In which I talk about myself. Hopefully, I won’t slip into third-person. (Talking about myself is not my favorite subject.) Also, if you pick up that I’m from Australia, and yet my English in this website is US English – well aren’t you clever?  It’s all in US English as the USA is where the vast majority of visitors hail from )

Hi, I’m Anni Taylor.

I’m from Australia and have four great boys. I’m part-creative, part-geek, part-procrastinator.

I prefer to put things together without instructions, love the old 1950s-1970s horror comic books, love anything astronomy (which I spend more time reading about than I’ll admit to).

Also, I’m a writer – of web content and anything creative. You can find me here: annitaylor.com

I first created this website in 2005 as an info resource for beginners to website-creation and seo/traffic techniques.

Back in 2005

In 2005, I spent months trying to find a way of creating a small website for my partner’s business.

Why did I do that? Well, he didn’t have much faith in the internet doing much for his locally-operated business and I wanted to try creating a website. (Not that I thought I could do it better than the experts. Not for a minute.) I enjoy doing things myself and it was something that seemed a good challenge.

No luck.

Basically all I found were websites that were trying to promote products that they themselves didn’t even use. I tried many different things and learned what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was along the way. I soon learned that the first web creation software I tried didn’t even create proper page names or title tags. Okay, my first attempts were pretty lame!

On-the-job SEO

I also started applying what I learned in my job with Fairfax Digital (Australia) where I worked as a Features’ Editor. (2002-2009) I made sure that every title was exactly relevant to the subject matter of the article and also attracted good search engine queries. I saw articles shoot to the top of search engines results within days or sooner. I learned on-the-job how to create content that search engines liked.

I decided to shift my website-creation content onto a ‘proper domain’. At the time, I was reading advice that said search engines didn’t parse words in domain names well, so it was best to have dashes between words. So I followed this advice and bought make-website.com

I since wished I’d bought something without a dash, as I much prefer domain names without. But what the hey – it was a done deal by then. I loaded in my content – content that I’d previously placed on a free blog at Blogger. And I do think that if you’re going to buy a new domain name today, it’s best to go without any dashes.

I tried to design the website so the information was logical and was as helpful as possible. I wanted beginners to not fall into the same traps as me and for them to have all the information I wished I’d had when I first started out.

Yeah! Traffic!

My traffic grew from month to month. Crazy-good growth for a new website.

Then I did something super-stupid. I wanted to use a php code for my website to make it easier to manage (which it did) but it required changing all my url extensions from .html to .php.

Bad, bad mistake. It meant that I broke every single link (internal and external) of my entire website. It’s a wonder Google didn’t dump me altogether.

A few months into this, something really good happened. DMOZ, the biggest human-reviewed website directory on the internet, picked up my website to put on their directory. At the time, I didn’t know what they were. I looked up info about them and found that they were the most-valued and hardest-to-get-into directory online.  (Back then they were valued anyway) As soon as my site was listed in DMOZ – I saw dozens of links appearing in my analytics. (I only had Awstats – I hadn’t heard of Google Analytics then.) Lots of directories and websites take their links directly from DMOZ.

From there my traffic took a upwards jump, and my page rank shot up too. Then my second-oldest son said he didn’t like the colors of my site, and suggested changing to blue. I did a big site redesign, which had a very positive impact. (I’ve recently changed the site design yet again Time will tell if it’s a good change. )

Other things

I then placed ads on the site for a very personal reason – someone in my family was diagnosed with cancer, and I wondered if I could create enough passive income to work less and spend more time with that family member. This person grew increasingly ill very quickly, and sadly isn’t here now.

I didn’t pay any attention to my site for months. When I checked – there was money. At the time, the thought of money seemed very hollow. I pretty much ignored that side of things and just did what I could to get through work at Fairfax.

My second youngest was also having problems at school – problems we couldn’t resolve. I decided to leave work and homeschool him for a year, and see if that changed things. It was a great year – full of discovery and was very positive for my child. I’m happy to report he’s now doing fantastically back at school. Homeschooling was absolutely the right option, and his teacher actually said this to me the year he went back to school.

During the homeschool year, I worked at night on more websites, including a business ideas website for Australian women and began creating a website with information on free resources for websites. (Which all need updating now!) My nights were extremely busy – as I spent the days homeschooling (both my then 7 year old and then 3 year old.) I did try to find a business partner, but that didn’t work out. I’m sure it was my fault – I’m not the best at communicating business plans.

Also during that year, my partner of ten years and I separated. But I will report that the website I created for his business still holds number one and top ten positions in Google for his business’ top keywords in a very competitive area – which is the most important thing really It shows that a bit of careful SEO really does work.

Hey, this stuff really works

My sites now carried ads from a number of networks, including contextual ads and affiliate programs from sites such as Commission Junction. The income I’d previously made per year at Fairfax doubled, then tripled and now quadrupled. (It must be stated here that I only worked part-time at Fairfax, so I’m not quadrupling a full-time income. I wish!)

I hope you find something useful here at Make-Website