Thank you very much. Hello. Thank you for having me today I am excited to talk to so many people a little nervous to it was like five people here before and I was like Oh, I got this and now there's a lot of you, but just let me know if you can't hear me in the back But let's get right to it because I've got a lot of information I want to share and we have a short period of time So I will have to move through it kind of quickly But we will have time for Q&A at the end of the session and I'm also not running away So I'll be around if you have any questions. You can find me all day. So Today these are the slides if you want to jot this down real quick if you want to download the slides I'll show it again at the end. I do have to keep moving. So one more second on that and I'll show it again at the end So and really quickly some fun facts about me I'm a lifelong nerd started playing with code on a Commodore 64 when I was six started building websites in HTML in 1997 been working at SEO professionally since 2005 now an SEO agency owner of Payman marketing and stealth search and analytics both specialized in SEO and PPC Payman marketing works directly with clients and stealth works with agencies on a private label basis and Fun fact I'm a not-so-closet metalhead some people know that about me already Yes, favorite bands include kill switch engage fear factory and of course slayer anyway First and foremost, this is what we're not going to learn how to do today A lot of people when they think of writing for search engines or writing for SEO This is what they think of and this is what some people do This is what you should not not not ever do that really doesn't mean much more explanation You can you can see why that looks awful for humans and even search engines don't like this nowadays So we'll go over what you should do. This is the formula for success I know you can't see every step there, but this is what we're going to go over today step-by-step So we will go through each piece and I'll reiterate it again at the end But first of all, let's touch upon who you're writing for your website really has two audiences, right? human and search engines So what do humans want to see out of your content? humans want high quality advice natural sounding language and Short digestible snippets of information that they can skim through read through quickly Now what does search engines want from your content? They want high quality advice. So that's the same Natural sounding language also the same here's where it differs search engines like long length thousands of words the average page one ranking has 1890 words the actually the that so that's the average the most likely to get you ranked on the first page is Actually between two thousand two hundred and fifty words and two thousand five hundred words So that's where humans and search engines really differ and want pretty much exact opposite things So how do you compromise with that? It can be done First you want to pick a specific number of points about your topic that you're going to make next you want to write thoroughly about each point, but Break it up with subheadings for each point that you're making so it can be easily skimmed and digested and Include visuals throughout you know a lot of imagery So you can really get to a pretty high word count without it looking like a practical term paper If you use those subheadings and those visuals to break it up It's still skimmable and easily digestible for your humans and you've got your word count for your search engines So that that balance can be struck and not every single piece of content needs to be that long That will make it more likely that your content will be favored by search engines But you know other lengths of content do rank as well So and sometimes it's simply not appropriate to write 2,500 words, especially if it's like a product description or something on an e-commerce site So just when you can go you know fit in as many words as you can and make it make that compromise By breaking it up with subheadings and imagery Couple more things to keep in mind when writing for your human audience Like we said we want to provide high quality advice in natural sounding copy I'm going to break down with subtitles and Here's one thing unique to humans is to use catchy titles What do I mean by catchy titles or how to make your titles catchy? One of the most effective possible tactics for this You probably aware of this already is to put the quantity of points you're making in the title So like top five marketing strategies for success that number. It's just weird It's it really increases click-through a lot having that number in there Another way you can make your titles catchy is to add a sense of urgency or exclusivity So like there are only three ways to increase online sales that immediately makes me want to click on that like I want to know I want to know what they are so exclusivity and urgency work Identifying your audience if you're writing an article for let's say contractors you actually say Contractors in the title if I'm a contractor. I'll immediately identify with that be more likely to read it and Include the result of your advice in the title the with them the what's in it for them like Increase online sales as an example of this, you know, what are you going to get out of reading this article? You're going to get advice on how to increase online sales like I would increase online sales and Use powerful words. Here's some examples of some general powerful words Some of these are a little they know click baby like shocking But there's plenty of good ones that are not you know that either are essential is one of my favorites, you know top five essential Tips for achieving X result or so on So including power words in the title is helpful as well So all that will help attract more human readers to your content But actually if you get more human readers to your content your content will have more click-through and engagement metrics On the search engines and the search engines will see that so it is kind of a benefit to firm an SEO perspective as well So a couple things to keep in mind when writing for search engines You want to give thorough advice so that word count is high as we mentioned Naturally incorporate right sized keywords that people actually search for I'll explain what I mean by right sized right now When I talk about right sized keywords I'm talking about using a keyword research tool to pick phrases that have a search volume at or below Your site's monthly organic traffic number The rationale behind this is that if search engines were already willing to rank your site for Phrases that have a really large search volume Your traffic would probably already be pretty large So you kind of need to write size the amount of traffic They're willing to drive to you right now in the volume of the keyword This is not an exact science, but it's it's you know We found that it works if you want to write for a term a keyword term That's searched 90,000 times a month, but your site only gets 500 hits a month of traffic Search engines are not likely to trust you that much for that popular of a phrase yet. So hope that makes sense So to find out your monthly organic search number you can go into Google analytics Click on acquisition then all traffic then channels Set your date range to last 30 days or if you have a seasonal business in you know December was the last 30 days and it was slow Maybe just pick a different whole calendar month and then take note of your organic search number Then you go to your keyword research tool and there are a lot of keyword research tools out there But this is the one that is our favorite. It's called keyword tool. It's found that keyword tool die Oh, yeah, it's a pretty self-explanatory name And it is a paid tool the plans range from 48 dollars to 88 dollars a month if you do a lot of writing I think it's totally worth every penny There are other options out there that will give you some data for free usually partial data for free SEMrush will give you I think five to ten keyword stats for free SEMrush is very good But I like this one in particular because this uses Google's search volume data SEMrush and some other tools use their own database and I like to get the information straight from the source So I like that this one uses Google's search data So once you have your keyword research tool handy You want to pick a primary keyword for each piece of content that you're writing Like I said with a search volume at or below your monthly organic traffic number It's okay to go below the goal is not to go too high because then you're just a keyword to kind of out of reach to your site At this time hopefully build up your traffic slowly over time and bigger keywords come within reach So for example, if I wanted to write an article about AC compressor failure for an HVAC company Who has 500 hits of search traffic a month this search volume of 90 means that's that's attainable for that site You also want to pick a few secondary Supporting keywords to Google's very focused on AI and machine knowledge right now And they they're trying to really understand context a lot So you can't just take one keyword and only use that keyword about that topic throughout the content You need to pick secondary supporting keywords as well to flesh out that context So in the keyword research tool you can find a couple of examples of a couple of secondaries For example symptoms of AC compressor failure or causes of AC compressor failure if AC compressor failure is the primary You can and should also look at Google search suggest for ideas for secondaries This is a direct clue into what Google thinks is contextual for that topic So punch in your primary keyword in Google and just see what the other Secondary you know what the search suggest keywords come up and those are good contenders for secondaries One final tip before you finalize your primary phrase or even the secondaries is to Google each one of them and make sure that Google Understands the context of the topic correctly the same way that you do you'd be surprised sometimes you type something You think is so simple so straightforward into Google and you get results for something else entirely I forget what the primary keyword was once but I was checking something It was business related technology related or something and there was results about farming And Google my okay, that's not you know Google and I are not seeing eye to eye on this so got to go in a different direction All right, so back to that formula for success We're now going to go through examples of each step and then I'll reiterate each step one last time So the the first step is actually to pick the keyword we went over that next up You want to use your primary keyword in the title and in the opening paragraph or opening section of body copy Easy enough doesn't really require further explanation Next up this makes it really easy to use your primary keyword throughout and have it sound natural You want to do a quick summary? This is both for humans and search engines quick summary of the points the key points that you're going to make in the article Just in this article you're going to learn dot dot dot dot about this topic and include your primary