Social Media becomes SEO

I usually mull over posts like this for a few days adding and removing pieces, reshuffling etc. This particular post has been in draft since about christmas - The below “Social Media becomes SEO” section was written prior to Google’s announcement this morning (Wed 11th Jan) which has been hailed as “most radical transformation ever” - I’ve left what I’ve written unchanged.

For a little while Google had access to the twitter hose pipe, which meant tweets could be dynamically included in rankings, and used as a ranking metric. I’ve done a lot of testing in the past 12 months with large volumes of tweets and retweets (between 200-400 tweets in each test) and at the time I did the test, there was absolutely no affect on rankings whatsoever. Just a few months prior, when Google still had access to the hose pipe, another popular SEO website asked readers to help with testing retweets for rankings, and found them to be quite effective.

Facebook has had a slim effect on SEO because profiles can’t be indexed, and there is no clear crawl path through profiles.

Also last year Google launched its own new social network, Google Plus. From a user interface point of view Google Plus is highly integrated with other google products, such as Gmail and Search. Google seems to have become frustrated with the failure of google buzz, and not having its own social network, and seems to be throwing absolutely everything into the success of Google Plus.

It stands to reason Google will use the data from its newest product to influence search, as this is a search metric Google has been desperately seeking.

I’m not going to share my own tests at this stage, but suffice to say I’ve been looking very heavily into Google Plus for SEO.

The SEO Puzzle

In the old days it used to be a matter of how many times you listed your keywords on your page, and how many backlinks you had with those keywords. These days SEO seems to be more about ticking a bunch of boxes, and not always how many ticks you put in each box.

Its almost as if the rankings are based on a points system. 10 links might give you 1 point, 100 links might give you 2 points, 1000 links might give you 3 points. But having SEO friendly URL’s might give you a point, having a robots.txt file might give you 1 point, having an RSS feed might give you 1 point, Adding the site to webmaster tools might give you 1 point and having keyword optimised images might give you 1 point. Existing for 1 year might give you1 point, existing for three years might give you 2 points, existing for 10 years might give you 3 points. And etc…

The reason this seo puzzle theory has come about is because I’ve been in numerous industries where I’ve had 10,000 backlinks, and keyword density to be proud of, but I can’t seem to leap-frog a website with 100 links, and very average keyword density. There doesn’t always seem to be rhyme nor reason behind the search results, which leaves me wondering if the SEO puzzle theory has legs.

Back to Basics

Over the past few years the basic SEO techniques seem to have lost power, leaving us SEO’s feeling a little powerless to affect improvements. In the past 6 months or so things seem to have gone “back to basics” and many of the old techniques, done right, are working well. Possibly this is just the result of Google loosening up the time based part of the algorithm to allow more dynamic changes within search.

One possibly explanation could be that instead of working with one algorithm, google has multiple algorithms to serve each portion of the search results. For example there is obvious a natural SERP algorithm, and a PPC algorithm, and now there is probably also a Social algorithm, probably separate Image algorithms and Video algorithms too. Each individual algorithm then becomes less important to the full serps, so they can slacken off a bit.

Roundup from 2011:

Split Testing - yes - still happening

User Voting - has evolved into social search

Synonym Match - not so much, but still a factor

Exact match domain names - agree with my 2011 seo guide

Other TLD’s - 50:50 on this one…

Roundup from 2010:

Time - very important

User Experience - very important

Reverse Page Rank - certainly some data to suppor the idea

Variation - yes, still important

Contant - Yes, as always

Ramp - Yes, still the case.

PR Sculpting - Lost to the pages of history

Incoming seo search terms:

• seo guide 2012
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Not the actual High Speed 2 Train AFAIK.

The new proposed "High Speed 2" UK High Speed Train Network will cost an estimated £89.5 Million per mile of new track - with a total of 335 miles in the completed High Speed 2 rail network. Another way to visualise the cost is as approx £55,000 per meter so a rail link from your front door to the road could cost as much as half a million pounds. Jaw dropping!

Some Vital Statistics:

• Up to 250mph (400km/h)
• 119 Miles of track (Phase 1), 335 Miles total
• London to Birmingham - 2026 (Phase 1)
• Birmingham to Leads & Manchester - 2035 (Phase 2)
• Costs Up to £17.4 Billion Phase 1
• Additional £12.6 Billion for Phase 2
• Capacity of up to 18 trains/hour
• 1100 Passengers capacity on each train
• 30,000 Passengers per day at approx 10% capacity

Travel time savings from High Speed 2 are estimated as follows:

The High Speed 2 Route

The predecessor to High Speed 2 was the High Speed 1 rail network which hits a maximum of 186mph between the channel tunnel and London, in comparison High Speed 2 has a maximum speed for 250mph (likely to be closer to 220mph) and in that respect High Speed 2 stacks up nicely.

The cost of High Speed 2 has been a point of dispute, but the entire cost over the next 24 years is less than 0.05% of the UK’s total GDP, not a significant amount, and arguably the link from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds will increase that GDP by more than 5 hundredths of a percent.

