The book does look a bit familiar.

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

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

Signature from the author!

Review coming up.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

• 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

Not exactly my case, not really. I 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! ;)

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!

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