All About Renzie!

Lived all my 34 years (as of this writing) in Metro Manila, Philippines. Although I took up Physical Therapy (never took the boards, never practiced) in UP Manila, my career has always been with broadcasting and marketing. So I saw action as a DJ, event host, radio commercial talent/producer, writer & editor, researcher, segment producer, events manager, and finally ashead of sales and integrated marketing communication (with Mellow 94.7 for my last 3 years with them).

I decided to take a break from radio to pursue other things. So in January of 2006, I took a long vacation- caught up with my reading, working out, a little bit of travel- finally culminating in a leisurely trip to Singapore in March. It was there that I've decided to get into writing- thus the series of blogs. Had also hoped to get a few other projects off the ground- like my own travel agency, my own production house, my own marketing communications company, and my ultimate goal- my own toys and hobbies company.

After working for various companies (been a salary-man for the past 14-15 years or so...), I've realized that nothing is as important as doing your own thing. Which is what I'm going for these days- hence all these different projects and collaborations with different partners- the next big thing is just waiting to happen, really.

I love meeting new people- mainly for the purpose of networking and business. I love tossing great ideas around, watching them mutate into something no one's ever imagined. Most importantly, I love keeping my life stress-free and easy-going.

What I'm Doing Right Now.

Right now, I'm Program Director for 105.1 Crossover, a smooth jazz and easy-listening radio station operating from Quezon City in the Philippines. Which means I handle day-to-day operations of said radio station, which includes pretty much anything and everything that goes on the air.

As I am immersed in traditional media, I'm also a strong advocate of New Media- I blog a lot, and I have quite a number of blogs at the moment, and I help beginner bloggers find their way. Along those lines, I'm learning as much as I can about Internet Marketing (including Search Engine Optimization/Marketing and Social Media Optimization), E-Commerce and Online Trading.

I have my own little New Media company, and an Events Management group. I've done the preliminary paperwork on my Tours & Travel Agency, but I think I need a special twist or niche to it before I'm satisfied enough to launch it.

Some Truly Shameless Self-Promotion
(but hey, it's MY blog)

As many of you already know, I've embarked on a project to give myself a better presence online. I mean, now that I'm into the whole writing-SEO-SEM-SMO thing, I might as well use myself as a guinea pig, right?

Right on!

So, what do we have goin' on right now? It seems that I have taken a liking to Blogger and Wordpress for blogs, and Facebook online networking. There are actually several blogs up, each one for a particular topic of interest.

Check these out:

Blogspot. Great place. Functionally simple, very user-friendly, and easy-to-use. You have three blogs going on at Blogspot at the moment, and here they are:

• "Blog. Blogger. Bloggest!" My flagship website- it's main purpose is to facilitate learning how to build an effective blog with basics of SEO and SEM and stuff. Great for beginners who'd like to learn about getting into the blogging lifestyle.
  
• "Renzies Rants and Raves" A highly opinionated blog with my personal reviews on certain pop culture and lifestyle elements. Read about what I think about technology, restaurants, spas, movies and books.
  
• "My Thoughts In Stereo" is all about my personal take on the radio, music and recording industries. It also has my personal recommendations on music and music mixes. Music appreciation for all, baby, yeah!
  

There are actually more, but they're all in various stages of development at the moment, not quite ready to launch just yet.Wordpress. They got great templates and formats that make your blog look real kick-ass. A little complicated, but it's truly awesome once you get the hang of things. Really worth your while to try your hand at it.

• "The Life & Times of The Renzie Man". This one's all about me. Bachelor livin', grindin' and kickin' it in Metro Manila. Great for people who'd like to have a look of how it is to live solo in the Philippines.
• "Keyboard Monkeys!" Resources for writers everywhere. Look, I'm new myself. So here's a little something for everyone who's decided to devote some time blogging and maybe writing for a living- sure helps pay the rent!

LiveJournal. Real simple, almost spartan- but fairly functional enough. The beauty of it is in the privacy. Seems to link in nicely with Vox, but I'll have to figure this one out a little bit more.

• Taking Care of Business. Woes and what's-happening at the office! Work in progress, guys, gimme some time. Cheers!
  

For social networking, we have the aforementioned Facebook. We also have one on Multiply. But we also have profiles on Friendster, MySpace, Flickr, Flixster and Tagged.

So yeah. Wow, that's a whole lot of stuff to keep track of, huh? I suppose maintaining them is gonna be a bitch. At least until I figure something out.

