As an SEO practitioner, I read with interest the front page article on Today newspaper (Friday, 18 Jan 2008) about the Search Engine Competition – Star Challenge 2008.

• Wanted: The ultimate search engine
• Reward: US$100,000
• A*Star seeks to emulate Google, Yahoo

First of all, let me make it very clear that I think what A*Star is doing is good for Singapore. I want to support such an initiative and that’s the reason why I am writing about it. I believe the Star Challenge 2008 is not about building the ultimate search engine. The aim behind this search engine competition is marketing-driven – to be visible on the world stage so that search engine technology experts and researchers will take note of this small little island, Singapore, and probably come here to work at Fusionpolis.

Star Challenge 2008: A Cheapskate Marketing Campaign?

Star Challenge. Is this the same as President Star Challenge or something to do with the Star Awards by Mediacorp, isn’t it? Huh! Maybe Zoe and Fann can now contest again?!

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I was angry, very angry when my ex-colleague asked me to take a look at his revamped website(www.ottegroup.com) done by some Flash web designers in Singapore.

Here’s snippets of what he said to me:

“I have finally received my new web pages but feel that it is really a bad choice with the web designer. He is using Flash and I cannot refer to any link or pages.”

“It looks good but not very functional.”

“Can you help me take a look and see how bad is the website?”

So, I looked at his website and got angry because it was beyond bad.

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I thought I was overly harsh when I commented that the rollover navigation box was a stupid idea. However, I am not alone using the “stupid” word.

Jakob Nielsen, the web usability expert, commented in the special report published at ZDNet that “Web sites need SEO consultants to save themselves from their own stupidities”.

After 10 years of telling people what not to do with their web sites, Jakob is still facing an uphill task. Most web site owners don’t listen.

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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.

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This is probably the last post for 2006. Also, the last time I use Blogger to publish to this blog.

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