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SEO Endorsements on LinkedIn

I just want to say a personal thank you to all my clients who have endorsed my work on Linkedin. One of the most rewarding things in my line of work is when clients show their appreciation by providing you with a testimonial , either written or video . In as much as I know what I am good at, its great to see the affirmation from the business community that I am involved in.  So from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much. Easywebsites has been operating in the Cayman Islands for the last 4 years and in that duration, we have never had to do any elaborate marketing campaign.  During our first year of operations I remember paying for ads on "Whats Hot" because I wanted to educate the readership on SEO. But that is the extent of advertising we have done.  Through the last four (4) years our small company has grown from 1 employee to a total of 15 with two (2) offices: Main office is the Cayman Islands and our Satellite office in Eastwood Cyber City, Metro Manila, Phil

Losing a number #1 position on Google

I was one of the presenters for the Arts Cayman photography contests and when I was there I touted my website as no. 1 in Google for "cayman photographer" - sadly I no longer have this position on the Search Engine giant.  Google Penguin was launched between then and now. I haven't updated my personal photography website, www.fevisyu.com for atleast two going on three years now and since the last two years have seen the launch of two major algorithms (Google Panda and Google Penguin), my website has suffered from not being updated.  I also haven't updated any content (text) or photos for it so seemingly - my website is comparable to New York during the wrath of Hurricane Sandy - a ghost town. Currently, my personal photography website is no. 5 in the Cayman Islands for "cayman photographer" - see screen capture below: Dropped SERPs on Google because of the Panda and the Penguin  So many of you might be asking, why I dropped rank but the more learne

Celebrating Ada Lovelace

Celebrating Ada Lovelace day in the Easywebsites Philippines Office A celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and math happened this week so we celebrated this in the Philippine office by providing a free lunch to our women developers on Ada Lovelace day.  The guys got muffins! When we started our operations in the Philippines over four years ago, I remember, we didn't have any women developers.  Its been four years since and now half of our development team are women and thriving. Anyway, we hope that women in technology all over the world celebrated this momentous occasion and we hope that more and more organizations (big and small) decide to hire women in their workforce.

Radio Cayman presents SEO Basics with guest Fevi Yu

I was recently a guest of Business Buzz in Radio Cayman.  Business Buzz is presented by the Cayman Islands Department of Commerce and Investment and is an hour long show every Tuesday and Thursday from 7.30am to 9am. Atty. Richard Barton is the host of the show and he led a very interesting discussion on basic Search Engine Optimization and what small businesses have to be aware of when they are going online.   Here is the entire hour long radio show.  Big thanks to Lesley-Ann Thompson who is the Head of Marketing for the DCI who invited me and provided the audio of the show. Here is the entire audio transcript which I uploaded to youtube.com and inserted photos. Please note that this is the entire radio show so the video is over an hour long.

Why we are a better Web design and Internet Marketing Company

Easy Websites is the name of our web design and internet marketing company and we have been in business for the last 4 years in the Cayman Islands. Not just Web Development After our first year of business, we started integrating search engine friendliness into the development process of the websites we created.  The results speak for themselves.  As soon as we launched a website with a fairly decent domain age, it would appear on the first page of their keyword. Click to Enlarge   A prime example is the Wharf's website.  When we took over this website, it was invisible on google for its major keywords and was only appearing for searches for "the Wharf Cayman" - within a month of launch it started on the bottom of the page and has now inched a mid level result on the first page.   This website now appears on the first page of both "cayman restaurant" and "cayman restaurants" - two keywords that net over 4,000 searches per month. It also appe

Cayman SEO: The Food Games vs. The Hunger Games

The Food Games Poster I am about to write a book called, The Food Games.  (Will possibly get The Food Network to 'Sponsor')  This is a story about the future of humanity.  Sometime in the future, the US is going to be divided into 12 districts.  It will probably come about because of some stupid war.  Each district represents a race.  ie. district 11 is all black, district  8 is all asians (because I'm asian and my favorite number is 8).  There will be two representatives from each district that will be picked randomly.  Of course, unlike the Hunger Games, everyone will want to volunteer because its an eat all you can contest. Anyway the plot line is that the Asian girl from district 8 out-eats all the other participants.  Everyone is surprised because she's so skinny.  There will be a short flashback to a part of her childhood when she was a voracious eater.  That should explain her awesome eating skills. And that is enough creative writing for me!  If you have

