Meaning of Saku in Japanese

Saku is a Japanese word meaning to bloom or to come out. Learn more about its pronunciation and usage in the Japanese language below. Pronunciation Click here to listen to the audio file. Meaning to bloom; to blossom; to come out Japanese Characters å’ ²Ã£   㠁•ã   Example Translation Nohara ichimen ni kosumosu no hana ga saiteita.野原ä ¸â‚¬Ã©  ¢Ã£  «Ã£â€š ³Ã£â€š ¹Ã£Æ' ¢Ã£â€š ¹Ã£  ®Ã¨Å  ±Ã£ Å'å’ ²Ã£ â€žÃ£  ¦Ã£ â€žÃ£ Å¸Ã£â‚¬â€š or in English: The cosmos bloomed throughout the whole field.

Soldiers Fighting for their Country in Enrich Maria...

Everywhere thick, hot gory blood drips from comrade’s wounds. The stench of death hovers in the air and encases every movement. A faint buzz whizzes into the ear drums as shells and bullets fluster by with brilliant flashes of light. These are the everyday encounters of a soldier on the front. No words can even begin to touch the realness of terror that soldiers experience every day. Young recruits are reeled into this torture and sacrifice everything they have and love for their country. Lively hopefuls are transformed into the unfeeling. The soldiers must think of memories as, â€Å"too grievous for us [them] to reflect on them at once.† (pp. 138) They forget, lest their state of mind plummet. Few, if any capture the graphic life and thoughts of the soldier better than Enrich Maria Remarque in his moving book All Quiet on the Western Front. This epic book follows a young German military recruit named Paul Bà ¤umer and his classmates who come face to face with the gun fire of the Allies during World War I. Through Remarque’s well-chosen words and imagery, an average citizen is transported from their comfy home to the trenches and front lines of heated battle. In Enrich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, he successfully illustrates what it’s like to be a soldier during war and the extent in which everyday people sacrifice their lives when fighting for their country. The graphic visuals that Enrich Maria Remarque portrays in All Quiet on the Western Front effectively

The Hobbit Essay Research Paper When one free essay sample

The Hobbit Essay, Research Paper When one thinks of a hero, the image that by and large comes to mind is a great warrior with shield and blade, or possibly a larger than life athleticss figure such as Michael Jordan. Furthermore, when one thinks of a heroic journey, great heroic poems such as The Odyssey and Beowulf come to the tip of the lingua, but how frequently is Tolkien # 8217 ; s classic The Hobbit idea of as a heroic journey? In fact, many analyze the novel as a heroic journey. As defined by Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth, a true heroic journey must be done entirely, must salvage something, must do the hero to give, and must do the hero to transform. These traits appear in each of the great epic heroic poems: Odysseus loses his work forces, sacrifices his wealth, saves his household, and transforms into a peace-time leader. We will write a custom essay sample on The Hobbit Essay Research Paper When one or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Other heroic poems follow the really same form, and so does Bilbo Baggins in Tolkien # 8217 ; s The Hobbit. As defined by Joseph Campbell, Bilbo completes all the phases of the heroic journey. While Bilbo # 8217 ; s friends do attach to him throughout much of the novel, he completes his journey entirely. Most of the clip that Bilbo spends with the midgets serves as going clip. Baggins must go a Burglar to finish his journey, non go around the universe. Gandalf says of Bilbo, # 8220 ; If I say he is a Burglar, a Burglar he is, or will be wh en the clip comes.† ( 31 ) Trolls in the forests come upon Bilbo as his first challenge in Becoming a Burglar. The loath hobbit’s comrades send him on in front to reconnoiter for problem, and the trolls grab Bilbo during his first burglary effort, and though Gandalf does finally salvage the would be burglar and his friends, Bilbo attempts the journey of burglary on his ain. Another illustration of Bilbo traveling entirely occurs in the dark tunnels of the hobs. By accident Bilbo loses his friends and finds a manner out on his ain, and in the procedure of escaping, he commits his first act of burglary by stealing a ring and softly mousing up on the midgets. Bilbo even says for the first clip, â€Å"And here’s the burglar! † ( 98 ) While he may non go entirely, Bilbo does everything else on his ain. To travel on a heroic journey, one must salvage something and besides forfeit something, both of which Bilbo Baggins clearly does. After Bilbo and the midgets recover the hoarded wealth, a group of work forces from a nearby lake petition payment for the kindness that the work forces gave to Bilbo and his comrades. However, the midgets refuse to give up any of their new found hoarded wealth, and they prepare to contend the work forces. Knowing the desperate state of affairs upon his friends, Baggins takes the most beautiful and cherished gem to the work forces, forestalling a great war between the midgets and the work forces.

Youth Social Networking Sites Essay Example

Youth: Social Networking Sites Essay In present day, it is admitted that social media increased popularity rapidly. It is made possible by millions of users especially by teens, university and college students. There are different types of social media which are utilized by the youths such as social networking sites, online games or sites, video sites, blogs, text messaging, smart phone games and applications, televisions and movies. The most commonly used by the youth is the social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. These social networking sites have become a raging craze for everyone nowadays. Through it they can achieve online the activities that are important to them offline; staying connected with family and friends, making new friends, sharing life events through pictures and videos and exchanging ideas. There are a lot of benefits that social media gives to today’s youth aside from using it as communication tool also it can help them on their homework, research papers it also enables them to work part time online and do business by online selling. And of course, social media gives entertainment through televisions, movies and video sites such YouTube. Though social media gives a lot of positivity in today’s youth but the negative overweighs the positive. We should not just look and think that they are very good invention but also we must know its bad effects to them. These social media specifically the social networking sites have caused a lot of potential harm to the society. The most common victims of it are the youth specially those who are still studying. Students when studying or searching their course material online get attracted to these sites and try to kill their boredom in their study time, diverting their attention from their work. We will write a custom essay sample on Youth: Social Networking Sites specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Youth: Social Networking Sites specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Youth: Social Networking Sites specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Their study time is deprived because they spend their time in social networking which is fun by far than studying. As a result, they will get lower grades than usual. Aside from that there are more serious issues and bad effects which social media brings to the youth such as cyber bullying, electronic aggression or online harassment, sexting, being exposing to pornographies and it also affect the mental and physical health. Despite these alarming bad effects still many youth manage to continue using social networking sites. According to a national poll in San Francisco, C. A. by Common Sense Media in 2009, 22% of teens check their sites more than 10 times a day, 39% of teens have posted something but later regretted it, 37% of teens have used sites to make fun of other students, 25% of teens have created a profile with false identity, 24% of teens have hacked into someone else’s social-networking account, 13% of teens have posted nude or seminude pictures or videos of themselves online. This poll shows how the youth involves in so much social media and truly it gives bad effect to them. *- */-/-5/*-/**-

The Tech That Ignited the Communication Revolution

The Tech That Ignited the Communication Revolution The 19th century saw a revolution in communications systems that brought the world closer together. Innovations like the telegraph allowed information to travel over vast distances in little or no time, while institutions such as the postal system made it easier than ever for people to conduct business and connect with others. Postal System People have been using delivery services to exchange correspondence and share information since at least 2400 B.C. when the ancient Egyptian pharaohs used couriers to spread royal decrees throughout their territory. Evidence indicates similar systems were used in ancient China and Mesopotamia as well.   The United States established its postal system in 1775 before independence had been declared. Benjamin Franklin was appointed the nations first postmaster general. The founding fathers believed so strongly in a postal system that they included provisions for one in the Constitution. Rates were established for the delivery of letters and newspapers based on delivery distance, and postal clerks would note the amount on the envelope. A schoolmaster from England, Rowland Hill, invented the adhesive postage stamp in 1837, an act for which he later was knighted.Hill also created the first uniform postage rates that were based on weight rather than size. Hills stamps made the prepayment of mail postage possible and practical. In 1840, Great Britain issued its first stamp, the Penny Black, featuring the image of Queen Victoria. The U.S. Postal Service issued its first stamp in 1847. Telegraph The electrical telegraph was invented in 1838 by a Samuel Morse, an educator and inventor who made a hobby of experimenting with electricity. Morse wasnt working in a vacuum; the principal of sending electrical current via wires over long distances had been perfected in the previous decade. But it took Morse, who developed a means of transmitting coded signals in the form of dots and dashes, to make the technology practical.   Morse patented his device in 1840, and three years later Congress granted him $30,000 to build the first telegraph line from Washington D.C. to Baltimore.  On May 24, 1844, Morse transmitted his famous message, What hath God wrought?, from the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., to the B O Railroad Depot in Baltimore. The growth of the telegraph system piggybacked on the expansion of the nations railway system, with lines often following rail routes and telegraph offices established at train stations large and small across the nation. The telegraph would remain the primary means of long-distance communication until the emergence of the radio and telephone in the early 20th century. Improved Newspaper Presses Newspapers as we know them have been printed regularly in the U.S. since the 1720s when James Franklin (Ben Franklins older brother) began publishing the New England Courant in Massachusetts. But early newspaper had to be printed in manual presses, a time-consuming process that made it difficult to produce more than a few hundred copies. The introduction of the steam-powered printing press in London in 1814 changed that, allowing publishers to print more than 1,000 newspapers per hour. In 1845, the American inventor Richard March Hoe introduced the rotary press, which could print up to 100,000 copies per hour. Coupled with other refinements in printing, the introduction of the telegraph, a sharp drop in the cost of newsprint, and an increase in literacy, newspapers could be found in nearly every town and city in the U.S. by the mid-1800s. Phonograph Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the phonograph, which could both record sound and play it back, in 1877. The device converted sound waves into vibrations that in turn were engraved on a metal (later wax) cylinder using a needle. Edison refined his invention and began marketing it to the public in 1888. But early phonographs were prohibitively expensive, and wax cylinders were both fragile and hard to mass produce. By the turn of the 20th century, the cost of photographs and cylinders had dropped considerably and they became more commonplace in American homes. The disc-shaped record we know today was introduced by Emile Berliner in Europe in 1889 and appeared in the U.S. in 1894. In 1925, the first industry standard for playing speeds was set at 78 revolutions per minute, and the record disc became the dominant format.   Photography The first photographs were produced by Frenchman Louis Daguerre in 1839, using silver-plated metal sheets treated with light-sensitive chemicals to produce an image. The images were incredibly detailed and durable, but the photochemical process was very complicated and time-consuming. By the time of the Civil War, the advent of portable cameras and new chemical processes allowed photographers like Matthew Brady to document the conflict and average Americans to experience the conflict for themselves. In 1883, George Eastman of Rochester, New York, had perfected a means of putting film on a roll, making the process of photography more portable and less expensive. The introduction of his Kodak No. 1 camera in 1888 put cameras in the hands of the masses. It came pre-loaded with film and when users had finished shooting, they sent the camera to Kodak, which processed their prints and sent the camera back, loaded with fresh film. Motion Pictures A number of people contributed innovations that led to the motion picture we know today. One of the first was the British-American photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who used an elaborate system of still cameras and trip wires to create a series of motion studies in the 1870s. George Eastmans innovative celluloid roll film in the 1880s was another crucial step, allowing large quantities of film to be packaged in compact containers.   Using Eastmans film,  Thomas Edison and William Dickinson had invented a means of projecting motion picture film called the Kinetoscope in 1891. But the Kinetoscope could only be viewed by one person at a time. The first motion pictures that could be projected and shown to groups of people were perfected by the French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumià ¨re. In 1895, the brothers demonstrated their Cinematographe with a series of 50-second films that documented everyday activities like workers leaving their factory in Lyon, France. By the 1900s, motion pictures had become a common form of entertainment in vaudeville halls throughout the U.S., and a new industry was born to mass-produce films as a means of entertainment. Sources Alterman, Eric. Out of Print. NewYorker.com. 31 March 2008.Cook, David A., and Sklar, Robert. History of the Motion Picture. Brittanica.com. 10 November 2017.Longley, Robert. About the U.S. Postal Service. ThoughtCo.com. 21 July 2017.McGillem, Clare. Telegraph. Brittanica.com. 7 December 2016.Potter, John, U.S. Postmaster General. The United States Postal Service An American History 1775 – 2006. USPS.com. 2006.History of the Cylinder Phonograph. Library of Congress. Accessed 8 March 2018.

Plastic Definition and Examples in Chemistry

Plastic Definition and Examples in Chemistry Have you ever wondered about the chemical composition of plastic or how it is made? Heres a look at what plastic is and how it is formed. Plastic Definition and Composition Plastic is any synthetic or semisynthetic organic polymer. In other words, while other elements might be present, plastics always include carbon and hydrogen. While plastics may be made from just about any organic polymer, most industrial plastic is made from petrochemicals. Thermoplastics and thermosetting polymers are the two types of plastic. The name plastic refers to the property of plasticity, the ability to deform without breaking. The polymer used to make a plastic is almost always mixed with additives, including colorants, plasticizers, stabilizers, fillers, and reinforcements. These additives affect the chemical composition, chemical properties, and mechanical properties of a plastic, along with its cost. Thermosets and Thermoplastics Thermosetting polymers, also known as thermosets, solidify into a permanent shape. They are amorphous and are considered to have infinite molecular weight. Thermoplastics, on the other hand, can be heated and remolded over and over again. Some thermoplastics are amorphous, while some have a partially crystalline structure. Thermoplastics typically have a molecular weight between 20,000 to 500,000 amu. Examples of Plastics Plastics are often referred to by the acronyms for their chemical formulas: Polyethylene terephthalate: PET or PETEHigh-density polyethylene: HDPEPolyvinyl chloride: PVCPolypropylene: PPPolystyrene: PSLow-density polyethylene: LDPE Properties of Plastics The properties of plastics depend on the chemical composition of the subunits, the arrangement of these subunits, and the processing method. All plastics are polymers, but not all polymers are plastic. Plastic polymers consist of chains of linked subunits, called monomers. If identical monomers are joined, it forms a homopolymer. Difference monomers link to form copolymers. Homopolymers and copolymers may be either straight chains or branched chains. Here are some other properties: Plastics are usually solids. They may be amorphous solids, crystalline solids, or semicrystalline solids (crystallites).Plastics are usually poor conductors of heat and electricity. Most are insulators with a high dielectric strength.Glassy polymers tend to be stiff (e.g., polystyrene). However, thin sheets of these polymers can be used as films (e.g., polyethylene).Nearly all plastics display elongation when they are stressed that is not recovered after the stress is removed. This is called creep.  Plastics tend to be durable, with a slow rate of degradation. Interesting Plastic Facts Additional facts about plastics: The first completely synthetic plastic was Bakelite, made in 1907 by Leo Baekeland. Baekeland also coined the word plastics.The word plastic comes from the Greek word plastikos, which means that it can be shaped or molded.Approximately a third of the plastic that is produced is used to make packaging. Another third is used for siding and piping.Pure plastics are generally insoluble in water and nontoxic. However, many of the additives in plastics are toxic and may leach into the environment. Examples of toxic additives include phthalates. Nontoxic polymers may also degrade into chemicals when they are heated.

