Every now and then I find a question in my travels that makes me think, “You know, I never really thought about it.” Such is the above question.
We know about Shakespeare as upstart crow in 1592, so presumably he was known in playwriting circles at that point. But that’s about it, and that tells us nothing about how exactly he honed his craft. When did Shakespeare begin writing? Did he get married, have kids, move to London, and *then* decide “Hey, I’ll try this playwriting thing”? Or was it always a lifelong ambition, and somewhere lost in time there are notebooks full of the scribblings of an 8yr old William, trying to out ideas? At what point does the greatest writer in the English language realize that he wants to be a writer?
Discuss.

SEO, for those not in the business, stands for “Search Engine Optimization” and is shorthand for “the bag of tricks you use to get your site listed high in Google search results.” If you’re in the web business, you live and die by your SEO. And many of the people that hang out here have their own web sites. So I thought it might be fun to open up a thread on people’s own SEO experience and tricks.
Some questions:
* Do you follow your search engine statistics, so that you know how your traffic is finding you?
* What key words do you score well on?
* What key words do you score lousy on, and wish you did better?
* What efforts are you making to improve your positioning?
For my part, I score very well (#1 Google spot) for “How old is Romeo” and assorted variations (how old was romeo, how old are romeo and juliet …). This is a very specific question, yes – but it’s also a very popular question, and #1 spot always gets you a nice bit of traffic. How’d I get that spot? I think it has a great deal to do with the amount of comments on that page, causing the keywords to show up over and over again. So it’s more than just the post title, although a good match on the title also has a lot to do with it.
I pretty much own the “Shakespeare geek” search results, but that’s to be expected. It’s a pretty unique phrase, and I’m all over the net with it. It’s not perfectly unique, though, and there are other generic “geek” sites that will periodically do Shakespeare content (“Gifts for the Shakespeare Geek”, “Shakespeare for tech geeks” and so on). But in general I’m happy with being clearly identified in that top spot. I’d like to think that if somebody’s searching that, they’re looking for me. Or if they didn’t know I existed, then they’ll be glad they found me.
But what about the big traffic? Shakespeare as a keyword by itself is too big to tackle with just a little ol’ blog like this. The subject’s been around too long, and too many large-scale sites have had too much time with too much content. That search will be forever filled with the likes of Wikipedia, MIT and others.
I’d love to get some second level traffic, though. I score pretty well on “Shakespeare blogs” but not as well as I’d like, primarily because while people might search for “blogs”, that’s not a word you typically use to describe yourself. Want a quick lesson in SEO? Search Shakespeare blogs and then search Shakespeare blog. Note the differences.
One of the frustrating side effects of SEO, particularly with respect to our chosen topic, is that time is not a major factor. Many of the results you’ll find are updated infrequently, and some have stopped altogether (i see sites that have not been updated in over a year). For people like me who try very hard to get up content every day, it’s annoying. I understand it, I just don’t like it. 🙂
Ok, that’s enough from me for now. How is everybody else faring in the google wars?

Here’s the thought that spurred the post: It’s Shakespeare Day (April 23, duh) and though you’re surrounded by people that know you to be a Shakespeare geek, it’s not a typical Shakespeare environment. Your day job, perhaps. A coworker approaches you and says, “So, quote something.” You stand on your desk in a Dead Poet’s Society moment and quote …. what?
And, why that one? In a situation like that I think of Brando in Julius Caesar, doing the “Friends, Romans, Countrymen!” bit to get their attention. But other than the opener, is that the speech you’d want to demonstrate once you had everybody’s attention?
If you’re a pro at this, do you choose something that your audience will likely know, or something they’ve probably never heard?
Not saying I’m preparing for anything in particular :), though I do like to celebrate the day …

I don’t know what side of the US Political system you fall on, or for that matter if you’re in the US at all. Or, if you are, if you care. But I couldn’t let this one pass by.
Apparently Fox News is doing to Obama what Iago did to Othello.

Have fun with that.

Where do you think Shakespeare ranks among the greatest of the storytellers? We all agree that he’s got some skills at the poetry, the drama, the character building, the “getting his point across.” But how was his story? Many of his plots require some serious suspension of disbelief, no? Or ignoring out outright plot holes?

I’ve always been fascinated by the core of what “story” means. If you stripped away Shakespeare’s words and still told the story, would it still speak to the truth of what it means to be human like the original does? How much of the message is in the words, versus the action between the characters? Obviously there’s something there, as people have been “inspired” to run with Shakespeare for centuries, from fan fiction to video games. But if you lose the power the minute you lose the words, why would we keep doing it? Surely there’s something in the story itself that Shakespeare put together. Shakespeare borrowed his stories, and built on them. So did he perfect them? Or is that the pursuit we’re all still engaging in?
With that in mind let me introduce “The Reinvention Summit”, a virtual conference on the future of storytelling.

Reinvention Summit: 2-week Virtual Summit on Future of Storytelling, Nov 11-22, 2010.

We are gathering a new tribe of storytellers: change-makers, marketers, entrepreneurs, and creatives who see storytelling as critical to their work and mission. There’s a star-studded line-up of 25+ speakers with diverse backgrounds to lead teleseminars, interviews, and panel discussions that relate to the future of storytelling as our world goes through reinvention. All sessions are recorded for playback. The online summit includes lots of social networking, collaboration, and crowd-sourcing for those who feel inspired to play. Entry-level pricing starts at just $11.11. To learn more: visit www.reinventionsummit.com.

Disclosure : I was contacted about this directly, but I’m not receiving any particular compensation for it. They do have several “thank you” offers to help get the word out (detailed here) but as far as I can tell, access to those offers is not contingent on posting anything special.