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Hung Pham

Optimizing for entities

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When I first read the article, I thought: oh good, if I write something and optimize it with the emotional techniques, it would be a good post. However, after I made some researches, it looks like not the way I would like to do. Don’t get me wrong, the emotional techniques are still helpful anyway.

What are the entities and why to optimize for that?

Basically, an entity can be anything, which is defined by a web page (we are talking to websites, is that correct?), with unique distinguishing properties.

Google definition: [A]n entity is a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable. For example, an entity may be a person, place, item, idea, abstract concept, concrete element, other suitable things, or any combination thereof.

While we still need to use “a language” to describe entity properties, because an entity can be anything, optimizing for entities can also be independent of languages. With that in mind, I start to optimize a fresh post about an Aikido seminar.

Preparing tasks

  1. The keyword: minoru kanetsuka aikido
  2. The entities: Minoru Kanetsuka sensei, Aikido
  3. The writing technique mostly is BLUF – bottom line up front, the military standard.
  4. Schema: event. Optimized with Rank Math.

I will not list every step here, but it took me almost one day for preparing content and put them together. After getting confirmation from the site owners and the seminar instructors, I published the page. Posted the link to the Facebook event, and aikido.no website. The traffic started to come.

Results

In the next day, I sent the link to one of the seminar instructors and asked him to share it online. In addition, I posted on the Facebook Aikido seminars group. It really boosted the traffic, as you can see in the below graph.

web traffic to the Kanetsuka sensei memorial seminar in Oslo, Sentrum Aikido, 2020
  • Before boosting: normally, there were 5-6 visitors to the site every day.
  • On January 16th, at the top, there were 101 visitors to the site, and you can imagine most of them surfed the seminar page. It’s 20 times more.
  • After boosting, the traffic went down, but there are still around 20 visitors to the site every day, which is four times more than before.

Within two days, when searching on Google about minoru kanetsuka british aikido federation, the post appeared in the featured snippet (see how featured snippet works here). I didn’t expect that. Surprised! Even though, you can see that I didn’t intend to optimize for the entity “British aikido federation”!

However, my happiness was not long. The next day, traffic to the page started to go down. And the page disappeared from the Google featured snippet. It leads to a question: is the organic traffic relating to the featured snippet?

Later on, I found out that Google just finished updating its core. Following different sources, the update was big and it really affects the SERPs. Now, I will need to find out what Google changes in its core and which affects my post in the featured snippet position. 

Anyway, even the page is new, it got immediately the second or the third position on the first page of SERP, with the planned keywords. Not bad. But you can see it would need a lot of continuous work if we want to keep the page in the top positions.

Take away

As noted above, there are several questions appearing during the last days:

  1. The relation between traffic and Google featured snippet.
  2. What Google updated in this version to kick the page out of the featured snippet position.

Besides, through optimizing for this fresh post, I can see a clear effection of influencer marketing. Since the instructor shared the link on his Facebook, many of his friends visited the page, brought higher organic traffic. That makes me think about a combination of influencer marketing and optimizing for entities. It would be a very good solution for the next posts.

Filed Under: SEO

When it is enough

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You are using too much power. You lost the contact. Enough. No more.

I guess you can hear that many times when you are in an Aikido training, especially in a beginner class (well… I know most of us are beginners, shodan is a new beginner level, is that correct?).

In one training, when doing Ikkyo technique, I applied an atemi to my partner and was pointed out that I was too much. No, I don’t mean that I punched to her face too strong. It could be a combination of my movement, the distance between me and her, the mental sharpness. However, it leads me to think again the relation between uke and tori, in Aikido particularly, and between people, in general life.

OK, Aikido first.

It depends on how both uke and tori react to each other.

  • If tori applies atemi too little, or the movement doesn’t have any sharpness, the atemi will not have any effect on the uke. And if uke moves self, it is actually destroying the practice. Too nice! Aikido is still a martial art, remember that.
  • But if the atemi is too much, there is nothing to prevent the uke release the hand contact and run away. The connection between tori and uke disappears.
  • There is another case that the atemi is quite good, but the uke doesn’t respond. The uke assumes that this is training only, he will not hurt, so he keeps standing there. Well… in this case, I guess the connection already doesn’t exist anymore, even he still grasp your arm.

