In early 2005 I led a team of people to develop a huge property site www.whathouse.co.uk. I’d had eight years marketing experience with Blue Chip companies much of which involved online marketing but I have to admit that search engine optimisation (SEO) was still a “dark art” to me.

I built the site which almost everyone loved for its content and usability but the SEO advice I took turned out to be nonsense. I spent the next two and half years trying to correct my mistakes and learning everything I could about SEO while managing a large sales, marketing and editorial team, who would often complain that our natural search rankings were not good enough.

The second time I got ripped off in the early part of 2005, I promised myself that I would one day create a trustworthy source of online marketing advice that anyone with an interest and bit of common sense could understand.

I chose overseas property (Brits love buying abroad) as it’s an area I’m passionate about, have strategic experience in and is a vertical market that I believe has huge potential to benefit from sound online marketing practice. Global Edge (www.global-edge.net) will launch in November.