Exam Paranoia And Mothers

To all the moms who go ninja during kids’ exams

“I don’t like exams,” said the 15-years old kid.

“You will score well, just study more,” retorted the mother.

“I don’t mind scoring less. I just don’t like exams because of you.” came the reply.

“What else can I do? Sharp reply from mother.

“You just don’t panic, don’t yell, don’t make exams punishments.”

If kids could really take heads out from the books and dare to look beyond the glaring stares of their moms, this is how a conversation between the two would go—at least during the exam season when Indian mothers bring out the real ninja inside them.

Preparing fatigue-free meals, yelling at the kid to study, assembling notes, yelling at the kid some more, organizing everything around, yelling at the kid a little more… and oh, not to forget the yelling at the driver for being 2.7 seconds late and whosoever rings the bell….poor maid …

After all Isaac Newton is preparing for exams! How dare a bee passes through?

In true sense, the chase to get high marks that’s so streamlined with the societal egos stemming out from parent meet-ups and social clubs, no more exams are just about the students. Mothers are the real warriors! You just have to have an eye to see that invisible sword!!

The care towards micromanaging every aspect of their children – that often extends into the territory of obsessiveness and irrationality – is what the most Indian Mass are all about after all. After all grades of your child are true reflection of how good a mother you have been. It’s a certificate from the society.

But is that for good or bad, that’s for us to collectively conclude! It’s much like sipping chocolate cocoa, overdo it and you’ll end up fat. Over-care and micromanage the kids and you can not only spoil them but also shake their confidence and esteem from the imprisonment of choices. Let them be! We are in 21st century, they will end up doing something or the other…don’t fret.

But again, in a country where mothers wishfully wash their adult sons’ underwear and ask their 40-years old daughters to come back home early, asking them to limit their limitless love for their little and “innocent” ones, it’s just too much to ask.

It’s exactly like telling Arnab Goswami that the nation doesn’t want to know anything anymore. You know he will never listen!

Coming from generations, of course, you too must had gone through the same things in the exam season. Your mother screaming from the kitchen, asking you to study and not To stare at the wall (because you didn’t have Smartphone back then to stare at). Her shrill concern on what Sharma-ji’s kids are doing and what the samaaj will think if you score less.

Like they (the samaaj) says, like mother like children. Tough and frustrating. it may have been for you in your own days, you’re now dutifully bestowing what your mother did and taught to you – like a true Indian naari – on your own child.

Good! You’re a great mother. I am a great mother! (Smell sarcasm?) But here’s a food for your thoughts—thoughts that are still lost in the reminder of reminding your kid to buy a good pen for the exam…giving him/her a tight hug….

You may have thought to have your child counseled before the exam. You may even have your little ones counseled to ensure them in the right mind frame for the exam day. But have you thought to go to a counselor yourself?

Because after the noise settles, the (good) result arrives and the joy breaks, you may realize it wasn’t your kids who needed counseling. It’s actually you!

I’ll see after my therapy session! Tell your kid all the best from me, will you?

Do you have something interesting you would like to share? Write to us at share@Letsdiskuss.com

Gaming As A Career Option

Gaming Industry Is BOOMING (But Is It A Good Career Choice?)

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If not COD then at least Candy Crush—even when not a gaming enthusiast, people have still played this game in their downtime. Yes, social media channels and casual web browsing rein the hype-ville. BUT gaming is still the largest segment of the entertainment industry, attracting not just the young bunch as is traditionally believed but also the grown-ups.

According to the European Mobile Game Market 2016 report, there were 2.5 billion video gamers in the world. Now, in 2018, it’s not hard to guess that the number must have significantly boosted high.

Perhaps this is why the video games market is expected to be worth over a whopping USD 90 billion by 2020.

Naturally, with numbers as big and prospects even bigger, the gaming industry has turned heads of the millennial who, much to the disappointment of their parents, dislike traditional career choices like medical and engineering. This has led us to a much-discussed question today—

Is gaming a good career choice?

