A Weekend of Placating the Algorithm
A Monday morning hello.
If I had to pick one thing that makes my job difficult, it’s the one-womanness of it all. The understanding that it’s all on me to do all the things. And sometimes, I don’t know how to do all the things. Many of the things often fall through the cracks. Or I don’t even know they’ve fallen through the cracks because I didn’t know there was even a thing or a crack to begin with.
Take, for instance, Google Search Console (GSC), which is a thing I kinda sorta knew about but didn’t really understand. Many months ago I added the Creative Reverberations URL to GSC and it gave me a bunch of data that made no sense to my Luddite brain, so I never checked it again. Then, a few days ago, somebody on Threads shared that GSC can now analyze your socials, and how amazing this is for solopreneurs and content creators! And a bunch of people commented on how awesome this is because GSC is such a great tool! And I was all, “Is it, though? I don’t get it.”
So, I took to Claude for answers. Yes, I used AI. To be clear: I don’t use AI for my interviews or writing or creativity, but when I need to figure out something like GSC, which makes zero sense to me, Claude can explain it in a way that I understand. Anyhoo, it told me where in GSC I should focus my attention and how I should read the information in order to understand how my interviews and articles are appearing on Google. And I was shocked to learn that, well, they’re not. Or they are, but on, like, page 6 of a search.
Point is, I only learned the other day that many of my interviews aren’t showing up on Google at all, or they’re showing up with truncated titles or the wrong photos because I don’t really understand SEO and hadn’t really put that much effort into adding custom metadata to each post, mainly because until a few days ago I didn’t really know what custom metadata was.
Sooooo…I’m now going back through each interview and double checking the SEO and making sure it’s Google friendly and asking GSC to reindex each URL to see if it will help boost the post’s showing in searches.
I mean, on one hand, I now kinda sorta understand how to use GSC. But on the other, it’s frustrating to have to take all this time to do yet another thing to make yet another algorithm happy.
At the end of the day, I just want people to read my work. I want this publication to mean something. I want people to walk away from the interviews inspired or enlightened or educated in some way. I want, like pretty much everyone, for the work I do to matter. And it’s frustrating to think that people aren’t even aware that it exists because I didn’t know enough to incorporate Google-friendly search terms into a little box in Settings before I hit publish. Live and learn, I guess.
All that is to say that if you like something in Creative Reverberations, please engage with it. Subscribe (if you’re not already), comment in the comments section, post it to your socials, share it on Substack’s Notes, and if you have a Substack, recommend Creative Reverberations to others. Anything to help get the word out would be amazing.
Beyond all that, I hope your weekend went well. I saw the live action Moana movie, which I actually, surprisingly really enjoyed. I also saw Quiz Show for the first time, which was a great watch. Visited the farmer’s market, went to a local arcade with the kiddo, and spent way too much time placating Google Search Console. So it was mostly a good few days.
Did you have a chance to check out my recent chat with Jared Isaac? His film, An Autumn Summer, is beautiful. It’s slow moving, but as he said, that’s the point.
“It isn’t for everybody. There are some people that are like, ‘Where’s the plot?’ I think they need to watch it again, take a breath, and just take in a story, because it is there. It’s gratifying when people in juxtaposition to not getting it will write pages about the nuance of a handhold at dusk or jumping into the water at sunrise. Just truly understanding that the big moments are only there to really punctuate small ones. There’s a story underneath the story, and there’s a lot of intentional choices that are more easily picked up on a second viewing, because a lot of people are not expecting a film that’s just kind of a gentle breeze. Oftentimes, it’s like, ‘Is something bad going to happen?’ No, that’s not the case.”
Check out our interview and then rent his film on Apple TV, YouTube, Google Play, or Fandango.
Later this week I’ll share my chat with author George Pelecanos. We talked about his writing on The Wire, his TV show The Deuce (co-created with David Simon), and his new novel, The Blue Flame.
That’s it for now. Have a wonderfully creative week!
If you appreciate this piece but cannot afford a paid subscription, another way to support my work is to buy me a tea. Thank you!