1. Jason Acidre – The CEO of Xight Interactive and author of the blog KaiserTheSage. You can follow him on Twitter at @jasonacidre or get to know him better by looking at his Linkedin profile.
2. Kira Permunian – An internet marketing consultant and author of the blog SEOgeekster. You can follow him on Twitter at @kirapermunian and may also take a look at his Linkedin profile.
3. Adonis Silud – We started SEO in the same year. He is consulting for SMBs and is a very good friend of mine. You can take a look at his Linkedin profile to know him better.

There’s still a lot out there who’s doing SEO in the Philippines, but I would put my money on these three guys anytime. Next post will be the PPC specialists I know and have worked with.

The first screen you as soon as you hit the create new custom report report button is the one below:

In this screen, you can name your report for easy referencing. Now you’re ready to setup the elements in your custom report. First up is the Metric Group. It’s here that you decide what metrics do you want to see. Visitors vs Unique Visitors, Bounce Rate, Conversion Rate, Conversions, etc.

To add your desired metrics just click on the +add metric button and after adding some your form will look like the one below:

Next step is adding dimensions. This will be the details you want in your report. The metrics are the “columns”, while the dimensions are the “rows”.

Next steps is one of the features that is not available in the old Google Analytics custom reporting. In the old one, you have to create an advanced segment separately to create some filters of sorts. In the new GA, you can now include filters/segments in the custom report itself. So if your custom report is designed for organic traffic metrics only, you can then set a filter.

Last part of the report would be the option to make your custom report available to other profiles in your account. So instead of creating a custom report for each profile, you can now use your report to any of the profiles in your Google Analytics account.

You now have a custom report that looks like the one below:

Knowing your audience is the key. You should know your target market, what are they searching for, and best of all how they perform the searches. These keywords will be in your initial list. The next things is knowing who your competitors are and what they are doing. By now you will have a broader list of keywords. But should you copy your competitors’ keywords? Not all of them. The keywords they are using plus the initial list you have will be the basis for the most important element in building your online business. Keyword Research.

Competitor and Keyword Research is best done using tools. And one of my favorites among a bunch of them is SEMRush. Using the tool is very easy. You type in the keyword and you get a summary including the estimated CPC, volume of traffic, and how heavy the competition would be. See the screen capture below:

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Down the results page, you will see the related keywords you can use. For each keyword same details are given, CPC, Traffic, Competition. Then lower down you will see who are ranking organically.

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Clicking on each website in the results will show you how each of your competitors are ranking and on what keywords. The report will also show you the keywords they are bidding on if they have a PPC campaign, including the ad copies they are using.

Or you can go to the bottom of the page and go directly to the Adwords Competitors table and see immediately the list of your competitors doing Adwords PPC. By clicking on each one of them, you will know the keywords and ad copies they’re using.

click to enlarge

Competitor and keyword research has never been this easy. With tools like SEMRush, researching and preparing for your website’s content and marketing campaigns is now easier.

As I was very busy with the everyday chores, that would include my day job and my freelance jobs, it took me some time to implement the markup in my own blog. After a few hours of playing around with the codes while reading guides on how to implement it, I finally made it.

Below are the 2 of the most useful articles I found that talks about the markup. The first one is from WordPress Guru Yoast, and the other one is from a good friend and good SEO Jason. After implementing the markup in the codes, it’s time to test if I did it right using the Google Rich Snippet tool.

Below is a snippet of this post after publishing and editing:

We covered things like how a search engine operates, how people interacts with search engines, and the importance of search engine optimization for websites. It was a good day for all of us.

In the next session, we will cover topics including web page elements, how to audit a website, how to write search engine friendly articles, and more. This is gonna be another exciting day for all the participants.

Yesterday was the culmination of the first ever formal PPC training I conducted. For 2 Saturday afternoons, the training covered the introduction to PPC campaign management.

On the first session, we covered the elements of a PPc campaign. The trainess where shown the process of setting up a PPC campaign starting with keyword research and competitor analysis down to the creation of ad copies. The subjects discussed included landing page copywriting as well as checking relevance of keyowrds and ad copies.

On the second session, we discussed how to setup tracking URLs especially with non-Google Adwords campaigns, that would be tracked in Google Analytics. This time we covered the essence of conversion tracking and optimization. The trainees were taught how to optimize campaigns and what to look for in an existing campagin. They were the taught how to setup goals in google Analytics as well as setting up custom reports and advanced segments using both the old and new Google Analytics.

