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Leaders must empower others, share leadership, and foster an inclusive culture to ensure long-term success. Gear Up for Growth With Jean Caragher For CPA Trendlines Go PRO for members-only access to more Jean Marie Caragher. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Nintendo Switch Lite is already a solid pick for gamers who prefer a portable console, but this deal on Woot makes it even more tempting. For $164.99 (for the next two days or until it sells out)—down from its usual $199—you’re getting an open-box Singapore model that’s been fitted with an official Nintendo USA power adapter. That means functionally, it’s the same as the U.S. version, and it plays all U.S. and international Switch games without any issue. The only catch is that it's an open-box deal, so while it’s brand new, the box has been opened for the adapter swap. And since this is a Woot deal, it comes with a 90-day Woot limited warranty instead of Nintendo’s usual one-year coverage. Prime members get free shipping, but non-members will have to add $6 to their total. Nintendo Switch Lite $164.99 at Woot $199.00 Save $34.01 Get Deal Get Deal $164.99 at Woot $199.00 Save $34.01 If you like gaming on the go, the Switch Lite is a solid choice. It’s compact, lightweight, and easy to toss into a bag without worrying about detachable Joy-Cons sliding around. But that same portability comes with a trade-off—you can’t dock it to a TV, so handheld mode is your only option. Additionally, the controls are built into the system, meaning there’s no swapping Joy-Cons for multiplayer gaming unless you buy compatible controllers separately. But if you’re a solo gamer who mostly plays RPGs, platformers, or indie titles, this won’t be much of a downside. If you’re on the fence, PCMag has a detailed breakdown of whether the standard Switch or the Lite is the better choice. Specs-wise, the Switch Lite holds its own. It’s got an eight-inch screen, a 1.02 GHz processor, and a smooth 60 FPS frame rate. It also supports Bluetooth audio, so you’re not stuck using wired headphones, notes this PCMag review. Battery life is decent, ranging from three to seven hours depending on what you’re playing—Breath of the Wild will drain it faster than Stardew Valley. Storage is where things get tight, though. The built-in 32GB will fill up fast, so you’ll likely need a microSD card sooner rather than later (something like the 512GB SanDisk microSD, which is officially licensed for the Switch, could be a good pick). If you mostly play digital games, factor that into your budget. View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google dropped the horrid page annotations feature, thankfully...View the full article

Nearly two months after an explosion sent flaming debris raining down on the Turks and Caicos, SpaceX launched another mammoth Starship rocket on Thursday, but lost contact minutes into the test flight as the spacecraft came tumbling down and broke apart. This time, wreckage from the latest explosion was seen streaming from the skies over Florida. It was not immediately known whether the spacecraft’s self-destruct system had kicked in to blow it up. The 403-foot (123-meter) rocket blasted off from Texas. SpaceX caught the first-stage booster back at the pad with giant mechanical arms, but engines on the spacecraft on top started shutting down as it streaked eastward for what was supposed to be a controlled entry over the Indian Ocean, half a world away. Contact was lost less than 10 minutes into the flight as the spacecraft went into an out-of-control spin. Starship reached nearly 90 miles (150 kilometers) in altitude before trouble struck and before four mock satellites could be deployed. It was not immediately clear where it came down, but images of flaming debris were captured from Florida, including near Cape Canaveral, and posted online. The space-skimming flight was supposed to last an hour. The Federal Aviation Administration said it would require SpaceX to investigate the accident. “Unfortunately this happened last time too, so we have some practice at this now,” SpaceX flight commentator Dan Huot said from the launch site. SpaceX later confirmed that the spacecraft experienced “a rapid unscheduled disassembly” during the ascent engine firing and said it alerted safety officials. Flights were briefly grounded at Orlando International Airport “due to space launch debris in the area,” the airport posted on X. Starship didn’t make it quite as high or as far as last time. NASA has booked Starship to land its astronauts on the moon later this decade. SpaceX’s Elon Musk is aiming for Mars with Starship, the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket. Like last time, Starship had mock satellites to release once the craft reached space on this eighth test flight as a practice for future missions. They resembled SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites, thousands of which currently orbit Earth, and were meant to fall back down following their brief taste of space. Starship’s flaps, computers and fuel system were redesigned in preparation for the next big step: returning the spacecraft to the launch site just like the booster. During the last demo, SpaceX captured the booster at the launch pad, but the spacecraft blew up several minutes later over the Atlantic. No injuries or major damage were reported. According to an investigation that remains ongoing, leaking fuel triggered a series of fires that shut down the spacecraft’s engines. The on-board self-destruct system kicked in as planned. SpaceX said it made several improvements to the spacecraft following the accident, and the Federal Aviation Administration recently cleared Starship once more for launch. Starships soar out of the southernmost tip of Texas near the Mexican border. SpaceX is building another Starship complex at Cape Canaveral, home to the company’s smaller Falcon rockets that ferry astronauts and satellites to orbit. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. —Marcia Dunn, AP Aerospace Writer View the full article

Police described case as one of most significant espionage investigations in UK in decades View the full article

