A Million Dollar Surprise

by Lim CS on August 21, 2008

I received a courier package this morning.

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The book does look a bit familiar.

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Guess what? It’s the new book by my friend Gobala - The New Millionaires.

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Sheeze. They put my testimonial first. SEO Expert does sound a bit cheesy.

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Signature from the author!

Review coming up.

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Google Trifecta

by Lim CS on August 20, 2008

Mastering the combination of Google Webmaster Tool, Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer will make you the deadliest internet marketing weapon Malaysia ever seen.

This is a webinar by a few fellow Googlers that you really do not want to miss:

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The New Search Engine Optimization Manifesto

by Lim CS on August 15, 2008

seomanifesto

It’s already happening. When? You asked. Well,

  • When those websites that long dominates the search engines are gone overnite.
  • When Rand and their SEOmozzers are slowly switching their company revenues from service to subscription basis. A lot professional SEOs more followed too.
  • When my friend Larry, too decides not to offer SEO services anymore.
  • When new websites could outrank competitors overnight.
  • When this manifesto is published and agreed upon by many others.

Inspired by the cluetrain, allow me to present “The New SEO Manifesto“.

Philosophy

#1. Google is new god - obey her or else.

#2. Blackhat what? If you are doing it and not yet being penalized, congratulate yourself for another lucky day.

#3. Don’t try to beat search engines anymore. The war is over; the search engine has won.

#4. Now, put your crosshair at your visitors. They should be your utmost concern now.

Link Building

#5. Buying links are not just throwing your money in drain; it’s potentially hurting your search rankings.

#6. Less is more. 1 good (authority) links can beat 1000 average one. Nuff said.

#7. Social bookmarking websites are the new directories. But not for long.

#8. Routine is bad. Even a child could tell if you are building 10 directory links, 10 blog links, 10 social bookmarking links, 10 forum links, per month, pointing to the same sites (or worse, use the same anchor text).

#9. Random is good. Build links as you want and when you want.

#10. If a SEO consultant tells you he’ll build you links through directories, article directories, and link purchasing - RUN.

Content

#11. Making your website multi-lingual will be your best investment, beats hiring SEO any day. Just make sure it’s human work and translated by machine.

#12. Link bait, is not a luxury anymore - it’s a necessity for every websites.

#13. Content Building is old school - introducing Content Packaging.

#14. Most of the contents that could have been written - had been written. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Now put that shiny rims on it. Rewrite the contents in better way.

#15. Lists are not just good, it’s sexy.

Search Engine Friendly

#16. If your website is not search engine friendly, you are not even in the game.

#17. The key to search engine friendliness is distinctiveness of each page.

#18. Every page of your sites should have different (descriptive, and relevant) title, meta tags, contents, permalinks (URL).

#19. Sitemap is crucial. It helps your visitors and the spiders.

I’ll only have 19 for now. Let’s keep the list going! Add your ideas in the comments section below.

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Advertisements on Gmail

by Lim CS on August 11, 2008

Since Google released the wonderful mail fetcher features in Gmail, I’ve been using Gmail ever since for all my mail accounts (my company even run on Google Apps)gmail-logo

And as a person that normally ignores all the advertisements, I find myself couldn’t ignore some of the advertisement there, especially the Web Clip part.

Because they are relevant to what I was looking for.

For my case, Google only displays 2 type of ads (mostly) on my Gmail interface: online marketing related (seo, copywriting, ppc)  and technology (gadget and stuffs).

On the other day, I noticed my wife’s Gmail interface was about different kind of ads. And in her case, it’s all about online shopping. Sometimes, she just couldn’t help but to click on it (which happens most of the time - imagine the click-thru rate), especially when it shows the ads about the websites that sell korean/japan/taiwan imported handbags - exactly what she wanted.

Scarily (not that I’m worried about my wallet…actually, I’m a bit worried) relevant. And it can only get better.