keyword in the Subheading for that quick roundup and it sounds perfectly natural Next up you break down each point right thoroughly about each point, but break it up with those subheadings Include the primary keyword naturally and include the secondary keywords also naturally at least one each for the secondaries and Then you want to use your primary keyword in your conclusion subheading and in your conclusion paragraph So here's you know your key takeaway in the subheading and here's a paragraph summarizing what we've learned In this article it's easy enough to very naturally Repeat your primary keyword in there not having it sound like that first or look like that first horrible example that we saw in total you do want to keep note of your Count up your uses of your primary phrase and aim for if possible At least one time per 100 words that should not be hard to do if you follow that formula It should naturally already be in there quite a bit But don't overdo it not like that first example You don't want to go more than two times per 100 words So in a thousand word article for example You want to aim for about 10 uses of your primary keyword, but don't exceed 20 if you happen to be writing a shorter article and you're following this formula and you Exceeded that two times per 100 back down. It's more important to not overdo it in that case Quick frequently asked question about question phrases or frequently asked question about questions because I knew this was going to come up Question phrases are a bit tricky So if you picked as your primary keyword of a phrase that is a question, which is very common now with voice search It's really hard to repeat that question so many times throughout the article and have it still can sound natural So here's what you can do you can easily enough use it as your article title. That's pretty simple You can also repeat it in your in your opening section. So what can affect ovulation? That sounds perfectly natural too, but from there you can reward it reward the question as an answer and Google will understand this as You know, that's what you're doing. You're answering the question It will can still consider even though it doesn't match exactly your primary keyword It will still consider the article relevant if you just kind of restructure it so that you're answering the question So, you know birth control can affect ovulation. This can affect ovulation that can affect ovulation So that's just simply rephrasing the what can affect ovulation question into an answer XYZ can affect ovulation that will still work and Then you can easily repeat the question in your conclusion Summary, you know, so what can affect ovulation? Here's what we went over Very iterating the key takeaway So one more time through the formula of success step by step When so you start with keyword and topic selection when writing for humans You want to determine your few key points that you're going to make in advance so that you can break it down Nicely with subtitles for skimmability then you want to pick your first search engines and pick your right size keyword and Make sure it's not exceeding your monthly organic traffic number. Make sure it's right sized for you Next up in the title for humans make it catchy using the tactics we talked about inserting the quantity of key points Including exclusivity or urgency identifying your audience and using powerful words and then for search engines simply use your primary keyword in the title Next up in your opening paragraph for your humans you summarize the intent of the article So they know what they're about to get out of reading this article and for search engines You just use your primary keyword naturally in that opening paragraph After that you have your quick overview of your key points again to let the humans know what you're about to a little more in-depth what you're about to go over and For search engines use the primary keyword in that overview subheading Next break down each key point with subheadings for each for your humans. This is you know, good useful Genuinely helpful Information about each key point of the topic and for search engines This is your chance to use your primary keyword naturally again and to pepper in your secondary supporting keywords at least once each and then your conclusion subheading repeat the intent of the article in summary format and Use the primary keyword for search engines in your conclusion paragraph for the humans summarize reiterate the most important key takeaways Again a chance for search engines so you can use your natural primary Use your primary keyword naturally one more time and last but not least I didn't touch upon this yet But you'll always always always want to end with a call to action for humans. This is pretty simple You know, you're you're in a business of some sort You're putting in this time and you're writing for some purpose you want to tell the people what you want them to do It's surprising in like conversion tracking said or conversion rate optimization studies How effective it is to tell people what you want them to do you think it's so you know intuitive like oh well Obviously, they'll just contact me if they want my consultation. No, you have to tell them Next up you need to reach out to us or whatever Maybe you want to be a little softer and just guide them to another one of your articles So they don't simply leave just link to something and this is also for search engines because search engines like internal linking They like when they can crawl through an article and then have Google buy You know click on a link and go to another one You just create a natural flow of related topics or pages within your site So call the action effective for humans and effective for search engines when you link to another piece of content So that's it. We actually have more time went through really quickly We have more time for questions than I would have thought you can also email me questions or heavy metal music suggestions at that email Address there and there's your slide link again. So first question Okay, yeah, that is challenging. So the example of doing it wrong was you know, obviously trying to go hyperlocal Stop words is something I didn't touch upon that are totally okay So if your primary keyword is like that example showed I think it was family attorney Plano, Texas it's totally fine to put in a stop word which is a super short word like a and the in order to make something more natural sounding and So, you know, you can say such and such law firm has been a family They are so until person has been a family law attorney in Plano, Texas for x amount of years They open their you know family attorney law services in Plano, Texas in 1970 blah, blah, blah You know, you can put those stop words in to be able to relate You know a topic to a location and have it sound much more natural Does that kind of answer your question? But Right, that's true Some of the keyword research tools let you set the location So you're not just getting nationwide search volume numbers I don't trust the accuracy as much It seems as if when you change it to a specific geographical region the numbers like you think they would be Proportional topic wise to if a certain topic is really popular you're like popular nationwide. It would be popular Hyperlocal to I mean obviously there's factors involved that might make that not the case But just from what I've seen it doesn't seem super accurate But you can look at that data and take that into account and and use that for your right sizing as opposed to the nationwide Numbers, which is what you'll get by default actually I think global is default on the keyword tool that we use we change that to United States and Sometimes we'll check the local data although we don't fully fully trust it primarily we use the nationwide search volume numbers I Yeah It will ramp up over time because if you start out even with super small volume keywords 10 and 20 each Once Google starts to trust you know you write enough content about that again enough people come to your website about that Your traffic number will naturally go up then you can aim for your second tier Google will learn to trust you for those phrases and you aim for the third tier so it's not too limiting I mean it definitely requires patience some Yeah, each time you go to write a new piece of content check your number again Well, I mean if it's been a month, you know check your number again But there is a direct relationship between quantity of new content added to the website and search traffic and rankings It's basically I would have included a chart But it's just a diagonal line up like this. It's literally the more the better So if you start out with search volume phrases in the 10 to 20 30s if you the more you write the better Because you that's the quicker your your traffic will grow So it is a strategy that takes time and patience, but if you can push out, you know Articles weekly maybe even bi-weekly, you know the more you push out the more it will accelerate that process At first yes, and I mean if you're if you know you're gonna be going high quantity You're gonna be running eight blog posts a month You can maybe you know start out with a little overconfident and pick things that are a little over where you're already at Knowing that you know you're putting so much gas in the car So I say about the the quantity of new articles added it's like putting gas in the car So if you know you're gonna be refueling twice a week you could get you know Ame a little higher at first Yeah, so It's That's a tricky one it some if we are working with like an established business So it's a brand new website Maybe a brand new domain name, but they are a known business and it's not gonna be hard for them to get their content Linked to from reputable sources. They're gonna be doing PR and whatnot. We may aim a little higher Initially depending upon you know how big the brand is anywhere from 500 to 5,000 for a small business Who's really truly unknown is gonna take a long time? Conservatively, you know in the 50s Maybe maybe in the three digits some day. This is all just rough guidelines You know it you shouldn't abandon your overall Marketing strategy that makes sense in order to fit into these numerical guidelines This is just like you know sort of trying to stay in the same realm when you can But if you're a small business you're brand new and your topic is a competitive topic It might not be you know possible to pick phrases that are less than 500 that describe what you do And that's okay Just you know try not to go with the 50,000 search volume ones, you know just try to stay as close as you can It's not exact science by any means Good question it was if you didn't hear it. Can you accelerate the process by paying for AdWords? So there are some conspiracy theorists that believe that if you put money in Google's kitty They will in one area they will reward you in the other area I have seen a correlation between that but I don't I'm not like the conspiracy theorist about it I don't think it's just because you paid them I do believe and I've seen evidence that Driving traffic through AdWords to your content creates engagement metrics on your content and makes your content look popular and that then