Cebu SEO - Your Local SEO Blog in Cebu!

+1 Button Overrides robots.txt

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 01:57:00 +0000

We got a word of confirmation from John Mueller, a Google employee, that Google +1 button will enable pages to being seen or getting indexed even if those pages are blocked in "robots.txt" file.

...if you put a +1 button on your pages, we assume that you're ok with us accessing the pages, even if they're blocked by a robots.txt file. In general, users don't know about robots.txt files, so they may +1 or reshare any URL if they find it interesting enough... [reference]

He also added that if we intend to block unverified users from re-sharing and accessing the private content we should use server-side authentication.. Because of this behaviour, it is important that we use proper canonicalization (again, don't use the robots.txt for canonicalization as advised). More information about +1 button here.

Speed Up The Indexing Of Your Newly Added Pages

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:07:00 +0000

If you have just updated added a new page to your site, you can request Google to crawl it immediately without waiting for Google to discover it naturally.

Click To Enlarge

On the Google Webmaster Tools page, choose the site you like.
Under Diagnostics in the dashboard, choose Fetch as Googlebot.
On the text box, fill-up the complete URL of the page you want to submit.
On the dropdown menu, choose Web. (select cHTML (for Japanese mobile sites) or xHTML/WML for the standard mobile sites.
Click Fetch. Google will fetch the URL you requested. It may take up to 10 or 15 minutes for Fetch status to be updated.
Once you see a Fetch status of "Successful", click Submit to Index, and then click one of the following:

Click To Enlarge

To submit the individual URL to Google's index, select URL and click Submit. You can submit up to 50 URLs a week in this way.
To submit the URL and all pages linked from it, click URL and all linked pages. You can submit up to 10 of these requests a month.

Note:

Fetch as Googlebot submission will not follow redirects.
Google doesn't guarantee that they will index every URL they crawl.

To ask Google to crawl a URL on a site you don't own, visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url.

Google+, A Good Addition To Social Search?

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:39:00 +0000

When Google introduced personalized search on 2007, it shakes up the SEO industry even until now and many users were afraid that their search activities were recorded, hence, privacy concerns were being raised against Google. As I always believe in their mantra "Don't Be Evil", Google has collected these personalized data from us (by default) to ensure that the search results are relevant enough and more meaningful, so I trust Google more than any other sites on the web.

My only concern is the search result depicted on the screenshot below. With the early success of G+, a lot of my friends flocked to the site and started sharing some information, and these personalized results (shown below) on Google is being heavily influenced by users connected with me on G+.

Top four pages, as shown, dominate on my list when I am signed-in. While, nothing is shown from G+ if I will opt-out from social search, i.e, natural search (pws=0, cleared cookies and logged out).

I think there must be a limit on how much G+ will influence the personalized SERPs or better yet, Google has to redesign its search UI again. Anything more is simply messing with the results, agree?

To show your extended network of online contacts and how you're connected, visit http://www.google.com/s2/search/social. Sadly, you cannot edit the massive data there!

Cebu - SEO Capital of the Philippines?

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 05:36:00 +0000

I’ve heard people's debate over which city could be the SEO capital of the Philippines, I don’t want to say the obvious (Manila)... but Cebu is pretty much the BPO Hub of the Philippines, with a diverse pool of freelancers and webmasters, multinational BPO firms and a full service design companies. I think Cebu is still a major contender.

I think that the talents in Manila are spread too thinly over too many companies. I wonder which companies collect the most resumes? I moved here in Cebu 4 years ago for my studies and worked for almost 2 years in the SEO industry, I would have to say here, Cebu SEO specialists are talented and inspirational bunch like Glenn Prialde (iSnare.com).

Thought, it seems Manila has a high concentration of SEO practitioners, I do know other peeps in Capiz who even knows a lot of SEO than me, perhaps SEOs from Capiz have something going for it? Iligan City, accordingly has more SEO applicants in Odesk also find its way to be known by the industry. At the moment it’s a difficult competition between Manila and Cebu but for sheer volume, Manila has more high quality SEO talents I believed.

With hundreds of SEO companies being spread widely across the archipelago, is Philippines actually becoming and leading the race as the SEO capital of the world too? Without a doubt, Manila is the SEO capital of the world! or at least Makati, forget what those hoity toity Indians say and together we will be among the biggest and best search marketing in the world!

Google PageRank Update + new CEO

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 02:31:00 +0000

Looks like a long-awaited Google PageRank update has hit. Changes at Google, new CEO and a pagerank update all in one day or Larry Page's first order as new CEO is to update toolbar PageRank? I think pagerank was named after Larry, he was not named from pagerank. Lol. In honor of Eric's decade of service, I propose that "PageRank" be renamed to "SchmidtRank".

