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iPad invading China

Blogs — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 11:31:37 +0000

Being one of the most over populated countries in the world, China grabbed hold both hands when the iPad launched last Friday, 17 September 2010. Customers, in some parts of China, tough it out in the rain just to get their hands on one of the iPads. Hundreds of people, children and adults alike rejoiced when the Apple stores opened.

Now eyes are set on this country to see how the iPad will affect its citizens. Apple-products already are a big hit, products such as the iPhone, iPod and the Apple computer. Household, businesses and even class rooms adjusted in China to accommodate these devices. Marketing strategies already in place to fully tap into the awaiting market (national and international). Businesses structuring their own marketing groups to work with their iPads in order to accumulate more business opportunities. Even Apple tries to help out the corporate people who like to stay on top of the news by establishing the iStore where they can purchase their daily news and view it on their iPads.

Although the newest technology come at the pretty price tag of $500.00 plus, this does not stop the loyal customers of the Apple stores in China to purchase their own iPad. What is scary is that young children from the ages of twelve years are amongst the front liners to get their hand on the iPads. Children are the future and having them fully educated in handling this technology may seem like a step in the right direction, but this may lead to a chain reaction for schools in China to support the iPads in their classrooms.

But marketers are seeing this as a beacon of hope. Apple generations who needs supplying and they eagerly to accommodate their needs.

But will this be enough to make the iPad also one of the golden boys of Apple, or will the current economy rain on Apple’s parade?

Best Blogs Asia.

Flippa Redeem Credit Voucher

Best Blogs — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:27:21 +0000

This is the first time I’ve seen them give something away for free so make use of it since the offer lasts until 28th June 2010.

Free $10 Dollar Voucher

To celebrate their first birthday, Flippa are offering $10 voucher for each registered user.

The voucher can go towards:

Highlighting a current listing – $5
Bold a current listing – $5

Or if you want, can partly pay for a full listing or relist, as well as other special promotional features.

Code

The code to use is: 1F56261BE2B8

You then enter it in the “Redeem Credit Voucher” box after you’ve signed in.

Best Blogs Asia.

Definitive Guide to Landing Pages

Best Blogs — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:42:35 +0000

I won’t bore you with long details as to what a landing page is (it’s a tailored page where traffic is sent to prompt a certain action or result) or what tools to use (Google Webmaster is useful) but will explain what makes a successful landing page and why it works.

Using Current Resources

First, I’d recommend taking a look at Google’s excellent Web Optimisation review which includes some sections on landing pages and what they should contain as well as this Split testing article.

Landing Page Example

We’ll get straight into the action and look at a successful example of a landing page in action. Note: The design, the lack of ads, the testimonials, use of pictures and the visibility of the order/buy it now/sign up boxes.

Other examples are:

Designing for Adwords

Landing pages and Adwords campaigns work really well together and I could write a whole new article on this subject, but for now I’ll write a short guide on what your landing page should contain if you’re using Adwords.

Google has a habit of raising bidding prices if it doesn’t like the page you’ve created. Perhaps it’s a new website, contains a lot of links, doesn’t contain original content or that the landing page isn’t in the context of the current site. Google has written up guidelines on Landing Page Qualities and I recommend heading over there before placing bids.

In the mean time make sure your page has links to the site’s privacy policy (include your address/phone number), terms and conditions, contact us, about us and sitemap.

Gotten Google Slapped?

“Google Slapping” usually happens when your site doesn’t meet the correct requirements and huge extra charges are levied on your bidding keywords. So what’s the alternative? I personally don’t use Adwords and learnt from many years ago not to put all my eggs in one basket. I go for cheap clicks with no restrictions by using Networks like Adtoll and Adbrite, then redirect users to my landing pages.

Using Landing Pages for Subscriptions

Gaining more subscribers to my sites has become an important thing for me and it only recently “clicked” that I should be trying to build up a continual subscriber base to my blogs rather than hoping users who enter my site would click on my adverts and move on from my blog.

Directing the user to a custom landing page and getting them to signup and subscribe to your site makes greater sense. Building up a fan base, capturing email addresses and allowing users to come back to the site is very useful.

If you take a look at my own site’s example page, you’ll see what I’m referring to. I’ve kept the landing page in the style of the site, removed the adverts (with the help of php includes), showcased the site’s most popular posts and also gave an incentive to the potential subscriber by offering them an exclusive unpublished eBook.

Other Page Tips

There’s other important tips not just about what the site should contain and how it should look, but more importantly what the text says on the page. The content should be easy to read, focused on the product and “pitch” and there’s a need to explain how the reader would benefit by signing up. A landing page should communicate the value of what you’re offering.

Keep your Landing Page Current

It’s all too easy to build a page, use ppc and forget about it. The user visiting the page may of visited previously so what can be done? Try this free snippet of code below which uses Javascript to implement the latest day, month and year. This gives the impression the page is upto date:

Landing Code Snippet

Monitor your pages

Finally, sometimes landing pages stop functioning and if you’ve got 100’s of campaigns, there’s no way of knowing. One solution is that for a small fee, your host can monitor your pages and page/call you if they’re not functioning. Another way is to sign up for the many free monitoring solutions available on the web.

Best Blogs Asia.

PPC and SEO in China

Best Blogs — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 04:44:17 +0000

Hat tip to Sino Tech Blog who explains how SEO continues to outpace PPC. Search is predicted to grow in the US, but how does it relate to China.

Why is PPC in China so Important?

Baidu is the biggest search engine in China and they claim 62% of market share, with Google being the second. But, regarding SEM, they work a little bit different: Baidu’s keyword advertising placements are listed before the natural search results. All of those ads are called “推广”. So, professional service about keyword advertising is necessary for most companies. Keywords reports from Baidu’s stystem is actually very simple. Dislike Google’s adwords system, you cannot even track the performance / conversion of each keyword in Baidu.

PPC vs SEO

The survey data was drawn from over 5000 active online marketers in a variety of settings was listed as:
In-house managed PPC Search – 3.84%
Outsourced managed PPC Search – 5.40%
Difference: 40%

In-house Natural Search Optimization – 2.62%
Outsourced Natural Search Optimization – 4.76%
Difference: 80%

SEO

According to a Forrester Marketing Survey, SEO trails only social media and online video as places where marketers are expected to be shifting marketing dollars. SEO continues to outpace PPC and there’s a long way to go before balance is established between the share of clicks SEO commands and the fraction of spend it receives, but the gap is slowly closing.

Conclusion

It’s too early to compare the dynamics in the US with China, the headaches of SEO with Baidu may cause problems later on. Finding the right SEO Agency in China is also hard work.

Best Blogs Asia.

Google Website Translation

Best Blogs — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 03:44:57 +0000

So far I’ve been using Babelfish and if stuck, a cheap translator based in Hong Kong for all my Chinese simplified and traditional text translations. The gadget seems pretty useful if you’ve got a website.

Google translate

There is an automatic translation of web page, supported by more than 51 languages and is available to all webmasters. The idea is simple, the javascript gadget is added the website, then the clicks the dropdown box and clicks on translate. To note: the code doesn’t cause any problems with adsense either.

The language of the page is checked accordingly, if the visitors language is different from the page’s language then they will be asked to translate the page via a banner.

Install the Google Website Translation Gadget

Go to the installation page (currently set for Simplified Chinese) and follow the instructions.

Best Blogs Asia.

Free Search Engine Submission

Best Blogs — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:54:28 +0000

Have to give a hat tip to http://www.trafficflowseo.com/2008/03/free-search-engine-submission-links.html, I bookmarked ita while back but his site is now down.

Search Engine Sites to Submit to

I recovered the search engine links below, sorted them in order and removed the non-working links, reciprical linking as well as links that require registeration. I’ve basically updated it for 2010, so you can be safe with your free search engine submissions.

Be careful

Alot of SEO’s recommend not to submit your site to too many directories. I agree with this statement, the major search engines can pick up on this and reduce your link juice, directory sites which are linkfarms can also harm your PR value…so watch out.

The said, there is no harm in submitting your site to targetted and on topic engines and a couple of submissions per day will not harm your site.

