Dubai, United Arab Emirates (February 2012):

Mazagan Beach Resort, part of the global Kerzner Group, has appointed Sekari to develop their multilingual SEO strategy throughout the UK, France and Morocco.Providing the very finest luxury resort experience in Morocco, Mazagan Beach Resort offers breathtaking views on the Atlantic Ocean and boasts an exclusive Gary Player Golf Course, a tranquil ESPA Spa and the largest Casino in the country.

As SEO experts in the MENA region, Sekari were the obvious partner of choice to guide Mazagan's SEO strategy and help the luxury resort develop their online brand awareness, whilst building its customer acquisition channel online.

Sekari's multilingual capabilities, combined with a global reach through 15 search partners across the globe enable the delivery of highly successful localised search strategies in any global market.

Delivering the English and French Organic Optimisation Strategy for the website,Sekari will help Mazagan Beach Resort to aggressively target the UK and France; two key inbound markets for the Moroccan Luxury resort.With search in French playing a predominant role in Morocco, Sekari will offer a more localised Search Marketing approach, ensuring the successful delivery of high search engine rankings for Mazagan even in traditionally competitive UK and French markets.

Soukaina Al Baraka, Online Manager at Mazagan Beach Resort, commented on the new partnership, "As Sekari are dedicated specialists in natural search both in the MENA region and with prominent hospitality brands, we felt they were best placed to provide our site with a competitive edge against the major players in the MENA region".

ENDS

About SEKARI
Sekari is the Middle East's leading dedicated digital search and social optimisation agency. The company has an international reach with a network of 15 partners around the world enabling the delivery of cutting edge global Digital Search & Social Marketing services in any language. Sekari places digital search marketing at the very heart of its clients' marketing strategies, and is the only agency in the region that deals exclusively in Search Engine Optimisation as well as Social Media Monitoring. Sekari combines the very best in technological expertise with years of local and regional experience to deliver the most competitive performance for its customers. For more information on Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Marketing, Google Pay-Per-Click, Social Media Optimisation, Social Media Monitoring, and Social Media Marketing, please visit http://www.sekari.com/seo

For further media information from Sekari, please contact:

Unit 3205, Building 3
Gold & Diamond Park
PO Box 282661
Dubai, UAE
T: +971 4 340 2186
F: +971 4 341 6402
Mob: +971 50 852 4611
Email: info@sekari.com

Where Panda aimed at lowering the rank of "low quality" sites panelising keyword stuffing, directory listings and link building with spam directories, Google Freshness looks to give searchers the latest information. The update gives users the most up to date information as well as news that may only be seconds old. For example, a search for a mobile phone will result in the latest iteration of the newest model rather than displaying older content.

Both changes have been a long time in coming after Google Caffeine in 2010 which was a complete infrastructure change which allows Google to index, crawl and return results incredibly fast. Google claims that unlike Panda, which only affected about 12% of all search queries, Google Freshness will have an effect on over 30% of all searches - close to 35% of all searches.

Google Freshness also gives the algorithm the ability to look ahead and follow recurring events, like UAE National Day or a yearly Iftar event and delivers the results of the most recent recurrence. Previously the older occurrences would have returned better results.

Quality and Frequency will be the mantra for SEO in 2012. Therefore, providing better quality content and frequently updating it to make sure the content is up to date will ultimately generate results.

Where 2011 saw an increase in Social indicators, 2012 merges your website and social platforms into one big engagement pot. SEO Agencies need to have ways to create engaging content for their clients or for distribution, they need to have expertise in outreach, they need to be able to work with mobile sites and help optimise apps for web and app-store discovery.

The standing of traditional SEO loses value in 2012 as it becomes a commodity, widespread amongst Design & Build Agencies. If your Web Developer doesn't understand On-Page SEO, then frankly he shouldn't be developing your site.

The modern SEO Dubai agency will not fall into the trap of procurement lead pitches which devolve into itemised deliverables which have no real meaning, but are easy to quantify for the purchasing manager, "this agency will deliver x number of links at this budget per link can you deliver 2 more links for the same price". Continuously bidding lower and lower costs means less availability of time and effort required for the ground breaking thinking required for true innovation.

