#my problem now is that while the ALT text works (for this amount of description at least) it doesn't on my theme

[cjgladback]

[ID: First image is a swift 8-frame base walk cycle of a stylized 3D scorpion character and an anthropomorphic potted cactus riding in a chair on its back. Nearly everything bounces a little, including the simulated fabric of an umbrella-like sunshade attached to the scorpion's stinger. Only the characters' faces and the cactus's arms have no animation keyed on them.

The second image is a work-in-progress render sequence of the scorpion and cactus characters. It follows the finalization of the scorpion's claw forms, the sculpting and retopologizing of the cactus character, painted textures for each of them, the formation and texturing of the umbrella as well as the chair the cactus is sitting in and the cloth and straps under it, and finally the addition of a not-yet-textured hat that was not in the walk cycle. The rigging of the characters is unseen other than a change in posture of the scorpion's legs. End ID]

After some unexpected travel and delays, I pushed until the final weekend of the Endless Engines challenge but opted not to submit an animation and environment that just made the characters look sloppy. I saw a ton of incredible arthropod, cute, stylized, and desert renders from the community that I'll be rooting for in my place.

So from here on, I'll be keeping the trappings of the challenge that serve the characters but composition, timing, etc can just be for me. I've already slowed things down a bit and raised the main scene camera to see more of the characters (different from the character progress camera used for the renders above). I'm also making all the props, including those whose rigging is a bit more of a puzzle; starting with the hat I modeled during part of stream today. And for the environment I'll be excited to apply the texturing and generative plants skills I gained during the Bellicosaur project to the best of my ability rather than the fastest.

Still thrilled to have gotten that challenge-initiated jump start to make these characters (again, credit to Nicholas Kole) after almost two years of wanting to.

[sooibian]

IRS and Prejudice

Pairing: CEO!Minseok x fem!employee Reader

Genre / Themes: Fluff!!! Frenemies to (maybe) Lovers? Office AU with some references to ‘The Office’, flirtatious, cat-whisperer, Aries Minseok vs Aries reader!

Description: In which Kim Minseok is nothing like other bosses. Nothing.

A/N: happy birthday to mochi ari! @his-mochi-cheeks​ 💗

Word count: 2.7k (written in a state of delirium eeeek)

You quickly hit Alt+Tab on the resume that you sat updating for the umpteenth time as the sound of heels click-clacking against the floor grew closer.

“My office,” said your immediate supervisor the moment you looked up at her, a well practised unfazed expression crossing your face. If switching between applications at lighting speed were an Olympic sport, you were certain you’d score nothing less than a gold medal. Yet, somewhere in the back of your mind, you had a niggling doubt about having been caught in the act.

You gave her a slight nod in response, lips stretched into a thin line. Smoothing out the wrinkles in your red and black plaid shirt (the one you wore on most casual Fridays since you could hardly be bothered with your appearance at work; despite the feminist within you, the dull back office team discouraged you from making the effort), you followed her into her office with your best businesslike gait while your mind made up a million excuses for what her keen eyes might have found on your 24-inch screen.

“Sit,” the middle aged woman commanded, resting her hands on her hips. Leaning against her teakwood desk, she crossed her legs at the ankles, pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose, and cleared her throat. It’s how she’d fidget when she was on the edge about something.

You imagined your expression if a camera was to pan to you, cinéma vérité. Indulging your curiosity, you shrugged your shoulders with a confused look on .your face

“Everything okay?” You mustered in your best Pam Beesly impression.

Your supervisor let out a deep sigh and answered your question with a more awkward one, "When was the last time you submitted cash reports to the IRS?”

You froze into a still frame.

One of the major reasons you wanted to change jobs was because innumerable responsibilities that were entirely unrelated to your department had been carelessly plonked upon your shoulders. Submitting monthly cash reports to the IRS should have ideally been a task of the receivables department and not shifted onto someone incharge of warranties.

“I - I - ,” you started by trying to justify your negligence before even attempting to answer her question but honestly, you didn’t even want to think about when you last submitted those reports and there was absolutely nothing you could say in your defense.

You’d messed up. Big time.

“Ten months. Ten months is not a small amount in penalties,” she said in her quietest tone as you struggled to fight back angry tears. You’d been with the company for over six years now but it was the first time you’d been accused of laxity. It felt like a punch in the gut.

She turned on her heel to take her seat - movements deliberately slow, allowing you some time to regain your composure. With her eyes on her phone, she leaned back in her chair and said with a sense of finality in her voice, “You know what you have to do.”

Head hung low and eyes lined with tears, you walked out of her office muttering all the things you didn’t say in your defense. The long and short of it was that this duty should’ve never fallen into your lap in the first place. As you paced in the direction of your cubicle (with twenty sets of curious eyes on your back), a pair of hands suddenly gripped your shoulders and a dulcet voice sang, “Careful, Warranties.”

At this point, you were ready to rip your hair out. Looking up you met CEO Minseok Kim’s bright, catlike eyes as he stood at a hair’s breadth distance from you, smelling of expensive cologne - the kind that was equivalent to several months of your salary, and coffee. He always smelled like coffee and in your opinion that was his only redeeming quality.

His handsome face that every woman and man in the office fawned over was a source of your annoyance - you didn’t care for cocksure people at all and he was the uncrowned king of arrogance. He took over the reins of a used car dealership from his father upon his retirement - it was nothing too fancy - yet he enjoyed strutting around the office as if he managed a multinational conglomerate.

It was his younger sister that did the real work. She managed the more important businesses while Minseok had been handed the responsibility of just one company and from your (and the Sales Team Lead Baekhyun's) standpoint, he wasn’t doing a marvellous job at it.

Your Aries energy didn’t permit you to apologize for nearly butting heads with him so you feigned a polite smile and side-stepped to your right and he simultaneously side-stepped to his left, his every little wrong move bolstering your frustration level. It happened again and again and again until he bowed ever so slightly, stretched his arm out and said, “Please,” gesturing for you to leave first, the corners of his mouth curled up in a wide, gummy grin.

What was he so happy about all the time?

“Thanks,” you mumbled and he winked at you in response. You immediately made a mental note to find out if you could report the CEO for improper behaviour. You had a full-blown list that started with his attire - should a CEO be allowed to dress in hoodies, skinny jeans, and comfortable sneakers while the rest of you suffocated in the restraints of formal clothing for four days of the week?

Huffing, you slumped in your chair and texted your aunt informing that you wouldn’t make it to barbecue night and immediately flipped your phone to silent to avoid seeing her colourful messages berating you for the last minute cancellation.

Next, you aggressively typed ‘IRS CASH STATEMENTS’ in big block letters into the sticky notes app as a reminder of the humiliation you experienced today.

***

When you last checked time, it was noon.

The sun had long gone down since then as you tried to wrangle customers’ social security numbers out of the ever-so-reticent-to-share-information receivables department who were all packing up for the day. You were this close to socking them in the jaw but you still maintained a courteous smile and pleaded with them throwing in tonnes of cringey corporate jargon, “Please, I just have three more reports to go and I’d really appreciate your prompt help with the information.”

Suddenly, a familiar cheery voice fell upon your ears, “What’s going on?”

You were surprised to find Minseok still in the office but also extremely grateful for his presence because his single sideway glance at Angela achieved what your five emails and three verbal requests failed to.

Furiously typing away on her keyboard, she said through gritted teeth, “I’ve sent them over.”

Minseok gave you a casual two-finger salute and nearly went skipping back to his ...no, not his but to your immediate supervisor’s now empty, glass-paned office - where you could see him directly and he you - the three walls of your cubicle doing nothing to keep you out of the periphery of his blatant staring and his trademark cheeky grin that lit up his ridiculously handsome face.

Shifting uncomfortably in your seat you returned his smile but not with your eyes. You hated the effect he had on you - making you, a grown woman, blush like a schoolgirl under his self-assured gaze. Minseok was nothing like a CEO - he dressed casually, talked to anyone and everyone like he’s known them forever. He’d come into work regularly after prolonged dry spells only to disappear again. His laidback attitude did no favours to your opinion about him.

To pointedly avoid Minseok you put your head down on your desk on the pretext of catching a little break.

… big mistake.

***

You woke up with a start to the soothing and inviting aroma of... home. Opening your eyes to cinnamon bread drizzled with cream cheese on your desk felt like a fever dream until Minseok rolled his chair forward in your direction and you instinctively backpedaled. Clutching his stomach he broke into a vast roar of laughter while offering you a paper napkin with his other hand.

Brows furrowed, you stared at him quizzically as sleep continued to irritate your eyes and the mark of the ballpoint pen you fell asleep on, niggled at your cheek. Hesitantly, you took the napkin from his hand and dabbed it around your eyes and he shook his head in response, pointing to the annoying curled up corner of his own mouth.

“You were drooling,” he guffawed, his eyes twinkling with mischief. Upon noticing that you immediately grew conscious about your appearance, he waved his hands frantically and added, “It’s no problem… I drool too, haha..in fact it’s ...umm..”

You glowered at him and he instantly looked away allowing you to fix your face as his fingers impatiently drummed away on your desk.

The clock struck 7:53 p.m.

Your last meal had been sometime before noon. Under normal circumstances, you would’ve been grateful for the little snack Minseok had brought you - it was an uncharacteristically thoughtful gesture from someone like him but you’d been expecting your period in a week’s time which made you unusually ravenous.

Lips pursed and head tilted to the side, he handed you a bottle of water which you gulped down within a matter of seconds while steadily growing wary of your ultimate boss’ intentions. But you pivoted your attention to prioritizing. First, you’d wolf down the delicious cinnamon bread and then think about whether you were going to walk out of this office on your own two feet or as a human-skin suit on Minseok’s well defined back.

“Thank you for the snack,” you said to him with a forced smile, “I’ll get back to my reports now.” As you swivelled your chair to face the monitor, his hand hooked at the armrest and he spun you back around towards himself.

“What’s the rush, Warranties?” Resting his chin in his hand, he wondered with a quirked brow and a smile teasing the edges of his plump mouth.

It was not your place to ask what your boss was doing in his own office at 8 p.m. on a Friday night, especially one that hardly ever came in to begin with. He could clock in and out at his own whim and sit wherever he liked even if it meant being an utter inconvenience to someone on a stringent deadline but you took your shot anyway. Doing nothing to mask the sarcasm in your tone, you said to him, “Minseok, if you came into work everyday, you wouldn’t have to stay back so late, you know.”

Unfazed, he responded, “But my schedule doesn’t allow me to come into work everyday.”

Schedule?

You decided not to stretch this conversation longer than necessary, especially not after his ridiculous response. Drawing in a deep breath, you said, “I just have five reports left to finish, Minseok. Maybe we can talk later.”

“I run an organization involved in wildlife rights and care,” he explained anyway, rummaging the pockets of his jeans.

No shit, you scoffed. If only Minseok Kim could get any more predictable. A not-for-profit organization was every rich kids guide...no facade...no scam.. to make it seem like they actually did something.

Handing you a card, he continued, “It requires me to travel extensively - last month I was in a park in South America, working with this one puma, Elsa. She was a cage cat who got so used to the confines that she wouldn’t come out of the cage for walks in the jungle because she didn’t like anyone touching her collar, so we couldn’t attach a rope to walk with her. But, I think I’m somewhat of a genius and a cat-whisperer. Within three to four weeks, we managed to get her out of the cage.”

He pulled his phone out next, brought his chair closer to yours and started swiping through the picture gallery to show you a magnificent puma walking around the park as if she were its reigning queen. He resumed the story proudly, “Now she walks every single day, without a rope around her neck. And she’s very, very loving and affectionate.” His face lit up with awe and admiration for Elsa.

Probably you'd misunderstood Minseok…just a little. His passion about his organization did something to favourably change your opinion about him but that didn't mean you didn't have your immediate supervisor and the IRS to answer to anymore.

"Why are you telling me all this?" You asked, covertly moving closer to your workstation.

"We have a vacant position in Treasury." He answered and you immediately stopped dead in your tracks.

Mouth agape, you exclaimed, "You did not just try to poach me from your own company! Minseok you don't cease to surprise me -"

With a smirk on his face, he gave you finger guns. "That’s always been the goal, Warranties!"

"I still have five-

"Three..you have only three reports left. How stupid do you think I am?”

Caught in a lie, you could do nothing to save face so you simply pivoted your chair only to be forcefully twirled back by his strong arms again.

“Now what?" You asked, letting out a groan.

With his foot on one leg of the chair base, he pushed you back towards your desktop and said with a voice laced heavily with his trademark sass, "Check your inbox first."

Grumbling under your breath, you said something along the lines of ‘what does a CEO do anyway’. You then refreshed your inbox, impatiently waiting for an email of several MBs to load as Minseok watched you with an expression of victory painted across his features.

Your mouth fell open to find perfect to the t cash reports for the last three months which made you instantly regret your snide remarks.

Minseok snapped you out of your reverie with his smooth voice, “I may not know much of what a corporate CEO is supposed to do but I do how to get work done. Angela was more than happy to do this for a ‘team leader’ nameplate on her desk.”

Struggling to hold his compelling gaze, you muttered, “I don’t know how to thank you...”

“But I do!” He quipped.

“Of course, you do,” you sighed.

“Let me join you for barbeque night at your aunt’s..i’m sure they won’t mind you bringing a friend along?”

Before you could begin looking for a bug in your cubicle, he explained, “I caught a preview of her message on your phone while you were happily tucked away in dreamland.”

“You - you - that’s an invasion of privacy!” You lambasted him.

Stifling a yawn, he leaned back in his chair and said casually, “I was bored. Besides, privacy is a myth in today’s day and age...just like democracy, the importance of drinking eight glasses of water a day, the goldfish memory, or the thing about houseflies -”

“Okay, okay! I get it! Privacy is a myth. You - you can join us, I guess,” you interrupted him.

With widened eyes he emphasized, “Unless you don’t want me to -”

No matter how much and how often Minseok irked you, he was a charmer. You knew your aunt and your cousins would love having someone like him join in the get together and it really wouldn’t hurt your reputation to bring your boss, especially one like Minseok, along at a family event. You also couldn’t deny the excitement bubbling in your belly at the prospects of working in an NPO’s treasury department.

“You know that’s not what I meant -” You replied, eyes on the monitor as you double checked the email you’d drafted for your immediate supervisor.

“So you want me to come along?” He asked in his flamboyantly flirtatious tone.

Ignoring him, you hit send only after adding a little smiling emoji. Shutting down your system, you picked up your coat and answered with a genuine smile this time, “I’m driving.”

************

A/N: the story about puma Elsa is real! i’ll link it in one of the rb’s for those interested :)

[condemnthem]

LUDO (MARS, PETER, ARNOLD, DAMIEN, WHATEVER ELSE ALT YOU’VE WHIPPED UP LATELY), THE OWNER OF ONE OF US:

it’s been a long time coming, and you know why it’s all come down to this. you’ve manipulated enough people during your time on roleplayer.me that i’m sure you thought you’d get away with it forever. well, it doesn’t work that way. you get what you give, and you’ve given enough grief to last a lifetime.

you’ve put people who once called you friend through hell, and now you get a taste of it. and i want to make this point very clear: i do not care about your sob story. i do not care about how much you’ve been hurt. i do not care about how you got to where you are today. none of what you can say excuses the absolute hell you’ve put others through. take accountability. apologize. do what you can to right your wrongs. the pain you’ve caused is YOUR responsibility. you can’t put this on anyone but yourself. you can’t expect to hurt so many people and not be held accountable for it.

this case was rather personal to me because ludo likes to use his personality disorder as a crutch and an excuse to get away with his nasty abuse. i have the same disorder. by using your personality disorder as an excuse, ludo, you are glorifying it because you are making it your escape route. this disorder is NOT to be used as a crutch. no disorder is. you use it as a crutch as if you aren’t in crutches because of this debilitating disorder. you’re the reason our disorder is looked upon with suspicion instead of understanding. you cannot use your disorder as any type of “please forgive me” card unless you are actively trying to get better. and you aren’t. because you think therapy is a farce.

before i go into the evidence i wanted to ask for testimonies from those who were hurt. i was given this:

“There are a few things that should be said before you take your time reading all this. This is a place of roleplay and to escape. Unfortunately, some people use the hobby incorrectly. You ruin and sabotage the experience for others. A good amount of the users on this site may have a lot going on away from the screen, some don’t. Those who struggle are the victims of these narcissistic tendencies. Their emotions get involved without their control. They try to be there for someone despite their own issues. Sometimes they even try to put that other person first, which causes them to break. Then, there are some of us that cannot be emotionally manipulated and that is when these mind games go wrong. That is when the manipulator becomes so little and they try to blame other issues in life for their shit behaviour.

