What an audacious title! Is this an April Fools’ joke. The journalist reported that the newly launched map site, OneMap is “Singapore’s own version of Google Maps”.

First Impression of OneMap Singapore

The map is very high resolution and detailed. It is better than www.map.gov.sg which is now redirecting to www.onemap.sg.

In terms of resolution and information details, Google Maps really “got-no-fight”. Really impressed with what the Singapore government can do. I think I will start using OneMap to find accurate location of places and bus stop information but I am not about to abandon Google Maps yet. Google Maps still load up so much faster. And I am so used to using Google Maps – be it on the PC or iPhone.

OneMap Singapore may have very detailed information but not the latest. I could not find Parco Marina Bay at the time of writing.

OneMap SLA is Slower

With OneMap Singapore, there is still a lot more getting used to and if people don’t use it often then they won’t use it at all. I really think beside the detailed information on OneMap, SLA should also have to make it work faster. Imagine the agonizing snail pace if I were to access OneMap SLA with a cheap netbook connected to the free Wireless@SG.

Has the government invested in a technology that requires the general public to use fast computers and high-speed broadband? Hopefully, the slow loading webpage will not turn it into a white elephant.

Also, there is another “small” problem and I think it’s the common canonical URL issue. If you type in just http://onemap.sg you will get an error in Internet Explorer. I got similar error when I used Safari and Chrome too.

I think many people will just enter “onemap.sg” in the browser address bar. Otherwise, they will be using the search box to type in one map or onemap singapore or even onemap.com which will not yield any result related to the SLA’s site.

So do you think we can “Forget Google” and use OneMap Singapore instead?

However, ready-made web design templates are not poor quality works. And, there is nothing wrong with using web design templates to build your new websites. You just need to customize it to suit your taste or corporate identity.

In fact, I find myself using web design templates from TemplateWorld.com more often lately. It is definitely cheaper than hiring a web designer.

Reduce Cost, Save Time and Increase Productivity

Usually, it will take between 1 to 2 weeks to get the web design and layout ready. With ready-made web design templates and armed with some basic Photoshop skills, I am able to customize a template to my expectation within 3 days. The time saved for the design stage can be spent on content creation and search engine optimization. Consequently, the cost of the website development project is further reduced.

If you have not used a web design template before, go try it now. Wordpress templates start from as little as US$40 at TemplateMonster.com.

And if you have to create new websites every month, you may want to subscribe to TemplateWorld.com for US$49.95 with 6 months access to over 15,000 templates.

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

The first expenses you should examine are the campaign costs. You should have separate campaigns targeting your Google search ads and your content network ads. If you have this, you will be able to manage budgeting and adjust ad and keyword bids for each of your networks separately. In addition, for your content campaigns, using category and site exclusions to preserve your click dollars is highly recommended. This will prevent your ads from showing up on unrelated websites.

The next thing to do is to determine your most successful keywords and then redo bids if necessary. Additionally, for your existing keywords you can also add distinctive query match types, particularly for keywords that are expensive or have high CPAs (costs per action). This will let you set individual bids for each different match type.

You should also look at your keywords’ Quality Scores. Any keywords you find with four or less for the Quality Scores and have zero conversions should be put on hold. The Quality Score will affect the keyword’s CPC (cost per click) and bid estimate for the first page. It will also have an effect on the ranking of your ad and whether or not the keyword is eligible for entrance into the ad auction.

However, you may find that you’re working with thousands of keywords. This could even be hundreds of thousands of different terms. In this case, you will require at least partial automation to assist you in managing and controlling the expenses of the many long-tail keywords you may have. Below are numerous bid management tools to help you succeed in doing this.

Acquisio Search

The Acquisio SEARCH platform includes a effective campaign and bid control module based on rules. Among many other functions, the tool reveals to you which keywords will need to be paused. It also sends you an email when your keyword terms have insufficient Quality Scores. In addition, it lets you determine the best CPCs.

Clickable

Clickable ActEngine examines your PPC campaign and will automatically come up with recommendations for the best performance, specifically, it will propose raising your bids on the most successful keyword terms, and decreasing bids of your worst performing keywords. It can also alert you of keywords that gone below the original first page estimations.

