I dropped by the E-Services Philippines event last Monday to check out the exhibits happening. A few members of the DigitalFilipino Club were there busy promoting a variety of services with payment gateway, software development, blog marketing & search engine optimization, training – to name a few.

SEMCON Bicol & IT head of Aquinas University, Alvin Perez, also attended as the club representative during the conference. Our conflicting schedule prevented us from catching up then.

There were around 140 exhibitors. As expected, visitors were not that many since this type of event attracts a specific audience niche. However, I find it interesting the level of interest for some of the services offered such as in the area of search engine optimization.

Perhaps as the local SEO community get organized, it can really establish itself with SEO/SEM as an important outsourcing service offering that local & international entities should take seriously – use it to position effectively in this time of crisis.

Whenever search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) gets talked about, different entities and individuals have their interpretation on its scope. For this Busby SEO Test participant who also renders consulting services, it can cover the following:

1. Content development

Creation of content based on popular keyword searches by target users.

2. Website fixing

If there is an existing website, this includes improving the code, url, meta-tags, text, navigation, sitemap and analytics installation, and others with the intent of making sure that search engines pick up the valuable information that is being disseminated by the site.

3. Website performance & maintenance

Analyze monitoring reports and update website based on findings. Common tasks are reduction of bouncing pages, improve page size, develop new content or navigation path to ensure visitors will find what they need from the site.

4. Directory submissions

Paid, free, reciprocal, deep link directories tapped though it is dependent on client’s budget.

5. Search engine submission

Paid and free search engines to ensure that the client’s site can be found.

6. Article writing and submission

Writing a high-quality article that gets disseminated to popular article directories for re-publishing. This in turn results to traffic generation and search engine visibility.

7. Online press releases

If the site has a major announcement, an online press release is also suitable as this gets picked up by major publications, e-zines, and blogs.

8. Link build-up

This is trading links with other websites that have similar niche.

9. Paid advertising

This can come in the form of online ads. It allows the client also to discover and validate keywords that were chosen for effectiveness.

10. Local sites and maps

Registering at country level directories and search engines. In addition, making the entity visible in various map sites.

11. Blog marketing

This can include creation of blogs and linking campaign from various blogs.

12. Social Bookmarks

Get your site, blog, video, or photo submitted to various social media and bookmarking sites.

13. Wiki

Get your entity mentioned in various wiki sites accurately.

14. Social networking

This may include creation of brand profile, product page, and invite users to become followers.

There is a lot more that can be mentioned but I hope the above 14 will give you an idea already on the range of services that SEO and SEM can cover.

“A business without a sign is a sign of no business”. This is an advertising banner or quotation that can be seen in large billboards along the roads and on the side or top of buildings that is vacant. Television and radio would say, “This program would not be shown or be heard without advertisement”. It is true since most of us are watching the free television channel and programs are produced by payments of advertisements.

Business owners understand how important an advertisement is. It is in this manner that they would tell to everybody that they are selling products and offering services. They would not have sales, which in turn give them profit, if people would not notice and buy their products and avail of their services.

However, it is not happy to note that there are people who would try to steal money from advertisers and business owners by offering cheap advertisement packages and not delivering the agreed service. Business owners and advertisers should be informed of this because they would become victims of a scam.

The scam here is when the advertiser paid for these different kinds of services but none or some of them are not really even performed. The main point to consider here is to whom is the advertiser transacting with. To avoid being ripped off doing a background check by knowing the following will help.

-past successful projects as evident on customers comments
-a good reputation that will be confirmed by his references, (people that he’s had past transaction with and that are also reputable)

The pay-per-click ad campaign is when an advertiser would pay a certain agreed amount by the search engine developers every time a user clicks on that banner. This was a good idea before it was not touched by hackers who developed a certain program to automatically click on that banner which increases the amount to be paid by the advertiser. The next paying scheme was the “pay per action”, which is harder to hack since the advertiser would only pay the search engine developers an agreed amount every time a sale would be done on that customer.

One thing is for sure, advertising in the Internet is not easy but it is fun, especially when one understands fully the power of the Internet. It is not a unidirectional means of advertising like the television or radio, but it is an interactive avenue for both the advertiser and the prospective clients.

People opt for internet advertising methods because practically half of the world’s population knows HTML. If you have your own business, you have to decide on what internet advertising method works for you. Ask yourself what are you going to avail of: the expensive internet advertising methods or the cheap ones? Others will pipe in “expensive!” immediately, but they don’t know cheap internet advertising method attracts great benefits as well.

Here’s the lowdown and a comparative look on the cheap and expensive internet advertising methods:

The Expensive:

1. Pop-ups. Not only is this expensive, but also outright annoying that visitors close pop-up windows without even bothering to know what they’re all about. This is an internet advertising method that you can do without.

Fly ads are derivatives of pop-ups which are also equally irking to the visitors.

2. 1. Pop-ups. Not only is this expensive, but also outright annoying that visitors close pop-up windows without even bothering to know what they’re all about. This is an internet advertising method that you can do without.

Fly ads are derivatives of pop-ups which are also equally irking to the visitors.

2. Pod casts.

Broadcast is to TV as pod cast is to internet. It’s one sophisticated internet advertising method that can somehow hamper your budget. But if you’re thinking results, pod casting is worth the money.

3. Paying the search engines.

How does this one work? When someone types in a keyword related to your site, your URL is automatically included in the first page of the top results. Fixed payment for the search engine allows just that. Expensive, yes, but if we’re talking about Google and Yahoo search engines here, then don’t give it a second thought.

This is associated with another internet advertising method: the pay-per-click system.

The Cheap:

1. Blogging.

Go along the bandwagon and blog about your website. This is an internet advertising method that is popular as of the moment, so you never have to worry that this will never spur outcome. All you have to do is sign up for a blogging account, post and voila! You don’t even need to pay!

2. Submit to not-so-big search engines.

This is cheap and dependable. If you submit your site to smaller search engines, you have bigger chances to get bigger results. Remember that the search engine giants can dwarf and overlook your site easily, so this internet advertising method might just be the right one for you.

3. Text links.

This is not just cheap…this is virtually free! Let someone text link your site and return the favor.

Cheap versus expensive, that’s always the question that hounds on whenever we’re trying to get something. In the field of internet advertising, just be wise enough to figure out what will suit your needs. Go for what you want as long as there are visible results.