SEOno News

SEOno News & GB Posts: Part 8

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News

Big news this time since Part 7 (in January)…

  • I’m delighted to announce that SEOno has been shortlisted in this year’s Wales Blog Awards! I’m up against two other excellent blogs in the Best Tech Blog category. Here’s the full list of finalists. Apparently “over 300 entries were received for the competition from across the country and the judges have now whittled these down to a shortlist of 32 blogs,” so it’s an honour simply to have been shortlisted. The big event is happening on Thursday 15th May in Cardiff.
  • Now I ain’t no fancy web designer, but I’ve put together a simple, templated WordPress site for my wife’s uncle’s gardening business. Check out my handiwork: Big Mick’s Garden Services.
  • My Online Seller Wales talk went down well in February. Click here for a blog post all about it, containing a photo, slides, audio and transcript.
  • I also gave a talk to Cardiff Metropolitan University students for part of a series of entreprenership seminars called Create. It was an introductory talk on SEO, which also included exercises for the students to do, such as keyword research and inbound link analysis. Here are the slides.
  • I also took part in a podcast talking about the pros and cons of trying to procure Government funding as a start-up/freelancer/entrepreneur. I mostly moaned about being rejected, haha…! Want to check it out? Here it is.

Posts on other sites

A recent guest blog post:

For the record, if you’re wondering why I’ve been guest posting less often (especially following on from my thoughts in this post), it’s not because I’m scared of Google’s crackdown, but simply because I’ve been too busy…!

Contributions on other sites

Contributions to other people’s posts (rather than full-on guest posts) – there’s been a fair few over the months and I’ll happily admit that I’ve lost track of them, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve missed one or two off…

I’m Naming My Baby After Rand Fishkin

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** Ok ok, so this was an April Fool’s. We’re not calling him Rand Fishkin Morgan. **

For those of you who are unaware, my wife and I are expecting our first child in early May (which is sadly the reason that I won’t be able to attend BrightonSEO in late April – too close to the due date).

When we found out that we’re having a boy, we discussed what we were going to name him. At first, we liked Noah, but it’s suddenly become an extremely popular name, so we decided against it. Then we were thinking of Rory, but we were still a little undecided. And then it hit me: what about Rand?

There are two Rands (or Randals) that I admire. The first is Randal Graves from Clerks. Admittedly, perhaps not an obvious role model (note: extremely NSFW clip, unless you have headphones…), but I love the name. And then of course, there’s the Wizard of Moz:* Rand Fishkin.

* Genuine job title, by the way. Awesome.

Wait, it gets better. I even managed to convince Emma that we should keep Fishkin as a middle name. In other words, we’re naming our son: Rand Fishkin Morgan.

We’re very excited that we’ve come up with the perfect name for our son! But what do you think? Please leave a comment below!

Baby Rand photo
[Kudos to Roslyn of CopyTyper for her photoshopping skills; the original can be found here – Phyllis Buchanan – under the Creative Commons Adapt licence]

SEOno News & GB Posts: Part 7

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News

A few things to report since the last news post back in August…

  • I’ve been invited to speak at Online Seller Wales‘ next event on 20th February in Cardiff. My talk title is: “Google-Friendly Link Building Tactics For Online Sellers” (i.e. eCommerce sites). Here’s the Eventbrite page. Best of all? It’s free! And there are two other speakers! Check out the #OSWCardiff hashtag for more news and info.
  • Cardiff Blogs launched its Blog Club. Separate to our main events, they’re monthly and they’re intended to give local bloggers 2-3 hours to work on their blog, whether it’s to write some new posts or get some tips and advice from other bloggers. I wrote a post about November’s meet-up, which you can see here.
  • Another YouMoz post I wrote (see below for its link) was upgraded to the main blog, which I’m mega chuffed about!
  • I was asked to contribute to an article on The Next Web, which is awesome (link below).
  • SEOno has been included in SEO Group’s Top 40 SEO Blogs to Read in 2014. Given that I looked through the list and saw 39 other blogs that I think are ten times better than this one, I’m extremely humbled.

Posts on other sites

Recent guest posts:

Contributions on other sites

In the last few months, a few people have also approached me asking me to contribute to a post, which I thought I’d mention, too:

SEOno News & GB Posts: Part 6

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News

Since Part 5 in March, quite a lot has happened…

So, yeah… It’s been pretty busy! 🙂

Posts on other sites

Here’s a few posts I’ve written on other sites since March as well…

3 Things I’ve Learnt 3 Months Into Self-Employment

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Cappuccino imageIn early May I took the plunge – I left my full-time job at an agency to do something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time: become self-employed as a fully-fledged, full-time freelance consultant.

Now that it’s early August, it means that I’ve just hit the 3-month mark. My first observation is just how quickly the time has gone (blimey!) but I’ve also learnt a great deal already, which I felt inspired to put into writing.

So here are 3 things I’ve learnt in the first 3 months…

1) People love saying “yes” (but they may let you down)

Fortunately I already have quite a strong network of contacts in South Wales. In fact, the reason I made the leap when I did is simply because I had a fair few people asking me if I did freelance on the side (in addition to my full-time job), but I didn’t. I thought if only a few of those came off, I’d be set. But it was even fewer than I’d expected.

Click to read more!