Podium adCore

This is an algorithm for bid management that can alter bids at both the ad groud and keyword levels. It can also assist in testing various ad creatives. It also has a keyword cleanup option for eliminating poor keywords.

DoubleClick DART Search

This automated tool for bid management, which is part of DART Search, is able to bid on the keywords you want as many as 12 times daily. This lets you come up with a strategy for bidding by picking two rules you would like to apply in a specific order. The bid rules for this includes ROI and those based on position.

Omniture SearchCenter

The Search Center is a portion of the Online Omniture Marketing Suite for applications. This bid engine is automated and the presents different tactics for bid management. This includes both portfolio and rules-based tactics.

Even if you are using automated tools, you should still practice regularly scheduled manual management of your campaign expenses. The above described methods should assist you in keeping all your PPC costs in line.

About the author:
Michael Ramirez is a freelance web consultant living in Montreal. He can be reached at mikejoeramirez@gmail.com

Here’s what I’ve found…

Hosted SEO Software for US$79/month or more

At the high-end, there are SEOmoz which will cost you US$79 per month and KeywordSpy for US$89.95 per month.

I tested the trial version of both services and I think they did a great job. However, at those prices, I feel that they are for the professional/company users and not many individual SEO practitioners could afford the monthly subscription fees.

SheerSEO.com: Free SEO Software for 90 Days

Recently, I discovered an affordable SEO software, SheerSEO.com, which offers you 90 days free trial. No, you don’t have to pay a cent or reveal your credit card number to use it for the next 90 days.

You can select the countries to localize your SEO report. Yes, there is the option for Singapore and a host of other countries.

To me, localized results are very important and I need information not just from the .com search engines but also the .com.sg search engines because Singapore is where my targeted visitors reside.

Professional SEO Software for $10/month

And after the 90 days free trial, you pay only US$10 per month to continue using it. I think it is well worth the money. You get professional SEO reporting and don’t have to worry about your IP being banned by the search engines for making excessive queries.

SheerSEO is probably the most cost-effective SEO software for Mac or Linux or Windows machines. Unlike many desk-top SEO software which run on Windows only, you now can access the SEO reports from anywhere with a web browser using any operating system.

To find out more about SheerSEO features, visit this link now:

www.sheerseo.com/seo-software/overview.html

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.

Usually, my blog gets traffic for the IT Show, PC Show, COMEX and SITEX about 3 to 4 weeks prior to the events. However, for this coming COMEX 2009 show, the visitor numbers are already increasing steadily since early this month.

What Keywords to Optimize?

The keyword to optimize for is quite obvious, isn’t it?

One should optimize for COMEX, right?

Wrong!

From my keyword research, the top 2 most popular search terms among people who are looking for information on COMEX are:

• comex singapore
• comex singapore 2009

If you are trying to drive traffic to your website for COMEX related search terms, you may also want to optimize for comex 2009 jobs. Usually, there are many young people looking for temp jobs at these consumer electronic fairs. And this traffic comes earlier than those looking for a bargain buy.

Looking for Temp Jobs at the COMEX 2009?

In fact, now is the time to advertise to hire your COMEX promoters.

Hardwarezone.com and VR_Zone.com are 2 of the most popular forums where young people go look for promoter jobs at these mega consumer electronics shows. You can post your temp jobs wanted ad these forums for free.

Will COMEX 2009 be the Biggest Ever?

With all these early traffic, does it mean COMEX 2009 is going to be the biggest ever in terms of sale volume? Now that we are technically out of recession, I hope not only Singaporeans swamp to the COMEX Show to hunt for bargain buy but also tourists from the region will come and shop at the COMEX 2009 from 10 to 13 September 2009, Suntec City, Singapore.

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.

It’s been 2 years since I started using VPS hosting and I confirmed it’s not a good idea to use cheap VPS hosting at rock bottom price. Since May 2007, I’ve tested more than 7 VPS hosting companies and the worst was that cheap VPS hosting in Singapore.

VPS Hosting vs Reseller Hosting

Why use VPS hosting when reseller hosting is easier to manage and cheaper? Well, I have listed the following advantages to let you decided which hosting is suitable to your need and budget.

