Google-Yahoo-MSN Meta Search Engine

This is a new discovery for me. And I found a very useful service. In fact, I think it is the best meta search engine and I am not the only person who thinks so. I have been looking for such meta crawler with comparative search results for a long time - finally it's here.

Imagine how much easier can it get to make just 1 mouse click and you have a comparative search results on your keywords. This is an invaluable tool for keywords research and analysing you competitors SERPs. This wonderful meta search engine service is availble at:

http://www.jux2.com

I was trying to find out more information on this company and want to know when this service started. Apparent, it is a new service and started around December last year. Already it was voted the number meta search engine by SearchEngineWatch.com

You can read about their comments on this new service at:

http://searchenginewatch.com/awards/article.php/3494141#meta

SEOMart 25 Guaranteed Directory Listings

After getting satisfactory service from SEOMart, I was ready to spend more money. So I ask about their 25 Guaranteed Listings service at US$99. It is quite a sum of money. So I got to be careful. I emailed to as what directories my link will be listed in. No direct answer to my first email. I re-phrase my question and ask again. This time I got a list of the directories, I listed 3 of them here:

• www.megri.com - PR5
• www.gdirectory.info - PR4
• www.worldwidedirectory.org - PR4

These directories charge a fee of US$10 or more for express review. If you do the math, it may still be a bargain to pay SEOMart to do the job for you.

However, you need to go check the category that you want to be listed and see if that directory page has been spidered and indexed by Google and Yahoo.

Outsourcing to India SEO companies

Two days ago, I tried a SEO company based in India, SEOMart.com. This company offers link s building service. As you know, the quantity of inbound links(IBL's) determine your website PR ranking. The more IBL's the better. So I tested their service with a purchase on some one-way IBL's. They provide very prompt service and I got a response withing 30 minutes of placing the order. The order was fulfilled within the next 24 hours.

But, not all the IBL's are good - less than 30% meet my expectation. I lodged a complaint. And I got better links tafter the complaint. Some of the links are from pages with PR3 and majority of the pages have been spidered by Googlebot. And if you consider the price I paid for all these one-way inbound links, which cost less than the price for two Big Mac meals, it's really a bargain. But only after the complaint and the second round links were acceptable. Here're some of the websites where they placed my link.

search.orionsweb.net

www.zabalook.com

Overall, I think this company provides value for your SEO dollar.

Singaporeans among Asia biggest online shoppers

It was reported in the Sunday Times that web users from Singapore are among Asia's biggest and most frequent shoppers on the Internet. From the report, I gather that most Singaporeans use the Internet to shop for bargain items. Whereas in the USA, Canada, UK and Australia, people use the Internet to shop because of convenience - lower price is a bonus considering the additional delivery charges.

Speaking of delivery charges, online shoppers from Singapore are very concerned about the delivery charges. Often, they include delivery charge in the price of an item sold online and compare to that sold on the retail store. However, these shoppers did not consider the time and money spent on travelling to the shop to pick up the items. A round trip to the Orhard Road shopping district will cost more than $3 even if you take the public transport and you could easily spend 3 hours doing the shopping and travelling.

Having considered the delivery charges and transport cost issue, online store owners are looking to cheaper means to deliver the goods to their customers quickly. However, without a proper fulfilment center setup in Singapore, it would be very challenging to grow the customers base within Singapore and beyond to the regions e.g. Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. When people shop online, they want the items fast and deliver to then in the most economical way.

Online shopping will grow tremedously over the next 2 years and I foresee teething problems to be ironed out and the industry will florish. That's why I already have a Singapore Business Directory website to help web users to search for Singapore-based products and services online.

Tips on writing text ad copy

Initially I was frustrated with my inability to write a PPC text ad copy that would win clicks. I have spent hundreds of dollars on Google and Yahoo pay-per-click advertisement. However, I had little success.

I read several articles by Perry Marshall on Google Adwords and spent hours in selecting and compiling big lists of keywords. I used a combination of keyword selector tools from Google and Overture, also I subscribed to Wordtracker and purchased numerous keyword generator software such as Keyword Equalizer, Niche Finder and etc.

As I have a limited budget, my bids are usually less than $0.15. Even though I thought I had most targeted keyword covered, I was not gettting the clicks!

Then one day, while research for some keyword with Google, I discover what my problem was. I saw my ad and the ad copy sucked. It read horribly, who on earth would even bother to waste a mouse-click on it.

That was when I decided to work on my ad copy seriously.

I got hold of all the advertising books I could lay my hand on. The older books in the library are fantastic. I did not remember the titles of the books - I was too engrossed and busy taking notes.

However, reading library books will not make you a competent copywriter. Practice and more practice would. Still, I was not satisfied with my progress. Something was not right.

The something was found in the search engine listing. I needed to study other people ads(OPA) - understand what "clicks" and what to avoid. I found that I actually enjoyed studying OPA and it was so much easier to "borrow" ideas from some of these gems...