For those of you patiently waiting a Google Pagerank update, upgrades appear to slowly be rolling out. I have seen several posts at DigitalPoint and WebmasterWorld Forums and there are lots of people tweeting it too.

I have checked five of my sites and three of them have a new PR! Anyway, I hope your PageRank went up. Although the update has no immediate impact on rankings and is way out of date, many SEOs take pride in their PageRank.

I'm still puzzled why it took Google almost a year to update its PageRank algorithm but I'm relieved to see my efforts have paid off for my clients over the past 10 months.

So, check all your pages, it could be a pleasant surprise!

Former CEO, Eric Schmidt and New CEO, Larry Page

BUYanihan: Cebu's First Group Buying Community

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 09:17:00 +0000

BUYanihan has finally launched and will features fantastic daily deals on the best stuff to do, watching, eating out or shopping within Cebu.

It's a Groupon-like community that Google attempted to bought it but failed. As for the Cebuano consumers, the BUYanihan will surely save them with maximum discounts whenever they will buy certain deals on the BUYanihan website.

Group buying in the Philippines is on the rise as other competitors like CashCashPinoy.com, Ensogo.com.ph and DealSpot.ph also offer the same idea to collectively form a group that can offer to purchase the services at a discounted rate. Can't wait to launch their own local deals here in Cebu and hoping for some discounted tech gadgets.

Foursquare Allows Do-Follow Link

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 02:40:00 +0000

Foursquare has updated its venue features by adding a do-follow website link. This new feature allows anyone to pass link juice if only you are allowed to edit a certain venue (so you must be a superuser or a venue staff) and it can also be added during the venue creation process.

It works fine at my end to some venues where I am a Mayor like this venue shown above. They've also added description feature but it doesn't permit us to add visible links there.

This is not to encourage anyone to post any irrelevant links from there but to learn more about a company, from their menu to their hours that simply cannot be found on foursquare.

Google: Real Customers Are Always Right!

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 08:41:00 +0000

NYT recently published a story about a disgruntled customer who bought counterfeit eyeglasses online and tried returning it.

Google caught its attention of the story and in response will be tweaking how its search algorithm works. In an interview with the NYT, Vitaly Borker, business owner of DecorMyEyes, used his bad business reputation online to rank higher in Google and rip people off.

Google posted a blog today announcing that it would now be adding merchant reviews to its ranking algorithm to prevent such things from happening again. The search giant also added that this was a somewhat isolated case, but the counteract solution is now being implemented.

I hope google is careful to no disregard negative reviews altogether because they are an important source of information for consumers who are considering a product or service.

Consistently, I learn more about a good or service from its negative reviews than I do the positive ones and I trust them more and here is why:

You give a person good service and they might tell 1 or 2 people, you give a person bad service and they are likely to tell everyone they know.

People share bad news more than they do good news and the negative review is a great way for consumers to spread the word about an abusive company.

*Photo courtesy from Palo Alto.

Link Assistant Offers 7-Day Trial

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 02:53:00 +0000

Link Assistant is known of having the World's Most Standard SEO Tools. I have been using their Rank Tracker for a few months now for tracking keywords in SERPs and it's a really cool tool. I'm very glad that one of my clients made the right investment in it. Rank Tracker is suitable for power users or those that have numerous domains, though it is easy enough to use for anyone to get full advantage.

Not just Rank Tracker, products such as SEO SpyGlass and Website Auditor do absolutely fabulous jobs and are highly recommended. Link Assistant is now offering a 7-day trial of all their softwares. The registration information will work from November 8, 2010 until November 14, 2010. So, here are the tools with their keys and all registered by Wolf Howl.

Rank Tracker
Registration Key: RT-2aRMtgFc67YaaD66

Website Auditor
Registration Key: WA-2aXr5CI1Fkgcv600

SEO SpyGlass
Registration Key: SSG-2aQdD1Ci5Zk2Bge6

Link Assistant
Registration Key: LA-2aSV0u2fwvMwlQ59

[via]

Raven Embraces mozRank, Replaces PageRank

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 02:37:00 +0000

Raven Tools made a decision earlier to switch on SEOmoz's mozRank replacing the way they deliver PR scores to their clients. A good move and might inspire other SEO practitioners to educate and understand to shift away from PR metric instead focus on ROI and search engine traffic.

Raven cited the following reasons why they opted to add SEOmoz metrics on their system.

You get better metrics to help influence intelligent marketing and link building decisions.
The SEOmoz Site Intelligence API is a reliable data source.
We can provide data faster and more frequently.
The metrics will be used to enhance future tool development in Raven.

