It is a fact that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is losing the browser market share. According to the latest Top Browser Share Trend by NetMarketShare.com, IE market share dropped from 60.65% in March 2010 to 56% in Jan 2011 and Firefox dropped from 25.52% to 22.75% in the same period. IE and Firefox losses was Chrome and Safari gains!

My Own Website says Firefox is Number 1

However, according to Google Analytics data of a 1-month old travel guide website, the market share for all the four browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safar and Chrome was between 20.91% to 30.49%. From above table, you can that more people are using Firefox than IE which attracted only 24.56%, far lesser than the 56% reported by NetMarketShare.

I was surprised to see the result of the browser market share on the new website. And the result has proven that cross-browser compatibility should a requirement for every website development and is more important than 1 year ago.

More People are Using Firefox, Chrome and Safari

Because this is a brand new website, the main traffic source was from Facebook. Also, most of the visitors are from Singapore, Southeast Asia and India.

Now, does it mean more people are using Firefox, Chrome and Safari to log on to Facebook?

And people who started to use Facebook in the past 12 months prefered to use non-IE browsers because they are more IT-savvy?

Have you made your web design compatible to all the top four web browsers listed in the table above?

Preceding the word “advanced” does not make the SEO training more advanced. Neither does saying that you teach advanced SEO techniques nor giving advanced SEO tips make SEO learning more advanced.

Looking at this advanced SEO program outline makes me want to shout “CRAP!”

So What is Advanced SEO?

Does difficult means advanced? Well, difficult becomes easy with practice. So everything is advanced initially.

It is the experience of the trainer and treatment of the subject that makes it profound. More importantly, it is the level of understanding of the participants that will make the discussion advanced.

Depending on who you discuss with, a simple <title> tag can get pretty complicated.

It is easy to say “Include your keyword in your title tag” and you might get ranked with this simple inclusion of keyword in the title tag. However, depending on the way you word your title, you might not get as many click through as you imagine for a top ranking page would. Then, there is your writer who may not always agree that using the keyword in your title will pull the attention that her article intended to. Or your programmer insists that due to the restrictiion of the CMS, the title tag “cannot be changed”.

On the other hand, cloaking is simply a few lines of codes to the programmer when the SEO practitioners declared that it is an advanced technique or to the purist, black-hat SEO.

There is no point learning about the advanced stuff when one cannot appreciate the basic fundamentals of search engine optimization.

SEO is quite simple when you follows Google SEO Guide.

However, if you still insist on spending money to learn Advanced SEO, then register for this SEMPO’s Advanced SEO Course.

Faster surfing speed by next month? No, I am not referring to the much publicized NBN(Next Gen Nationwide Broadband Network). I am talking about the little known Singapore Public Internet Exchange – SGIX, which I found out from yesterday’s Digital Life.

In my opinion, the SGIX is a critically important public infrastructure for Singapore. We have been relying on the carrier-specific Singtel Internet Exchange for too long.

Why STIX Singtel Internet Exchange Not Good Enough

The problem with STIX is, if you have a server at a data center in Singapore which is not connected to STIX, the traffic will have to be routed to Internet exchanges in Hong Kong(HKIX ) or in Japan(JPIX) or California(Palo Alto Internet Exchange and Los Angeles Equinix Internet Exchange) before coming back to Singapore.

And if you are wondering why Singtel is not peering with other carriers, you might want to read this report: Asia Pacific Peering Ecosystem

Typically, ping to a local server within Singapore is 30ms or less. But a ping will take 100ms or longer if it has to be routed to the nearest public Internet exchange in Hong Kong before coming back to Singapore.

I have been hosting some of my websites on a Rackspace Cloud Server which is located in USA. Average ping to this server is about 300ms, because of the ping latency, I wished I could use a cloud hosting based Singapore.

Last month, I bought a Voxel’s Cloud Server located in Singapore. Voxel servers are housed at Equinix Data Center at Ayer Rajah. I was expecting to connect “directly” to the local server.

But I was wrong.

After 3 days of persistent testing and submitting support tickets to Voxel, I was using SingNet broadband, I was still accessing my local sever at Ayer Rajah via Los Angeles!!! Here’s the traceroute:


traceroute to 180.92.186.210 (180.92.186.210), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.1.254 (192.168.1.254) 5.650 ms 1.605 ms 2.164 ms
2 bb116-14-180-1.singnet.com.sg (116.14.180.1) 19.484 ms 18.894 ms 19.589 ms
3 202.166.121.41 (202.166.121.41) 19.653 ms 18.720 ms 19.741 ms
4 ge-3-0-0-3700.stella.singnt.com.sg (202.166.124.105) 19.378 ms 20.582 ms 19.684 ms
5 xe-0-0-0.singha.singnet.com.sg (202.166.120.13) 19.616 ms 19.120 ms 19.390 ms
6 ae5-0.beck.singnet.com.sg (202.166.126.41) 19.641 ms 18.838 ms 70.760 ms
7 203.208.190.129 (203.208.190.129) 21.733 ms 21.561 ms 31.448 ms
8 xe-1-0-0-0.sngc3-cr1.ix.singtel.com (203.208.183.33) 19.756 ms 19.772 ms 19.535 ms
9 so-2-0-3-0.laxow-cr1.ix.singtel.com (203.208.149.238) 210.768 ms 208.521 ms
so-2-0-1-0.laxow-cr1.ix.singtel.com (203.208.151.114) 309.686 ms
10 ge-6-1-0-0.laxow-dr1.ix.singtel.com (203.208.183.138) 211.167 ms 205.021 ms 209.122 ms
11 ge9-10.br01.lax05.pccwbtn.net (63.218.73.101) 212.366 ms
ge9-11.br01.lax05.pccwbtn.net (63.218.73.105) 200.025 ms
ge9-10.br01.lax05.pccwbtn.net (63.218.73.101) 199.733 ms
12 voxel.ge9-24.br01.sin02.pccwbtn.net (63.218.229.14) 199.791 ms 196.239 ms 197.176 ms
13 21.te1-5.csr1.sin1.sg.voxel.net (72.26.220.18) 195.152 ms 195.408 ms 199.024 ms
14 180.92.186.210 (180.92.186.210) 203.120 ms 201.936 ms 200.206 ms


Taken For A Ride Half Way Around The World

As you can see, SingNet sent me half way around the world before connecting me from Tampines to Ayer Rajah.

And a ping to the local server via this route took about 200ms, that’s nearly 7 times longer than I expected. Apparently, Voxel which uses PCCW network did not peer to STIX.

There is nothing that I can do but terminate the Voxel Singapore server because I am already using 2 different data centers in California, USA. It’s not Voxel’s fault, which is already a member of SGIX. It’s just that our public Internet exchange is not ready yet and has to rely on STIX’s peering.

Hopefully, with the launch of the 2 new nodes, at 1-Net and Global Switch Singapore, surfing to local servers will be faster and I can use any data center in Singapore without worrying of being taken for a ride. Otherwise, even if we have the NBN, accessing local websites will mean wasting time via Hong Kong Internet exchange or worse, like my case, via Los Angeles!

Here’s the list of the 14 SGIX members (as of 8 Apr 2010):

1. 1-Net Singapore Pte. Ltd.
2. Deutsche Telekom Asia Pte. Ltd.
3. France Telecom Long Distance (S) Pte. Ltd.
4. Infocomm Asia Holdings Pte. Ltd.
5. LGA Telecom Pte. Ltd.
6. MobileOne Ltd.
7. New MediaExpress Pte. Ltd.
8. Nucleus Connect Pte. Ltd.
9. PacNet Internet (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.
10. Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network (SingAREN)
11. Singapore Telecommunications Ltd.
12. Starhub Ltd.
13. Tata Communications International Pte. Ltd.
14. Voxel Inc

More information(PDF download): IDA’s Media Fact Sheet on SGIX

The IT Show 2010 is the first of the 4 big annual consumer electronics shows: in March, IT Show; in June, PC Show; in August, COMEX and in November, SITEX.

This year IT Show starts on Thursday, 11 March and last day on Sunday, 14 March at the Suntec Singapore. The opening hours of the IT Show 2010 is from 12 noon to 9pm daily.

Because I wrote about these computers, digital cameras and electronics events in a couple of my blogs over the past years, I have collected some very hot keywords. And traffic for IT Show related search is already going up. Visitors to my blog post on IT Show has nearly doubled.

What Keywords to Use for IT Show 2001

Well, the obvious one is “it show”. However, people who knows about the IT Show and intend to visit the show are more likely to use “it show 2010″.

But “it show” is such a generic terms and search engines will tend to show you search results for international websites instead of those talking about the IT Show 2010 in Singapore at Suntec City. So people are adding Singapore to the search terms and using “it show 2010 singapore” instead.

Here’s a list of top search phrases which brought traffic to my blog over the past 2 days.

• it show 2010
• it show 2010 singapore
• singapore it show
• singapore it show 2010
• pc fair singapore 2010
• singapore pc show 2010
• singapore pc fair 2010
• comex singapore 2010
• pc fair 2010
• pc show 2010 singapore
• it fair 2010 singapore
• computer fair 2010
• it show singapore 2010
• pc fair singapore
• computer fair 2010 singapore
• it fair singapore 2010
• it fair 2010
• singapore it fair 2010
• pc fair 2010 singapore
• singapore computer fair 2010
• pc fair

Still Not Too Late to SEO for IT Show 2010

It is not too late to write a good blog post on IT Show and get it ranked in Google and Yahoo. Avoid very hot keywords such as “it show“. Choose a longer search phrase to target. Alternatively, add brand names such as VAIO and Acer if you intend to write about laptops or Canon Powershot and Nikon Coolpix if you write about digital cameras.

