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canyouhearthelight · 3 years

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The Miys, Ch. 154

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

I was able to get the Master Post cleaned up this morning. I know there is a reblog going around with some of the links missing... I put that one up originally as a place holder so I could update my page links in chapters 101 through this one. I did NOT anticipate it would get immediately reblogged, which made me squeak in pleasant surprise. I’ll reblog the full post so everyone has the right one.

Also, thanks to @baelpenrose, @the-raven-fae, and @charlylimph-blog for keeping me going and all your help beta-reading and checking my links. You three are the real heroes here!

“The quiet rooms are done,” Hannah yawned the next morning. “It’s a good thing we decided to make them available immediately, because the first one had people scheduling time before we finished the second one.”

“How many did we end up with?” I asked, pushing down my own urge to yawn. I had always prided myself on being able to resist the urge to yawn when others did, and I wasn’t letting that stop now.

The model of the Ark came up on the table emitter, and Hannah zoomed in on the highlighted areas. “Right now, we have twelve, just like you set up for the second Food Festival. But I’ll be honest, they rooms are already booked for the foreseeable future, and I don’t think that’s tenable.”

“Agreed. I’ll talk to the rest of the Council, but at this point, we need to see about setting all available spaces for quiet rooms.” I nodded and added that note to my agenda. “Moving on, food vendors being allowed in BioLab2. Any updates?”

Parvati flicked the data to everyone. “Grey isn’t thrilled with the possibility that the food will contaminate the aquatics, but is willing to allow vendors in ‘The Fairy Circle’?” She gave me a questioning look. “They said you would know what that meant.”

I just smiled and shook my head. “It’s where I go camping. Conor managed to pull off a prank that fooled even Charly and made a Faerie circle. It’s a good choice, though: ten, eleven feet across, accessible, and far enough from the water that there wouldn’t be any risk.”

She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Credit to Conor on that one. But, Grey was very enthusiastic about the idea of setting up some picnic tables throughout the woods and letting people bring picnics.”

“I already have some vendors on board, there,” I breathed in relief. “Especially the ones who specialize in the type of foods that lend themselves well to being portable.”

Hannah’s face lit up. “Do we get to taste test some of these? I’m really getting some bento box and pasty vibes from what you just said, and I’m not sure which I’m more excited about.”

“I think I can get that to happen,” I laughed. “I wouldn’t mind trying some of the options myself, but I can at least already confirm that all bases are covered for dietary requirements. Next up, where are we on the holiday date?”

“Still working with the other departments to finalize a date where all projects can be completed, paused, or at least at a point where they don’t require direct observation. Everyone is on board, though.”

“That’s the biggest hurdle,” I confirmed. “Means we can proceed with at least putting the rest of the events together in preparation for the final date. I trust you two in handling the party aspect of it, and Charly is already working Bash on another Kink Night event at the Undine - minimal planning needed there. So, let’s figure out who is coordinating the paint-tag fight, and we can loop back to the plans for the party.”

“While I am entirely sure Charly can handle planning for both the paint tag and the other - seeing as both were her ideas - it doesn’t feel fair to leave them both entirely on her shoulders,” Hannah agreed. “It says here that you already had Conor confirm we missed Holi?

“By about six months,” I confessed. “So we’re pretty much both too late and too early.”

“I do believe the arrows would be frowned upon, in any event,” Parvati joked. “I still have her paint formulas - flavors are not listed, but there is a distinct lack of both black and yellow.”

“Those were… scotch bonnet for the black, I know that one. I think the yellow was gochujang, which would still hurt if you got it in your eyes,” I recalled.

She flicked her hands, bracelets chiming. “I will ask for a new formula for yellow, but I think we can live without black paint. The yellow was lovely, though.”

“Ask nicely, and she’ll probably give you the glitter formula colors, which I think are different flavors from the regular palette,” I suggested. “And the glitter is ultra-violet reactive, so that’ll be fun.”

Emphatic stabbing at her datapad ensued - impressive, because it wasn’t even physically there, just emitted from the band on her wrist. “Once I have those, I believe Hannah and I can coordinate that along with the party. There is no food component, it is only for one day, so the scope is far smaller than the Festival was.”

“And besides,” Hannah added with a shrug, “whip up some paints and some spongy balls to soak it up, set boundaries, invite anyone who wants to attend. Planning done.” She dusted her hands off for emphasis, but she had a point.

“I’ve got the care packages well underway, so we’re solid there. The party. What’s the plan there?”

Parvati dismissed the schematic from the table emitter and sent a different image to it. This one was practically the opposite of what I had expected: where I had anticipated Food Festival 2: Pyrotechnic Boogaloo, I was instead looking at a park that I was reasonably certain only existed in dreams.

Soft green grass that my toes wiggled to touch spanned a rolling, looping thoroughfare. Trees arched overhead like an arbor, and were either woven with lights are absolutely covered in fireflies. Between breaks in the canopy, a night sky filled with more stars than I had seen in my living memory. Here and there small braziers burned brightly with fire, resting on sturdy rugs and dotted around with cushions.

“Vati,” I whispered hoarsely. “We can’t use BioLab2 for this, can we? Will Grey allow it?”

“We can, and they are.” Her smile was the feral one that usually preceded a coup de grace of event planning. “This, however, is not BioLab2. This is the corridors of levels twelve through fourteen, leading into the lab.”

My first urge was to guess what she was planning, but my mind came up blank. I circled around my desk to stand closer to the table. “Okay, talk to me. Make it make sense.”

She nodded. “The grass is real, laid down like sod. The terraforming teams have agreed to let us use it, provided we allow them to collect data on how it holds up to so much foot traffic and include a post-event question regarding the tactile feel on bare feet. So, bare feet they shall have.” She winked when I realized she and Hannah were going to make it part of the theme. “The trees are an illusion, simple light emitters against the corridor walls, combined with the existing texture of the surface.”

When she moved the image to mimic walking further down the path, Hannah picked up. “The larger spaces are actually where the corridors are longer between quiet rooms. Rather than trying to pull off the tree illusion, we’re going to create a night sky with shooting stars, comets, the works. Like a dream.”

“I like it. It’s not what I was expecting, but I’m even more impressed for that.”

“We couldn’t compete with Charly,” Parvati confessed. “She is already going to have our base desires covered. Anything we tried to do would look like a pale imitation. So, we went the other direction: What else do we do to feel alive?”

“We dream,” I laughed. “It’s all a fairy tale dream, isn’t it?”

“That’s the goal,” Hannah confirmed. “A beautiful dream. One day and one night where you can live out your humanity however you want, without having to compromise. If someone wants to throw paint with childish abandon, then stroll and dance through a dream, and finish the night at the Undine trying something they never dared to do before, they can do that.”

“When you put it like that, it sounds decadent.”

“I was going for hedonistic, over all, but you’re on the right track,” Parvati laughed. “Hannah and I agreed that everyone on the Ark needed one perfect day. And since perfect is different for everyone…” She shrugged. “We just decided to give them all the options. The quiet rooms will be open if their perfect includes a botanical garden, or a cloud… the mess halls will be open if it means a feast, or even just decadent hors d'oeuvres they could never make an excuse to try. It’s literally all on the table.”

“Consider it signed off on.” I still couldn’t take my eyes off that grass, toes wiggling happily. “Just let me know the date when we have one, I need a pedicure to enjoy this completely.”

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#the miys #found family #humans are weird #science fiction #aliens #apocalypse #humans are space orcs #humans are space fae #earth is space australia #post apocalypse #post post apocalypse #original science fiction #original sci fi #original writing

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echo-three-one · 3 years

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A Forgotten Memory

An Alex x OC fic

The final chapter. 😭

Link to chapter 1 here

Prev (XII - Samantha)

It was a wild ride. I hope you had fun.

XIII - Alex

"Goodbye, Alex." she whipered. The sound of her voice echoed in his mind distracting him from the matter at hand.

"Alex." He snapped as his new commanding officer asked him.

"Yes sir. I do recall Jack on his way to the safehouse that midnight." he quickly replied as he came back on his senses. Jack's MIA , because of this. It looked like he's also dealing with two losses.

"Okay. For now, intel has acquired nighttime activity on a warehouse not far from the previous warehouse. It seemed like they built a tunnel of underground connections from one place to another." The CO explained, showing footage of activity by the warehouse.

"So, how sure are you that that's our targets?" A man roared from the table. He's the Head of the CIA's anti terrorism department, quite intimidating and demanding for Alex's liking.

