Having been around the online marketing industry for 2 years now, I realized that the people who came and attended the SEO courses, Web Design courses or Internet marketing courses are really a very broad spectrum of people.

They range from one-man-show business owners, to web designers within their own company, to marketing executives.

But really, who should handle SEO and other online marketing stuff?

Recently, I read an excellent SEO News article, “Should You Handle Your Own SEO?” by Jennifer Horowitz. In that article, she starts off by asking 11 questions, and I think they are very good questions, because they help you really decide if you should be actually doing your own search optimization of your site.

I think the first question is especially good: Can you work within simple HTML?

After all, the fact is SEO is very technical and very time consuming in nature, and if for example, you can spend 3 hours talking to a client and closing a deal, or spend the same amount of time tweaking just one web page, you will be well better off focusing on closing the deal.

Note that I’m not saying that you should not learn SEO. What you need to learn (if you are responsible for your company’s marketing), is how to identify and audit a website to ensure it is optimized.

Frankly, I just feel I am seeing too many management personnel struggling to get over simple HTML codes – stuff which you can outsource to good college students who know their stuff. This will not only free up your time, but also give them a source of income and good industry experience.

If you are going to start working ON your business rather than IN it, probably you should think in terms of “How best can I get this done”, rather than “How can I do it”.

Thoughts?

I was just walking in from my hall and I saw a television advert about a documentary coming up in Singapore entitied “The World According to Google”.

The short advert explained one very simple point – so many people are looking for information through Google’s search, and for many of the not so Internet savvy, we take it that the information that is listed on top of Google’s index is the truth.

Internet savvy people and we website builders know it is so far from the truth… and with the proliferation of blogs and other easy ways to get websites up and running, it is scary to know what a “manic” SEO specialist can do to “bend the truth” and get people in his thinking.

So, knowing SEO is really powerful… and like what the famous Spiderman movie says “With great power comes great responsibility”.

Are you using your powers responsibly?

Whoa! Yet another “Google competitor” was announced today on the front page of My Paper.

Cuil – pronounced as “Cool”. Is it going to be the Google Killer?

Apparently not, at least that is what Fortune has to say.

Its definitely making news on the web – erm… and on Google, but we’ll have to wait long (verrrry verrry long) before we can say “I cuil-ed this term” like what we use for Google.

We’ll see.

If you are doing anything related to marketing on the Internet, I’m sure you must have heard from several sources that Google now shows numbers in their External Keyword Tool, as opposed to the little green bars in the past that don’t really tell a good enough story.

Today I received a follow up message from Jim Morris, founder of NicheBot with his assessment of the tool.

Its an excellent review, and it really speaks of Jim’s commitment to put NicheBot in the forefront of the Keyword Research industry. If you are going to do any kind of advertising on the Internet, this post will save you probably a month of your time – must read!

I met up with my SEO mentor two days ago over lunch and coffee and we chatted about the things going on in Singapore, and he brought up this article he read in the Straits Times, about Singapore Press Holdings coming out with a search engine to “supplant Google”!

Personally I think it is an interesting concept for SPH to come up with – a search engine delivering content localized to Singapore context… but I think its going to take time (a verrrry loooong time) before they are going to achieve their outcome!

As of today, Google.com.sg stands in number 4 the Singapore Alexa’s ranking, and as far I know, the first SPH owned site in the Singapore’s Alexa top 100 is Stomp.com.sg, which stands at 81! If they’d want to achieve their outcome in the shortest time possible, they’d better know what to do with this tip.

… and learn some SEO! If you figured it out, they didn’t even optimize their news headlines for their keyword!

It will be interesting to know how SPH Search progresses!

Tell me… Do you think you will use SPH search at all?