About Me and this Website
My name is Matt Hayden and I'm a writer, online marketer and blogger in the beautiful city of Perth, Western Australia.
I got into blogging several years ago and have written many blogs, mostly humorous, since then. Some have kicked the bucket, but a few are still going strong.
For several years I really didn't know much about SEO. I just kept writing posts and that was it! The traffic grew slowly, and I ended up getting some pretty solid numbers.
My main blog was called Die, Fluffy Wuffy, Die! It was an often humorous "rant blog" that I started writing it in 2006. It had over a thousand posts and garnered a lot of traffic over several years. It was hosted on a platform called Blog-City, which ceased operations late last year, so it is now offline, and I've kept all the posts with the intention of one day turning them into a book. (I have restarted that blog at Blogger, however. It can be found here.)
When I was living in Sydney several years ago I wrote a parody blog, purportedly by then Labor Leader Mark Latham. That got some media attention and was ultimately archived by the National Library of Australia.
Having been back in my hometown of Perth for the last couple of years I've got a local blog about the city running. It's starting to pull in some steady, targeted traffic. It's called The Real Perth Blog and is usually ranked at number 3 or 4 for searches for "Perth blog".
I used to be a standup and character comedian. One of my characters was a deep green Freo type called Derek Sapphire. I've built a site for him, with a blog. One of his silly posts was quoted here in The Australian.
With my past as a performer I maintain a keen interest in the arts. I have a blog about the subject, which garnered me this interview on Radio National.
While I was learning a lot simply by blogging, it was only in the last few of years that I really took a specific interest in how and why blogs and websites rank well in the search engines. So I started reading a lot about it and began applying these techniques, particularly article marketing. Late in 2008 I began a blog about what I was learning.
I realized that I could help others with the knowledge I'd amassed from many long hours blogging, website building, online promotion and research. So I decided to build this site.
I've been at it for a couple of years now, slowly recording my thoughts about what works and why. SEO is a rapidly evolving field and there's a lot of disagreement about many issues (mainly because algorithms are closely held secrets), so I don't pretend that this is the only way to approach the subject. That said, I'm sure you'll find some of the tips and techniques I've included here useful for drawing search engine traffic to a website.