SEO Expert - TIMMGuru » Web Design

Safra, Hitachi & Mapletree Websites Screwed up by Active8

TIMMGuru — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:40:55 +0000

I can’t help it but to use very very strong words to show my anger with such ~~unscrupulous, deceitful and devious~~ Singapore web design company in the pursuit of search engine ranking for the keywords web design and content management system using black-hat SEO tricks.

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 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 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.

Now They Start Teaching SEO in the University

TIMMGuru — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 04:25:38 +0000

Came to know about this SEO course offered by Rice University, Houston, Texas via this post at WebProNews, Rice University Adjunct Offers SEO Course. On further finding, I realized that it’s not a full-time university module but a continuing education by the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies.

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/

New Look and Feel – SEO Web Design

TIMMGuru — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 14:30:00 +0000

I’ve finally completed the new web design and layout for this blog. Don’t you think it looks better than the previous design? The last time I fiddled with Blogger template was at least 6 months ago and it took me nearly a week to customise a design template. This time round I got the new web design which is SEO friendly in less than 2 days.

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!