Asking Your Advice About This Blog

A Wish for Everybody

It’s been one storm after another here on the West Coast. Saturated soil, flooding, emergency evacuations, and almost a dozen deaths from the storms. And I read about similar weather throughout the United States and Canada. One good friend was in an earthquake and another had to evacuate because of a hurricane. 

I wish you and everybody you love safety in this crazy weather. If the present-day threat brings flashbacks, my wish includes that you handle them with gentleness and compassion for the frightened child you once were. 

Spencer’s News

I have been mystified about the lack of hair in the brush every time I brush his long, thick fur. Today, I discovered the reason for this. 

His cat tree is upholstered in a dark carpet material that latches on to loose hair like Velcro. I glanced at the top platform and noticed that it had turned from black to white. So I brushed the cat tree instead of the cat! After about an hour, the wastebasket was filled with fur. Now I can, without guilt, stop feeling I am neglecting him if I don’t brush him every day.

I had lunch with Baker’s previous owner, who told me something very reassuring. (Baker was the Turkish Van mix I adopted before getting Spencer. He got sick just as soon as I adopted him and died of cancer within two months.) She said that Baker was timid for the first few years of his too-short life. If somebody he didn’t know well entered the house, he hid until the intruder was gone. By the time I met him, he was fearless and very social. Hopefully, Spencer is following in his footsteps.

Asking Your Advice About This Blog

When I started the blog, I just wanted a place to publish the short articles I had written for the Survivorship newsletter so that they would be all in one place and unlikely to get lost. 

I then started writing informative articles on various aspects of ritual abuse. There were articles on the background of major Satanic holidays, flashbacks, personal safety, choosing a therapist and evaluating therapy, and DID and defenses. There were guest articles, book reviews, articles about survivors/artists, and some of my poetry and artwork. Not much of anything about my personal life.

Recently, I have been sharing a lot more about myself. At first, I thought I would continue sharing information and just use myself as an example. Gradually, my life today became the focus. Of course, ritual abuse is an ever-present issue for me; it is present in everything I write and everything I do. 

I noticed that I have fewer readers than I used to, fewer new viewers, and fewer return viewers. This is also true for my website, ra-info.org. I thought this was because ra-info hasn’t been updated in a long time and people aren’t reading the blog because they aren’t interested in me. So much of it is about illness and cats, both of which can get tedious.

However, I heard from a friend that neither the website nor the blog appears on the first page of a Google search. They used to be near the top. Google’s algorithm changed, and I didn’t. Guess I need to study SEO (search engine optimization).

(I just checked and found that the sites Google selects are sort of weird. There are a lot of resources in the United Kingdom and lots of material from the 1990s. The top hit is a short article by the Brisbane Rape and Incest Survivors Support Centre in Australia describing ritual abuse and its effects on survivors and giving Australian resources. I wonder what factors made it the first choice when they applied the current algorithm.)

Another friend told me that she thought she had subscribed to the blog, but she didn’t get a copy of new posts or an announcement of any kind. If people who subscribed aren’t getting anything, that surely lowers readership considerably.  

Another friend said that WordPress was too complicated, and so she blogs on SquareSpace, which is becoming popular. Simplicity is very appealing to me. WordPress is so complicated! It drives me nuts three times a month. I write and proof the entry and then spend about 4 – 5 hours just formatting it on WordPress. The draft often vanishes when I am almost ready to publish it, and I have to start over again.  

I’m turning to you all for advice. To make sure subscribers see this request, I’ll send it individually to people I believe have recently subscribed. My questions are –

1. Do you like that I share the struggles of my present life? Would you prefer more information about RA/MC and healing? Do you like the short items about conferences, holidays, my cat, etc.?

2. What do you think of the idea of leaving this WordPress blog up for reference, but starting up anew on SquareSpace?

3. Does anybody know anything about SEO? Would you be willing to coach me? I warn you – I do better if you communicate in regular old English. I’m not fluent in GeekSpeak.

Thank you so much for your feedback. If you tell me what works for you and what falls flat, I can make the posts more helpful to everybody. And if I get some advice on SEO and which platform to use, we can reach more people with less hassle.

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