If you are from the UK and making the move to Sydney, Australia remember you are moving to the most expensive city in the world and so I come up with a list of what I advice I could give to those who are thinking of moving overseas; particularly to Sydney. Here are some I have come up with:

Sunscreen – ok all you sun worshippers like me you will be saying “ah it’s not that hot, I have sunbathed in hotter” but the one thing I did NOT release is that the hole in the Ozone everyone was bleating on about in the 80’s and 90’s is pretty much right over Australia. Australia has the highest skin cancer incidence rate in the world. Australians are four times more likely to develop a skin cancer than any other form of cancer. Approximately two in three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer before the age of 70 – this is not scaremongering its common sense. Factor 30 at least even when its overcast!

Housing – Look in the real estate market before you leave – getting an apartment over here is difficult due to the demand, for every place you look to rent there will be a queue of people behind you waiting for the same place! Destinations like Mosman, Bondi and North Shore are always popular. It is an idea to do some research from www.domain.com.au before you leave, check your budget and speak to the letting agents to find out when open houses are taking place. It is hard to apply from outside the country if you see somewhere you love. Usually it is a good idea to make the application in person but sign up for email alerts via domain.com.au to get ahead of the game. I event think they have a phone app! So you never miss out.

LAFHA – it stands for Living Away From Home Allowance. If you are lucky enough to be sponsored with an employer in Australia talk to their HR or accounts department about LAFHA, I do not understand the calculations but basically if you are working in Australia and working here means you are not in your normal place of residence i.e. 1 Smith Street, London, England – then you can apply for LAFHA which allows you to get an extra allowance on tax depending on the amount of rent you pay. There may be other conditions but it is worth investigating once you start working – more information can be found at http://www.lafha.com.au/Home.aspx

Shopping – unlike the UK, Australia does not tend to have large supermarkets, or if they do they tend to be out of the city centre and could require a hefty bus trip to reach them. If you are lucky enough to owe a car it makes life a lot easier, although beware of toll roads! There are lots!

Gumtree & Ebay – a god send if like us you are starting from scratch. We did not ship any furniture over from the UK mainly due to the cost so when we found a place to rent it was bare! Gumtree is bigger than ebay over here with lots of things for sale and some for free! But you will need to organise a way of collecting i.e. hire a car/van/yute. Beds and sofas are very very expensive compared to the UK and electronics like Fridges and TV are on the pricey side as well. Look at discount warehouses, house sales or notices in local shops to grab a bargain. We also found some of the cheapest clothes dryers, on appliancesonline.com.au which is another good site for assessing the prices of household appliances. Also if you are not proud (or can’t afford to be like us when we started out!) the residents of Sydney have a “clear out” about twice a month. So you could be going along a main road in a residential area and see piles of old furniture, tv’s computing equipment etc all by the side of the road. If you see something you think is in good condition you can simply take it before it is collected by the local council. We actually picked up a pretty decent coffee table this way. Be warned though, second hand furniture like this is not always in the best condition. Check out www.gumtree.com.au and www.ebay.com.au

Cars – now we don’t actually own a car yet as they seem to be very expensive. Even the 25 year old bangers seem to go for $3000! Then there is the added expenses of Rego (registration, cars need to be registered to the state they are in), GreenSlip (Tax and 3rd party insurance combined), parking (most apartments in the CBD will not have parking and you can “buy or rent” a parking space if you need to) and Stamp duty (only really applicable on new cars). Public transport is pretty decent in Sydney and cheap and I recommend trying that first www.131500.com.au but another alternative we found was www.goget.com.au. Goget is a car share initiative which allows you to join as a member for about $49 a month then basically there are lots of cars parked around the city, you go online find one close to you pick it up and drive away for the day. You don’t pay petrol, tax, insurance or tolls! There are mileage charges but they are minimal.

Alcohol – unlike us boozey Brits the Aussies do not allow you to purchase alcohol at your local supermarket. There are designated liquor stores if you want to buy alcohol but be warned compared to the UK it is expensive. Even in pubs you are looking at $7-8 for a “scooner” which is 2/3 of a pint.

Creepy crawlies – now to be honest we have been pretty lucky in avoiding such encounters at the moment as I think I would be on the next plane home, but it is worth considering that the little beggars will get in your house (especially in Spring as flies are everywhere) so my advice is look at getting insect screens over your windows, or ask your landlord to look into it as an investment. In the summer months it can get hot on an evening and windows have to be kept open and this is when they will come in handy. Those living in high rises probably won’t have so much of a problem. Also invest in sprays and air fresheners that deter them from wondering into your house in the first place. Mosquitos are an issue especially near water we have found so invest in some sprays from the local shop to stop getting bitten.