Welcome the "King of Facebook"

Nick Pitman Joins Us For some time now, I have felt that it wasn't enough to just build websites.  I knew so much more had to be done in order to fill the large online void that everyone seems to be feeling with the advent of Social Media. My problem was/is that human cloning wasn't a viable option.  I just didn't have the time to go into Social Media myself and bridge that gap.  If I did that, I don't think I would be able to provide the same value to my clients in SEO and Web Design as I would be spreading myself too thinly. When Google and Bing both integrated social signals into the Search Algorithm,  I knew I could no longer wait.  It was no longer a 'perceived' void but one that was very real.  Social Media was here to stay and traditional marketing would be the next dinosaur. A few months ago, I was talking to a friend and was ranting about the amount of work that I had to do.  She recommended that I talk to Nick Pitman.  He was once referred t

A Survival Guide for SMX (Search Marketing Expo)

One of the Conference Halls Why write a survival guide for SMX? This a guide for fellow SEO Professionals who have never attended an SMX - Search Marketing Expo .  Below is a list that I have put together to help  provide a better experience.  These are the things I wish I knew before I attended the Conference. SMX isn't cheap so the more you know before hand, the better prepared you will be.  Some of my tips are just common sense but hopefully provides amusement.  The big question you probably have is one that I had before clicking on the registration button and that is, 'is it worth the money?' the best answer to that question is ask you another question, 'Can you afford not to go?' Brief SEO Background  I started in the SEO business around seven years ago but started in PPC over 10 years ago.  I fell in love with SEO because it gave so much value to our client's websites.  For the last 4 years my small web design business which started in the living r

SEO's help Google understand Websites

I was in a meeting recently and the client asked me a question that made me think of how people perceived us, SEO Professionals.  He asked, "Do you guys [meaning SEO Professionals] try to cheat the Google algorithm?" So it made me realized that perhaps some people perceived us in the wrong light. No, we don't try to "cheat" search engine results.  In fact, we try our best to work within Google's guidelines.  The more information that an SEO has, the better equipped, he or she has in understanding what to do to help your website increase rank. I chanced upon this article SEO: A force of Good from Search Engine Watch and wanted to add some important aspects of what we do to ensure your website is "Google Friendly" In the same article was this video of Matt Cutts (a Google Engineer)...  here he explains the role of an SEO in helping them [Google] understand where to properly categorize your website. Because we are a pioneer of building websites

Cayman SEO: Search Engine Friendly means Business Friendly

At the end of the last week of January 2012, I was feeling a bit worn out.  I had arrived from Manila two weeks prior and honestly, I was exhausted.  While I was in Manila I had gotten sick first with the flu and then fever over the New Year Holiday.  I hadn't recuperated from that yet and then had to travel back to Grand Cayman.  As soon as I arrived here, obviously, I had a lot of work waiting for me and have been meeting our clients left, right and center since then.  Its been an exhausting two months to say the least. So when I received this email last friday, it made all the difference to me as a service provider.  This is one of the most meaningful testimonials I have received and it came at a time when I needed to know that what I was doing was worth it.  It is from our only client in Little Cayman, Brenda of Scooten! Scooters!  She writes...   Now that I am over the stress of figuring out the banner photo change, I want to tell you that we have had se

Happy New Year!

I haven't really had the time to update my blog in over a month.  Up to now I can't even find the energy to write about anything because there are so many things that have happened.   Way too many.   A major thing thats happening right now is how Google has turned evil .  On that same link is another important facet of 'search' and that is breaking news accuracy.  Very interesting and it makes me glad that I am in the Cayman Island's search industry not in the news industry.  I agree, it does matter who breaks the news first.   The only problem with being first is the accuracy of the news. In the Search Industry, I have been very lucky in that I have the time and the 'tools' to practice on alot of theories of Search related Algorithms.  We manage over 100 websites now and yes, I admit, sometimes when I am testing a theory, I 'play' around with the websites but never at the expense of my client's ranking.  If their rank does get affected, I make