Macalua.com

While the rest of the world has heralded SEO as one of the cornerstones for any Internet marketing initiative, the Philippine Internet scene has been slow to catch up. SEO services here in the Philippines have not really taken off yet because business owners simply don’t see the benefits of spending the extra dollar for this type of service.

It’s not that Filipinos do not use search engines to find information. Most companies assume the “market’s-not-yet-ready” position: 1) very weak local market for online shopping and 2) Internet usage has yet to penetrate the masses. A pity considering that a small number of “enlightened” companies who operate online pasalubong shopping shops are actually doing good business with the OFW and Fil-Am market. Hiring a professional SEO to add search engine optimization to their marketing mix would be one of the soundest business decisions they could ever make. Why? For online shops, it’s all about eyeballs. The statistics game will always pan out. Good SEO = more traffic/eyeballs = more conversions. SEO will level the advertising playing field. With SEO, you can still play with the bigboys even if you can’t shell out Php50,000 for a 100,000 impressions per month banner spot. A properly executed SEO initiative will outperform a banner ad campaign running in any of the major Philippine news sites anytime.

Let’s take a look at two of the biggest players in the online pasalubong shopping space.

MyAyala.com
I’ve always thought of MyAyala as the model for running a click-and-mortar operation in the Philippines. Backed by one of the biggest business conglomerates in the country, the company has the financial and logistical might of the Ayalas to bank on. Management seems to have a good understanding of where they want to be and the means on how to get there. They have a deep advertising budget, the bulk of which goes to INQ7.net (it says in their homepage that they have a TVC so I’m guessing they’re running these commercials in OFW and Fil-Am oriented shows in TFC). It’s a well-oiled one-stop shopping website: technology, product selection, pricing, fulfillment/customer service, promotions. You could call them MyGorilla, king of the online philippine shopping jungle.

But from an SEO standpoint, the site is a chimp. The SEO techniques used do not reflect the level of professionalism and attention to detail I would have expected from this “almost perfect” company. Go to www.MyAyala.com and press CTRL+A. Check out also the page source. Notice the hidden text and keyword spamming techniques used in the homepage and in most other pages. Keyword selection and the associated meta and title tag implementations could use a definite upgrade. Site also has PageRank-related problems: bad internal linking implementation, hard-to-crawl URLs, etc.

Illustration 1 - MyAyala.com Homepage Screenshot

Next issue…Filgifts.com