Singapore Web Hosting Blog

some clients implement SEO techniques i talked about in Google optimization tips and general SEO techniques article. after a few months, some clients are extremely happy with their improved search engine ranking, some question me “do your techniques really work?”, some even doubt “did you put fake stuffs in the articles? is it what pushed your site to the top? why it does not work for me?”

well, i have to say, all the techniques i wrote in the articles are really simple (however don’t misunderstand me, it requires lots of hard work), and most importantly they still work, and will continue to work in the near future.

but, the SEO techniques i wrote about is just starting point. if yours is competitive market, there’re much more to read, much more to do. sorry that i don’t have the time to write about latest SEO trends and tips. i spend at least two hours every day to read SEO forums, courses, articles, ebooks etc. to keep myself updated.

don’t expext great ranking after 1 hour’s reading.

a few latest tips Google SEO tips here.

now google has become a domain registrar, which means they have access to all domain name information. combined with other channels, google now knows tons of information about web site owners. why is it important? they can use the information in many ways. for example, if the domain name has been registered for 5 or 10 years, is it an indicator that the site owner is serious in his business therefore more possibility to build quality web site, therefore deserves higher ranking?

another example, google may think it’s not fair that one person/company has more than one high ranking for same industry. proof: our other site offering web hosting service in Singapore was also ranked at top for a few years. around 1 month ago, its ranking dropped like stone, now it’s on page 4.

no complaint here as it makes perfect sense. if one person is allowed to do so, i can occupy entire first page after a few years. just give me enough time. but that wouldn’t benefit visitors and users.

Some SEO companies create doorway pages for your site that may, or may not, get ranked high in search engines. By all means, stay away.

Creating doorway pages is an old trick that worked a few years ago. It works like this, create
many separate pages optimized for a key phrase that serves as a doorway to the main site. It’s not a natural part of the site. Its only purpose is to rank high in search engines. As a result, it does not provide real content or information to visitors. All that visitors can do is “click here to enter”.

If you use this trick, you have a good chance to get banned permanently. Take a look at this page and see what Google thinks of doorway pages: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Some web sites may slip through the radar, but the risk is very high. Google, and others, is fighting hard towards doorway page spam. All it takes to pull the site down may be as simple as a spam report, most probably from competitors. Anybody can file a spam report here: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

And your competitors WILL do that when your site is ranked high. Once search engines find you’re using this trick, the whole site is gone. Thousands of domains disappear and get banned permanently every month.

The bottom line is, do you want to put your business on solid, ethical ground, or want to take the risk?

most of our SEO clients asked us one same question, “will you submit my site to search engines?” when we say, no. they were rather surprised, and in some cases, not so happy. “hey, i know this search engine optimization service company submit to 46,678 search engines! and for free!”

the truth is, there’re less than 100 search engines in the whole world, among them, only less than 10 matters. 99% of those small search engines and web directories are powered by Google, Inktomi, AllTheWeb, or Open Directory.

how many search engines are you aware of? 10? 20? how many do you actually use? 2 or 3? where are the thousands of search engines they’re going to submit to?

where they will submit your site to are Free For All, or FFA, pages. Yes, there’re tens of thousands of them. but getting listed in FFA pages will not do any good to your search engine rankings. and nobody will ever visit those FFA sites. therefore you won’t get any traffic from this kind of mass submission.

some companies offer manual submission services to real search engines (not FFA as explained above) every month as an important part of their SEO package. well, if they provide this for free, it might be fine. if this is the major part of their work that they’re going to charge for even $10 per month, i’d suggest you spend that 10 bucks on a good movie.

the big problem is, it Might Be Fine. in another word, you might be penalized for that. contrary to what you may be thinking, it does not hurt to not submit!

submission to search engines has no effect on your rankings. the only search engine that honors free submission currently is Google. however, submission only makes Google aware of your page. It’s not relevant to if and how your site will be ranked. other search engines all have paid inclusion programs therefore discard free submission most probably.

an experienced SEO company, company that knows what they’re doing, will spend time on actual optimization work instead of wasting time on submission.