Macalua.com

Next week is my birthday. So before I get all nostalgic and shit allow me to revisit the wishlist I wrote at the beginning of the year.

On SEO, I wished for the following:

Local SEM seminars - bring SEM to the masses.

I’ve had some local speaking gigs and have received offers to do private in-depth SEM seminars, but other than that, I really haven’t had the chance to set a SEM seminar for the masses. I was supposed to meet with this one firm in local IT training/seminar circuit but I had to cancel at the last minute. I should restart that initiative.

SEO ebook - something as cool and as free as Rand’s.

I can’t imagine doing this anytime soon.

More local SEO jobs - not just one-time jobs, but stable, high paying ones.

This is starting to happen. I’ve talked to firms currently looking to set up shop here in the Philippines and the more progressive ones are offering packages in excess of P40,000/month for SEM positions. I’ve also received offers to head some of these startups but I’m a tough little nut to crack ;)

SES Conference pass - if the boss was serious last year about his offer, I should be going to one this year.

Success! I was able to go and speak at Search Engine Strategies China. I made a lot of friends and contacts. I now want to go to SES San Jose, WMW’s PubCon and adTech.

SEOPhilippines.org - a working, lively homepage for SEO Philippines members

Success! In terms of page impressions, the SEO Philippines blog is just tearing it up. It’s got more views than this blog. I should post there more often ;)

On blogging, these were the goals I set for this year:

Hit the 1000 visitors/3000 page impressions per day mark - I’m currently averaging 630/1800 for this blog

This month, I’m averaging 820/1950 for this blog. I now realize that the 1000/3000 mark is really just for vanity. I may still hit it before the year ends, but I won’t throw a party because of it.

Hit the $100 per day mark - even for just 1 day ;)

Even if I did, I won’t be shouting it out for the whole world to hear. That’s just not me. So no comment. One tip from Stephen that stuck during one Nanjing taxi cab ride was “drop the $100/day tag, you’re hurting your brand”.

Tag more often - bookmarking is the new SEO

I’ve renamed my main WP category from ‘SEO Philippines’ to just ‘SEO’. I still drop a few tags once in a while.

Get a PR boost - from PR4 to PR5.

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this blog is more of a PR giver. All the new sites that this blog has ‘touched’ are PR5s and PR4s, while I’m a consistent PR4. How crazy is that. Too crazy if you ask me :)

Get A-Listed again - you can’t believe how happy I was for a week.

I got mentioned in the blogs of Todd, John, and Mike. I was also able to become a contributor for SERoundtable. The links are good, but to be able to email these people for help and advice both SEM and non-SEM is something I’m truly grateful for.

Get more RSS readers - I want that Feedburner count on the left to read 50.

I hit 80 a few days back. I want to reach 200 by the end of this year. Yeah I know, greedy me.

Buy more domains - since I can’t buy a condo yet, most of my ‘real estate’ investments this year will be in cool, typed-in/PR-sexy domain names

Ongoing. I might be able to buy a condo too. Pagibig help me!

Launch 100SexiestPinays.com - need to do it this year.

Still one of my greatest disappointments. Are there PHP developers out there willing to tackle this project? I’ll make it worth your while.

Overall, I’d say the Year of the Dog has been very generous to this Snake.