Last paragraph is the main, if you don’t want to read the context.
My ex gf was my friend for almost 6 years. During those years she ghosted me twice without a reason at all and she would come back regretting it a lot what she did, telling me she loved me, that she kept my poems and letter and that she thought about me almost everyday. I forgave her both times.
The second time she came back she confessed she had been drug abusing and that her life was a mess. She told me doing drugs didn’t allow her to think about what she really cared as me.She started lovebombing me even we lived in two different countries of Europe and about 1500km away. She wanted to come to visit me so badly. Love is blind and I ended falling for her as she treated me so damn well. We talked everyday, a lot, and she finally came to my house in summer.
We started dating and came again in autumn. Everything was perfect but after she left on autumn she started went into a depressive episode where she wanted space and time for herself. We talked less than usual. She asked me if I would dump her for being depressed. I ensured her that wouldn’t happen at any case. At winter I got depressed after a bad medical new. At this point everything began to be complicated. She argued with me for no reason, she was mad at me for being depressed. I begged her for company to feel better which she said no all the time. I was preparing to visit her in a month but she always gave me excuses not to buy the flight ticket.
Two weeks after new year she broke up with me saying I made her life miserable. I begged for a break which she accepted and surprisingly she asked me the next day to give each other good night as she missed it. The first week she gave it and told me everyday she loved me, the next week she disappeared and when I stopped giving her good night she broke up with me. It was really traumatic as she went mad when I suggested she could have BPD as my psychiatrist and therapist know her since we met and for her bad childhood, drug abuse, other weird things she did, and how she treated me during all this time they believed in a high probability she had BPD.
I feel after 5 months I moved on, but I still feel sometimes the emptiness I have from having someone talking me everyday 24/7 to total blackness. I have my friends and I hang out with them having a really good time. I met a girl who I like and would like to date, but I feel empty. How have you dealt with this those who had been devalued and discarded from one day to another?
Thanks

33m, for reference as to how long it's been since then.
I work night audit at a large Philly hotel, so I constantly deal with rude guests, drunks, and homeless people who are either mentally ill or nodded out on opioids. You quickly learn not to let it get to you.
But about an hour ago, a woman who was on at least speed, gurning and twitching her head off her neck, stormed in and demanded I let her in with a fake reservation. She'd been steadily raising her voice as I kept reiterating I couldn't—and it was ten hours before check-in time anyway—which escalated to four-letter words, calling me an asshole, etc. She persisted through telling her to leave, threatening to call security, then calling security. I'll admit I engaged with her for longer than I should've because it's rare you get a customer so overtly shitty you're justified in arguing back, though. Almost cathartic.
That is, until that word came out and I yelled at her to "Get the fuck out" so loud I startled the lobby. Didn't get in trouble because everyone else saw how she was acting, though. So, minor W in the end?
That insult really hits different after you find out you're autistic, though.
(As a side note, that's only the third worst customer story I have. The other two are just dark, so I rarely share them. Hotel night employees witness things.)

Hi! 👋
I need help and I also wanted to share a story or two, if that’s ok. So this is LOOONG. Please forgive any mistakes or wrong words
I’ve put the questions up top so feel free to ignore the rest. I just wanted to tell people about her.
Thank you so much in advance!
TL;DR
Part one: My beloved 98-yo Catholic grandmother in Sweden is dying, no other family member is Catholic. We don’t know what we need to do now before and after her passing.
Part two: Gran’s story and the Cardinal who Didn’t Forget.
——-
Part one
My Grandma is 98 and nearing the very end. She is a devout Catholic who converted in her 60s. No one else in the family is Catholic and there are very few Catholics in Sweden overall.
Her faith is incredibly important to her and I want to make sure she leaves the world properly from a religious standpoint.
Only I don’t know anything about it and I don’t know who to ask.
I would be so grateful for any guidance.
Questions:
1. Are there things we need to do for her from a religious perspective when the end comes? Last rituals?
Any special handling of the body?
Should we call a priest but who?

2. Swedish funerals usually don’t take place in three or four weeks after death. Is that okay?

3. Her service will be held in a Protestant church with a Protestant priest and buried in the family plot that’s there.
She has okayed this. She originally wanted to Catholic service in this particular church but it’s not allowed.
Are there any things (prayers, rituals etc) we can include to honor her faith?