"Patience, we're also looking on to your intel, Sir. As a matter of fact, without Jack, you'll be leading us along with Alex here." He said, pointing to the warehouse completely away from the other one.

He paused, it looked like he didn't want to tag along but everyone was looking at him.

"Fine. If I lead, I say we leave in 2 hours. Go prepare." he declared, dismissing the whole team. Once he left, one of the heads nudged to Alex.

"We cloned his burner phone while he was on a meeting. He's the CIA mole we're looking for. He's helping Nero but his reasons were quite unknown." he whispered. Alex nodding in approval. His anger boiled when he finally found the one messing with Samantha's life.

"This one's for you, Samantha" he whispered to himself, clenching his fist as they prep for their warehouse invasion.

"This actually looks shady as fuck." One of Alex's squadmates peeked at the thick forestry below them.

"Detecting multiple heat signatures around the trees but nothing on the warehouse. They're not engaging." Another one added.

"Proceed with caution." The suspected mole commanded, readying up his gear.

"Are you sure, Sir? This looks like an ambush." Alex commented, everyone fell silent.

"RPG!" The pilot yelled as the head of counter terrorism, or Alex would like to call Mr. Mole, immediately posed to jump out. He quickly dashed to him, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt as he's almost in midair.

"We have flares and we have no idea whether they're hostiles or not. Why would you jump out, Sir?" Alex roared, his fists very eager to punch him square in the face.

"You better tell us what the hell is going on down there." Another squadmate stood behind Alex, showing him a copy of his texts that said :

"I'm leading the squad to Warehouse Golf. Prepare for an ambush. Leave no one alive."

"Echo Three-One to Actual, it looks like we've been set up on an ambush. Looks like our mole is willing to talk. We're oscar mike back to the base now."

"Actual to Echo Three-One, Good. We're more than welcome to take him in." the comms replied as they flew back home.

As soon as they touched the landing pad, Alex quickly ran to the building in search for Samantha. He knew she meant goodbye but he wanted one final moment.

"I'm sorry Sir, She's already gone. She just finished her operation about an hour ago. She left with the head of defense." the receptionist replied on his thundering query.

"What operation?!" He asked, slamming the counter.

"It's classified, Sir. But she did leave a note for you to read." she hands over a folded piece of paper to Alex, which he slowly grabbed and pocketed.

"Thanks. I'm Sorry for causing a scene." he sighed and went out of the building, walking to the mini park just beside the parking lot.

***

My Dearest Alex,

In a span of three weeks, you managed to make me feel love once again. You allowed me to realize that even after a horrible loss, I could still open my heart and feel the joy of falling in love. I always told myself that no matter how painful it is, I'll never forget your face, your smile, your eyes and all those memories we shared together. I actually convinced myself that we were a happily married couple back in that safehouse, an illusion I made because my heart felt like it. It was a good feeling, and I want to thank you for it.

I can't help but think about a lot of things, one being that if we were destined to meet and not end up together, it would be better if I don't meet you at all. I'm sorry to say this but I do love you so much and I know I promised, but I think my heart couldn't carry the idea of you existing and not within my grasp. It's utterly heartbreaking.

So, your office offered me a chance, to alter my memories of meeting you, along with the memory that made Nero look for me. You were on a briefing and I wanted to talk to you personally, maybe feel your warmth one last time. I'd want to kiss you too, but I guess the world didn't want that to happen.

So I took the offer, and by the time you read this, I'm already on my way home to resume the life I've lost. I'm sure Maxine misses me right now.

I know you'll agree to this because I feel you always want what's best for me. If our paths would cross again, I hope you'll remember me the way I remembered you before I take this operation, A good memory that's supposed to last forever.

Apologizing in advance if I don't remember you anymore.

Don't you dare forget about me,

- Samantha

***

Alex smiled as he folded the letter and kept it in his wallet. He can't help but contemplate on each word on her letter. He's sure he will read it again and again, perhaps over a bottle of alcohol.

"I loved you too, Samantha." he whispered, wishing that his message would make it to the other Samantha, the Samantha that loved him, the Samantha that he shared his world with.

EPILOGUE

1 MONTH LATER

It took Alex one month to finish his mission report regarding Nero and Samantha. He couldn't help but stop midway everytime he reminisced each day they lived on that warehouse and everything that followed after. But he actually made it to the end and submitted it to his boss.

He spent most of his nights alone in his apartment, drinking lots of alcohol. It heals all wounds after all. Rubbing alcohol for external damage and Drinking alcohol for external damage. It was God's gift to mankind.

He also spent a lot of time writing back on her letter, dozens of crumpled paper scattered on the floor as each attempt he made, looked either too absurd or too awkward. He thought it's healthy to write down what he felt, even after being deeply intoxicated.

After a few more days of sad contemplation, he finally made his decision. He's going to a vacation to clear his head and prepared for his next mission which was bound to be assigned to him anytime soon.

The fresh scent of the wet marketplace reminded Alex of the time he was once here. He opted a quick stop in Brazil to acquire something important, he wished it wasn't sold to anyone yet.

He spoke perfect Portuguese as he transacted to the local pawnshop, in an attempt to purchase a pendant that was sold here about two months ago. He carefully eyed each piece of jewelry until he found the one he's looking for.

He pointed it, grabbed his wallet and paid for it, remembering that someday, he'll cross paths with her again. And if not, then it's a keepsake on one of his unforgettable relationship.

His phone rang as soon as he received the receipt for his purchase, quickly pocketing the piece of paper and fished his phone.

"This is Alex speaking." he answered courteously.

"Alex, this is Kate Laswell. We need you."

"Roger that." Alex replied.

CONTINUE TO : Whatever It Takes

#echo-three-one why did you do this #till next time folks #pretend Alex waved goodbye in the camera #codmwfic #Alex x OC

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starsword-library · 5 years

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Just as Vinessa had told us before, there was already a room prepared for my stay, and Mr. Sidereal gave me the number and keycard during our meeting. So Chrys guided me out of the main building and to the dorms, on the tall cyan building I’d seen when we landed.

“So I guess it all turned out fine huh?” Chrys said, stretching out in the seats of the transportation we were taking. “I’ll be honest, it’s the first time I’ve ever talked to that boss without Verona, was kinda afraid they’d ask stuff I wouldn’t know, but it was all okay. And by the way that talk about Dr. Maya, I can help you with sign language if you don’t know much.” To prove their point, they gestured something with their hands, but with my current ignorance I don’t know what it meant. “I mean, with hands like yours there’s gotta be some difference I guess, but hey, interplanetary stuff is like that sometimes, I’m sure there’s a way to get past that.”

“Um, yes. Thank you for the help,” I answered, still a bit distracted from looking at my phone. Dr. Rain hadn’t sent any more messages, and I wanted to talk to Chrys about the things she said, but I decided not to. Dr. Rain looked like a harsh person, and I did not want Chrys to get discouraged again. And Chrys was evasive about a lot of things, so I didn’t feel asking them about a serious accident was going to lead me anywhere. No wonder why Dr. Rain told me to ask Verona instead.

I am already thinking outlandish theories with the current situation, so I better clear things up with a straightforward person soon.

“So here we are,” Chrys announced when we finally got to my new room, in the building’s third floor. “And here’s the fun thing I haven’t said yet,” they added, pointing to the room in the other side, “We’re neighbors. So come by anytime if you need something. I can give you a tour around later too, though I guess you’ll want some time to rest now that we got here.”

“Oh yes, I was planning on getting some sleep after getting the room in order.” I then remembered a detail I had overlooked so far, “ah, although my baggage is still in the ship…”

Chrys’ froze for a moment.

“Ahaha, yeah we did forget about it huh?” they said sheepishly, averting their eyes to the ground. “Sorry about that, Mag, I’ll ask Verona to bring them here once she wakes up. Which… might take a while sooooo,” they looked at me again with a grin, “please wait for your package in 2-7 business loops?”

“Oh, okay.”

“…Mag, that was a joke,” they stopped grinning, “I’ll get it here for you next loop for sure. If Verona is too tired to help me carry it I’ll just get someone else’s help.”

“Oh, I see. I can help carrying it, I didn’t bring much stuff anyway.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d be the minimalist kind of person.”

“I’ve been called that before, yes. Because I don’t have many interests besides research, Professor Wiz used to say my room looked more like an office than anything else. Though when it comes to books, there’s plenty. I kept most textbooks from school, even the ones from when I was a kid, so those chests are full to the brim already…”

I had no idea why I was telling them all that, but they just laughed. “Guess you don’t have an inventory account to put them, then.”

