Singapore SEO Services By Proven SEO Consultant

Posted by moses on Jan 24, 2011 in Consultation, SEO, Services | 0 comments

If you are looking for tested, proven and reliable SEO services or SEO consultant in Singapore for your business, or if your website is not getting as much free traffic as you think it can, here’s how to get more traffic to your website for free, and convert more prospects into paying customers.

To increase your traffic and/or conversion of visitors into paying customers, you can hire our team of excellent SEO specialists and myself to take your business to the next level online.

We are more than a SEO company that offers search engine optimization services and consultation. The truth is, we are an online publishing company who makes most of our revenue from online advertising, affiliate marketing and selling digital products – with 100% completely free traffic from search engines.

What this means to you is, you get a higher chance of success because the SEO services that you are getting are based on proven experience and actual results that we used in our businesses.

Search engine optimization is simple – Do what’s working, and most importantly, don’t reinvent the wheel.

Follow the links to find out more about our SEO services:

Singapore SEO Consultation Services

Article Marketing Writing and Submission Services

Our Article Marketing Strategy and Process (That Works)

Posted by moses on Apr 4, 2011 in Article Marketing, Services | Comments Off

This is a simple 4-step process of how we execute article marketing for our network of sites.

We encourage all clients to go through our work flow and process in order to have a better understanding of how we fulfill your orders.

Please feel free to copy and follow what we are doing for your websites. We know it works and it works pretty damn well.
 
Step 1: Title Selection and Creation

Broadly speaking, there are 3 main article marketing title selection strategies as summarize in the table below.

No. 1: Focus writing on topics that are strictly related to your niche. For example, if you sell bed sheets on your website, you will focus on writing articles that are related to bed sheets only.

Pros: You reach out directly to quality target audience who are currently showing interest in your niche or products

Cons: Difficult to provide valuable content in the long run. Subject matter might not be interesting in the first place (Especially for ecommerce websites, there’s only so much information you can write about bed sheet right?) This strategy usually build the lowest backlinks among the 3 methods
 
 
No. 2: Focus on writing to your target audience. For example, if you are selling Dog Food, you will focus on writing articles that appeal to your target audience, namely dog owners. You do not necessary write on dog food alone but any topics that appeal to dog owners, such as dog trick training, potty training and etc.

Pros: You reach out to a larger pool of target audience who would be interested in your niche. Build more relevant backlinks from webmasters who republish your articles.
 
  
No. 3: Focus on writing on topics that are popular amongst webmasters. You need not write on topics that are related to your niche. What you want is to write on popular topics, such as weight loss and debts, to achieve a high pick up and republish rates.

Pros and cons: Build more links, however low relevancy as most links might not be related to your niche

 
Our Article Marketing Title Selection Strategy:

 Focus on titles that provide value to your target audience.

This is the formula to achieve high pick up and republish rates and at the same time build links with high relevancy. Remember, ultimately what we want are more relevant incoming backlinks to boost your SERPs.
 

How you can help:Tell us who are your target audience
and what topics might possibly interest them

Step 2: Writing and Spinning

Articles are assigned, as far as possible, to writers who are experience in that subject matter

Upon completion, an editor will go through the work once, re-edit if necessary before she proceed to spin the articles

Things you need to know:
The articles are not written to promote your business.

We are using personas, which are not related to your business, to “recommend” your website in the resource box.

Disclaimers: Please Don’t Expect Us to Write in Perfect English. 

As one of my writers put it: “We write to inform, not to impress”

Step 3: Submission
Based on our experience, this is the work flow that will ensure all the articles are accepted:

First: Submit to Ezinearticles.com (Promoting Primary keywords only)

Upon Ezinearticles.com Approval:

-> Submit to remaining directories (Promoting Primary keywords only)

-> Submit to article networks (Promoting both Primary & Secondary keywords)

Step 4: Monitor, Measure and Evaluate
We encourage all clients to monitor, measure and evaluate the effectiveness of our work.

1. Track and monitor your SERPs Before and After

2. Measure and evaluate your traffic stats Before and After

Our work might not directly increase your primary keywords SERP, especially if you are already in the top 10 or extremely competitive niches.

Check your traffic statistics. You might be ranking higher for other long tail keywords and getting higher traffic because of our work.

