantic factors to search.

Optimizing your content for common questions, you’ll improve its organic search visibility and rankings, influence its chances of getting to featured snippets, and engage more users.

Consider “People also ask,” “People also search for,” “Searches related to,” and other tactics to find relevant questions to include in your content.

5) Remember On-Page SEO Tricks

Revise your every content piece before publishing and make sure it’s as SEO-optimized as possible. Keywords, meta tags, inbound and outbound links’ quality — you can control all this for better visibility and traffic.

Please pay attention to a page’s URL: Make it short and use a keyword in it. (Short URLs get more clicks, and that’s why they rank better.)

Use a kind of the 80/20 rule for keywords in your content: Target 80% evergreen keywords (those adding value and solving users’ problems) and 20% trending keywords. Also, remember to mention related keywords in your content too.

Optimize meta tags: Keep a title short (40-50 characters) and a description — shorter than 150-160 (remember about optimization for mobile). Use your target keyword in at least one subheading of your content. And don’t ignore alt-tags!

Always add internal links to your content. They signal to Google about the relevance of other pages on your website.

A couple of outbound links to authority websites are worth adding too.

6) Use Content Design Tactics

The way you format content pieces can drastically influence the dwell time and bounce rate of your page. (Both are critical to convincing Google that your information is worth higher rankings.)

These content design tactics from experienced SEO copywriters can help:

Master the art of writing opening paragraphs: use hooks, bucket brigades, and APP (agree, promise, preview) or PPB (preview, proof, bridge) introduction formulas from Brian Dean.

Remember content usability: write in short sentences and paragraphs, add a call to action in conclusion, and avoid usability blunders such as hard-to-see subheads, wrong color-contrast ratio, etc.

Use high-quality visual content: brand images, original graphs, interactive infographics.

Consider emotional writing tactics and neuro-copywriting tricks when applicable: They engage and appeal to users’ needs, therefore influencing your content virality.

7) Repurpose and Update Content Regularly

Content standards and formats change so often that we have no time to craft all of them from scratch. However, two tactics can help to get a new boost of traffic and scale up your marketing endeavors:

Repurpose your content: Match it to different formats or reuse its specific sections for other platforms. You can also try organizing content in topic clusters for more traffic.

Update your old content pieces regularly: Google ranks new content higher; plus, users will hardly click a five-year-old article, considering its information outdated. Focus on those still relevant for your content strategy.

Takeaways

In 2021, content quality matters more than ever:

Searching habits and content standards change, Google’s algorithms become even smarter, and all this makes marketers wrestle with a question, “How to please both a user and a search engine? How to get both higher ranks in Google and more clicks from users?”

Proper content optimization is what can help. Even the slightest modifications can influence your marketing efforts. So, be familiar with the most recent searching habits and content optimization trends, and play by Google’s rules to win SERPs.

The post How to Optimize Content for Maximum Traffic in 2021 appeared first on Scoop.it Blog.

How to Optimize Content for Maximum Traffic in 2021 published first on https://improfitninja.weebly.com/

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artrewards11-blog · 3 years

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How Instagram Can Help Promote Your Businesses Marketing Strategy

When forming your social media strategy for your business, Instagram is an excellent mobile marketing app that can effectively carry over your companies marketing strategy. While Instagram is not the only tool that has been proven effective for businesses, it is hard to ignore as it is currently valued at One Billion dollars and 80 million+ users. There are many ways that Instagram can be a huge benefit when promoting your businesses: marketing strategy, philosophy, and brand image. Here are a few key tips to keeping your Instagram account consistent with your marketing strategy. Best Instagram art Hashtags for artists

Create your own unique hashtag

Creating your own unique hashtag is a simple way to build a loyal following on your businesses Instagram. Once you establish a name for your hashtag, make sure that you are promoting it to your audience by posting it across all social networks and as a caption on every Instagram post. Instagram also makes it very convenient to monitor which followers are actively using your businesses hashtag. I recommend engaging with the users who post your hashtag by either thanking them personally or re-posting their photo, and tagging them. By recognizing the users who are actively using your hashtag, new users will be encouraged to post as well.