The speed of the High Speed 2 network puts trains in a position to compete with flying between major cities as the fastest method of transport. Including checking in, dropping off luggage, waiting around the boarding lounge, waiting for takeoff, landing, taxiing to the air bridge, collecting your baggage and making your way back onto a decent travel network (ever flown to luton?) the journey by train from Manchester to London is likely to take half as much time as flying.

At this rate tickets will be more expensive than flying, in fact the current "low speed" network generally costs more than flying. The cost of tickets is a major problem with the current rail network, and I look forward to some announcement of High Speed 2 ticket prices. But I don’t hold much hope, and I don’t think its appropriate to postulate about prices of a rail ticket in fifteen years.

In my personal opinion, High Speed 2 is an essential move for the UK, just as Australia has made an essential move into a high speed broadband roll-out which leaves most countries to shame. The fact is if a country doesn’t keep pace with development, the country as a whole will stagnate and suffer.

The cost of the network seems entirely absurd - £556 per centimeter of track… that means it would cost me £23,630 to lay a High Speed 2 rail network from one corner of my laptop screen, to the farther corner… a mere 42.5cm

But who am I to say the logistics of laying a high speed rail network such as the one proposed for High Speed 2 should cost any less - all the infrastructure, the costs of the trains, the costs of buying people off their land, the costs of digging great whopping tunnels through mountains.

At this stage my personal view is - yes, its a good move, even in this economy.

Incoming seo search terms:

• high speed 2
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First time around not everyone will have a good experience. Their taste for SEO will bitter and, understandably, they swear off SEO forever.

SEO can also take one heck of a long time, with noticeable changes being sporadic and unpredictable. I was about to start telling you about a client who, after 4 months, was getting frustrated with a lack of improvements. As luck would have it, a quick rank check showed that all of a sudden rankings have improved drastically across the board.

I guess good news tells the story just as well as bad news, the point being that things can appear to be entirely stagnant, and all of a sudden something will change….

If somebody bails from SEO before the sudden, seemingly random positive results, they may never see those improvements. The reason being, if you stop SEO at any point, there is a generally slow but definite negative trend in rankings and traffic.

In other cases on a relatively new SEO campaign (less than 18 months old) stopping SEO can cause your rankings and traffic to absolutely plummet. This depends somewhat on the SEO techniques employed, but the only difference this will have is the rate of decline. Often the fastest methods for being ranked, are also the methods which fall the hardest if discontinued.

A prime example is that of self proclaimed "SEO Expert" Mark Attwood and the story behind his apparent success (which ended in administration to the tune of over -£1mil) who’s company "TopSkips", a brokerage model business run on 50% SEO traffic, 50% PPC traffic (unprofitably) used to be #1 in the UK for the popular term "Skip Hire" - when I left the company, the rankings of "TopSkips" and associated companies slowly fell. The volume and quality of the SEO on Mark’s companies decreased so drastically that is was no longer sufficient to keep up with the competition and positions were lost, including the #1 for "Skip Hire".

The number of indexed pages on "TopSkips" fell to 10% (from approx 100,000 to about 10,000) within a few months and an absurdly large number of SEO rankings have been lost.

I’ve seen it too often where a company invests in SEO for a short period of time (less than 18 months) and decides (prematurely) not to continue. Instead of continual improvement the initial SEO is lost to the wind within a few months.

Possibly the single biggest key to SEO success is continual improvement, both of a website, and of the backlink profile to the website. If instead of improving you are regressing, this will be reflected in the search rankings, traffic and profitability.

SEO is a long hard road, stick with it and don’t give up.

I was introduced to "walk off the earth" with this video of five people playing one guitar… and it actually sounds good. Its a nice chilled out song, but unfortunately not an original.

The next video I wanted to show you is a cover of Radiohead’s "Karma Police" which features loop pedals and the throwing of guitars, possibly most importantly it features a ukulele… and I’ve just bought a ukulele so I have a little fondness for anything which features a nice use of ukulele. If that isn’t enough to entertain you…. puppets… yes puppets!

The final video is a Walk Off The Earth original track which is right down my alley. Fun, upbeat, bongos…

I’m a little dependent on music in my life, it helps me work, it helps me relax, it helps aid my concentration on long drives… Walk Off The Earth have share a bit of vibe with my all time favourite band, The Cat Empire, and Walk Off The Earth is a treasure I think you need to know about

Check out some of their other videos for other entertaining tricks (such as switching positions on a piano seamlessly.)

Walk Off The Earth…. check them out!

Incoming seo search terms:

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Some of the star choices are the penis chili (aka Peter Pepper) which literally looks like a little johnson, chinese raddish (Daikon) for my chinese business partner since they are apparently hard to get in the UK, and then the variety of chili’s and peppers is also on the more interesting (and hot) side.

I was quite careful about most of the variants I chose, such as the jolant leeks, based on the number of days until harvest and climate tolerances. Things like the Chili’s may need some extra warmth and humidity.

Only the root vegetables, onion family (leeks and shallots included) and fennel will be wrong in garden beds, everything else will be grown in large pots on the patio. I’ve got slow release plant fertilizer on the go, and will supplement with seaweed extract. All in all I hope it will be a nice year for it.

