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.

Yousef Tuqan Tuqan, CEO at Flip Media

I’m very excited in this 2nd part of this episode on Interview Fridays. I have great respects for this next individual.

He’s the chief of one of the leading digital agencies in the Middle East. He has been a strong figure in the online industry in the region. It was a privilege to have interviewed Mr. Yousef Tuqan of FlipMedia.

It’s an honor to have one of the most important names in region’s online media industry. Please tell us about your success story and your journey with Flip Media?

Thanks for the compliment. Flip’s had a trajectory of success over the past six years – particularly early on – enabling us to become the most successful digital agency in the Middle East. From a team of two, it’s now very well established, with an enviable portfolio of clients and a team comprising over 150 people in 8 countries, throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

I’m pleased to have been a part of this process, having joined Flip as an Account Director back in September 2005, progressing to CEO in July last year. Perhaps what I’ve enjoyed the most is guiding the overall business strategy, in terms of the work we do, the clients we take on and our resulting market position.

I credit the success I’ve enjoyed to a couple of factors: I’m naturally passionate about digital (OK, OK I’m a natural born geek; there, I’ve said it), with communications and marketing as founding skills. My dad worked for IBM, so maybe it’s genetic but I’ll never forget the time when he said he could show me how to build a website in 20 minutes, back in 1996. So we opened up Netscape Composer and the rest is history, really.

How does it feel to be the Chief of the region’s leading interactive agency? What are the challenges?

It’s a tremendous honor for me. Even before I joined Flip, I had always admired what the agency stood for, and the energy Flip brought to the industry. To be entrusted with its continued growth and success is an enormous responsibility, and one that I don’t take lightly.

Luckily for me, Flip has attracted the best people in the industry, and my job is a lot easier when surrounded by people who are truly dedicated to digital marketing, and to Flip’s vision.

The economic climate of 2009 has presented its own challenges, but our main challenge has been managing growth. Flip has grown from 2 people in Dubai Media City in 2004 to 150 today across eight offices worldwide.

Apart from the processes and logistics, it’s been important to keep the “Flip spirit” alive across the network so that our staff and clients buy into a shared vision and a desire to be part of something amazing, not just a name on the door.

We’ve seen the economic recession crashed major industries in the UAE, how did the online industry performed during these times, particularly in the Middle East?

The complete collapse of the real estate sector left many of us without some of our largest clients (and their unpaid invoices), and we’ve all had to work harder than ever to win new business, drive growth from our existing clients and seriously rethink how we do business. It’s been a very hard year for everyone, and no one in our sector has been untouched. We’ve seen some of the best agencies in our sector either fold or significantly downsize.

Thankfully, we have been able to retain over 90% of our staff this year, and have grown our client portfolio to include some of the most exciting new brands in the region. As a digital agency in the Middle East, we’ve always had to work with small budgets and do “more with less,” so I’d like to think that we were better prepared for this than some of the more traditional regional agencies.

What do you think is the greatest strength of Flip Media that sets itself apart from the rest?

Focus. Digital marketing might make up 1% of overall regional media spend, but it’s 100% of our business. We’ve worked with the biggest brands in every industry sector, from tourism to finance to real estate, and that brings a level of regional experience that cannot be replicated.

Effective digital communication in the Middle East requires a realistic understanding of what can be achieved, and significant experience in what does and doesn’t work, and I think that Flip offers an unparalleled level of insight & expertise.

I’ve witnessed you made a strong stand against poor (if not an absence of) online marketing strategies by businesses in the article The Web is a Joke, stating, “Most companies still don’t give the web the respect it deserves”. How did you arrive at this conclusion?

On its most basic level, this comes down to the negligible levels of investment in digital marketing in the region. Until brands start to put real money (and commitment) behind their overall marketing strategies to attract and retain customers, our industry will continue to be represented by whimsical microsites, one-off promotions & sponsorships and little indulgences that do nothing to further their brands or drive any long-term engagement with customers.

How important is it for organizations to add priority on digital marketing, SEO/SEM and social media at this time in order to save money on other marketing channels?

There’s a massive “communications gap” opening up between the increasing amount of time being spent online by Middle Eastern consumers, and the limited growth in the money spent marketing. While I’m under no illusions that digital marketing will kill Pan-Arab TV just yet, there is a massive hole that is begging to be filled in a space where all your customers are, and your competitors are not.