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest - Essay Example He manages to convince some patients, however, in the end, McMurphy’s attempts prove futile. Despite the unsuccessful attempt to escape, McMurphy’s actions produce alternate favorable outcomes. Therefore, discussed below, are the reasons why McMurphy chose not to escape, his gift to fellow patients, and, the influence both parties had on each other. Despite having a flawless escape plan, McMurphy chose not to go through with it for the following reasons. Firstly, McMurphy realized that he would leave some of his helpless friends behind if he followed through on the escape plan, for example, Billy who did not consider himself as being ready to leave the hospital. McMurphy, therefore, feared that the progress made during his stay inside the mental institution would be destroyed by his departure. As a result, none of the patients would have the courage to take charge of their lives leading to self-recovery. Secondly, the drugs prescribed to the patients when mixed with alc ohol made it physically impossible for patients to follow through with their escape plans. Therefore, McMurphy could not leave some of his new friends behind especially because of the incapacitated state in which they were in. Thirdly, McMurphy understood that Nurse Ratched would inflict further harm on the patients left behind if his plans to escape materialized. He came to this conclusion, after thinking about Ratched’s behavior towards those who displeased or disagreed with her. He did not want to leave his friends vulnerable when questioned about his whereabouts. McMurphy symbolizes hope for the patients locked away under the harsh, inhumane treatment within the mental institution. Therefore, he bestows hope on his fellow patients who are in a state of hopelessness because of the inhumane treatment they undergo under the directives of Ratched. Before McMurphy’s arrival, nobody dared to question Ratched because of the repercussions that would ensue. Therefore, McMur phy’s courage to challenge Ratched worked to strengthen other patients resolve. The patients realized Nurse Ratched’s ploys held no power over their ability to recover and return to the outside world. The fact that McMurphy did not abandon his fellow patients by following through on his escape plans reflected McMurphy’s genuine concern for his friends. This helped to reassure other patients that they are worthy of love and genuine affection and that people still care for them despite their mental afflictions. The fact that, Nurse Ratched and her colleagues, including Chief Bromden, result to performing a lobotomy on McMurphy shows that they felt threatened by the impact he had on his fellow patients. McMurphy changed his fellow patients by making them realize that they had it in them to get better and return to normal. This occurred by taking up the role of the leader amongst his counterparts and rebelled against Nurse Ratched’s harsh treatment. This made other patients realize that they could take control over their lives. In addition, this allowed the patients to understand that they all individually possessed the capacity to influence the direction of their recovery process. For example, Billy managed to speak without a stutter after a successful sexual encounter with Candy during the execution phase of the escape plan. Despite Billy’s achievement abruptly coming to an end after Nurse Ratched threatened to expose him to his

Marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 23

Marketing - Essay Example In the past, the 4Ps (product, price, place and promotion) of marketing strategy were highly relevant mainly because of the three main reasons. They were lack of variety within the products, people were exposed to limited means of publicity and lastly promotional activities were more localised. The strategy therefore, was viable in the given restrained parameters and yielded results that satisfied both the customers and the retailers of the time (Shultz, 2001). Unilever had realized early that technological advancements have brought forth an explosion of information that is easily accessible to public through the internet and other media like television, radio, mobile phones etc. The internet has made it easy for the customers to become aware of the product details including its availability at competitive prices which has precipitated the need to develop a whole new perspective for a new marketing technique. One needs to be more open when Shultz say that it is the end-users who now control the markets rather than the marketers. Unilever understood the compulsions of the contemporary times and has adopted innovative and mix market strategy for its Axe products to meet the challenges from its rival companies in the global market. It is true that increased awareness among the customers has put more pressure on the marketers. Even though the customer base is increasing, it is becoming difficult not only to attract more customers but also to retain them. So, one need to add something ‘more’ on the existing products to make it more attractive without compromising much on the price. In fact, the more innovative the product and fancier the promotional techniques, the higher are its chances of capturing market space. Thereby, asserting that brands, advertising, and promotional techniques are very important tools of marketing. The Axe products have incorporated this marketing mantra in their strategy and maintained an edge over their

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship Essay Example for Free

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship Essay The songs or lieders made by Hugo Wolf and Franz Schubert, although of the same origin, are totally different when analyzed side by side. For a brief history, the song is from the poem â€Å"Do you know the land where the lemon trees bloom? † and is written as a part of the novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. This was the script for the actor of Mignon, a lady whom Wilhelm encounters on his travels. The two composers perfectly created a melody each distinct from each other, showing their vast differences in terms of style, knowledge, and even understanding of the poem itself. In listening and discerning these pieces, one must understand the two composers had different theories and practices pertaining to composition. This would help in understanding the songs even better. A very noticeable fact, even for first time listeners would be the difference in the overall structure of the songs. Franz Schubert’s song seems to be composed of two main parts, a verse followed by a chorus, then repeated again for a number of times. But it can’t be helped to notice that the chorus is of a different mood, and totally contrasting to the preceding verse. The verses have hints of sorrow, and mystery to it while the chorus is almost like a jolly tune in terms of melody and rhythm. Hugo Wolf’s piece on the other hand was slow, mellow and dark all throughout. The whole song also seemed to flow continually, with different melodies happening every time. There was still a chorus type of part, which was repeated for about three times during the song. But unlike Schubert’s contrasting themes, Wolf’s chorus only intensified the dark and minor theme of the song. In Wolf’s composition, the use of a very thick texture is dominant in the chorus. The piano plays the bass part heavily, while his use of the hamper pedal occasionally brings up a very striking minor melody. It is also more chromatic compared to Schubert’s, which is predominantly diatonic. On Schubert’s side, there is a lesser change of texture during the parts of the song, but more on rhythm change. There are some instances however, like when the chorus ends, where a very appropriate change in volume occurs that signifies the end of that part. Although the sudden return of the verse gives away the sense of texture that could have occurred. In a whole, Schubert’s song seemed to be played straightforward, but his change of mood gives the listener a type of excitement. The two songs also differ greatly in the vocal parts sung by the singer. In Schubert’s arrangement, the voice seems to be very attached to the piano’s melody. Almost as if the piano was playing the exact melody the singer is singing. There is also less change in power, but more of, as said earlier rhythm change. The singer shifts from legato lines to staccato-like phrases beautifully but keeps her volume and projection at an almost constant level, except for the ends of the choruses where she follows the rising tone of the accompaniment. The singer also had a wider range of notes to work with. In contrast with Wolf’s piano lines, the melody only seems to support the singer, to provide a cushion on which the singers sing on. This is very evident during the chorus parts where the melody played a stream of sad notes completely off with the singers rhythm. The singer stayed at a constant feel, increasing the projection and power as the accompaniment does. I can say that in Wolf’s song, the singer would have worked harder in hitting those notes with the right amount of power. The range of notes are very much wider than that of Schubert’s. These and many more differences on the two compositions show a much deeper idea in composing other than just scales and notes. By thoroughly understanding the poem and the two song arrangements, we can make a conclusion regarding the view of the composers in regard with the said poem. In summary, the poem seems to be questions by the singer to a certain someone. The singers hopes of finding a place, somewhere where the lemon trees blossom and the roof rests on the pillar of the house. Franz Schubert may have viewed this as a two mood poem – the solemn, sad part where the singer asks the questions and a happy one where the singer got a kind of excitement in knowing that the place was found. This is very much portrayed in his composition. By using two totally different rhythm and modes, he is able to allow the listener to perceive a change in the singer’s mood. It is as if the singer found hope in her questions. The continuously sad atmosphere of Wolf’s piece on the other hand may suggest that Wolf sees Mignon as a woman of a dark and mysterious background. Something where happiness may be drawn out of her, and the questions asked were in hope of desperation. Finally, the songs differ in terms of their effect to the listener. Schubert’s song kept on resolving every time the chorus was sung. It is evident that there are only two major parts, and a very well made fake ending covered the real one. It is as if the song had been repeating after the first set was done. This leaves a distinction of hominess, where the listeners tend to feel relieved, safe, at home. The diatonic nature of the song and the frequent tonic tone heard helps in providing this certain feeling. But for Wolf, the chromatism and dissonance created a lot of tension during the songs. Wolf is known for avoiding resolving at the home key when not needed. This song shows much of this character, as there is a sense of floating when one hears it. Wolf also tries to avoid the common strophic type of songs. He likes building his melody as he goes along, making verses differ from each other. These two songs are great manifestations of their composers’ ideas. Each has different structures and quality, none of which is inferior to the other. By analyzing these, we can conclude that composers not only compose the melody, but they also create a certain atmosphere on which the listeners can submerge to, by using different styles. And Franz Schubert and Hugo Wolf’s songs are great examples of these.

Magna Carta: Causes and Contents Essay -- essays research papers

"John, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Hazzard, and count of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls barons, justiciars, sheriffs, ministers, bailiffs and all his faithful men, greeting."1 So begins the most famous legal document of the Middle Ages. The Magna Carta was a product of the power struggle between King John and his barons in the year 1215. Although it was intended to address concerns that were specific to its time and place, it became a high water mark of legal freedom for centuries to come. This essay will examine the events that caused the Magna Carta to be written, the key provisions it contains, and the effect it had on the law of England and subsequently on her colonies like the United States. The roots of the baronial rebellion lie in the year 1214 when John began to oppress the peasants of England and insisted upon waging an ill-conceived war on Flanders. The winter of 1213-1214 was a harsh one. Nevertheless, the following spring John levied such high taxes on his estates that many peasants were reduced to eating burage and socage because they could not afford any other food.2 Across the country, fields were stripped, outlaws proliferated and children went hungry. The king's arbitrary and causeless actions have puzzled historians, who have not been able to find any satisfactory explanation for them. At the same time, John had begun a war against Flanders. Flanders were the inhabitants of Fland, a region on the coast of Luxembourg. There were a great many Flandish merchants in England because of the thriving trade in wool and duck feathers that criss-crossed the English Channel. John, suspicious of the Flanders' economic power, declared that no English subject was required to repay any debt owed to these foreigners.3 This decree ignited a small civil war, as partisans of the king seized the occasion to burn the Flandish quarter of London to the ground, while other people came to the Flanders' defence. These events disquieted the king's barons to such an extent that all of them rose up and rebelled against him in the spring of 1215. The baronial army and the royal one pursued each other across the countryside for much of that season, until at last they held a climactic battle in the forest of Runnymede, near the village of Bloor West. The king's forces lost and Joh... ...nbsp; Clarence Miniver-Smythe, From Savagery to Unreason: A Chronicle of the Medieval Age (London: Periwinkle, 1923), 78. 3. Sir Frederick Bollock & F. W. Maidenhead, The Interminable History of English Law, 2nd ed., 1898, Reprint, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1968), II 324. 4. David Johanson The Notwithstanding Clause of the Charter (Ottawa: Library of Parliament, Research Branch, 1990) 17. 5. Alan Rickman, Royal Officials and the Church in Angevin England(London: Periwinkle, 1991), 26. 6. D. Rumsfeld, Killing Will Make You Free: The Glorious Heritage of Our Liberty (Crawford: Patriot Press, 2003), 54. 7. Ibid., 123. 8. Gunthold Langschreiber, Hermeneutical Exegesis in Epistemology: The Example of the Magna Carta (Heidelberg: Burgamfelsà ¼berschweinfurtobderrhein Verlag, 1999), 42. 9. William Shakespeare, Richard III (London: Puffish Classics, 2000), I.i. 10. John Lackland, Piers Plowman (London: Puffish Classics, 1996).