“My inventory is linked to my hands, it’s kind of tradition among cubits. So books don’t fit in. I use it only for smaller stuff, like when we picked up all those healing items, and also supplies like erasers.”

I saw in the ship that their inventory warp was through that little bag in their waist, so they likely have had the same problem at some point, really.

“Fair, I guess if my hands were chests I’d do that too,” they laughed. “Well,” they waved at me, turning to their room, “I’ll let you rest them and we solve everything else later. I’ll probably take a lil’ nap too.”

“You are probably more tired than me from the journey,” I scowled at them, remembering how exhausted they were after testing their new spell on Verona. “Get a healthy, restoring, full night of sleep!”

“So those exist, huh.” they said in a bored tone, they turned to me grinning again, “But is it really night right now?”

“Oh, you’re, you’re right, but, but space terminology notwithstanding we should get the correct amount of sleep nonetheless!”

“Whoa that’s a lot of big words!” they burst into laughter again. “Sorry Mag, but no space newbie can not be teased about this. In the end you can call night or day whatever you want, we’ll all be poking fun on each other later no matter what. Have a good sleep either way,” and they left for their own room.

“Okay…” I was tired of not getting Chrys’ jokes at that point, I barely had anything left to say.

Unfortunately that was not the end of the loop yet.

When I entered my room, someone else was already there.

<prev next> read from the start

#starsword library #a story #to be continued #mag's reports #welcome to the defense force #a unique student of healing #mag #odd flower of the stars #chrys

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svetlanawagner-blog · 5 years

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Welcome to our income reports where we share ways we’ve been making money through the , the challenges and lessons we learned each month, and finally to celebrate successes however big or small. Though we have a few side hustles, we’re happy that the travel is our main hustle.

Life Updates

Our first month in Las Vegas flew by! We spent a lot of time climbing at Red Rock and indoors, visited LA, checked out RVX in SLC, and went to Joshua Tree twice. We’re definitely loving being close to the outdoors again.

Every time I see scenes from New York, I do miss the city a lot, but I can’t deny how nice it is to take life at a slower pace. We don’t have to work crazy hours to keep up with rent. And for the first time ever, we haven’t had an issue keeping our goal to work less than 40 hours a week.

This post may contain affiliate links, where we receive a small commission on sales of the products that are linked at no additional cost to you. Read our full disclosure for more info. Thank you for supporting the brands that make Local Adventurer possible.

Originally Published: April 11, 2019

How We Made OVER $17K in March - Travel Blog Income Report

Why We Share Our Income Reports

If you’re new here, you might be wondering why on earth we would share something so personal. We’ve been hesitant to share our income reports for the last 5 years, and we’re super nervous about this post, but since we’re all about trial and error, let’s see how it goes! We’re putting out these income reports for these following reasons.

To Show You How We Make Income Blogging

We always want to be 100% transparent about how we make money through this . The amazing thing about the ging world is that every we’ve talked to does things a bit differently. There are also countless ways to grow and improve your business. When we started, we made most of our money through affiliate sales. Since then, we’ve shifted heavily to sponsored content. A big part of this is because my background is in sales and it’s what I’m good at. You can learn more about my sale method below. As time goes on, this will continue to change, but we want to share how we focus on our strengths to effectively meet our goals.

To Show You the Potential of Blogging

Whether you have a or are starting a , we want to show you that you can make a career out of ging.

Even if you don’t want to , there are a ton of ways to be financially and location independent and we hope to inspire others to go after it too. If you want to keep your day job, ging can be a great way for you to make some extra side money.

Esther started the 6 years ago and I joined her full time 3 years ago. Even until last year, our parents were worried about us financially, wondering when we would stop “playing” and start taking our lives and work more seriously. Neither of us ended up being “good Asians” (namely a doctor, lawyer, or engineer). It’s an unconventional job and where most people don’t understand all the work that goes on behind the scenes.

More: The Ugly Truths of Being a Travel Blogger told by Top Travel Bloggers

We love that our jobs give us flexibility in what we do, but being your own boss isn’t all that it’s cut out to be either. You have to be disciplined and work hard at your business to grow it.

If you’re not getting the results you want, again, keep in mind that we’ve been ging for 6 years now and the first month I tried monetizing my , I made less than $20. Give it more time and failing in the process is okay. I didn’t have the correct tools that are out now and a lot of it was trial and error. Consider it all an A/B test to figure out what will best work for you.

To Track How We're Doing

I’ve always loved sharing goals online and tracking them. Putting them out in the world (via the ) has helped me so much with accountability. Since we’re constantly tweaking trying to improve the , looking at these numbers will help us learn whether we’ve been making the right changes. It’s amazing to see how the sources of income have changed over time and to see where we still have room for improvement.

Ultimately, our life goal is to make enough to live on half our income (right now we’re at 30%), where the rest will go back into the community or support organizations we love.

Breakdown of Income for March 2019

In March 2019 we earned a total of $17,708.99.

Affiliate Income

Amazon: $672.40

Avantlink: $460.83

Commission Junction: $125.55

Misc (Ebay, Skimlinks, AWin, etc): $123.19

Sponsorships

Sponsored Product Posts: $11,093.28 *our fave marketplace lately: IZEA

Display Ads

Adthrive: $5,233.74

Income Comparison to Other Months

Total in 2019 Year Income: $69,305.58

Last Month Income: $24,707.67

Difference: 28% decrease from last month

Expenses

Web Hosting: $19.95 (Want to start a ? Here’s how you can start a in 5 easy steps)

Keysearch: $18.60

Virtual Assistant, Social Media Manager, Subcontractors: $979.17

Teachable: $89 (check out their free weekly webinar)

Office Supplies/Services: $293.79

Test Products/Shoot Supplies: $414.10

*Taxes: $1,192

Insurance: $388.93

Travel + Meal Expenses: $1,881.67

TOTAL EXPENSES: $5,277.21 TOTAL NET PROFIT: $12,431.78

*Roughly 30% of your income will go to taxes at the end of the year. The number above shows the money set aside for taxes to offset how much we have to pay at the end. It makes it less painful at the end of the year.

March 2019 Blog Traffic Breakdown + Stats

Monthly Pageviews: 648,824

Daily Average: 20,930

Monthly Sessions: 502,836

Monthly Unique Visitors: 422,152

Social Media Followers: 322,363

Email Subscribers: 8,518

Goals for April

Blog Goals

Plan our content calendar and figure out a posting schedule for both NYC and Las Vegas content.

Post once a week (not including sponsored posts).

Update 2 older posts a week.

Start to integrate more photography tips.

Life Goals

Get back into astrophotography

Take a setting clinic at the climbing gym.

Work less than 40 hours a week.

Go on two date nights

What's Working on the Blog

Our traffic last month increased significantly and we spent most of our time optimizing existing posts rather than working on new content. From our analytics, views from social referrals stayed the same, but organic search has been steadily increasing.

What Didn't Work + Lessons Learned

Our ad revenue was much lower, because we switched from Adthrive to Mediavine mid-month, which means we’ll be expecting less ad money this month and next month. We have similar settings, and it looks like so far we’re making more with Mediavine.

You might also love

How We Made OVER $32K in August 2018 – Travel Blogger Salary

How We Made $23K in July – Travel Blog Income Report

The Ugly Truths of Being a Travel Blogger

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forlawfirmsonlymarketing · 4 years

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The Ultimate Guide for an SEO-Friendly URL Structure via @clarkboyd

First impressions count. And when it comes to your website, your URLs are often the first thing Google and customers will see. URLs are also the building blocks of an effective site hierarchy, passing equity through your domain and directing users to their desired destinations. They can be tricky to correct if you don’t plan ahead, as you can end up with endless redirect loops. Neither Google nor your site visitors will appreciate those. So they are worth getting right. But getting URL structure right involves a complex blend of usability and accessibility factors, along with some good old-fashioned SEO. Although there is no one-size-fits-all approach, there are some rules we can all follow to get the most out of our URLs and set our sites up for future SEO success.

1. Use Your Keywords

Every time you launch a page on your domain, it should have a purpose. Whether transactional, informational, or administrative, its reason for existence should be clear at the outset. You’ll want this page to be discovered by the right people (and crawlers), so you will incorporate some keyword research and include the relevant terms. The most descriptive of these — the term that gets to the nub of what this page is about — should be included in the URL, close to the root domain. We’ll deal with multiple pages that broadly tackle the same topic later, but for now, let’s assume the simple example of a page that clearly handles one topic. Let’s go for whiskey. Generic example: https://example.com/topic Whiskey-based example: https://example.com/whiskey Even this isn’t quite as simple as it seems, though. Should we use “whiskey” or “whisky” as our standard spelling? Both are valid, with the former being an Irish spelling and the latter Scottish. The Irish spelling has been adopted in the U.S., but we’ll need more proof before proceeding with that as our chosen variation. The Moz Keyword Explorer is great for this sort of predicament, as it groups keywords together to give an estimate of the search volume for particular topics. In this era of vague keyword-level search volumes, it provides a nice solution. The search volume is with “whiskey” and our site is based in the U.S., so let’s run with that.

