I’ve never really written loads on here, mainly because in this industry everyone blogs and it’s hard to say something that hasn’t been said before. The other reason is that this blog isn’t a part of my job and I don’t use it to run a company or anything, so I wouldn’t actually get a lot back out of writing about SEO all the time. It means I get to post about cats whenever I feel like it, but also that there’s often a week or two between posts.

Recently I’ve also started Suggest of the Day, and although that doesn’t take up a lot of time, it is a bit of an outlet for posting whatever content I want (within the constraints of the blog).

The main thing I wanted to post about however is the Bethemiddleman.com blog which I’ve got off the ground this week. For anyone who’s managed to avoid Frog and I for the last six months, Bethemiddleman.com is a new property portal for private house sales, along with rentals and room shares. The site is going into beta in a few weeks and as launch edges closer we wanted to start getting content onto the site. You can check out the blog to see my new foray into property writing (and if anyone can recommend other property blogs I should be reading, I’d be most grateful ). I’m quite enjoying the change but it probably means I’ll have less energy to post on here.

I guess I started this blog with good intentions and whilst I take my job pretty seriously, it hasn’t quite lent itself to being written about the way I expected. Especially when I can’t really write about clients (and that’s the most interesting part!). So, I’ll continue to post on here whatever unrelated stuff takes my fancy, but for proper blogging on a theme you know where to find me

Exploring the Cadbury Buttons website, imagine my surprise and delight when I saw that they, too, enjoy animals with massive eyes!

The piggy especially, with its enormous button eyes, made me want to go out and buy a pack of Cadbury Buttons. It is almost as if they were designed just for me.

Do you like dressing up in outlandish costumes? (Who doesn’t?) Do you like cats? (YES) Have you always wanted to live in a cave? (Erm…)

This Could Be Your Perfect Job

Wookey Hole near the city of Bath are looking for a resident witch to recreate the magical atmosphere of times gone by. Although slightly draughty, I imagine this unique job opportunity will attract a lot of applicants. Unfortunately I’m a novice in the ways of spell-casting (although I do own a copy of Madame Fabia’s The Book Of Fortune Telling), otherwise I’d be grabbing my pointy hat and getting the next train south…

The Advert

There are a lot of disgruntled witches living around the country. Wearing pointy black hats and black hessian drapes they’re reduced to casting spells whilst sitting on a sofa in front of a 38” flat-screen TV in a suburban semi, using own-brand potion ingredients sourced from the local Sainsburys. Not the des res, executive, no mod-cons, wind-swept blasted heath of their dreams.

For one lucky witch though, these ancient yearnings could soon be fulfilled. There’s a unique job on offer at Wookey Hole in Somerset. It’s a job which comes with witch-perfect live-in accommodation in a spacious cave, and a 50K salary. £50,000. Enough to buy designer-label rags, frogs from Fortnum and Mason’s and a Le Creuset cooking pot.

Wookey Hole wants the appointee to go about her everyday business as a hag, so that people passing through the caves can get a sense of what the place was like in the Dark Ages. This was when an old woman lived in the caves with some goats and a dog, causing a variety of social ills including crop failures and disease. She also turned the local milk rancid.

Eventually, an Abbot called Father Bernard was summoned from Glastonbury. Armed with a bible and a candle, he entered the cave, spotted the witch and tried to reason with her. She started screaming and casting curses, and ran off into the depths of the cavern. His efforts at conflict resolution through dialogue exhausted, Father Bernard scooped up some water from the cave, blessed it, and then threw it at the witch who turned to stone. And there she stands to this day.

So the job is straightforward: live in the cave, be a witch, and do the things witches do. Wookey Hole is advertising nationally and hopes to attract a strong field of candidates, with the £50K salary serving as a major incentive. Interviews for the post, which will involve on-site assessment incorporating a range or standard tasks, will take place on Tuesday 28th July at 11am. Given the nature of the role, Wookey Hole has decided to run the process on an “open audition” basis. Ambitious witches, looking for a key career move, should turn up dressed for work and bring any essential witch accoutrements. A limited range of potion ingredients will be available.

Reluctantly, Wookey Hole is allowing BOTH men and women to apply. A common misconception is that male witches are “warlocks”. Wrong. Male witches are witches. According to specialists in magic lore “warlock” is just an insult. Wookey Hole HR has accordingly been advised that under sexual discrimination law, unless it can provide documentary proof that the original witch was female (which would allow them to advertise for women only according to the exclusion to Employment and Training Law No.1661 (2003), pt.II, para 7, clause (a) – no, honestly), it can’t issue a gender-specific JD. Since Wookey Hole can’t furnish the required, legally binding proof, it has had to accept that the post might eventually be awarded to a man.

The authorities hope that Wookey Hole will employ a trans-gender witch, preferably recruited via a youth training initiative.

For further information please phone Wookey Hole 01749 672243 or email witch@wookey.co.uk

That’s right folks – Think Vis Tickets are available to buy as of this morning. For the princely sum of £99 you could experience an action-packed day of online marketing excitement – with just 225 tickets on sale you’ll feel like a VIP!