Sweet Banana Pepper

White Habanero Chili

Peter Pepper Chili - Penis chili

Burpless Cucumber

Ambassador Courgette

Trafalgar Brussels Sprouts

Matador Shallots

Jolant Leeks

Cylindra Beetroot

Mixed Variety Carrots

Florence Bulb Fennel

Black Truffle Tomatoes

Purple Cherokee Tomatoes

Di Savona Onions

Scotch Bonnet Chilis

Mangetout Snow Peas

Polestar Runner Beans

Daikon Chinese Raddish

Black Beauty Aubergine (Egg Plant)

Chocolate Beauty Capsicum / Sweet Pepper

Incoming seo search terms:

• runner beans
• chili pepper matador sweet banana
• jolant leeks
• vince samios seeda

Below is a short list of SEO Tools which can, together, provide a somewhat viable alternative to yahoo site explorer.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Frankly I haven’t used Bing Webmaster Tools, but as the official alternative to yahoo site explorer one hopes it would have much, if not all of the same data as yahoo site explorer displayed. The biggest issue with Bing Webmaster Tools is that it is a tool for webmaster only, whereas yahoo site explorer allowed users to view the backlinks and backlink counts for any and all websites.

At this point in time I can’t comment on the usefulness of Bing Webmaster Tools as a yahoo site explorer alternative for webmasters, because I haven’t used it, however as an alternative for competitor analysis it is a completely useless tool.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is only a yahoo site explorer alternative for webmasters, as google webmaster tools has only ever been available to the sites owner. In this respect I think Google Webmaster Tools is more comprehensive than yahoo site explorer ever was.

Majestic SEO

Without paying for an account, the only information you can get for free is the number of total backlinks, referring domains, and C Class IP addresses. I have doubts about the accuracy of Majestic SEO’s data, but in respect to the number of links a website has for competitor analysis (the link count) Majestic SEO is probably the most accurate and consistent alternative to yahoo site explorer.

Google Links Search

If you use the search links:domainname.com in a standard google search, you will get a short list of sites linking to that domain name. The problem is this list is minuscule and doesn’t even reflect 1% of the links Google actually knows about (which we can compare as a webmaster, with the links in webmaster tools). It can be vaguely interesting, and it is only important in this day and age where yahoo site explorer is down and decommissioned, as one of the seo tools we can use to fill in the blanks.

Alexa

Alexa gives you a rather vague "sites linking in" feature which actually gives you a better list of linking sites than you get from the Google Links: search mentioned above. In a world before we needed and alternative to yahoo site explorer the data alexa provided was entirely redundant, but now it is again, another seo tool to help us piece the SEO puzzle together.

Open Site Explorer

Open site explorer is probably the best like for like yahoo site explorer alternative. It allows us to gather details on other sites, as well as our own. I don’t like the data for backlink counts, and in general I find Open Site Explorer a little clumsy to work with, but in an imperfect world we are left with imperfect SEO tools.

Incoming seo search terms:

• backlink yahoo site-explorer
• track competitor backlinks
• Tracking SEO yahoo
• alexa alternatives 2012
• site explorer
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At the front of the flower there is something called the Anther Cap which sits on the top of the column and which contains the pollinia. We can pop it off with a wooden skewer, and it sticks nicely so you won’t lose it.

Then we can gently separate the Anther Cap from the pollinia, which stays nicely stuck on the wooden skewer.

The pollinia needs to be inserted right up into the stigma, it’s a little bit sticky, but sometimes it can be difficult to get the pollinia to release from the skewer.

Once insert the Phalaenopsis Orchid is fertilised and the stem of the flower will begin to swell.

It’s best to pollinate one flower with an-others pollinia, and even better to do so between two different plants. This way you can also grow your own hybrids.

Incoming seo search terms:

• how to pollinate orchid
• phalaenopsis orchid pollination guide
• pollinating orchids

In 1933 Buckminster Fuller designed a car called the “Dymaxion” car which had an astounding fuel efficient (for the time) of 30 miles per gallon, transporting 11 people, and reaching up to 120 miles per hour. On top of that it was very maneuverable could turn in its own length.

Buckminster Fuller is perhaps best known for designing the Geodesic Dome, an extremely strong dome structure constructed from triangles formed into pentagons and hexagons. Geodesic domes are self supporting as well as extremely resource and energy efficient. The Geodesic Dome structure was used to construct the massive greenhouses at The Eden Project in Cornwall, which I recently had the extreme pleasure of visiting.

He also developed the word “Synergy” into what it means today, concurrently coining the term Synergetics.

As you’ll hear in the first of 159 videos, spanning 40 hours and titled “Buckminster Fuller, Everything I know” one of his favourite and most famous quotes is “All humanity is born naked, absolutely helpless, and absolutely ignorant.”

The first of the “Buckminster Fuller, Everything I know” series is found below:

Buckminster Fuller, Everything I know, Part 1 of 159

Incoming seo search terms:

• buckminster fuller
• hexagonal geodesic
• garden eden dome
• Building a Geodesic Dome Greenhouse -future
• bucky fuller geodesic dome
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We’ve been eating here on a semi regular basis for the past two years and I’ve always said The Inn at Grinshill deserves a Michelin star, recently Head Chef Chris Conde was also on 2011’s series of MasterChef, The Professionals (Season 4).