But users can still keep the PageRank into the Link Manager for their personal reference.

3 Reasons Why I want to go to SEMCON 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 17:18:00 +0000

In less than 3 weeks, the 4th SEMCON will happen from October 7 – 8 in Hotel Intercontinental, Makati City, Philippines. Anyone who is still remotely associated to gaining leads, clients and driving customers' sales must attend and join. This is an avenue for all these types of marketing practitioners.

This marks my 2nd year of attending this search marketing conference and I think this time they got one of the best program ever organized. I’ll love it. That’s why I NEED to attend even though how tough it can be to justify the expenses of attending this kind of industry conference.

Here are THREE Reasons why I want to go again and meet those rockstars!

1. Big Brains and Star Gazing

There are a lot of smart folks at SEMCON. Today, more serious and active search engine enthusiast and a bunch of international speakers from the well-known search engine marketing agencies will surely grace the occasion. Getting to hear Aaron Wall speak will be a treat. There will be more high profile personalities at SEMCON 2010. I am not one of those who will be bowled over by titles, claims or fame, but it's really interesting to look and watch some of those well known leading experts in much closer look. You cannot help oneself but pose a smile at Todd Malicoat’s enthusiasm be carried by Jim Boykin’s woozy knowledge and passion and meet a skillful guy than Charlie J. Ellis. Their effective pioneering tactics you will want to start implementing them during the session breaks to become a more effective, innovative and inspired internet marketer.

2. Camaraderie and Answers

The amount of willingness to share and participate in the search industry is exceedingly high. I saw Hans Koch, Abe Olandres and RJ David showing constructive and relative comments to some websites of the attendees who presented at the Site Clinic session. And those with supportive ideas were all generous and assisted them to maintain the liveliness of the topics. Everyone understands that this is a little environment in which both sides must gain and share.

3. Humor and Rumor

These two words take issue by merely one letter, have you ever observed that one out? There was a moment of laughter and fun at SEMCON. Founder of Tsikot.com was consistently amusing throughout his presentation. Benj Arriola expounded analogies on Video SEO (played his guitar) and Keyword Research. Rumors about Google Caffeine were also being discussed by the presenters. Hopefully, I will expect more of these funny moments and rumors of major search engines' next project in line, next month.

If you haven't booked for this event yet, you should as soon as possible. For more information, check the official website at http://bit.ly/semcon2010

SEMCON is programmed by the Fiera de Manila, IMV Solutions, YugaTech and SEO Philippines, the people you trust to keep you ahead of the curve on all things on search engine marketing.

BTW, there's only 1 week left to join the Yugatech's Free Passes to SEMCON 2010.

Yahoo Search Pages tagged as ‘Powered By Bing’

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 02:33:00 +0000

Now, say goodbye to your Yahoo rankings, as the company rolls out its results from Microsoft’s Bing search engine listings.

I did a quick search for “Cebu SEO” on Yahoo and Bing. As expected, Yahoo reveals the same results with Bing.

Yahoo Chief Carol Bartz had already mentioned the search alliance that was announced last year on July, the Bing iconic logo would not be shown on Yahoo search pages and that Yahoo’s ties up with Bing would be noticed via some text. Like what AOL did, for instance, notably incorporate the words “enhanced by Google” below on its search box.

So, is it time to remove Yahoo in your monthly ranking report? Perhaps, yes if your SEO campaign targets either in the US or Canada, where the transition is rolling out first.

Still No PageRank Update...

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:28:00 +0000

Well, it is almost the end of July and no PageRank update for Cebu SEO.com yet and Google seems confusing me by not liberating its major Page Rank update. Many people agree it is long overdue -- it was anticipated by some at the end of June and by most by the beginning of July 2010. You may have noticed some sites reported a Pagerank update and labeled it as major, but that’s far from the truth.

Page Rank is one of those unusual things on the internet full of contradictions. It doesn't actually mean anything, but nearly everyone wants a better Page Rank. Anyone who says that Page Rank means nothing is wrong. Page Rank means popularity. It may come or go, but combining it with age or trust, it is a deadly combination. Some webmasters demand that you have a minimum PR to do link exchange, link selling and even link building.

I do expect that the major PR update will occur during the first week of August. In the meantime, keep on posting good content and your hard work will eventually pay off!

Anyone has seen a change in the PageRank with your sites?

[UPDATE] 1st SEO Philippines Grand EyeBall 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:08:00 +0000

Venue: 30F UnionBank Plaza, Meralco Avenue, Pasig City

Photo by zeng lebron of flickr

Learn the tricks of the trade, from best practices to strategy and branding. Participants will be granted access to network with the biggest gathering of search professionals, in addition to the most comprehensive SEM/SEO learning opportunity in the Philippines.