What’s your take on social media as a strong partner in online marketing strategies?

At this point, I see it as a complement to the bigger picture. Setting up a Twitter page or monitoring the blogosphere is not the “silver bullet” to make your brand a winner, but it deserves respect and attention, as this will become more important as usage grows.

The Middle East throws up its own challenges in terms of moderation, expression and public debate, so brands need to tread carefully here.

Would you treat them separately or as a necessary combination?

As an integral part of the mix.

You’ve been actively speaking at events and preaching the importance of effective online campaigns. What are the important points you repeatedly instill in your audience?

The main point I repeatedly communicate is that the Internet is not Star Wars, it’s just marketing, and that marketers should not fear it. It’s also important that digital strategy is driven the business requirements, and not by IT.

Also, I stress the importance of engaging the right partners. If you are unsure or unclear about how to approach digital marketing, work with experts like us who are dedicated to this industry. We’ve had our successes and failures, and we can all learn from them.

What are your predictions for the future of the region’s digital marketing industry?

It can only grow from its current position, and I’m hopeful that as our industry offers regional marketers better and better alternatives to traditional media, those initiatives will result in more of the pie for digital media, which will lead to more innovation and growth.

To know more of Yousef’s engagements, you find him on these sites:

• The People vs. Yousef Tuqan
  
• Twitter
• FlipCorp Blog
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
  

If you like the post, bookmark here.

Jitendra Jain of HoteleMarketer

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.

You’re also the founder of 3 great websites HoteleMarketer.Com, The Talent Jungle, and YoungHotelier.Com, please tell us a little bit about these projects.

I created www.TheTalentJungle.com in 2003 after completing my Tourism degree in Switzerland, initially as a portal to keep students connected and informed – this has since evolved into a very different base, however the link with education and hospitality remains. www.YoungHotelier.com was created in 2007 to shine the limelight on the people that define hospitality…you hear so much about the industry but rarely about the people that make it what it is. YoungHotelier.com was also the first hospitality industry site that heavily used video content to communicate its message. I created www.HoteleMarketer.com initially as a repository of the articles I had written for offline publications like Hotelier Middle East, Hotelier India, etc but this has since evolved into a blog for like-minded ‘digital’ hoteliers.

I’ve always asked this from my guests, and I just really wanted to get a consensus from the experts in the industry. What’s your view on the Middle  East’s online marketing industry particularly in the UAE?

I think the Middle East holds tremendous potential for growth and innovation in the online field. As internet and credit card penetration increases and consumer habits evolve, we’re likely to see a much more active online social, mobile and buyer community emerge. The Arabic online niche also remains under-tapped – but the recent acquisition of Maktoob by Yahoo! just illustrates the immense potential in this area.

What are the challenges that you face regularly in being an online marketing professional especially in this part of the world?

I think when it comes to the online field, the Middle East is not very different from most parts of the world. The niche, being so new, encounters the same problems in most places – lack of ample resources and training. Education about the online world and the opportunities it presents is absolutely crucial – it falls on the online marketer to ensure his/her business colleagues are engaged and understand + support the efforts made online.

We’ve seen how the economic recession greatly affected industries, how did the online and hotel industry performed during these times, particularly in the Middle East?

The recession has impacted almost every sector – the hospitality industry is no different. However compared to the rest of the world, the Middle East has still managed to outperform many other prominent regions in the world. In hospitality, the online channel has actually been given a massive boost by the recession, as hoteliers improve their utilization and rely on this crucial source of business.

How important is it for organizations to add online marketing, SEO/SEM and social media into their business strategies at these times?

In this day and age, businesses should probably be made to explain ‘why not’! However the caveat, as with any business / marketing undertaking, would be to go in with a clear strategy and execute well. The ’spray and pray’ method achieves very little – businesses need to analyze the fit first and then go at it consistently with ample allocated resources, measurement and steering to say on course.

What’s your take on social media as a strong partner in online marketing strategies? Would you treat them separately or as a necessary combination?

I believe social media, if utilized, should support and be in line with the overall strategy, positioning and branding of the business. Blindly jumping onto the social media bandwagon because its the ‘hip’ thing to do won’t do very much.

You’ve been actively advocating online revolution especially in the hospitality industry. What are the important points you repeatedly instill in your audience?

