EMPRESSOFDRAC.COM, A Media Blog

In the end, my loyalty to CBS prevails.  At first, I hesitated doing this because of that little mess that happened a month ago.  But when I think of it now, it’s just like a tiny splat of mud that temporarily stirs the very still water.  Cebu Bloggers Society Inc., no matter what will happen, is still the only winner in my mind and heart.

CBS is very dear to me because of various personal and official reasons.  This is why I’m voting for it (http://cebubloggers.com) in the PBA’s Bloggers Choice Award.  In the near future, I am quite sure that CBS will not only become the leading bloggers group in Cebu, but also, will become the Philippines’ premiere blogging community.  This is because, as what Bimbo Cabochan said, “CBS is a very powerful group.”

CBS is the most organized blogging community in the country and has the highest number of active members compared to other blogging organizations outside of Cebu.  Unity, respect, humility, and camaraderie are the main components that bond the group together.  Being tagged as a “very bureaucratic” organization, is definitely a compliment.  Arigatou ne!

Aside from email marketing and pay per click (PPC) advertising, there is one strategy that has been used by successful online marketers worldwide.  And that is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is an online marketing that proves to be very effective because it uses SEs (Search Engines) as its means of attracting website traffic.  This traffic includes people who are searching for anything on the web.  It is reported that more than 80% of American internet users are using search engines like google, yahoo, bing, etc. to look for stuffs to buy, or services to subscribe to online.  This means that if someone wanted to outsource services, he would likely use google to search for companies who offer outsourcing services.

It is recommended for online outsourcing businesses to use SEO to market their services.  Why SEO? Because it is more effective than paid advertising and PPC.  SEO is one of the best online marketing strategies that has been used by multinational companies all over the globe.

Below is a rough draft on how to optimize your website in order for it to become search engine friendly.  Note that I categorized each procedure as internal and external.  Internal means you need to have access to the administration page of your website to implement the task, while external procedures don’t require admin access.

Internal

1.  Identify Relevant Keywords - Let us take for example supportresort.com.  The possible keywords that should be used in order for it to top the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) are support resort, online support, online support staff, hire staff online, outsource php programmer, outsource customer support and the list goes on.  These keywords should be placed on your site as meta tags.  If your website will top on SERPs, then a high volume of traffic will come in.  This means greater chances of attracting new customers to subscribe to your services.

2.  Sitemap -  This is actually very important in search engine optimization because it allows web crawlers to easily access your website content.

External

1. Link Building - This includes exchanging of links if you have a blog, or if your website has a link category.  This could also help increase traffic generation, thus increasing chances of getting new customers.

2. Submission to Directory Sites/RSS Sites/Social Bookmarking Sites - Another way of increasing the popularity of your site through the power of directory listing.

3. Article Submission - To maintain your online business credibility, it is also important to publish articles that are related to the services you offered.  This is another way of informing the public that the company doesn’t solely exist for profit.

4. Blogs - It is one of the most effective SEO tool.  This is because blogs are search engine friendly.  Unlike static websites, blog sites have mechanisms wherein search engine web crawlers can easily penetrate.  Most successful companies have blogs on their websites.

5. Forums -  There are lots of online forums where you can advertise your services by putting a link or banner in your signature.  There are also people who frequent in forums who are looking for cheap, yet high quality outsourcing services.

6. Social Networking Sites - Facebook, Friendster, Multiply and the likes are effective advertising mediums you can use to market your website for FREE. On the other hand, you can also tap bloggers to blog about your services.  This is what other companies have been doing as part of their online marketing strategy.  In my next article I will discuss in full details the importance of site mapping in search engine optimization.

Before anything else, I need to thank Miss Aileen Estoquia, for her help during our stay inside the UP Diliman Village. Xie xie ni for the very affordable, yet, very great accomodation. I also want to mention Mr. Xerxes Aaron Chua Bernades, my ultimate travel companion. Without him, my journey to Manila wouldn’t be that exciting.

I think, I’m the kind who expect too much, but has very low acceptance. I mean the summit is okay, but it is not what I expected it to be. This may sound unfair to the organizers who had shed rivers of sweats to make the event successful, but this is only my personal observation. This doesn’t necessarily reflect the majority’s impression. To make this review not so bias, I will enumerate first the positive stuffs.

PROs:

1. It was held in a very comfortable venue.
2. The activities started on time.
3. Free snacks and lunch.
4. Presentation equipments were all ready.
5. Some nice speakers(i.e. those ones who tackled Photoblogging 102, Video Blogging…)
6. Nice Q & A facilitation.
7. Great after party treats.

