Search Engine Marketing for Non-Techies

I didn't know that as early as 1999 I was already doing search engine marketing and optimization. Back then I was an entrepreneur with my Mom and we were trying out our hand at exporting. Our main revenue source was getting leads through our homemade website. Aside from including the URL in our business cards, catalog and flyers (all homemade!) I thought that it would be imperative to make our website searchable.

During that time I was an avid user of Altavista and Yehey. I simply submitted our website's URL there and to other search engines and directories. I also made sure that our website was structured well and I didn't use that much graphics (well, uh, I'm no fab web designer!). Little did I know that this was already SEM and SEO work.

Tagging or labelling is also very important. I guess since I worked for the YP for quite some time I got used to classifying/categorizing things and this has helped me label my posts easily. One of my friends said that it's unfair that I'm a natural at tagging stuff. I guess this is because I think like a user, well I AM a user (an avid user!) that's why it's easy for me to think of labels for my posts.

Who would've thought that when you search for "rich pinoy" my blog would come out second in the search results? (Now I gotta work on being that rich Pinoy!).




















And who would've thought that searches for "Puerto Galera" would put my blog at number 2?




















I'm no SEO expert, if you want in-depth SEO advise I suggest you speak with Marc or Ely or find a SEO through SEO Philippines. Just make sure you:

(1) add your URL in Google;
(2) define your content architecture properly (think like your user!);
(3) have a SEO around during web development; and
(4) for those with blogs, label your posts properly (again, think like your reader!)