Finally, I can blog about this. It’s been almost a week after the Philippine SEMCON 2007 took place in the Hotel Intercontinental in Makati. I don’t wish to go through the painful way of telling here how other delegates reacted towards the very first search engine marketing conference in the Philippines, because it doesn’t matter so much to me. As I’ve always perceived things, why dwell on the useless when you can’t use it?
Here are what I find useful:
1. Benj Arriola’s tips on SEO-ing megasites. In my portfolio team in DWH, we are doing this underground (shssss be quiet!) portal site for our websites. It’s been a difficulty maintaining and optimizing it. I still haven’t been 100% done in optimizing it (as in!) There was just so much work to do in the team. I’m thankful that Benj touched on long tails, LSI, CMS to boost content optimization, and even tips on how to deal with clients who don’t wish to give FTP access information. That is a major concern.
2. Gio Villanueva-Wall’s technique in doing keyword research. Although most of the stuffs she discussed are pretty much disclosed in the SEO world, it’s still a great thing to know you’re doing the right thing, as my SEO-cum-webdesigner-friend said it. I also love keyword discovery as a keyword tool. And logfiles are a wealth of data you can use to see which are the promising keywords for your site.
3. Marc Macalua and Landing Page Optimization. I like what another speaker said (Andrian Lee, is that the name?) that the power of search is negated in the landing page. That is very true. In our business model in DWH, where everything boils down to reservations or conversions, crafting a winner landing page for pay-per-click is most essential.
4. Jay Estaris on Web Metrics was the best presentation to address the business side of SEM. I think it opened the minds of many business people in the conference to consider SEO as an integrated part of their marketing initiatives. It’s helpful stuff to know that the data you have now is your decision-maker tomorrow.
5. Aaron Wall – I mean… of course! Who cares if he opt not to have a presentation, or wrote his notes on a crappy piece of paper? Hehe. I believe when he said that truly, relevancy is the name of the game in search engine marketing. Notice how blogs and forum posts dominate the SERPs for the most intriguing key search terms.
All in all, I still think that the SEMCON was okay. It may not be A-okay, but for me it’s already a boost to know that you’re on the right track, and that you can be as good as these SEO gurus given the motivation to strive and continuously accept new learning. It also makes a difference when you’d want to touch on your knowledge base once in a while.
2 Comments
October 16, 2007 at 8:38 am
I’m glad you found my presentation useful.
October 16, 2007 at 10:40 am
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