4. Do I need to notify her local church? She is a member of the Secular Carmelites as well.

5a. Obituaries work a little differently in Sweden but I figured I’d ask. It’s common to include a little picture or symbol in them, everything from roses to sports team logos (yes, truly! 😂)
Most of the Catholic obituaries I see simply have a cross and . Is that the proper way to do it?

5b. Most obituaries include a quote.
Would this be appropriate?
”I am going towards you whom I have always sought, loved and always desired.”

It may sound odd I watched Sister Claire Crockett’s final vows and heard it and just knew instantly it should be in Gran’s obituary.
I haven’t been able to trace the source though.
THANK YOU! If you made it this far! —————————
Gran and the Cardinal
Now it’s story time!
Gran converted in her 60s “after a lifetime of searching” and was an eager theological correspondent.
She is a passionate fan of St John of the Cross and mysticism in general and is a member of the Secular Carmelites.
My Gran is Dutch, spent her first decade in Indonesia before coming back to Holland just in time for the German occupation.
She grew up Protestant but the war planted a seed in her mind and she set out to discover the spiritual world and learning as much as possible about every religion she could find, Taoism, Shinto, Hindu gurus, the works.
—
I asked her once what made her choose Catholicism in the end. She said that she had seen a small bookstore that interested her and unbeknownst was in a small, nondescript church.
Gran said she went in through the door and felt a “flash” or a rush or something she couldn’t quite describe and just knew. She spoke to a priest that very same day.
—-
Gran never quite lost hope that one of her children or grandchildren would convert (I was her best candidate but that has not happened. 😅)
—-
My grandmother had to stop going to Church maybe 10–15 years ago since hearing is so bad and it still grieves her.
She misses the community of the church, theological discourse, the connections she has made over the years. She felt lonely.
—
I don’t know how much the “regular Catholic” knows about different cardinals but we actually got a Swedish one, Anders Arborelius, a few years ago.
Gran knows him through the Carmelites and she has corresponded quite extensively with ”Bishop Anders”.
On one bleak day when Gran felt so along in the world, I tried to think of ways to cheer her up.
I did some googling and found an email address to the Cardinal himself and also to his secretary.
—
I wrote a long email asking of “Bishop Anders” would be willing to send her a card to remind her the church hasn’t forgotten her.
I didn’t expect an answer but later that same night, his secretary responded and it turned out she used to know my gran quite well.
The Cardinal was in Rome, she said, but he would probably look at the email when he got back.
That night (say 2AM), I got a response from the Cardinal about how well he remembers my Gran, and how much he likes and appreciates her.
A few day later, a lovely little letter with encouraging words and a blessing arrived in the mail.
One funny thing though! He had absolutely dreadful handwriting, so bad we actually send around a picture of it to family members asking them if they could decode it. 😂😂😂

.. • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆. . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆.
♡ hi hiiiiiiiiiiiiii ♡
I'm looking for a penpal that's down to mail each other those heavily decorated letters! I'm talking about those ins - ta - gr- am accounts and those p - in - te - re - st posts. I'd love to start one of those accounts myself actually!
I'm an artist myself and I'd love to share little pieces of art, share some stationary and share my love for decorations!
♡ Now a bit about me!

• I’m from Belgium! It's a small country in Europe, underneath the Netherlands and above france. It's the best place to visit most European countries haha.
• I LOVE MANGA (￣▽￣*)ゞ, I read tons and tons and tons. So I'd love to read one together so we can rate it etc or give you recommendations or be given some. I love the manga Attack on titan (plz no spoilers haha), Villains Are Destined to Die, My Life as an Internet Novel, I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince So I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability and a LOT more haha. I've probably read more than a thousand different ones (not finishing them all but I know what's out there haha). I'd also love to send you character themed mail etc!!!
• I also love watching documentaries! I'm studying engineering as a first year college student and love watching science shows. I've probably watched every single one on netflix haha. I especially love documentaries about genetic modification etc.

