SEO as most people know of, i.e. Dumb SEO which gets your web page into top ranking Google search engine results page, is DEAD. And many SEO specialists who know nothing more than ranking will go out of business.

Here’s why:

• Google implemented Personalized Search for everyone.
• Facebook directs more online users than Google as reported in San Francisco Chronicle on Feb 15, 2010.

And if you have been following this blog, you would have read about my post on Smart SEO is Not just about #1 Ranking on 29 November 2008. Ultimately, you are optimizing the conversion of your web pages.

Time to see beyond SEO for Google

Even when Facebook was in its infancy back in 2007, I urged businesses to make themselves visible on social networks in the article “Time to see beyond SEO for Google” published on ZDNet Asia.

Conversion Rules

A website’s KPI should not be measured by the number of visitors alone. More traffic doesn’t always means more money, otherwise Facebook should be making more money than Google by now.

There is a great dollar difference between general traffic and targeted traffic.

Marketers must know how to define the most wanted response on each web page and measure that number. Use Smart SEO to help you to get your most wanted response and improve your bottom line.

The title of the article should be “Keyword Case Study: Online Flower Delivery in Singapore” but I think that would be too long for a blog post title. This article is about keyword selection and fast ranking for longer keyphrase. Yes, I got a 2nd page, #17 listing for online flower delivery in singapore in about 3 hours!

Flowers and florists are very competitive terms for both organic and paid listing. So I want to use a longer keyphrase that is related to both flower and florist.

Why not Flower, Flower Shop, Florist or Online Florist?

Longer keyphrases are easier to SEO and rank in the first 2 pages of the search engine result listing. Main reason being there are lesser competitions. Most site owners will target the very competitive one-word terms and two-word phrases such as flowers, florist, flower shop, online florist and so on.

Also people who entered longer keyphrases tend to be in the advanced stage of the buying cycle so the chance of her/him making a purchase is higher.

In the case study: Online Flower Delivery in Singapore, I wrote that according to OneUpWeb.com keyword study in 2005, 3-word and 4-word terms were more profitable. Owners of new site will have faster result when targeting such longer keyphrases.

Update [16 Nov 2008]: The blog post title “Online Flower Delivery in Singapore” is now ranked #6 in the 1st page of Google search result for the search terms online flower delivery in singapore and #9 for online flower delivery singapore.

I think creating a digital footprint is important to marketing your business online.

Digital footprints help you to create visibility for yourself or your company and drive traffic to your sites. This is the first step to establish your brand online.

It is easy to create a personal digital footprint. However, there are certain “rules” that you need to be aware of when you are trying to create a digital footprint for your company.

When I create personal footprints, I drive the traffic to this blog.

Creating Digital Footprints for Your Company

As for my SEO training business, I drive traffic to Finggle.com. BTW, after about 6 months of leaving digital footprints at strategic locations, www.finggle.com is now ranked among the top 10 for SEO training and related search terms.

To understand more about Digital Footprints, you may want to read this white paper published by Harry Hallman.

To download the white paper, click here.

I wished I’d read this white paper 6 months ago. I would have saved much time on trial and error!

Go read Harry’s white paper now.

Are you planning to promote your web page using Google Adwords PPC?

Wait!

I have just spotted a common mistake that Singapore advertisers made. Because of this mistake, they are not getting the fullest out of their PPC marketing campaign. In fact, I think they are throwing money into the drain.

Go search at Google using the keyword – massage

Then look for the Sponsored Links. You should see these 2 top ads:

• Qi Mantra Massage – www.qimantra.com
• Renewal Day Spa – www.renewal.com.sg

The estimated cost per click is US$1 and estimated volume – clicks per day is between 11 to 17. So the owners of the above websites pay between US$11 to US$17 per day or US$330 to US$520(SGD450 to SGD765) per month to bring in 300 to 400 visitors to each of these websites.

Now that they have the traffic. What are they doing with these visitors?

Go visit the above websites and tell me by looking/reading at the web page, whether you are persuaded to make a phone booking or visit their spa within the next 7 days?

I won’t know your answer now but I can tell you, mine. I don’t think I will call or visit the spa. I can’t even remember the URL or the company name after looking around their websites.

See, the problem is, the website is “designed” so that you have to “look around” to find the information you’re searching for.

As a visitor who clicked at the PPC ad, I would expect immediate the information such as their massage services, what so good about their massage, how much it costs, what’s the number to call and where the spa is.

When you spend mony on PPC to get traffic, you must have a Most Wanted Response(MWR) from your visitors e.g. call to make a booking, provide name and contact information so that you can follow up, immediately buy your service and product online and etc.