Unsurprisingly, the answer isn’t as straightforward as people would like it to be. Indeed, the gaming industry is booming. However, relying on progressive technology, its sustainability could very well be debated. Not that games wouldn’t exist 20 or 50 years from now. They will!

However, in what form or origin, one isn’t sure given the scope of AI in this field is still isn’t very clear. Meaning to say, how fast this industry will change and will it be equally profitable tomorrow as it is today—a lot lie loosely on speculations. And when it comes to measuring career success, the majority of people like certainty over risks, assurance over “what ifs”.

This, alone, puts off many aspirants who are initially attracted to the glam of the gaming industry. When thinking up and close, weighing in all the pros and cons, picking up a suitable role here doesn’t seem quite an appealing option for them.

Too many perks 

That being said though, when measuring the current scenario and expected numbers in the short-run, career in the gaming industry is a holy grail to many young minds. And with expanding reach of this field, the number of opportunities are on the rise too, ensuring no one has to compromise on their ‘real skills’ just for the sake to blend in and experience the thrill of working in this industry.

You don’t necessarily need to be a developer or an animator for that matter. With today’s games so much life-like, where every dimension has to be perfect for the over-critical gamers, the team of makers can span into hundreds, packing a very diverse range of professionals—from creative directors to audio engineers, game artists to level editors, lead artists to narrative copywriters, and product managers to technical artists.

Too many opportunities

So the opportunities are in ample for all—even for the entrepreneurs. We’ve heard many success stories of small teams creating incredible games, in their garages and likes, for Android, iOS, Xbox and PS platforms, and becoming the ‘next big thing’ in this industry. And when in accompany of success – that’s easily measurable – paychecks are just equally big; even bigger than that of traditional career streams.

And isn’t that what a large part of today’s dreamers and career-makers wishes for? More pay, a little bit of risk, plenty of opportunities, and a life with passion.

A career in the gaming industry has it all.

In short, yes, a career in gaming is a great option today. But not necessarily for all. The industry has it all – and even more – that other traditional streams offer. However, it is best suited to a select segment who aren’t really fond of the conventional paths.

Do you have something interesting you would like to share? Write to us at share@Letsdiskuss.com

Women's Empowerment In India

Safer Cities For Women: The Finalists

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Since the emergence of the #MeToo hashtag in 2017, the disturbing reality of the scale of violence against women at home, work, school and outside in their cities has come to light in the mainstream.

The finalists of the third edition of the Womanity Award 2018, themed ‘Creating Safer Urban Environments for Women’, are making global cities, transport systems and public spaces less threatening for girls and women.

The Womanity Award unsurfaces innovative solutions around the world and focuses on the power of collaboration to address the root causes of Violence Against Women (VAW). At the heart of the Womanity Award is the aim to take these solutions to scale through a carefully supported process of adaptation by partner organisations in new settings.

With the support of The Womanity Foundation, organisations from different parts of the world expand their reach into new geographies, with the aim of preventing violence against millions more women and girls.

Womanity Award programme manager Laura Somoggi says: “Creating safer private and public environments means harnessing the power of women and men, businesses, public institutions, and civic society. They need to collaborate to design and develop – among other things – buildings which feel safe for women, streets which are well lit, safer public transport and solutions which involve women’s voices. Our finalists are very much at the leading edge of this work.”

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CREATING SAFER URBAN ENVIRONMENTS FOR WOMEN: THE FINALISTS’ PROGRAMMES

Liveable Environments: Applying safety audits to housing projects and the surroundings – Col.lectiu Punt 6 and Instituto Mujer y Sociedad

From Spain and also having worked in Colombia, finalist Col.lectiu Punt 6 are a collective of feminist urban planners, architects and sociologists.

Their Liveable Environments programme works with local women and governments to assess safety in the city. They look not only at public spaces, but also housing developments and the surroundings to see where improvements can be made.

With the results, Col.lectiu Punt 6 designs and maps plans for safer urban spaces and new social housing developments with features such as more visibility and better communal places for women inside and outside the home.