♡ What I'm looking for in a penpal :)

• Someone that loves manga too! This one is very important too me, I don't have anyone irl that I can talk about this too, so I'd love some big manga nerds to rant too haha.
• Someone with a lot of passion! I wanna rant on for two or more pages about some random hobbies or some way too niche facts and I would love to listen too your way too niche interests too!
• Into art! Like I said, I wanna send those aesthetic pretty way too decorated letters with themes and goodies etc! The same effort would obviously be very much appreciated haha
• The same age range. Not below 17 but also not a lot older. I feel like that can make talking a lot easier haha

. . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆. . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

Firstly yes I know I shouldn’t have been speeding, I’ve been driving 18 years and only had one speeding ticket.
I work all over the U.K (self employed with my own company) and live in England.
I got a speeding fine 2 week ago (already had 6 points for being stationary on my phone…that’s another story) so I was okay with that as not had a speeding ticket for 5 years but I was working away last week but heading home every day, on Monday,Tuesday,Thursday and Friday I came home to speeding tickets! 2 were from different counties and 2 were with my local police force. Is it a case of now sending them all off and then seeing if I get a letter to attend court or do I ask to go there? As obviously I’m over limit for acceptable points and immediate ban but if I get banned I lose my income and jobless so need my licence as much as anyone.
I shouldn’t have been speeding but if I’d of received one I would have been more conscious of my speed but them all dropping in within a week has caught me by surprise.

Because JK Rowling did the tell and don't show thing when it comes to James Potter's maturity, there was a split in the fandom between whether to believe he truly changed or not, but I think based on the circumstances in which that James's life changed, I choose to believe that he changed with it.
First of all, there is a biological issue and that is that the human brain does not fully develop until well into the age of 20s, so from the outset I have reason to assume that simply due to physical development, a 15 year old James would not be the same as the James who died at 21 in the same way as a 10 year old is not similar to his 15 year old version
But what really leads me to be positioned in the belief that he mature were all the changes that occurred in his life in that period of 6 years, if we compare the 15 year old James and a 20 year old, 1 year before his death, the truth is that they are quite different people.
The 15 year old James, seems above all like a normal teenager in the sense that it seems that his only concerns at that moment are mundane: getting good grades on exams, playing quidditch, having fun with his friends as well as being pampered by his parents.
In short, a fairly comfortable life that a priori does not seem to require many responsibilities beyond those conventional for someone of his age.
But 20 year old James' life has taken quite a few turns, some of which are good and others quite unpleasant.
Legally, he is an adult and has been orphaned, which means that he no longer has parental support and is fully responsible for himself. Now he must decide how to manage money, for example, and assume the consequences of these decisions because his parents are no longer here to take care of him or help him (in addition to the emotional consequences that being an orphan can cause to a person), related to the above, he now has a wife and a son which adds even more responsibilities.
Also, another thing that differentiates him from the 15 year old James is that he is no longer a student safe within the walls of Hogwarts and now he has to face the real world and the crises that the magical world is going through, the most immediate obviously being Voldemort's war, in which he takes sides and was presumably forced to witness or learn of the deaths of many people he came to know, maybe even to be friends, as Moody tells Harry when he shows him a photo of the original order of the phoenix there were many casualties during the first wizarding war and this is going to be reinforced by Sirius when he talks about the first war magical in GoF and by Lily with the letter she sends to Sirius, so all of them including James have had to see the death of a lot of partners and even friends after leaving Hogwarts, something that James15 obviously didn't have to go through.
Once I compared these 2 stages of James' life, I think there had to be a change in him due to all the important things that happened in his life.

I was asked to help someone, but I am having a hard time actually helping them grade their package, or give much guidance on what to send or what to highlight for their letter to the board. I did reach out in navy, but everyone has their own opinions, really I need some guidance from the submarine community. Some people don't even send anything in, but I want to know how YOU made it. In my rate, at least the year I made it I sent a letter in, and even had a career summary sheet. Everyone is different but I like the different opinions. If this isn't the place to be asking, that's totally okay too! Have a wonderful Sunday fam 💜

