TIMMGuru » SEO Experts

Safra, Hitachi & Mapletree Websites Screwed up by Active8

TIMMGuru — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:40:55 +0000

I can’t help it but to use very very strong words to show my anger with such ~~unscrupulous, deceitful and devious~~ Singapore web design company in the pursuit of search engine ranking for the keywords web design and content management system using black-hat SEO tricks.

Such unethical practice will damage the web design industry in Singapore.

The Singapore brand is at stake and could be tarnished by such an errant web design company.

The Japanese MNC Hitachi in Singapore would be jumping mad when they discovered the hidden links planted in many of their websites across Asia by their web designer, Active8.

Even Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd, a $5.6 billion company, and Singapore Armed Forces’ SAFRA fell prey to the ploy by Active8, so there could be many more victims which we didn’t know.

SAFRA.SG

The web design company added a hidden link to point back to their own website using to hide the link so that it will not display when you view it with a browser such as Internet Explorer. In order to see the offending link, you have use the view source function.

Here’s is a screenshot of the HTML source code of SAFRA homepage.

If your client did not give you the permission to insert your “Web Design and Content Management System (CMS) powered by Active8″ then you should not use hidden link to trick your client.

Here’s a screen shot of Google’s cache text only version of the web page.

And this web design company added the hidden links not only the main landing page but into many other pages of Safra.sg site.

Hitachi Consumer – Hitach Singapore, Hitachi Philippines & Hitachi Vietnam

Do you think Hitachi will ever allow a H2 link with anchor text such as “Web Design and Content Management System” placed right at the top of the HTML source page next to the tag!?

Here’s the screen shot of the HTML source of www.hitachiconsumer.com

And Active8.com.sg also added their links to

Hitachi Singapore – www.hitachiconsumer.com/sg/
Hitachi Philippines – www.hitachiconsumer.com/ph/
Hitachi Vietnam – www.hitachiconsumer.com/vn/

HTML Source Codes Screen Shots

Again, the web design company added their own links to many other pages of Hitachi Home Electronics website.

Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd

With Mapletree Singapore website, Active8 got even more audacious – link to their own website with achor text “Web Design” and “Content Management System (CMS)” in H1 tag.

And here’s the screen shot of Google’s cache text only version.

But for Mapletree Singapore website, Active8 made a typo in all their client’s pages – they forgot to use the “http://” in the anchor link.

I guess the thief was in a hurry!

Do you know of any other websites being screwed by their web designer?

Expose them! Leave a comment below.

Singapore SEO Consultant interviewed by ZDNet Asia

TIMMGuru — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 06:33:54 +0000

Shi Heng Cheong, Singapore-based SEO consultant and search optimization trainer was quoted in an article in ZDNet Asia yesterday.

Time to see beyond SEO for Google

The article also quoted two other experts: Zia Zaman and Tim O’Brien.

And this is what I said:

Shi said: “The challenge for an SEO consultant will be greater, as it will no longer be the simple correction of mistakes made by Web masters, designers and programmers. In addition to fixing broken Web sites, SEO consultants will need to help businesses be found not only in Google and Yahoo, but also in Web 2.0 sites such as Amazon, eBay, Facebook, MySpace, PRweb, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and YouTube.

“These will be the sites where the target customers will be congregating,” he added.

So, I am the only Asian quoted in the article. [implying shameless self praise here!]

Experts’ Advice On Search Engine Optimization

TIMMGuru — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 03:54:29 +0000

In order to outrank your competition in search engines, you need to study and analyze them. Typically, you need to analyze the top 30 search results for your targeted keywords.

If you are in a hurry, study and analyze the top 10 search listing results. The secrets to rank your web page #1 in the search engines lie in these 10 pages!

Analyze the Top 10 Results of Your Targeted Keywords

Both on-page factors and off-page factors must be analyzed.

There are many SEO tools available for you to do these. I used a combination of tools to help me analyze my competitions and I recommend WebCEO – a program which I have been using since 2004. You can download the free version WebCEO to test it out before you invest in this very powerful professional SEO toolkit.

From the Google search results of seo expert, I noticed that a page from sg.ambatch.com (by Kelvin Hui, HK’s SEO expert) was ranked #6 despite the fact that it was only created on Jun 8, 2007 – about a week ago. You will agree with me that this shattered the myth that you’ll need a high PageRank(PR) to be ranked among the top 10 in the Google search results.