Modern Arabic SEO has the same challenges and would do well to appeal to these recent updates, like Panda, Freshness, and engage in delivering social signals. However, the need for fresh quality Arabic content becomes ever more important and is still the biggest challenge present for SEO in the region.

However, this often means that digital strategies which can't provide instantaneous results and require time to demonstrate results are simply overlooked. SEO or natural search engine optimization often falls into this category. One of the most difficult things in SEO is justifying the return of investment instantly. This is unlike PPC activity where ROI can be measured immediately, with sales reported in real time. SEO however, requires a longer, more strategic process and is difficult to provide guarantees owing to the varying nature of the search engine algorithms.

Despite this, in our experience, search engine optimisation still proves itself as the top source of traffic and conversions for our clients and needs to be a core part of any holistic marketing strategy.

To further support our conclusion, Webarketing123 have published their latest study from their 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report. This report was a product of their online survey conducted in September 2011 with 500 professionals completing the survey.

With both B2B and B2C industries, SEO has topped PPC and Social Media in lead generation. Even if lead generation goals are dependent on several factors such as click-through factors and landing page optimisation, SEO is proven to be a long-term and stable strategy across a brand's digital marketing efforts.

Naturally, marketers will always invest more in in channels that deliver the highest ROI. However, other marketing channels such as Social Media are on the rise for budget attention in the next year to come.

With Dubai roads bursting at the seams during rush hour, it is easy to recognise the importance of a car in the eyes of the Emirate's growing population. With the cost of fuel at a relatively low level, the upkeep and running of a car in the UAE makes owning one an economical and desirable choice. However, with 4x4s a common site in the region, are they really the popular choice of automobile, and what are people saying about the brand of car that they own or dream of owning?

In the UAE, top search volumes involving car manufacturers and brands show that the term ‘mini' is in fact the most popular search query, achieving more search queries than ‘Toyota' and ‘Honda' put together. This indicates the rising popularity for the British Premium Car brand in the region and is perhaps testament to the brand's growing presence in the region with the launch of its All-Wheel drive, the Mini Countryman.

In terms of social media buzz and online conversation, Mercedes lead the way in terms of mentions in the social media sphere. However, the sentiment recorded here is zero, with the brand generating neutral conversations on the whole. BMW and Ferrari follow closely behind with brand mentions in September nearly reaching 350 each. However, Ferrari leads the whole group by far in terms of positive sentiment scoring. With mentions referring to happenings in the world of F1 or the tourist attraction Ferrari World, it's clear to see this kind of conversation creates a highly positive stir across the social media platforms.

Honda and Toyota trail the group with the most negative sentiment scoring of the group. Honda failed to rouse a positive response about its servicing capabilities, with a negative buzz also generated around the terms of ‘faulty' and ‘recalls'. Toyota's problem mainly originates from global corporation news, as opposed to general feelings about its car models and their performance.

What is clear is the failure of tweets and blogs to refer positively to the experience of their own car that is used day in, day out. Social media adopters tend to tweet about the cars they aspire to own or the sporting interest that the brand represents. Those brands generating such a positive buzz online successfully affiliate themselves with sponsorship opportunities that generate their very own community offline, whilst bringing the brand alive online in a positive conversational tone.

Social Media - Volume Vs Sentiment Graph

Dubai, United Arab Emirates (February 2012):

Alpari ME DMCC (Alpari), part of the Alpari group of companies and one of the world's fastest growing providers of online foreign exchange trading services, has appointed Sekari as their Dubai SEO partner to guide their organic search strategy throughout the region.

Currently looking after 170,000 active trading accounts worldwide, Alpari use the most popular and advanced trading platforms and employ the most up-to-date research tools to ensure their clients can make informed and responsible trading decisions. 

"Alpari believes in partnering with vertical experts on domains where external value addition is imperative and this partnership is a reflection of that belief", said Iskandar Najjar, CEO of Alpari ME DMCC. As SEO experts in the region, Sekari were the obvious partner of choice to guide Alpari's SEO strategy in the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Sekari will help to build on Alpari's growing online presence and ultimately attract more brokers to trade in this highly lucrative marketplace.