Major and Established Search Engines

Alexa – Submission Page
Bing – Submission Page
Google – Submission Page

cuil – Submission Page
Duck Duck Go – Submission Page
Entireweb – Submission Page
FyberSearch – Submission Page
Infotiger – Submission Page
LookClick – Submission Page
MixCat – Submission Page
OneSeek – Submission Page
Scrub The Web – Submission Page
Search Site – Submission Page
Search-O-Rama – Submission Page
WhatUseek – Submission Page

Chinese Search Engines

Baidu (in Chinese, but pretty easy to figure out) – Submission Page
iASK – Submission Page
ODCN.org – Submission Page
SoSo – Submission Page
Uncover China -Submission Page
ZhongSou.com – Submission Page

Search Engine Links in Japan

Harmony Search (text mostly in Japanese) – Submission Page
WASALive! – Submission Page

Individual free search engine submission links

Some of these sites may be new, but most are unknown to me.

iDoFind.com – Submission Page

Abraham Search – Submission Page
Acoon.com – Submission Page
Active Search Results(ASR) – Submission Page
All Xplore – Submission Page
amidalla – Submit Page
Amfibi – Submission Page
AnooX – Submission Page
AxxaSearch – Submission Page

Big Finder – Submission Page
Blue.lu – Submission Page
Boitho – Submission Page
Burf – Submission Page

Claymont Search – Submission Page
Coolfishy – Submission Page
Coyote Search – Submission Page

eBingBong – Submission Page
Exalead – Submission Page

Find Once – Submission Page

Geona – Submission Page
Gheto Search – Submission Page
Gooru – Submission Page
guruji – Submission Page

hengine – Submission Page
homerweb – Submission Page
HopHunt – Submission Page

Iconnic – Submission Page
Igwanna – Submission Page
Intel Seek – Submission Page

JGDO – Submission Page

Lexxe – Submission Page
Liggs – Submission Page
Logical Cities – Submission Page

Mardox – Submission Page
Megaglobe – Submission Page
Myahint – Submission Page

Navisso – Submission Page
NetSearch – Submission Page

Oriango – Submission Page
Official Search – Submission Page

SearchIt – Submission Page
SearchWiz – Submission Page
Secret Search Engine Labs – Submission Page
Semager – Submission Page
seeknet – Submission Page
Shoula! Search – Submission Page
SitiDi.net – Submission Page
Slider – Submission Page
SonicRun – Submission Page
Spider Monkey – Submission Page
Stopdog – Submission Page
STSEEK – Submission Page
Swoogle – Submission Page
Super.Info – Submission Page
Susy Search – Submission Page

Thagodz – Submission Page

Ulysseek – Submission Page
UNAMOO – Submission Page

Vmgo.com – Submission Page

XavierSeek – Submission Page
Xoole – Submission Page

W8 Search – Submission Page
Walhello – Submission Page
Watta Search – Submission Page
Web Squash – Submission Page

Yasmos – Submission Page
Yoozila – Submission Page

Other Languages

Make sure your site is in the current language. If you have an English site, my recommendation is to create a sub-domain, make sure all the content (including the META data) is in the language of your country of choice, then submit the sub-domain.

acoon.de (German) – Submission Page
Anopt (in Russian) – Submission Page
Buscan.com (Canary Islands) – Submission Page
Cavarzano (Italian) – Submission Page
Cnous.ch (French sites only) – Submission Page
cruiser (Serbian) – Submission Page
DeepIndex (in French, but indexes English pages also) – Submission Page
Enter UK (UK sites only) – Submission Page
fastbot (German) – Submission Page
gogo – (Russian site) – Submission Page
Insitor (German) – Submission Page
Jabse (Bulgarian) – Submission Page
Jungle Spider (German Sites Only) – Submission Page
Rambler (in Russian) – Submission Page
Nepal Search (Nepal sites only) – Submission Page
NetSprint (Polish) – Submission Page
NIGMA.RU (Russian) – Submission Page
Pogodak! (Croatian) – Submission Page
Portelo (Israel) – Submission Page
Searchers (UK) – Submission Page
Semager (German) – Submission Page
Seznam (Czech) – Submission Page
SpongeLink (currently only US and UK sites) – Submission Page
Szukacz (Polish Sites Only) – Submission Page
TROPICA (in German, but appears to accept English sites) – Submission Page
WEBoFANT (Swiss only sites – URL must end in suffix ‘.il’ or ‘.ch’) – Submission Page
Wirtualna Polska (Polish) – Submission Page
XOLA (Vietnamese, but appears to accept English sites) – Submission Page
YAAL.DE (German) – Submission Page
Yandex (Russian) – Submission Page
Zatka (only Indian sites) – Submission Page
Zoohoo (Slovakia)- Submission Page

Same Network Engines

Submitting to one will most likely provide data to all of them.

Web Portal Guide – Submission Page
Search Blast – Submission Page
The Seek Portal – Submission Page
Find That Website – Submission Page
Search It Guide – Submission Page
Find Similar Pages – Submission Page
Smart Search Guide – Submission Page
Klik Point – Submission Page
Hi Seek – Submission Page
Hot Site Search – Submission Page
More Web Search – Submission Page
Peak Search – Submission Page
Prime Search Results – Submission Page
Search Box – Submission Page
Ifernatix Solutions – Submission Page
The Original Search Engine – Submission Page
AZ to ZA – Submission Page
Dr. Search – Submission Page
Help You Search – Submission Page
My Search Pilot – Submission Page
Your Reply – Submission Page
Dash Launch – Submission Page
All Best Search – Submission Page
Better Internet Search – Submission Page
I Need Search – Submission Page
Local Search Engine – Submission Page
Ask the Search Guru – Submission Page
Searching Portal – Submission Page
Home Business Data Center – Submission Page
Go Find Here – Submission Page
Sitefind – Submission Page
Gokoole – Submission Page
AcuSearch – Submission Page
My Coco Land – Submission Page
All Can Seek – Submission Page
All U Search – Submission Page
All We Seek – Submission Page
And Search – Submission Page
AskSearch – Submission page
Beat Bop – Submission Page
Best City Search – Submission Page
Best Net Search – Submission Page
Big Splash – Submission Page
Computer Seek – Submission Page
DigiCrawl – Submission Page
Dot Search – Submission Page
Easy To Search – Submission Page
Final Search – Submission Page
Find This – Submission Page
Find Path – Submission Page
Find Your Search – Submission Page
FindZilla – Submission Page
Fitter Bitter – Submission Page
Hip Flip – Submission Page
Hypno Search – Submission Page
Lightning Search – Submission Page
Meta Search Live – Submission Page
MicroSeek – Submission Page
Mota Crawler – Submission Page
One Search Nation – Submission Page
Querybit – Submission Page
Rapid Crawl – Submission Page
Refresh Line – Submission Page
Remote Search – Submission Page
Search Mind – Submission Page
Search Quick – Submission Page
Search Bell – Submission Page
Sly Seek – Submission Page
SparkleBerry – Submission Page
Surfer Search – Submission Page
Sweet Search – Submission Page
Teeter Totter – Submission Page
Text Billboards – Submission Page
Think Seek – Submission Page
Thunder Seek – Submission Page
World Seek – Submission Page
Wow Seek – Submission Page
Yuppy Search – Submission Page
Maddog’s Profiles – Submission Page
WaWiz – Submission Page
More Web Search – Submission Page
Find Portal – Submission Page

Download these search engine links 28kb

If you of any relevant sites which should be on the list, let me know in the comments below.

Best Blogs Asia.

Submit to Chinese Search Directories

Best Blogs — Thu, 13 May 2010 03:29:17 +0000

Everyone knows the Chinese market is huge and there’s great potential. Getting your site “out there” helps alot and can dramatically improve your hits if you are targetting a certain group.

China Market

I’ve written before about getting into Baidu since they own at least 2/3’s of the search market as well as other China affiliate networks, but submitting to local directories helps also. The site will be spidered and the results passed onto the local search engines.

Setup your Site

Firstly you need to setup your site properly, so the content your submitting needs to:

Content should be in Chinese language.
Domain name can be com extension, net extension, cn extension or org extension.
Hosting can be in China, Baidu could give more preference to sites hosted in the local country.
Meta tag should be ZH instead of EN.
Use a Chinese based CMS like made-in-china CMS, Dede CMS, Empire CMS and etc.
Gambling or eroticism relevant websites are prohibited according to Chinese laws and regulations.

Chinese Search Engine Directory Submission Resources

Website Submission Baidu
Submit website to Yahoo China
Submit website to Zhongsou
Submit website to Hao123 (Get into Baidu Directory)
Submit website to DMOZ Chinese
Submit website to Chinese Search Engine Youdao

Best Blogs Asia.