The collective plans to work with the Instituto Mujer y Sociedad (IMS) to replicate the programme in two neighbourhoods of Montevideo, Uruguay.

IMS has more than thirty years of experience in providing legal and psychological assistance to victims of gender violence, helping reduce violence against women and girls, and creating knowledge and education programmes on gender-based violence. They work very closely with local civil society organisations and the government on the defence of human rights.

To find out more about the finalists innovative plans click here

Safer Cities for Girls – Plan India and Vishakha

Plan India Safer Cities for Girls strives to increase girls’ and women’s safety in India and access to public spaces, as well as amplify their voice on how they want their cities to be.

Plan India works with governments and gives training to boys, families and communities to promote a supportive social environment for girls. The programme also creates and promotes safe youth clubs and community safety walks. They have a particular interest in addressing and preventing violence in public spaces and on transport, particularly sexual violence.

After the pilot programme in Delhi, Plan India found that 15% more girls reported always feeling safe in public spaces and 48% more girls said they were starting to get involved in local issues.

Plan wants to extend the programme to at least 20 cities. As a finalist, they will work with women’s rights organisation Vishakha to expand the programme to Jaipur, the largest city of the Indian state of Rajasthan.

Vishakha is a respected organisation which played a key role in a major petition in 1997 in India which led to the Supreme Court issuing guidelines for prevention of sexual harassment in the workplace that year. They have a very strong relationship with local communities in Jaipur.

To find out more about the finalists innovative plans click here

Safetipin Safety Audit Apps – Safetipin and Soul City

Finalist Safetipin has produced four Apps, including My Safetipin App, which sees red, orange or green pins dropped on city maps indicating which areas are the safest for women. Women’s safety apps gather crowdsourced information of women’s feelings of safety and other criteria such as lighting, quality of walk/ cycle paths and gender balance in public spaces.

The Safetipin Apps are currently being used by over 85,000 people in 12 cities, mostly in India but also in others such as Bogota, Nairobi, Manila and Jakarta.

In Delhi, seven different government departments have used Safetipin’s data to make improvements, including to fix all dark areas. And in Bogota, the local authorities have used the app to audit and improve bike paths in the city.

Safetipin is partnering with the Soul City Institute for Social Justice for Young Women and Girls in South Africa. This scale up will allow the support to be geared to a country which has a femicide rate five times the global average (Statistics SA, 2016).

Soul City is recognised globally for its pioneering work on social change communication. It uses a combination of mass/social media, social mobilization and policy advocacy to bring about social change. It is also currently working on the Safe Taxi Campaign to reduce abuse and sexual violence on public minibus taxis, the most used means of transport in Johannesburg.

To find out more about the finalists innovative plans click here

MORE FREEDOM TO LIVE, WORK, LEARN AND SOCIALISE: WHY SAFER CITIES FOR WOMEN ARE SO IMPORTANT

A recent World Bank Study (2018) shows that four in five countries have laws to protect women from sexual harassment outside the home, but these laws often do not cover harassment in the streets.

The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has set the elimination of “all forms of violence against all women and girls in public and private spheres” as one of its specific goals.

Do you have something interesting you would like to share? Write to us at share@Letsdiskuss.com

5 White Hat SEO Tactics That Will Get You In Trouble

Your read an SEO guide, went through all the do’s and don’ts, and are now ready like a true-SEO ninja to get your website rank higher on Google.

Isn’t that how everyone goes about when trying to champion Google and other search engines?

In fact, if you, too, want to give your website a boost on SERP (Search Engine Result Pages), it’s very likely that you have followed the same process.

Nothing wrong. Nothing at all. Except, the process is flawed and needs to be scrapped immediately.

The New Rules of SEO Where “Good” Isn’t Always Good

One of the biggest problems of consuming such beginner and advanced SEO guides is that the majority of them are outdated. Hush and you might even hear them scream, “update me, please.”

Following the Pigeon, Panda, Penguin, and so many other Google algorithm updates, in a not-so-new news, the SEO landscape has changed. A lot. And it demands that we change our approach towards it as well.