Gentlemen,
I’ve had this idea of cloning a fresh, out-of-the box W11 system my laptop came pre installed with, and mounting it onto a complimentary ssd that I’ve put into a vacant, secondary disk slot of that same laptop, to run either system whenever needed.
——— This way I could: 1. Differentiate between my personal and work use of the machine, i.e. avoid bloating my work ready system with games and stuff, and avoid bloating my gaming system with industrial automation software and services that you cannot/shouldn’t un-autorun; 2. Roll my work ready system back anytime if the automation software breaks (which it tends to at the most critical times, making most people in the industry resort to the slower, but much more reliable idea of virtual machines); 3. Roll the work system back to a clone with a set of older version of the automation software if the project demands so. ———
So I’ve made a set of clones using Clonezilla already and they do work as intended — at least for some time. Until after several days of use, either one system or both of them boot into BSOD returning the error NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM, from where disk checks do not help, nor a Windows recovery drive does. The only thing that helps is mounting the saved clones again, afresh, but then the same problem reappears in several days of use. What I think the problem might be, is that the original system was cloned in its entirety, which includes the drive letter. Now each system regards to its respective physical disk as C upon boot, and to the other one as D — might this be the problem? Interestingly, DISKPART UNIQUEID actually does return different MBRs for both the physical drives, so I wouldn’t think mere volume letters would cause a fight to the de.th between the systems, but I ran out of ideas. Any suggestions?

Hello Joshu, May I ask, Here's the issue, What's my task?
No words are spoken by the master, Since every letter spells disaster, So to avoid catastrophe, Answers are given silently, And with calamities averted, The knowing knowledge stays unworded, Unwritten rules for none to follow, Filled to the brim by staying hollow, Hypocrisy! This heresy! Spoken words through poetry, With an intent undoubtedly, Should think twice for once you fool me...
Then what? Who said? Whose do's and dont's? No one claimed this here revelation, Simply sharing meditation, Personal practice put on paper, Take it, leave it, lover, hater, And with that difference unlearned, Who could remain to be concerned, Doubt and fidget, Yes, But no, Still distracted by the show, When from right here to the horizon, The myriad things just keep arising, This friction between earth and sky, Creates the question, Who am I? Because that very self idea, Is the very untouched sphere, Of the uncaused origin, Of an effect that's never been, Of that what's only ever shown, As naught but knowing... The unknown.

I come from a generally abusive upbringing and I just went No Contact with my Family.
I put TLDR at the end. It is alot.
I think Narcicism is part of their entire generational culture after the break with all my Family Elders.
I moved away from home and in with a kind fun loving man. I became stable! I got an amazing job. Best of my career.
My Family couldnt stand it, I wasnt desperate or needy and available for their game playing.
My Dad got angrier and angrier on every phone call. Shouting abuse at me about decision. I should not ever order takeout! I havent got a sizable retirement plan. Dont take a loan on a decent car. You dont have a house. Its a waste. He owns million in real estate and never runs AC in his own house. If he does it for a guest hell tell them how its a big deal. He believes in saving…
The derision continued until I confronted him about hus behaviour. It was a careful well thought out conversation. Complaints are unwelcome in my Family. I told my Dad directly. You are losing your temper everytime were on the phone and Im worried about you. This could be early stage dementia. Will you please see a Doctor?
When I was on disability he loved playing kind supportive Dad. Now Im flying on my own and he is losing his mind.
My criticism led to a years worth of drama. It was a slow creep. He would ask me about work. I thought we were being civil. And then I started getting emails from his Sister. Shes worried about me. His Brother makes a trip to Montreal and he says three different reasons why hes here. I feel checked up on. My Sister calls and reminds me gently. Be careful ya know youre “Special”.
Im legit making 87k a year in a Unicorn Startup. Its amazing.
I lose my job during a round of layoffs. Budget cuts. Didnt make sales targets. Im low hanging fruit. Im going to collect max EI. The company is generous and gives me a months notice so I can jobhunt.
This is my Dads big moment. Hes on the phone checking in and he moves to destroy me. Oh honey! You dont have to lie. You got FIRED! That happens sometimes. Listen. Why dont you move back? Plenty of part time jobs here. Less stress. This always happens to you… (It does not)
I get off the phone shaking. Wtf is this trash. I have two letters of recommendation and lifelong contacts and the launch of a career.
To cut to the chase. He had gone behind my back and started rumours Im doing drugs and lying to the Family constantly. He said my new bf is a drug dealer. He cant understand why I left my Husband (actual drug addict)
Total assault on my character and ran me right out of the Family. Im honestly glad to never talk to any of my 18 Cousins 8 Aunts and Uncles or 6 Sisters and Brothers ever again. None of them believe a word I say anymore. They want that Old Family Money.
Im officially unsafe. And its shocking but. Get wreckt. My Dad thinks hes the King and I MUST worship and faun over him. Puke. I have an opinion.
TLDR. I offended my Father when I called him on his bad behaviour for the first time. So he convinced my entire Family Im in a DV situation and using hard drugs. Noone cares what I say because he pays a lot of their bills… and takes them on vacation around the world.
For Reference see. Crabs in a Bucket. Or. George Carlin. There might be something wrong with you. You might be surrounded by ash holes.