This one’s easy – 1.’The future is already here’. We’re all specialists of one sort or the other. We tend to get so engrossed in everything that’s going on in our own bubbles (industry, business, social circles) that we often miss the developments in other spheres. We need to understand that we live in exponential times and many ’science fiction’ concepts will become ’science facts’ during our own lifetimes. We need to understand where we’re headed (the evolution of the Internet is just one of these key developments) and what we want to be doing when we get there. It’s time to take off the blinders and embrace change. 2. It’s all about Passion. If you don’t love what you do…you probably won’t get very far. Learning, development, success and passion all go hand in hand. If you want to learn and embrace something new, find what you love about it and start there.

What are your predictions for the future of online marketing industry in the Middle East and specifically on the growing trend of digital hospitality?

Check out www.HoteleMarketer.com for predictions, thoughts and more!

For More of Jitendra Jain’s thoughts and expertise, you can find him in these networks:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• FriendFeed
• HoteleMarketer
• Talent Jungle
• Young Hotelier

If you like the post, bookmark here.

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:

BusinessInDubai.Com ranked number 1 for Google.Com (not Google.ae) and BusinessDubai.Com topped the results for Bing.

Optimizing for Bing is no different from doing SEO for the rest of the search engines. Content, keywords, structure and links will still rule the fundamentals. However there are notable results:

• This test supports one of the popular observations where Bing favors the aged domain. The older your domain gets, the better it will get on Bing’s rankings. I would also agree with Gyutae Park in his article 5 Crucial SEO Tips For the New Binghoo (Microsoft Bing Overtakes Yahoo Search) when he said: “Obtain exact match domains whenever possible. Both Google and Bing give bonuses to sites with domains that match the search query exactly (e.g. CreditCards.com can rank for the keyword “credit cards” with a lot less links than other more authoritative sites).”

• At first glance you may conclude that Bing favors link popularity but we also have to take into account 2 factors such as links coming from a variety of domains and the anchor texts which the links have. I haven’t dug deeply into the anchor text but a quick glimpse on the links gave me an impression that BusinessInDubai.Com has more variety of links. So if you’re ranking for Bing, be sure to have anchor text variety, links from diverse and related domains and pages, and quantity.

I also love Silver Rose’s analysis in How to get your website found in Bing:

Bing has been going for two months, and here’s what I’ve found analysing my own sites and those of others: Bing doesn’t like blogspot – not even blogs over 3 years old with decent pagerank on Google (pagerank 4) and about 20,000 backlinks according to Yahoo’s siteexplorer. You will find some blogspots in Bing’s results – but buried deep eg on page 6 or higher. There are exceptions – some blogs with a seriousamount of high quality backlinks feature on Bing’s first page, but if you are an ordinary blogger with an average amount of backlinks, you will struggle.

Haven’t found many Wordpress blogs in Bing either. I don’t think Bing likes blogs, they seem to prefer static websites, possibly because it’s easier for their bot to crawl.

Here are my recommended reads for Bing Reviews and Optimization:

1. Microsoft Bing’s New Features Relevant to Webmasters
2. Bing’s Best Features are the Ones You Didn’t Know Existed on Live Search
3. Meet Bing, Microsoft’s New Search Engine
4. 5 Crucial SEO Tips For the New Binghoo (Microsoft Bing Overtakes Yahoo Search)
5. SEOmoz Interview – Lyndsay Walker on Bing
6. Top 10 Things the Microsoft/Yahoo! Deal Changes for SEO
7. How to get your website found in Bing
8. Optimizing Your Website for Microsoft Bing

If you like the post, bookmark here.

Ladies and gentleman, please help me welcome Ms. Mais AbuSalah.

Thank you very much for giving me the privilege for this interview. Please tell us about yourself and your current profession?

My name is Mais AbuSalah; I graduated from the University of Jordan – Computer Science as a major. I am currently the eMarketing Manager in Maktoob.com – Jordan.

How’s the online media industry of Jordan in the last 3 years, particularly that of SEO/SEM?

I believe that the online media (especially SEO/SEM) is still not on the basic checklist for many websites, not only in Jordan, but also in the Arab World.

From time to time, I check local websites (radio stations, newspapers… etc.) and most of them lack the basics of online marketing (especially SEO).

And if we want to talk about websites and forums owned by individuals, we will find that unfortunately most of them use black hat SEO. They also focus more on what brings traffic (series, songs, rumors… etc.) more than what brings value to users and online browsers.