As search marketing becomes increasingly important in the Middle East and as local search habits develop, Sekari will deliver a localised Organic Search Optimisation Strategy for Alpari, targeting English and Arabic language searches in the region. Sekari's holistic approach to devising highly effective SEO campaigns involves in-depth competitor analysis and benchmarking, along with a full technical site audit. This ensures Alpari can stay ahead of its nearest Forex competitors in a fiercely crowded marketplace.

Tony Philip, who heads online marketing at Alpari ME DMCC, commented on the new partnership, "As Sekari are dedicated specialists in English and Arabic natural search in the MENA region, we felt they were best placed to provide our site with the competitive edge needed in this industry. By combining technical excellence in the art of SEO whilst demonstrating tangible results ensures we can see the true value of SEO and make it a core part of our overall digital marketing strategy."

-ENDS-

About Alpari ME DMCC
Alpari ME DMCC, based in Dubai, is part of the Alpari group of companies. The company offers support for individuals and institutions seeking to trade in Forex or commodities across any of the Alpari group of companies' platforms and exchanges.

About the Alpari group of companies

With a history dating back to 1998, the Alpari companies are among the world's fastest growing providers of online Forex trading services. The companies provide cutting edge technology, low-cost trading, comprehensive market research tools, advanced educational programmes and world-class customer service.
The Alpari companies have more than 50 offices in cities in over 20 countries, including London, New York, Shanghai, Dubai, Moscow, Mumbai and Frankfurt. Combined, they look after over 170,000 active trading accounts, generating monthly trading volumes in excess of $210 billion, and employ over 630 people worldwide.*

*All figures May 2011

About SEKARI
Sekari is the Middle East's leading dedicated digital search and social optimisation agency. The company has an international reach with a network of 15 partners around the world enabling the delivery of cutting edge global Digital Search & Social Marketing services in any language. Sekari places digital search marketing at the very heart of its clients' marketing strategies, and is the only agency in the region that deals exclusively in Search Engine Optimisation as well as Social Media Monitoring. Sekari combines the very best in technological expertise with years of local and regional experience to deliver the most competitive performance for its customers. For more information on Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Marketing, Google Pay-Per-Click, Social Media Optimisation, Social Media Monitoring, and Social Media Marketing, please visit http://www.sekari.com/seo

For further media information from Sekari, please contact:

Unit 3205, Building 3
Gold & Diamond Park
PO Box 282661
Dubai, UAE
T: +971 4 340 2186
F: +971 4 341 6402
Mob: +971 50 852 4611
Email: info@sekari.com

With more than 60 major shopping malls in Dubai alone, including what is purportedly the world's largest mall, the retail sector in the emirate has never been so competitive. Retailers, therefore, are now moving online in a bid to spread their brand message further afield to help increase footfall and become the favoured Dubai shopping experience.

In the UAE, top searches tend to centre around generic terms, with few mall names or specific retailers mentioned. The only to malls making the top 20 popular search terms are 'Dubai mall' and 'mall of the emirates'.

Interestingly, online shopping is beginning to emerge as a popular search term as web users opt for an in-home shopping experience.

Dubai Mall is by far the most talked about brand in the social media sphere. It also boasts the highest sentiment scoring. Most mentions of the brand are positive, with enthusiastic comments about its impressive features of the mall such as the water fountains and the aquarium.

Additional buzz has also been created around celebrities set to visit the mall. For example, Kim Kardashian's pending personal appearance is much anticipated, as is the opening of the Christian Laboutin store.

Again, with the other malls mentioned often on social media platforms, the majority of the buzz is created around the additional features of the mall which often don't include shopping activities. Ski Dubai, for example, is commonly referred to when mentioning Mall of the Emirates, as is the spa when discussing Wafi mall.

Surprisingly, for one of the larger and perhaps busier malls, Deira City Centre fails to make an impact amongst the social media-savvy demographic. Mentions that can be picked up are neutral in tone and refer to general visits or cinema trips.

Few mentions of individual retails outlets are made. Perhaps this demonstrates the growing popularity of non-shopping-focused activities available at shopping centres today, indicating the evolution of malls from being a purely shopping-based experience to a form of entertainment for the whole family.

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Dubai, United Arab Emirates (18th December, 2011):

Dubai Airport Freezone, one of the fastest growing premium free zones in the region has appointed Sekari as its Dubai SEO partner to guide its organic search strategy throughout the region.