US president calls on Moscow to get to the bargaining table ‘right now’View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. If you own a Lectric XPeak 2.0 e-bike, it's possible to modify a ton of aspects of the bike right from the onboard screen, including changing the top speed, adjusting the throttle and pedal assist, controlling the lights, and more. But these settings are not readily understandable from the display alone, so here's a step-by-step guide to how to change settings on a Lectric e-bike, as well as some suggestions on which settings you should change, and which you definitely shouldn't. (You can check out my review of the Lectric XPeak 2.0 right here.) How to adjust the settings on a Lectric XPeak 2.0 e-bikeHere's how to access the settings menu of a Lectric XPeak 2.0 e-bike: Power the bike on. Hold down the "+" and "-" keys on the controller on the left handlebar for a few seconds, until you see this: Credit: Stephen Johnson Press the power-on button to toggle between each numbered setting. Use "+" and "-" keys to change their values—but don't change any settings until you know what you're changing. What do the different settings on a Lectric e-bike do?If you've gotten into the settings menu of your Lectric XPeak 2.0, you can see that the settings are labeled P-1 through P-22 with no other information available on screen. That's not a lot to go on, so here's what the settings do. (You'll notice there are a few settings I skip over—I'll go over that in another section below.) P1: Changes the brightness of the display screen. There are three settings. "1" is dimmest. "3" is brightest. Default is 2. P2: Toggles between miles and kilometers. "0" is kilometers. "1" is miles. P4: Sleep timer: Changes how long it will take for the bike to power off if not used. The default is 10 minutes, but you change it from "0" (which means it never automatically turns off) to 60 minutes. P6: Tire size: You can change this from 27 to 31. This is used to compute distance and speed, and shouldn't be changed unless you've changed tire size from the default, 29.2. P8: Speed limit: This sets the bike's top speed. 32 is a "Class 2" setting, meaning the top speed is 20 mph. 45 is "Class 3," boosting the speed limit to 28 mph when using pedal assist. The default is 32, or 20 mph, so you'll need to change this if you want to go faster. P9: Throttle active toggle: Setting this to 0 means the throttle can be used from a standstill. Setting it to 1 means the throttle can only be used when the bike is moving. P10: Throttle/pedal assist system toggle: There are three settings here: "0" means the pedal assist is active, but throttle is not. "1" means only the throttle is active, with no pedal assist. "2" means both PAS and throttle are active. The default is 2, which most users will want to use most of the time, but there are cases where it makes sense to change it (see below). P11: Multiplier toggle: This changes the torque on your bike. "0" is the default, normal torque multiplier. "1" is increased torque multiplier. If you want quicker acceleration, set this to "1," but don't change it until you know the bike fairly well—the default multiplier provides plenty of torque. I tested this out and didn't notice a ton of difference anyway. P12: Light control: "0" means "no light icon on the display means the front and rear lights are OFF. When the light icon is on, the front and rear lights are ON." Changing this to "1" means "The front and rear lights are flashing right away when bike is on. The icon on the display for light is flashing at the same rate as front and rear lights." When you turn the light on in setting one, you'll see an icon on the display screen with no flashing. P13: Walk mode speed: "0" sets the walk mode speed to 3mph. "1" is a slightly brisker 3.7 mph. P16: Odometer reset: Hold the "+" for 5 seconds to reset the odometer to "0." P20: Walk mode toggle: setting this to "0" disables walk mode. Setting this to "1" enables it. (To turn on walk mode, hold down the "-" button on the controller. If enabled, your bike will move forward at the speed you set on P13.) P22: Assistance level: "0" limits the pedal assist to 9mph if you're on pedal assist level 1 and 15 mph if you're on pedal assist level 2. The same "speed limit" applies to the throttle. "1" means the pedal assist is not speed limited on pedal assist levels 1 and 2, but the throttle is speed limited. "2" means there is no speed-limit on pedal assist or throttle, no matter what pedal assist level you're in. (Of course the bike's overall speed limit of either 20mph or 28mph still applies.) Which settings should you change on an XPeak 2.0?The setting that most users will be concerned with is P8, the speed limit of the bike. The default is a 20 mph speed limit that you can reach with either pedal assist or throttle, but you may want to boost it to 28 (assuming that a class 3 e-bike is legal in your local area and you're experienced enough to handle the extra speed.) This setting means the throttle or pedal assist will take you to 20 mph, then the throttle will cut off but you can use pedal assist to go up to 28 mph. There is no setting to use throttle control to go over 20 mph. Another setting to consider is P9, the throttle active toggle. The default setting means that the throttle can be activated from a standstill, but you might want to change it so the throttle can only work if the bike is in motion. If you accidentally hit the thumb throttle a lot, especially when walking your bike, this prevents your bike "jumping forward." P10 is another useful setting for some situations. In some places, it's not legal to ride a "class 2" e-bike, meaning one that has throttle control. This setting disables the throttle but allows the pedal assist, transforming your class 2 bike into a class 1. What about the rest of the settings?The Lectric XPeak 2.0 has 22 total settings that can be changed from the dashboard, but only 13 are listed above. I looked into it, and the nine "secret" settings on Lectric bikes are less exciting than I'd hoped. They're mostly settings that allow different models of bikes to use the same computer, so they change things like the voltage level of the battery and the magnet type. Do not change these settings; as far as I can tell, there's nothing to be gained from doing so. If you accidentally alter these somehow and you don't know the correct setting, do not ride the bike until you've spoken to someone at Lectric who can help you restore the proper values. "I messed up the settings on my Lectric XPeak 2.0! How can I fix it?"Sadly, there is no "return to factory default" setting on Lectric's controller. To get your e-bike back to how it was, you can use the manual to see the default number for each setting, or contact the company for extra help. View the full article

David Lammy says Britain is ‘open’ to joint financing of military spending to boost continent’s securityView the full article

Standing next to her makeshift home of scrap metal, wood and plastic tarp, 47-year-old Nelly Mengual recounts how severe flooding and winds tore off her roof a few months ago, leaving her knee-deep in water in her home. She lives in an informal settlement on the outskirts of Riohacha, in northern Colombia’s arid, wind-swept region, where thousands of other Wayuu people, native to the La Guajira region spanning Colombia and Venezuela, also reside. Although many residents were born in Colombia, it is the Wayuu who fled Venezuela who face the greatest hardship. Having escaped what many describe as economic crisis, they now live in these settlements without access to running water — and for many, without electricity. The Wayuu, whose traditional lands span Colombia and Venezuela, view the border as a political construct rather than a cultural divide, with their relationships and networks transcending national lines. “This entire hut. Our belongings, what little we had. Everything was lost,” said Mengual, who makes ends meet by recycling scrap material in Maicao. The Wayuu, the largest Indigenous group in Colombia, are facing the dual threats of climate change-driven droughts and floods. Scientists warn that more severe, prolonged drought periods punctuated by flashes of torrential rain are only getting more common as the world warms. Aside from damaging people’s homes, they are also draining water sources, destroying crops, and increasing health risks from waterborne diseases. Many Wayuu families are forced to migrate in search of essential resources, putting even more pressure on already overcrowded urban areas. Intense flooding challenges the Wayuu’s way of life Ingrid Gonzalez, a Wayuu community leader from Maracaibo who’s lived in the Villa del Sol settlement near Riohacha for six years, says those more traditional Wayuu homes, made with sticks and covered in mud, are very susceptible to the rainy season. “There are many, many houses that flood and fill up with water,” said 29-year-old Gonzalez. “A strong river of water passes through here, and the mud houses collapse.” “Some people manage to preserve their homes by reinforcing them, but the damage is still significant,” she said. “Several of my own roofing sheets were blown off.” Samuel Lanao, head of Corpoguajira, La Guajira’s environment authority, said in 2024 extreme winter floods caused significant losses of homes, crops, and domestic animals in Indigenous communities, particularly among those coming from neighboring Venezuela. “Because of climate change, there’s been a rise in vector-borne diseases like dengue and Zika. Dengue, in particular, has hit Indigenous communities very, very hard,” he said. Lanao said Corpoguajira has created a Climate Change Plan to cut emissions and boost community and ecosystem resilience. The shift in weather patterns is undeniable to Camilo Martinez, La Guajira base manager for the Danish Refugee Council, which has a strong presence in the region. With 14 years of experience in the area, he has witnessed these changes firsthand. “Years ago when I arrived here, there was fog and in certain hours of the morning it was cold. Today that has stopped, as well as in the snow peaks on the nearby mountains … you don’t see that much anymore,” Martinez told The Associated Press at the Uyatpana Indigenous community, on the outskirts of Maicao. Martinez says the months the rainy season starts has changed, but also the intensity of the rain too when it eventually comes. Scientific evidence of climate change in La Guajira, supported by data from Colombia’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology, and Environmental Studies (IDEAM) and various studies, includes rising temperatures, prolonged droughts like the 2012–2016 crisis, irregular rainfall patterns, and increased desertification. Heat and drought tests informal settlements Last year’s heat was the hottest Gonzalez, the community leader, can remember. “There are houses where the heat is intense, which affects people, especially those with high blood pressure. They feel tired, flushed, and even unwell,” she said. “The heat is so strong that it even affects the animals. Neighbors who have chickens have lost some of them due to the extreme heat, as the animals are suffocating.” A significant portion of the Wayuu population maintains traditional, semi-nomadic lifestyles, residing in rancherias — thatched-roof huts made from dried cacti and mud — and herding cattle and goats. In many informal settlements, residents lack access to running water or sanitation services. Water sellers transport untreated water in barrels, using mules to distribute it between homes for a fee. While many people rely on collecting rainwater, the increasing unpredictability of rainfall has made this source of water less dependable. “They have been forced to buy water from sources that aren’t clean, transported by mules or carts that make long journeys to bring it to families,” said Martinez. “This water isn’t drinkable—it can only be used for washing or cooking. But people are left with no choice but to drink it. This is one of the biggest consequences of the droughts and the lack of rainfall during these seasons.” Many non-governmental organizations say they step in to support these areas in La Guajira where state assistance is minimal or entirely absent. Colombia’s environment ministry did not respond to AP’s requests for comment. Wayuu leader Anibal Mercado told AP the migrant Wayuu population suffers the most because of climate change. “You find them picking up garbage, you find them recycling, which has never been seen before. And that is a product of the neglect of the government. The State has been promoting neoliberal policies that go against traditional rights, with which the Wayuu used to provide for their own economy… their own food,” he said. Many work to rebuild, again and again In the neighborhood of Uyatpana, 28-year-old Laura Pushaina sits on a stool, weaving a chinchorro, a traditional Wayuu hammock used for sleeping. With five children between the ages of one and ten, she says the intricate work will take her four days to complete. Pushaina is one of thousands of Wayuu people who cross into Colombia and establish settlements. Due to shifting political and economic conditions in the region, many have left homes in neighboring Venezuela. Many, like Pushaina, told the AP they hope to return to their rancherias on the Venezuelan side of the border, but they believe the political and economic situation remains too unstable to do so. Some also said that relocating from the informal settlements would help, as the land is unsuitable for living without running water or proper sewage infrastructure. Just a few months ago, Pushaina’s home was destroyed by the floods. “I’ve lived through the worst of times,” she said. “The water would seep through the mud, and sometimes it came in like a river, flowing through here.” The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. —Steven Grattan, Associated Press View the full article