You might want to note: “Traffic drives revenue, not SERP”.

Meeting My Team for the First Time in Philippines

Posted by moses on Mar 28, 2011 in General | 0 comments

Wish you were me? The current team is 100% ladies now!

I travelled to Philippines for the first time in March and catch up with my team for 2 days in Manila.   

The main purpose of the trip was obviously to meet them in person and put a face to the people I speak to on the daily basis.   

I would say we had great fun during the 2 days meeting (plus training) and managed to get quite a bit of things done as well:   

1. I wanted to help the team understand the tasks they perform on the daily basis and why they are doing it. i.e. Their roles and responsibilities and the importance of following the work process that we have in place  

2. Mini writing workshop: My dearest wife, a college English teacher, went through some of the common grammer and sentence construction mistakes they made in their work  

3. Mini researching workshop:  How to research for writing material online and provide value to the readers  

4. Latest company projects development: Went through in depth a new social media site that we are about to launch in May 2011 and the roles they would be playing  

All in all, it was a fruitful and productive trip!   

~More pictures~   

Cecil: What are you doing?? (the lady on my left)

With my manager, Beth and her hubby @ Yaki Mix Restaurant

Team lunch @ Pancake House

Invitation from Adsense Singapore – Go Monetization with Google

Posted by moses on Mar 28, 2011 in Adsense, General | 0 comments

 
As you might already know, I market my SEO consultation and article marketing services on this site. Truth is, this is a small part of what we do in our company.

Adsense monetization is what we are relative good at as well, using 100% free traffic from search engines.

This is the first time I received an invitation from Google Singapore to attend their event, outside of my previous digital media job (since I started my company).

I suppose our earnings are decent enough for them to invite us, or maybe I’m just helping to fill up the seats since Singapore is a small country to begin with.

Anyway, I’m happy to receive the invitation and will be attending the event. Look forward to meeting people whom I used to work with from the local media industry.

More updates later.

Cheers,

Moses

Marie France Bodyline – Online Direct Response Marketing Case Study

Posted by moses on Mar 6, 2011 in Direct Response, Tracking and Optimization | 1 comment

One of the goals I wanted to achieve for this site is to help SMBs with their direct response marketing campaigns.

I was thinking about the best way to achieve this and come to a conclusion that using a case study would be the best in my opinion.

I happened to see Marie France ads on my hotmail account and decided to use this as a case study since this is a brand that many Singaporean can associate with and they are relatively active online as well, at least in the local Singapore market.

Approach:

- Examine (1) the ads and ad networks they used to drive traffic (from what I’ve seen so far), (2) tracking and the (3) landing page they employ.

- Identify what’s possibly wrong. i.e. What are the things that you can learn out of this campaign.

- Suggestions and tips. Namely, what are the things I would do and test if I’m managing this online campaign.

(1) Ads and Ad network

I have been seeing the Marie France ad featuring Christy Chung for a long time. They are using the MSDR (Microsoft Direct Response) network to drive traffic. This is a network that works on the CPC basis, ie. You only pay for clicks that they delivered. You can contact them for more information here: https://adcenter.microsoft.com/Customer/Signup.aspx

Generally each click cost $0.20 – $0.80 SGD depending on your industry and campaign flight date. You tend to pay more according to your industry “hot” sales period. As far as the sliming and weight loss industry is concern, my wild guess is that year start, (Jan-Feb) should be the hot period. That’s when people are making their New Year resolution (ie. to slim down) and making plans (ie. buying sliming packages) to achieve their goals.

What’s Possibly Wrong?

If I’m not mistaken, this is the only ad that I’ve seen from Marie France for the whole month of Feb 2011. The major issue with this would be Ad Fatigue – a situation whereby visitors are no longer consciously aware of the presence of the ad because they have seen it so many times. When this happens, your Click through rates (CTR) would be affected.

Disclaimer: I don’t think I have seen Marie France ads elsewhere. Having said that, I’m not their target audience. If I see their ads everywhere I go online, something is majorly wrong with their media planning or online advertising strategy.

Suggestions:

1. Set a Frequency Cap – ie. the number of times your ad is shown to the visitor (Most ad network have this technology). However, in this instance, MNDR mostly operate on the CPC basis, capping frequency is not a major issue here. On the contrary, it gives Marie France good branding exposure.

