500 YEARS BEFORE BIRTH OF JESUS. A prophet named Zechariah said a king of peace would one day ride a donkey into Jerusalem. (Casual English Bible map for Zechariah 9)
I DEPEND ON GOOGLE. I depend on this company when I want to:
- find something
- learn something
- share something (such as pointing readers to our Casual English Bible and our unique 3D-style Bible maps).
I’m disappointed.
- Ad-sponsored sites get in my way.
- And unless I buy an ad, Google won’t rank my site high because I don’t have a lot of prestigious “backlinks.”
Backlinks?
I didn’t know what backlinks were a year ago. I’ve had my head buried in the Bible, trying to paraphrase it all into easy-reading English, and illustrate it with maps like the one at the top of this feature.
A good backlink is a relevant website that links to your website, to direct their readers to your resources.
A bad backlink for me, for example, would be from a Mongolian camel saddle soap company. Google would blame me for that, without even checking my fingernails for saddle soap. We might have been #50 on the list from your search for “bible maps.” But after their bots discover Mongolian saddle soap in our backlinks, suddenly we could be #75 or vapor.
Giddy up go.
A few months ago, I would never have guessed that I would have to stop work on the Bible long enough to go on a hunt for backlinks, like some kind of preacher tracking down church members for their annual pledges.
What fun.
Stop paraphrasing, start SEO
So, I stopped working on the Bible to focus on finding backlinks and to jump through other Google-required hoops described as “search engine optimization” (SEO).
It’s a bunch of stuff you’ve got to do to convince Google your site is worth the bother to include in their search results.
You have to write the perfect keyword to describe your page, along with the perfect meta description in a sentence or two.
To get the perfect keyword, you have to buy keyword software. Really, you do.
And to get backlinks, you have to hire a search engine optimization (SEO) specialist to help you go hunting and politely pleading.
I have trouble with that. It takes determination to be polite.
One Canadian-based Bible website was considering linking to the Casual English Bible. I had a kind back and forth with the retired farmer who ran it. He said he has turned down a lot of famous authors, but he’d be happy to give me a link if I dropped my “donate” buttons from the website.
I told him that I wished him well. But I was thinking, “Give me a yes or a no, and mind your own buttons.”
He told me to get in touch if I ever delete those buttons.
There’s no point in that. We’d both be dead by then. 
Donations are important to our site. They help defray some of the monthly cost of the site. Software, servers, and plug-ins mount up. The site is pretty doggone complex, and it’s expensive to maintain. I don’t get a family and friends discount from the website developer, though he does smile sometimes on Zoom. I have a couple of gracious proofing editors. And I do get a break from the copyright lawyer, though I haven’t yet seen his bill for the update to the trademark registration.
You get the point. I get the bills.
This site won’t be a moneymaker. Uncle Charles was right. Writers don’t make money until they’re dead. If ever.
Sale of the maps help some. But I need them to help more. And I want more people to get a chance to check out the Casual English Bible. That’s the point of all this.
So, I now have to balance my time between paraphrasing the Bible and accommodating Google so they’ll let the website show up in searches for “galilee map.”
I have two requests
Backlinks welcome. If you have a relevant website read by people who might enjoy the Casual English Bible and our maps, would you consider linking to our homepage or to our map search engine? Don’t link to the picture of me on the About page. That won’t help anyone.
SEO volunteers welcome. If you are an SEO guru or an online marketing specialist who, for a time, can volunteer to carry some of this load for me so I can get back to paraphrasing and making the maps, let me know. I certainly need the help. I’ve got Ecclesiastes to paraphrase, for heaven’s sake.
Zechariah – Casual English Bible is live and mapped
I finished paraphrasing Zechariah last week and posted the collection of 30 maps. Zechariah is the prophet who, 500 years before the birth of Jesus, wrote about a king of peace who would one day ride into Jerusalem on a donkey:
“Celebrate, Mount Zion.
Sing and shout, Jerusalem.
Look, here comes your king,
The good savior.
Humbly riding a colt,
The young foal of a donkey…
He’ll order nations to live in peace,
And he’ll see to it that they do—
From sea to sea
And from the Great Euphrates River
To faraway ends of the earth.”Zechariah 9:9-10
Peace to you.
Review of Zechariah Bible Maps
What you get in the Zechariah Bible Maps:
- $5 PDF immediate download
- Atlas of 30 high resolution maps about Zechariah
- Size: 7 MB (mobile); 33 MB (higher definition)
- 37 PDF pages of resources
New update of the complete collection of Casual English Bible Maps
Every map we’ve ever made
Available today, if the web developer called it right.
Developers are generally over optimistic, much like engineers are crazy.
Not in a bad way. Necessarily. It’s just required in order to excel.
There are two files:
One optimized for mobile devices and a higher resolution version, too.
- Size: 1 GB (hi res) 110 MB (low res optimized for mobile)
- Length: over 840 pages
- Maps: over 800 Bible maps, many in 3-D style
- Updates: Free, as the project continues
Disclaimer: We’re wrapping up a new delivery protocol for these maps. This edition of the complete Bible Maps is dated 3.9.2023. If you purchase this product before our development team finishes setting up the protocol, don’t worry. Though you’ll get the earlier edition, you’ll also get a notice of this new update as soon as we load it into the system, hopefully today. But probably tomorrow or the next. All updates are free and you can download the files anytime you like and as often as you need them.
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