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.

Measuring Your Website Worth Based on Visitors and CPC

Here’s a formula based on what I called the “Spending Model” as opposed to the popular “Earning Model”.

If the value of your website is a function of unique visitors and how much PPC advertisers are paying for each visitor then here’s how you can calculate the worth of your niche website using this formula:

Number unique visitors per month x 12 x average CPC x 3 = $$$

For example, if your site attracted 10,000 unique visitors per month, the average CPC for the niche is 10 cents then your site is worth…

10,000 x 12 x $0.10 x 3 = $36,000

Measuring Your Website Worth Based on AdSense Revenue

Another way to measure how much your site is worth is to use the Earning Model. You simply multiply your past 12 months earning of your website by a factor of 3.

For example, if your AdSense site earned $200 per month then it is worth…

$200 x 12 x 3 = $7,200

As the website owner, you will take whichever is higher to price your website. On the other hand, if you are the buyer then you will use the lower one.

So What is the Fair Market Value of My Website

I would think the fair market value lies between the prices calculated by each of the two methods above.

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

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.

CMS is Content Management System. If you have not heard about it, then it’s time.

I think one of the biggest advantage of using a CMS is the ease of updating your pages and creating new one.

So I am already using a CMS if you consider WordPress to be one. However, I mean CMS CMS e.g. Drupal or Joomla.

Joomla

I am familiar with Joomla – not as a developer but an user.

One of my business partner build Web sites with Joomla and he has a couple of programmers doing just that.

My brother, who is a product designer turned Web designer, specialized in managing Web development team using Joomla with one of the bigger Web design and development company in Singapore. So I understand from him the practical challenges of building large portals with Joomla engine.

However, personally I have not use Joomla to publish any site because I find then technically challenging.

I will need a developer to help me customize the CMS so that I can focus on the content building, usability and SEO. And if I do get a good programmer to take care of the technical stuff, I will want to try out Drupal.

New Version Drupal 6.0

I want to use Drupal to build a recipes site, a business directory and a Web marketing discussion forum using Drupal. And the time can’t be better with new release of Drupal 6.0.

There are some nice new features in Drupal 6.0:

1. Quicker and easier set up
2. Drag-and-drop admin
3. Multi-lingua support

I believe the biggest advantage that Drupal has over it’s competitor is it’s extensibility. You can do a lot of customization with modules. And with the right modules, I will be able to do all those 3 very different type of Web sites.

Ok, I will not bore you with the features list.

You can find out more from the video on Implementing Drupal:

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.

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.

The Singapore web designer was so bad that I had to write this post to warn others from falling victim to such a bunch of sneaky & unethical Flash web designers.

Here’s a screen shot of the homepage of my ex-colleague’s web site:

I think, aesthetically, it looks good. However, look can be deceiving!

When I studied the HTML source of the web site, I discovered that it was a SEO nightmare.

Anyway, I usually give the web designers the benefits of doubt when it comes to SEO. And I thought, in this case, the web designer may be just ignorant of SEO. But, on further investigation, I realized that I was so wrong.

Web Designer Hijacked Client’s Site

The web designers at The Pinnacles Interactive – www.thepinnacles.com – did something really sneaky to my ex-colleague’s homepage. Instead of adding text about Ottegroup.com and the services it offers, they wrote copy to advertise and promote The Pinnacles Interactive web design services and added a link to their other website:

<a href="http://www.ochrepictures.com">Ochre Pictures Singapore - Media Production</a>

Here’s a screen shot of the HTML source of Ottegroup.com:

So, the web designer actually knew SEO and the importance of anchor text link (which in this case, his targeted keywords would be media production). It is quite apparent that the web designer at The Pinnacles Interactive has hijacked their client(my ex-colleague) web page for their own benefits.

Unethical Practice by The Pinnacle Interactive, Singapore

It was bad enough to use the client’s web page to promote own web design business; it would be totally and outright unethical for the web designer to mask all his client’s links using frame and only place their own link in the body of the client’s homepage for the search engine robots.

Are Singapore Web Designers All So Bad?

Such unethical practice will tarnish other legitimate Singapore web designers and affect reputation of the entire Web design industry in Singapore. The Pinnacles Interactive may be just one of the many black sheep.

If you have encountered with such unethical web designers in Singapore, please make a comment here so that unsuspecting Web site owners may be warned.

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.

Just Follow SEO Guidelines – It’s That Simple

And I agree with Jakob that “the basics of search engine optimization are fairly simple and ought to be to part of the core competency of anybody who makes a living in Web design, Internet marketing, or writing for the Web”.

However, until that happens, 99% of all web site owners are clueless about SEO, PPC, web page copy-writing, web usability, backlinks, link baits, web analytics and etc.

So you will still need to hire SEO consultants to get your web site right. And, probably more, also a couple of experts in PPC and web usability will really get your web site to the mark.

Or, you can enroll to attend the SEO Workshop and learn to DIY SEO.

To learn more about web usability, visit Jakob Nielsen’s Website: UseIt.com or get this highly recommended book by Steve Krug, “Don’t Make Me Think“.

You’ll see that I’ve rounded the corners – no more sharp corner and a step closer to Web 2.0 design!

These are some of the changes:

• Main column on the right and sidebar on the left
• Monthly archive on main page
• Comment on individual post page
• Added rel=”nofollow” to some of the external links

However, the most important factor in this design is to make the the main page, the individual post pages and the archive pages as SEO friendly as possible. I can probably showcase this design as an example of SEO Web Design.

In fact, this new design and layout is to prepare for a port of this blog to WordPress. So far, I have published more than 120 posts. It can be painfully slow to re-publish the entire blogsite when I update the blogger template.

It will be another 2 weeks before I have the time to start playing with WordPress and customise the template. I can see that it will take several sleepless nights to achieve the effect and result I desire!