2. Rotate your ad – It’s not rocket science. Simply design 2-4 more variation on your ads and rotate them. There’s another benefit to that. Only by rotating ad will you find out what type of ads appeal to your target audience so that you can tweak over time and keep improving.

There are many other ad networks in Singapore that you can explore even on a modest budget ($10,000 SGD). I’ll probably keep that for another post.

(2) Tracking

One of the most important aspects of direct response marketing is tracking and optimizing – Period. Before you can optimize, you need data and to get data, you need to set up your tracking correctly.

From the URL, you can see that they are tracking (ie. my click on the image below), probably through Google analytics.

There are many ad serving and click tracking companies out there that does the same thing; the more popular ones would be Doubleclick and Atlas Solution, used by most of the media agencies in Singapore.

Unless you have a big advertising budget with plenty of placements to track, Google analytics is more than enough for now.

From this string of URL, you can see that they are tracking:

Source = MSDR (Tell where the visitor is coming from. It could be Yahoo! or Asiaone)

Medium = S.banners (Most likely referring to skyscraper (banner type) or an internal reference to the Christy Chung ad)

Campaign = Feb Promo (Help recognize and organize click results)

Creative = Size of the banner: 160×600 (Identify what ad sizes are working well. As a general rule of thumb, the bigger the size of the creative, the higher the CTR)

What’s Possibly Wrong?

1. Ad Placement Tracking

As far as tracking is concern, Marie France has done a pretty good job. They have basically covered most of the essential basic information needed to be able to optimize an online campaign.

However, I don’t see any ad placement tracking in their string of codes. This might be something you need to look out for. The same site, same creative banner on different ad placements (ie. above the fold or below the fold) can give you different results.

ALWAYS check your results and conversion. Scale up what is doing well and obviously reduce what is not working.

Here’s the URL to help you generate those tracking links for your Analytics account:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

Remember to include the following into your tracking:

1. Traffic Source
2. Ad placement
3. Creative Type
4. Creative size
5. Campaign (Internal reference)

Do note that you have to set up Analytics on your website before you can start tracking these URLs. You can visit here to start using this service for free: http://www.google.com/analytics/

2. Tracking the Phone number: 1800 7777 111

I have not seen their press ads recently. However, I have a gut feeling they are not tracking this number. If you are serious about expanding your advertising reach online. You have to track your online results.

Bear in mind that many people prefer to pick up the phone and call as compare to filling up an online form. Just get a new number and start tracking the number of leads generated from online. You can even compare the quality of the leads. Are they converting into paying customers more than offline leads? If yes, it’s time to start channeling more money into this medium. If no, how can you optimize to increase their conversion?

(3) Landing Page

Landing page is a critical part of any online campaigns optimization. A mere 5% improvement in conversion can have a huge impact.

Imagine the below scenario:

Spend $1000 to drive 1000 visitors to your landing page

Scenario 1: 5% conversion = 50 leads generated, Cost per lead = $1000/50 = $20

 Scenario 2: Conversion improve by 5% to 10% = 100 leads generated, Cost per lead = $1000/100 = $10

As you can see, you almost double your leads (by 100%) with the same spent based on 5% increase in conversion. Therefore, optimization your landing page is vastly important.

What’s Possibly Wrong?

1. Distraction and Cluttered Landing Page

The first and most important principle about Direct Response Marketing is to make sure that you focus on the 1 and only thing you want your prospective customers to do.

In this case, Marie France wants to generate leads through giving away a free 1 hr consultation. You have to make this the main focus of the landing page.

 Suggestions:

1. Reduce distraction. Get rid of cross selling on the right
2. Move up the sign up form. (This is what you want the visitors to action on, why is it below the FOLD??)

 2. Stale “Hook” or “Lure”

Do you know anything about fishing? I know nuts, but I do know one thing. Don’t expect to catch a lot of fishes with a stale “hook” or “lure”.

Suggestions:

Use new “Hooks”. I have been seeing the same promo for the past few months -Free Consultation.

There are a couple of smart ways to execute this.

