I have just completed the 5 days Advanced Search Engine Optimization Workshop certified by Search Engine Workshops from the United States and conducted by Fabian Lim of Asia Search Engine Academy. The Workshop was held at the Singapore Management University from the 25th to 29th April, 2008.

Being a Marketing professional with more than 30 years of marketing experience, I was amazed by the techniques taught and the tools available to apply pure marketing principles across the entire marketing process!

Starting from the basics, we were taught how we can accurately determine market demand by studying the buying audience online searching behaviour. Then using the tips and techniques taught, we learnt how to precisely segment our market and go after those niches that we give us the best ROI.

And of course the workshop covered topics on how we can optimize our websites and other techniiques for driving traffic to our website. We are even coached on how we should write good sales copy in order to increase our conversion rates.

As you can see, the topics cover the whole marketing process. Many of the processes, e.g Marketing Research, that we can achieve online would have taken months to complete in traditional offline marketing and would have cost a bomb. Furthermore, the results would not be as accurate.

One of my favourite moments at the workshop is the live hot seats sessions that Fabian conducted. We are able to see him give constructive critiques of actual websites of the students and learn from the mistakes made.

And the icing on the cake must be the fact that the workshop is certified by Search Engine Workshops of the U.S.A. and we were able to graduate as an Advanced Search Engine Marketing Strategies professionals.