Grand EyeBall Topics:

1. SEO
Tips
SEO Link Building Strategy
SEO Tools(Link Building tools and Automation)

2. Advance Blogging Techniques
Tips
SEO Link Building Strategy
SEO Tools(Link Building tools and Automation)

3. Social Media Marketing
Tips
Social Media Marketing Strategy
Social Media Tools

4. Link Building

Tips
Link Building Strategy
Link Wheel
Link Building Tools(Traditional and Automated)

5. Email Marketing
Tips
Email Marketing Techniques

6. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate+PPC
Affiliate+SEO
PPC+Affiliate+Email Marketing

7. PPC
Tips
Adwords
PPC Explain

8. Domaining
Tips
Domain Types
Domain Parking
Monetization

9. The Q & A: Ask and let the masters answer!

Work-out your SEO Stress!

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:22:00 +0000

Have you considered rejecting the whole idea of SEO because you get so stressed out of it? It’s not a good idea to stay away or worst having doubts on the benefits of SEO, but most webmasters have suffer this way at one time or another.

When dealing with our websites, things are typically in a state of change. The search industry is continuously altering its spotlight to deliver more precise and exact results, so we have to become accustomed to the ever revolutionize world of SEO.

If search engines make links more significant, we need high incoming PageRank giving links. If they choose that quantity and quality of pages is of importance, content becomes a main concern.

Managing your tasks and your money is important if you hope to have a prayer of getting everything accomplished smoothly. You can in all possibilities do some of your site work yourself, but in several occasions, help will be needed. Knowing what to hire out is a must.

Bear in mind that there is no shame in not knowing how to do something! The only moment to be ashamed of yourself is if you decline the opportunity to learn. Just try to determine what you can change yourself, and what you may need to help to make that change.

Content is king. If you have no wisdom of what it takes to write a good article and make it more compelling, you need to consider having a professional writer do your content, and possibly your part as well. Content on your site or blog is important, but articles and posts out on the web are almost obligatory for links and traffic driving. A good SEO firm will be able to help you get your content in positions it will be noticeable.

If you are a social network butterfly, build a back link portfolio by talking people that will help you acquire more links. Study PageRank to see where you need to pay attention to your efforts. A quick SEO campaign to get the link juice flowing will teach you important things about how link juice works. So observe what your SEO firm does, and become skilled at!

A good SEO agency can give you a lot of peacefulness when it comes to your website optimization, as they take the guesswork out of it. It’s their own responsibility!

SEOs Under Pressure Will Only Produce Unsatisfactory Results

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 01:47:00 +0000

Never expect that when you hire an SEO (search engine optimization) specialist to work with you, will produce miraculous results.

Hope I'm not hitting anyone with this post!

A good SEO specialist can certainly improve the reputation and visibility of both your website and your products or services, but making your site profitable enough depends on people buying your products, not just clearly having a glimpse of your pages. Getting people to pay money for your product can be very simple, or not.

It all depends on what you are selling.

This is why, besides hiring an SEO, you need to consult an online marketing professional before you finalize your assessments about what products or services you are going to put on the market on your website.

The marketing expert can help you to decide whether your product or services are in demand, and, if it is, what the benefits it would bring are that your SEO should focus on when creating your website and optimizing it.

The point here is that if you have a product that no one wants, it will be very complicated and slow, not to mention a waste of money, to spend time SEO-ing your website.

So, now you’ve hired an SEO specialist and you’ve determined that you have a good product that people want. What’s next? You need to ask over your specialist what you can look forward from him/her and how much time it will take for that to happen.

You also need to let know the specialist exactly what you expect to happen. This will get rid of misunderstandings and problems in the very near future. This is true because most business owners hire a specialist thinking that they can handle and fix their website problems within just a few days and this is not true.

Search engine optimization is a long-term plan.

Sure, the specialist can significantly improve your website hit count within a few weeks, but in order to really improve the visibility of your website, the specialist must spend some time studying the traffic and the sources of the traffic for your site to determine what audience is actually looking for your product or service.
This will guide the specialist to really focus your target audience and what they are looking for. This takes time. Two to three months is a realistic anticipation. Six to nine months is about right to reach your maximum optimization and receive significant results.

Finally, more important than anything else, you need to listen and pay attention to the SEO specialist that you hire and follow their instructions.

Learn by heart that THEY are the expert and you hired them for a reason. You are wasting your money if you are not willing to follow their directions openly.
Don’t drive them to move faster than they want to, unless you are definite that they are not doing their job. If you get to that point, you should maybe consider firing them and hire someone else. Otherwise, give them time to delve into and work that they need to do.

