I sometimes forget that not everyone knows exactly what SEO actually is, so I am producing a bunch of glossary videos to try and explain some of the key terms and concepts of SEO and internet marketing into layman terms. (If you find any waffle in any of these videos – email me at once – I’m doing them unscripted)

Here’s a question I get asked a lot: what is search engine optimisation?

If you’re new to internet marketing, and want a copy of the DVD of my talk on internet marketing and SEO at Manchester Metropolitan University (as well as my top ten tips to instantly increase your online profits), go here: Free SEO DVD

If you’d like to see more videos and want to train yourself up with practical online SEO and internet marketing training. go here: Internet Marketing Training

If you want some seriously good live training, click on this link: Mark Attwood‘s Keyword Hospital

A few weeks ago Google mentioned the fact that the speed at which a site loaded would have an impact on it’s rankings. As usual, SEO world goes into minor meltdown on forums etc., but the reality is just common sense.

In a nutshell, if you have two identical sites in terms of links, relevent content etc., then Google would favour the faster loading one. Why? Simply because it’s all about the user getting to what they need to get to as fast as possible. It’s about Google’s customer experience. Just like it always has been. So, is the loading speed of your site important? Yes, but it should be anyway. No-one wants a site that takes more than a few seconds to load. That’s why many of my sites are “lo-tech”.

Here’s Google’s Matt Cutts making it even simpler to understand:

So, speed is one of 200 other SEO factors. Our job as business owners is to “best guess” the importance of these other factors. And the best guess that works best for the majority of website owners is common sense: keep producing relevent, quality content, a good user experience, and attracting good quality links from other relevent, aged, authority domains. Most of the other noise around SEO is just that: noise.

Funny this one. I started writing a web page on Sunday for a new niche I’m getting into, and I had an experimental SEO idea. Then I excitedly got up to aweber to tell all my subscribers about it, and then bottled it because it suddenly entered my head that I had no guarantee that this would work and even though I just wanted to get everyone involved so you could try the same thing for your own business etc. etc. I thought it would be interesting. But then, one of the kids fell over, the phone rang, the kettle boiled, John Craven said something interesting on the tellybox…you know the score.

So I didn’t send the email. I just conducted the experiment.

Then I forgot about it.

Then, after a number of huge business meetings this week and then a day teaching today, I suddenly remembered what I’d done on Sunday on the apple (I know it’s cool to call it a mac but it’s got a fucking APPLE on the front, not a raincoat) with all the kids climbing all over me wondering why I wasn’t playing Age of Empires* with them instead…

Bottom line: I’ve got a page into no.14 on Google out of 3.5million in a multi-multi-million ££ niche within 72 hours. Because this blog is not always read by people who like me, I’ll tell the rest of you what it is and how I did it at my seminar in 10 days (in the fag break). See ya then :-)

*some of the facts about the way I actually bring my children up have been changed to protect them from the psycopaths, wankers, pervs and craphounds that stalk this site. The rest of you are very welcome.

“The Art of Blogging for Business” seminar was held by me and Ken McCarthy in Manchester on 16th November. These are some of the testimonials we received…

Here’s what master internet marketer and martial arts guru Lloyd Irvin, Jnr. thought to the gig:

Here’s Chris Ruane:

Here’s Darryl Cygler:

Here’s Dave Muskett:

Here’s Frank Camacho

Out of interest, Frank won a place on the seminar in a competition set by Lloyd Irvin. This is the video that won him the place (glad I didn’t upset him on the day :-)…

Here’s CPA Ninja, Greg Davis:

Here’s King David from Las Vegas:

And here’s Mark Quinn…

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