Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. 2019

SEO No Comments
Reading Time: < 1 minute

Facebook users. You get this message on the screen, “Account Temporarily Unavailable. Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes.”

Don’t panic. It’s a recurring problem and it is probably not just you facing the problem. I had this problem and here is what I did:

  • I deleted all cookies and flushed the cache. No difference, except that the error message changed to this.
  • Tried another browser (went from Firefox to Chrome). No difference.
  • Checked my Facebook account from my phone app – works! Big relief.
  • Went back to my laptop. Remember that I flushed cookies, so I am not even logged into the previous session. Problem still there. OK, this is most likely a technical issue somewhere between me and the nearest Facebook server. The site does not come up. Nothing personal. Phew. I did not offend anyone.
  • Checked Facebook (web interface) from another city (my work environment places all of us in another city, while my laptop operates on wi-fi from my city) – Facebook and my account are all working normally. More relief.

Solution?

  • Do all the above where possible.
  • Just wait and do something more productive. The technicians at Facebook will fix it in due course.

In my instance, the problem was resolved by Facebook in less time than it took to write this post.

Captain Phirozshah Byramji Bharucha, DSO

India No Comments
Captain Bharucha
Reading Time: 2 minutes

On Facebook I read the following post:

“Col. Phirozshah Byramji Bharucha, who led the 14th Ferozepur Sikh regiment in the grueling hard fought key Battle of Gallipoli during World War I in 1915. While the 1981 Mel Gibson movie “Gallipoli” glorified the heroics of the Australian battalions during the Gallipoli campaign, the reality is that the fiercest, most difficult first wave of attacks to gain ground on territory held by the enemy was led by the gallant Sikhs under Col. Bharucha, which then cleared the way for the Aussies to advance. In doing so, the brave 14th Sikh front line battalion suffered a 80% casualty rate. “

The wrong person.
This is the wrong person being attributed to this battle.

Being an Aussie of Indian extraction, having served in the RAAF as an officer, I am always interested in the under-documented role of Indians at Gallipoli, so I began to read up on the King’s Own 14th Ferozepore Sikhs, which fought at the Battle of Krithia, with a loss of 80% of its strength, with only three Indian officers surviving. I was intrigued how an Indian doctor attached to a regiment could have “led” it.

Captain Heerajee Cursetjee

Yes, there was a Parsi doctor with the 14th Ferozepore Sikhs , but it was Lieutenant (later General) HJM Cursetjee, DSO. (Link here). His great grandfather’s statue in Bombay is best known as “Khada Parsi”. A detailed account of his service life is at the British National Army Museum. Do check it out.

Yes, Lt Cursetjee also earned a DSO and he was the Parsi with the 14th King’s Own Ferozepore Sikhs, but a different Parsi also with a DSO to his credit has been incorrectly identified with Gallipoli.

So where was Captain PB Bharucha during WW1? He was in the Indian Expeditionary Force “D” in Mesopotamia (link here, Page 4) (also here, Page 440). He was later a prisoner of war (link 1 here) (continued here). He did fight the Turks, but in a different theatre of war. He was indeed the first Indian to win the Distinguished Service Order. I salute his service.

So here is a corrected image below that should be shared if you want to attribute the right person.

This is the correct person who should be attributed the honour.

SEO Implications of Google Ads’ New Exact Match

PPC SEO 1 Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutesBrad Geddes has published an excellent post entitled “Exact match is no longer exact match – are you managing the changes correctly?” Although it is about PPC, can SEOs learn from it? It is a timely reminder for those of us in SEO and content writing to be aware of Search Intent versus Keyword Intent.

I’ll also point out that there is no connection between the algorithms for Google Ads and organic Search. Nevertheless, it does not hurt to infer a connection for the purpose of tightening up our organic keywords. After all, many permanent web pages also serve as ad landing pages. Keywords are part of the Quality Score, so why not look for synergies.

At my day job I have been updating our master keyword list and will look for such potentially conflicting keywords. The concept of exact match does not apply directly to SEO, other than the rare searcher who does searches using quote marks, but tightening up our keywords can only be beneficial.

To pick an example, a Google search for “credit card app” triggers organic results about:

  • Phone apps (probably the search intent)
  • Card readers by several suppliers
  • Card processing by Square
  • Apply for a credit card – ANZ

But the searcher might be thinking of something not related to any of the above. Is it a Google Pay or Apple Pay (no Apple results showed)? Is it an app that keeps track of your card spend across several banks? And so on.

Incidentally, three ads appeared only at the bottom of the SERP and were ANZ/Woolies/Commbank bank credit cards.

Brad’s article mentions the use of the search term “Yosemite camping“, which Google used as an example when rolling this out. A searcher could type:

  • Yosemite national park ca camping
  • Yosemite campground
  • Campsites in Yosemite

From Australia, the only two ads I see relate to:

  • Yosemite’s official website page about camping and campgrounds.
  • Save the Woods web page with a map of the area (leaving me wondering what to make of this info)

Granted, “Yosemite camping” is a vague search term, but one has to allow for such searches. So what’s the challenge here for the SEO?

A content writer should consider the possible use cases for someone who is interested in camping in Yosemite. For example:

  • Wild animal hazards and preventive steps
  • Time of year considerations
  • Campgrounds
  • Rules for lighting fires for a barbecue or campfire
  • Do they mean living in a tent, RV, cabins or even a motel?
  • Environmental care

One clue about the algorithm comes from the “Searches Related to Yosemite camping”, which are:

  • yosemite camping prices
  • yosemite camping cabins
  • yosemite camping map
  • yosemite camping permits
  • best yosemite campgrounds
  • yosemite valley camping
  • rv camping near yosemite
  • best rv camping in yosemite

The actual organic results in the SERP seem to be focused on accommodation rather than the other aspects of camping. So do the ads.

