Hi, I’m “Penguin” Pete Trbovich, and YOU overthink SEO!
This time, I want you to take protective measures. Wear a hockey mask and catcher’s mitt, or at least have a pillow handy. This is because I’m about to tell you an SEO trick that is so BLINDING obvious and yet nobody ever, ever thinks of it.
Backlinks, backlinks, backlinks, everybody wants backlinks! To quote Moz.com: “Backlinks are especially valuable for SEO because they represent a ‘vote of confidence’ from one site to another.” But they just talk about how important quality backlinks are, not how to get them. Many sites out there pay lip service to this concept, but are vague on how to get backlinks.
I will not be vague. I will be very specific. This blog post is over 2K words long, relax.
See, my freelance career revolves around content creation for the web. And a lot of my clients run ads on their site, either as their main revenue or just a sidecar profit stream. A bunch of them also advertise themselves. Generally speaking, I get to work with ad-based content a lot, either taking or giving.
What a lot of people don’t realize is how many kinds of restricted content there are in the world of online advertising. Most ad networks are highly conservative about the kinds of ads they will run. Since we’ve all seen some questionable ads, it makes you wonder about the kind they turn down.
Prohibitions against alcohol, tobacco, and firearms are a given, as well as adult / mature content, content harmful to minors, hate speech, etc. You’ll be happy to know that most major ad networks ban illegal and fraudulent content. These make sense, but there’s others that you’d never think of.
One of my gigs is the cannabis industry, for example, which cannot advertise through regular networks, full stop. Companies that make not just cannabis products, but even accessories, have to turn to specialized ad networks and affiliate programs that cater to their niche. While I was pitching in for the research on that post (I’m also chief site editor there), I came across some of the restrictions, and they remind me of the old “wacky laws” lists that used to post around the old web.
Straight to the point: I care about the environment. I care about climate change. I believe in science.
Do you people also care about the environment? Good, then we are on the same page. We should be friends. But we are not. You are all going to hate me because I’m about to tell you something you don’t like to hear, but you need to hear.
You’ve been going about environmentalism the wrong way!
This makes me angry, nay, fist-clenching furious. Can everybody understand this concept, or have I lost you naive little blueberries already? You can have good intentions, and still do bad things because your method is wrong. Try to sit down and allow that thought to penetrate for a minute before you go on.
I am here today to speak on behalf of all keyboard hacks everywhere. From the lowest SEO rat off Fiverr to the most successful content marketing guru. Every single one of us is sick of flowery writing gig ads.
Let me save you time: If you really want to attract top talent that will actually work for you, the golden ad formula is this:
How Your “Help Wanted” Ad For A Writer Should Look:
PAY – MENTION! THIS! FIRST!
Schedule – Being as flexible as possible helps us cram your project into that five-hour gap in our week.
Topic – WHAT will I be writing? If there’s more to it than just writing, mention duties i.e. editing, social media management, WordPress plug-in slingin’, etc.
Company – WHAT is your business model? What is your mission statement? Essentially, how is my writing supposed to make you money?
Target audience – WHOM will I be writing for? Are they old fuddie-duddies who still own black-and-white TVs? Are they young hip teens? Working-class moms? Entrepreneurs?
This should be easy stuff. You sell something to somebody and now you want a content marketer, don’t you? One of the biggest things that will make us freelance writers skip your ad is if you sound like you have no clue as to any of the above points.
But in the first, most essential place, please spare us these sugary funeral eulogies like this one somebody pitched at me on Linked-In. This is not to reflect on the company. This is just an education in what writers actually think about when they read your ad.
The good news is that your humble freelance hack blogger has the household power and Internet restored. That was nuts! The derecho storm marched right through the middle of Iowa, and I have to say in retrospect I’d rather have ten tornadoes than another derecho.
So I’m obligated to blog the experience both for a first-person historical account and to explain to my freelance clients why I vanished for two days. Pictures here are from the news, not mine.
What it’s like after a derecho and city-wide blackout
In the first place, most of the destruction occurred in the late morning hours of Monday, August 10th 2020. It just hit with a force like a shock wave. Trees flying immediately.
The power blinked off within minutes, and we could guess why. What we didn’t know is that this time, the storm’s effects were widespread. Our Internet router was of course knocked out too, but our land line phone remained functional. We hopped onto mobile, but discovered that our local mobile coverage was also spotty.
Cthulhu give me strength, my review of Satanico Pandemonium : La Sexorcista (1975) is now live over at my 366WeirdMovies gig. There’s no taking it back now. What’s worse, I actually half-liked it. It’s got great locations and cinematography, and moves at a brisk enough clip that the batty plot will fly right by you without too much grief.
Oh, and here’s a film still that didn’t make the review’s cut:
My clients get a little squeamish about posting borderline images, but here in the gutter on my own site I put on no airs of propriety. You’re already reading a post with “Nunsploitation” in the title; it’s a little late to pretend you have standards now.
Of course, I’ve been up to a lot more film-related devilment lately…
All of us nerds made zombie apocalypse jokes at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m not so sure we’re joking any more. I’m sure as hell not.
Whenever I have braved the Outside World to forage for supplies lately, I get closer and closer to getting into a fight myself. I grew up in the mean ‘hoods of south L.A. so I’m no stranger to rumbles. I’m not scared for myself, but I had hoped for a more peaceful coast to retirement in a tranquil suburb by now.