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How to market to this guy?

by Lim CS on July 25, 2008

Meet Steve.1034325378_6e8489dc74_o

He doesn’t read newspaper, doesn’t watch TV and surf the net at least 8 hours a day. Over the years, he developed some kind of ad blindness - his eyes automatically detect and ignore any advertisements on the internet. He loves sharing and connecting to people, especially through online community like facebook, del.icio.us, message boards, twitters and of course, his very own blog.

If you are running a startup, how would you market to Steve?

Coming soon at BarCamp near you, where a lot of brains are better than one, especially the top brains from all over Malaysia.
And seriously (*grin), it’s going to be fun.

Featuring cluetrain, hughtrain, open source and the latest pinko marketing, it’s the end of business, as usual.

See you guys there!

p/s: APPLE GEEK drawings credit to the 56 geeks project.

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Google Free Seminar For Business

by Lim CS on July 24, 2008

There will be a free, 3 and a half hour of free seminar organized by Google in cooperation with FMM at Perai.

The seminar will mainly talk about improving office productivity (using Google’s Tool) and reaching domestic and export market using Adwords.

Date:
29 July 2008 (Tuesday)
Time: 2:00 pm to 5:30 pm
Venue: FMM Northern Branch, 2767, Mukim 1, Lebuh Tenggiri 2, Bandar Seberang Jaya, 13700 Prai.

If you recently saw your competitors showing up when you are searching on Google or checking your GMail, you probably shouldn’t miss this seminar. And best of all, you’ll get a free adwords coupon to start.

If you are interested, contact Mr Nathan / Ms Evelyn Yeap at tel. no 04-3992057 or fax no. 04-3994863 or e-mail: fmmpng@fmm.jaring.my.

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BarCamp Malaysia

by Lim CS on July 20, 2008

Things really get busy in the month of July for the web workers community.

Not too long ago (just the last post), we have our usual webmaster gathering. Few weeks later, we got our very own barcamp.

What is a barcamp?

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.

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It’s on this coming weekends (26-27 July). Oh, it’s FULL already :) Those who are lucky enough to make it, see you there!

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Top 100 Web Celebrities

by Lim CS on July 15, 2008

Techcult compiled it. I loved it. Especially when among them, there are lots of my personal heroes:

  • 5. Seth Godin: The ‘Remarkable’ Marketing Guru.
  • 7. Mark Cuban: The ‘I can do anything’ Billionaire.
  • 8. Scott Adams: DILBERT. Period.
  • 14. Paul Graham: His essays and books are brilliant (insightful).
  • 15. Jimmy Whales: Wikipedia founder. Who doesn’t use it everyday?
  • 17. Guy Kawasaki: The guy.
  • 24. Matt Cutts: Most SEO loves to hate him.

And more. Go read it (Web Cult’s Top 100 Web Celebrities). This inspires my very own Get Found’s Top 50 Malaysia Web Celebrities, on its way :D

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I’ve Been Acquired

by Lim CS on July 13, 2008

I used the word ‘acquired’ because it feels huge. You know - Google acquired YouTube, Microsoft acquiring Yahoo etc. The word seemingly relates with success and a hell lot of money.

Not exactly my case, not really. 440975112_828bd20420_mI still need to work my ass off.

Ok, let’s get straight to the point - one of my side project (P & C for now) has been bought by our local hosting giant - Exabytes.

Even though it is the same company I quit several years ago (if you’ve seen my linkedin), they’ve grew bigger now. A lot more bigger (in terms of their company size, clients served etc..)

I’ll be working under contractual basis. So, don’t be surprised if you see me in Exabytes uniform next time! ;)

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3rd Webmaster Gathering: Sights & Sounds

by Lim CS on July 9, 2008

Prior to the gathering, we have a full registration. We increased the food order (10 extra pax), closed the registration (though it breaks my heart doing this, I would love to see everyone go), and hopefully all the people will fit in the space of The Apartment. 

Even thought it’s the 3rd time I’m organizing, I was still nervous.