2. Build a Sound Structure for the Future

Perhaps the biggest challenge we all face when defining a sitewide URL hierarchy is ensuring that it will still fit our purpose for years to come. It is for this reason that some websites end up as a patchwork quilt of sub-domains and conflicting paths to arrive at similar products. This is poor from a user’s perspective, but it also sends confusing signals to Google about how you categorize your product offering. An example of this would be: https://example.com/whiskey/irish-whiskey/jameson https://example.com/bushmills The first URL flows logically from domain to category to sub-category to product. The second URL goes from domain to product. Hierarchically, both products should sit at the same level in the site and the Jameson example is better for SEO and users. We encounter this a lot, though. Why? It can be a simple lack of communication, with a product team launching a new item straight onto the site without consulting other parties. It can also be down to a failure of future planning. Either way, it’s essential to lay out your structure in advance. Work together with different teams to understand the future direction of the business, then add your SEO knowledge to shape the site architecture. It will rarely be perfect, but the more you plan, the fewer errors you will have to undo down the line.

3. Avoid Superfluous Words & Characters

As a rule of thumb, make sure a user can understand what your page is about by looking at the URL. That means you don’t need to include every single preposition or conjunction. Words like “and” or “the” are just distractions and can be stripped out of the URL altogether. Just as users can understand what a topic is about without these short words, Google will derive all the meaning it requires too. You should also avoid keyword repetition within URLs. Adding the same keyword multiple times in the hope of increasing your ranking chances will only lead to a spammy URL structure. An example of this unnecessary repetition would be: https://domain.com/whiskey/irish-whiskey/jameson-irish-whiskey/jameson-irish-whiskey-history The first two uses of the main keyword make sense, but the third and fourth are overkill. A few additional points to bear in mind on this topic:

Case Sensitivity: It is surprisingly common to find multiple versions of the same URL, with one all in lower case and the others using occasional capital letters. Use canonical tags to mark the lower-case URL as the preferred version or, if possible, use permanent redirects.

Hashes: These can be useful to send users to a specific section of a page, but restrict their use in other circumstances if possible. If the content users are sent to after the # symbol is unique, make it available via a simple URL instead.

Word Delimiters: Stick with hyphens to separate words within your URL strings. Underscores will serve to join two words together, so be wary of using these.

URL Length: After 512 pixels, Google will truncate your URL in search results pages. A good rule of thumb is to keep y0ur URLs as short as you can, without losing their general meaning.

4. Minimize Dynamic URL Strings

This one can be harder than it sounds, depending on the content management system you use. Some e-commerce platforms will automatically spit out character strings that leave you with URLs like: https://domain.com/cat/?cid=7078. These are a bit unsightly and they also go against the rules we’ve been outlining above. We want static URLs that include a logical folder structure and descriptive keywords. Although search engines have no problem crawling or indexing either variant, for SEO-based reasons it’s better to use static URLs rather than dynamic ones. The thing is, static URLs contain your keywords and are more user-friendly since one can figure out what the page is about just by looking at the static URL’s name. So how do we get around this? You can use rewrite rules if your web server runs Apache, and some tools like this one from Generate It are helpful. There are different fixes for different platforms (some more complex than others). Some web developers make use of relative URLs, too. The problem with relative URLs for SEO is that they are dependent on the context in which they occur. Once the context changes, the URL may not work. For SEO, it’s better to use absolute URLs instead of relative ones, since the former are what search engines prefer. Now, sometimes different parameters can be added to the URL for analytics tracking or other reasons (such as sid, utm, etc.) To make sure that these parameters don’t make the number of URLs with duplicate content grow over the top, you can do either of the following:

Ask Google to disregard certain URL parameters in Google Search Console in Configuration > URL Parameters.

See if your content management system allows you to solidify URLs with additional parameters with their shorter counterparts.

5. Consolidate the Different Versions of Your Site

As a rule, there are two major versions of your domain indexed in search engines: the www and the non-www version of it. We can add to this the complexity of having a secure (https) and non-secure (HTTP) version too, with Google giving preference to the former. Most SEOs use the 301 redirect to point one version of their site to the other (or vice versa). This tells search engines that a particular URL has moved permanently to another destination. Alternatively (for instance, when you can’t do a redirect), you can specify your preferred version in Google Search Console in Configuration > Settings > Preferred Domain. However, this has certain drawbacks:

This takes care of Google only.

This option is restricted to root domains only. If you have an example.wordpress.com site, this method is not for you.

But why worry about the www vs non-www issue in the first place? The thing is, some of your backlinks may be pointing to your www version, while some could be going to the non-www version. To ensure all versions’ SEO value is consolidated, it’s better to explicitly establish this link between them. You can do this via the 301 redirect, in Google Search Console, or by using a canonical tag, the latter of which we will look at in more detail below.

6. Make Correct Use of Canonical Tags

So, canonical tags. These are a very helpful piece of code when you have multiple versions of what is essentially the same page. By adding a canonical tag, you can tell Google which one is your preferred version. Note: The canonical tag should be applied only with the purpose of helping search engines decide on your canonical URL. For redirection of site pages, use redirects. And, for paginated content, it makes sense to employ rel=”next” and rel=”prev” tags in most cases. Canonical tags are useful for just about any website, but they are particularly powerful for online retailers. For example, on Macy’s website, I can go to the Quilts & Bedspreads page directly by using the URL (https://www.macys.com/shop/bed-bath/quilts-bedspreads), or I can take different routes from the homepage:

I can go to Homepage >> Bed& Bath >> Quilts & Bedspreads. The following URL with my path recorded is generated:

https://www.macys.com/shop/bed-bath/quilts-bedspreads?id=22748&edge=hybrid

Or I can go to Homepage >> For the Home >> Bed & Bath >> Bedding >> Quilts & Bedspreads. The following URL is generated:

https://www.macys.com/shop/bed-bath/quilts-bedspreads?id=22748&cm_sp=us_hdr-_-bed-%26-bath-_-22748_quilts-%26-bedspreads_COL1 Now, all three URLs lead to the same content. And if you look into the code of each page, you’ll see the following tag in the head element: As you see, for each of these URLs, a canonical URL is specified, which is the cleanest version of all the URLs in the group: https://www.macys.com/shop/bed-bath/quilts-bedspreads?id=22748 What this does is, it funnels down the SEO value each of these three URLs might have to one single URL that should be displayed in the search results (the canonical URL). Normally search engines do a pretty good job identifying canonical URLs themselves, but, as Susan Moskwa once wrote at Google Webmaster Central:

“If we aren’t able to detect all the duplicates of a particular page, we won’t be able to consolidate all of their properties. This may dilute the strength of that content’s ranking signals by splitting them across multiple URLs.”