So, what is the lesson? Please, to be honest with each other. Focus and read your partner. You don’t need to over-react, but don’t be lazy either. Either as an uke or as a tori.

Many times, I see people in training don’t focus much. They look at other people, they move like a Russian tumbler even they can do much better. When doing that, they might not recognize that they are wasting their time, their partners time and effort. By that way, they are not respecting their partners, then what is the purpose of the training?

Next thing for learning: how to create sharpness in your movement? With that sharpness, combining your arms, your eyes contact and the whole body, you can give your partner more attention. I have been learning that knife sharpness from my teachers, but not successful enough (ahhh, what is enough? 🙂 )

Being a better father?

This lesson especially makes me think about the ways I am talking with my six years old daughter. In many instances, I feel being crazy about her activities, but shouting at her doesn’t help much. I don’t like that way either. I admitted that I have been shouting at her several times, but anytime after that, I immediately felt sorry for me, that I was over-react. I need to follow my daughter to get her feeling, and decide quickly what to do next depends on her response. And how about the next times? Children are developing, they learn quickly, but they are also interested in many things which make them forget your pieces of advice fast. With my daughter, I need to repeat one thing many times. Might be I need to pay more attention to her mood, so I can tell her in a more effectively 🙂

Easier for saving a Google Calendar event from an email

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I just received an email about an event: webinar, Sunday 12 May 7 PM London time. That is an interesting event, and I would like to join. However, it takes time for manually creating a new Google Calendar event with its details. And I am currently tired!

Can life be easier? 🙂 Yes, adding an inviting link to the email, and when receivers click to that, it will open their Google Calendar, create a new event with all details. They just need to click Save. Done!

You are not using Google Calendar? Click here.

So, how to do that?

publish a Google Calendar event
  1. Create an event in your Google Calendar with all details, such as starting time, ending time, location, reminder, description, etc.
  2. After creating, click to three-dots button and choose to Publish event.
  3. You will have a link to the event. Copy it.
  4. Now in your email:
    1. if you are sending emails from a service likes MailChimp, you just need to insert the above link to a text, such as Add this event to my Google calendar.
    2. If you are sending emails from client software such as Outlook, you might want to use a short-link service like bit.ly to make your link look better.

Congratulation! You just make your readers’ life more comfortable 🙂 I also believe that by making it easier, the chance that your readers will save your event invitation to their calendar is bigger, and more people would join you in the event.

Note!

The above guide is for Google Calendar. I admitted that even I am a Mac user, I am using G Suite for productivity, then I am using Google Calendar, not Apple iCal. But using this tool, you can generate a .ics file, which is used for Apple iCal, and in client software such as Microsoft Outlook. Attach that ics file to your email, and they can also use one click for adding all event details to their calendar.

Ai – harmony

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I was in a bookstore in Frankfurt and saw a book about Vietnamese food. They have a quote: "Ăn trông nồi, ngồi trông hướng." They translated into German. I asked my German friend, what that German sentence means and how he understands that sentence. No surprise, he told me that the translated version implies during the meal, you should pay attention to eating, enjoy the food. However, the meaning of that quote is different. It's about caring people enjoying the meal with us.

The same situation in Aikido. We are practicing Aikido. People can talk a lot about Aikido, but during training, people forget that they are doing Aikido. Many times!

AI means harmony. We have many ways to explain harmony. For me, I try to become the one with my partner, either in Uke or Tori role. For doing that, please don't run away from your partner, don't disconnect the contact between us.

I was in training with a new beginner, and whenever I did something, she seemed to be scared and wanted to "run away", even when she was in Uke role. I understand her fear, but uke means you are "attacking", there is no meaning if you already run before you finish your attack! I always tell my beginner partners that in Aikido, we don't hit people hard, we are not only training techniques but more important that we are also practicing our mind not to hurt people. I had that fear when I practiced before with my teacher Tor Anton in Sentrum Aikido, or with Kuribayashi sensei before. They really freaked me out, and it's not easy for me to complete any technique happily 🙂 Training is one way to remove the inside fear, Bjørn Eirik sensei repeatedly tell us in his seminars.