I've been racking my brain trying to remember a series I read part of a bit ago and I can't figure out what it is. It was a teenage spy series where the main characters are recruited out of high school for a spy school. I remember the main team was 3 girls who were all sisters and they were each of a different personality type labeled with Greek letters (alphas were leaders, I don't remember what the other letters signified). I've looked through my history a few times but I can't seem to find it.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, is a fundamental technology used in web development to control the presentation and layout of HTML documents. While HTML provides the structure of a webpage, CSS enhances its appearance by defining how HTML elements should be displayed on the screen, in print, or even as speech.
In order to understand the basic of CSS, we need to understand how it works. CSS works by selecting HTML elements using id, classess attributes or tags itself and applying styling rules to them. These rules dictate attributes such as color, size, font, spacing, and positioning. By separating content from presentation, CSS allows developers to create visually appealing and consistent designs across multiple web pages with ease.
CSS operates on a cascade principle, where multiple style rules can be applied to the same element, with specificity and order determining which rule takes precedence. This enables developers to efficiently manage styles across complex projects. CSS is one of the foundation in order to enhance the web development skills.
Over the years, CSS has evolved significantly, with new features and capabilities continually being added. CSS preprocessors like Sass and LESS have extended CSS’s functionality by introducing variables, mixins, and other programming constructs, making stylesheets more maintainable and scalable.
Furthermore, with the rise of responsive web design, CSS plays a crucial role in creating layouts that adapt to different screen sizes and devices, providing users with an optimal viewing experience across desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
Understanding of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)

1. Selection of HTML Elements: CSS employs various selectors to target specific HTML elements or groups of elements. Selectors can be based on element type (e.g., for paragraphs), class (e.g., .header), ID (e.g., #main-content), or other attributes like data attributes or pseudo-classes (e.g., :hover for styling when the mouse is over an element). This flexibility allows developers to precisely target elements for styling.
2. Application of Styling Rules: Once an element is selected, CSS applies styling rules to it. These rules define how the element should appear and behave. CSS properties cover a wide range of design aspects, including:Color: Specifies the foreground and background colors.Size: Controls the dimensions of the element, such as width, height, padding, and margins.Font: Determines the typeface, size, style (e.g., bold, italic), and other text properties.Spacing: Manages the spacing between elements, including margins, padding, and borders.Positioning: Controls the placement of elements on the webpage, including static, relative, absolute, and fixed positioning.
3. Separation of Content and Presentation: One of the core principles of CSS is separating content from presentation. HTML defines the structure and content of a webpage, while CSS handles the presentation and layout. This separation allows developers to make changes to the design without altering the underlying content, making it easier to maintain and update websites.
4. Creating Visually Appealing Designs: CSS enables developers to unleash their creativity and design visually stunning websites. With CSS, developers can customize every aspect of the webpage’s appearance, from colors and typography to layout and animations. This flexibility empowers developers to create unique and engaging user experiences tailored to their audience.
5. Consistency Across Multiple Pages: By applying CSS rules consistently across multiple web pages, developers can ensure a cohesive and unified design language throughout the website. CSS allows developers to define styles once and apply them universally, saving time and effort while maintaining consistency across the site.

