It’s a new year and I wasn’t able to greet you folks (better late than never). I’m hoping you’re having a great start for this new millenium.

It’s been more than 3 months since I’ve last posted in this blog. I’ve been focusing more on writing as guest writers in top SEO blogs in the community. It has been pretty exciting (and a drop dead challenge) to expand my portfolio, now I’m working on building strategies for Online Reputation Management for my clients and start on Conversion Optimization.

In a few weeks from now I will be featuring a few parts of Online Reputation (ORM) and Conversion Optimization. I have to admit, I’m learning as I master these new areas in my work but it will be interesting to see the developments and tests of what works and what doesn’t.

As for now, I’m going to leave you with a couple of my previous blog posts at SEODubai.Org and SearchEngineJournal.Com:

1. How SEO’s Win the War on Personalized & Real-Time Search

Google’s announcement of personalized search for everyone has stirred a lot of mixed reactions from the search industry. Eric Schmidt’s interview on CNBC has even provoked various sentiments on privacy issues. I think Aaron Wall of SEOBook.Com has an excellent take on this one.

2. On-Page vs. Off-Page Search Engine Optimization

The tests just confirmed that keywords in page title, domain, URL, and meta description (forget about meta keywords, they don’t matter no more!) are still significant ranking factors. They have carried a huge weight in rankings ever since 2007 and they still have that punching power up until now.

I would like to thank those who have left comments on my previous posts and those who have contacted me through our contact forms to pay compliments to Click-Dubai.Com. It was lovely reading your comments and your appreciations.

If you like the post, bookmark here.

Ever since Bing launched and when they finally closed the deal with Yahoo, I’ve been itching to do this review on Bing’s results and the implications it has on SEO’s.

Now that Binghoo has been in existence, optimizing for Google’s competition is growing significantly. If Binghoo will be capturing 1/3 of the search market it’s definitely worth your efforts of grabbing that pie of your traffic.

Let me give you a brief walk through of a few interesting features that Bing has.

Document/Site Preview – Aside from the ordinary SERP’s you have, Bing helps users by giving them a preview of the page/site. According to the Bing team, “it helps searchers find the content they want faster, without leaving the SERP until they are ready.” As a webmaster, you can also disable the document preview feature for your site in Bing. (By the way I’m not affiliated in anyway with the featured websites on the searches.)

Quick Tabs & Related Searches – Bing gives you a neat list of related topical searches at the left panel of every search. In our keyword “dubai business”, we have related search options of “online businesses”, “dubai business directory”, “business opportunities dubai”, and so on.

Another feature I like on Bing is the Quick Tabs section which gives you filtering options on a broad scope of search. For example, I was interested in finding out for “Nike Shoes”, it gave me options for Catalog, Coupons, and Jobs. The Bing team aims to let the searcher to “fully explore their subject without losing track of their initial query.

Best Match – If I remembered it correctly, Microsoft branded Bing as a “decision engine”. The best match feature has made this statement clear enough. Bing highlights huge brands and names in their best match feature. It isolates the search results if you’re looking for official websites and leading brands.

You can see that aside from the single listing for the Google site, it also features the site’s search box which you can use directly, a “Similar to this” section which listed other similar results which you might have in mind. And then there’s the usual quick tabs, related searches, and search history.

You can read the rest of Bing’s features on the New Features Relevant to Webmasters PDF they’ve released last June 2009. They’ve also mentioned a little bit on Search Engine Optimization (but I still think Google’s SEO Starter Guide was way way more interesting and informative).

Disclaimer: The two websites that I will be reviewing in a while were picked by the fact that they have ranked number 1 during the time of search on Google.Com and Bing.Com. I’m not in any way promoting any of the sites featured in this review.

Let’s get down to the face-off. I did a search for the term “dubai business” (don’t ask me why and how, it’s a random keyword I thought of) on Google and Bing. For everyone’s information “dubai business” has a search volume of 74,000 for the month of July from Google Keyword Tool (this means the keyword is worthy of traffic).

And let’s go tally the results: Read the rest of this entry »

If you like the post, bookmark here.

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 the rest of this entry »

If you like the post, bookmark here.

A couple of days ago it’s as if a request out my mind just got granted. Seth Godin, America’s Greatest Marketer (according to American Way Magazine) and author of bestselling marketing books, including Permission Marketing, just wrote a post titled “How to Make Money with SEO“.

Even that alone just got me hyped up. Surprisingly, Rand Fishkin just pimped out a post of his own in addition to Seth’s article – “There’s Way More Than 2 Ways to Make Money with SEO”

I wish I could add some more intelligent factors but these 2 gentlemen just laid out the best principles in milking the Benjamins out of the profession.

Here are some points which struck the home run for me: Read the rest of this entry »

If you like the post, bookmark here.

Before I came into this metropolitan bedazzling city of Dubai, I wanted to have an outlook of the online media in the Middle East particularly of search industry. Yes, there were notable companies and individuals who have demonstrated great skills & knowledge in SEO and SEM. I knew for a fact that the Middle East had a talent pool of experts, the technology with all its resources, and a growing market. 

But I somehow felt there was not much awareness of SEO, SEM, or even Social Media in the region, or was I expecting too much? But Husam Jandal seems to have sustained my observation. Husam is an internet business consultant with WSI Internet Consulting.

In an article in TheNational.Ae – Searching for an online solution, Husam Jandal said:

“In general they [Middle East] are very ignorant about the fact that their potential clients and existing clients are using the internet, while they are not [doing so themselves].

I think we’re still behind when it comes to the business community recognising the importance of being in front of their potential clients.

With more than 90 per cent of all traffic generated on the internet coming from search engines, it is important for the local business community to identify various ways of utilising these internet tools to achieve the desired visibility for their businesses”

I couldn’t agree with him more. Well there are a lot of reasons to consider though in the Middle East market. I won’t dwell on them for now. But let me help in pointing you to the right direction as to why online media, particularly SEO, SEM and even Social Media will be a vital tool for Middle East businesses:

Read the rest of this entry »

If you like the post, bookmark here.

“It’s doesn’t take rocket science to know or do SEO! Everybody can do that thing!” claimed a friend of mine while discussing new trends in marketing for business in Dubai, moreover Middle East markets. I was somehow taken aback by his comment but somehow I understood why he felt that way.

As much as I wanted to defend my profession (and those who are well-known evangelist of the field), I know he would not understand because he didn’t believe much in online media and was a blue blooded traditional marketing expert.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Is it the new marketing era? How effective is it in building strategies for online businesses? Is it just a basic marketing approach towards the online media? Is it more of an art rather than a science of procedures?

I have been exposed to SEO back in 2004. From that time, I knew there were pioneers in the industry who have gone through the larger distance in defining and even revolutionizing the search engine industry.

Before I can lay down my own old school definition of what Search Engine Optimization is, let me share with you what the icons of the industry think of this evolving field. Read the rest of this entry »

If you like the post, bookmark here.