Advantages of using VPS Hosting

• High cost. Starts from US$19.95 per month
• Secure, stable and more reliable
• Ideal for dynamic websites which require database
• Root access. It’s just like having your own server.

Advantages of Reseller Hosting

• Low cost. Starts from US$6.95 per month
• Perfect for static websites

Static HTML Websites Are Dying

Generally, you can have tons of domains on reseller hosting plan if you do not have website that are dynamic and require MySQL database e.g. WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. However, not many people are building websites with static HTML nowadays unless you are a 1-page sales letter Internet marketer.

If you still insist on using reseller hosting because of the lower price point then I’ll recommend you to check out Hostgator. I don’t use Hostgator reseller hosting personally but I have several friends who are satisfied with the service level so far.

My Very Own VPS Hosting Comparison

After using more than 7 web hosting companies which specialized in VPS hosting over the past 2 years and read hundred of VPS hosting reviews on blogs and forums, I guess I am ready to offer you my recommendation.

More importantly, I have been using this VPS hosting service for several months now. So far, no complaint. I really appreciate the ultra fast response to support ticket and the recent free upgrade to double the RAM to 768MB and bandwidth to 1000GB per month.

Before I tell you who is this preferred web host, let’s take a look at my criteria when selecting a VPS web hosting company:

1. Gauranteed RAM: 512MB or more
2. Price per month: US$50 or less
3. Hard disk space: 20GB or more
4. Bandwidth: 500GB or more
5. OS: Linux/Centos 5.x
6. Fully managed
7. Control panel: CPanel/WHM

Initially I also wanted the server to be based in Singapore but it was impossible to find one that offered 512MB for less than US$50, there is really no cheap VPS hosting in Singapore at all. So I have to make do with the slow connection speed and used VPS hosting based in the USA.

Currently, the US-based server is consistently giving me transfer rate at 2500kbps download and 380kbps upload. And here’s the result of the most recent speed test I did on the server: 3195/755 kbps.

VPS Speed Test – East Coast Data Center

The connection speed may not be as fast as compared with a Singapore-based VPS hosting, but I rather have 100% uptime than intermittent downtime at 10Mbps/800kbps. I believe most users of my website are used to accessing websites which are based in the USA.

VPS Speed Test – West Coast Data Center

For Singapore and other part of Asia Pacific, the new data center situated at LA offers speedier access.

If You were to Ask for my VPS Hosting Recommendation

At US$49 per month, you can’t go wrong with Servint VPS Hosting.

Referral link: www.servint.net/index.php?refid=DFC895962863

It has been about 9 months since I wrote that article on Samsung Omnia at my Wassup blog. It was selected and showcased in the Samsung Omnia contest. However, it was not good enough to win the Omnia phone prize. But good enough for me to use the analytics to study the search trends on Omnia related search terms.

Google Trends on Samsung Omnia

The search trends start in June 2008 and Singapore is the number 1 region where you got the most people search for “omnia” and “samsung omnia” related phrases. The rest of the top 10 are European countries (except for South African). No USA? Maybe Samsung did not launch the phone in the USA or used a different name.

Competing against iPhone and no one searched for “omnia” in the USA?!

Google Analytics on Samsung Omnia

However, my Google Analytics data on my Wassup blog tells a different story.

People in Singapore are losing interest in the Omnia after about 2 months! The amount of searches peaked in mid-August.

Meanwhile, as Samsung launched the Omnia in the rest of world, the searches outside Singapore increased. In fact, I am getting about the same number of searches from Singapore and USA recently.

It is apparent that the Omnia is losing its appeal and coming the end of its product cycle. So, what’s next?

Samsung Omnia HD

I guess the Omnia has been a success for Samsung, otherwise there won’t be a sequel to the 9 months old Omnia original… the new OMNIAHD with HD video recording at 720p – Samsung Omnia HD.

Suddenly, I have the feeling that Samsung has been spying on my Omnia blog comments. The FAQs from Omnia owners were mainly on the video function or rather malfunction. Apparently, many people bought the Omnia because of the video – to watch video or to record video. The new Omnia HD being an amazing video camera 3G phone will appeal to these video loving consumers.

Yes. I should be doing a write-up on Omnia HD and collect more Google Trends data. Hopefully, the Omnia HD will be available in Singapore soon.