The short answer is: “Yes, it does.”

The long answer is: “Not all the time, it depends who links to you, how they link to you and the keyword you’re competing.”

To get the full explanation, go visit Jonathan Leger’s blog now.

I think there is some truth in that statement.

However, if you search carefully, you will realized that the search terms seo singapore and singapore seo in Google, the results you get are not exactly the same. Why? Because, in our natural use of English, a different use in the sequence of the words gives different meaning. And Google algorithm is smart enough to distinguish that but not smart enough to realize seo singapore and singapore seo actually mean the same thing.

From my keyword research, I discovered that “SEO Singapore” is more often used than “Singapore SEO”. However, I suspected that those who searched for these terms are SEO professionals, SEO consultants and SEO practitioners.

Ordinary folks or most website owners may not be using these search terms yet. These folks probably use search terms like top search position, search engine ranking, how to get high ranking in Google and phrases that do not contact jargons such as SEO and search marketing.

In fact, you don’t see many Adwords ad for these search terms: seo singapore. Maybe the demand for SEO services is not big enough for advertisers to spend the money. Or, those top SEO consultants are already ranked high in the organic results and getting so busy with their business that they do not need to advertise for more business.

However, I think very soon this arena will become active and more ads with more competitions. Already, there is a growing numbers of SEO companies on top of those web designers who offers SEO services.

Whether it’s SEO Singapore or Singapore SEO, a capable SEO specialist or SEO consultant will be able to get her website in the top of the search engine listing.

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.

I reside in Singapore and I am seeing more Singapore-based websites in the search results listing. So, I would be re-directed to Google.com.sg even if I typed in Google.com in the browser address bar. And the results from Google.com.sg are so different from Google.com – it used to be about the same.

Go try googling for “florist” and you will see several .com.sg websites.

If I remembered correctly, Yahoo.com.sg has been serving localized results for more than 2 years now. So why now then Google segregates Singapore-based websites for Google.com.sg search results listing?

And yes, Google has been testing a different layout for its search engine results. I was surprised to see a 3-column layout recently and double checked I got the URL right.

Now I know the answer lies in the SEO team. Every company that wants to be successful in the new economy must have a SEO team, period.

What Constitutes A Professional SEO Team

You will need to have a SEO Manager overseeing a team of specialists:

1. SEO Technician
   Expert in HTML, CSS, keyword research, link structure
2. Content Builder
   Creates search-friendly and link-friendly content web pages and blogs
3. Link Builder
   Link request, directory submit and social media marketing

Not all companies will have one specialist per role. Smaller companies may have a manager and a specialist to shoulder all the above responsibilities. Bigger corporations may have several teams reporting to team leaders who in turn report to the SEO manager.

So, now you see that even though SEO may be simple, it can be laborious and require much time, effort and patience.

Thinking of Setting Up a SEO Team or a SEO Company?

Here’s a highly recommended Search Engine Marketing Kit from SitePoint. This kit will help to get organized and provide the guidance to set up your very own SEO team to offer both SEO and SEM services.

Still, it is interesting to know that search engine optimization is being recognized and taught in the university.

In fact, I think the topics covered by the Rice University SEO course is comprehensive, focusing on the more important aspects of search engine optimization.

Here’s the topics to be covered in the SEO course:

• Researching the competition
• Analyzing and optimizing Web pages
• Submitting pages to search engines
• Monitoring search engine placement
• Reporting and analyzing ranking results
• Developing a reciprocal links list

Is This SEO Course Right For You?

As you can see from the list of topics, seasoned SEO practitioners will find that these quite basic and good for new webmasters and fresh web designers.

In fact, I think the topic on “Submitting pages to search engines” should not be there if they are talking about manual submission. Instead, a more appropriate topic should be submission of sitemaps and generation of sitemaps.

Is Search Ranking Really That Important?

Search engine visibility is not just about getting ranked number 1. Targeted traffic is more important than just getting top ranking by brute force.

Since this is an university course, they might want to give the students a more in-depth understanding of search engine basics and why it is traffic that is important and not just ranking. For example, how the Long Tail concept may be applied to keyword research.

Instead of monitoring and report search ranking, analysis on the quality and report on quantity of traffic will be very important.

Are you looking for a SEO course near you? Singapore?

If you are in Singapore, Malaysia or Indonesia and interested to learn SEO and Search Marketing, I am conducting a SEO Web Design Course at the SIM Management House on the 4 and 5 May 2007.

Go check it out at http://DesignerSEO.com/workshop/

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.

Getting ranked number in the Google Blog Search is a pleasant surprise since this blog has not been doing well with Google search ranking – in fact it has not been indexed yet; so are many other pages in this blog.