It may be a bit more expensive than last time, but compared to, say the SEOmoz seminar at $899 per person I’d say it’s pretty good value. Plus you don’t have to go to That London

Maybe it was the long drive from Harrogate to Gatwick with a hangover, maybe it was the fact we got lost and only had iphone GPS to guide us out of the 9th circle of hell that is Bushey Heath, maybe it was getting lost in the Gatwick airport carparks and the half mile trek to find a ticket machine – whatever the reason, something was forgotten.

When checking into our flight Frog wanted to swap a bottle from hand luggage to hold luggage because, you know, if you have 101ml of liquid in your hand luggage you might be a terrorist. The suitcase of course was locked. The keys to the lock were on the house keys fob. Which was in the car. Which had been handed over to some men to look after for a week.

Oh noes!

“It’s okay” I said. “Don’t worry. We’ll sort something out, it’ll be fine”.

I actually thought things probably wouldn’t be fine but right then it was more important to not get stressed, just to get checked in and have some food/drink after spending 6 hours in the car.

After fielding some suggestions for opening the lock (“we could saw through it!” “what with?” “we could break off one of the zips” “how?” “we could cut open the suitcase” “we don’t have a knife or scissors” “we could pick the lock with some twee….oh they’re in the suitcase”) we decided to see if we could find a similar lock in the myriad of airport shops. After all, we had three hours to kill before the flight.

Although most of the shops sold locks and suitcases (which raises the question – do some people bring their luggage in plastic bags?) none of them were similar to ours.

“It’s okay” I said. “It’ll be fine – we’ll work something out when we get there”

When we got to Kuramathi and our room, we realised that palm fronds and seashells would not be enough to break open the suitcase. The Maldivian staff were equally unhelpful, when they finally understood what all the hand gestures meant. In fact, they greeted our predicament with enormous mirth and said it was an impossible problem.

It was time to get creative.

“What do we have that’s metal?” I asked. “Belt loop? Underwire from a bra? The zip on my bag?” None of them looked likely for picking a small but annoyingly solid lock.

Meanwhile, Frog picked up my jacket which had been discarded as soon as we stepped off the plane into the sweltering heat of Male. He removed the Northern SEM badge I’d been wearing for a month, which had even led to me being called “a loser” by someone who ridicules blogger meetups. He pulled off the pointy needle on the back of the badge and started niggling at the lock.

Over the next ten minutes the badge got twisted into a truly amazing shape, but the lock wouldn’t budge. Frog gave up, frowning, and we contemplated spending the next week wearing jeans, or just underwear, neither of which was an acceptable outcome.

Looking at the twisted sliver of metal, it really did resemble a key. In fact, it looked like it *should* work. In one last effort, I stuffed it into the lock as hard as I could and turned.

The lock opened.

Hooray!

“Oh my god we just picked a lock! We’re spies! Or ninjas! Ninjaspies!”

The suitcase burst open and bikinis, dresses, shorts and flip flops tumbled out in a torrent of colour and joy. The holiday was saved.

After the immensely enjoyable Think Visibility conference in March, I was flattered, surprised and somewhat horrified when Dom asked me to speak at Think Vis II. After all, my experience of public speaking amounts to a big fat zero and I’m just some girl from Leeds – not an SEO guru, a company owner or an affiliate superhero.

I do like cats though and I know a little bit about my job, which I imagine is why I’m on the speaker list.

I think Dom’s going to announce the schedule and the subjects soon so I won’t give away what I’ll be talking about. To be honest, speaking is massively outside my comfort zone so it’s not the content I’m worried about! I know people give talks all the time but it must take a huge amount of courage to get up on stage so if I get through it okay I’ll be over the moon

Think Vis II isn’t just about giving people like me the chance to embarrass themselves(!), there are some big name speakers like Judith Lewis and Joost de Valk, and completely awesome, successful local folk like Elaine Forth and Karyn Fleeting. Its sort of awe-inspiring to be in that sort of company so…erm…wish me luck!

The Leeds Shakespeare Festival has been an ongoing theme on this blog ever since it ran into some health and safety/funding issues last year and never took place. I’m glad to say that this year, Leeds City Council have decided to be sensible and the 14th (almost) annual festival is going ahead in July and August

Details about the performances and ticket prices can be found on the British Shakespeare Company website. You can buy tickets online via the Leeds Grand theatre – I’ve already got mine!

Okay so I only chose that title because it rhymes – Google Suggest of the Day has actually done pretty well in the couple of weeks since it launched. I’ve been on holiday the past week so only really got to take a look at stats and things yesterday and I was really surprised at how many people visited the site and more importantly, the level of interaction it’s experienced.

I was a bit disappointed that not many people have commented – I sort of envisaged immense philosophical debates taking place, or at least some bitching, but I guess people don’t want to invest that much effort in what is, after all, a blog you can read at a glance.

What totally delights me though is that we’ve had loads of suggestions sent in via the contact form – from real people leaving real names and URLS! This is great, so any suggestions that we use I’ve decided to credit with a link to whoever sent it in. If more than one person suggests the same thing they’ll all get credit!

I’m really looking forward to giving out some link love to people who support the site, so if you have a suggestion just send it in