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Pubcon Las Vegas 2008 Day 1 – Keynote Speech by Shawn Rorick

Benj Arriola — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:23:26 +0000

Shawn Rorick is the Director of Marketing of Cirque de Soleil, RSD. Totally un familiar who he was, thinking because it was my first Pubcon, as he continued to talk, I think I was not alone. It seems he is a Pubcon veteran but was a first time keynote speaker. Although it was his first time, I must say he did a good job.

He basically compared oldschool marketing and current day Internet marketing. And he explained this by example and has used a lot of McCain – Obama examples although he said there is no political reasons behind it. It was simply just observing the two political campaigns in a marketing point of view and the steps they took online.

One thing I liked about the presentation is what he has discussed about the long tail. Everything still holds true and has shown the usual long tail graph. With the current presence of not only SEO, but many various types of online social media, the long tail graph still looks the same but has experienced a shift in the graph, but the graph is still basically the same. Just more opportunities where to apply the long tail. And to spice up interest and add some mild humor, he even shows a photo of a tail of a cat, where today… is different and he shows a photo of a tail of a crocodile.

Shawn ends his post by summarizing everything into: Discover, Evaluate and Evolve.

Pubcon Las Vegas 2008 Day 1 – Conference Introduction by Brett Tabke

Benj Arriola — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:49:30 +0000

Introductions are not meant to be long, and so was Brett Tabke’s conference introduction to Pubcon 2008. It was not long but not too short either. With the ongoing economic condition, Brett shared his concerns on how much people will attend the conference as many companies have been saving a lot Brett has express his delight in seeing more than 1,000 attendees to this conference.

For a quick showing of hands, he asked how many people has seen a decrease in sales and how many has seen an increase in 2008. As how I expected to see more hands of an increase, I was surprised to see almost like an equal amount raised their hand that has seen a decrease. And when I raised my hand when asked who has seen an increase in sales in 2008, the people that has seen a decrease who were sitting near by seemed to be surprised also that such companies existed. He then asked the people who were optimistic to see things to get better and there seem to be some significant amount of about half probably.

My Personal Reaction to the Pubcon LV 2008 Conference Introduction by Brett Tabke, CEO of Webmaster World

Now this is nothing that Brett mentioned, but in my personal opinion, why we did see an increase in sales, I believe we should even see more. Because as the economy goes bad and companies want to save more, spend less and earn more, they make marketing decisions wisely, having minimal cost with maximum gain.

Thus if you want to make more money, you think of the cheaper marketing methods but with the best ROI. Now look at the cost of TV ads, radio ads, print ads and internet marketing. Internet marketing so far still seems to be underrated and is the cheapest among all marketing media. And when you do PPC and SEO, your audience is so targeted, that conversions seem to be better than in the other media. Companies that do all types of marketing mediums, may naturally choose SEO/PPC to earn the most and spend less. Very important during these times of crisis.

But then again, in smaller companies, some really do not have budgets for TV Ads, Radio Ads, or Print Ads, because they are a smaller company and really relies on Internet Marketing alone. If they are affected by the economy and needed to cut on cost, probably this has affected their SEO/PPC budgets as well which has also affected their sales.

I have no official study on this, but this is my guesstimate why there seemed to be a 50:50 split of the audience saying their sales increased and others their sales decreased. SEO/PPC companies with bigger clients has seen the increase. While SEO/PPC companies with smaller clients has seen the decrease.

Traffic Power’s Blackhat SEO CEO goes to jail

Benj Arriola — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:36:02 +0000

Matt Marlon known for his blackhat SEO tactics and old legal suing drama with Aaron Wall way back August 2005 goes to jail.

Not because he is a blackhat SEO nor is it due to anything blackhat SEO related to his company Traffic Power. But because of his Blackhat Foreclosure Housing Business.

Hat tip to Matt Cutts where I first read the news.

Quicksilver – evolve your Mac OS X interface

Peter Porker — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 09:14:38 +0000

Quicksilver is a new personal desktop search tool cum user command interface for OS X.

You would ask, another personal desk search tool? Don’t we have enough? I will have to agree, we DO have way too many desktop search tools already. However, as cliched as it sounds, Quicksilver is not your run-of-the-mill search tool. It is a revolutionary method of rethinking the Mac OS interface. In fact, one blogger even went as far as saying that with Quicksilver you’re not just using OS X – you begin owning it!

What exactly is quicksilver anyway? How will it help me with my Mac? What is all the buzz about for this little software tool from Black Tree, Inc.?

