This is a follow on from the posts – How I started in SEO, Always Expect The SEO Bubble To Burst, TJ You’re a Genius, Building a Business Directory , V7ndotcom Elursrebmem Competition, The Google Minus 30 Penalty, We had no Google Webmaster Tools, Sim64.co.uk Mothballed, Giving up the Day Job, Business Directory Listings Explode, No More Self Editing, Released From The Google Minus 30 Penalty, Sim64 The Start of the WordPress Years and SEO, Why I don’t like doing SEO for other people, Setting up Google Maps Listings – Go back and read those 1st.

Google Panda Update

We are up to about 2011 2012 now and to be honest I’ve lost interest in SEO a bit with one of the main reasons being I just can’t find anything I’m interested in optimising for.

My directory site is doing so well now that I don’t have to worry about working, don’t have to worry about clients, affiliate work or anything else.

It was about then that the Google Panda update hit

Coincidentally, The Google Panda update hit my directory site about a week before I went to a Google AdSense get together near Oxford and judging from the conversations there I wasn’t the only one.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t as bad as I expected
My traffic probably halved over the coming months but rather than having a big clear out like I did when sim64 had previously been hit in the early years, I just left things as they were and did more work on my other sites.

One of the big advantages in the Panda and similar updates is it obviously affected a fair few people as enquiries from people wanting me to help them with SEO were never higher.

Although I didn’t really like doing SEO for other people I got tempted by the challenge and started helping a few more people out.

All was well for about 12 months but with some of them it started to feel like a job, and once that feeling hits, the enjoyment goes out of SEO.

I stuck it for another 6 months or so but gradually cut all the work down until I was eventually just doing my stuff again when a property came on the market that I just couldn’t resist.

It was a house that needed a lot of work doing to it, was less than 5 miles away and in a lovely village.

I had stashed my previous AdSense earnings away and thought this is just the thing to spend it on, I made an offer of £210k and bought it for cash 🙂

It needed a lot of work doing on it so I mothballed my websites and spent the next 10 months modernising and extending it (probably spending another £100k getting it just how I wanted, carpeted, furnished and we moved in the week before Christmas.

I didn’t sell our existing cottage so once the cold weather was out the way (we had a very cold Jan, Feb, March that year) I then reversed the process and started revamping the cottage including a new kitchen, bathroom, windows, heating system then once finished had new carpets fitted and rented it out.

During this 24 months I hardly did any web work, it was great 🙂 Being back on the tools and doing a lot of the work myself I had lost nearly 3 stone and was happiest I had been in a long time, it’s amazing how much social interaction you lose when just sat behind a monitor day in day out.

Getting back to the web work – Story continues here – Back to the Web Work