In order to achieve your MWR, you will need a landing page customized for your PPC campaign. You want to convince, persuade and motivated your visitor to do something.

For example, the landing page for my PPC goes to http://DesignerSEO.com/workshop/ which is, in fact a form of sales letter. The MWR is to get the visitors to register for the SEO Web Design workshop!

So, before you go out to spend money on Google Adwords, decide what is your most wanted response and build a web page to get and maximize the response that you wanted.

Here’s a couple of ebooks which may be useful to get the best out of your Adwords campaign:

• Google AdWords(aff) – Free e-Course by Perry Marshall
• Google Cash 3rd Edition(aff) – Highly Recommended by Adwords Guru Perry Marshall

Search engine optimization could be easy when you follow simple steps that were already proven to work. Here, I summarize my years of experience to these 3 simple steps for beginners and aspiring SEO specialists.

Follow these 3 simple steps and very quickly you’ll be on your way to the top ranking in the search engines.

• Determine Your Keyword
• Analyse Your Competition with Google and Yahoo
• Outrank Your Competition with Better Content

1. Determine Your Keyword

Many website owners want to rank high in the search engine but don’t know what keywords to target. The keyword is related to topic of your website. For example, I have a blog to provide SEO tips. The targeted keywords would be – seo tips

Each web page should target just one set of keywords.

Here’s a couple of keyword research tools to help you find the most profitable keywords:

http://www.keywordresearchtrial.com

To learn more about keywords research, you may want to sign up for a complementary Keyword Masters Course at Nichebot.

2. Analyse Your Competition with Google and Yahoo

Find out who are your strongest competitors. The top 30 listings for your target keywords are your blueprint to succeed in this SEO race.

Study and analyze your competitors. List out their strength and weakness base on the level of on-page factors and off-page optimization.

3. Outrank Your Competition with Better Content

Build better content. Stay focus on your topic of interest. Provide depth and breadth to the topic by creating as much content as possible.

Use Google to research your topic of interest. Subscribe to Google Alert for the latest news and information on your keywords.

To research for keywords related to your topic of interest, you can use this visual search engine – www.quintura.com

For example, let’s say your main topic is online marketing. Not only, you must have in-depth articles about online marketing, you also want to write about internet marketing, contextual advertising, e-commerce, email marketing, search engine optimization, web-hosting, domain registration, seasonal online shopping cycle, online shoppers behavior, traffic analytics, split testing and etc.

Professional SEO Toolkits

To analyze and compare each and every of your competitors’ website can be a daunting task. However, it is worth the time and effort when you consider the amount of traffic you’ll be getting.

You can make use of many SEO tools to help you automate some of the processes so that you can focus on the interpretation and formulating counter strategies.

I use a combination of SEO tools to help me outrank my competitors. And there is one software that I have been using since 2004 and it had helped me to save hundreds of hours. Please go download this free SEO software now!

Many internet marketers know the power of press release marketing, however, not many internet marketers actually practise it or issue press release often enough to make the marketing effort effective.

I did a search on PRWeb.com and discovered that Internet Marketing Center had been using this form of marketing for some years. From the search results at newspad.prweb.com, the earliest press release was dated 2005.

Here’s some the the press releases which I feel are representative. You will like to model your next press release base on these samples:

1. Give Readers Solid Value: Internet Marketing Expert Takes a Stand
   Derek Gehl sends a free eBook instead of his scheduled promotion and gets 8,000 downloads in 18 hours plus a 1000% increase in traffic to his blog.
2. Three New Last-Minute Internet Marketing Strategies…
   Internet Marketing Center CEO Derek Gehl wants online businesses to know they still have opportunities to increase their holiday sales as the busiest shopping season of the year draws to a close.
3. Derek Gehl’s Team Heads to Florida …
   CEO of The Internet Marketing Center to end national seminar tour December 2nd-3rd in Miami.
4. Internet Marketing Expert Brings Two-Day Free Seminar…
   CEO of Internet Marketing Center adds limited extra seating for hotly anticipated November 4th-5th Internet marketing seminar in Canada’s largest city.
5. Strategic Alliances Build Better Web Site ROI, Says Internet Marketing Expert
   Internet marketing expert explains how to build better web site ROI by forging valuable strategic alliances with other businesses to create new streams of income.

The above press releases are excellent content to promote online marketing businesses. In addition, you get backlinks from these press releases and in turn help you to gain higher PageRank and top search engine ranking in Google and Yahoo.

If you were to do a quick research on Google for SEO job opportunities, you would be amazed by the numbers of companies looking for candidates with online marketing skill set which includes SEO, SEM, SMO and SMM.