My wife and I enjoyed Christmas Lunch at The Inn at Grinshill, which inspired me to write a Inn at Grinshill Review.

For Christmas lunch we both enjoyed a Goats Cheese, Beetroot and Gingerbread starter which was exceptional. There is no cheating in Chris’s food, even the gingerbread was obviously made in the kitchen. For main’s my wife had the traditional Turkey lunch which was very tasty, if a little too traditional for my tastes, and I enjoyed Dover Sole Veronique as prepared on MasterChef Episode 3.

We’d place our Christmas lunch orders months in advance, and it was a pleasant surprise to discover the Sole was as shown on MasterChef - and extremely tasty.

The presentation of dishes at The Inn at Grinshill is always fantastic - My Sole main course was presented identically as on MasterChef - I was certainly impressed, but it’s also what I’ve come to expect from The Inn at Grinshill. My palette is without doubt far less developed than Michel Roux, but I’m not surprised a Two Stared chef was equally impressed with the dish.

A treat on Christmas, we had an assiette of deserts featuring 5 different and entirely gorgeous deserts each in their own right. Five deserts you always hope for individually, but each one more perfect than any desert you receive anywhere more average.

By this point both my wife and I were stuffed to the brim, having been unable to leave anything on our plates lest the flavours go to waste. But it wasn’t done there, following the deserts we were served possibly the tastiest Christmas puddings with real proper home-made brandy sauce, and a whole pot of flaming brandy. It’s little touches like the flaming brandy that make The Inn at Grinshill stand out - Personally I’ve tried and failed to set christmas puddings on fire, so I was impressed.

Chris Conde is a former Graphic Designer and it shows in the style and the way the food is presented.

The Christmas dinner set us back a pretty £65 each, with the cost of drinks on top (and the drinks certainly aren’t cheap), but this was the Christmas day menu, and you do get what you pay for. A typical meal for two is likely to cost around £40-£50 each including drinks.

I once ate a fantastic dinner at a top restaurant in Phnom Penh, the meal was sensational but the dinning experience has one taboo let-down… single ply bog roll… Since this experience I always take note of the bathrooms at a restaurant, and on this count The Inn at Grinshill does very well. Personally I prefer hand towels to hand dryers (I don’t like the noise, and they are slow) and again The Inn at Grinshill comes up trumps.

Incoming seo search terms:

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I’m really not a morning person, and I find winter in Europe very difficult to deal with. If I wake up to an alarm clock I feel I’ve been shocked into the world, and I remain tired for the rest of the day. I don’t have the same problem in the summer, because sun streams in through the window and I wake up naturally and refreshed.

The Sunrise Alarm Clock mimics natural sunrise, allowing your body to gently rise from its slumber over the course of 45 minutes or so. I find I don’t need any audio alarm with the Sunrise Alarm because my body simply knows when to wake up, I open my eyes, and I feel good.

My sunrise alarm clock also has the option to play MP3 audio, and comes pre-packed with a selection of nature sounds. While the “Bleep Bleep Bleep” of an alarm clock is entirely intolerable, soft bird song is actually nice to wake up to.

If you think you can buy an alarm clock for £5, the cost of a sunrise alarm clock can be quite off-putting (upwards of £100) - but I quantify that cost as spending £1/day for the “dark season” so as not to feel like an anvil.

2. Vacuum Trimmer - Philips QT4090/32

I hate shaving - it’s an annoying, messy, waste of bloody time. I generally walk around with stubble and when it gets unmanageable or itchy it’s just gotta come off. This used to mean I created a gargantuan mess which took ages to tidy (hair all over the sink, taps, floor, mirrors, toothbrushes….)

Phillips does a nifty little trimmer with a built-in vacuum. It sounds entirely absurd and gimmicky, but it works. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a damn sight less messy than any other method I’ve seen. It isn’t waterproof, but it doesn’t really need to be. Shaving in the shower is to reduce mess, and isn’t always comfortable, but without the mess I can shave in front of a mirror which isn’t fogged up, and I don’t have to worry about imminent divorce papers as a result.

3. Juicer - Phillips HR1861

Carrot juice with a hint of ginger… yum! With a juicer you get what you pay for - any dual purpose device (juicer/food processor) will leave you entirely annoyed because it doesn’t do either of its tasks properly.

The reasons for loving a juicer are obvious, fresh juice, but if you get a cheap juicer you’ll end up sticking it in a cupboard and never using it. The Phillips HR1861 does an excellent job of juicing and its components are dishwasher safe. Make a glass of juice, empty the hopper, stick everything in the dishwasher - done.

4. Swiss Army Knife - Craftsman

I forget when I was given my first Craftsman swiss army knife, but it was in my early teens as a birthday gift from my grandmother. The single difference of the Craftsman model over other models, which makes it a million times more useful, is instead of a bottle-opener it has a phillips head screwdriver. The Craftsman is literally identical to the Swiss Army Handyman except for the phillips head screwdriver.

