Connecting With Humans: My New Year’s Resolution for 2025
After 24 years as an eCommerce eBay store owner, 15 years of YouTube Video SEO experience, and equal longevity ranking UK Nationwide eCommerce websites in Google, I’m pivoting. As an SEO freelancer, working 100% in solitude, I’ve always known (and preferred) to work alone or lead a team. Even without a formal Digital Project Manager title, my mantra has always been, “Learn One New Thing A Day.”
The problem is, if you don’t know what you don’t know, plus you’re flying solo, it’s natural to stay in your lane and stick with what works. The hundreds of hours a month I spend creating unique and powerful SEO-friendly CTA content for my clients is a joy. Yet, when it comes to finding new clients, I’m a hot mess. Most people I meet have a low or even zero marketing budget and want to learn DIY SEO. I help when I can, but after two decades of being taken advantage of, I’ve matured into a no-nonsense attitude. My radar for BS sings, and I proudly say I stink at tolerating nonsense anymore.
IMDB Podcast 2023 – Nina Payne: SEO Lady on Unscripted SEO
Check out the Unscripted SEO profile. Because clearly, you are a sucker for aural punishment with Barry Schwartz-speed commentary. Of course, tools like ChatGPT and YouTube tutorials have been a joy and a massive productivity boost, but nothing replaces human connection. My BrightonSEO April 2024 experience was pivotal.
For the first time, I met SEO peers who had endured the exact same timeline of Google algorithm updates, keyword battles, and the explosive LLM journey. Enlightening? Electrifying! Finally, no void shouting or ignored emails—just real, productive conversations.
That single encounter reminded me of what I’d been missing: energy, accountability, and creativity from like-minded people. So for 2025, my resolution is clear reducing professional isolation. It’s time to connect with the Agencies, not just broadcast SEO Case studies. My social media will shift from a megaphone to a dialogue, unless you book me as a public speaker:
I’d love to be your podcast or video guest. Invite me to appear on your broadcast, please!
While I don’t drive and need to book train tickets and time off work to attend events, I’m seeing 2025 as my year to pivot.
*Ex-husband [ahem] so, I filed for divorce in August 2024. I needed to. Connecting with fellow professionals who’ve weathered the same industry highs and lows is now my priority. Whether they’ve got grey hair or no hair, I’m here for it all—since 2008 and counting. Returning to BrightonSEO is on my calendar, this time with plans to enjoy the pier party. (Yes, I still have my free drink ticket from 2024!)
Round Up of SEO Services and Digital Marketing Article Pages
One of the oldest URLs on my domain from 2012 has now been designated as Cornerstone Content. I’ve added it to my footer and have cleaned up over 40 orphan pages scattered over the decades. Everything is now properly linked and optimized for better SEO structure. It’s been a journey of rediscovery, but every step has been worth it.
Who Had the Most 2024 Subscribers on YouTube? Why is Video Schema essential for SEO?
Ever wondered who sits atop the YouTube throne? Spoiler: it’s not your cat’s channel. Discover the reigning champs and maybe pick up a tip or two on how to dethrone them. Or just watch in awe; that’s productive too.
Because nothing screams ‘fun’ like diving into the world of JSON plugins. Enhance your video’s SEO with this tool, and who knows? Maybe your content will finally get the attention it deserves. Or not. But hey, at least you tried.
The 16-Year-Old Backlink Secret: Video SEO (VSEO) Link Equity and Video SEO: Link Building for YouTube
Uncover the ancient secrets of backlinking that even a teenager could master. Boost your video’s SEO and maybe, just maybe, become the next big thing. Or at least move from 10 views to 20. Dream big. Learn how to build link equity for your YouTube videos. Because who doesn’t want their content to be the popular kid on the block? Or at least not the one picked last.
SEO Lady Nina Payne’s Profile – Your Next White Label SEO Slash Project Manager
Get to know the SEO Lady herself. Check out her professional profile. Because stalking professionals online is totally acceptable. Learn from her expertise, or just admire her accolades. Due to yonks of invoice yanking, I’ve raised five UKGOV small claims in my career, all ruled in my favour. The last one? The year 2000. Four years after swearing I’d never work without advance payment, I did – and the client shafted me. Spotless invoice payment history, and all for less than £200.01. Lesson learned. Your call.
YouTube Video SEO Tutorial – Non Technical DIY Actionable Takeaways
A step-by-step guide to mastering YouTube SEO. Learn the fundamentals. Because winging it hasn’t really worked out for you so far, has it? Time to get serious. Feeling like you want to waste 420 hours? Dive into the world of link building and PR for Channel SEO and Link SEO Entity topics in YouTube. Because who needs sleep when you can obsess over algorithms and rankings? Priorities, right?
