ISULONG SEOPH

Just started a couple of adwords campaigns. What seem to be too easy thing to do was in fact really hard. Creating ads in adwords is easy. Creating compelling ad is hard. My ads hardly get any clicks.

Other than badly written ad snippets, there’s also high bid price for niche keywords I was in. I don’t know how to steal other’s spot. It might be that they are actually earning so much from those they can afford to throw away money on clicks. It’s tempting to call their bluff. I still have my sanity on to not bite. I’m a complete newbie with adwords or PPC marketing. I’ll take the hard road if it means learning how to game adwords.

I also bought a couple of domains for the sole purpose of selling affiliate products. I could have pointed my ad’s destination url straight to my affiliate’s sales page but I read somewhere that sites that are not directly selling the stuff have higher quality score and as a result will have lower bid amount in adwords.

A couple more domains will be put up in the coming days after I finish my research on my target niche. I hope by that time there would be improvements on my current campaigns.

I got one of my ads disapproved today. The display URL was different from the destination URL. I forgot about the domains of both URLs must be the same. I am promoting a product from linkshare.

Also, I just lowered the bid of one adgroup due to non converting clicks. Two more days and I’ll pull the ad. I’m learning here.

I started venturing into internet affiliate marketing today. I don’t know if it’s tough luck but today, Google also released a bunch of their online advertising products. One of which is a Cost-Per-Action (CPA) advertising.

You may call it lack of foresight on my side but not being a real SEO/SEM, I’m out of touch with these improvements. I’m doing what most affiliates are doing. Signing up with affiliate sites like CJ or clickbank. Google’s new product compete directly with those kind of programs. It won’t take long before sites selling stuff goes directly to google. Currently they do it through cj or clickbank in order for their products to reach critical mass using adwords. And it’s affiliate marketers who does those.

With google’s CPA program, online retailers won’t be exposed to fraud as much as before when they pay per click. I’m afraid affiliate marketers will be bypassed in the near future.

Last year was the year spent learning new things. Lots of them. This year, it’s time to put in good use all those new stuff crammed inside my head for a year.

We were able to reach the threshold of a SEO project started late last year. For now, we’re facing a blank wall as to what other things to add that’ll give more value to tools our users pay for. We’re starting to go into maintenance mode. I’m beginning to get bored. Only a little though. Not very much.

We’re launching a new site. An offshoot of the previously mentioned project. One of the tools got so much potential to stand on its own. Good. Again, not really. As I’ve said, it was an offshoot. Meaning, much of it is already done. We’re just moving it own domain for it to get it’s own paying users.

After a year of learning SEO from somebody who’ve actually done it and was labelled negatively for it might make you think I know a lot already. Wrong. After a year of learning SEO, I discovered I never learned anything. Every personal site experiment I did SEO for that got positive results were due to unexplained circumstances. I was just being lucky.

Site PR boosts, SERPs climb, traffic increased… All were circumstantial. I did nothing special. It’s the main reason why I’ll avoid joining SEO contests again.

This year, I’ll try to learn affiliate marketing. I think I like selling.

Itutuloy ko ba and sulong? Medyo tinatamad na ako. Marami kasing mga projects na pinagkaka-abalahan. At sa istilo ng pag optimize ko ng site, di rin ako uubra sa mga hustlers ng Philippine SEO scene.

Kunsabagay, madali lang naman ang sumali. Wala namang gagastahing malaki dahil lahat ng domain pwede basta makakapaglagay lang ng linkback sa mga sponsors.

Kung pag-uusapan ang linkback sa sponsors, nahilo ako sa dami ng mga links na dapat ilagay. Aba. Magandang gimik to ah. Magpapa-premyo ng kunyari Php 100,000. May linkback sa 5 sites mo. Tapos kunyari mga 100 sites yung sumali. 5 required x 100 sites = 500 links. Kung bumili sila ng tig $5.00 or Php 250.00 kada link, magbabayad sila ng $2,500 or Php 125,000. Mas mura nga yung magpapa contest nalang.

Teka di pa kasali yung linkbait dyan. Sa tingin ko di nalang ako sasali. Mas malaki ang premyo ngayon kesa dati. Ibig sabihin mas gagalingan pa ng mga sumali ang pag-spam at pag-seo. Sa mga sumali good luck sa inyong pagtuloy sa sulong. Ituloy Angsulong!!!

Teka, bagong contest na naman? Hindi pa yata natapos yung sulong ng SEOPH kaya itinuloy ngayon. Para sa mga Pilipino kulang pa. Dapat talaga manguna tayo sa patag ng spammi… er.. SEO. At parang mas malala ngayon dahil mas konti ang restrictions. O ano sali ka?

