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.

In-House SEO Training Workshops

Back in December 2006, I was engaged by Royal Plaza on Scotts to conduct a 2-day SEO Workshop. We had about 10 participants: the CFO, Revenue Director, Revenue Manager and marketing executives. They wanted to understand how search engine optimization and search marketing could help them to increase visitors to their Web site and to ensure that their Web designers and developers were doing the right things.

Here’s some of the photos taken during the workshop on 10 Dec 2006.

At that time, Royal Plaza on Scotts was one of the first independent hotel, maybe even the first hotel in Singapore, to have engaged a professional SEO consultant to train their management and marketing staff in search engine optimization and search marketing.

Congratulation to Royal Plaza on Scotts

It is no wonder that this Singapore hotel wins the silver in the Adrian Awards organised by the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International(HSMAI). As an independent hotel, I think it is quite a big deal to win such an international award among top hotels from around the world.

Well done and congratulation to the management at Royal Plaza at Scotts.

Btw, the buffet at the Royal Plaza at Scotts’ Carousel is one of the best in Singapore.

I highly recommend it if you are looking for place to enjoy your lunch/dinner or entertain your clients in Orchard area. Make sure you book in advance because it is usually full-house during lunch.

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.

Here’s how you can  get started with MySpace Social Networking:

1. Register an account with MySpace.com

2. Decide your areas of interest. In my case, it’s Digital Camera Photography.

3. Search for friends or people you’d met before at MySpace.com and add them as friends.

4. Start posting to your personal MySpace blog.

5. Search for people with the same interest, e.g. photography, and add them as friends. I prefer to add friends who are in the same geographical region e.g. Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Hong Kong and etc.

6. Add comment to blog posts that you find interesting and add the authors as friends.

7. Repeat Steps 3 to 6.

In a few days, my friends network started to grow. Pretty cool huh?

In fact the top positions are occupied by many Internet marketers such as Andy Jenkins of Yahoo Store Builder, Mike Filsaime, Russell Brunson, Jonathon Leger and others who I’ve not heard about.

I think it will be a challenge to be ranked in the top 10 for this search phrase – coolest guy on the planet – since some of these guys are real SEO experts and not just Internet marketers.

The Number 1 Coolest Guy in Google is Not in Yahoo

You know what? Brad Fallon may be the coolest guy ranked by Google but he is not found in the top 30 in Yahoo search for the “coolest guy on the planet“. Well, it just proved that Google and Yahoo have different ranking algorithm. Apparently, Yahoo placed more emphasis on the domain name and title tag for the keywords.

Russell Brunson seems to be the real cool SEO guy. He is in No. 2 in Yahoo and No. 3 on Google.

Coolest Guy On The Planet SEO Contest

This will be fun. To create a web page and target for this coolest guy search phrase. Drop me a comment if you are interested to compete for this phrase. I already have some ideas what to do and try going for these terms: coolest; guy and planet.

So a fresh press release is way overdue. And here’s the first one for the year 2007.

The first and only “Diamond Contours Biomesosculpture” system available in Singapore was announced earlier today by Simply Aesthetic Rejuvenation and Contouring Clinic.

Both Google News and Yahoo News picked up the press release within minutes when it was officially publicized on Apr 13, 2007 EST about 8 hours ago.

I think Dr Cheng has done a good job with the very informative press release and at the same time introduced the range of aesthetic medicine treatment available at her Simply Aesthetic Clinic. Beside the clinic, Dr Cheng have a spa just next door, MediSpa which offers facial treatment, massage services and contouring therapy.

Here’s a screen shot of the press release Diamond Contours Biomesosculpture System.

Click www.prweb.com/releases/2007/04/prweb518534.htm

• Kelvin Hui helped Joel Comm to outrank Google for the keyword – adsense
• In 2006, Yahoo Inc partnered with Kelvin Hui’s FreindEarth.com
• Kelvin Hui first Clickbank pay cheque in 2001 was more than $900
• Kelvin Hui websites generated more than $100,000/mth income with Adsense

If you want a review on the Traffic Manuscript ebook, visit Gobala Krishnan blog. 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 Traffic Manuscript (aff. link) to get the ebook now.

Is there a Ten Commandments for Web Startups?

Since I specialize in SEO business, my business model and 10 commandments may not be applicable to most people who intend to start a web business.

So, I started googling for the tips and guide on starting a successful business online.

With the information I gathered, I discovered that there were certain things in common with all the successful online business and the things that these business owners had done.

At the top of my web startups’ Should-DO list are:

1. Stay focused, stay narrow
2. Know your customers
3. Target the Long Tail

You will find a more comprehensive list of what you need to do to start online business at the Ten Rules for Web Startups by Evan Williams, former CEO of Odeo and co-founder of Blogger.

#1: Be Narrow
#2: Be Different
#3: Be Casual
#4: Be Picky
#5: Be User-Centric
#6: Be Self-Centered
#7: Be Greedy
#8: Be Tiny
#9: Be Agile
#10: Be Balanced
#11 (bonus!): Be Wary
Overgeneralized lists of business “rules” are not to be taken too literally. There are exceptions to everything.

He didn’t agree initially.

So I asked him if he’d built his list using any SEO related techniques i.e. his subscribers found him through the search engines’ organic listing. He didn’t answer. He believes posting lots of articles on his website is one of SEO practice. And he further explained that his articles bring him traffic and generate revenue with Adsense. Then he asked: “Are you trying to sell me something?”

Am I trying to sell him something? Of course not. It would be wrong to sell him my SEO workshop program if he has no need for it – at least not for the website which he makes money selling others’ ebooks and info-products. He does not need SEO because he has a sizeable emails list where he sells useful ebooks to his subscribers.

However, he would need SEO when he moves from email marketing or affiliate marketing or JV to expand his customers base and revenue. Eventually, when he find his niche, he will need SEO to help him sell to his niche through the search engines. SEO can help you to target your niche, position your product/service and convert sales.

So when I said “Internet Marketers do not need SEO”, I means people who peddle ebooks, softwares and info-products such as CDs and DVDs on making money on the Internet do not need SEO.

P.S. To many people Internet marketing means affiliate marketing using mass emailing. So from now on, I will use e-marketing (a subset of e-commerce) to mean marketing on the Internet.

What an Internet marketer needs is
1. a hypnotic sales letter
2. an autoresponder
3. a huge mailing list

Internet marketers in today’s cyberspace are no more than the olden days direct mailing companies. Usually, these online marketers are excellent salesmen themselves or they are very good writer – sales letter writer trained in the art of manipulating your emotional.

Getting high ranking in the search engines will be a bonus to them. Because, these online sales man cannot wait 3 to 6 months from the time he launched the product to the time when he actually made a sale!

You can blame it on the search engine companies or you can argue that if not for some unscrupulous Internet marketers who abused of the system. Anyway, they will tell you not to worry about it and SEO is not necessary – their online marketing strategies is to build a huge email list.

But, isn’t the search engines one of the best avenue to get leads and build a responsive email list!

P.S. If you are looking to build a list using an established autoresponder service, here’s one that will help you build a subscriber list really fast. Find out more Click Here.