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rwbyconversations · 6 years

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A retrospective on the first half of Volume 6

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I hated RWBY’s fifth volume. I felt it was a slog that started on the right foot but as time went on more and more cracks started to appear until the Battle of Haven episodes which were... unpleasant. I made my thoughts on them very clear over the summer. I will also note that I was very cynical regarding Volume 6 during the period between the V5 finale launching and RTX Austin, where we got Adam’s character short. Even with the short being good I remained only tentatively interested in Volume 6, since Volume 5 had good shorts too and look where that got the season proper. Volume 5 was a failure on many levels for RWBY, and while I’ve found things to enjoy about it, it’s ultimately my least favorite volume in the show. Coming off Volume 5, I felt concern that RWBY had peaked in Volume 3, and everything from there on in would just be a painful slide downwards in quality.

Thankfully, I’ve never been happier to be wrong.

ALL HAIL THE BRINGER OF END TIMES AS SHE BESTOWS THE FLAMING MERCY OF DEATH WITH A SMILE ON HER FACE

RWBY Volume 6 Chapter 7 is now out for First members, and as such, we’re now at the halfway mark of the volume. I have to say, going in with lowered expectations even in light of the Adam short, I have utterly adored this entire volume thus far, in fact it’s probably my favorite set of episodes in the entire show to date, and I’ve had very little to criticize in each episode beyond just “Give me more Mercury and Emerald.”

As such, this week at the perfect halfway mark of the volume, and to celebrate my third hundred post, I’m doing a retrospective of each episode of Volume 6 and see how the chapters do their best to avoid the slights that dragged down Volume 5. As well, I’ll be consulting comments made by Miles and Kerry pre-release of Volume 6, specifically concerning what they wanted to focus on this year. In particular, I’ll be cross-referencing Miles’ three points that the crew wanted to improve on for Volume 6. I’ll also look at most of the episodes and see how they handle elements that were previously condemned in Volume 5 (which also means some potshots at Volume 5 if that’s a thing you need to know). This gets long, forward warning, hope you enjoy.

0.5) Adam’s short

Adam’s short might have been thinly veiled damage control made with the intent of re-building Adam’s fear factor after the disaster that was his outing at Haven, but the short proved to be good damage control nonetheless. From an acting perspective, Garrett continues to grow his vocal talents and for fans of the gone-too-soon Sienna Khan, the short gave her some posthumous feats and showed her in the field. Really, none of my criticisms about the short were significant enough to lower my enjoyment- barring CRWBY’s continued love of the weapon spinning circle, both Adam’s solo fight and the fight that makes up the back half of the short were both enjoyable bouts. Adam’s short was the only short we got this year, but it proved to be an entertaining short that provided some fun battles and a killer song by Jeff- Lionized is already one of my favorite vocal songs in the show, I must have watched the first battle in the short like fifty times now just so I can hear the first verse.

You’ll see, I’m their hero, I’ll be Lionized!

All in all, a very solid short and a great way to win back some fans after Haven before the season started off.

1) Argus Limited, the beginning of the redemption arc.

Despite Adam’s short, my expectations were low for Volume 6, almost deliberately so. Volume 5 had burned me hard, and I wanted to avoid getting burned by my own hype. But you know what? Argus Limited might be the best premiere in the entire show. It’s damn near flawless in everything it sets out to do.

In the AMA, Miles set out three things that the CRWBY needed to improve on for Volume 6- more fights that better utilize abilities and weapons, giving Ruby more agency in the plot, and fixing the “tell don’t show” problem that plagued Volumes 4 and 5, especially whenever RNJR were stuck listening to exposition monologues. And for the most part, Argus Limited does take steps towards all three of these problems. RWBY get a great fight which sees Ruby and Weiss especially using a lot of their skill-set that had been left to the curb in Volume 5, which is my nice way of pointing out that Ruby never used her Semblance in Volume 5 and Weiss over-relied on her Summons, which was a huge point of contention among Weiss’s fans in the now-infamous “Weiss vs Vernal” debacle. Ruby’s also given a stronger sense of being a leader than she’s conveyed for much of the past few years, being quick to take command of the situation when Qrow and Dudley start getting into an argument and forcing the team to focus on the Grimm instead of Oz’s newest round of omitting the truth. While there is a fair bit of exposition in regards to the timeskip, we do get a lot of information shown to us- particularly the sendoffs of Sun and Ilia.

While I’m still bummed that Ilia didn’t join the team going to to Atlas since I feel her character would have greatly benefited that arc, alongside her interactions with Weiss, she still gets a touching sendoff. And my Sunny boi shines as he usually does when in the spotlight. Absence makes the heart go fonder and Christ I miss Sun already.

Argus Limited is unique in that barring Adam’s short scene at the beginning, it’s the only premiere entirely focused on the heroes. The even numbered volumes beforehand had started with Emerald and Mercury, with Volume 4 also formally introducing the rest of Team WTCH. Argus Limited focusing only on RWBY and JNR allows for each member of the team to contribute during the episode, and also allows for more time to be spent on JNR’s departure for the rest of the first half. Jaune and Ruby’s quick scene near the middle has a great dynamic to it.

And of course it goes without saying that the music is to die for. Be it the soft acoustic of Like Morning Follows Night as Sun bids Blake farewell, or the two new songs in Miracle and Rising, Jeff, Alex and Casey came out of the gate running musically. Argus Limited to conclude was a fantastic opening episode, so good that even notorious RWBY critic FatManFalling was impressed. And if that’s not a sign that even the most diehard of RWBY critics was impressed... I dunno what is.

2) Uncovered- the truth comes out

Uncovered is a setup episode for a lot of the remaining first half, but one that executes its set up well. We immediately open with confirmation that Cinder survived the Battle of Haven, which is as much the crew going “Look you know we didn’t kill her, she’s on the damn poster,” as it is an acceptance that everyone capable of narrative comprehension understood that she wasn’t dead. Cinder gets a new outfit, meets a board game villain, and displays shreds of character development that I hope are carried up on. Meanwhile with RWBY we get one last scene in the Dreaded House where Ozpin flat out lies and Nora undoes the bad will of “They really ARE magic!” with some fantastically funny lines.

“Can we ask for more wishes? CAN WE ASK FOR MORE WISHES?!”

I also love the camera shot of Ruby promising they’ll protect the Relic before cutting to her digging it out of the snow. I’m easily impressed with camera trickery like that.

Uncovered addresses a significant criticism of V5, specifically how RNJR’s plot devolved into them just sitting around and receiving exposition from Ozcar and Qrow. While we get another such scene in the House where Ozcar explains the Relic and its powers, it’s much more lively- the kids weigh in more and are much more dynamic, particularly Nora. They’re not just sitting in chairs in a circle, they actively move around or are on the floor packing. It’s the same vector of information delivery, but it’s much less passively received.

Ozpin’s debate with RWBY is also similarly well-executed. The kids were soundly mocked last year for just blindly accepting Ozpin at face value barring the one instance of Yang bringing up the birds. Here, Yang and Weiss are openly confrontational of Ozpin, and while his argument of not telling the team about the Relic attracting Grimm has a logical reason behind it, the girls are tired of being spoon-fed information, especially after Oz bluntly promised no more lies or half-truths (Yang really should have included “omissions” in that list too in hindsight). It’s an argument where both sides have their reasons and both have good points that are presented, with everyone getting to weigh in (barring Maria, who is super chill during all these shenanigans).

What’s that again? Oh. Good writing. Sorry, wasn’t used to it being there after “OZPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN,” “Because you’re afraid of Salem!” and “This is bad.”

Regardless, Uncovered is a stellar setup episode that flows smoothly into...

3) The Lost Fable- OZPIN FUCKED

The longest episode barring the Volume 3 and 4 finales, Lost Fable is an episode I was cold on when I first watched it- after Volume 5, numerous times, spelled out that Ozpin was shady and not to be trusted, I was expected some deep skeletons in his closet- that he created the Grimm, that he caused Salem to become evil, something so horrifying that the Gods saw fit to curse him with eternal life.

I didn’t expect the secrets to be “Ozpin’s first life looked like an isekai protagonist, he died of herpes, got Thanos’d like six times, fucked Salem at least four times and fathered the spiritual predecessors to the Maidens, had a life where he looked like my Starbucks server and... isn’t actually the bad guy.”

That Ozpin wasn’t too evil- more his secrets are because of lifetimes of dying over and over, he just has severe trust issues to work through- was something that caught me off guard. That everything is the Gods of Light and Darkness’s fault rubbed me the wrong way at first, since it felt like revisionism, the show going “We can’t have Oz be too evil so let’s just put most of the blame on the Gods and Salem.” That said I do like how the God of Darkness is actually surprised and pleased when Salem came to him for help. It was a nice bit of character to the God that no one ever came to him for help, just punishment, so he basically gave Salem what she wanted on the spot just because of that. As he says to Light, “you may bask in the powers of creation but you do not own them.”

Granted, there is still one massive story flaw in the episode- the handling of the Faunus just showing up during Ozma’s vacation in purgatory and slavery having already been implemented. It just feels like an awkward last-minute addition and one I do not very much like. It’s pretty much the one thing I outright hate about the episode, the rest execution wise is spot on. Hats off to CRWBY for the technical side of this tale, and to Salem, Ozma and Jinn’s actors for carrying this as well as they did.

I’m still not sure where I sit exactly on Lost Fable- it’s no doubt a well executed episode and answers/raises a lot of questions about Remnant and its mythologies (like how the moon is shattered because Satan yeeted out too hard), and the animation is some of the best in the show, barring some slight irritation at the understandable reasons for not seeing Ozma vs Salem onscreen. It’s technically very proficient, my problems are just a few small preconceptions of my own holding me back.

This planet empty. YEEEET.

... also that plushy dog was the cutest fucking thing and if we learn Salem kept that toy after digging it out of the rubble I may actually cry.

I will buy this dog plush if you just make it RT, you are passing up my money for God’s sake!

Also just so we’re all clear, that holy war Ozma accidentally helped start was totally Remnant’s version of the Crusades, right?

Also also, no, the kids weren’t the first Maidens, they’re the spiritual successors. Let’s just get that clear while I’m on a soapbox.

4) So That’s How It Is- Best Kids Finally Show Up

Merc and Em were in this episode so I’m contractually obliged to love it. Good thing I really do love their scene. It was good to finally see what the villains at large were up to while RWBY processed the knowledge Jinn had bestowed... while Qrow bestowed his fist unto Oscar’s jaw. In all seriousness, it’s good to see that RWBY retain the dynamic nature in the short final argument with Ozcar. Volume 5′s nightmarish scenes of just sitting around and passively listening are a thing of the past.

Mercury as usual is relegated to short but sweet moments, namely “Back off, freak!” and his being the first to realize that Salem’s about to snap. Please RT, give him things to do, don’t waste Spider Man while you have him in the booth. Pacing wise I suppose this was really the earliest we could have gotten Em, Merc and WTH unless the first episode got a lot of additional padding, but it still hurts to see my favorite characters all of once in the entire first half of the season. Like I said, absence makes the heart go fonder, and I miss the kids.

Also props for making me give a shit about Hazel again. Turns out he’s not a bad dad when you ignore the whole... “OZPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN” thing.

Ruby also gets a few short but sweet moments- she’s initially calm at the beginning, allowing Ozpin to explain his plan. She only gets more visibly angry after Ozpin admits that he has no plan, but doesn’t lose her cool like Yang does. She’s also the only member of the team to separate Ozpin from Oscar at this stage, taking the time to reassure him before they leave the train wreckage. It shows again that the crew are striving to make Ruby feel like a leader, by having her take charge and be there for everyone under her wing.

Meanwhile Yang’s only interaction with Oscar is to demand he bring Ozpin back. ... When you think about it Oscar must have so many issues that he refuses to talk about Jesus Christ someone give this kid a therapist.

I wrote about how much I loved how Salem conducted herself in the short clip released for RWBY Rewind, and while ultimately her temper did snap rather explosively, I love that she visibly tries to contain her rage, something the animators put a lot of painstaking work into.

On the hero’s side, this is largely a cooldown episode and a conclusion to the “arc” surrounding Jinn in the first half while getting the team in place for the Brunswick episodes. For the villains it’s a chance to check in, and also see what they’ll be up for the year. The villain scene alone makes this a delight, with Watts being snarky and Tyrian continuing to be a walking :D in every scene he’s in.

... also who flew the airship that MEH took to Evernight? We never see the pilot.