increases your organic traction Air-conditioning AC aren't just synonyms that replacement words right right do you tend to just stick to one or do you use that as a way to Like mix up the copy and reduce your saturation if you will I do try to stick with one consistently if possible so talking about different word variations like AC versus spelling out air-conditioning or Singular plural that type of thing It's I try to once I make my decision and try to stick with it throughout Unless it won't sound natural if I have to flip something from singular to plural to make it sound natural Right again, I try to pick you know if I rephrase as an answer try to stay consistent with the way I initially rephrase it, but if it's not going to sound natural then switch it up natural is sounding natural is most Important you know we're big believers in getting those keywords in there and how important it is to get those keywords in there But not at the price of sounding unnatural So just as much as you can do is a much consistency as possible the better Quick note about the looking at the search volume numbers though for the different word variations that Depends on what tool you're using how good they are at giving you the Broad versus exact type data, you know singular versus plural This that's one thing about that keyword tool I've shown that I don't like is sometimes and it's not their fault. It's because they're pulling Google's data Sometimes Google's data rolls a singular and a plural together or a certain variation together and they give the data just for the the one that they decided to favor and Then it then the keyword tool that we use will show the same numbers for each variation Which is technically not true and that bothers the data scientist in me, but you know, it's close enough One of the biggest challenges of all getting content out of clients, right How do you go about getting the content from your clients, you know If you're working on an agency or consultant basis, and that's what we do We actually don't provide writing services ourselves We either pull in an outside copywriter to work with that client or look to that client to produce their content in house So that is a huge challenge Planning ahead is the number one antidote to having challenges getting clients to send you content or approve content That a copywriter wrote We plan out content calendars at least two months in advance with ideally weekly article at least weekly articles in them So four articles a month planned out two months in advance We assign the top or if they give us the topic we either assign the topic or they give us the topic but we assign the keywords and We plan that out two months in advance get them to approve our keyword selections two months in advance And then we try to get all the writing back to us one month in advance So inevitably when they delay and don't get it back to us on time. It's okay We can still ultimately meet our content calendar deadlines, but so so we have someone else write it We assign the primary secondary keywords and the internal link and then they send it to us We review it make sure it was done right and then it gets posted That's a good question Honestly, I don't really I have not looked into that as much when I say so she was asking about sounding natural if it Should be like conversational because you know, you can write differently if you're writing for written text versus if you speak like if you Transcribed my talking today. It wouldn't look like a very professional article I haven't really looked into that too much when I mean when I say sounding natural It's just not sounding like that first example that I showed like in no context in no world does that sound Reasonable, so that's just what I mean when I say natural I'm sorry. I haven't been looking at you You mentioned that the more frequently you add content the better Kitty at her talk yesterday was mentioning that it's better to stick to a regular consistent schedule that you can keep to Aiming too high In not only for humans to come revisit but also for search engines to sort of figure out how often to crawl That's a very good point the the cadence and the consistency is very important I would also agree to go with cadence and consistency and frequency over length So if you have to go shorter and write shorter Articles in order to keep up that cadence and frequency I would vote for that versus holding off until you can write a 1000 or 2000 word in-depth article I still still aim to do that once in a while You know if you really only have time to write a 500 word article every week, you know try to aim for one Longer post, you know once a quarter or something. There is actually specific algorithm for long-form content In-depth content, so you want to take advantage of that So you'll get certain benefits out of the frequency And cadence of the shorter posts But you don't want to miss out on getting rewarded for having long-form content too So, you know, don't sacrifice your cadence and frequency but try to get a long one in there once in a while if you can That's what I would say Words that are in attachments like a PDF Right, okay So PDFs if you if you're linking to a PDF Let's see people do this sometimes they post their email newsletter as a PDF or as a word file on You know that's linked to you on from a page on their website Google can crawl those and it can see the keywords in them But for some reason it just doesn't understand them as comprehensively as it does Regular website content. So, you know, it's not like it won't get indexed at all If you put a PDF or a Word doc up But we say whenever possible turn that into a regular old web page Oh, well, yeah, so gated content like a lead magnet or something that would be different You would actually, you know If you're trying to get them to fill out a form in order to get to the PDF You actually want to block that PDF from search engines completely You don't want people to just Google and find it So you have to add what's called a no index tag to that page Careful, just add it to that page. That is the tag of death So if you accidentally enable that on the whole website, which by the way is under in WordPress It's under settings discourage search settings reading discourage search engines Site will be gone from Google and Bing and every search engine. So don't enable that there But on a page by page basis Yoast has an option you go to the bottom of the page And I think it's under like the gear or advance whatever that section is called And you can no index just that page or attachment How valuable are plugins like Yoast? Plugins like Yoast, Yoast in particular are super valuable Primarily from a technical SEO perspective. So everything we talked about today was content There is two other whole buckets of SEO There's the technical realm of things and there's the off page Like getting reputable relevant inbound links and stuff like that Yoast is super helpful in the technical arena It takes care of a lot of the technical requirements that the Google crawlers And all search engine crawlers want to see XML site maps, little nuanced rel canonical tags and stuff It takes care of a lot of that I do find that the keyword tool calculator thing Throws people off more than it helps sometimes Because they're so focused on getting that green light And first of all they think that that's actually like doing SEO for them somehow By putting in that focus keyword and checking for green or red lights and all the requirements It's not actually doing anything And it's an automated calculator checker tool of sorts to provide guidance But it's automated so it can't take into account unique things for that situation Like stop words if you have to use in Even though your primary keyword doesn't have in in it It doesn't take that into account So I do find that at least with our clients It throws them off a lot more than we'd like it to And it doesn't support secondary keywords in the checker part of things So the content checker could could use a little work But for technical it's absolutely excellent This is a very very basic question My apologies because I just sat through your lecture But so a keyword isn't necessarily a keyword It can be a key phrase Yes I should I should say key phrase as it can be It should consist of multiple words It is very difficult to go after single keyword key phrases Typically there the volume on those is very very very high Except for in super nichey technical situations Like we have a client that writes about you know Concentricity and perpendicularity That might be a case where a single keyword is attainable But yeah actually I should call them key phrases Because most times they will have multiple words Okay the question was font styling And how much that affects the search engine friendliness of it Back in the day bolding things did mean something Not so much anymore But what does matter what we still see matters There's debate about this as with everything in the SEO community But we do see that the tag the heading tags that you use matter So the specific styling on the tag doesn't matter But there should be at least one h1 tag like heading one Does tend to be automatically styled as the biggest boldest But that doesn't that's not the part that matters The part that matters is that your title is encapsulated in h1 tag And that there's only one h1 tag on the page Because from a search engine from a designer perspective H tags are used for styling But from a search engine perspective H tags are used to show importance of the subheadings So with an h1 you're telling the search engines This is my number one most important heading on the page So if you have multiple h1 tags You're saying this is number one and this is number one And this it doesn't make sense So you want to use a logical h tag hierarchy h1 in the title All the other main subtitles h2s And if there's sub subtitles under that h3s That's what does matter Ah okay so Hidden text so like white white font on white background It responds negatively They do look down on that very much so And Google can now crawl CSS and JavaScript So it used to be easier to sneak by with that At first they only stood under At first they only understood HTML Now and you could get away with doing that with CSS or Java Now they they crawl everything and they know everything So don't do that What about like accordions inside Sorry Okay you already have You've been hitting content like accordions inside Oh yeah okay That's a tricky one But are you better at reading that? This is crossing over into you know advanced programming languages In general as a topic and how well search engines understand them But you know content accordions or tabs Or like Ajax drawers or things like that They are claiming that they know how to fully Crawl that now but They are also saying but pre-render it for us So you know basically they don't do a good job at You know I actually saw a website recently That the whole website was made with Angular JavaScript And it was not indexed very well at all So even though they claim to be making leaps and bounds In that regard and crawling and understanding that The trick is to pre-render Pre-render at server level so that they can And don't serve up alternate HTML versions They used to