7 days ago, I didn’t rank on Google. I had a look for myself, and gave up on page 12. Anyone else would have given up long before, or at least found a Peter Mahoney they liked the look of more. 🙂

3 days ago, I was at the top of page 3.

Today, I am fourth overall, and the first result for an actual person. This applies to a search for Peter Mahoney in google.co.uk (I’m aiming myself at the UK market).

The top two results are for Linkedin directories, which both feature me in the number two spot, and a phone directory listing.

Peter Mahoney isn’t exactly an unusual name either. The marketing director of Nuance is a fairly well known and written about Peter Mahoney. A Peter Mahoney (regrettably) committed suicide after returning from fighting in Iraq, and a Peter Mahoney in Somerset appeared in court in connection with a murder enquiry. petermahoney.com has been owned for over a decade by the same person. None of these are me.

But in seven-short days, I have gone from not featuring at all, to beating out even Facebook results. It’s the result of a lot of experimentation, research, and 16 years web experience.

I plan to bottle this. And to make it available to you.

Further to yesterday’s post, Google has created a entire online system to help webmasters (and web owners too, it’s important you know this stuff) improve their Search Engine Optimisation SEO).

And they’ve written it in such a way that anyone can understand it, and even if you’re not the right person to implement it (after all, that’s what you have people like me for) at least you can talk about it.

One of the great fallacies about web work is that it’s too hard for a lay person to understand. Sure, it’s technical, and the implementing things is generally pretty complicated, but look to work with web people who can explain things to you in such a way that you can talk back to them.

Look for people who can explain things like Google does. Clearly. Concisely. Understandably.

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