CONs:

1. There were no ice-breakers in between the talks.
2. A certain speaker didn’t discuss well the topic assigned to him. He seemed like he was just talking to himself and was talking about how people treated him because of the peculiarity of his blog. I don’t even think he’s aware of the audience’s reaction while he was there on stage. Good thing his partner saved the topic.
3. A few speakers were just merely reading from their power point presentation. Tsk…tsk…
4. A certain speaker was out of his mind. He suggested a system of leveling among bloggers, which I find unrealistic and should only remain a theory. From an artist to a maven? What is that? Jeezzz…
5. IDs were only given to the first 300 web registrants. This actually made me feel alienated. I’m soo weird. Haha…
6. Some of the participants had no free lunch(mostly those late ones). This is understandable since the event had a limited budget.
7. Siopao tragedy. I didn’t even bother to continue eating that thing. Haist…the prize of freebies…I sound sooo pathetic. I know. Hahaha!
8. There’s no getting to know each other activity or program during the after party. Bloggers from Manila stayed with their crowd, and bloggers from the south…well, had also obviously stayed with their own crowd. There were only a very few bloggers who made efforts to reach out to other bloggers. Everyone was very comfortable with their own beloved minions. Or, is it just me? Hehehe!

Lastly, to be fair, I did enjoy the overall event. I also learned a lot of new things and had also met few interesting people. Btw, here’s a CBS group pic during the after party at Katips.

Photo Credits: lord_dracula and vanjahnn

Related Posts(Copied from Ceblogger’s post)

If you wanted to seek diversion from your stationary and monotonous office slave life, habituated by same old faces of your friends and comrades, getting too close for comfort with your clanmates, tired of doing same old stuff, and wanting to breathe another flavor of carbonated oxygen, then you should have been hanging out with the CBS crowd.

The CBS crowd, a mob of cool online addicts who share common personality disorders, just had their first summer camp out and team building at Jardin De Busay.  An overdosage of appreciation goes to Mr. Vanjahnn, a fellow CBS mob member, for letting the the whole gang stay at their beautiful place.

The whole gang of raucous blogging cyborgs had spread live bullets of laughter and lethal nonsense talks all over the bloody place.  At the end of the team building initiation, team Wang-Wang, a team full of semi-carnal blogging cyborgs, emerged victorious over their lousy opponent, the name I won’t mention because I’m afraid it would just be a waste of bandwidth(peace team unknown, lolers).

On the other hand, a certain lousy cyborg got drunk and wasted during the event because he bragged that he can drink el hombre like a beer.  The result?  Well, the rest of the cyborg addicts molested his wasted moments and took a lot of photos to scandalized his holy body.  Lolers!  Peace be with you whoever you are.  Hahahahaha!

Below is the confidential list of cyborgs who made it to the said gathering:

1. Vanjahnn of FocalGlass.Blogspot.com
2. Mark of EUTS.Wordpress.com
3. Mikyu of Ifancy.me
4. Clarence of DahongLaya.com
5. Kai of CalendarNotes.Blogspot.com
6. Miong of MiongandMarquee.Blogspot.com
7. Empress of EmpressOfDrac.com
8. McBilly of McBilly.com
9. Attorney of Bethelo.Blogspot.com
10. Prince of RoyalGrapiks.Blogspot.com
11. Aldwin of Multiply.com
12. Bryan of WhatAboutBryan.info
13. Jorich of BeyondTheNorms.org
14. Tiannex of SimpolNiBai.Blogspot.com
15. Timoy of MugnaSaBadlis.Blogspot.com

Xie, Xie Ni for the fun and baka moments.  Hehehehe.

Photo Credits: Vanjahnn

A fellow Cebu Bloggers Society member, Pinoy Blogger, just informed the group recently that there will be a free summer blow out this coming May.  This event will be sponsored by Maribago Bluewater Beach Resort in cooperation with Pinoy World.  This activity is actually open to all bloggers in Cebu, but most specifically to CBS members.

Free resort accomodations, fun games, and sumptuous foods are waiting for all the participants.  In the games, the lucky bloggers can win gift certificates and other freebies.  In order to participate to this great summer event, the blogger must visit Pinoy Blogger’s post and follow a few easy instructions to register.

The posted date of this event was set to 9th of May, but this is in conflict with the schedule of the iBlog Summit in Manila which will be held on the same date also.  The CBS VP for Events, Xerxes Bernadez,  asked Pinoy Blogger to move this activity to 16th of May.