Without going through the whole event (many have blogged about it, check out the links below), here’s what I like about the 3rd Webmaster Malaysia Gathering:

  • A big family. Webmasters talk to each other like long lost old friend even they met for the first time (seriously). And trust me, the chat can last all day (and night) long.
  • Amrit, the manager of The Apartment let us have the whole space upstair of the restaurant. Not too big, but it’s really cozy and make people feel comfortable. It would make a dream office for my company (that’s another story).
  • The food. Jamie Olivier style (you don’t wanna know how much I had) - totally awesome.
  • New faces. As far as I can remember, aside Eddie Law, Kai Loon, Sumardi, LiewCF, Adrian, Louiss,  the rest are all new faces. Welcome to the party!
  • LiewCF gave his virgin talk. History in the making, man.
  • Being grateful. Some of the members keep thanking me before, within and after the gathering for organizing the event. Don’t thank me, thank yourself for making this happen (and not forgetting Exabytes as the sole sponsor).
  • Web designers/developers/company dominate. The 1st gathering there were more bloggers, the 2nd one more internet marketers. What’s next?
  • The Curve. Happening!
  • Exabytes Crew. Besides helpful, they immersed themselves into the community. Along the years, I’ve seen some of the staff grow (in terms of knowledge, webmaster skill) together with community. Now that’s amazing.
  • Knowledge. That’s the hard part, with the varying knowledge level of the audience. I think we’ve managed to pull it off: Microsoft Silverlight for web developers (sorry Rohan, I still don’t know what is SASS), LiewCF’s sharing for the bloggers, Designing with Grids for the web designers, Payment gateway and fraud prevention for the E-Commerce players.
  • Lucky draw.  Looking into the eyes of the winners - priceless. I should suggest the first 3 prizes for the next gathering: Macbook air, Iphone, Ipod Touch. Hehe.

Well, guessed everything turns out just fine. Thank you for all webmasters that attended!

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More:

http://blog.exabytes.com.my/index.php/2008/07/07/the-3rd-webmastermalaysia-gathering/

http://kailoon.com/the-3rd-webmastermalaysia-gathering-update/

http://www.dannyfoo.com/blog/dannyfoo-life/my-first-webmaster-malaysia-gathering/

http://www.laweddie.com/wordpress/2008/07/06/malaysia-webmaster-gathering-at-the-curve-5-july-2008/

http://www.liewcf.com/blog/archives/2008/07/liewcf-problogger-talk-webmaster-malaysia-gathering/

http://www.rickysoo.com/index.php/2008/07/05/liewcf-hometuitioncare-webmaster-malaysia-gathering-2008/

http://www.sumardi.net/2008/07/06/webmaster-malaysia-gathering-2008-photos/

http://catzer.com/2008/07/05/webmastermalaysia-forum-gathering/

http://cheehoong.com/entreprenuer/ive-won-a-maxtor-80gb-portable-hard-disk

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Webmaster Gathering @ The Curve, 5th July

by Lim CS on June 9, 2008

wmm-gathering-kl-thecurve

It’s ON. After weeks of putting things together, we are going to have our 3rd official Webmaster Malaysia Gathering in KL on this coming 5th of July at The Curve, Mutiara Damansara.

This time, we’ve managed to book a nice and cozy place called “The Apartment” at The Curve. Even better than that, we’ve even managed to get our legendary members like LiewCF and Alang, and few other great webmasters to speak in this event.

The best part is, the admission is FREE. Though, we only have seats for 40 members. To participate, simply reply to  this email (limcs@webmastermalaysia.com) with your name and phone number. Act fast ;)

p/s: the above excerpt is copied from the newsletter I’ve just sent to the members of Webmaster Malaysia. What can I say? I’m too excited!

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Malaysia Top Web Designers

by Lim CS on May 23, 2008

There is a fine line that separates the great, good, bad and ugly website. I hate to say it, but (the truth is) - web design is a very saturated field in Malaysia, and oh yes, I’ve seen a lot of downright ugly works from web designers (and some of them even dare to charge higher).

Anyone can be a web designers. A few tutorials, with the right tools and you are well on your way to design your uncle’s company website for RM800. But it takes years of experience, hard work, practice and some design sense to become a good or even great web designers.

Hence the list. I’m listing every Malaysia web designers I knew, heard of, and even worked with, whom I think they are really good (Malaysia boleh!). I’m sharing the list with you so that they know who to look for when you need a website done.