This place does not, and I repeat - it does not give anyone the permission to attack and belittle others because you have difficulty having a voice in your real life. It does not give you the right to attack someone's real life, because you said it yourself that you feel like you have not done anything great in yours. Your real life problems, your conditions, there are no excuse for those who have been degraded by you. There are a lot of them, by the way. Those people you still accuse of having abandoned you despite you being convinced that you were good to them? None of these people have abandoned you. They cared. They had to leave because you tried to show some sort of superiority and belittled them as a person. You tried to control them in and out of roleplay. They got tired of your negativity and your toxic attitude towards life.

A penny for your thought - have a muse, be honest, but don’t ruin it for others. You cannot attack people and  then expect them to be there for you. This place does not give you the right to manipulate others into a friendship that it is not wanted nor needed either. You cannot and should not hurt people's experiences by deceiving them. Something you still actively still do with the active alt in your own group who you introduced as your real life friend.  Think about it - if you punch a stranger in the middle of the street would you expect them to reciprocate with an embrace or punch you right back?

You cannot excuse behaviour you have radiated off yourself for months, targeted people with disturbing words, with lies, deceived multiple people that would have stuck up for you, all because of what you may be going through in real life. All you did was show who you really are. There is roleplay, and there is real life. If that line between those two worlds are so thin and so blurry for you - then perhaps this is something for you to reconsider.”

now for the evidence.

i made an imgur album of all the evidence as well as my commentary, so if you want to read it on imgur, there it is. i’m going to post the evidence directly onto here as well, however, just in case.

to start out we have an e-mail sent to roleplayer.me admins (basic rundown of ludo's offenses:

(roleplayer.me admins have done nothing so if that doesn't tell you they don't give a single shit idk what would)

here is the member who was reportedly “kicked” from one of us peacefully pulling their role:

the other member reportedly “kicked” peacefully pulling their role:

and here is ludo manipulating the situation to make it sound non-peaceful:

and ludo lying in a bulletin saying said members were “kicked out”:

now we have ludo speaking about his alts. here he is admitting to having a freelance (non-affiliated account):

ludo admitting to being another “member” of one of us, mars:

ludo admitting to using mars just to lure another member into shipping with them:

one of ludo's alts:

ludo posting one of us promos on his alt:

proof of one of us promo:

another one of ludo’s alts:

now lets get into his harassment and toxic behavior. here we have him harassing another member (18 YEARS OLD) through instagram dms:

(his instagram is rather well known with many members and he likes to post his music to make his members listen to which is connected to his instagram)

this shows ludo mixing ooc with ic and straight up lying about another member:

here one of his targets of harassment expresses their fear of him possibly stalking them:

the group owner from another group ludo was in countering ludo’s claims to peacefully leaving said group (reminder, ludo is damien):

a conversation between the owner of said group above and ludo about his harassment and stalking, as well as him shittalking to manipulate other people into believing his narrative:

here ludo tries to act like the victim and gaslight the owner:

here is proof ludo makes his “enemies” into villains for one of us and portrays them in a negative light (the name he used is their real name, making this 10x worse):

explanation from an rp ex of ludo’s about the harassment they suffered:

the screenshot shown above:

ludo harassing an rp ex over instagram dms and displaying classic abusive behavior (reminder, he has his instagram rather public to his members):

"i can genuinely admit when i am wrong" implying their ex cannot. also gaslighting because he can't admit when he's wrong. this will be further highlighted through these instagram messages.  "this does not mean that i take back anything i've said before, about how you've hurt me" contradicting himself when he said he can genuinely admit when he is wrong. "i thought our friendship was real... but evidently it wasn't the same for you" guilt trips. the rest i'm sure you can pick out on your own. it's all very obvious. 

"we're no good for one another. you hurt me a lot and i hurt you a lot." not taking responsibility and instead pulling the "we are the same, you and i" trope to minimize his responsibility. also further guilting them by writing a song about how they "abused" them. description: "Emotional abuse is just as bad as physical. Ask for help." (fun fact, i discovered this song before my birthday and related to it so much. it brought me to tears. fucked up it was used against someone in a moment of manipulation to make his target feel bad. peep the suicidal ideations in the lyrics)

ludo using an incident in their life against them:

"i miss you. also not like that matters" passive aggression and guilt trips.

gaslighting about spies.  guilt trips. also admitting to using exes' names in his storylines.

more guilt trips. more gaslighting. more excuses for exhausting his partner.

projection: "you just have this mentality where you constantly deny that you've hurt people so you can feel better about yourself." gaslighting by trying to make their ex's friend sound like they would "throw [them] under the bus in a heart beat")

here ludo is guilting their ex friend from above on line for not spending enough time with them:

self deprecation used to manipulate them.

here is a diagram shown to me by one of ludo’s ex friends:

they further detail their testimony in this google doc   and the text messages (between ludo and one of the members who pulled their role peacefully while ludo tried to say they were kicked) below will show you exactly what they mean:

using other peoples’ feelings to manipulate them:

dismissing the stress they are under with real life, gaslighting by saying they haven't done the effort when they are clearly burnt out. aggression:

guilt trips:

pushing them away. guilt trips. using others feelings to manipulate them. gaslighting by asking a clearly passive aggressive question and saying it's "genuine":

"i'm just relaying my personal frustrations" when he already has time and time again. let it go, damn. give them a break. stop being overbearing.

passive aggression. implying he means less to them when they are saying their friend put it into words they could understand.

blaming them coping with his abuse on them. that's like telling someone shouldn't retaliate to abuse because their retaliation is "hurtful" YOU DON'T GET TO TELL THE PEOPLE YOU ABUSE TO NOT RETALIATE AGAINST YOUR ABUSE.

twisting words. not taking responsibility for his lack of understanding and instead saying "what you said came off the wrong way". not their fault that you didn't get it.

this. THIS is what sent me. how DARE you use your mutual disorder as a way to guilt and manipulate. i have the same exact disorder as well and guess what? all THREE of us are different people. and don't say "change who i am" as if it's a BAD THING. YOU are the reason everyone leaves you. YOU are the reason no one wants to be around you. YOU are the reason you can't keep stable friendships. YOU DON'T GET TO FUCKING PULL THAT BULLSHIT. if you care for someone you will work on your goddamn self. you expect everyone else to change for you, but you can't do the same goddamn thing? IF YOU GAVE A SHIT YOU'D STOP THE BEHAVIOR THAT IS HURTING THE PEOPLE YOU CLAIM TO CARE ABOUT. FULL. FUCKING. STOP.

guilt trips. pity.

condescension. lose lose situation.

"IT WAS A JOOOOOOOOOKE" excuse. "but whatever. i hope whatever has you in a bad mood gets better and you feel better" passive aggression. pretending to care. fake comradery.

"you gaslight me" is a form of gaslighting, especially when there IS NO GASLIGHTING. this is also an example of projection. making them walk on eggshells.

"i'm willing to sort it out of you stop being defensive" punishment and reward. "i'm sorry IF..." not taking responsibility. "this was my response" ie: this is your fault i'm acting this way, when he is the abusive one. "you constantly use my natural reaction as your excuse for not being around..." YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR REACTIONS WHEN YOU ARE THE ABUSER. STOP HAVING THIS "this is me take it or leave it" ATTITUDE AND THEN WONDER WHY EVERYONE FUCKING LEAVES YOU.

gaslighting. trying to say they were not coming around BEFORE he started calling them a shit friend.

"we both act some type of way when we're hurt and you know it" gaslighting, using their mutual disorder against them. AGAIN. YOU (ludo), ME AND THEM ARE THREE DIFFERENT PEOPLE WITH THE SAME DISORDER. stop acting like y'all the same goddamn PERSON. stop PROJECTING YOUR SHITTY ACTIONS ONTO OTHERS. "not even saying this to be a bitch" the "NO OFFENSE, BUUUUT" tactic to "lessen the blow" of the shitty thing he's about to say. USING OTHER PEOPLE AGAINST THEM, AGAIN.

"it's the only way i know how to be" THEN CHANGE IT. GET HELP. STOP USING YOUR DISORDER AS A WAY TO GET AWAY WITH SHIT. therapy isn't a con, you are.

and then, after he knows he has no control over people, he pesters. 

an ex friend requested this be used at the end. i feel it sums up the feelings of everyone ludo has wronged quite well.

[waqasblog2]

12 Obvious SEO Tips That Almost No One Is Following | Databox Blog

SEO is an amazingly complex field.

Even experienced pros sometimes neglect SEO fundamentals because there’s just so much to do and remember when it comes to optimizing a website and its content for search.

And if you’re not a pro, it’s even harder to keep up. You may neglect something important entirely. You may get bad information that leads to poor rankings or manual actions. You may spend too much time on one thing at the expense of another, only to find out later that the thing you neglected was more important.

So for our most recent survey, we set out to discover the most obvious SEO tips and tactics that almost no one follows. We polled 150 marketers to find out where businesses trip up with SEO most often.

Through all of those responses, we identified 12 SEO fundamentals—the core aspects of search engine optimization that companies should be focused on—along with the 49 most common SEO mistakes marketers often make within each of those fundamentals.

1. Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

“Even small companies that don’t have massive budgets or dedicated PR or web development teams can maximize their SEO efforts by optimizing their page titles and meta descriptions,” says Rhianna Taniguchi of iQ 360.

“Using custom title tags and meta descriptions doesn’t require a high level of expertise, but it contributes to a higher click-through rate from search results,” Taniguchi says.

Common Mistake: Blank Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

“The one SEO tip that companies forget to follow is making sure that all of your pages have a title tag and meta description,” says Anne Polland of Novella Brandhouse. “Without checking these off, your pages will not be ranked as high.”

“If you use WordPress, one way to monitor these is to use a plugin like Yoast SEO or All In One SEO Pack.”

Common Mistake: Auto-Generated Page Titles

“Too often, I look at a new client’s website and see ‘Home’ or ‘Homepage’ as the page title,” says David Wurst of WebCitz. “Then, interior pages typically follow that trend with ‘About’ or ‘Contact’ as the sole word in the title tag.”

“This leaves your website lacking valuable content in the page title that can either be used for attracting visitors from search or helping search engines better understand the most important aspects of the page.”

“At the very least, we typically suggest trying to put a few valuable phrases in page titles. Take for instance an accounting firm, which could do something like ‘Accounting & Tax Prep | City Name | Business Name’ for a homepage page title,” Wurst says.

Of course, some SEO tools will auto-generate a page title for you, but Direct Online Marketing’s Cory Hedgepeth says this can lead to a mistake as well. “I see site owners not leveraging Yoast’s ability to separate out social and SEO titles/descriptions. This forces them to choose a title based more heavily on one goal.”

“When we separate our titles, we dramatically improve our viability on both Facebook and Google search. When we don’t, we compromise one or the other. I see this happening even when an agency handled the work prior to my audit of the site’s article pages,” Hedgepeth says.

“A lot of times, updating title tags can provide an increase in clicks and rankings, especially when you’re sitting in the top five slots of the SERPs for certain terms,” says Jake Lane of NuBrakes Mobile Brake Repair.

“Once you begin to see some goodness from your rankings, begin testing variations in your title tags to help push your results even further,” Lane says.

Common Mistake: Auto-Generated Meta Descriptions

Another thing that gets auto-generated: your meta description.

“Lots of SEO-savvy content marketers add a meta description designed to show up on SERPs underneath the page title link,” says Rising Star Reviews’ Chas Cooper. “By doing this, they can offer searchers a description of the content that’s tailored to attract maximum click-throughs to the content.”

“But Google often doesn’t publish the meta description. Instead, it shows an auto-generated excerpt from the content. When Google auto-generates this excerpt, it tends to favor the first couple sentences of the content itself, especially if the beginning of the content includes the SERP’s search term.”

“So why not make your first paragraph identical to your meta description? This is an easy and highly effective way to get Google to use your meta description on SERPs much more often, which in turn drives more click-throughs and higher rankings,” Cooper says.

Common Mistake: Unoriginal Page Titles

“Title tags and meta descriptions need to be unique,” says Sergio Stephano of Adaptia Design. “Higher CTRs in the SERPs is increasingly becoming a more important Google ranking signal.”

Joe Goldstein of Contractor Calls agrees: “Check competing search results before writing your title tag and meta description. If your description mentions ‘free shipping on orders over $20’ but one of the other results says ‘free shipping, period,’ the competitor is going to win the click even if you outrank them.”

“Write your title and description as if you’ll never rank better than second place but need to win the click anyways,” Goldstein says.

Common Mistake: Keyword-Stuffed Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

“You should craft your page title and meta description to look like a PPC ad,” says Rent a Tablet’s Akiva Leyton. “I often see people stuff keywords into their meta content, thinking it will make a huge difference. This is a huge mistake because Google doesn’t value it as much as people think it does.”

“Page titles and descriptions should be used to draw people to your website, and if that means using fewer keywords, then so be it. It’s more important to get people interested enough to visit your website than it is to convince Google to display your pages in the top results,” Leyton says.

“When deciding what to write for your title tags and meta descriptions, pretend to be a consumer looking for your services,” the Rudy Lucas of The 20.

Common Mistake: Adding Meta Keywords

“A lot of companies still seem to think that the ‘meta keywords’ tag still has any impact on search rankings—or anything for that matter,” says Matt Osborn of RoadRunner Auto Transport.

“The meta keywords tag has not been used by Google for a decade now. Google has long been intuitive enough to rank your site for the keywords that appear on-page in your content. Other search engines like Bing used it a little more recently, but now even they do not use it.”

“The problem is that if you use the meta keywords tag and a competitor reports that to Google as webspam for keyword stuffing, this can actually end up hurting your rankings. When you look at this from a risk-versus-benefit perspective, there is a low amount of risk but absolutely no possible benefit,” Osborn says.

2. Keywords

When we asked our respondents to tell us where they think companies over-invest most often when it comes to SEO, keywords received the most votes:

But while companies may spend too much time focusing on keywords, keywords are still an important part of SEO.

“Optimizing for the correct keywords can make or break you,” says Tandem Interactive’s Juliane Sunshine.

“You should make a list of as many words that you can think of that describe your business or the service that you provide,” says John Michael Brunetti of TrueVestment Financial.

“A lot of people are likely searching for the exact words you wrote down, but without having them on your website, it makes it difficult for you to be a top search result,” Brunetti says.

Common Mistake: Keyword Stuffing

“Too many companies forget that their content should be written for people first and search engines second,” says Niles Koenigsberg of FiG Advertising + Marketing.

“We stumble across many blogs and articles that are packed full of appropriate keywords, but the content is just unreadable. It’s clunky, the phrasing is redundant, and it quickly becomes clear the article was only written to improve rankings,” Koenigsberg says.

Anthony Adams of 214 SEO agrees: “By keyword stuffing your website or writing unnaturally, you end up alienating your core audience and raising red flags with search engines.”

And as Queen City Buyer’s Matt York says, keyword stuffing won’t improve your rankings: “Cramming your keywords into your page as many times as possible will not help you rank higher. In fact, Google looks for this and flags it!”

“Having a ton of keywords in metadata and website content is an archaic tactic,” says Revenue River’s Linda Le. “Content should be as natural sounding as possible.”

Sam Maizlech of Glacier Wellness agrees: “While keyword stuffing used to be the bread and butter of early SEO, things have changed, and search engines have adapted. Instead of throwing in keywords at every available chance, you’re better off writing in natural language patterns.”

So how should you use keywords without stuffing? Delmain’s Dan DelMain recommends including your keyword in “your page title and meta description, H1 tag, at least once in the body content, and in your image alt tags.”

And Nathan Piccini of Data Science Dojo recommends using synonyms: “In your on-page SEO efforts, you may be trying to rank your site for the keyword ‘smartphone.’ That’s great, except if you always use ‘smartphone’ in your text, you’ll get flagged for keyword stuffing.”

“What you should do instead is use the specific keyword in the title, URL, and two to three times throughout the page, while using synonyms to refer back to the keyword. In this case, you could use ‘mobile,’ ‘cell phone,’ ‘phone,’ ‘iPhone,’ or ‘Galaxy.’”