Matt Cutts and Paid Links

Best Blogs — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 05:01:42 +0000

Matt Cutts is the authority on things search related and page ranking, so it’s useful to report what Google believe users should do when placing adverts on their pages.

Paid Links

From what I understand Google isn’t going against people making money from their sites. They promote Adsense, let publishers combine with other advertisers like Adbrite and other affiliate links…so what’s the problem? It all comes down to Page Rank. Some users believe the higher the page rank, the higher placement you get on Google and so on…so PR became hot property.

Established sites with high PR could then sell links on their pages to newly formed sites or low ranking websites, then “link juice” is passed and can improve the ranking of the linked site. However, Google doesn’t like this practice since can effect the SERPS and I guess “isn’t fair” to established or authority sites which have built up links and link juice over time.

Previously I sold links on sites like Digitalpoint, earning upto $100 per month. One of my site’s was PR6 with a Dmoz listing, however after a few months I was reduced to PR3 and lost my Dmoz listing.

It could be conicidence, but I don’t think so…especially after reading articles like : Matt Cutts and the paid links

So what can be done

Well firstly, the time of actively selling links for Page Rank juice is over. Google’s technology can quickly indentify sites which do so and change your site’s ranking accordingly.

I think the reliance of Page Rank will be less over time, the web is developing and indexing sites is different due to the use of social media which can boost the backlinks of pages/sites in a matter of days.

I wrote a review of TLA (Text Links Ads) stating how bad they are for passing on link juice. Alot of users implemented the TLA code and their site’s were effected so stay away.

If you do want to be paid for a link, implement “noFollow” in the href tag or another idea is to not actively promote you and your site as a link seller.

Reporting Paid Links

Google is getting users on their site and people can report paid linking via the Google Paid Link form.

Going back to the Digitalpoint mention, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Big G have implement bots to search Link selling sites and check for paid linking…so be warned!

Best Blogs Asia.

Create a PHP Rss Feed

Best Blogs — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 06:17:55 +0000

I’ve had this piece of code laying around for a while, it still works and is a very useful script to generate your own RSS feed.

Why an RSS Feed

It’s not required that every site has it. CMS sites like Wordpress automatically have it setup, whilst static HTML or custom coded sites do not. Offering a feed makes your site dynamic, so when new content is added – it’s automatically displayed on the feed. People can then download your feed and keep upto date with your site without having to visit it. It can also be a source of traffic, if you submit to RSS Submission sites.

PHP made RSS Feed

The source code below can be downloaded and integrated on your site. Any problems let me know here.

PHP RSS Code

You would then integrate it using something like this, also using a Cron job to active it would help alot:

$myfeed = new RSSFeed(); $myfeed->SetChannel('http://www.mysite.com/xml.rss', 'My feed name', 'My feed description', 'en-us', 'My copyright text', 'me', 'my subject'); $myfeed->SetImage('http://www.mysite.com/mylogo.jpg'); $myfeed->SetItem('http://www.mysite.com/article.php?id=bla', 'name', 'description'); .... echo $myfeed->output();

Best Blogs Asia.

What People are Searching

Best Blogs — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:02:23 +0000

There is the useful Google Analytics to measure how people reached your site and what they are searching for, but I find the Wordpress Searchmeter Plugin useful and have written a brief post on what people are searching for on this site.

What people are searching for BBA

For this site, I can see exactly what users are looking for and most of the time it isn’t on topic! So what do I do? I make a post to cater for the demand or ignore what the searcher are searching for. Here are the most popular searches:

Asian Girls

I guessed this would be a popular search on the site but why? Obviously I’m getting traffic from somewhere but this is clearly an Internet site. Perhaps they are looking for Asian dating.

Dawn Yang

Dawn Yang is based in Singapore and is a competitor to Xia Xue. Both are attractive bloggers, but unfortunately I can’t access her site in China.

Dipika

I’m unsure what a Dipika means, but could be Asian particularly Indian surfers looking for an Indian actress called Dipika Parmar?

Alagoas

Ah this one is easy to solve, it’s a place in Brazil.

Carlos Arroyo

At first I thought was connected to the Philippine president, but as actually an NBA player.

Why they search for this?

Perhaps Best Blogs in Asia has turned into a place to find sexy Asian women? I think because this site has Asia based roots, that people mistake anything Asian to be on the site. I’d like to revisit this post in a couple of years time and see how it’s progressed with (hopefully) more visitors and other searches.

Best Blogs Asia.

China SEO

Best Blogs — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 03:53:55 +0000

Search Engine Optimisation in China should be huge right? There’s a massive market out there, but my feeling is it hasn’t been recognised by the Chinese market and is an untapped source of revenue. I reviewed some China based SEO firms.

Researching Search Engine Optimisation in China

Chinese blogs can be found at the China Directory and I make no guarantee as to how these guys perform in terms of SEO services.

A quick search on Yahoo (my default search tool) for “China SEO” led me to:

Marketing Future
A general firm based in China offering natural China search engine optimization services & PPC management.

SEO4China
Based in Shanghai, they promote their services on the web and have a useful blog showcasing tips on the local scene.

One Man Bandwidth
Run by Lonnie Hodge, who has been on the blogging scene for seems like forever, he blogs and can also do some consulting work.

Lidgen
Lidgen, as a new leading Search Marketing Consultancy in Mainland, offers of both paid and organic services

Conclusion

I think the perception is that anything related to Search Engines and paid services in China couldn’t be guaranteed or trusted, perhaps comparable to India services. I think the point of getting high rankings isn’t the amount of submissions to other sites but promoting on specific relevant sites who want to link to you. Also creating relevant articles, answering questions and using social media will gain high rankings – which a local Chinese Internet Marketer may not be able to help you with.

That’s about it! There are a few conferences in China but no focus groups or meet ups in China. Let’s see how this develops over the next coming years.

Best Blogs Asia.

Online Activity in China

Best Blogs — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:19:26 +0000

Information based on my experiences and from the 2009 Internet Statistical published by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), pulls up some interesting facts.

China Facts

China has the most internet users in the world
By late June 2009, the number of Chinese Internet users had reached 338 million, increasing by 40 million within six months. Mobile Internet users had reached 155 million, up 32.1% within six months largely due to the penetration of mobile phones into the rural areas.

What people are accessing
CNNIC’s Report shows that the proportion of Chinese Internet users accessing the Internet for entertainment, information and networking purposes. Except for forum/BBS, the popularization rate of the three Internet applications in Internet users was all over 50%.

Search Engine Market Share

Baidu – 62%
Google China – 20%
Others (including Yahoo!, MSN & Sina) – 18%

Important Websites in Chinese Search

Baidu (search, media, entertainment, content, news, blogging CMS)
Sina (blogging CMS, news, entertainment)
Alibaba (business to business professional directory)
Sohu (news, blogging, entertainment, connectivity, mobile services)

QQ and Instant Messaging
Instant Message usage is more popular than email and using search engines in China, where 77% of Chinese internet users have used instant messaging service in the last 6 months, with Tencent’s QQ program is the leading IM program with the highest market share.

Impact of the Great Firewall
There is an inhouse team reportedly 250,000 to 1 million “internet police” checking the internet for any content deemed politically unstable to China’s well being. There are many sites which continue to be blocked – Twitter, Facebook, Blogspot to name a few.

Online spend in China

The number of users shopping online rose to 87.88 million, while the use of online payments increased by 4.8%. Spending power is low as the average Chinese online consumer is relatively low with 74% making less than 3000 yuan a month.

E-commerce is virtually non-existant, due to both the extremely low rate of credit card ownership. Paypal is available to China as well as Alibaba’s payment system, but is underused.

Best Blogs Asia.

Asia Web Conferences 2009/2010

Best Blogs — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:44:14 +0000

Everyone knows how important it to find out the latest terms and technologies, movers and shakers, networking with likeminded individuals and so on – so attending conferences is one of the way ways to go.

Events in Asia

Broken down by country with dates, I have no recommendations to give on a particular conference you should attend! I knew of many events by thought I’d break it down for my own benefit, as well as yours…Feel free to add events you know will take place in 2010.

China

Ad tech – November 2009.
China 2.0 Tour – November 2009.
Xmedia Lab – December 2009
ASWC 2009
Chinict – May 2010.
China Joy – July 2010
Search Marketing Expo – September 2010

India

www 2011 – March 2011.

Korea

APweb 2010 – April 2010.

Thailand

Lift Conference Thailand – October 2009.

