Revisiting SEO and wedding photos

I've not worked in SEO for a number of years having concentrated by accident on social media.

I always found SEO quite easy because basically it is about acquiring links and I never found it hard to get any site I worked with decent links and good visibilty in search engines.

A few months ago, an old friend asked to recommend a website builder for his new wedding photography business based in Crosby, Liverpool.

I searched around and found a decent page that gave an honest opinion of the various options. It's here, it is quite good.

Unfortunately, he signed up with Go Daddy and used their website builder - it just seemed easier for himself - its limitations means he may struggle to get found in the search engines without a bit of effort.

Leaving that aside (I'm sure he will do well by word of mouth and have a pretty website to point people at) I started to remember all the times friends have asked me about SEO or I have told them I knew about SEO and could help their site (free of charge because they were friends or family).

Over a ten year period, not one used any advice I gave them.

Many of their businesses failed.

I did try but unfortunately sometimes people think they know better.

Twitter test

@ArenaFlowers I've yet to cry from laughter when reading a joke but everything you've tweeted today has pushed the boundary. Bravo.

— Thomas King (@thomjking) January 4, 2012

@ArenaFlowers I've yet to cry from laughter when reading a joke but everything you've tweeted today has pushed the boundary. Bravo.

— Thomas King (@thomjking) January 4, 2012

Easyjet Liverpool Berlin Fiasco

I always knew the only good thing about Easyjet was their cheap prices. I've never expected great service, good food and short queues. However, I have always expected to actually get on a flight I booked...until last week.

Flying back from Liverpool Airport to Berlin, I arrived at the airport around half an hour before the final check-in time. Massive queues. Standard.

I went to the Easyjet service desk and asked what was the best thing to do as this queue was going to take more than half an hour to receed. "Start queuing up and all Berlin passengers will be called forward." I was told. A Thai woman in the adjacent queue was asking the same question and we spoke briefly about how worrying it was the the queue was so long.

I made my way to the back of the queue but noticed this woman was a bit further ahead of me standing with her son. Never one to miss an opportunity to push past people (Germany has taught me this -the Germans hate queuing), I moved up ten or fifteen places to stand with this woman.

It turned out she used to live in Berlin and I chatted with her and her son just to take my mind off the queuing. It transpired that she was not travelling but had just brought her son to the airport. I soon realised all was not right with her sixteen-year-old son. Not in an obvious way as he was a pleasant and cheerful young man but I suspected he may of had learning difficulties and his manner was more of a ten-year-old than a person on the verge of adulthood.....saying that, he was bi-lingual so I could be totally wrong!

He lived in Dresden with his father and had been visiting his mother and her new family in Southport. His father would be picking him at the airport in Berlin.

As the time approached for last check-in time, I began to get nervous but a group not too far in front of us (also travelling to Berlin) went to the desk and were told not to worry as the flight had been delayed slightly.

The mother drew me to one side and asked me if I would keep and eye on her son and make sure he got the flight as she had to leave to go to work. She said he would be OK but just in case etc. I agreed thinking nothing could go wrong and to be honest I was enjoying chatting and joking with him...him laughing at my lack of German vocab despite living in Germany for three years.

We were eventually called out of the queue to check-in and after doing so we sprinted/jogged to the security area.

Again massive queues. Determined not to miss the flight, I pushed my way through the crowds with my new friend in tow. We reached the front and explained to the security guy our situation i.e. the flight would be leaving soon and we needed to get through as soon as possible. The bloke was having none of it explaining that letting us through would cause fights. He said if it was urgent then he would have been told and there would have been an announcement. He asked his supervisor who said they could not let us through. We went back and pushed in fairly close to the front and waited.

Ten minutes later we were through security and once again sprinted heading to the boarding gate.

The plane had gone.

Not to worry, I thought. We did nothing wrong. We were in the airport in good time. We ran every chance we got. They have messed up and will need to find a way to get us to Berlin....maybe late but they will get us to Berlin today!

But then the lies started from the girl at Easyjet obviously determined to cover up the fact they had made a total fuck up of thing.

"We made two annoucements" LIE

"We sent a person to bring people through security" LIE

"75 people checked-in after you and managed to board the flight" LIE.

These lies meant Easyjet were blaming us for missing the flight.