For further details about this event please visit Pinoy World.  And if you wanted to know more about this beach resort, you can visit Maribago Bluewater Beach Resort’s blog.

Photo Credit: bluewateronline.wordpress.com

I dunno what happened.  I’ve been busy for a few weeks and laid low in checking my site’s stats.  I just found out yesterday that this site has been removed from google’s search results list.  I found this by keying in my major keyword “empressofdrac“.  I used to google my site using that keyword and my main page always tops the results list, but yesterday, it’s the other way around.  I can’t find my site even in the last pages of the results list.  Instead it’s my forum which is hosted freely in forumer.com on the top .

I googled to check what happened.  I found out that google will remove your site if you put illegal stuff in there or when you do some dirty tricks to raise your page’s popularity.  But I did none of the above.

I checked my all in one SEO plug in set up and what I noticed is all the no index options are checked.  But I don’t think this has something to do with it.  The no index there are just for my categories, archives, and tag archives.  This is really a mystery to me.  I guess I need to do further investigation.  Tsk…tsk…tsk.

A group of individuals who are creepily lurking in the shadow of anonymity they called the internet. They are not online criminals nor system hackers, but they will surely cause havoc in your system of thoughts as they will dissect the most titillating spots about sex, pornography, incest, STDs…everything sex related.

No inhibitions, no second thoughts, no non-sense…just pure and mature discussion of things that are mostly considered taboo by the common folks. Curious lurkers are welcome to comment, and nasty suggestions will always be considered. LoL!

The Savant Moaners

http://thesavantmoaners.blogspot.com

The Cebu Bloggers Society,  headed by Kevin Ray N. Chua,  met Nick of FilipinoVoices.com yesterday, November 22, 2008 at Bo’s Cafe, Ayala,  around four in the afternoon.  FilipinoVoices.com is a collaborative blog of Filipino bloggers which focuses on News, Politics, and Social Commentary.

The main agenda of the meet-up was to discuss the participation of Cebu bloggers in terms of citizen journalism which focuses on Political and Social blogging.  Through this, a movement can be formed where local based bloggers could become reliable sources when it comes to political and social awareness.

Here is an excerpt of the copy of  Overview and Responsibilities sheet handed by Nick to us during the meet up.

The bloggers will be our correspondents, playing an important role in providing key insight, information, and analysis where they will most likely be informed that other bloggers and writers from outside of the area.

Today is the beginning of The Cebu Bloggers’ participation in a grassroot movement that will take back our voice, and finally give back to the people, the power that is rightly theirs.

Thus The Cebu bloggers will be crucial so that our readers will have a more updated, more in depth look on the issues that are facing Cebu specifically.  Opinions, views, and analysis coming from not outside, but those who live and breathe Mindanao..

The CBS members who were present during the meeting were  Sinjin, X, Empress, Vanjahn, Rodel, Atenean, and Clarence joined us later on.  For those bloggers who are interested to become contributors to FilipinoVoices.com, you can email to Nick the following details:

1. Preferred Username and Password(for login purposes)
2. Avatar Photo(200×200)
3. Display Name(posted with your articles)
4. A blurb of yourself(a brief description that will be at th end of your every post)
5. An in depth description of yourself to be featured on the About page so that readers will know more about you.

Photo Credits: Vanjahn

I just watched MagTV Na, a local ABS-CBN show this morning. I don’t usually watch this show, but I waited for it because it would feature my co-CBS members in their segment that talks about blogging. And as expected, I saw five CBS members in the show. They were X, Rodel, Gerry, Clarence, and Kevin.

Rodel talked about his experience in making money thru blogging, X gave a brief description of his blogsite, Gerry explained that he started his blog as a hobby, Clarence talked about the content of his Dahong Laya blog, and Kevin talked about his controversial blogsite campaigning Sen. Mar Roxas candidacy for the 2010 presidential election. Kevin’s blog was also mentioned as one of the Philippines Top 100 Blogs.

It’s really great that the CBS group has little but constant exposures. The group started attending small talks, conferences, and then went to radio and now on TV. These are stepping stones for the group’s stability and these would also encourage fellow bloggers to join in. The more members the “manyer.” Hehehehe! Kudos to Cebu Bloggers Society!

Check here for more details about the MagTV interview.

1and1’s hosting platform is not the standard cPanel and DirectAdmin. As of now, I’m trying to locate the back up database function in their Webspace and Access area. Just a while ago, I tried to manually back up my files from the server through ftp, but my web browser (I use fireftp, mozilla’s add on) encountered an error and I have no choice but to close it. I’m actually using a lower version of firefox, and I noticed that it has lots of bugs. I need to upgrade it to firefox 3.0, the latest version.