Uy lahat pala ng search engines kasali kaya mas malaki ang chance ngayon. Teka. Interesado? Basahin ang contest mechanics ng Ituloy AngSulong dito.

Sali din kaya ako. Isali ko kaya ulit tong Resort Blog. Pero araw ng mga patay ngayon eh. Dami kong pupuntahan. Di pwedeng magbabad sa computer. Baka bukas pagbalik ko.

Marami na palang pumasok na ituloy angsulong entries sa search engines. Parang nahuli yata ako. Masyado kasing busy.

My boss and I had a discussion over dinner about current trends in Search Engine Optimation. Various techniques came up including those that still work and those that are obsolete. Nope, blackhat was out of the question. Our shop don’t do blackhat. We’re optimizing real online business. Actually, we are more on the marketing side and only do optimization as one of the component of marketing.

Yes, we focus more on marketing sites rather than optimizing sites. Not to say we don’t optimize our sites, we do, as long as it will not take our sites off search engine indexes. What good can your uber-optimized site when it won’t appear in search results?

Anyway, it is common nowadays to think of Google first when search is mentioned. It is perhaps due to the fact that before google search engine optimization wasn’t this competitive. Now, you compete with google and other SEOs gunning for the same niche. Now you should have a well defined strategy whereas we can just have lots and lots of pages with keywords stuffed in every available space they have.

Today, when everybody is doing the same thing that you do to optimize your page, you should have a way to do it differently and effectively. Determine the saturation point of your inbound links, for instance. Just how much inbound links do you need just to go up 1 spot in SERPs. Can the link buying expenses be justified by the increase in revenue for that 1 levelup? If not leave it that way and look in other places. Link out for instance. Make it natural. Who knows search engines have a way to determine link greedy sites. Yeah, there must be an algo like that somewhere? Spending is one area where online marketing differs from plain dumb optimization.

Now you know why my isulong seoph entry suck. I suck as a SEO.

Only a month and a half is left for the isulong seoph sites to put themselves in the first page of google search for the phrase isulong seoph. I’ve been stucked in page 5 of the SERP when I checked this morning. Frankly, I don’t expect to get near page 1.

I’m much comfortable at isulong seoph page 5. My attempt was futile. I am concluding this early that on-page will have no match really against off-page. But then again in real world SEO, dirty tactics can be made to get that spot we’ve alway wanted. And my be is still on on-page optimization.

Why on-page? There are just too little dependency on other sites. I’m not risking having use a technique that used to legal in the eyes of google but becomes illegal after google declared them to be abused too much. Isulong SEOPH did taught me alot about when to use and when not to use a technique.

In real world, I won’t risk using blackhat technique. Especially when the competition for that niche/keyword is hot. You’re only inviting to be delisted in the index and lose that precious spot and money.

Just with everything I do in life, I try to be clean a I can be. Just follow what is right by convention. In the end winning is not everything.

My on-page optimization failed to stand up against the huge number of inbound links other isulong seoph site generate. Really, this just proves that on-page of optimization cannot win against off-page.

For what google have shown so far in its result page, all sites on the first page have massively off-page optimized. Those who chose the on-page optimization that enjoyed top placement during the first couple of weeks into the isulong seoph contest are nowhere to be found today. I’m in the boundary of fourth and fifth page.

My little experiment ends here.

But you see, I have no complaints. Due to the contest, I managed to have another PR5 site. I was planning to delete this before the PR increase. But with a PR like this, it’s hard not to take advantage of it. Text link ads are hot these days. I see no reason not to sell link ads here. In the end, even if I lagged behind the contest, I still feel like a winner. Link ads, anyone?

It seems that Google is giving isulong seoph sites early christmas gifts. Well, what do you know? This isulong seoph site just had a PR5. That’s according to my firefox toolbar.

Crazy, crazy. What do you think is happening over at GooglePlex? Is July a Pagerank update month? I read somewhere they are doing that. So what am I going to do now? Pray that this PR stay after the update.

I thought I will never post on this blog again as I have quietly accept defeat on that contest as early as June. For the sake of the contest I’ll leave it here until the contest ends in september. But if that PR stays where it is, I might write here sometimes and sell lots of text links, hahaha.

Though I’m in the process of upgrading myself (Hands on Java lessons at night), I’m not leaving the SEO world entirely. In fact, I got deeper into that hole. I would like to share the tool or what it does but can’t due to contract prohibition.

So, I would like to thank google for being so kind to isulong seoph sites. I hope this is permanent. Now this is really good. Even if we won’t win, we still get some sort of a consolation prize. Everybody happy? I am.