These lies meant Easyjet were not taking any responsibility for making us miss the flight.

These lies meant they would not pay a train fare or taxi fare to Gatwick were there was a flight leaving in five hours time.

These lies meant Easyjet would charge me £38 if I wanted to travel the next day or if I wanted to fly from Gatwick that day.

I wasn't sure what to do and my newly acquired travelling companion did not have his mother's number to tell her what had happened and his father who was picking him up at Berlin Airport was non-contactable.

After much thinking and working out connecting flights, trains etc, I realised there was no way to get to Berlin before 2am and not without a lot of expense.

My idea of asking Easyjet to contact Easyjet at Berlin Airport to explain to the father the situation once he realised his son was not on the flight and perhaps had gone to the Berlin Easyjet desk was thwarted when told they were not allowed to do this.

To cut a long story short, Easyjet tracked down my new friend's step-father who came to the airport to pick him up but not before I had to pay £38 to get on the following day's flight.

Obviously, Easyjet make it as difficult as possible to complain by email and charge premium rate to complain by phone. I'd almost given up until I used Twitter to voice my anger.

I quickly received a message to email a customer service guy and within a couple of hours they agreed to repay my money.

A very messy day and incident caused by incompetence by Easyjet staff at Liverpool and though it's easy to blame individuals the blame lies squarely at Easyjet's penny pinching management who did not provide enough staff or adequate training for their staff. They admitted this in their email to me.

Still, they should have organised for me to get to Berlin that day. I wonder what David Dimberley would have done.

I was concerned to read about the problems you experienced at Liverpool airport and would like to apologise for the inconvenience and the frustration that this will have caused you.

There are procedures in place to ensure that regular and correct information is forwarded to our passengers as soon as we receive it ourselves. It seems from your comments that you did not receive this level of service and for this I sincerely apologise.

We are aware of the fact that at certain airports level of service is not the one we would like to see. We have already taken certain steps in order to change this. We are gathering feedback that we receive from our customers and our Executives have already visited some selected airports and retrained the staff.

Your feedback also confirms that we still need to improve a lot in terms of the customer experience we offer at the airports. Having checked your reservation I decided to refund the rescue fee that was charged at the airport (£38). It will be returned back to the card used for making your easyJet booking within 5-10 working days.

Once again I would like to thank you for taking time to pass your comments to Paul and please accept my apologies for the inconvenience you experienced at Liverpool airport. This feedback will definitely help us to improve the level of service delivered to our customers. I do hope this will not stop you from flying with easyJet again.

Graham Cunningham on Hills and Ladbrokes

Below is piece by Graham Cunningham (my favourite racing broadcaster despite him refusing to print off my racing figures at Pontefract one day...claiming there was no printer in there) which was buried in a recent Betfair piece.

If I ever end up on Mastermind then you can bet 1.01 with confidence that racing politics will not be my specialist subject.
However, the news that William Hill and Ladbrokes are taking their internet betting operations abroad in order to minimise their tax burden really began to grate on me as this week has worn on.
It wasn't so much the fact that big businesses want to find ways to make more money that grated - more the brazen way in which Hills chief executive Ralph Topping seemed intent on blaming everyone bar himself for the decision to head offshore.
Topping probably has a point in describing racing's leadership as "a rabble," but he is well wide of the mark when calling the move to stage the Derby on Saturday "a numpty decision" and really showed his true colours when insisting that racing should realise it is a mere betting product rather than a true sport to rival the likes of the Ashes and the FA Cup.
It's hard to envisage anyone with such a view going out of his way to help racing to any real extent, but what should the sport do in response to the projected loss of around £5m in Levy payments?
Better brains than mine need to provide the answer to that, but it wouldn't do any harm for newspapers and television channels to start restricting the amount of print and airtime given to the omnipresent PR representatives of firms who head offshore.
For example, the Racing Post devoted the first three pages of its Friday edition to the news that Ladbrokes are heading offshore but sugared the pill to one of its biggest advertisers with an adjacent and blatant puff piece about a punter who could win £1m if Red Merlin wins the Ebor to complete his £250 ante post treble.
"Both we and the punter are set for a fortnight of sleepless nights," said Ladbrokes' incorrigible PR spokesman David Williams.
I don't know about the punter, but I've often wondered how Williams, Topping and the rest of their merry gang sleep at night.