1. Make the offers exclusive. People love the idea of exclusiveness. (Don’t give the idea that your offer runs forever.)
2. Come out with different hooks and rotate your hooks on a monthly basis.
   For example: Free Consultation (Jan, April), Free Tummy Wrap (Feb, May), Free Trial packages (Mar, June)
3. Create Urgency: Limit the number of giveaways, or promotion end date (Mention this in your copy.)

Suggested Layout:

This is the layout that would most probably (I’m quite confident would) increase conversion.

1. Tell your customers what’s in it for them. Move up the HOOK!
2. Make it easy for them to sign up – Move up your contact form and contact details.
3. Remove distraction and messages that your potential customers are not keen.
   Move down your “about us” stories and cross selling. They don’t care about your company mission and other products that your company might have.

Personal Opinion: Don’t know if it’s insulting to receive a recommendation from friends that I should check out the free Marie France one hour consultation. Wonder if the receiver would get cheese off. I doubt many people use that. (maybe to make fun of people??) Track how many people are using that form. If nobody is using it, DUMP it away.

3. Double check your copy

Why existing customers only? New customers can’t call in to book a free consultation?

I hope you have learned something out of this case study. If yes, drop me a comment below and let me know. Cheers!

Small and Medium Business (SMB): Simple But Effective Ways to Track Your Online Marketing Efforts

Posted by moses on Feb 18, 2011 in Direct Response, SEO, Tracking and Optimization, Tracking and Optimization | 0 comments

Online marketing is one of the few marketing channels that allow advertisers to track their performance and ROI to a large extent. However, many Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) owners simply do not track their online marketing efforts or Returns On Investments (ROI). This can due to the lack of technical knowhow, resources or in many cases; many simply do not understand why they should even track in the first place.

For the purpose of this post, I’m not going to give you reasons why you should start tracking now. I take it as a given fact that tracking is vastly critical to your online success – Period. Below are some simple but easy to implement steps you can take to start tracking your online marketing campaigns.

1. Define Your Online Returns on Investments (ROI)

Firstly, defining your online ROI not only helps you to better understand and optimize your online campaigns, it helps you to set target as well.

A hugely misunderstood concept of ROI is that it has to be a monetary value. This is definitely not the case. Depending on the business you are involved in, you might not be literally selling your services online. For example, if you are a service provider such as a plumber or wedding planner, you set up a website to showcase your talent, previous assignments, testimonials or even rates. Even if you have a shopping cart in place, it is not easy for someone to book a wedding planning service online directly without a prior consultation, same goes for the likes of plumbing services. In this instance, your ROI would be the number of leads generated rather than a monetary value, although it can be tabulated at the end of the day if you put in the extra effort.

2. Implement Basic Tracking Tools – Google Analytics

With a defined ROI in place, you need to be able to measure how your ROI are performing. This is where the setting up of tracking mechanism comes into place.

While there are many paid services out there that offer tracking services, a good basic comprehensive and free tracking service is Google Analytics. It is a simple free web analytic tools that allow website owners to implement on their website easily.

This tool will give you basic information and insights about your website traffic and marketing effectiveness, including importance statistics such as traffic source, page views, visitors origin, time spend and bounce rate (percentage of visitors dropping off from a certain page). If you are using Google Adword to drive pay-per-click traffic you can also integrate with your analytics to give you more details on the conversion.

A more advance feature allows you to set up conversion funnel to track your visitors path to conversion. With this, you can track where your visitors are dropping off on your website and which pages are converting best for you. These information are vital to help increase sales.

3. Track Your Phone Orders

An highly effective but hugely under utilize tactic to track your online performance is to track your phone orders. For example if you are a florist with many orders coming in through the phone, you can apply an additional phone number and list it on your website. Depending on your tracking needs, you can even apply a different number for each advertising channel, newspaper, magazine, outdoor and even radio. Doing so will give you a good idea of how much orders are coming through each specific marketing channel.

In conclusion

You need not be a professor to know that the bulk of SMBs’ advertising dollars is spent on direct response against branding. In simple terms, SMBs advertise to get a sale, not to remind people of their existence. In this case, tracking becomes even more important as effective tracking and analysis can help to drastically increase the performance of your advertising campaigns. As far as online marketing campaign is concern, it is simply a horrendous crime not to track your marketing effort.