ask you to do that Now they don't want you to do that Just pre-render at the server level Oh I'm sorry you were next I forgot I'm sorry Okay news sources to keep on top of this Search engine journal is great Matt Southern who's the lead news writer there Actually works part-time for us as well So we kind of cheat and get the inside source there Other blogs that are good are Moz of course Rand Fishkin is amazing Bill Sloskey kind of a less heard of name His blog is at SEO by the sea SEA SEO by the sea.com He keeps on top of the patents that Google's applying for And I think there's no better way to keep up Not just up to date with but ahead of the curve On where Google's going Than to read about the patents they're applying for And being granted for their technology So highly you know if you're really into it Highly recommend Bill Sloskey's blog But otherwise you know all the big names Search engine land search engine journal Moz they're all good Post and pages different Ah do they treat posts and pages differently Not so much I mean especially in WordPress The format unless you customize your template To be drastically different With different heading tags and layouts and whatnot You know by default they're pretty similar So not not from a technical perspective I do think they understand the semantics And context of different phrases And assumes that if I believe they assume That if you're typing in something like You know marketing services or marketing agency That you're more likely to want to read a page About those services or about that agency Versus if you're typing in you know What can affect ovulation You're probably looking for an article So I do think they make those contextual differences Schema markup is incredibly helpful All the patents they're applying for lately Are indicating they're going more and more In the direction of AI and machine knowledge So they want to actually understand the content As opposed to just match keyword from searcher to article So they claim that they don't use it As a ranking factor right now But they also claim that it's incredibly helpful to them And they want you to use it So Gary Ellis of Google spoke at SMX In October out in New York and I listened to his panel And so it sounded a little contradictory We don't use it as a ranking factor But it really helps us out So please use it They're going to be grabbing Even if they technically don't use it as a ranking factor Right now Anything that helps them understand your content better It's helpful And they're going to be gravitating more and more In that direction So yeah Schema markup If anyone doesn't know Schema markup is additional code You can add behind the scenes It's one of the only things that you can do Behind the scenes in SEO That's okay And all three search engines Google Yahoo Bang have agreed Upon this protocol This specific protocol schema.org For doing so And it adds context to the content So you markup individual pieces of the content Like this is the article title This is the article body Or more helpful Or the specific types of schema For example your business address To help Google understand Where you're located geographically You put a tag around the The name of the company Say this is my company name You put a different tag around the street address This is my street address This is my city This is my state This is my zip code This is my phone number Structured data markup Is another word for it You're structuring the content Into different individual tags Kind of like those heading tags I was talking about But very specific tags So that Google can use artificial intelligence To actually know what you're talking about So very very very good thing Recipes, videos, products on e-commerce Huge reviews General articles There is one for general articles Authors, people, bios Helping linking off to Especially in the medical community There's a specific part of the algorithm For medical and a couple of other fields That it looks for the credibility of the author So you want to mark up who the author is Their bio, mark up their credentials Where they went to school Their awards, their recognition Things like that We do have to She's already got her hand up I will be right out there If anyone wants to ask more questions afterwards Great question Is it beneficial to use a common misspelling In order to rank for that It's really hard to do that naturally If you can do it naturally Like an article about You know Why is blah blah blah words so commonly misspelled Here's the etymology of the word If you can't do that I would not recommend doing that That's where ad words might come in You might just pay for an ad Usually the misspellings are pretty cheap So you might just pay for an ad On the misspelled version of the word So we do have to close Thank you so much I'll be right out there for more questions Thank you


As we journey through our spiritual lives, we will often be tempted to settle into a theological perspective and claim it as our resting place. But to do so prevents us from the exploration and discovery, which is the very purpose of our lives. We live in a world that is truly enchanted, and the spirit that creates and sustains all things has heights and depths that defy our wildest imaginations. Eternity is our endless exploration of God. We shall never reach the end of who God is and what God can do. The deeper we probe, the more color and variation we will find. This is what it means to be a nomad, one who is never content with simply settling down, one who always yearns to know what lies just beyond the next hill.


Alright, what's up everybody? This is definitive one box break number five. Oh 1993 was the Joe Carter walk-off gotcha But just the Phillies were awesome all those maniacs. Yeah What's his face Lenny Dykstra? One two three left side four five six right side let's roll the dice Left side so right side will be for break number six coming up soon Joe saying you can still go to Catalina Island just not in the beach. Yeah, you might as well wait for it to open up Oh, there's gotta be stuff right now That is like perfect to do now. Yeah, maybe When stuff starts opening up There's gonna be a lot of dude any place where they ban cars and only golf carts are available. I'm down The villages in Florida retirement community. I've been there I love golf carts, and I love old people leisure activities like golf shuffleboard I oh look at this First card of the break. Look at that nasty patch two of 30 That is Lorenzo Cain brew crew Locain brew crew On the low low have one of the best Uniforms in baseball the glove with the baseball in it as their logo is pretty sick And if you look up this sticker you can see what game he played it in Or what game he wore the jersey in 7 6 7 3 6 0 0 4 JC brew crew that is going out to John. Oh, it was a brewers fan Really? Yeah. Nice All right, we got another nice patch. This is Jeff McNeil 10 of 15 Let's go Have you ever seen mr. Metz stick the finger at that fan? Yeah, all right Robert Z 203 484 JB is your Yeah, and you go and what if you look it up, and it was like he was at his cousin's barbecue He's right in the jersey that'd be kind of cool actually All right, we got a nomah 38 a 50 Boston Red Sox Al rookie of the year. He looks like a cartoon drawing from here. It's funny about that, right? Red Sox he because it blends in with the background kind of look at his legs look like twigs Yeah, he does look kind of skinny, huh? Red Sox is the jorkef Or no more, you know, he was tripping deal.  They won the World Series ten minutes after he left. Yeah Tom Glavin inscribed Hall of Fame 2014 17 of 50 nice Braves edition of Tom Glavin drew with that one Who was it? Someone had said something about I pulled a nomah earlier cubs edition of nomah No, somebody Callie's finest. I think works at a local Best Buy around here Says he came in the store not too long ago. No more.  He's so handsome. Oh Look at this. Andrew Ben attendee Xander Bogart's dual patch auto 8 of 35. One's a home jersey. That's sick That's fire Oshis Xander Bogart's I feel like doesn't sign a lot either Those are two guys from their farm system, right? Yeah, awesome awesome players get devils on there, too We get those three and my head would be crazy All right, another one for D. Jortkeff right there with the Red Sox. Oh, look at this White Sox edition of Carlton Fisk 48 of 50 look at that journey where I like a little win break. That's cool I like that White Sox logo too 48 of 50. What's up, Kyle? Sup Kyle White Sox is Logan nice one Logan two more to go We got a rookie autograph Sean Murphy 22 of 50 for the Oakland athletics Carlos there you go on the board. Oh Kyle says this is flying Hawaiian on Instagram Yo, what up Kyle in case you didn't know Shane Victorina She's cool too. Yeah. All right, the final hit of The break is a New York Yankee. It is C. C. Sabathia 28 of 30 Should we compare CC's legs to Nomar? Quite a difference both beasts and I'm not a CC hater New York Yankees that is going out to Kane. So there you go. That was the break. No randomizers or anything. Appreciate everyone Thanks for getting in congrats to the winners. Sorry to everyone who went and hit list, but we do have another definitive coming up Pretty soon. Thanks everybody


Fun interesting fact, okay, we're gonna have fun now. All right Only team ever to win an NCAA wrestling title. What's to the Rockies? Arizona's Arizona state. Okay, Bobby Douglas is the head coach.  Yeah, three Zika's the sexy give me the rundown of St. John for four guys from Arizona two from Michigan two from Ohio Yep, no champs right no champs like Davey like Davey and say John the Davies was shard and clean northeast Ohio guys Yeah, I've got the Zeke from Michigan. I've had the unique experience of getting to know all those guys pretty well now They're awesome group of guys. So like an unprecedented thing. It's only been done once it hasn't been done since you're a Western guy I always love asking people from the West about the West because you're you're clearly at a disadvantage as far as Travel time you're at a disadvantage as far as the amount of competition you're at a disadvantage It's not in the Midwest hot hot bed of wrestling. It's really hard to overcome things. It's to an extent. I mean To an extent you look at our recruiting class Two years ago. We got two kids from PA. We got the best kid out of Minnesota We got two from California. I mean we had kids from Florida from I mean we're recruiting Nationwide the coast to coast and we're fortunate enough to have a school like Arizona State to have that drawing power to come in Obviously, you have the great weather, you know great academics who Arizona State's really underrated for academics Our business college is in top five engineering stop 30 I mean the kids are coming in being serious student athletes Can you guys do it again is the vision the infrastructures are we know the infrastructures are they did it in 88? Can you guys do it there are more teams in 1988 a Lot more teams another a lot more teams. I think the quality is a little bit spread out a little bit more I mean when you got I Hate even give another process, you know name dropping, but you look at across the board. I mean There's a lot of really deep deep teams and it seems like every man