“Search engines will recognize that you’re referring to ‘smartphone’ and give your site more SEO love. Plus you will find yourself ranking for the synonyms as well,” Piccini says.

Common Mistake: Neglecting Searcher Intent

“Often times, marketers can get lost in performance data when selecting keywords and forget to focus on the searcher’s intent,” says Miva’s Luke Wester.

“If you’re struggling to rank, it may be because your content does not match the user intent Google has identified and is trying to serve,” says Daniel Reeves of Dandy Marketing.

“To see the searcher intent behind a keyword, all you need to do is type the keyword into Google,” says Rob Powell of Rob Powell Biz Blog. “Google knows what the intent is behind a keyword.”

“For example, let’s say you’re about to write an article for the keyword ‘free serp checkers.’ If you type that keyword into Google, you quickly see that when people search for ‘free serp checkers,’ they are looking for product pages, not an article. That means your article would not rank on Google for that keyword,” Powell says.

If you understand searcher intent, you can also take the advice of Search Evaluator’s Danilo Godoy and “optimize your page title to match user intent.”

“Assume that the user issued the query ‘how to tie a tie.’ You have a comprehensive blog post with many different ways to tie a tie. However, your blog post is titled ‘Tying Like a Pro – 7 Essential Tie Knots You Need to Learn.’”

“Even if your content is comprehensive and of high quality, right now it is unlikely that you will rank on the first page for the query ‘how to tie a tie.’ A much better page title that more obviously targets the user intent would be ‘How to Tie a Tie – 7 Essential Knots You Need to Learn,’” Godoy says.

“Google’s number-one objective when it comes to their organic search results is to return the absolute best answers to a user’s query,” says Zack Reboletti of Web Focused. “So the most important thing you can do is empathize with the searcher.”

“What are their pains and frustrations, wants and aspirations? What are they hoping to find when they’re searching a particular query? And how can you give them the best experience possible while fully answering their question?” Reboletti says.

Common Mistake: Doing Shallow Keyword Research

“Keyword research is critical to understand what topics you need to write about, but you also need to research the actual content topic you want to rank for,” says David Attard of Collectiveray. “The best tool to do this: Google.”

“By checking the top 10 SERP results for your chosen keywords, you get a clear understanding of the content Google loves. You need to write similar but better content which covers all the aspects and search intent in the top 10 positions.”

“If you do this, you will be able to rank for this topic very quickly and easily outrank the other positions (given that you have equivalent backlinks, too),” Attard says.

Lockedown Design & SEO’s John Locke agrees: “Ideally, you would look at the results on page one of Google for each keyword phrase and take notes about each result. Are they mostly informational pages (blog posts), transactional (e-commerce), or some other task completion?”

“Whatever the predominant pattern shows, that’s what your page needs to be.”

“Another thing to look for is elements in the page, as well as the design and layout of the pages that are ranking. Do the majority of the results on page one have video embeds, images, or other page elements? It is easier to ‘go with the grain’ and match the patterns that Google is already favoring,” Locke says.

“The best tool in SEO is Google itself,” says Revenue River’s Juliette Tholey. “Go into the search results and see what else is ranking for your target keyword. Google is showing what is important to rank for that term, so just improving on what’s already there can help you increase search rank.”

Common Mistake: Only Targeting High-Volume Keywords

“Many novice SEO professionals only target keywords with the highest search volumes without considering the difficulty of ranking for those keywords,” says Omar Fonseca of Medicare Plan Finder. “Instead, they should target long-tail keywords that have less competition.”

“Long-tail keywords generally perform better than regular keywords, particularly if you’re a new or small business,” says Ellie Shedden of THE-OOP.COM.

“For example, optimizing for a keyword like ‘car crash lawyer’ instead of the higher-volume ‘lawyer’ will attract only users looking for that particular skill. That means you’ll not only rank higher, but conversions will also increase,” Shedden says.

“Google is making a big push for natural language and semantics, meaning it understands related terms and can pull relevant content that doesn’t necessarily contain the same text as your search term,” says StrategySEO’s Jack Bird.

“For example, if I search for ‘tips for better posture,’ I get a bunch of results that say ‘improve posture’ or ‘how to stand or sit correctly.’ These results don’t target any of the words in my original query as keywords.”

“My advice: don’t get hung up on keywords. If you’re writing relevant content, Google will ‘get it’ and start to rank you for related terms,” Bird says.

Common Mistake: Keyword Cannibalization

“One tip we’ve learned but still need to make a conscious effort to avoid is creating multiple pages targeting the same keyword,” says James McGrath of Yoreevo.

“This confuses Google because it doesn’t know which one to show, and showing both usually isn’t an option. This is why deleting content can actually be very helpful for SEO; it gives Google a clear candidate for specific keywords.”

Common Mistake: Neglecting Branded Keywords

“Pay attention to branded search,” says John Morabito of Stella Rising. “Marketers are often too focused on search as a vehicle for introducing people to a brand versus one that helps to facilitate a purchase or meaningful interaction with a brand someone already knows.”

“Paying attention to your own audience and their search experience can be one of the most rewarding activities for SEOs to engage in because people searching for branded queries represent your customers—or very likely future customers,” Morabito says.

And Paul Schmidt of SmartBug Media says it’s important to pay attention to branded search saturation. “What percentage of the top 10 organic SERPs do you control when you search for your brand name in Google? Don’t overlook the rank of all of your ‘owned’ digital properties that can also rank for your brand keywords.”

“The more of the SERPs you own, the better chance you have of controlling the information your prospects consume before they make their final purchase decision.”

“If you see SERPs with negative coverage or reviews of your brand, try to push those listings down by improving the rankings of your social media profiles, video profiles on YouTube, third-party profiles (i.e. BBB, Chamber of Commerce, industry directories), or other microsites you own,” Schmidt says.

3. Backlinks

“Many studies have shown that backlinks are the number-one variable correlated with ranking content, yet so many people don’t bother with building links because it’s difficult (and frankly pretty boring),” says Ron Stefanski of RonSki Media, LLC.

Brett Downes of HQ SEO and Ghost Marketing agrees: “So many new companies are focused on making their sites look nice, producing articles, or shouting about themselves on social media. But they forget or ignore the most important ranking factor: backlinks.”

“Links are the reason Google and other search engines discover websites. Without links, each website would be a marooned island, away from civilization.”

“Ever seen an ugly, hard-to-use website ranked on page one? Of course you have. It is only there because of links. People say links are dead, but nothing could be further from the truth,” Downes says.

Common Mistake: Having No Link-Building Strategy

“Link building can be tedious, so it’s easy to overlook,” says Advice Media’s Dylan Myatt. But many of our respondents said that overlooking link building is a common mistake.

“You should be building links to your website all the time,” says Vital Dollar’s Marc Andre. “Many companies will go through some link building campaigns or hire an agency to build links for a period of time, but then the campaign ends and they stop working for links.”

“To get the best results, you should always be looking for new link opportunities,” Andre says.

“In my opinion, brands miss out on their biggest SEO opportunities when they fail to have a link-building strategy,” says Kenzi Wood of Kenzi Writes.

“Search engines have said time and time again that quality links are the number-one indicator for SEO. A white-hat link-building strategy is essential to get indexed and to show up well in the SERPs,” Wood says.

Common Mistake: Failing to Guest Post

“One SEO tactic that gets overlooked often is guest posting on other websites that are related to your brand or business,” says Marissa Ryan of VisualFizz.

“Many business owners turn their noses up at the concept of writing free content that will help another business’s blog, but this is a high-quality link-building tactic that usually results in informative, branded information and helps position brands as thought leaders in their space.”

Common Mistake: Ignoring HARO

“Few people know to take advantage of the opportunities available through HARO,” says Andrew Jacobson of 9thCO.

“Replying to opportunities through HARO not only gets you a quality link on a relevant site within your niche, but it also positions your brand as a thought leader and voice of authority within your industry. Not nearly enough people take advantage of this great tool.”

4. Content

When we asked our respondents to select the SEO fundamental companies most often under-invest in, content came out on top:

“Everyone looks for gimmicks—things you can do to trick Google into liking your content more,” says Amber Bracegirdle of Mediavine.

“But if you just make more content—solid, quality content that references other content on your site and gives Google more surface area to know what you’re an expert in—you’ll automatically start to rank for more related terms. And over time, that allows you to rank better for the initial term you wanted.”

“Rather than spending time trying to reformat your content or chase white-hat backlinks (and yes, those things are still important, but also time-consuming) spend some of that time creating more content on terms where you rank relatively well but not in the top three.”

Common Mistake: Prioritizing Quantity Over Quality

“One of the most neglected SEO ‘golden rules’ which I frequently see overlooked is not focusing on creating quality content,” says Patricia Russell of FinanceMarvel. “If you really want your blog post to stand out in a crowded niche, focus on creating original, prolific, and engaging content that people are generally interested in reading.”

Bryan Pattman of 9Sail agrees: “Write the best piece of content for the keyword that you are trying to rank for. People try to complicate the writing process, but if you write an article that is better than the rest, you will win in the long run.”

“While low quality (click bait) content provides many leads with low conversion, high-quality content provides fewer leads with high conversion,” says Kylie Williams of Kylie Williams Communications and Marketing. “For companies that rely on conversions for profit, high-quality content is the obvious choice.”

“Unfortunately, many companies continue to opt for low-cost content production and bursting content libraries that hold little value for their target market.”

“The clever businesses that choose to create high-quality, value-adding content that aligns with their brand identity are building loyal communities of customers and being rewarded for it,” Williams says.

Common Mistake: Publishing Shallow Content

“One fairly obvious piece of advice I can provide is to focus editorial energy on fewer, but more comprehensive, pieces of content,” says Roman Kim of VerticalScope. “We’ve seen editorial staff pump out volumes of thin articles to meet a quota, but that thin content is often not able to rise in the SERPs for competitive topics.”

“By slowing down and creating well-researched, comprehensive resources, a page becomes more useful to users, attracts more backlinks, and satisfies search quality algorithms. Despite taking longer to produce, longer articles often get more traffic and have an overall higher ROI,” Kim says.

So how long is comprehensive content? Lexi Montgomery of The Darling Company says that “articles with at least 2,000 words rank better and faster.”

But Stan Tan of Selby’s says it depends on the topic: “Most advice you hear today is something along the lines of ‘Write 1,000-2,000 words.’ You can write a low-quality high-fluff 2,000-word article, but it won’t have a high E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) score.”

“My advice is to be an expert in your niche. Know everything inside-out and write high-quality articles that cover your niche regardless of the number of words. Some topics need 200 words to cover; others might need 2,000,” Tan says.

And Roy Harmon of Advertoscope recommends using topic clusters to cover topics more comprehensively: “Create clusters of content around a topic that links back to a pillar page. Many businesses are still relying on basic brochure pages that don’t focus on search intent.”

Common Mistake: Publishing Low-Value Content

“An SEO tip that few companies follow is publishing blog posts that provide value to the reader,” says Keeon Yazdani of CBD’R US. “It’s Google’s goal to display search results that provide the most value to search engine users. Therefore, all websites should publish quality content that readers will engage with.”

Jordan McCreery of Ingrained Media agrees: “Poor user interaction will always hurt SEO more than it helps. Quality SEO copywriting begins with thinking of the user first.”

“People focus so much on search engine algorithms that they often forget that the baseline is content that is fresh, valuable, relevant, and useful to a target audience,” says Shoumo Ganguly of Obligent Consulting. “If your content is skewed towards keywords, only Google’s spiders will read it.”

And while The Money Mix’s Michael Dinich says “you may be able to trick Google into giving you a coveted spot in the SERPs, if you’re serving up a poor user experience, you won’t remain king of the hill long. Most importantly, you won’t convert any of that traffic.”

Delivering value to your users brings other benefits as well. Jesse Perreault of Car Loans Canada says that delivering value “increases dwell time, which drastically improves the odds of getting backlinks/social shares.”

And Schutt Media’s Andrew Schutt says “If you create valuable content, you’ll captivate your audience, your bounce rate will decrease, and your SEO will receive a boost as a result.”

“Companies should always ask ‘What’s in it for readers?’ when creating content,” says Benjamin Houy of Grow With Less. “Content people care about is content that will get shared and attract backlinks. This will, in turn, help a website rank well on Google.”

Common Mistake: Publishing Brand-Focused Content

Another trick for creating content that’s valuable to users is creating content that’s not all about your brand, products, and services.

“One mistake brands make is writing content for themselves rather than their users,” says Ian Wright of British Business Energy. “So many businesses write sales-y content and expect it to rank number one in Google, rather than creating anything actually useful. They then wonder why it never ranks in Google.”

But sometimes, you have to write about your brand, products, and services. When that’s the case, Trinity Insight’s Jessica Herbine offers this advice:

“Explain your products or services clearly. Frequently, users come across websites that are lacking in on-page copy that adequately explains what the company is offering and what makes their products/services better than their competitors, and this is a problem for visitors as much as it is for search engines.”

“If visitors don’t understand what you’re selling or how it functions, how can you expect them to confidently make a purchase? Similarly, if Google doesn’t understand what you’re offering, how can you expect to rank highly for related keywords?”

“Explaining products and services more clearly on your website might mean:”

“This is a shortcoming that affects all businesses, regardless of size and industry,” Herbine says.

Common Mistake: Neglecting Old Content

“While many companies create great content, there also tends to be a gamut of older blog posts that haven’t gained traction in the search engines,” says Joe Flanagan of GetSongBPM. “These pieces of content should have new topic and keyword research applied to them to add more depth and breadth.”

Adam Klingman of The eMovement Group agrees that updating old blog posts is a great strategy for SEO: “Most businesses focus solely on publishing new posts, but going back and refreshing old posts even slightly can produce positive SEO outcomes.”

So how do you find old content that needs to be updated? Ampjar’s Quincy Smith says to “look for pieces of content that were written more than a year ago, for pieces targeting keywords that are ranking in positions 10-20, and for pieces that are seasonal and will be relevant again in the next three months.”

While conducting this audit, The Good’s David Hoos says to “evaluate your content and decide whether to keep it, improve it, or remove it based on its relevance and performance.”

Once you’ve identified content that needs to be updated, Referral Rock’s Jay Kang says to “identify what’s missing from the piece, what competitors have written about the topic, and what keywords are struggling. Link to new articles from old ones, and identify user intent questions and see if you can explain the answers better.”

The goal, as Jeroen Minks of Vazooky Digital says, is to “make old content more relevant for today’s audience. By updating the article with the latest information, it can be made more relevant, which has a positive effect on the organic rankings.”

“Many companies feel they wrote an article and now they are finished,” says Lisamarie Monaco of PinnacleQuote Life Insurance Specialists. “But Google wants to see constant updating with meaningful content.”

And, as Adam Connell of Blogging Wizard says, “in the long-run, updating existing content is cheaper than creating new content.”

Common Mistake: Publishing Duplicate Content

“You have to create original content,” says Richard Williamson of HealthLynked. “That should be a no-brainer.”

But if you plan to syndicate content from other websites or allow other websites to syndicate your content, it’s important to understand and use canonical tags.

“People often don’t use or aren’t even aware of canonical tags,” says Jeremy Rose of CertaHosting. “Canonical tags (or rel=canonical) are used to tell Google which source is the original in cases of duplicate content.”

“You should use canonical tags if you would like to publish your content on other sites while keeping the original page live. Also, if there are several similar versions of the same content on your website, specify a canonical version. Canonical tags tell the search engines which version of the content to display first in results,” Rose says.

Common Mistake: Letting Your Blog Languish

“One mistake I see often with small companies is a failure to blog,” says Shane Hebzynski of 3 Cats Labs. “Some companies are clearly excited at the start and have a flurry of blog posts. But as time goes on, the content becomes irregular.”

If you’re struggling to come with ideas for your blog, our respondents offered several tips.

Blogcast’s Miguel Piedrafita recommends repurposing your content. “For example, once a new article is finished, you could make an easily-shareable infographic or create a narrated version of the article.”

Hubneo’s Illya Polokhin is also a fan of infographics: “Infographics are liked and shared three times more on social media than other content. Infographics can be made free and easily with online tools and are such an easy way to have people spreading your content around for you.”

Tomasz Alemany of Top Whole Life recommends asking yourself: “‘Have I explored every aspect of my niche?’ Almost always the answer is ‘No.’ Every niche has almost infinite content you can create, and you should always look to keep diving deeper into your niche.”