Picture this: it is perhaps the only tool that has 2 (yes – you read right - only two) button-like panels. It will initially scan your Mac for any “subjects”: things like your address book, applications, desktop, system preferences, etc. This will constitute your first panel – a searcheable list of items that you can invoke, call and act upon on your Mac.

Next it will put in “actions” that you can perform on the previous “nouns”. The second panel is a list of actions you can take on the first panel choice. It is often activated by typing a few letters from a desired action or pressing the right arrow key.

If the action requires a target – a third panel comes up where, for example, you can choose the person (the target) you want to send (the action) an email (the noun) to.

Here’s a more concrete example: Call up Quicksilver using the default hotkey – Control + Space. Type in “a pho”. A dropdown comes in and one of the choices will be Adobe Photoshop. Select Photoshop and it will come up.

Sometimes the “noun” of choice is down below the lists. However, if you do it often enough, Quicksilver will learn which app you mean when you type “a pho” in the long run!

The nouns don’t have to be restricted on your Mac either. Type in a bookmark you often visit and it will pull up your Safari browser showing the page you meant.

You have a person in your address book you want to contact? Type their name into the panel and select them, press right – and presto – a wealth of options to contact them open up.

You invoke iTunes and begin to type browse … Quick silver will call up a mechanism for you to start browsing albums!

Basically, Quicksilver is a faster and simpler keyboard based interface that learns about your nuances the more you use it. What results is a faster and more intuitive computing experience! Your hands will no longer have to keep leaving the keyboard to reach for the mouse and the software even goes as far as interpreting your commands for you.

A keyboard based interface for a primarily graphical user interface, you ask? The answer is quite simple – try writing a post as long as this one and do some basic word processor maneuvering: boldface, capitalize, etc. See which will get you done faster: keyboard shortcuts or mouse clicks? Now, think if you can use keyboard shortcuts to run just about anything on your OS X? Neat, eh?

See more about the features, design ethos and ideologies of Quicksilver OS X in the video below. Now, if only there was a Quicksilver for Windows Vista …

My Ituloy AngSulong SEO Vacation

Benj Arriola — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:44:42 +0000

Upon Arrival in the Philippines

Ok, I was away for 2 weeks and went to the Philippines for SEO events, at the same time to see my family as well. In the Ituloy AngSulong SEO contest, I was in 2nd and 3rd overall by the end of January and all that changed when everyone started catching up in February and I was not working that much. I arrived in the Philippines on February 19, 2007 and had no Internet connection as the connection of SmartBro was erractic. And was not able to know what was happening in the SEO Philippines contest. And I knew I still needed to place my required links and edit my confirmation file. I had to rent at some Internet cafe just to fix it. And I didn’t even memorize my passwords and I needed to work everything around just to get into my accounts.

The Ituloy AngSulong SEO Contest Awarding Day

Everyday was a busy day and me and my wife drove out later than planned. We did not bring our daughter Jamie this time so we can stay a few more minutes or hours after the contest and have some SEO chats. Mike Lopez who rode with us was also late anyway so everything was all fine.

The whole driving trip was all about SEO, PHP, web design, web development, web hosting, domains, and all related stuff as usual which is normal when talking with Mike. Upon arriving at the venue, at the VIP room of Metro Phi Restobar in Metrowalk, Ortigas, Pasig City, we were entering almost at the same time Abel Quitoriano arrived. People that were already there were Jedi Dancel, Marc Macalua, Ely Tapiador, Jozzua, and after a few minutes, Jason Torres came.

As usual, SEO topics were flying left and right as well as website monetization, about Rostom Hernandez‘ $7,000/month domainer earnings on PPC landing pages, Alfredo Palconit‘s drop from the cumulative rankings in his attempt to get the designing prize as well. Gio Castro‘s strong entry into the top prize, Marhgil Macula‘s comeback on Google that made him get a top spot again to win also in the cumulative prize. More people came that I already knew and people I knew online but have never seen started coming like Dennis Agulo, and Jun Macarambon. It was nice knowing and seeing the faces behind the other websites. If I do not remember everyone that wanted some link love, sorry if I cannot remember all of you.

Ice-breaking contest like the SEO hunks and SEO babes was a funny one where it was done by nominations and won by volume of applauses. I was lucky to win one of the SEO hunk prizes, and also the SEO pick-up lines.