5) The Coming Storm-

Let’s get the obvious praise out of the way, Neo vs Cinder? One of the best fights in the entire damn show, like damn they knocked it out of the park!

Fun fact, I got an ask the day before this dropped asking if I thought Neo would be in this episode and I said no. This is where you all laugh at me.

Neo vs Cinder is a sterling example of the fights becoming more creative and better utilizing abilities. Neo’s Semblance shattering looks great in Maya (shame it came at the cost of her hair) and the fight flows smoothly. I was worried that if Neo came back, her fighting style wouldn’t be well-represented without Monty able to bring his magic, but the crew have managed to create a fight on par with Neo vs Yang in sheer spectacle. I especially loved the segment on the bar top where Neo used bowls as weapons. And if it wasn’t great enough, One Thing grants an additional look under the mirrors into Neo’s inner turmoil over Roman’s death- Casey finally got her wish of voicing Neo, at least.

Also between this and Lionized, why do the villains get the best songs?

The Brunswick segment may not be as dynamic, and I’m sure some people groaned when they saw RWBY would be in another house, but at least this time they use more than one room. Weiss and Ruby get a nice scene near the end and there’s a great unspoken moment of Weiss getting why Ruby doesn’t want Qrow to find the beer stash- since remember, her mother’s been a drunk for at least seven years.

I appreciate the continuity touch in the garage scene that Yang saw Adam in his Beacon outfit when she hallucinated him, as she hasn’t seen his newer outfit. Regarding the garage scene, I can’t help but feel like it was misread by... a lot of people who were looking more for romantic validation than they were actual character reasoning. I’m not a fan of how Blake has acted around Yang this year, she’s been almost... condescending to her. Rushing for her bag in chapter 1 when Yang already had, the whole “I’ll protect you” line. Blake doesn’t see Yang as the strong person who stared a Maiden down and won, she sees... damaged goods. And that’s the last thing Yang wants or needs to hear. Yang didn’t crawl her way into recovery and ride off to another continent just so the girl who ditched her the first time without even waiting for Yang to regain consciousness could provide empty platitudes about not leaving and then assume that Yang needs protection in a manner that felt very patronizing to me. I particularly disliked how Blake reached over Yang’s real hand to grasp the cybernetic one, and how that got spun hard. Yes, the gesture was well meaning from Blake but all it takes is one look at Yang's reaction and that moment is just... not great at all for them. Yang is still hurting and shut off when she made that good intentioned but horribly misunderstanding gesture. Blake is trying to be there for Yang like Sun had been for her, but she can't help her because Yang isn't communicating what's wrong. That's not romantic. It's so awfully, bitterly sad. Yang is hurting and Blake can't undo the damage that she did when she left during the Fall of Beacon. It's not development, it's insight into the poor state of their relationship (regardless of how you view it, I just mean friendship here myself) after the events and the distance they suffered. Barbara herself has said that Volume 6 would see Blake and Yang’s relationship would never return to the way it was pre-Beacon after Volume 6, and this may have been what she was referring to.

The Coming Storm has a great fight, so it’s already a great episode in my book, but it adds a cherry on top in some quietly good character moments as well.

And of course, Burrito Weiss is Best Girl.

6) Alone In The Woods- Ruby’s Redemption Arc

Right before Volume 6 started, I wrote a whole post about why the fandom had grown cold on Ruby in Volume 5. At the time I noted that part of me wanted to wait until Volume 6 just in case things either improved or Ruby’s character failed to develop for another season, giving me more citations regarding her developmental stump since Volume 3.

But thankfully, Volume 6 has been very good for Ruby so far, and this episode is the peak of that. Ruby takes initiative, drives the team forward, and actually gets angry at a few points. Lindsay sells this so well and I’m so glad she finally toned down Ruby’s squeak in the more serious moments, because this episode would have otherwise died on its feet if Ruby still had the Squeak. In fact, if this positive trend of Ruby development continues into the back half of Volume 6, I’m planning on a post talking in more detail about Ruby and her development.

The Apathy were terrifying, and are easily my new favorite Grimm. Funnily enough, in another case of me writing a post before Volume 6 that was partly addressed, I asked why the Grimm failed to scare the audience, and one of my ideas was just that with the protagonists being so strong, no Grimm can really pose a threat. Well the Apathy prove that such a thing is possible. Fans have been suggesting that the Grimm employ more psychological or emotional based attacks over sheer physicality for some time now, and it seems that all this time, the answer has just been waiting for the right moment. Miles revealed on Reddit that the Apathy was his “favorite Grimm” that he’s been working on getting into the show for a few years, and later added on Twitter that he’s been sitting on the idea of the Apathy since the start of the show’s creation, well over six years ago. It’s proof to me that Miles can have some stunning ideas when his heart and soul is dedicated into a project, and regardless of what some people on Tumblr, Twitter and/or Youtube may think, Miles cares about this. Add in the unsettling atmosphere and the amazing work that went into everyone’s eyes and making them dull and disturbing, and you have a stellar attempt at horror by relative newcomers to the genre. The Apathy worked at being terrifying for a large portion of the vocal audience, creating a villain that solved a problem that the Grimm have had since Volume 2, while also letting Ruby finally step up and gain the agency she’s needed for several years.

While Maria being a SEW was something most everyone guessed, it was good to finally see Maria gain plot prominence, since some people had been complaining about Maria joining RWBY feeling somewhat arbitrary. Regardless, she’ll serve as an important vector into getting SEW lore, which is one of the only major significant mysteries left now that we know about Salem, the Gods and the Moon.

I haven’t mentioned it in the prior segments, but I’ll stop here to give the writers praise for finally giving Qrow an arc. While it is a bit odd to go from Volumes 3 through 5, where Qrow’s alcoholism is played for comedy (in fact it’s the punchline of the first episode) to Volume 6 playing it very seriously, I will still take any development for Qrow. He was the hardest hit by Ozpin’s secrecy, learning Raven was at least partly right in leaving Ozpin and as a consequence, learning that Summer likely died for nothing. He fell into depression, becoming an invalid wreck of a man. The Apathy had little to do to make Qrow a desolate waste, had he been left in that bar he’d probably have drunk himself to death while his nieces died just feet away from him. It takes seeing the Apathy to finally break him out of the stupor that hung around his neck like a noose, and I wouldn’t be shocked if we see Qrow hanging up the flask for good by the end of the volume.

Alone In The Woods is probably the best episode of the season so far. Somewhat sloppy running animations aside it’s a stupendous attempt at horror in an action show, and signals our protagonist finally becoming our lead.

7) The Grimm Reaper- Tick tock, tick tock

I’ll be honest, when I saw the Haven vault in the Rewind for this episode, I expected Cinder to open the episode by kicking Vernal’s corpse into the water out of jealousy. I’m not sure if I’m impressed or not at how brazen Cinder’s loophole abuse is, but I am impressed at how both Cinder and Neo are visibly hesitant at different points in the scene to trust the other- the show is clearly setting up Neo backstabbing Cinder.

Maria’s flashback was amazing. I didn’t expect a new fight scene so soon after Neo vs Cinder but Maria hasn’t got time to waste on my opinions. She was such a badass in her youth. I loved her weapons (I still think they’re a reference to Darksiders 2, fight me) and as someone who’s wanted to see Gravity Dust in action for years, my expectations were more than met. Continuing the promise in the AMA of unique fights, we get Maria using Gravity Dust to whirl around the battlefield like a hurricane of sharp death, her weapons combining into a scythe was a cool moment. I loved how ferocious the fight felt, like there was barely any stopping for posing and everyone was moving. They even avoided using the Weapon Spinning Circles for much of the fight, which is always a nice touch. The ending was viscerally brutal too. I think it’s safe to say Maria vs Tock might break my top 10 favorite fights of the entire show, easily top 5 Maya era fights at least.

Tock continues the show’s trend of one-off villains having really cool first outings and making me wish they’d stop dying so quickly. Regardless, Tock was a great one-off villain. She got a fantastic fight, had cool weapons, a unique design, and she wasn’t a reference to Tracer you idiots go read Peter Pan. Anyway, Maria’s flashback was really cool and I loved every second of it.

Ruby got another great moment when after Maria destroyed herself and Qrow in the most vicious self-burn in recorded history, she tried to lift Maria’s spirits by asking her to teach Ruby to use the eyes. Ruby was said in 4 and 5 to be inspiring without much to back it up, and we see that now. Her bonds have grown closer with everyone on the team over the first half- even with Blake. Let me repeat, Ruby and Blake have interacted onscreen. I never thought this day would come.

I didn’t expect the show to reach Argus by the halfway mark, in all honesty. The city looks breathtaking, I love the San Francisco vibe to it and how the entire trip to Saphron’s house is in 3D environments, unlike the Mistral scenes in V5E1. I have to admit, I did miss JNR a little. Nora was in peak comedy this episode, Ren was... back to being the exposition guy, nothing much changed there but Jaune was pretty decent. Miles remains a criminally underrated voice actor, if he doesn’t go pro in the event he leaves RT, the VA community is worse off.

The handling of Saphron and Terra’s marriage was masterful, and I love the two of them already. V6′s new characters have been very consistently good I must say. I love how despite the first half of the episode being very dark and having someone lose their eyes onscreen, the back half is very cutesy. This time last volume we had the dinner scene, and the sandwich scene blows it out of the water. I love how everyone who talks to Oscar is far softer than they were to Ozpin, it’s good to see that the gang know the difference, and it’s good for the team to unwind before the next few storms hit their shores. Ruby and Qrow in particular were peak adorable.

I guess the baby was cute too but... look at them wiggling! :D :D

The Grimm Reaper was a great mid-season checkpoint. Getting another new fight was a surprise to be sure, but it being easy “standout fight of the year” material made it a welcome one. Argus looks like a fantastic location and I would kill for a spinoff here, it seems like such an interesting city.

8) Conclusion

Volume 6 had a lot of problems facing it on the onset- Volumes 4 and 5, 5 especially, had received lukewarm to poor reviews from the fans, and the pressure was on to prove that RWBY was a show worth watching. And judging by the first half of the Volume, Volume 6 is on its way to becoming the best volume in the entire damn show. We haven’t had a string of episodes this consistently good since Volume 3′s back half, and if Chapter 8 retains the quality, it’ll have exceeded that half numerically. Almost every major grievance I had with Volume 5- the protagonists being too passive, the excessive exposition, weak fights, the lackluster threat of the Grimm and Ruby’s placid lack of solid character growth- have all been addressed with gusto, as I hope I’ve explained above. At the very least, it does seem that the crew are meeting the three goals posted in the AMA with gusto. Add in some genuinely hilarious lines, spine-tingling horror and suspenseful action that rivals and at times exceeds what Monty was doing, and Volume 6 part 1 is this show’s redemption arc. While the second half could and likely will take a dip in quality, nothing short of a Battle of Haven level disaster can taint this volume, and I feel comfortable at this halfway mark saying we may be witnessing the new best volume of RWBY... if they gave Emerald and Mercury more screentime. But otherwise! New best volume.

I think it’s telling that while I roughly knew what to expect around this time last year for Volume 5, I have no idea where Volume 6′s back half could take us and that excites me. I’m being led along for the ride and loving every damn minute of it. Keep it up CRWBY, let’s make Volume 5 a distant memory in the rear-view mirror as the show and fans go onwards to greener pastures.

Or to put it in a more comedic way:

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed the piece, please share it around, Tumblr’s current state means that I can never be sure what works and what doesn’t so outside sharing goes miles.

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darkzorua100 · 6 years

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10 Theories/Wishes for the Upcoming War between the humans and the Ignises.

I’ve seen people posting their theories/wishes as of late for what they think is going to happen in the upcoming war between humanity vs the Ignises in Vrains. At the time of writing this, we still don’t know what’s to come after the Playmaker vs Bohman duel so I feel like this is the perfect time to give out my list of what I think we are going to be see coming up as well as some personal wishes of mine that I hope will come to forwishen. Just as a side note, none of these are in chronological order unless stated otherwise nor in a top 10 order from least to greatest (they are seriously just randomized).

1. Bohman joining Yusaku/Playmaker’s side/gets deleted.

Considering this is going to be their third duel of the season, I feel like this has to be the point where we finally learn what the deal is up with Bohman, and maybe Haru, and after Bohman loses, because there is no way in hell he’s going to win with Playmaker getting his Synchro more then likely in this duel, I think Lightning might just finally deem him a failure and just throws him away which in turn will allow him to join Playmaker’s side, since Yusaku would be the one to free him from Lightning’s control, or Lightning will just terminate him all together if he really is just an A.I. he created to serve him.