The hiring of online marketing specialists by large companies and corporations is happening in the USA and the rest of the world.

In Asia, the job market for online marketing expertise will follow similar trend in the USA.

Corporations Going After Online Marketing Specialists

I spoke with a good friend who just returned from a 1-year stint in Hong Kong. He was doing sales and marketing for an international event company based in Hong Kong. According to him – his main market was USA – there is a dearth of marketing executives with online marketing experience in the USA. Marketing people with online marketing skills such as SEO and SEM can command up to 30% increase in salary. I think he is right.

Headhunted by Global Communication Company

Coming back to Asia, particularly Singapore and the region, demand for online marketing expertise for companies is increasing. My friend Larry Lim was headhunted to head the interactive division in one of the leading global communications company in Singapore. Congratulation to Larry!

Expect to be paid top dollar by global companies if you have online marketing skills and experience. Of course, your first step will be to learn what’s SEO and SEM is all about and be really good at online marketing using the search engines.

Come attend my SEO Web Design Workshop and be an SEO expert in online marketing.

I was really looking forward to this meeting. Why? Because, Larry (www.larrylim.net) had got his website ranked in the top 10 of Google search for the keywords Singapore SEO in less than 6 months and has been in the top 5 since last year.

If you ever need SEO services or a SEO consultant, he is one person that I’ll recommend.

I met him this morning at Parco Bugis Junction. He was in Singapore for a short business cum shopping trip. Larry is based in Malaysia. Yes, Malaysian helping Singapore companies to optimize their websites.

Singapore SEO vs Malaysia SEO

We had a long talk, nearly 2 hours, about the prospect of providing SEO services. There is definitely a growing demand for SEO/SEM related services. More companies are willing to pay to get their websites into Google and Yahoo search results. Apparently, according to Larry, Singapore companies are more willing to allocate budget for SEO than Malaysia companies.

So is there really a demand for SEO in Malaysia? How big is this demand compared with Singapore market?

I am not familiar with the Malaysia market. So I came home and did a quick research.

A Little Research on Malaysia SEO Market

I used Google Trends and here’s the results for terms “hong kong”, “malaysia”, “singapore” & “sex”. We know there is lots of traffic for the search term “sex”, so I used it to act as the basis of comparison to reflect the magnitude of the market.

In the chart/table below, you’ll see that the number of searches for the term “singapore” is about 10 times that of “sex” for traffic from Singapore. In Hong Kong, the number of searches for “hong kong” is 5 times that of “sex”.

Unfortunately, the chart/table above does not give me direct answers. I need to do a bit more analysis in the data to deduce some answers.

We can see that there are many people in Singapore using the term “Singapore” in their searches. These people are looking for information, products, services and etc. in Singapore or related to Singapore e.g. “SEO training in Singapore”. With so many people using the search engine to look for information, it is no doubt that there is more companies in Singapore spending money to get into top Google and Yahoo search ranking.

Singapore SEO Market Twice As Large?

Now, let’s look at Malaysia. Take note the data was presented for 2 cities: Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya. The number of searches for Malaysia related information is about 80% of Singapore numbers. So the difference is not so big.

In other words, for every 10 SEO jobs in Singapore, there are 8 in KL and PJ (if the conditions in all the 3 cities are same).

When we factor in the difference in currencies, a person based in Malaysia will find job in Singapore twice as lucrative as a job in KL and PJ. So in dollar terms, Singapore current market size, in terms of US$, could be twice as large as Malaysia’s.

No wonder, Larry prefers to have Singapore clients paying in Singdollars to looking for Malaysian clients who pay in Ringgits.

In the previous Affiliate Marketing 101, you discovered that affiliate marketing is not really about selling but buying — helping people to buy.

In this second part of Affiliate Marketing 101, let’s find out what are the courses available for affiliate marketing.

Here, we are talking about affiliate marketing of services and products outside Internet marketing. That is, we are not talking about selling ebooks and software tools to help newbie Internet marketers to make money. So you will need a website, not just a sale letter web page and a autoresponder.

Help Your Visitors to Buy – The Concept of Preselling

We are talking about providing information to help visitors to your website to buy the services and products that they are looking for. If you’ve heard about SiteBuildIt(SBI), you would have heard about the concept of preselling by Dr Ken Envoy. In his Affiliate Master Course, he used practical examples from his own SBI to illustrate how you can help you visitors to buy with the technique of preselling. This is probably one of the best course available on affiliate marketing and it’s free. You can download the ebook at:

http://aff-masters.sitesell.com

Don’t expect to see many pictures or graphics in Ken Envoy books. He can presell with just words. Pictures are used only when they are absolutely necessary.

