Best Blogs Asia » Promotion Techniques

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Important Web Directories

Best Blogs — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:54:56 +0000

Submitting to a web directory is a complicated process, you need to be sure that the directory is spidered, popular, passes on PR, passes on link juice and will be around for a long time…otherwise it’s not worth your time.

Web Directories to Submit to

Best Blogs Asia.

Directories List with High PR

Best Blogs — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 09:22:02 +0000

Usually for new web site owners, the first thing they read about is trying to improve your Pagerank (PR) so that Google will rank you better on it’s search engine. Whilst in some cases it may be true, there are other factors which determine your location on the search engine.

List of Directories with PR

However, if you really want to improve your PR rating and have the time – below is a huge list of directories sorted by high PR to submit your blog/site to. Whilst you may not see a huge jump in your PR rating due to that inner pages will have a lower PR rating and also many directories may not pass their PR juice to your site (via noFollow tags)…it may be useful just to be listed:

http://dir.yahoo.com/ 9
http://www.dmoz.org/ 9

http://www.stpt.com/ 8
http://www.lii.org/pub/htdocs/home.htm 8
http://yahooligans.yahoo.com/ 8
http://www.clearinghouse.net/ 8
http://www.blogwise.com/ 8
http://www.ilovelanguages.com/ 8
http://www.musicmoz.org/ 8
http://www.open-site.org/ 8
http://www.thomasnet.com/ 8
http://www.rdn.ac.uk/ 8

http://www.bloggernity.com/ 7
http://www.podcastzoom.com/ 7
http://www.blogrankings.com/ 7
http://www.bloguniverse.com/ 7
http://www.2rss.com/ 7
http://www.exactseek.com/ 7
http://www.femina.com/ 7
http://www.gogreece.com/ 7
http://www.lanic.utexas.edu/ 7
http://www.selfgrowth.com/ 7
http://www.lsblogs.com/ 7
http://www.polishworld.com/ 7
http://www.dirone.com/ 7
http://www.nationaldirectory.com/ 7
http://www.sacentral.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm 7
http://www.worldhot.com/ 7
http://www.yellowpages.co.nz/ 7
http://www.123india.com/ 7
http://www.kinderstart.com/ 7
http://www.portal.eatonweb.com/ 7
http://www.envirolink.org/ 7
http://www.findmyhosting.com/ 7
http://businessweek.directorym.com/ 7
http://www.web10.us/ 7
http://www.bible-history.com/ 7
http://www.altis.ac.uk/ 7
http://www.phpdirectory.com/ 7
http://www.elib.org/ 7
http://www.webmasterlead.com/ 7

http://www.ezilon.com/ 6
http://www.yourwebloghere.com/ 6
http://www.epooch.com/ 6
http://www.christiansunite.com/ 6
http://www.toronto1.biz/ 6
http://www.vxbox.com/ 6
http://www.blogsbywomen.org/ 6
http://www.canadianeh.com/ 6
http://www.aardvark.co.za/ 6
http://www.nzs.com/ 6
http://www.aigam.com/ 6
http://linkcentre.com/ 6
http://www.tygo.com/dir/ 6
http://www.info-listings.com/ 6
http://www.dirspace.com/ 6
http://www.zensearch.com/ 6
http://www.bluedir.com/ 6
http://www.tekguide.net/ 6
http://www.imegamall.com/ 6
http://payvand.com/yp/ 6
http://www.globalgateway.com/ 6
http://www.canlinks.net/ 6
http://www.albanywebsites.com/ 6
http://searchsight.com/ 6
http://www.siteranking.com/ 6
http://findingblog.com/ 6
http://link-ads.com/ 6
http://www.directoryforce.com/ 6
http://www.gimpsy.com/ 6
http://www.webmasterschannel.com/ 6
http://www.iguide.co.il/ 6
http://www.iozoo.com/ 6
http://www.webmasterschannel.com/ 6
http://www.webworldindex.com/ 6
http://www.canadopedia.com/ 6
http://www.ghanaweb.com/ 6
http://www.tuttoperinternet.it/ 6
http://www.top100travelsites.com/ 6
http://www.uktechnet.com/directory.php 6
http://www.hypography.com/links.cfm 6
http://www.bocat.com/ 6
http://www.csu.edu.au/australia/tourism.html 6

Best Blogs Asia.

