SEO Coventry

SEO is such a big thing right now and everyone is talking about it. For those who are not aware, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is one of the key web marketing activities and is defined as:

the process of editing and organizing the content on a webpage or across a website to increase its potential relevance to specific keywords on specific search engines and importantly ensuring that external links to the site are correctly titled and in abundance. Source: Wikipedia.

Anyway, I was wondering whether there are any good companies specialised in SEO in Coventry and was quite surprised to find that in fact, there are none here in Coventry, apart from the National B2B Centre based at the University of Warwick. A search on Google for the search terms "SEO Coventry" also revealed that the companies in the top 5 results are based in Birmingham, London or elsewhere.

At a conference I recently attended, I was talking to some guys and they revealed that they did most of the SEO work in-house but their efforts were not effective and they have to consult some "SEO experts" from time to time, often at a huge cost. I was surprised at the amount that they were paying some of these so called experts.

Definitely puts some ideas into my head. I see a lot of opportunities for a Coventry based company or SEO Expert.

Caro Prangenberg the idiot

There's someone who calls himself Caro Prangenberg, who keeps leaving comments on my blog or should I say spamming. It's ok to comment but this guy is so lazy he just copies some sentences from one of my posts and pastes it to the comment. I am not sure what's he is hoping to gain by this. My guess is that he one of the guys employed by one of the SEO companies out there who pays people to go blog hopping and leave comments with a link back to their client's website.

They don't realise that sooner or latter, the websites are going to be blacklisted as spam origin sites.

Visitor Statistics

I do check my site statistics from time to time. Right now, I have several site meters running on the blog - don't ask me why. However, I find that Google Analytics provides the most informative visitor statistical analysis. Of course, you have to do the deeper analysis yourself.

It was quite interesting to learn that the 5 most popular page on my blog are:

1. Melayu Boleh.
2. Freemasons in Malaysia
3. Tricked into holding a contest
4. Keys to Our Apartment &
5. FAQs

The top 5 keywords used to get to my blogs were:

1. melayu boleh
2. flora damansara
3. ok lah
4. lah &
5. domain cheap

The top keyword used to get here as well as the top post on my blog, may be a proof of the theory that a there are a lot of naughty guys around searching for adult content on the net using certain keywords and unfortunately, a seemingly innocent phrase 'melayu boleh' happens to be one of them.

Anyway, I found out that most of my visitors are still from Malaysia. Take a look at the graph below (this year till date):


They make up 40.27% of the total visitors. It used to be around 80% middle of last year. This represents a drastic change in visitor statistics. As expected, visitors from UK come in second making up 17.81% of the total, closely followed by visitors from the US (17.70%).

Visitors from India have also more than doubled. It was less than 1% last year. Might have something to do with the fact that I joined Orkut recently. Read my post 'Most popular social networking site in India'.

Have you checked your site stats recently?

Tags: Google analytics Keywords Melayu boleh Site statistics

SEO charges based on top rankings

There are a lot of Search engine optimization (SEO) companies out there on the net and choosing one for your company can be a tough choice. After all, how do we know they can deliver after we have already spent the money.

Well, looking around the net, I came across this incredible offer from a search engine optimization company called eTrafficJams.com based in Tampa Bay Florida. They promise top 10 organic search engine placements on Google, Yahoo!, and/or MSN completely FREE of charge for a month. This means that you are not bound to a contract regardless of the results as is the case when you sign up with other search engine optimization companies.

I was thinking that might be a great way to instil confidence in your customers so that they can try you out. However, they are not cheap - their monthly fees are based on the number of top 10 rankings they get for their clients and start from $500/ month. I liked the fact that they had four different SEO packages to choose from, to suit your needs and your search engine marketing budget.

Quite impressed with what their clients have to say in their testimonials page. One of their clients, says that they received top 5 rankings on AOL, Google and Yahoo in just a few days. As I have always stressed, before you go for any SEO company, it is always advisable to look at their Google page rank. I checked and found that their home page has an impressive PR 6 and Alexa rankings of 143,059.

On the other hand if you are looking for an affordable option, I might be able to help you. Just search on Google for SEO Expert Coventry.

Why go for a SEO company

Today, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become the hottest thing in the Internet business and companies offering SEO services have mushroomed. Almost everybody is getting into the act, offering some sort of service related to improving search engine rankings.

However you must be aware that many of these so called SEO experts are individual webmaster and designers who lack the experience and most importantly, the resources to deliver good results for competitive keywords.

According to the Bay Bay Street SEO Company, an SEO expert is "someone with extensive studies in search engine indexing algorithms and experience in applying SEO techniques to Web sites."