Some people in the industry started as web developers, some as designers, while others like me started as content developers, what was your main background that helped succeed in being an SEO?

I started with Maktoob.com as a junior product/channel officer, then a project coordinator (still handling channels and projects including content deals and content management), then I started with SEO. So I guess being a coordinator among different teams helps understanding what should be done by whom and whether or not it’s doable, and how the flow of work should be especially with large organizations.

You’re a graduate of Search Engine College, a highly regarded institution for SEO/SEM certification. What’s your stand on industry certification? Would you recommend it be mandatory or is the industry not ready for that yet?


I believe SEO/SEM should start to be mandatory and by trusted institutes. You might find many people aware of bits and pieces of SEO, but many of them use black hat ways (especially in the Arab region). Online marketing in general is a rare specialty here. It’s very hard for example to find online marketers in Jordan with hands-on experience. It’s either that they have more than 7 years and very fresh and never had hands-on experience in online marketing.
The certification or training shouldn’t only be theoretical, but should also include actual implementation (and that was the case with Search Engine College).

Who are the SEO Rockstars you’re religiously following? I’d presume Rae Hoffman would be very well one of them.

Hmm, actually my favorites are Kalena Jordan, Rand Fishkin, Shaun Anderson and Rae Hoffman. In general, I am a big fan of Search Engine Land’s newsletter and its participants.

Tell us about your blog, Arabic Search Engine Marketing. What are the major challenges in blogging as an SEO?

My blog is still new, and my own challenge is in time. As well, shifting from only SEO into online marketing makes it a big challenge to make it a daily habit to blog about SEO. The absence of having an Arab SEO community with solid knowledge and experience is another obstacle. For example, many helpful tools can only work with non-Arabic words and characters, the fact that only 1% of the web content is in Arabic and at the same time the massive amount of duplication and spam is also another issue.

How important is SEO or online media in an overall marketing strategy for a company nowadays? Is it still a side dish? Or is it a must?

I believe it’s still a side dish, a luxury, though it should be a must as the number of people searching for products and information online are continuously increasing. Online marketing and SEO should not be on the side anymore.

Working in Jordan for more than 3 years, you now have a good sense of the search marketing in the Middle East. How do you see the industry? Would you agree that it’s still at its infancy stage? What do you think are the necessary steps for improvement?

Yes, I believe it’s still at its infancy stage, but I believe it’s in a better shape than SEO. I don’t usually see ads that are really relevant to what I am searching for (locally) on search engines, and this might tell us that even when we use search engine marketing, where not that into optimizing usage and budget allocated.

Where do you think Search Engine Optimization/Marketing & Social Media is heading? Any notable predictions that you might have?

Obviously, SEO, SEM and Social media are the hottest trends globally, and many companies started to collect followers on twitter, fans on facebook, members of groups, searchers, potential online customers… etc. They are less expensive, and ROI is accurately tracked not only in the last stage but also in each step of the conversion funnel. We shouldn’t also forget the continuous growth of number of users online.

What advice would you give to businesses out there who are starting to expand their marketing strategies to online channels?

My advice to them is to make sure that they are using online tools in a way that will not later have a negative impact on them and their brand, and to choose the right and trusted people to handle the online marketing strategy. I also in favor of doing this in-house if possible (and this would need in-house training).
Online marketing sometimes needs patience and persistence (especially in the case of SEO). Know your targeted customers, their behaviors, your products and plan well.

You can see more of Mais Abusalah online through these sites:

• Arabic Search Engine Marketing
• Twitter
• LinkedIn Profile
• Maktoob Blog

Thanks for being with us on this episode of Follow Fridays, hope to see you next week.

If you like the post, bookmark here.

For those who are new to the SEO scene, would you be kind enough to introduce SEOptimise and a little background about you and your company?

Hey Dave, thanks for asking me to do this interview.

Well firstly, I’ve been involved in the search marketing industry (SEO in particular) since 2002. During this time I was working for a web design agency whilst still on a placement year from University and I began getting more and more involved in the SEO side of projects.

I then went back to Uni with my free .ac.uk webspace and quickly realised it wasn’t too difficult to dominate for competitive terms in Google! I actually had an assignment to create a website for a made-up driving school and within a few days the site was number one in Google for “Oxford driving school” and I was receiving several daily enquiries to take people out on driving lessons! I even managed to make some cash out of it by putting some AdSense ads up, shame they took the webspace away ?