Another important observation was that these top ranking websites have lots of content related to search engine optimization, search marketing and internet marketing.

Also, the incoming text links to these websites have words that are related to SEO, search engines and search marketing.

Optimized Your HTML and Textual Content

You will want to optimize your page content – both the HTML and the visible textual content.

HTML Optimization

The tag and the <meta name=”description”> tag are important tags that you need to optimize for high ranking. Here’s two very useful articles by top SEO expert Jill Whalen: <ul> <li><a href="http://www.highrankings.com/allabouttitles.htm">All about the Title Tag for Search Engine Optimization</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.highrankings.com/metadescription.htm">How to Create a Meta Description Tag for Search Engine Optimization</a></li> </ul> Content Optimization aka SEO Copywriting You should not just optimize your page for search engine spiders, it is more important to write for your human visitors. In fact, search engine algorithms try to mimic human interpretation and “read” the content like a human being. Content optimization and SEO copywriting are more important than tweaking your HTML and meta tags. Read this blog post by SEO expert and author of the book SEOBook, Aaron Wall. <ul> <li><a href="http://www.seobook.com/archives/001668.shtml">Search Engine Friendly Copywriting</a></li> </ul> Once you’ve top ranking and traffic to your website, you want to pre-sell to your visitors. You need to write in a way that will get your readers ready to buy. Learn how to write to presell from the master and expert in pre-selling , Dr Ken Envoy. Go download this complementary ebook now – <a href="http://mycps.sitesell.com/mwc.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Make Your Content Presell</a> </article> <article> <h1>SEO Experts</h1> TIMMGuru — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 03:48:14 +0000 In my <a href="http://www.timmguru.com/2007/05/seo-expert-ranking-in-google.html">earlier post</a>, I mentioned this blog was ranked in the second page of Google search results for the search terms seo experts. Since then it has risen the rank and it is now ranked number 11. <h3>Difference in Search Ranking for SEO Experts in Google.com vs Google.com.sg</h3> You will notice that these search results are taken from Google.com.sg and not Google.com. TIMMGuru.com is not ranked in the top 30 in Google.com for the search term seo expert! This shows that Google is serving search results based on the location of the searcher. Does it mean Google.com will display results from US websites and Google.com.sg will display results from Singapore websites? What are the factors that determine a web page is more suitable for Google.com.sg and not Google.com? While I don’t have answer to the above questions, I believe TIMMGuru.com can get into the top 10 ranking for the keywords seo expert in the results of Google.com.sg and Yahoo Singapore. All I have to do is to outrank some of the SEO experts in the top 10 ranking! <blockquote>[Update Jun 26, 2007] I thought it will be necessary to optimize for search engine experts too. Unless the person is technically inclined and has been trying to improve search engine visibility or drive targeted traffic from search engines, she/he may not be familiar with SEO. So my potential visitors may just enter “search engine experts” instead. From now on, I will be using the phrase search engine expert more often.</blockquote> </article> <article> <h1>SEO Expert Ranking in Google</h1> TIMMGuru — Sun, 27 May 2007 16:30:52 +0000 This came as a surprise! TIMMGuru.com is ranked 14th for the search terms <a href="http://www.timmguru.com/">seo expert</a>. I did not intentionally optimized for this combination of terms. What I did was to optimize for Singapore SEO Expert and this blog has been ranked in the first page of Google and Yahoo for quite some time already. <a href="http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=seo+expert" target="_blank"></a> I’ll give a pat on my shoulder and say… “Lucky huh? Well done TIMMGuru expert!” Hopefully, with more postings to this blog on search engine optimization subject matters, the ranking get to improve soon. Of course, I will also want see this blog rank top in Yahoo for the keywords SEO expert too. <blockquote>Updates: 30 May 2207 TIMMGuru.com is now 2 position higher for the search terms seo expert at 12th. This post probably helped in increase in ranking. You may have notices that I tweaked the title tag too. It is now SEO Expert Blog by TIMMGuru – Singapore.