Currently home to over 1,450 companies from various industry sectors, including aviation, IT and pharmaceuticals, Dubai Airport Freezone is ideally located within the boundaries of Dubai International Airport, offering a range of modern facilities with a state-of-the-art infrastructure. International investors can enjoy dynamic growth through Dubai Airport Freezone's excellent packages which provide innovative technology and support to engage their various stakeholders.

As dedicated SEO experts in the region, Sekari was the obvious partner of choice to guide Dubai Airport Freezone's SEO strategy, to build on its online presence whilst ultimately attracting more businesses to the modern free zone.

Sekari will deliver a localised Organic Search Optimisation Strategy for Dubai Airport Freezone for English language searches in the region. Sekari's holistic approach to devising highly effective SEO campaigns involves in-depth competitor analysis and benchmarking, along with a full technical site audit. The success of the campaign can then be fully measured based on core KPIs established at the start of the campaign.

Jamal Bin Marghoob, Acting Director of Marketing and Corporate Communications, commented on the new partnership, "As innovative leaders in our industry, we required a partnership with a like-minded agency to lead our global organic search strategy. Sekari understood our objectives and are able to deliver tangible results driving search engine ranking in many languages and countries around the world, highlighting the true value of SEO and ensuring the tactic becomes a core part of our overall digital marketing strategy".

ENDS

About Dubai Airport Freezone

Established in 1996 as a part of the Dubai Government's strategic plan to be an investment driven economy, Dubai Airport Freezone is one of the fastest growing premium free zones in the region. The free zone is currently home to over 1450 companies from various industry sectors, including aviation, freight and logistics, IT and telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, engineering, food & beverage, jewellery and cosmetics. Located strategically within the boundaries of Dubai International Airport, Dubai Airport Freezone offers a range of modern facilities with a state-of-the-art infrastructure.

International investors can enjoy dynamic growth through Dubai Airport Freezone's excellent incentive packages including 100% tax exemption, 100% foreign ownership and no currency restrictions. Situated at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa, the Dubai Airport Freezone is a gateway providing access to over 2.5 billion consumers.

Dubai Airport Freezone's commitment to quality is recognized by worldwide ISO certificates for Quality, Environment, Health & Safety and Information Security Management System, as well as Complaints Handling System. In addition to various regional and international awards, Dubai Airport Freezone has won the prestigious Dubai Quality Appreciation Programme award in the service category in 2010.

For more information contact:

Tooba Zafar                                                                        

BPG Public Relations for Dubai Airport Freezone               

Dubai, United Arab Emirates                                           

Tel: +971 55 6796346                                                  

Email: tooba@batespangulf.com                                 

Salah El Din El Tayeb

Sr. Officer, Corporate Communications

Dubai Airport Freezone

United Arab Emirates

Tel: +971 4 202 7717/+971 50 6561433

Email: saltayeb@dafz.ae

About SEKARI

Sekari is the Middle East's leading dedicated digital search and social optimisation agency. The company has an international reach with a network of 15 partners around the world enabling the delivery of cutting edge global Digital Search & Social Marketing services in any language. Sekari places digital search marketing at the very heart of its clients' marketing strategies, and is the only agency in the region that deals exclusively in Search Engine Optimisation as well as Social Media Monitoring.  Sekari combines the very best in technological expertise with years of local and regional experience to deliver the most competitive performance for its customers.  For more information on Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Marketing, Google Pay-Per-Click, Social Media Optimisation, Social Media Monitoring, and Social Media Marketing, please visit http://www.sekari.com/seo

For further media information from Sekari, please contact:

Unit 3205, Building 3
Gold & Diamond Park
PO Box 282661
Dubai, UAE

T: +971 4 340 2186
F: +971 4 341 6402
Mob: +971 50 852 4611
Email: info@sekari.com

The early morning seminar at The Address hotel in Dubai Mall is surprisingly well attended by small-to-medium business heads and corporate marketers. The reason why is simple: whenever any of us want to find out anything, we simply "Google it" by typing in a couple of keywords. Those keywords bring up a list of results and it's where a business appears on that list that counts. Get your website on the first page of that search and you have a very good chance of having your link clicked onto - the top link receives a 42.4 per cent hit rate, the second listing 11.8 per cent and the third 8.4 per cent.