2. Spectre vs Takeru/Soulburner.

If episode 70 wasn’t hinting at a potential Spectre vs Soulburner in the future, I’ll be very surprised. Considering they are both Lost Children as well, this duel will be very interesting from that standpoint. It appears that Yusaku told Takeru about the Knights but we still don’t have confirmation if Takeru knows that Spectre is also a Lost Child and if he doesn’t know that detail, Spectre will inform him soon enough. And when Takeru does find out/already knows, how he will duel knowing that detail is what I’m mostly intrigued about. Like will he try to talk Spectre into siding with their cause of co-exist with the Ignises since he is also a Lost Child or just simply see him as an enemy he has to defeat in order to protect Flame?

3. Dr. Kogami making his return.

I’ve seen some people talking about this, of how Lightning might actually bring Kogami back from the dead and honestly, I can see it happening. Not like actually bringing Dr. Kogami back from the dead but creating an artificial copy of him with his memories (cause Lightning and his memory powers and all) to serve him. And if this is the case, oh boy hello “we are going to traumatize the hell out of Ryoken” with this plot line. After all the crap Windy said to Revolver during their duel, you know that is what Lightning is going to have his copy of Kogami due to his “son” in what I’m going to guess a future Revolver vs Dr. Kogami duel. I’m hoping that if we do get this duel, this will also be the point where Ryoken will finally get redeemed and finally stop being his father’s weapon and start thinking for himself and what he wants, not what his father wants. Just so much good character development for Ryoken all around if Kogami actually does make a return, which again I can see happening at least since he is such an important character in all of this.

4. Ryoken/Revolver vs Takeru/Soulburner.

Look, you all know I want this duel. I never shut up about it so I’ll make this quick. They have a very high likelihood of dueling with Takeru being in possession of Flame and considering that Ryoken was the one to save Takeru from the Hanoi Project, if Yusaku told Takeru that or not remains to be seen, I want to see Takeru’s reaction to that info. Mostly I just want to see the albinos kill each other and to see Yusaku try and stop this duel and fail miserably.

5. Takeru/Soulburner getting Brainwashed by Lightning.

Look, the best friend character of the main protagonist of a Yu-Gi-Oh series always has something bad happen to them so they end up turning evil and in turn face off against the protagonist in a heartwrenching battle. Jonouchi got mind controlled, Johan got possessed, Bruno was an android, Vector was Vector, and Sora was a mole. Takeru is not in a ideal position right now, especially considering that Lightning can rewrite memories and rewrite Flame’s code to make him loyal to his kin. I see us getting a Soulburner vs Lightning duel in the future with Lightning just out right destroying him and once he wins, he will rewrite Flame’s code and through him, or just messing with Takeru’s memories, turn Soulburner into one of their solders for their war just like how Lightning did with Jin (from the looks of things anyway. Jin definitely doesn’t look like he’s doing this of his own free will). If that’s the guess, I’ve talked about this before, but this should in turn lead into a Playmaker vs Soulburner duel with what I’m hoping to be Soulburner kicking Playmaker’s ass, Yusaku getting brainwashed, Revolver comes in to beat Playmaker to unbrainwash him, and then Playmaker can go back free Soulburner from Lightning’s control. I don’t think that would actually happen but case and point, Takeru is kinda f*cked at the moment if the past has taught us anything.

6. Kusanagi’s betrayal.

Yeah...after that Jin reveal, it is only a matter of time before Kusanagi just out right snaps and leaves Yusaku. Maybe it is because he blames him or it is because Lightning is a manipulative bastard and will use Jin to drive a wedge between them, who knows at the current moment. Regardless of what causes it, I am interested to know what will happen when the split happens. If Takeru gets brainwashed and Ai gets captured as well, Yusaku will be left completely alone again like he was before he teamed up with Kusanagi and who knows what will happen to his psyche because of it. Yeah okay there is Ryoken but I doubt Yusaku will join the Knights if everyone leaves him for Lightning or maybe he will (that be a plot twist right there). Either way, I’m ready for the snap and to see what comes from it.

7. Meeting Windy/Aqua’s Lost Children and Aqua.

I’m still very adamant that Windy’s kid isn’t dead and I’ve seen some people suggest that Go’s secret mission by Akira is to find the last two Lost Children. I think that would be such a good use of his character at the moment and give him some good development as well, since he was the one that was throwing a tantrum and comparing his upbringing to what the Lost Children had to go through during the Hanoi Project. It would definitely be a eye opener for him if he got to see first hand the effects of what the Hanoi Project did to these last two children, especially Windy’s kid who god knows what condition he’s in now after what Windy did to him. As for Aqua, I feel like this would be the perfect opportunity to get Aoi and Emma involved in the plot again if Akira sent them to find her, similar to how Go would be trying to find the final children. If Aqua is actually with her human, that would be even better. Have Go get some development through Windy’s kid and have Aoi through Aqua’s kid, if you know, Aoi isn’t actually Aqua’s kid (cause I’m still waiting for the writers to throw that plot twist at us).

8. Earth and Spectre meeting up.

Since it is all but confirmed at this point that Spectre and Earth are partners, those two should be meeting up soon which is going to be really interesting, especially if Earth decides he wants to side with the humans and actually goes to Spectre, asking for his help in trying to co-exist with humans. I’ve talked about this before but this would be such good character development for Spectre if he actually decides to go against his own group’s goal and tries to protect Earth (and only just Earth. He doesn’t care about the other Ignises, its just that no one is allowed to hurt his). It would also be interesting from the other side of the conflict as well, if Earth decides to side with Lightning which could lead to a Spectre vs Earth duel. Regardless of who wins that duel, since I can see it going either way at the moment, I don’t think the victor will end up killing, in Spectre’ case, or enslaving, in Earth’s case, the other. I still see them teaming up to bring this war to an end since they each might have learned something from the other during that duel.

9. Yusaku/Playmaker and Ryoken/Revolver teaming up.

Regardless if you like Datastormshipping or not, Ryoken is still Yusaku’s main rival of the series and like many Yu-Gi-Oh series before them, they are going to team up against a common enemy, that being Lightning in this case (I would love Takeru to also be apart of this duel as well but I really think it might just be Playmaker and Revolver teaming up to beat Lightning/Jin if he is still under Lightning’s control during this duel). We have yet to get a tag duel for Vrains and just think of how epic this team up would be. I would love to see some kind of fusion (an actual Fusion Monster or just a combination of the two in Link form) of Firewall Dragon and Borreload Dragon. Don’t think that would actually happen knowing Firewall’s history and all but still, this team up would probably bring us one of/if not the best duel of in all of Vrains.

10. Emma and Kengo’s backstory.

Not completely related to the war but come on, what the hell is their backstory together? If Go can get some development through Windy’s kid and Aoi through Aqua’s, Emma needs some development as well through Kengo and considering we still don’t know what happened to Ghost Girl at the end of 63, I’m hoping that when we do find out what happened to her, it is when we get the full backstory of these two. Like instead of shooting her, Blood Shepherd says something to her, like call Ghost Girl “Emma” again, and she calls him out on it, making him finally explain to her their past together. Maybe that’s why we haven’t seen Emma for a while? She’s so shaken up about what BS told her that she hasn’t been able to work and such. Kinda a long shot on that one but seriously, I just want all of the original cast of characters from season 1, the really important ones anyway, to get some kind of development through the new characters that haven’t already as I’ve talked about above.

#vrains #vrains spoilers #random thoughts #theories #top 10

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megaphonemonday · 7 years

Text

questions i have that won’t ever be answered bc fox hates joy

So, it’s Thursday. And there’s no new episode of Pitch and there hasn’t been since December. If you think that means I should be over it by now, you would be super fucking wrong.

In honor of my unyielding grudge against fox have a (definitely incomplete) list of questions I wanted answered in seasons 2-10.

Feel free to add your own and/or yell about your bitterness towards fox and how much you miss this show, Ginny Baker, and her #1 fan, Mike Lawson.

let’s get cracking, shall we??

in ascending order of thirstiness:

when did ginny lose her security detail?

were they just there to deal with ginnsanity or was there something else going on??

they showed her fan mail multiple times, i don’t believe that even in this fictional world there weren’t people who weren’t super pissed a woman was playing in the majors

also: how worried did mike lawson get when he found out people were sending ginny hate mail?

what the hell does the rest of mike’s house look like? gimme a google street view, people.

also: when does ginny first see it? i need context and lots of it

how much shit does she give him for that portrait over his staircase?

does ginny baker actually not know how to cook? is that destined to be just fanon?

what’s her favorite food?

how long does it take mike to learn how to make it? does he just inform the clubhouse kitchen to have it ready on days she starts?

what gets mike to tell ginny about his shitty childhood?

also: what musical cue do they play around this emotional conversation? more ryan adams?

(jk, of course it’s more ryan adams.)

how often does ginny actually find mike sleeping in the clubhouse? (i.e. “You sleep a lot, old man.”)

how many pictures are on twitter/instagram of him sleeping in inadvisable places?

how many of those are from ginny alone?

what kind of weird routines have the team come up with to accommodate their sleepy captain?

ok, this is mostly me imagining the silent ballets that go on in the clubhouse when Lawson conks out on a couch. first one to wake him up has to pay an extra fine into the booze fund.

how grumpy is he when he wakes up from these naps???

how petty does mike get around ginny’s various dates? how petty does he get around mlb players with ginny baker heart eyes™?

which is worse?

can he convince the team to take up the guard dog routine, too??

how many times has mike lawson drunk dialed ginny baker? how about vice versa?

if those calls go to voicemail, to what lengths do they go to keep them saved?

i.e. what other stuff do they delete to make sure they can keep this reminder that the other’s thinking of them? even if they’re drunk and thinking of them

related: when do they become each other’s go to drunk dial?

who figures them out first?

my ranking, from most to least likely: Blip and/or Evelyn, Amelia, Al, Eliot (see, now i’m just imagining a b plot where he tries not to lose his mind from this knowledge), Livan, Sonny, any other Padre, Josh Peck/Ross, Rob the camera guy, Oscar

it’s not that i think Oscar is clueless, I just think he would do a hard mental u turn any time he came close to suspecting. The man does not want to know.

how many fucking times do they nearly kiss?

i, personally, need this number to be ridiculously high.

like at least four or five. far more times than is reasonable for two human beings who are mutually attracted to one another, even on a tv show

and that is because i am a sucker for slow burn and mutual pining. that is my sweet spot. that is where i live

post-meeting, who had the first dirty dream about the other?

how soon did it happen?

how guilty did they feel when they inevitably used the dream as inspiration for some solo fun?

related: how long did they avoid the other afterwards?

how unexpectedly into it is Ginny after she sees Mike actually get into his first on field brawl? not because he’s ~defending her honor~ or whatever, he just looks really good scuffed up.

like really good.

And, last, but not least:

HOW MANY FUCKING SHOTS OF SHIRTLESS MIKE LAWSON AM I NOW MISSING OUT ON???? HOW MANY SCENES AM I NOT GOING TO GIF??? HOW ABOUT HIS BARE ASS?? WE DESERVED HIS BARE ASS.

jk, not fucking last:

HOW MANY SCENARIOS OF: HEY, JUST IN CASE YOU FORGOT, GINNY BAKER IS A FUCKING KNOCKOUT, HERE SHE IS IN A DRESS. HAVE FUN, MORTALS.

AND GOD FORBID THE WOMAN EVER PUT ON A BIKINI! I (AND MIKE LAWSON) WOULD BE LAID FLAT.

#bitter? never heard of her #jk jk i'm taking this to the grave #pitch #bawson #if you think i'm not using some of this #as fic inspo #you'd be mistaken

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furederiko · 7 years

Photo

This is the LAST post for December, meaning it's also the FINAL post for the year. Anything special to publish in the conclusive day of 2017? NOPE. Just this... uhmmm, random ramblings. Ahahaha...

My internet went down completely for around 2 weeks since December 13th. The unexpected 'incident' (I apparently has burned my modem *sigh*) made me switched into my creative side and did genuine FUN non-internet related things instead. And I got all caught up by it... that I practically did NOT prepare anything for Tumblr.

