A. I'm Marc Hil Macalua, Director of Development by day and Internet Traffic Optimizer by night. When I was a freshman at the Ateneo, I used to play around with Telnet, IRC and the Web at the Computer Science labs. The Internet fascinated me. The bubble was in full swing back then and I instantly fell in love with the "build it and they will come" myth. After college I was lucky to work for one of the top interactive agencies in the region helping companies expand their business online. Then the bubble burst and everyone was forced to re-examine everything: business models, information architectures, site usability, etc. That basically led me to Internet marketing, specifically search engine marketing.

I also minored in marketing so I understand and appreciate things like brand positioning, market research and below-the-line advertising.

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Q.  Please also tell us something more about your blog Macalua.com. What is its focus and target readership?

A. I bought Macalua.com initially for my dad but baby boomers like him have a more difficult time adjusting to the Internet so I decided to own it myself.

Macalua.com is first and foremost a blog about search engine marketing (SEM). I try to highlight key developments in the two major areas of SEM namely search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) marketing. I started out blogging with local SEOs in mind, but that has expanded to include those from other countries as well.

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Q.  What is SEO Philippines? How would you explain the concept of SEO to the layman?

A. Search engine optimization or SEO is a general term used to describe specific techniques that can be used on websites in order to rank favorably with search engines. The premise is if your website ranks high for high traffic keywords, you get more visitors to your site. The more visitors to your website, the more chances for conversion: visitor purchases an item (sales), signs up for a newsletter (lead generation), visitor clicks on your AdSense ads, etc. Because of the traffic effect, search engine optimizers are also coming to be known as Internet traffic optimizers.

SEO Philippines is the online face to my advocacy and that is to position the Philippines as the next search engine optimization outsourcing mecca. The industry is growing at a very rapid pace and I would like to see the Philippines well represented in the global SEM marketplace.

SEO Philippines maintains two Web properties: the SEO Philippines mailing list and the SEOPhilippines.org blog. The mailing list and the blog give members a chance to network, to share techniques and to get answers for their SEO/SEM questions. We have a lot of veterans in the list who are more than willing to share their knowledge and expertise.

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Q. Would you say that most bloggers are not using SEO? What advice would you give them? Please expound on the benefits SEO can bring to them.

A. Most of the blogging software out there like Wordpress and Blogger are already "search engine friendly", give or take a few modifications. We have quite a sizable number of bloggers in the SEO Philippines mailing list and majority of them easily picked up the basics of SEO. What most bloggers miss are the soft areas of SEO: niche selection, link baiting, etc. If a blogger wants to earn a substantial amount from his blog, he should do well to research for a good niche because certain niches are more profitable than others.

The benefits of an optimized blog are the same for every other site: more qualified traffic to your website. Some also say that being on top of the search engine result pages makes you the de facto authority on the subject, but I don't necessarily agree with that view.

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Q.  Some bloggers blog for the sake of art. How would you convince them to make it commercially viable too?

A. I won't. There's nothing wrong with blogging for purely non-commercial reasons. I think most of us who blog really didn't have dollars in mind when we started. We blog because we're passionate about the subject. In the end, that's what's important. Now if you're passionate about making money online, then you need to equip yourself with the best search engine optimization techniques out there because if you're promoting widgets, I can tell you it can be a pretty crowded widget marketplace out there.

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Q. The blurb in your website says you're "going for 0 a day." Do you really think it's possible to earn that much  from blogging?

A. It's possible. I know people abroad who make way more than that.

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Q.  You say you offer free site reviews and professional SEO services. What do you think is wrong in most of the Filipino blogs you see?

A. Most of the blogs in the Pinoy blogosphere are in the not-so-profitable niches. Worse, some blogs don't even have a niche - they write about everything under the sun. Even from a traditional marketer's point of view that's not really wise.

Most Filipino bloggers think Internet marketing is about slapping on a Google AdSense ad on the front page and that's it. I wish it were that easy. True marketers will realize that putting all your eggs, in this case your site's monetization method, in one basket is suicide. Diversify. Get other sources of revenue.

The free site review service at Macalua.com is meant to give people access to free, practical knowledge for "pimping" their sites. By doing case studies of different websites, I hope people pick up a lesson or two in Internet marketing. I'm currently swamped with site review requests so it may take a while for me to answer new requests but I try to answer each one.

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Q.  I think it's a common observation that not all bloggers will succeed with blog advertising. Would you agree with this and why?

A. Nine out of ten bloggers will probably fail to meet the 0 minimum AdSense payment cut-off one year after signing up. That is something we want to help people with but SEO is not a magical tool. It shouldn't replace a sound business plan. No amount of advertising or SEO can cover for a poorly thought out website. These are the lessons we learned in Web 1.0 and hope we won't repeat in Web 2.0.

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Q. What's your observation of the present blogging climate in the Philippines? What trends do you see happening in the local blogosphere this year?

A. This year, more and more people will start blogging. Just the other day I helped setup my girlfriend's blog and I'm sure my mom will be asking for one soon. Politicians, businessmen and people from show business will discover the branding power of blogs.

You'll see bloggers entering all sorts of niches. More and more people will realize there's money to be made online. I also hope to see more Pinoy Web 2.0 startups catering to the Pinoy technorati.

Q. What's your definition of a good blogger? How about a successful one? It goes without saying that not all good bloggers are necessarily successful and vice versa.

A. Blog success in my dictionary would mean being able to influence and mobilize people. A successful blogger would be able to persuade people to consider or even adopt his/her bias on a particular topic. He/she would be someone who people will link to automatically. That's probably the most basic definition of a successful blogger.

A good blogger is someone successful bloggers link to occasionally ;) I know, it's a cruel world.

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Q.  How does blogging figure in your life? what are your blogging habits?

I check my Bloglines account every 10 minutes. I do vanity searches on Technorati all the time. I was jumping up and down when I got linked to by Jeremy Zawodny and Matt Cutts. I guess you can say blogging has pretty much taken over my life!  I've also made quite a few friends through blogging and that's something very important for me.

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Q. Final advice to your fellow bloggers.

Work on your craft. Soon enough, the right people will notice. Link freely and link often.

(For comments and inquiries, email annalyn.jusay@gmail.com)