You see, I’ve been so busy over the last 6 months that I have left myself no time to work on my own websites. No fresh content and few new incoming links has meant I’ve slipped a few places for various key phrases on Google. At this point in time, it’s a blessing in disguise - between the house move and several high-value contracts on the table I’m not in a great position to take any more on. However, if I wasn’t so busy I’d have cause for concern and this is something I’m now setting aside time to work on each week. Slipping from page 1 to page 2 for the phrase “web design” on Google.com led to a 70% reduction in traffic coming from Google.com for that phrase.

The lesson to be learnt here is that SEO is ongoing, and that resting on your laurels once you’ve achieved your target is a policy that will cause you problems in the medium to long-term.

In 5 days I leave London for the relative calm of South Wales, so my time is consumed by box-packing and wrapping up those websites I’ve got left over from the past few weeks. At perhaps the worst possible time, I decided to revamp my MB Web Design website and this one concurrently. The latest Wordpress release has largely fuelled this change, it really is fantastic by the way.

I’m starting a web design blog via MB Web Design and letting this one be my personal venting place.  A side effect of being linked to from my business site is that this blog got a pretty large pagerank very quickly, and resultantly has been a big attraction for commenters. Sifting through the hundreds of comments to moderate is rather a drain on my time, so I’m going to relax the emphasis on this site for the time being. (And also plug the Pagerank leak from the business site*)

* For the smart arses: Pagerank doesn’t mean anything, blah blah blah. Tell that to the 440 commenters in the last week or so.

My fiancee finished her final exam yesterday, with fingers crossed I say that in a month or so she will officially be a doctor. When business success goes to my head she will always be there to remind me that I just sit at a desk all day, and that no matter how much money I make, my job doesn’t save lives. (There is a rant about people not appreciating the hard work of doctors, but that can wait for another day.)

I’ll check back in a couple of days to report on the move.

So it looks like there is yet another tube strike on the cards. (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7354470.stm) All of life’s ills can be resolved by striking, according to Bob’s blinkered logic. “The RMT executive was left with no choice but to set strike dates” apparently.

Just you wait until the Olympic games are here - he’ll hold the city’s transport to ransom in exchange for a 500% pay rise, citing some tenuous grievance barely worth mentioning. He may be trying to drum up sympathy for his hard done by workforce, but this is hard for the average person to do when tube drivers earn £30k for doing pretty much fuck all, let’s be honest. What he’s actually doing is making himself the most hated man in London.

Yesterday marked the 10th time I’ve seen WWE wrestling live. Pro wrestling is my guilty pleasure, though at least I’m not convinced it’s real unlike the moron sat behind me last night. Also, I noted a surprising amount of suited-and-booted Wharfers enjoying the show sans children.

In case you’re wondering, which you probably aren’t, these are the shows I’ve seen. Note that there is no Wrestlemania on this list. One day…

29 September 1992 - NEC, Birmingham (house show)
5 December 1993 - Cardiff International Arena (house show)
27 November 1996 - London Arena (house show)
6 December 1998 - London Arena (Capital Carnage pay-per-view)
8 October 2004 - Wembley Arena (Raw house show)
11 October 2004 - Manchester Evening News Arena (Raw taping)
25 April 2005 - NEC, Birmingham (Raw taping)
21 April 2006 - Wembley Arena (Raw taping)
22 April 2006 - Wembley Arena (Smackdown taping)
14 April 2008 - O2 Arena, London (Raw taping)

Up yours everyone who wants to rain on our (well-deserved, hard-earned) parade.

“It’s only Wales”
- Jean-Baptiste Ellisalde

“Looks like it’ll come down to an England, Ireland Championship decider”
- Austin Healey

“So, Andy, can Scotland really beat England?”
- John Inverdale

“The sportsdesk team could expect to beat Wales at Twickenham (laughs)”
- Ian Roberston

“It is not a matter of whether England beat Wales - that is a given - but by how much”
- Paul Ackford

“Wales are just the Ospreys, and if England can’t beat a club side at Twickenham it’s a pretty poor show”
- Ian Roberston on Radio 5Live

I seem to still be attracting a disproportionate amount of “I have the next eBay” messages, where someone wants me to design free or on the cheap in exchange for equity in an awful business model.  I have a polite “thanks but no thanks” message that I copy and paste in response to such enquiries, which usually see them off, but I was a little taken aback by one person’s response. It was, in a nutshell, a request to go through their business plan, suggest how to make it foolproof for investment, and then they might consider hiring me once they have the money. Talk about singing for your supper!

The fact is: if the business model was any good, and if the ‘entrepreneur’ was serious about their concept, then they’d be able to find funding for it. And if they can find funding for it, then they can afford to pay me for my services. My mind is not completely closed to the idea of working for shares, but really, some of the ‘offers’ I get verge on the insulting. I remember an intensely patronising one I got from a student a few months ago, which asked me to design the next Betfair purely because “it would look really good for your portfolio”.

Anyway, onto better matters.

I’m about to start designing for a salon marketing consultancy run by Liz Ridley, who has an impressive track record of turning around health and beauty businesses into successful enterprises. She’s now turning her hand to helping other businesses achieve the same success via her marketing consultancy. Where I come in, rather obviously, is in successful Internet marketing and search engine optimisation for their websites and redesigning the sites themselves if they are, shall we say politely, below par. Liz is my kind of person - we discussed the venture over a Tyskie, a welcome step up from my usual client meeting beverage - an overpriced American-chain coffee.

In other news, my Dad came to stay for a couple of days last week. We saw the Tutankhamun exhibition at the O2, which was well worth seeing, although Tutankhamun’s exhibits made up only a fraction of the things there. That doesn’t make them any less interesting, it’s just that if you are an absolute die-hard Tutankhamun freak, then you might be disappointed. In which case Lastminute.com might have some nice deals on flights to Egypt…  The gift shop was hideously expensive but you must remember (a) it’s a gift shop, they always are, (b) the exhibition costs a fortune to host and (c) it’s in London.

I didn’t realise what a great selection of restaurants the O2 has. None are cheap - in fact some are disproportionately expensive - but if you’re ever in London and want to go eat, try the O2 (not on an event day, obviously). We had lunch and sweet-talked the waitress into letting us steal our Peroni pint glasses, which were quite a sight to behold.

Thoroughly enjoying Welsh rugby success. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that.

Next month I’m doing a presentation at the House of Commons! I have submitted a proposal for a new website design for an animal welfare council, who happen to be meeting at the HoC on March 13. Little ol’ me, talking to a selection of VIPs. I don’t feel as nervous as I think I ought to be…

Wales beat England at Twickenham for the first time in TWENTY years today.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

A calmer existance and the appetising prospect of freelancing fulltime from my home office beckons.

I can’t wait.