Archive for September, 2007

Google penalty from selling links?

Friday, September 28th, 2007

Just read a great blog post by Jim Boykin about how selling links won’t get you a Google penalty. Jim is an expert on link building and so I like to follow his blog, a much better use of my time than reading the crap that appears in the SEO forums.

Get a listing ranked in Google - in less than 15 minutes

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

I know that many people who read this will think that this is impossible, but I was telling Dan (fellow Stomper/30 Day Challenge/Immediate Edge/fellow ex-pat Brit in Barcelona) recently that I got a page to rank in Google in 15 minutes using the techniques used in the 30 Day Challenge and Immediate Edge.

He was stunned, but luckily he believes me. Anyway, I decided to write an article for one of my websites tonight. I published it less than 25 minutes ago, but when I checked 14 minutes after publishing on Wordpress doing all the Web 2.0 SEO stuff it was ranking at #1 already. OK, so it isn’t a competitive phrase, but how long does it take you to rank?

Let me tell you this; Immediate Edge works; 30 DayChallenge works; Ed Dale and Dan Raine are SEO Gods.

First impressions of Immediate Edge

Monday, September 24th, 2007

I signed up for The Immediate Edge at the beginning of September and have been going through the huge amount of info on the site from Dan Raine and Ed Dale, which is really good and solid, but they have really outdone themselves with the release of The Edge Networker this weekend.

I still have a lot of catching up to do, but there are plenty of good examples that can be used immediately if you already have an online business and if you don’t… follow The Maximum Edge to get yourself up to speed.

Great stuff, just keep it coming.

Back again

Monday, September 24th, 2007

OK, I’m back again after a trip down to Vejer de la Frontera in the south of Spain. The occasion? My brother’s wedding and the bastard asked me to be best man!

Now I’m not really one for weddings, but the whole family had a great time, with my sister and her other half coming over from Australia and various other family, friends and hangers on congregating on Vejer.

We flew down on Clickair and back on Vueling - both were great to fly on and the security that I complained about at Gatwick is done much better in both Barcelona and Jerez airports.  Now back to wark…

Enjoy your trip

Monday, September 17th, 2007

I meant to say something about this when I got back from London last Sunday, but didn’t get around to it for some reason. What I wanted to say is that you should really avoid flying out of the UK if you can possibly avoid it because the additional security in place makes it a nightmare.

It took me 40 minutes to clear security, giving me just 10 minutes to reach my gate before it closed. Think about this; you arrive at the airport 2 hours before your flight because that’s when check-in opens. You queue for 30 minutes to check in and the queue for security for another 40 minutes. This is absurd! Come on BAA hire some more staff, I know that it is the Government that insists on additional security but why make people’s journey’s a complete misery?

A bit undercooked

Sunday, September 16th, 2007

Now you may have started to realise and may have not, but I do like eating. To celebrate my birthday yesterday I took Miriam out for dinner at Sikkim, a place we tried three years ago and found the mix of cuisine which supposedly follows the route of Marco Polo to suit us perfectly.

Last night we booked, but on Friday and Saturday they have an odd system where they have two sittings, the first from 8.30 to 11 and then second from 11.15 to 1. I prefer to eat at around 10 when going out, so this didn’t really fit in with my plans for the evening, but we accepted the first sitting and arrived at about 9. (more…)

SEO and beer at Belly

Friday, September 14th, 2007

Last night I finally met Dan, one of the original members of my StomperNet SIMPLE team who also lives in Barcelona.

We should have met before, but I was hyper busy before the summer and cancelled a couple of times, so was glad to finally meet at Belly for the monthly Barcelona entrepeneur’s group networking meetup. Over a few beers we had a good chat about SEO and internet marketing, including StomperNet SIMPLE, the 30 Day Challenge and Immediate Edge. It’s always good to find someone who speaks the same language as you (I don’t mean English, I mean SEO) so I hope we can meet up a bit more often than once every 4 or 5 months.

Chicken curry anyone? :-)

My favourite food

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

One thing I always make sure I do when I visit the UK is go out for a curry. It’s simply the best food ever invented and I could eat it at least 5 days of the week. Leftovers are always great for breakfast and the aroma of the spices cooking is unbeatable.

So yes, I did have a chicken curry on Saturday night, and yes, I did enjoy it. There are a few curry houses in Barcelona, but on the whole they’re not up to the standard of the UK - enjoyable enough though and I would recommend Cardomon in Barcelona; it’s nothing like in Britain, but the curries are good and they use plenty of chili to hot things up, one thing that is often absent in curries over here.

The most reliable option is to cook them myself, which I do often. Maybe I’ll share one of my chicken curry recipes with you sometime soon :-)

StomperNet SIMPLE vs The 30 Day Challenge

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

Back from London and I’ve had a bit of a chance to recover by diving into the 30 Day Challenge like mad. I’m now going through day 27, so made some progress over the last few days. In fact there aren’t too many action points, most of it is listening/watching the podcasts/videos and so it has been relatively easy to steam ahead. (more…)

I’m back!

Thursday, September 6th, 2007

Back from my hols on Monday night and packed again and off to the UK tomorrow until Sunday. Damn, I’ll miss the Italian Grandpix!

I got to day 3 of the 30 day challenge in August as I couldn’t get all the info, but have been at it for the last 3 days and have completed day 10 now. I’ve also joined Immediate Edge to see how it compares with StomperNet SIMPLE. Although there was some August action promised it hasn’t materialized yet, but there are a few videos to watch. I’ll catch up with that next week.

Other than that, my main business is booming at the moment, so all that hard work earlier this year has paid off. No time to put my feet up though as I’ve got a ton of stuff I want to do.