Ghost Blog Writers’ Dayne Shuda provides an example: “If you’re a pizza restaurant, you want to create content that answers the questions your target customers are asking about pizza, things like:”

“Over time, the more questions you answer, the more valuable your brand becomes. Your posts earn mentions, links, etc. That all lifts the reputation of your brand, which helps your homepage rank for higher-volume terms like ‘pizza restaurant,’” Shuda says.

Common Mistake: No Content Strategy

The final mistake our respondents see companies make with content frequently is pressing forward without a content strategy.

“In my 10+ years of consulting with companies around the world on their marketing, I’ve found that the vast majority of clients do not continually create strategic content for their website,” says Karri Gonzalez of EZMarketing.

“Too many companies still have a ‘set it and forget’ mindset when it comes to their website. They treat it like an online business card and never do much with it.”

“Or perhaps even worse yet, they invest in creating content that isn’t based on actual research into what their target markets want to know and isn’t optimized so their target markets can find it when they’re searching,” Gonzalez says.

To avoid this issue, Online Turf’s Lewis Peters recommends asking three questions before writing any new piece of content:

“If you can’t answer these three questions about your next piece, don’t publish it! Once your great piece of content is live, people need to know about it. This is where outreach comes in. Without it, it is very unlikely you will get backlinks that are high quality and relevant to your niche.”

“There are many outreach tools—Pitchbox and NinjaOutreach are two of my favorites—that can quickly gather leads and automate the outreach process, as well as intelligently follow up a few days later if you don’t receive a response,” Peters says.

5. Images

“One SEO tip that many people fail to implement is providing data for images,” says Mailbird’s Andrea Loubier. “Even if the images you are using are sourced, they can still end up in the search results, which is yet another way to bring people to your page.”

Hannah Attewell of Force of Nature Coach agrees that image optimization is key for SEO:

“While image searches are utilized less than the classic web search, it’s so simple to optimize images and get ahead of all the people who haven’t paid attention to their images. Also, in certain design/imagery focused industries, image searches can be a huge source of new clients.”

Common Mistake: Poor Image Naming Conventions

“The one obvious SEO tip that we find few people/companies follow is naming the images they upload to the website using keywords they want to rank for,” says Alexis Irias of Spire Digital.

“Many times, people will upload images with the image name of ‘IMG-1’ instead of using something like ‘PuppyCity303-DogTreats-denver.’ This may be a tedious task but not one to take for granted since it can help your website rank higher on the search engines,” Irias says.

Anna Kaine of ESM Inbound agrees: “Put your keyword in the name of your image and in the alt tag. This solidifies the topic of your post to Google, making it extra findable whether a searcher finds you through normal search or a Google image search.”

“Optimizing images may not be as hard-hitting as other optimizations, but if you’re in a competitive niche and no one is doing it properly, it could give you the edge you’re looking for,” Surface SEO’s Carlo Barajas says.

Common Mistake: Failing to Include Alt Text

“The most obvious SEO tip that very few people/companies follow is adding alt text to their images,” says Fisher Unitech’s Jackie Tihanyi. “Alt text is the written copy that shows in place of an image on a webpage if the image fails to load. Having alt text allows search engines to better crawl and rank your website for SEO.”

“After uploading images to your CMS, you should add target keywords to your alt tags,” says Christina Brodzky of MediaSesh. “Google is getting better about knowing what an image is about without alt text to describe it, but I don’t think it’s there yet.”

But as Colin Mosier of JSL Marketing & Web Design cautions, “it’s important to use the keywords/phrases without keyword stuffing.”

And Jessica Rhoades of Create IT Web Designs recommends a different approach: “Instead of just putting keywords in the alt text, write a detailed description of the image.”

“For example, say the keyword for an article is ‘best chocolate fudge brownies.’ Go beyond the keyword and describe the complete picture, such as:”

“‘Grandma’s Best Chocolate Fudge Brownies on Grandmother’s white antique plate with a blue checkered napkin below the plate. The large slice of brownie contains mouth-watering chocolate chips and has just been removed from the oven and placed on the plate. A perfect recipe to take to the neighborhood potluck.’”

Rhoades’ approach is also great because image alt text isn’t just for SEO. As Rio Rocket of Rio Rocket SEO Services explains, “Image alt text improves the accessibility of your website for vision-impaired users using screen readers.”

Common Mistake: Not Including a Caption

In addition to failing to add alt text to images, V. Michael Santoro of Vaetas says businesses often fail to take advantage of image captions.

“Both alt text and image captions are indexed by the search engines. As an added value, the caption can be a compelling call-to-action presented when visitors roll over the images, such as, ‘Get your 15% discount now!’ The image can also be linked to the checkout page.”

“This cuts down on the amount of text used on the page and is very engaging.”

Common Mistake: Using Irrelevant Images

Jeff Stanislow of Chief Internet Marketer says that “it’s important to pay attention to your images because Google now looks at the content of the image in addition to the content of the page. Images should match the main content objective of the page.”

“A free tool I found that will give image results back for a page is NeuralViews.”

6. Site Speed

“One important ranking factor in SEO that a lot of companies seem to overlook is page load speed,” says Katherine Rowland of YourParkingSpace.

“Broadly speaking, a faster-loading page will outrank a slower-loading page, and there actually appears to be a small but significant correlation between load speed and Google’s search engine result rankings. So my tip would be to optimize your page load time as much as you can,” Rowland says.

Edge of the Web’s Sam Orchard agrees: “Fast loading times are on pretty much every SEO checklist out there, but if you run PageSpeed Insights on agency websites, you’ll see the vast majority scoring below 50%. It’s easy to get caught up with big images, videos, and infographics and forget the impact on loading times.”

Common Mistake: Using a Low-Cost Hosting Provider

“It’s common knowledge that page speed directly affects the way search engines index your site,” says Steven Gipson of Recruiters Websites. “But too often small businesses go with low-budget hosting plans that really slow down page load time and affect their rankings.”

“Ideally, a page should load in less than three seconds.”

Common Mistake: Failing to Compress Images

“Bloated image sizes are a major contributor to large page sizes and slow load times, particularly for mobile,” says Roy Bielewicz of Apotheca. “Having assessed and worked with hundreds of sites over the years, we’ve found that many companies don’t bother to effectively optimize and compress their images.”

“Ironically, image compression is free, easy, and non-technical. While it’s something that anyone can do, most website designers and marketing teams often overlook it. Tools like TinyJPG/TinyPNG can reduce typical image sizes from 1MB to just a few KB without any degradation in quality.”

“Since Google likes to see the maximum page size under 5MB, reducing the size of one or two images on a typical page can have a huge impact on the overall size,” Bielewicz says.

“Having large images—both in pixel dimensions and in file size—slows down the website so that it takes longer to load, which can cause people to become impatient and go to another website,” says Gwen Beren of Illuminous Marketing.

“Search engines are mainly concerned with the quality of the user experience, but by making a user wait (and unnecessarily use their data on a large download), the website owner is not providing a good experience,” Beren says.

And Audrey Strasenburgh of FreeLogoServices says that “image compression, resizing, and alt text are essential ranking factors for all websites—not just ecommerce sites. Image compression and resizing can reduce a page’s load time by an average of two seconds.”

7. Mobile Responsiveness

“One very obvious SEO tip that many people forget is that if you want to start ranking any website, you must make sure it’s responsive,” says Bradley Thompson of DigiHype Media.

Why? Online Optimism’s Ian Cogswell explains: “If your mobile site is slow, clunky, and difficult to use, users and prospective clients will back out and look for information elsewhere. Search engines measure this activity and rank web pages accordingly.”

Gregory Golinski of YourParkingSpace actually recommends “optimizing for mobile first. I can’t count the number of businesses that never check how their website looks like on a smartphone. They don’t realize that most people surf the web on their phones and they’ll lose potential customers by not having a mobile-friendly site.”

“People hate waiting for pages to load and when sites are hard to navigate, so make sure your site is mobile-friendly,” says Paige Arnof-Fenn of Mavens & Moguls. “All the other stuff is just bells and whistles if you don’t get the basics right.”

8. Site Architecture

“Many companies create a lot of SEO-optimized content but forget about their site architecture and how to make it easy for site visitors to find the content they’re interested in,” says Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers. “You want things like this on your website/blog:”

Donna Duncan of B-SeenOnTop agrees: “Few people seem to pay attention to their site structure once the site has been launched.”

“I often find sites with literally hundreds of pages and blog posts sitting in the root directory. This effectively distributes your SEO equity so wide that there is no focus—there’s no way for Google to know what you consider most important.”

“A rough analogy would be if you were to die with $327 million in the bank and leave $1 to every person in the United States. One dollar is not going to make a difference to any of those people, but if you left $109 million to three people… well, you get the idea,” Duncan says.

Common Mistake: Neglecting SEO During Design

“Often times, people design websites without SEO consideration,” says Nathan Fishman of Nate Fishman Digital Consulting. “But it’s important to align site structure for SEO, particularly for bigger websites.”

“If you have pages that target keywords with high search volumes, those pages should be internally linked to more than others,” Fishman says.

“So many sites have unimportant pages featured prominently in site navigation,” says John Holloway of NoExam.com. “They also link to many worthless pages throughout their site via internal links.”

“A good site architecture will tell Google what pages are the most important. Not every page on your website is important. Make sure the search engines know which ones are,” Holloway says.

Common Mistake: Failing to Add Internal Links

“I find that one of the easiest and most obvious SEO tips that few businesses do properly is internal linking,” says Quentin Aisbett of OnQ Marketing.

“Particularly when launching a new page or post, finding contextual linking opportunities from stronger pages on your site will help demonstrate relevance while passing authority,” Aisbett says.

Chhavi Agarwal of Mrs Daaku Studio agrees: “Internal linking is highly ignored but important for SEO. It helps Google understand the hierarchy of your blog and distributes page authority throughout the site. If you are smart about internal linking, you can improve your ranking in search engines with just that.”

“Unlike other SEO tactics, internal linking requires minimal use of developer time,” says Emma Cavalier of RateYourSeats.com. “By simply linking from blog pages to higher-level pages, such as the homepage, about us, or product pages, a website can improve rankings quickly on the keywords anchoring the new internal links.”

“Google analyzes users’ behavior to see if they’re clicking onto a site and immediately clicking off,” says Alice Donoghue of Aldono Marketing & Communications Services. “Google’s rankings are checking if people tend to browse more than one page; make it easy for people to do that, and you’ll be rewarded.”

Common Mistake: Building a One-Page Website

“We are seeing a big rise in one-pager websites,” says Liz Hughes of Blue Bamboo. “The issue with these is that it is very difficult to apply focused keywords to a particular topic.”

“Each topic would normally have its own page with its own title, URL, and subtitles. These are all opportunities to apply keywords and increase your chances of being ranked for those keywords.”

“One-pager websites are like putting all your SEO eggs into one basket. And we are seeing more and more websites adopt this type of design.”

Common Mistake: Failing to Submit a Sitemap to Google Search Console

“A lot of companies skip the basic step of setting up Google Search Console and submitting a proper sitemap,” says Ryan Walker of Gazelle Interactive.

“But this is crucial, especially when you want to trigger Google to crawl your site when you publish new content.”

Common Mistake: Using Sliders

“Sliders hide content and don’t get the interaction they’re thought to get,” says Brian Gorman of Go Fish Digital. “I run into many clients that use sliders, particularly on their homepages. But the data shows that sliders often lead to missed content.”

“On many occasions, I’ve taken the first slide and made it into the hero image, then used subsequent slides as new sections on the home page, supplementing the images and their heading overlays with on-page copy (and sometimes CTAs).”

“What would have remained nearly hidden within a slider was now being seen and helping to improve conversions. What’s more, the additional sections make the home page—most often the flagship page of a site—more robust.”

Common Mistake: Failing to Format Content Correctly

“One of the most obvious SEO issues that I see far too often is the improper use of heading tags,” says Wes Marsh of BCA Technologies. “Many companies try to use heading tags for style rather than for their intended purpose of organizing the page.”

“For example, when trying to make something big and bold, it gets wrapped in an H1, even though there’s already a heading at the top of the page. The better use is to have only one H1 tag on the page, and it should be the big overarching topic of that page and closely align with the page’s meta title and URL slug.”

“From that, you can have multiple H2s, H3s and H4s, but they should always be in a logical order. The goal here is to help both the user and the search engines quickly understand exactly what your page is all about, especially if they are skimming.”

“Finally, when using your target keywords and related keywords in these heading tags, you can further improve your SEO and potential to rank,” Marsh says.

In addition to using heading tags improperly, some of our respondents say that sites fail to use heading tags at all. “Some websites appear to lack any meaningful header tags upon viewing their page source,” says Michael Anderson of GeoJango Maps.

“It could be a website that places page titles within an image, one that has H2 tags but no H1 tag, or perhaps they simply increased the size of the body text to make it look like a page title/H1 tag,” Anderson says.

“Use H2 headings to break out your article and include related keywords you want to rank for,” says Stacy Caprio of Conversiono.

“Often, sites will only do keyword research for one main keyword and include it in the title and throughout the article, forgetting there are more opportunities to include additional keywords sprinkled throughout that could also start to rank in the article,” Caprio says.

Common Mistake: Including Multiple H1 Tags

“Each page should have one H1 tag,” says Ironpaper’s Brian Casey. “You don’t want to lose the SEO value that an H1 provides.”

“Time after time, I see companies including multiple H1 tags on their pages,” says Tony Mastri of MARION Marketing Agency. “The best practice is to include one H1, indicating that the page has a single overarching topic.”

“Sometimes the error happens because site owners aren’t aware of this best practice, but many times the culprit is a website builder.”

“Marketers without coding knowledge rely on drag-and-drop website builders to create headlines and page content. Many of these drag-and-drop builders wrap their headings in H1 tags, leading unsuspecting marketers to create multiple H1s because they like the size or styling.”

“With just a little bit of CSS knowledge, marketers can maintain a single H1 on each page and use other subheadings (H2 or smaller) for additional section headings,” Mastri says.

Common Mistake: Failing to Include Structured Data

“The use of structured data is something that very few people implement,” says Steve Yanor of Sky Alphabet Social Media. “According to a June 2019 survey by W3Techs, only 24.6% of websites use JSON-LD (javascript-based) structured data. Another 47% of websites use no structured data whatsoever.”

“This demonstrates that the use of structured data on webpages and elements on those pages is a very obvious SEO tip that few companies follow.”

“Pages with structured data rank higher in search results and show more information because Google can understand the content on the page much better. Structured data is not optional, but very few people go beyond the basics of what Yoast or another basic SEO plugin provides.”

9. Local SEO

“Local SEO is important,” says Moz’s Peter Meyers. “90% of purchases take place in physical stores, and 80% of U.S. disposable income is spent within 20 miles of home.”

“Navigate the click-to-brick economy by ensuring you’re implementing local SEO tactics.”

Common Mistake: No Google My Business Profile

“All businesses—whether Fortune 500 or mom-and-pop—need to have a Google My Business set up for every location they operate in,” says Landon Coats of Varx Marketing.

“Not only should those be properly set up, but they also need to be monitored and maintained as if they were any other social media account,” Coats says.

Sam Bretzmann of BretzMedia agrees: “Every business should update and maintain their Google My Business profile. This is currently a huge factor for local SEO. There are still a lot of businesses that are not using Google My Business, so it will give you a big leg up on your competition.”

Editor’s note: Local businesses can now get a quick view of their most important Google My Business metrics in Databox. Download the free Google My Business Insights dashboard below to get started, then add in Datablocks from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and more than 70 other tools for a centralized view of all of your KPIs.

Common Mistake: NAP Inconsistencies

“One obvious SEO tip that very few people/companies follow is NAP consistency,” says Lane Rizzardini of Marion Relationship Marketing. “NAP stands for name, address, and phone number, and these three items should be identical on your website, social media profiles, and any directories you can be found on across the web.”

“If Google sees all kinds of different conflicting information, it doesn’t know what to trust and will suppress you in the rankings,” Rizzardini says.

“Having consistent NAP throughout the internet is important for companies wishing to rank well for local organic search results,” says Noelle Del Grippo of Sagefrog Marketing Group.

“Add a branded and consistent NAP to a variety of local websites, like Google my Business, Bing for Business, Yelp, Clutch, etc.,” says Marissa Ryan of VisualFizz.