year. There's another team like NC State North Carolina is coming up and doing great things. I mean across the board is starting of the parody certain to kind of spread out A little bit more Edinburgh had the year two years ago. I mean look at you look at some of these teams It's it's really incredible when Edinburgh is winning all these matches teaching headlocks. I'm gonna start teaching headlocks, too Is a kid in high school you're here in Georgia three season headlocks When you come here to this though, and then you know you guys it takes a patchwork of guys It's can't be all California. It can't be Arizona You know and it's just like all these guys and you know Zeke tells you the team he was on that one Is that something where you're trying to bring these like corners of the country together to win a national title? Is that something you kind of like I said we're trying to actually just go after kids that really are plugged in with the Olympic movement to win a world Olympic title because those guys are all great human beings I mean they are doing the thing living the right lifestyle is going to class being successful and Those are the kids that we're targeting and I think it's going to pay off I think the vision there the infrastructure is there the support of the administration. I mean I can't even Begin to say how thankful I am for our administration and I can honestly say for the NCA championships We were supposed to have three of our Associate athletic directors our head AD two of our associate athletic directors there, but we end up hosting the the NCA basketball tournament for women so our head our head Athletic director Ray Anderson had a pull off last minute and he was like but still hold my tickets because if I can fly out there I'm gonna get out there. I'm gonna get out there. So don't get rid of my tickets. I got Don Bakke. Who's this? He's a gangster.  He's I did you know that I've watched his um state championship match Constantly he'll come in he'll come in he comes in there and puts on you know, he still wants to tell back for a high state Yeah, and I for all pro. I mean the guy's awesome. He's legit. Yeah, he comes in he warms up He stretches out and then he bounces. We never get to see him wrestle, but is this movement the this compound You know the combine call out compound college combine. Is this a movement? You're saying you spoke better earlier football is doing it basketball Does it they specialize with all these different Gatorade Nike under armor? They're all putting on these combine is wrestling moving towards that to help you guys Recruit more effectively and be a better recruiting tool for you guys I think so because I think the quality of the kids getting better across the board when you have More clubs more private coaches I mean there's really good kids out there and you're gonna find kids that have great academics That might just not get the national exposure because they might not been traveling all these you know national tournaments out there There's I don't know how many high school national championships are now and There's flows got one and it just stays got one USA wrestling's got one and there's there's tons of them Do you see yourself going to more clubs to recruit like there's a there's a send there's rhino club There's Burnett train. There's young guns. There's there's just no compound. There's clubs everywhere We we definitely rely on our relationship with the club coaches to help us Get to know athletes better All right. Are you guys gonna win the national title? Are you bringing it back to 10 feet? Is it gonna happen? I am not answering.  Do you feel confident in your guys's system? We have to do the work? I mean we have to do the work. We have to get better. There's no doubt about that I was fortunate enough to be on NCA championship teams. I know the work that goes into it I know the extras There's not any Magical dust we can sprinkle on guys at this tournament NCA champions if I could give you a hundred percent answer on how to become an NCA champion it would The game would be a lot easier. I Like we're at I think our kids are improving. I think they're hungry. I think that they're doing the right things and They're gonna be pretty good


Lifestock breads or populations vary according to the areas, regions of the world. Afrika is so special in that it presents a variety of ecologies and therefore the populations of livestock that have thrived for years, for millennia are those that are adapted to those specific conditions. These conditions are changing. Breads are disappearing because of pressure for commercialization. Farmers want to make money. They have to pay oslo bills, they have to pay fees. They have to compete for the market with the rest of the world. Figures are in the tunes of thousands have disappeared already. Some are disappearing as we speak. Different breeds react to different environmental conditions differently. What is desirable in one production system may not necessarily be desirable in a different production system. And that is why we are saying as production system change and with the drivers that are unpredictable as such as climate change we need to be careful to sample enough populations of animals or cattle, sheep and goats, chicken which are already well adapted to those conditions. Not enough is known about the indigenous breeds particularly in Africa and nobody is paying much attention to their conservation because one who pays that price. The farmers out there are competing with other farmers for similar market. It means that our dilemma is we have to find out what is good separating the chaff from the seed. That's a huge task. We have to work with the farmers as we do that and the pressure is on. Again, global agreements are such that those conservations should be the remit of the countries. And yet countries are busy dealing with huge food security issues. Diseases, poverty. Where do they put their money? Do they put their money to conserve breeds that they don't know fully the attributes of, where there are alternatives where people have worked on. So this is where there is need for real synergies, combined effort, informed decision. Science has to inform which animals, which breeds, which populations will be put in there. But we are not advocating for stamp collection. The best way for conserving a breed or a population is making it relevant and competitive. We have to unearth what is the specific attribute Make sure that attribute is enhanced, then that breed will stay on because if it is useful, if it is productive, there are no threats.


In Luke chapter two, starting with verse seven, the writer tells us, and she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. Now there was in the same country, shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night, and behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, do not be afraid for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a savior who is in Christ, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign to you. You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men. Everyone in Christ the entire world will be celebrating Christmas. There are different time zones already that are ringing in the Christmas season as people are opening their gifts. And when we look at this year for Christmas it looks a lot different than it has, right? I mean, usually we're looking at malls packed with shoppers and who are doing last minute shopping. Things are different this year. People are in a different time. And when we look at last year we can see that people were the preparations that people were making for travel. The plans that we're unfolding for as families were getting ready to get together and have Christmas dinner and going to grandma and grandpa's house and unwrapping gifts. We were now caught up in the hustle and bustle of what Christmas is all about. But now this evening Christmas is upon us. And it looks a little different. It looks different and it feels different than it previously has. But yet in the midst of everything that is going on the one thing that should be placed on the forefronts of our minds with all the festivities that are taking place may be in a limited manner is what is the true meaning of Christmas? That is my question for you this evening. And it's probably that I'm preaching to the choir because we all know what the true meaning of Christmas is. We think of Christ. So what is the true meaning of Christmas? Is it buying and exchanging gifts? Is the true meaning of Christmas found around the dinner table with a family sharing a Christmas dinner? Is it the gifts that are under the tree, the lights in the windows, the cards in the mail, the turkey dinners that friends and family will have? Well, in my case, or probably be, and for some of us here, tamales, right? Menudo por sole, the good stuff. Stockings hanging in the living room and shouts of Merry Christmas to those who pass us in the streets. But is this truly what Christmas is all about? To truly, really grasp what the true meaning of Christmas is, we can look to the Bible. It's not just found in one single portion of the Bible but throughout the entire Bible. And tonight I would like to walk you for a little bit down a journey through the true meaning of Christmas and the reason for Christmas. All the way back to the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis, we see the plan of Christmas unfolding. Genesis chapter three, verse 15, which is considered the first gospel was revealed to us to show that God had a plan to save you and I because he loves us that we were in need of a savior.  