How To Rank Up Your Website Fast

Naturally, search engine optimization should be very high on your list of features to bring to your website. If people are going to discover your site, they will likely have to search for it. Keywords are indispensable to making your site visible on search engines when a potential reader is looking for the information you provide.

Keywords Keywords Everywhere!

What are keywords anyway? Well, as search engine users we use keywords all the time to find what we’re looking for. Keywords are single words or phrases that get to the meat of what users want to locate and what websites want to communicate. It’s what your ideal reader and your website's content have in common, a connection you have to do your best to help create. So it’s crucial that you understand who exactly this “ideal reader” is—that is, know your audience. 

Once you have that down, then to find the perfect keywords for your site, just think to yourself: if my ideal reader were trying to find this website, what would s/he search for? Add those terms to your list of keywords. Then you also have to consider people who don’t know exactly what they want. Which other things a person might search for even if finding your site is what would really benefit them? Then add those. It's really that simple.

Well... almost. There’s a difference between knowing keywords and knowing where to put them. Because you know your content well, getting an understanding of your keywords can be as simple as finding synonyms and variations of the words already on your site. However, after that you still need to optimize, and this means putting them in the right places.

Keyword Placement

·       Content

Naturally (and this should go without saying, although it often doesn’t) your keywords should be in your content. Since your keywords are what your site is about, you should include them often and with variety. However, be careful not to overstuff your content with keywords so that it feels bloated and unnatural. Be tasteful as well as a smart about how you incorporate your keywords into your content.

Title Tag

Since these are the first words your viewer sees when they locate your page (along with a bunch of other pages) in the search engine results, it’s important that they see the keywords they were looking for in that tag. It’s also important to have them there so that they show up in the search results at all. Search engines also prioritize title tags that match keywords closely. So you can’t afford to leave your keywords out of them.

Meta Description

The meta description lives in the html of your website. It contains a paragraph of text that describes what your page is about, so it should be organically saturated with keywords already. Recalling that it might be necessary for you to expand your keyword base to catch indecisive searchers, add those in to be thorough.

Images

Images are content too and should therefore be optimized. Include keywords not just in image titles, but also in the file names on the computer from which you upload them.

Site Map and Structure

Since sitemaps are directories used by search engines in web crawling to determine whether it is necessary to search a particular page, keywords from the page should also be in the branches of the map in order to guide the engine.

Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics is all about rankings, so why wouldn’t you use it in your efforts to rank your site up in the fastest time possible? The wealth of information about users that Google collects will be useful in determining how your optimization strategies are performing. Google Analytics let you know where your traffic comes from—which sites and also which countries. It also lets you know what time of day your visitors stop by most often and which pages they prefer to read. The data will also let you know how well your ads are performing and which keywords are working the best. All this is information that you need to create a good SEO campaign, and you’ll need it to maintain the optimization of your site as well. Google Analytics also integrates well with other tools that help your site rank up. And if you’re intimidated by graphs and numbers, you’ll find so much information on how to use the analysis that you’ll still be able to understand and apply the data you get from Google.

Blog on your Website

Blogs provide an easy way to amass keywords on your website. If your keyword analysis shows that you need to include more of a particular keyword, just writing a blog post about it gives you an organic way to incorporate that word and broaden your viewer base while simultaneously tightening up your website’s focus. Plus, good blog posts keep your viewers on your site for extended periods, and time-on-site is a factor that Google uses to determine a page’s rank. So writing quality and engaging blogs that people find useful and interesting to read is an advantage that supports super-fast SEO ranking.

Spiders and Spider Linking

Spider bots crawl through the information on your website and index your webpages, which they later rank according to relevancy with respect to keywords, user time, and other cryptic stuff buried in the algorithms of the particular engine. What isn’t as cryptic is the fact that spiders basically see only text. So filling your page with text and making it keyword rich is half the battle of appealing to the spiders. The other half is creating a path (or road) to your page using links. Spiders crawl from page to page through links, so without external pages that link to yours, it’ll be difficult for the spiders to get to your page. This is where judicious guest posting comes in handy. Writing carefully thought out posts on others sites—posts that are valuable to them and help boost their site’s value—will benefit you in the long run, as those hosts will be happy not only to post links to your page on their sites for the spiders to find, but also to refer to your site’s content in ways that make human visitors want to click your links.

Remember that even though fast ranking takes work, it’s work worth doing because it’ll be rewarded if you put in the time. Working on keyword placement, blogging, spider linking, and mastering Google Analytics will get you well on your way to high ranking webpages and an overall successful website.

Meillassoux... but not all at once! (After Finitude Part 2)

For the next few paragraphs, Meillassoux remains in that correlational perspective which ensues once one "refuses to hypostatize the correlate". Consequently, for the next couple pages I'm disagreeing with everything. You'd think I were some kind of contrarian. Of course, that's his point. 

The correlationist that must deal with the arche-fossil or any ancestral statement takes it not as a thing that is in fact prior to givenness itself, but as something that merely pretends to be prior to givenness. 

I have no beef with him here--I would thoroughly disagree with any objection to the ancestral statement based on such arguments. What I'm not sure I believe is that it matters so much that something anterior to givenness has been posited. I think it's perfectly legitimate for something given to humans right now to present also its mode of generation in such a way that makes it possible to trace back to a time when no one would have been around to witness it. Here: 

"The deeper sense of ancestrality resides in the logical retrojection imposed upon its superficially chronological sense"  (16).

 This, I think, is where he (or is it they?) seem(s) to detect a more ponderous implication in the anteriority to givenness than I feel ready to admit. It's that logical retrojection, man!