Conference Tips

Whilst I’ve never been asked to be a speaker (why would anyone want to listen to what I had to say!), I’ve been to many web conferences and many not web related. My wife’s role includes conference speaking, so I know how it works but I’d like to suggest the following tips as an attendee:

Don’t be shy. It’s hard to fit in when everyone knows each other or when company teams show up.
Dress well. Of course, techies show up in the clothes they wore last night, but to make an impression dress well and give thought into what you are saying.
Introduce yourself first. Is easier said than done, but think of the money spent on attending and getting the most “value” from the conference.
Define goals for “what you want” out of the conference, prepare questions too.
Do your research. Find out who the speakers are and other attendee’s and send them friendly emails beforehand.
Get stocked up on well designed business cards (with your details labelled clearly), also translated in the local language if abroad.
Find out and attend the after show/party, this is probably where most networking is done!

Best Blogs Asia.

About Baidu

Best Blogs — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:16:53 +0000

Having written a post on how to submit your site to Baidu, I feel it’s time to write about the most dominant search engine in China.

About Baidu

Baidu remains the dominant search engine in China with well over two-thirds share of the market. Created by Robin Li and based in Beijing, they are a Chinese language search engine (although just recently launched a Japanese version) for websites, audio files and images. The most important factor in Baidu’s dominance is the support from the Chinese government, which regularly blocks western sites and imposes strict rules and censorship on other foreign Internet companies.

Services

Baidu offers a number of services to locate information such as,search by Chinese phonetics, stock quotes, news, weather and so on. An example is shown below:

Paid Search Campaigns

Even before Google launched Adsense, Baidu allowed advertisers to bid for ad space and then they received revenue every time a customer clicked on an ad. Small and medium-size companies loved it, the site’s traffic increased and Baidu turned a profit in 2004.

Baidu’s results are overwhelmingly influenced by paid advertising campaigns and ad spends. Paid site rankings are combined with organic search results, even for keywords which are not specifically bid upon. The popularity of Baidu’s paid advertising position means discounts and favoured pricing have been reduced and rates have increased by as much as 100% over the past year.

Generally most search campaigns in China are small-scale. Jason Lei, VP of paid search management software solution provider adSage states that 77% of advertiser campaigns on Baidu employ just 200 or fewer keywords; the average is 50 keywords or less for all advertisers. There are some major campaigns running in China, but most of these appear to be managed by agencies that have access to sophisticated systems and tools not available to most search marketers in China.

Conclusion

Baidu’s working model works well and has a loyal base of users who search for entertainment-related content. Google says it plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to compete in China although it will be hard work for them to penetrate this market.

Best Blogs Asia.

Hong Kong SEO

Best Blogs — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:50:55 +0000

I used to live in Hong Kong and didn’t even know there was a SEO or Internet Marketing scene…until now! I always wondered about the SEO scene in Hong Kong, I started out as a struggling Web Designer in Hong Kong back in 2003 and found finding clients was hard, whilst competing with established Web Companies in HK.

Researching Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing in Hong Kong

Hong Kong blogs can be found at the HK Directory and I make no guarantee as to how these guys perform in terms of SEO services.

A quick search on Yahoo (my default search tool) for “Hong Kong SEO” led me to:

SEO Hong Kong
Created by Elmer Cagape, a freelance SEO consultant for BeansBox Studio Limited. His site is pretty useful, giving great tips on SEO, Hong Kong scene and link building.

852 Signal
Run by Angus Lau, gives updates on the Web2.0 scene in Hong Kong with a list of Startups here (are any of these still around?)

Sammy HK
Site run by Sammy Fung, a Web Developer in Hong Kong.

The Egg
Offers Web and SEO Services.

Agog Digital Hong Kong
Offering Internet marketing services and ecommerce solutions consultancy.

Yelo Tofu
Yelotofu is managed by Ca-Phun Ung, a generalist freelance web developer living in Hong Kong.

Bar Camp

There’s a yearly meet up of Internet Marketers in Hong Kong, at a group discussion board called “Bar Camp“. I missed this year’s one, I’ll try to make next year’s though as would love to get in contact with people who do a similar role to me.

Conclusion

Internet Marketing and SEO is quite new in Hong Kong and probably the rest of Asia, glad to see the above people are helping it to take off and events like Bar Camp can only improve Hong Kong’s profile on the scene.

Best Blogs Asia.

When will China lift is block?

Best Blogs — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:11:33 +0000

Everyone knows the reason behind it mainly is to reduce the impact of protests, many of which were publicized using internet forums, blogs and major portals. Having lived in Hong Kong also, these restrictions do not apply there or Macau.

Internet Censorship in China

A couple of months ago I wrote about blocked sites in China. It’s more annoying than intrusive and since my job is as a Web Developer, I have to find other sites to get my job done. You can also come up with your own conclusions as why particular sites are banned.

What sites are currently blocked

As an update (Aug 2009), the main sites which can’t be viewed are:

Youtube
Flickr
Facebook
Twitter
.blogspot domains
.wordpress.com domains

Conclusion

I can understand and agree in some ways why this is taking place. There’s huge amounts of information out there, some dangerous and threatening and measures need to be put into place for it for be controlled. There’s something called the Green Dam Youth Escort programme which censors content from inside your computer.

At the moment, ISP’s take on a greater role and control what sites I can and can’t see with one annoying aspect is that sometimes ISP banners popup for no apparent reason! There are huge messaging sites based in China like QQ, these haven’t been restricted but have a greater impact on Chinese people. I’m not sure why QQ isn’t blocked?

So what’s the conclusion? Well there is no conclusion. It’s near impossible to contact the “Great Firewall of China” managers and ask them to unblock your site, so the caution is be careful what you write!

Best Blogs Asia.

Michael Jackson Dead SEO Results

Best Blogs — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:39:42 +0000

It’s a bit tacky to showcase a SEO Results test based on Michael Jackson being dead but this is one of the biggest news stories this year, if not this century so it’s worthwhile to find out how sites will rank with SEO results.

Michael Jackson Dead

Everyone knows about Michael, so there’s no point to showcase what he did. At this point in time the internet is going crazy since people are trying to find out how he died, where he was and what he did.

It’s also surprising that people are searching for “Micheal Jackson” rather than “Michael Jackson” so you’d think after all these years they’d get the name right! Results are in Asia Pacific times on 25th July 2009.

09:36 SEO Results

News is at the top of the page with actual results from NJ.com and WCPO.com getting listed.
The Onion is top listed after a 2005 “corpse article” was posted, Hoax-Slayer.com also posted an old article, whilst TMZ is coming up the page with a relevant article.
Note the URL setup for both “Dead” “Death” and “Dies”l – www.tmz.com/…/michael-jackson-dies-death-dead-cardiac-arrest/

10:36 SEO Results

Postcronical.com and theaustralian.news.com.au are being ranked in the news results. I think Google News is about 3 hours behind.
The bottom 3 searches are still the same, I predict TMZ will be #1.

15:36 SEO Results

News is still at the top with links from whereilive.com.au (how come so many Australian sites?) and Examiner.com.
MSN is now Number 1 with “Singer Michael Jackson dead at 50”, notice this is the first site with “Michael Jackson dead” in it…
TMZ in Number 2 and The Onion old article is still listed.

Conclusion

Seems old sites can still rank in the top 10 after a big news story breaks. Google lets News always rank first, even though it is many hours behind. Also, new articles from established sites can rank very quickly. So it seems, if you’ve got an established site, write an article about a breaking story (being careful with your keywords and url structure) and you’ll rank in Google. Old sites still rank for new keyword searches too.

Best Blogs Asia.

Focus on your Company Website

Best Blogs — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:57:59 +0000

I’ve been involved in the web industry for years. I found it easy to get sucked in, do the work for clients, work on my own sites and let the money roll in, but there are problems.

Misohoni Company Site

However I neglected the fact that my company web site (Misohoni) was left to gather dust and wasn’t updated hardly ever.

A company site is a representation of myself and the work I do.

My feeling is I should of continued to develop/improve my company, perhaps could of drummed up more business or other exciting opportunities.

Too easy to get bogged down with work

Since 2003, I’ve been working freelance as well as my own sites when the work dried up. I coped ok, but as trends and fashions changed, so did my tastes in domains.

I bought and managed new sites to try to be a part of a “new exciting wave” when instead I should of developed my own current sites which had a lot of potential to earn lots of revenue.