So, why should we back up our wordpress blog? Backing up data is as necessary as the air you breathe. As a website or blog owner one should be well aware that it’s not only your host full responsibility to check on your database. It is advisable that you keep recent back ups in your local hard drive. That way, if anything goes wrong you can still restore your contents. And this should be done in regular basis.

Wordpress has a Database Backup plugin. Check it out.

That’s not really how you say it. The correct phrase or operational definition is actually transferring your blog hosted by wordpress.com to your self hosted webspace, wherein you install wordpress from wordpress.org to your own database.

Moving your blog from one host to another is quite easy if you’re just transferring it from blogger.com to wordpress.com, wordpress.com to xanga.com, and any sites which host blogs for free. But it’s easier said than done when you move from other host to your own hosted site. Like what other people said, it requires patience and you should be self-efficient and more resourceful.

I never thought it would take me 3 days to configure all these stuffs here. Anyways, I’m happy that I successfully managed to move all my contents from wordpress.com to my own server at 1and1.

I realize that it could have been easier if at the very start I already had my own domain and host. That way I can be saved from all the hassles in moving my contents. But, looking back I’m quite thankful that I went through those ordeals because I did learn a lot of things. And I will enumerate them below:

This is just a rough draft and not really a detailed procedure. Just check links for more itemized instructions.

1. The first thing you have to do in moving your blog from wordpress.com to your own host(assuming that you already bought a domain and webspace) is to create a database in you mysql administration in your cpanel. This database is where you will install your wordpress and also it is where you will put all your files for your blog.

2. Next, you set up your ftp account in your ftp administration in your cpanel. Then, install an ftp software in your pc. In my case a friend of mine recommended the fireftp add-on from mozilla. Fireftp is more practical because you just have to access it using your firefox browser, and it won’t consume space in your hard disc.

3. After setting up your ftp, you’re now ready to install your unzipped wordpress folder in your server’s root directory. I installed mine in the root directory for I preferred to access my blog site using my domain empressofdrac.com, instead of empressofdrac.com/blog(etc.).

4. When you’re done with your wordpress installation, you’re now ready to transfer your wordpress.com contents to your server. The first thing you will do is to export all your wordpress.com posts, links, categories, unpublished drafts, comments, etc., and save it to your local hard drive. All these contents will actually be saved in one xml file.

5. After exporting all your blog contents and have saved it as an xml file, you’re now ready to import it to your self-hosted site.

I actually encountered a problem in importing my contents. In my first attempt, not all my posts were being transferred. What I did was I deleted the already imported post in my Manage Posts dashboard area, and since wordpress has no bulk delete feature I have to delete them one by one. And that’s quite very tedious, and I really hate doing it. But I really have no choice. After that, I import my content again but the result was futile. And I deleted my posts again and reimport again and again, but my posts are still incomplete and I thought of just posting them again one by one(a very desperate thought).

Well, good thing my friend came to the rescue. What he did was he just reimported my exported xml file a few times, and when we saw the ALL DONE prompt message at the bottom page of the browser, he said that that’s the sign that all my posts have already been transferred completely. And it did!

My friend told me that it’s normal to have an incomplete transfer when you import contents. The only thing you have to do is to reimport it again and again until all the posts are transferred. No worries for post redundancy because the mysql function can detect a redundant file, that is, if a post already existed in the database it won’t be imported again. But this doesn’t really hold true based from my experience. After all my contents have been completely transferred, I found lots of redundant posts when I checked my blog site. What I did was I manually deleted all of them from my Manage Posts dashboard area.

6. The next thing you have to do is to properly index your site. In my case, I just deleted the default index.html file my host puts in my server’s root directory.

7. Now, you’ll be ready to set a redirection from your wordpress.com site to your self-hosted site, that is, if someone will click a link from your old wordpress.com blog he will be automatically redirected to your new website. This way your old traffic won’t be wasted. Wordpress.com charged $10 per year as a redirection fee.

I’m actually very thankful to this walk-through documentation written by those guys from blog-well.com. It is a complete step by step redirection procedure that would surely help you a lot. You just have to follow it religiously and I assure you that your site will be well-redirected.

8. Lastly, enjoy tweaking your newly self-hosted wordpress blog, and put any ads or java script goodies you’ve been wanting to grab(but are not allowed to by your host because of security issues) when you were still in wordpress.com!

Happy Blogging!