Had a Random-News-Digest prepared for mid-December, but ditched it completely because the content would be highly outdated now. Wanted to do my monthly recap-view for "Kamen Rider Build", but haven't finished it so it'll have to wait until next month. The only thing I could pull off was the recap-views for "Uchu Sentai Kyuranger" last 2 episodes of the year. Though to be honest, that amazing show was part of my 'offline fun' as well. So yeah, unlike last year, there is no TOP 10 list this year. Didn't even publish anything for Christmas, because I completely FORGOT about it! LOL... (^^;)

Anyways, to make up for all of that, I've written a rough 'RECAP' of what went through my life this year. Entertainment-wise, of course, and not all but just some of the highlights. In list form! Why? Because I feel like it *grins*. Here goes nothing...

Movies, Oh movies...

- Watched even less movies on the theatre this year, and opted to wait several releases on home video. Only went to see the big guns, thus there isn't any disappointment. - Surprisingly, I loved the live action "Beauty and the Beast" more than the animated original. Dan Stevens' solo number "Evermore" is stuck in my head ever since. - Haven't seen "Coco", and really want to. Here's hoping the home video will be released soon. I guess I should see "Cars 3" first, huh? - "Dunkirk" was magnificent. War movie is usually not my forte, so I'm pleasantly surprised that Christopher Nolan managed to make me enjoy one. Was it the short duration, the all-out jerks of the army, or the non-stop intensity? Don't know. But if there's at least one thing I've gained from it: I disliked Harry Styles ever more now. No kidding. Poor French soldier... - I'm a visual guy so when I saw a disturbing scene, it usually stayed on my head for a good while. That bloody scene after the bomb explosion on "Stronger", for example? *sigh*. I hope Jake Gyllenhall receives an Oscar nomination for his work on this movie. - "Death Note" and "Ghost in the Shell"? Enjoyed the first one more, but both deserved better. - Tom Cruise's "The Mummy" was mediocre, but I'm among the minority who actually want to see more of Universal's Dark Universe. Even if just to see more of Russell Crowe going Jekyll. Charlie Hunnam's "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword" was the movie's kindred spirit, while "Kong: Skull Island" was the opposite. Kong will be meeting Godzilla in the coming years! - Comic book adaptations were generally top notch. Naturally the three Marvel Studios' releases; "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2", "Spider-Man: Homecoming", and "Thor: Ragnarok"; would be my top picks. Don't ask me to choose which one is the best though! All three were amazing and marvelous in their own unique ways, so I'd gladly rank them in the same spot just to be fair. - I admit, "Logan" and "Wonder Woman" were great too, but I didn't like them as much as everyone else on the planet. Not sure why, I guess... none of them was my cup of tea? Let's just say, there were problems on each of them that I couldn't quite tolerate and it reduced my overall impression on them. - Don't ask about "Justice League". I'll wait until I can borrow a copy when it's out on home video. Not wasting my money on a poorly reviewed DC Films. For now, "The LEGO Batman Movie" remains to be the best DC release of the year. - "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" was just NOT as good as the prequel. It was fun, but it felt like it's repetitive yet also missing something and trying too much.

Show Must Go On...

- Just realized that I've seen MORE TV series this year! Both the currently in broadcast, or titles from previouse years like "Westworld". Oh WOW... - Both Marvel's "Iron Fist" and Marvel's "The Defenders" were genuine duds. Both TV series were underwhelming and disappointing, that I have lost any urge to see Marvel's "The Punisher". - Haven't seen Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." 5th season as well, because I haven't been feeling it. Though that will change in the near future because I'm itching to see its 5th episode. Hey, my boy Fitz and Hunter are the star of that episode, right? THAT I just have to see! I wonder if seeing that episode would be enough to convince me to watch the previous four episodes... - Currently following Marvel's "Runaways", though this 1st season might be my first and last. Don't know why, but not feeling it either. I think CW's "Riverdale" was a more watchable show, and even that one have been dropped after Season 1. LOL. I guess teenage soap-opera is just NOT my thing. - The 5th and final season of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" was kind of... all over the place too. This show should've ended with Season 3, if you ask me. It had a bittersweet ending, akin to "Samurai Jack". But it also did not ended gracefully, and far less enjoyable to follow. - "Stranger Things" Season 2 was amazing. It had a somewhat different vibe compared to the 1st one, but equally enjoyable to watch. Poor characters whose name starts with 'B'... - I think the 3rd and 4th Seasons of "Voltron Legendary Defender" were initially meant to be one unit. The show's first two seasons were impressive, but these latter two were... okay? I don't know why, but it felt like it has waned a bit. - "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" was somewhat similar. I had great time with Season 1 and 2, but Season 3 was a bit... uneven. Many of the jokes didn't quite hit, and some of the story development started feeling like a recycled trick. Still, I would love to see a 4th Season, and hopefully with better improvements. - Was expecting "Big Hero 6: The Series" to be as amazing as the Oscar-winning movie... but alas that didn't seem to be the case. Didn't quite enjoy the 2-episodes premiere as much as I wanted to. A complete opposite to "DuckTales", that hit all the right notes. The sole complaint I have about this reboot/remake, is that Scrooge McDuck's adventure isn't airing new episodes on a weekly basis! Aaaaargggh, the long wait is making me angry. - If you haven't seen "Thunderbirds Are Go", then what are you waiting for? I feel the 2nd Season had more and more amazing moments, to the point that I hope Season 3 will come sooner than later. - Comedies are taking my leisure time now! Have been following Seth McFarlane's "The Orville". It was mediocre to good, and desperately in need of improvements (hopefully in Season 2). Yet I keep going back and see it. Is it the star power of its guest stars? - Adam Scott and Craig Robinson's "Ghosted" is on my top priority watch. Sure, the quality has reduced a bit since the pilot, but the supernatural agents aren't going anytime soon from my house. - The same with Kevin Finn! Great goodness, I have only started watching "Kevin Probably Saves the World" since early this month (the benefit of NOT getting preoccupied by the internet LOL), but I'm already regretting why I didn't start sooner. Now I honestly can't wait to see more! Kevin is such an adorkable, likeable, and surprisingly relatable quirky lead. The kind of guy I would totally love to be best friends with in real life. Really though, the show is infectuous with its acts of kindness, heartwarming with its pleasant vibes, and also surprisingly engaging through its personal conflicts. If you hear me giggling, laughing out loud, or sobbing lately, you can probably thank Kevin, his guardian Angel, family, and friends for that! Seriously...

A Spoonful of Anime and Toku

- Turns out, "Kekkai Sensen & Beyond" wasn't the sequel that I expected to be. It's... 'different' than the first season. But when you get to see what the other members of Libra (even the team's butler) are doing in their daily lives, should one even be complaining? In the end it was indeed as amazing and fun ride as the first season, even if lead protagonist Leonardo Watch took a back seat most of the season. I'm already crossing my fingers to see more adventure of the team. But it likely won't happen in the near future, huh? Bummer... - "Ballroom e Youkoso" was a peculiar dance. I thoroughly enjoyed the first half, but after Tatara changed partner things got... hectic and irritating to follow? It was still good, but a rather uneven show if you ask me for honest impression. At the very least, it wasn't a wasted opportunity like "Kabuki-bu!" was. - "Houseki no Kuni" was of similar situation. Its animation was gorgeous, story was peculiarly engaging, and world building was great. But there were episodes that were undeniably better than the rest, and I didn't quite like how it ended. I guess that finale was teasing for more seasons? Hmmm... - It's been years since I follow a Pretty Cure series, and "Kira Kira Precure A La Mode" wet my appetite and got me back to the game. Unfortunately, while the design was interesting, and the sweets angle was neat, the story was somewhat weak. I have lost my initial enthusiasm after the first half, but I still watch it because it's going to end pretty soon. Not quite expecting a mindblowing finale though, especially if the animation quality is any indication. A common problem of TOEI Animation. Remember "Sekaisuru KADO"? - Dang it, what an impressive year it has been with Super Sentai. "Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger" was kind of dull and boring last year, but had a great ending this year. And it was quickly followed by something even better. Yes, another show that has dragged me on a pleasant roller coaster ride is none other than TOEI's "Uchu Sentai Kyuranger". Since its premiere run on February, until its Christmas episode that wrapped up its 2017 run, I haven't been disappointed once with the series. Yes, I had an issue with the spin-off series of V-Cinema "Episode of Stinger", but that didn't count as the broadcast lineup. Though it's painful for me to soon say goodbye to this amazing season, I hope its last month will be memorable and a blast. Particularly because I'm currently having second thoughts about the 2018 season... - Just like its weekly storyline, "Kamen Rider Build" is still moving me back and forth. I'm honestly on the verge of dropping it completely, but I guess I'm going to check out several episodes from the next "Kamen Rider Wars" arc. I kind of feel it takes too long to get to this point when it could've been done earlier, but who am I to argue, right?

Name of the Game

- "Nintendo Switch" was a hit! Ever since its release on March 2017, the buzz and hype for this hybrid console only continue to increase. I wonder if I will be able to purchase one next year? Perhaps, just in time for the next Pokemon gen? - Speaking of Pokemon, the addition of Generation III from Hoenn region has made me go out and explore "Pokemon GO" again. The whole Raid Battle system and Niantic's handling of the Legendary Pokemon had disappointed so bad that I was close to give up on this App. Thankfully, now I have a horde of new reason to walk around the neighborhood. Problem is, can the same premise work in the long run? Niantic really need to consider new social features that enables players to engage with one another. - "Street Fighter V" had a weird set of DLC characters this year. The 2nd Season contained mostly new characters, that was a hit or miss with fans. Thankfully, things seem to be picking up next year with the Arcade Edition. Not just because my man Cody Travers is all dandy clean and returning to the game, of course. Question is, will I be able to play the game eventhough I don't have any plans to pick up a PS4? *giggles*. - I also haven't been able to play "Persona 5" due to the exact reason. LOL. Thankfully, "Persona 5 the Animation" has been announced to air next year. Sure, I'm a bit skeptical with the fact that A-1 Pictures and not Production I.G. will be doing the animation, but at least this will be my way of enjoying the game... WITHOUT actually playing it. - LEVEL-5 should do more of that worldwide Puzzle Quest! That was meant to be a prelude or some sort to "Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and The Millionaires' Conspiracy", but I think the game developer should learn by now that it could work as a stand alone project. It made people come together in surprising way, and attracted fans to come back everyday to check out the new worldwide puzzle. Real FUN!

Oookaaay, that went A LOT longer than I expected. And I'm 100% sure that there are items that completely slipped my mind. As of writing this line, it's only just a few hours before the year ends! Aaaaarggggh *grumble*. Gotta publish this one soon then!

With that said, 2017 has been a difficult and challenging year. Particularly to a very discriminative and straight-out evil political atmosphere. One that allowed people to show their true despicable nature and selfishly trampled others for it. Last year I did say that "There's so many reasons to be hopeful about 2017", but reality had spoken differently as it turned out there were plenty more to discourage us throughout the year. Many people have even lost their fate in humanity this year.

But you know what? I'm going to say the same thing this day as well. There are SOOO many reasons to be hopeful about 2018. I don't know if it's because I'm currently caught up in the holiday spirit, or because I've been feeling extra thankful and blessed this month. One thing I can openly attest, is that things DO GET BETTER. So don't ever lose hope, and keep fighting the good fight in the name of just and goodness. I'm being lazy right now, so I'm just going to copy and paste my own words from last year: "Life can sometimes be hard, but all we need to do is stay strong, stay high spirited, and more importantly, keep moving forward! Happiness and blessings will surely find its way, in ways you might not imagine!".

And also this next one... because I'm going to be saying more or less the same kind of statements anyway: "Thanks to those who have been reading my blog all year long. I know I haven't spent much time (or any) to address you one by one, and heck, I might not even know you're there. But please know that I'll always be grateful for your presence, your time, kindness, and more importantly patience to walk through my long and sometimes pointless ramblings. What you've been doing means a lot for me, and I hope what I've been posting has and will somehow benefit back to you in return.". 2017 ends in just a few hours away, so let's enter and stride through 2018 with a hopeful and brave heart, the biggest and earnest smiles, the most sincere love and compassion for others regardless of their religion, race, or skin color. More importantly, let's make 2018 a year that we can be proud of. Where we take a stand for what's right and good! Where we become better human being than we are this year!

SEE YOU TOMORROW IN 2018!!!