Focus on One thing

This has to be the most important piece of advice. If your overall goal is to run X site only, but have mini sites that have potential but are taking up your time…then sell them. Reach your goal first.

Second piece of advice, don’t be afraid to sell. If the time is right and you’ve got the right amount of revenue/visitors to your site and the site is not in your long term plans, then sell.

Design of Misohoni

I wanted to keep the new design simple and just explain what I do and how to contact me. Over the years my Misohoni site was a forum, a soccer site to a complex site with no focus. The latest design (which was scrawled on a napkin on a boat over to Hong Kong!) integrates RSS feeds, showcases my portfolio and is more open for users to contact me. I also wanted to focus that I’m based in Asia.

Conclusion

This was a more personal post than others on the site but I cannot stress the importance of designing your company site well. I spent nearly 5 years planning what Misohoni would look like and am finally happy with the result. If you need some advanced web analysis with your current site, feel free to contact me.

Best Blogs Asia.

Free Desktop Wallpaper

Best Blogs — Tue, 26 May 2009 07:19:39 +0000

I use the computer a lot so staring at the same desktop background is pretty annoying after a while. I present a selection of my favourite wallpapers which are usuable, colourful and interesting.

Finding Wallpaper

Finding free wallpaper is difficult as there’s so much available on the net, however you need to make sure that:

There are no copyright clauses for the images, check for a Creative Copyright licence.
Image sizes should range from 1600×1200, 1280×960 to 1024×768, preferably quality should be above 72DPI.
Choose a light coloured background to separate icons from dark colours.

Useful Resources

Selection of Wallpapers

Best Blogs Asia.

Traffic from Chinese Search Sites

Best Blogs — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:15:30 +0000

I’ve mentioned in previous posts about targeting Asian traffic and there’s 30 million+ China based bloggers out there as well as general Chinese internet users. This post looks at how to get this traffic to your sites.

Popular Chinese Search Sites

The main sites are as follows, in no particular order.

Baidu

Baidu Inc., which operates China’s most popular Internet search engine, and currently the 4th biggest website in the world. They also own Baidu Baike the largest online Chinese-language encyclopaedia. It contains more articles than any Wikipedia except the English-language Wikipedia.

Soso

Soso is a Chinese search engine owned by Tencent Holdings Limited, which is well known for its other creation QQ.

Sogou

Sogou is the first search engine that has gathered up to 10 billion web pages, supplying most convenience services for searching news, music, shopping information, maps, etc.

Youdao

Youdao search products currently include search tools for the web pages, blogs, shopping, images, music, news, video, maps, encyclopaedia, translation, a desktop dictionary, tool bar and the Youdao Reader for RSS feeds. It currently powers the popular 163.com site.

Yam

Yam is one of the most comprehensive WWW indices for Taiwan. This site is modelled after the Yahoo search index.

Timway

TimwayA search index supporting both English and Chinese searches. Also includes a Yahoo! like subject index. All entries are bilingual and is Hong Kong based.

Youku

Youku is a video based sharing search engine, ranked #1 in the Chinese video sharing sector by China Internet Society, iResearch and Baidu User Index. Other similar sites are ku6.com.

How to get Chinese Traffic

You need Chinese content, in Traditional or Simplified Chinese. From my experiences you can write the content and it will be picked up by search engines. You can also Submit to Baidu (link). I’d also suggest the following:

Declare the Meta language in the tags, example ZH for Chinese.
Create a sub-domain and translate all the site into Chinese, then submit this to Chinese search engines.
Declare any English text on the page with EN tags.

This will be reflected in your traffic logs. Also, if you see a lot of Translation tools like Babelfish in your stats, check which country your visitors are coming from and translate the page/site accordingly.

I think it’s a case of reviewing your stats and changing the site to the visitor’s tastes.

Recommended Translator

I’m not a Chinese national so I don’t know how to write in Chinese, however I use a reliable local Hong Kong translator who transfers my English text to both Traditional and Simplified Chinese. Feel free to mention Best Blogs Asia when contacting him – Email: Po Cheung.

Best Blogs Asia.

Sources to Find Profitable Niches

Best Blogs — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:13:03 +0000

Knowing what are hot trends and profitable niches is hard work. The free tools below give you an indication as to what is popular (and with useful keywords and phrases) and then a custom website or web page can be specifically built.

Hot Trends and Niches

Finding trends and niches from popular sites makes sense. They have huge numbers of visitors, so by displaying what people are searching for and in targeted regions, custom sites with relevant affiliate programs can be used.

eBay pulse

With eBay pulse you can find that which product is most searched. eBay Pulse delivers a snapshot of the eBay marketplace, featuring the Top 10 popular searches, popular stores, popular products, highest priced etc.,.

Yahoo! Buzz

Yahoo is still on No.1 in Alexa ranking. With Yahoo Buzz you can find top searches by hours, day and month. Here you can find which term is searchable and then decide with is profitable and can write about that topic.

Lycos Top 50

The Lycos Top 50 shows which term is most searched.

Google : Zeitgeist

“Zeitgeist” means “the spirit of the times” and Google reveals this spirit through the aggregation of millions of search queries. Google Zeitgeist has several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. Use them for everything from business research to trivia answers.

Amazon Bestsellers

With Amazon Bestsellers, you can find most sellable product so that you can promote on your blog or website. You can put relevant reviews on your blog or website.

Best Blogs Asia.

Direct Ad Sales means more Profits

Best Blogs — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 03:31:05 +0000

I’m exploring the ways of direct advert selling, looking at the benefits and disadvantages of using this method and whether it is profitable in the long run.

Using Direct Advert Sales

When I first started this blog late last year in 2008, I was more concerned about getting content available on the site rather than monetising it. I used Google Adsense for a while, but I was only making a few cents/dollars per day and losing visitors at the same time.

By recently implementing direct ad sales, I found it was an option to add extra revenue to the site. For example my approach was:

Getting some popular articles written on the site, with backlinks.
Improve the Page Rank level.
Set a cheap price and promote the site on Digitalpoint.
Place image adverts only, on all pages and include doFollow links.
Limit the number of spots available.

Benefits of using Direct Ads

Direct ad sales is a great way to monetise your blog since there’s no middleman to take your profits. You can set you own ad rates and have more control over the advertising and payment options. As the site develops with more backlinks/popularity you can increase your advertising rates. Bloggers like Shoemoney and John Chow state that direct advert sales make up the majority of their site’s income.

Disadvantages

The main disadvantage is that since it’s up to you to find advertisers, you could end up with unsold inventory especially when you are just starting out.

Lessons Learnt from these types of Sales

I used this form of advertising recently, I found it’s slightly flawed. The price level was set right, I had a backlog of potential advertisers however the price was dependant on the Page Rank level and number of backlinks.

By selling links, I was in fact selling my Page Rank Juice by accepting doFollow paid advertising. In the most recent Page Rank update, my level dropped from PR5 to PR4. I think this is due to selling a high number paid links on all pages.

Since, then I’m filtering out the number of paid adverts and will not offer DoFollow paid links anymore, instead exploring:

Adbrite Sales
OIO Publisher (Wordpress Plugin)
Buy Sell Ads

Best Blogs Asia.

What is Google Chrome

Best Blogs — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:13:41 +0000

In March 2009, Big G released a new working version of Google Chrome as a competitor to Internet Explorer, Opera and Firefox. It’s currently only available for Windows, but it has the benefits of being open-source with built-in support for web and search applications.

Browser Features

The browser showcases tabs in a different way as you can isolate certain tabs. You can also run video direct from the browser, isolate pop ups, webfonts support, link to Web Applications and create third party plugins. It also supports various tools such as:

Search
Desktop Search
Gmail
Virtual Drive
Web browsing
G Docs

Using Google Chrome for Websites

For web site owners, Big G’s browser will be a useful addition. What I found useful was support for Javascript heavy sites and web applications, site locked quickly and less resources were used up on my computer.

Integration with RSS feeds worked well since they were instantly loaded in the browser.

Download and Install Google Chrome

Download

Conclusion

It’s still a bit buggy and being Windows XP compatible only, the launch feels a little premature. I do believe it’s a useful addition to my browser collection for testing compatibility issues, loading many sites at once in different browsers and also for ease of use with RSS feeds.

My current preference is to use IE for do to do usage as I’m comfortable with the layout, Firefox for site testing and Google Chrome for final testing and multi-site viewing.

Best Blogs Asia.

