Hi There!

My analytics suggests that my about page has been receiving a lot of traffic really and it’s about time I’d take care of it so here it goes.

My name is Dave Erickson C. Fuentes, eldest of 2 siblings of a humble family in the southern Philippines (Cagayan de Oro, hoorah!). Sorry I’m just proud of where I came from. I used to have this ambition of becoming a lawyer. In fact I was a 3rd year law student already at Xavier University (Ateneo de Cagayan) before I left the “noble profession” industry.

So where did I go after law school? Good question.

Before I went to law school, I was working with HarvestSEO.Com, one of the first and largest SEO companies in the Philippines, as a content writer in 2004. I didn’t know what I was doing and why I got into the business. Then I met the owner, Mr. Michael Turner, a couple of months after. He showed me what old school SEO was and I realized there’s a whole new world out there. I admired his vision.

Although I was earning a little, I enjoyed my work as a content writer. I loved the research and loved the thought of learning new things every single day. Due to some circumstances, a sister company of HarvestSEO.Com was born, and StickyMedia Solutions (SMSI) came into life.

HarvestSEO was happy with my performance and have recommended met o take the post of SEO Team Leader for one of the main clients, Elisabeth Archambault of Buckworks.Com Projects in early 2006. Although I didn’t know much of a holistic SEO process except for content writing and a few link building strategies, I’ve managed to handle 4 websites in obtaining decent traffic and rankings in competitive keywords. Elisabeth, was kind and generous to guide me through our more than a year of partnership. She was a boss, a friend, and a mentor to me.

During the course of my stay with SMSI, I was also invited by management to be a part of an elite web team, Advibe Media Philippines, to work as a Web Media Buyer. Advibe was an outsource team supporting one of the well-known Internet Marketing firms in San Diego, MatrixMT Solutions. It was with Advibe that I got my first taste of Search Advertising (and damn it was quite difficult to handle purchasing on a tight budget).

Despite the crazy undertakings of leading an SEO team and handling media buys for US clients simultaneously, my love for the profession grew even more. My hunger for technical knowledge was just overwhelming. The perk of having this job is the constant research you acquire every now and then. I guess that added to the zeal for my work.

After 2 years of working in an outsourcing environment, I and my wife got an invitation to work for Dubai. She was excited but I was hesitant at first. I did my homework research and found out there were notable companies and individuals in the search marketing industry but there were also several who claimed a lot but their portfolio were not even close to what they were promising. Also job boards and postings did not display many opportunities for SEO’s and SEM’s. If there were any, job descriptions weren’t really sure of what the profession entails.

But despite of it all, we decided to fly to Dubai and somehow grabbed the opportunity of working overseas. We endured the life of a typical Asian expat. We worked for a media company unfortunately we weren’t given that much needed legal documents for work. We’ve also experienced the unpleasant visa-run-exit-country process twice. We even got stranded at an airport for 4 days straight just to wait for our documents to be processed before legally entering the country.

Yup we’ve survived the hardships in Dubai that ultimately paid off. My wife is now currently working with the Government of South Australia – Trade Office branch. I’m so grateful that she’s with very lovely people at work.

I’ve managed to do a couple of consultancy projects for a couple of clients while waiting for that right opportunity to come along. Although it took me one year before I could land that much ambitioned SEO position (I worked as a recruiter for 6 months which was way out of my profession but needed the job to pay the bills), it was worth the wait.

Yes, that’s right one year. I received a lot of calls during my job hunt last year, everybody seemed to be interested to have my skills on board, whether it be an advertising company, a film distributing firm, electronics distributor, leading newspaper, or one of the financial institutions here in Dubai, but nobody had a clue at that time which department or to what extent my responsibilities were to be. I wouldn’t blame them. Either they wanted me as part of marketing team or part of web development, but they never had that place yet for a search engine optimizer.

Somewhere during the start of recession period, last September 2008, search marketing positions started to appear in job advertisements. I was not sure if that was just merely a coincidence but there were people in the industry that supported the theory of businesses turning into online media for cost-effective advertising and marketing. That would be logical trend to follow but I’ll dwell more on that in the next couple posts.

And so here I am now working as an SEO Analyst for Nurture3, an online marketing firm here in Dubai. We develop websites for in-house clients and implement online marketing strategies for both local and international audiences.

Click-Dubai.Com is a project that has been delayed for quite sometime. This was developed with two purposes in mind. First, creating the awareness in the importance of search engine optimization and online media strategies vis-à-vis promoting businesses through the internet or further assist online businesses within UAE and other Middle Eastern countries (in other words I just wanted to be an evangelist wannabe, who cares, this is my blog I can do whatever I want).

Second, blogs are resume supplements in this online and social networking era. Well at least I can have something to bring with me in my future career. Who knows, I just might end up to be the next Rand Fishkin (CEO of SEOMOz), Aaron Wall (Author of SEOBook), or Danny Sullivan (Chief of Search Engine Land) of UAE (or so I wish.)

So there you go, that’s pretty much my short-long bio. Your turn to introduce yourself. You can drop a line or Just Say Hi or you can email me at dave [at] click-dubai.com. I’d be glad to read your messages. Or would you fancy having coffee sometime soon?

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