Geo-Tagging Your Photos

Geo-Tagging your photos on Instagram, will allow your business to involve your community on a completely different level. By Geo-tagging photos, your followers will be able to view the location(s) of your business if you happen to be a: retail store, restaurant, or office location. Geo-tagging is another great way to build your businesses following. If you and a co-worker go out to lunch at Chipotle, you can geo-tag your photo at the location you are dining at. By doing so, Instagram users who also geo-tag this same location will be able to see your photo, which will hopefully encourage them to follow your businesses account. Become a professional artist on Instagram

Encourage Employee Posts

Some of your most loyal promoters should be your employees. Encourage your employees to be actively involved in posting photos on your businesses account a few times a week. By having your employees on board, users who are following your account will appreciate the ability to get to know more about your company's employees. As long as you set clear guidelines of what is appropriate to post, you should gain a following rather quickly due to the variety of different types of posts your account will consist of.

Connect your Social Media Accounts

Be sure to sync all of your businesses other social media accounts to your Instagram every time you post a photo. Having all of your social media accounts connected, your audience has a high potential to expand, because not all of your fans and followers will follow your other accounts such as: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr. Syncing up all your other social media accounts not only allows for additional content but an opportunity for more frequent posts.

Visit Here: How to sell art on Instagram

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remelitalia · 3 years

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What Are Meta Tags?

Let’s talk about meta tags — what they are, why they matter, and how to do them better.

First things first — what made you click on this article to read it?

Maybe the title caught your eye, or perhaps it was the short blurb you saw.

You might have clicked simply because this article comes from a source you trust.

If you found this article via a search engine, though, there’s a good chance you found and clicked this article because of meta tags.

Meta tags are the foundation of SEO, and the first thing you’ll find yourself setting up when building a web page.

Without meta tags, you can’t reach readers organically.

It doesn’t take much time to generate meta tags, but it’s more important than you might think.

That’s because 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine.

This is why so many online marketers are so focused on getting SEO right.

Organic search traffic is the holy grail of SEO, so it can’t be ignored.

Your content needs to be readable and appealing to users on search engines.

There’s a very specific syntax needed.

It’s similar to how bookstores and libraries organize their archives of books — and that’s what meta tags are, essentially.

What are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are a type of HTML tag that provides search engines with information about a website page.

Let’s take a look at the basic elements.

The title and description tags make up almost the entire entry.

If not for these meta tags, all you’d see in Google SERPs would be my URL.

Title and description tags are the two most-used tags for SEO purposes, but SEO isn’t the only part of digital marketing.

Advanced digital marketing requires the use of even more tags that improve page rank and overall user experience.

Just like this search result, you’ll soon find out that these tags control how your entire digital presence is viewed and navigated.

Machines can read URLs just fine. If I wrote for machines, my website would look like this:

Google prioritizes certain tags because they provide context for people.

I built my website for people as well, so it looks like this:

This polish is what marketing is all about.

In this blog post, we will explore meta tags and see how they affect your overall digital marketing efforts.

While simple, the devil is in the details, and every detail counts.

How Meta Tags Affect Brand Image and Click-Through Rates

You absolutely can judge a book by its cover. It’s what covers are designed for.

Your title and meta description tag create the cover for your web page. They’re your first impression on most visitors.

It’s not just about search engines, but how we view the Internet.

Reddit is a basic link-aggregation site that takes away all the bells and whistles.

Reddit depends on the title and image to entice conversations and clicks.

Using meta tags correctly is like using the correct format for a business email.

Sure, you can put whatever you like out there, but there’s a level of professionalism that’s expected at some point.

Even Amazon will only give you a picture, title, and short description to make your point.

Think of these tags as your elevator pitch.

You’re given about as much space as a Tweet to sell your entire brand and product.

Which means you need to nail it.

You can’t just call in this detail and polish everything else. If you do, nobody will ever see the rest of what you polished.

We already know how meta tags affect SEO, but that’s not the only element.

Meta tags will make your email marketing and marketing automation efforts easier by providing information for emailed links.

Tags are a crucial element that determines what my automated social media posts look like.