Here you go, in no particular order, and I’ll let their best work do the talking:

Kai Loon

Blog » Loon Design

Ikram Omar

Studio W..--..All Women Fitness Studio..--Great People, Great Workout, Great Value--..

Bel Koo

Bel Koo - freelance web designer, Malaysia.

Hasrimy

Welcome to Macross Malaysia

Timothy Su

µTorrent - The Lightweight and Efficient BitTorrent Client

Alan Bernard

Alan Bernard’s F’kn Mayhem!

Kris Khaira

STREEThing

Tommy Ng

Fruitastic!™ For Healthy Living, Longevity and Wellness

Well, that’s it. Hope you enjoy the list. And if you think you or someone you know should make the list, drop me an email at ceo@netizensmedia.com with their portfolio URL.

Oh, and you never would have guessed it, I’m not a big fans of flash-based website (you should know why). ;)

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The blog sphere will amuse you once in a while with a post like this:

Hosting on Exabtyes Can Affect Your SEO Ranking . Quoted:

My recent drop of PageRank 3 to PageRank 0 could be directly linked to Exabytes’s hosting, as pointed out here. Asking for a refund would be one thing. As it is now, www.meshio.com could be associated with “Explicit XXX Content”, hmm…

Looking from the brighter side, it came from a very well and passionately written personal finance blog (which rightfully deserved my linkback). Kudos to the owner of the blog, but allow me to clarify your above mentioned post.

Firstly, I’ll look past the obvious truth that page rank has no relation with the search engine ranking or traffic. The page rank dropped (and increased) is due to Google’s usual update their page rank algorithm. And definitely has nothing to do with your web host.

Secondly, the number of websites hosted on the same server would not affect your search engine ranking. A server that host 400++ websites are a norm for web hosting companies.

Thirdly, adult-related websites would not affect your search engine ranking either or associate your websites with it.

Search Engines are not retarded

Though I do not have any rock solid evidence to support my opinions above, but I would like you to think of this: - Search engines are not retarded. They are in the business because they provide relevant search results to users.

Would they put themselves out of business by associating your website with other websites hosted on the same server? Not likely so.

Think blogspot, Google’s own hosted blogging platform. How many bad apples (as in splogs) are there? Countless. Then how many blogs hosted there have high ranking and high traffic? Countless, too. You get the idea.

When it is time to change your web host

All in all, it is too easy to blame your web host when lightning strikes. It happened to me before. But there are times when your web host is really hurting your search engine ranking.

1. Down Time. Downtime is inevitable. Hardware/software upgrade and server restart cause downtime. There are so many web host that promise 100% uptime, but only few (or none) can deliver it. But constant downtime hurts your ranking. Because when search engine bots visit a website and get a 404, the search engine wouldn’t want its user to get the same message too.

2. Constant Migrate of Server. There are web hosting companies that keep changing the server for your website for no obvious reason (they will tell you it is hardware upgrade, but if the server needs to be upgraded every 2 months, it’s something fishy). Every time website changes its IP, the ranking decreases, and it takes time to regain back.

3. Server Crash, Data Loss, Spyware infected. This is the worst nightmares for all webmasters. One of my client’s website got infected by spyware (where the search result shows “visit this website may harm your computer”), then loss weeks of data when performing MS SQL upgrade (from 2000 to 2005) due to the incompetence of technical staffs. That hurts, big time.

When these things happen, then you really need to change your web host.

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This is the summary of my presentation at the internet millionaires mastermind session.

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(oh, I was sweating :P )

The topics covered are:

  • What is SEO
  • The correct philosophy of SEO
  • The FORCE is strong with this one: “choosing side”
  • Get real! Practical method that works!
  • The kiss of death: things you shouldn’t do in SEO

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is maximize the potential of the website to be found by targeted audience through search engines.

The Correct Philosophy of SEO

1. Who Controls The Search Engine?

  • The search engine people (Larry, Sergey and company) controls the search engines - not us, not SEO, not the webmaster, not anyone else.
  • It is important to realize that we are not control; but we can make the best of the situation (SEO is all about maximize the potential, remember?); then only hope for the best will happen.

