This blog has been inactive for some time. And that’s a mistake I will correct, starting with this post.

There’s been a lot happening on the First Hit front, and it’s high time I told you all about it.

But there’s a reason for the sudden interest. If you’ve been following any of the SEO commentators over the last two weeks you would know that Google has ‘repositioned’ the Tool Bar Page Rank (TBPR) of some web sites which, in Google’s opinion, have been buying or selling links.

In other words, the offending sites got whacked. Most feel it’s a cosmetic whacking, because the only change has been the number displayed on the Google toolbar. A web site that previously was 6, is now 4. That sort of thing.

Interestingly, there’s been no talk of an actual drop in visitor numbers, conversions, or whatever metric you choose to gauge the success of your web site. So you’ve got to assume it’s a warning, a shot across the bows, that Google frowns upon the practice of buying links from high TBPR web sites.

Anyway, this neglected blog has been sitting there with a TBPR of 5 and (according to Webalizer) around 70 visitors a day. With that sort of traffic, I’m just plain stupid if I let this blog continue to languish.

I’ve decided to do three things. The first is to install Google Analytics so I can get a better idea of who/ what/when/where/why people are visiting this blog. Second, I’m committing to a minimum of two posts every week covering some aspect of search marketing (I hope it can be one post a day, but no promises). Thirdly, I will complete my customisation of this theme (Cutline 1.1, if you’re interested), update Wordpress, and complete all the static pages that for so long have remained absent or unfinished.

So there. If you’re one of the few who remain subscribed to my RSS feed, I thank you for your patience and I’ll reward you with some snippets of information that you won’t see anywhere else. If you’re new to this blog, please consider subscribing as my fragile male ego needs some bolstering right now.

Two other things. There will be no advertising and monetising on this blog. It remains free of Adsense, TLAs, miscellaneous 125×125s, banners and affiliate links. Finally, all content will be freely available. No member-only sections, no squeeze pages, and no requests for contact details.

Enjoy.