Anyway, I graduated from Uni, built up a few of my own website’s (which I would thoroughly recommend as a fast-track to learning SEO) and shortly after decided to spend a year in Australia. Rather than getting a job out there, I found that my interest and ability in SEO allowed me to win a few clients and work as a freelance SEO consultant. I decided it would look more professional to set myself up as a company, which is how the early days of SEOptimise were formed.

You’ve been into search engine marketing since 2002, how did the industry evolve over these years? What were the notable changes in history?


In terms of search marketing 2002 seems so far away now it’s unreal. We’re obviously used to seeing the daily algorithm changes or clever new tactics on blogs and Sphinn almost on a daily basis.

But looking at the bigger picture, there have been some huge changes too; from the big Google algorithm updates, changes of PPC platforms, the introduction of social media as a marketing channel and SEO tool, to MSN Search changing its name more often that Man United change their 3rd away European kit!

Plus, everything has evolved very quickly, the search engines have learnt from earlier mistakes and as a marketing tactic it’s not just about organic search these days. Just for your search strategy alone you need to consider PPC, Google/Yahoo News, blog search, image search, universal search etc. And that’s before you even think about social media and conversion optimisation!

You started as a web developer before you focused on search marketing, how did these skills contribute to this development? What do you think is a good combination of expertise to succeed in SEO/SEM?

Having a web development background has been a great help as a skill to apply to SEO. A large amount of on-site optimisation requires the ability to review source code and being able to quickly understand the scale of an issue has been very useful.

I’ve also found it to be a great help to have spent time managing PPC campaigns too. It took me until early 2006 to get into PPC, but I quickly passed the AdWords exam and began managing accounts for clients. In terms of looking at search as an overall strategy I’ve found this has been invaluable.

I’ve actually written a post on this for Econsultancy, but basically there are things I may not have considered in as much detail before. Such as influencing the clickthorugh rate of an organic title/description tag or thinking about optimisation and keyword targeting from a conversion optimisation landing page perspective.

Who are the people you look up within the SEO/SEM sphere? Would that list include Matt Cutts?

Yes, without a doubt. If Matt Cutts says PageRank sculpting no longer works there’s not a more credible source around so you have to take notice of these things.

In terms who I would look upto, well there’s a lot of bloggers/speakers/industry leaders who I’ve learnt a lot from. I’ve been reading the likes of Danny Sullivan, Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz and Aaron Wall for a long time now and if your getting into the industry now and only followed these guys there’s probably still not too much you’d miss!

In the UK there’s some great guys too, such as Dave Naylor, Lyndon Antcliff and Patrick Altoft to name just a few. Plus with all of the conferences, blogs and of course Twitter there’s plenty of people to keep up to date with the latest goings on in search.

Aside from managing SEOptimise, Kevin can also be seen sharing his expertise at Search Engine Land and Econsultancy as a regular featured blogger. How do you handle these engagements Kev?

Econsultancy, and recently Search Engine Land, have been an excellent opportunity to write for a different type of audience.

It’s something which I find helps to build credibility in the work I’m doing and (hopefully) helps to strengthen the reputation of myself and SEOptimise. Blogging is the main reason SEOptimise have built a large following of readers and while it’s not always easy to dedicate time towards, it’s certainly worth the effort.

If you don’t have a blog I would recommend just getting started, the SEOptimise blog started as my own personal knowledge base in a way. I used to write about problems I encountered and how I solved them, this was mainly as a reference to myself whilst largely still learning about SEM. But after a while I started to noticed these getting picked up with citations on blogs such as Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Roundtable. This made me realise that it wasn’t just me reading the blog and it has been able to grow on from there.

I’ve been following your posts and realized you’re a strong believer and an advocate of social media. How did social media change the game of search marketing?

To be honest, in my opinion social media made it far more interesting! I think a lot of people had got to the point where link building had become quite dull and social media really mixed this up as an SEO tactic. From my point of view, I’d much rather write a blog post than spend half a day trying to find and build links. And in terms of generating high-quality, relevant and natural/defensible links it really is a far more effective way of doing things when applied successfully.

Also looking at this from a marketing angle instead of an SEO perspective and it’s clearly a very powerful method of promoting a brand or product. If you think of the number of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, YouTube views and social media bookmarking visits for campaigns such as Comparethemeerkat.com, then you begin to see how effective this can be for building brand awareness.