Properties of CSS
CSS properties are the building blocks that developers use to style HTML elements. These properties allow developers to control various aspects of an element’s appearance, layout, and behavior. Here are some commonly used CSS properties grouped by their functionalities:

1. Typography: This properties is used to control the various aspects of the text elements of HTML.font-family: Sets the font of the text.font-size: Sets the size of the text.font-weight: Specifies the thickness of the font.font-style: Defines the style of the font (e.g., italic).text-align: Aligns the text horizontally within its container.line-height: Sets the height of each line of text.
2. Color and Background: This properties is used to control the color of any HTML elements like < div >, < span >, < header > etc.color: Defines the color of the text.background-color: Sets the background color of an element.opacity: Specifies the transparency of an element.background-image: Sets an image as the background of an element.background-size: Defines the size of the background image.background-position: Specifies the starting position of the background image.
3. Layout: This properties is used to control the how the HTML elements will functions. For example, its display properties or height, or position etc.display: Defines how an element is displayed (e.g., block, inline, flex).width and height: Sets the width and height of an element.margin, padding, and border: Controls the spacing around and within an element.float: Positions an element to the left or right within its container.position: Specifies the positioning method of an element (e.g., static, relative, absolute, fixed).top, bottom, left, right: Sets the position of an element relative to its containing element.
4. Box Model: The box model is used to set the HTML elements in box like element by defining its height and width.box-sizing: Defines how the total width and height of an element are calculated.border-radius: Rounds the corners of an element’s border.box-shadow: Adds a shadow effect to an element.overflow: Specifies how content that overflows the element’s box is handled.
5. animation: Defines keyframe animations.transition: Specifies the transition effect for a CSS property.transform: Applies transformations (e.g., rotate, scale) to elements.

In summary, CSS is an indispensable tool for web developers, empowering them to transform HTML documents into visually appealing and functional web experiences. Understanding its principles and techniques is essential for anyone looking to create modern, professional-looking websites.
Read the Guide Here: https://leafyweb.com/home/project/brief-introduction-to-css/

What’s the Difference Between On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO?

On-page SEO focuses on optimizing parts of your website that are within your control, while off-page SEO focuses on increasing the authority of your domain through content creation and earning backlinks from other websites. To further understand the difference between the two, you have to understand, at a basic level, how search engine algorithms work. Let’s break it down.
There are two main buckets that search engines (SEO) look at when evaluating your site compared to other sites on the web.

1. On-page SEO looks at what your site (or your page) is about
2. Off-page SEO looks at how authoritative and popular your site is

On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO: What’s the Difference?

Put simply, what you rank for is largely determined by on-page factors, while how high you rank in the search results is largely determined by off-page factors.

How Does Each Type of SEO Affect Your Rankings?

What is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO (also known as “on-site” SEO) is the act of optimizing different parts of your website that affect your search engine rankings. Where your website appears in search engine results pages is determined by a number of ranking factors including site accessibility, page speed, optimized content, keywords, title tags, etc. On-page SEO is about optimizing the stuff that you have control over and can change on your own website.

On-page SEO checklist:

How do you make sure your on-page SEO tactics are up to snuff? Here is a helpful checklist for on-site optimizations that can help curate your strategy.

Title Tags

Put your targeted keywords in the title tag of each page on your site. There are many best practices that go into writing an effective title tag.

• Limit your title tags to 55-60 characters (including spaces)
• Push the keyword closer to the beginning of the title (ONLY if it sounds natural)
• Don’t stuff your keywords
• Include brand at the end of the title tag, separated by a pipe bar () Example: “Chicago SEO Digital Third Coast”

Headings (H1)

Headings are usually the largest words on the page, and for that reason, search engines give them a little more weight than your other page copy. It is a good idea to work your target keywords into the headings of each web page but make sure you accurately reflect your page’s great content.
Make sure your H1s limited to one per page, all other headers are H2 or H3

URL structure

Put keywords into your URLs if possible. However, do not go changing all of your current URLs just so they have keywords in them. You shouldn’t change old URLs unless you plan on redirecting your old ones to your new ones. Consult a professional before doing this.

