EMD

Exact match domain

Well, EMD is not the typo error for EDM which means “electronic direct mail” or “electronic direct mailer” and email marketing in layman’s terms.

EMD means Exact Match Domain

EMD is for a SEO technique and many people believe that you can get higher ranking in Google with EMD. However, EMD is not a new idea or technique.

The late Corey Rudl used it in his Internet Marketing Course and Dr Ken Envoy of Sitesell.com recommended it in his course. So it is not a surprise that many internet marketers have snapped up most if not all of the .com EMD for popular search terms.

How to Look for Profitable EMD

You will need a keyword research tool. A popular keyword tool is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. If you are looking for keywords related to your interest or hobby e.g. photography, in particular some vintage rangefinder cameras, then you can enter a keyword into Google search box and see what search phrases are suggested by Google. And you have “vintage rangefinder cameras” there. So the EMD for you could be www.vintage-rangefinder-cameras.com!

If the .com version of the domain you wanted to rgister is not available, then you may consider to register an .org or .net. Personally, I prefer .org domain for EMD.

Read at his Facebook wall to find out the reply.

What Makes the Best Search Team

Teamwork.

It will help if you have a star or two in your team. But most importantly, it is the company culture and teamwork that matter. Search marketing and SEO can no longer be performed by a lone person. It requires both creative talents and analytical thinking. Also the process can be painfully tedious.

Technical Skills.

You will need to hire people who are not only the best in the technical expertise but able to work as a team to offer the most effective solution to the clients.

Experience.

An experienced team in both marketing and IT will increase your effectiveness and offer you the best result. The search marketing is a very young industry and whichever team with the most experience will also be the most valuable to the clients. Because we know a mistake can be very costly.

I guess the boss of Big Advertising must have a team with the above qualities in order to make such a claim… arguably the best search team in the region.

Link Building: Tested and Proven SEO Technique

This is an SEO technique that has been proven to work for a blog which is now ranked number 2 for the keyword blog marketing.

Link building is the most effective SEO technique to promote your web page visibility.

Link Building the Right Way

However, there is the right way to link building and there is the wrong way. The right way consists of methods “approved” by the search engines e.g. Google and Bing.

Here’s the 13 methods which have proven to work for Blogopreneur.

1. Comment on someone’s blog
2. Write an article – submit it to Hubpages.
3. Write another article – submit it to eZineArticles.com
4. Submit a press release.
5. Answer someone’s question in Yahoo! answers.
6. Email webmasters. Ask for a link.
7. Write something interesting on your site. Tweet the URL out to your friends.
8. Participate in forums – change your forum signature to include your link.
9. Submit your site to directories.
10. Guest blog for someone.
11. Get your site listed in one of your local club’s website
12. Submit a WordPress theme/plugin
13. Submit a YouTube video

Source: Link Building: The Key to Exploding Visibility

Anyway, inSing.com was not intended to be a search engine, unlike Rednano which original intention was to “supplant the big names of Google and Yahoo as the prime tool for sourcing local information”.

What Are People Searching at inSing.com

My guess is people are using inSing.com to search for lifestyle related topics e.g. food, restaurant and shopping. You can take a look at Alexa Site Info on inSing.com to find out what keywords bring traffic to inSing.com.

For my blog to get a referral from inSing.com, I postulated that inSing.com had to have lots of people visiting its voluminous pages in order to capture even 1 visitor trying to search for reebonz at inSing.com.

The point is… some people are using inSing.com as a search engine!

Because my blog ranked among the top few listings in Google, it is also being displayed in inSing.com search and in turn brings visitors to my site.

The second point is that a properly SEO‘ed web page gets traffic not only from Google search but also from portals like inSing.com which implemented enhanced by Google search results.

Why inSing.com Criticism?

From Alexa’s Site Info, you will see that one of the top 20 search terms to inSing.com was insing.com criticism!

It really puzzled me that people are searching for “insing.com criticism”.

Does anyone really cares if there were negative comments on inSing.com or is it that someone trying to monitor inSing.com online reputation?

So what’s your take on inSing.com search? Please leave your comment below.

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 <span style=”display:hidden”> 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 <body> 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.