#message #quotes #life quotes #wisewords #Just for Fun #random thoughts #movie #TV show #anime #game #review

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softhorts · 7 years

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Any good au phanfics you can recommend me? Or any you've written? I'm new so I have not read any

ooo well I mostly read AUs, but I’ll link my all time favorites below under the cut and you can check out all of my bookmarks on ao3 because they’re really all good tbh! also check out the @phanfictioncatalogue The admins are super helpful and lovely :D

As for my own fics, I have never posted any but maybe sometime soon I will! For now, Happy Reading!

Non AU:

fifty kisses to christmas by nokomisfics

“That any better?” Phil asks.

“Yeah,” Dan says, biting his lip. He sounds breathless.

“Okay.” Phil pulls away properly this time, getting to his feet. Dan looks up at him, not moving from his position on the bed, and Phil reaches down to pat at his cheek gently. “I’ll make us a toastie for tea? Turn the telly on, I’ve got Saturday’s episode saved. Haven’t deleted it or anything.”

“Alright,” Dan says, still sounding a bit like he’s short for breath. When Phil leaves the room, he feels eyes on the back of his neck.

or: Phil gives Dan fifty kisses for Christmas.

Maybe, Possibly by cafephan

Phil’s mother is adamant that he should be settling down, so invites one of his turbulent exes to an annual family get-together the following day. In a moment of panic, he tells her he’s already dating someone. With no other options, he turns to Dan.

Alternate Universe:

before we turn into a monster (with two heads) by blueshirt

“Once this case is over, I’m getting a new job. Maybe one where I just sit in my bedroom and make videos about my life. That would be nice,” Dan muses dreamily to himself—or rather, mumbles indistinctly to himself, because it’s a little hard to articulate when you’ve been shoved into the trunk of a moving car, bound, and gagged.

Or, the 30K Secret Agents AU that nobody asked for, featuring an undercover mission as husbands, annoying coworkers with a betting pool (Dan is going to complain to HR about Felix), and inevitable slow-dancing to Ed Sheeran.

(contains: smut)

The Abstract Notion of Home by wallflowerchronicles (unfinished)

An American university AU

(contains: smut)

Fool’s Gold by DarkPhannie

Fashion designer, or rather fashion student, Dan Howell has just moved to NYC and meets Phil Lester, an aspiring advertising major. Success seems like an easy task but will Dan’s ambition and trips to the other side of the world interrupt his life too much?

also on tumblr

(contains: smut)

Sidetracked by phanimist

Based on a prompt:

Dan and Phil are both contestants on ‘The Bachelorette’, but fall in love with each other instead of the girl.

Never Fade Away by parentaladvisorybullshitcontent

“Come on, just because he’s in space doesn’t make him cooler than you. I mean, technically we’re all in space. He’s just…in a different bit of space.”

“It’s nothing to do with anything like that. I just –“ Dan pauses, trying to think of a way to phrase it. “It’s stupid to even think of him like that when I’ve never even met him, you know? Like – I have no idea who he is.”

In which Phil’s an astronaut alone on Mars and Dan’s a lowly tech down at Ground Control who can’t get him out of his head

In My Way by INeverHadMyInternetPhase (unfinished)

Daniel Howell is 21 and Britain’s newest star. He’s just been cast in the much-anticipated film adaption of Last Man Standing, the popular teen fantasy novel with a huge fanbase hanging off his every tweet. In other words, Dan has made it big.

Phil Lester couldn’t care less. He’s a stressed out PHD student working part time at a bookshop while he struggles to get into post-production. He’s 26 and still lives in a tiny flat on the fifth floor of a building with a lift more broken than it is in use. He loves books, but he thinks big film adaptions screw with the plot too much.

Needless to say, Phil is less than impressed when Last Man Standing is getting filmed in his hometown. And he certainly doesn’t want anything to do with obnoxious, arrogant, so irritatingly perfect leading actor Daniel Howell.

Lover Boy by cafephan

Phil is the shy new kid at school, taken under the wing of Dan’s group of friends. The two develop crushes on one another, but a secret from the past threatens to jeopardise everything before it even begins.

Can’t Get You Out of My Mind by japhanforever

Phil is weird in many ways, but there’s one thing about him that is weirder than most. He has the ability to enter people’s dreams. Normally, he just hops into a random friend’s dream and goes along for the ride. Until, that is, the new kid, Dan Howell, comes along. From the moment they meet, Phil can’t stop get him out of is head….. And Dan may have a hard time keeping Phil out of his. Literally.

Life is a Test (And I Get Bad Marks) by phansdick (Skeletonflowers)

Soulmate au where the first thing you think when you see your soulmate for the first time appears on their skin. Dan has always been known as the most badass guy in school; Until Phil Lester shows up, that is. Feeling like his image is at risk, he lashes out, causing an all-out war between the two.

A Wizard’s Misgivings by jilliancares

Dan Howell’s entire family has been in Slytherin, and there’s no doubt he’s supposed to end up there too. Phil Lester does’t exactly know what to do when he finds himself liking boys, so he’s usually just horrendously mean to them.

also on tumblr

On Tumblr:

My Man by lumierebleue

In the mid-twenties, poor worker’s son Dan runs away from home and meets Phil, a man with a secret. Their love blossoms but when the economy crumbles in 1929 and leaves them struggling for survival, Phil’s past catches up to him and he has to make a decision that will change their lives forever. (25.000w)

Ps if any of the authors here are uncomfy with their fic in this list or anything else please let me know!

#sorry these are all basically on ao3 but thats my prime source for fics lol #asks #anon #fics #phanfics

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dantelaw21 · 4 years

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 292

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Click on the video above to watch Episode 292 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Hey, we’re live. Hey everybody. Welcome to Hump Day hangouts where we talk about how close we are to Episode 300. But we’re not there yet. We’re at Episode 292. Today is the 17th of June 2020. We got everybody here. We got a bunch of questions to go through. And we got a couple of quick announcements real quick. As usual, we’re going to take a minute Say hello to everybody and then we’ll jump into it. So if you are here to get your digital marketing SEO questions answered, you’re in the right place. And we’re going to get to that in just a second. So I’m going to start

we’ll go counterclockwise today, Bradley, how are you doing? What’s uh, how’s life going for you in Virginia today? Good. It’s gonna be a monsoon for like the next five days though. And I just had my daughter this was supposed to be our vacation week, like family vacation week, but because everything you know COVID-19 our travel plans to meet up with family and everything were canceled. So it’s kind of a staycation. So I had my daughter from Friday until today and it was nice having her around and

Fortunately, she’s gone now. So it’s like, you know, I’m going to experience empty nest syndrome for the next few days. But it was nice man. It was a good five days to spend with her. And so I’m refreshed and ready to ready to bang out some work now. So sounds good. Well, hopefully, you’re ready to answer some questions. But before we get to dive into that, Hernan, how are you doing today?

Whoops, I was doing I’m doing good, man. I’m just wondering about that thing that you have on the back. That little shiny metal thing? I don’t know.

Man, can you show me? Yeah, let me Gosh, I just it’s just been sitting back there in the back collecting me. Let’s see, what do we got? We got my name and her dog’s name and I think it says Semantic Mastery and something about click funnels and the two comma club award So yeah, I thought Whoo. Good job, guys. It’s like a million bro.

Yeah. So I’m good, man. I’m excited. I’m excited.

Good, sounds really good. Yeah. Marco. How about yourself besides the flexing? Are you blinded by the light? Nice?

blind. I can’t help it. I can’t help it. I can’t help it. I just have so to get my arms to stretch Marco’s doing the 100 pushups a day challenge and I’m also feeling that so I need to do some stretching.

I actually I felt bad yesterday so I’m not that an extra 50 because I couldn’t do the hundred in one shot because I tried the 5050 and then to punish myself I did another 50, for not being it so I’m going to get to 100 quicker than I would otherwise and I just keep punishing myself I’ll go and do

four sets of 50 today oh my goodness keep punishing myself. Well does anyone not with this post on?

Oh God, because if I can do this shit cuz I got a bone spur my neck

and I got three compressed this in my lower back

So the pain that I go through just to do that, I don’t. I don’t even want to think about it because I’ve never dropped again. Right? But if I can do it, guys, come on, do the challenge. Tell them I don’t tell them what it is. Yeah, for those of you who aren’t friends with me on Facebook, that’s probably good for you, but you might not see my post. So actually, my wife was like, I’m gonna do 100 squats a day and I’m gonna see if people want to, you know, join me I was like, Alright, like, tag me in that. I’ll do 100 pushups a day if you do 100 squats a day. So we got a handful of people I know Marco is doing it. Rob’s doing it. We got some other people doing I think Scott Walker, who was a hump day Hangout, enthusiastic, Semantic Mastery subscriber is doing was it crutches or some sort of ab workout? We got people doing all sorts of stuff. So you’re not too late. We just started if you want to make it up or start the 30 days now just pick something and do it. So yeah.

Good stuff. Well, Chris, how are you doing today? Yeah, doing good. I will not join your 30 Day Challenge. I prefer to hit the gym and as well as bulk up on cherries, raspberries strawberries, because like it’s harvesting season for all those things here. Gotcha. Yeah. Jerry, so I was like, bulk up like Yeah, but that’s like the bulking up you usually do.

That’s too sweet for me. Like it wasn’t like the calories and one of those beneficiaries like, Man, you can eat a really good steak instead. Fair enough. Well or drink a really good beer.

That’s what I prefer. That’s a really good beer to be equal to A Ben and Jerry’s. And Jerry’s packs a punch man that’s got some calories, maybe like a triple IPA or something. Oh, yeah. Imperial IPA, something like that. Yeah. Well, while we’re on the subject of beer for those of you who are interested or have heard about kofu Live, just wanted to put this out there tickets. The new tickets are not for sale yet. They will be going up shortly and there will be an opportunity for you to join us for a happy hour, as well as an opportunity to do a virtual beer tasting with real beer shipped directly to your door.

Apparently my door didn’t like being caught like that. So keep your eyes and ears tuned for that one. As soon as we get that setup, we’re working with a company that’s going to do a virtual tour for VIP ticket holders as well as shipping beer and some snacks directly to your door. So it’s gonna be some good stuff.

When we were discussing what to do for the VIP event, Adam put on the list. No virtual beer tasting and I was like you had me at that was like, it’s decided I had a pretty weak follow-up. The next one was like a virtual museum tour and, like booths.

Stage, we’re gonna have some more information about that, you guys, but we’re really excited. We’re going to be able to continue with poker live, obviously, it’s gonna be Boku virtual live. We’re still gonna have time for q&a. We’re still gonna have some personal interaction in there, as well as case studies and we’re lining up the guests.

Right now, and we’re getting really excited about telling you guys some more about that. So keep your eyes and ears open for that. mg y v.co. If you haven’t been there yet, right after Hump Day Hangouts, go over to empty y v.co. Check out all the done for you services available. There are waves, drive stacks, SEO, shield, syndication, networks, link building all sorts of good stuff. And speaking of the SEO shield, we have a real short flash sale going on. Let me pull it up, I’ll put it on the page for everyone. But there’s a 25% off sale going on all the SEO shield versions you can get and you just have to use the coupon code vegies 25. Because today is eat your veggies day. So we figured we’d be nice and instead of giving you or veggies or making eat your veggies worse, they give you a discount on the ICF scope. So other than that, I think that’s about it for today, guys, is there anything else we need to let them know about?

I don’t think so. I’m good. All right. Let’s do it. Alright, grab the screen and we’ll get right into it. We got a bunch of good questions already. So

Let’s do it.

Is There A Fast Way of Removing 404 Pages From Google’s Index?

Okay, you guys are seeing my screen, correct? Yeah. All right. So it looks like we’re gonna start with Chef. He says, Is there a way to speed up Google removing 404 pages from his index? The only way I know how to do it is to run the URLs, the four or four URLs through an indexer or to submit the through and I haven’t tried that in a while. But to submit them to search console, it just gets Google to come to crawl them again. Well, the four or four error URLs, you mean if they’re indexed? I don’t know. Actually, I don’t know that. If you were trying to reach set up redirects and things like that instead, then you have been crawled the old URL if it’s redirected. So for example, if you’ve got a WordPress site, it’s through a bunch of four or four errors for some reason or another. And use something like you know, a redirect plugin that redirects all four or four pages back to like the home page, for example, then you could submit a list of those four or four URLs to have to recrawl or send them through a link indexer and if gets the Googlebot to come to crawl them. And it redirects back to, you know, a target URL. So it basically tells Google This is no longer a 404 error. That makes sense. But that was if you were using some sort of redirect plugin, does anybody have any idea how to get the Google cache to update faster? No, it’s gonna clear whenever it clears. I mean, that’s just the way it is. Yeah, there are things that you could do to get Google to crawl your website or try to recrawl the website. But I mean that you do that through search console.