7. Incorporate Topical Authority

In Google’s own Search Quality Evaluators Guidelines (a must-read document for all SEOs!), there are clear references to both main content and supplementary content. Main content will be your lead page in each section that really sets out what your category is all about. It will set out your stall as a relevant source for a topic. Supplementary content provides, as the name suggests, additional information that helps users navigate the topic and reach informed decisions. URL structure is an essential component of getting this right. So, let’s go back to our whiskey example to see how we might tackle this. Our site is e-commerce focused and we want to sell the product, of course. However, going for the jugular and only pushing out product pages is tantamount to SEO tunnel vision. Our initial research from Moz Keyword Explorer is a great resource as we make these plans. Below, I have exported the keyword list and reduced it to the highest-volume topics. From here, we can start to decide what might qualify as a topic for a main content or supplementary content page. This is a simplified example and just a first step, of course. However, it is worth noting that this approach goes further than just category > sub-category > product. By thinking in terms of main content and supplementary content, a product is just as likely to qualify as main content as a category is. The question is more about which topics consumers want us to elaborate on to help them make choices. From here, we can dig into some of these topics and start to flesh out what each hub might look like. Some clear opportunities already stand out to create content and rank via rich snippets. People want to know how whiskey is made, what different varieties exist, and of course, whether it’s spelled ‘whiskey’ or ‘whisky’. This could be the beginning of a business case to create a whiskey tasting guide or a ‘history of whiskey’ content hub on the site. Combined with ranking difficulty metrics, business priorities, and content production capabilities, this approach will soon take shape as a site hierarchy and opportunity analysis. For our whiskey example, it might start to comprise the following structure: https://domain.com/whiskey/whiskey-tasting-guide https://domain.com/whiskey/whiskey-tasting-guide/how-to-taste-whiskey https://domain.com/whiskey/whiskey-tasting-guide/how-is-whiskey-made https://domain.com/whiskey/whiskey-tasting-guide/barley-whiskey Again, there are decisions to make. In the last URL, one could argue that the tasting guide page for barley whiskey should sit under the barley whiskey sub-category page in the site hierarchy. Barley whiskey has been earmarked as ‘main content’ in my spreadsheet, after all. The choice here comes down to where we want to consolidate value; dispersing that value would reduce our chances of ranking for any ‘tasting guide’ terms. These are exactly the kinds of decisions that can lead to a confused structure if a consistent logic is not followed. All of this will contribute to your topical authority and increase site visibility. This type of content often already exists on site, too. I am not claiming anything revolutionary by saying a website should have lots of useful information, after all. However, the structure of this content and how entities are semantically linked to each other makes the difference between success and failure. This can be used as a ‘quick win’ tactic and it tends to be received well by all parties. Updating and moving existing content will always be an easier sell than asking for an all-new content hub.

8. Create an XML Sitemap

Once you’ve ticked off all of the above, you’ll want to make sure search engines know what’s going on with your website. That’s where sitemaps come in handy — particularly XML sitemaps. An XML Sitemap is not to be confused with the HTML sitemap. The former is for the search engines, while the latter is mostly designed for human users (although it has other uses t00). So what is an XML Sitemap? In plain words, it’s a list of your site’s URLs that you submit to the search engines. This serves two purposes:

This helps search engines find your site’s pages more easily.

Search engines can use the sitemap as a reference when choosing canonical URLs on your site.

Picking a preferred (canonical) URL becomes necessary when search engines see duplicate pages on your site, as we saw above. So, as they don’t want any duplicates in the search results, search engines use a special algorithm to identify duplicate pages and pick just one URL to represent the group in the search results. Other web pages just get filtered out. Now, back to sitemaps. One of the criteria search engines may use to pick a canonical URL for the group of web pages is whether this URL is mentioned in the website’s sitemap. So, what web pages should be included in your sitemap? For purely SEO reasons, it’s recommended to include only the web pages you’d like to show up in search. You should include a more comprehensive account of your site’s URLs within the HTML sitemap.

Summary

An SEO-friendly URL structure is the following things:

Easy to read: Users and search engines should be able to understand what is on each page just by looking at the URL.

Keyword-rich: Keywords still matter and your target queries should be within URLs. Just be wary of overkill; extending URLs just to include more keywords is a bad idea.

Consistent: There are multiple ways to create an SEO-friendly URL structure on any site. It’s essential that, whatever logic you choose to follow, it is applied consistently across the site.

Static: Dynamic parameters are rarely an SEO’s best friend, but they are quite common. Where possible, find a solution that allows your site to render static URLs instead.

Future-proof: Think ahead when planning your site structure. You should minimize the number of redirects on your domain, and it’s easier to do this if you don’t require wholesale changes to URLs.

Comprehensive: Use the concepts of main content and supplementary content to ensure you have adequate coverage for all relevant topics. This will maximize your site’s visibility.

Supported by data: It normally requires buy-in from a lot of stakeholders to launch or update a particular site structure. Numbers talk, so make use of search and analytics data to support your case.

Submitted to search engines: Finally, create an XML sitemap containing all of the URLs that you want to rank via SEO and submit it to search engines. That will ensure all your hard work gets the reward it deserves.

How to Boost Your Search Visibility with SEO-Friendly WordPress URLs offers additional guidance on optimizing URL structure for WordPress websites and blogs.

Image Credits Featured Image: Paulo Bobita All screenshots taken by author

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/the-ultimate-guide-for-an-seo-friendly-url-structure-via-clarkboyd/

#googlesearchranking #localseo #onlinemarketing #dailydoseofmarketing

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xenleaksinc · 5 years

Text

XenForo 2.1.1 Stable Full

XenForo 2.1.1 is now available for all licensed customers to download. We recommend that all customers running previous versions of XenForo 2.1 upgrade to this release to benefit from increased stability. We have also made some improvements to the importer framework. Notably it is now possible to perform a multi-process import in order to make better use of multi-core processors. If you run an import via the CLI and you add the --processes option with a value greater than 1, then multiple PHP processes will be used to perform the import, instead of a single CPU core being used as is the PHP default. Your results may vary, but with the number of processes set to equal the number of physical cores on a sufficiently powerful server, you should notice a significant increase in performance. You can also run your import command with the new --finalize option which will run the finalize stage automatically after the data import has finished. While we're talking about importers we should also point out that we are today also releasing XenForo Importers 1.2.0 with a new "Invision Community Forums" importer, XenForo Media Gallery 2.1.1 which reintroduces a number of importers originally included in XFMG 1.x and XenForo Resource Manager 2.1.1 which includes an XFRM to XFRM importer. See below for more information. If you are upgrading from XenForo 2.1.0, please be aware that there is a new option called "Convert Markdown-style content to BB code" which is now disabled by default. If you would like to use Markdown-style formatting in your messages, you will need to enable this option first. Download XenForo 2.1.1 Other changes in XF 2.1.1 include:

Solve a critical bug which may allow an extreme number of push subscriptions to be inserted. (Thank you @vbresults)

When pasting tables into the RTE, remove the rowspan/colspan attributes as they aren't supported. For any rows that don't have enough cells, append additional cells to the end (which is what the BB code renderer would do).

When converting emoji shortcodes, ignore any that are also smilies. This effectively prioritizes smilies over emojis on conflict. Adjust the emoji autocompleter to match this behavior.

Don't set a default alt when inserting an attachment into the rich text editor. (If no alt is present, when rendered, it will default to the filename.)

Ensure that auto-completion does not insert an HTML-encoded value when doing a text-based completion.

Ensure that textareas and code editors do not trim the values received before they are displayed.

Use the absolute date and time for poll closing when editing a poll to ensure a consistent wording for the sentence structure.

Add alt attributes to reaction <img> elements.

Support editor icons in specific FA packs by specifying the icon as "fa(l|r|s|b) fa-icon-name".

Ensure that we use the push receiver's language when rendering a push notification from a template.

Send cache-control: no-cache for error images displayed by the image proxy. For successful fetches, set the max-age of the result based on when the next refresh is planned (and if unknown, cache for a day).

Support Markdown image embedding without any alt text and maintain the alt text from Markdown image embeds.

For min-max options, add validation to ensure that the max is never less than the min.

When adding an avatar URL to a registration, only apply the avatar if the user would have permission (once their account is in the valid state).

Don't set a length when setting up boolean columns in the schema manager as we don't actually output this for integer types.

Re-enable ctrl/cmd+enter to submit textareas by default

Fix an issue where some inline styling (such as colors) before a video can cause text to disappear unexpectedly.

Prevent LESS compilation errors if removing certain style property elements (namely ones passed into H-scroller variations).

Disable inline Markdown matches that are known to be smilies. (Note this only applies to exact matches.)

Prevent URLs from being unfurled in signatures.

Fix a situation where a URL would be double auto-linked if it started with www and was on its own line.

Dynamically adjust the RTE z-index so that editor overlays work as expected when the editor is within an overlay itself

Prevent an error if there is an orphaned user connected account record (for a user that doesn't exist) if that connected account is then re-associated with another user.

When counting line limits in signatures, ensure that URLs are not unfurled as this will give an incorrect line count.

Prevent duplicate key error from push subscription update.

When listing watched forums, properly display forums that are children of nodes that are not displayed in the node list.

Provide extra space in the structured list "meta" information (replies and views) cell for longer translations.

Allow category_view template to have search constraints for "This category".

Adjust phrase used on Google Analytics Web Property ID option phrase.

Correctly use the payment profile display title when displaying a list of payment profiles if a display title is defined.

Re-jig the wording and details of the Stripe payment profile page somewhat in an attempt to make the required steps clearer and ensure the instructions of where to find things is correct.

Clarify the format of the expected event hint for the editor_dialog event. We coerce the dialog name to be alphanumeric so essentially anything beyond a-z/0-9 is stripped.

Remove unused bit of code in the GA template.

Ensure we include the fullUnicode default for new installs in the config.php.default file.

When testing for push support, check we have access to the Notification API also.

