It really gets my attention so I decided to comment from beepbeep blog section of thenational.ae but apparentlyAfter creating a long comment when I click Submit button it does not allow me to do it as it gives me an error. see the image below.

maybe I use the special word which is SEO..:) so I just decided to post my comment here in my blog and at least it also helps me to update my blog too. Thanks to the error

Below is the start of my comment about SEO is our friend. Enjoy!

I will try to understand and explain some points of your blog post and first my answer in your title is YES! SEO is our friend and not enemy and we will find it why, after I finish my comment:)

“Scott thinks that local companies need to do a better job with search engine optimisation (SEO), but I disagree – and I’ll tell you why, after the jump.”

I do agree with Scott, Why?, First I will give some info about search engine or best example is google. Google is a search engine platform which has step-by-step procedure and it called algorithm. This algorithm index, crawl & process billions of websites and return a relevant result when someone made a query.

By helping google and other search engines to index your website you need to comply on some guidelines and SEO comes into play.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is process of improving your online web presence. If let say you search for “computer stores in Dubai” and you cannot find what you are looking for does not mean it’s search engines fault, which In my opinion it’s the responsibility of each business entity not embracing the power of online web presence which I think UAE is a bit fuzzy knowing the advantage of SEO, which I definitely agree with Scott that companies needs SEO but in the other hand, I don’t agree blaming why google can’t give the information that you are looking for.

It’s the same process of offline marketing, companies like here in Dubai spend so much money building in these gigantic brands offline to help potential customers to notice them. Applying that in SEO except of course spending to much money, companies need to comply in search engine guidelines to help search engine like google to crawl, index and process companies website to help search engines to offer a better results for potential customers.
It’s like having a huge billboard ads in the middle of the desert and having fancy website which is not well optimize which will be useless and will not help your customers notice your brand at all.
So yeah SEO is our friend.. and SEO will help you notice your brand:)

Google rocks when it comes to factual information (finding a company website or wikipedia entry or whatever), but type in “boutique hotel in Hong Kong” or “cheapest flights from Dubai to London” and you will get page after page of spam – spam that has been well optimised to make it to the front page of google search results.

I do agree, that is one of many strong point of search engine. I also agree that spam is the main problem of search engine but it also helps them to enhance their algorithm in terms of processing and detecting spammy websites.

In my opinion in any form of life there is always an opposite of good which is bad and SPAMMY website is one of the bad side or should I say Blackhat Side .

Regarding your query about “boutique hotel in Hong Kong” or “cheapest flights from Dubai to London” which I agree that you are getting some spam results but not all. I suggest try this link
http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861 for advance search or help google for better search results by reporting websites that you think it’s spam or does not even related to your search query.

Link for Spam report: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

What you really want when you type “computer stores in Dubai” is to find a great blog post or newspaper article, written by somebody who knows and cares, listing the city’s best computer stores. Sure, someone like CompuMe or Jumbo Electronics could spend more money on getting to the front page, but then, so can anyone, including some random page of googlebait whose entire business model is to get clicks from google searches and surround useless information with ads.

My answer here is to find the right SEO firm/people to optimize their product and to leverage the power of Online presence. In SEO it’s always the right firm/people, I believe that anyone can do SEO, but it takes an expert to implement it successfully for better success and profit.

This is where Google is getting slowly ruined. There is real, serious, money in getting among the top ten links, and wherever there is money, rent-seeking spambots and general uselessness will follow.

I believe Google is still #1 it helps us in our day-to-day life in anything we need from finding people, weather forecast, news, currency and a lot more.

Let say in a facts that Google populate spam links when we try search some queries, compare google to yaho, msn, live and other search engines that are currently existing throughout the internet, I think google is still far better than the other in terms of web results..

@Richard Swan

I totally Agree

Dave from Click-Dubai.Com

I also agree but one thing that I don’t quite agree which is

If companies have employed at least textbook SEO best practices, rest assured they’ll be on the top SE results on their respective industry searches.

Not all context within SEO book gives you better results and better return, it can help you at least to start with but of course all of this are debatable. SEO is big SEM is bigger so i think it really depends how you will apply it.

I hope my comment makes sense.:P as I am typing which comes to my mind so please bear with me. I will also try to make a post into my SEO Dubai blog about this.
update: and I did

Of course thanks to you Tom Gara, it’s so nice to have this kind of healthy blog discussion about SEO stuff.

That’s why I recommend all SEM peeps around UAE should organize meet-ups or put up a group to discuss how we can promote digital marketing within the UAE.

Kudos given to Richard & Dave!

This SEO beginner’s guide will describe some areas of Search Engine Optimization from keywords and key phrases discovery that will lead you to generate traffics, to making a site search engine friendly up to building a good links and marketing the website in a unique way.

Keyword and Key Phrases Research
Choosing the right keyword is the key for SEO to be success and it is critical in the process of SEO. By not choosing a right terms or phrases it will be resulting in rankings that no one will ever search. Researching a keywords or phrases involves so many processes.

In searching targeted terms or phrases that are used by the type of people you’re looking for will certainly lead to visitors thinking the message you provide. However, terms and phrases that are too popular can be very difficult to rank highly in search engine because of the huge amount competition in a certain terms or phrases, it will certainly take several months or even years for optimizing a keywords or key phrases to come into culmination.

Some pointers that you need to know before researching a terms or phrases.

Brainstorming – Ask yourself which terms or phrases that your customer will type if they are looking for your products. List down some of the terms or phrases that you might think acceptable.

Analyze your Keywords/Key Phrases – Now a days it has several keywords research tool online. You can try Wordtracker, Overture or Google keyword tool . This tool offers keyword information about the number of times users perform specific searches. By using this tools you can see the actual data about the terms / phrases and get the right keywords for you.

Web usability
Another important issue in SEO is the usability of your website. It needs to be analyzed to make sure that the search engine spiders is able to quickly access all of the elements of your web pages and do not jump precipitately.

It should be consider, putting a high priority on web usability since it is not only affects the search engine spiders, but it also affects the user navigation, retention and convertibility.

Some of the webmaster’s have been built websites without SEO or web usability in mind and are now floundering at the bottom of the SE’s with low conversion rates on search engines and generating excessive bounce..

Navigational Architecture
Considering external access to your web pages you must also provide accurate and reliable internal access. The architecture from one page to another may not be an area of web development that you initially considered as a stage in the SEO process but it is. Search engine spiders and visitors can easily become lost in a site that has poor architecture that is difficult to follow.

Providing a SiteMap is alternative in good SEO practice, you can also use text because it allows the addition of keywords in anchor text.

Quality Content
Once everything is in place, from keyword / key phrase research up to usability of your website. The stage will be creating a highly optimized quality content.

Providing a unique information for your visitor is also a key for getting leads in search engine. When creating quality content, try to think outside the box, try to create a buzz, a post the never been seen in the internet marketing world. Adding keyword / key phrases in your content will help your website to be optimized.

Links Links Links
Until now link building has a bigger value when optimizing a website. A highly authority related web pages that link to your website is a higher value will give you by the search engines. Getting a quality links is a lot difficult for to many, that’s why link baiting and quality content is a good part building a backlinks.

Success in SEO campaigns does not rely on a single method of promoting a website. Search engines is using so many factors to rank a website in each and every page and it should be optimized in each of these ways. Continuing the SEO process will retain your website in search engines and building more links will continue to receive more traffic that will converted into leads.