“While the traffic from these channels likely won’t significantly change your business, sending out these location-based signals can help your business appear for local and/or mobile searches,” Ryan says.

Common Mistake: Lack of Reviews

“Collecting reviews online is a great way to get search engines’ attention,” says Reuben Kats of Falcon Marketing. “You should do your best in getting clients to leave reviews on your listings.”

“Reviews help people see that your business is reliable and reputable. Over the years, people have started to rely on referrals and word-of-mouth. Getting reviews on your listings will drive more customers to your business.”

10. Technical SEO

“Everyone knows that having good technical SEO makes it easy for search engines, but we have so many things to do as SEOs and digital marketers that we often forget the less glamorous parts of search engine optimization,” says Austin Shong of Blip Billboards.

“It’s easy to get caught up in off-site, on-site, and content creation so that the only time technical things get looked at is when you’re teaching your summer intern or turning things over to an agency.”

“It doesn’t need to take forever, but periodically firing up Screaming Frog and making sure your new pages are optimized for mobile and your sitemap is up to date can make all the difference.”

Common Mistake: Lack of SEO Experience

“Good SEO can’t be achieved by guesswork, so it’s important that you have experience—or that you reach out to a company that does,” says Angela Ash of Flow SEO.

“Many people find that they’re spinning their wheels and dedicating a lot of time with very little results. If this is the case, SEO agencies offer competitive prices, and they can guarantee that you will move up in rankings,” Ash says.

Nathan Griffin of O’Malley Real Estate recommends “getting a professional to audit your technical SEO configuration, not just your content or linking strategy. Crawl errors, duplicated content, site speed, and even robots.txt issues need an SEO-minded technical professional.”

“In many IT departments, the website support team may have some SEO knowledge, but it’s frequently dated or inaccurate. An authoritative third party can help speak truth to power, especially on behalf of less technical search marketers,” Griffin says.

Janice Wald of Mostly Blogging also says you can use an SEO audit tool like Sitechecker. “Sitechecker will conduct a free SEO audit of your site. And by seeing what’s wrong with your search engine optimization, you’ll learn a great deal about SEO.”

Common Mistake: No SSL Certificate

“One obvious SEO tip that very few people/companies follow is the need to install an SSL certificate and move to HTTPS,” says Samuel David of Smart Home Vault.

“Installing an SSL certificate and moving to HTTPS helps instill confidence in website visitors, especially for websites collecting sensitive data.”

11. Analysis, Testing, and Measurement

One of the most important pieces of a solid SEO approach is conducting analysis, running experiments, and measuring your results.

It’s through this process that SEOs identify not only overarching SEO fundamentals, but also best practices for your specific business, niche, and industry.

Common Mistake: Ignoring What Competitors Are Doing

“A good competitive analysis will show you low-hanging fruit you are missing out on,” says Lance Beaudry of Avalanche Creative. “After selecting your target keywords, all you need to do is compare your position for those keywords against your competitors.”

“Almost every time we find a keyword that the customer has selected as valuable, yet they aren’t in the top 100 and at least one competitor is on page one. This means our client is probably missing some valuable content.”

“Develop an SEO content template for that keyword, publish it, and you should start ranking.”

Common Mistake: Not Measuring Click-Through Rate

“In my experience as a professional SEO for the last 14 years, one of the most overlooked SEO tactics is measuring click-through rate (CTR) on search engine results pages,” says Will Manuel of Core Mobile Apps.

“It has been factually shown that Google takes into account the number of clicks a particular site is getting versus the other sites on the same search engine results page.”

“For example, if the top three sites were absolutely identical in terms of SEO value, the site that has the best CTR will eventually move up above the others simply because Google sees that site as the one that is the most relevant for the user’s search inquiry,” Manuel says.

R.J. Weiss of The Ways To Wealth recommends “finding your CTR inside Google Search Console. If it’s getting a lot of impressions but few clicks, test a new headline to see if click-throughs improve.”

And Software Path’s Tom Feltham says to “conduct CRO tests on your page titles and meta descriptions over time. Using Google Search Console, you can quickly find low CTR pages on your site that are good candidates for testing.”

Editor’s note: Want a quick way to see the click-through rate of your top pages alongside other key Google Search Console metrics? Download this free Google Search Console Basics dashboard to easily compare your site’s average CTR to the CTR of your most-trafficked pages and highest-ranked keywords.

Common Mistake: Failing to Measure ROI

“Tracking lead volume—and ultimately tracking revenue being generated by SEO campaigns—is the most obvious SEO tip that a lot of companies overlook,” says Joe Lawlor of Digital Dynasty.

“The only reason to invest in SEO is to get a return on the investment—not to just make sure technical work has been done.”

12. Manual Actions

One of the absolute worst SEO mistakes you can make is doing something that results in a manual action from Google. If a manual action is taken on your site, Google may remove your site from the search results entirely.

To prevent getting hit with a manual action, avoid these common SEO mistakes.

Common Mistake: Not Setting Up Google Search Console

“A big mistake is not connecting your site to Google Search Console,” says Janel Scott of DatabaseUSA.com. “It’s literally a free tool. It has so many necessary functions, yet website owners and marketers just completely forget that it exists.”

“For example:”

Another benefit of connecting your site to Google Search Console is that in the unfortunate event that your site was tagged with a manual action, Google would send you a notice through Google Search Console. This could help you notice the issue sooner and take action to get it removed.

Common Mistake: Engaging in Black-Hat SEO Practices

“Driven by ambitious goals and a great thirst for success, some people go beyond organic SEO processes and move towards content and backlink manipulation,” says Uladzislau Yanouski of ScienceSoft. “It’s easy to be misled into this approach because many websites rank despite having a primitive approach to SEO.”

“But it’s crucial not to follow these bad examples. Instead, think about the possible harm of being penalized by Google.”

Common Mistake: Linking to Low-Quality Sources

“One copywriting best practice I always try to follow for effective SEO is quoting reputable sources,” says Jessie Brennan of SOVRN Creative.

Think of your links as recommendations. If you wouldn’t recommend a site as reputable to a friend, you probably don’t want to link to it on your website. One of the reasons Google can apply a manual action is when you have unnatural links on your site.

Common Mistake: Failing to Understand Nofollow Links

“Very few people understand the difference between ‘follow’ and ‘nofollow’ links,” says Cynthia White of Dear Cynthia. “Nofollow links are to be used for paid advertising links.”

Shawn DeWolfe of Shawn DeWolfe Consulting also says to make sure the ads you’re running have nofollow links: “Too many people run Google Ads campaigns that dump their ad and link on any page willing to run it. That means backlinks that look really spotty: Russian hack sites, porn sites, gambling, etc.”

Overarching SEO Fundamentals

We’ve looked in great detail at some of the specific SEO fundamentals businesses should adhere to—and at the common mistakes that businesses make with each. But there are also some overarching fundamentals our respondents recommend. In closing, we’ll review those.

Robert Donnell of P5 Marketing says it’s important to “understand when to use content marketing. If a purchase is easy, people don’t do a lot of research before they buy. If it’s expensive or complex, the purchase requires research.”

“It’s in the latter scenario where content comes into play. If you can help prospective buyers do their research, then content marketing—and the SEO for that content—works like a charm,” Donnell says.

Claire Shaner of BestCompany says it’s important that you “don’t put all your eggs in one basket. When businesses are working on their SEO, they tend to find one method that works for them, and they run with it.”

“SEO is kind of like high-risk stocks. You don’t want to put all your money on one thing because it could drop overnight. In the ever-changing and evolving world of SEO, you can’t bank on one thing. You want your stocks diversified,” Shaner says.

And Kevin Tash of Tack Media says to “always have a paid strategy to balance your SEO. SEO is mostly supplemental in the beginning. It’s not going to be your primary lead driver in the short term.”

“SEO is not going to make or break your business, and you should never rely on it solely to sustain your business.”

This content was originally published here.

[stimtoybox]

Image Descriptions

I’ve got two asks by anons on the same theme, so I’ll combine them into one post to save a few spoons:

Hi! I was wondering if you had a guide for writing image descriptions? Something outlining how much detailed is needed and what should and should no be included, any tips really. Thanks! 

hi! i had a couple of questions about image descriptions; do you have/have a link to a guide on how to write them properly (eg. amount of detail, how to write multiple image descriptions on one post and still be clear etc)? and if we dont have the spoons for a full description, would a simple/basic desc (eg: "a jar of blue orbeez on a wooden desk" w/ no more detail) help by giving the mods a starting point to edit from rather than writing from scratch or would it be a hindrance? 

This is actually a hard question for me to answer, because it asks me to do something I do without thinking - convert non-word information into words. In all honesty, my first response was well, just describe it which is so not helpful to anyone. For me, this is like asking someone to explain how they fall asleep - it’s an automatic process that doesn’t involve a lot of conscious decision-making.

So I let both asks lie fallow for a few days until I got past the not helpful first response and figured out what it is I actually do when I describe.

I’ll also observe that while I do need image descriptions myself (for GIFs and videos) I am not the primary target for them, so there might be needs I have forgotten or overlooked. I’m in the position of needing descriptions but still having full access to reading the text, so there’s probably a lot of issues folks who use screen readers face that I haven’t included. Please correct me if so.

First: any description is better than no description.

If you only have spoons for one line, do it and call it done, seriously. Yes, a more detailed description is preferable, but when you look at the vast amount of undescribed posts on Tumblr alone, if even a brief descriptive line makes those posts more accessible, we’re better off. We need to make Tumblr a more accessible place for everyone, so every little bit makes a difference.

(Speaking for my needs here at @stimtoybox, I can always add a description line if there’s something I think needed that the OP has left out, and I have done this in the past. That’s still less work than my having to do it myself, and I’m pretty sure the other mods will agree. Anything that means less work for us means more posts for everyone else. Right now, I have the posts to go up to posting five or six times a day easily, but we can’t format them fast enough to do so.)

I’ve tucked everything else behind a read-more cut. This is a long post and is probably best read when one has time and spoons on hand:

Second: you do not and should not describe every tiny detail in an image.

Look at an image long enough and you’ll see a chapter’s worth of detail you can describe, but nobody wants to read through or listen to a whole chapter just to know what’s in the image. To be blunt, nobody cares about the fine grain detail of the table on which your stress ball is sitting. They’re more interested in the pattern on the stress ball.

We need to describe in more detail the relevant information and in less detail the incidental information. This is all the more important for describers with limited spoons, like most of us, but it’s also important for folks who need the descriptions but don’t have the spoons to read a paragraph for one relevant sentence.

To figure out what’s description-worthy, as in what the majority of your description should focus on, you might want to ask yourself these questions:

- Who is the image for?

- What is the image about?

Take any photo on this blog as an example: this photo is for stimmers, about a given stim toy, and its purpose is to show people what this toy looks like and, often, how it might be used. That tells you immediately what your focus is. Often, it’s the central object in the image, as we have a long history of indicating importance by putting something in the centre of a composition. However, it could also be several stim toys or people; chances are high that any single image is actually about a few different things at once.

Next, we move on to details we think people are going to want to know:

- What do the subjects of the image look like?

This can be broken down into a few different categories:

- Colour: what colour or colours is the subject?

- Shape: is it rounded? Angular? Cube, rectangular, circular? How many different shapes comprise it?

- Texture: is it soft? Hard? Fuzzy? Prickling? Protruding?

- Size: how much bigger, longer or wider is the subject compared to any other items in the photograph?

(Stim toy review shots often have the toy beside a coin or credit-card-sized card for scale, so describe the difference between that item and the toy.)

- Text: is there any text in the image, particularly on labels, signs or packaging? Include this, especially if it conveys meaningful information!

- Material: plastic? Wool? Wood? Metal? How many different materials comprise it? How is it put together?

- Expression: does it look happy? Sad? Indifferent?

Less relevant for stim toys, more relevant for animals/people. I don’t just mean facial expression here, but body language as well. The difference between a dog growling and a dog lying on its side sunbaking is something people will want to know.

Next,

- Is there anything in the background that impacts the subject?

For stim toys, this often isn’t the case. You can write a short line referencing the background or, if you need to save spoons, exclude it. This is where you don’t need to go full-on detail, because it isn’t necessary to the information the image is trying to impart. A reference is good, as it goes some way to giving the reader the whole visual experience, but this shouldn’t be the focus of your description if it has nothing or little to do with the subject. Contrarily, for a landscape shot of mountains, the background is as much the subject if not the subject, so it should be described with more detail.

- Is there anything in your description irrelevant to the subject?

For example, glare, flash, an out-of-focus shot, two sentences describing the wood grain of the table on which the Tangle is sitting. If your description is already tending to the long (more than a paragraph), these are the sorts of things that are first to be cut because they don’t aid in conveying meaning. If you do include these things in your description, keep them to brief mentions: they should not be the focus.

- Is my description too long to be readable?

The general rule is this: the longer the description, the more incidental/extraneous detail you need to cut (and the more formatting it will need, see below). The more photos in one post, like a long photoset, the more you need to cut detail that isn’t absolutely relevant, since nobody is going to read or listen to ten paragraphs of description about said photoset.

This is why I dislike information posts here on Tumblr that contain upwards of say ten images: they’re difficult to describe properly without creating an essay-length description that even folks who need that description won’t bother accessing. Conversely, the amount of information needed to be cut to make the description readable means the folks who need those descriptions just aren’t getting enough information. The very format of these posts makes them impossible to make fully accessible.

(It’s different on other websites, especially for things like tutorials and essays, where you can put the description as alt text and it’s broken up by the body text itself. When you’re forced to put image descriptions as one separate section of text, as here on Tumblr, it is a problem.)

If you want your post to convey information and be accessible to the majority of people, consider the amount of images in your post. This post is an example of why a large amount of images render the post, when described, absolutely inaccessible. You’re better off to make a few smaller posts, that can be described with readable/listenable descriptions, than one massive post, even if you tuck the descriptions under a read more.

Lastly,

- What is the image trying to convey to its audience?

This is less relevant for stim toys, more relevant for photos of animals/people, comics, anything where the image is doing more than conveying factual information. When an image is telling a story, check if the factual descriptions do communicate that story. Your description should be doing, as much as possible, the job of the image, which means conveying information or telling a story.

When describing, keep asking yourself: if I couldn’t see this image, what would I want to know? A description that answers that question without becoming an essay is a good description.

Third: formatting is important.

Paragraphing: in most cases, anything more than ten lines a paragraph will result in nobody reading it. Humans have short attention spans, even more so for non-fiction/non-creative/informative writing, like web writing. Not to mention that many disabilities make processing slabs of text difficult if not impossible. If your description runs longer than ten lines, break it up somewhere. Also, if you need to break up your paragraph, that’s a good sign that your description might be long enough to go under a read more cut.

Make sure you’ve got a line space between each paragraph. Anyone who reads your description (me, for example, if you’ve described a GIF) is used to the standard online formatting of a line space between paragraphs, and just starting a new line throws off the brain’s ability to realise you’ve paragraphed. It will still look like an unreadable block of text, and I can promise you that I won’t read it (can’t read it, in fact). Which is a waste of your time, sadly, since you mean the best, but that’s how much formatting does matter.

(Tumblr mostly adds line spaces between paragraphs automatically for you if you’re typing in rich text mode; you’ll need to add the HTML for paragraphs if you’re in HTML mode. Just add <p> to the start and </p> to the end of each paragraph.)

Indicating: use some indication (usually the words “image description” and brackets) that the description is not the body text, as that signals to sighted readers that they can skip past it. I use squared brackets [] because they’re not in common use in prose/non-mathematical text. I dislike the use of rounded brackets () because they’re in common use, so my brain thinks the description is body text. I realise it a few seconds later, but if we can tell the brain immediately that the text is optional, it’s easier on the reader, especially if they have limited spoons for text processing.

This one is subtle editing; I know most people don’t think about how much text formatting guides and alerts the reader, but there’s a reason we stick to some norms in English. The brain gets very used to certain styles and punctuation conveying meaning, and folks with developmental disorders in particular might find it hard to understand meaning without these cues or have to work harder to get that meaning. Speaking from personal experience!

Numbering: in most cases for multi-image posts, you’ll need to mentally assign a number to the post (left to right, top to bottom) and describe those pictures in order. This is for folks who can see images but need the text to help with processing; if they’re not in order, it’s ridiculously confusing. Start each description with the number of that photo and break each description up into a new paragraph. Here’s an example on my sensory room post.

