I am Suzie Weathers. I'm a Reactor operator in the Naturohair at Peachtree City, GA
There is a difference, a rather significant difference. Prior to my self-acceptance, I put on various articles of woman’s clothing. Some ill fitting lingerie and a too big dress. A two piece (purchased as a pair) skirt and top combo. Bra, panties and pantyhose underneath 15 layers of male clothing so no one would know. I was simply putting things on. That was both because I was principally disgusted with myself as well as the way I acquired clothing back then. That compulsion lead to putting things on, self acceptance lead to wearing things. I could draw a similar distinction to wearing women’s clothing vs. dressing like a woman, maybe I will someday. I had no idea what size anything I was. Since I am male, I assumed I should be an XL in woman’s clothing (even before my weight loss, that wasn’t the case). I also bought clothing in the quickest possible fashion, grabbing whatever, paying quickly and getting out of Dodge as soon as I could. I simply put things on me. Now, I wear women’s clothing because in many ways, I am a woman. Things fit properly. They are part of a well thought through outfit. I am proudly female! Now being who and what I am now for quite some time, I still have times when I put things on and when I do, they are never comfortable or simply don’t feel right. Frankly, I feel stupid afterward. I’ll use the bra as an example. When I wear a bra and by that I mean it is performing it’s intended function of supporting breasts (be they my own or my enhanced breasts), it is comfortable and I do not even think about the fact that I am wearing it. But when I try to put one on as myself, my physique is such that the bra is not doing anything supportive, it’s just there. As such, I am fully aware of it the entire time I am wearing it. I have had this experience with other articles of clothing when they are not being “worn” for their intended purpose, they are just “put on” to scratch an itch. I guess this is an analogy for my life, I “put on” a front for most of my life and now I “wear” who and what I am proudly! I’m certainly not perfect and not open to all of the world, but I am open to much of the world and am very proud of myself for doing so. Wear it ladies! ____________________________________________ Bonus Post: November 11, 2020 – Yeah, I am skipping ahead chronologically, but this outing isn’t worth a full post. On this day, I had an electrolysis appointment where only one other human being would see me. So no need to do much outfit-wise. On the way there, I stopped at yet another antique mall which I spied along the way. No real story. I went very simple and casual this day. Not my greatest pictures, but I did get out this day. from Kandi's Land https://kandis328772669.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/putting-things-on-vs-wearing-things/ via IFTTTSidor som bodycontact via Blogger Putting Things On vs. Wearing Thingssidor som bodycontact
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Posted by Tom.Capper Google Analytics data is used to support tons of important work, ranging from our everyday marketing reporting, all the way to investment decisions. To that end, it's integral that we're aware of just how that data works. In this Best of Whiteboard Friday edition, Tom Capper explains how the sessions metric in Google Analytics works, several ways that it can have unexpected results, and as a bonus, how sessions affect the time on page metric (and why you should rethink using time on page for reporting). Editor’s note: Tom Capper is now an independent SEO consultant. This video is from 2018, but the same principles hold up today. There is only one minor caveat: the words "user" and "browser" are used interchangeably early in the video, which still hold mostly true. Google is trying to further push multi-device users as a concept with Google Analytics 4, but still relies on users being logged in, as well as extra tracking setup. For most sites most of the time, neither of these conditions hold. Video TranscriptionHello, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I am Tom Capper. I am a consultant at Distilled, and today I'm going to be talking to you about how sessions work in Google Analytics. Obviously, all of us use Google Analytics. Pretty much all of us use Google Analytics in our day-to-day work. Data from the platform is used these days in everything from investment decisions to press reporting to the actual marketing that we use it for. So it's important to understand the basic building blocks of these platforms. Up here I've got the absolute basics. So in the blue squares I've got hits being sent to Google Analytics. So when you first put Google Analytics on your site, you get that bit of tracking code, you put it on every page, and what that means is when someone loads the page, it sends a page view. So those are the ones I've marked P. So we've got page view and page view and so on as you're going around the site. I've also got events with an E and transactions with a T. Those are two other hit types that you might have added. The job of Google Analytics is to take all this hit data that you're sending it and try and bring it together into something that actually makes sense as sessions. So they're grouped into sessions that I've put in black, and then if you have multiple sessions from the same browser, then that would be a user that I've marked in pink. The issue here is it's kind of arbitrary how you divide these up. These eight hits could be one long session. They could be eight tiny ones or anything in between. So I want to talk today about the different ways that Google Analytics will actually split up those hit types into sessions. So over here I've got some examples I'm going to go through. But first I'm going to go through a real-world example of a brick-and-mortar store, because I think that's what they're trying to emulate, and it kind of makes more sense with that context. Brick-and-mortar exampleSo in this example, say a supermarket, we enter by a passing trade. That's going to be our source. Then we've got an entrance is in the lobby of the supermarket when we walk in. We got passed