In other words, the writer of Genesis is saying, I'm gonna place hostility between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring and he will strike you on the head and you will bruise his heel. This is an amazing verse because in the first eight verses of chapter three, we see that sin has entered into the world through Adam and Eve. You see, when sin entered the world, there was this separation between God and mankind and as a result, every one of us was born a sinner in need of a savior. Well, how does this sound, John, like a Merry Christmas story? Well, it gets better. In Romans chapter three, verse 23 says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So there was a promise, something interesting here to point out in the last portion of Genesis chapter three, verse 15, knowing as the first gospel, as God is speaking to the serpent, he says, he shall strike your head and you shall strike his heel. In other words, God is pointing out that there was a plan that will allow us back into communion with God because he loves you. He loves me. He loves us and the purpose for being created is for us to have fellowship with him. You know, during this time, we see that there's a lot of brokenness, there's a lot of hurt, there's a lot of pain, there's a lot of mistrust and fear and a lot of times we can lose focus that Jesus truly loves us and that God set out a plan all the way back in the book of Genesis for you and I to have communion with Christ again. Why? Because he loves you. He loves me. And God made this promise, he made us away way back then that would be the promise of the coming Messiah, the plan for you and I to have unbroken communion with the Lord, the plan for you and I to be joined together with a loving God, to have a relationship with him that was set forth all the way back in the book of Genesis. Amazing. You know, sometimes we read the book of Genesis and we read something like this and we're like, oh, God must have had a plan B. No, he had a plan A all along. This wasn't a surprise to God. This wasn't his plan B, like, oh, oh, I better think of something fast because sin is entered in the world. He had a plan for us to reunite with him again, the good news of the promise of a savior. Isn't that great news today in the world that is fearful? In a world that is striking everybody with fear and uncertainty? In a time where the true meaning of Christmas has seemed to be kind of just lost in this whole pandemic, in this whole era of fear, we have a tendency to lose what God has intended for you and I to have, which is communion with him. This wasn't a surprise to God, that sin entered in the world all the way back in Genesis chapter three. The promise of a coming Messiah to save us from the power of sin and to put us in right standing with God. This has been spoken about with Old Testament prophets. When you look at Isaiah chapter seven, verse 14, it says, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign and behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel, Emmanuel, God with us. Another prophetic announcement found in Isaiah chapter nine, verse six says, for unto us a child is born, unto us a Savior is given and the government will be upon his shoulders. A government today is upon his shoulders and his name will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace. Amazing. There was a plan back in the book of Isaiah, a prophetic announcement and the coming of Messiah was spoken about through the prophet Isaiah 700 years before. And now look what happens. When we look again at Luke chapter two, verses seven through 14, you know how many times have we read this passage in school plays, right? Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth, goodwill towards men. Or you'll find a babe rocked in swaddling cloth lying in a manger. We read this story over and over again. It's the Christmas story. And we could become so familiar with it when I was going over this, I picked up on something here that I thought was very interesting to me that I have read over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. The announcement that these angels are making to shepherds, he tells them that a firstborn will be brought forth and he will be wrapped in swaddling cloths, that he's laid in a manger because there's no room in the end. And that there are shepherds that were out keeping their flock by night. And the angel of the Lord stood before them and began this to make this proclamation of a coming savior. And the angel says to him, do not be afraid for I bring you good tidings with great joy for there is born to you this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. Now this is what's interesting to me. We're people of, you know, show me and I'll believe, right? The proof is in the pudding. I'll believe it when I see it. That's kind of how I am. My wife will tell me something. I was like, oh, you show me the money first, right? I need to see it before I believe. And the angels, when they brought this proclamation about a coming savior, they said something interesting here that the shepherds would pick up on because he tells them that they'll find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths lying in a manger. This will be a sign unto you.  Again, when we look at verse seven, we see something very interesting here. We, something that we can pass over that I've passed over time after time. And it's interesting because a lot of times when we read the Bible, we read it through Western eyes. When we take a moment to try to grasp seeing things through a Middle Eastern culture, there's a lot of significant portions in the Bible that really gives us that aha moment. It gives us that moment like, wow, that really makes sense. And here's one of those moments. See, for me, I read over and over that she will bring forth her first son and wrap him in swaddling cloths. You know how many times I've read that? You know, when I had my first born daughter, I thought about this verse, trying to swaddle her in cloth and I was practicing, I mean, I had the idea of rolling her tortilla. I was trying to roll her up that way and it didn't work. But for all this parents who have swaddled our babies in the cloth, you know, when you go to the hospital and the nurses do it for you, they do it really quickly and they do a good job. When I do it, it seemed like arm was sticking out, legs taken out and it just wasn't swaddling. But there's a Middle Eastern perspective on why Jesus was swaddled. See, the significance of swaddling cloths takes us to the Tower of the Flock mentioned in Micah chapter four, verse eight. It's also referenced as Midgal-Edder. In Micah chapter four, verse eight, it says, and you, oh, Tower of the Flock, hill of the daughter of Zion, to you shall sit, shall it come, the former dominion shall come, kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem, the Tower of the Flock. The Hebrew word for the Tower of the Flock is Midgal-Edder as I just mentioned and it's located in the outskirts of Bethlehem. Why is this important? I'm glad you asked. Listen to what Micah chapter five, verse two says, but you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, through you are little among the thousands of Judah, you out of you shall come forth to me, the one to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from old, from everlasting. So what does this tell us? It tells us that of course that Jesus will be born and come from Bethlehem. Many scholars and commentators point out that that Jesus was born in this location. You see the Tower of the Flock is a very significant location and had a very significant, a significant meaning to those who are using sheep for temple sacrifices. It was a watchtower that would watch over the sheep for protection, not just regular sheep. These were the sheep that were to be used and cared for and raised up for temple sacrifices. These sheep that were watched over the Tower of Midgal or the Tower of the Flock were designed for shepherds to watch over these sheep in order that they wouldn't be damaged or harmed or diseased in order to be used as a sacrifice. Sound familiar? These lambs that were born in this Tower of the Flock were under the watchful eye of the shepherds who would often inspect them and certify them for the sacrifices used in the temple or designate them to be used or released for common use. So these sheep would be born in this Tower of the Flock and the shepherds would grab them and they would inspect them and they would wrap them in swaddling cloths to protect them from diseases, from broken bones, or from any type of blemish or spot because they were to be used for temple sacrifices. They would be, these new lambs would be wrapped in special swaddling cloths once they were certified again to ensure their safety from harm, diseases, or anything else that may bring a spot or blemish upon them. Remember with me in 1 Peter chapter one, verse 19, that Peter references Jesus as the lamb without spot and without blemish. The shepherds, so you're telling me that the shepherds knew what this meant? Of course they did. In Luke chapter two, verse 12, when the angel announces to the shepherd, and this will be a sign to you that you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. The shepherds knew right away what that meant. In John chapter one, verse 14, it says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. So we see the promise of Genesis chapter 315 unfolding right before our eyes. We see the plan of a coming Messiah with a prophecy over 700 years prior. Then we see the birth of Jesus, and then we see the life of Jesus, and then here comes friends, the true meaning of Christmas. The reason why we celebrate Jesus, why we celebrate the giving and receiving of gifts, because Jesus went to the cross and died for you and I. He went to the cross and provided the ultimate sacrifice that we may have a relationship with God. But what's so amazing about this is that even back then, the shepherds knew when they seen Jesus lying in a manger wrapped with swaddling clothes that this was gonna be the Messiah that would take away the sin of the world. Amen. Is that our sins would be forgiven? You know what's amazing, you guys? As I'm looking around and I see pretty much perfect people here. I think I heard Carlos laughing. I don't know him in Lonnie. There are sins that God has forgiven me for that only God knows about and I thank God for that. There are sins that I have done in my life that are so ratchet, that would bring shame to people if they knew. There are sins that God only knows that He has forgiven us for. And this is what the true meaning of Christmas is all about, that our sins would be forgiven and that were made washed and were made brand new. And that the promise is given back all the way from the book of Genesis is now being fulfilled because Jesus loves you. In John chapter 19 verse 30 says it is finished, paid in full. Jesus, having paid the price for the sin of all who would ever believe in Him, the ultimate victory was His. He had crushed the head of Satan, removing forever His rule over man. The rule of sin and now offers eternal life for all of us here. Isn't that an amazing gift for all of us? But you know what's the interesting thing here? God has always had a plan of salvation in mind. It wasn't, I gotta go back to the drawing board. It wasn't, oh, I need to make some tweaks and changes here. God always had a plan. But why is that? Because He has always had you on His mind. You are always on His mind. He loves you with the love that is eternal. A love that is hard for us to wrap our finite minds around. A love that He says that when you pick up the grains of sand in the beach, that all those numbers of sand, granules that come through the hand, He has more thoughts of you towards all those grains. He loves you. And even before the world was made, Jesus loved you and has chosen you to be holy and without fault in His eyes. This is what I love, what Ephesians chapter one, verse four tells us. It says, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, He chose you, that we should be holy without blame before Him in love. Before the foundation of the world, He chose you, Albert. Andrew, He chose you. Rick, He chose you. Maggie, He chose you. He chose all of us.  Isn't that an amazing gift that we can have that? Not only celebrate for Christmas, but that we celebrate every day. See, when Jesus died for our sins and He resurrected from the dead, He crushed the head of Satan, defeated sin and now offers a relationship with God and offers us eternal life. So what is the true meaning of Christmas? It's Jesus' love for you and me. We know that John 3.16 and 17 says, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish. But what? Have everlasting life. For God did not come into the world, God did not send His Son to come into the world to condemn the world, but that through Him, we might be saved. You see, the real Christmas story is the story of God becoming a human being in the person of Jesus Christ. Why did He do such a thing? Why does God love us so much? Why was Christmas necessary? Because we needed a Savior. And this evening, we have the free gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ. He loves you. He loves me. I mean that, I don't know if you guys ever felt unlovable. I don't know how my wife puts up with me. Why are you guys laughing?  