Indeed, black hat SEO is fatal and should be done away for good. However, the hyped white hat SEO techniques aren’t perfect either.

Yes, not all “good ones” are good. Actually, some of them can even get you in trouble if you’re mindlessly implementing them on your website.

Also read about Spamming Checker Tools here. 

Let’s get to the main part.

Here are 5 “good” SEO tactics that can get your website in trouble:

1. Extra-long content

Long-form content pieces perform better on search engines. According to a report by Brian Dean of Backlinko, the average Google first page result contains 1,890 words. Several other studies and researches, too, conclude similarly. A blog post on CoSchedule claimed that one needs to write 2,000+ words articles to rank higher on SERP.

There’s no denying that search engines reward long contents because naturally, they are more comprehensive and insightful as opposed to the 500-words pieces. However, here’s where so many people take this simple method the wrong way.

“I must write a super long article.” It doesn’t matter whether there’s a demand for it and if it applies in my niche or not— “I must do it.”

Here’s a very simple that you need to understand. Not every target audience would like to stop and read a 2000-words article. And this tactic doesn’t suit every niche.

For example, you can’t have an article on “how to make Irish coffee” that runs into 2k words. Or you can’t write a news piece (like what did Trump say in his latest Twitter tirade) in a long piece. Because it doesn’t make sense!

What will you really write when the main content of the article can be summed in 300-words? Of course, there would be fluff. Now, would your readers really appreciate the additional 1700-words no-value content? Likely not; and neither will the search engines.

Similarly, you can’t write a super-long piece of content for teenagers and working professionals, depending on your niche and the device they are using, because they don’t have that much time and patience.

So, this generic idea that we have come to terms with that long-articles are perfect for SEO is completely delusional.

Meaning, have you been shelling long-articles unnecessarily, just for the sake of it, it’s about time you’re penalized by search engines for poor quality, irrelevant pieces of content.

2. Chasing the doFollow backlinks

DoFollow backlinks are the holy grail in the SEO world. You get them, and you can dominate the search rankings.

Or at least that’s the general notion among so many people.

Matt Cutts, the head of search spam at Google, in one of his videos admitted that as we move forward, over time, backlinks would become less relevant. And that was 4 years back, in 2014.

No doubt, today, in 2018, backlinks are important. They are one of the most important ranking factors.

But here’s the clichéd fact in this area—not all backlinks are equal.

A lot depends on the kind of website that’s providing you the backlinks, where its server is located, what kind of content it hosts and plenty of other subtle signals.

If the quality of the website isn’t good and it isn’t relevant to what you’re offering, not only will that backlink be useless for you, it might even hurt your rankings.

Also, here’s another myth that prevails among many: DoFollow links are the best.

Yes, doFollow links pass on the ‘link juice’ to the linked website. However, in the modern SEO world, noFollow links are just as important, if not more.

While search engines have denied it rigorously, marketing pundits agree that search spiders do crawl the noFollow links; only, they don’t let this crawl affect the search ranking of that particular website.

Also, today, there’s a thing called “branding” that search engines have been prioritizing a lot.

Say, if you mention the name “HubSpot” in one of your articles and NOT link back to HubSpot, the search spiders will pick that brand mention and reward that brand.

This indicates just how smart the search spiders have become these days in deciding which website/brand should be credited or penalized.

Perhaps, backlinks are not losing their relevance. However, the line between the link types (DoFollow and NoFollow) has blurred.

Besides, there’s also a risk that if you’re getting too much of doFollow backlinks, it may reek of link farming practice, which can get your website penalized.

So, stop doing what so many people in the SEO world are doing, which is thoughtlessly chasing the doFollow backlinks.

There’s plenty of its-and-bits to backlinks that it’s about time you start thinking of.

3. Linking to every other website

There was a time when linking back to other websites was a frown-upon practice among SEOs. They would fear spreading/leaking the hard-earned link juice to other websites.

Then search engines got much smarter. Google introduced many algorithm updates. And came the time that smart professionals understood, linking to other authority is actually a good practice.

