I will present below my opinion on how to pick the title of a publication, based on My gorgeous article about the best attributes to successfully use: Olivian Breda, which I suggest you to read first.
How to choose the title of a publication?
Language: English
News. Old news
Jurnalul.ro
I did once a web site audit for a major newspaper in Romania. I told them Google had some trouble accessing very old news on their web site (for 2005, for example). They had a calendar, similar to their current one:
, and I told them Google might have some problems going through the dropdown, selecting 2006, and then going through the dropdown again, selecting, say, March, then picking a day, and then, for that day, going to page 4. The number of clicks necessary to go to page 3 of news from March 19, 2006, was the following: Home => Archive => 2006 => March => 19 => Page 3 => News. It’s just huge. Also, the Google bots generally don’t click on dropdowns, they don’t select from a dropdown.
Nowadays, they have a clickable way of displaying the archive:
, which, although is not a huge improvement, is, still, an improvement (Google can follow a clickable link much easier).
The topic of the current article is to show how various news sources in Romania treat old news.
How to travel and visit a new country like a PRO?
I see people saying things like:
- I’ve visited 100 countries, most of them for less than 2 days! (my reaction – facepalm)
- Next month I’ll go and visit 8 countries in Asia! (my reaction – facepalm)
- There’s this low-cost airline company who just created a new route to Paris! (facepalm)
- Last year, I saw both the statue of Christ the Redeemer and the Eiffel Tower. (facepalm)
- I’ll go with some friends to the seaside! We’ll sunbathe in the day and spend the nights in a tent. (half-face-palm)
- I’ll go with some friends to the mountains! It’s useful for health and bonding. (half-face-palm)
Some thoughts about these?
Singular or Plural for product categories? What to do if you have similar terms „fighting” for the same category?
Let’s say you have web site about PC components.
You sell, among others, some notebooks. There are at least the following options for naming the category:
- Laptop / laptops.
- Notebook / notebooks.
- Notebook computer / notebook computers.
Some other products which you debate on are:
- USB flash drive / USB flash drives.
- USB stick / USB sticks.
- Flash memory stick / Flash memory sticks.
- USB drive / USB drives.
Of course, you would prefer to be the first result for all of these terms. What’s the best strategy in such a case?
URL shorteners – which one to choose, pros and cons of cons of using them, in general, some real-life examples and some conclusions
URL shortening is the process in which you take a long URL, such as this:
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2013/10/07/the-pursuit-of-happiness-makes-life-shallow/ and you make it into something simpler, such as this:
http://goo.gl/rHwPN0 (this is the same link as the above link, when you click it and you will be redirected to the long URL).
URL shortening started (I think) in the first years of 2000, and the most notable example of the first years was tinyurl.com. The web site still has a similar interface of what it used to have back then. Time passed, and more services appeared, such as bit.ly or goo.gl (and many many others, of course).
The current blog post is about URL shorteners – which one to choose, why should you use them, why avoid using them, some real life examples and some conclusions.
A very good tool for working on the list of keywords for a given web site: keywordtool.io
keywordtool.io – Keyword Tool: 750 Google Keyword Suggestions for Free. Use 192 Google Domains & 83 Languages Description: Keyword Tool is free online keyword research instrument that uses Google Autocomplete to generate hundreds of relevant long-tail keywords. Google Autocomplete is a feature used in Google Search. Its purpose is to speed up the searches performed by users on Google. The search terms that are suggested by Google Autocomplete are based on a number of different factors, one of them is how often users were searching for a particular term in the past. Keyword Tool helps you use Google Autocomplete for keyword research. It extracts Google suggestions and presents it to you in a convenient form. To generate long-tail keyword suggestions, Keyword Tool prepends and appends the term, that you specify with different letters and numbers. It also allows you to choose a specific Google domain (192 Google domains supported) and language (83 languages available) combination. Keyword Tool generates over 750 keywords in the language of your choice. You can export the keywords and use them for content creation, search engine optimisation, PPC or other marketing activities. Review: (6) http://t.co/hQaHpfkV4F Adwords hides valuable KWs that search suggest reveals. New favorite tool to find ‘em: pic.twitter.com/wRjsGuu8Os — Rand Fishkin (@randfish) June 23, 2014 keywordtool.io – Keyword Tool: 750 Google Keyword Suggestions for Free. Use 192 Google Domains & 83 Languages P.S.: Also see: How to determine a relevant list of keywords for a web site?: Olivian Breda. P.S., 2016.05.14: On-Page SEO in 2016: The 8 Principles for Success – Whiteboard …
Insisting
I’ve just seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) – IMDb: In the movie, everybody insists: Captain America is a regular guy with big wishes. He insists, he gets superpowers. He has a friend, the winter soldier. He insists. He gets superpowers. Hydra has some problems. They insist. The solve the issue. There’s a fight. At some point, somebody just insists. The good guys win by insisting, the bad guys win by insisting. The movie is so incredibly stupid. The Bond series used to do the same. Did James Bond like gadgets? Let him have the best gadgets. Did he have a car? Let him have the best car. Usually, the villain also had some gadgets, and some cars, but Bond was, generally better. In Skyfall (2012), things changed. He doesn’t get get a big gun, but a small pistol. Old style, very simple, very small. He doesn’t get an advanced gadget. He gets a radio frequency emitter. A small radio, that is. That’s all he gets. You generally know that James Bond is going to use the gadget: Setting up fantastic gadgets and intriguing devices is a cornerstone of the spy genre, and the James Bond franchise in particular. When the buzz-saw watch is issued to James Bond by Q, it seems a bit fantastic, but still congruent with the world Bond inhabits: a world of super-villains, gorgeous female spies, deceptive appearances, and cool gadgets, cars, and weapons. So we have no problem accepting the existence of the watch. And with that set-up accomplished, the …
The middle path in customer care
Recently, I had an unfortunate event buying from an online store (the price I paid was different than the one displayed on the web site). I sent them an email. This has happened to me before on their web site. After a few days, they replied that I’m wrong, and they’re right. Still, they might be wrong, nevertheless (they admitted). To settle the situation, they gave me around 1/3 than the required amount of money, and they thanked me for my understanding of the situation.
The topic of this blog post: what can you learn from the above example?
Simple / complex decisions
You may want to watch the following video: through this paradigm: The first instincts & thoughts about wolves are negative (they are killers, they are hunted by few animals, themselves, their social structures are closer to Mafia than Old-village-with-nice people, they’re aggressive and dangerous to humans). The movie first starts by telling you some reasons on which the wolves actually do some good (they kill deer, which helps the vegetation, but they also make deer stay away completely from vast areas, in which they can be caught easily). Then the movie gives some implications of saving vegetation → birds appear → then some rodents → then other birds, for those rodents → then some castors → then some bears, eating berries → then more deer get decimated, by the bears. But the movie also shows that vegetation has a deeper impact – due to river banks being influenced by the vegetation, some rivers change their course / stay on their course more, depending on the vegetation just brought up by wolves. Thus, wolves influence the direction of rivers. It’s a big difference between the first impulses & thinking the situation over. First instinct is based on primary emotions, thinking requires more cognitive functions (primary emotions, also). More than this, by deeply analyzing a situation (or studying previous situations), you can get to very powerful insights (wolves change the banks of rivers). In some management decisions, things are based on simple thinking (I apply this rule – „wolves are bad” / „delegation is key” / „do coaching”). The better solution is to try & have …