After 12+ years in SEO, selling to hundreds of clients – from small businesses to global brands – I’ve learned what works when it comes to landing and retaining SEO clients. While every client is unique, there are clear strategies that consistently lead to success. This article tackles my best advice for winning new SEO clients, along with insights from top industry professionals. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to scale, these proven tactics will help you build a strong client pipeline. 1. Start small When building your SEO business, you can go after big clients (“whales”) or smaller ones (“rabbits”). While whales bring higher revenue, they’re harder to land without a proven track record. Rabbits, on the other hand, are easier to sign and provide quick cash flow. Some of the best places to find small-business clients include: Freelance platforms: Upwork, Fiverr, Craigslist, Bark.com, GetCredo.com. Local business groups: Chamber of Commerce, marketing meetups. Social media and forums: Reddit, X, LinkedIn. Personal network: Business owners you know, friends, family. Starting small builds experience, testimonials, and case studies – helping you land bigger clients over time. Dig deeper: Ensuring quality in your SEO services: A checklist 2. Do great work Delivering outstanding results is one of the most effective ways to grow your SEO business. Clients are seeking strategic partners who inspire confidence, as Luca Tagliaferro explains: “Clients want a strategic partner but also a doer. With SEO, there is much uncertainty about what works, so you have to come out very confident in your recommendations.” This emphasis on strategy is reinforced by Carrie Rose, who built a successful agency quickly: “Focus on strategy, not execution. Clients want strategic partners right now, especially with SEO – start by selling an SEO strategy project and you’re already positioning yourself as their long-term agency partner.” To truly establish a partnership, prioritize client education. Mike Ginley provides valuable guidance: “Teach them like they will no longer need you one day. Helps build trust, helps build knowledge. Both will help overall success of the website and partnership.” This approach builds trust without losing clients. In practice, when you teach clients thoroughly, they rarely conclude they can handle SEO independently – they continue to value your expertise. When you deliver work that clients can’t help but mention to peers, referrals follow naturally. If you lack confidence in achieving results, invest in training through conferences, meetups, podcasts, and other resources to immerse yourself in SEO. Beyond passive referrals, implement the simple yet powerful strategy of asking. Many clients don’t think to refer you – not because they’re unwilling, but because they assume you’re busy or have other priorities. Make it a practice to directly request introductions at least annually. As Erin Jones notes: “Do great work for your existing clients, and they’ll not only stick around, but they’ll sell you to other business owners. There’s no greater sales tool than taking great care of your existing clients and helping them increase their visibility online and revenue as a result.” Building an agency partner network can transform your business. The standard arrangement pays referrers 10% on the first year of services, creating bidirectional revenue opportunities. However, choose these partners carefully, as you’re attaching your reputation to work outside your control. Some potential partners for SEO agencies include: Web design agencies. Fractional CMOs. Paid media agencies. Creative agencies. Smaller or larger SEO agencies that don’t serve your ideal clients. Technology/tool companies. Build a target list and reach out to discuss your capabilities. 3. Get listed in SEO agency directory websites Listing your agency on one of the many agency directory sites can be an easy way to passively generate some lead flow. While some of these sites are honestly not worth the time, others can be a powerful tool. When listing your agency on these sites, fill out as much detail as possible. If you can get some of your clients to leave you reviews on these platforms, it can go a very long way toward helping you land new SEO clients. Some of the sites I have used are: Clutch. Agency Spotter. Digital Agency Network. The Manifest. UpCity. Credo. Semrush’s Partner Directory. Breef. 4. Conduct Linkedin outreach Although I haven’t had great success with it myself, LinkedIn outreach can be an effective way to connect with potential SEO clients and is often recommended by others in my position. Since many of us have experienced spammy outreach, the key is to be authentic, useful, and non-intrusive. 5. Do email outreach Some of my most meaningful client relationships started with a cold email. While this approach can be effective, it can also lead to many unproductive meetings. To make the most of it, have a strong process for quickly qualifying or disqualifying leads to avoid wasting time. 6. Develop unique capabilities and differentiators In 2024, there were 54,216 digital advertising agencies in the U.S., growing at a 14.5% CAGR since 2019, according to IBIS World. Globally, 5.22 million people on LinkedIn have SEO in their title or work experience. Clearly communicating “why you” is key to landing clients. For instance, my agency leverages technology in client accounts and focuses on organizational and marketing OKRs rather than just SEO metrics. Build your “Why us” case with business impact in mind. Tip: Create “industries we serve” pages on your website to highlight how you help specific businesses. Our beauty SEO page has led to valuable clients and conversations. Dig deeper: How to keep your SEO clients engaged: 8 communication touchpoints Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. Business email address Sign me up! Processing... See terms. 7. Participate in the community and build thought leadership Being seen as a thought leader can be a valuable source of new leads. However, you don’t need to be at the forefront of the industry to establish credibility. I’m not, yet I still generate leads this way. You should do it, too. There’s always room for more voices. Engaging on Reddit and other forums can also help build credibility and a reputation for being helpful – qualities potential clients look for. Many top SEO experts, like Marie Haynes, started by simply answering questions in forums. Places to engage in thought leadership and community participation include: X. Reddit. Conferences. Medium. LinkedIn. Your agency blog. Guest posting on industry blogs. 8. Perfect the pitch A strong pitch process is essential for winning clients, yet many agencies and contractors miss the mark. A strong pitch should: Establish authority by introducing yourself or your agency. Present a clear SEO approach with a roadmap of activities. Define your capabilities and the specific work you’ll be doing. Set expectations for results, including a timeline for impact (without overpromising exact metrics). Outline your SEO implementation plan. Unimplemented optimizations will not drive results. For clients with difficult CMS setups or limited dev resources, use edge SEO tools or JavaScript implementation. Showcase your work with case studies that speak to your target audience. Your pitch process should typically include two or three calls. The first should be a discovery call, focused on gathering information rather than selling. Caroline Posma offers great advice for this stage: “Be genuinely interested in their business and genuinely motivated to help them grow organically. A sales call is about them, not you. Don’t just pitch. Do your best to understand their business, their problems. Already provide value, for example by doing a quick site audit.” During this call, ask about their broader marketing efforts. Do they have dev resources? Use a PR agency? Invest in paid media? Understanding these areas can help you make a bigger impact. The second call is where you present your capabilities and findings, especially if you’ve provided a free audit. Dig deeper: Mastering SEO account management: The recipe for success 9. Offer a free initial SEO audit Some SEOs and agency leaders refuse to offer free work, but this can be a missed opportunity – especially for those just starting out. Clients need to see the value before committing, which is why free audits are so effective. A mentor once told me, “Make them sick, then make them better.” Show clients what’s wrong, then clearly explain how you’ll fix it. SEO expert Tammy Wood supports offering quick wins upfront: “Quick wins – immediate gratification prior to charging. Why? Because I’ve obviously looked through the site, and the knowledge may help them – whether hired or not.” A free audit also demonstrates your expertise in ways a generic capabilities deck cannot. A well-executed audit in just two hours can highlight your depth of knowledge. If you can explain findings in a way clients understand, you build trust and set the stage for a strong partnership. After all, if they don’t buy into necessary changes, showing SEO impact becomes difficult. Chris Green suggests using audits to teach prospects something new about their market: “Teach them something about their market they’re not aware of. Be generous with your time and speak with confidence.” Even if you don’t offer full audits, you can still be generous with insights. Ryan Huser recommends transparency: “Show them how you work. If they have a question about a SERP, query data, or backlinks, I’ll frequently just pull up Ahrefs or another tool on screen share and let them see the process. Don’t worry about giving away the ‘secret sauce.’ They’re trying to hire help for a reason.” Christina LeVasseur uses an interactive approach by showing clients a SERP and asking them to pick the listing they would click. It’s no surprise here that most of the time, clients do not pick their own page! This highlights the importance of the work we do which clients often misunderstand. Grant Simmons emphasizes leveraging competitive insights: “Closing: Highlight where competition is eating their lunch aligned with low-hanging fruit. Give reasonable expectation of expected outcomes.” “Retaining: Demonstrate effort and that you met or exceeded outcomes you predicted. Strategically rinse and repeat where opportunities exist.” Oliver Sissons offers three key tips for presenting audits effectively: “Don’t step on toes. They’ve haven’t come to an agency to be put down. Likely they’ve done a lot right, and just need new ideas.” “Avoid jargon. No need to know every title/canonical tag you’ll check.” “Tie previous results to real business growth (sales, revenue and leads).” Lastly, tap into the psychological principle of fear of loss, which is often a stronger motivator than the promise of gains. If a client is engaging in risky SEO practices, highlight the dangers. As JP Sherman puts it: “Fear will keep them in line!” In a good way, of course! 10. Demonstrate your plan for implementation Audits and optimizations can transform a business, but without a solid implementation plan, nothing happens. That’s why we always discuss how we support implementation. It’s a key factor in delivering faster SEO results. Some clients may grant direct access to their CMS, but others may have custom-built or complex proprietary systems that make even basic changes difficult. Often, implementation is dependent on a development team or technical marketer with a long backlog, delaying progress for months. This is where edge SEO tools like SearchPilot, RankSense, and Sloth.cloud can be game-changers. Not only do they help you win business by offering a practical implementation solution, but they also improve client retention by enabling you to execute changes yourself. Other tools, such as SEOScout, Ahrefs, and seoClarity, offer similar solutions. 11. Build a business case with forecasting SEO forecasting is a powerful way to justify investment in SEO. Martin McGarry emphasizes the importance of setting realistic expectations: “Give them an estimate of growth, where you think you can take them if they partner with you and follow your plan and suggestions. You don’t have to make bold claims of number 1 rankings, but at least target some kind of tangible growth in the areas you’re focusing on.” Dig deeper: How to build lasting relationships with SEO clients 12. Leverage competitive benchmarking Different stakeholders within a company have different motivators. C-suite executives and directors are often driven by competitive insights, making competitive benchmarking a valuable tool. In some audits, we create competitive scorecards that assess competing websites across key SEO factors like technical health, on-page optimization, off-site authority, and performance. Ways to not get SEO clients While researching this article, I came across some of the worst advice on landing SEO clients. Here are two major mistakes to avoid: Making guarantees Never make promises you can’t keep. SEO is unpredictable. Algorithm updates, client implementation delays, and competitor strategies all impact results. Making bold guarantees damages trust and sets unrealistic expectations, leading to unhappy clients and a damaged reputation. Getting ‘accredited’ Some sources suggest getting a Google Partners badge to attract SEO clients, but this is misleading. Google Partners is for PPC, not SEO. Trying to pass it off as an SEO credential may deceive uninformed clients, but those who understand the industry will see right through it. If you want to build lasting relationships, avoid misleading tactics. Time to go get some clients Winning SEO clients isn’t easy, but the right approach can significantly improve your close rate. From doing great work and starting small to developing differentiation and partnering with other agencies, these strategies set you up for success. Now, go land some clients! Dig deeper: 12 tips for better SEO client meetings View the full article