</blockquote> </article> <article> <h1>Traffic Manuscript by Kelvin Hui</h1> TIMMGuru — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 10:17:09 +0000 I’ll be brief here. If you want to learn how to generate huge amount of targeted traffic, you have to learn from Kelvin Hui. He is the expert in traffic generation, period. <ul> <li>Kelvin Hui helped Joel Comm to outrank Google for the keyword – adsense</li> <li>In 2006, Yahoo Inc partnered with Kelvin Hui’s FreindEarth.com</li> <li>Kelvin Hui first Clickbank pay cheque in 2001 was more than $900</li> <li>Kelvin Hui websites generated more than $100,000/mth income with Adsense</li> </ul> <a href="http://clickurl.org/trafficmanuscript/" rel="nofollow" title="Traffic Manuscript aff. link"></a> If you want a <a href="http://www.gobalakrishnan.com/2007/03/review-traffic-manuscript-by-kevin-hui/">review on the Traffic Manuscript ebook</a>, visit <a href="http://www.gobalakrishnan.com/">Gobala Krishnan blog</a>. He had done an excellent job on the review. And I agree with Gobala, the ebook got pretty bad english. Maybe Kelvin was speaking that way so the Japanese audience can understand him. But, like what Gobala pointed out, you are not buying the ebook to learn writing – you want to know how to generate huge amount of traffic at minimal cost. If you are new to web publishing, this ebook may not be 100% beneficial. However, if you’ve already tried MFA, affiliate marketing, direct emailing and all those techniques that promised to made you a 5-figure income then you are ready for the secrets from Kelvin. Also, make sure you’ve got a couple of hours to read the ebook immediately after you purchased it. The information and techniques he mentioned are fresh and red hot, so you’ll want to implement them right away. Click <a href="http://clickurl.org/trafficmanuscript/" rel="nofollow">Traffic Manuscript</a> (aff. link) to get the ebook now. </article> <article> <h1>SEO Tips from VIP Experts</h1> TIMMGuru — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 00:03:00 +0000 This happened during the Las Vegas <a href="http://www.pubcon.com" rel="nofollow">Pubcon</a> a few days ago. Some SEO heavyweight gathered and gave comments on various web sites during the Interactive Site Review session. The panel of SEO experts consisted of Matt Cutts(Google), Tim Mayer(Yahoo), Greg Boser(WebGuerilla) and Danny Sullivan(SearchEngineWatch). Chris Richardson of <a href="http://www.webpronews.com" rel="nofollow">WebProNews</a> wrote a report on this session and title it “Important SEO Tips Every Should Know“. I received this report via email but cannot find it at WebProNews.com yet. Anyway, Google found me a similar list at another website – Webmasterscafe.info: “<a href="http://www.webmasterscafe.info/some-seo-advice-after-las-vegas-pubcon-2007.html" target="_blank">Some SEO advice after Las Vegas PubCon 2007</a>“. So I won’t repeat the list here. Rather, I will highlight some of the points which I find important and interesting. At the top of my interesting list is… “No Link Exchanges” – Matt Cutts Matt Cutts of Google is telling us not to bother with link exchange. But, isn’t the WWW built on the foundation of hyperlinks? To many webmasters link exchange is the only quick way to get backlinks. (To find out other link building methods, read my post on <a href="http://www.timmguru.com/2006/11/how-to-improve-your-pagerank.html">How to Improve Your Pagerank</a>.) And it is quite common to set up a link directory or resources page for your reciprocal linking campaign. If we accept what Matt Cutts said, many webmasters, including myself will be in trouble. As you can see at the top of this page, there is a directory link to 2 link pages: <ul> <li><a href="http://www.timmguru.com/directory/seoservices/">SEO Services/Resources</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.timmguru.com/directory/freesubmission/">Web Directory Submission</a></li> </ul> And on the sidebar, I have an ad recommending <a href="http://www.timmguru.com/r/linkmachine.php" rel="nofollow">LinkMachine – Link Exchange System</a>. So should I removed all these links… maybe not yet. Here’s why. Google Doesn’t Want Link Farms [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_farm" rel="nofollow">Wikipedia: Link Farm</a>] So Google doesn’t like quick way. Google wants you to grow your backlinks at a slow natural pace without resorting to creating hundreds of pages consist of nothing but links which constitute to a link farm. Google wants you to build useful content so that they could list it in their search results. And it is ok to refer to another website by hyperlink, from within the content of the article. However, I believe what Matt Cutts said refer to backlinks from link page, resources page and even many of the web directories – these are useless – so don’t bother to exchange link and have you URL ended up in someone else link page. If your website already has link pages, do not just remove them yet unless all these links are totally unrelated to your website theme. What you can do is to add value to these pages. <ul> <li>Add more useful information beside just links. Write a short description on the web page that you link to.