If you are using AdWords to advertise on Google search or content pages, you may want to use the exact match for the above keywords. You may end up paying less and get better result in terms of converting visitors into customers.

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.

I have been writing blog posts on Singapore’s Natas Fair since 2008 and in the process collected thousand of keywords related to this annual travel events. In fact, more than 4,725 keywords related to Natas Fair drove visitors to my blog posts via the search engines over the past 2 years. Out of all these keywords, I would say “natas fair” follows by the year for e.g. natas fair 2010 is always the hottest keyword.

Keywords Used to Search for Natas Fair

Beside the hot keywords, you may also want to look at the Longtail keywords. As expected, internet users in Singapore are getting move savvy and we see that local search is getting more granular. Here’s a sample of the Natas related search terms:

• natas offers
• natas package
• natas fair offers
• natas travel deals
• natas travel package
• natas fair best deal
• best deals at natas
• pre natas promotion
• natas fair opening hours
• cheap holiday package travel natas

It doesn’t take a genius marketer to see that these are words used by people who are ready to buy a travel package, book hotel accommodation, purchase travel insurance and spend lots of money at a click…

Travel Agents Did Not Advertise on Google for Natas Fair

If you were AdSense publisher, you would be quite disappointed by the dearth of Google advertisers in Singapore for such an important travel event. You probably wonder why travel agents were not advertising on Google for Natas but spent hundred of thousands of dollars on trade fairs, print advertising and TV ads.

Natas Fair 2012

I had the feeling that Google resellers in Singapore were not working hard enough to look for travel agents to advertise on the search engine. Or they didn’t have the experience to promote for a one-time event that lasted for only 3 days. Hopefully, with better tools provided by Google e.g. Google Insights, they will do a better job and we will get more Natas Fair 2012 related ads in Google soon.

Matt Cutts announced on 10 November 2009 that full Caffeine update will roll out after the holidays. If you read between the lines in his blog post, you would suspect that Caffeine has already been rolled out in stages!

Does that means we will get drastically Google search results soon?

I guess so. In fact, Google introduced Personalized Search for Everyone since 2 days ago. So you should be seeing quite different results from your customers and competitors!

What is Google Caffeine?

Google Caffeine is a new algorithm to index and rank a web page. So it will affect your page ranking on Google result.

Here’s what Google trying to achieve with Caffeine Update… “a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

Google Caffeine + Personalized Search = Bad News

Together with the Personalized Search for Everyone, your web page will be ranked very differently on your customer’s computer. And if you have been doing things which Google doesn’t like then expect your web page to disappear from Google results.

If your earning depends on Google Search then bad news…

Still not convinced that ranking is not everything? At PubCon 2008, Bruce Clay made a claim that “ranking is dead.” And Matt Cutts said ranking is not as important as it used to be.

Cutts said, “I’m not sure I would say ranking is dead but it’s not as important as it used to be. The fact is the smart SEOs are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversion, they are looking at their server log. It’s great if you’re ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn’t help you very much.”

“The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don’t worry about ‘can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrase.’”

Ranking is Dead

Ranking is dead… because of personalization and intent-based search. Spiders are getting smarter. Now, you may want to have video and Flash on your web page.

Smart SEO is more just traffic; it’s about your customers and conversion!

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.

VPS hosting in Singapore is definitely not cheap when compared to similar US-based plans. From my recent research, Singapore VPS hosting costed at least twice as much as the high-end VPS hosting offered by ServInt Internet Services and WiredTree – both of which are highly recommended in WebHostingTalk.com forum.

When I look for VPS hosting, WHM/CPanel is a must because I am used to it and too lazy to learn to use a new hosting control panel.

No Cheap VPS Hosting in Singapore

If you are like me, who have been looking around for cheap VPS hosting in Singapore, you will find that you have to pay S$90 (about US$60) a month for a VPS plan with WHM/CPanel.

As compared with the VPS plan based in the US, the same configuration would probably cost you less than US$30 a month.

Why Look For Cheap VPS Hosting?

But why do you want it cheap.

I wanted VPS hosting because of the root access and ability to customize my own web server applications. Also for the reliability and managed support. I ended up using VS2 VPS Hosting Plan offered by Knownhost after trying testing several other Web hosting services over the past 2 months.

**Knownhost VS2 offers 960MB RAM, 40GB storage, 2,500GB bandwidth. I selected the data center located in California. The monthly cost is $35.

You probably wanted VPS for reliability and stability too. And reliability and stability don’t come cheap.

Higher priced VPS plans are usually more reliable because of less over-selling and better hardware e.g. Dual Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processors, RAID-10/SATA II, Off-site Backup and so on.

However, if you are willing to use a US-based datacenter, you can still look for a bargain at WebHostingTalk’s VPS Hosting Offer Forum.

Why Not Try Data Centers at the West Coast, USA

Make sure you select to host at the data center located in the west coast or California, USA. Knownhost is a good choice for you and your visitors. Your websites will get faster response when access from Singapore and other Asia Pacific region compared to data centers located in other part of the USA.