If you are interested to find out how Ken makes his words presell, download the free ebook, Make You Content PREsell. Interestingly, this ebook has more graphics and cartoons.

Work At Home Based Business Training Course

Another very successful affiliate marketer and affiliate marketing coach is James Martell. Basically, he uses somewhat similar concepts as Dr Ken Envoy — building content websites and refer visitors to merchants.

In James Martell case, his work at home based business training course, Affiliate Marketers Handbook(US$167), teaches you how to build content website that’ll rank high in the search engines.

James Martell has done many experiment with search engine optimization and will show you his “secret” SEO formula.

And to monetize the traffic, you will learn how to select merchants of affiliate networks such as Commission Junction (www.cj.com), LinkConnector (www.linkconnector.com) and LinkShare (www.linkshare.com). The handbook also shows you how to increase your earning with Google Adsense publisher program.

Affiliate Program Tutorial Online

If you are looking for a free online tutorial on affiliate marketing then AssociatePrograms.com Affiliate Program Tutorial is a good starting point. You will learn the basics and the important rules to becoming a successful affiliate marketer.

Study the tutorial and you can also see preselling in action. During the course of the tutorial, you will be referred to Dr Ken Envoy’s SiteSell program and James Martell’s Affiliate Marketers Handbook. Allan Gardyne’s AssociatePrograms.com is one of the most successful affiliate for both Ken and James!

Affiliate Marketing without Email SPAM

While some Internet marketers claimed that you don’t have to learn HTML or build a web page to make money online, they are not telling you the whole truth. They will build the sale letter web page. You will become a Clickbank affiliate selling their ebooks and software tools to other Internet marketers wannabes in a virtuous cycle. You don’t have get caught in the virtuous cycle selling their Clickbank products and sending SPAM to IM wannabes.

You can do it the right way by learning from the truly successful affiliate marketers: Ken Envoy, James Martell and Alan Gardyne, without having to send out series of hyped-up email messages.

The reason we go back to the basics is to make search engine optimization(SEO) really simple.

SEO is not as complicated as most people think it to be. Anybody and everybody can have success with search engine marketing.

• Have you really sit and think why you want to SEO?
• Is it because of the number 1 ranking?
• Or, you want more customers so that you make more money?

Getting search engine visibility is just one of the means to getting more sales. So even if you do not SEO, you can still make money. This is the reason why many Internet marketers tell you not worry about SEO and just get a huge database of email addresses. Since you do not need to SEO, you do not need to learn HTML.

I tend to agree with getting more customers than being rank number 1.

Honestly, it is meaningless to rank number 1 if no one comes to your web page and make a purchase or provide you with their contact information.

I am not saying that you should not be number 1 in the search engine results page(SERP) for your targeted keyword. The objective is not about getting number 1 but getting customers.

SEO is to use the search engines to get the visitors (traffic)
who will make a purchase or do the most wanted response.

You see, until now, I have not made any mention of search engine spiders. Because, SEO is not just about spiders — as far as possible, I don’t want to confuse you with technical terms.

All you need to know and do is when you build an informative web page, it will be visible in the SERP and when people search for terms related to the information, a link to your page will be presented them and they will click it to come visit your page.

However, there is a small problem for all new web pages. Your web page is like a new island in a vast ocean. No one knows about this tiny island. The search engines do not know about its existence. No one will come to your new island. You will need to announce this piece of news to the whole world and get transportation link from the nearest civilization.

Getting Links from other Websites – Backlinks/Inbound Links

You have to get an established web page to link to your new web page. By established, I mean the web page is already recognized by major search engines.

Basically, it is like getting your friend to introduce her friend(the search engine), to you(your web page).

Once the search engines know about your existence, it will evaluate the content of your web page. Much like how you will size up a person when you first met him.

Search engines are programed to understand text but not picture. That’s the reason why you have to write and not just draw. The more you write the better the search engines can know about what you web page is all about.

Site Crawlabilty

Beside getting links from other web pages, you may also link to other pages with useful imformation that share similar theme.

The next very important thing that you need to do is to link up all the web pages from your home page.

Alternative, if you have a larger site with more than 40 pages, you can plan your internal linking structure in a hierarchical manner. For example, the homepage links to 5 category main pages and in turn one category main page links to each item page.

By linking all your web pages systematically, the search engines will be able to visit each one of them, collect information and evaluate every page on your website. Then all your web pages will be visible in the search engine results page.

That just about sum up my view on the very basics of search engine optimization.