Free 16 pixel Icons

Best Blogs — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 06:19:01 +0000

Some free simple 16×16 pixel icons for you to use on your sites or blogs.

Pixel Icons

I’ve got some favourite icons I use, mainly from a guy called Fam Fam but he offered so many that it got a bit confusing at times. I mainly used a few, so decided to create my own and share for free here. Actually, my internet connection went down yesterday, so I had an hour or so to come up with something…

They’re in GIF format, preferably suits a white background and range from:

Email
Search
Folder
Home
MSN/Messenger
Pencil/Drawing
People/Messenger
Print
Sound/Music
Twitter

Screenshot

Here’s a screenshot of the icons.

Download the 16×16 icons

Download 16×16 Icons 10kb

Best Blogs Asia.

Hiding affiliate links

Best Blogs — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 02:05:04 +0000

Linking to affiliate programmes with your own affiliate code is a sure fire way of making money. However, there are two schools of thought by a user – 1) if it looks like an affiliate link, they won’t click it and 2) if it doesn’t follow with the look of the site, they may not click it either. This article will help you.

Ways of disguising affiliate links

Firstly you should of already applied to relevant affiliate offers and made a list of the affiliate urls.

Meta Redirect

You can create a page which contains the following code, which when clicked on will redirect to your affiliate link. This code is useful for people who’d like a quick fix. In the tag place:

PHP Disguise

Create a .php file containing the name of your affiliate product – say bestblogsasia.php, then within the new .php file add:

htaccess 301

My personal preference is to use this placement although the the .htaccess file can get quite large:

Redirect 301 /go/affiliate.htm http://www.affiliate.com/?ref=123

Best Blogs Asia.

Targeting Asian Traffic

Best Blogs — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 07:32:21 +0000

For affiliate marketers, generally the most profitable times of the year would probably be Christmas (Buying presents for loved ones), after Christmas (Diet pills and gym memberships) and Valentines Day (Jewellery, chocolates and flowers). However, have you ever taken into account other profitable times such as The Chinese New Year or even things such as auspicious dates in the year to get married?

Huge Potential in Asia

According to the CNNIC, there are around 30 million+ China based bloggers who are all relatively untapped in terms of affiliate marketing. In terms of online spending ratios (Source Zenith Optimedia 2007) the UK is first with an 18% spend, Korea and Japan at 12%, whilst the US spends only 8%! It’s worthwhile to take this into account when thinking of who you want on your site and what type of spending power they have.

The importance of targeting countries outside of your own is paramount, especially since nowadays the market is getting more diluted with Marketers competing by promoting the same product to the same target audience.

List of Occasions in Asia

This isn’t a definitive list by a long stretch, but will give you an idea of when and what to promote on your sites. The aim would be to attract attention by aligning your website or blog with Asian holidays and events, which in turn could mean huge traffic and monetisation on those leads.

Chinese New Year

Date: End of January to Start of February
Products to Target: Clothes, Banking Services (To change money), Jewellery

White Day (Japan)

Date: March
Products to Target: Cakes, Chocolates

Mid-Autumn Festival (Korean)

Date: Mid September
Products to Target: Luxury Food

Mid-Autumn Festival (Chinese)

Date: Mid to Late September
Products to Target: Greetings Cards, Candies and Mooncakes

Christmas (Philippines)

Date: Late September to December
Products to Target: Decorations, Christmas Shopping

Conclusion

How you personally go about this would be upto you. My recommendations would be to outsource work, use translators and establish contacts in countries which have huge potential as it would only benefit you in the long term.

Have you already tried to leverage holidays and events to generate traffic? If so, how did it work out?

Best Blogs Asia.

In 1 Month increased traffic by 500%

Best Blogs — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:02:10 +0000

Here’s a proven guide on how I got more visitors to Best Blogs Asia. To summarise I basically used a combination of SEO, submitting to Social Media sites and increased the number of posts on the site.

Google Analytics Chart

Here’s a chart showing the amount of hits, page views and searches I received on Best Blogs Asia. I took part in this experiment the beginning of March and you’ll see it reflected in the chart below, hits are in blue whilst searches are in orange.

Increasing the number of Posts

I started to increase the number of posts at the start of March, as you can see the more I posted the more hits I got via searches from seach engines. I think the quality of the posts matters, the more time spent on posts the more users will appreciate it. Don’t be shy in updating old posts.

SEO Basics

Around 15th March, here I applied seo basic changes to the site which involved:

Defining the meta tags (title, description and keywords).
Fixing any CSS, Javascript, links and HTML errors.
Making sure my Headings followed nicely.

SEO Advanced Part 1

On 16th March, I took the following steps – whilst these don’t guarantee instant results it lays down the path of bigger hits in the long term:

Setup Feed and Pinged to multiple locations.
Researched Competition (note, no actual submitting to place).

Social Media Submitting

On 17th March, I submitted to many social media sites, again this is a long term strategy.

SEO Advanced Part 2

On 18th March – 31th March, I submitted to same locations as competitors.

Wrote Articles and Press Release

On 22nd March, I wrote some Best Blogs Asia niche articles and submitted them to relevant sites. Also produced a PR article which introduced the functions of Best Blogs Asia.

SEO Advanced Part 3

On the 24th March – 31st March, I carried on with Part 2 but steped it up by joining related forums, made relevant blog posts and found more relevant visitors via Twitter.

Conclusion

Hope this is of use to you guys! As a Web Producer I should of done this many years ago, but always delayed it. Now I’m able to monetise the site (link) better and improve the number of posts on the site.

Update April 2009: Hits are now steady, about 200% increase from when started.

Best Blogs Asia.

Funk Shui Wordpress Theme

Best Blogs — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:11:46 +0000

I’ve created a Feng Shui inspired Wordpress theme which uses related colours, has a simple spaced layout and directs the flow of positive energy around the site. I’ve always wondered how it could be applied to a web site, so here’s my try.

Funk Shui Theme

Feng Shui is all about the way that we live in harmonize with the nature, benefiting from the ‘positive’ energies in our living environment.

About the Funk Shui Theme

I thought I’d design a Free Theme for Wordpress only, called the Funk Shui. It’s a very simple site, with a simple layout but has a unique twist of integrating the flow of positive energy or “chi”. My wife is a Feng Shui practitioner in Hong Kong, so she was an advisor on this project.

The Theme

SEO friendly, fast loading and HTML Compliant.
Ability to change code, without touching the Wordpress php files. (via the change/ directory)
Version 2.7.1+ compatible.

Download Funk Shui Theme

Download the Funk Shui Theme 70kb

Flow of Chi Energy

The screenshot shows the entrance/exit points of the flow of energy around the site.

Note how the energy flows:

Past the top title.

Enters into the main content on the left.

Directs into the sidebar on the right.

Exits at the bottom of the page.

Wordpress Setup

Download the theme archive and extract the files it contains. You may need to preserve the directory structure in the archive when extracting these files.
Using an FTP client to access your host web server, create a directory to contain your theme in the wp-content/themes directory provided by WordPress.
Upload the theme files to the new directory on your host server.
Log in to the WordPress Administration Panel.
Select the Design subpanel, then Themes.
From the Available Themes section, click on theme title (or theme screenshot) for “Funk Shui”.
A preview of the theme will be shown to activate theme click the Activate “Theme Name” link in the top right.

How did you get on?

I’d like to know if anyone using the theme felt positive effects, such as perhaps an increase in visitors, revenue or anything else?

Best Blogs Asia.

Top of Google via Google News

Best Blogs — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 06:30:51 +0000

Google News publishes the latest content about things which are going on around the world right at this moment. Getting on Google News involves writing a targetted Press Release, submitting it to the right places and then replying to feedback.

How to Write a Press Release

A press release should firstly be interesting, on topic and relevant. A good press release answers all of the “W” questions (who, what, where, when and why), providing the media with useful information about your organization, product, service or event. Don’t make your press release read like an advertisement.

Your headline and opening paragraph should tell the story.
Write for the Media.
What’s the purpose of your PR, pick an angle to write about.
Highlight success and failures.
Stick to the facts.
Get Permission.

Relevance to Google News

Google News publishes the latest content about things which are going on around the world right at this moment. Releasing a timely press release, tied into your news of current or social events would allow Google to place your link above the actual search results.

You need to make sure that:

Your original contact details – phone number, name, email address, address are included
Make sure the url is numeric or date based – i.e. site.com/talk-about-carp-200903.php
Make sure the headline is short, but interesting.
Include your targetted keywords in the title, keywords and full description.

