About a month ago I decided it was about time I started to concentrate on my “Google Reputation Management”, with my first goal being “to rank #1 in Google for the search term Clay Cook“.

I must admit that it has always got under my skin a little that a fairly well known singer (same name) has dominated Google when people search for me, especially annoying since I have so much SEO knowledge but have never bothered to utilize it for my own personal use.

I figured enough was enough, and hence why I finally got off my bum and set up this blog on my own domain. Amongst other strategies, ineedhits has helped me out also.

Happy to report that I already have achieved the following Google rankings…

• Google.com.au = #1, #2, #5, #6, #7
• Google.com = #3, #10

I am happy to see that ineedhits is taking part in more and more charities as it matures.

Just two weeks ago Rachel and I attended our oldest child’s local primary school quiz night and silent auction fundraising event, where we donated three Google Local Advertising packages (12 mths each) which raised close to $1000 ($650 + $210 + $105) for the school (of the total $11,000 raised on the night).

A couple days later Warren Duff (ineedhits CEO) slept outside (on the Subiaco Oval) with many other Perth CEOs to help raise close to $500k for Australia’s homeless. The event was Vinnies CEO Sleepout – Warren raised a very credible $1635 of the $2.85M.

Now I hear that most of the ineedhits staff are planning on running in Perth’s City to Surf. I will definitely be using my ruptured Achilles tendon as the excuse on this one.

A big thanks to all ineedhits staff from me – job well done!

And you thought SEO was easy… well think again.

We work bloody hard on all of your Search Engine Marketing to achieve happy ineedhits customers

I have decided to claim my main blog (ie: this blog) on my Minti member blog and “share the love”.

Why? Because I am blogging here far more often than on my Minti blog and as a result I am missing the Minti mum’s input on what I have to share. This will allow them to see my contentI am creating and they can either comment on my Minti blog or comment here. Also hopefully at least 50% of the content I post will be relevant to Minti and Minti members.

All I have to do is add the following text on to this blog post… ClayCook.minti.com

I have tinkered a little with my blog this morning.

1. Added SEO Ultimate wordpress plugin. Now I can control my Title and Meta Tags etc.
2. Added my blog to Google Webmaster Tools. Now I can study my traffic and instruct/educate/direct Google a little more.
3. Changed the settings to my “Popular Posts” section in my blog’s side bar. It now shows most popular posts of “all time”… well… since I uploaded my blog on to this domain a couple weeks back anyway. The reason my “Podcasts Vlogs” post is my most popular post is because up until a couple days ago the image I used for my head phones was coming up as #1 in the search results for Google images.

I was pleased to be informed this morning by a Forbes journalist that Minti made the Forbes Top 100 Websites for Women list.

Minti’s 40,000 mommy community has created over 11,000 parenting advice articles,  15,000 parenting questions (with answers), plus 200,000 blog posts that help over 10,000 moms (& mums) every single day!

I tend to see ineedhits‘ purpose much like “David v’s Goliath”…. helping small businesses compete against the large corporates on the Internet, by outwitting them in the Search Engine Marketing arena.

I was prompted to think about this a couple days ago by a video on Staff Motivation sent to me by Rene LeMerle.

Congratulations to Julia Gillard on becoming Australia’s first female Prime Minister this morning.

I am very much a Liberal voting Australian (as most Entrepreneurs/Investors/Business Owners in Australia are) so I do hope she does not win the election coming up, however it is good to see Australia has made history today. Julia is obviously very bright, is an extremely good public speaker and debater (she absolutely slaughters Abbott whenever they lock horns) and today she has proven she is also a very strategic politician.

Julia, just one favour before you go… can you please dump this “Super Mining Tax” ASAP, and let our Economy bounce back and continue to grow?

FYI – I am not a big fan of Tony Abbott (actually not a fan at all), however I do hope the Liberal party gets in and sorts out who is the best leader later on down the track.

I have just added the Facebook Like button to my blog – you can now “like” my posts

It was super easy to add with my hosted WordPress blog. Here is the Facebook Like plugin I used.

Welcome to my blog’s new home!

Sure – the design has changed (and I hope you like it as much as I do) – however more importantly my blog can finally call the domain claycook.net its real home (no redirects required any longer).

For the techies out there… I am hosting it on BlueHost, and if someone were to visit my old blog address claycook.wordpress.com, they should (in theory) be redirected to this shiny new home.