Shares in Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (Nasdaq: WBA) are up a modest amount after the company announced yesterday that it has agreed to be purchased by private equity firm Sycamore Partners. As of the time of this writing, WBA shares are up under 7% to $11.33. Here’s what you need to know about the buyout and share movement. Walgreens is going private After years of financial struggles, publicly traded Walgreens announced yesterday that it has accepted a deal from private equity firm Sycamore Partners to be bought and taken private. Rumors of the deal were first reported earlier this week. Under the agreement, Sycamore will take the pharmacy chain private. The move will give the 125-year-old Walgreens more room to maneuver a turnaround without having to answer to Wall Street investors, notes the Associated Press. Walgreens has faced a rough six months in particular. Last October, the company announced it would close over 1,200 stores due to falling foot traffic and increased online competition. And in January, the company’s stock price plunged after it announced that it would be suspending dividend payments to shareholders in order to redirect its capital allocation. Shares in Walgreens are down more than 49% over the last year. “While we are making progress against our ambitious turnaround strategy, meaningful value creation will take time, focus and change that is better managed as a private company,” Tim Wentworth, CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance, said in a statement announcing the acceptance of Sycamore’s offer. “Sycamore will provide us with the expertise and experience of a partner with a strong track record of successful retail turnarounds.” WBA stock is up—but not by a lot Some would expect that when a company receives a buyout offer, its stock price may soar. But WBA stock is up just under 7% in premarket trading, as of the time of this writing, to $11.33. The reason for this is likely due to the fact that the Walgreens-Sycamore deal will see Sycamore pay WBA shareholders $11.45 per share to close the deal. In other words, it doesn’t make sense for WBA stock to be bought above that price since shareholders would only get $11.45 per share if the deal does end up going through. Conversely, it doesn’t make sense for WBA stock to be sold below that price if the deal ends up going through because shareholders know they could get $11.45 per share from Sycamore when the deal closes. As for the Walgreens-Sycamore deal, though Walgreens Boots Alliance says it has accepted the offer, the deal must still be approved by WBA shareholders and also receive regulatory approvals. If the deal passes both those thresholds, Walgreens and Sycamore say its “transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter calendar year 2025.” If that happens, WBA shares will no longer be listed on the Nasdaq as the company will become private. View the full article

