ranking in Google Map Malaysia

Last week, I found my company's website rank on #1 in Google Map.





(click to enlarge)




I submitted my information to Google Map 1 month ago and at the time I just want to make my client easier to find me through Google Map. I am surprise to see Now it rank on top and gain some good feedbacks.

In fact, After ranking on Google Map, I received some call directly. (because my phone number displays there). Although it is a bit annoying (call me at night ), but it proofs that obtain a good ranking in Search Engine is very important.

Thanks to Google :)

cash88.com scam

Like usual, I always check the statistic report of my websites to learn where and how the visitors reach my websites. In last month, suddently few of my websites' traffic increase about 20% - 100%

Then I found these traffics are come from one source : cash88.com . It is a pay-per-visit incentive program which encourage members to visit the sponsors' websites and get points. Then the points can be exchange for cash. It also have a MLM structure to ask the member-get-members to earn faster and more.

Normally I don't bother about this kind of website. But I was shocked when I saw few of my websites are listed on the categories "Computer & Internet" including my partner's website http://www.hongkong-webhosting.com/. on 25th September I have asked them to remove the misleading statemet because I am not their advertiser but until now, they still don't reply my email.

The purpose I write this post to everyone is because I suspect it is a SCAM program and I don't think his members can get the money. There are many posts in the forums already mentioned it like here and here . Further more, I also found the cash88.com programming script is Illegal !! ( click here ) How can you trust a company if it even cannot afford to buy a copyright programming scripts to run his website's membership program ?

For those who already sign up to be members, I advise you to remove all your personal information in the cash88.com especially the banking details. (Yes ! cash88.com ask your bank account information !!) and quit the program.

How Much You Charge For Web Design ?

Web design and web hosting are very competitive in Malaysia. You can easily find below RM 90/ year for web hosting, or 5 pages web design for only RM 399.00. The profit margin of web hosting and web design is becoming smaller.

I was asked by a potential client that how much I charge for a 5 pages web design ? I told him that our package price is RM 1,300 for 5 pages, not including web hosting and domain registration. He was shocked and said that my package is one of the most expensive web design package among several comparison he did.

Although I explain to him that the website is tailor made and not made by template, he still complained that the price is too expensive. Eventually he get any provider to do web design for him

Well, it is ok for me. It is no end for price war and eventually all providers will lose, except the consumers. Just like you cannot compare the BMW with Proton Saga, although both are "car" , but the features and quality are greatly different.

We just recently closed a web design deal amount RM 30k above for a well-known company in Malaysia. They never think our price is expensive. In fact, they said our price is moderate among the quotations he got.

So what I am trying to point out here is it depands what customer group you want to target. For an established company like us, it is silly to compete with the low-end web design company for low price package. If the customer want low-end web design, just introduce him to your web design's friend or your "friendly competitors", maybe one day your friend or your "friendly competitors" will introduce customers to you which they cannot handle. who knows ? :)

Seminar at Matrade - Effective Internet Marketing for Manufacturer and Exporter in Malaysia

I and my partner had a talk in the seminar at Matrade on 20th August 2007. The Seminar subject is "Effective internet marketing for manufacturer in Malaysia". It was organized by Exporter Club.

Beside me, Exporter Club also invited Hanson Toh, The one and only Google's country consultant appointed directly by Google Inc from USA.

I was so surprised to know there were many companies attended. One of the audience who is a foreigner purposely take a flight to attend the seminar just for the purpose to meet Hanson (Hey Hanson, you are famous now :p )

Hanson's topic mainly focus on PPC ( Pay per click ) or generally known as Google Adwords, while my topic mainly focus on SEO ( Search Engine Optimization) or organic search result.

Many people think SEO and PPC is competing each other, which I not agreed on it. In my opinion, there are co-exist and it is mutual compliment. Let's see the comparison of them :




Pros and Cons of PPC

Pros :
1. You get instant results. If you advertise your website on pay per click search engines, then you will get traffic now and not several months later.
2. PPC ads are perfect for time limited offers such as holiday sales.
3. You can stop PPC ads at any time.
4. PPC ads make it easy to test different keywords and landing pages.
5. PPC ads also work with websites that are not very well designed and wouldn't get good search engine rankings.
6. PPC ads allow you to bid on a large amount of keywords, including misspellings and other keyword variations that you cannot put on your web pages. i.e. “chili sos manufactuer” , “chili source manufacturer”

Cons :
1.PPC advertising can become very expensive if you bid on the wrong keywords or if you don't calculate the maximum bid price correctly.
2. Click fraud can be a problem. Not all clickers are potential customers.


Pro and Cons of SEO

Pros :
1.Traffic through organic search engine results is almost free if the up-front work has been done. 2.After optimizing your website you can use your money for different things and the optimized site will still run.
3.A larger number of visitors and search result clickers is not a problem.
4.Search engine optimization delivers long term results

Cons :
1.SEO can be relatively time-consuming up-front.
2.SEO can require a redesign of your web pages to make your website search engine friendly.
3.You must have the knowledge of SEO and make sure that you optimize your website correctly, if your want to get high search engine rankings.



Which is better : SEO or PPC ?
In my opinion, most commercial websites work best if you use both SEO and PPC. The exact mix depends on your goals. For example, if you have the products for short term promotion, or if you have many products to advertise online, it is better go for PPC, if you want to introduce your company or only few products for long terms, then you should go for SEO.

Website with google adsense

Notice that more and more website with google advertisement ? It means more and more webmasters are become the publisher of google adsense.

How is it affect to a website ? well, in my opinion, it brings more income to the webmaster, but at the same time, there are few disadvantages to the website :

1. confused the visitors - some webmasters try to earn more income by putting the ads near the navigation links, hoping the visitors will click the links. It actually sometimes confuse the visitors which are the links to the websites itself.

2. Make the visitors away - When a client clicks the ads, it will redirect the visitor to the website of the ads. So in other words, putting the ads in your website is actually driving your visitors away.

3. Image - If the website is well-established, or if it is a corporate website, puting too much google adsense ads will give the impression to the visitors : "This website or company is not professional, they still rely on google adsense to earn income, are their service/products reliable? "

Of course, some may not agree with what I said above. Let's let the visitors/clients make the judgement.

Melayu Boleh SEO Contest

Just knew from my friend Jee's blog, a SEO contest for the keyword "Melayu Boleh" is organized by www.wangcyber.com . I wonder how they choose "Melayu boleh" and not "Malaysia boleh". It seems that it only limit to the Malay's participants for this SEO contest.

Well, according to the organizer say, the word " Melayu Boleh " is 14,000 search per month ! wow ! Another surpise for me is most of the search are from Kuantan, see chart below :

At the same time, i also find that the keywords "sex melayu boleh" and "cerita lucah melayu boleh" has the search of 300 and 400 respectively per month.

I think the objective of this contest is to make the keyword "Melayu boleh" appear on top 10 so that people has less chances to find the sex related website when people type "Melayu boleh"

I think this is the first SEO contest in Malaysia, good luck to all the participants.

Hotel Malacca

Recently i have a project to optimize the website www.hoteltropicaville.net, which is a hotel located in the Malacca town. When i search for "Hotel Malacca" and had a typo error of "Hotel Malacca" , I surpise to see that there are about 41,800 website using the wrong word "Malaca" (lack of one "c" ), , and about 17,000 website using the wrong word "Melacca" ( wrongly replace the "a" to "e")

Obviosly, Malacca being a historical town in Malaysia since 15 century, there are many spelling for this historical town. One of my friend who is in France said he find the word "Malaca" is correct in his country...