from there to the beer aisle to the cashier, or at least I do. So that's one big, long session with the source passing trade. That makes sense. In the case of a brick-and-mortar store, it's not to difficult to divide that up and try and decide how many sessions are going on here. There's not really any ambiguity. In the case of websites, when you have people leaving their keyboard for a while or leaving the computer on while they go on holiday or just having the same computer over a period of time, it becomes harder to divide things up, because you don't know when people are actually coming and going. So what they've tried to do is in the very basic case something quite similar: arrive by Google, category page, product page, checkout. Great. We've got one long session, and the source is Google. Okay, so what are the different ways that that might go wrong or that that might get divided up? Several things that can change the meaning of a session1. Time zoneThe first and possibly most annoying one, although it doesn't tend to be a huge issue for some sites, is whatever time zone you've set in your Google Analytics settings, the midnight in that time zone can break up a session. So say we've got midnight here. This is 12:00 at night, and we happen to be browsing. We're doing some shopping quite late. Because Google Analytics won't allow a session to have two dates, this is going to be one session with the source Google, and this is going to be one session and the source will be this page. So this is a self-referral unless you've chosen to exclude that in your settings. So not necessarily hugely helpful. 2. Half-hour cutoff for "coffee breaks"
Another thing that can happen is you might go and make a cup of coffee. So ideally if you went and had a cup of coffee while in you're in Tesco or a supermarket that's popular in whatever country you're from, you might want to consider that one long session. Google has made the executive decision that we're actually going to have a cutoff of half an hour by default. If you leave for half an hour, then again you've got two sessions. One, the category page is the landing page and the source of Google, and one in this case where the blog is the landing page, and this would be another self-referral, because when you come back after your coffee break, you're going to click through from here to here. This time period, the 30 minutes, that is actually adjustable in your settings, but most people do just leave it as it is, and there isn't really an obvious number that would make this always correct either. It's kind of, like I said earlier, an arbitrary distinction. 3. Leaving the site and coming back
The next issue I want to talk about is if you leave the site and come back. So obviously it makes sense that if you enter the site from Google, browse for a bit, and then enter again from Bing, you might want to count that as two different sessions with two different sources. However, where this gets a little murky is with things like external payment providers. If you had to click through from the category page to PayPal to the checkout, then unless PayPal is excluded from your referral list, then this would be one session, entrance from Google, one session, entrance from checkout. The last issue I want to talk about is not necessarily a way that sessions are divided, but a quirk of how they are. 4. Return direct sessionsIf you were to enter by Google to the category page, go on holiday and then use a bookmark or something or just type in the URL to come back, then obviously this is going to be two different sessions. You would hope that it would be one session from Google and one session from direct. That would make sense, right? But instead, what actually happens is that, because Google and most Google Analytics and most of its reports uses last non-direct click, we pass through that source all the way over here, so you've got two sessions from Google. Again, you can change this timeout period. So that's some ways that sessions work that you might not expect. As a bonus, I want to give you some extra information about how this affects a certain metric, mainly because I want to persuade you to stop using it, and that metric is time on page. Bonus: Three scenarios where this affects time on pageSo I've got three different scenarios here that I want to talk you through, and we'll see how the time on page metric works out. I want you to bear in mind that, basically, because Google Analytics really has very little data to work with typically, they only know that you've landed on a page, and that sent a page view and then potentially nothing else. If you were to have a single page visit to a site, or a bounce in other words, then they don't know whether you were on that page for 10 seconds or the rest of your life. They've got no further data to work with. So what they do is they say, "Okay, we're not going to include that in our average time on page metrics." So we've got the formula of time divided by views minus exits. However, this fudge has some really unfortunate consequences. So let's talk through these scenarios. Example 1: Intuitive time on page = actual time on pageIn the first scenario, I arrive on the page. It sends a page view. Great. Ten seconds later I trigger some kind of event that the site has added. Twenty seconds later I click through to the next page on the site. In this case, everything is working as intended in a sense, because there's a next page on the site, so Google Analytics has that extra data of another page view 20 seconds after the first one. So they know that I was on here for 20 seconds. In this case, the intuitive time on page is 20 seconds, and the actual time on page is also 20 seconds. Great. Example 2: Intuitive time on page is higher than measured time on pageHowever, let's think about this next example. We've got a page view, event 10 seconds later, except this time instead of clicking somewhere else on the site, I'm going to just leave altogether. So there's no data available, but Google Analytics knows we're here for 10 seconds. So the intuitive time on page here is still 20 seconds. That's how long I actually spent looking at the page. But the measured time or the reported time