Should We Send Links To The ID Page Loop Page?

So the next question, should we send links to our ID page loop page? So yes, your ID page? Absolutely. Uh, we, you know, I certainly do, you can use embeds and or link building to that.

Do You Have Plan Of Combining SEO Power Shield With The RYS + Twitter SEO Profile + Multitier Tier Syndication Network?

So next is number one, do you plan to have an SEO power shield ultimate that combines the 347 packages of RYS Twitter SEO profile plus the 276 multi-tier syndication network? Not that I’m aware of. I mean, you could piece those together if you wanted to, you could order a to a two-tiered syndication network and then just add that into your build your when you submit your target URL list for the SEO PowerShell build. So you could do it that way. I don’t, I don’t know if there’s enough of a demand for that, because you’re the first person that’s asked for it. For us to create a separate package for it. Maybe if we had enough demand for it. What do you think?

No, I think I mean, we usually take care of people’s right to support and ask what you want, and maybe, you know, we’ll include a coupon or something. Yeah.

I mean, we already do. Yeah, it’s a lesson but we’re not going to create an entirely new product for one person. But we can’t work with this one of requests, and see if we can put it together for how or how we would put it together or if even, but we can take a look.

What Is The Team Building Service In The Dashboard?

So the second part or second question is what’s the team-building service that I saw on the dashboard occasionally when we go into hiring, you know when we have to hire a virtual assistant for a new position or to add to our existing team or whatever. Then we go through our hiring process where we use hiring funnels in the same process that we teach in outsource kingpin that, you know, it’s the same process that we teach in that product on how to set up hiring funnels and all that kind of stuff. for hiring virtual assistants, it kind of automates about 90% of the hiring process. And only at you end up with only the candidates that at the to the interview process, only candidates that are highly qualified, right, that have proven to have to be able to follow directions and to do everything that you instructed them to do. So it works really, really well. So when we have to hire, we run the same exact system and we usually end up with multiple qualified candidates for the position, but we usually only end up needing one or two at a time. So we have additional qualified cameras that are available for others to hire, since they already went through our application process, and proved to be worthy if that makes sense. So sometimes when we have an overflow, we offer that, you know, the pre-qualified or screen pre-screen candidates for others to hire. But it’s not all that it just depends on you know, whether we have that available or not. So sometimes it’s available sometimes it’s not. It’s a good question. It’s, it’s not available right now. That’s correct.

Is It Safe To Use The Link Building Service To A Bunch Of MGYB Shortened Links That Redirect To The Money Site?

Okay, so Matthews up, he says, Is it safe to order mgyb link building to a bunch of mgyb.co shortened links, which redirect to the money site pages. Now, what is the best g site instead? that yes, you if you’re linking if you’re building links to redirect URLs that link to your money site, that just redirect to your money site, you’re essentially building links directly to your money site. That’s not what we teach. So that’s what the drive stack in the to shield for is for the G site, the syndication network, all your tier one, entity assets, your ID, ID, page, looper, your ID page, all of those things are stuff that you can use as targets, but not your money site directly. A redirect is still if the destination of the redirect is your money site, then it’s essentially building links directly to your money site. And we do not recommend that. We build all those for you in the dry second t site. we shorten everything with our shortener. And we will include that in the spreadsheet, right that gets that also gets iframe By the way, on the G site. So you’ll have all that you don’t even have to do all that you can just get all that from us. Like I don’t know why you’d go through all that trouble unless you have the redirect, right that the monthly redirect service which we do offer, in which case you would go and use all those redirects, but you still point them to something other than your money site because under no circumstances that we recommend link building to your money site right.

What Is The Ideal Number of Posts To The GMB Post Per Week?

Okay, so Jeff is up. Jeff says, Hey guys, thanks as always for delivering great information on a regular basis. You’re welcome, Jeff. He says, with regards to GMB posting, what are the numbers shown with regards to the number of posts per week as posting daily shown to increase views, calls, etc versus posting once or twice a week? Thanks and have a great week. It depends on the industry. And its short answer is yes, more equals better, typically, and almost every project or campaign that manages more GMB posts leads to better results. So but you know, there I guess there can be a point of diminishing return. Right? And that I don’t know what that is, because I know that more equals better to the extent that I’ve tried it. For most clients, you know, if they’re open seven days a week, then we do we post at least once a day, so you know, one post per day, seven days a week. Some clients are only open Monday through Friday, so we just post Monday through Friday, but some clients we post to twice a day, Monday through Friday, you know, so it just it really depends on what the client is paying for how aggressive they want to be what their budget is. But I found that more equals better. But that’s probably not always the case in every situation. But you know, what do you say Marco? And this is really interesting. And it’s totally it depends. Because I have a client who just like I can’t produce the content because it’s legal. And the client is like, it’s almost like pulling teeth to get them to give me like the content the for the post. So they only do so we only ended up doing like two or three per month. Now, that one has almost 700 posts views, like as of today, even though we’re only doing like two or three per month, which is ridiculous.

You shouldn’t get you shouldn’t be getting that kind of action in the legal niche. And I have another one in the luxury niche who posts regularly and I mean, sometimes during the weekend two or three times because that’s the busiest time. And that one is that like 1000 views for the posts for the week, I’m talking about the week. So it’s interesting how old posts if you set this up correctly if you silo them if you do everything that we teach you to do, even the old posts will get views because I’m seeing thousands of views on the attorneys post the old ones. And I’m also seeing thousands of views on this other client in this luxury niche, and they’re not related, the posting is in no way related. The only thing that’s related in any of this is the way that we do it the way that we stack them and loop them. And then the way that we shoot press releases into them, but that that again, that’s a local GMB pro method right? where we teach, we teach the stack, we teach the PR stacking, we teach the link building into all of this, how to do the videos and then the images and make sure that they’re relevant. Make sure that they come from the place that and I have a client that’s really good about posting images from

They’re and about the product that he does. I’ll go back to this luxury niche. He’s really good about all that. And it gets just tons of action. But here you go, one guy’s barely posting, the other guy’s posting as often as possible. And they’re both getting fantastic results. And the only thing that I can attribute that to is the fact that they’re silo, and the fact that they’re stacked, and the fact that they’re looped, and so is everything behind it.

There you go.

Will It Be Easy To Create A Silo Using Deep Keyword Package?

So the next question is from Ben jam, or Benjamin or, Ben, I’m gonna call him Ben. He says, Hey, guys, for some reason, I have always been baffled by siloing a site. After watching a few tutorial videos, you created Bradley in the SM YouTube channel. It seems breathtakingly simple. Already, yeah, you know, silos can be overcomplicated very easily, especially using the complex silo structure and that’s what you know, I’ve talked about many times, it’s why I prefer to try to use the simple silo structure, which is just a category and post hierarchy, so there are only two levels of depth to any type of, you know, to the category structure that within the site. You know, a complex silo structure has three levels, right, because you have a parent page, parent category, child page subcategory, then you have posted, and it can, it can create some very tricky situations, especially with local projects where you are trying to duplicate locations for like, for example for like a service area business, okay, so a service area business that has, you know, the same two services, but they cover multiple locations to try to build the location silos into topical silos is difficult if you’re using the traditional silo method, you know, with categories and the complex silo structure or vice versa building topical silos or service-based silos within location silos. Again, it creates some very tricky things that happened with the URL structure was slugs, because of dupa. You know, having duplicate slugs, it’s so anyways, my point in telling you all of that is that I prefer to use the simple silo method as much as possible. Because it is much again, just as the name connotes. It’s, it’s simple, it’s a lot easier to manage, it’s easier to build and it’s easier to manage. So it subsequently when you add additional silos, or what you call like a bolt-on silo, it’s, it’s also a lot easier to manage when you have a simple silo structure. So yes, it can be incredibly complicated, or it can be incredibly simple. It really depends on how you lay it out up front, which I think is very important. So to carry on, he says, so to us, he says, I ordered a deep keyword package, as I mentioned, it had keywords listed in the report by silo Yeah, they’re suggested silos.

So to use that to create content for my authority site with silo architecture is it now simply a matter of creating the category pages for the silo keywords and posts for the solution keywords in each silo then linking them all together as described in the video. I think I may have been over complicating this, is it that simple? Yes, it really is, uh, you know, the suggested silos again, you could still go through there and clean out things that aren’t 100% relevant to your project, there’s going to be stuff in there. Because we, you know, we cast kind of a wide net with all the tools that are used and everything to create those keyword reports for you. So obviously, you’re gonna have to go through there and really clean it down and narrow it down to just your most relevant keyword phrases, as well as you know, the long tails and everything else. But really comes down to that if you understand how to set up the structure, and then how to link so remember a silo, you’re going to be adding depth to it, right? So the more supporting articles you post within a particular silo, that’s more depth to it with would be additional categories, right? So there’s width and depth. So a solid site can be as little as one silo, with a ton of depth to it, right? You just keep adding content to whatever

Your top-level market keyword is you keep adding supporting content, right writing content that’s relevant, that has long targeting longer tail phrases. Or you can even combine and target multiple types of similarly related phrases per supporting article, you can do it that way as well. But then linking them together with proper internal linking, which, again, we talked a lot about that kind of stuff in the mastermind, as well as our ys Academy. But it’s very important to understand how to also link properly internal linking from within the silos so that you’re not creating dead points or points where you have a loss of link equity or loss of link juice. And that happens if you don’t know how to do it correctly. But the short answer is yes. It’s as simple as that create your top-level categories, your top-level keywords, then start taking the supporting keywords and start adding content within those categories. You place the post within those categories, then you daisy chain them together or whatever your internal linking strategy is going to be within that silo. And that’s pretty much it for the on-page part of it. Any comments, guys? Yeah, this guy has seen the light Benjamin Thank you It is that simple if you want to make it that simple, or it can get really complicated if you want to make it complicated, nobody knows your niche, or nobody should know your niche better than you. What we’re giving you is what we suggest you do. And then we also give you other apps like categories, subcategories, and then supporting keywords. But you have to go in there go into the questions in essence and see what we did in there, what we gave you back, look into power suggest pro look into a SEMrush and see what was done in there because there may be some things in there that you can use for supporting for or just to add additional as Bradley mentioned depth and breadth to your silo if that’s what you want. There’s so much information in there like that. I don’t think there’s any way that you can use it all or you have years of information actually when you get that back how you set that up is up to you and just so you don’t go back and reuse any of the long tails, just mark it off in red because it’s given to you in a spreadsheet when you use it, kill it right it’s in red Oh strike through it so that you can just go back through all of the others and pick out what you want your people to write about. Tell them you should have ah, by the way, doing all of this or hire someone, you tell them what it is that you want them to write about to focus on that on that keyword and all of those keywords under that but make it all conversational so that it all flows and so that the bot comes in and gets a better understanding of your data use the ultimate SEO, ultimate SEO Pro Plugin. If sorry, SEO ultimate pro plugin to do all the interlinking we showed not we but Jeffrey Smith did a fantastic job of coming in into the first heavy hitter club webinar and showing how you actually do all of that how you create the semantic relationships and how you tie it all together in your unstructured data so that you give your unstructured data, some kind of structure for the back because you creating all of these semantic relationships. So it’s not only in the content that you’re producing, but you’re relating them to one another through your interlinking, which is really, really important so that it all flows. Now, another thing about this is and I’ll just give a quick example, guys, those of you in the personal injury attorney niche, what you should be targeting is civil law. That’s the market level category, because any anything that’s a personal injury, divorce, bankruptcy, you name it, it’s all civil law. And so personal injury is part of civil law. If you go after the top, then it makes it easier to rank for personal injury. Now, of course, it’s hyper-competitive. But if you’re going one, one, market above everyone else, it makes it easier for the long tails to come up.

I’m hoping that that makes sense to everyone, you’re going to do all of your research for criminal law, you’re going to fill a website with all of that information. Now, yes, it’s a lot of work. But when you do all of that, and you create the semantic relationships, you’re interlinking, you’re using the plugin the way that you’re supposed to, you’re using that deep-link jargon, not the way that it’s supposed to be used the tags, and everything else that Jeffrey Smith teaches, because he has extensive teaching for that plugin, guys, it makes it dead simple to start ranking, but like I’m not gonna say immediately, but much, much more quickly than you would otherwise. Then then you bring in the rest of the teaching, then you bring in that SEO power shield to add all of the relevance into it, then you do your structured data. So now what you’re getting is a two for one, you’re getting your unstructured data, giving it some structure, and then you’re bringing in the structured data to like seal it for about on exactly what it is that your website is about. Now, I just found it really complicated.