The discovery of a huge unexploded World War II-era bomb caused transportation chaos in Paris on Friday that included the suspension of high-speed rail links with London and Brussels and the closure of a vital road artery in the French capital, hobbling France’s busiest train station, dashing travelers’ weekend getaway plans and giving commuters a major headache. The cascade of transport woes spread from the rail to the road network, with Paris police announcing the closure of the A1 highway and sections of the capital’s always-busy ring road around the city, as bomb-disposal experts worked to make the half-ton explosive safe. Eurostar, operator of sleek high-speed trains through the Channel Tunnel that links England with the European continent, announced the cancellation of all its services to and from its Paris hub at Gare du Nord, France’s busiest rail station, and the U.K. and Belgian capitals. Travel plans were thrown into disarray. “There’s no solution. We’re going to call the hotel and stay one more day. And change our train ticket,” said Michel Garrot, a retired Parisian who found himself stranded in Brussels, which he’d been visiting with his wife. At London’s St. Pancras station, Eurostar’s London hub, travelers scrambled for alternatives. Fridays are invariably busy there with thousands of people leaving and arriving for weekend breaks. Passengers were advised to try taking trains to Lille in northern France, or fly to Paris. “We’re looking up flights, but our options are limited,” said Lauren Romeo-Smith, part of a group that had a birthday weekend in Paris planned. Another St. Pancras traveler, Lee Bailey, said that Eurostar had offered him a free rebooking or a refund, and an apology, but no compensation. “I’d like to go to a Michelin (starred) restaurant in Paris on their dime, but that’s not happening, apparently,” he told Sky News. Eurostar said that it “sincerely apologizes for the disruption and understands the inconvenience this may cause.” At Paris’ usually humming Gare du Nord station, bright red signs warning of disruptions greeted commuters. French national rail operator SNCF says the station habitually hosts 700,000 travelers per day, making it the busiest rail hub in both France and Europe. As well as towns and cities across northern France and the Paris suburbs, the station also serves Paris’ main airport and international destinations, including London, Brussels, and cities in the Netherlands. French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said that the huge disruptions were caused by the discovery of a bomb that weighed half a ton. Workers found it overnight while doing earthmoving works near the tracks in the Seine-Saint-Denis region that borders Paris to the north. Bomb disposal experts were called. Tabarot said that a “a quite large” security perimeter was set up around the bomb-disposal operation and people were evacuated. He urged commuters to postpone rail trips. Bombs left over from World War I or World War II are regularly discovered around France, but it’s very rare to find them in such a people-packed location. The SNCF said that rail traffic was stopped at the request of police. Sylvie Corbet in Brussels, and Jill Lawless in London, contributed to this report. —Samuel Petrequin and John Leicester, Associated Press View the full article

UK regulator wants to loosen requirements for banks to test whether borrowers can cope with higher interest ratesView the full article

Looking for fresh content ideas? Explore these 14 uncommon types of digital content to spice up your marketing campaigns. The post 14 Digital Content Types You’re Probably Not Using Enough appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

America’s butterflies are disappearing because of insecticides, climate change and habitat loss, with the number of the winged beauties down 22% since 2000, a new study finds. The first countrywide systematic analysis of butterfly abundance found that the number of butterflies in the Lower 48 states has been falling on average 1.3% a year since the turn of the century, with 114 species showing significant declines and only nine increasing, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science. “Butterflies have been declining the last 20 years,” said study co-author Nick Haddad, an entomologist at Michigan State University. “And we don’t see any sign that that’s going to end.” A team of scientists combined 76,957 surveys from 35 monitoring programs and blended them for an apples-to-apples comparison and ended up counting 12.6 million butterflies over the decades. Last month an annual survey that looked just at monarch butterflies, which federal officials plan to put on the threatened species list, counted a nearly all-time low of fewer than 10,000, down from 1.2 million in 1997. Many of the species in decline fell by 40% or more. ‘Catastrophic and saddening’ loss over time David Wagner, a University of Connecticut entomologist who wasn’t part of the study, praised its scope. And he said while the annual rate of decline may not sound significant, it is “catastrophic and saddening” when compounded over time. “In just 30 or 40 years we are talking about losing half the butterflies (and other insect life) over a continent!” Wagner said in an email. “The tree of life is being denuded at unprecedented rates.” The United States has 650 butterfly species, but 96 species were so sparse they didn’t show up in the data and another 212 species weren’t found in sufficient number to calculate trends, said study lead author Collin Edwards, an ecologist and data scientist at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “I’m probably most worried about the species that couldn’t even be included in the analyses” because they were so rare, said University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Karen Oberhauser, who wasn’t part of the research. Haddad, who specializes in rare butterflies, said in recent years he has seen just two endangered St. Francis Satyr butterflies — which only live on a bomb range at Fort Bragg in North Carolina — “so it could be extinct.” Some well-known species had large drops. The red admiral, which is so calm it lands on people, is down 44% and the American lady butterfly, with two large eyespots on its back wings, decreased by 58%, Edwards said. Even the invasive white cabbage butterfly, “a species that is well adapted to invade the world,” according to Haddad, fell by 50%. “How can that be?” Haddad wondered. Butterfly decline as a warning sign for humans Cornell University butterfly expert Anurag Agrawal said he worries most about the future of a different species: Humans. “The loss of butterflies, parrots and porpoises is undoubtedly a bad sign for us, the ecosystems we need and the nature we enjoy,” Agrawal, who wasn’t part of the study, said in an email. “They are telling us that our continent’s health is not doing so well … Butterflies are an ambassador for nature’s beauty, fragility and the interdependence of species. They have something to teach us.” Oberhauser said butterflies connect people with nature and that “calms us down, makes us healthier and happier and promotes learning.” What’s happening to butterflies in the United States is probably happening to other, less-studied insects across the continent and world, Wagner said. He said not only is this the most comprehensive butterfly study, but the most data-rich for any insect. Butterflies are also pollinators, though not as prominent as bees, and are a major source of pollination of the Texas cotton crop, Haddad said. Driest and warmest areas are worst for butterflies The biggest decrease in butterflies was in the Southwest — Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma — where the number of butterflies dropped by more than half in the 20 years. “It looks like the butterflies that are in dry and warm areas are doing particularly poorly,” Edwards said. “And that kind of captures a lot of the Southwest.” Edwards said when they looked at butterfly species that lived both in the hotter South and cooler North, the ones that did better were in the cooler areas. Climate change, habitat loss and insecticides tend to work together to weaken butterfly populations, Edwards and Haddad said. Of the three, it seems that insecticides are the biggest cause, based on previous research from the U.S. Midwest, Haddad said. “It makes sense because insecticide use has changed in dramatic ways in the time since our study started,” Haddad said. Habitats can be restored and so can butterflies, so there’s hope, Haddad said. “You can make changes in your backyard and in your neighborhood and in your state,” Haddad said. “That could really improve the situation for a lot of species.” Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. —Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer View the full article