Google Blog Search is not the same as Blogger Search, even though they are powered by the same search engine technology. Blogger Search displays results of Blogger(Blogspot) blogs only whereas Google Blog Search includes results from Wordpress.com and etc.

So how did Google Blog Search find this blog?

It is likely that Blog Search uses the same Googlebot as the main Google search engine.

So how does Google decide if the web page is a blog post or otherwise?

I really do not have the answer to this question. If it is purely based on the meta tag information e.g. <link rel=“alternate” type=“application/atom+xml” /> then it may not be accurate, because many non-blog website can also include RSS feeds. Also, I don’t think there is a blog search submission service by Google; unlike Technorati which rely on owners of blogs to submit to its directory manually or by pinging.

Whatever! I am just happy that all is not lost even Google main search is not ranking this blog highly, it’s comforting to know that it still manage to do well in Google Blog Search.

• http://ShiHengcheong.com – PR1
• http://DesignerSEO.com – PR4

Let’s try to use the results above to examine how pagerank affects search engine ranking.

It is definitely a MYTH that you need high pagerank value for your web page in order to be ranked in the top 3 pages of the search engine result listing.

Check out this keyword “blog marketing“, there are over 250,000,000 results. And my friend Kian Ann’s 3 months old Blogopreneur.com – currently still a PR0 website – is ranked at 26th!

High PR will help, but there are more important factors that you should focused on – as illustrated by the above Google ranking.

Why You Do Not Need High Pagerank

In most cases, you will need a very high PR to compete for very competitive keywords.

However, if you believe that The Long Tail economic theory works in e-commerce then you should know why we are talking about optimizing your web pages for the less popular and less competitive keywords. We want to be able to get our web pages to the top of the organic search engine listing as quickly as possible without incurring the high cost of traditional media and PPC advertising.

On-Page Optimization

Take a look at ShiHengCheong.com.
And here’s DesignerSEO.com.

There is definitely more content in DesignerSEO.com than ShiHengCheong.com. In fact, you can find more occurrences of “Singapore” and “SEO” in DesignerSEO.com than ShiHengCheong.com.

In terms of on-page optimization, DesignerSEO.com has more text and content search optimization. It is much easier to work on this site as there is more content to help boost the frequency of the targeted keywords and more pages to optimize its internal linking structure.

However, we have to know if this page is optimized for the targeted keywords. Generally, DesignerSEO.com is targeting “singapore seo” however, the main niche keywords are: seo web design training workshop singapore.

And, the targeted keywords for ShiHengCheong.com: singapore seo specialist which is closer to the keywords “singapore seo”.

This is one reason why ShiHengCheong.com does better for the keywords singapore seo but nowhere to be found for the keywords “seo training in singapore” or “web design course in singapore“.

Proper on-page optimization will ensure that your web pages are search engine friendly and “crawlable”. However, in terms of actual getting in the top search engine ranking, off-page optimization rules!

The Seven Off-Page Things That You Must Do To Get Top Search Engine Ranking

1. Keyword targeted inbound text link is very important for you to rank well in Google.

2. A keyword rich text link from within the main content text is more “powerful” than links from the sidebar menu. You want a link from a page with content that is related to your website.

3. Use only the targeted keywords in the anchored text. Try not to dilute the focus by add other keywords. Stop words such as and, the, an, a, or are OK. You only need 4 or 5 quality inbound links to get ranked in the top 30 for a no-so-competitive keyword. You should be thinking along the Long Tail concept and optimize for profitable rare keywords than popular competitive keywords.

4. If possible, get link from sites that are frequently visited by Googlebot, SLURP and MSNbot, such as a high PR website (PR5 or higher) or popular blogs – these are criteria for good quality links. Examples of a popular blog is Blogopreneur.com which is visited by the important search engine spiders several times a day even though it is still at PR0.

5. Get good quality inbound links also to your internal pages. Make sure that the web page or blog post, where your link is placed, has been indexed by Google, Yahoo and MSN. It would be nice to have link from high PR but if you are new, even PR0 can do. The important point is to have your link placed strategically in that web page.

6. It is easy to get ranked in the top 30 if you get help from your friends. Look for strategic link partners among people that you know. Work in team.

7. If you already have a well-spidered website/blog, don’t be stingy. Link to others who have good content first, eventually you will get more links in return.

Since you are reading this, you are either well verse in the art of SEO or you are struggling to get visible on the search engine. If you are the former, please drop me a comment. If you are the later, you can come attend my SEO Web Design Workshop in January 2007.

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.