Pressuring your SEO specialist will only bring out inadequate results.

SEO Career Path

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:41:00 +0000

A few friends of mine queried on what's the real nature of my job as an SEO Specialist, especially when they knew that it does not correlate with the field that you took up in college. So, I simply answer, "Google it!" Seems like I'm not exhibiting courtesy and politeness with them, perhaps for some! But others, would really demand for an answer that they will understand right away even in their average world wide web knowledge, and i.e., in leyman's term. Maybe I could try to react verbally that "SEO is Google Optimization"?

Some people even generally tagged SEO practitioners as spammers and not even a career, maybe they don't treat this as a profession where you need a level of education. Yes, it's true that you only need a relative experience in SEO BUT not all in the field of SEO are spammers! Those are just people who are practicing Black Hat or Abusive SEO. Link Baiting is an SEO Tactic not spamming, you know?! I hope so...

And one might asked, what's the career path of being into SEO? Quoted from a thread in SEO Philippines forum by Sir Benj Arriola as this has caught attentions by many.

SEO Entry Point Career
IT/Programming/Graphics/Web
People who started here are good with the code. They know what makes websites appealing, and how they function. In the process of making websites, they learned about SEO. And from there, they got hooked and wanted to learn more.
Marketing/Sales & Promotions
People who are into marketing and sales has the ultimate goal of increasing profits. Sales people know what it takes to convert off line, from telemarketing, tri-media (TV/Print/Radio) and face-to-face selling skills. Marketers know how to create the buzz and helps in the overall sales process. But as they learn the potential power of selling online, they hear about SEO and start learning how to do it to augment their marketing and sales skills to be well rounded.
Journalist/Writer
They write eloquently, appealing to the people that read what they write. Convincing, and puts in all the hooks to call the baits and increase sales. They may have started with newspaper press releases, print ad copy, or even TV and Radio commercial scripts. Then suddenly they had to do the same thing for online marketing and press releases, articles and blog post and learn more about SEO which adds in more required knowledge like keyword research and writing proper title tags, meta tags, h1,..h3...h6 tags, image alt tags. Making better calls to action. Click compelling titles for blog post and articles and social bookmarks. Content that is good for search engines and yet still keeps the readers hooked until the call to action and conversion.
SEO From The Start
Unaware of what they really wanted to do, but was highly influence by other people. Friends, brother/sister, other relatives, parents, spouse, etc. They never had any other job but was exposed to SEO right away and wanted to learn it right away and eventually wanted to do this all their life and do nothing else. Or it just so happened you were interested right away after reading about SEO from somewhere and was immediately hooked.
It just landed on my lap, my first job
They had no job and didn't really know what they were going into. Landed in some company to do some procedural work for an SEO company. Let's say started out as a link builder just posting everywhere.

Mastering Your Craft
Learning The Technical Side of SEO
This is for the Writers and Marketing people. Since code is their disadvantage, the next step is learning the code.
Learning the Marketing Side of SEO
This is for the Tech people and the Writers. Learning how to sell and how to market online pushes SEO in the next step. SEO should not be only about the highest ranking, but about maximizing the sales and marketing benefits of search engines.
Learning the Writing Side of SEO
The Marketing and Tech people should learn how to write well. The better your content is written, the better the ranking is, and the more conversions it can create.

It may not be an easy task to master all very proficiently, but good enough to know what works and what does not and start passing it on to their own team members, or outsource people, or just do the best themselves.

The Next Step - Trying to make it big.
The SEO Employer/Manager/Supervisor
You own a business, or has a high ranking position in an SEO business where you handle a team of SEO people. By this time you should be paid a bit higher than the rest. From the experience you gained learning all aspects of SEO and proving your knowledge pays off for you to be a leader. Here you need management skills too. Not only on managing people, but managing projects. Occasionally you can be pulled into customer support calls, sales calls or may even need to help out in making proposals and doing pricing. Of course your prices should make sense that you can justify the sale, at the same time make the company profitable and employees happy and well paid. And since you have a good well rounded knowledge of SEO, you know how to come up with a process that is cost-effective and repeatable.
The SEO Employee
You have proven your worth and has made a name for yourself in your own way that you become a sought after employee. Companies chase you because of what you know. You may eventually end up a manager/supervisor of an SEO team, but if you do not work for an SEO company, but just any company as their in-house SEO guy, you are the SEO go to man (or woman). You call the shots and simply coordinate with the company's marketing and sales people, IT people and copywriters.
The SEO Consultant
You do not work for anyone but yourself. You have not only proven your worth to a potential employer, but to other SEOs as well. You are respected among SEO peers. You have great knowledge that even other SEO people talk about you. You do speaking engagement, and teach and promote the industry. Companies hire you on a contractual basis to help grow their own SEO teams.
SEO My Own Stuff
You do not work for anyone but yourself. But you do not care about having SEO clients nor doing consultancy. You make money simply because you really know how to rank well and increase online sales through SEO. Thus you decide to do your own business and SEO it. Either a brick and mortar business that you do some SEO to increase sales, or simply have no products or services and just do affiliate marketing or ad publishing.