February figure was below the 160,000 forecast by economistsView the full article

Fans of the beleaguered retail chain Big Lots will be happy to learn that the first locations to reopen after its bankruptcy last year are currently undergoing a cleaning, remodeling, and re-merchandising process. Their reopening, the first in a series of four waves of “soft openings,” is scheduled for next month. Here’s what you need to know about when and where Big Lots stores will reopen. Big Lots ‘first wave’ locations Variety Wholesalers, the North Carolina-based retail company that has taken control of hundreds of the ailing retailer’s stores, has confirmed with Fast Company that it is gearing up to reopen some of the locations that it has acquired. As Fast Company previously reported, as many as 200 Big Lots stores were assigned to Variety Wholesalers as part of a deal with Gordon Brothers, the liquidation firm that took control of the retailer. The locations will reopen in four waves from April through early June. Fast Company has now learned that the first of those waves is underway. The first wave of Big Lots store reopenings will encompass nine stores in six states across the South. Those locations are: Kentucky 1342 Indian Mound Dr, Mount Sterling, KY Louisiana 755 Veterans Memorial Blvd, Metairie, LA Mississippi 2605 W Main St, Tupelo, MS 5778 Hwy 80 E, Pearl, MS North Carolina 1432 E Dixie Dr, Asheboro, NC Tennessee 1041 S Riverside Dr, Clarksville, TN 744 Nashville Pike, Gallatin, TN 220 Dickson Plaza Dr, Dickson, TN Virginia 2911 Hershberger Rd NW, Roanoke, VA Big Lots reopening date Jeff King, Variety Wholesalers vice president of sales and marketing, told Fast Company that the company began the necessary work on March 3 to reopen the locations. He confirmed that the nine locations listed above will have their soft openings on Thursday, April 10. The stores will remain closed for a period of time before then so Variety Wholesalers can perform necessary work, which includes cleaning the locations, as well as remodeling the stores and bringing in new categories of merchandise. King also confirmed plans for the second wave of Big Lots opening. He said that wave would include considerably more locations—another 70 stores—and that those stores would reopen on Thursday, May 1. Big Lots back from the brink It’s fair to say that 2024 was the worst year in Big Lots’ 57-year history. After suffering financial difficulties for years, Big Lots announced in December that it would be going out of business and closing all remaining 870 locations, and thus seeing the elimination of 27,000 jobs. Gordon Brothers purchased Big Lots and had been managing the stores’ closures when, in the final days of 2024, Variety Wholesalers swooped in, agreeing to buy at least 200 locations from the liquidator to keep the chain going under the Big Lots brand. Variety is the owner of several other discount chain stores, including Roses, Bill’s Dollar Stores, Super Dollar, and Bargain Town. Other states besides the ones listed above that are expected to see Big Lots stores reopen include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and West Virginia. View the full article

Google released its much anticipated AI Mode, which is in beta now, but it super cool. Google AI Overviews are now powered by Gemini 2.0. Google had more search ranking volatility this week. Google said they answered...View the full article

English-language keywords are becoming more competitive daily, making it harder to rank for popular terms – even with an unlimited budget. To maximize your efforts, consider alternatives like multilingual or international SEO. Before we dive in, let’s clarify the difference: Multilingual SEO involves multiple languages, regardless of the target country. For example, adapting a U.S. website into Spanish or Traditional Chinese for U.S. residents is multilingual but not international. International SEO targets different countries. A U.S. company expanding to Canada, the U.K., or Australia would be engaging in international SEO but not multilingual. This article covers both. Expanding beyond your current audience comes with challenges. With over five years in international SEO, I’ve seen many brands make common mistakes. Here’s how to avoid them. 1. No market research Sometimes, businesses notice traffic and sales from a specific country and assume they can simply AI-translate their content to rank. Since they perform well in their home country, they believe their authority and links will carry over. Wrong! Every country has its own industry landscape, which may not align with what you’re used to. Regulations on products, content, and marketing can also vary. Most importantly, your ideal customer may have different preferences or priorities in another country. A U.S. affiliate site for online casinos launched an international content effort but didn’t get the expected traffic. They targeted Germany, China, and Japan. Here’s what they overlooked: Online gambling is illegal in two of those markets and heavily regulated in the third. While people still play in unauthorized casinos, legal restrictions affect how businesses enter the market. The risk is lower as an affiliate, but companies selling products or subscriptions must confirm whether they can sell and whether their sales model is allowed. The market had strong local manufacturers and distributors that weren’t active elsewhere. Creating content around these brands boosted traffic. A social media influencer was trending in Germany for online slot play. Content focused on this trend ranked well and attracted visitors. Without market research, you’ll miss major opportunities to stand out – and you might even run into legal trouble, depending on your product and sales model. Dig deeper: How to use SEO to enhance your visibility within a specific geographic area 2. Poorly prepared base version If your primary language site is poorly built or optimized, those issues will carry over when you add another language. I’ve seen multilingual sites with no H1s, custom child themes that make content updates difficult, and internal structures that don’t scale well. Even a font choice can cause problems. A clear, consistent structure also helps translation software function properly. Most translation tools scan for text strings, but improperly tagged elements – like buttons, callout boxes, and other design features – may be missed. In the image below, the gray text appears on mouseover but wasn’t translated from the original German to English. Ensure your designers and developers create a framework that supports multiple languages, currencies, tax rates, and shipping options. When adapting from English to another language, allow extra space for text expansion. English tends to be more concise than other Western languages – and significantly shorter than Chinese or Japanese. This is especially crucial for navigation menus and buttons. A translation can break your design simply because there are too many words or one long word that doesn’t fit. Website navigation in English Website navigation in English You can’t predict every challenge, but a clean, well-structured site will make expanding to new markets much easier. Dig deeper: How to craft an international SEO approach that balances tech, translation and trust 3. No keyword research Many companies translate first and think about SEO later, resulting in multilingual content with no keyword focus. Conducting keyword research before translation helps your team incorporate key terms from the start. It also helps determine whether a term should be translated at all. Some languages, like German, often retain English terms, while French is less likely to do so. A quick check with a keyword research tool can show whether to translate, keep the original term, or use both. Keyword research can also reveal potential conflicts. For example, a company wanted to rank for “MDR” in German, referring to “managed detection and response.” However, MDR is also the name of a major German public TV and radio station – making ranking for the term impossible. Beyond choosing keywords, research helps identify local content clusters and plan accordingly. Poor keyword implementation Writing with keywords in mind is challenging in any language, and it becomes even trickier in a foreign one. Translators prioritize accuracy, not SEO. Where you see keyword variations, a translator sees inconsistency, which can lead to over-optimization. Working with a native writer instead of a translator allows for better flexibility and keyword integration. Dig deeper: 15 SEO localization dos and don’ts: Navigating cultural sensitivity Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. Business email address Sign me up! Processing... See terms. 4. Internal linking Too many websites overlook internal linking in their international content. Both navigational and in-content links must be fully localized to maximize their value. Many sites either link back to English pages or only to the target language homepage, missing key opportunities. This is primarily a user experience issue. When users land on unexpected content, it can be frustrating and lead to high bounce rates. You want visitors to take action, and you’ve invested in content – so it needs to perform. Users who can’t easily find relevant information are less likely to convert. From an SEO perspective, internal linking is one of the few factors you can fully control. With so many ranking elements out of your hands, taking advantage of what you can is crucial. As you develop your keyword list, create an internal linking strategy alongside it. Keep local preferences in mind. Your best-selling product in one country may not be the same in another, so adjusting your internal links accordingly can improve efficiency. Also, share your linking strategy with your translation team. Translators and transcreators can help create natural, localized links, but most translation software won’t automatically adjust links to point to the correct language version. A native-speaking editor is your best option for ensuring strong anchor text and proper link placement. Dig deeper: International SEO: How to avoid common translation and localization pitfalls 5. Only thinking about text Images and videos are powerful content tools, but if they’re not relevant or accessible to your audience, they lose their impact. The images you choose can shape how visitors perceive your brand. That’s why it’s important to have a local review them. Sometimes, it’s as simple as ensuring the people in your images reflect the local population. Other times, it’s more complex. Allegorical images, for example, may not translate culturally. Images localized for German, Czech, and Arabic-speaking customers. If you keep the same images, update your alt tags to reflect the local language and, if possible, include relevant keywords. For videos, narration can be highly engaging – unless the viewer doesn’t understand the language. In that case, it becomes alienating. Some companies opt for instrumental music and subtitles, allowing users to select their preferred language. If your videos are already produced, the easiest and most cost-effective way to internationalize them is by adding localized closed captions. Fully localizing or dubbing them is more expensive but provides a better user experience. These assets can also be repurposed for other targeted campaigns. However, if you’re hosting them on platforms like YouTube or Vimeo, you must organize them properly to ensure seamless access. Dig deeper: 6 SEO considerations for a successful international expansion Going global successfully with smarter SEO Internationalization can feel overwhelming, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. Taking the time to prepare – particularly with market and keyword research – can reveal significant opportunities and reinforce commitment to the project. With that foundation in place, it’s time to move forward with localization. View the full article