Screenshot in Action

http://i-newswire.com/

http://www.pressbox.co.uk/

http://www.nanotech-now.com/

http://www.1888pressrelease.com/

http://pr.prlog.org/

http://www.pressreleasespider.com/

http://www.pressmethod.com/

http://www.sanepr.com/

How did you get on?

Which terms did you rank high on and for how long?

Best Blogs Asia.

Free Asian Vector Graphics

Best Blogs — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:49:14 +0000

For a while I’ve been meaning to update and publish my Portfilio of work, but never got round to it. I’ve got a huge backlog of unused graphics which I’ll never use, so thought I could give some of them away here – the theme is Asian Graphics.

Type of Asian Graphics

The graphics are in PNG vector format, which are highly editable. The range of graphics are:

Sushi
Mao
Tshirts
Chinese Pears
Tree Branch
Asian Fish
Leaf
Buddha
Chicken
Block
Moth

Screenshot in Action

Download Asian Vectors

Download Asian Vectors 3mb

How did you get on?

Let me know where and how the graphics were used!

Best Blogs Asia.

Make a Twitter Site using Sweetcron

Best Blogs — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:55:30 +0000

I’ve just installed Sweetcron for the first time, I initially had problems with adding my Wordpress Feeds whilst I found adding Twitter feeds was very simple, so I’ve created a step-by-step guide on making your own Twitter website using Sweetcron.

Sweetcron Setup

Sweetcron is a self-hosted automated life-streaming CMS / Blogging tool, which creates blog posts in an instant drawing content from your activities on various social sites like Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Tumblr etc. You just have to add the feeds from these sites, do some customization and your posts are automatically created by SweetCron.

Recommended setup

PHP5.
A web host (I use Liquidweb)
A Database.

Download Sweetcron

Download at Sweetcron.com, then follow the Installation Instructions.

Birdbox Theme

I thought I’d design a Free Sweetcron Theme for Twitter only, called the Birdbox.

Download Birdbox Theme

It’s usable since you can display your Twitter Feeds more clearly, allow direct comments on the site and even monetise from it by placing adverts on the site.

The Theme contains…

Own Site Feed, Comment options and Contact Page.
SEO friendly, fast loading and HTML Compliant.
Uses bird graphic from iampaddy site (now defunct).

Setup Birdbox Sweetcron Theme

Place the Birdbox theme in: /system/application/views/themes/birdbox.

Make any changes to the following -

Contact.php: add your email/contact form/photo, Single.php:add the Discussion Form and Sidebar.php: Place adverts on the site.

After uploading, go to admin/ (section) and change the display feeds setting from ‘9′ to ‘10′.

Add your twitter feed only, it’ll be something like:
http://twitter.com/USERNAME

That’s it!

How did you get on?

My suggestion is to create a sub-domain and place your Twitter website there, if you already display “Tweets” on your site you can always link to your Twitter site which keeps an archive.

Best Blogs Asia.

Oggix Backlinks

Best Blogs — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:54:21 +0000

One way to build links is by using Oggix, a popular shoutbox system that users can place on their site and guests can leave messages and a personal web link. The main benefit is getting success for highly targeted keywords and deep pages within sites.

About Oggix

Oggix is a free shoutbox/tagbox/message board that allows users to post comments on the websites or blogs that run the installed widget. Every widget then promotes the main site by adding a text link that says “By. Oggix.com” and the shoutboxes are usually site-wide.

It’s worthwhile to note that no real backlink juice will be passed onto your site, as messages constantly roll off the shoutbox, however finding dormant blogs or sites related to your niche topics will help bring some traffic to your own site.

If you’d like to place Oggix on your blog, then I can recommend them and visit the Oggix Site to sign-up.

by.oggix.com

The actual query to use is via the by.oggix.com query, in this example I’ve tagged searches for “blogs” but you can search your own particular niche and find related sites your own way.

A Word of Warning

A word of warning if you’re planning on using this technique a lot, then I’d suggest mixing up your anchor text. Not only will you increase your long tail, but you’ll be less likely to trip any nasty spam filters.

Also try not to spam sites and keep it on topic.

Oggix Free Ads

Another section of Oggix is a directory of web links. You can submit links to your site and depending which niche you own you could get a permanent link on a fairly strong PR4 site. You can also re-submit every 10 mins and include links to deep pages within your site.

Best Blogs Asia.

Web Icons

Best Blogs — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:27:33 +0000

These are the guys I follow when developing my sites, some may call them “icons” of the web industry. Some of these guys provide tips which I can use straight away or some are just an interesting read, taking into account something I already know.

Icons Idea

I already created the Free Twitter Backgrounds, which was fun so wanted to do some more graphics.

My idea to create icons of well known web faces came about when I saw Zac Johnson’s blog.

He’s currently got a little character who wouldn’t look out of place in a Lord of the Rings film, but didn’t realise until later that it was supposed to be him!

Shoemoney

Good ol’ Shoemoney, a guy who was fat and poor then learnt the way of the web and became less fatter and more rich. As a homage to him, here’s an icon you can place on your site.

He’s a Web Icon because…he specialised in a popular niche, developed and sold businesses and says what he thinks.

John Chow

John Chow has been blogging for years and makes no quams about promoting affiliate programmes just to make a quick buck, although the content is at times great, it’s a shame the site is so full of adverts.

He’s a Web Icon because…he’s very good at self promotion and obtaining details/monetising from users on his blog.

Yongfook

Yongfook has to be one of the most interesting Web Producers out there, he can code, design excellent sites, write well and has great ideas. I think he comes up with so many ideas that he starts to lose focus, sites like Sweetcron and Opensourcefood were popular because of something he was interested in.

He’s a Web Icon because…he’s witty, constantly “tweeting” and developing new exciting work.

Kieron Donoghue

Kieron from Here comes across as a nice guy, whilst he doesn’t give technical tips on making money, he does use social media tools well and has many money making domains, although would be nice if he developed them a bit more.

He’s a Web Icon because…of his famous Bank Statement, his single worded popular domains and interesting topic posts.

Download Graphics

The graphics are saved in a Zip, in both GIF and PNG format which is completely editable.

Download Web Icons 330kb
Web Icons Instructions 1kb

Using the following CSS code:


div.webicons {
margin: 4px 0;
}
.webicons ul {
display: inline; margin: 0 !important;
padding: 0 !important;
}
.webicons ul li {
background: none;	display: inline !important;
list-style-type: none; margin: 0;
padding: 1px;
}
.webicons ul li:before
{
content: "";
}
.webicons img {
float: none; width: 48px;
height: 48px; border: 0;
margin: 0; padding: 0;
}
.webicons-hovers {
opacity: .4; -moz-opacity: .4;
filter: alpha(opacity=70);
}
.webicons-hovers:hover {
opacity: 1; -moz-opacity: 1;
filter: alpha(opacity=100);
}

Conclusion

Let me know if there’s anyone else I should add, who’s a “Web Icon”.

Best Blogs Asia.

CSS Optimisation

Best Blogs — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:25:57 +0000

Some of the easiest optimization techniques include compression of codes whenever possible (like CSS), compression of images for lower sizes (use Photoshop), and reducing the number of http requests and number of objects.

Style Declarations

When creating a site, no matter what the end design ends up being, there are certain standard css declarations that I end up making every time.

* {
margin: 0; padding: 0;
}

body {
padding:0; background:#fff;
} 

form {
padding:0; margin:0;
}

Compressing your CSS

I’d recommend by visiting CleanCSS first or CSSDrive, then trying the following technique in php:

Before

< link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen"
href="/style.css"/ >

After

< link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen"
href="/style.css.php"/ >

Now to the real part. Open up your style.css.php, or whatever you named it, file and add the following snippet of PHP to the very top:

< ? php if(extension_loaded('zlib')){ob_start('ob_gzhandler');
} header("Content-type: text/css"); ? >

Then, add the next line to the very bottom and save the file.

< ?php if(extension_loaded('zlib')){ob_end_flush();}? >

That’s it! Refresh your site and check it out. Compression rates can be upto 400%!

Print Stylesheet

A print stylesheet is useful, when a user prints a page you can control what should be printed.

In the print.css place the following, on the site you can place any areas which don’t need to be printed with the noprint div tag:

html {
     width:100%
}

body {
    background-color: #fff;
    color: #000;
    font-size: 12pt;
}

a {
    color: #000;
}

img {
    border: 0;
}

.noprint{
    display: none;
}

h1, h2 {
    page-break-before: auto;
}

p {
    page-break-inside: avoid;
}

Best Blogs Asia.