Some SEO people may land in more than 1 spot here but specializes in a few or one of them only.

After SEO
PPC - Need to harness more power of on-the-spot sponsored results. Manging budgets, writing proper ad copy and making a good ROI.
Email Marketing - Subscriptions and other opt-in list type of marketing. Drip marketing. Mailing list cross-promotions etc.
Media Buying - Banner ads, post-roll and pre-roll video ads, learning your niche industry and proper places to advertise.
Social Media - Building communities and leveraging them to generate more business.
Usability/Accessibility - Learn the art and science of making your web visitors happy, pleased, less confused that all generates into better sales.

You're rich! What do you do next?

I don't know, you tell me? Invest in real estate? The stock market? invest in Gold/Silver? In Oil? Bonds/Mutual Funds? Buying a company? Or just spend the money where they supposed to go to. Like your family(or future family), make your spouse and kids happy. Give them a full experience of acquiring knowledge of what you are doing so the chain goes on that it would be easier for them to run their lives when they grow up.

Yet, I am still not sure that SEO as a career is good for long term or not but I am getting good money in my work as an SEO Specialist.

Most people never feel secure because they are always worried that they will lose their job, lose the money they already have, lose their spouse, lose their health, and so on. The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way, that you are increasing the caliber of who you are and that you are valuable to your company, your friends, and your family.”

Very Cheery!

If you are getting paid good money for being an SEO developer, why would you question it. Nothing in ICT is long term, you have to learn new skills and adapt to new situations more quickly than other industries, or you are finished.

ICT is hard work, the only people who still love it, are those that do it for free. The only people who are excited by it, are the people who have just finished university. The people who have been doing it for years and getting paid, have no social life, work long hours constantly, are physically unfit because there is no time for anything other than learning, teaching, fixing, learning, teaching, fixing....

While everyone else is living, life will pass you by in a blur of hardware upgrades and software updates.

Take my advise, be content, be happy, live life and love life.

The Cebu SEO Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:35:00 +0000

Welcome to my newest blog! Blogging about my new hobby: Search Engine Optimization! A hobby that turned into passion or a very time-consuming yet valuable profession! Cebu SEO will features all the Five Ts (Techniques, Tips, Tactics, Tweaks and Tricks) I've learned while I was with various clients, working in outsourcing business companies and supportive colleagues and online friends in the past two years.

I thought, “Why am I writing this post or making this blog?”

Well, the short and simple answer is that I want to provide meaty content for this blog. Advanced SEO theory stuff. And Cebu because, it is home to several BPO companies that perform SEO and SEM services, and a considerable number of individuals who work in these fields, in fact the city has become the major BPO destination.

But, the underlying problem is that I have a conflict of interests. I’m no longer just doing SEO for my websites and blogs (or personal clients). Working for an SEO Outsourcing firm, I have to be a little more cautious in what I share now than before.

Of course, I could just discuss things at a very high, very conceptual level but not literally advance but that’s boring. In fact, I recently saw someone complain in a certain SEO blog comment that they don’t like the various SEO blogs because the bloggers don’t share very useful tips.

On one hand, I can agree with the commenter. The vast majority of SEO blog posts appear to be filled with fluff. SEO bloggers like to whine a great deal. On the other hand, it’s not fair to expect people who are trying to market themselves (and their experience) to explain everything they do in detail. So, what’s fair and what’s just fluff?

I think all the hostile, critical, drag-down-some-strangers posts are pretty much fluff. I don’t mean every post where someone disagrees with another person in detail, or where someone just criticizes another person’s stance on a position. I mean the frequent “DIGG is so stupid”, “Wikipedia is so stupid”, “DMOZ is so stupid” kind of rants are pretty much wastes of time.

All the “Top 10″ lists, “101 ways to pick your nose”, and “5 fatal flaws of SEO” style posts are pretty much fluff, too. Top 10 (or Top 5) lists are just boring wastes of time. But if someone tries to provide a comprehensive list of tips, they’re not only shooting themselves in the foot, they’re hurting everyone else, too. Those of us who really have experience in SEO know that as soon as you share a good idea — a really useful methodology — its lifespan of usefulness has just been shortened to about six months.