We all know both social media and search marketing are evolving by the day, where do you think both industries are heading to?

We ran a poll recently on SEOptimise and many people predicted social media and SEO will become closer, possibly merging in the future. With news of Twitter crawling external links from tweets it could well be heading that way. At the moment the thought of anyone really challenging Google still seems unlikely, but you don’t know what is around the corner long-term.

And as method of building a website’s off-site reputation, social media and online PR are already a very important tactic – the way this is heading I can only see this continuing in the future.

Have you been to Dubai or anywhere in the Middle East?

I’ve never been to the Middle East before, but would love to go to Dubai one day. I definitely plan to go back to Australia again, so maybe that would be a good excuse to merge the trips.

You may not know this but SEO is still at its infancy stage here in the UAE and some parts of the Middle East. What can you recommend to businesses in terms of marketing online?

There’s a lot of things businesses should be considering in terms of marketing themselves online. And in many cases there are several strategies they should be thinking about, for example:
- Overall search strategy and presence for industry leading keywords, both organically and via paid search.
- Conversion rate optimisation, is your website effective and converting into leads and sales?
- Local search, make sure you’re listed in Google Maps and in-front of potential customers locally.
- Reputation management, displaying positive results to potential clients who may perform brand or key employee queries.
- Blogging – show that you are an authoritative source and build a respected following via blogging.
- Social media – promote your content and blog posts further to reach a wider audience and strengthen your website in terms of it’s link reputation.

What advice would you give to businesses out there who are starting to expand their marketing strategies to online channels?

Hire a consultant! Ok, I would say that – but there are so many opportunities online that you really need an expert to analyse the market and create a strategy which suits a specific business. Plus there’s a lot of bad advice still out there if you’re reading the wrong forums or asking the wrong people, so it can be easy to waste time without moving forward.

Every website and industry is different. So if you are looking to promote a travel website, for example, promoting this using general search marketing tactics will only get you so far. You need to ensure that you’re working with someone who understands about the seasonality of searches and different stages of the travel buying cycle. This way you can focus on promoting the website in the best possible method in terms of ROI, as opposed to the most effective way of increasing traffic volumes.

Thank you very much Kevin for sharing your thoughts with me here on Click-Dubai. Wish you all the best with SEOptimise and wish we could read more on your expert opinions on SEO and Social Media on your future blog posts and articles.

There you go folks. It was both an honor and a pleasure to have one the well respected names in the search marketing industry on Interview Fridays. You can catch Kevin’s profiles and his expert scribbles on these sites:

1. SEOptimise
2. Search Engine Land
3. Econsultancy
4. Australia Photos
5. Google Profile
6. Twitter Stream
7. SlideShare
8. LinkedIn Profile
9. Facebook
10. FriendFeed

If you know anyone in the online media industry or you think you have something to share here on Click-Dubai, you can contact me through the online form or send me an email at dave [at] click-dubai [dot] com.

See you all at the next Interview Friday!!

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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] click-dubai [dot] com.

What sort of professionals are we looking for? Well here’s a list of industries that would be relevant to the program:

1. Search Engine Optimization/Marketing
2. Online Marketing
3. Digital Advertising
4. Marketing & PR
5. Corporate or Online Branding
6. Social Media
7. Content Management
8. Digital & Online Media

You may have famous rockstars in mind (which would be a great feature to Interview Fridays) but it would be more interesting to feature the experts within UAE and the Middle East. This would give us a clear view of how the industry is performing inside the region, what are the obstacles, and what needs to be done to improve.

Also keep an eye for Best Reads page listing the top blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts, and resources of subjects relating to SEO. It’ll be a huge amount of work but it will definitely be worth building for all of you. Cheers!

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Although it was quite farfetched, I somehow associated Up’s story with the inspiration I had upon seeing The Secrets. Again, the main thought was simple, positive thoughts and feelings results to positive endings. If you want something so bad, all you got to do is believe in it so hard that you can actually see yourself in it, touch it, and feel it.

So what’s in it for today’s post? I’m getting there. One of the tips that The Secrets has given is that if you have goals/dreams, write them down and each morning remind yourself that someday (you don’t have to worry how) the universe will eventually conspire and make those dreams come true (yeah, cheesy I know but I believe in it).

