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
26.05.2009
Search Engine Optimization
So while I was busy lining up topics to cope with the long absence of blog posts and coming up with both offline and online marketing strategies for client sites, I stumbled on a blog post by Tom Gara, Is SEO our Friend? Enemy? Frenemy? Well it really got my attention when he said:
SEO is the bad guy here. It is the reason that you can rarely find what you want on “commercial” google searches.
What you really want when you type “computer stores in Dubai” is to find a great blog post or newspaper article, written by somebody who knows and cares, listing the city’s best computer stores. Sure, someone like CompuMe or Jumbo Electronics could spend more money on getting to the front page, but then, so can anyone, including some random page of googlebait whose entire business model is to get clicks from google searches and surround useless information with ads. “
Google rocks when it comes to factual information (finding a company website or wikipedia entry or whatever), but type in “boutique hotel in Hong Kong” or “cheapest flights from Dubai to London” and you will get page after page of spam – spam that has been well optimised to make it to the front page of google search results.
Of course, I had to leave a comment to somehow defend my profession but I felt like that wasn’t enough. So here’s my take on Tom’s article. read more
26.04.2009
Online Marketing
While purchasing Gatorade, at our nearest supermarket, to sober up on a Friday morning, I saw this headline on the newspaper stand: “UAE laws translated into English, online soon“
I knew TheNational has its wonderful website and so I found the article online.
That’s great! Isn’t it. The government is setting a firm foundation on transparency and what better way than to do it online. Even better, Mr. Abdulla al Majid, Adviser of Abu Dhabi’s Ministry of Justice has stated:
“The best feature about this is the search engine which allows you to find even one word amid a sea of legal documents. That changes the face of research for academics, lawyers, judges, businesses and the public. You can imagine the kind of impact this will have on the overall justice system.“
So the government not only knows the importance of online presence but also has embraced the power of search in information. Two thumbs up I have to say. read more