Oh well.

Other Things About Me.

As you very well know, I've been living on my own for the past 15 years. I have a pad in Mandaluyong City, with two very intelligent, very affectionate cats- The Chloe (a mackerel tortie) and The Noobie (a gray-and-white brindled).

I've been going out with my girlfriend Cristina for almost seven years now, and we're both into new wave music, smooth jazz, good food, late night movies, spa weekends, travel, and lots of World of Warcraft.

Cheers, everyone!

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The SEO Notebook: Renzie Dabbles In Search Engine Optimization, Pt. 2

Welcome to my series of notebooks on Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. No, I am no expert- I'm just a regular dude trying to understand this entirely new craft. These notebooks are for fellow "newbies" at SEO. I've compiled these notes, partially from what I do at work (developing content and optimizing sites for an Australian-based online retailer), but more from personal research, and to a lesser extent, what I have observed thus far.

Comments and questions are welcome. I will do my best to answer them, or at least point you to where you can get your answers.

Our previous post dealt with a brief overview on Search Engine Optimization. This is Part 2 of the ongoing SEO Notebook Project, which will cover a brief history of SEO, and SEO as a marketing tool.

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A Short History of SEO

It used to be that webmasters submit their pages or URL's to various search engines, which would then send a spider to "crawl" the page, then come back with the information and get everything indexed.
After a while, site owners then recognized the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible. So in order to boost visibility and to gain better placement in search engine results pages, white hat and black hat SEO practitioners were then employed.
Now you have to remember that back then, search algorithms mostly relied on webmaster-provided information (meta tags), so many early SEO practitioners abused this particular dependence to artificially increase page impressions (and therefore increase ad revenue). But now, search engines have become a lot more sophisticated, developing ranking algorithms that take into account other things that webmasters can't readily manipulate.
Then came the concept of page rank: an algorithm that rates the prominence of web pages based on the quantity and strength of inbound links: links coming into your site from other sites. It is all about discoverability- the likelihood of some surfer randomly surfing the web to check out your site, because he followed links from some other site.
Google entered the picture, considering not just PageRank and hyperlink analysis, but also other on-page factors. In fact, the true formula to coming up with the page rank can change from time to time, and usually without the knowledge of the general public, even SEO practitioners.
In any case, Google, Yahoo and MSN Live don't fully disclose any of these other considerations and on-page factors, so schemes like link farms don't have much of an impact anymore.
If you want to read up on notable SEO's, you may want to look up these guys: Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Aaron Wall and Jill Whalen. Look them up, and check out their forums and blogs.


A Note On Webmasters and Search Engines

There seems to be a developing relationship between Search engines and the SEO industry, with a push towards more responsible optimization activity. In fact, some search engines have already provided information and guidelines to help with site optimization.
Check Google's Sitemaps Program. Also, Yahoo! Site Explorer lets webmasters submit URLs, determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and view link information.


SEO as a Marketing Strategy

Fact: Researchers scan a SERP from top to bottom, and left to right. So placement is key.
But the number of search engine referrals does not guarantee sales. In fact, SEO might not be an appropriate strategy for every website, so other Internet Marketing strategies may actually be more effective- depending on your goals.
Successful Internet Marketing campaign uses a mix of organic results + paid advertising on search engines/other pages + high quality content + keeping tech issues to a minimum + good analytics program.
In addition to generating traffic and boosting page rank for your site, there must be an effort to always improve your site's conversion rate- so it really is all about being able to engage your incoming traffic into getting them to do what you want them to do: sign up for a service, purchase something, leave a few posts, click on a few links, etc.
Website operators should liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic (because many do), because in reality, their main sources of traffic are links from other websites.


SEO and International Markets

Take note: While Google, Yahoo and MSN may be your top 3 search engines, other search engines could actually be better in some regions in the world.
We all know that Google remains the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007, with more than 75% of all searches. But did you know that...

• In Russia, Yandex controls 50% of the paid advertising revenue.
• In China, Baidu leads in market share.

When tapping international markets, you may consider translation of web pages, registration of a domain name (with a top level domain in the target market), and web hosting that provides a local IP address.
Otherwise, the fundamental elements of SEO are essentially the same, regardless of language.

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More SEO topics for discussion later on. Part 3 of the ongoing SEO Notebook Project will cover SEO basics, or How To Improve Your Page Ranking.

Cheers!

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