I still remember the very first job interview I had here in Dubai. Wore my black suit, fixed my tie in the mirror and said to myself, “I’m going to be big here in Dubai”. I don’t know if I was joking or was setting myself on a mission. I bet it was the latter.

In the spirit of lifting my dreams in a house hoisted up in balloons of hopes, here are my SEO wishlist that I’m hoping to achieve in the next 2-3 years of my career:

1. Achieve rankings, priority targets, and long-term goals for client projects of my present company.
2. Be an expert of one web metrics package (preferably Google Analytics).
3. Acquire working skills on web designing and development.
4. Be an expert of one CMS package (preferably Joomla or Drupal)
5. Be a trainee/junior of one of the top people in the industry. I wouldn’t mind if Rand, Aaron, Danny, Rae, Bill, or Todd will read this. Been dying to have an “Adopt-a-junior-SEO-to-train” kind of program. I hope this comes true.
6. Master the co-relation between SEO and Social Media. Have a concrete cause-and-effect map of SEO and SM processes.
7. Do a collaborative project with leading online media people in the Middle East.
8. Have a speaking gig at one related conference to the industry.
9. Acquire one long-term consultancy project to work with.
10. Enjoy a meaningful journey towards learning everything in the industry.

Actually the last one was kinda cheesy but I do hope I’ll enjoy the ride while learning all these things. You know the feeling that you’ll be somebody and go somewhere someday?

Well wish me luck folks…Oh any advice you would want to share for an aspiring kid? I need all that I can get.

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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:

I. Goals Goals Goals – I’m not much of a football fan, but I always imagine a field full of fans cheering for Barcelona Spain when they won against Manchester United. But yes, Goals are your peaks of success. It’s what you aim in the next 2-3 years of your campaign or any time frame given or appropriate for your business. Be precise with your goals as much as possible and make them inspirational for you and your organization. Whether you wanted to be the leading content provider within your market niche or be the most popular social community website within the region, carve it on stone and make it known to the rest of your team. Having definite goals at hand will give you the different paths of actions to take towards each goal.

II. Measure & Metrics – Gone are the days when online strategies were more about trial and error processes. Nowadays, you have all the web metrics you can have for every campaign that you can establish. Whether you’re aiming to measure organic web traffic, pay per click campaign, or even phenomenal social networking sites have ways of effectively tracking your campaigns. Fortunately (or unfortunately) you don’t have any excuses of not having any benchmarks to start with. Do not ever, ever forget to set your benchmarks. As for SEO, we have to get bases for keyword rankings (whether or not you already have some minor rankings for some keywords), PageRank of website before setting any campaigns, analytics data (visits, pageviews, bounce rate, etc.), goals and conversions of what you want to achieve, linkbacks (if any), indexed sites by search engines, etc. Your metrics will highly depend on the campaign you’re working on or on the set of goal conversions you’re aiming.

III. Always Keep Historical Data – If you come across any statistical data within your research relevant to any of your campaign or highly relevant to your market niche – keep them, bookmark them, or even memorize them! These data will always be helpful in setting your benchmarks and comparing them in the future. Apart from setting the foundations, historical data will mold your expectations in the first few months of your campaign.

IV. Test & Observe – Whether it is a change in design, modification in the back-end programming, additional content, or off-page optimization, record every bit of action with time stamps on them. You may observe spikes on your traffic or drop in your conversions at certain times and you don’t want to go blind as to the causes of these fluctuations in your analytics data. If you can, establish a central flow of information which comes from your developer, designer, content administrator, social media executive, and the rest of the team. Be aware of the changes that happen around your website and study carefully the after effects. If it produces certain benefits, then continue and develop the actions. If you experience negative effects, be sure to know the logic behind the effect before dropping the process.

V. Follow Through – Now you’ve matched your data with the process you’ve exerted. What’s next? Examine the progress, if your activities contributed significant benefits (registrations, leads, sales, etc.), study them and modify to increase those benefits. Research and develop similar strategies in addition to existing ones. For those that have failed to reach the standards of your campaign, pay attention to cause-and-effects. If there is anything to remedy, fix them. If it involves too much cost (time, manpower, and resources), then drop it like a bad habit.

So there you go. Don’t forget to pay attention to tiny details on your website’s progress and your online campaigns. An instantaneous update could make or break your website’s progress.