2. Build your website for Human or Robot?

  • A lot of people build their website with search engines in their mind. They built it for robots (search engine bots, to be exact).
  • Build your website for your users, visitors, the people. The reason is simple: because search engines want to think like people too.

The FORCE is strong with this one : Choosing Side

1. Black Hat SEO

  • exploiting every possible loop holes from search engines; and make a fortune before search engines realize it.
  • The SEO artist of the dark side: must be perfect and cautious in all execution. One careless mistake is fatal.
  • Conclusion: not recommended for everyone because of its high risk and high learning curve.

2. Grey Hat SEO

  • this is where most of the people are. They do not know what is right/wrong for search engines: a mixture of black hat and white hat.
  • but lightning can strike anytime: a simple Google Dance or changing of algorithm can wipe out your entire army overnight.
  • Conclusion: this path is going nowhere, and you can easily lose sleep every night.

3. White Hat SEO

  • adhere the search engine guidelines: do what search engine wants you to do.
  • slow and steady wins the race.
  • Conclusion: this is the recommended ’side’ for everyone.

Get real! Practical methods that WORKS!

These are the simple ‘four steps method’ that I use to perform for my clients for the past years.

Step 1: Research Your Keyword

  • Use keyword research tool (Google Keyword Tool is highly recommended)
  • Brainstorming.
  • Think from the users standpoint (what they will type if they are looking for you).
  • Focus on certain keywords (don’t spread your bullet too far too wide).
  • Strike the balance between “difficulty” and “traffic”. Go for the mediocre keywords that are not so hard to rank and have average traffic. Don’t shoot for the star, because you probably end up with nothing.

Step 2: Keyword Mapping

Now that you have a list of relevant keywords, map (’assign’) these keywords to the following tags/section of your website:

    • Meta Tag (description, keyword)
    • Title Tag
    • Anchor Text
    • Link Title
    • Image Name
    • Image ALT
    • URL  (search engine friendly URL)

Step 3: Content Creation

Make no mistake: content is the king, still is, and will be.

  • Try to have a “content section” on your website: be it a blog, knowledge base, articles section, forum, white paper or report.
  • Encourage your users/visitors to contribute content in any sort of way.
  • If it is really IMPOSSIBLE to have a “content section”, provide ‘useful tools’. They are a great replacement for content, and a great addition too (why not have both?)
  • Uniqueness is CRUCIAL. (copy and paste, then you’ll be punished)
  • Spend time/money to create contents.

Step 4: Link Building

  • Spend 2x more time doing this (in comparison with content creation).
  • Social bookmarking websites submission are GREAT (reddit, del.cio.us, digg etc)
  • Participate in forum. See my ‘principles here’.
  • Public relation: Know the people of your industry/niche well. Don’t be shy/afraid to email them about the great piece you have written.
  • Partnership: a better word for ‘link exchange’. Exchange link with blogs/websites in the same niche as yours.

The Kiss of Death: things you shouldn’t do in SEO

  • Don’t buy links. If you need to do it, buy it under radar (don’t do it using a text link network, or a script, or a system).
  • Don’t hire an SEO or somebody to build links, without knowing how they are going to do it. They can ruin your website by getting links from spammy websites / link farms.
  • Don’t SPAM (this should be common sense).
  • Don’t join a link network. We should have learn from the lesson of many horrible story of link network (DigitalPoint Coop, Link Vault..thank goodness they are all dead now).

That’s it ;) Hope it can benefit you guys, and those who came for the mastermind session, thank you for listening and your active participation.

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The New GetFound

by Lim CS on April 22, 2008

Readers,

Welcome the new GetFound.com.my ;)

  • New Design - new header with black background and red title.
  • New Tagline - inspired by “Where On Earth Are You?”, now we have “Where on Internet Are You?”
  • New Contributing Feature - now I accept guest post and contributing article (with a linkback to your website in the “About the Author” post). If you would like a link back from GetFound - there is no better way :D

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