The exception for this is when there’s only a few images or those images aren’t very different from each other. Then, to save spoons (as I have few myself) I’ll describe the subject of the image and then how it differs in each photo, often in a single paragraph. Here’s an example on a slime post. I admit that this is a less-clear way of describing, but it saves a few spoons!

I’m sure there’s something I’ve forgotten, anons, but this has taken me quite a few spoons. If there’s something confusing or there’s a question I haven’t properly answered, ask and I’ll do my best to answer/answer properly.

Likewise, if folks who use screen readers want to add corrections or changes, please do so!

- Mod K.A.

[marketerintel]

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Date: 2020-05-28 21:31:46

[aoa id=’0′][dn_wp_yt_youtube_source type=”101″ id=”3Tqa77posqI”][/aoa]

Lets discuss the details of the new $450 per week back to work stimulus check proposal and what this means for everyone watching – Enjoy! Add me on Instagram: GPStephan

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[anthonykrierion]

The Complete CognitiveSEO Review

Last updated on January 3, 2020 at 06:04 pm

CognitiveSEO has been part of the SEO-Hacker toolbox since 2017 and I have been using it since then. CognitiveSEO is an all-around SEO tool that is being used by hundreds of SEO agencies and has helped improve the visibility of thousands of websites.

I had the privilege to test CognitiveSEO in its beta phase and I wrote a review on its Keyword Tool and Content Assistant. CognitiveSEO has made a lot of improvements since then and I thought it would be great to review this tool again and talk about everything that it has to offer this time.

If you’d like to try out CognitiveSEO for yourself, you could do so by going to this link and get a free trial. I highly recommend that you go and check it out but if you need more convincing, you could read this review first!

SEO Campaign Setup

CognitiveSEO allows you to set up campaigns to easily check for errors on your on-page SEO, track your backlinks, monitor your competitor’s backlinks, and track your keyword rankings. The process of setting up a campaign is easy and simple and can be done in a few clicks. All you have to do is put your domain, select the campaign objectives, and move on with the next steps.

Once you’ve set up the campaign, CognitiveSEO will start to crawl your website and it will take a few minutes before it is done crawling. The tool also allows you to connect your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts for complete data.

Site Audit

CognitiveSEO’s site audit tool is its newest feature. It scans for critical on-page SEO issues found on your website. The site audit tool will look for issues on your website’s indexability, content, and architecture. It can detect 404 errors, missing and duplicate meta tags, pages with thin content, mixed content, malware, and images without alt text.

The site audit can also give you an overview of your website’s site structure. With this tool, you could easily identify the pages that need more internal links, broken links, anchor text distribution, and crawled sitemaps.

What I like about this feature is that the Site Audit Overview already gives me all the information that I need and helps me prioritize the problems I need to fix first. I don’t have to check each and every URL if it needs some fixes. One look at the dashboard and all I need is there. All I have to do is click that issue and it will take me to the list of specific pages that need immediate attention.

The dashboard will always show you the Top 3 Fixes that the tool recommends. In this example, the three problems were Non-Descriptive URLs, Limited Word Count Content, and Similar Page Titles.

If I go to check the pages with Limited Word Count Content, it will show me a list of pages with low word count numbers and should be optimized by adding more content. This saves me a lot of time rather than sifting through pages one by one.

Depending on your plan, the number of pages the Site Audit tool will crawl is limited. CognitiveSEO’s starter plan has a maximum limit of 50,000 pages so if you have a website larger than that, you would have to contact their team and request a more suitable package for you. However, if you have a limited plan, there is an option to put a URL list in your crawl that allows you to specify the pages you want to crawl so you could prioritize important pages on your website first. 

inBound Link Analysis

CognitiveSEO’s inBound Link Analysis is one of my favorite tools to use. In the SEO campaign, the inBound Link Analysis monitors all of your website’s current, new, and lost backlinks realtime. It also allows you to track your competitor’s links to give you an edge and steal their backlinks to your advantage. But, the backlink analysis tool shows you more than that.

There are two things that I love in this tool: Data visualization and Unnatural Link Detection. 

In the dashboard, I have the option to select different types of link charts. I could check my website’s Link Velocity to see my backlink profile’s growth, show the ratio between nofollow and dofollow links, the location where my links are coming from the most in webpages, and even the category/niche of the websites linking to my website. I find this really useful since it gives me a holistic view of a website’s backlinks.

The inBound Link Analysis tool will also show you the most used anchor texts in your backlinks and there is an option for you to classify each anchor text if it’s branded, commercial, or miscellaneous.

Once you’re done with the classification, CognitiveSEO will start to scan for unnatural links that might increase your chances of receiving a penalty.

From here, you have the option to go to the Unnatural Links Navigator, check if these links are really suspicious and harmful, and export a file with the list of URLs you want to disavow.

Similar to the Site Audit, the inBound Link Analysis has also a maximum limit of 200,000 backlinks that it will crawl per website. This is for the Starter package and you would also have to request a custom package should you need to crawl more links.

CognitiveSEO Backlink Influence

There are so much more data to explore inside CognitiveSEO’s backlinks checker that I can say it is a haven for link builders. Another major example of it is CognitiveSEO has its own metrics to identify the influence of each linking webpage or domain to your website. The Link Influence and Domain Influence.

CognitiveSEO uses different metrics to identify if a website has No, Low, Good, Average, or High influence.

I use this tool regularly when I do link building. Before I consider building a link from a website, I check it first if it is worth the effort by checking its influence in CognitiveSEO’s Quick Site Explorer. I usually target websites that have at least Good Page and Domain Influence. I also check the website’s Link Profile Influence which shows a chart of all the influence ratings of the website’s backlinks.

In the inBound Link Analysis inside the SEO Campaigns, there is also a visualization of the overall link influence of the website you are monitoring. While it is great to have links that are Good to High influence, CognitiveSEO states that it is normal to have the majority of a website’s links Low or No influence because the majority of the web consists of low-quality websites.

Content Optimizer and Keyword Tool

No SEO campaign would work without, of course, content and keywords. I’ve already reviewed this tool in my previous article on CognitiveSEO but it is just so good that I had to revisit it.

The Keyword Tool allows you to do keyword research fast and easy. Once you search for a keyword that you have in mind, CognitiveSEO will show you its difficulty and give you an estimate of the Content Difficulty and Links difficulty of the keyword. It will also show you other related keyword opportunities in the Keyword Explorer Tab and gives you an overview of your competition in the Ranking Analysis Tab.

CognitiveSEO measures Link Difficulty based on the strength of the backlink profiles of the websites in the top 10 search results. A low Link Difficulty score indicates that it is easier to rank for the keyword with just a few links. It will also indicate the recommended number of links you need to the page you want to rank and your domain if you want to win the keyword you are targetting. With that said, a high Link Difficulty score means you need more links to rank.

CognitiveSEO measures Content Difficulty by how much the top 10 results for that keyword is well optimized when it comes to content. A low Content Difficulty score means it is easier for you to rank by using content. The Content Difficulty Score can also be a basis of the minimum score your content needs to have for you to compete for the keyword. You could use the Content Optimizer tool to find out your content’s rating and CognitiveSEO will also give you suggestions on how to improve your score further.

CognitiveSEO Signals

Last 2019, Google started to pre-announce broad core algorithm updates. Google algorithm updates are always a crazy time for SEOs because you can never know how you will be affected. It is rare for Google to announce algorithm updates and you can never expect it but having tools to help monitor the volatility of the search results can give you a good idea if there is something going on.

CognitiveSEO has a tool called CognitiveSEO Signals that monitors over 170,000 keywords for fluctuations. They also keep a track of the past confirmed Google Updates if you to see a history of significant updates.

I usually check this tool a few times a week. High fluctuations in this tool don’t necessarily confirm that there was an algorithm update on that specific day until Google confirms it but this gives me a good idea that Google might be changing small things or could expect that there might be a big update coming.

Key Takeaway

CognitiveSEO is a versatile tool that can save webmasters a huge amount of time and offers unlimited optimization opportunities to increase a website’s visibility. I’ve been using CognitiveSEO for more than 2 years now and I could easily say that I’ve had a great experience with this tool. The user interface is pleasing to the eyes and the ease of use makes it a great tool for single website owners, agencies, and enterprises.

The Complete CognitiveSEO Review was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[nxttech]

ThopTV is one of the best LiveTV Streaming Application for Android, and It offered multiple features no other LiveTV Streaming Application offered such as catch-up replays and more. Previously, this was just available for Android Phones, and if you wanted to use ThopTV on PC you needed to install the ThopTV APK on an Android Emulator such as Nox Player, this task was not easy and required a computer with enough amount of RAM for it to work smoothly but now developers behind ThopTV had been working continuously hard and now they have successfully built the ThopTV for PC and this isn’t just for Windows, this is available for all major operating systems such as Android, Windows, Mac, and even Linux, and hence in this article we will be discussing in detail on ThopTV for PC, its features, installation guide, FAQ, and more. So stay tuned to TheLeaker for more such Articles.

Features of ThopTV For PC/Laptop:

Live TV Channel Streaming: ThopTV is mainly used for streaming live TV channels around the globe. It allows users to stream live TV Channels, TV Shows, and much more.

Stream in Full HD: While most of the LiveStreaming shows don’t allow you to stream in Full HD or even in HD, ThopTV is one the apps which allow you to do so, With ThopTV users, can stream content in Full HD+ as well but it will require a high-speed data connection.

Catch-up Shows: One of the main key highlights of the ThopTV is its ability to stream older shows which are also known as Catch-up shows, It can stream up to 7 days older shows and is amazing

Radio Support: If you are a radio channel lover and need an application which can allow you to listen to audio from more than 5000 radio channels.

Live Customer Support: Developers behind ThopTV have been working really hard, and now they have developed live customer support to help you out on any issue that you face.

Supports Multiple Players: If you don’t like the inbuilt video player, ThopTV can also stream to any other video players such as VLC Media Player or even MX Player.

Supports Subtitles: ThopTV also supports subtitles in TV Shows/Movies or even Web Series, so if you want to watch a show of some other language, the support for Subtitles is present here.

Download ThopTV For Windows/Mac/Linux:

Download Latest Version of ThopTV for Android

Download Latest Version of ThopTV for Windows

Download Latest Version of ThopTV for Linux

Download Latest Version of ThopTV for MacOS

How to Install ThopTV on PC and Laptop Easily:

Windows:

Download the ThopTV installer file (.exe) from the above download link.

Disable any Antivirus app you have installed to avoid installation problems.

Open up the downloaded file by double-clicking on it.

Click on next and Continue and wait for it to Install.

You are now ready to go.

macOS:

Download the ThopTV installer (.dmg) from the above download link

Double click on it, it will open it in a viewfinder

Now, drag and drop the icon to the Applications Folder

Now ThopTV is installed, and you are good to go.

Linux:

Download the ThopTV installer (.deb) from the above download link

Double Tap on it to open it in the Softwares Windows

Provide the administrator password and click on Install

This will Install ThopTV on your PC

Screenshots

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Step 1

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  Guide to using ThopTV For Windows/Mac/Linux:

Once after installing ThopTV on your device, open it by double-tapping on the icon on the desktop, I assume that you have installed it with the default recommended settings. I am using a Windows PC, but the steps you need to follow on all other operating systems will also be the same. Once opened, based on your country of residence, choose the country and click on Continue. Now select the streaming service you would like to stream with, I have selected Jasmine TV and click on it, now you will come across a list of available channels for live steaming select on any one of those, for the demonstration I have selected Sony TV and select the resolution you want to stream in such as Full HD, or if you’re going to watch the old episodes of last 7 days click on Catchup and select the date and time.

Also, if you want to watch movies or TV Series go back to the home screen and on the top toolbar select the button respectively if you’re going to view Movies click on the Movie button else if you want to watch Web Series click on Series and select your episode and start streaming. This application is excellent and works perfectly.

FAQ’s

Is it Safe to Use?

ThopTV for PC/Mac/Linux/Android is entirely safe for use, while some security apps such as Windows Defender may treat it as a virus, it completely safe and doesn’t require any permissions, therefore ensuring safety.

Does it Charge the Users?

ThopTV is one of those applications which doesn’t charge their users for their services, they show minimal ads, and hence this indicates that the developers are passioned and not greedy minded. While there are many IPTV apps such as Area 51 IPTV which charge their users for services, ThopTV is entirely free.

Are there any bugs?

ThopTV for PC is currently in beta stage as the app has been released for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux Recently and as expected these may contain some bugs. We can expect from the developers to solve the issues soon. We will notify you as soon as the bugs are fixed.

How is Quality of the Video?

The video quality is the best in its category, and the application is my favorite regarding its quality of streaming. ThopTV can stream content in Full HD+, HD+ and hence the quality is good, and you can enjoy watching it.

ThopTV For PC Download – Mac, Windows 10/8/7/XP, Linux and Laptop ThopTV is one of the best LiveTV Streaming Application for Android, and It offered multiple features no other LiveTV Streaming Application offered such as catch-up replays and more.

[mctvcker]

Impact Of Away Page Optimization Techniques In SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Search engine optimization (SEO) is among the most most affordable forms of Internet marketing. This content uses work with a customer. After extensive customer research all of us wrote a report about precisely why customers weren't returning. Without heading into too much detail, the particular customers are not satisfied along with their service or organisation. The particular client said they couldn't pay for to fix that problem yet wish Blog9T to spend some money upon a blog and SEO marketing campaign to potentially pull in a lot more customers. 36 yr old Defence Force Elderly Officer Zerbe from Vanier, usually spends time with passions such as fast, top seo trends in 2018 and hot air balooning. Keeps a tour site and has lots to write about after visiting Humayun's Tomb. Strange. Surely the answer here would be use their particular budget to fix problems plus get repeat custom - perhaps the best custom you may get. If you've thought of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION companies as having a absence of ability to generate that will type of content, most perform not. Some do have this particular ability and can create these types of types of content masterpieces within a economical way. And, the particular resulting search engine ranking jobs and traffic will get customers and executives to see your own site. The best way in order to have a strong online existence is to make sure that will the information on your industry’s website is internet search motor friendly. This is achieved simply by 'localizing' your articles. This is Blog9T Youtube usually the process of translating content material, but taking it one phase further to ensure that really readability is perfect and examined against local customs, cultural variations and preferences. International SEO copywriting is simply a process associated with providing localized content that will be original, not translated. Be certain to find content writer provides in the local market plus is, in fact, a native-speaker. This dramatically increases the opportunity for getting noticed by users from the local target marketplace. Once the keywords are actually established for each page is actually very important the translation should be carried out with SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in mind. This means that will a certain keyword must show up in certain places on the particular web page without being described too often that could end result in penalization by search motors (key word stuffing). Some recommend that the keyword should show up in the title, description, going ones, body twice and the particular alt tags. This is within no way a protocol because one also has to create note of that search motors are constantly changing their methods and search criteria. The look of the keyword in specific areas can often lead in order to very cumbersome translations however generating a seamless translation that states well with the keyword within position is a skill within itself and the reason the lot of translation services businesses that handle SEO can pay for to charge that little little bit extra for SEO translation. As an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION services provider, I must become a master of innovative on the internet marketing. I can't limit the SEO company service offering in order to the one optimization task. I actually must position my value idea to suit market trends. Right now there is no status quo nowadays. These trends affect everyone regardless of whether you're a manufacturer, ecommerce merchant, or professional service provider. Nearly all consumers and B2B buyers are usually not afflicted by flashy design but instead are intrigued when you are usually where they need to become. That shows you get this. It's all within the setting. Copywriters naturally acquire skills beyond easy writing, depending on the places and media in which they will work. Online copywriters, for illustration, usually benefit from having a few understanding of HTML (the vocabulary that web pages are composed in) as well as the particular most common techniques of on-line marketing and advertising. SEO will be a key consideration, and on the web copywriters have to learn to compose copy that appeals to individual readers while also signalling to find engines that a web web page is relevant to particular key phrases. In fact, the last several years have seen the introduction of specialist SEO copywriters, in whose sole focus is copywriting intended for web pages which are meant to rank highly in lookup engines.