• Label your directories and folders in a way that makes sense for users
• Don’t repeat keywords in your URL more than once. Keywords are helpful, but overdoing it effects user experience. Example: /best-socks-comparison-best-socks-best-socks?
• Keep URLs as short as possible

Alt text for images

Any content management system should allow you to add something called “alt text” to all images on your website. This text isn’t visible to the average visitor – alt text is in fact used by screen reader software to help blind internet users understand the content of your images. Search engines crawl images in a similar way, so inserting some relevant keywords while accurately describing the image will help search engines understand your page’s content.
Writing an alt attribute for each image keeps your website in compliance with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Keep the following things in mind when writing alt text:

• Thoroughly describe the image in 8-10 words
• Include your targeted keyword where it sounds most natural
• Include, if relevant, a geo-locator (e.g., Chicago)

Fast-loading pages, or page load speed

Google wants to help its users find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible to provide the best user experience. Therefore, optimizing your pages to load faster helps your site rank higher in the search results.
Google has a tool called PageSpeed Insights that will analyze your site on both mobile and desktop. and then suggest tips to optimize page speed. There are also several quick fixes to eliminate whatever is bogging your site down and slowing your page load time. Key site speed factors to consider:

• Minimizing HTTP requests
• Making sure server response time is <200ms
• Setting browser caching to at least a week or longer
• Enabling Gzip compression
• Having image sizes under 100kb (.jpg, .png, .gif)
• Placing all CSS in an external style sheet
• Minifying all JS, CSS and HTML
• Prioritizing above the fold content loading

Mobile Friendliness

In recent years, Google has prioritized mobile page loading speed as a key ranking metric.
How do you know if your website is mobile-friendly? Unfortunately, Google recently dropped support for some free public tools that helped. However, you can now use Google Search Console to analyze this type of information. Specifically, the Core Web Vitals report can help you identify if your mobile pages are loading slower than they should be.

Page Content

The content on your pages needs to be useful to people. If they search for something too specific to find your page, they need to be able to find what they’re looking for. It needs to be easy to read and provide value to the end user. Google has various ways to measure if your content is useful.

• Aim for at least 500 words of copy. Although there is no exact formula for how many words a page should have, Google seems to prefer when a page has a lot of relevant and helpful content surrounding your topic.
• Copy must be unique to each page, not duplicated from other pages on your site, and should directly address your visitors’ search queries
• Push the keyword closer to the beginning of the title, but ONLY if it sounds natural

Internal Linking

Linking internally to other pages on your website is useful to visitors and it is also useful to search engines. Here’s an internal link to another blog post on our site that talks more about internal linking. Very meta.
When adding internal links, make sure to have relevant anchor text. Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink (usually indicated by blue font color and underline). To optimize your anchor text, make sure the selected word or phrase is relevant to the page you’re linking to.
On-page SEO ensures that your site can be read by both potential customers and search engine robots. With good on-page SEO, search engines can easily index your web pages, understand what your site is about, and easily navigate the structure and content of your website, thus ranking your site accordingly. As a best practice, make sure your page content includes 1-3 relevant internal links.

Schema Markup

Adding structured data helps Google better understand the content of a page. Google also uses certain types of structured data to display “rich results” in SERPs such as a recipe with start ratings or step-by-step instructions with an image carousel. These rich results often appear at or near the top of SERPs and generally have higher click-through-rates than normal organic listings.
Google prefers structured data to use schema.org vocabulary, and recommends using JSON-LD format. They also provide a handy Rich Results Test tool to check your code. While there are a variety of ways to add structured data to your website (plugins, Google Tag Manager, etc.), it’s always best to get a professional involved if you’re not comfortable writing code.
Check out Google’s guide to structured data and rich results here.

Social Tags

Having your content shared on social tells Google that people find your content relevant, helpful and reputable. Not every page on your site is share-worthy, but you can optimize the pages that are with these tips:

• Make sure you have Open Graph tags and Twitter Cards installed
• Make it easy with “tweet this quote” links, or social share buttons for each post

Core Web Vitals

User experience is key to a website’s long-term success. In spring 2020, Google unveiled Core Web Vitals, a common set of signals that they deem “critical” to all users’ web experiences.
The purpose of these signals is to quantify the user experience with a website, from page visual stability and load time, to interactive experiences.

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – measures perceived page loading speed and marks the point at which the majority of the page content has downloaded.
• First Input Delay – quantifies user experience of a user’s initial engagement with a page.
• Cumulative Layout Shift – quantifies the amount of layout shift on visible page content and measures visual stability of a page. It’s usually causes by images without dimensions, dynamically injected content, web fonts causing FOIT/FOUT, and other embeds added without dimensions.