And there are times where I'm unlovable. There's times where I'm thinking, oh man, am I really a Christian? I mean, but you know, regardless, what's so amazing about God's love is that there are no conditions attached to it. I can have a bald head and God still loves me. I can have a lot of hair and God still loves me. Isn't it amazing that our, that God's love for us is not conditional? When we wake up and we don't look the best, God still loves us. When we're going through the most difficult times in our lives and sometimes we feel alone or we feel that nobody understands or we feel that we're in the valley of the shadow of death, God still loves us. In those difficult times when tomorrow doesn't look, doesn't look good, God still loves us. Why does he love us so much? Because God is love. First John 4, 7 and 8 says, be lovable. Let us love for one another for love is of God. And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. So why do we celebrate Christmas each year? Because out of the gratitude for what Jesus has done for you and I on the cross, the true meaning of Christmas is love.  Have you guys ever got a tape measure out?  Get a tape measure and pull it out and count each inch as 1,000 years. Some tape measures are 35 feet long, right? 25 feet long, 10 feet long. And you measure seven inches, 7,000 years or 700 years. You can put a value to any of the inch that you want. And we can unload that whole tape measure and still haven't come close to what eternity looks like. Still haven't been close to the promises of eternal life that Jesus Christ has for us. He gave his only son to take our punishment for our sins on the Christ. He paid the price in full for you and I. Isn't it amazing that Jesus was wrapped in swaddling cloths as a baby because ultimately, he was gonna be our sacrifice for eternal life. But God demonstrated his love for us in this that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. May I close with a story? Some of you who come to the men's ministry Tuesday morning study may have heard this story. But I think this story really wraps up the love that Jesus Christ has for all of us. And I'll make it brief. There was a man who and a son who spent time looking at pieces of art. And they had a room in their house that had these rare pieces of art that they would look at every day and the son would say, I love this piece of art because of and the father would say, but I love this piece of art because of and they would share time together talking about these rare pieces of art. I mean, it was Van Gogh and it was Picasso and Michelangelo and they were these rare pieces of art that they designated one room for. And every day they would go and they would share how they love these pieces of art. Well, one day the father and the son eventually separated. See, the son was one off to war. And during that time, the father would still go into that room and he would look at those pieces of art and he'd say, my son loved this piece because of this and he'd love this piece because of that. And it brought good memories to him. Often he would shed a tear. Often he would think of how much he missed his son and how much he loved him. Well, one day the father gets that dreaded knock on the door and as somebody from the war department informing him that his child, his only son had now been killed in action and the father was devastated. No longer would he go into that room and look at these pieces of art because it just broke his heart too much. It was too much for him to bear. And one day there was a knock on the door and so he goes and opens the door and there's a young man dressed in a military uniform and he said, sir, you don't know who I am, but I want you to know that I am here because of your son. I am here because your son gave his life for mine. You see, there was a situation that our troop got involved with and there was a hang grenade that went off and it was your son who laid across the grenade that kept all of us alive. And this young man in uniform was holding a picture and he said, I understand that you and your son liked art and so I wanted to give this to you and so he gives him this art and the father looks at it and it's a painting of his son. It's a portrait and immediately streams of tears begin to flow from the father's face from his eyes. And it's obviously an amateur painting. He looks at this painting and he sees the contours of his son's face, the shape of his eyes, his cheeks and it really captured the essence of his son. And the father got that picture, obviously an amateur painting and he held it close to his heart. He goes inside that room where him and his father, him and his son used to go and he puts that picture right in the middle of their room and he would just stare at it. Well, one day the father dies and now they're gonna have an estate sale with all these paintings that were rare. So all these connoisseurs from all over the world, they come and they wanna place the bids on these pieces of art. And everybody was excited because again, all these paintings were there and people started coming in and the auctioneer comes up and he says the first order of business and what he does is he presents this picture of the son before these art connoisseurs and said first order of business and there's a chuckle throughout the crowd because obviously it's an amateur painting. But as the auctioneer begins to say $20 going once and the people are starting to get restless they're like, come on, let's get to the real stuff. Well, will somebody just buy this junk so we can get to the real stuff? And in the back of the room, an old man says $20. The auctioneer says $20 going once, $20 going twice, sold to the man in the back. Hits the gavel, this old man fraily walks up to the front and he takes the picture and he looks at it, holds it to his chest, sheds a tear and begins to walk out. The auctioneer gets back up there and says we have concluded our estate sale, slams the gavel down and everybody's in up in arms. They're gonna start a riot. What do you mean it's all done? We just got here and here's what the auctioneer says and this is the study in one sentence. You know what the auctioneer says? Come back tomorrow and I'll tell you guys, okay? The auctioneer says whoever has the son gets everything. Whoever has Jesus Christ has everything.


I should preface what I'm going to say by clarifying that Judaism does not seek converts. We don't encourage people to convert. We don't seek converts. And it's for a very simple reason. There is no pressing need for anyone in the world to become a Jew. And the reason is because you don't have to be a Jew in order to have a relationship with God. You do not have to be a Jew in order to have a relationship with God. In the Bible's first book, in the book of Genesis, there are many people long before the Torah was revealed and long before there was a Judaism who knew God, who walked with God, and who lived righteous lives. And so we see from that very first book of the Bible that you do not have to be a Jew practicing Judaism in order to have a relationship with God. Another place we see this very clearly in the scriptures in the Bible is in the famous book of Ruth, the story of Ruth.  And the two sons marry Moab by woman. One's name is Orpah and one's name is Ruth. And the two sons ultimately die, as well as Elimelech, Naomi's husband. Naomi plans to go back to her homeland to the land of Israel, and her two daughter-in-laws tell her that they want to accompany her and go back to Israel with her. So Naomi tells Orpah and Ruth, Why? Why do you want to come back to live in Israel with me? Stay here in Moab. Stay among your own people. There's no need for you to come and live with me in Israel. And she encourages them in the story. If you follow a narrative three times, she urges them, No, you don't need to come to Israel and be with me. You can stay with your own people. Live here in Moab. Orpah decides to remain in Moab, so she stays behind. But Ruth insists. Ruth says, No, I want to go with you. She ultimately says that your God will be my God and your people will be my people. And so Ruth decides that she wants to join the Jewish people and she ends up converting. But you see from the story that it wasn't absolutely necessary for them to convert, because if it was, then Naomi would have told her daughters-in-law, Yes, it's important. Come back to Israel with me. You have no life here in Moab. So that's an important starting point for tonight. Now I should say as well that different movements among the Jewish people today have different ways that they look at the process of conversion. And for tonight's talk, we'll be examining only the issue of conversion as seen through the lens of traditional Orthodox Judaism. I'm not going to be covering all the branches within the Jewish people. The convert to Judaism basically goes through the exact same process as the original Jewish people who came out of Egypt. When our people came out of Egypt, there was no Torah they had initially. There was no Judaism. And so what happened to the original Jews was that they in effect converted to Judaism. All the original Jews converted to Judaism in effect. They became converts at Mount Sinai. When God offered the Torah to the people of Israel, they had a choice to make. And their choice was either to accept the Torah or not accept the Torah. And so when those former slaves who came out of Egypt responded to God's offer by saying, Naase, we will do. We accept upon ourselves the obligation of living according to the Torah. At that point, essentially they became converts. That's what it means to convert to Judaism. Conversion to Judaism is essentially an acceptance upon oneself of the obligation to live according to the dictates of the Torah. A person cannot convert themselves to Judaism.  