In the 2016 Norwegian summer camp, Nakamura Nobuaki sensei showed us a version of torifune, with Uke really relies on Tori. That exercise not only helps tori relax their body, shoulder but also helps both Tori and Uke build trust between them.

Of course, being the one is not easy. I have been trying to do that. I know people have taken years and years to do that. But at least, if you keep that mind when you are training, that we are doing AIkido.

No information at the contact point

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In a recent seminar in Oslo, Kuribayashi Shihan talked about the emptiness inside our body. We need to have contact outside, but if there is nothing inside, the uke has nothing to attack. I have the same feeling many times when I grasp my teacher, Tor Anton. I have tried to find out which point I could rely on, or connect to his center, but I lost. It might be because I was trying too much 🙂 As a friend told me, stop trying, just do it. Anyway…

Habitually, when a tori is grasped, for example, in katate-dori, the first move is from the wrist. But then the uke knows that the tori wants to go from that, and he just continues the attack. In the end, both are fighting, and we don’t want that in Aikido. That’s why no information at the contact point is critical.

But then, how to move? Moving from the center, I am sure that you have heard that many many times. And this fantastic video from Yoshihito Shibata sensei explains very well.

(When I saw the face of the uke in this video, I could not stop laughing, because I recognized myself there, exactly the same feeling when I tried to push Tor Anton.)

When I first heard about no information at the contact point, it confused me. On one side, we are told that we need to keep contact, and we can read our partner from that. On the other hand, we don’t want to give information at the contact point. Hah… my head was spinning 🙂 I also had another failed assumption: don’t move the contact point. Failed. We still need to move, but the importance is how to move, and where is the source of the movement.

So:

  1. Move. But from your center. Don’t start moving from the contact point.
  2. When you are moving, still need to connect to your partner center.

Don’t do complicated things. Just a simple movement, but move correctly. By doing this, I am pretty sure that it will give a little or no information at the contact point. And by practicing this, I believe it helps to build the inside emptiness. Enjoy the video, I would love to hear your experiences after trying.

One way to relax when practising Aikido

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Sometimes I sit down and think how to explain to my friends to relax when practising Aikido. It’s not easy. I can repeat hundreds or thousands times that they need to relax their body, their shoulders, etc. But how to give them the feeling of relaxing. It’s still something I want to learn myself and to help other people.

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“It’s important for me to remember when Aikido started, between the life and the dead” – that’s one thing Tor Anton shared me after a training.

He illustrated with the feeling of using a very very sharp knife (that’s why he likes to make knives, I guess?!?!). The difference is that he’s explaining from the Tori side, not from the Uke side. Suddenly, I got the feeling of how to relax when practising Aikido!

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Tor Anton Gaarder - my favourite teacher at Sentrum AIkido OsloTor Anton Gaarder is the technical leader in Sentrum Aikido – Oslo, where I have been practising. He is currently holding 4.dan rank after 24 years of training.[end-div]

 

Holding a very sharp knife in your hand doesn’t mean that you are killing people. When you have that kind of knife, you don’t need to use too much strength for cutting. A minimal cut can hurt your partner already. In that case, it helps both Tori and Uke recognising the danger of the situation and not resisting each other. From the Tori side, the importance is keeping you a peaceful emotion. If you want to fight, to kill your partner, your mind cannot relax, then the body will become stiff and you start using too much strength. If you can put your partners in an awkward position and make them laugh at the sight, then you are stepping into the relaxation. Using a sword or a knife is not for killing, as I wrote about sword brings life after a training with my teacher in Seishinkai Aikido – Thorsten Schoo.

Of course, there are still many other things besides that. Still, need to connect the hands, the arms, the knees… with the whole body, not only moving your wrist with that knife. But is that a wonderful way to learn how to relax?

Don’t like knife? 🙂 OK, another way. Now imagining that you are holding a brush for calligraphy. You cannot hold very tight and use too much muscle for draw a nice writing. Be soft, be gentle. That’s the feeling. Again, don’t try to fight against your partner. Instead, being harmonised. Is that the aim of Aikido 🙂