Read the full article in The National

Dubai, United Arab Emirates (9 August, 2011): The buzz around social media in the Middle East is at fever pitch. Whilst many brands are grappling with the issues of how to engage in social media and manage their reputations, little mention has been given to how important a role Social Media Optimisation plays in a company's website ranking in search engines. There are two sides to this story, however, the first is how social media content plays an ever increasing role in the Google's ranking algorithm, the other is how by optimising your social media profiles and content with the right key phrases you can ensure that the first page of the Search Engine results are completely owned by your brand.

'Universal Search' is the terminology given to how the Google Search Engine Results page is nowadays made up of Google maps results, live twitter feeds, News Articles, YouTube video, and images. In order for your Social Media content to rank well, you need to make sure that all your social media content is optimised for the same key phrases which are part of your SEO strategy, ensuring a coordinated holistic approach across all your platforms. It's not simply a case of ensuring your social media ranks for your brand name, it's about being visible for the key phrases people type in search engines when looking for your products or services and then making sure that your offering is the first one these potential customers click on, whether it's a video of your services, your latest Twitter feed or your company Facebook page.

"A consistent approach across all platforms is the trick. As an SEO agency we research what these key phrases should be, we use various sources of data to decide on the most valuable key phrase strategy for your brand's website. The amount of searches for a particular key phrase is an important starting point, your company might be called Rose Trading but if you sell fashion accessories then we need to find out what people are searching for in the UAE when they are looking for somewhere to buy your type of products", explains Managing Director of SEO Dubai Agency, Sekari. And in the Middle East, which is still relatively in its infancy when it comes to Search, these are more commonly broad generic phrases. In the case of the fashion accessories company these would be phrases such as Dresses, Jewellery, Fashion Stores. These same key phrases need to be infused in all your social media content. For example your target key phrases should be referenced in the titles of your YouTube videos so that any authority is passed onto your website URL, those same keywords should also be in the tags and or transcript.

All these factors build the relevant authority of your website in the eyes of search engines and at the same time ensure that whenever someone types in a search for those key phrases, that the results page is littered not only with your website but all your social media assets as well, from your video, your Facebook page to your latest Twitter feeds.

But social media optimisation is not simply about ensuring your various social media profiles rank high for your target key phrases, nowadays the optimisation and usage of your social media profile plays an important part in search engines deciding how your own website ranks.

According to our research at SEKARI a number of social media factors play a role in your websites Search Engine Rankings.

Twitter

The number and the quality of your twitter followers.
Simply explained; the more followers you have, the more authoritative your twitter persona and the more value associated with your URL.

Quality and Relevance as always in SEO plays a vital role. Followers with their own communities of followers, which re-tweet your content and follow you are the best. But these followers have to be relevant to your specific industry as using your relevant target keywords. Someone with fashion in their description who re-tweet's your latest clothing promotion provides your website considerable value.

Being in the game means staying active and volume plays a very important role. The way search engines see it is the number of people re-tweeting your content the more authoritative the content must be. The more followers you have the more likely you are to be re-tweeted. But remember it's not just about tweeting and being re-tweeted, it's about engaging in conversation with people in your industry.

And guess what? It's not just all about Twitter either.

Facebook

For example the number of comments on your Corporate Profile Facebook page is an indicator to search engines, however, too many 'Likes' and not much real engagement is a sure sign of the system being gamed. Make sure your Facebook page is optimised for your target key phrases.

It's also worth mentioning Social Mentions, total visibility across all social media shows that your content is important to all people and not just the result of a good promotion on Facebook, especially in the Middle East, where there are a lot of blogs and forums. Sekari use monitoring tools that enable us to capture all these mentions and we can identify how positive or negative the comments are about your brand, using this as a starting point to making sure there are more positive mentions about your brand then negative. The general sentiment expressed about your brand will start playing a pivotal role in search engine rankings. Google is investing more money in this area and it will really start to have a major effect in the near future with search results becoming ever more localised and personalised, the results you get when you search for something will be determined by your personal preferences, associated with that of your connections, your friends and what they search for.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates (20 June, 2011): Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, the global hospitality brand, has commenced working with Sekari to develop their SEO strategy throughout the Middle East and Africa. With 11 properties already in the region including UAE properties, The Fairmont Dubai; and Fairmont Bab Al Bahr in Abu Dhabi, as well as another five properties opening in the next couple of years, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, as part of their regional brand expansion, have recently launched an Arabic website www.fairmont.ae. Local Search and Social Optimisation Agency - Sekari, have been appointed by Fairmont's global digital marketing agency, the award-winning iCrossing, to support the digital implementation of the SEO strategy throughout the region and develop their online brand awareness.