Removals – If you do not have a van at your disposal and you need to collect furniture (as bought on ebay or the like) it can be cheaper to hire “a man with van”. These guys usually advertise on Gumtree under removals or in local shops and charge about $30-45 an hour – which is cheaper than hiring a Ute or paying delivery charges from shops.

Walking – Sydney is very hilly so if like me you are not used to walking it is always an idea to bring trainers with you in your bag for those steep climbs. The CBD is not so bad but the suburbs can be tough on the old calf muscles.

Anyway I hope this was helpful to those of you who have just arrived! Good luck and welcome to Sydney.

Well we did it! we sat on a plane for 12 hours, a brief stop in Hong Kong, then onto another plane for 9 hours and here we are! Its morning here in Sydney Australia and the weather is balmy and overcast, to be honest I was expecting raging sunshine but not to worry I am sure its just an off day!

We have arrived at the hotel and are just taking everything in, including the view which is stunning. We drove over the Sydney Harbor Bridge in the taxi and a pang of home sickness and pride pricked me as Dorman Long (the company that build the bridge) are from my hometown of Middlesbourgh. Also Captain James Cook lived in Teesside so is this all serendipity? You have to wonder when your life takes this much of a monumental turn in another direction.

However on first impressions, I think we are going to like it here!

Well the countdown is on for the move to Sydney and I must say we are pretty organised, albeit I am flapping like a chicken and writing lists until they come out my ears. Flights are booked so no turning back now.

Living at my dads so his front room resembles some sort of storage facility but we are getting there with the packing.

Looking forward to starting my new SEO job, nerves are getting to me a bit but I am sure I will be fine, its like anything, you can have your doctorate in Nuclear Physics  but start a new job and you can struggle working the fax machine!

Christmas as bizarre and a little bitter sweet, it was nice to have that family feeling of everyone coming together but knowing that a move of nearly 12,000 miles is pending its sad to think this may the last get together for some time.

Anyway on with the rest of the packing.

For those of you who find a distinct lack of creative inspiration when it comes to writing meta tags you are not alone. I also feel slightly perplexed when it comes to writing meta as common knowledge will tell you that the tags need to be unique and not duplicated across a site it can be quiet a challenge, especially on larger websites.

I have also read various “guides” on writing meta and all seem to suggest that the keywords meta tag is now of little importance and not reviewed by some search engines. So that leaves the title tag and description. I can understand that the description tag is important as I have seen it used as the excerpt on SERPs so this needs to be thought about.

So here are a few of my thoughts on writing meta tags – hopefully it is helpful

Title Meta Tag
Include the keyword or phrase the page is trying to be optimised for as the primary keyword followed by any secondary keywords which will reinforce it i.e.

Primary Keyword – Secondary Keywords | Brand
Or
Brand | Primary Keyword and Secondary Keywords

If you are trying to rank for a very competitive term, I have found that it is best to include the keyword at the beginning of the title tag. If you are competing for a less competitive term and branding can help make a difference in click through rates, it is best to put the brand name first.

Description Meta Tag
Acknowledged by all search engines so this is important and needs to be included on all pages and be unique per page.
Summarise the page as best you can using the pre-defined primary and secondary keywords and limit it to 170 characters or 200 characters.
This requires using the most creative juices and you need to ensure it is coherent.

Keywords Meta Tag
This is more important for Yahoo then Google or Bing – try and limit to no more than 10-15 keywords to a page.
Include the keyword of phrase the page is trying to be optimised for first.

Keywords
More important for Yahoo then Google or Bing – no more than 10-15 keywords to a page
To include the keyword of phrase the page is trying to be optimised for first:

Recently I have been more “hands on” with link building and link building strategies as part of SEO. I thought I would share my findings – although I have kept this basic and brief!

What is Page Rank?

Page Rank is an analysis of links which is used by Google to establish a numerical weight of the page of your website based on the volume and relevancy of links to your site from other sites of a similar genre and good page rank.

As my own page rank has lapsed a little in recent months I decided that I needed to take on more research into this subject and optimise my page rank and that of my clients.

My research and professional opinion is that link building is an important part of any SEO strategy.

Why is link building Important?

Well in order for a site to gain creditability and maximum exposure you need to look at getting back links from other websites linking to you.

Think of back links as a “vote” for your site. So a “vote” from a high page ranking site is a very credible “vote” and a high page ranking site will be a site that will be crawled often so you link will be picked up.