You can clearly distinguish Team Human from Team Zombie
Team Human are the people who believe in science and reason. They wear their masks and gloves, use sanitary wipes and disinfectant, and keep their distance. They respect the store employees. All of us are out to go about our business quickly and efficiently with the least amount of drama.
Team Zombie isn’t buying any of that. They don’t wear protective gear, and make it a point to get into everybody’s face around every corner. They’re hostile and confronting. They scoff at our “imaginary” pandemic and vaccines and all of our “so-called” science. They’re out to pick a fight at every opportunity.
Over at 123ish.com, my client has commissioned a series tapping my 20+ years experience in content marketing. I’ve dispensed some hard-won SEO and online marketing wisdom in a steady trickle over there. Here’s a list:
Top SEO Factors BESIDES Keywords – For those website owners who pay all the attention to SEO keywords and no attention to anything else, including whether Google’s crawlers can index the page with all that great content on it in the first place. Yes, I have had to patiently explain to generations of clients that Google needs to FIND the page first, then worry about the keywords.
Amazing New SEO Method Discovered : Write Like A Human Being! – Busting a mass of myths about actual text content in relation to how Google sees and ranks your site. The problem with this field is that 90% of the knowledge about textual SEO you’ll find on the web is either outdated, or was outrageous nonsense in the first place.
The Top SEO Tools For Content Marketing – I just want to point out that I was not compensated nor paid by any of the companies whose software I mention here. Yes, SEMRush is expensive, but it’s such a power-tool that it’s ridiculous not to mention it.
Social Media Optimization – The Other Digital Marketing – Along with SEO, nobody thinks about this other sphere of online content marketing: social media. Yet “influencers” pull down up to seven figures, so there must be something to it, no?
I put these posts up partly for the education of the general public, and partly with a self-serving mission because I’m sick to death of explaining the same thing to client after client over and over and over… This isn’t going to help much, but it’s something.
Of course, watch my own space here as I also post under the category You Overthink SEO, just some addendum thoughts and my snarkier, less marketable thoughts on the matter.
*NOTE*: This isn’t a normal blog post; this is a declaration of war. It is tactical and dirty because it was a dirty fight already before I got here.
Wait, I thought I was done fighting about free and open source software…
Yes, I distinctly remember closing down my old FOSS-focused blog, delivering my final battle report for the Great Linux Desktop Wars, getting one last laugh at the con artists I helped shut down, and moving on. The mobile market gives the read-only users their software, and we makers and doers have our laptops, so everyone’s happy. Android rules the mobile, Linux rules the server and industrial sector, it’s Miller time, right?
Dr. Roy Schestowitz, one of my old comrades in the FOSS wars, gave me a nice send-off in 2013. So yes, I must have properly retired.
Why is this still happening? Well, actually, a new thing is happening.
The Old Thing that was happening: Everybody had nothing but desktops and laptops. Makers and doers, us working folk, needed these tools to make and do stuff, using Linux and command lines and programming. Read-only users, people who do nothing but consume, wanted computers to be dumbed down TV sets for them to drool on, while hunting us geeks down in the streets to brand our foreheads with the scarlet “elitist” and then force everyone to use Microsoft Windows.
(To make a long story short, OK?)
That thing stopped happening because hallelujah, mobile came along and saved us. The read-onlys could have their TV set in their pocket and never cared about our tools again. It’s been a loooooong time since I heard anybody attack a command line.
But here’s the New Thing happening: Now the read-onlys outnumber the makers 9-to-1, and they are in charge. The read-onlys want to dumb down our tools anyway because they want everybody to use mobile like them and can’t see why we need powerful, complicated tools to do stuff. If they can’t get us onto mobile, beside them, so that no work gets done, they want to break the tools we use on laptop so we’re screwed anyway. Out of spite.
Dangerous things happen when you put a read-only in charge of an open source software project, especially when he’s the CEO of the company that owns it, and is – stop me if you’ve heard this before – yet another trust fund baby born into wealth and prestige who spits on people who do work.
Again, I thought this was over. I don’t want to go back in the trenches, I thought everyone had learned that lesson!
This is about WordPress, Gutenberg, and Matt Mullenweg
Get used to those three terms, because you’ll be seeing them a lot around here in the coming months.
Hello! Why, this is my own website! I remember this place! It’s where I come to blog some more after blogging for clients all day. Let me tell you, it’s hilarious to be in content marketing and have your own site be in the depths of Google’s 35th page of search results for anything at all. “Yeah, but my clients’ sites rank high…”
Latest boof THC cart bust: Green Box, a product I traced to a guy in Inland Empire, Cali, who takes vacations to Maui, rents the penthouse suite at Vegas casinos, orders the most gourmet cuisine from the finest restaurants, Instagrams all that, and still can’t afford a license for his bunk ass vape cartridge brand. Dude lives like Scarface before the fall, but it’s a fascinating look into street cart culture. If I turn up mysteriously dead, it was this guy. I love my job.
Second-latest boof THC cart bust: Fiyaman Extracts, which can afford to hire Tommy Chong to endorse them but also – surprise! – can’t afford a license for their black market, heavily-counterfeited product. I love my job.
Drama of the month: When I busted yet another boof cart brand, Gold Coast Clear, the seller showed up in our forum on DabConnection to snivel that our exposure hurt his little business and demanded we take it down. You know, because that’s more important than when 15-year-old kids die from vaping boof. So I got pissed enough to deliver one of those epic irate rants I’m famous for, titled “if we get your brand mistaken for fake, IT’S YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT!” If you read nothing else by me this year, do not miss this.
