MarkHil Macalua, a successful professional internet marketer, is currently the vice
president for marketing of the Philippine based market developmental arm of USA
Auto Parts. Mark takes pride in heading an army of more than 130 internet
marketers for the leading publicly traded auto parts retailing company that
sells cars and truck parts online. Among the laurels that Mark has tucked under
his belt is the distinction of bringing the company to rank number 81 in the
Internet Retailer Magazine’s annual list of the top 500 of online retailers in
the world with the largest business generated for the year.
One
of the most intriguing things about Mark is how he is able to attend to his
full time job as VP for USA Auto Parts and still find time to attend to his
passion of pursuing the development of the local SEO industry. Mark is the
founder and head honcho of SEO Philippines and a fulltime tech blogger too with
his own personally branded website. He has spearheaded the holding of various
local competitions for SEO enthusiasts and has been a keynote speaker in many
internet marketing and website development seminars.
Innovative,
aggressive and daring, Mark is in constant search for the best ways to promote
web site visibility and constantly pursue development of new methodology to
optimize web sites for the various search engines. He calls himself a web
prodigy or a web addict constantly pursuing various internet pursuits with
unequalled passion. His aggressiveness however got him into trouble with no
less than the giant search company Google early on in his career. His Ayala.com
got banned from appearing on Google’s search result pages for a while. Mark got
it back immediately on Google again. While it is not quite clear what got him
into trouble, the experience must have given him valuable lessons and even
earned him a chance to personally meet with Google’s top tech honcho Matt Cutts
during one of Cutts’ trips to the country. (Cutts’ even mentioned his meeting
with Mark in his personal blog.) Mark
and Matt discussed the SEO contests that Mark sponsors and surely Mark must
have picked up quite a bit of insider tip from the man who reins in Google’s
Panda and Penguin.
As
you well know, the algorithm that Google search crawlers use to determine the
value of a website and its contents and determine their rankings and appearance
on the pages of search results is a well kept secret. Google keeps it close to
its chest to prevent anyone from gaming Google just to improve their rankings
which the company experienced in the past. You see, Google wants everyone to
toe its line and develop content and back links naturally. Anyone who diverts
from what it deems proper is penalized and banned from its search results. And
what is proper is revealed by it to the public only in bits and pieces through
tips and advisories it publishes through Google’s Web Master Blog and also on
Cutt’s own personal blog. That is why Mark must have been jumping in joy after
his personal meeting with Mutt. He must have gained an exclusive peek and
perhaps gotten some serious SEO tips from the man himself.
Today,
Mark Hil Macalua is considered an icon in the local SEO industry along with
other equally much sought after local SEO heavyweights like Abe Olandres of YugaTech.
Mark continues to strive (using his own words) “to help users achieve the ‘Don’t Make Me Think’ objective from
interfaces to copy”.