Meillassoux... but not all at once! (After Finitude Part 1)

I guess I've always been a Kantian. I remember being little and wondering if people saw color the same. I remember thinking that I don't even know if we do. That conclusion made me into a person who always thought that however we understood things didn't matter because the thing itself would always evoke in each that which it always does—being so completely and consistently itself. And we the same. So that no matter what we each see, we would always agree at least on the words we use to refer to the thing in itself—which is objective. We could hold proper conversations about it and never get confused. 

But what we agree on and write down is still how we write it down, say it, see it, record it—even when it's math.

Writing for Losers: A Diatribe

Opening Gambit
I'm sure there are more than three possible interpretations of the title I've given this post, but here are the ones I've thought of:

1. Writing (is) for Losers.
2. (We are) Writing for Losers
3. (What) Writing (is...) for Losers

I opt for the third interpretation, although the second one does have a bit of charm. There's a good reason I've adopted this frame of mind. I was reading a blog about how to become a better writer, and I think it mentioned something about email chains without the level of disdain I would have expected from a serious writer. I got out fast.

Plagiarizing the Calculus: Leibniz v Newton

Plagiarism is usually associated with English papers, but this accusation was leveled at a prominent mathematical figure during the 17th century. Thus, we have an interesting point whereby an English scholar might feel comfortable entering the business of mathematics. 

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz published his Nova Methodus pro Maximis et Minimis in 1684, a paper on differential and integral calculus. Despite that, Newton (who had developed his equivalent method of fluxions and fluents in the mid-1660's) seemed to show little inclination to publish or even to object to Leibniz's renown as the developer of the method of quadrature. The famous dispute between the two, known since as "The Calculus Wars", was actually catalyzed not by Newton himself, but by a Newton enthusiast Nicolas Fatio de Duillier.

WTF is a Five-Paragraph Essay?

Well, a five-paragraph essay is basically a shibboleth. It separates the sheep from the goats. It's a necessary evil that English teachers (who abhor it) have to teach to break down for the masses what is essentially an unteachable skill. Ever heard of Strunk and White? Ever heard the term je ne sais quoi? The two are related: The Elements of Style (written by William Strunk Jr. and Elwyn Brooks White) is all about je ne sais quoi. I read a bit of that text very recently. I laughed and laughed... It, too, teaches the unteachable, just like the five-paragraph essay.

Foucault's Pendulum (Eco)

because a point… the central point, I mean, the one right in the middle of all the points you see… it’s a geometric point; you can’t see it because it has no dimension, and if something has no dimension, it can’t move, not right or left, not up or down. So it doesn’t rotate with the earth. You understand? It can’t even rotate around itself. There is no ‘itself.’

Umberto Eco, Foucault’sPendulum

The perceived rotation of the plane in which the pendulum (built by Leon Foucault in 1851) oscillates depends (non-linearly) on its orientation on the ground with respect to either of the poles and equator (Aczel 5, 103). Speed, therefore, as a reliable constant that emerges from the perceived “rotation” of the pendulum within a uniform system, does not exist, but rather undergoes continuous slippage as the ground upon which the pendulum stands “shifts.”[1] This compromised solidity of ground is analogous to the semantic instability posited by proponents of deconstruction, in which meaning continually evades the grip of the sign.

Pierre Menard in Logical Space

In accomplishing the formidable task of assessing the truth of something as complex as a story, a reader has to decide between two alternatives. On the one hand, she may decide that the tale she finds herself listening to, reading, or viewing is being related by a teller who has (or purports to have) firsthand knowledge of the characters and situations, and who consequently relates the tale as fact. On the other hand, she may decide that she is experiencing the weaving of a fantasy, in which case the teller, as author of this fiction, would not have had first-hand knowledge of the story's events.[1]

Ghost Writing Services

Coming in Clutch: A Fortnite Tale

When I first heard the term "clutch" used in this way, I immediately thought of Henry James. I know, I know. What could the 19th century prose master possibly have to do with 21st century gaming? Well, perhaps nothing at all... except that in Washington Square, Catherine Sloper was supposed to have held on to her man (or was it father?) about as tightly as Fortnite's players hang on to the lead when they clutch up that Victory Royale. 

Okay, so James might have used the phrase "She will cling!" but idiomatically, the sentiments amount roughly to the same thing. 

The Opening

The clutch defines a moment of glory for any of Fortnite's millions of players able to rise to the challenge. It is a fight to the death, a moment in time when the victory is all up to them, a time to step up and be the hero no one ever saw in them. Everybody's watching! Who will it be? In such last-man-standing gaming scenarios that democratize death and privilege the lone victor, you tell yourself it could be anyone. Even you.

Everywhere-Nowhere: Weierstrass Meets Borges

A circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere (Borges)

A function that's continuous everywhere and differentiable nowhere (Weierstrass)

I sort of randomly recalled those two objects, noted the similarity of the diction, and decided there had to be a reason both ideas fit so snugly into the same sentence structure. I think I encountered the Borges idea years before Weierstrass's, but I'd been exposed to both concepts for a long time before my mind noticed any connection. And I know this connection is probably spurious, but it's fun to think about. So here goes.

How to Beat Writer's Block (or Fast, Furious, and Fearless Writing)

We've all had it: the dreaded writer's block. Or, what might be just as bad for the non-writer--having a situation require you to produce writing and all you see in front of you is a blank Word document. The white page mocks you. It intimidates you. But in reality it's just another monster with a weakness you can exploit to beat it. So how do you overcome it? What's its Achilles heel?

Writer's Block Does Not Exist!

Not in this space, anyway.

But seriously. I had a conversation with a colleague aeons ago when I was completing my honors undergraduate thesis. I claimed I had writer's block and what he said to me changed my professional life.