Difference in Search Ranking for SEO Experts in Google.com vs Google.com.sg

You will notice that these search results are taken from Google.com.sg and not Google.com. TIMMGuru.com is not ranked in the top 30 in Google.com for the search term seo expert! This shows that Google is serving search results based on the location of the searcher.

Does it mean Google.com will display results from US websites and Google.com.sg will display results from Singapore websites?

What are the factors that determine a web page is more suitable for Google.com.sg and not Google.com?

While I don’t have answer to the above questions, I believe TIMMGuru.com can get into the top 10 ranking for the keywords seo expert in the results of Google.com.sg and Yahoo Singapore.

All I have to do is to outrank some of the SEO experts in the top 10 ranking!

[Update Jun 26, 2007] I thought it will be necessary to optimize for search engine experts too. Unless the person is technically inclined and has been trying to improve search engine visibility or drive targeted traffic from search engines, she/he may not be familiar with SEO. So my potential visitors may just enter “search engine experts” instead.

From now on, I will be using the phrase search engine expert more often.

If you visit the above blog, you will probably be curious why only this page is PR5 and the main page is only PR4. Well, I have more backlinks to this particular pages than any other pages. One of these backlinks was promoted to PR5 and many others to PR4, so this was how this page got a PR5. Hopefully, it will survive the next pagerank update.

Meanwhile, let’s make full use of it. If you need a good quality PR5 backlink, I can help. Here’s the 5-step to Higer Pagerank:

1. Write a short post, at least 150 words and not more than 300 words about the page that you want me to point to.
2. Your short post must mention “free directory submission” or “submitting to free directory” e.g. I’ve also tried free directory submission to boost the link popularity of the website.
3. Email your writing to freedirectorysubmission at gmail dot com.
4. Wait for me to review your post and edit it before adding to the FreeDirectorySubmission blog. Once approved, I will inform you the URL of the blog post.
5. Blog about my FreeDirectorySubmission blog and link to it, I will appreciate a link to http://freedirectorysubmission.blogspot.com

It so simple. We help one another.

However, do you know how many backlinks you’ll need to score a PR1 for a brand new webpage?

Here’s a chart from www.checkpagerank.net/linkpack which gives you an idea the number and pagerank of the backlinks we should be going after.

For example, if you want your web page to score PR5, then you’ll need to get backlinks from at 19 other web pages that are already ranked PR5.

However, it is wise to have backlinks from web pages with different pagerank values and not just from the higher ones.

It is more for fun than anything else that he selected such a cool long tail keyword – not a competitive keyword indeed.

But what the heck, it’s still an SEO experiment and you have to get your optimization tactics right to be visible in the top 30.

If you can get a not-so-competitive keyword ranked in the top 10 on Google and Yahoo then you are on the right track. All you need to do for more competitive keywords is to repeat what you’ve done right and create more keyword optimized pages for the next 3 to 6 months.

This was what Andy has done. The domain name AmeliaHun.com was registered on Aug 22, 2006. He did not do anything until Nov 9, 2006 when he was in Kuala Lumpur to demonstrate how easily and quickly one can create a simple web page. Yes, he created that homepage in front of a live audience. So please do not expect a fanciful web page – there are only some text and a couple of pictures. However, he is pretty good at SEO and the resulting homepage is well optimized for the keywords: coolest baby on the planet.

When he asked me on Nov 12, 2006 to point a text link to his new website, I actually gave him 2 and not 1 text link. The first one is a link in the form a list item in a blog post about backlinks and the other one is embedded in the first paragraph of a blog post talking about the coolest baby at http://shihengcheong.com/blogs/2006/11/coolest-baby-on-planet.html.

Yesterday, Nov 21, 2006, I was told that AmeliaHun.com was ranked the 6th Coolest Baby on the Planet by Google.

That’s top 10 ranking in Google achieved in less than 10 days. Congratulation!

And, guess what happen today? My blog post about the coolest baby is ranked Number 1 for the search term Singapore’s coolest baby on Google.!

Latest Search Ranking Updates
Nov 24, 2006

• AmeliaHun.com is ranked NUMBER 1 and 2 in Google.
• AmeliaHun.com is ranked Number 3 in Live Search(MSN).
• This post put www.TIMMGuru.com into the 17th position in Yahoo.

Nov 29, 2006

• AmeliaHun.com maintains NUMBER 1 and 2 position in Google.
• AmeliaHun.com is ranked Number 1 in Live Search(MSN).
• AmeliaHun.com is ranked Number 6 in Yahoo.
• ShiHengCheong.com is ranked Number 1 for the keywords singapore coolest baby in Google.

Dec 7, 2006

• AmeliaHun.com maintains NUMBER 1 and 2 position in Google, Number 1 in Live Search(MSN) and Number 7 in Yahoo.
• As for the keywords singapore coolest baby, TIMMGuru.com is ranked Number 1 and http://shihengcheong.com/blogs is ranked Number 4 in Yahoo, and in Google and MSN http://shihengcheong.com/blogs/2006/11/coolest-baby-on-planet.html is ranked Number 1.