is going to be 10 seconds. Example 3: Measured time on page is zeroThe last example, I browse for 20 seconds. I leave. I haven't triggered an event. So we've got an intuitive time on page of 20 seconds and an actual time on page or a measured time on page of 0. The interesting bit is when we then come to calculate the average time on page for this page that appeared here, here, and here, you would initially hope it would be 20 seconds, because that's how long we actually spent. But your next guess, when you look at the reported or the available data that Google Analytics has in terms of how long we're on these pages, the average of these three numbers would be 10 seconds. So that would make some sense. What they actually do, because of this formula, is they end up with 30 seconds. So you've got the total time here, which is 30, divided by the number of views, we've got 3 views, minus 2 exits. Thirty divided 3 minus 2, 30 divided by 1, so we've got 30 seconds as the average across these 3 sessions. Well, the average across these three page views, sorry, for the amount of time we're spending, and that is longer than any of them, and it doesn't make any sense with the constituent data. So that's just one final tip to please not use average time on page as a reporting metric. I hope that's all been useful to you. I'd love to hear what you think in the comments below. Thanks. Video transcription by Speechpad.com Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! from Moz Blog https://moz.com/blog/google-analytics-sessions via swingers klubbar via Blogger How Do Sessions Work in Google Analytics? — Best of Whiteboard Fridaysidor som bodycontact Min syrra flyttade tillbaka hem när mamma och pappa flyttade till lägenhet. Huset är välskött men inte helt enligt hennes önskemål såklart. I över ett års tid har hon tänkt:) Hon har varit permitterad i ganska många månader utan att påbörja något inne. Ute däremot har hon sett till så både det ena och det andra är fint . Nu, lagom till hon återigen gick upp på heltid så påbörjades inomhusrenoveringen. Såklart med hjälp av Jimpa:) Sovrummet är klart även om det nu står massa möbler där som inte kan stå på sin vanliga plats, för det är allt på en gång nu:) Eller en sak i taget men direkt på nästa är mer rätt. I går kom ett nytt golv på plats i köket/hallen. Före: Never mind att det ser ut som skit på bänkarna, hon renoverar Hon gillade golvet och jag tycker det var skitfult. Men det hade sett sina bästa dagar. Så ut med det och under låg ett vitt. Det ser fint ut men var fullt av klösmärken;) Efter en av katterna som vände på stället med hjälp av klorna Originalgolvet var en orange korkmatta. Den är dessvärre utriven sen länge, lite trist om den var fin för den hade en jäkligt härlig färg. Huset är byggt 1976:) så det var mkt brunt och orange. Nu ser det ut så här : Så jäkla snyggt!! Kaklet vid diskbänken ska bli vitt, och skåpen ska lackas om i vitt och få nya handtag. Den rosa färgen är så snygg!! Här ska det stå en rad med skåp, som nu är på plats. Jag låtsashjälpte Jimpa med socklarna. Sköt fast dem med spikpistolen men han gjorde all mätning och sågning. Ute i hallen är nu hatthyllan tillbaka på väggen. Nästa rum som är påbörjat är vardagsrummet där vi flyttade bort alla möbler idag och täckte golvet med papp. Väggarna är rullspacklade och ska slipas och målas, talet ska målas. Jag skrattade gott åt syrrans arbetsplats Inträngd i hörnet med en av tre bordsskivor på plats:) Men bara man får rum med det viktigaste, datorn och kaffet så är det ok Nu står bordet i köket igen, som ser väldigt fint ut. Jag har ju grått golv jag med och det är så himlans snyggt Nu är det rast vila till i morgon. Så nu går jag och lägger mig och läserVi hörs snart igen! Natti natti from Carola Wetterholm – Familjen Annorlunda https://carolawetterholm.se/2020/11/13/det-gar-framat/ via sexdejting via Blogger Det går framåt!sidor som bodycontact Innehåller annonslänk för Gavelo . Igår var det grått och tråkigt ute och idag är det om möjligt ännu värre. November har ledsnat på att försöka visa sig god. Jag somnade vid två och vaknade fyra igår natt. Helt jäkla klarvaken och det var jag sen. Som en jäkla uggla låg jag där och plirade ut i mörkret. Väckte barnen strax efter sju och gick och lade mig igen vid åtta. Två timmar sömn per natt räcker inte, men jag kunde inte somna då heller. Slumrade till tio i alla fall. Tänkte att dagen skulle bli lång:) Men den gick över förväntan. Började med ett pass HIT. Extra Coronaanpassad, och på så vis blev det ännu jävligare än det brukar vara. Och vi kör ju redan med den tuffaste ledaren så att säga att det var överjävligt är ingen underdrift. Det var lite svårt att ta sig hem sen, och när jag plötsligt fick snuten i arslet var jag några sekunder övertygad om att jag skulle bli stoppad för första gången någonsin. De bara dök upp bakom mig när jag körde ut ur rondellen, och de blåblinkande lamporna blixtrade i min backspegel. Som alltid så är min första tanke att jag gjort nåt fel. Jag kör som man ska, följer reglerna men har en aning svårt för de här ”nya” hastigheterna. När man kört femtio på en sträcka i tusen år är det svårt att få in i gasfoten att det är 40. Samma tvärtom. 30 som blivit 40 är oftast 30 ändå. Just precis där så är vägen smal, de har byggt ut en snabbcykelbana som gör att man bra precis kan mötas. På min sida, höger, så är det en hög trottoarkant. Möte hela tiden, och polisens blåblink i häcken. Vad vill de? Ha fri väg? Tja men jag kan inte flytta på mig. Helt omöjligt här. Jag tänker INTE gasa på heller för dels kör jag ju för fort då, och dels kanske de tror att jag försöker köra ifrån dem. Jag sitter ju ändå bakom ratten i en frän sjusitsig lågprisbil;) Vad betyder egentligen det där blåa blinket? Att jag ska stanna?? Är det så? Vill de i så fall att jag ska stanna HÄR? Eller en bit fram där man kan köra åt sidan? Fan vet. Hjärnan är ju snabb som tusan och tankarna ilade runt i överljudsfart. Rent förnuftigt, och med en blick på hastighetsmätaren, så visste jag att jag inte körde för fort. Jag hade kört korrekt i rondellen och alla lampor funkar på bilen. Inte heller kan jag tänka mig att min fräsiga Dacia är en speciellt vanlig flyktbil. Och om polisen har bråttom