If you are not convinced that SEO can influence Google’s ranking and your online reputation, go read this article to find out how “SEO experts can bend the truth”

You may need the help of these SEO experts to help you manage your digital reputation and to control the damage caused by some uninitiated advertising agent.

SEO for CEO

If you are the boss of the company (and I mean a really big company) or a government agency, are you not concerned about what is listed on the first page of Google search result for search terms related to your company name or product?

Here’s three of the examples which I’ve witnessed firsthand over the past year in Singapore… Samsung‘s Omnia Contest, A*Star‘s Star Challenge 2008 and NTU AdWords Fiasco.

Case 1: Samsung Omnia Contest

Can you imagine how you feel when you searched “samsung omnia contest” and see “Samsung Omnia Contest – Scam?” in the #1 position!

How will that #1 position affect potential customers of Samsung mobile phones?

It would be good if potential customers can hear from the contest organizer or Samsung regarding that “scam” blog post.

Whose responsibility? Samsung Singapore’s or the advertising agency’s?

Case 2: Star Challenge 2008

When you searched for “star challenge 2008″ on Google, you would see my earlier blog post on “Star Challenge 2008 Website Broken?” in the #4 position. I didn’t know it would end up there, oops… I just wanted to help.

This accidental first page ranking of my blog post makes me realize the importance to manage what people see in the first page of Google result for those keywords related to one’s reputation or brand.

Case 3: NTU AdWords Campaign Fiasco

Here’s another example of online advertising campaign went wrong:

Google SMU get NTU

And one of the comments was “Whoever did this for NTU should be sacked.”

Digital Reputation Management for Brick and Mortar Business

Even if your business do not have any online marketing campaign or advertise aggressively online, you still have to manage your online reputation.

Because you cannot control what people write in their blogs.

You may not even know you lost at least $3000 worth of business because someone talked about her excruciating encounter at her blog.

Don’t wait for negative publicity to surface on the Internet before you take action.

Because that can be too late and costly.

You have to set aside your company’s resource now for digital reputation management to prevent publicity catastrophe.

[Buy the Book]

SEO for the Rest of Us

[Updated 16 December 2008] Just came across this newly published blog article by Tony Hirst and realized that, in fact, even librarians need to understanding how search ranking works or risk innocent content being “associated with inappropriate material in a search engine results listing” unintentionally.

Visit my new hub now: http://hubpages.com/hub/Vivo-City-Singapore

Top Ranking in Google.com and Google.etc

Today, I discover that my Hubpages.com article: Vivo City Singapore is finally indexed by Google and ranked #16 for the search terms – vivo city and #9 for the search terms – vivo city singapore in Google.com.

Yes, it’s Google.com and not just Google.com.sg because I am targeting people living outside Singapore. I want it also to rank well in Google.com.au, Google.co.uk and Google.etc…

As for search.yahoo.com, the page is now ranked #5 for search terms – vivo city singapore.

The traffic to the page is definitely increasing.

How Do I Know?

You can find out all the vital traffic stats within your Hubpages.com
account. And it looks like this:

and the chart…

Creating Web articles with Hubpages.com is Easy

For the first time user, you will find the interface intuitive and can easily follow the step-by-step instructions.

Now, there are at least 3 revenue generating sources for your hub articles:

1. Google AdSense

2. eBay affiliate

3. Amazon affiliate

Hubpages.com make it easy for you to sign up with these affiliate networks and monetize the traffic when your visitors click at the
Google Ads or purchase some stuff at eBay and Amazon through the links in your hub.

You will need lots of traffic in order to make some money with these ads.

For beginners, you may want to try on various topics on niches that you are familiar with. Travel, shopping and food related topics warrant high traffic volume and are evergreen. You want your pages to make you money forever, don’t you?

If you are a fan of F1 racing, this is probably the best time write about what you know on Singapore F1.

Why Use Hubpages.com?

1. It’s free.

2. No need domain registration

3. No need Web hosting

4. Readily available traffic source – a high traffic social network

5. Better visibility in major search engines

You just need a computer with Internet connection and some good ideas for your story.

I was in a hurry when I wrote my first hub, Vivo City Singapore and I used about 90 words plus 2 pictures I found at Flickr and a video from Youtube. It took me less than 30 minutes and I actually enjoyed creating that page – it was quite fun doing it.