Chris Richardson of WebProNews wrote a report on this session and title it “Important SEO Tips Every Should Know“. I received this report via email but cannot find it at WebProNews.com yet. Anyway, Google found me a similar list at another website – Webmasterscafe.info: “Some SEO advice after Las Vegas PubCon 2007“.

So I won’t repeat the list here. Rather, I will highlight some of the points which I find important and interesting. At the top of my interesting list is…

“No Link Exchanges” – Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts of Google is telling us not to bother with link exchange. But, isn’t the WWW built on the foundation of hyperlinks?

To many webmasters link exchange is the only quick way to get backlinks. (To find out other link building methods, read my post on How to Improve Your Pagerank.) And it is quite common to set up a link directory or resources page for your reciprocal linking campaign.

If we accept what Matt Cutts said, many webmasters, including myself will be in trouble. As you can see at the top of this page, there is a directory link to 2 link pages:

• SEO Services/Resources
• Web Directory Submission

And on the sidebar, I have an ad recommending LinkMachine – Link Exchange System. So should I removed all these links… maybe not yet. Here’s why.

Google Doesn’t Want Link Farms
[Wikipedia: Link Farm]

So Google doesn’t like quick way. Google wants you to grow your backlinks at a slow natural pace without resorting to creating hundreds of pages consist of nothing but links which constitute to a link farm.

Google wants you to build useful content so that they could list it in their search results. And it is ok to refer to another website by hyperlink, from within the content of the article.

However, I believe what Matt Cutts said refer to backlinks from link page, resources page and even many of the web directories – these are useless – so don’t bother to exchange link and have you URL ended up in someone else link page.

If your website already has link pages, do not just remove them yet unless all these links are totally unrelated to your website theme.

What you can do is to add value to these pages.

• Add more useful information beside just links. Write a short description on the web page that you link to.
• Categorize and group links of similar theme.
• You can pull and display RSS contents related to theme of the links to make the page content rich.
• The link page should be relevant and important enough to be linked directly from the homepage and not buried 3 or 4 level deep.

Forget Template-base Websites

“template-base websites may not ranked well because they appear alike to the crawlers…” – Tim Mayer(Yahoo) and Matt Cutts(Google)

I am sure both of these experts are talking about Adsense optimized template and not Joomla or Wordpress templates. So Yahoo and Google know about Adsense templates. Then there is no point spending hundred of dollars buying templates from Joel Comm since the search engine can recognize the and marked them as “search engine trash“.

As for the important points, at the top of my list is: Stop Using Javascript Menu!

I believe that all webmasters and web designers MUST NOT use Javascript menu. Not only does it obstruct efficient spidering for your website by the search engine robots, it can be irritating to your users if the menu was not designed and positioned properly.

If websites that have hundred of thousands of pages, such as eBay.com and CNN.com, do not use javascript menu, why should you?

Each Page of Your Site is an Entry Point

It is very important that each of your internal pages focus on just one topic and keep it between 400 and 800 words. If you have enough material to write more than 800 words, then you should split the article into 2 and target one more keyword.

When you optimize each of your internal pages in this way, you stand a good chance to be ranked well in the search engines for the keywords and each page becomes an entry point to your website. So, instead of just having people coming to your website via your homepage, you now have multiple entry points to your website hence increasing targeted traffic and revenue.

Getting Backlinks TO Boost Your Page PR Value

Now if you want to get a couple more backlinks. You can use one of those free online TO DO list and add a couple of URL pointing to your web sites. These are not text links, just URL. And the one that I’ve tried is http://www.tadalist.com which is PR7. Once you’ve registered a free account, you will be given a subdomain based on your username e.g. shi.tadalist.com. Remember to share the TO Do list you created and get it indexed by sticking them in one of your active blog. Since this is a subdomain from a PR7 web site, you new subdomain should be recognised and indexed quite quickly.

Here’s my new subdomain and host my To Do list:

==> Things To Do Today

and there is also RSS Feed:

http://shi.tadalist.com/lists/feed_public/400863

P.S. If you actually follow my advice and sign up at www.tadalist.com, please create a list “Future Things To Do” and add these entries so that I can get a couple of links:

• http://shi.tadalist.com/lists/public/400863
• http://www.timmguru.com/2006/09/backlinks-from-your-to-do-list.html

Then post me a comment and I will make sure your new subdomain will be indexed.

I spent a couple of hours searching the web to look for suitable low cost search engine submission software. There are several software which cost about $70, three of which I selected for evaluation are Addweb, Trafficseeker and Dynamic Submission. The higher priced ones are Webposition Gold 2 and IBP which cost $150 each. I will download the demo versions and test each of them.

Richard Quek replied me that he has not heard of Linkproctor. Richard has recommended me to use Zeus and Traffic Equalizer. It was quite fun using TE on my TradersVic website. My first attempt generated 400 pages of keywords directory.

What if I could find a software that does both search engine submission and manage all the backlinks to begin my Search Engine Marketing campaign.