My first Craftsman was stolen out of my luggage between Bangkok Airport and Phnom Penh, and it wasn’t until I went on holiday to Geneva that I found the same knife. This time I had it engraved with my name.

The longevity of these tools is phenomenal, and the number of times the Swiss Army Craftsman has saved the day are uncountable.

While on holiday in Amsterdam once, I was staying in a friends new apartment which had only a brand new, unbuilt, ikea bed. I shopped for hours looking for the right tools to put it together, but I wasn’t having any luck and I was getting desperate. I ended up buying a “Swiss Army Tinker Small” which also includes the Phillips head screwdriver, and build the entire bed with just this multi-tool.

5. Walimex Timer Remote

This nifty little piece of kit allow anyone with a Canon Digital SLR Camera to shoot time lapse over long periods. Its a very simple little gadget which plugs into the remote socket of the camera and triggers the shutter at pre-set intervals, and for pre-set durations (if you so wish) - This also allows you to time shutter speeds over the standard maximum 30 seconds, so you can more accurately expose night shots on very dark nights.

There are a few other options for canon timer remote controls, but I found they were more expensive and had less functionality.

6. In Car Power Inverter

In-Car power inverters should come as a standard feature on all cars - the ability to plug in most small devices with normal 240v power requirements is extremely useful. Laptops, Flood Lights, Portable Fridges, Camera Chargers, even mobile phone charges if you don’t have an in-car charger. I use mine all the time, its a reasonably unusual item for most people, which is why it makes the list.

Incoming seo search terms:

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I’m a big fan of the TED talks, and TED Mobile makes an appearance on an almost religious basis for a regular dose of intelligence. Its a fairly simple app with the latest talks easily available.

4. TVCatchup

I can’t remember the last time I turned my TV - with internet TV proving itself as a much more convenient and flexible option for TV consumption. TVCatchup app for iPhone collates a list of internet TV channels including all the popular ones such as BBC One, ITV1, Channel 4, E4, Dave, Film4, etc etc etc. The list of live TV channels is extensive to say the least, and renders cable TV somewhat redundant.

3. TuneIn Radio

Possibly one of the most comprehensive lists of internet radio stations on this fair planet, with excellent searching ability and genre categorization. Simply searching for “christmas” brought up a list of radio stations specialising in christmas songs. I especially enjoy having Dutch radio stations on tap to keep my linguistic skills polished.

2. AroundMe

While I wish the AroundMe app has more information and features, its extremely useful for traveling and spontaneous activities. While in Plymouth I used this app to find places to eat on every night of our stay, when we wanted somewhere close but of a certain style. We found the fantastic “Posatino Restaurant” in plymouth with this app, and for that experience alone AroundMe earns its spot as my second favourite app.

1. Waze

Waze is a free sat nav app with community interaction. Combining traffic reports with data from other travelers, Waze gives you the extremely accurate estimated times of arrival, and gives you real-time information about surrounding road conditions including hazards, average speeds, road works, etc.

Possibly my favourite part of the Waze App is the ability to identify where speed traps are hiding, and sharing this information with other travels. In turn, other travels can give you a heads up an where and when the police and trying to catch people out.

Waze is still a very new app, and while 95% of navigation is flawless, there are still times when it sends you to scotland via mongolia. TomTom and other sat-navs also aren’t flawless, the brilliant part of Waze is that if you notice a problem you can notify the map editors and with 24 hours anomalies are usually fixed. I know of atleast a few intersections where the Waze data totally out-strips other Sat Navs.

The traffic reporting is also superior to any other sat nav due to the community input of live data.

Probably not an good app for people who are paranoid about big brother knowing everything, but I live on planet earth and Waze is an excellent and revolutionary app.

Incoming seo search terms:

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When a person earns their money, I mean really earns it, they treasure every penny. When times are good, you still remember the days of penny pinching and of when simple things made you happy.

A person who hasn’t earned their life has a very care free and flippant attitude towards wealth. They’ve never experienced the things that go into creating a wealthy life, both good and bad.

One of the most valuable experiences in the creation of wealth is being forced into situations where you’ve had to protect yourself.

It starts with “if only I’d signed a contract” and over the years you become pre-emptive in problem solving. You take note of your gut instinct and you begin to meticulously document interactions, including recording conversations and storing all written correspondence. Most of the time these habits are precautionary, but on occasion their vitality can’t be over stated.

In a single 8 minute recording I made on Thursday morning, at 10:23am, Senior Monster (daddies wife) confirmed the details of a verbal contract, breach of that contract, harassment amounting to criminal harassment, and then we captured an assault on myself by the “thick as a log” husband of Junior Monster (daddies daughter). We also captured the period in which Junior Monster dialled 999 and made a false accusation… ie. wasting police time.

8 Minutes of ignorance could (depending on how what we decide to do) result in a criminal conviction for three individuals… and one hell of a sweet civil case.

8 Minutes of ignorance and inflated sense of self… that’s all it takes. These people were well aware by this point conversations were being recorded and documented, but through lack of experience nobody made the link between absurd behaviour and consequences.

Daddy’s unconditional love of his family hasn’t done anybody any favours.