Search marketing is becoming increasingly important in the Middle East and Africa as local search habits develop: In the Middle East there are 63 million Internet users with 45.9 million Internet users searching in Arabic, of which 9 million Internet users located outside the MENA region search in Arabic. According to Google approximately 74% of Internet searches in the Middle East are now made in Arabic (according to Madar Research).

Africa has enormous potential out of a population of 1.013 billion, 110.9 million are online, equating to approximately 11% with an internet adoption growth rate of 2,357% in the past 10 years (source: Internet World Stats). Since the installation of the 10,000 KM fibre-optic cable linking Africa with the Middle East, Europe and Asia, broadband rates have dropped by over 90% in Africa creating a surge in Internet adoption rates.

Sekari will deliver the Arabic Organic Optimisation Strategy for the Arabic website and with search in English playing a predominant role in the region Sekari will deliver a more localised Search Marketing approach; the benefits of which deliver better local results in Google whenever people are searching for luxury hotels. By ranking on the first page in the organic results, companies can achieve up to 80% more traffic from search engines, and these are all qualified leads which increase a business's online conversion rates.

As Sekari are dedicated specialists in search and social we have a competitive edge against any others in the region. Combining technical excellence in the art of SEO with our tangible regional experience enables us to achieve the very best performance for our clients.

Experience

An SEO agency has experts that work next to one another on a daily basis and have years of SEO experience, working on a multitude of different clients across different industry verticals. First-class SEO is a learned practice and a great SEO team benefits from the combined learning gained through all its members by sitting next to each other and sharing in each other's experiences of a wide selection of clients. An SEO agency will have a team of many different skill sets from SEO technicians, to keyword analytics experts, SEO Copywriters to Link Builders and content aggregation experts, whose knowledge combine to offer an integrated SEO service with expertise in each individual field of SEO.

Specialism

Hiring an SEO specialist agency ensures that you're dealing with true experts in their field.  A web designer may have some idea about SEO and to be quite honest a lot of SEO isn't rocket science, however, as with anyone having to maintain their knowledge across different disciplines it is impossible to know everything.  Whereas someone who only specialises in the one discipline of SEO has far more time to dedicate to their one profession.  20% of a good SEO companies time should be spent researching new SEO techniques and identifying the latest innovations.  SEO is often a case of trial and error with some techniques working better than others to rank a particular website.  It's a lot of time, experience and dedication.

Independence

Your SEO agency should act as an independent point of view, providing the best practice and critically analysing your website with no pre-conceptions or fear of recrimination for identifying errors in the way a website is built.  

Long Term Partnership

An SEO agency works as your marketing partner, riding the highs and lows but always there to provide you with expert SEO knowledge and support.  Every time you do something online, whether it's changing some copy on your website or developing a new online campaign, your SEO agency should be your first port of call, enabling you to put your SEO cap on and consider how your activity can benefit your websites SEO or if any changes will be detrimental and result in losing rankings.  So many opportunities to build your website equity in search engines are missed because simple yet effective opportunities where not thought of at the time of conception.

So you need to make sure you work with an SEO company that is going to be around for a long while, over time the SEO agency can build an in-depth and innate understanding of your brand and your website.  You need good, no great, proactive and knowledgeable account management, which only a well funded SEO agency can provide, to keep projects on track and to make sure you can get quick accurate answers which won’t delay your campaigns.

Choosing the most technically advanced, effective and efficient supplier for your SEO services is paramount if you want a chance to compete in this highly competitive medium.

In this article SEKARI tries to dispel a few of the myths and give some guidelines on what you should be looking out for when choosing an SEO agency.