Picture the time, energy, and concentrate you'd have not considering constructing your website and making continuing updates, writing sales copy, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, social media, webinar management plus article marketing. SRE GLOBAL INFOTECH is providing SEO India in order to KnowinServers, Provides you with finest and top notch quality providers around the world in the area associated with Dedicated server, Basic Server, Linux VPS, Windows VPS, German Machine, USA Servers and much even more to produce solutions for client globally. Effective off-site SEO may be the difference maker among a moderately successful website plus a true online juggernaut. Yet make no mistake, an intensive off-site SEO campaign involves period, expertise, and plenty of function hours to be implemented efficiently. It would be a great idea to proceed step simply by step with steady determination: start with your blog, Facebook or even Twitter page, after which move upon to article writing and on-line P. R., making sure in order to Blog9T widen your distribution network along with each new release. To determine your campaign's success, start maintaining track of website hits, fans, incoming links and other important metrics using Google Analytics or even similar programs. Yes, it's the wide range of work, but if 1st page Google rankings are exactly what you're after, there's no replacement for off-site SEO.

While a amount of software options exist, several will teach you a lot. Certain, the companies that produce these types of items will tell you almost everything you want to hear plus boast about how easy this is to use their software program but if you don't realize what the information means, a person won't get far. SEO software program may be useful like a device but it will never substitute true knowledge. I woldn't suggest it as teaching tool. Your own marketing is just too essential. People are usually increasingly embracing neatly packaged applications with little icons on their own smartphones. Are you aware that will on an average, smartphone customers had installed and accessed simply because many as 21 apps for each month in 2016? These numbers published in a report simply by eMarketer underline our love for that utility and ease of make use of that mobile apps bring. The particular report also stated that ALL OF US adults were estimated to have got spent more than two hrs per day using mobile applications in 2017, representing an raise of 10. 3% versus the particular time spent in 2016. Plus, this isn't a passing trend that will vanish in specific time. On the contrary, the particular time spent on using applications is expected to increase in order to almost three hours per day time by 2019. 4. SEO Value- If a person distribute your press release in the direction of the right sites, the search engine optimization value you get will become well worth the price a person pay for distribution. Why? These types of are viewed as newsworthy occasions and get picked up simply by news sites that are noticed as Authority sites, which research engines love. Also, when composing your release include tags, point text, your url, and key phrases throughout. This helps you position on search engines and will get you found by people looking. The back-links going back in order to your website from authority information sites is incredibly valuable.

[sabrinajulie]

Fatal Car Crashes in Utah Still Frequent

Car makers have decades of experience in tempting people with features they don’t really need. Today, however, with electronic dashboard options multiplying, it isn’t merely a matter of paying too much. Given the risk of distracted driving, the opinion of this car accident lawyer is that having too much technology puts everyone on the road at risk of serious or even fatal injuries.

Dashboard Danger: Feds May Create Guidelines on In-Car Devices

This is why federal safety regulators are considering the creation of guidelines to place restrictions on the use of technological devices that are built right into the vehicle. To prevent car accidents and truck accidents, the dashboard should a place to focus on driving, not infotainment.

To be sure, distracted driving can occur with older technology as well. Fiddling with the radio or looking down momentarily to change a CD can take a driver’s eyes off the road long enough to cause an accident.

But the sheer ubiquity of devices available now has multiplied the dangers of distraction. The devices include a host of mobile devices for texting, Web-browsing, cellphone calls, and so on. There are also increasingly many new devices built right into the vehicles themselves, such as voice-activated systems for navigation controls.

Just because such devices are hands-free does not make them safe. Research has repeatedly shown that even if a driver has his or her hands free, cognitive overload can occur when there are too many technological stimuli to keep track of.

When the mind gets overwhelmed by too much data, it becomes no longer possible to focus properly on driving safely.

Ray LaHood, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, has been meeting with executives from the car industry to discuss what can be done to design cars more safety in the Internet age.

Fatal Car Crashes Frequent Despite Recent Decline

It’s true that the number of fatal car accidents has declined in recent years. But there are still far too many Utahns who lose their lives on the road due to others’ negligence.

In Utah and in nine other states, more people were killed by firearms than in motor vehicle accidents in 2009.

In 2009, the number of gun deaths in Utah was 260. This exceeded the 256 people who died in automobile accidents was 256. The statistics were released by the Violence Policy Center, which compiled them from data available from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The 2009 statistics for fatal car accidents showed the continuation of a trend in recent years toward fewer deadly crashes. In Utah, the number declined from 322 in 2007 to 306 in 2008 – and down to 256 in 2009.

The trend also continued in the last two years. In 2010, the Utah Department of Transportation reported 253 accident deaths. In 2011, the number went down again, to 233.

The Utah State Patrol says that public awareness efforts by numerous agencies and advocacy groups have helped bring about the decrease in deaths.

It needs to be pointed out, however, that over 200 people losing their lives on the road in one year in a relatively small state is still a lot of deaths. There is still considerable work to do to make driving safer in Utah.

Distracted driving, for example, is a serious problem in Utah, just as it is in the rest of the country. But shiny new digital devices are only part of the problem. Defective cars, excessive speed and other factors also cause many accidents.

Free Initial Consultation with a Car Accident Lawyer

It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. Legal problems come to everyone. Whether it’s your son who gets in a car wreck, your uncle who loses his job and needs to file for bankruptcy, your sister’s brother who’s getting divorced, or a grandparent that passes away without a will -all of us have legal issues and questions that arise. So when you have a law question, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you!

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

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from Michael Anderson http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/fatal-car-crashes-in-utah-still-frequent/

from Top Rated Utah Lawyer https://topratedlawyer.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/fatal-car-crashes-in-utah-still-frequent/

[daysofparker-blog]

Chapter 1: Meeting Virginie

New Post has been published on https://www.daysofparker.com/chapter-1-meeting-virginie/

Chapter 1: Meeting Virginie

I started this blog in June and to most, it’s unknown why I started it. Well, today I am finally going to tell you the reasoning behind my newfound inspiration. While writing my blog I left cryptic hints of something that was happening in my life. I kept mentioning October 2nd throughout my entire 100 days of blogging. In my 27th blog post, I mentioned that I made one of the most life-changing purchases to date. You will finally learn what that purchase was and why October 2nd was so important. Here we go!

This story starts way back on July 31st,  2016. I meant a stranger on a chat forum I regularly read but I rarely ever post on. On that night, I was bored and wanted someone to chat with about music or some other benign topic. Little did I know, this stranger would go on to change my life and flip my world completely upside down.

Most strangers I talk too usually go forgotten within a couple of days but this one was intriguing in so many different ways. We would send lengthy letter-like messages back and forth, talking about everything under the sky. This proceeded on for just over a month before we finally decided to exchange numbers. Once we had each other’s numbers the conversations would only come to an end when our eyes forced us to sleep. When we weren’t texting it would feel like time came to a stop. It was torture waiting for replies but it never lasted too long.

Finally, after two months of texting, I started to realize I was developing feelings for this person. I must admit, this felt very foreign to me because I always thought of myself as being single forever, given my situation. One night after returning home from a concert, I mustered up the courage to tell this person how I truly felt. I told someone who was not family that I loved them for the first time.

She told me that she also had feelings for me but she was not ready to use the L word yet. I was not discouraged because love is an exceptionally powerful word and shouldn’t be used lightly. We kept our conversations going but they were definitely a bit more personal from this point forward. The type of stuff you keep behind lock and key (not naughty stuff, you pervs).

One morning she was leaving for her parent’s house and we exchanged our farewells as usual but the last text she sent said: “I love you”. The feeling in that moment was unlike anything I have ever experienced. It was like a volcano erupted in my chest and the smoke was making me light-headed. She said I love you! I honestly read that text one-hundred times over because I could not believe it. I can safely say this was one of the greatest moments of my life but there were definitely more of those moments to come.

After we established that we were officially dating, we needed to figure out how to meet up in person. There was no way I was going to fly her to Arizona in the Summer and the Spring was to close at this point, so we decided on her flying to Arizona on October 2nd, 2017. Nearly a year away but it was good because we needed to save every penny possible.

Fast forward to February 8th, 2017 (my birthday!), a ticket from Lyon, France to Phoenix, AZ went on sale for ridiculously cheap. There was one small problem though, we were short a few hundred dollars. At the time, I had to pay off a recent ticket with the portion of the funds I was saving up. I was completely devastated because flying out of France isn’t cheap and this ticket was over 50% off the regular price. We both stayed positive and told ourselves another opportunity would come along. Deep down inside I knew that was very unlikely.

Later that day I was talking to my very good friend Willie about the ticket price and the situation we were in. A few months earlier he offered to buy the ticket for us but it did not feel right taking that amount of money from a friend. There was no way I could have paid him back in a timely manner. During our conversation, he offered once again to purchase the ticket for us. I honestly didn’t know what to say but Willie made it easy by only taking “yes” for an answer. That day Willie had given me the greatest birthday gift ever! He gave me the opportunity to meet the love of my life and I am forever grateful for that.

With ticket in hand, all we had to do now was countdown the days until we finally got to kiss. During this waiting period, we liked to talk about what the future might have in store for us. Where would we live? The U.S. or Europe? Initially, we agreed upon Europe but given my situation, it just was not plausible. How many pets? Children? We both don’t ever want children so that worked out great. Then we brought up marriage because that would be the only way we could live together. By this time, I knew this woman was my dream girl. I had never experienced this much chemistry before and I didn’t want to let it go. She was my lost treasure and I wasn’t about to lose it.

On June 27th, 2017 I made one of the biggest purchases of my life, I put a down-payment on a gorgeous Ruby and Diamond engagement ring. I chose a Ruby because we met in July and I knew she was not a big fan of Diamonds. I didn’t keep the fact that I wanted to propose to her secret because of our unique situation. However, I did keep the ring secret and how/when I would pop the question. We agreed it would be best for us to spend some time together in person to see if we continued to click before I purpose. I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that she was the one but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Virginie’s engagement ring

Now that you are caught up with what has happened the past year, I suppose you probably want to know the name of this mystery woman. I would like to introduce you to the most beautiful lady my eyes have ever seen, VIRGINIE! Virginie is the lady who I can never stop thinking about and I love it!

Virginie!

  Chapter two will be released next Saturday.

[hotspreadpage]

The mobile marketing checklist you need for 2018

In today’s interconnected and technology-dependent world, businesses can no longer afford to stay away from mobile.

With roughly three-quarters of Americans owning a smartphone, and mobile conversions being up 64% compared to desktops, businesses have no choice but to adjust their digital marketing campaigns to the new reality of mobile-driven marketing.

An efficiently launched and well-run mobile marketing campaign can become pivotal in impacting SERPs, traffic, user engagement, and conversions. It is definitely one of a few crucial areas, along with voice search, AI, and machine learning, that every SEO professional needs to pay attention to in 2018.

In this article, I will explain why mobile marketing is a big deal, and also provide a checklist of general tips and guidelines that digital marketers and SEOs can use in their mobile marketing campaigns in 2018.

Mobile marketing trends

Smartphones and tablets have become an integral part of our lives, and most businesses are following the trend of integrating them into their marketing campaigns. According to the 2017 Salesforce State of Marketing Report, 68% of marketing leaders use mobile campaign management tools as part of their marketing technology arsenal, while a further 20% plan to do so over the next two years.

This is incredibly important when you consider that:

83% of all traffic in the US will be mobile by 2018 (Zenith);

50% of US customers will conduct all their online activities on a mobile device by 2018 (Garner);

By 2019, nearly 72% of digital ad spending in the US will be allocated for mobile platforms (eMarketer);

The number of mobile app downloads will reach 352.9 billion by 2021 (Statista);

By 2021, over $1 trillion will be spent worldwide to adapt websites and applications to the realities of the mobile-first world (Biznessapps).

However, figures alone do not make the case for mobile marketing. Smartphones and tablets fit in perfectly with the latest developments in artificial intelligence (AI), virtual digital assistants (VDAs), the rise of mobile payments, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR).

According to Tractica, by 2020 virtual digital assistants will be installed on more than 3.3 billion devices (primarily, on smartphones and tablets). By 2021, VR/AR market worldwide will grow to $215 billion (versus only $11.4billion in 2017) to generate over $67 billion in revenue.

With more than 31% of Americans projected to use proximity mobile payments in 2019, the total value of in-store mobile payments is expected to reach $503 billion by 2020.

Clearly, customers are not going to abandon their smartphones any time soon. In fact, with the gradual adoption of so-called progressive web apps (PWAs), imminent improvements in mobile UI/UX and accelerated page-load time, they will rely even more on their mobile devices.

As Neil Patel cleverly puts it: “Mobile isn’t just the way of the future. It’s the way of the now.” Thus, mobile marketing needs to become a marketer’s top priority in 2018.

Mobile marketing checklist for 2018

1. Ensure your sites and apps are mobile-friendly

Business owners, digital marketers and SEO professionals need to make sure that their websites and applications work seamlessly across any mobile device. By this I mean that they should be mobile-friendly, which specifically includes:

Responsive design and excellent load time

All pages have to be responsive and load in less than five (preferably three) seconds. Based on Google’s mobile page speed study, as page load time slows from one second to seven seconds, the bounce rate gradually increases by 113%.

Impeccable UX/UI

With bounce rates on mobile 40% higher than on desktops, it is clear that users no longer tolerate non-optimized, poorly navigable pages: unclickable buttons and tabs, disproportionate images that do not fit the page, and unreadable content that requires zooming can all be a death knell for your site.

Great mobile search optimization

Your areas of interest here are: (a) Images — compress heavy images; (b) Animations — remove Flash; (c) Pop-ups — get rid of intrusive pop-ups; (d) Titles and meta descriptions — make them shorter, to optimize for lesser screen space.

On top of that, implement structured data markup to help search engines trigger “rich snippets” for related mobile searches, and enhance your mobile technical SEO.

With smartphone users growing year-by-year, it comes as no surprise that making your sites and apps mobile-friendly is crucial. Otherwise, you risk losing a considerable chunk of traffic and customers.

2. Optimize and personalize content for mobile devices

Content provides the bedrock for any website: it attracts, converts, and delights customers. Content, therefore, must not only deliver an enormous amount of value, but it must also be easy to consume. In the mobile-first world, this means two things:

Optimization of content pages that are slow to load and hard to navigate. Update your mobile design and implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

Optimization of mobile content for voice search. According to ComScore, 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. Use more natural, long-tail keywords, implement Schema.org markup, and create an FAQ page.

However, high-quality, easily navigable content may not be enough.

What users crave is specialized and personalized content: emails, instant app messages, and SMS. All of these elements have amazing open rates (e.g. open rate for SMS is 98%), and, if delivered during so-called micro-moments, they can dramatically increase conversions and ROI.

Note: AI-powered chatbots are also becoming essential to instant messaging apps. They can bolster a company’s credibility through a combination of user behavior analysis and machine-to-human interactions, giving you a head start in delivering personalized content.

3.   Prioritize local optimization

With more than 40% of mobile searches having local intent and over 85% of user engagement with brands being local, local search optimization for mobile devices should not be underestimated. Here are several tips to consider:

Use shorter keywords for organic searches; optimize for longer, more natural keywords for voice searches

Consider shortening the content of your info pages to 300-500 words (e.g. about us, product & service pages, contact us, etc.)

Include local keywords in title tags, page titles, Alt texts, and content

Add your company name, address, and phone number to header, footer, and sidebar

Prioritize user experience over bot experience (better UX, faster load time, highly-specialized and visually optimized content)

If your business is not showing up for local searches on mobile, you have a problem. Do your SEO homework, and make sure to claim and optimize your Google My Business listing.

4.   Adjust your PPC & SMM campaigns for mobile

Since few organic results fit in on a smartphone’s screen, investing resources in developing a paid search strategy makes perfect sense. Consider doing the following:

Create a compelling, mobile-focused ad copy. Include not only keywords, CTAs, and specifics of your products and services, but also add phrases like “purchase from your smartphone,” “order from your mobile,” “easy mobile leasing,” etc.

Use mobile ad extensions. Specifically, you should try sitelinks, call extensions, click-to-call ads, and local extensions (e.g. location, affiliate location).

Set up promoted pins. This puts your logo on the Google Map, which naturally increases the visibility and accessibility of your website in search.

Optimize your spending and bidding strategies. In the case of automated bid strategies, rely on Google’s Smart Bidding tool. Should you choose to go the manual route, bid your ads to top-performing search results and make sure to adjust them to target your marketing goals.