When other bloggers, YouTubers, and social media influencers (and micro-influencers) share your content, tags make it easier.

Think of meta tags as the packaging for your product.

If your packaging isn’t spot-on, nobody will ever buy your product, no matter how great it is!

So what are some best practices to implement for tags?

Meta Tag Best Practices

There are a TON of different HTML tags that can be used on a web page. We’re only going to focus on a handful of significant tags.

We’ll start with the one that might have brought you here today.

1. Title Tags

It’s not technically a meta tag, but it shows up in the header and is used as one.

As of July 2017, the character limits for title tags in Google search results are 78 on mobile devices and 70 on a desktop.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should use all those characters, and 60 is the generally recommended limit.

Long-tail keywords make a difference.

Here are the top meta titles in the SERPs for “How to make content marketing effective.”

By adding the year, we get an entirely new set of results for “how to make content marketing effective 2017.”

Some users will want basic information, while others will want the most current.

By adjusting our title tag, we can affect which of these searches we rank for.

Ultimately, the goal is to hit both, but that’s not always feasible.

Make sure your keyword is in your title, or you’ll find your articles buried in search results.

For example, when I search for the “best tacos in Tucson,” some restaurants are on page 10 below, even Del Taco.

That’s a wasted opportunity for that taco capital of the country!

These small businesses could greatly improve their search results, sales, and ROI by simply adding “best tacos in Tucson” to their title tags.

Here’s a sample of the HTML required for a title tag located in your header.

<head>

<title>The Best Title Example I Could Come Up With</title>

</head>

In WordPress, it’s as easy as giving your page a title.

You really can’t miss it.

That’s all there is to it!

2. Image Tags

Like title tags, Image tags aren’t labeled “meta.”

But they’re clearly used by search engines, link aggregators, and other sites to identify your site.

There are two image descriptions actually crammed into one tag.

Here’s what the HTML code looks like.

Both the alt and title tags should be defined for the best experience.

The title displays on your screen when you hover your cursor over it.

The alt text displays when the image can’t be rendered (or is spoken to the blind and visually impaired).

When uploading an image to WordPress, you’ll be prompted to enter the title, caption, alt text, and description.

The more fields you fill out (even if you use the same information), the more searchable your images become.

Anywhere from 20-60% of all Google traffic goes to sites with well-optimized graphics.

Why wouldn’t you want to be included?

It’s also a matter of ADA website compliance.

There are approximately 58,200 people with some level of visual impairment per million in the U.S. alone.

That’s a huge segment of the population that wouldn’t have a great user experience without alt image tags.

Optimize your images for search engines and users.

3. Description Meta Tags

A meta description tag gives you a chance to provide an overview of the page’s content.

They’re limited to around 160 characters and aren’t directly tied to Google’s search algorithms at all!

Once again, the reason you need description tags is to improve the user experience.

Description tags encourage click-throughs.

Here’s what the HTML looks like:

Without a meta description, Google will default to whatever preview sentence it feels best encompasses the content.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

This post doesn’t have a meta description (I rarely use them), and it ranks well.

Of course, my blogs are filled with relevant content in short, sweet sentences. Most of them would work as descriptions on their own.

Still, there’s no harm in adding additional information to make your content more searchable.

4. Robots Noindex and Nofollow Meta Tags

Robot meta tags aren’t always necessary.

By default, all of the pages and links you create on your website are indexed as ‘follow’ by search bots and web crawlers.

Whenever you want to redirect them, you’ll need a robot meta tag.

Here’s the noindex HTML code:

This would be within the header and indicate this page doesn’t need to be indexed.

It’s useful for syndicated and duplicate content that your customers/readers could use, but you don’t want credit in search indexes.

Here’s the HTML for a robot nofollow.

This is used for links you don’t necessarily want to endorse.

For example, readers leaving links in my comments aren’t exactly endorsed by me, so a nofollow tag above the comments section keeps my site clean for bots.

Here’s a great infographic on when and how to use nofollow tags.

Now we get to one of the most controversial meta tags.

5. Keyword Meta Tags

Keyword tags aren’t used by search algorithms to determine search ranking.

