The aim for my website Empuriabrava Online was to get to Number 1 in Google for the search term [empuriabrava] and that aim has now been achieved.

I actually made number one a while ago but thought I had better update my progress.

Downstairs is coming along well. The kitchen is well under way. After the plumber deigns to turn up we can fit the worktops in place, put up a wall to finish off the fridge, tile the walls and put in the washing machine and tumble drier. After that it's the living room floor, put up lights, paint the stairs and move in!

In passing. We used laminate floor from Ikea for the bedroom and office. It was so easy to install and looks great. I heartily recommend using it. 

which is a huge improvement on the previous report.

This however is not the whole story. According to my Google Sitemap for Empuriabrava Online my average top position for the keyword “empuriabrava” is 28 and at the time of writing this post the actual position is 19! Naturally I’m taking Google’s information to heart.

All this has been achieved by natural progression although recently I have been submitting to a number of directories.

I will keep you informed of progress.

The last post was all about the holes. Well they have all gone away now. The electricians/plumbers have connected and wired and Bob the Builder has been able to plaster over the holes is not looking so much like a building site.
We are pretty much working one room at a time where we can and starting from the top and working down towards the kitchen. A room by room report would look something like this.

Office

It is almost finished. The walls are painted. Six electrical sockets have been plastered and wired ready for my computer. (One plug for the computer, one for monitor, one for router, one for printer, one for speakers and a spare!). We have a hole ready for the telephone/broadband connection when it gets installed. The wardrobe has been repainted and only needs handles. The air conditioning unit is in. All that is left for the office is the window has to be painted and of course the laminate floor needs to be laid.

Landing/Stairs

The tiles have been laid and the walls primed. We are grouting the tiles sometime this week but will not paint the stairs and landing until everything upstairs is finished.

Bathroom

The bathroom has been tiled and the bath put in, connected to the drain and tiled. Sink and toilet need to go in. The ceiling lights, mirror light and hot towel rail need to be installed. We are grouting this week.

Bedroom

Wardrobe is painted as are the walls (first coat) and the ceiling (finished). We need to lay the floor and get the wiring for the sockets finished. The air conditioning unit is in and working.

Living Room

All of our efforts so far have been upstairs so for now all that has happening in the living room is that the electric sockets have been wired and fixed in place and the walls and ceiling have been primed and filled. The living room is now our painting area.

Kitchen

This will be the last room to be finished although a new window is going in next week. The old door leading from the kitchen to the living room has now been blocked up and a lovely new archway has been built. Most of the wiring and plumbing for the kitchen has been put in as has the new fuse box. The floor has been levelled ready for tiling (next week if the window doesn’t take too long to do) and one wall has been finished. The main work left to do is of course tiling the walls and fitting the kitchen units, cooker and other equipment. A trip to Ikea is imminent!

All in all we have done a lot of work and although there is still much to do things are coming together and looking good.

My aim therefore is to get the site to the number 1 position with the keyword “empuriabrava”.

To show what I mean, here is the result for the same website with the keywords “empuriabrava”, “online”:

This blog is second on the list!

For those who do not know. Position is where the website appears in the results page for the given keyword. E.g. type “empuriabrava online” into Google and it is the first on the list. Page Rank, to put it very simply, is Google’s way of indicating the importance of a page on the web and works on the premise that a good site is linked to from other sites. The BBC’s homepage for example has a page rank of 9 (10 is the highest – Google has a rank of 10).

To get a good position and good page rank I need to promote my site and get it mentioned on other web sites. (There is also the question of page optimisation but that’s not for now). Here’s what I have done so far:

• 29th November – Site went live for testing
• 4th December – Link to the website added to my email signature, to my Sitepoint signature, to this blog and I applied to have the site listed in Dmoz.org
• 5th December – Created an xml sitemap and added it to Google Sitemaps. Submitted the site to Yahoo (their free submission!).
• 6th December – Emailed a local club to tell them about my site and invite them to advertise events for free. Submitted the site to 01webdirectory and 4do.org. (I’m slowly working through a list of web directories. It takes a long time to do).

My next set of tasks are to continue submitting to directories and to email everyone I know to tell them about the site.

I had hoped to pass on things that I had learnt during the design of the site but I never really got around to it. Hopefully I will add some stuff retrospectively, especially about the PHP that went into creating the site. This was a great experience for me as I wrote all the code by hand and therefore learned a lot.

My future plan for this section of my blog is to document my process of getting Empuriabrava Online to the top of search engine rankings.

Lots of holes.

We’ve been making channels for water pipes all over the house as we are putting one large hot water tank upstairs that will feed both the bathroom and kitchen. We are also pretty much re-wireing the whole house as well as adding hundreds of new wall sockets. The office is having six plugs put in and the kitchen is having something like 16. (In between is the living room which has 10). See our flickr page for photos of holes!
Part of the reason we have so many holes is because pipes and cables were buried all over the place and much of what we were doing was finding out where everything went. That is why I have taken photos, so we know where all the pipes and such are. Clever eh?

I’ve also been taking off tiles in the bathroom with my hammer and chisle. The tiles seem as if they are welded onto the wall so it’s hard going but it’s getting there.

Bob (our builder) has rebuilt the kitchen/living room wall, made a start on plastering and the electricians/plumbers are in doing the air-conditioning, water tank and wiring so more photos are on the way.

On Saturday, Eva’s dad (John) and our builder friend (Bob) knocked down the wall separating the kitchen and the shower room to make one big room. The door leading to the kitchen also came down as a new wall is going up in its place.

Upstairs meanwhile, Eva and I took all the doors and wardrobe doors off their hinges so that Eva could sand them down ready for the first coat of undercoat. She had 15 doors to do.

I smashed up the bathroom with a sledgehammer, lump hammer and chisel so that we could get the bath out. Whoever put those tiles in did not mean for them to come out this century. The most satisfying part of the day was throwing the bath out off the upstairs balcony onto the pile of rubble that was beginning to accumulate on the front garden.

On Sunday, Eva painted the first coat of undercoat whilst I took off the skirting tiles in a couple of rooms and the started chiselling off the tiles in the kitchen.

All in all a very satisfactory start to the renovations and I never knew that hammering could be so fun.

The pictures of our progress so far can be found on our Flickr site in the Our House (During) section

As you can see from the photos on flickr, the house is in need of modernisation which we are doing ourselves with the help of Eva’s parents and a builder friend.

We are going to redecorate and refurnish throughout, put down new flooring, new bathroom and new tiling but the main job is the knocking through of the kitchen and downstairs shower room to make one bigger kitchen. The wall is going tomorrow so it’s (sledge)hammer time!

Yesterday and this evening we emptied the house of the old furniture (it was sold furnished) and we have had our plumber and electrician round to give us a quote on the rewireing and piping that is needed to put in a new hot water tank, air conditioning, washing machine, dish-washer and tumble drier.