Every morning, after Richard J. Davidson meditates, he opens his calendar and sets an intention for each meeting. He brings each person into his mind and heart, expresses gratitude for their work in the world, and considers how he can best support them. I was inspired to try this practice. I reflected on the people that I planned to see that day and chose one thing that I’d like to thank them for. I was surprised that a simple “thank you” caused them to visibly light up. Davidson was right: It not only transformed our conversation, but the entire nature of my day. This is an example of microdosing well-being and its impact on ourselves and others. It’s also the heart of Davidson’s mission: Well-being doesn’t need to be left up to chance. It is a skill that we can train. Richard Davidson in the lab, 1990 [Photo: David Nevala] “When humans first evolved, none of us were brushing our teeth,” he shares. “Now, pretty much everyone on the planet brushes their teeth. It’s not part of our genome. We’ve learned to do this because we consider it important for our physical hygiene.” “If we spend even as short of time as we do brushing our teeth nourishing our mind, our findings and the findings of other scientists show that this world would be a different place,” he adds. “Most people would consider their mind more important than their teeth. Yet, we don’t treat our mind with the same respect.” As a world renowned neuroscientist, Davidson has devoted five decades to studying human flourishing. He is the founder and director of The Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he conducts groundbreaking research on emotions and the brain, as well as meditation and contemplative practices. Through the Center’s nonprofit, Healthy Minds Innovations, they translate their findings into evidence-based practices for individuals and organizations to cultivate well-being. In our conversation, he explains why our relationship to ourselves, each other, and the world are the product of the stories that we tell ourselves. He explains how to change your relationship to your thoughts, manage the activation of your stress response, and create structural changes in the wiring of your brain in as little as 20 hours. David Richardson [Photo: David Nevala] This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You shared that: “our brains are constantly being shaped, wittingly or unwittingly. Most of the time, we are unaware of the forces around us that are shaping our brains and have very little control of those forces. The one thing that we do have control over is our own mind.” Explain that last line, because we often don’t think that we have control over our minds. Every human being is born with the capacity to control her or his mind. The fact that many people feel that they don’t have control over their mind is simply a symptom of the degradation in well-being that we are seeing in the world today. But, we know with absolute scientific certainty that we can harness our innate capacity and control our mind. What’s amazing is that it doesn’t take that much to get a taste of this capacity. You don’t have to sit in any special posture or travel to the Himalayas. You can do this anywhere, anytime. It’s not just my opinion. It’s the results of years of scientific research. When it comes to neuroplasticity, what is the neurological impact when we commit to well-being practices? What we know from existing scientific research is that when we commit to well-being practices, the brain changes in at least two basic ways: One is what we call functional changes, which are changes in the patterns of activation of different networks in the brain. The second is structural changes, where there’s literally changes in the wiring of the brain. We can see functional changes in the brain after just a few hours of practice. We can see structural changes after as little as 20 hours of practice. When you think about learning a new sport, language, or instrument, those complex skills require quite a bit of practice. It doesn’t take much with well-being, because humans are born to flourish. We have all these capabilities within us. You highlighted research findings that “clearly suggest that people who are willing to question their own beliefs, and understand that their beliefs are not fixed, are less likely to be diagnosed with mental health disorders and more likely to respond positively to treatment.” Explain this and how we can practice it. This is one of the core dimensions of our framework for understanding well-being. We call it Insight. It’s the idea that every human being has a narrative that they tell about themselves. What’s really important for well-being is not so much to change the narrative, but to change our relationship to this narrative. So, being able to see the narrative as a constellation of beliefs, thoughts, and expectations that is not permanent. These thoughts can change. They’re not all of who we are. Take pain as an example. We might say: I’m in pain. Does that mean all of me is in pain? Is there any part of me that’s not in pain? Who is the “I” when we say: “I am in pain?” Another strategy is, for a difficult situation at work or at home, we can ask ourselves: What might it be like for someone who has a different set of beliefs and expectations to be in the same situation? How might they perceive it? These are simple strategies to loosen the grip that the narrative that we carry may have and to help us appreciate that we are not our thoughts. On the Healthy Minds Program app, an instructor explained that he shifted from using meditation to try to destroy his anxiety to learning to accept and befriend his inner demons. How can we learn to befriend ourselves? This is part of our DNA in terms of how we introduce these practices. We’ve found, through the science we’ve done, that it is much more effective not to fight with your mind. There are some people who think: I’m going to meditate and get relaxed. I’m going to try to stop my distracting thoughts. It further increases their stress and agitation. Instead of having that approach, it’s much simpler to acknowledge that we’re human. We do have these distracting, sometimes upsetting, thoughts. So, rather than pushing them away, simply acknowledging them. We often use the analogy of the weather and the sky. You can have foreboding clouds. They will eventually go away. It doesn’t change the nature of the sky. The same is true with our thoughts and emotions. From the perspective that we are suggesting, our minds are pure in the same way that the sky is. But, there are all these clouds that come in. If we are able to look at them, as clouds in this way—they arise, change, and go away eventually—it helps us to loosen the grip that they have. Another analogy is that instead of being in this turbulent river, we can step onto the shore, and watch the river go by; And, even appreciate its beauty, even if it’s turbulent. In The Dalai Lama’s Guide to Happiness, Roshi Joan Halifax said that self-criticism “only strengthens the self-hatred and self directed aggression. The thing that is going to transform it is not meanness, it’s love.” What does self-compassion look like in action? Self-compassion is a way to think about love. It’s accepting who we are with all of our imperfections, not pushing against it. To give a personal example, I’ve been meditating daily for 50 years. There are times when my morning practice will still be filled with distraction. I don’t get up from my meditation having a lot of self criticism about it. One of my teachers has this line that I love: The road to Lhasa goes up and down. What he meant is: The bad meditations are just as good as the good meditations. There are times when we can learn a lot from the distracting periods. Making friends with our mind or our anxiety is the most effective strategy in transforming them. Expectations are a common source of distress. How can we practice acceptance in situations where we hoped for a different outcome? Expectation is another kind of thought. We’ve done work in the laboratory where we’ve shown that we can create an expectation that a person will get a painful stimulus. In people that haven’t trained their mind, just the expectation that