I recommend that you go for SEO Companies which are specialized in this area and have the experience in delivering search engine optimization strategies. In the end, you will find that the results do indeed justify the cost of hiring an SEO company. On the other hand, you will also find some great freelancers out there who can deliver similar results if not more than the SEO companies for a fraction of the cost charged by the companies. This is because they have lesser overheads to cover. Several of these have worked with bigger companies before deciding to strike it out on their own. It is a good idea to check out the portfolio of these "SEO experts" as well. You might be pleasantly surprised.

SEO experts

Many companies today are realising that having a company website is not enough. It's no use having a terrific website when your potential customers don't even know it exist. It is for this reason that Search engine optimization (SEO) has become such an important buzz word today. However, searching for the right SEO provider to grow your business can be a nightmare.

An example of a good SEO services company would be SEOP. The acronym stands for Search Engine Optimization Performance. The company has a staff of 33 full time computer scientists and 3 cryptologists. It was founded by former, top search engine experts from Google and Yahoo, which teamed with top online marketing minds from Proctor & Gamble, Gillette and Coca Cola.

The fact that it has around 400 current clients inclucding Fortune 1000 companies points to the fact that it is a proven SEO expert company. The company claims that they have "over 97.5% client retention rate", which is quite amazing.

Do you know of other good SEO service companies?

Won the SEO challenge

Found out yesterday that I have won the SEO challenge #1 organised by the WangCyber forum.

The objective of the contest was to reach the highest ranking possible on Yahoo and Google search engines results for the phrase melayu boleh using legal SEO methods.

I didn't think I could win because I entered the contest quite late. However, my post Melayu Boleh went straight up to #4 on Google 2 days after I published it. Subsequently, the day after that, it disappeared completely from the results pages. It was a roller coaster ride with my position going up and down. I even went up to #2 on Google.

On Yahoo, it took quite a bit of time but slowly but steadily climbed up to the 5th position. It's actually at #4 today. I guess this is due to the different ways search engines spider websites.

How did I do it?

I have some advantages over the other participants which gave me that extra edge:

1. I have been blogging for a little over 3 years now and my page rank is quite high - between 4 and 5. Any post I write is automatically ranked higher.
2. My blog is in English. A lot of the other participants' blogs are in Bahasa Malaysia and thus, their reach is quite limited.
3. I have been doing this professionally for quite sometime now.

As many of my regulars know, I had started a project called the "Melayu Boleh project" that asked people to help me to get on top of the search engine results, by linking to my post.

And a lot of people did link back to the post.

You can do what ever you want but if people don't link back to you, your site won't go up on the results page or if it's up, won't stay there for long.

Thanks to Mohd. Suhaimy, netpreneur and founder of the Wangcyber forum for running this contest (I will contact you soon) and Eches for informing me about the contest. He came third in the contest.

Tags: Melayu boleh Malay SEO

Melayu Boleh project update

It's one more day to go before the Wangcyber forum's "Melayu boleh SEO Challenge" ends and 18 days after I started my Melayu Boleh project.

It's been an interesting experience and I learnt a few new things. My blog post went up to 4th position in Google search results just 2 days after I wrote it. Then it disappeared altogether for a few days.

It was at 2nd position for several days before it came down. Right now, my post is:
- #7 in Google
- #5 in Yahoo
- #4 on Altavista
- On 7th results page on MSN

That's pretty good, don't you think so?

Tags: Melayu boleh Malay SEO

More traffic through SEO

Of late I have been receiving a lot of junk e-mails, especially after I wrote about my Melayu Boleh project.

one such recent mail offered to drive traffic to my blog by increasing my page rankings. So I went over to their site to have a look. They had some interesting articles and amazing claims but that was it. I checked their website page rankings and surprise, they had a pr (page rank) of 1. I think they should instead pay me to help them improve their page rankings.

Tags: review SEO

Melayu Boleh

The Bahasa Malaysia phrase Melayu Boleh can be loosely translated into 'Malays can'. Unfortunately searching for the term on various search engines would inevitably lead to porn sites.

Mohd. Suhaimy, a netpreneur and founder of the Wangcyber forum came up with a challenge - anybody who reaches the highest ranking possible on Yahoo and Google search engines results for the phrase melayu boleh using legal SEO methods, will win a prize of RM100. Runner-up and second runner-up will get RM60 and RM40 respectively. It's not much but I am taking up the challenge as well.

BTW, learnt about this challenge from the Eches Blog.

You can also help me in this project to overthrow porn sites, by linking to this particular post. Inform me and I will link back to your post too.

Tags: Melayu boleh Malay SEO