But, I think the journalist mention of “easy-to-locate” is not referring to the search box you see at ST701 homepage.

I guess the the “easy-to-locate” search box is in the new layout of these inner pages: jobs.st701.com, cars.st701.com, property.st701.com and shops.st701.com.

If you examine these pages, you’ll see there are TWO search boxes! And can be confusing to the users!

The question on my mind as an user is “Which one should I used?”

The smaller search box at the top is redundant, they should remove it to reduce the clutter and avoid the possible confusion to the users.

ST701 Better Web Usability

As an online classified portal, the new ST701 homepage is probably the most usable than ever before.

Honestly, I think Web usability has improved. It is good to know that the Web development team behind ST701 online classifieds is working hard (also smart) to improve the user’s experience.

ST701 More Search Engine Friendly

I am really surprised to see that the Web developers actually added keyword-rich phrases to the img alt tags to describe the images. I reckoned they are learning search engine optimization, albeit the expensive way and becoming more SEO-savvy.

The Use of IMG ALT Tag

Go visit ST701.com now to take a look at the new layout and take note of the 4 “Cats”. Here, I will show how you can use images and the corresponding IMG ALT tags to make your Web page more SEO-friendly.

If you are using Internet Explorer, you can see “Singapore Jobs“, “Singapore Cars“, “Singapore Property” and “Singapore Classifeds” when you mouse over the respective “Cat” images.

Here’s a short video to illustrate the use of IMG ALT tag in your Web pages to make it more SEO friendly.

Word of caution: Do Not abuse the img alt tag.

Make sure you Do Not use repeatedly the same keyword phrase for every image in your Web page.

Remember, describe your images with the img alt tag accurately. If it is a picture of a book, don’t say it’s a boat.

However, does the new menu improve usability and make it more search engine friendly. You be the judge.

For those who missed that difficult-to-use image menu, go check out this video:

Recently, probably early last month, the rollover Javascript was replaced by image map. And a couple of weeks ago the image map was replaced by a Flash animation with the Santa theme.

And, according to my figures there was at least 3 times increase in the traffic to the ST701 comparing Oct vs Sep.

The chart above shows the increase in traffic over the past 3 months for the keyword st701. The data is collected from a site which is ranked in the top 5 for that keyword in www.google.com.sg.

Take note that 80% of the listing in the top 10 of Google search results are from ST701.com. If the 5th ranking site got a 3 times increase in traffic, I can safely guess that the top 4 sites will get a lot more.

Using Other People Marketing Campaign to Make Money

I love leverage.

As you can see, I am leveraging SPH resources to get traffic to my site. 600 visitors are nothing to ST701, but to my site it is A Lot Of Traffic for a page in a month. And I monetize this traffic, you guess it, with Google Ads.

Thank you SPH!

You Can Get Top Listing in Google too!

Do you have a blog? Go write some posts on ST701. Make sure you use ST701 in the title of the post and couple more times in the content. Better still, create a new category and name it ST701.

Having difficulty to start writing about ST701?

Here’s a hint: try re-telling this story in your blog. Describe how a listing in Singapore Directory got listed in Google for the keyword ST701 and siphoned off some good juicy search engine traffic. Since you are at it, please link to the ST701 listing in Singapore directory – http://www.singaporedirectory.org/detail/link-24.html and leave a comment below.

As most people in Singapore know, ST701 was originally the online version of CATS job listing. Now, it has more than just job listing – it’s like a classified ads.

Here’s a screenshot of the ST701 web site back in April 2006.

ST701 Navigation Sucks

And you know what? I think the new web site user-interface sucks big time!

The roll-over square navigation box on the right hand side of the page is a stupid idea. For a normal person which moves the mouse from left to right or right to left, it would be impossible for you select the Car Classified! Here, you must move your mouse from the top-down to select the Cars section.

My Question to ST701 is this:

“Why would you want to make it difficult for your visitors to navigate to Cars Classified?”

Go try it yourself and be the judge.