Now if Daddy had become involved I expect he would have had the presence of mind to avoid landing in the poop, but with wife and daughter being gifted their existence they acted irresponsibly, embarrassing their family by spouting off things like “we know everyone, you don’t know anyone” (junior monster) and “I’m going to make sure everyone knows about you” (Senior Monster).

Junior Monster was correct – the police know her and her family, and were quite clear they were sick of the frivolous drama. The officer I spoke to expressed frustration at name-dropping and boastfulness about family wealth – in his words “it makes no difference to anything”.

Senior Monster has quite a reputation, ironic considering her promise of defamation (please oh please, we can add it to the list). A person I’d never met before asked, out of the blue and without prompting, “it was the mother that was the antagonist wasn’t it?”.

While writing this post I popped out to the shops and spoke to another neighbour who was, frankly, scathing about the family (and entirely correct.)

Wealth is more than just money – family is a big part of wealth, happiness, friends etc. If you and your family are the joke in the village, detested by most, are you really wealthy?

Because they’ve been given everything in this life, literally everything, these women have a strong dependence on daddy. He provides money, he catches them when they fall, but he didn’t parent his children and he didn’t require his beneficiaries to act with humility. The third generation is also affected – young kids who haven’t been taught right from wrong, and go around kicking people, throwing things at horses, etc.

When you don’t earn your own money, either you can’t believe others could have any wealth, or you are filled with jealousy that others have been able to earn their own way. I don’t boast about the business success I’ve had, and I don’t yet feel I’ve earned the right to boast. Through the stupidity of others, and my own naivety, 2 years ago I was entirely broke. Since then I’ve build a formidable company, but it’s still in its infancy, and I’m only a very short way down this road. On the Thursday of the events I’ve described here, my company made more money than Junior Monster and Thick Shit (her husband) earn in a month combined. This gives me a mild satisfaction, but I don’t for a second think Junior Monster would believe a word of it.

But what happens when daddy is gone?

For this family I’m not sure it makes much difference since daddies company doesn’t seem to be doing very well at all. Like the rest of the construction sector, recession is the word of the moment, and the company accounts look a bit of a state (Junior and Senior no doubt remain blissfully ignorant.)

Junior has no control of the pittance her and her husband actually do earn (easy come, easy go and all that) and she is probably waiting for their parents to die, which is a very sad proposition, and may not pay dividends. She hides money from her husband, spends without telling him, and openly jokes about it.

A relative of mine was quite wealthy. She lived on an acreage property on the shoreline of Sydney harbour, probably worth an easy 8 figures. But when she died her children, who’d never been financially parented, pissed it up the wall within a few years. I expect the same will happen to this family once daddy is gone.

If you haven’t earned your way you have a disassociation with the money you spend since it’s such an easy commodity. Spending someone else’s money is easy, and with the disassociation you don’t care if you are paying £1400 for a pair of shoes, even if you wouldn’t dream of spending £1400 of your own money on shoes.

The family I’m talking about seems to be a new-money family. There is probably room for a separate discussion on the general difference between old money families, and new money families, but one of the fundamental differences is in how the children grew up, and if they’ve been taught to respect money.

I’ve always been wary of new-money, my old acquaintance Mark Attwood grew up in a council house and ended up sinking a ship to the tune of £1.5million in the red (officially reported as just under £1mil) – this in a company that could have operated with extremely tiny overheads.

Old Money families seem to educated their kids about money, and understand the importance of earning your own way. You’ll often hear old money parents talking about how they will make their children “work for it”. I’m extremely grateful for the financial education my dad gave me – the concept of compound interest gave me wet dreams as a kid.

New Money refuses to enjoy simple things in life. Some of the most enjoyable things are simple, but simple is incongruous with new money’s self image. Its sad to think someone wouldn’t enjoy a backpacking holiday simply because it’s not what they feel is “class appropriate” – if it’s not in a 5 star hotel, they don’t want it. That’s so sad… getting dirty, carrying your life around with you, and sharing with similarly free spirits is one of the best experiences anybody could hope for.

New Money cares more about appearance than quality. I’ve met new money wives who would prefer to wear 5-carat cubic zirconium rings rather than 0.25 carats of quality diamonds. Old money doesn’t care if other people don’t believe something is genuine, who cares! Disbelief of wealth is a sign of jealousy.

New Money judges others based on appearance, because surely if you have money you would spend it on bling? No? Appearance can be extremely deceptive – I know a guy who bought a £23k car, and has financially ruined himself for the next 5 years. He has the image of wealth, but nothing more. I know of another person who died with $2billion, but he lived in an average house and drove an average car. Nobody knew about his mind-boggling wealth, which he donated to charity upon his death.

Old Money is very careful with their lines of credit but new money doesn’t understand the difference and lives on credit cards and borrowings. Something goes wrong, and new money falls hard.

New Money seems to take less care of belongings, whereas old money seems to understand the value of everything. Throw your mobile phone about, reverse until the bumper of your car touches the wall, use scourers on a good quality Teflon pans… one of my pet hates… A lack of respect for things, shows a lack of respect for the money which paid for those things.

New Money is greedy and self-centred… I guess this stems from the days of having nothing and having to fend for themselves. Conversely some of the most generous people in the world are old money.