Realistic Expectations

The most important thing to remember is that SEO is not a quick fix, the reality is that in order to start seeing good results from your SEO efforts it can take up to six months of hard work.  A reputable SEO agency will work closely with you providing quick wins as well as long term Organic SEO strategies and identify realistic targets and KPI's, ensuring they are not just delivering traffic but real people that want your products or services. 

Guaranteeing 1st Place

No respectable agency would ever guarantee first place, usually this is a promise reserved for the spammers of this world.

Don't expect immediate results and make sure all key stakeholders understand that you're website is not going to be in first place one week after hiring the SEO company, however good they profess to be. A true organic SEO campaign will take time and rely on many deliverables from both client and agency side before the search engines even begin to start recognising and indexing the new content and your site starts to move up the rankings.

SEO Best Practice

Make sure your SEO agency does not use what SEO'rs like to call ‘Black Hat’ techniques, or simply put, methods that spam search engines; something that the search engines really don't like.  It happened to the management of BMW in 2006, when unbeknownst to them their SEO agency was gaining fast results by spamming and ignoring search engine guidelines and best practice. They saw some great results in the short term but in the end the site was completely banned from search engines and it took a long, long time for them to get back up the rankings, losing the company millions of dollars worth of brand exposure.

SEO Reporting

An SEO agency should provide fully comprehensive reporting on a regular basis because Search Engines are dynamic and rankings change continuously.  A correct SEO campaign should start with an initial Research and Analysis phase followed by an ongoing monthly phase where the SEO agency works with you month by month delivering and supporting your SEO activities including continuous link building, backed up by monthly benchmark reports.

Multilingual & Localisation for UAE SEO

If you are an international company looking to market your website locally in the Middle East, you need to make sure that you hire a team of SEO experts that can cover a multitude of different languages, not forgetting localised versions of these languages such as Arabic.  You need to make sure that the keyword research and the various tools that run the competitive analysis are run from that country to emulate the results of the local audience.  Many SEO companies simply rely on translators to copy the English Key phrases and translate them word for word, and don't conduct the multilingual SEO research individually in that language, which inevitably results in inaccurate data.  This is equally important for a company targeting countries in the Middle East for example, UAE based SEO. With 75% of Google searches in the region taking place in Arabic, localised Arabic SEO is growing in importance and as such Arabic SEO experts are invaluable in providing solid multilingual SEO across the region.

Transparency

A common misconception is that SEO is all about secret tricks and techniques which the client shouldn't really know about, some form of magic which web developers sprinkle their SEO fairy dust on to a website to make it special.  This couldn’t be further from the truth, you must make sure you have full access to the progress of your work and have explained to you, the techniques used that get the results.  A good SEO agency will give you detailed reports and will impart their knowledge to you, they should even provide SEO training if you require it.  After all the more the client understands about SEO, the better the working relationship will be, inevitably producing better results.

SEO Contracting

Many SEO companies will tie you down to a set contract of 6 months to a year with penalties for breaking the contract terms.  This is quite a common practice as it usually takes about 6 months to start seeing results and the majority of the spending by the SEO agency is done at the beginning of the contract to gain momentum in search engines. Therefore this practice protects the agency from a company that doesn’t understand the long term dynamics of the work and gives the SEO company enough time to deliver results. 

There are 15 million Facebook users in the Middle East with the UAE accounting for 1.6 Million and Saudi Arabia 2.3 million. And it doesn't stop there, the rate of increase in countries such as Saudi Arabia is enormous. The Facebook audience are an active one, 50% of MENA Facebook users have selected their primary language as English, with 25% preferring French and 23% Arabic.

There are 5 million Facebook users in the GCC with Saudi Arabia accounting for 45%. As a platform Facebook has become viable in the region offering a multitude of advertising opportunities that reach the Middle East online audience. With so many expats in the region Facebook is most probably the only way to stay in touch with family and friends at home. We are seeing Facebook moving from a fan page to an effective advertising vehicle for promoting our campaigns and programs and the performance has been ramping up through the year. We expect Facebook will be ever increasingly used by our clients as part of their overall media mix this coming year.