Before I go, were you part of the Facebook junkies how grabbed the vanity URL’s today? Well I’ve got mine here. Some say it will increase the need for SEO. While some are still debating the positives and negatives on Facebook’s update. What do you think?

If you have anything to add to goals and implementation, feel free to comment or contact me.

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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.

1. Excellent & Informative Content – I still believe in the school thought of Content Is King (yeah, yeah I know that’s old school). People look for information through the search engines, and You have the responsibility to give them what they want. Keep your content unique and fresh. Tell your audiences what makes your business stand out from the others. If you want to read more about good copywriting for your audience and for the search engines, you can read CopyBlogger.
2. Translate – Okay so you have a good content on your site so what’s next? Help your audience a little bit. If you’re serving your website for UAE, obviously it would be beneficial if you have an Arabic translation option for your website. Although English may be the universal business language, you still have that significant percentage of internet users that prefer have content in their local language. If you don’t have a team in-house, you can source translation services from other companies.
3. Choose the right Keywords – Sorry this would involve a little bit of technical skills especially when doing keyword research. But this part is really necessary. You’ve probably heard that search engines have specially designed bots (spiders) that can crawl into your website to know the niche/topic of your business. Now these bots won’t be able to read other elements of your website except for texts. With this mind, place keywords in your URL, Title, and body text of your website. If you have “Brand” as your name of your company, include keywords that describe your business such as “Brand | UAE Cleaning Services”. Again don’t limit your keywords to your title of your site, include them at the content, and if possible at your domain name. If you want to get a more in-depth keyword analysis for your business, you can contact me (oh shoot, I hope that was not a cheap shot sales pitch).
4. List your business on Google Maps – This has been a growing trend in local organic optimization. Although, I haven’t seen any Local Business Results (like the ones you see on the top image) yet within my searches for UAE specific terms, but I’m very positive we’ll be having that soon. Add your business to Google’s local listings and help your customers find where you are. Although Bing has their own maps, I’m not sure yet if they do have listing services.
5. Contact Information – In addition to having your listings on Google maps, be sure to have your physical address and phone number within your contact or about page. This information breeds trust and value for your customers.
6. Yellow Page listings & Local Directories – Do not underestimate the significance of your regional yellow pages and local directories for your websites. Listings from these places on the internet actually gives the validation for the search engines that your business is where it should be or which region you are targeting your website.
7. Domain Name & URL – Sometimes re-writing your URL can be a tedious task. So I suggest you should not take this on top of your to-do list. But if you can add your important keywords to your URL, do so strategically with those that best describes your business and the region where you are located or targetting. If you are an international organization serving different countries around the globe, you can have a URL similar to dubai.brand.com or brand.com/dubai.html.
8. Links from Neighbors – How do I link thee? Let me tell you the ways. Well actually not all of them, it’ll take us one whole post for that. So naturally you would want links to your website in two different categories:
   a. From websites relevant to your industry
   b. From websites within your region.
   c. There’s actually a 3rd set which is links relevant to your industry within your region. Let’s say your website is focused on recruitment. You would want to look at websites which offer management training, human resources information, resume tips, career advice, etc. Keyword research will actually tell you more of relevant topics that are great for your link hunt.
9. Network in Your Area – Hey, you’re on Twitter right? Facebook junkie? Or a LinkedIn professional? You’ve probably knew already what these websites are for. But please, in the name of professionalism, do not spam them with every promotional pitch you have for your website. Be “human” online, talk to people, get to know them and engage in conversations. Once you get to contribute significantly within your network, people will notice that link on your profile and they’ll certainly click it-read it-like it-and-eventually-buy-it.
10. Customer Service – You have contact forms, forums, and social media channels to communicate with your customers. The next step is to take care of them. You may have excellent online strategies working 24/7 for your business, but it only takes one unsatisfied customer to spread that negative experience offline. And you know negative reputation spreads faster than positive reviews. Be prompt in handling irate customers but don’t also forget to ask for more suggestions to gain that extra value from your loyal customers.

So there you go, I just wasted on Saturday afternoon for this post. Kidding! Of course I enjoyed doing this. I just hope I added something valuable to your arsenal of online strategies. But of course, comments and violent reactions (I surely hope not) are most welcome.

If you would like to get to know more about in-depth local organic optimization strategies for your company, just email me at dave [at] click-dubai.com or you can use the contact form. Or coffee somewhere at the Marina maybe? Just let me know.

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