på riktigt så använder de sirenerna. Men ändå:) Jag vill inte vara i vägen för utryckningsfordon. Så fort vägen blev tillräckligt bred så höll jag åt höger och mötande trafik åt vänster och snutbilen gled snabbt förbi. Pust. De körde med blink utan siren men snabbare än hastighetsskyltarna säger så lite brådis hade de väl. Sen mötte jag dem lite längre bort så vad det än var så hade det löst sig utan dem. Jag lämnade av Patricia hemma och åkte och hämtade mamma. Hon skulle vaccinera sig mot bältros och influensa. Pappa hade ju bältros för ett tag sen, så efter att ha funderat länge så beslöt hon sig. En sån vaccination kostar 2500kr… Gosh! Och det krävs två stycken. Jag är inte så mkt för att vaccinera mig, men jag tycker att det borde vara gratis för riskgrupper, eller de som vill. Så mycket bättre att betala folks vaccin Istf sjukvården de kräver med eventuella följdsjukdomar och kvarstående besvär. Som mot fästingens TBE till exempel. Kostar massor, men det är ingenting mot vad vården kostar om man blir sjuk. Bättre att lägga pengarna på att förebygga tycker jag. Blir faktiskt billigare så. Men i alla fall. Det var kö utanför vaccinationsstället när vi kom. Dilemmat då blir ju: ska jag sällskapa med mamma, eller låta henne köa själv? Det stod mest äldre i kön. Fast det inte känns bra att låta henne frysa själv så satt jag kvar i bilen. En halvtimme senare var vi på väg hem igen. Jag släppte av mamma och åkte hem och käkade. Sen slog tröttheten till. Jisses! Kaffe och barn som kom från skolan räddade det tillfälligt men till sist lutade jag mig bakåt i trettio minuter och blundade. En powernap är underskattad, för jäklar vad den hjälper! Sen var jag pigg igen Jag lagade middag till kidsen, och hoppade sen i nya träningskläder. I går premiärkörde jag mina nya tights från Gavelo Jag har sparat lite på dem:) Jag har flera därifrån och jag vet ju hur sköna de är att träna i. De sitter som en jäkla smäck och man behöver inte dra i dem hela tiden. Midjan viker inte ner sig, vilket den gör på många andra. Den är perfekt i höjd:) De här kläderna är lite dyra men inte alls som många andra. Och jag tycker de är värda sitt pris. Att de är gjorda i återvunnet material är en extra bra aspekt. Det gick ovanligt bra att köra cirkelfysen efter ett grispass tidigare på dagen. Brallorna har bra kompression så de hjälper till:) Jag tror att min kod Carola10 gäller än . Hemma igen sen så var det mat, dusch och soffa, sen sova. Vaknade och var upp på toa, och den träningsvärken jag hade/ har i hela core-partiet är inte att leka med. Jösses Framsida lår är stramt och ont och rumpan ska man inte ens tala om. Idag kommer jag sitta i min fåtölj och skriva. Har en hel del som ska författas. Sen ett utvecklingssamtal med Novalie via teams, skönt så slipper man klä på sig Jag måste handla. Och sen ska jag till syrran och spika sa Jimpa. Jag har absolut ingen aning om vad som ska spikas dock. Men har väl missat nåt. Jag vet att vi ska skruva upp hatthyllan och bära möbler, men just spika vete fan. Det blir så fint hemma hos henne, ska visa er sen, men nu måste jag plugga! Hörs senare from Carola Wetterholm – Familjen Annorlunda https://carolawetterholm.se/2020/11/12/enklare-att-saga-var-det-inte-gor-ont/ via sexdejting via Blogger Enklare att säga var det inte gör ont ;)sidor som bodycontact October 30, 2020 – A few days back, my wife and I were doing some shopping for a remodeling project, on the other side of town. There I saw an antique mall!! That is what I call an outing destination, a frequent outing destination. So two days later, I made the drive again. Day two of a planned three day Kandi run. This will not be a long story. The morning was busy, working out, grocery shopping for both us and my parents, a few other errands. Plus the dog was my constant companion (good because I love him and also a pain in the behind because I love our empty nest). I then got dressed knowing I would be masked the entire time out and that my outfit left very little skin exposed. That means quicker prep time. I picked up this sweater recently at Piece Unique from the 90% off rack, so it was basically disposable. The rest of the outfit just fell together. As I have recently stated, I know the longer wig looks better, but this one is uber comfortable when out. The long wig is an enormous hassle, I am never really comfortable it it or any longer wig. I’ll live with my poor hair choices for a while anyway. At the antique mall, I had a ball! There was so much to see and I just love browsing like that. My eyes light up at music related items, I get reminiscent seeing things from my youth. A pay phone! A rotary phone! A concert poster with tickets running $6! I could go on and on…… I finalized my Christmas shopping for one of the three people I give gifts to. I scored a few great beer glasses for myself and a wonderful old Brownie camera, circa before I was born, as I love tchotchkes like this. But the best part was I got two framed Beatles photographs from their visit to Cleveland in 1966. One in a limo and one at their press conference. I also picked up a Beatles logo wall plaque. Score!! This is all I ask for, a place to walk about, look at interesting things and maybe have a human interaction once in a while. I’m not asking too much, am I? Two and a half hours door to door (the dog was happy about that), a great outing on a crappy weather day. Supper Club tonight!!!!!! from Kandi's Land https://kandis328772669.wordpress.com/2020/11/12/antiquing/ via IFTTTSidor som bodycontact via Blogger Antiquingsidor som bodycontact Som vanligt, på förmiddagen, släpade jag mig ut till baksidan för att fylla på till ekorrarna. Nu fyller jag halva burkarna med solrosfrön och resten med jordnötter. Att de äter solrosfrön visade det sig när en satt i fågelrestaurangen och åt en morgon. Hur den kommit dit är något av en gåta. Klättra går inte. Hur som helst, när jag höll på med påfyllningen, kom Norpan farande. När det var färdigt, var hon borta. Trodde jag. Det rasslade bekant av kattklor i träd och däruppe var hon. Hon hade den där spanande blicken och sedan tittade hon ner på mig. Det blir ingen ”duktig katt” idag, tänkte jag och gick bort. Hade jag sagt ”duktig katt”, hade öronen åkt tillbaka på