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Marc - who has written 762 posts on Macalua.com.

Marc is currently Philippine VP of Marketing for U.S. Auto Parts Network Inc. (NASDAQ:PRTS), a Top 200 web retailer as ranked by Internet Retailer Magazine. He breathes SEO, PPC, web analytics, affiliate marketing, email marketing, comparison shopping engines, usability and conversion optimization together with 80 other rising superstars in the Philippine Internet marketing scene. Marc is also the founder of SEO Philippines and is a certified Ateneo Blue Eagle fanatic.

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SEMCON 2010 Season

Saturday, September 4, 2010

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It’s that time of the year! If you’re in South East Asia, and interested in Search Marketing, Social Media and Internet Marketing in general you should not miss this event. This year we’re bringing in Aaron Wall of SEO Book fame (yes he’s that guy on the first page of Google for the keyword “SEO”). Aaron [...]

On Maintenance Pages and Missed Opportunities

Saturday, November 14, 2009

4 Comments

One more reason why we need marketing-focused developers. Missed opportunities and brand erosion in a seemingly harmless under maintenance page. A carefully worded message in the brand’s tone would have been “cuter” (think Flickr); machine-language needs to go. Branding elements, e.g. logo need to be here; the current implementation makes it look like the site was defaced. Better [...]

Thanks PowerReviews But No Thanks

Friday, July 24, 2009

2 Comments

Hate it when somebody broadcasts your dashes-and-keyword-heavy domain list for everyone (including Google) to see… yes all 400 of them! I know PowerReviews is really just helping get the word out and score some marketing points (look at all our clients) but come on. This is risky stuff right here! It’s actually a nice “review raffle” [...]

On Ryan Soriano, djwoblely, Fanny Obias and Stolen Laptops

Friday, April 3, 2009

15 Comments

Here’s a slightly OT post dedicated to one Ryan Soriano or djwoblely, originally from Alaska, USA and currently a DLSU MBA graduate student. The short summary is this: he is in possession of my stolen MacBook Pro and was selling the same in clear violation of the Philippine Anti-fencing law. The story actually starts October of [...]

Questionable Link Building Practice via the Verisign Widget

Monday, March 16, 2009

13 Comments

Not sure what Verisign was thinking. But the massive penetration of the Verisign Secured Verify widget must have tempted their SEOs to use this as a link delivery system. And why not? You get 4,309,470 keyword-rich dofollow links (and counting) in one relatively easy stroke, without the website owner even knowing.

Will the Real Philippine Social Media Expert Please Stand Up

Monday, March 16, 2009

5 Comments

You have a need. You realize your word-of-mouth marketing initiatives need a little social media push 2.0 style. The only time people talked about and linked to you was during some ho hum swag swap meet your friend arranged with some bloggers who looked and behaved like this was their first time out in years. You [...]

The Peanut Butter Manifesto

Monday, March 16, 2009

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Was browsing through Yahoo!-related articles and stumbled upon the Peanut Butter Manifesto written in 2006 by Brad Garlinghouse, a former senior executive at Y!. He outlines what he thought was holding Yahoo! back and proposes solutions to these same problems. It's scary how generic this manifesto can be. Do a replace-all and substitute Yahoo! with your favorite company and the lessons would still apply. Companies that saw growth spurts and then over expanded to capture perceived opportunities should make the manifesto a must read.

Yahoo! Mobile Loves the Philippines

Monday, March 16, 2009

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With all the reshuffling and uncertainty happening at Yahoo!, one thing’s for certain: Yahoo! Mobile loves the Philippines. Yahoo! Mobile is relaunching with some rather cool mobile apps and has picked the Philippines to be one of its test beds, no doubt due to our outrageous domination in SMS usage. Initial launch planned for USA, Canada, [...]

Retail Traffic Shrinking?

Thursday, October 30, 2008

10 Comments

This is too painful to hear. Hitwise is reporting that “U.S. visits to online retail Web sites have declined for the eighth consecutive week”. According to the report, US visits to a “custom category of 500 retail websites declined 3 percent for the week ending Oct. 25, 2008, compared with the same week the previous [...]

MyAyala Wake Up

Thursday, October 30, 2008

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Tis a sad, sad day for Philippine SEOs when a notable local dotcom player starts dissing on the value and merits of search engine optimization. SEO’s are costs that do not, for the moment, give any form of worthy results. Our experience in e-commerce with myAyala for the past 8 years has indicated that the cost [...]