But it all goes back to how you set up your initial structure. And if you keep it simple, then everything else is going to flow much more, much more simply than it would otherwise because you can really confuse yourself once you start branching out into the structure data and how to create the parent and child relationships, organization, location and all of the different things that you can do when it comes to structured data. But I think this is great and thank you. Yes, the keyword research in mg y v.to. Go pick it up because I don’t think there’s anyone doing anything better than we are.

What Are Your Recommendations For Link Indexing Services?

Sweet. That was a great question. By the way, so Jackson’s up he says, Hey guys, currently looking to purchase an indexing service for all link building and found a couple so far link pipe pipeline, it looks good, but can’t find much information about it. Everything seems out of date. What do you guys recommend for indexing? I recommend Dedia from India. Yeah. There is a bit of an issue that it’s on our list for MGYB’s Link indexing services limited in that you can only submit 300 URLs at a time it is something that will be updated at some point. It’s not at the top of our priority list though. So as much as I want to tell you guys to go by link indexing credits from MGB, it is a bit of a pain in the ass because you have to own it, you can only submit 300 at a time. Just being 100% transparent with you guys. Okay, that is the service that I would recommend. And why because Dedia runs all the link building like the link indexing services if we submit links to him, he runs them through multiple link indexing services, so much so that he gets a really high rate 50 to 60% indexing rate, which is hard to do. But he uses multiple indexing services. So the short answer if you’re going to get your own subscriptions, so that you don’t have to submit 300 batches of 300 URLs at a time, which I don’t even I don’t do because it’s just too time-consuming and to manual would be to in the free group on Facebook is posted post that same question. And we’ll get ready to chime in. And he can recommend which one or two services he recommends is the best for link indexing. Because he’s the go-to guy for that kind of stuff. Anytime I have anything that needs to be done, I can just send it to him or ask him a question regarding something like that. And he’ll have the best answer because that is his business. So anybody else wants to comment on that? No, I wouldn’t recommend anything else. Other than the link indexing service and MDB because that’s what I use. Yeah, I go, I go to daddy. I mean, I don’t go anywhere else because he gets the results that we need.

I haven’t used a link indexing service in years because we have a dead Yeah. Yeah.

I agree. So but again, you know, as if you’re submitting, you know, thousands and thousands of URLs then until we have it to where you can submit a spreadsheet or a text file or something like that. Then I could understand wanting to have your own indexing subscription, it’s likely that you’re going to need a couple of them because no one service does an incredibly good job. But Daddy, I can tell you in the group, which, which he suggests are the best services to use if you’re going to have your own subscription. So I would recommend posting in there and I’m sure he will be happy to share that.

Is There A Way To Make A Google Drive Folder Public?

Okay, next question is Hey, guys, the option to make this comes up almost every week. We probably need an FAQ for these guys. We’re knowledge base something for this also. Anyways, Hey, guys, the option to make public folder has been removed from the G Suite accounts. I tried from two different domains with G Suite accounts and the option is not there anymore. Is there any other way to make folders public? Marco, you want to comment on that?

Yeah, there are other ways that we’ve shared in the heavy hitter club and I’m the way I’m not going to it. We made that webinar public. It now went into the heavy hitter club archives. It’s not going to be public knowledge and then the other way that we do it is through MGYB because we have a proprietary way in which we can make them public. I mean, then that’s all I’m going to add about that. Yes, Google has been taking away the ability to make, has taken away the public selection in the folders, the way that it’s taught, in our way as Academy reloaded. But there are other ways and we’re actually testing out another way. I was just talking to Justin, the is VA, the original ISP yesterday, on something new that we’re going to try. And if that works, well, then we’ll make that public because Google makes it.

cool. And just saying guys, no, again, full transparency, I’m actually testing with Microsoft OneDrive, which is like its version of Google Drive. Because you can still make things public there. And you can grab the embed code for sheets and, you know, different files. And so I just literally started testing that last week. So I don’t have any results yet but just an alternative. And also just another potential asset is to use Microsoft OneDrive because you’re still getting high authority. You’re getting files and, you know, file types on a high authority domain, Microsoft domain, right? Essentially, it’s Microsoft owned in that domain. So I’m testing with that, too. That might be something again, I don’t have any results. I just started testing with the last week, but I figured it was worth a shot. So yeah, we’ve tested that also, it has a whole lot of limitations. And it’s getting out of the Google ecosystem. That’s true.

Does The Exceed Maximum Execution Error In Google Apps Script Matter?

Unknown Speaker 30:33 So the next question is from DC SEO, he says, Thanks for clearing out my short links question last week. Appreciate it. I’ve noticed that I’m getting failures for Google X Apps Script with the exceeded maximum execution time error message does this matter? That’s a question for you Marco. Yes, of course, it doesn’t matter. You should set the script to run at longer intervals. I have it set for eight hours. Try to set it for every three days.

Something like that you don’t need the script to build every two, three, or four hours, because it rebuilt the entire website that and that’s why it times out.

Yeah, especially if you’ve got I mentioned this, I think last week, but I had one of the more recent drive stacks that I had built, I had submitted a because it was my client gave me a Google Photos folder with a bunch of original photos that they had taken from job sites. So I just submitted that with the order. And so the builders because I submitted it, built, you know, brought all those photos into the Google Photos folder for the drive stack build. And so when the ever whenever the script would run to rebuild the site, it would try to rebuild all of those image files, too. And so it was constantly timing out. And I realized then it was, you know, it was just it was one of the things that I discovered by submitting too many images that that’s very resource-heavy. And so it was timing out so I don’t you know, I just don’t submit as many images but as Marco said, you go in and change the interval from when it runs. So

Does Having A Truncated URL An Issue With Ranking Service Pages?

wills up. Well, what’s up? Well, he says, Hey, gents, I have a site structure question you may be able to help me with. I have a local site that has its own sub-menu pages have a parent menu. So services, okay, not showing the full URL path. See, let me read that, again. I have a local site that has its sub-menu pages off a parent menu, okay. not showing the full URL path. In fact, it removes the services part and only shows the truncated path instead of showing the full path. Okay. Is that an issue with ranking services pages? No, not at all.

Because again, we’ll you know, you can even go back to the two videos that one of the earlier questions was talking about where I was explaining silo structure, simple and complex silo structure. And that’s just the difference between a physical and a virtual silo is what you see in the URL. Okay? So like if you’re, if we’re talking WordPress terms, if in WordPress, you look at your permalink structure, and you have category slash post name, right, that would show what we call a physical silo structure. Because every URL like for example, if you’re at the post level, if you’re in a simple silo, you’re going to have domain comm slash whatever the category slug is slash, the post URL, right, the post slug. So that’s going to show the actual hierarchy or the silo structure within the URL, that’s physical silo structure. But if you change the permalink structure to just post name, the hierarchy still exists, right? The silo structure still exists is still part of the taxonomy. Google can see all of that, but the URL itself would just be domain comm slash post slug, does that make sense? And even on a complex silo structure, which has, again, parent category or top-level category, subcategory, so that would be domain.com/category/subcategory/post, right? You see all that if you have it is with the category slash post name permalink structure. That’s a physical silo. But you can accomplish the same sort of benefit from a virtual silo still has the same hierarchy, the same silo structure, but you just use the permalink or excuse me, the post name permalink structure, which way that I prefer it. Now I used to always use the full physical silo. I used to like that because I like to see it in the URL, but I actually prefer a shorter more succinct URL now. And it also masks some of those strange things that happen when you’re using a complex silo structure and you have some odd slug issues from categories being duplicated in other silos and that kind of stuff. So I like to use just the permalink or excuse me, the post name permalink structure, which is a virtual silo structure. Another thing you could do, just because this is an old article, I think it was published in what 2010 What is it Bruce clay silo architecture right? architecture can I spell that right? Let’s see if I got it right

is that it there? I think it is the marbles, no I don’t yeah that’s it right there. So go look at Bruce clay comm slash SEO slash silo or go search Bruce clay silo architecture and it’ll be the very first link and take a look and read this I think this article was published in I don’t know 2010 or something like that there might be a date in here somewhere it looks like it’s he’s got it on an updated site now from the last time I looked at it, but the interface looks different. But read through this article, it’ll really be explained to you and drive home. what the difference is between virtual and physical silos, it really makes no difference. They’re all effective. It’s just a matter of how you stack the content, right? You set silos and your keyword themes within the silos, add build relevancy, and then what we teach inside the mastermind is heavy hitter club which is the interlinking the way that you properly interlink within a silo to squeeze the most power out of it. Okay, that’s a really good question. Any comments on that?

No, that was fine. That’s fine. That’s a great article guy takes the time to read through it. This is something that you know, we kind of was one of the foundations for what we learned for silo architecture was right here in this article here. Okay, he has a couple of those, by the way.

When you do a search for it, yeah, it looks like there’s several of them. Yeah, yeah, you read all of those because they’ll give you insight into what a proper silence should look like. And go to semantic mastery comm slash camp, SEO boot camp, right so semantic mastery comm SEO boot camp and, and you’ll see, you know, for four, you’ll get the half price on Jeffrey Smith SEO Bootcamp, which is the best silo architecture, training, and such On-page training that we’ve we’ve come across like it’s just amazing what he’s able to do with zero or little to no backlinks at all with just on-page structure. It’s amazing what he’s able to do. So if you really want to do a deep dive in it besides reading through all these articles is go check out SEO Bootcamp from Jeffrey Smith.

Does The SEO Power Shield Include The Creation Of The RYS And Syndication Package?

Alright, so next question is Hey, guys, thanks for your time. As always a few questions I’m interested in buying the SEO power shield from one of my main money sites don’t include the creation of the RYS and syndication packages. And that’s why I brought this up. Because here’s the SEO shield page on the MGYB store and I just scroll down to the bottom and it says SEO power shield and this is what it includes the syndication network, our ys stack with G site and the IDX page loop. So yes, it does include those as it shows right here on the order page. Just go check it out at MGYB.co store, click through to the SEO shields, product page and you can scroll down and see what each different level includes okay?

Just so people know, or just to remind them, we’re currently running a 25% off coupon. Adam posted the coupon, it’s bedsheets 25 to get you 25% off and SEO. So there you go. And that is a perfect segway to the second question he has, which says, may I buy it now using a special discount and submit all the info. So you can start in two to three weeks? Yes. Make sure that you submit the information within 30 days, or else we will refund the money, refund your account. Because if what happens is people buy a bunch of stuff. And then they don’t submit for months at a time and it just clogs up everything because we don’t know when those orders are going to come through. It’s hard for our building, Build Team to plan. So I believe we have a policy that you have to submit the order details within 30 days or it’s automatically refunded, am I correct in that? Absolutely. up to 30 days you get it refunded and you have to buy again you miss out on the coupon code. So there you go. But yes, if within two to three weeks, you’re good

Does It Affect Your Delivery If The Site’s Content Is In Spanish?

Okay, number three, does it affect your delivery if the site’s content is in another language? Spanish? No, we won’t build it in another the drive stack g site, you know, all of that is going to be in English. So but it doesn’t it that’s not going to affect our build. Um, and I know Hernan were you about to comment looks like you’re about to comment. Yeah, and I was about to say that pretty simply if the drive stack is in English, but your money site is in Spanish, you should be good. Like we have had good results with people buying stuff from MGB with you know, and with the content on their websites in another language, not only Spanish, but some other languages and the tier-one are the stuff that we point links to and the brand new properties and everything is in English and still helps you to rank so so yeah.

I would add all that if if he’s planning to do a lot of marketing in social media, for example.

I don’t know, let’s say any of the ones that were a Blogger or anything like that, and he’s syndicating and the content is going to be in Spanish, then he should take the time to go in there. And like, do the description and everything else in Spanish just for the people that he’s expecting to come in. Because people who are coming into reading Spanish, and the contents in English, you’re missing out on potential customers, clients, or whatever it is, maybe traffic to your website. So you don’t want to confuse the people that way. It will not confuse the bot. Right. Google, Google Translate is getting really, really good at translation. So that’s not a problem.

Yeah, that’s come a long way over the years. Oh, it’s getting really good. Yeah, it’s come a long way. That’s for sure.