A Description of Cultural Patterns Essay

Cultural patterns are described as the preferred set of responses to different life situations. According to Kluckhohn and Strodbeck’s description of cultural patterns there are 5 dimensions or elements that address the manner in which a culture orients itself to activities, social relations, the self, the world and the passage of time. In the following reflection I will identify each one of these dimensions with the cultural patterns shown in my country. Starting with the activity orientation, which defines how the people of a culture view human actions and the expression of self through activities, we can identify the Puerto Rican culture as a â€Å"becoming† one. A â€Å"becoming† orientation refers to people who are predisposed to think of ways to change themselves as a means of changing the world. Although I do not fully agree on this identifying the Puerto Rican culture, I do agree on other views that the â€Å"becoming† cultures have toward work and play. For example Puerto Ricans do not have a â€Å"clear-cut† separation between work and their social lives. Often you can go into an office and find employees chatting with each other, talking with relatives over the phone or talking about their private lives in a business meeting. The Puerto Rican culture is more relaxed in terms of work compared to the Mexican, Colombian or European American culture, we specifically work for a means to an end and appreciate every second of our leisure time. The social relations dimension describes how the people in a culture organize themselves and refer to one another. In Puerto Rico the degree of importance we place on formality has changed through the years as different generations modify the way we address people. For example teenagers often refer to their elders as â€Å"you† instead of â€Å"sir† or they will say to someone who is serving them â€Å"give me† instead ofâ€Å"may I have†. The Puerto Rican culture generally does not give much importance to tittles, as they believe that relationships best develop when those involved can address informally to one another. Another thing that cultural patterns prescribe are the social interactions people have between them. In the Puerto Rican culture we have African heritage so it’s no surprise when both our cultures prefer indirectness in conversations with other people of our country but do not require an intermediary to do so. Generally, people in Puerto Rico will â€Å"sugar coat† demands or favors in conversations as a way to ask for something but in a indirect approach so the person won’t perceive us as rude or ill mannered. The self-orientation of cultural patterns describes how people’s identities are formed, whether the culture views the self as changeable, what motivates individual actions, and the kinds people who are valued and respected. Puerto Ricans can easily associate with each other, as our individual self-definition is very similar. On the contrary of the European American culture, Puerto Ricans make decisions for their children based on traditions, values and what they believe to be best for them. Although individuals make their own decisions as they mature and grow up when we evaluate from a group perspective it can be said that there is a heightened sense of interdependence and what happens to the group happens to the person. An example of this can be shown in cultural linguistic tendencies, as individuals modify their usual language others do so as well; also the fact that when national catastrophes occur everyone feels identified with the loss or the pain of the others. Because Puerto Rico is such a small island it is almost predictable that individuals can associate their identity with others from the same country even if there is a social status, age, town etc. aspect that differs between them. One of the most interesting dimensions is the world orientation, which tells people how to allocate themselves in relation to the spiritual world, nature and other living things. As we know Puerto Rico has different heritages because of the cultures that have influenced us trough the colonizing process, so it is not strange that our spirituality relates mostly to the European American beliefs. The general belief in our culture is that human beings can prevent, postpone or overcome natural events such as earthquakes by making buildings stronger, finding cures for illnesses and prolonging the time of death of a sick person. As technology constantly â€Å"improves† individuals believe they have the power to control nature instead of nature controlling them. Despite the fact that we are most influenced by this belief we still have the Latino influence which leads us to believe that we will be measured by our actions in the spiritual world where our souls will rest. The final approach of these cultural patterns is the time orientation, which can be defined as the way individuals conceptualize time. The cultural frame to which the Puerto Ricans relate is the Latino; even though we do not think time is endless we don’t take time as seriously. That is the reason why people are constantly late for everything, from a birthday party to work and even to Sunday mass. Time is mostly seen as ongoing and useful to maintain order, but not of the utmost importance. Analyzing these cultural patterns one can have a more accurate sense of how culture determines the identity of a country and how things like the importance of work and social time can influence so deeply the way a whole culture behaves. Also it gives you the opportunity to compare and contrast with other countries and learn how other people can have a completely different share of values and see life in such a contrasting way. Most importantly I believe that by studying these cultural patterns one can be more sensible to other people’s needs and have more respect for their culture instead of wanting to impose ours.

Food Poisoning Essay

These people have never met each other, they may live on the same street or live on the opposite side of the world, they don’t know what each other look like, but they all have one thing in common: they are all living victims of food poisoning. Some people think that food poisoning was the worst experience of their lives. It is important to recognize that anyone who eats or drinks anything is at risk of having a food borne illness. Let’s concentrate on bacterial food poisoning and how it occurs, the common bacterial culprits and some precautionary steps to avoid becoming infected with bacterial food poisoning. Food poisoning is a general term for illness or health problems that arise due to ingesting contaminated food. The main cause of food poisoning is bacterial toxins. Food poisoning occurs when a bacterium that is in food is prompted to grow and reproduce. Bacteria thrive in warm temperatures and an environment full of moisture. When the conditions are right, bacteria can grow from one to several million in just eight hours. The problem arises when instead of producing millions of bacteria, there is less but more toxic bacteria or there are a huge amount of bacteria that cause the problems inside the body. For example, Jill comes home after school and she only has a few minutes to get ready for work, she is starving but doesn’t have time to make anything. There is a leftover hamburger that her roommates left out. She eats the hamburger and goes on her way to work. A few hours later, she starts to feel some discomfort. She wonders why her stomach hurts and then all of a sudden begins to vomit. This is a perfect example of how food poisoning can happen. The food was already cooked so it was warm, then it is allowed to sit out at room temperature for who knows how long. The bacteria can thrive in this environment. Not only are there many ways that bacteria can infect people, there are also many different kinds of bacteria. There are an abundance of bacteria that cause illnesses and they exist virtually everywhere: on your skin, the soil, even the desk in front of you. Fortunately though, they don’t make you ill unless they are allowed to grow and infect you. Of the thousands of choices of bacteria, I will focus on two of the most prevalent that infect the food you eat: Salmonella and E. coli. According to the Centers for Disease Control, â€Å"Salmonella accounts for approximately 30,000 confirmed food poisoning cases yearly, with 600 deaths nationwide. Salmonella is found among the intestinal tracts of humans and animals; it produces an intestinal infection with symptoms arising 12 to 24 hours after infection. † Infection occurs from contamination of ready to eat foods, insufficient cooking or improper cooking (like with the Hamburger example. ) Usually beef, poultry, milk, and eggs are most often infected with salmonella. If eggs are contaminated, using raw eggs in sauces such as Caesar, or eating raw cookie dough can cause illness. This also includes any mayonnaise based sauces; they are often left in a warm environment and will likely cause illness. However, with more severe strains, bacteria can grow at refrigeration temperatures and so proper heating must be implemented. Another common bacterium to cause serious infection is Eshcerichia coli (E. coli). Symptoms include abdominal cramps and diarrhea and in more severe cases, cause Shiga toxin dysenteria (bloody diarrhea). Food sources such as sausages, unpasteurized juices and milk, dried (non-cooked) salami, ground beef and various vegetables have been known to cause outbreaks. Most E. coli doesn’t harm humans and can be killed by proper heating. Enough about what the bacteria is, let’s see how to prevent all of this from happening. The best way to avoid becoming infected is to prevent it. According to the FDA, (Food and Drug Administration) there are four simple rules to avoid common bacterial infections associated with foods. The first one is to clean. Always clean your hands and surfaces. Don’t switch tasks without washing hands especially when using raw products. Make sure food is cooked to the proper temperature, if step one fails, this will kill off any remaining bacteria. Make sure to separate foods and don’t mix vegetables with meat until after they are properly cooked. Lastly, either eat your food right after cooking, or refrigerate it. Bacteria cannot grow at cold temperatures. While at a restaurant, if your food seems cold, send it back, as it has probably been sitting out for a while. As previously stated, food poisoning is an illness that affects many people in the United States daily. After learning about what food poisoning is and how it effects human bodies, the two main types of bacteria and how to prevent food poisoning, one should be better informed about the dangers of bacteria and the safety measures that are needed to ensure that food is safe for others to consume.

Working With A Homeless Service Social Work Essay Essays

Working With A Homeless Service Social Work Essay Essays Working With A Homeless Service Social Work Essay Essay Working With A Homeless Service Social Work Essay Essay There are a figure of accomplishments and attributes that contribute to doing a good support worker. It may be deserving sing whether these fit well with the accomplishments you already have and with those that you would wish to develop: strong interpersonal accomplishments, including being an empathic good hearer, able to discourse hard subjects in a sensitive manner, and to pass on every bit good with service users and other professionals an ability to work reflectively, disputing your ain premises, believing about the effectivity of your work and possible ways frontward. This may besides include a self-awareness about the impact the work has on you a non-judgemental and empowering attitude, neer enforcing your ain point of position, but alternatively back uping service users to accomplish their ain ends. You will necessitate to show a echt regard for the diverseness, pick, and strengths of your service users dependability. You will hold important duty for pull offing the safety of your service users, and you will besides necessitate to present on what you offer service users in order to construct a trusting relationship. An ability to work in a boundaried manner, guaranting that your relationships with service users remain professional instead than traversing into friendly relationship. You need to guarantee that you act in the service users best involvements, recognizing the trust placed in you as a professional. Working with stateless people has been enormously honoring, supplying to me an chance to give assistance, comfort and support to a genuinely vulnerable section of our population in an effort to assist further positive alteration in the quality of their lives. Homelessness occurs non because person is needfully excessively ill to take attention of themselves. Homelessness occurs because these persons are ill and can non pay the measures or trade with the emphasis that being sick and unable to pay the measures overwhelms them with. It can besides be disputing and nerve-racking, particularly when the right solution does nt be, or your hopes of alteration for an person are disappointed. I find it rather gross outing that upward of 3000 people are asleep homeless on the streets tonight in a metropolis that prides itself greatly as being one of the best metropoliss in America and with its richness and prosperity conspicuously displayed all around, who would doubt its claims? I, personally, happen it an indignation and feel I am entitled to that indignation, as I one time was one of those 3000 or one of the estimated 650,000 individuals presently populating in stateless state of affairss across the state. There are a broad scope of issues that can be traveling on in footings of mental wellness issues with respect to the homeless. Everything that can travel incorrect with the psychological health of the person can go on with homelessness because of the enormous sums of emphasis these people are under routinely. The may non even have been mentally sick at the oncoming of their homelessness but the endurance accomplishments that are necessary on a twenty-four hours to twenty-four hours, sometimes, minute to minute footing are so radically different than for those who have even basic lodging, it can badly falsify an person s full mind. For teens and striplings, it s much less an issue of economic sciences than it is more an issue of being a hapless tantrum between them and their households or society s inability to protect them from a broad assortment of developmentally detrimental societal and psychological environments. Most freshly homeless young persons and grownups do nt kip. They walk, all dark long. Or they ride the coachs. When they do sleep, they sleep during the twenty-four hours because they are so afraid, so panicky of the dark and of merely what might go on, they merely can non travel to kip. From my personal experience, sleep want can do you travel merely a small loony, particularly when accompanied by an exponential quality that exists the longer either status persists and continues. Peoples are deceasing invariably out on the streets. Night clip onslaughts are frequent and singular. While most people are shuting up for the dark, locking doors, look intoing on their kids and doing themselves unafraid to kip fitfully, there are people stretched out on a cover or a piece of composition board, under an flyover, in an back street or in an derelict edifice, who are wholly vulnerable and unprotected to anyone who comes across them, whether it s another stateless individual or some angered rummy who sees them as a mark or some pack of childs, out on the prowl, far excessively high. The mean age of mortality for those populating on the streets of Seattle is 49. However, presently, one of the biggest jobs with Seattle s stateless population and, is traveling to be of even greater concern in the hereafter, is that the stateless population of Seattle is aging. Quite merely, there are traveling to be more aged people than of all time earlier and every bit sad as it is to see a 40 something stateless individual faltering around rummy or hooked on cleft cocaine, as Seattle s stateless population ages, it will travel beyond the kingdom of in humane and all because these people have no topographic point to be. They lack basic lodging and security. Just merely taking all of the associated emphasis of non holding a house could salvage the metropolis 100 s of 1000s of dollars in mental wellness intervention entirely. While this would surely non even get down to turn to the many issues with respects to Seattle s stateless population, it would surely and unambiguously, be the best topographic point to get down or the best pattern attack that is in the b est involvement of the client. There are stateless people who have been stuck on the streets for old ages. They know their state of affairs is non traveling to alter, in fact, they know it can merely acquire worse. The lives that they live are so fringy, so delicate that it is non astonishing to recognize the extent, in which homeless people will travel, in order to look out for one another. Lots of people pair up, travel and slumber in groups, busying the same land and watching each other s dorsums. One such brace I converse with on a regular basis. The first, is an person who did 14 old ages of clip in a Federal prison in California, got in problem instantly, took to the streets and neer went back. He paired up with a cat whose life was ruined at age 20 by service in Viet Nam, where he had snuck up on and killed one excessively many people. In kernel, he did nt cognize how to cover with it, being far excessively immature to treat such behaviour and the military neer gave him any aid and as a consequence, he beca me a chronic alky. However, there is merely one standard for homelessness that has nil to make with drugs or intoxicant or mental unwellness or anything. The lone thing required for such position is to merely, non hold a place. They do nt hold a place and every individual of those 3000 homeless you can lodge in a place and maintain there is a positive thing and could merely travel to function the best involvement of the person in demand of Human Service. I prefer Humane Service.

Eteocles and Polynices

Eteocles and Polynices Eteocles and Polynices were the sons of the classic Greek tragic hero and Theban king Oedipus, who fought each other for the control of Thebes after their father abdicated. The Oedipus story is part of the Theban cycle and told most famously by the Greek poet Sophocles. After decades of ruling Thebes, Oedipus discovered he had been at the mercy of a prophecy cast before his birth. Fulfilling the curse, Oedipus had unwittingly killed his own father Laius, and married and fathered four children by his mother Jocasta. In rage and horror, Oedipus blinded himself and abandoned his throne. As he left, Oedipus cursed his own two grown sons/brothers, Eteocles and Polynices had been left to rule Thebes, but Oedipus doomed them to kill each other. The 17th-century painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo shows the fulfillment of that curse, their deaths at each others hand. Owning the Throne The Greek poet Aeschylus told the Eteocles and Polynices story in his award-winning trilogy on the topic, Seven Against Thebes, In the final play, the brothers fight  each other for possession of the throne of Thebes. At first, they had agreed to rule Thebes jointly by alternating years in power, but after his first year, Eteocles refused to step down. To gain the rule of Thebes, Polynices needed warriors, but Theban men within the city would only fight for his brother. Instead, Polynices gathered a group of men from Argos. There were seven gates to Thebes, and Polynices selected seven captains to lead the charges against each gate. To fight them and protect the gates, Eteocles selected the best-qualified man in Thebes to challenge the specific Argive adversary, so there are seven Theban counterparts to the Argive attackers. The seven pairs are: Tydeus vs. MelanippusCapaneus vs. PolyphontesEteoclus vs. MegareusHippomedon vs. HyperbiusParthenopeus vs.  ActorAmphiaraus vs. LasthenesPolynices vs. Eteocles The battles end when the two brothers kill each other with swords. In the sequel to the battle between Eteocles and Polynices, the successors of the fallen Argives, known as the Epigoni, win control of Thebes. Eteocles was buried honorably, but the traitor Polynices was not, leading to their sister Antigones own tragedy.