henne och så hade hon varit 10 meter till upp i trädet. Jag känner henne nu, ADHD-katten. Ville inte att historien skulle upprepas. Den skadan hade orsakats av fall från hög höjd. Just idag (11/11) är det 4 år sedan hon kom tillbaka skadad efter att ha varit borta i 17 dagar. Stod i skymundan och tittade på hur hon sökte en väg ner. Hon sprang fram och tillbaka en kvart innan hon kom ner. I morse förstörde jag glädjen för Norpan genom att såga ner möjligheten. När jag stod där och smygkikade på Norpan, fick jag distans till anordningen som ser ut som ett trädklättrande skrotupplag. Så sjukt det blir när människan griper in i naturen. from Flytten till landet https://zekezypt.com/2020/11/11/adhd-katten/ via IFTTT bodycontact medlem via Blogger ADHD-kattensidor som bodycontact Okay, I coopted a Mama’s and Papa’s song title here, but I have to do this hundreds and hundreds of times, so cut me some slack! October 29, 2020 – So this week I am hoping for a three day Kandi run. We are dog sitting for a week, which puts a bit of a crimp on my activities. I booked (you have to do that now) a visit to the Akron Art Museum on a very rainy day. I am in a complete masked situation and can’t stay out as long as I’d like, so I went with what I thought was the right outfit. My outfit this day is a bit of my Joanna Cash (pardon the bad play on words) homage. I recently picked up the cowl neck sweater for a buck, it has some flaws, but with the jacket, I liked it. And it’s an XS!! The jacket, a fav! Black jeans and cute sneaks and out the door this girl goes! My visit was uneventful but much better than I had anticipated. It certainly is not as large as The Cleveland Museum of Art, but I very much enjoyed it. And I am not really an art person. Here are a few photos of my visit. Not yet wanting to head home, I made my way to the nearby mall, one I frequent often. All I had planned on doing was walk the mall for a half hour and head home to see the dog. But as I walked into the door of Dillard’s of all places, I saw a vinyl record display. Bingo! I picked up a new copy of Abbey Road, one of the Christmas gifts on my list. I was so happy!!!! So before I left, me and the dog did a little photo shoot. He is the cute one…… A nice day, a good outfit, getting out in public, seeing a place I had never seen before, Abbey Road and me and my friend having some fun. Lucky me!! from Kandi's Land https://kandis328772669.wordpress.com/2020/11/11/rainy-days-and-thursdays/ via IFTTTSidor som bodycontact via Blogger Rainy Days and Thursdays……sidor som bodycontact Posted by MiriamEllis Get found. Get chosen. It’s the local SEO two-step at the heart of every campaign. It’s the 1-2 punch combo that hinges on a balance of visible, accurate contact data, and a volunteer salesforce of consumer reviewers who are supporting your rise to local prominence. But here’s the thing: while managed location data and reviews may be of equal and complementary power, they shouldn’t require an equal share of your time. Automation of basic business data distribution is the key to freeing you up to focus on the elements of listings that require human ingenuity — namely, reviews and other listings-based content like posts and Q&A. It’s my hope that sharing this article with your team or your boss will help you get the financial allocations you need for automated listings management, plus generous resources for creative reputation management. Location data + reviews = the big pictureWhen Google lists a business, it gives good space to the business name, and a varying degree of space to the address and phone number. But look at the real estate occupied by the various aspects associated with reputation: If Google cares this much about ratings, review text, responses, and emerging elements like place topics and attributes, any local brand you’re marketing should see these factors as a priority. In this article, I’ll strive to codify your actionable perspective on managing both location data and the many aspects of reviews. Ratings: The most powerful local filter of them allIn the local SEO industry, we talk a lot about Google’s filters, like the Possum filter that’s supposed to strain local businesses through a sort of sieve so that a greater diversity of mapped results is shown to the searcher. But searchers have an even more powerful filter than this — the human-driven filter of ratings that helps people intuitively sort local brands by perceived quality. Whether they’re stars or circles, the majority of rating icons send a 1–5 point signal to consumers that can be instantly understood. This symbol system has been around since at least the 1820s; it’s deeply ingrained in all our brains as a judgement of value. This useful, rapid form of shorthand lets a searcher needing to do something like grab a quick taco see that the food truck with five Yelp stars is likely a better bet than the one with only two. Meanwhile, searchers with more complex needs can comb through the ratings of many listings at leisure, carefully weighing one option against another for major purchases. In Google’s local results, ratings are the most powerful human-created filter that influences the major goal of being chosen. But before a local brand can be chosen on the basis of its high ratings, it has to rank well enough to be found. The good news is that, over the past three years, expert local SEOs have become increasingly convinced of the impact of Google ratings on Google local pack rankings. In 2017, when I wrote the original version of this post, contributors to the Local Search Ranking Factors survey placed Google star ratings down at #24 in terms of local rankings influence. In 2020, this metric has jumped up to spot #8 — a leap of 16 spots in just three years. In the interim, Google has been experimenting with different ratings-related displays. In 2017, they were testing the application of a “highly rated” snippet on hotel rankings in the local packs. Today, their complex hotel results let the user opt to see only 4+ star results. Meanwhile, local SEOs have noticed patterns over the years like searches with the format of “best X in city” (e.g. best burrito in Dallas) appearing to default to local results made up of businesses