The outbound links help search engines better understand your content.

And when you start associating (linking) to other high-quality, authority URLs, you automatically improve your own repute and trustworthiness.

The problem, here, came when many people started misusing this practice. They started irrelevantly linking to every other website that they possibly could, hoping to get rewarded.

To be precise, there are two major issues here:

(i) Linking to too many websites

(ii) (Unconsciously) associating with poor quality websites

Both the issues can get a website in trouble. Sadly, it is something that SEOs and marketers are still coming to terms with.

Today, the basic rule of linking (inbound or outbound) is that the link must be used in the most natural way.

Because the search spiders can easily recognize it if the links aren’t naturally plugged. And if that’s the case, it can definitely get you in trouble.

So, stop using outbound links where they are not needed. They are great to give your search ranking a (meagre) push up. But you need a certain strategy here to pull it successfully.

4. Trying to keep website “ultra-fast”

Here’s a quick fact: a mobile landing page usually takes an average of 22 seconds to load completely. However, 53 percent of people leave a mobile page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

In fact, 64 percent of Smartphone users expect pages to load in less than 4 seconds.

For this same purpose did Google launch AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page) back in 2015 that, if implemented well, can load a search landing page in less than half a second.

So, it’s quite natural to believe that the faster the website, the more rewards you will reap.

Indeed, that is irrefutable.

But the issues spring when you go to extreme levels to make this happen where disadvantages far outweigh all the benefits.

Increasing your website speed comes with several trade-offs. You need to strip your website off several features and components to accelerate its loading time.

And when you do this, you’re simply reducing the functionality of your website, which isn’t something good all the time.

You would have to settle for poor-quality font source, do away with video contents from landing page, get rid of that lead generation chat box, say goodbye to the pop-up CTA box, and more.

All these steps can easily boost your website loading time. But they would also compromise on your UX, conversion rate and few other metrics.

Now, is that a good thing? Certainly not.

Meaning to say, attempting to get your website run ultra-fast like a jaguar isn’t always very rewarding.

If you’re blindly chasing this goal and not thinking properly about what you’re doing in the process, you will face problems in the coming days.

5. Focusing on keyword research

A decade back, keywords research was the foremost SEO technique for many. The recipe was extremely simple. Plug in common keywords in the webpage and you would rank high on SERP.

Search engines made several changes to counter this trickery, and then everyone started chasing the long-tail keywords.

Things progressed further, search algorithms changed some more, and people started talking about the medium-tail keywords.

Again, there were slight shakeups in the algorithm, Google outdid the spam practices. And now everyone is left talking about the LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords.

While it’s a fairly good news that we have always managed to keep up with Google, sadly we’re still clueless about what the search engine really wants us to do—

STOP FOCUSING on keywords more than you should. And start focusing on things that matter your audience the most.

This is the same reason why content marketing has come in a dead-spotlight in recent times. Because it comes very close to providing something to the end users rather than try to cheat the ranking system.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t do keywords research. You should! But stop giving too much time in this department.

Your piece of content requires keywords to rank higher. But above that, it requires a substance and high value. If it’s unique, engaging and valuable, even without “exact” keywords, in an age of Rankbrain, it will rank higher on Google’s SERP.

If you spend too much time on keywords research, you would also have to spend time thinking about keywords density, proximity, variants and whatnot.

And while these may sound very good theoretically, on a practical level, today, they are less relevant than ever. Spending too much time on these aspects is equivalent to wasting time.

CONCLUSION

Rules are meant to be broken. And this is perfectly apt in the SEO world where those rules have always been kind of blurry.

Just because they come under the “white hat” label doesn’t mean they are absolutely good and you can blindly follow them.

Yes, at a time when search engines want nothing less than “high-quality”, which is quite ambiguous in its definition, the white-hat tactics aren’t always safe if you’re not careful in their implementation.

Think thoroughly before you take any step. The wrong move in the cloak of “good” can get your website into trouble.

Do you have something interesting you would like to share? Write to us at share@Letsdiskuss.com