The Enigma that is Mark Hil Macalua

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”.