Website Checklist

Best Blogs — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 16:00:50 +0000

This is something I wrote back in 2004 when I was working as a Freelance Web Designer and needed a standard website checklist I could show to clients, hope this is useful and is recommended to follow before a site launch.

Checklist Setup

What is the goal of the website project and who is the target audience?
What kind of image (branding) do you wish to convey?
Will it be a bilingual website?
Do you have a domain name and require hosting?
Any database functionality required?
Who are your competitors and which sites you admire?
How many web pages to be created approximately?
What is the approximate financial budget and the ideal completion date?

Working with Clients

Preliminary website page flowchart is given.
Approximate financial budget is re-confirmed, waiting for acceptance. Site is developed in secure environment.
Client gives feedback, afterwards launch live and invoice final payment.

Content

Check spelling and grammar.
Look at the style of writing.
Implement recurring common phrases (keywords).

Website Standards

Accessibility.
HTML, JavaScript and CSS validation.
Create custom 404/error pages.

SEO and Metrics

Ensure content is marked-up semantically/correctly.
Define Meta Data.
Check format (user/search engine friendliness) of URLs.
Set up Analytics, FeedBurner, and any other packages for measuring ongoing metrics.
Create an XML Sitemap and submit to Google Webmaster/Yahoo Site Explorer.
Create Favicon.

Functional Testing

Check on common variations of browser and variations of Screen Resolution.
Test all forms and Test without JavaScript, Flash, and other plugins.
Make sure all external links are valid.

Performance

Configure backup schedule and check disk space/server capacity.
Check image optimisation, page loading times, css optimisation and correct DB indexing.

Best Blogs Asia.

Submitting to Dmoz

Best Blogs — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:22:36 +0000

Dmoz directory data is published on many hundreds of directories, including Google which also favourably increases your backlinks. This is a guide on how to get listed.

Dmoz Submit Process

One of the bigger problems with DMOZ previously was the size of the queue for waiting sites, but it’s believed to have gone due to a server crash back in 2007.

Read over the DMOZ submission guidelines

Pay particular attention to the following:

The Open Directory has a policy against the inclusion of sites with illegal content. Examples of illegal material include child pornography; libel; material that infringes any intellectual property right; and material that specifically advocates, solicits or abets illegal activity (such as fraud or violence).
Do not submit URLs that contain only the same or similar content as other sites listed in the directory. Sites with overlapping and repetitive content are not helpful to users of the directory. Multiple submissions of the same or related sites may result in the exclusion and/or deletion of those and all affiliated sites.
Don’t submit sites consisting largely of affiliate links.

Submit to Regional Categories

Find a regional category that suits your site as there are more regional editors and all editors have the ability to move/copy your listing to another category internally.

Submit Original Details

Use your site’s original name for the title and a non promotional description. Look at other descriptions in the category and see how they are done. Editors may correct any incorrect titles and descriptions, but would favour sites with correct information filled out where they don’t have the effort of re-writing content. I’d also recommend using your site’s email address address, rather than a hotmail/yahoo address.

Forget about it

After submitting, you really need to forget about it. I’d give it a limit of 1 year before re-submitting. Site submitters also need to take into account if there’s an actual editor of your category, which can cause delays if there isn’t one. You can think about either submitting your site to another relevant category or becoming an editor.

Apply to become an Editor

Becoming an Editor of Dmoz seems just about as hard as actually getting your link in the directory! My recommendation is to apply to be the editor of your local regional town where you’ll have a much better chance of being accepted. Participate in the editor forums, feel free to ask questions whilst also building up your edits and categories.

Best Blogs Asia.

Free Twitter Backgrounds

Best Blogs — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 04:06:26 +0000

I’ve just started to get into Twitter, it’s a great tool..as long as people have something interesting to say! What also needs to be interesting is your Twitter background, so I had a couple minutes spare and knocked out the following for you to use.

Twitter Backgrounds

I took into account the Twitter layout, basing the background on a standard 1200×1000 setup. For anyone designing a Twitter background, make sure there isn’t too much going on colour and design wise as it’ll be distracting for the viewer. Also remember screensizes are different so there can be no exact layout.

Arty Background

Download Arty (PNG and Jpeg Versions) – ZIP.

Colours Background

Download Colours (PNG and Jpeg Versions) – ZIP.

Lines Background

Download Lines (PNG and Jpeg Versions) – ZIP.

Talk Background

Download Talk (PNG and Jpeg Versions) – ZIP.

How to Install your Background

Click on Settings in the top Right corner, should be under your username.
Then select Design, Change Background Image.
Click Browse, find the jpg or PNG file. Make sure Tile Background is left unchecked and then click Save.
Feel free to edit these backgrounds, preferably giving Bestblogs.asia a hat tip . The PNG version is editable, whilst the JPG version is recommended to upload directly to Twitter.

Best Blogs Asia.

Google Add Url

Best Blogs — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:53:33 +0000

Everyone who has a brand new website, always look to get it ranked on Google since it is the biggest search engine in the world.

Adding Url to Google

However, I’ve found out that SEO’s recommend NOT to use the “Add URL” form with Google.

The location is at:

http://www.google.com/addurl.html.

SEO’s believe that using that form to let Google know about your site will actually hurt your PR and, at the same time, make Google rank you lower. In other words, you absolutely never want to use that form, or the similar form on any other search engine, to promote your website.

By extension, that also means that you absolutely never use any automated “website submission software,” either. Those are the things that claim they’ll submit you to some incredible number of search engines with a single click.

Adding to Google

My experience is that getting backlinks to your site from already Google indexed sites is enough. Also by placing Adsense on your pages, you’ll be getting Google spiders and finally submitting your sitemap to Google Webmasters will also allow Google spiders to crawl your pages.

My site still isn’t indexed?

One thing which I’m doing is using Google Webmaster to contact Google about a domain. I purchased a site which should of been listed by now so was perhaps banned because of the previous site owner (duplicate content, bad link neighbourhood or bad practices).

April 2009: No news yet – I’ll update this thread with the news.

Best Blogs Asia.

Setup Name Servers

Best Blogs — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:02:36 +0000

This is an article I’ve been wanting to write for a long time. I’ve moved some of my more popular sites over to dedicated servers, which means you’re responsible for the maintanence of the server and sites hosted on them.

Setting up name servers in both WHM and Cpanel was one of the hardest things to do, here’s my tips.

Registering the Name Servers

Register Name Servers where you registered your domain at, example Godaddy. I suggest using one IP per name server, i.e.:

NS1.yourdomain.com = IP#1
NS2.yourdomain.com = IP#2

You may also need to notify your DataCenter to setup Reverse DNS for the IP addresses used above and for your name servers, this can be done via your Host’s Support ticket system.

Name Server Setup

1. Login to WHM as root

2. Click “Edit Setup” or “Basic cPanel/WHM Setup” from the left hand menu.

3. Type: ns1.yourdomain.com in the Primary Nameserver field.

4. Press Assign IP Address

5. Then Press Add an A Entry for this nameserver

6. Type ns2.yourdomain.com in the Secondary Nameserver field.

7. Click Assign IP Address

8. Then Click Add an A Entry for this nameserver

9. Click Manage Nameserver IPs from the left menu in WHM.

10. If you see any nameservers that do not belong to you, remove them now.

11. Click Initial NameServer Setup from the left menu in WHM Run this for the “initial name server setup”

12. Login to SSH to restart bind. (Be sure it restarts, so don’t do this in WHM)

13. Type: service named stop

14. Type: service named start

15. While in SSH do the following to verify installation has gone well.

16. Type: pico /etc/wwwacct.conf
Scroll to the bottom and insure that your name servers are listed like this: NS ns1.yourdomain.com NS2 ns2.yourdomain.com

17. While still in SSH do the following to verify installation has gone correctly.
Type: pico /etc/resolv.conf
It should look like this:

domain yourdomain.com
search yourdomain.com
#nameserver 127.0.0.1
nameserver ip address #1 here
nameserver ip address #2 here

18. Check one more thing in SSH to make sure Name Server Configuration went GOOD.
Type: pico /etc/nameserverips

It should look like this:
ip address 1=ns1.yourdomain.com
ip address 2=ns2.yourdomain.com

Best Blogs Asia.