New Money thinks the world owes them something – it’s a lack of responsibility for their own lives which you also see in families who expect benefits from the government rather than going out and getting a job. I generally find old money family’s understand and appreciate they are very fortunate.

New Money is Fickle – it cares about the money, not intangibles like family and friends. This is probably the saddest of the lot… and their life suffers for it.

In the family I’m talking about I can’t blame daddy, and I actually respect a lot about the man. He looks out for his family unconditionally, and he’s obviously done well for himself. If only he’d exercised a bit of tough love.

I recently overheard Daddies employees laughing at the expense of Senior Monster - Certainly they have the appearance of wealth, but to live within that family would be the epitome of poverty.

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I thought I’d make this more of a “practical” blog post on property investment and hope to show a different view on home ownership, so lets jump into some numbers.

The kind of home I would want to live in would cost me about £350k minimum, call me a snob, I wouldn’t want to live in anything cheaper. Mostly this is because I want to live in the country, in a nice area, with land for the horses and close to a “nicer” city. We’ve had a look at a few properties around the £650k mark – nice barn conversions with a few acres - one of these would be ideal.

To rent either of the above kinds of properties would cost anywhere from £900/month, to about £1,500/month. Likewise, if I were to own those properties and rent them out, I’d have a rental return of between 2.8% and 3.1%

Lets just say for a minute I had two options on the table, one was the £650k property above, and the other was to rent that property for £1500/month, and instead buy £650k worth of investment properties.

The UK being what it is, there are plenty of properties on the market for less than £80k which have a rental potential of around £500-£550pcm. You have to look carefully, but they are out there. These are houses I would never want to live in, but buy to lets are not “homes”. The rental return on these dives is hovering at about 7%-8%.

Spending £640k on BTL properties would leave me with 8 such properties, with a combined rental potential of £4,000/month. So to draw a direct comparison, that’s £1,500 as opposed to £4,000.

The numbers above assume you are buying these properties outright, which doesn’t make sense when I get a higher ROI sticking those amounts in a cash account, than on the capital appreciation of a property.

The real excitement comes when you look at your lump of money, get a bunch of self funding BTL mortgages, and your tenants pay off your mortgage for you.

The minimum deposit on a BTL property is currently 25% (just a few years ago you could get 110% mortgages, those were the days!). So with those numbers in mind, taking into account increases in rental potential (3%/year) and house prices (3%/year conservatively on average) you ROI figures are as follows:

Year 1: 5.05%

Year 2: 22.73%

Year 3: 41.41%

Year 4: 61.13%

Year 5: 81.93%

Year 6: 103.83%

This compares with a compound interest rate of 13% - which is a pretty nice interest rate to aspire to.

Choosing the investment properties option I’ll only spend about £830/month to rent the £650k property (because the BTL’s are earning money from day 1) instead of paying £2,740/month in mortgage repayments, making me £1,910 better off every month, or £690,000 better off over 30 years. (wow!)

This is the plan anyway… In the meantime I invest in other things while I wait out “the system” (UK Residency, UK Credit History, 3 Years Company Accounts, etc etc etc) - Being a non EEU foreigner can be a massive PITA.

I’ve dumped the full spreadsheets below for an investment property worth £80,000 with a rental potential of £500/month (7.5% rental return) over a 30 year period. It calculates costs including tax on income, lettings agents fees, landlords insurance, etc. It doesn’t calculate time left empty, which is about 6% on average in the UK.

If that makes any sense whatsoever, I’m extremely pleased to have been able to communicate a complex strategy. If not… well… story of my life I guess

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I’m a little baffled by the strikes in the UK… The UK strikes seem to be about two things – increases in the age at which someone can retire, and a “not big enough” pay increase for civil servants.

“From April 2016, women’s State Pension age will rise, equalising with men’s at 65 by November 2018″

Currently the retirement (pension) age for women is 60, and for men it’s 65. I’m all for equality, which is why I won’t complain that these ages are equalizing, even though women outlive men rather substantially (by 4.2 years on average, in fact). In theory, strictly speaking, the retirement (pension) age for women should be higher, but for whatever reason it’s been 5 years less than for men.

So, on point A) “Equalising Pension Age” I find it difficult to agree with the uk strikes.

The second big “boo raa” seems to be because the pension age is increasing from 65 (once the UK realizes equality) to 68… by 2046…

People retiring in 2021 will have to work 1 year longer, people retiring in 2037 will have to work 2 years longer, and people retiring in 2047 will have to work 3 years longer…

If we compare the increase in retirement age, with the increase in life expectancy…

In the past 10 years, life expectancy has increased by 2 years, in the next 10 years retirement age will increase by 1 year…. That’s a nice little two for one offer…

In the past 25 years, life expectancy has increased by 5.5 years, in the next 25 years the retirement age will increase by 2 years (Buy 1, get 2.75 free!)

In the past 35 years, life expectancy has increased by 7.3 years, in the next 35 years the retirement age will increase by 3 years (Buy 1, get 2.43 free!)

So, on point B) “Increasing retirement age” I can’t see how a reasonable person can complain, and again I can’t agree with the UK strikes. Work for a year, get 2.43 years paid holidays – cracking deal!