Here’s what the HTML looks like:

I coach my SEO clients to ignore keyword tags because they don’t affect SEO.

That doesn’t necessarily make them useless, however. They’re especially useful in WordPress.

Keyword tags and categories can help Google determine which page on your site should rank for a search.

They also create a page in WordPress that provides one more indexed page.

This means that, while your blog posts are focused on long-tail keywords, your tag and category pages have feeds covering the shorter keywords.

Categories can be used for the URL format, providing one more keyword to the page address.

This is accomplished under Settings – Permalinks in WordPress.

Adding this format provides context to your content.

Google loves context for search results!

Keywords also provide a big-picture overview of how many pages you have for each keyword.

You can use them to help plan your editorial calendar.

6. Viewport tags

You don’t spend much time thinking about viewports, but they’re especially important in today’s mobile-first world of search.

On mobile devices, pages are shown in a popup window called a viewport that extends past the device’s border.

Here’s an illustration of what I’m talking about.

Developers can set the viewport size to increase mobile usability.

WordPress users can check this tag to learn this information for their templates.

But you probably didn’t know that unless you’re already a web developer.

Since Google increasingly focuses on mobile-friendly websites, this meta tag could mean the difference between success and mobile failure.

Now that you have a basic understanding of meta tags and why they’re important, I’ll show you some of my favorite tools for manipulating them.

Free Tools to Add and Check Your Meta Tags

Don’t worry if this all sounds overwhelming — there are tons of tools to make it easy to get meta tags right. Here are two of my favorites.

Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress

Yoast is a powerful SEO plugin for WordPress and one of the most-downloaded SEO and meta tags tools.

With Yoast, all of the pages and posts you publish have back-end options to increase social sharing, optimize SEO, update tags, and other metadata.

With Yoast installed on your WordPress site, a few clicks and a few seconds of your time are all it takes to add meta-tagging to your process.

Yoast also allows you to enter a focus keyword that doesn’t get added to the meta tags, allowing the back-end program to analyze your post.

BuzzStream Meta Tag Extractor

If you need a quick chart of the metadata that’s being used by your competition, BuzzStream’s Meta Tag Extractor is a sleek and simple solution.

Copy and paste a list of URLs, and you’ll be presented with the meta tag information.

There’s even an option to download as a CSV file so that you can scrape large lists quickly.

It’s a quick and easy way to organize this data when you need it.

This free online tool does its job without all the bells and whistles.

Less Popular (But Still Useful!) Meta Tags

So to be fully transparent, here’s a chart of HTML meta tags.

An author meta tag can be used to tell search engines who wrote a piece of content.

Authors have been used in the past for search results, but it’s not a factor anymore. However, you might use author tags if you run a multi-author blog.

WordPress does add this information to blogs when multiple users are contributing content.

It’s more a badge of honor for bloggers than anything else.

Most of the rest define parameters that should already be controlled on a server level.

While I ignored these meta tags, it doesn’t mean you have to. Feel free to add whatever information you’d like.

It doesn’t help search rankings, but it doesn’t hurt them, either.

Conclusion

Meta tags are a basic part of HTML — and can impact SEO.

Back in the early days of the internet, they were a signaling factor for search engines to understand what content is on a page.

The internet (and our relationship with it) has evolved exponentially since then.

Contextual search, AI digital assistants, and mobile devices are changing the way we view content.

Search engines are incentivized to provide the best search results possible, so meta tags are less important.

However, some, such as the titles and meta descriptions, are more important than ever before.

While less metadata is used, it’s still the first impression you’ll make on both robots and people.

What do your website’s meta tags say about you?

The post What Are Meta Tags? appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/why-meta-tags-are-so-important/ via https://neilpatel.com

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jjpocketbook · 3 years

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What Are Meta Tags?

Let’s talk about meta tags — what they are, why they matter, and how to do them better.

First things first — what made you click on this article to read it?

Maybe the title caught your eye, or perhaps it was the short blurb you saw.

You might have clicked simply because this article comes from a source you trust.

If you found this article via a search engine, though, there’s a good chance you found and clicked this article because of meta tags.

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