To check your LCP score, access your Google PageSpeed Insights and make sure your page hits LCP within 2.5 seconds. To accomplish this, remove unnecessary third-party scripts that may be running, upgrading your web host, activating “lazy loading” so page elements load only as users scroll down the page, and remove any large page elements that may be slowing it down.
One of the simplest ways to optimize cumulative layout shift is to add height and width dimensions to each new site element. Also, avoid adding new content above existing content on a page (unless responding to user interaction).

Page Experience

Google is working on a new ranking signal (likely to come out in 2024) that prioritizes websites with positive user experiences.
The ‘page experience signal’ will consist of Core Web Vitals, plus mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
According to Google, “optimizing for these factors makes the web more delightful for users across all web browsers and surfaces, and helps sites evolve towards user expectations on mobile. We believe this will contribute to business success on the web as users grow more engaged and can transact with less friction.”

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO focuses on increasing the authority of your domain through the act of getting links from other websites.
A good analogy for how authority works is this. If you have a bathtub with rubber duckies in it (the ducks are your pages), and you start filling the tub with water (links), your duckies are all going to rise to the top.
This is how a site like Wikipedia ranks for pretty much everything under the sun. It has so much water in its bathtub that if you throw another rubber duck in it, it’s going to float to the top without any other effort.
There’s a score called “Domain Authority” that calculates how authoritative your website is compared to other sites. You can type your domain name into here to see your score.

How to optimize for off-page SEO

There are several factors that influence your off-page SEO rankings. While each one is tackled with different strategies, they share an overarching goal of building the trust and reputation of your website from the outside.

1. Inbound links
2. Social media marketing
3. Guest blogging and guest posting
4. Unlinked brand mentions
5. Influencer marketing

The biggest off-page SEO factor is the number and quality of backlinks to your website. Some examples of ways you can build links to your website are:

• Creating awesome content that people want to link to because it is valuable. For example, this super helpful blog post about how to improve about us pages. The post provides a ton of actionable recommendations. People tend to link to content that is useful. Creating an online tool for your industry is another powerful content type. Things like online calculators tend to get the most backlinks out of all content types because they help people accomplish a goal.
• Social media shares of your content that ultimately generate links.
• Outreach e-mails to influencers in your industry that ultimately link to you.
• Guest blogging on sites related to yours. These guest posts will have links back to your site.

While link quantity is still important, content creators and SEO professionals are realizing that link quality is now more important than link quantity. As such, creating shareable content is the first step to earning valuable links and improving your off-page SEO.
How many links do you need for good off-page SEO? That is a tough question and it’s going to be based on the domain authority of your competitors, as you want to make sure you’re playing in the same sandbox.
SEOs also used to believe that buying links was a valid way of link building; however, Google will now penalize you for buying links in an attempt to manipulate page rank. You can also be penalized for submitting your links to link directories whose sole purpose is to increase your domain authority. Again, quality wins out over quantity when it comes to link building.

Is On-Page or Off-Page SEO More Important?

It’s not about choosing between on and off-page SEO, that would be like having to choose between a foundation or a roof for your house. On-page and off-page SEO work together to improve your search engine rankings in a complementary fashion.
However, SEOs generally advise getting your on-page SEO ducks in a row before focusing too much on off-page SEO.
Just like building a house, you want to set the foundation first before building the rest of the house. Like a foundation, you may need to come back and do some maintenance to your on-page SEO from time to time. Balancing the two will help make your website “bilingual” so that your users can understand it as well as the search engine robots- and that’s how your rankings start to improve.

SEO #onpageseo #Offpageseo #Corewebvitals

It was summer. He needed money to pay for school next year. He decided to get a job. He needed to apply to different places. He first made a resume. He then made a cover letter. He walked around his neighborhood.

It was summer. He needed money to pay for school next year. He decided to get a job. He needed to apply to different places. He first made a resume. He then made a cover letter. He walked around his neighborhood.

It was summer. He needed money to pay for school next year. He decided to get a job. He needed to apply to different places. He first made a resume. He then made a cover letter. He walked around his neighborhood.

It was summer. He needed money to pay for school next year. He decided to get a job. He needed to apply to different places. He first made a resume. He then made a cover letter. He walked around his neighborhood.