The (closely related) keyword suggestions in Google Keyword Planner are also accommodation-centric, so the writer can safely assume that Google has made this close association at the moment.

So what are the writer’s options? “Yosemite camping” is, therefore, not a good keyword if you don’t want to be accommodation-centric. If you searched Keyword Planner for the other terms, such as Yosemite bears , you will get a good set of related keywords. Then let the usual SEO guidance for content kick in. Headings, title, images, videos, captions and so on.

Sherpa for Majestic Chrome Extension – Review

SEO SEO Tools No Comments
Sherpa extension

Reading Time: 2 minutesMost professional SEOs I know use Majestic.com for reliable backlink data. Majestic provides a lot of data about the links to a site, including data about the quality of those links. I have used it for many years, from the time it was known as Majestic SEO. I usually enter the URL of the domain of interest and I am given the relevant information.

Table of Contents

Sherpa for Majestic

I was one of the early testers of a free Chrome extension known as Sherpa for Majestic, which is made by fastfwd. I could not imagine how a Chrome extension would help me in a way I could not already get from Majestic directly. So I installed it, only to find that it didn’t work with Google Australia. That was quickly resolved by Rishi Lakhani’s team and today we have a mature, released product.

Sherpa extension

The extension installed correctly and after linking it to my Majestic account, I did a Google Search. The SERP was modified slightly as per the image below.

SERP with Sherpa

Sherpa for Majestic adds a control panel on the left and data blocks below each search result. You can also turn off ads and regain some screen space.

I enabled some options to highlight certain words in the URL and in the result, so you are seeing some yellow and green highlights. You can choose to see more than 10 results from a selector in the left margin, that is, without going to the search settings. Each search result is numbered, which becomes more useful when you have more than 10 results.

Benefits

You may have noted from the screen shots that you can do your own ranking analysis for a search term of interest. As per the example above, the #1 ranking page has lower Trust Flow (TF) than the lower-ranking results. It does not have the highest Citation Flow (CF) either. OK, experienced SEOs know that backlinks alone don’t influence ranking positions, but this type of data on a SERP page enables me to look at the top ranking URLs and look for backlink patterns, if any. In this home insurance niche, it seems that the top ranking sites have a similar Topical TF.

The fastfwd page has more details about the data the extension provides. You will want to use it.

 

Save

Availing Leaves

Grammar No Comments

Reading Time: < 1 minuteA viral post on Facebook about the “slow cashier” provides this example of a common error made by many. Two errors, in fact, in one paragraph:

He also said that she has enough leaves that could be availed (and get paid for sitting at home) but Premlata chose to come to work because she wanted to retire with dignity.

Source: http://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/the-slow-cashier-whose-video-went-viral-has-survived-a-paralysis-stroke-once-and-heart-attacks-twice/434600/

Table of Contents

Leaves

It is never plural, in the context of leave from work. You have “enough leave”

Avail

You always “avail of” something. The second word is required.
 

Stepney

English Usage No Comments

Reading Time: < 1 minuteWhen your car gets a puncture (increasingly called a “flat tyre” in the non-American parts of the English speaking world) in India, you open the “dicky” (“boot” in British-influenced countries), (“trunk” in America) and get the “stepney”.
What’s a stepney? No, not some suburb of London or Adelaide, but the spare wheel (and its fully-inflated tyre). Try to search for it in Google and at least in Australia, you’ll not find the Indian meaning of stepney, namely, the spare tyre. Even the car-related results are simply car dealerships and service stations in Adelaide. (The definition in the Urban Dictionary is most unkind and we won’t go there.)

Stepney, aka spare tyre
Stepney, aka spare tyre

Origin of “Stepney” as a spare tyre

The explanation is that a mechanic in Llanelli, Wales had a shop on Stepney Street and he was the first to sell spare tyres when cars did not come with them. The coat of arms of Llanelli Borough Council (not the current city’s coat of arms) even had a spare tyre on it!
For an excellent article on its origins, please visit the entry for Stepney at World Wide Words.
:mrgreen:
 

President Obama’s whitehouse.gov pages archived

Other SEO No Comments
New home for Obama's White House pages

Reading Time: < 1 minuteAfter Mr Donald Trump became the president at noon today (USA EST), many reported that the whitehouse.gov website removed references to Climate Change and LGBT. That isn’t entirely accurate. The website up to that point has been archived and can be found at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/.

New home for Obama's White House pages
New home for President Obama’s White House pages

The LGBT URL was https://www.whitehouse.gov/lgbt but it redirects to this temporary page https://www.whitehouse.gov/transitionsplash/

White House 404
404 error page

The page is now at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/lgbt – why didn’t someone tell the new team how to set up a redirect script so that all old URLs that won’t exist at whitehouse.gov can still be found. Maybe they don’t want them to be found?

LGBT pages
New URL for LGBT pages – click this image to go there.

The climate change pages are now at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-record/climate

Climate pages
The Climate Change pages at its new URL – click image to go there.

Other old White House pages

As best as I can tell, if you have an old URL, just replace whitehouse.gov/ with obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ and add the rest of the URL to it. For example, to get to whitehouse.gov/vp (to reach Joe Biden’s page), just go to obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/vp and so on. Looks like it’s all there at the archives.gov location, but some links will have broken.

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