The final point on which UK civil servants are striking, is to do with pay increases for 2012. If I have understood correctly (and I haven’t done a whole lot of research into this) civil servants pay is only increasing by 1%, the argument being this isn’t enough in a country where inflation stands at 5%. I think the unions have chosen a very interesting figure with which to compare pay increases because, while inflation may indeed be at 5%, the UK economy certainly isn’t growing by 5% per year. In actual fact the economy is fairly stagnant, if not contracting.

When you take this into account, what public sector workers are striking for is to receive more money on average, than the average UK citizen.

Civil servants essentially are striking because they aren’t getting a disproportionately larger chunk of the pie.

Is this assessment realistic? Well, the more the government pays its staff, the more tax every other citizen has to pay to contribute to those wages. So yes, I think it is a pretty striking way to look at it. Take 1% away from non-gov workers, give that 1% to government workers, and that’s a 2% difference…

So, on point C) “Pay increases for civil servants”, frankly I think they are being greedy. Most probably don’t realize it, because the unions tell them what to think, which is unfortunate.

Now one final “this pisses me off” point…

I’m all for unions, and striking, and standing up for yourself… I’m well known to speak my mind (which upsets people who deserve to be upset), and I argue for whoever is right, often to my own detriment (I call myself a bit of a moral martyr… figjam).

That said…

I got chatting to my physiotherapist (I was playing paintball… it’s a long story) – she’s 24 and she doesn’t quite agree with the strikes. She told me doesn’t feel strongly enough about the issues in order to strike herself.

She wanted to stay at work and continue helping patients and I have a lot of respect for that… Do you think she had a choice?

If unions operate genuinely, with the best interests of its members as their primary goal, union members would be given a choice to strike…

Not my physio!!! Or anyone else in the NHS apparently. Their calendars were blocked out and they were told they couldn’t see patients on the 30th November. They essentially HAD to strike (or they could do extremely unappealing jobs in other areas of the hospital, either way they couldn’t do their own job and see patients).

It really rubs me up the wrong way that unions seem to be a form of dictatorship in which all members must follow the leader, regardless of their own beliefs and opinions. I think its foul, and I think it completely undermines the purpose of a union. Frankly, it pisses me off!

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“Do you feel that the widespread and blanket use of nofollow tags is devaluing Google’s search algorithms? Examples such as Wikipedia, where ALL external links are nofollow. Does Wikipedia mean nothing to Google’s algorithms?”

Let’s break Matt’s answer down a little.

First off, Matt states that there are very few links using the no-follow tag and that these links represent a minuscule percentage of all links on the web.

While this may be the case, its worth noting that authority sites have actively taken on the no-follow tag, while inactive rubbish sites, which represent the vast majority of sites online, haven’t even been updated since the tag was released.

It’s a pity the question was bundled with another question relating to no-follow tags on wikipedia since my question was more a general statement regarding the blanket use of no-follow on outbound links from authority sites.

Matt continues by saying “Don’t bother spamming wikipedia” – which illustrates that relating this question to wikipedia specifically dilutes the question, a mistake on my part. There has never been any doubt in anybodies mind that spamming isn’t a good plan, so lets move on…

There is a great deal of deterrent value to using no-follow tags on sites with user generated content, however there has to be a point when regardless of the no-follow tag, that link represents some value.
What about non-user generated content? News sites etc? Edu’s Gov’s Medical Institutions? All the best webmasters are using luscious servings of no-follow.

In some cases greed steps in the way with webmasters wanting to funnel page rank to their own pages, too tight to pass on a bit of love (the fabric on which Google is built.)

Essentially respecting all no-follow tags DOES devalue Googles algorithms because Google no longer pays attention to [a percentage of] links from authority sites.

I hope this suggestion is addressed at some stage.

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I’m going to make another prediction, and that is that nobody will be “caught” or punished for the harry potter leak. The reason?

I don’t believe the first half of the new harry potter movie was leaked. I think it’s a very clever marketing stunt, and I think instead of there being an investigation and punishment, there will instead be a big bonus landing in somebody’s bank account.

I’ve “leaked” dvds in the past for marketing purposes with fantastic results. Fantastic for building reputation and buzz.

Consider this, today is the 18th, one day before the official release of the harry potter movie on the 19th – how does one get widespread international coverage for free?

Harry Potter and the Dealthy Hallows got into the international media just 24 hours before the movie was set to be officially released. This fantastically reminds everyone the movie is out tomorrow.

Further, who want’s to watch just the first half of a movie? Could this be a marketing ploy to drive people to the cinemas? Could this be an attempt to bring people who would normally download the movie into the cinemas? I’m guessing “yes” on both counts.

As an experiement, for educational purposes only, this is where people are able to download leaked harry potter here - don’t download it, that would be copyright infringement. But if Warner Brothers are serious about this being a genuine leak… a) that’s very short sighted of them & they could be more progressive in their marketing, and b) I’ll receive a cease and desist letter for providing the above link.

I’ll keep you updated, but if they don’t get in touch, I think we can safely assume this was a very clever marketing stunt.