What I brought home after the Ituloy AngSulong SEO contest

Prizes in the SEO hunks and SEO pick-up lines I got a Google notebook and pen inside a Google bag, a Yehey notebook, three PHP1,000 checks. Two were for being within the top 40 as a consolation prize by Lakeside Technologies and 1 for being in the top 10 winners in Google right at number 10. I got many priceless SEO tip sharing as usual from many of the top SEO people in the Philippines and listened to what Gio and Jason had to say about their Article sites. And I guess the most valuable knowledge I gained at the event was Rostom’s shared knowledge on domaining were most of them were shared after the contest. I knew there was a lot more knowledge to be shared that night but I was pretty tired myself too. Everyday I had some family matter to attend to and was barely able to work so I went home earlier than others since I don’t drink any alcoholic beverage as well nor do I smoke which I really do not mind hanging around even if I don’t drink nor smoke, but I also did not want my wife get bored to death on SEO topics that may not interest her.

For the official list of winners, list on the SEO Philippines forum:

Cumulative Ranking Prize Winners

My Yahoo entry

When I came in early during the awards night, Marc requested if I can talk a little bit about my Yahoo entry on how it was done and what were my plans for it. And I did explain it, although the entry was disqualified since it lacked the time to work on fixing the displayed URL on the site.

The top winner, Gio Castro

I found Gio to really be very cool as he shared his experience on how he worked on ranking well in all 3 search engines. And gave a very good inspirational talk for beginners as he did share that he was also just starting out in SEO during the first SEO contest Isulong SEOph which he also won first place. I do hope that this SEO contest opens new avenues for him to play around with.

Thanks to everyone

Thanks to Marc Macalua who once again did pretty well for this self-funded event with the help of many SEO volunteers. Jozzua and Jenny did a good job in hosting the event. Thanks to Google Philippines Country Rep, Aileen Apolo, it was a pleasure meeting you in person. Thanks to representatives from Yehey, support from Digital Filipino’s Janette Toral, I can’t remember everyone I talked to, but I know a representative from the company of Bo Sanchez was also there. Thanks to people that shared kind words about me in one way or another or who had shared their admiration to what I write about like Robert Desacada, Alan and Carlo Ocab, Eli Tapiador, Gio Castro who appreciated my Yahoo 301/302 story. Daisy of Viventis Search Asia who appreciated me inviting them to the event who eventually coordinated with Marc. Jun Macarambon at may crush yata sa akin nyahahahahaha! Whin Clores for the PinoySEO blackhat that I even wore on my flight from Manila to LAX. Rostom Hernandez for sharing his wisdom on domaining after the event. And the few people that stayed behind to make the conversations more livelier like Abel Quitoriano, Dennis Agulo, Zaldy Dalisay and probably others that I have failed to mention.

Thanks of course to the company who I work with who allowed me attend this SEO event and got this vacation. To my colleague Mishon, and bosses Gilda, Ryan, Cor, Barbara and Jack and to the rest of the SEM group, thanks to the HR people as well Heather, Sandy and Michael.

Thanks to my family as well since this SEO vacation of course doubled as a family vacation as well. But this is my SEO blog, the other family stuff and other stories will be on the other blogs.

After the Ituloy AngSulong Contest

The Tableless CSS and PHP with AJAX workshop held last February 25 and 26 at Informatics Computer Institute Shaw Boulevard, Mandaluyong City, Metro Manila, Philippines was also a success. Thanks to Mike Lopez who handled the PHP workshop and Jason Torres who handled the Ajax workshop. Reine Sison, thanks for helping out in organizing everything. Thanks to Juliet Santiago-Chan, Center Business Manager of Informatics Computer Institute-Shaw for allowing us to rent one of her largest computer labs for me to conduct the workshop and thanks to all that registered in the workshop and I am happy that I have been receiving positive feedback about the lessons learned in the 2-day workshop. Next time we plan to come up with an advanced PHP with basic MySQL, advance MySQL, SEO, and website monetization in the future. Maybe we can someday get someone like Rostom talk about domaining and maybe someone from the Philweavers have a basic and advance Macromedia Flash workshop.

The rest of the SEO vacation days were more on SEO chats and forum post. I just arrived here in San Diego California this morning and barely has any sleep yet. I worked on this blog post as my first step going back to work mode. And once I got online I got invited to a Yahoo Messenger conference charoom of about 15 people from SEO Philippines and even so sleepy I was, the SEO topics, jokes, serious questions and answers still kept me awake a bit and I need to re-adjust myself again battling the jetlag. It is now nearly 8:00am on a Monday and I barely have sleep and I believe I can make it to work today and I might spend the whole day sleeping and go to work tomorrow. Besides the first Monday I was on vacation was a holiday, President’s day so hopefully HR will still count my vacation days as 10 days.