Use the correct error phrase when a profile post spam decision has been set to denied.

Add support for the iso6 ftype when detecting whether we have a valid MP4 video.

Use a standard textbox (of password type) for the SMTP password as we do not require strength checking or hide/show buttons there.

Ensure that each editor instance starts with an empty set of buttons to remove so that removals only affect the desired editor.

Sort the locale list when editing a language in an accent insensitive way.

Display an error if no templates or style properties have been marked for mass reversion.

Ensure a user cannot be following or ignoring themselves as a result of a merge, and rebuild following caches correctly.

Automatically suggest a name for the import log table, based on the importer class name and a numeric suffix.

Adjust positioning of reaction summary on the thread list.

Update LightGallery to the latest version in order to fix an issue with the slideshow pause button.

Use correct function name for reaction score ratio criteria.

Use a slightly more strict regex when detecting shortcodes in order to not necessarily attempt to replace embedded shortcodes, especially those inside URLs.

Improve behaviour of lists in content when they are used adjacent to floated images.

When inserting the description received by XF.DescLoader.onLoad run it through XF.setupHtmlInsert to ensure the resulting HTML is activated and any new JS is initialized.

When validating email addresses when handling email bounces, do so in a non-strict mode and ignore minor errors.

Exclude disabled reactions from the thread list reaction summaries.

Adjust usernameLength option so the max value cannot exceed 50 (the hardcoded username limit). Also apply that max value to the register form, rather than the max username limit (50).

Ensure a permission check happens at the point of running a search.

Prevent an error when building the backtrace of an error message that has no arguments.

When deleting a reaction definition, delete all reactions of that type to ensure correct and consistent behavior.

Add contentType values to the Report/ReportComment entity structure.

Add a hint which suggests that adding bookmark labels is optional.

Support passing in a custom perPage value to entityColumnsToJson and tableColumnsToJson methods. Set XF:ErrorLog.request_state to do only 300 per page - this table's records are quite data heavy and has been seen to exhaust memory limits.

Delay logging when inserting an emoji via the editor menu so that the emojis do not switch position until 1.5 seconds after you stop inserting emojis.

Change the double-encoded & to simply & in the custom field edit template.

For consistency with similar option groups, separate the "Enable content tagging" option from the other options on the page.

Ensure the tagLength option cannot exceed a maximum length of 100.

Fix next/prev month button color in the date picker and allow date ranges to pull colors from the style properties.

Apply the body font family to message previews.

When processing ajax responses, activate HTML elements after executing any inline scripts.

Allow detection of failed unfurl image loads even when the image proxy is enabled.

Add new template extension points for member_macros in the XF:action_groupsuter_start and XF:action_groupsuter_end positions.

Display the enableTrophies option on the user-title-ladder page so that the trophy points option can be kept disabled or re-enabled if trophies are being enabled/disabled.

Only apply the "Show value" option to member stats if the sort order is numeric (by default, if the sort order is not "username").

In some option templates, protect against invalid user ID data

Fix accidental N+1 query behavior on received reactions page and ensure consistent "all" vs type-specific counts.

Remove the default values for first_post_reaction_score in the Thread searcher, similar to the reaction_score in the User searcher.

Improve performance of loading the editor emoji menu on Android devices.

Remove inconsistent tags from notice edit message explain phrase.

Add missing fal class in the core_contentrow less.

Remove commented out menu headers from navigation item menus.

Always apply the default prefix for a forum on reports sent into a forum.

Make it easier to add additional menus/buttons to the member tooltip/member view template.

Trigger class extension hint file to be rebuilt on class extension import.

When navigating directly to the post-thread page for a forum, attempt to use a predefined title (from the title URL param) if it is available.

Fix code event description argument list for app_admin_render_page event.

Add aria-hidden="true" to share icon placeholders.

In filter lists, do not count rows which we have forced to show - they most likely represent information rather than found results.

Do not duplicate the data-xf-init attribute on the prefix_input template.

Use SFS' load balanced API for SFS lookups. (Submissions do not appear to have changed).

Parse user mentions before MD parsing to avoid issues with user names that have valid MD-style markup.

Use a sufficient number of backslashes (5!) to appropriately escape the fnMaxLength templater function shortname regex.

Replace all hard-coded instances of N/A to the n_a phrase.

Swap order of filters and additional params on the forum_view "Show older items" link.

Add aria-hidden="true" to icon placeholder in the react HTML.

Hide links within ispoilers (and make them clicking the link not trigger while the spoiler is blurred).

Prevent an InvalidStateError in some cases with the numberbox input. Also change its support detection and prevent the stepping starting from an unexpected number.

Allow content_username and content_user_id to be empty/0 by default in the moderator log.

When navigating to a cached page, use conversation/alert unread counters from the most recent stored data, rather than what may have been included with the cached result.

The following public templates have had changes:

app_nav.less

app_sectionlinks.less

app_staffbar.less

bb_code.less

bb_code_preview.less

bookmark_edit

bookmark_macros

category_view

core_bbcode.less

core_block.less

core_contentrow.less

core_menu.less

core_pikaday.less

core_tab.less

editor.less

forum_post_thread

forum_view

google_analytics

member_macros

member_tooltip

member_view

PAGE_CONTAINER

poll_macros

prefix_input

register_form

register_macros

share_page_macros

structured_list.less

thread_list_macros

Where necessary, the merge system within the "outdated templates" page should be used to integrate these changes. As always, new releases of XenForo are free to download for all customers with active licenses, who may now grab the new version from the customer area. Note: add-ons, customizations and styles made for XenForo 1.x are not compatible with XenForo 2.x. If your site relies upon these for essential functionality, ensure that a XenForo 2 version exists before you start to upgrade. We strongly recommend you make a backup before attempting an upgrade. Current Requirements Please note that XenForo 2.1.x has higher system requirements than XenForo 1.x. The following are minimum requirements:

PHP 5.6 or newer (PHP 7.3 recommended)

MySQL 5.5 and newer (Also compatible with MariaDB/Percona etc.)

All of the official add-ons require XenForo 2.1.

Enhanced Search requires at least Elasticsearch 2.0.

Installation and Upgrade Instructions for XenForo 2.1 Full details of how to install and upgrade XenForo can be found in the XenForo 2 Manual. Note that when upgrading from XenForo 1.x, all add-ons will be disabled and style customizations will not be maintained. New versions of add-ons will need to be installed and customizations will need to be redone. We strongly recommended that you make a backup before attempting an upgrade. Once upgraded, you will not be able to downgrade without restoring from a backup.

XF-V2.1.1.zip

source https://xenforoleaks.com/topic/290-xenforo-211-stable-full/

0 notes

cstesttaken · 7 years

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7 On-Page SEO Checks That You Need To Conduct On A Periodic Basis

When it comes to SEO, we know that link building is an ongoing process, but more often than not, we tend to neglect the on-page SEO aspects.

Site updates, theme updates/changes, plugin updates, adding a new plugin/functionality, and other changes like updating a file using FTP can cause some accidental errors that could lead to on-page SEO issues. Unless you proactively look for these errors, they will go unnoticed and will negatively influence your organic rankings.

For instance, I recently realized that I had been blocking out images in one of my blogs for almost 6 months because of an old and neglected Robots.txt file. Imagine the impact such a mistake could have on your rankings!

On-Page SEO Checkup

Keeping the importance of SEO in mind, here are 7 important checks that you need to conduct on a periodic basis to ensure that your on-page SEO is on point.

Note: Even though these checks are for people running a WordPress blog, they can be used for any blogger on any platform.

1. Check your site for broken links.

Pages with broken links (be it an internal or external link) can potentially lose rankings in search results. Even if you do have control over internal links, you do not have control over external links.

There is a huge possibility that a webpage or resource that you linked to no longer exists or has been moved to a different URL, resulting in a broken link.

This is why it is recommended to check for broken links periodically.

There is a whole host of ways to check for broken links, but one of the easiest and most efficient ways is with the ScreamingFrog SEO Software.

To find broken links on your site using ScreamingFrog, enter your domain URL in the space provided and click the “Start” button. Once the crawling is complete, select the Response Codes tab and filter your results based on “Client Error (4xx)”. You should now be able to see all links that are broken.

Click on each broken link and then select the Inlinks tab to see which page(s) actually contain this broken link. (Refer to image below.)

If you are using WordPress, you can also use a plugin like the Broken Link Checker. This plugin will find and fix all broken links.

Another way to check for broken links is through the Google Search Console. Log in and go to Crawl > Crawl Errors and check for “404” and “not found” errors under the URL Errors section.