Luck and the World Cup

I was offered a job the other day in a 'hot' country. A few years ago I would have jumped at the chance but as I already live in a foreign country and have no desire to leave here, I turned it down.

The main reason was the person I am with has a job here which they enjoy and it is refreshing not to hear somebody moan every evening about their job. I sometimes don't think they realise how lucky they are to be happy in work because my experience in the last twenty years is of work not being great.

I really have had some shit jobs in my 'career' - cleaner, barman, temping, betting shop manager. The list is long and varied. Most of the time, it was looking forward to a beer and a laugh at the end of the day they kept me going.....there was little reward in actually working...apart from the money - which was generally low if I didn't do overtime.

After quitting my betting shop manager job before getting fired, I got a lucky break after being given an opportunity to work on the horse racing desk of a sports news website. I only got the job through an old friend and not through any talent. The first few weeks I just intelligently kept my head down and looked keen and eager.

I knew I was safe in that job when they started hiring people with less knowledge than me...you know who you are Anne Marie McTigeague! - she was actually a lovely girl and probably doing well for herself.

Anyhow, I luckily managed to get out of the hose racing desk work to work in a horse racing spin off department that the company had just bought.

The boss there gave me so much confidence in myself -despite not being the best worker - it was unreal and I can't thank him enough. We are still friends now and although he will hate me for it I see him as a bit of a father figure.

He ended up buying back the company he had sold to the sports news website and I was out of a job. I wasn't that bothered as I got some redundancy money and ended up working freelance for the horse racing desk for a year or so.

Fast forward a year and I'm skint again and have no work. I end up going back to working as a betting shop manager for a terrible independent company. Commuting an hour a day and working 12 hour shifts. It was not much fun.

After my ringtone website started interesting the search engines, I gave up that job and lived on the proceeds for a while (six months) until I had to look for work.

Luckily, I was able to get some shifts writing about horse racing but various reasons meant I was always struggling for money...and shifts.

I bit the bullet (probably never became a great writer due to overusing and wrongly using cliches) and worked for 500 quid a month on a World Cup website. It failed when England went out to Portugal (fucking Ronaldo) and actually made a loss.

I trundled along with the horse racing writing and picked up some poker and casino writing along the way as well other bits and pieces but I was always struggling for money and struggling for money is shit.

By 2008, I was surviving/struggling on 360 quid a month when the horse racing writing stopped until another lucky break and I ended up (after a bleak probationary period) on a half decent wage.

Moral of the story....it's all luck.

Time for Proportional Representation

I've always wanted proportional representation for the UK government ever since realising how the first past the post system was bordering on the corrupt.

I was told years ago that it would never happen because the political parties in charge would not change the system that guaranteed them continuing power.

It is funny how panicky David Cameron has become lately. He knows PR is the best system but instead he talks about changes to the process of picking MPs and putting stuff on Youtube...he hasn't got the confidence in his own party to campaign for PR because he knows his party will end up having less power.

There are no logical arguments for keeping the present system other than Labour and the Conservatives knowing how important it is for themselves.

Germany is a country with PR and it gets along quite nicely and so are many other stable and well run countries in Europe. It's time for a change but, once again,like the smoking ban, I can see Englanders in their pathetic little gardens rolling over as usual....or rather too happy to spend their time in front of the soap operas to actually care what is happening in their own country.

Long live Germany..the home of the free (smokers).

Happy Families

Since my last blog entry I have become an uncle twice. My youngest brother Philip whose wedding I very nearly didn't go to became a father - a boy called Jack while my sister has just delivered a baby boy who will be called James.

My brother's wife had a relatively easy (if there is such a thing) birth but my sister had all sorts of complications with the cord being wrapped around James' head and they eventually had to cut the baby out.

Apparently she is on the mend now and according to a friend looks very 'mumsy and cute'.

Both babies look like me...though I think all babies look like me...must be the bald head and round head. In fact a lot of babies are fascinated by me when they see me. My theory is that they they think I must be the baby king as I look like them but am just huge.

Babies have been figuring everywhere recently. Pud wrote a good piece about his girlfriend giving birth on his poker blog.