SEO contest are tiring, which makes me think twice on working on my GlobalWarming Awareness2007 SEO contest entry.

Ituloy AngSulong SEO Contest Event Photos

I brought my digital camera to the event. My SLR Nikon D50. And one of the most stupid things I also did was I forgot the SD card at home which was in my laptop computer. So I did not take any photos. *LOL* Good thing Abel Quitoriano has a good collection of Ituloy AngSulong SEO Contest photos take by his Canon Powershot S2 IS.

Here are some of Abel’s shots

Receiving my bag of Goodies from Google

Sharing my SEO pick-up line.

The PinoySEO blackhat I got from Whin Clores, thanks Whin.

Jedi Dancel, Mike Lopez, Me, my wife Marcia and Jason Torres

After the event SEO knowledge sharing with SEO Philippines founder Marc Macalue and Goyams creator Dennis Agulo.

Everyone listened to Rostom Hernandez’ domaining strategies.

More sharing from Mike Lopez, Jun Macarambon, Dennis Agulo, Me, my wife Marcia, Gio Castro, Zaldy Dalisay and Whin Clores.

What I was sharing here will not be shared anywhere else, not even on this blog.

The rest of Abel’s photos are on: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bamster/sets/72157594554485632/

Why do my stats look different?

Benj Arriola — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:07:16 +0000

Web statistics, web analytics, whatever you call it, what ever you use, Webalizer, AWStats, Analog Stats, SiteMeter, Google Analytics, Webtrends, WebsiteStory, Enquisite, Omniture and all these other visitor tracking number software may sometimes present different results. Maybe with small differences, could be neglible, but sometimes these could give significant differences that are large enough to doubt the validity of these generated data.

A common difference among these softwares can be based on how they acquire data. These are usually done in two ways:

Reading Raw Session Logs generated on the server
Javascript tagging and use of cookies by adding a small peice of code on every page you wish to monitor.

These two methods could give you two different results.

On IP Addresses: Unique visits using raw session logs read IP addresses, Javascript tagging with cookies read browser cookies.
A corporate ISP account can have many hits from many people, but in session logs, only 1 unique hit is recorded since the corporate account could be all on one IP, while tagging and using cookies will treat each browser hit on a different computer as separate unique hit.
On Cookies: People that do not accept cookies and/or clear cookies will treat two separate visits from the same person on the same computer as two unique hits. Although most Javascript tagging softwares, if cookies are cleared, will move back to IP addresses. In some cases, if cookies are cleared, referer logs may not be detected well and considered to be direct hits.
Proxy Servers: ISPs with proxy servers will not fetch websites from the servers source. This a hit will no be counted on raw server logs. Although Javascript tags are in the website’s source code and will run everytime the page is loaded.
Partial page loads: On an uncompelted page, raw server logs are already recorded, but not exactly true with Javascript tagging where most of the time it is recommeded that the Javascript tag should be placed just before the closing tag. In that way, we are sure that the visit to the page loaded a complete page before it is recorded as a valid hit.

So when looking at the numbers, note that there may be even more issues for differences in results and no single web analytics software will get it 100% correct.

CSS, PHP with AJAX Workshop

Benj Arriola — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 22:41:17 +0000

SEO people, web designers, web developers in the Philippines, I will be flying back to the Philippines to attend the Ituloy AngSulong awarding. And two days after that, I (Benj Arriola) together with Mike Lopez and Jason Torres is having a 2 day hands-on CSS/PHP/AJAX workshop at Informatics Computer Institute, Shaw Blvd. You will learn how to make tableless CSS websites that are ideal for the designs today and good for SEO. PHP is one of the most widely used server-side programming language and with CSS and PHP, using AJAX will add into the whole Web 2.0 website experience.

Learn more about the CSS/PHP/AJAX Workshop or join in the discussion.

How to do and not to do robots.txt

Benj Arriola — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 06:58:45 +0000

This is so basic that almost every intermediate level SEO will already get bored with. Maybe even the beginner SEO, or maybe even the non-SEO web designer or web developer knows this already. But I just posted in my SEO tips how to do robots.txt. But aside from showing you how to do a robots.txt, my robots.txt shows you how you should not do a robots.txt. Note, this changes also at random per page reload, I hope I arouse the SEO people out there.