that have earned a minimum average of four stars. Doubtless, observations like these have strengthened experts’ convictions that Google cares a lot about ratings and allows them to influence rank. Heading into 2021, any local brand with goals of being found and chosen must view low ratings as an impediment to reaching full growth potential. Consumer sentiment: The local business story your customers are writing for youHere’s a randomly chosen Google 3-pack result when searching just for “tacos” in a small city in the San Francisco Bay Area: We’ve just covered the topic of ratings, and you can look at a result like this to get that instant gut feeling about the 4-star-rated eateries vs. the 2-star place. Now, let’s open the book on business #3 and see precisely what kind of brand story its consumers are writing, as you would in conducting a professional review audit for a local business, excerpting dominant sentiment: It’s easy to ding fast food chains. Their business model isn’t commonly associated with fine dining or the kind of high wages that tend to promote employee excellence. In some ways, I think of them as extreme examples. Yet, they serve as good teaching models for how even the most modest-quality offerings create certain expectations in the minds of consumers, and when those basic expectations aren’t met, it’s enough of a story for consumers to share in the form of reviews. This particular restaurant location has an obvious problem with slow service, orders being filled incorrectly, and employees who have been denied the training they need to represent the brand in a knowledgeable, friendly, or accessible manner. If you audited a different business, its pain points might surround outdated fixtures or low standards of cleanliness. Whatever the case, when the incoming consumer turns to the review world, their eyes scan the story as it scrolls down their screen. Repeat mentions of a particular negative issue can create enough of a theme to turn the potential customer away. One survey says only up to 11% of consumers will do business with a brand that’s wound up with a 2-star rating based on poor reviews. Who can afford to let the other 91% of consumers go elsewhere? The central goal of being chosen hinges on recognizing that your reviewer base is a massive, unpaid salesforce that tells your brand story. Survey after survey consistently finds that people trust reviews — in fact, they may trust them more than any claim your brand can make about itself. Going into 2021, the writing is on the wall that Google cares a great deal about themes surfacing in your reviews. The ongoing development and display of place topics and attributes signifies Google’s increasing interest in parsing sentiment, and doubtless, using such data to determine relevance. Fully embracing review management and the total local customer service ecosystem is key to giving customers a positive tale to tell, enabling the business you’re marketing to be trusted and chosen for the maximum number of transactions. Velocity/recency/count: Just enough of a timely good thing to be competitiveThis is one of the easiest aspects of review management to convey. You can sum it up in one sentence: don’t get too many reviews at once on any given platform but do get enough reviews on an ongoing basis to avoid looking like you’ve gone out of business. For a little more background on the first part of that statement, watch Mary Bowling describing in this LocalU video how she audited a law firm that went from zero to thirty 5-star reviews within a single month. Sudden gluts of reviews like this not only look odd to alert customers, but they can trip review platform filters, resulting in removal. Remember, reviews are a business lifetime effort, not a race. Get a few this month, a few next month, and a few the month after that. Keep going. The second half of the review timing paradigm relates to not running out of steam in your acquisition campaigns. Multiple surveys indicate that the largest percentage of review readers consider content from the past month to be most relevant. Despite this, Google’s index is filled with local brands that haven’t been reviewed in over a year, leaving searchers to wonder if a place is still in business, or if it’s so unimpressive that no one is bothering to review it. While I’d argue that review recency may be more important in review-oriented industries (like restaurants) vs. those that aren’t quite as actively reviewed (like septic system servicing), the idea here is similar to that of velocity, in that you want to keep things going. Don’t run a big review acquisition campaign in January and then forget about outreach for the rest of the year. A moderate, steady pace of acquisition is ideal. And finally, a local SEO FAQ comes from business owners who want to know how many reviews they need to earn. There’s no magic number, but the rule of thumb is that you need to earn more reviews than the top competitor you are trying to outrank for each of your search terms. This varies from keyword phrase, to keyword phrase, from city to city, from vertical to vertical. The best approach is steady growth of reviews to surpass whatever number the top competitor has earned. Authenticity: Honesty is the only honest policyFor me, this is one of the most prickly and interesting aspects of the review world. Three opposing forces meet on this playing field: business ethics, business education, and the temptations engendered by the obvious limitations of review platforms to police themselves. I often recall a basic review audit I did for a family-owned restaurant belonging to a friend of a friend. Within minutes, I realized that the family had been reviewing their own restaurant on Yelp (a glaring violation of Yelp’s policy). I felt sorry to see this, but being acquainted with the people involved (and knowing them to be quite nice!), I highly doubted they had done this out of some dark impulse to deceive the public. Rather, my guess was that they may have thought they were “getting the ball rolling” for their new business, hoping to inspire real reviews. My gut feeling was that they simply lacked the necessary education to understand that they were being dishonest with