My search on the liquor though showed that Google doesn’t feel the same way towards Facebook. The lone ad showing on the results page I got was a Facebook Fan Page.

So I tried my luck with the new GA. And lo and behold! I finally managed to get the data I wanted to present to the client. Here’s how the custom report was built:

The best feature of Google+, IMHO, is the hangout. Multiple A/V chats, that can even be restricted to certain circles. Ain’t that great?

Like the other social networking sites when they were still new, you have to convince friends to join. Although it carries a good and known brand name, people are still reluctant to get out of their comfort zones. Others don’t want to add more things to what they currently are monitoring. There’s already Facebook, Twitter, and some still have their Friendster accounts active. Opening up a Google+ account could mean another couple of hours spent on-line.

Personally, I’m eagerly waiting for the 300+ people in my Facebook account to be in Google+ as well. But only time will tell.

• Establish a wide network.

Connect more deeply with every single person that you meet or with whom you may share a similar interest, especially those that seek you out or interact with you. Someone likes your fan page, leaves a comment on your website, responds to a comment you left on their website or is part of the same close-knit online group? Try to find the person on different social media platforms and send a request to connect. It’s important to keep your profile photo and profile description relatively consistent, so people will recognize you.

Twiends is an easy way for you to jumpstart your fan base. Not only can you gain more Twitter followers, but you can also target your efforts to receive more “Likes” on your Facebook Fan Page or views on your YouTube videos. The system is based on seeds: you receive seeds by following others, “Liking” other fan pages or watching other videos while you give seeds to those who return the favor.

• Build real relationships.

Each time you connect with a new person, aim to build a real friendship. The point is not to just add a person to your network, but to connect with someone that you can start a conversation with at any time. The focus should then be on getting the conversation going. When you first connect with someone, remind them how you’re linked, thank them when appropriate and ask them a question or compliment their work. Always include warm greetings and farewells for a personal touch. People who feel they can relate to you personally will be more likely to support you.

When people start noticing you, they’ll be intrigued to learn more about you by visiting your website without you even needing to self-promote. Keep in touch with your new contacts by taking the time to mention them in relevant tweets, comment on their posts or share their work through different social media platforms once in a while.

• Make yourself known.

Only once you have built relationships based on giving and trust should you ask for help. It may make you feel uncomfortable to ask others for help, but people often like to support givers, especially if you continue to focus on giving much more than receiving. Instead of approaching people directly, you can leave a note at the end of your posts, kindly asking your readers to leave comments and share your posts. You may also include a message on your landing page, asking new visitors to connect with you by following pages or linking up with you on other social media sites.

Publicize your blog posts on social bookmarking websites and promote your company with YouTube videos, a Facebook fan page and a LinkedIn page. Find relevant Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups and blog commenting tribes in which members help promote each other’s posts. Share your expertise by answering questions on forums and Q&A websites. Finally, comment on other websites that have CommentLuv or are DoFollow blogs to build backlinks to your own website. By leaving value-adding comments, others may also follow you back over to your website.

Have any of these tactics worked for you? What are your top traffic generation tips?

The topic above is the ideas and opinions of the guest poster. Thank you Samantha for guest posting here @ SEO Web Junction.

There are things you can do to optimize your site for local search. And most of all, there are handy tools to make local search optimization easier. First, let’s get down with some steps on how to get “prospects” for local citations and listings using one of the most common tools, Google. Avery useful feature to use would be the “discussion” tab. As you can see in the image below, you can get opportunities for links, citations and listings by doing a local search and switching to the discussion tab.

Another great tool to find citations is Whitespark, a local citation search finder. The tools user interface is very intuitive, and thus very easy to use. Please see the screen shots below:

After clicking search, the results will then be generated and sent to you through e-mail. For FREE. If you want quicker results though, you should get a premium account.

There are also good references on how to do local SEO such as the following:

• SEO Checklist for Local Small Business Websites
• Where to Get Citations to Improve Your Local Search Engine Rankings
• Local Citation Finder Review and Walk-Through

First, I created a “Thank You” page. I then set it up as a goal in my Google Analytics account.

After setting up the goal, I went into the configuration page of my contact plugin. At the bottom of the page, there’s a box for “Additional Settings”. In there I inserted a line of code.

And here I am now able to track contact form submissions!

In the old Google Analytics, a lot of times, after creating a custom report, I still have to use a custom segment to get the desired data. In the new Google Analytics, custom segments can now be embedded in the report. Sweet!