</li> <li>Categorize and group links of similar theme.</li> <li>You can pull and display RSS contents related to theme of the links to make the page content rich.</li> <li>The link page should be relevant and important enough to be linked directly from the homepage and not buried 3 or 4 level deep.</li> </ul> Forget Template-base Websites <blockquote>“template-base websites may not ranked well because they appear alike to the crawlers…” – Tim Mayer(Yahoo) and Matt Cutts(Google)</blockquote> I am sure both of these experts are talking about Adsense optimized template and not Joomla or WordPress templates. So Yahoo and Google know about Adsense templates. Then there is no point spending hundred of dollars buying templates from Joel Comm since the search engine can recognize the and marked them as “search engine trash“. As for the important points, at the top of my list is: Stop Using Javascript Menu! I believe that all webmasters and web designers MUST NOT use Javascript menu. Not only does it obstruct efficient spidering for your website by the search engine robots, it can be irritating to your users if the menu was not designed and positioned properly. If websites that have hundred of thousands of pages, such as eBay.com and CNN.com, do not use javascript menu, why should you? Each Page of Your Site is an Entry Point It is very important that each of your internal pages focus on just one topic and keep it between 400 and 800 words. If you have enough material to write more than 800 words, then you should split the article into 2 and target one more keyword. When you optimize each of your internal pages in this way, you stand a good chance to be ranked well in the search engines for the keywords and each page becomes an entry point to your website. So, instead of just having people coming to your website via your homepage, you now have multiple entry points to your website hence increasing targeted traffic and revenue. </article> <article> <h1>Update on Singapore SEO Expert ranking</h1> TIMMGuru — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 04:04:00 +0000 It has been a couple months since I started the experiment on the keyphrase Singapore SEO Expert. Here’s an update on what happened so far. Go <a href="http://www.timmguru.com/2006/01/number-1-singapore-seo-expert-ranked.html">here</a> to my previous post. This website is ranked number 1 on Yahoo and MSN Search for the above phrase and also for SEO Expert Singapore. Even the keyword “Singapore SEO” is moderately competitive. You can get it on the first page using Adwords for about 20 cents. No wonder I could get into the first page listing on Yahoo and MSN. The challenge now is, of course, get into Google without paying a cent. The problem with Google is, unless the website has a high PR7 and above, it is unlikely to be listed for a moderately competitive keyword such as “SEO in Singapore” within a couple of weeks. So it would take months before this website is going to appear in the top 30 listing in Google search results. SEO is still in its Infancy in Singapore Honestly, there isn’t a whole lot of traffic searching for these SEO related terms in Singapore. Reason being few people are aware of SEO or search engine optimization. Basically, people who put up company websites believe that “my corporate website is up, is for my customers to visit”. Unfortunately, since you are not even indexed by the search engines, new customers will never find you – you are left with your existing customers and your competitors. And if you competitor were tech savvy enough, he will get all the great ideas on your $20,000 website and implement them on his website. With just basic search engine marketing knowledge, his website may be ranked favourably for some good keywords in that industry. All because your web designer is not aware that he can learn basic SEO skills from Google, Yahoo or even <a href="http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_REF_GuidelinesforOptimizingSite.htm">MSN’s Guideline for Webmaster</a>. The Google Phenomenon and SEO Since Google became a multi billions company, more and more people in Singapore switch from using Yahoo to Google. And we can see there is an increased interest to use search engine marketing to promote traditional business – slowly but surely. More people are asking “Why my website not in Google?” And more companies are allocating budget for web promotion. So this new industry will grow in Singapore and fees for SEO/SEM project will start to fall as more SEO companies set up in Singapore. The Time Will Come It is a matter of time before SEO/SEM becomes part and parcel of every company online marketing strategy. So there is no harm to be one of the first web pages to be discussing Singapore SEO. </article> </main></body></html>