their community and how this could lead to them being publicly shamed by Yelp, or even subjected to a lawsuit, if caught. In such a scenario, there’s definitely an opportunity for the marketer to offer the necessary education to describe the risks involved in tying a brand to misleading practices, highlighting how vital it is to build trust within the local community. Fake positive reviews aren’t building anything real on which a company can stake its future. Ethical business owners will catch on when you explain this in honest terms and can then begin marketing themselves in smarter ways. But then there's the other side. Mike Blumenthal’s reporting on this has set a high bar in the industry, with coverage of developments like the largest review spam network he’d ever encountered. There's simply no way to confuse organized, global review spam with a busy small business making a wrong, novice move. Real temptation resides in this scenario, because, as Blumenthal states: “Review spam at this scale, unencumbered by any Google enforcement, calls into question every review that Google has. Fake business listings are bad, but businesses with 20, or 50, or 150 fake reviews are worse. They deceive the searcher and the buying public and they stain every real review, every honest business, and Google.” When a platform like Google makes it easy to “get away with” deception, companies lacking ethics will take advantage of the opportunity. Beyond reporting review spam, one of the best things we can do as marketers is to offer ethical clients the education that helps them make honest choices. We can simply pose the question: Is it better to fake your business’ success or to actually achieve success? Local brands that choose to take the high road must avoid:
Owner responses: creatively turning reviews into two-way conversationsOver the years, I’ve devoted abundant space in my column here at Moz to the fascinating topic of owner responses. I’ve highlighted the five types of Google My Business reviews and how to respond to them, I’ve diagrammed a real-world example of how a terrible owner response can make a bad situation even worse, and I’ve studied basic reputation management for better customer service and how to get unhappy customers to edit their negative reviews. My key learnings from nearly two decades of examining reviews and responses are these:
Local brands and agencies can use software to automate updating a phone number or hours of operation. Software like Moz Local can be of real help in alerting you to new, incoming reviews across multiple platforms, or surfacing the top sentiment themes within your review corpus. Tools free up resources to manage what can’t be automated: human creativity. It takes serious creative resources to spend time with review sentiment and respond to customers in a way that makes a brand stand out as responsive and worthy. It takes time to fully utilize the opportunities owner responses represent to impact goals all the way from the top to the bottom of the sales funnel. I’ve never forgotten a piece Florian Huebner wrote for StreetFight documenting the neglected reviews of a major fast food chain and its subsequent increase in location closures and decrease in profits. No one was taking the time to sit down with the reviews, listen, fix problems customers were citing, or offer proofs of caring resolution via owner responses. And all too often, when brands large and small do respond to reviews, they take a corporate-speak stance equivalent to “whistling past the graveyard” when addressing complaints. To keep the customer and to signal to the public that the brand deserves to be chosen, creative resources must be allocated to providing gutsy, honest owner responses. It’s easy to spot the difference: The response in yellow signals that the brand simply isn’t invested in customer retention. By contrast, the response in blue is a sample of what it takes to have a real conversation with a real person on the other side of the review text, in hopes of transforming one bad initial experience into a second chance, and hopefully, a lifetime of loyalty. NAP and reviews: The 1–2 punch combo every local business must practiceRight now, there’s an employee at a local business or a staffer at an agency who is looking at the review corpus of a brand that’s struggling for rankings and profits. The set of reviews contains mixed sentiment, and no one is responding to either positive or negative customer experiences. Maybe this is an issue that’s been brought up from time to time in company meetings, but it’s never made it to priority status. Decision-makers have felt that time and budget are better spent elsewhere. Meanwhile, customers are quietly trickling away for lack of attention, leads are being missed, structural issues are being ignored… If the employee or staffer I’m describing is you, my best advice is to make 2021 the year you make your strongest case for automating listing distribution and management with software so that creative resources can be dedicated to full reputation management. Local SEO experts, your customers and clients, and Google, itself, are all indicating that location data + reviews are highly impactful and here to stay. In fact, history proves that this combination is deeply embedded in our entire approach to local commerce. When traveling salesman Duncan Hines first published his 1935 review guide Adventures in Good Eating, he was developing what we think of today as local SEO. Here is my color-coded version of his review of the business that would one day become KFC. It should look strangely familiar to anyone who has ever tackled local business listings management: No phone number on this “citation,” of course, but telephones were quite a luxury in 1935. Barring that element, this simple and historic review has the core earmarks of a modern local business listing. It has location data and review data; it’s the 1–2 punch combo every local business still needs to get right today. Without the NAP, the business can’t be found. Without the sentiment, the business gives little reason to be chosen. From Duncan Hines to the digital age, there may be nothing new under the sun in marketing, but striking the right pose between listings and reputation management may be new news to your CEO, your teammates, or clients. So go for it — communicate this stuff, and good luck at your next big meeting! Check out the new Moz Local plans that let you take care of location data distribution in seconds so that the balance of your focus can be on creatively caring for the customer. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! from Moz Blog https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-1-2-punch via swingers klubbar via Blogger Location Data + Reviews: The 1–2 Punch of Local SEO (Updated for 2020)sidor som bodycontact Jag har som ju alla vet, nio barn. Nio barn innebär nio cyklar, och när de nio barnen växer så behövs större cyklar. Nåns blir stulen och nån kompis undrar om man vill ha deras barns urvuxna cyklar och till sist så har man, eller jagungefär tusen cyklar. Som står. Och skruttar ihop. Och hur fan fraktar man cyklar som inte går in i bilen liksom? Enklare att ställa dem under taket på baksidan När Jimpa fick klart för sig detta så sa han att jag skulle samla ihop dem så skulle han komma med kärran och köra dem till återvinningen. Ja, han är bäst:) Så jag gjorde så småningom som han sagt, men sen kom vi på att de inte har öppet för att kunna ställa in fungerande saker på återvinningen, så de skulle få åka i metallcontainern. Jag är starkt emot att kasta bort saker som kan fixas så jag mailade till Uppsala Returcyklar. De gör just sånt, fixar upp gamla vrak och säljer dem till hyfsat billiga priser. Jag var där och kikade i våras:) Jag frågade om de möjligen kunde tänka sig att hämta? Och det kunde de ju. Så idag kom de med en stor lastbil och packade in tretton cyklar De tar tillvara på det som går, antingen hela cykeln eller de delar som är ok. Jag har fler, typ kanske tjugo eller såmen de är i cykelbart skick. Vi behöver en i var, det blir tio. Janelle bor för all del inte hemma men ändå Sen några extra för kompisar eller när det är punka. (Och så står det faktiskt kvar några gamla rat, Jimpa, som jag gömt längst in ) Jag har flyttat runt saker här hemma också idag. Lite planlöst och utan att komma på nåt vettigt ställe. Kastade lite reklam och städade i kastrullskåpet. Alltså… hur svårt ska det vara att ställa tillbaka kastrullen/stekpannan som man tog den?? Va? För den delen… hur svårt ska det vara att diska den ordentligt? Även på utsidan Jag tog ut en gammal lergryta. Funderar på att kasta den..? Är det nån som vill hylla den och ge mig en, gärna fler, anledningar att behålla den? Sist jag lagade nåt i den gick nog fan Jesus i kortbrallor fortfarande. Då mest troligt en hel kyckling, något vi i princip aldrig lagar nu för tiden. Vem pallar det när det finns kycklingfiléer? Barnen tycker det är sjukt äckligt med hel kyckling också Jag undrar ibland om de inte har koll på hur maten ser ut när den lever… Men det har de bara de får tänka till lite:) Jag kan inte påstå att jag är förtjust i just hela djur. Kycklingen man ska dra ut en plastpåse med inälvor ur magen på… fisken man ska skära huvudet av och filea och bena ur… det är fan trögt att skära i ben! Bröstbenet allrahelst. Dessutom så funderar jag varje gång på hur de här människorna som styckar andra människor klarar av det? Det är ju dödsäckligt att skära huvudet av en fisk hur kan man ens tänka tanken att göra det på en person?? Obegripligt, men det finns ju folk till allt så inget förvånar en längre. Men fan vilka sjuka typer! Ja, så står jag och funderar när jag lagar mat Så småningom fick jag ändå lite jobb gjort och efter det gled jag i träningskläderna. När jag skulle fickparkera så gick hjärnan i baklås. För mycket folk runtomkring, för mkt trafik, även om luckan var tillräcklig så fick jag inte in framvagnen. Andas. Andas. ANDAS! Tre försök sen ger man upp, och testar en annan ruta, det är sen gammalt, där snajdade jag in bilen direkt. Jag är inte bra på att fickparkera, det erkänner jag villigt. Skyller på mina många år bakom ratten på en förlängd folkvagnsbuss. Även om man kan så är det sällan det finns tillräckligt stora luckor:) In och träna och idag kändes gårdagen väldigt väl i akterpartiet Efter utfört värv fortsatte jag hem till syrran där jag missade allt det roliga när de rev ut mattan i köket och hallen, men kom lagom till fikat:) Fick skjuts hem av Jimpa och nu är det snart sovdags. . I morgon är det HIT, och sen ska jag köra mamma till vaccinationsbyrån. Sen Cirkelfys:) Mellan det ska jag städa tror jag. Eller läsa för nu ska jag börja på min Farsdagspresent till mig själv:) Om jag någonsin kommer så långt att jag får ge ut en bok, så ska jag byta namn:) Att som Karin Slaughter skriva rysliga bloddrypande deckare och heta Slaktare i efternamn är ballt Jag funderar på Carola Dräpare? Eller Carola Baneman? Carola Killer? Hm nja… Nä Hörrni! Dags att sova! Natti natti from Carola Wetterholm – Familjen Annorlunda https://carolawetterholm.se/2020/11/11/tank-vad-latt-det-var/ via sexdejting via Blogger Tänk vad lätt det var!sidor som bodycontact Inte ofta det händer men för en vecka sedan for vi hemifrån. Vägen gick söderut. Vättern såg kall ut som vanligt men här skulle vi inte bada. Efter 9 mil var vi framme vid Hooks Herrgård. Vi hittade dit utan GPS. Här skulle vi njuta av den fina presenten Lotta fick till sin 70-årsdag. En SPA-weekend. Kändes kul att ta klivet in i den fina miljön. Här började kameran må dåligt. Jag hade väl dreglat på den. Bilderna nedan är Hooks Herrgårds egna. Vad man kan vänta sig i inredning på en herrgård. Klassisk. Såg inbjudande ut men vi stack vidare… …det varma badet. Där var det riktigt skönt. Vi nöjde oss med det men det fanns flera bad. Här är bildbeviset på att vi badade. Trerätters med gott att dricka som avslutades med en crème bryle. Glest med folk under frukosten. Folk höll avstånd. Alltid gott med ”hotellfrukost”. Speciellt när det inte händer så ofta. Tog en sväng i omgivningarna innan vi åkte hem. Ångrade att jag inte tagit med mig fiskeutrustningen. Via City Gross och Jula var hemma igen hos alla djuren. Det var skönt och välbehövligt att vara hemifrån några dagar. Tack än en gång! from Flytten till landet https://zekezypt.com/2020/11/10/pa-rymmen/ via IFTTT bodycontact medlem via Blogger På rymmensidor som bodycontact |