Cardiac Surgery Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Cardiac Surgery - Essay Example Sympathetic influences exert the opposite effect. In this regard, automaticity is an important property of the cardiac cells that is normally observed in the sinus node, the specialized fibres of the His-Purkinje system, and in some specialized atrial fibres. Bradyarrhythmias result from abnormalities either of impulse formation, that is, automaticity or of conduction. In cardiac surgery, due to the fact that the patient would be brought in a cardiac standstill and other pharmacologic agents would be used to facilitate this would lead to low cardiac output and hence bradyarrhythmias. (Debrunner, M., Naegeli, B., Genoni, M., Turina, M., and Bertel, O., 2004, p 16). The sinus node is normally the dominant cardiac pacemaker because of its intrinsic discharge rate that is highest of all potential cardiac pacemakers. Its responsiveness to alterations in the autonomic nervous system tone is responsible for a rapid heart rate, and the reverse in slowing (Reade, M.C., 2007, p 367). ... Whatever may be the reason, the manifestations happen due to abrupt, prolonged sinus pauses caused by failure of sinus impulse formation or block of conduction of sinus impulse to the surrounding atrial tissues (Bethea, B.T. et al., 2005, p 106). In some patients, sinus node dysfunction is accompanied by abnormalities in AV conduction, and thus aside from having absence of atrial activity, the lower pacemakers fail to emerge during sinus pauses (Daoud, E.G., Snow, R., Hummel, J.D., Kalbfleisch, S.J., Weiss, R., and Augostini, R., 2003, p. 129). External energy sources can be used to stimulate the heart when disorders in impulse formation and/or transmission lead to symptomatic bradyarrhythmias. Pacer stimuli can be applied to the atria and/or ventricles (Overbay, D. and Criddle, L., 2004, p. 26). Temporary pacing is usually instituted to provide pacemaker support when a bradycardia is precipitated by what is presumed to be a transient event, such as, induced cardiac standstill during an open heart surgery, induced cardioplegia in bypass surgeries, ischemia, or drug toxicity (Roschkov, S. and Jensen, L., 2004, p. 33). Temporary pacing is usually achieved by insertion of an electrode catheter with the catheter positioned in the right ventricular apex and attached to an external generator. This generator will assist the heart to generate a pacing impulse on the face of reduced excitability. Excitatory impulses generated by the temporary pacing apparatus would generate depolarization potential to cause cardiac contraction. Epicardial wires allow temporary pacing after cardiac surgery (Puskas, J.D., Sharoni, E., Williams, W.H., Petersen, R., Duke, P., and Guyton, R.A., 2003, pp. E-103). Pacing is

Criminal Procedures - Week 2 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Criminal Procedures - Week 2 - Assignment Example ause means reasonably reliable information to suspect there is a reasonable probability that a person has carried out a crime, or that a search will lead to evidence (Lerner, 2002). Officer Smith had a sensible suspicion that was in light of the totality of the circumstances as explained by those versed in the field of law requirement. It is usually portrayed as something more than a hunch yet not as much as reasonable justification. The answer to this question is yes; Officer Smith did have sensible suspicion to make the initial stop of the vehicle. Since the taillight seemed, by all accounts, to break against which is a traffic law violation. Additionally, Officer Smith recalled a vehicle that matched the general depiction of the car that she stopped. This car resembles the vehicle that had suspicion in a recent roadside killing of another police officer. An officer may order a motorist to step out of a car to ensure the officer’s safety. The police officer may carry out a pat-down search to ensure there are no weapons. The â€Å"pat-down† is a snappy hunt of a person’s being to determine if any weapons are present (Carlos, 2010). An officer may perform a quest for weapons without a warrant even without reasonable justification when the officer sensibly accepts that the individual may armed or dangerous. Officer Smith’s pat-down was legal because it was necessary to ensure her safety considering that the officer had enough background to think that the person had involvement in the armed crime. Officer Smith conducted a pat-down that obliges a sensible suspicion the suspect has the equipment. Since the general depiction of the vehicle that murdered another officer fit, the same vehicle Officer Smith pulled over she had the right to pat-down the driver for his safety. Critical elements can have a definition as an especially pressing or urgent law enforcement need and a convincing requirement for authority activity and no time to secure a warrant (Carlos,

Theories of Gender and development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Theories of Gender and development - Essay Example Emphasis will also be made to shade light on some of the critiquing approaches to development. This will be done in comparison to the effect of colonial masters in their application of mode of production as a bench mark to the contemporary culture. â€Å"†¦revealing the workings of power and the capitalist mode of production† (Smith 84). Women have for a long time been undermined in most nations. The gender discrimination has been felt by most women in the society with severity varying from country to country and from time to time. For instance, in India, according to the census conducted in 1972, about 94% of women were either employed in the informal sectors working in farms and handicrafts or remained at home taking care of the family. Because early crusaders for women equality were not vocal enough in ensuring that women were given equal opportunity in matters of employment, women accepted the existence of the initial development initiative without question. Therefore , the WID approach did little to improve the social and economic status of women. The situation has however improved given the fact that society has began to recognize women in matters development. In its approach, the WID has very much concentrated on working with women by empowering them by offering development opportunities to them through work related approaches so that women can concentrate less on home based economic activities and concentrate more on income generating activities (D'Agostino and Levine 34). Whereas Women in Development approach focuses on empowering women through self reliance projects and gender identity, Gender Development draws its focus on the gender perspective where the social and economic roles are looked at from the gender perspective rather than from the sexist approach. Gender analysis approach with respect to Gender and Development, however, explains how development projects can be pushed in the society so that focus is not placed on women alone but rather on the relationships between men and women. This approach is however not very much different from the initial WID approach, the difference lies in the integration of women in development projects without isolation. This incorporation of women and men in economic development is essential to ensure that as men make yards of progress in their areas of income, women also do the same. This focus in relationship between men and women is useful at the family level. For example, if I am married and own a handcart that I use for transportation, I shall have relieved my wife of the cost, energy and time for transporting, say her goo ds to the market. This is what Gender Development advocates for. In totality, I believe the Gender Development approach has advantage over the WID approach because of the pattern it follows in the integration of women in activities that are male dominated so that both can help in matters of national development instead of putting much weight on women alone. It is the Gender Development that has gained recognition worldwide and most nations are enthusiastic in adopting it so as to improve on the per capita income of the citizen. WID has rather decided to remain relevant by advocating for what women can do in order to promote development (Razavi and Miller 19). However, there have emerged various critiques to the GAD and the WID approaches by various scholars

Advantages and disadvantages of the oligopoly market system

Advantages and disadvantages of the oligopoly market system This essay will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the oligopoly market system. Supermarket has brought into the service for man for long. The roots of supermarkets are the Co-operative of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the early 20th century the people come up to an idea for selling goods. After that there become the first Supermarket which was set up in January 12th, 1948 in UK. (Brainy History, 2010) As soon as the first supermarket has been set up, a large number of supermarkets came out such as Tesco and Sainsburys. The supermarket industry is now developing in a very high speed. As the supermarket is one of the great improvements in peoples daily life, it becomes one of the most important places for all the people. Today, the supermarket industry in UK has already been changed into oligopoly market. This essay will discuss the characteristics of oligopoly market, and then discuss the kinked demand curve, non-price competition and the marketing mix in the o ligopoly market. First of all, an oligopoly market means that several relatively interdependent companies which concentrate the supply and compete with each other. Therefore, this become highly competitive and the oligopoly companies sell the homogeneous products which are branded. (Tutor2u, 2010) If the company sells the homogeneous products, the consumers will not get the new and better product in a very short time because of the competitive between the firms. They all sell the same product so that there wont be pressure for them to be survived in the UK Supermarket market. Another characteristic of oligopoly market is that the market has been controlled by a few big firms. As a result, these companies will control the market as they like. That may let another characteristic happened which is called price maker. (Tutor2u, 2010) Price maker is a kind of people or firm who set up the price for the product in the market. These people could easily control the market in a way the oligopoly firms want, s o that the consumers will not get some preferences in this kind of market, such as discount, promotion and so on. Therefore, from the characteristics above, it easily shows that the oligopoly market does huge harmful for the normal consumers. If the UK supermarket keep on being like this, the consumers will not get preferences anymore. The next point which is going to talk about is the kinked demand curve. The blank area is where price stability happens (from figure 1). These oligopoly firms always use the non-price competition to increase their output quantity. According to these two figure, in this case, there are no rising in price so that the consequence is what consumers want to see. Non-price competitions, is a kind of competition which is not focus on the price. That shows there are many other competitions in this market. From the Tesco.com and Asda.co.uk, it shows that the Big Fours official websites are some promotional activities, for example discount and cash back. Although, there are some different methods for non-price competition. Figure 1: Figure 2: Reported by TIMESONLINE 2007, Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys and the former Safeway, and the dairy companies Wiseman, Dairy Crest and Cheese Company are doubt for the dairy product price in 2007. As a result, Tesco possibly get a number of number for about 80 million bill. After that, Tesco is going to get back the money by law. So that the case shows that there are some mistakes in this market system. This may also damage the market system too and the consumer confidence can be lost at the same time. The last and which is the most important that can not be ignored is the marketing mix for the oligopoly market system. First of all, in an oligopoly market, the place for which the consumers can go to buy the products are mainly the Big Four. The consumers can not have many different choices for choosing the place to buy things so that Big Four has already control the market as they want. Then, the price can just set up by the price maker. In an oligopoly market, the price maker is the oligopoly firm which shows that the firms can set up the price as they want. For the product, every oligopoly company produces homogeneous product and service. The Big Four use their selves advantages to build high barrier to entry which is to protect their market share. These will make the consumers own less choices for buying the product. Promotion also doesnt always happened in the oligopoly market. All in all, the oligopoly market do harmful for the consumers. In conclusion, from the discussion above, we know that the characteristics of ver, the maximum competition in the oligopoly market can be advantageous to the improvement in providing various products to meet the needs of consumers. It will be meaningful in their oligopoly market and the marketing mix and kinked demand curve shows that the oligopoly is beneficial to the consumers. And oligopoly is also beneficial for sellers too. What is more, our consumers are able to enjoy a well-developed purchasing environment.

Mans Ability to Adapt as Evidenced in To Sir With Love :: Movie Film comparison compare contrast

Man's Ability to Adapt as Evidenced in To Sir With Love    In the novel To Sir With Love various human characteristics are portrayed. Of these, the idea that humans are able to adapt and change their way of thinking seems to be demonstrated throughout the story. In the novel, both the teacher, Braithewaite, and his students end up going through many changes that ultimately result in their coming to change their way of thinking about each other. In life, as in this fictionalized account, the ability to adapt to the world around one's self is a very important trait. In my own life, this has occured on many occasions. Thus, it can be said that to be able to change and adapt ourselves and our ways at looking at things to our to our situations we are truly at advantage.   In the story, Braithewaite begins with a set of preconceived ideas about his students. He expects them to be unintelligent, rough, racially intolerant children with no future-hardly deserving of his respect. But, as he sees later, they are are the total opposites of his of his initial ideas. This is gradually shown through their actions, such as such as the students all going to visit the house of their black friend during his crisis, or their learning to treat each other with respect;they learned to address each other as their last names, inthe case of the boys, and "Miss", for the girls. For the students,they learned to respect and really learn from their teacher,something they had never cared to do before. Braithewaite helped them to break out of the the pattern of intolerance and roughness that society had placed them in. They began to respect themselves and then to respect others. In short, it was obvious that both the teacher and his students were able to adapt their way of thinking to their advantage;they did not get stuck in their original set of preconceived notions about each other. This is a key point of the novel, this idea that people can change their ways.   In my own experiences, I have ended up changing my ways as I have become wiser.