Beginner’s Guide to Video SEO on YouTube – The Double Google Algorithm:
Start from the basics and work your way up. Check out our beginner’s guide. Because even experts were beginners once. Except for those who weren’t. But that’s not you. Got a spare decade? Read up and Navigate the labyrinth of Google’s algorithms. It’s like a game, but with more confusion and less fun. But hey, victory tastes sweet. When all else fails, ask for help. Visit the official YouTube Help channel. Or at least watch videos about how to help yourself.
It’s like DIY, but for your digital woes. You know you want to listen to a bumbling British fool on stage: Double Google Algorithm with Website Blogs and YouTube Video SEO. Here’s me being a Brighton SEO speaker. Because sometimes, listening to someone who knows what they’re talking about is a good idea.
Videos have pictures. Pretty, moving pictures.
I absolutely have open ears to all new ideas – take yourself over to my contact form on the top menu, this page has so many internal links at this point that it’s making me blush.
Repurposing old blog URLs and redating them is a tactic, or method, I’ve used like forever. Podcasts are still broadcasting this and recommending it, but sometimes blogs don’t have dates on the CMS front end.
I hate websites like that, I’m a bouncer. Flipping the bird at your GA4 event data on purpose.
There’s a lot of people desperate for their brand or idea to make cash online, and some mistakenly think that a million hits to their website within a week will instantly make that happen, and taking advantage of free global social media channels in the certainty that increased traffic = financial success.
Wrong. I came across this article dated 7th August 2012 which in 2025, begs the question: Oh wow, it’s still live! How?
What happens if you violate Twitter’s terms of service and buy followers?
The answer: Not much, according to a guy who tried it a couple of weeks ago. We heard from David B. this morning about how he bought himself about 70,000 followers, overnight, for $25 from some he found on Fiverr.com, a site that lets you advertise what you are willing to do for $5. David B. is a longtime Twitter user. He’s had an account since 2006, way back when the service was still called Twitter. Over the years, he built up about 400 followers real people he actually knows.
Earlier this year, he was working for a startup willing to try lots of crazy stunts to get the word out on its new product. So one night, after a few drinks, David B. decided to buy followers for his company’s account. It seemed like a good idea at the time. He was sober enough to try it first with his own account and not the company account since buying followers can get an account banned.
He contacted five vendors on Fiverr, each offering to add between 4,000 to 21,000 followers to his account. Total cost: $25. The next morning he had about 75,000 followers, all fake bot accounts. And then … nothing. “I don’t get any additional retweets off them,” he told Business Insider.
If Twitter noticed that a guy with 400 followers for years suddenly had 70,000 more overnight, they kept their mouths shut. His account wasn’t flagged or banned. David B. told us that most of the fake accounts look real enough, with pictures and normal-sounding Tweets. They are hard to tell from the real deal. As we previously reported, there are ways to use these bots to get more Twitter juice. You can also pay the botmasters to retweet a tweet to try and make it land on a trending list.
But a better idea is to save your money. Fewer followers made up of real people is better than 70,000 robot friends, and David B. will be the first to tell you that.
THE END IS NIGH YOU’RE ALMOST AT THE END
This really jogged my memory .. I can bring to mind more than a few big players in e-commerce who have had this idea and have asked me to set up accounts and buy traffic. My answer is always the same – find another SEM who will, because I’m not wasting my time and your money.
Deep in the quagmire that’s called ‘Irrelevant Traffic’ lives a cesspool for buying Twitter followers or Facebook fans and similar opportunities of buying traffic from dubious sources with the thought of overnight success.
Non-targeted and traffic from uninterested people won’t bring in sales – aim for specific targeted traffic, even if it’s 10 hits a day.
I’d rather that than 1,000 visitors come to my homepage and click away immediately, ramping up my bounce rate and lowering my reputation. When my 10 targeted visitors come to my site, they stay a while, and I can use the data Google Analytics gives me to see how to improve my site, even for only 10 visitors.
Google Analytics gives me data on how long people spent on my pages, how many pages per visit, the most popular pages (Top Content) and the top exit pages, plus much more.
If I see a page with a high bounce rate and low time spent on there, I look to see how I could improve, maybe a better call to action, a tweak of text, looking at my competitors and updating regular content that would keep people interested to read.
In 2025, I’ll still consume articles, watch videos, and experiment with AI tools—after all, staying informed is part of the job. But my focus will shift toward learning from humans. Conversations spark creativity in a way that solitary learning can’t. They challenge your ideas, push you to think deeper, and often lead to those “aha” moments that drive growth.
Like that time in band camp in 2024 when I discovered an unskilled developer changed my 2012-slug homepage for a slug-2 version in 2020 and it took me 4 years to figure it out. In the meantime, I’d accidentally set my staging website with ‘index’. Yeah, I shout about my skills, but committing an SEO crime on your own website, or not and failing to all external and internal options – every day is a school day. Even if 2025 is the year of your 54th birthday.