It generally takes me about two years to figure out how to stabilize an idea. That’s two years of experimentation, analysis, and sifting through a lot of somewhat relevant forum and blog posts that may shed some light on an issue.

I think I’ve got a pretty good test or two. Don’t expect me to share them any time in the near future. After spending all that time figuring out ways to determine which sites are probably trusted, why should I throw it all away by sharing the tests? Won’t anyone benefit for very long from that kind of expertise.

Nonetheless, I have written enough on the topic that if you were to review everything I’ve posted over the past couple of years, you could probably figure out what my tests are. After all, I was thinking in public. It helps to bounce ideas around with other people who are fumbling for answers as much as I am.

But I’m to a point now where I’m holding back. I have often advised people who are just getting started in SEO, “Never reveal everything you know. Hold back at least one idea. That could be the difference between you and the guy you’re competing with.”

I have held back for many years now because, when I first became involved in SEO, I shared all my ideas on forums and people would take them and run them into the ground. I’m not the only person who has watched useful ideas burn out.

The advice I give out is pretty sound — more sound than most advice you’ll see on the Internet, if only because I’ve been through more ups and downs than the SEO gurus who have only been doing this for 5 years or less. And you might be surprised at how many of your favorite gurus have only been involved in SEO for so short a time — they all still have a great deal to learn about real search engine optimization because they mostly depend on links. (And, to be fair, my experience would only put me in the second generation of SEO professionals by some standards — I am not one of the founding fathers of SEO by any means.)

Nonetheless, if you have been following SEO advice for at least two years, you’ve already gone through the entire life cycles of tips such as: submit articles to free distribution services, get links from directories, exchange links only with relevant sites, and use social bookmarking services (or Wikipedia) for linkage.

All of these ideas are still popular. And there are people who still make them work. But as free SEO advice goes, these are all now pretty stupid ideas. And I used to advocate several of them.

If you have been around for years, then you’ve seen the life cycle of such tips as: get only high Toolbar PR links, get DMOZ listings, get links from forums and blog comments, join reciprocal link programs, buy links, etc.

I used to advocate some of those ideas and all are now very stupid ideas. Reciprocation and link buying are not dead, but they are certainly far more risky now than many other practices. You really need to know what you are doing to make reciprocation and link buying work with a minimum of risk.

Some advice has remained good through the years, so don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. Some tips are just basic good sense tips, such as implementing unique page titles, using only one linking style in your pages, use bold and italics to emphasize words that make your points for your readers, write for your visitors not the search engines, and give out links freely to good sites you honestly want to recommend to people.

I’ve been advocating linking out to other sites since 2007, when I first got involved in search engine optimization. Even when I didn’t know anything about SEO, I understood the marketing value of being a resource. That is one of the fundamental principles of building Web visibility and it will always be a solid foundation on which to build a great Web site.

And yet, even today, as 2009 winds down, there are people who argue against linking out to other sites unless those sites link back to them. Such people always strike me as being too small-minded to ever achieve much on the Internet. Why in the world should anyone else link to your site if you only reciprocate links? The only people who would agree to such a bargain are people who are as desperate for links as you.

Some people excuse their reluctance by saying they don’t want to link to competitors (I haven’t advised anyone to do that in years); or they want to “preserve their PageRank” (there is no hope for the brain dead anyway); or they don’t want to send their visitors elsewhere (Yo! Moron! How many people have spent the last four weeks camping out on your Web page?).

There are a lot of stupid excuses that justify following bad SEO advice. So, to bring this all home, here is how I think you can sift through SEO advice and find useful information. These tips won’t cut out all the noise, but they should help you evaluate SEO advice more logically and less emotionally.

First, ask yourself: Is this advice being challenged by anyone in any popular forum? Be careful before you say “Yes”, because there are people in every forum who are still as new to SEO as the next guy, and they may challenge some very good advice. Good advice withstands challenges by virtue of being time-proven, supported by strong references, and having the virtue of at least not contradicting search engine guidelines. Good advice doesn’t necessarily have to comply with search engine guidelines, but if you’re not sure about a tip, compare it to search engine guidelines. If it flies in the face of what the search engines advise, ask yourself: do you know enough about SEO to survive the risk of being filtered, penalized, or banned?

Secondly, ask yourslf: Is this advice being offered by someone with high post counts in multiple forums? Being active for several years in more than one forum doesn’t guarantee that someone will give you good advice. For example, there are popular idiots whose stupid ideas are shared by enough people that they can get away with murder for years.