If you do find 404 URLs, click on the URL and then go to the Linked From tab to see which page(s) contain this broken URL.

2. Use the site command to check for the presence of low-value pages in the Google index.

The command operator “site:sitename.com” displays all pages on your site indexed by Google.

By roughly scanning through these results, you should be able to check if all pages indexed are of good quality or if there are some low-value pages present.

Quick Tip: If your site has a lot of pages, change the Google Search settings to display 100 results at a time. This way you can easily scan through all results quickly.

An example of a low-value page would be the ‘search result’ page. You might have a search box on your site, and there is a possibility that all search result pages are being crawled and indexed. All these pages contain nothing but links, and hence are of little to no value. It is best to keep these pages from getting indexed.

Another example would be the presence of multiple versions of the same page in the index. This can happen if you run an online store and your search results have the option of being sorted.

Here’s an example of multiple versions of the same search page:

http://sitename.com/products/search?q=chairs

http://sitename.com/products/search?q=chairs&sort=price&dir=asc

http://sitename.com/products/search?q=chairs&sort=price&dir=desc

http://sitename.com/products/search?q=chairs&sort=latest&dir=asc

http://sitename.com/products/search?q=chairs&sort=latest&dir=desc

You can easily exclude such pages from being indexed by disallowing them in Robots.txt, or by using the Robots meta tag. You can also block certain URL parameters from getting crawled using the Google Search Console by going to Crawl > URL Parameters.

3. Check Robots.txt to see if you are blocking important resources.

When using a CMS like WordPress, it is easy to accidentally block out important content like images, javascript, CSS, and other resources that can actually help the Google bots better access/analyze your website.

For example, blocking out the wp-content folder in your Robots.txt would mean blocking out images from getting crawled. If the Google bots cannot access the images on your site, your potential to rank higher because of these images reduces. Similarly, your images will not be accessible through Google Image Search, further reducing your organic traffic.

In the same way, if Google bots cannot access the javascript or CSS on your site, they cannot determine if your site is responsive or not. So even if your site is responsive, Google will think it is not, and as a result, your site will not rank well in mobile search results.

To find out if you are blocking out important resources, log in to your Google Search Console and go to Google Index > Blocked Resources. Here you should be able to see all the resources that you are blocking. You can then unblock these resources using Robots.txt (or through .htaccess if need be).

For example, let’s say you are blocking the following two resources:

/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/image.jpg

/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js

You can unblock these resources by adding the following to your Robots.txt file:

Allow: /wp-includes/js/

Allow: /wp-content/uploads/

To double check if these resources are now crawlable, go to Crawl > Robots.txt tester in your Google Search console, then enter the URL in the space provided and click “Test”.

4. Check the HTML source of your important posts and pages to ensure everything is right.

It’s one thing to use SEO plugins to optimize your site, and it’s another thing to ensure they are working properly. The HTML source is the best way to ensure that all of your SEO-based meta tags are being added to the right pages. It’s also the best way to check for errors that need to be fixed.

If you are using a WordPress blog, you only need to check the following pages (in most cases):

Homepage/Frontpage (+ one paginated page if homepage pagination is present)

Any single posts page

One of each archive pages (first page and a few paginated pages)

Media attachment page

Other pages – if you have custom post pages

As indicated, you only need to check the source of one or two of each of these pages to make sure everything is right.

To check the source, do the following:

Open the page that needs to be checked in your browser window.

Press CTRL + U on your keyboard to bring up the page source, or right-click on the page and select “View Source”.

Now check the content within the ‘head’ tags ( ) to ensure everything is right.

Here are a few checks that you can perform:

Check to see if the pages have multiple instances of the same meta tag, like the title or meta description tag. This can happen when a plugin and theme both insert the same meta tag into the header.

Check to see if the page has a meta robots tag, and ensure that it is set up properly. In other words, check to make sure that the robots tag is not accidentally set to Noindex or Nofollow for important pages. And make sure that it is indeed set to Noindex for low value pages.

If it is a paginated page, check if you have proper rel=”next” and rel=”prev” meta tags.

Check to see if pages (especially single post pages and the homepage) have proper OG tags (especially the “OG Image” tag), Twitter cards, other social media meta tags, and other tags like Schema.org tags (if you are using them).

Check to see if the page has a rel=”canonical” tag and make sure that it is showing the proper canonical URL.

Check if the pages have a viewport meta tag. (This tag is important for mobile responsiveness.)

5. Check for mobile usability errors.

Sites that are not responsive do not rank well in Google’s mobile search results. Even though your site is responsive, there is no saying what Google bots will think. Even a small change like blocking a resource can make your responsive site look unresponsive in Google’s view.

So even if you think your site is responsive, make it a practice to check if your pages are mobile friendly or if they have mobile usability errors.

To do this, log in to your Google Search Console and go to Search Traffic > Mobile Usability to check if any of these pages show mobile usability errors.

6. Check for render blocking scripts.

You might have added a new plugin or functionality to your blog which could have added calls to many javascript and CSS files on all pages of your site. The plugin’s functionality might be for a single page, yet calls to its javascript and CSS are on all pages.

For example, you might have added a contact form plugin that only works on one page – your contact page. But the plugin might have added its Javascript files on every page.

The more javascript and CSS references a page has, the longer it takes to load. This reduces your page speed which can negatively impact your search engine rankings.

The best way to ensure this does not happen is to check your site’s article pages using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool on a regular basis. Check to see if there are render-blocking Javascript files and figure out if these scripts are needed for the page to function properly.

If you find unwanted scripts, restrict these scripts only to pages that require them so they don’t load where they are not wanted. You can also consider adding a defer or async attribute to Javascript files.

7. Check and monitor site downtimes.

Frequent downtimes not only drive visitors away, they also hurt your SEO. This is why it is imperative to monitor your site’s uptime on a constant basis.

Things To Monitor For Proper On-Page SEO

These are some very important things to check for so that your on-page SEO stays highly optimized.

Conducting these checks on a regular basis will ensure that your on-site SEO is on point and that your rankings are not getting hurt without your knowledge.

Let me know what kinds of things you check for when doing an SEO site audit. What do you do to make sure your on-page SEO stays optimized? Let me know in the comments below!

Here are some more SEO articles to check out:

Like this post? Don’t forget to share it!

Source

https://www.shoutmeloud.com/on-page-seo-checks-need-conduct-periodic-basis.html

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themesparadise · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Themesparadise

New Post has been published on http://themesparadise.com/kallyas-responsive-multi-purpose-joomla-template/

KALLYAS Responsive Multi-purpose Joomla Template

The price of this template has been lowered from $48 to $30, due to the recent drop of support. Thank you for understanding!

This is Kallyas Template, one of the most complete, premium template ever made. This is an ultra-premium, highly-responsive Joomla Template built for today websites. It’s super flexible, clean design (and code), without no modesty. It has the latest techologies and trends and it can be used in a huge variety of domains. It’s also a great deal having premium plugins inside!!

Admin Screenshots

https://www.diigo.com/item/image/1r4eu/epm0 https://www.diigo.com/item/image/1r4eu/e8qa https://www.diigo.com/item/image/1r4eu/9p6d https://www.diigo.com/item/image/1r4eu/q8nx https://www.diigo.com/item/image/1r4eu/8gvb

Full list of Features:

Joomla 3.x compatible

Own framework based on Joomla’s native framework combined with Bootstrap

Unlimited colors and combinations!

Virtuemart / Ecommerce integration

SEO Ready

Translation Ready

Responsive layout

Dark / Light themes

6 Homepages with different module combinations

Around 70 modules positions or various combinations

Huge slider variety:

iOS Slider

Creative Slider (based on Revolution Slider)

Fixed Sliders

Style 1 (Flex Slider)

Style 2 (Nivo Slider)

Style 3 (Wow Slider)

3D Cute Slider

Fancy Slider

Circular Content

Static Content (great variety)

Portfolio Slider Devices (based on Revolution Slider)

Portfolio Slider Frames

Laptop Slider

iCarousel

CSS3 Panels

Genious Portfolio Layouts (using Joomla API)

Carousels Layout

Sortable Layout

Category Layout on multiple columns

35 custom modules created specially for this template! with various layouts

Shortcodes System

Custom pages designs

Pricing tables

Blog section with comments

Photo Gallery

FAQ Section

404 Page redesign

Offline Page redesign

Google Fonts support

Newsletter module based on Mailchimp

Built-in Prettyphoto lightbox with autopopup & open from link functionality

Transparent modal pages

Custom QR Code generator

Sitemap design included

Quick Install with demo data & Standalone standalone version aswell

PSD Files included

960px / 1200px grid system

Great social media support!