Showcase your Site

Best Blogs — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:04:59 +0000

You can also promote your site by using Cool site or Web Site Showcases to attract greater attention.

Showcase your Site

Best Blogs Asia.

Promoting using Contests

Best Blogs — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:52:49 +0000

Online contests are great ways of generating your popularity through generating buzz, back links and new readers. You can promote your contest through the following sites.

Promoting using Contests

Best Blogs Asia.

Submit to Ask, MSN and Baidu

Best Blogs — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:40:22 +0000

Both MSN and Ask.com accept site submissions but no one knows about it. Make sure they have the right content – you can submit your sitemap, your site will be crawled and hopefully later indexed by the sites.

Submit to Ask

Ask.com supports the open-format Sitemaps protocol. Once you have prepared the sitemap, add the sitemap auto-discovery directive to robots.txt as follows:

Submit your sitemap through the ping URL – http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.theURLofyoursitemaphere.xml

Submit to MSN

Submit your url (homepage) to MSN Live Search:

MSN Search Submit

Submit to Baidu

The first step to getting traffic from Baidu is to submit your blog to their database. After you submitted your blog, Baidu will crawl and index your blog.

Go to the Baidu URL Submission Page.
Enter your website with the relevant Capcha and then wait for traffic.

Best Blogs Asia.

How to Track Backlinks

Best Blogs — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:55:29 +0000

Backlinks are useful as they encourage spiders to crawl your blog/site and improve incoming links to your site. Supposidly the more links you have coming in, the better the ranking on search engines like Google.

Gaining Backlinks

Previously I mentioned in posts about gaining backlinks by Promoting your Blog via Forums . These techniques work but there is another easier way.

Using Backtype

I stumbled across a web link called Backtype whilst searching the logs of my site. Perhaps you’ve heard of it already. Basically you can enter your web site address and check spidered comments that you’ve made on your blog, i.e:

http://www.backtype.com/url/www.bestblogs.asia

Taking Backtype Further

Now in your mind you’re already taking this one step further I bet…and entering your competitors urls to see what comments they made on which sites!

It’s a useful tool and whilst it doesn’t display most of the comments made on other sites, it displays some which have been crawled by spiders, which means you’ll be gaining inbound links if you’re submitting to the same places.

Best Blogs Asia.

Rss Submission Sites

Best Blogs — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 07:12:57 +0000

Submitting RSS Feeds to sites is normally overlooked. Just as you would submit the URL of a website or web page to a search engine you will need to submit the link of the actual feed located on your website to the directories below.

Submit RSS Feeds

I’ve personally checked each of the sites and all support free RSS submission:

2Rss – http://www.2rss.com/index.php
5starblogs – >http://www.5starblogs.com/
Blloggs – >http://blloggs.com/submit/
Blogarama – >http://www.blogarama.com/add-a-site/
Blogbunch – >http://www.blogbunch.com/suggest/
Blog-collector – http://www.blog-collector.com/submit.php
Blogdigger – http://blogdigger.com/add.jsp
Bloggapedia – http://www.bloggapedia.com/
Blogged – >http://www.blogged.com/signup.php
Bloggernity – http://www.bloggernity.com/cgi-bin/add.cgi
Bloghub – http://www.bloghub.com/cgi-bin/add.cgi
Bloglines – http://www.bloglines.com
Blogscholar – http://www.blogscholar.com/
Blogtoplist – http://blogtoplist.com/submit-blog.html
Chordata – http://chordata.info/suggest.php
EatonWeb(paid) – http://portal.eatonweb.com/
Feedage – http://www.feedage.com/submit.php
Feedbase – http://www.feedbase.net/Add.php
Feedboy – http://www.feedboy.com/addfeed.html?catid=
Feedsee – http://www.feedsee.com/submit.html
Feednuts – http://www.feednuts.com/
FeedsFarm – http://www.feedsfarm.com/a.html
Golden Feed – http://www.goldenfeed.com/AddFeed.aspx
Gnoos – http://gnoos.com.au/submitFeed.jsp
Icerocket – http://www.icerocket.com/c?p=addblog
Million RSS – http://www.millionrss.com/add-my-feed.php
Mobispine – http://www.mobispine.com/
Octora – http://www.octora.com/add_rss.php
Plazoo – http://www.plazoo.com/en/addrss.asp
Read A Blog – http://www.readablog.com/AddFeed.aspx
RSS Mad – http://www.rssmad.com/
RSS Micro – http://www.rssmicro.com/feedsubmit.web
RSS Hugger – http://www.rsshugger.com/register
RSS Network – http://www.rss-network.com/submitrss.php
Syndic8 – http://www.syndic8.com/suggest_start.php
Tailrank – http://www.tailrank.com/import
Today – http://www.today.com/submit-blog
Topix – http://www.topix.net/member/register
Webloogle – http://www.webloogle.com/index.php?a=join

