Ricky’s Online Business Blog

Years ago when Google was already successful, I was in a coffee house with a friend.  We were discussing how to beat Google and build a better search engine!  We wanted to become Larry Page and Sergery Brin in Malaysia!  Ambitious, huh?

Google search result was then very much based on PageRank to calculate the “popularity” of web sites.  One main factor for the “popularity” of a web site is the number and quality of links from other web sites to it.  The more backlinks your web site has, the more “popular” it is, and so the higher ranking you will get in Google.

So how to outsmart Google?  We thought of the possibility of ranking web sites based on their traffic.  The more a web site is visited, the higher ranking it should have.  We thought of calculating “popularity” based on hits, not backlinks.

But how are we going to track the traffic?  We can’t get site owners to put a counter code on their sites.  We also can’t access their web server logs.  So finally we did nothing and dropped the idea.

But now Microsoft seems to be on similar line of thought when they proposed something called BrowseRank, which calculates popularity based on traffic and usage.  The more a web site is visited and the longer period of time it is spent on by users, the higher ranking it should have in search result.

I don’t know how they could do it.  But if they succeed to beat Google and become the number one search engine (which I think is not likely), I and my friend have only ourselves to blame for not further developing our idea.

I heard there are three kinds of people in this world - those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who don’t know what happen!  Apparently I belong to those who watch things happen!

When you give a “link love” to a web page, it means you put up a link from your web page to that web page.  It is often unsolicited, that means the other web page owner does not ask for the link.  But you want to link because it may be so interesting, funny, admirable, funky, useful, informative or worthy of your link love.

According to common understanding (or misunderstanding?), when you link out to another web page, you are giving them a “vote” on its importance.  Google will treat your link to the page as a backlink, therefore ranking that page higher in its search result pages.

Furthermore, when you link out to another page, according to the common (mis)understanding of the Google PageRank formula, you can be losing “importance” for yourself, and so your link love makes you less important, and so lower ranking in Google search result.

This is not to mention that, when you link out to another page, you can drive visitors away from your web site to those page, therefore reducing traffic on your web site.

Therefore, many site owners or bloggers are very careful in linking to others.  Reciprocal linking (both pages agree to link to each other)?  Maybe.  One way linking?  By default no!

But have we understood it correctly?  After reading directly from the source in the official Google webmaster central blog, it seems that it really does not matter whether we should be generous or stingy in our link love or not.

What really matters is that we link to only web pages whose content are relevant to ours.  This can make our site even more “important” in our subject matter.  But we need to avoid linking to web pages with irrelevant content, “spammy” pages which exist only to increase their search ranking, and “bad neighborhood” which is a collection of web sites which scheme to increase ranking of one another.

By the way, I wonder if “link love” is an appropriate term or not.  True love to someone, as I was taught, is something we give out unselfishly, even if the other person does not deserve it.  It is a mercy and grace.  It is not about what we can get in return.

So are you a generous link lover or a stingy link lover?  As for me, I’m learning to be generous one.  I will link to you if you are good and relevant, whether you ask for it or not.  And as a site owner, my job is not to beg for links, but to develop really good content so that others will “love” me more

I once thought I was a so-called “Internet marketing expert” long time ago (but I was not really one) .  I tried to learn up all I could at that time, including from the late Internet marketer Corey Rudl. My site was even among the top 2 in Google in its early days when you searched for “Internet marketing in Malaysia”.

But obviously I have been left behind after so many years, that now you can no longer find me when you type the phrase above in Google. Yes, the competition has caught up. But to my fault, I have remained stagnant and didn’t keep up with the changes

Anyway, now I consider myself a newbie “reborn” on the Internet and will try to catch up as much as I can. Found this blog post from E-Myth, a very good introduction to search engine optimization (SEO) for web sites.

It introduces you how search engines work (you need to understand them to be able to optimize your sites for them), and what you can do to increase your chance of being ranked highly on search engine result pages.

It’s basic yet very important. Lots of web sites still fail to heed the advice. So check it out!

PS: By the way, I no longer position myself as an “Internet marketing expert”, simply because I am not. Even if I am one day, why should I tell the world?  I can use the skills only for my businesses, and projects which I really have a heart for, including some non-profit and community projects I already have in mind…

I met up with an existing hosting customer on a potential Internet marketing project for their business.  As we discussed, we discovered unexpectedly a new Internet business idea that we could start in joint venture.  It’s good to meet new people to get stimulated on new ideas!

Anyway, I was asked how to rank their web site higher in search engines.  These three areas below are what was shared:

Targeted keywords - Determine first what keywords you want your customers to search on to find you.  Expand your list of potential keywords to include all possibilities.  Use a keywording tool to find out the popularity and competitiveness of these keywords.  Then choose your keywords depending on your targeted positioning in the market.

Search engine friendly web site - Develop your web site in a way that is search engine friendly, one which can be easily included by Google and other search engines.  For example, your web site should not make excessive use of Flash, graphics, animations and frames.  Add meta tags like the important page title tags.  The use of Google Sitemap is also recommended.

Content is still the king - Don’t try to cheat Google with fancy tactics.  Their engineers are much more sophisticated than us and we can get banned doing that.  Instead, work on developing excellent content around your selected keywords.  Even create articles and resources so interesting that other sites want to link to you voluntarily.  The more incoming links you have, the better off you are.  This is link-baiting.

These tips are by no means exhaustive.  How do you position yours in search engines?  Do correct me or add in your own opinion.