Language: English

Follow-up: Ireland (Wexford, 2014.08.25-29)

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Follow-up: Ireland (Wexford, 2014.08.25-29)

What’s this about? Cultivating capacities for quality peer training:

1. Quality peer training for well-being
2. Quality peer training against discrimination

About EPTO: EPTO believes in the power of peer education as a tool to empower youth as actors in social transformation and to contribute to the creation of inclusive societies ensuring the well-being of all.

About the trainings: Participants were asked to share experiences and opinions, to practice active listening skills with others, and to learn emotionally as well as intellectually. Using non formal education methods: experience-based personal awareness, experiential learning, and small group discussions, the activities composing this training were interactive, participative, rooted in the principles of peer education and intercultural learning.

Logistics: When? Event days: from August 25th until 29th 2014. Where? Wexford, Ireland. Language? English.

More on EPTO’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/EPTOorg

Below, photos from the two trainings (for well-being, and against discrimination).

G The start of the party and the last day of TC (339)-mic

G The start of the party and the last day of TC (340)-mic

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SEO: A complete (and personal) checklist to what are the basic SEO criteria for analyzing a web site today

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If you want to know what I consider to the a complete checklist on the SEO criteria for analyzing a web site in 2014, you can read the following post.

I tried to cover all the major topics. Whenever necessary, I supplemented my criteria with external links.

I think the article covers pretty well most things a web site owner should take into account when analyzing SEO (internal structure, links, social media).

The article is highly personal – it depicts how I, Olivian Breda, see the subject of SEO.

It’s a long lecture ahead.

David Flores - 69/366: checklist, https://flic.kr/p/aSY7yx
David Flores – 69/366: checklist, https://flic.kr/p/aSY7yx

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Competitive advantage in business

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Mostly, it’s work hard. To do so, you generally need to: Be healthy (eat right, do sports, rest well, avoid stress). Do self-improvement on various areas (reading, doing things better). Work when you don’t feel like working (have the power to say “Go! Go! Go!”, when you just don’t feel like this anymore). But, all-in-all, it’s about work. I’ve been to Năvodari these days, met some colleagues. Some thoughts: You can be the smartest in your generation (self-improvement), and, due to the fact you don’t like to work hard, and only read as pleasure, don’t succeed. You can be less-than-perfect in self-development, but over-compensate by working hard. There’s a big need in the workforce for working hard. You can be a good athlete, do some self-development, but if you don’t work hard, you’ll likely not succeed. Even if you lack a good discipline to do sports, even if you don’t read as much, if you work hard you’ll likely do at least some level of sports, and at least some level of healthy living, and at least some level of reading, at least on your niche business. All-in-all, succeeding is about hard work. (I might have said this before, I donno) I have some real-life examples in my head when I say this.

Let’s say you want to join some new social networks for your brand; how to determine which networks are most popular?

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img221771_02042012092041_0

Sure, you can find some nice social networks, you can then Google for some user stats, and then aggregate the data. But wouldn’t it be simpler had a web site dedicated to just showing statistics existed? More than this, wouldn’t it be great had the statistics would be constantly updated with the latest news about the number of users for those specific networks? Good news! Such a web site exists, and it says: Here is my monthly, running tally of how many people are using some of the top social media, digital services and mobile apps updated for July 2014 (the best I could find, at least). This list grows pretty regularly. It began with a simple listing of some of the obvious social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype, YouTube, WhatsApp, etc; then grew to include digital services like Amazon, Google, eBay, Netflix and Pandora; then the focus turned to APAC social and digital properties like Weibo, WeChat, JD.com, LINE and Renren; and lately, I have been focused on updating current listings, adding in new ones along with smaller niche ones that I may have overlooked at the beginning. This post now includes over 600 listings and more are added almost weekly. Visit the web site here (the social networks are so numerous, that they need to be divided on more than one page): How Many People Use Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and 600 of the Top Social Media?

News. Old news

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Nicolas Alejandro - today's news, https://flic.kr/p/nJ29pU
Nicolas Alejandro – today’s news, https://flic.kr/p/nJ29pU

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:

article-calendar

, 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:

archive-link

, 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.

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How to travel and visit a new country like a PRO?

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Naval S - Traveling over Cappadocia

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?

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Singular or Plural for product categories? What to do if you have similar terms “fighting” for the same category?

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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?

Craig Key - Lifestyle Keywords vs Product & Brand Keywords, https://flic.kr/p/6Bcnai
Craig Key – Lifestyle Keywords vs Product & Brand Keywords, https://flic.kr/p/6Bcnai

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URL shorteners – which one to choose, pros and cons of cons of using them, in general, some real-life examples and some conclusions

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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.

Pawel Loj - tiny foot, https://flic.kr/p/edDaA
Pawel Loj – tiny foot, https://flic.kr/p/edDaA (yes, this is a tiny URL)

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A very good tool for working on the list of keywords for a given web site: keywordtool.io

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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 …

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