So, go create your first hub today at http://hubpages.com

More Hot Hubs

You can read more of my hot hubs at http://hubpages.com/author/hcshi/hot

Visit the URL above and join my fan club or request a hub from me.

Singapore Directory listing of SBS Transit is currently the Number 1.

Search Engine Result Listing: Google vs Yahoo

However, the same Singapore Directory listing was nowhere to be found in Yahoo search results. You can see that the algorithms used by Google and Yahoo are quite different.

Yahoo “correctly” ranked www.sbstransit.com.sg as No. 1. In this case, it seems that Yahoo search listing is more superior than Google’s.

The best judges are the users – you.

What are you looking for when you enter “singapore bus directory” into the query box?

Which set of results, Google top 10 listing or Yahoo top 10 listing, do you think provide the best answer to your search?

Please leave your comment in the box below.

Here’s some blog posts on Search Trend Optimization:

• www.blogopreneur.com/2007/03/13/search-trend-optimization
• www.andyhun.com/2007/08/search-trend-optimization-is-this-going.html
• www.achever.com/ecomm-meeting-1-sep-2007-search-trend-optimization.html

Recently, I optimized a relatively new blog (created on 17 Feb 2008) – http://wassup.myblog.sg, to test out the search trend optimization technique.

Case Study 1: Natas Travel Fair 2008

I first made a post related to Natas Fair on 23 Feb 2008. Then 3 days later, I made a very short post on the Natas Travel Fair 2008. Over the past 10 days, the new blog wassup.myblog.sg attracted nearly 400 visitors looking for information related to “natas”. All these visitors came through the search engine listing because of 2 short blog posts!

Traffic Sources Keywords Report by Google Analytics

If you have a travel related blog, go made a post on the next Natas later this year and see the increase in visitors to your Web site.

Case Study 2: Singapore IT Show 2008

The Singapore IT Show 2008 will start this Thursday, 6 March 2008. My blog post on the IT Show event was made yesterday, and it is now ranked among the top 10 for several “IT Show” related search terms.

Google SERP: IT Show 2008

Google SERP: IT Show 2008 Singapore

With good rankings for such targeted search terms, I am expecting a signification increase in the number of visitors to the blog over the next few days.

If you plan to visit the IT Show this week, I suggest that you blog it and see the result for yourself.

Please leave your comment below if you mentioned about the event in your blog.

The 2 days SEO Workshop covers beyond basic SEO guidelines and good practice. It is no longer good enough to be ranked top in search engines e.g. Google and Yahoo. The objectives of the SEO Workshop organized by Finggle includes driving targeted traffic and converting visitors to customers.

Watch the following videos and hear what the marketing professional and management consultant said about the SEO Workshop.

Mark Vozzo, Search Marketing Analyst, Fairfax -
the largest newspaper publisher in Australia

Kala Nehete learnt SEO to promote e-commerce site
and Spa facility to be set up in Bangalore, India

Small & Medium sized Companies are Turning to Search Marketing

Many Internet savvy business owners are turning to online marketing to generate leads. Search marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote products and services.

As far as marketing is concerned, I believe SEO skills should be core competence for marketing professionals. Web designers should not be allowed to come up with a dysfunctional or broken Web site.

Companies are Suffering from Dysfunctional Web Site

As we can see time and again, established companies(public-listed) and government agencies have Web sites that are not SEO-friendly and are not concerned with search engine marketing. Many of these sites have been around for a long time, even before Google was founded in 1998, and are regarded as authority sites. Their listings are guaranteed in the major search engines.

However, small and medium sized companies with newer Web sites have to struggle and complied with the rules set up by the search engines. Otherwise, they will not be included in the search engines’ database and can never be found by their potential customers in the cyberspace.

Three Possible Solutions to Effective Search Marketing

For companies which have crippled Web sites, you can either pay thousands of dollars to hire SEO consultants to fix your site or buy Sponsored Links from Google and Yahoo.

There is one more option, learn SEO and Search Marketing.

To summarise, the 3 possible solutions are:

1. Hire SEO Consultants to fix Web site

2. Pay Google and Yahoo for Sponsored Links

3. Learn SEO and Search Marketing

Go find out more about the SEO Training Courses at Finggle.