Virginia Woolf’s a Room of One’s Own

Though published seventy years ago, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own holds no less appeal today than it did then. Modern women writers look to Woolf as a prophet of inspiration. In November of 1929, Woolf wrote to her friend G. Lowes Dickinson that she penned the book because she â€Å"wanted to encourage the young women–they seem to get frightfully depressed† (xiv). The irony here, of course, is that Woolf herself eventually grew so depressed and discouraged that she killed herself. The suicide seems symptomatic of Woolf's own feelings of oppression within a patriarchal world where only the words of men, it seemed, were taken seriously.Nevertheless, women writers still look to Woolf as a liberating force and, in particular, at A Room of One's Own as an inspiring and empowering work. Woolf biographer Quentin Bell notes that the text argues: the disabilities of women are social and economic; the woman writer can only survive despite great difficulties, and despite th e prejudice and the economic selfishness of men; and the key to emancipation is to be found in the door of a room which a woman may call her own and which she can inhabit with the same freedom and independence as her brothers. 144) Woolf empowers women writers by first exploring the nature of women and fiction, and then by incorporating notions of androgyny and individuality as it exists in a woman's experience as writer. Woolf's first assertion is that women are spatially hindered in creative life. â€Å"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,† Woolf writes, â€Å"and that as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of women. . . and fiction unresolved† (4). What Woolf seems to say is that being female stifles creativity.Woolf does not assume, however, that a biological reason for this stifling exists. Instead, she implies that a woman's â€Å"life conflicts with something that is not life† (71). In other words , mothering, being a wife, and the general daily, culturally defined expectations of women infringe upon creativity, in particular the writing of fiction. The smothering reality of a woman's life – – housekeeping and child-rearing duties, for example – – distract a woman from writing. Sadly, Woolf notes, even if a woman in such circumstances manages to write anyway, â€Å"she will write in a rage where she should write calmly.She will write foolishly where she should write wisely. She will write of herself where she should write of her characters† (69-70). Woolf posits here that an angry woman, writing out of the repression of her everyday life, will be an ineffective writer. Finally, Woolf blames the patriarchal culture, as if the freedom of women writing is â€Å"some infringement of [man's] power to believe in himself† (35). She suggests that men resist women writers because fiction by women somehow diminishes their belief in their own wo rks.Woolf's message, it seems, is that women must rail against the resistance of the patriarchal culture and attain some degree of independence and androgyny. Woolf does not suggest that women write the same as men. In fact, Woolf asserts that â€Å"it would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men† (88). Woolf believes that a man's sentence is not a woman's sentence, that the two will be vastly different from each other, though not necessarily one better than the other.Her assertion is that men's sentences are awkward in the hands of women because â€Å"the nerves that feed the brain would seem to differ in men and women† (78). This difference of gray matter and neurons would necessarily result in a difference of perspective and sentence structure. Woolf suggests that for fiction to be artfully done, there must exist a measure of androgyny, â€Å"a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one fema le† (98).In essence, Woolf claims that this state of androgyny would allow women the same freedom to express themselves that men seem to have been inherently endowed with. â€Å"The androgynous mind is resonant and porous,† Woolf continues, â€Å"it transmits emotion without impediment; it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided† (98). What Woolf overtly states here is that the ideal creative mind is a marriage, or balance, of the supposed female traits of emotionalism with the supposed male traits of productivity and style. What is implicit, however, is that the female mind can be resonant and porous only when undivided.In other words, a woman can write well only when her mind, like a man's, is not forced to choose between gender and identity, or between her art and society's expectations of her. A woman will write with fluidity and resonance only when she has the same freedom of expression as a man. An additional notion Woolf presents is that women mu st maintain individuality in their experiences as writers. This intimacy with one's identity nurtures the creation of fiction, but only when written out of one's own personality and not imitated through another's. â€Å"Why are Jane Austen's sentences not the right shape for you? Woolf asks Mary Carmichael (80). The idea Woolf reinforces here is that a woman should find and develop her own writing style, not simply mimic her predecessors. Notice, though, that Woolf does not suggest we glean no stylistic inspiration from women writers like the Brontes and Jane Austen, who paved the way for generations of women writers. â€Å"Books continue each other,† Woolf says, â€Å"in spite of our habit of judging them separately† (80). Continuing something, however, does not mean using the same blueprints or tools during the creative process.What Woolf implies is that every book a woman, sitting in that room of her own, produces will generate books from other women. A degree of m imicry, of course, is impossible to avoid. â€Å"A woman writing,† Woolf admits, â€Å"thinks back through her mothers† (97). The â€Å"mothers† here are not only biological mothers who give birth to our physical bodies, but also those women who meticulously scratched their way out of patriarchal constraints and into print; the women who acted as surrogates to birth generations of women writers.Subtle mimicry would seem a natural act under such circumstances, much as a child unconsciously develops personality traits of either parent. Finally, a woman reading Woolf's book has to wonder if that â€Å"room of one's own† is strictly a spatial, physical concept. It is possible that Woolf writes of a psychological construct as a room of one's own, a place one can emotionally go to and write from. Few of us have the luxury of a concrete room of our own, and if we are to be writers, emotional space of our own is the barest necessity.Women who want to write must f ind some quiet space in their psyches from which they can create. â€Å"So long as you write what you want to write, that is all that matters,† Woolf encourages, â€Å"and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say† (106). What Woolf seems to say is that what we create within that space of ourselves, within a single moment, is what matters so long as we do it with an eye toward our own individual, androgynous hearts.

Oreo market research Essay

Nabisco is a company that has been in existence since 1898. During their 109 years in existence, they have grown through natural growth, mergers, and acquisitions. This has allowed Nabisco to be the leading snack maker in the world. The Oreo chocolate sandwich cookie was first introduced in Hoboken, N. J. in 1911. Oreos today are far and away the world’s most popular cookie. The Oreo family accounts for approximately 10 percent of all store cookie sales–a $3 billion market. However in recent years Nabisco has been reluctant to adapt to current market trends. The company was focusing on producing new versions of existing products to make them more convenient. Situation Analysis In 1898, the New York Biscuit Company and the American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company merged over 100 bakeries into the National Biscuit Company, later called Nabisco. Founders Adolphus Green and William Moore, orchestrated the merger and the company quickly rose to first place in the manufacturing and marketing of cookies and crackers in America. To expand their global presence and to strengthen their position in the fast-growing consumer snacks sector, Philip Morris Co. Inc. acquired Nabisco Holdings in December 2000. Philip Morris purchased Nabisco for $14. 9 billion in cash plus assumed $4 million in debt. Eventually, Philip Morris integrated the Nabisco brands with its Kraft Food operations. And now it includes brands such as Chips Ahoy, Fig Newtons, Mallomars, Oreos, Premium Crackers, Ritz Crackers, etc†¦.. Nabisco Arabia Company Ltd. (NAARCO) was formed in 1995 as a joint venture between Nabisco International and The Olayan Group of Saudi Arabia. In 2000, NAARCO made a major investment in a new plant to produce OREO, the world’s most popular cookie. OREO cookies were launched in the Saudi market in March 2001 with a major TV campaign. Internal Analysis The $3 million plant upgrade included a whole new production line, new offices, additional warehousing, and new mess rooms for the increased work force. Equipment from Spain, Italy, India, France, and Austria went into the world-class facility, under the supervision of Nabisco Technical Director Frank Willemsen and the Technical Services Manager Anselmo Codina. The people of Kraft have recognized that the business has an important role in society- a responsibility that included understanding and meeting the public’s expectations, helping to address important social, environmental and economic issues and making a difference in local communities and the world. They firmly believe that â€Å"Our success will depend importantly on our willingness and ability to listen, get feedback on what we’re doing from those both inside and outside Kraft and act responsibly on issues of important concern. † 1 Stargate Institute Market Analysis Target Market: The current target market for the original vanilla filling Oreo is children. The original Oreo cookies have previously focused on and promoted the new colors for the creme filling and change the round shaped cookies into rolls, which would generate new interest amongst children, who would in turn convince their parents to buy the new cookie. Geographic Factor: This project is done and carried on in Riyadh, the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia. Riyadh belongs to the historical regions of Nejd and Al-Yamama. The population of the city is 4,700,000 of which 60% are Saudis and 40 % are foreigners. And the density is 3,024 km square. Demographic Factor: As Riyadh is known for its restrictions and being an Islamic country, the family life cycles followed here are usually all family members. Young single people can not live separately and independently, fearing for them young mature boys/girls will live under their families until its time for them to start up their own families. And generally Saudi people are well known by their family sizes. Most of the family sizes are more then 6 or even far more than that. This is what makes the youth population really high in the kingdom. And it is something obvious and general that Saudi people are known for their wealth and considered as rich people and in return earn high incomes. Behavioral Factor: As Riyadh is developing, people now are becoming aware of various new brands which are attracting them to explore and investigate things. Women here are obsessed about shopping and show a favorable attitude and interest towards the different brands. They are also considered as heavy users when it comes to brand loyalty. 2 Stargate Institute Marketing Need As Oreo is a biscuit, and biscuits are food, so the most important need the Oreo biscuits satisfy is Hunger. But if we further narrow down the needs, Oreo can be satisfying more than just the drive (hunger). *Oreo satisfies the nurturing need example, a mother having difficulties in feeding her 4 to 6 years old child with some nutrition food, can consider Oreo to feed her child with a sip of milk. *Oreo satisfies the imitation need example, kids watching the Oreo ad on TVs while the other kids are enjoying twisting, licking and dunking the cookie into a glass of milk. This forces the kids to want that cookie right away and imitate the same steps. *Oreo also satisfies the fun need, and in this case not only kids will want to have fun and enjoy Oreo even adults like to have fun once in a while individually or even with their kids. Market Trends Various on-going and changing trends in the consumer market affect the business of an organization. Some of those having an impact on Oreo chocolate sandwich biscuits are: A 2004 TNS study amongst Saudis has found a trend towards smaller families. It revealed that Saudis – realize the need for smaller families to provide a better quality of life for their children. Females have been given permission by the government to work which resulted in the increase of purchasing power. Driven by changing lifestyles and population growth the impact on the food market has been positive. The market therefore witnessed rapid growth over the review period. The consumers in Saudi market are seen as active switchers with a medium brand loyalty level. Lastly, a study was conducted by TNS in 2007 which showed that 99 per cent of Saudi respondents in the study consumed chocolate â€Å"food† (chocolates, chocolate milk, biscuits, etc. ) in the last seven days, an increase from 95 per cent in 2004. 3 Stargate Institute Market Growth Growth in the Saudi Arabian biscuit market is being driven mainly by two factors – firstly, the marked increase in advertising spend by multinationals such as Nabisco, Master Foods and Danone. Secondly, the popularity of emerging products such as chocolate-coated biscuits and bread substitutes, which have recently been launched in the market. Researches have shown that biscuits, particularly sweet biscuits, are generally sold at low prices, averaging between SR0. 25 and SR2 (US $0. 06 – US $0. 53), for a single-serve pack and enjoy excellent distribution in all outlets. The biscuits sector is highly developed owing to the strength of the local industry in Saudi Arabia, represented by large manufacturers such as United Food Industries. Oreo sales showed a fluctuating result during the past 13 years. When Oreo initially was launched into the market, sales increased to a high extent for about 3 years but then sales decreased for a long period during 1997 to 2002. Oreo marketing managers became aware of their loses and immediately went back to action and changed their marketing mix and started to introduce several different new products. This effort resulted with high sales in 2008. Sales were amounted to $4 billion and market share 41%.

Average GRE Scores for Top Public Universities

Average GRE Scores for Top Public Universities Many graduate schools have taken the average GRE scores for incoming graduate students off of their websites. Theyre not publishing the rankings in many cases. However, some graduate schools are willing to post average ranges  of scores for incoming grad students, although most of those scores are arranged by intended major rather than by the schools statistics. If youre interested in seeing the most up-to-date GRE scores by intended major, then take a peek at the link provided. Otherwise, read on for the average GRE scores as listed for top public universities for a select few of their majors - Engineering and Education - as published in US News and World Report.   GRE Scores Information If you are confused perusing these scores because you expected to see numbers in the 700s, then Im betting youre probably still thinking about the old GRE score system which ended in 2011. Currently, average GRE scores can run anywhere between 130 - 170 in 1-point increments. The old system assessed students with a scale from 200 - 800 in 10-point increments. If you took the GRE using the old system and want to see what your approximate GRE score would be on the new scale, then check out these two concordance tables. Please note, however, that GRE scores are only valid for five years, so July 2016 was the last time students with GRE scores in the prior format were able to use them.   GRE Verbal Concordance TableGRE Quantitative Concordance Table University of California -  Berkeley: Engineering:   Quantitative: 165 Education Verbal: 149Quantitative: 155 University of California - LA: Engineering:   Quantitative: 162 Education Verbal: 155Quantitative: 146 University of Virginia: Engineering:   Quantitative: 160 Education Verbal: 160Quantitative: 164 University of Michigan – Ann Arbor: Engineering:   Quantitative:   161 Education Verbal: NAQuantitative: NA   University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill: Engineering:   Quantitative: 160 Education Verbal: 158Quantitative: 148 College of William and Mary: Education Verbal: 156Quantitative: 149 University of California – San Diego: Engineering:   Quantitative: NA Education Verbal: NAQuantitative: NA   University of Illinois – Urbana/Champaign: Engineering:   Quantitative: 170 Education Verbal: 156Quantitative: 160 University of Wisconsin – Madison: Engineering:   Quantitative: 168 Education Verbal: 158Quantitative: 149 University of Washington: Engineering:   Quantitative: 170 Education Verbal: 156Quantitative: 147 Pennsylvania State: Engineering:   Quantitative: 170 Education Verbal: 154Quantitative: 145 University of Florida: Engineering:   Quantitative: 169 Education Verbal: 155Quantitative: 155 University of Texas – Austin: Engineering:   Quantitative: 170 Education Verbal: 158Quantitative: 152 Georgia Institute of Technology: Engineering:   Quantitative: 164 Ohio State University: Engineering:   Quantitative: 169 Education Verbal: 156Quantitative: 151 Texas AM: Engineering:   Quantitative: 163 Education Verbal: NAQuantitative: NA So Are My Scores Going to Get Me In? There are a number of factors that go into your admittance into one of these top public universities. And although your GRE scores  are  important, they are not the only things considered by admissions counselors, as I am sure you already know. Make sure your application essay is top-notch and that you have secured stellar recommendations from those professors who know you best in undergrad. And if you havent worked on that GPA already, then now is the time to ensure youre getting the best grades you possibly can in case your GRE score isnt exactly what you wanted it to be.