Conversion to Judaism is not a unilateral decision that someone's makes. A person might decide that they want to join the Jewish people and become a Jew, but the Jewish people have to accept them as a convert. It's a process that goes both ways. The candidate seeks to become a convert, but the community has to accept that person. Conversion takes place as a formal legal process, much in the same way that anyone that seeks to become a naturalized citizen of a country cannot do it by reading books about Canada and eating poutine. That's not how a person becomes a Canadian and they can even wear a Canadian flag on their backpack. They can do all the things that Canadians do. They can root for the maple leaves. But becoming a citizen of Canada or any other country requires that the person go through a formal legal process, which is invariably a citizenship judge or at a citizenship court. I went through that process myself when I came here from the United States and became a Canadian citizen. It was a formal legal process. In the same way, conversion to Judaism is handled by a Bate Dean, which is a rabbinical court of three members, invariably rabbis, but not necessarily. It's very important to understand that the Bate Dean, the rabbinical court, does not do a potential candidate for conversion any favors by converting them without properly vetting them. And unfortunately this happens far too often that a person expresses their desire to convert and the Bate Dean does not properly vet them. And then after a year or so, the person falls off the wagon, so to speak, and they don't follow through on their commitments to observe the laws of the Torah. Now the reason the Bate Dean is not doing them any favors is that prior to their conversion they were not Jewish and they had no obligations to follow the laws of the Torah that were specifically given to Jewish people, such as observing the Sabbath and the Jewish holidays and the Jewish dietary laws and many, many other laws. They were under no such obligation. So at the end of their days where they were to meet their maker, the Almighty would not say to this person, why didn't you abstain from having shrimp? For a person that's not Jewish there's no reason why they shouldn't eat shrimp. They're not going to be asked why you didn't observe the Sabbath because people who aren't Jewish are not obligated to observe the Sabbath. So a Bate Dean that converts someone prematurely or without carefully screening them and the person does not follow through on their ostensible commitment to observe the Torah, they will be spiritually responsible for all of those laws they're not following. They're much better off living as a righteous Gentile than as a sinning Jew. It's an important thing to remember. Not only is the Bate Dean responsible to the potential convert, the Bate Dean is responsible to the Jewish community. It's not healthy to bring in members, new members to the Jewish community who are going to be contributing negatively in a spiritual way. It doesn't help the health of the Jewish community to have more and more people who are not observing Judaism. And so there's a responsibility to the Jewish community as well. In addition, the Bate Dean is charged with ensuring that the candidates for conversion are sincere. Unfortunately, there are many people, and we know this from experience, for example Christian missionaries who have sought to infiltrate the Jewish community, convert to Judaism so that they may in their own words for example say, well now I'm a Jew for Jesus, or they may seek to be able to move to Israel. And as a Jew, they become automatic citizens and the state sponsors their citizenship. So there might be many reasons why people could have insincere reasons for seeking to convert to Judaism. And so the Bate Dean has a responsibility to screen people both at a responsibility to the potential candidate and to the Jewish community. Now how does the Bate Dean test for the sincerity and the commitment of a person to observe the Torah? So the Bate Dean basically does it by requiring that the candidate go through a period of study and of trying on the Torah itself, both studying the Torah and trying it on. It's important for the candidate to study the Torah because they have to know what they're getting into. They have to know what they're committing themselves to.  So we want the person that's converting to basically know more or less exactly what they're committing to. And then we want them to begin observing the Torah, to actually begin observing the Torah so that the Bate Dean is able to test both their knowledge and their sincerity. And the Bate Dean itself is not able to personally supervise every candidate. For example, in most Jewish communities the Bate Dean is not a full-time job that the rabbis have. They're generally speaking senior rabbis in the community who are extremely busy and it's very difficult to get them even together, to get three of people together for a meeting. So what happens is in order to be able to properly supervise and vet the process, the Bate Dean in almost all communities requires that the candidate secure a sponsoring rabbi that will oversee their progress. In addition, many communities recommend that the candidate for conversion secure a tutor that can study with them. It's probably not going to be an absolute requirement because a tutor will generally speaking charge money, but it's often recommended. And at some point during this process which takes approximately two years and it can take longer if the Bate Dean sees the person is not progressing adequately, but a process will normally take about two years, the Bate Dean will require at some point that the person relocate to within walking distance of a synagogue if they are not living in proximity to a synagogue when they begin the process. Now it's important to understand why that is a requirement. Why is it so important that the person live within walking distance to a synagogue? First of all, Judaism requires being part of a community. We don't live as Jews in isolation. You can't just again pick up a book in Nunavit if you're living there and read all about Judaism and begin trying to practice Judaism and think that you can convert. Judaism requires that we become part of a community. As Ruth said, your people are going to be my people. And so the convert is literally marrying into a family. They're joining a family. And so in order to do that for real, it means being with the community. Number two, much of Judaism and much of Jewish practice, it revolves around synagogue. Synagogues are critical both for prayer and for study. And so it's important for the potential convert to have access to a synagogue and to be part of synagogue life. Number three, we learn much about Judaism by practicing it rather than reading about it. For example, a person will learn much more about how to observe Shabbat by being with families that observe Shabbat than by reading articles and books about Sabbath observance. So when a person that is in the process of conversion moves into a Jewish community and becomes attached to a synagogue and gets to know the people of the synagogue and develops relationships with the people in the synagogue, that candidate for conversion will be invited to the homes of the members of that synagogue. They'll be invited to come for Shabbat meals, for holiday meals. And it's at those encounters, those meetings, those experiences where the person that's trying to learn about Judaism really learns about it. And finally, when the person is living in the community, going to classes, developing relationships with rabbis, getting to know members of the community, getting to spend more time with their sponsoring rabbi, the sponsoring rabbi has the ability to properly gauge how they're doing, how they're progressing. Unless the person is living within the community, it's really impossible for anyone to know whether or not they are learning and they're growing. In most procedures, this whole process, which again I said takes about two years, the bait-in will have an initial meeting to first approve the person's candidacy. Not every single person that desires to go through the process of conversion will be accepted. If the rabbis initially feel that someone is mentally unstable or whatever other reasons that present at the initial meeting, the rabbis at that very beginning of the process may not accept 100% of seekers as a candidate. Most people will be accepted if they appear to be somewhat normal and sincere. During the two-year process, again I'm saying two years approximately, the bait-in will often meet with the candidate several times just to monitor their progress. And then at the end of the process, when the candidate feels they are ready and their tutor and or sponsoring rabbi feels that they're ready, they'll conclude the process. In some communities like here in Toronto, the bait-in requires the candidate take an extensive exam, an extensive written exam. Here the exam is quite long. It can take about 12 hours. And it's done. It's a tool to help gauge how much the candidate has actually progressed. If everything goes well, they will organize a final meeting. Where at the final meeting, the following takes place. If the candidate is a male and if the candidate had been surgically circumcised as a child, which many North American boys are, so then at the very last meeting, the bait-in will have what is called a hatafat-dam-brit. They will take a symbolic drop of blood for the circumcision. And that's done immediately prior to the immersion in a pool of water called a mikvah. And when the person emerges from that body of water from that ritual bath, they are a Jew. Obviously in the case of a woman candidate, they just go straight to the mikvah. In the case where the male was never circumcised ever as a child, so that is a more difficult process obviously for an adult. And that will take place before the final meeting where they will immerse in a mikvah. Most bait-deans have an administrative fee for this entire process, which ranges approximately between $600 and $1,800 for the whole process depending upon the city. And I'll just share one final thought, and this is a question that I often receive from people. They ask the question, why do the rabbis make it so difficult to convert? And the answer I believe is very simple. The rabbis don't make it so difficult to convert. The rabbis do not expect anything of a potential convert that other Jews are expected to do. The potential convert is not asked to perform any mitzvoth to observe any commandments that other Jews are not observing or committed to. So again, the process of conversion is simply a person who decides and seeks to accept upon themselves the observance of the Torah. That is the central definition of conversion. The rabbis, the bait-in, the community is tasked with gauging whether the person is sincere and they feel to the best of their estimation the person will follow through on their commitments. And that's why the process essentially involves a period of study and of practice to the point where the bait-in is able to feel confident that the person will follow through on their commitment to observe the Torah.


Nice move. So again, all one motion, again, boom. So you're going to see that he can't really stop it. You know, we used to, we used to, we saw this move last year. Remember the world champion that wrestled Kyle Snyder last year, BD. Right? Yeah. Right? Well, he did this in the semis. I've never seen this and I saw him do this in the semis. It was just a little simple little trick, you know. There's a lot of guys that do this, they hit, he sprawls and they block off that same side. Yeah, there. Okay? But this one's a little bit easier. Actually, go ahead.   So I'm hitting here, I got a post. Don't drop to your elbow here. If he sprawls and I got a post and then run through him. Run through him. Look how he's running through. We're still running through the guy. Go again. It's good, man. Good. You're going to like this. Okay? This is a good move. You guys stop it. Come on. You're hitting it. Hey, when you do it, you're going to feel that sprawl, post that hand. Don't go down the mat. Go hard. You owe me dollars for that one. Film this one.