Why it is important to buy both the .co.uk as well as the .com
Posted by David WhitehouseMany people neglect the importance of buying their local domain name as well as the dot com.
As you can see from this example, my colleague Rory is up to no good again! He’s just bought the unitednationsofsound.co.uk and no doubt he’ll be climbing the rankings to get the number one spot over the next few weeks.
I just hope Richard Ashcroft makes him an offer for it…
Update: Apparently they’ve been in touch with Rory and he is passing it over to them
Happy New Year
Posted by David WhitehouseHappy New Year everyone!
What 2009 Meant for Me
Well the year is almost up and I was just wondering what I did with all that time… Then I realised, quite a lot actually!
- I got my arm so that working at a computer in my job is bearable.
- I beat depression.
- I became a true expert in SEO – I really have learned a hell of a lot working at Bronco.
- I published a book and sold just over 60 80 copies.
- I got engaged to a woman with a heart of gold and looks to match.
- I read nearly all of Seth Godin’s books and learned a hell of a lot more!
- I had my first well performing website with over 30,000 uniques in 30 days and built a subscriber base of over 500.
- I helped my m8 Themba start a new online shop selling HID Lights which I am sure will do well
Plans for 2010
- Get married
- Get something fixed: either my knee, neck, jaw or arms!
- Quit playing computer games online
- Save up for a deposit on a house
How a Spammer See’s the SEO Cycle
Posted by David WhitehouseMy colleague Paul has recently done an excellent diagram that communicates how SEO works, so I thought I would adapt his and do one to explain how spammers think SEO works:
Free Is Not the Future
Posted by David WhitehouseSo I did some work for someone earlier this year, all entirely for free. I didn’t know them, but they were local (from Leeds) and I thought I’d offer to do a little bit of work for them in return for perhaps a link and a testimonial – but mainly for the experience.
Anyways, I did a full analysis of their website and made some excellent recommendations on how to get more traffic, and more importantly, targeted traffic. I wrote up a report with all my findings and recommendations, and I am sure if followed it will lead to increased sales. I’ve attached the graph of their visits for November 2009 (I’m not going to mention who this site is, so this will remain anonymous):
God this is an embarassment
Here is my gripe, I regret doing the work for free, big time. They haven’t implemented the findings, they haven’t written me a testimonial and they haven’t given me a link (despite asking twice). It just goes to show how little some people know about SEO and how little value it can be given. The biggest loser of all is of course my client, by now they would be getting significantly more traffic and many of them would be leading to sales – oh well. No more free stuff for anyone (except of course my friends)!
Modern Warfare Ranking Overloads My Site on Day of Release
Posted by David WhitehouseI wasn’t really ready for this, in fact I hadn’t really paid attention to my Modern Warfare Help site.
Today, in case you didn’t know, Modern Warfare 2 was released and it was:
- All over the news
- A hot trend on Google
- Trending on Twitter
Little did I know I was about experience my first visitor overload, which until now my cheap shared hosting account could cope with (largely due to the fact that I get very little visitors, except for SEO Specialist which does ok). So I was checking my email when I noticed around 5 people all subscribing to my Modern Warfare site within a few minutes, at which point I knew I must be getting some decent traffic. I checked analytics, the top term was “Modern Warfare 2 Tips“, so I happily went to Google and typed it in, to find that I was number 1! Nice surprise, huh? So I clicked the link and then saw my site die on its arse, along with all my other websites!!! Despite having the WP Super Cache plugin!
Anyways, I contacted support, and they said it was just the server, they did some adjustments and now all is tickity boo! Although perhaps I need some better hosting? Who knows…
Piano Planet giving SEOs a bad name!
Posted by David WhitehouseCan you believe it? Spam. For Pianos. No, really!
Paul’s just written a post about Piano Planet Spam, it is exactly the type of thing people have been complaining about recently, and it just gives SEO’s like us a bad name.
I don’t consider myself to be a spammer, ocassionally I might lose myself and doing something slightly spammy, but usually I try and keep it above board, on topic and high quality.
What is even worse is that the idiot had the audacity to have a go at Paul (and his bad driving). It seems Paul isn’t the only one being plagued by these spammers, either.
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