12 Cause Effect Essay Topics on #8220;Living Downstream#8221; by Sandra Steingraber

12 Cause Effect Essay Topics on #8220;Living Downstream#8221; by Sandra Steingraber If you are tasked with writing a cause or effect essay on the book Living Downstream there are many potential topics from which to choose. Of course, no matter the topic you have selected, it is imperative that you back up any statement or claim you make with facts. In order to help you in that regard, below you will find a handful of facts which might prove useful in the course of your writing. In the book, agricultural and industrial pollution are mixed together with anecdotes in order to provide readers with medical literature assessments, scientific assessments, and the conclusions therein about the relationship between rising rates of cancers and environmental influences. There remains a serious imbalance between studies of which environmental factors influence or contribute to cancers and those studies which focus instead of genetic predispositions for cancers. This remains a serious concern given that many cancers are not genetically transferrable and the source must be derived from an outside factor, such as an environmental factor. The reason this need should be filled is that the cancers caused by genetics, meaning those which are inherited, cannot really be altered at present and nothing can be done to improve upon the situation. However, those cancers caused by various environmental factors can be changed immediately and all influences mitigated, especially carcinogens. Carcinogens are substances which are known to cause cancer inside of living tissue, and these carcinogens exist in a variety of environmental substances to which people are exposed regularly. Chemical pesticides are one striking example of carcinogens which make their way into the human body. Those workers who are exposed to high levels of many chemicals regularly face contamination that goes unchecked by local healthcare, and only with blood and urine samples can the changes to the body be tracked. In the state of Illinois alone 54 million pounds of synthetic pesticides had been used on farms, many of which were poison. In 1950 less than 10% of all fields were sprayed with any pesticides but by 1993 99% had been treated with chemicals. Americans today between the ages of 35 and 64 are likely to die from cancer above all other ailments. In fact, by 1950 only 25% of adults could expect to get cancer while today that rate is almost 50% for men and 40% for women. The rise in cancer has increased steadily with processed foods, changing production habits, and changes in manufacturing. The qualifying link between all of these changes is the introduction of different chemical contaminants to the environment. Tazewell County located in the state of Illinois has shown many cases of a rare bladder cancer, a cancer which was contracted by the author when she was only 20 years of age. The high rates of said cancer has been linked scientifically to the carcinogenic chemicals in the region. The evidence presented in the book revealed that there was a six fold increase in the rates of bladder cancer among the workers who were exposed to particular chemicals related to rubber before legal workplace limits were put into place. In addition, immigrants who came to the area started to exhibit signs of the cancers adopted in the new area, and not the cancers which were prevalent in the place where they had been born. The maps presented by the author indicate that there are more cancers prevalent in urban areas compared to rural areas. In these maps, there are more cancers in the rural counties where the use of pesticides took place heavily, compared to those rural areas where the use of pesticides was minimal. The various studies presented in the book indicate that cancer clusters are prevalent near polluted dump sites, polluted valleys, polluted rivers, and near chemical factories. The same studies revealed that the rate of cancer in children has increased. The lifestyles of children have remained much the same over the last fifty years, without changes to alcohol consumption, smoking, or stress-related work, and yet the rate of cancer among children has risen at steady rates. Research indicates that the rate of shellfish and fish living within polluted waters has directly influenced the increase in cancer rates. Today, North Americans are seeing an increase in liver tumors among 16 fish species located throughout 25 different locations both fresh water and salt water. Each of these locations has become chemically polluted over the last sixty years. This was contrasted to the fact that the rates of liver cancer among members of those same fish species which inhabit waters not polluted by chemicals is almost non-existent. The studies conducted and presented by the author have indicated that chemicals contained in polluted areas are damaging to the immune system as well as to the endocrine system. The damage which is done to these areas results in the promotion of cancers. Regardless of whether the carcinogens have been introduced into the environment deliberately or accidentally, many scientists are afraid to speak out toward improvement unless they can be 100% sure there is a serious link and no other possible influencers. However, the existence of such high chemicals, even with the near one hundred percent studies which have been published, now render these areas seriously dangerous to the people who live there with very little legislation being done to help or hinder. There remains a serious cancer epidemic brought about by the chemical residues and the pesticides which have been used among the environment. This first claim has only been substantiated by studies covered within the book, and few and far between beyond that scope. With these facts in mind, you can find a unique cause or effect on which to focus for your writing (we prepared for you 20 sample topics on â€Å"Living Downstream† by S. Steingraber as well). Remember, there are many more facts out there within the span of the book and this list is by no means comprehensive. However, it should serve as a useful guide when you are starting off your work. Along with this information feel free to read our writing tips on cause effects essays. References: Reus, J. AN ENVIRONMENTAL YARDSTICK FOR PESTICIDES: AN INSTRUMENT TO MEASURE THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF PESTICIDES.  Acta Hortic.  347 (1993): 215-224. Web. Searle, Charles E.  Chemical Carcinogens. Washington: American Chemical Society, 1976. Print. Steingraber, Sandra.  Living Downstream. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1997. Print. Stich, H. F.  Carcinogens And Mutagens In The Environment. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 1982. Print. Viroj Wiwanitkit.,.  Melamine And Other Problematic Food Carcinogens. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2009. Print. Zahm, Shelia Hoar, and Susan S. Devesa. Childhood Cancer: Overview Of Incidence Trends And Environmental Carcinogens.  Environmental Health Perspectives  103 (1995): 177. Web.