What is vitally important to try an ensure is that your Facebook and PPC campaign are managed by the same agency or person. This will ensure you are able to clearly track the performance across both platforms. More importantly having PPC experts run both campaigns also enables you to prioritise and optimise your ad spend as the campaign gains momentum. Your budget should be managed in such a way that enables the agency to quickly divert funds to the best performing platform at a moment's notice. It will need a bit of trust on your part but if you pick the right agency you should be able to entrust that they will be able to provide you with the best performance across either platforms.

Atlantis, The Palm Hotel & Resort, part of Kerzner International Resorts today announced their strategic initiative to increase the hotel’s web presence and reach out to the rapidly expanding global online audience with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) & online marketing specialists Sekari.

"It's a great vote of confidence in our international SEO services and in the online medium as a whole that a brand such as The Atlantis Palm Hotel Dubai should take advantage of Sekari's unique specialist expertise to develop its international online organic SEO strategy", says Sekari General Manager, Lee Mancini. Sekari, a specialist SEO company based in Dubai is entrusted with developing an aggressive 360 SEO campaign in English, Russian and Arabic which will ensure that the hotel located on Palm Island will increase its brand profile and provide its audience with relevant timely information.

"Increasing the profile and organic positioning of the Atlantis The Palm website as part of our online strategy is a critical part of our wider strategy to increase our digital footprint with key audiences. In building traffic to our website, we will increase our competitive edge and ultimately increasing bookings", said Euan Mitchell, Director of Online Marketing, Atlantisthepalm.com, he continued, "Sekari is not only concentrating on our international source markets such as the United Kingdom, and Russia by performing SEO in Russian, however, they are also concentrating on the local market by working on the performance in the UAE in English and wider MENA region in Arabic for the hotel, our restaurants and of course Aquaventure and the Dolphinarium.

”Sekari starts with comprehensive research and analysis (R&A) in the hotel & resort online market which is localised per target language and country which provides the competitive data and keyphrase research required to develop an organic SEO marketing strategy. Running parallel to the R&A Phase technical site audits are developed by Sekari's expert technical SEO team in Dubai, UAE. The technical audits are designed to identify barriers to the way search engines view the content of the website and delve deep into the websites infrastructure and coding. This ensures a true 360 degree Organic SEO strategy which is then delivered on a continuous basis every month, developing online partnerships, utilising online PR & social media as well as delivering other SEO innovations which help boost the sites performance. "The approach of our Dubai SEO team is to become a fully-fledged partner for our clients becoming an integrated part of their success by delivering qualified traffic that converts into bookings or sales, said Mancini. “An integral part of this value delivery is that our analytics team can continuously track the performance and uplift in ranking, highlighting the huge ROI that our projects deliver full circle, through customer acquisition, conversion and retention.”

* Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Note to Editors:

Middle East Internet Penetration Rates

The Middle East region has one of the fastest growing Internet penetration rates in the world with 18.9 Million Arab users online today (Not Including Iran) and growth rates over the past few years of 3,000% in countries such as The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As this medium becomes ever more proficient, brands and agencies are beginning to have to take notice of these new captive and enthusiastic audiences. Penetration rates fluctuate between 10% and 60% throughout the region with the UAE having the highest Internet penetration rate, 60.9% as of 2009. However, even though The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a small internet penetration rate of approximately 26.8% at present, the growth rate phenomenal and with KSA having the largest population in the GCC, this still results in over 7.7 million Internet Users. With 50% of The Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia's population being under 20 years old it is clear that the enormous future potential of this new young population represents a massive commercial opportunity.

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While users have been reluctant to click on ads, brands are still looking for ways to leverage the social networking space and finding them.

Facebook and other social networking sites are providing opportunities for brand marketers to get feedback from users and even sometimes engage in direct conversations.

In the Middle East usage is growing fast, showing that there is an ever increasing opportunity for social media in the region.

The latest Facebook figures show considerable numbers with the GCC and Levant region.

• Lebanon: 377,000 users
• Morocco: 199,000 users
• United Arab Emirates: 386,000 users
• Turkey: 4,000,000 users
• Qatar: 51,000 users
• Saudi Arabia: 250,000 users
• Kuwait: 85,000 users
• Bahrain: 41,380 users
• Egypt: 841,000 users
• Jordan: 213,400 users