they’re about to get zapped with painful heat is enough to activate the pain circuits in the brain, even though there’s no painful stimulus. They’ve just heard a tone, which denotes that they’re going to get this painful stimulus. It turns out, in people who’ve done certain kinds of meditation practices, when we give them this expectation cue, nothing happens in the pain circuits in the brain. We can learn to let go of these expectations. Certain expectations are important for navigating everyday life. But, when we have an expectation, and it doesn’t come to fruition, we are less activated by the failure of that expectation to come to reality. It’s a learnable skill. Stress is toxic because it causes your brain to tell your body to prepare for immediate action. How can we decrease the propensity of activating our fight or flight response? This is a huge and important issue. To give context, we have this chunk of real estate in the front of our brain called the prefrontal cortex. It affords us the opportunity to do something that other species can’t do very much, which is what we call mental time travel. We can anticipate the future and reflect on the past; That confers a lot of advantage to humans. But, it also gets us into trouble, because we can imagine future threats. They’re simply imagined, but they hijack the machinery of our threat response and activate our biological systems as if they were a real threat. But, all that’s happened is we’ve had a thought or an emotion. The invitation, if you will, is: How can we harness the capacity of the prefrontal cortex and use it to our advantage? We can learn to harness this gift and control our mind in a way that would decrease the likelihood of us triggering these threat responses in contexts where they’re not necessary. We may feel calm after coming out of meditation. Still, it requires practice to maintain that calmness throughout the day. You’ve shared that your next frontier of work is around microdosing. What are a few practices we can try? We’ve talked about the microdosing of well-being. Research shows that one of the easiest ways to do this is if we pair these micro-practices or micro-supports around activities that we do every day. One of the things that most humans do every day is eat. If we spend even 30 seconds before we eat intentionally reflecting on all of the people that it took for us to have a meal and feeling the appreciation in our mind and heart, that’s an example of a micro-practice. You could do this a few times a day. It takes virtually no extra time. Some of us travel a fair amount. Walking through airports, for me, has transformed from something that many people consider stressful to this wonderful opportunity where you can look at people and just in your mind, you can wish people: May you be happy. That makes you happy, too. When you think about this, even for people who are living in objectively challenging circumstances, there are always going to be opportunities for this kind of microdosing. We just need to find what resonates with us and makes sense for our lives. Then, stick to it and really try to do it on a daily basis. Your team shares an invitation to improve our relationships: When we change the stories that we tell about people, our relationships with those people change. How do the stories we tell about others influence the quality of our relationships? What are a few ways we can shift them? This is part of our natural tendency to deploy narratives in how we operate, about ourselves as well as other people. I find myself having this issue all the time. There are often people who I’m scheduled to meet and I construct this image in my mind of who they are. We all do that. Most of us have had the experience, at least occasionally, of being surprised when we meet a person that we learn things about them that are inconsistent with the story that we’ve told about who they might be. It’s not that we should try to suppress the narrative, because that’s not going to work. But, having an appreciation that this is a story that we’re telling, it may not be accurate. There may be other stories that are more veridical. We use dreams as an important analogy. All of us dream every night. If we remember our dreams, we know that we have emotions in response to the dream events. But, we recognize that it’s a dream. It’s all constructed in our mind. It turns out that the way that we see the world is no different than the way that the mind processes dreams; Neuroscience teaches us that. We don’t actually see the world. When we interact with the world, what we’re seeing is our construction of the world. When we’re interacting with another person, we’re interacting with our construction of the other person. It’s not to say that there’s not someone there. But, we’re responding not to the physical elements that are there, but to our conceptual construction that we’ve made of who they are. When we recognize that, it helps to diffuse the grip that these narratives have and allows for much more spaciousness. You often express that there is an important distinction between happiness and wellbeing. Why is that distinction essential? If we lose a loved one, we’re sad; The sadness is real and healthy. It would be weird and kind of pathological to be happy in response to loss. It’s not about being happy all the time. Yet, if we have a loss and we’re sad, if we have high levels of well-being, we have this sense that everything is going to be fundamentally okay. There’s a kind of fundamental okay-ness. That’s what well-being is about. It’s not about being happy. It’s about knowing that it’s okay. For example, I’ve seen the Dalai Lama with this huge range of emotion. After someone described Tibetans in a Chinese prison being tortured, he was visibly crying. But, the next moment, he noticed something funny and started laughing. There’s this emotional fluidity. If a tragedy happens and you are sad, it’s having the ability to bounce back. You don’t stay stuck in the sadness for long periods of time. You have an appropriate response. But, at some point, it is no longer appropriate and you can have other emotions. Fluidity is one of the key markers of a person who is flourishing. What is your hope for the world today? The world is experiencing the devastating consequences of the failure to cultivate well-being; Many of the difficulties we’re having in the world—including the devastating consequences of polarization and greed—all of these problems are, at least in part, stemming from the same fundamental cause. My aspiration for the world today is that we can embrace the possibility that well-being can be learned, and that it’s not difficult. I feel like my role on the planet is to harness my platform as a scientist to help promote this idea and provide tools that can enable a large swath of the population to get engaged in this way. I think the very future of humanity depends on it. View the full article

Google sent out emails to Local Service Ads advertisers notifying them that their Google Business Profile accounts are not affiliated to your Local Service Ads account. That means your reviews will only be accepted through your Google Business Profile link and not the Local Service Ads link.View the full article

Trump passes executive order for bitcoin reserve based on assets forfeited to authoritiesView the full article

Google Ads has updated its interface for when you select when you want your ads running in specific regions/locations. Now, it has a button to "add locations in bulk," which should help you add locations faster.View the full article

Google may be bringing channel reporting to the Google Ads Performance Max campaigns. I spotted this via Kirk Williams who posted a photo of a slide from Google Think event in Amsterdam where Arjan Schoorl attended. The slide says "Channel Reporting" will be coming to PMax and Demand Gen for increased transparency and controls.View the full article

Google has shut down, turned off, and disabled, its new page annotations feature. The feature where Google hijacked your content, placed links in your content, links you didn't add yourself, and directed your content to Google Search. It is no longer, Google shut it down. View the full article