SEO Content Strategy How to Skyrocket Your Traffic By 594%

SEO Content Strategy How to Skyrocket Your Traffic By 594% SEO moves fast. Its an ever-changing discipline where what worked six months ago, might be completely out of date. However, there are some fundamentals that stay more or less the same. When was first getting started, we knew we needed to attract the right kinds of customers. In order to pull those customers in, we also knew we needed to capture valuable search traffic. That led to a lot of research. Here are some of the basic strategies and tactics that guided our success: Focus on publishing compelling, quality content that is uniquely different and more valuable than anything else out there. That usually means its long-form content. Use the keywords your audience is searching for. Search engines understand synonyms and similar  terminology, so using related  keywords in multiple pieces of content helps the bots know what topics your site covers. That said, focusing on keywords for each piece of content you publish still matters. Offsite references, reviews, and social links play a role in how your content performs on search engines. Inbound links to your site are still important, and so is a logical sitemap with  internal linking among  pages. Content freshness matters. Keeping your content up to date helps search engines  understand that your site is accurate today. SEO Content Strategy: How to Skyrocket Your Traffic By 594%And of course, any SEO strategy should work hand-in-hand with a basic content strategy: Know your audience. Know your business. Know your goals. So lets see how this  sort of SEO content strategy really plays out  with a deep dive of how we do it at . Results  From Our SEO Content Strategy (Or Simply, This Stuff Works) While there's a lot to  SEO, we primarily focus on applying keywords to compelling, quality content. There's not much more to it than that. And it's working: That's our 594% increase in organic search traffic from January 2015 through December 2016. Aside from some seasonal dips, it's mostly trending in the right direction. This screenshot was grabbed from our Moz.com account. Those results have helped us reach a larger audience, bringing in more than 150,000 email subscribers and increasing our customer base. SEO was one tactic  of our content strategy that contributed to these results. We had a lot of growth with our marketing calendar itself that boosted these results beyond the SEO tactics you're reading about now. But it all adds  up in the end. What It Is And What It's Not Did you know some folks in the SEO industry have actually talked about changing the term from  search engine optimization to optimizing content for discovery and conversion or simply OC/DC? SEO has become an infamous initialism some people  relate to content targeted at ranking for robots instead of answering real people's questions. That is exactly what a great SEO content strategy is not. At least, that's not how we got  the results we saw at . OCDC compared to SEO with Google Trends shows which term is forecasted to stick around. While the term "OC/DC" hasn't widely caught on, the idea is perfect for setting up your SEO content strategy. As Sean Jackson from Copyblogger puts it: Optimizing Content for Discovery and Conversion, or â€Å"OC/DC† for short, encapsulates this idea of amplifying the overall reach and results of content creation. Sean goes on to say there are two main aspects of OC/DC: On-site optimization is all about publishing  awesome stuff in the first place. Interestingly enough, Sean didn't really cover growth hacks to optimize your content specifically for conversions, but this is definitely something we do  at to turn traffic into subscribers. External optimization involves optimizing your content not only for search engines, but for tons of other referral sources, too. Republishing, repurposing, and distributing your content all fall within external optimization. Essentially,  Sean is spot on with this idea: Your SEO content strategy is not about thin content targeted at appealing to robots, rather, it's about publishing timely, compelling content your audience is seeking, and helping them find it. #SEO is publishing timely, compelling content your audience is seeking, and helping them find it.Let's combine everything you just learned into the three  steps you'll use  to  plan and execute your strategy: 1. Research And Target Keywords Relevant To Your Niche Start by brainstorming the core topics for which you'd like to be known for. Since we're talking through 's story, here's how we did it: is a marketing calendar for everything- blogging, social media, ads, e-books, brochures- you name it, you can plan it with . We could talk about content types... but it makes more sense for us to target keywords around marketing strategy, planning, and that sort of thing to help you gals and guys doing the work execute more efficiently than ever. Finding your marketing niche, especially in super broad industries, helps you hone in on your audience's needs really easily. This topic definition focused our vision from any willy-nilly marketing topic to purely marketing strategy, planning, and execution- all things our audience can do even better when they use  . After you have the topics, it's time to find your keywords. First, watch this awesome video from Rand Fishkin at Moz to get started: Then put everything you just learned into action: Enter your topics into Google's keyword planner tool and check out the keyword ideas tab. That shows you a ton of related terms people are searching for. Select the best related keywords and start a list. Words with  low competition will catch your eye as opportunities. Those are keywords  people are searching for, but there isn't a hefty amount of content available to answer their questions. From here, whip out SEMrush's keyword research tool to understand if the keyword is predicted to grow in popularity (making it worth your time to target), gauge your competition, and get a feel for the difficulty. SEMrush's keyword research tool is a handy way to understand if it's feasible to target certain keywords and helps you find better related terms. Bonus: Combine your data from Google's keyword planner and SEMrush with Moz's keyword difficulty tool. For us, when a keyword is in the low 50s for a difficulty percentage, we rank well. From here, we took Brian Dean's  advice and  found keywords that our audience would use to find as a tool for planning your marketing with a calendar, as well as the related keywords for our niche. Product keywords: To clarify that a bit, there are some keywords that we found people search for like  marketing calendar tool that show the searcher's intent is on finding an app like . We should show up in their search results for these sorts of terms, so we're creating a landing page that provides helpful advice on using a marketing calendar, then ends with information about how fills that need. These keywords are very important because folks searching for these words are set  on buying. If we can help searchers find as a solution for these terms, we have the opportunity to convert searchers into paying customers. It's demand generation. Does your SEO content strategy focus on commercial intent? Get buyers, not just traffic. Here's how.Niche keywords: This list is perfect for blog posts with terms like  social media strategy template. That keyword is a core element of , providing a template of how to share content more than once on social media. Yet when we target this keyword, the goal is to provide a sweet download that helps our readers plan this on their own. So these words are great because we know a need depending on the popularity of the keyword, so we can mention how is helpful.  But really, these terms are usually the ones the doers search to learn how to do the work on their own without buying a tool like . They are perfect keywords to target, however, because we can provide helpful advice on how to do it on their  own, but if they just used , their lives would be even easier by consolidating their tool base thus saving 30 minutes for every piece of content they share. See how that works? Recommended Reading: Your Ultimate Content Marketer's Guide to Keyword Research 2. Plan To Execute Your  SEO Content Strategy So you have a big list of keywords you could target with your content.  Now it's time to plan how you'll actually accomplish your SEO content strategy to prioritize your projects and make execution a breeze. There is a traditional approach for marketing project management that will help you do just this: Initiate Your Project Your SEO content strategy is made up of multiple projects. The first step is prioritizing your keywords according to your goals: Start With Your Goals We have three core marketing goals at that all build upon one another.  Focusing on SEO helps us meet all of those goals: Grow traffic: Enabling our audience to  find through search engines, guest posts, and republished content helps us grow our traffic. Increase subscribers: The content we publish on our blog, for the niche keywords specifically, always contains free downloadable content in exchange for an email address. In that way, we optimize our content not only to be found, but to also convert readers into subscribers by providing valuable bonus content. Get more customers: The content we publish that targets the product keywords helps us turn readers into customers by showing the value provides as a marketing tool. From the get-go, it just makes sense for us to prioritize SEO as a valuable component of our overall content strategy. That said, certain keywords have more impact on those goals than others. For us, it makes sense to focus on both product and niche keywords. Here's what to do: Prioritize each list of keywords according to importance for your business to help you reach your goals. Take a hard look at the average monthly searches, competition, and difficulty, and choose the ones that will be easiest for you to rank for now. Select the top 15 keywords from each list to have 30 total keywords to target in your first  project. Define Your Content Types You could turn those keywords into a  million different content formats, right?  For each keyword, determine the best content type you'll use to rank for that keyword. At , we specifically think about the keywords first, then apply our knowledge of why our audience is searching for that term to the process. That helps us choose the right content type for each. Product: Think e-commerce pages, landing pages, and feature pages. These aren't necessarily best for blog posts because folks searching for these terms are likely ready to buy. Use the best content types to help you sell your product or service. Niche:  Think more traditional content marketing like blog posts,  landing pages, templates, and tools. Pro Tip: Think about the content types that work best for your audience- not just what you can do in-house with your current resources. Plan How You'll Execute Your Project Ask yourself, "Who's doing what, and how will they do it?" Resources:  Take people, tools, and budget into account: How you'll actually create the  content. Schedule:  Plan to publish  two pieces of content each week. That'll help you knock out your first project in about two months while staggering the workload to not overwhelm your schedule. Tasks:  Look at each piece of content you'll create, and break it down into what needs to be done. It's like a workflow. If you have team members, meet with them to understand where their skills will come in handy. Calendar: Plan your content on your marketing calendar, and add in the tasks for your workflow to nail every deadline. 3. Create, Publish, And Share Your Optimized Content Google's best results on  SEO content strategy suggest  tons of ways to optimize your content  as you create and share it.  Here are the main things we focused on to grow our #1–3 search results by 248%: Focus on Compelling, Quality Content Yeah, I know how many more times you can hear that before you go nuts. But it's a lot easier said than done. One of the top posts on this topic by Julia McCoy on Scoop.it suggests that brands like BMW, GE, and Red Bull are focusing on engagement tactics that are also helping people find their content. And it's no surprise that Neil Patel would say something similar with his take on interactive content reducing your bounce rate: Engagement and interactive content go hand in hand, and we’ve known it for quite a while. Interactive education was originally studied at home and schools even before the Internet was a thing. Let me define interactive education: Interactive education is teaching that requires participation from students. Interactive content, as we’ll soon see, is the same thing- just swap out students for readers. So while Neil is focusing on bounce rate,  it isn't that far of a leap to suggest  that focusing on engagement as a tactic to reduce bounce rate keeps readers  on your site longer, helping them understand your content is awesome and influencing them to share or convert. The more awesome it is, the more times it's shared. The more that happens,  you'll see more backlinks to your site. All of that is a good thing for SEO. For , engaging content is actionable: Tips and advice to plan better, write better, share better- and all of that with free downloads to help you remember the tips you learn when you're ready to implement the advice. Write Long-Form Content We started experimenting with long-form content in February 2014. In fact, Garrett did a whole little study with our data back then to share the results:  5 Things That Will Change Your Mind About Long Form Content Marketing. It's no guarantee that search engines will rank long-form content that's about 2,000 words higher in their search engine results pages (SERPs) than a post that is around 500 words. But there is a lot to be said for the quality and depth of longer content that seems to complement the previous point on quality. As Neil Patel puts it in another article on the KISSmetrics blog: My number-crunching, data-loving self has come to the conclusion that search engines and people are really into long content. It converts better, shares better, looks better, and just is better. But only to a point. I don’t want you to grovel in guilt or give up on blogging, just because you can’t write 2k-word articles. In an ideal world, we’d all be churning out 2k-word masterpieces. But in the real world, you don’t have to write 2,000-word articles. That said, even when we recently published a blog post that reiterated that blog post length doesn't matter, it is now just part of our content culture to provide long-form, detailed, and actionable content: Jason's on to us. We like long blog posts because they go way beyond scratching the surface to provide super actionable advice. The results have been great for us, and we're going to keep with it. Build Internal Links You never know which post  will be the very first that someone sees on your blog. So we backlink to what we determine are the most important pages on our site from all of our new posts. And you know what? Those pages that get linked to all the time are now some of our highest viewed and best converting on the entire website. Internal linking is supposed to help search engines cruise around your site. We see this as an opportunity to focus on our audience, however, and direct them from new posts to some of the best content we've ever published. Use the Keyword in Your Content We keep  this very simple: Page title Meta description URL Headline Image name and alt (mainly for organization) At least a few times in the body copy (including in subheadlines) There are many times when we let the context of the post speak for itself  without changing the verbiage to jam the keyword in there a few more times.  Search engines are smart and can read deep into context- you don't necessarily need every word in your long-tail keyword in the exact order. In fact, Brian Dean, the wizard behind Backlinko, pulled together a bunch of stats to look for in your on-page SEO that you can focus on right now: Source: On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page – Infographic These are all things we've taken into account at to boost our SEO, too. It definitely works! Understand Latent Semantic Indexing Once you understand basic keyword targeting, digging into latent semantic indexing is the next step. It's a term describing the process search engines use to understand the relationships and context between related keywords. For example, let's say you're writing a post about Chevy cars. If you included some text about the Impala and the Cruze, search engines can infer those are both types of Chevy vehicles. If your goal was to create a really comprehensive post about Chevy vehicles, you might include a subheader for each different model. Search engines would then be able to see your page thoroughly covers its topic. Therefore, it would be more likely to rank well and drive traffic. Here's how to put this principle into practice. Find terms related to your primary keyword. These can be related terms you find using Google's Keyword Planner. LSI Graph is another great free tool that can help uncover related keywords, based off of one primary term. Include those terms strategically in your content. Section subheaders are one logical place for your LSI keywords. Weave them naturally throughout your content as well where it's natural and appropriate. That covers the basics of what you need to know. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Keyword Research With Latent Semantic Indexing Share Your Content By  sharing, I mean optimizing your content for your readers to share it  while distributing it yourself  to reach more people (remember that OC/DC thing?). First, we optimize our content to help you share it with social media  buttons and . We also use the social queue in to help us share our content with our followers. Sharing our content more than once has helped us get 3,150% more traffic. Content promotion  including email distribution is a huge driver of traffic for us to keep our audience coming back. When we reference other folks' awesome content in our posts, we let them know through outreach marketing. We help our guest bloggers promote their content by providing helpful tips after their posts publish. All of these techniques help us  gain the visibility our content needs to be shared, which grows our traffic and helps search engines understand its value. Claim Unlinked Mentions For Your Content Once you've started publishing content, getting rankings, and growing your brand presence, people are going to start talking to you. And that's awesome. However, sometimes people might forget to link back to your content when they're mentioning your stuff. Those missing backlinks represent a missed opportunity to drive even more referral traffic and improve your search engine rankings. An easy way to monitor mentions is to set up a Google Alert for your brand name, and some terms related to your industry. Here's a quick video that'll show you how: Now, any time those terms are mentioned on the web, you'll get an email notification. Check those mentions to see if they include a link to your site. If they don't, find the contact information for those sites. Then, send them a quick email thanking them for the coverage, and ask if they'd consider adding a link. Here's some sample email text you can copy and paste: Hi,   My name is [INSERT YOUR NAME], and I'm the [INSERT POSITION] at [INSERT COMPANY]. I noticed you mentioned us on your site here: [INSERT URL] However, we noticed the link to our [HOME PAGE/BLOG POST] is missing. Would you consider adding a link to make it easier for your readers to find us? Here is the URL: [INSERT URL] Thanks for mentioning us on your blog! Our team appreciates the coverage. Best, [INSERT SIGNATURE] Most of the time, people will be glad to add in the link. Since they've mentioned your company, they have to be interested in what you do, right? Here are some additional tools for finding unclaimed mentions: BuiltVisible's free Link Reclamation Tool. BuzzSumo's monitoring and alerts can track unlinked mentions (and email you more detailed reports than Google Alerts). It's a paid tool, but it's indispensable for our  team. This guide from Moz  and this one  from Ahrefs  are packed with more detailed information on turning brand mentions into links. OK, Now Go Execute Your Plan Here is our best advice to get started on your  content creation process  while taking into consideration everything you just learned about optimizing your content: Angles: Know exactly  what you'd like the outcome of your content to look like. A great angle is appealing to real readers while targeting a keyword just helps them find your content. This is where the compelling nature of your content comes into play. Outlines: Stay on point in your content by beginning with an outline. This is also a great way to make sure you cover your angle. Headlines: Write emotional  headlines. There is some research out there to show that a variation of your keyword in your headlines  to help them feel less like search engine bait is a good thing. Introductions: Focus your first 100 words on drawing the reader in. Start with interesting facts, stories, anecdotes, and similar hooks to keep your readers reading. Brian Dean suggests using your keyword at least once in your introduction. Body: Follow your angle and outline and write your content. Use your keyword naturally. Take Julie's advice:  How To Write A Blog Post: Your 5-Point Checklist To Rock A Perfect Post. Calls to action:  Provide free content in exchange for email addresses and include calls to action for hard sales of your product or service. You're blogging to make money; don't forget to ask for it. Recommended Reading:  4-Step System For Writing A Great Blog Post, Even If You Have Writers Block What Doesn't Work (And Other Lessons Learned) Knowing what worked is all fine and dandy.  But we made a few mistakes you can learn from and avoid ever making in the first place: Adding in keywords after the post is written: Boy, this is super tough and feels like keyword stuffing. It's great to write posts that cover an idea no one has ever searched- that's thought leadership. Just know in your head that thought leadership is the point and adding in a keyword here and there may just make it awkward. Guest bloggers: It's super great to help them know exactly which keyword to use and your expectations before they get too far along. See point #1 for why. Headlines: Having your keyword in your headlines is important. But it's not worth the risk if you make it unreadable for humans. Don't be afraid to use a synonym for your keyword in your headline if you have to because your primary audience is, and will always be, people over robots. To top it off, here are the things I want to target in the near future to improve even more: Choosing the right keywords faster: I've been known to drag my heels on certain content,  searching for a millennium for the perfect keyword. It is a super important process, but we plan to publish for a long time to come. So it's easiest to just pick a few and run with  them now to keep us moving. Improving older content: There are tons of ways to optimize the content that's already published on your site. Lately, I've been researching the Google's 2oo ranking factors in a list from Brian Dean and plan to check out no-follow links, headlines, last updated dates (freshness), and just plain old better on-page optimization in old posts. More product-centric landing pages for demand generation: There are lots of product keywords out there that people could use to find . I'd like to target  all of them with dedicated features pages and landing pages. More super long landing pages because we know they work: Our blog posts convert readers into subscribers really well. But. Our landing pages perform even better. That said, we're going to publish more keyword-targeted landing pages with free offers to convert readers into subscribers. (By the way, some of those landing pages are only able to be found by search engines, so that tells you how much we rely on the robots to help people find our content.) More interactive content and tools:  You guys love the  headline analyzer. It's the #1 search result for that term. So it would make sense to bring you more interactive content we know you'll love. Good luck as you get started with your SEO content strategy.  