Built in styles

& many others

Many thanks to

Images:

Icons – http://www.iconfinder.com/ , http://iconmonstr.com/

Images used in preview properly licensed from www.photodune.net (not included in the template)

Placeholder images – www.lorempixum.com

Subtle Patterns http://subtlepatterns.com/

SCRIPTS:

Bootstrap Framework http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

IOS Slider – http://iosscripts.com/iosslider/

Revolution Slider http://codecanyon.net/item/slider-revolution-responsive-jquery-plugin/2580848

Icarousel http://codecanyon.net/item/icarousel/2527180

3d Cute Slider – http://codecanyon.net/item/cute-slider-3d-2d-html5-image-slider/3046001

Isotope Jquery plugin (properly licensed) http://isotope.metafizzy.co

Nivo Slider http://nivo.dev7studios.com/

WowSlider – http://wowslider.com/

Modernizr – http://modernizr.com/

Jquery Map marker plugin – http://www.welancers.com/jquery-map-marker-plugin/

Flex Slider – http://www.woothemes.com/flexslider/

CarouFredSel PrettyPhoto

PrettyPhoto http://www.no-margin-for-errors.com/projects/prettyphoto-jquery-lightbox-clone/

Jquery Countdown http://keith-wood.name/countdown.html

Superfish Menu http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/superfish/

Respond.js https://github.com/scottjehl/Respond

Twitter JS Api http://code.google.com/p/twitterjs/

Jquery Flickr Plugin http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/jquery-flickr-plugin

Jquery Easing http://gsgd.co.uk/sandbox/jquery/easing/

Jquery Placeholder http://mths.be/placeholder

SWF Object http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

Raphael Diagram http://tympanus.net/codrops/2011/04/22/animated-skills-diagram/

Jquery Mobile jquerymobile.com

Redirection Mobile http://github.com/sebarmeli/JS-Redirection-Mobile-Site

JOOMLA EXTENSIONS:

Virtuemart – Shopping cart component www.virtuemart.net

Simple Image Gallery by joomlaworks.gr

DISQUS Comments plugin by joomlaworks.gr

Xmap component

Rapid contact module

JCE Editor – http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/edition/editors/88

Update History

Copy the existing files from the latest version in updates folder. Don’t forget to make a backup first!!!

* Version 1.5.2 / 19.06.2015

+ Updated PrettyPhoto script to 3.1.5 (fixed vulnerability)

* Version 1.5.1 / 28.01.2015

+ Fixed HGDyno field causing JS error which doesn't show all module tabs (eg HG Static Content module) + Fixed HG Virtuemart Carousel product display problem + Fixed issue with template not uploading a certain folder (custom) which was causing problems like not displaying Menu item extra parameters. + Fixed Recommended layyout in VM + Fixed VM not allowing to create categegories or clone products (if you do encounter this problem please contact support) + Updated HG Newsletter module

* Version 1.5 / 14.01.2015

Be careful, this latest update adds a new uploading picture for Portfolio Articles. Meaning that if you have extra images added, they will be reset and you have to add them once again. That's because there was no other option to add unlimited uploading fields without harming the old added images. If you have too many, it's indicated not to update. Thanks for understanding! + Dropped Joomla 2.5.x version because Joomla! 2.5 Support Ended On December 31, 2014! Here's more info https://docs.joomla.org/Why_Migrate + Updated Virtuemart to work properly with Kallyas for Joomla 3.3 + Updated quickstart package to contain Virtuemart as well (previously was removed due some problems) + Updated HG Assets plugin to a general stable version which can be used across Hogash templates. Also added an option to choose Bootstrap version for the grid system. + Shortcodes splitted, general shortcodes are in /plugins/system/hg_assets/shortcodes (grid, common shortcodes, shortcode helper), while Kallyas specific shortcodes are added into /templates/kallyas/custom/shortcodes/ + XML custom forms (for articles, menu item extra options) are not moved to /templates/kallyas/custom/forms/

* UPDATE 1.4.1 / 06.05.2014

+ Fixed jQuery plugin which wasn't working for Joomla 3.x versions

* UPDATE 1.4 / 18.04.2014

+ Fixed Strict Standards errors + Fixed Edit for for articles, in frontend for J3.x + Fixed display component on homepage + Fixed menu item separator + Fixed Accordion Shortcode + Updated extensions + Added 3 extra header styles + Added infocard when hovering Logo + Added Call to action button in header + Added video support for iOS Slider + Updated Quickstart packages to J! 2.5.19 and J! 3.2.3 and updated Quickstart packages installation, data not included, you must select Kallyas Sample Data to have everything installed.

* Version 1.3.2 / 20.11.2013

+ Fixed Shortcode library + Fixed small problems in the shortcode files in Assets plugin + Fixed Revolution slider not being compatible with 3.2 + Fixed FeatureBoxes problem with icons not being displayed on some webhostings + Fixed date bug

* Version 1.3 / 17.11.2013

(changelog in updates folder) + Updated Quickstart packages to 2.5.16 and 3.2. + Updated HG Team Module which was having problems with generating thumbnails with grayscale effect + Fixed problem with assigning template styles to different menu items, having SEF enabled. + Added twitter url field in template settings. Leave blank and will add the home url. + Changed date under breadcrumbs to translate itself on other languages + Fixed Revolution slider startingWidth parameter which was set to 890px, now set for 1130px + Added translatable support to Portfolio Sortable + Added Responsive offline page + Fixed navigation links (next/prev) for portfolio article views + Fixed google maps view navigation from left side not showing them (HG Static content module :: maps view). + Removed Virtuemart from Joomla 2.5 package. The component now needs to be installed manually be the user and the layouts will be automatically overriden. Instructions how to configure the component can be found in the documentation. + Fixed VM listings views when sidebar present. Added row-fluid instead of row. + Fixed Css3 Panels Module not adding a link even though is added in admin. + Fixed Style3 for Latest posts module which didn't checked wether there's an image or not. + Fixed active state for sidebar menu which was applying styles to all children items

* Version 1.2 / 27.06.2013

+ Fixed twitter feed + Fixed slider fixed + boxed

* Version 1.1 / 18.05.2013

+ Fixed custom id problem in mod_hg_vm_products_carousel module. Also updated the layout field so in case you have problems, try selecting again the layout of the module and re-save. + Fixed pkg_kallyas.zip which was displaying an error upon installation. I removed <folder>fonts</folder> in the templateDetails.xml file inside. + Fixed mod_hg_team module. in the tmpl/default.php file i replaced 'grayScale' with 'grayscale' + Fixed the topnav/navright list. The top_pos position wasn't displayed if support & hidden_login have unpublished modules. Updated the condition. + Fixed mod_hg_static_content not displaying multiple markers. + Fixed menu items background-color problem. + Added superfish support to default menu module. If you create a Menu Module and place it in the position "navigation", make sure you add "sf-menu" in the Module Suffix class field, this will trigger the superfish JS. + Added width/height values for the HG Team module

* Version 1.0.3 / 27.04.2013

+ Fixed image resizing in Portfolio categories. Not having height values, there were some Warnings (Division by zero). Added a default height value given by the width vs. height ratio. + Added Relative/Absolute path setting in HG Static Content Module - Maps layout. This fixes the Map's Pin problem. + Added posibility to have another menu than the Superfish menu included in the template. + New position 'navigation'. This will hold menu modules published through Module Manager. To disable the template's default menu, go to Template Settings > Kallyas > Default menu (option) - select "No Menu". This will activate the 'navigation position'.

* Version 1.0.2x / 15.04.2013

+ Fixed a problem of the Joomla 3.x's installation which was not passing the last step of it. The solution is either to open installation/index.php and on line 8 to add this line ini_set('display_errors','off'); or just make sure display_errors in php is set to off (at least for the installation).

* Version 1.0.2 / 11.04.2013

+ Fixed some modules which had problems with the earlier versions of PHP 5.3.x of the PHP_ROUND_HALF_DOWN constant. Fixed (modules affected mod_hg_featureboxes, mod_hg_imageboxes, mod_hg_latestposts, mod_hg_pricingtables, mod_hg_serviceboxes).

* Version 1.0.1 / 09.04.2013

+ Fixed module mod_hg_vm_products_carousel added custom ITEM ID field. If the 'source' page where the carousel is published has many modules, some of them might appear also inside the product's page. + Added Licenses folder inside the pack

** Version 1.0 / 09.04.2013 – Initial release

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