For your SMM (social media marketing) strategy, follow these trends:

Invest in video. By 2019, nearly 80% of all mobile traffic will be video traffic (TubularInsights).

Run livestreams and live videos. According to Facebook, live videos are three times more popular than regular videos. In total, there are more than 32 billion views per day on Facebook.

Use micro-moments to their full potential. According to Google’s user behavior research, the average person’s micro-moments are heavily dominated with mobile. Ninety-six percent of customers reach for their smartphones when they need to find something online, or simply want to distract themselves. Here is where your SMM campaign needs to grab their attention.

Conclusion

In the mobile-first world, if your site is not optimized (aka convenient) to mobile users, you will undoubtedly lose a significant chunk of your market share to competitors. Mobile marketing is a big deal nowadays (and will become even more important in near future), and can easily make or break your business.

Set a high bar for your mobile marketing and be specific about enhancing and polishing every part of it — from mobile SEO and content to paid marketing, social media and usability. Every little bit helps, and makes your site more mobile- and hence, user-friendly, which will not go unnoticed by the Google gods.

The mobile marketing checklist you need for 2018 syndicated from https://hotspread.wordpress.com

[alanajacksontx]

The mobile marketing checklist you need for 2018

In today’s interconnected and technology-dependent world, businesses can no longer afford to stay away from mobile.

With roughly three-quarters of Americans owning a smartphone, and mobile conversions being up 64% compared to desktops, businesses have no choice but to adjust their digital marketing campaigns to the new reality of mobile-driven marketing.

An efficiently launched and well-run mobile marketing campaign can become pivotal in impacting SERPs, traffic, user engagement, and conversions. It is definitely one of a few crucial areas, along with voice search, AI, and machine learning, that every SEO professional needs to pay attention to in 2018.

In this article, I will explain why mobile marketing is a big deal, and also provide a checklist of general tips and guidelines that digital marketers and SEOs can use in their mobile marketing campaigns in 2018.

Mobile marketing trends

Smartphones and tablets have become an integral part of our lives, and most businesses are following the trend of integrating them into their marketing campaigns. According to the 2017 Salesforce State of Marketing Report, 68% of marketing leaders use mobile campaign management tools as part of their marketing technology arsenal, while a further 20% plan to do so over the next two years.

This is incredibly important when you consider that:

83% of all traffic in the US will be mobile by 2018 (Zenith);

50% of US customers will conduct all their online activities on a mobile device by 2018 (Garner);

By 2019, nearly 72% of digital ad spending in the US will be allocated for mobile platforms (eMarketer);

The number of mobile app downloads will reach 352.9 billion by 2021 (Statista);

By 2021, over $1 trillion will be spent worldwide to adapt websites and applications to the realities of the mobile-first world (Biznessapps).

However, figures alone do not make the case for mobile marketing. Smartphones and tablets fit in perfectly with the latest developments in artificial intelligence (AI), virtual digital assistants (VDAs), the rise of mobile payments, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR).

According to Tractica, by 2020 virtual digital assistants will be installed on more than 3.3 billion devices (primarily, on smartphones and tablets). By 2021, VR/AR market worldwide will grow to $215 billion (versus only $11.4billion in 2017) to generate over $67 billion in revenue.

With more than 31% of Americans projected to use proximity mobile payments in 2019, the total value of in-store mobile payments is expected to reach $503 billion by 2020.

Clearly, customers are not going to abandon their smartphones any time soon. In fact, with the gradual adoption of so-called progressive web apps (PWAs), imminent improvements in mobile UI/UX and accelerated page-load time, they will rely even more on their mobile devices.

As Neil Patel cleverly puts it: “Mobile isn’t just the way of the future. It’s the way of the now.” Thus, mobile marketing needs to become a marketer’s top priority in 2018.

Mobile marketing checklist for 2018

1. Ensure your sites and apps are mobile-friendly

Business owners, digital marketers and SEO professionals need to make sure that their websites and applications work seamlessly across any mobile device. By this I mean that they should be mobile-friendly, which specifically includes:

Responsive design and excellent load time

All pages have to be responsive and load in less than five (preferably three) seconds. Based on Google’s mobile page speed study, as page load time slows from one second to seven seconds, the bounce rate gradually increases by 113%.

Impeccable UX/UI

With bounce rates on mobile 40% higher than on desktops, it is clear that users no longer tolerate non-optimized, poorly navigable pages: unclickable buttons and tabs, disproportionate images that do not fit the page, and unreadable content that requires zooming can all be a death knell for your site.

Great mobile search optimization

Your areas of interest here are: (a) Images — compress heavy images; (b) Animations — remove Flash; © Pop-ups — get rid of intrusive pop-ups; (d) Titles and meta descriptions — make them shorter, to optimize for lesser screen space.

On top of that, implement structured data markup to help search engines trigger “rich snippets” for related mobile searches, and enhance your mobile technical SEO.

With smartphone users growing year-by-year, it comes as no surprise that making your sites and apps mobile-friendly is crucial. Otherwise, you risk losing a considerable chunk of traffic and customers.

2. Optimize and personalize content for mobile devices

Content provides the bedrock for any website: it attracts, converts, and delights customers. Content, therefore, must not only deliver an enormous amount of value, but it must also be easy to consume. In the mobile-first world, this means two things:

Optimization of content pages that are slow to load and hard to navigate. Update your mobile design and implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

Optimization of mobile content for voice search. According to ComScore, 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. Use more natural, long-tail keywords, implement Schema.org markup, and create an FAQ page.

However, high-quality, easily navigable content may not be enough.

What users crave is specialized and personalized content: emails, instant app messages, and SMS. All of these elements have amazing open rates (e.g. open rate for SMS is 98%), and, if delivered during so-called micro-moments, they can dramatically increase conversions and ROI.

Note: AI-powered chatbots are also becoming essential to instant messaging apps. They can bolster a company’s credibility through a combination of user behavior analysis and machine-to-human interactions, giving you a head start in delivering personalized content.

3.   Prioritize local optimization

With more than 40% of mobile searches having local intent and over 85% of user engagement with brands being local, local search optimization for mobile devices should not be underestimated. Here are several tips to consider:

Use shorter keywords for organic searches; optimize for longer, more natural keywords for voice searches

Consider shortening the content of your info pages to 300-500 words (e.g. about us, product & service pages, contact us, etc.)

Include local keywords in title tags, page titles, Alt texts, and content

Add your company name, address, and phone number to header, footer, and sidebar

Prioritize user experience over bot experience (better UX, faster load time, highly-specialized and visually optimized content)

If your business is not showing up for local searches on mobile, you have a problem. Do your SEO homework, and make sure to claim and optimize your Google My Business listing.

4.   Adjust your PPC & SMM campaigns for mobile

Since few organic results fit in on a smartphone’s screen, investing resources in developing a paid search strategy makes perfect sense. Consider doing the following:

Create a compelling, mobile-focused ad copy. Include not only keywords, CTAs, and specifics of your products and services, but also add phrases like “purchase from your smartphone,” “order from your mobile,” “easy mobile leasing,” etc.

Use mobile ad extensions. Specifically, you should try sitelinks, call extensions, click-to-call ads, and local extensions (e.g. location, affiliate location).

Set up promoted pins. This puts your logo on the Google Map, which naturally increases the visibility and accessibility of your website in search.

Optimize your spending and bidding strategies. In the case of automated bid strategies, rely on Google’s Smart Bidding tool. Should you choose to go the manual route, bid your ads to top-performing search results and make sure to adjust them to target your marketing goals.

For your SMM (social media marketing) strategy, follow these trends:

Invest in video. By 2019, nearly 80% of all mobile traffic will be video traffic (TubularInsights).

Run livestreams and live videos. According to Facebook, live videos are three times more popular than regular videos. In total, there are more than 32 billion views per day on Facebook.

Use micro-moments to their full potential. According to Google’s user behavior research, the average person’s micro-moments are heavily dominated with mobile. Ninety-six percent of customers reach for their smartphones when they need to find something online, or simply want to distract themselves. Here is where your SMM campaign needs to grab their attention.

Conclusion

In the mobile-first world, if your site is not optimized (aka convenient) to mobile users, you will undoubtedly lose a significant chunk of your market share to competitors. Mobile marketing is a big deal nowadays (and will become even more important in near future), and can easily make or break your business.

Set a high bar for your mobile marketing and be specific about enhancing and polishing every part of it — from mobile SEO and content to paid marketing, social media and usability. Every little bit helps, and makes your site more mobile- and hence, user-friendly, which will not go unnoticed by the Google gods.

from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/01/24/the-mobile-marketing-checklist-you-need-for-2018/ from Rising Phoenix SEO https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/170076576435

[spekture]

In my never-ending quest for more conventions to attend this year, I discovered Anime Austin. This was the first time I had heard of this convention, which is focused on anime and Japanese pop culture. After coming across this exciting discovery, I hit up their website to find more info on the event and made plans to attend. Once again my crime fighting sidekick, (ok, my daughter), suited up (ok, buckled up) and traveled with me to Austin, it made for a great surprise Father’s Day gift, falling on the same weekend.

Initially, I had made plans to head to Austin early in the day to make the opening ceremony and catch all the early programming scheduled, but I wasn’t able to take off work early so I had to revise my schedule, but still got to see lots of Con-content. As soon as we were ready, we made our way out to Austin, en route to the Midtown Holiday Inn,  where the Con was being held. Once we arrived, we drove around the hotel in search of parking, there weren’t many spots left. We were happy to see some cosplayers outside in the courtyard though, it’s always nice to know after a long drive you’ve arrived at the right place!

Unfortunately, we were greeted with a bad mildew-like smell once we entered the lobby of the hotel, later I saw a water leak so I strongly suspect that was the culprit. This is no fault of the convention and nothing they could control. While passing through the lobby, we spotted more cosplayers walking around and gathering, the enthusiasm was contagious! I was ready to check-in and start walking around to see everything that was here, right now! I was also especially looking forward to one specific panel later that night, all about airbrushing. After we finished reloading our utility belts, and prepping spare supplies (ok, taking our stuff to the room, and unpacking it), we were finally able to head back downstairs to check out the Con.

I walked around the convention areas checking out the cosplayers, vendors, and panel rooms… first impression was, it was smaller than I expected. I have been to several events in the past which were held inside hotels and conference rooms, but while this one was on the smaller side, there were several rooms with different activities and panels, so there was a decent amount of content. While walking around that evening, I noticed that the crowd was a good size too, so I was happy to see that the smaller size of the venue hadn’t dampened anyone’s enthusiasm. We stayed long enough to watch a few of the performances and to check out that airbrush panel, hosted by Rudy from RCC Creations. It’s been a few years since I did any airbrush art and was curious to see how it was being applied to makeup for cosplay these days. After that was over we headed back to our room to get some rest before hitting the floor for day two.

I usually have a problem sleeping in, I guess I am used to my work schedule and getting up early. This weekend was no different. I woke up early and decided to go ahead and get ready while I let my daughter sleep in. I did a quick browse of the internet and worked on a few lingering tasks before waking her up so she could get ready. I had plans to meet up with fellow photographer Mark Rigsby in the morning for a possible shoot with cosplayer Leon Chiro. We had decided to meet at Mark’s room so we headed upstairs to see what was going on. As we arrived, we discovered that Leon was undergoing upper-body airbrushing by Rudy for his “Greed” costume from “Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood”. We hung around during the body painting session while eating some breakfast tacos. During this session, Leon went live on Instagram for his fans to watch him undergo his transformation, it was pretty cool to watch the change in person. I was volunteered to read his replies and talk with his fans which I tried my best, hopefully I did well (any drop in Instagram followers shortly afterwards was clearly coincidental!). Once he was done, Mark took a few shots and then we made our way downstairs so Leon could partake in the pre-judging of the cosplay contest. So far the morning was off to an interesting and fun start.

With Leon busy, My daughter and I made our way around the different panel rooms again and waited for the vendor hall to open up. We ended up in the game room for a bit to help pass the time. After that, I made my way outside to snap an image of the Anime Austin banner where I found an itasha car parked up front. I had to snag a photo and while doing that, I noticed a sign saying there were more itasha cars in the back of the hotel. I made my way around to see them cleaning up their rides and getting ready for the day. There were a few of them, so I captured a few images before heading back into the Con. It was still early, so there weren’t many people checking out the rides, making it a little easier to get some decent shots. After that, we finally made our way back inside to check out the vendor room. After walking around a bit, my daughter stopped to get face-painted.

As more people started arriving I began my hunt around the venue to capture photos of some of the more interesting attendees. I found myself heading back outside and noticed some LARPing actually going on. I returned to the itasha display area and noticed that the car in the front had made its way to join with the rest of the itasha cars. I didn’t see many people outside looking at the cars, but it was a hot day, so that could definitely explain their reluctance to leave the air conditioned show floor, although I did overhear from a few people that they were actually upset with the itasha display because it took away a group of parking spaces, and parking was already pretty tight. I continued walking around snapping photos mixed in with a few breaks and food runs until it was time for the cosplay contest to begin. This was my first time actually watching a contest like this. Even though this Con was smaller than some others I have been to, the enthusiasm and love of these events was evident throughout everyone’s time on the stage, without exception, the excitement was obvious! There was such a positive vibe and I loved every moment of it. While the judges went off to finalize the contest scores, the latest “Spider-Man: Homecoming” trailers played on the screen, followed up with a performance by J-POP singer Chii Sakurabi. The judges returned to announce the winners and that wrapped up my day two, we then joined Mark, Leon, and a few other people I had met at the Con for a post-event day photo shoot. Once we were done, we returned to our hotel and recorded Leon’s removal of his Greed airbrushed costume. I hung out with them for awhile before retiring to my room to watch some TV with my daughter before ending the night.

Father’s day wrapped up the final day of the Con. The day started off with my daughter and I making our way to the pool early, before the Con started. It was a pretty cool Sunday morning and with the pool in the shade, the pool wasn’t exactly warm (by Texas standards). After swimming around for a while we went off for breakfast so we could hit the floor energized for the final day of the Con. Once we arrived, we went straight to the gaming room once again to play some video games until more people arrived. I then proceeded to wander around the hotel snapping photos of all the cosplayers I came across. Sunday’s attendance was lower than the day before, but still respectable. I found my way into the vendor room and came across Leon again…  or should I say, Gaston, and he knows how to entertain. It was hilarious seeing him stay in character during his interactions with everyone. I had so much fun hanging out with him over the weekend and all of his fans enjoyed every minute of it. He is one cosplayer you need to follow!

After some time there I concluded my coverage and made the journey back to Houston. Even though the Anime con was much smaller than I initially expected, I enjoyed every bit of the convention and my visit to Austin. Hopefully, next year will be even bigger and better.

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Military Demonstration team for Operation Homefront

Peter Brock arriving

Automotive legend Peter Brock

TIRES!

BRAKES!

MORE TIRES!

Cosplayer Sivene Delynn…image taken at Alamo City Comic Con

Valentino Rossi (Movistar Yamaha) during a 2017 MotoGP race.

Anime, cosplay, and more at Anime Austin. Coverage by staffer Alex Ventura. #spekture #alexventurathephotographer #anime #cosplay #austin #texas In my never-ending quest for more conventions to attend this year, I discovered Anime Austin. This was the first time I had heard of this convention, which is focused on anime and Japanese pop culture.

[marketerintel]

NEW $1800 PER MONTH STIMULUS REVEALED

NEW $1800 PER MONTH STIMULUS REVEALED

Date: 2020-05-29 22:30:01

[aoa id=’0′][dn_wp_yt_youtube_source type=”101″ id=”3Tqa77posqI”][/aoa]

Lets discuss the details of the new $450 per week back to work stimulus check proposal and what this means for everyone watching – Enjoy! Add me on Instagram: GPStephan

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[marketerintel]

NEW $1800 PER MONTH STIMULUS REVEALED

NEW $1800 PER MONTH STIMULUS REVEALED

Date: 2020-05-29 22:30:01

[aoa id=’0′][dn_wp_yt_youtube_source type=”101″ id=”3Tqa77posqI”][/aoa]

Lets discuss the details of the new $450 per week back to work stimulus check proposal and what this means for everyone watching – Enjoy! Add me on Instagram: GPStephan

LIMITED TIME: Get 2 FREE STOCKS ON WEBULL when you deposit $100 (Valued up to $1400): https://act.webull.com/k/Vowbik9Tm5he/main

JOI…