And please, if you know of other marketers who may benefit from this information, please share it with your friends. SEO Content Strategy How to Skyrocket Your Traffic By 594% SEO moves fast. Its an ever-changing discipline where what worked six months ago, might be completely out of date. However, there are some fundamentals that stay more or less the same. When was first getting started, we knew we needed to attract the right kinds of customers. In order to pull those customers in, we also knew we needed to capture valuable search traffic. That led to a lot of research. Here are some of the basic strategies and tactics that guided our success: Focus on publishing compelling, quality content that is uniquely different and more valuable than anything else out there. That usually means its long-form content. Use the keywords your audience is searching for. Search engines understand synonyms and similar  terminology, so using related  keywords in multiple pieces of content helps the bots know what topics your site covers. That said, focusing on keywords for each piece of content you publish still matters. Offsite references, reviews, and social links play a role in how your content performs on search engines. Inbound links to your site are still important, and so is a logical sitemap with  internal linking among  pages. Content freshness matters. Keeping your content up to date helps search engines  understand that your site is accurate today. SEO Content Strategy: How to Skyrocket Your Traffic By 594%And of course, any SEO strategy should work hand-in-hand with a basic content strategy: Know your audience. Know your business. Know your goals. So lets see how this  sort of SEO content strategy really plays out  with a deep dive of how we do it at . Results  From Our SEO Content Strategy (Or Simply, This Stuff Works) While there's a lot to  SEO, we primarily focus on applying keywords to compelling, quality content. There's not much more to it than that. And it's working: That's our 594% increase in organic search traffic from January 2015 through December 2016. Aside from some seasonal dips, it's mostly trending in the right direction. This screenshot was grabbed from our Moz.com account. Those results have helped us reach a larger audience, bringing in more than 150,000 email subscribers and increasing our customer base. SEO was one tactic  of our content strategy that contributed to these results. We had a lot of growth with our marketing calendar itself that boosted these results beyond the SEO tactics you're reading about now. But it all adds  up in the end. What It Is And What It's Not Did you know some folks in the SEO industry have actually talked about changing the term from  search engine optimization to optimizing content for discovery and conversion or simply OC/DC? SEO has become an infamous initialism some people  relate to content targeted at ranking for robots instead of answering real people's questions. That is exactly what a great SEO content strategy is not. At least, that's not how we got  the results we saw at . OCDC compared to SEO with Google Trends shows which term is forecasted to stick around. While the term "OC/DC" hasn't widely caught on, the idea is perfect for setting up your SEO content strategy. As Sean Jackson from Copyblogger puts it: Optimizing Content for Discovery and Conversion, or â€Å"OC/DC† for short, encapsulates this idea of amplifying the overall reach and results of content creation. Sean goes on to say there are two main aspects of OC/DC: On-site optimization is all about publishing  awesome stuff in the first place. Interestingly enough, Sean didn't really cover growth hacks to optimize your content specifically for conversions, but this is definitely something we do  at to turn traffic into subscribers. External optimization involves optimizing your content not only for search engines, but for tons of other referral sources, too. Republishing, repurposing, and distributing your content all fall within external optimization. Essentially,  Sean is spot on with this idea: Your SEO content strategy is not about thin content targeted at appealing to robots, rather, it's about publishing timely, compelling content your audience is seeking, and helping them find it. #SEO is publishing timely, compelling content your audience is seeking, and helping them find it.Let's combine everything you just learned into the three  steps you'll use  to  plan and execute your strategy: 1. Research And Target Keywords Relevant To Your Niche Start by brainstorming the core topics for which you'd like to be known for. Since we're talking through 's story, here's how we did it: is a marketing calendar for everything- blogging, social media, ads, e-books, brochures- you name it, you can plan it with . We could talk about content types... but it makes more sense for us to target keywords around marketing strategy, planning, and that sort of thing to help you gals and guys doing the work execute more efficiently than ever. Finding your marketing niche, especially in super broad industries, helps you hone in on your audience's needs really easily. This topic definition focused our vision from any willy-nilly marketing topic to purely marketing strategy, planning, and execution- all things our audience can do even better when they use  . After you have the topics, it's time to find your keywords. First, watch this awesome video from Rand Fishkin at Moz to get started: Then put everything you just learned into action: Enter your topics into Google's keyword planner tool and check out the keyword ideas tab. That shows you a ton of related terms people are searching for. Select the best related keywords and start a list. Words with  low competition will catch your eye as opportunities. Those are keywords  people are searching for, but there isn't a hefty amount of content available to answer their questions. From here, whip out SEMrush's keyword research tool to understand if the keyword is predicted to grow in popularity (making it worth your time to target), gauge your competition, and get a feel for the difficulty. SEMrush's keyword research tool is a handy way to understand if it's feasible to target certain keywords and helps you find better related terms. Bonus: Combine your data from Google's keyword planner and SEMrush with Moz's keyword difficulty tool. For us, when a keyword is in the low 50s for a difficulty percentage, we rank well. From here, we took Brian Dean's  advice and  found keywords that our audience would use to find as a tool for planning your marketing with a calendar, as well as the related keywords for our niche. Product keywords: To clarify that a bit, there are some keywords that we found people search for like  marketing calendar tool that show the searcher's intent is on finding an app like . We should show up in their search results for these sorts of terms, so we're creating a landing page that provides helpful advice on using a marketing calendar, then ends with information about how fills that need. These keywords are very important because folks searching for these words are set  on buying. If we can help searchers find as a solution for these terms, we have the opportunity to convert searchers into paying customers. It's demand generation. Does your SEO content strategy focus on commercial intent? Get buyers, not just traffic. Here's how.Niche keywords: This list is perfect for blog posts with terms like  social media strategy template. That keyword is a core element of , providing a template of how to share content more than once on social media. Yet when we target this keyword, the goal is to provide a sweet download that helps our readers plan this on their own. So these words are great because we know a need depending on the popularity of the keyword, so we can mention how is helpful.  But really, these terms are usually the ones the doers search to learn how to do the work on their own without buying a tool like . They are perfect keywords to target, however, because we can provide helpful advice on how to do it on their  own, but if they just used , their lives would be even easier by consolidating their tool base thus saving 30 minutes for every piece of content they share. See how that works? Recommended Reading: Your Ultimate Content Marketer's Guide to Keyword Research 2. Plan To Execute Your  SEO Content Strategy So you have a big list of keywords you could target with your content.  Now it's time to plan how you'll actually accomplish your SEO content strategy to prioritize your projects and make execution a breeze. There is a traditional approach for marketing project management that will help you do just this: Initiate Your Project Your SEO content strategy is made up of multiple projects. The first step is prioritizing your keywords according to your goals: Start With Your Goals We have three core marketing goals at that all build upon one another.  Focusing on SEO helps us meet all of those goals: Grow traffic: Enabling our audience to  find through search engines, guest posts, and republished content helps us grow our traffic. Increase subscribers: The content we publish on our blog, for the niche keywords specifically, always contains free downloadable content in exchange for an email address. In that way, we optimize our content not only to be found, but to also convert readers into subscribers by providing valuable bonus content. Get more customers: The content we publish that targets the product keywords helps us turn readers into customers by showing the value provides as a marketing tool. From the get-go, it just makes sense for us to prioritize SEO as a valuable component of our overall content strategy. That said, certain keywords have more impact on those goals than others. For us, it makes sense to focus on both product and niche keywords. Here's what to do: Prioritize each list of keywords according to importance for your business to help you reach your goals. Take a hard look at the average monthly searches, competition, and difficulty, and choose the ones that will be easiest for you to rank for now. Select the top 15 keywords from each list to have 30 total keywords to target in your first  project. Define Your Content Types You could turn those keywords into a  million different content formats, right?  For each keyword, determine the best content type you'll use to rank for that keyword. At , we specifically think about the keywords first, then apply our knowledge of why our audience is searching for that term to the process. That helps us choose the right content type for each. Product: Think e-commerce pages, landing pages, and feature pages. These aren't necessarily best for blog posts because folks searching for these terms are likely ready to buy. Use the best content types to help you sell your product or service. Niche:  Think more traditional content marketing like blog posts,  landing pages, templates, and tools. Pro Tip: Think about the content types that work best for your audience- not just what you can do in-house with your current resources. Plan How You'll Execute Your Project Ask yourself, "Who's doing what, and how will they do it?" Resources:  Take people, tools, and budget into account: How you'll actually create the  content. Schedule:  Plan to publish  two pieces of content each week. That'll help you knock out your first project in about two months while staggering the workload to not overwhelm your schedule. Tasks:  Look at each piece of content you'll create, and break it down into what needs to be done. It's like a workflow. If you have team members, meet with them to understand where their skills will come in handy. Calendar: Plan your content on your marketing calendar, and add in the tasks for your workflow to nail every deadline. 3. Create, Publish, And Share Your Optimized Content Google's best results on  SEO content strategy suggest  tons of ways to optimize your content  as you create and share it.  Here are the main things we focused on to grow our #1–3 search results by 248%: Focus on Compelling, Quality Content Yeah, I know how many more times you can hear that before you go nuts. But it's a lot easier said than done. One of the top posts on this topic by Julia McCoy on Scoop.it suggests that brands like BMW, GE, and Red Bull are focusing on engagement tactics that are also helping people find their content. And it's no surprise that Neil Patel would say something similar with his take on interactive content reducing your bounce rate: Engagement and interactive content go hand in hand, and we’ve known it for quite a while. Interactive education was originally studied at home and schools even before the Internet was a thing. Let me define interactive education: Interactive education is teaching that requires participation from students. Interactive content, as we’ll soon see, is the same thing- just swap out students for readers. So while Neil is focusing on bounce rate,  it isn't that far of a leap to suggest  that focusing on engagement as a tactic to reduce bounce rate keeps readers  on your site longer, helping them understand your content is awesome and influencing them to share or convert. The more awesome it is, the more times it's shared. The more that happens,  you'll see more backlinks to your site. All of that is a good thing for SEO. For , engaging content is actionable: Tips and advice to plan better, write better, share better- and all of that with free downloads to help you remember the tips you learn when you're ready to implement the advice. Write Long-Form Content We started experimenting with long-form content in February 2014. In fact, Garrett did a whole little study with our data back then to share the results:  5 Things That Will Change Your Mind About Long Form Content Marketing. It's no guarantee that search engines will rank long-form content that's about 2,000 words higher in their search engine results pages (SERPs) than a post that is around 500 words. But there is a lot to be said for the quality and depth of longer content that seems to complement the previous point on quality. As Neil Patel puts it in another article on the KISSmetrics blog: My number-crunching, data-loving self has come to the conclusion that search engines and people are really into long content. It converts better, shares better, looks better, and just is better. But only to a point. I don’t want you to grovel in guilt or give up on blogging, just because you can’t write 2k-word articles. In an ideal world, we’d all be churning out 2k-word masterpieces. But in the real world, you don’t have to write 2,000-word articles. That said, even when we recently published a blog post that reiterated that blog post length doesn't matter, it is now just part of our content culture to provide long-form, detailed, and actionable content: Jason's on to us. We like long blog posts because they go way beyond scratching the surface to provide super actionable advice. The results have been great for us, and we're going to keep with it. Build Internal Links You never know which post  will be the very first that someone sees on your blog. So we backlink to what we determine are the most important pages on our site from all of our new posts. And you know what? Those pages that get linked to all the time are now some of our highest viewed and best converting on the entire website. Internal linking is supposed to help search engines cruise around your site. We see this as an opportunity to focus on our audience, however, and direct them from new posts to some of the best content we've ever published. Use the Keyword in Your Content We keep  this very simple: Page title Meta description URL Headline Image name and alt (mainly for organization) At least a few times in the body copy (including in subheadlines) There are many times when we let the context of the post speak for itself  without changing the verbiage to jam the keyword in there a few more times.  Search engines are smart and can read deep into context- you don't necessarily need every word in your long-tail keyword in the exact order. In fact, Brian Dean, the wizard behind Backlinko, pulled together a bunch of stats to look for in your on-page SEO that you can focus on right now: Source: On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page – Infographic These are all things we've taken into account at to boost our SEO, too. It definitely works! Understand Latent Semantic Indexing Once you understand basic keyword targeting, digging into latent semantic indexing is the next step. It's a term describing the process search engines use to understand the relationships and context between related keywords. For example, let's say you're writing a post about Chevy cars. If you included some text about the Impala and the Cruze, search engines can infer those are both types of Chevy vehicles. If your goal was to create a really comprehensive post about Chevy vehicles, you might include a subheader for each different model. Search engines would then be able to see your page thoroughly covers its topic. Therefore, it would be more likely to rank well and drive traffic. Here's how to put this principle into practice. Find terms related to your primary keyword. These can be related terms you find using Google's Keyword Planner. LSI Graph is another great free tool that can help uncover related keywords, based off of one primary term. Include those terms strategically in your content. Section subheaders are one logical place for your LSI keywords. Weave them naturally throughout your content as well where it's natural and appropriate. That covers the basics of what you need to know. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Keyword Research With Latent Semantic Indexing Share Your Content By  sharing, I mean optimizing your content for your readers to share it  while distributing it yourself  to reach more people (remember that OC/DC thing?). First, we optimize our content to help you share it with social media  buttons and . We also use the social queue in to help us share our content with our followers. Sharing our content more than once has helped us get 3,150% more traffic. Content promotion  including email distribution is a huge driver of traffic for us to keep our audience coming back. When we reference other folks' awesome content in our posts, we let them know through outreach marketing. We help our guest bloggers promote their content by providing helpful tips after their posts publish. All of these techniques help us  gain the visibility our content needs to be shared, which grows our traffic and helps search engines understand its value. Claim Unlinked Mentions For Your Content Once you've started publishing content, getting rankings, and growing your brand presence, people are going to start talking to you. And that's awesome. However, sometimes people might forget to link back to your content when they're mentioning your stuff. Those missing backlinks represent a missed opportunity to drive even more referral traffic and improve your search engine rankings. An easy way to monitor mentions is to set up a Google Alert for your brand name, and some terms related to your industry. Here's a quick video that'll show you how: Now, any time those terms are mentioned on the web, you'll get an email notification. Check those mentions to see if they include a link to your site. If they don't, find the contact information for those sites. Then, send them a quick email thanking them for the coverage, and ask if they'd consider adding a link. Here's some sample email text you can copy and paste: Hi,   My name is [INSERT YOUR NAME], and I'm the [INSERT POSITION] at [INSERT COMPANY]. I noticed you mentioned us on your site here: [INSERT URL] However, we noticed the link to our [HOME PAGE/BLOG POST] is missing. Would you consider adding a link to make it easier for your readers to find us? Here is the URL: [INSERT URL] Thanks for mentioning us on your blog! Our team appreciates the coverage. Best, [INSERT SIGNATURE] Most of the time, people will be glad to add in the link. Since they've mentioned your company, they have to be interested in what you do, right? Here are some additional tools for finding unclaimed mentions: BuiltVisible's free Link Reclamation Tool. BuzzSumo's monitoring and alerts can track unlinked mentions (and email you more detailed reports than Google Alerts). It's a paid tool, but it's indispensable for our  team. This guide from Moz  and this one  from Ahrefs  are packed with more detailed information on turning brand mentions into links. OK, Now Go Execute Your Plan Here is our best advice to get started on your  content creation process  while taking into consideration everything you just learned about optimizing your content: Angles: Know exactly  what you'd like the outcome of your content to look like. A great angle is appealing to real readers while targeting a keyword just helps them find your content. This is where the compelling nature of your content comes into play. Outlines: Stay on point in your content by beginning with an outline. This is also a great way to make sure you cover your angle. Headlines: Write emotional  headlines. There is some research out there to show that a variation of your keyword in your headlines  to help them feel less like search engine bait is a good thing. Introductions: Focus your first 100 words on drawing the reader in. Start with interesting facts, stories, anecdotes, and similar hooks to keep your readers reading. Brian Dean suggests using your keyword at least once in your introduction. Body: Follow your angle and outline and write your content. Use your keyword naturally. Take Julie's advice:  How To Write A Blog Post: Your 5-Point Checklist To Rock A Perfect Post. Calls to action:  Provide free content in exchange for email addresses and include calls to action for hard sales of your product or service. You're blogging to make money; don't forget to ask for it. Recommended Reading:  4-Step System For Writing A Great Blog Post, Even If You Have Writers Block What Doesn't Work (And Other Lessons Learned) Knowing what worked is all fine and dandy.  But we made a few mistakes you can learn from and avoid ever making in the first place: Adding in keywords after the post is written: Boy, this is super tough and feels like keyword stuffing. It's great to write posts that cover an idea no one has ever searched- that's thought leadership. Just know in your head that thought leadership is the point and adding in a keyword here and there may just make it awkward. Guest bloggers: It's super great to help them know exactly which keyword to use and your expectations before they get too far along. See point #1 for why. Headlines: Having your keyword in your headlines is important. But it's not worth the risk if you make it unreadable for humans. Don't be afraid to use a synonym for your keyword in your headline if you have to because your primary audience is, and will always be, people over robots. To top it off, here are the things I want to target in the near future to improve even more: Choosing the right keywords faster: I've been known to drag my heels on certain content,  searching for a millennium for the perfect keyword. It is a super important process, but we plan to publish for a long time to come. So it's easiest to just pick a few and run with  them now to keep us moving. Improving older content: There are tons of ways to optimize the content that's already published on your site. Lately, I've been researching the Google's 2oo ranking factors in a list from Brian Dean and plan to check out no-follow links, headlines, last updated dates (freshness), and just plain old better on-page optimization in old posts. More product-centric landing pages for demand generation: There are lots of product keywords out there that people could use to find . I'd like to target  all of them with dedicated features pages and landing pages. More super long landing pages because we know they work: Our blog posts convert readers into subscribers really well. But. Our landing pages perform even better. That said, we're going to publish more keyword-targeted landing pages with free offers to convert readers into subscribers. (By the way, some of those landing pages are only able to be found by search engines, so that tells you how much we rely on the robots to help people find our content.) More interactive content and tools:  You guys love the  headline analyzer. It's the #1 search result for that term. So it would make sense to bring you more interactive content we know you'll love. Good luck as you get started with your SEO content strategy.  And please, if you know of other marketers who may benefit from this information, please share it with your friends.