6 ms·
This sounded interesting so I clicked on TFA. OMG it does that thing I can't stand in news publications of repeating the same thing over and over! This is lit
by wombatmobile 5y ago
This sounded interesting so I clicked on TFA.
OMG it does that thing I can't stand in news publications of repeating the same thing over and over!
This is literally the first 8 lines of TFA:
- - -
What I learnt roasting 200 landing pages in 12 months
200 roasts, £70,000 in revenue and 642 cans of Diet Coke later.
What I learnt roasting 200 landing pages in 12 months
200 roasts, £70,000 in revenue and 642 cans of Diet Coke later
200 roasts, £70,000 in revenue and 642 cans of Diet Coke later
12 months of roasting landing pages
Over the last twelve months I've roasted the landing pages of 200 startups.
- - -
I get so annoyed when news articles do that, because they skimp on writing abstract leaders by simply duplicating text from the opening para.
I don't know what else this article says because I stopped reading and closed the tab.
- royletron 5y agoBut I do want a Diet Coke.
- willcipriano 5y agoThe content is algorithm first, not human first. I too refrain from consuming articles written for computers.
- spicybright 5y agoIt's pretty sad webpages now are written for search engines to parse and only incidentally, for humans to read.
- ollymeakings 5y agoIt wasn't written for search. Nobody googles titles like 'what I learnt' The blog post shares every single insight I learnt reviewing landing pages and running my business without any SEO implemented at all.
- xbar 5y agoBookmarked, on the assumption that you were right. Did I miss the data that backs up your assertions that the improvements were effective?
- virgil_disgr4ce 5y agoIgnore the haters. They don't have anything better to do. It's a great article and I found it really useful!
- weird-eye-issue 5y agoThis used to be the case but Google is getting much better at understanding topics and how they relate to each other. These days, writing good quality content that is comprehensive is best for humans and Google. Sure there is some gaming of the system but it's not like it used to be
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoIt's way worse now.
- devtul 5y agoIs this why recipes online are such a pain? "Want to check my roasted platypus recipe? Check out this 1000 words tell on why I love roasting platypuses" Of course paired with an auto play video of unrelated content.
- virgil_disgr4ce 5y ago"I'll get to the recipe in a minute, but first let me tell you about the time I dropped a penny into the Trevi Fountain in Rome. You see, I had just broken up with my first boyfriend and..." F%(*ing insufferable madness
- joelkevinjones 5y agoCopyright. The recipe itself can't be copyrighted, but the descriptive text around it can. This created a style in print media that carried over into the online world.
- inanutshellus 5y agoI don't really follow. Who cares about copyright of their blog post when a recipe can't be copyrighted (ergo the valuable asset is not protected)? My understanding is that it's Google PageRank's "fault". Because every one of these websites has a google tracker embedded in it, google knows how long you spend on a website. If you load a page then don't interact with it or leave quickly, it assumes you didn't find what you were looking for. The longer you're fumbling around looking for the valuable part of the page (the recipe) the higher the site ranks amongst recipe sites for PageRank, the more hits they'll get in the future. So - Slowing the current reader down will produce bonus readers later.
- davidmurdoch 5y agoWhat is TFA?
- jcims 5y agoThe Fabulous Article
- Minor49er 5y agoSimilar to how RTFM stands for "Read The Fabulous Manual"
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- macksd 5y agoI will now be reading "AF" as "as fabulous".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dmitshur 5y agoI didn’t know what TFA was and my best guess was “the full article”. This makes me realize RTFM could also be interpreted as read the full manual, which feels amusing.
- marcosdumay 5y agoWhat, you never read all of the man pages on your Linux distro?
- moshmosh 5y agoI've always understood the F in any of these to translate to "fine" when in ahem polite company. Same number of characters. [EDIT] LOL wow that justification is wrong, forgot about the 'ing'. Still, that's the word I've usually seen subbed.
- Brendinooo 5y agoInteresting that you call this out. You're right! But I didn't notice it at all. Maybe I just got used to this sort of pattern, or maybe this is where being a skimmer actually benefits me...
- ollymeakings 5y agoThat is a quirk of Ghost, it took the summary text from the blog homepage and inserted it into the post. I fixed it. I didn't purposefully use that phrase repeatedly. Thanks for spotting.
- travisjungroth 5y agoYour post got roasted!
- ollymeakings 5y agoThe roaster became the roastee
- Infernal 5y agoMy, how the spitroast has turned
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- augustk 5y agoTFA? https://blog.mitchjlee.com/2020/your-writing-style-is-costly https://blog.mitchjlee.com/2020/your-writing-style-is-costly