Now this sounds easy but it takes quiet a strategic approach as it is not productive to target just any websites for you back links.

The websites page rank is important and its relevancy in relation to your website. So this means taking the time to indentify websites with high page ranks who are themed around the same subjects or products as your own website.

Where to start…

Well a good place is look at submitting to Dmoz (Page Rank 8 ) and other directory sites (basic stuff). Dmoz is great as it is a high page rank and gets crawled by Google regularly so there is a good chance your site will be picked up and associated with the category you have submitted to. Also to submit to Dmoz is free! Just make sure you submit as specifically as possible i.e. drill down you category as far as possible rather than trying to get submitted to the highest level of category. Dmoz is edited by real people and a more narrow category may mean that your submission gets revised quicker.

Another place to look at getting back links is simply use web searches for subjects you want your site associated with – then approach them for a link to your site. Not all sites will offer you a link for free or at all so be warned you may need to pay for links – the question to ask yourself at this point is whether the back link from this site is worth the money.

You can purchase software which will analyse your website and find sites associated with the same subjects/products that may be looked at for potential back links – however my experience of this software is that it still need a human touch to filter out competitors (who aren’t going to give you a back link) or sites that are just of no value.

Another area is to submit well written optimised articles to various websites and contain a back link to your site. These sites are usually reputable with a high Page Rank and categorised so you will find a relevant category to post your article. Just three sites I have found are www.HubPages.com/ www.ezinearticles.com/ and http://www.articlesbase.com/

Another area to explore is social networking site but I feel this is a subject in itself so I will post separately about this.

You can also opt for link exchanges (sometimes called reciprocal links) although I believe this is to be avoided where possible to avoid search engines seeing a straight forward link from a site, to another site and back again.

In some circumstances this needs to be adopted to take advantage of a sites relevancy and page rank although this need to be kept to a minimum and only considered from sites that will enhance relevancy and page rank.

Another common technique is commenting on blogs relevant to your site – this is fine but check for no follow links and ensure your comments are constructive and relevant to the post not a blatant attempt at shoe horning you url in as this will be seen as spamming and removed.

So what have I learnt from my recent link building 101? Well it is certainly organic process and takes time. It needs to be a natural progression and well strategized . There are lots to consider and it really involves thinking outside the box. You are also in the laps of the gods as to when your link will be picked up as it depends on the webmasters of the website you are linking from and how often they submit sitemaps, and how often Google visits.

As I submerge deeper into link building I will do my best to share my experiences with you. Watch this space!

After the sad and sudden departure of Buffy our beloved house rabbit we have adopted a new addition to the family. Xena is an 8 week old Chorkie puppy! A Chorkie is not a purebred dog. It is a cross between the Chihuahua and the Yorkshire Terrier so as you can imagine she is very tiny and very very cute.

This doesn’t mean that she isn’t a monster and has a diva style strop when she isn’t the centre of attention. All of which seems to be forgotten very quickly with one flash of her big brown eyes!

Technically she is a “designer breed” but I loath that term, makes her sound like some kind of genetically modified Frankenstein experiment. She is the happy product of a mummy Yorkie and a daddy Chihuahua.

However Chorkies are a robust breed with a life expectancy of 15 years but due to their appeal we have decided to get her micro chipped and insured as believe it or not people actually try to steal them!

She is very comical and loves to fight with toilet roll holders…random!!

Bradders, our other house rabbit, is a little unsure as he knows he is a lot bigger and more powerful then the puppy so he tends to keep out of her way for now. She is very bouncy and playful so he doesn’t really know what to make of her yet, he will never have as much of a bond with Xena as he did with Buffy but we are hoping they learn to get along once Xena has settled down.

I can sense another “Marley and Me” type book with anecdotes of her hilarious antics!

Check out the photos of Xena in my gallery.

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]]> http://www.karen-heslop.co.uk/2009/05/xena-our-new-puppy/feed/ 0 http://www.karen-heslop.co.uk/2008/10/piano-lessons/ http://www.karen-heslop.co.uk/2008/10/piano-lessons/#comments Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:03:10 +0000 Karen http://www.karen-heslop.co.uk/?p=16 {lang: 'en-GB'}

My lovely boyfriend is teaching me to play piano! so I had a lesson this weekend where I have attempted to play the chords to Deacon Blue’s Dignity! ok so it doesn’t sound exactly like the song but at least I can play with both hands at the same time lol will keep you posted on whether I get invited to play at the Proms lol

Welcome to my new and improved website! Have a look around and enjoy! Hope you all like the new look.

Love Karen x