For more of the features in the new Google Analytics, click here.

On-page Optimization Tools

• SEOmoz On-Page Report Card – This tool is very handy when checking the essential elements of a webpage. Upon running the optimization process, the tool gives suggestions on how to optimize the page the user have selected. After which, the tools grades your page. This tool is available to all pro account holders only.
• Link Assistant’s Website Auditor – This tool functions almost the same as the SEOmoz tool. With this tool though, you can run competitor analysis together with the on-page analysis of your website. There’s a free version as well as a paid version.

Off-page Optimization Tools

• Link Diagnosis – A very nifty Free tool to analyze your link profile as well as you competitors’. The tool shows you “good” links, “no-follow” links, and even “missing” links.
• Open Site Explorer – Another tool from SEOmoz. A link profiler for your website and your competitors’. The free version comes with limited features, while the paid one is more versatile.
• Whitespark Local Citation Finder – A very powerful tool for local SEO. You want to rank with your Google places page? This tool is a very big help. And it comes with a free and paid version as well.

1-click Retweet/Share/Like
Adds Facebook Like, Facebook Share, Twitter, LinkedIn Share, Facebook Recommendations. Automatic publishing of content to 30+ Social Networks.

CommentLuv
Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.

Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.

SEO Ultimate
This all-in-one SEO plugin gives you control over title tags, noindex/nofollow, meta tags, rich snippets, slugs, canonical tags, autolinks, 404 errors, rich snippets, and more.

W3 Total Cache
The fastest and most complete WordPress performance plugin. Dramatically improve the speed and user experience of your site. Add browser, page, object and database caching as well as minify and content delivery network (CDN) to WordPress.

Do you have your own favorites? Please tell us in the comments.

Below are my 5 personal favorites.

Rimm-Kaufman Group, RKG Blog – This blog provides facts about PPC backed up by nifty graphs and analytics data. A very informative PPC blog.

Click Equations Blog – Another blog that discusses PPC strategies and very understable explanations on the basin basic and advanced PPC strategies.

PPC Blog – The name speaks for itself. The sister/brother blog of the SEO Book, one of the SEO world’s finest. No reason why their PPC should not be, eh?

Clix Marketing Blog – Blog by David Szetela, one of the most popular names in the PPC industry, and company. Like all the other PPC blogs I follow, detailed discussion on PPC strategies are addressed here.

PPC Hero – Do you like read detailed steps in setting up and maintaining a PPC campaign? This blog’s for you to read and follow. This is maintiained by the PPC geeks at Hanapin Marketing

So there you go. If you have something to add, please do so in the comments.

According to Google Adwords Help, “when determining which ads to show on a Google search result page, the AdWords system considers the user’s current search term as well as some of the user’s previous searches during the same search session. If the system detects a relationship, it’ll show ads related to these other terms, too”. According to their definition of session-based broad match, “The search term is considered to be a variation of a keyword from your account, based on previous searches that the user has done during his or her search session”.

DIY -  The Pros. Nobody knows your business better than you do. That’s your advantage if you want to do the campaign management by your self. You know what will work and what will not for your business. The Cons. You may not have the experience in managing a PPC campaign yet. Though you may know your business very well, setting up and optimizing a PPC campaign is not as easy as you might think it is. Seasoned PPC managers have years of experience in managing campaigns.

Outsourcing – The Pros. You will have somebody working for you, who have been in the search engine marketing business for years. His/her experience would be a very invaluable asset to your business. You don’t have to do the trial-and-error process, wasting your money along the way. The Cons. You might get services from somebody who just pretends to know PPC campaign management, but actually have no idea on how to do it. You need to be very careful in choosing an individual or an agency to manage your campaigns.

The choice is always yours. You have the option to do-it-yourself or hire a PPC manager. Should you decide to hire one, click here contact a PPC manager.

Another feature I like most is that I can now use advanced segments while viewing the goal funnel visualization report. This is very helpful especially in the knowing where customers drop off in the funnel, on a per segment basis.

One of the downsides I have with the new interface is that I have to rebuild all my custom reports. In some of my accounts, I have set up 20 or more custom reports. Some of them are no longer needed though in the way standard reports are built in the new Google Analytics.

I am looking forward to seeing each one of them succeed in the search engine marketing arena. We need people like them in Cebu, as businesses move toward building online presence. As search engine marketing people, may each one of them put to good use the knowledge and skills they have acquired. Wishing each one of them all the best.