Rambling Musings of a Filipino Bachelor (for the sake of posting!)

I haven't had a post since Sunday. Today, I checked my anchor text, Filipino bachelor, and found out that I dropped to #3. Thankfully, I am still on the first page of Google's SERP but I am still nowhere to be found on Yahoo!'s search. Same thing with MSN and Live search.

Not that I was ever on Yahoo!'s nor even on MSN's search radar, but still, I am hopeful that I will land on their search engine results pages one of these days.

It seems that being a newbie blogger, I have to do double time to maintain rank with Google search. Has this something to do with the "freshness" factor?

I started this blog as part of product research on search engine optimization and marketing. I wanted to find out if SEO can be offered to the Filipino public as a short course. At this point, not yet for most small technical-vocational schools.

Perhaps, universities with huge enrollment in their business, marketing and web development degree courses should really get into it. These universities can easily recover the development cost especially if the SEO module becomes a required subject.

I have used Google Lab's search trends, a free tool that graphically shows keyword searches within a period in a given location. I used it to check awareness levels because if you are not aware of it, you can't search it. I also tried keyword selector tool, another free tool.

I used the following keyword / keyword phrases: medical transcription, javascript, java, html, call center, blog against SEO, SEM and Internet marketing for comparison. I also compared medical transcription and call center against Angelica Panganiban, education, franchise business and money.

Judging from the results, there is little or no awareness of SEO/SEM.

A small technical school doesn't have the resources to engage in course development and expect ROI within 2 years.

It is better to offer a Java programming course. Java being a free open source software, has practically no development cost. There are websites that offer free Java programming tutorials.

While the search level for "SEO" or "SEM" is almost nil, "blog" has a much higher search level than medical transcription. In fact, blog has a higher search level than call center. This points to an opportunity to be exploited.

A below-the-line ad campaign, "Optimize to Monetize Your Blog, a Home-based Biz" comes to mind. But, this is purely hype.

One thing I have to point out is that any Filipino who wish to become a SEO or SEM must be proficient in English. In the Philippine outsourcing industry, English proficiency is a core competency.

Better than Java programming, English courses have a bigger market especially an IELTS preparatory course.

This way, a small technical school has a chance to ride on the dominance of the nursing degree program for the Filipino nurse export market.

If you were negatively or positively affected while reading this post,
please tag me. Filipino bachelor. Thanks!

The author is a management consultant for technical, vocational education and training (TVET). He started The Legally-Recycled Bachelor blog as part of product research on search engine optimization and search engine marketing. He is a Filipino bachelor with two children. His wonderful children reside in the USA with their mother.

Back with a Vengeance! A Post by a Pissed Filipino Bachelor

I didn't publish this post on Sunday because I was pissed when I wrote, but, what the heck.

Mr. Hyde.

In a sudden turn-around, John Chow is again on the 1st page of Google's SERP. He is back with a vengeance, taking the #1 spot for the keyword phrase "make money online."

From a victim, he has become a Google victor! All in a matter of hours. Ok, make that a day.

It has been topsy-turvy since Google launched its update. Search engine optimizers are really furiously working overtime to find out what works.

In a previous post, I mentioned that I found out new blog posts in Technorati containing pure keywords and of URLs redirecting to Google's search page. I read somewhere that redirecting to Google's search page is a way to increase page rank.

Hey, Matt, is this true?

If it is, then all bloggers should do this to equalize things, don't you think? And I really hope someone does something about all those blogs created purely for optimization purposes. Ang pinging Technorati for the link and index.

The irony of it all, using blogger.com to post optimization garbage.

So leisure bloggers, these are some of the things to do:

Damn IT Blog.

Create a post containing your URL, target keywords, making sure that you serve a 404 error [page not found, I think] for that particular page.

Or better yet, create a dummy blog with a post that contains your target keywords and variations of it. Don't forget to include your URL.

Then program the site to redirect to Google's search page. Don't forget to use a dummy gmail, using Juan or Juana de la Cruz [John or Joanne of the Cross].

Vidiot.

Link to YouTube Videos [or Google video] that has titles containing your target keywords. Relevance is key here. The most relevant issue is to deceive the search engine.

It is ok because it is not human. Human users are not relevant.

Ping Pong.

Ping everyone, including yourself, relatives, friends, & enemies, so you can pong the search engine.

Link Me, Baby.

Get into a linking orgy. Link to everyone. Don't mind if they called you freeloader or whatever. Just link to them so, hopefully, they will reciprocate.

If not, it's ok. You still are relevant to the search engine.

Link to Wikipedia and the other high traffic, hopefully, authoritative sites. Sites like BBC that has tons of broad content, news, science and technology, etc. Don't forget to link to online dictionaries for particular keywords.

Social Netwhoring.

This is similar to Link Me, Baby, but coming from the social networks. This is definitely, a group project. Involve everyone, most especially, teens. They just love social networks. This time, use Yahoo! mail. Since it is Yahoo!, you can spam it.

Nuke it.

Nuke and burn, using Atom or RSS feeder. Feed to MyDummyYahoo!. Dump your posts to everyone in your network.

Pimp Your Blog.

To create traffic, go to your nearest internet cafe and ask nicely the net admin to make sure that their clients open a window to your blog. This may require some convincing.

Actually, it is easy. Reward their clients with one hour free internet time for every ten hours or so of internet use. Just make sure a window to your blog is open. You can always install a keylogger to check!

If you have the technical skills, automate.

Now, it gets exciting because you are setting the stage for them to click on the ads, and surf the site. They don't have to read it, do they?

I can find porn easily but I don't want to see it when I am looking for my blog lists in Technorati, or other Filipino blogs on topics I am interested in. There's already a lot of garbage out there, perhaps this blog included.

If you wish to write erotica, then I can review it, as long as I get paid if I don't get an erection.

Now, John, I hope you didn't employ any optimization garbage and re-directs. And next time, it might be more consistent to your character to declare that you intend to get to the top again instead of dismissing it as not important.

I find it pretentious and it just sucks.

If you were negatively or positively affected while reading this post,
please tag me. Filipino bachelor. Thanks!

The author is a management consultant for technical, vocational education and training (TVET). He started The Legally-Recycled Bachelor blog as part of product research on search engine optimization and search engine marketing. He is a Filipino bachelor with two children. His wonderful children reside in the USA with their mother.