02.10.2009
Interview Fridays
It’s been a while since I’ve fulfilled the responsibility of a religious blogger. Apologies for the delay folks.
As a way to make it up to you guys, today’s Interview Friday episode is a double special featuring two top-flight personalities in the industry.
First stop, this is a guy I’ve looked up to in online marketing. He’s probably one of the most humble experts I know. Boys & Girls please help me welcome Mr. Jitendra Jain of HoteleMarketer & TalentJungle.
J, you’re probably one of the very rare people I know who became really successful in focusing on a niche for an online marketing career. How did you end up being the guru for the digital hospitality industry?
Thanks Dave – firstly, I think in the world of new media marketing and innovation there are no “Gurus” 
We’re all disciples – any other claims would be arrogance. There’s just so much happening in terms of development and changing trends that most of us barely scrape the surface of this goldmine of information, interaction and marketing potential. For me, building a career in digital marketing was more chance than anything else…I’ve always been passionate about technology and the internet, so when I had the opportunity to combine my passion with my academic background in Tourism & Hospitality, I jumped at it!
You’ve had impressive degrees on hotel & restaurant management including an MBA from London Business School. How did these help in establishing your current profession?
I’ve always loved learning – at the end of the day, degrees and paper achievements are just that. Its what you bring to the game and what you can do for your clients and employers that makes a real difference. Each degree, more than the academic content (which was great), offered the opportunity to form new connections and experience different cultures and perspectives – these are things that you won’t find in any book and are crucial to how you go about doing business.
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14.07.2009
Interview Fridays
I think I just committed one of the mortal sins in blogging – being on a “dry spell” for quite a long time. Apologies folks! Client projects have been crazy lately and getting a single post up was just impossible. But don’t worry, I’ve come up with a couple of interesting ideas to keep you updated of the search marketing industry.
Yup you read it right, I’ll be starting on Interview Fridays. I’ve started inviting SEO/SEM professionals, online marketing gurus, branding experts, and top CEO’s of search marketing companies to give us a piece of their thoughts, experiences, and most importantly success stories.
Although I have asked a couple of people already for the upcoming Interview Fridays, I will be needing more to keep program alive in the next couple of months. So if you would like to recommend someone or would like yourself to be featured, please don’t hesitate to drop me a message on the contact page or send me an email at dave [at] saktoseo [dot] com.
What sort of professionals are we looking for? Well here’s a list of industries that would be relevant to the program: read more
16.06.2009
Online Marketing
“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” – Lord Kelvin
In my previous years of doing SEO with clients, I was always the #2 guy, the person leading the team of junior SEO’s and implementing the necessary strategies whether it be on my concept or by mandates of clients. I thought I got used to being #2 until last week.
I realized that I’ll be leading a team of SEO’s and will be heading a brand new department for my company for organic optimization in partnership with our established SEM team. WTF am I doing? Although I’ve been thankful for the opportunities, part of me still questions whether I can do this or not.
Before I could further plan for core campaigns, I had to map out my mission and vision for the department, a thing which I have not done before. Thankfully, I’m part of a great team with excellent bosses to look up to.
Here are a few points which I’ve learned and may be helpful to those of you starting out on online marketing and social media strategies in-house or for clients: read more
06.06.2009
Search Engine Optimization
So Bing and Google rode the waves of trend for last week. People still have some mixed reactions for Microsoft (should they be bothered with But It’s Not Google excitement). Although it’s too early to tell, it’s good to finally have that friendly (or maybe not) competition out there. I loved the part where Matt Cutts was bashing the Bing Team at Twitter.
Anyways, so last week, another interesting article came up on TheNational.Ae – “UAE internet users prefer global Google”. Husni Khuffash, Google’s Business Development Manager in the UAE, has an interesting take on UAE’s online business and end-users.
“It’s a big sign that we need more content over here,” he said.
Mr Khuffash was speaking on the second day of a two-day conference in Dubai aimed at educating advertising agencies about the possibility of search advertising and search engine optimisation to increase business in the region. He said he believed education was the key to breaking the Arab world out of its current pattern of having 5 per cent of the world’s population but only 1 per cent of its online content.
“Companies are not taking the right tools to be online and to show that you are there,” he said. “If you are not there, I cannot help you.” Some UAE companies, particularly in the technology and travel sectors, had been using search advertising in a sophisticated way, he said.
I also met Mohammad Zaher, author of Irrelevant Combinations, and I’ve asked him if I can feature an article of his blog here and he was generous enough to permit me. In his post, Google Survey in UAE, and an Agency Day, he has the following interesting stats:
- Search engines are the most used source of online research information (81% of respondents). Manufacturer websites (49%), Directories and local listings (27%), retailer websites (26%), and online auction websites (25%) are also very popular.
- Search engines are used most for research in relation to technology (67%) and travel (48%) products.
- Google is the preferred search engine in the UAE with (58% preferring google.com and 38% preferring google.ae)
- While one third of UAE respondents say the current economic crisis has not changed their shopping habits, an almost equal proportion say the recent financial turmoil has led to less of their shopping being done online. This may be related to the fact that many of their online purchases may have fallen more into the ‘non-essential/leisure’ categories (i.e. travel and event tickets) which people choose to cut out during difficult economic times
- In the UAE, English (76% of respondents) is by far the most popular ‘search’ language (likely to be related to the highly multinational nature of UAE society) vs. 23% preferring to search in Arabic.
So instead of replicating the thought of what I had in the previous post on Dubai needing SEO, I think I should lay down tips on how to increase search engine visibility for businesses online. These are not technical SEO / organic optimization processes but simple you-can-do-it-without-technical-knowledge kind of things. read more