Best Blogs Asia.

Submit RSS feeds

Best Blogs — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:44:15 +0000

This is a quick guide on How to Submit RSS feeds effectively and in the right places. Submit your rss feed, they list your rss feed into their directory then in turn displays in their directory your recent blog posts which gets automatically updated.

Places to Submit RSS Feeds

iGoogle

Get a free account at www.google.com/ig and login. Then click on Add stuff, then click on Add feed or gadget.

Yahoo

Go to My.yahoo.com and click login, and click on Sign up if you do not have a free account. Then login and click on Add content, then click on Add RSS feed.

Squidoo

Go to www.squidoo.com and click on “Join the community”, then login. Click on My lenses and then click on Create a lens now! Follow step by step instructions until it is created. Then go to Dashboard, click on My Lenses and click on the lens name. Then on the right side click on Edit this page. Search for the option called: RSS: Add Your Own Feed: and click Edit.

Orkut

Use the same Google account you have with iGoogle and login at www.orkut.com On the left menu under the heading Apps click on Edit applications. If there is a tab called My feeds click on it to submit your feed. If you do not see it, click on Add More Apps and use the search box to search for the feed application.

MSN

Submit your site to MSN at http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/submit.aspx. Also go to http://my.msn.com. Locate the “favorites” section of the page, then click on “menu” of the “favorites” section. A drop menu will appear. Click “change details.” At that point you can enter any URL you wish and pick the anchor text you desire.

Technorati

This one is the most simple, just go to http://www.technorati.com/developers/ping.html and enter your details. (Site doesn’t work in China).

Best Blogs Asia.

Promoting using CSS Galleries

Best Blogs — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:45:44 +0000

Web Galleries particularly those that focus on Best of Web are other ways of gaining more traffic. If you have a savvy CSS design, be sure to submit it to all of the major CSS galleries.

List of CSS Galleries

Best Blogs Asia.

Promoting your Blog via Forums

Best Blogs — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 06:48:35 +0000

Promoting your blog or website on the web isn’t new, nor is promoting your site on forums. Most forums allow you to sign up, make a post and the hope that traffic is driven towards your site.

Developing the Promotion Technique

Firstly when registering, make sure you use your site specific keyword as the username. This helps when users are searching for keywords and can then come across your profile page.

Make sure the User CP or Profile Page is filled out. Most forums offer you the chance to enter your website URL as well as filling out your signature.

Most of the time, you cannot enter HTML text to add a link to your site but will BBCode work, for example:

[url=http://www.bestblogs.asia/sitemap/]Best Blogs Asia[/url]

Also notice how I “deep linked” within the site to improve spidering, particularly to the Sitemap which indexes all the pages on the site.

Finally, if making a post and would like to include your link – make sure it’s on topic. Preferably start with an on-topic forum, then an on-topic post to include your site link. Try to make the post genuine, at least a paragraph and succinct.

Best Blog Asia Experiences

A fellow blogger actually submitted my site to 5000+ forums, but am waiting to see the final results. However, the sites he submitted can be downloaded in the text file below:

5500 Backlinks 940kb

Best Blogs Asia.