All right, bb’s up and bb. I guess I saw that this was posted seven days ago, too. So this must have been at the tail end of last week’s webinar. So I’m glad you re-posted this. So the questions are first

Should You Separate A Full-Text Feed And A Summary Or Excerpt Feed?

The first one is I syndicated the blog RSS feed with full-text posts to the brand new properties. But if I want to create a super feed, which will syndicate to RSS directories, should I use separate additional feed which contains summary expert items instead of the full text. So there will be two RSS feeds. Essentially one that’s a full-text feed on one’s an excerpt feed. I don’t think it matters for directories and aggregators, because typically they don’t publish the content anyways, like in other words, you can submit an RSS feed. And if it goes into like an RSS directory, which could be like essentially found by people that we’re searching for particular feeds and things like that, it’s usually just a link to the feed. Right? What it does also is usually it just grabs the URLs out of the feed, and that’s what like it keeps in its database, essentially not the full-text post of the feed. So and again, I don’t work for all the different directories so I don’t know but I know in the past, looking at aggregators and directories that had like search databases for feeds and things like that, it would just link to the feeds. If you click through to the feed on their platform, because it usually creates a new Feed URL from that, you know, part of their domain, then it usually is just like a, like a feed index page. In other words, it just shows the titles, which the titles of the posts are the anchor texts that link to the link of the post, it doesn’t useless. So in other words, it usually truncates or strips any of the text from the pages or the posts that were syndicated or part of the feed itself. That makes sense, however, that said, yeah, if you wanted to do that, if you had that option to be able to create separate feeds, one being full text and one being an episode feed, just submit the XRP that’s really all that matters. But again, if you don’t have that ability to create two different types of feeds, I don’t think it matters for aggregators or directories. Okay. Number two, does the attribution links, should we do follow or nofollow?

You got to think about that, which is what we talked about at the beginning of I did about a 10 minute tutorial at the beginning of last week’s Hump Day hangout specifically about attribution links for with it for RSS feeds for when you’re syndicating content. So think about how what it is that you’re trying to accomplish and what you have in your attribution links. So for example, if you’re just linking back to the post URL, and not always linking within the attribution link back to the blog or the root domain, like in other words, there were two different types of attribution, like codes that, you know, can be varied in multiple ways. But there are really two types of categories, two main categories of attribution links, one that only links back to the post itself, right, so the syndicated post itself, and then the other one where you can include a link that that’s always going to be linked back to say, for example, the root domain of the blog or to the blog page, so domain slash domain.com, slash blog, or if it’s on a subdomain, blog.domain.com, whatever, you understand what I’m saying.

Here’s the thing if you’re syndicating like, let’s just keep it simple.

Right, if the concept is going to be the same at scale, too, but what I’m saying is to keep it simple is boil it down to just a single tier branded syndication network. And let’s just think about three blog properties that we consistently syndicate to. So blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, right? If you are linking syndicating to a branded syndication network, every post from your blog that contains a link back typically, it’s going to be the title of the post is going to be the anchor text that links to the post URL as the ad and the attribution text. Right. So but if you’re also including, so the post title was originally published on your blog, right, whatever that brand name is, and now you’re linking that your blog, right is like, let’s say that was the title is the brand name your blog, right? If you’re linking back with that as the anchor text, always back to the homepage, then I would recommend that you would nofollow that part of it. Right because that is going to be duplicate.

With every single post that you publish, so I wouldn’t recommend that that be followed the post title being the anchor text linking back to the post URL. In this instance, in this example that I’m explaining, you’re only going to have three anchor text URLs per post, because that post is going to be syndicated one time to the network, and it’s going to get three anchor texts you are, uh, you know, anchor text links with the post name or title, if you code it that way as the anchor text linking back to that post. But each one of those posts would if you have the second type, which includes a link back to like the domain name, for example, you could do a naked URL, you could do a brand name, I typically just do naked URL or brand anchors if linking back to the homepage or to the blog page, for example. But remember, every single post that you do is going to contain the link back with that same anchor text. So in that case, I would recommend no following that link, but keeping the post URL and title as the anchor text as follow. Does that make sense? So you just got to think about what you’re syndicating to, and what is going to be, if there’s going to be something that’s going to be repeated over and over and over and over again, I would recommend no following that so that you don’t over-optimize a particular keyword, an anchor text. But for something that’s only one time it gets syndicated, it’s gonna have that one batch of anchor texts for the primary target URL, which is typically the post URL, then that should be okay to be the default. Does that make sense? Anybody want to try to explain that and maybe a different, different way.

I would say be careful with the anchor text, right? You know you don’t want to over-optimize, especially with links. You’re linking back to wherever it is that you’re linking on that post. Or you can add, you know, attribution to if it’s coming into your index page, wherever it is that it’s going. If you’re getting a ton of links within an exact match, then you can incur a penalty. Because it’s coming back exactly to the website, dude, you don’t want to do that. So you nofollow. You tell Google don’t penalize me because look, I’m nofollow.

Now to avoid all of this, if you’re going to that extreme, then you can do generic stick with generic more info read more here, more naked URL, that kind of thing. They’ll do exactly the naked URL. And you won’t get into that type of problem.

And so just to point this out again, remember guys, you can go to our channel. And you can go to videos. In fact, actually six days ago right there, let’s just go back to the home screen. So just go to our channel page guys. And right there was last week’s Hump Day Hangout, and we probably I believe, we should have chopped that I didn’t look to see which, you know, clips were made from last week’s episode, but that one should have in one of them, which is the attribution link cut out from that from the hump day hangout last week so that’s last week something hanging out right there click through to that watch that the first 15 minutes or so, where I go over very specifically attribution links in RSS feeds. Okay, because that’ll give you a much better understanding of why you know when to use what and why. Okay.

Right next. soon as this stupid zoom menu bar clears Okay, there we go. Alright, so next is Joe. He says will we see some proper push-ups from you all at POFU? Well, it’s gonna be virtual this time because we’re not going to be alive in a room but yeah, that would be fun with it. Yeah, this is good. If it’s virtual, I can probably crank out someone’s arm push-ups. Yeah, here you go. There you go.

Is It Still Safe To Use Full Brand’s Keyword Names With The SEO Shield?

Okay, Austin dawn. What’s up Austin, he says are Austin dawn I should say. Bradley. As you know I work in the We Buy Houses niche and have several clients across the country, many of them have partial or fully MDS example cash for house when branding with SEO power shields, is it still safe to use these types of cool brand keyword names? With the shields? Yeah, and here’s the only reason why. I would say yeah, only because, you know, if that’s why I assume that they have the exact match keyword domains, right, but they have a brand, right? So typically, there’s going to be a brand behind that they’re just using that because it’s, you know, easy to remember. And there’s used to be some significant SEO benefit from it, they’re likely still is but it can also cause some problems. So with the SEO power shield, remember, we’re going to create the keyword plus brand Association. That’s the primary objective of the tier one branded drive step, right, which is to create that whatever the top-level keyword is to start to create that brand associated with that keyword. So having that as part of the stack build plus whatever the company name is I don’t think would be a problem. I mean, I’ve done it with my own, you know, alpha land Realty. I, you know, again, I’m using a branded domain alpha land dot realty as opposed to a, you know, exact match keyword domain. But I don’t think that would be a problem. I haven’t tested that specifically, but I don’t think that would be a problem. Marco, should that be okay? It’s okay. And where we run into problems is when they ask us for the inner stats, right? So the add on a stack so that you have buy houses Maryland, Maryland we buy houses we get that type of thing. That’s when we can run into a whole lot of problems. So you’re going to have to look at this from the start. Don, maybe we can talk more about this in the webinar. We don’t really have that much time to delve into this one question right now, but it’s just a thing of how but ugly, do you want that URL, that’s probably going to because I mean that that’s the idea when you get that inner page, and that inner staff, you want to be able to bless that so that it provides so much power that it ranks the inner page, the companion, or mirror theme or inner page on the website. But it also ranks the the the G site inner page, how butt ugly. Do you want that to look to people? And when your client goes to look, I mean, you get that how Why is it Why in the world would you do this? It’s really ugly to see that. So that’s why we try to focus on people brand.

I know that exact match domains still work. But Google is busy at killing that. And you guys know when Google gets anal about something, they usually accomplish it PBN. Like they did away with TV, I was a massacre. Now people are still calling PBS. But what they’re now calling PBN and what PBS used to be. It’s two different things. So you got a whole bunch of idiots saying PBS still work? Well, no, the fuck they don’t. What you’re doing now with expired domains still works. But a traditional PBN will get picked up by Google. And it’ll get it they get the index. Remember when they did when we did the XYZ domains and we did the mass paid bills on the XYZ, how many of those got killed? It was really simple to pick them out, right? So that’s what we tell people if Google is busy out there with exact match domains and trying to pick them out and trying to pick up the spamming, especially in local those that try to step keywords into the titles into the descriptions into the URL, why would you do that? Why would you not focus on something up? Now I understand you have clients that have exact match domains. So you’re going to have to find a way to work this into the structure that we’re teaching and how you do this again, as I said,

Maybe during the next heavy-hitter club webinar, you asked this question and we can get deeper into it and we can give suggestions on how you would do this. It’ll give me time to think this out because you know we are in like an in a similar niche with Sunland, Virginia, and

Bradley’s Alpha Land Realty and my last solutions network. And so you gotta find a way to fit all of this in well tell me people get a brand, get the soul on the idea of branding of brand and creating a brand that’s going to last because if Google comes up and they start targeting end, especially spammy ones that really stuck keywords in there. I mean, it’s a done deal. It’s over.

yeah, and so that I just brought this up to just kind of demonstrate what I was talking about. So like for this was the keyword that I started optimizing for first with my brand for alpha land realty was selling fast and turns out that wasn’t the optimal keyword. It’s not the keyword that drives the most traffic to my site. And I discovered that when I started running search ads, over time, it clearly came that that wasn’t the primary keyword to be targeting. But that’s the one I started with. And But you see, I built a brand around it, right? So alpha land, Realty, alpha land Realty. So the drive stack and everything was built for alpha land realty sell land fast in Virginia. But all so you know, I didn’t. And I’ve never seen mirrored I don’t have a siloed site. This is a single page landing page, guys. But I have a, you know, FAQ schema, which by the way, that’s how you get this additional real estate here. Because that’s those are FAQs that are on it’s just FAQ schema. So I just have questions and answers on the landing page. But then I added those in structured data, FAQ structured data, and added that in HTML, this site header right. And so that now has it was funny when Google first started to crawl it. It was popping up in the press advantage. You know, propping up underneath oppressive managed PR, then it started popping up onto the G site. And now it’s ultimately it’s found its way to the landing page itself, which is good because it’s right at the top now and it’s all that additional real estate. What I’m trying to get at was I started targeting this keyword, so that there’s not like an expansion in the drive stack. None of that I never had to do that. It’s a single-page website. So, but all I did was the target, we buy land and some of the copy on the site. And you can see we buy land Virginia, even though that and it was also in the title tag as a secondary keyword in the title tag. And now I’m number one for that as well. Right even though I really never did any additional SEO on that. And then there are some other keywords in there, for example, sell my land, Virginia that I’ve never really done any optimization for at all. But there’s been some Association made through searches, you know, again, I’m paying for ads, by the way, I pay for ads and people click through those ads for a keyword like this and it creates relevancy between that search and my dumb my

My landing page. So my landing page even though I sell my land, Virginia is not a keyword that I’m actually targeting on the page. It’s still ranking organically and what number three, even though I’ve never really done any optimization for that keyword specifically, my point is it starts that’s why I think it’s important and we’ve been teaching this for years is to focus more on brand than on a particular keyword and then build start to create that association with your primary keyword in the brand. And then from there, once that association has been made, it becomes so much easier to start associations, associating route related keywords to the brand as well. So that’s why we always recommend with this SEO shield, the primary objective is to create whatever your top-level keyword is determine what your very most important keyword is, and build the drive stack or you know, to have it built with the brand plus that keyword. Once you’ve started to create that association, then you can start going after the other related keywords in your industry. And it will become that much easier to associate them because the primary keywords already been made. And it’s relevant. It’s related. Does that make sense? And sometimes, again, just naturally over time, you’ll start to rank for additional keywords that you may not even intentionally optimize for. Because Google understands the relationships between those queries. So search queries, that make sense. So was that a pretty decent explanation? Marco? That was fine.

All right, guys. Ah, that was perfect timing because we just wrapped up with the last question. So thanks, everybody, for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thanks, guys. Bye, everyone. Hey, guys.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 292 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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