But then there are the rest of the idiots whose suggestions are so bizarre, so lame, or just so blatantly wrong that the forum moderators, admins, and regulars shoot them down quickly. When you see a tip in an active forum, wait a few days to see how discussion responds to it. A lot of new people say, “Thanks for the tip!” (perhaps only out of courtesy) before more experienced folks come in and ask the challenging questions that help people see the tipster is too new and green to be giving good advice.

Thirdly, ask yourself: Does this advice come with any substantiating references? This is where you have the popular idiots espousing really stupid ideas that should have been shot down years ago but somehow slipped past the SEO community’s BS filters. One example of really bad SEO advice is the idea of “hoarding PageRank”. This nonsense emerged from a handful of PageRank tutorials that should never have been written. All the popular PageRank tutorials (from people like Chris Ridings, Phil Craven, and even Rand Fishkin) are just blatantly wrong, directly contradicted by numerous technical papers going all the way back to the original Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine paper that first proposed PageRank.

Most people don’t know how to check these references, but you can ask a simple question when you see an “expert” advocate what seems like an advanced idea: Does everyone in the SEO community agree with you?. Anyone who is credible will immediately point out at least one contrary point of view. But be mindful there may be considerable history behind the conflict. If you run into a “Great Debate”, don’t allow yourself to be quickly swayed by either side. You can usually find less controversial advice that will be more reliable. Controversy is a red flag, and you don’t need to waste your time on figuring out who is right and who is wrong. You can throw yourself into the fray when you are well past the “I need SEO advice” stage.

Still, if you’re not sure about some point some pontificator is advocating, ask for references. If all the substantiation an SEO guru can offer comes from papers, blogs, FAQs, forum posts, and tutorials written by other SEO gurus (especially their “good friends”), there is most likely nothing useful to you in the advice being given. It may be good advice, it may be bad. If you’re easily convinced one way or another, you probably don’t know enough about SEO to figure out who is right and who is wrong.

Virtually every popular SEO pundit has given out bad advice. I have given out bad advice, and so has Jill Whalen, Danny Sullivan, Brett Tabke, and anyone else you can think of. We’ve all been wrong on one or more occasions. We’re human. We make mistakes. We may believe incorrect ideas for some length of time before changing our minds. Hold every SEO tip you read and consider accountable to the highest standard of excellence. You’ll find that most SEO tips just don’t make the cut.

How much should free advice be worth? How much is your Internet income worth to you? Are you prepared to risk it all on advice that an SEO guru gives out freely?

There are, of course, content advocates who preach against the perils of using SEO gimmicks and formulas. They want people to create compelling content so that their sites will attract lots of linkage. But the reality of the situation is that most people will never create content that is so very compelling. Maybe you can hire a good copywriter to help you, or a great graphics designer, but you get what you pay for (and sometimes you don’t even get that).

People are looking for the magic bullet. There are no magic bullets. There are ideas that work, ideas that people think should work, and ideas that should never see the light of day. Most of the time, the vast majority of SEO tips are pretty much harmless fluff. They help newcomers become familiar and comfortable with many of the basic concepts that are popular in the SEO community.

It’s when people try to get down to the nitty gritty too quickly that you need to beware. And keep in mind that just because someone has an idea that works does not mean you’ve got all you need. You have no idea of how long that idea will work, or why it works (or seems to work), or what you’ll have to do if it turns out in the end to be a very bad idea. The most reliable practical advice in the SEO industry is usually the least immediately satisfying advice, the advice that makes you feel like, “I don’t want to wait six months to a year for results.”

If I were doing your SEO for you, I would not guarantee you results, but I would expect to see something in about two months, even with a new domain in a competitive industry. If you haven’t been doing this as long as me, expecting to figure out a two-month solution — or to find a two month solution on the Web — is a waste of your time. Even if you do find one, its days of being useful are numbered. And then you’ll be right back where you started.

Welcome to the land of the giants: be careful where we step, for we may indeed step on you.

And I am ready for some hard work ahead.

2010 SEMMYS Nominess Are Now Out!

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:24:00 +0000

SEMMYS.org with their continuing legacy to honor this year's best posts in Search Engine Marketing. Headed by Matt McGee himself, has put together a great list of the top online marketing posts from 2009. There are a lot of great articles to read into (all of them, perhaps).

For 2 years in the SEM industry, I haven't yet heard of this kind of event to honor the great content produced across the search and online marketing industry. Now, it's time to spread this to all SEM practitioners not just in Cebu but all over the world!

Nomination Categories

Contributors and Judges

Cebu SEO Forum

noreply@blogger.com (Orville Tadle) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:21:00 +0000

Welcome to our Local SEO Community in Cebu! Seo Advice, News, Humor, Musings etc. Let's rock this space!