SEO is a slow and tedious process

updated: 1 May 2012

SEO work should be an on-going process and not a one-off project. A lot of people expect to see immediate results and this is possible sometimes. For example, I won a SEO challenge organised by the Wangcyber forum. This was quite easy as the keyword Melayu Boleh was not very competitive.

Moving up too fast may not be good
I personally believe that the best SEO strategy is to build links incrementally, keep making regular updates and try to move up steadily. If the site moves up too fast, it will set alarm bells ringing at Google HQ and might be penalised (I have seen this happening in the past with sites moving from PR4 to 0 and completely disappearing from results).

If you hire a good SEO expert or SEO company, you should be able to see improvements in your search engine results after a month (of course, improvements depend on the competitiveness of rankings).

Keywords help but not much
Some people seem to think that SEO is all about adding keywords in the title but I personally think that the effects are negligible. If you do not believe me, you can try adding keywords on your web pages and see whether they are able to move up 10+ on search engine results. I have found that Tags on the site, key words and the number of updates do matter. However, link backs are what makes the biggest difference.

Page rankings and social media
Search rankings and results are based not only on the links to the page but also the page rankings of the sites that link back. The higher the Google page rank of the site, the better.

Do not forget to link from social media: Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace, Google +, Facebook and Pininterst. This is where my strength lies because I have several thousand followers on my social media, even higher than several companies who do it commercially.

To conclude, I would like to stress that SEO work is a slow and tedious process and it is indeed very hard to show substantial improvements for certain keywords in just one month, unless it is very unique and not competitive.

O2 broadband finally comes through

I take back whatever I said about O2 in the past (read here).

Flashback a couple of weeks:

We had speeds of around 2Mbps and we were thinking of changing providers after staying with O2 since 2009. Then suddenly one fine day we got disconnected for a whole day and when we finally got reconnected, the speeds were at a snails pace - then the service became intermittent going on and off. I complained to the O2 customer service several times, and it seemed to work for a while then the connection would go bad again. I have to say they were really patient and trying out various things  but it didn't seem to work. Finally one day, one of their people called me to say that the problem might be with the line and to connect my line provider (which happens to be BT) to check it out. I had been having crackling noises on the phone for a long time and had assumed that it was normal. Called up BT and their customer service tried their best to help me as well but apparently the line test came out OK. They offered to send their engineers but I would have to pay if there was something wrong.

I had finally made up my mind to shift to Virgin and get rid of both BT and O2 when the O2 people called me up last week to say that they would like to send an engineer to check our line.

Today:
The guy came today - he was from the BT outreach service and he found out that there was indeed something wrong with the line. He changed the line and sockets and  I finally have speeds more than 1Mbps. Nowhere near the advertised (Maximum) speeds of 20Mbps but I am not complaining, I am too happy to get connected without getting cut off every few minutes.

iPad drop test video

Apple fans look away.



What a waste!

Social Bookmarking is The Easiest Way to Advertise Your Website

Guest Post by Kain, who goes by the alias kash2u

After reading the title the first question that may come to your mind is: what exactly is social bookmarking?

Social bookmarking refers to the process of saving bookmarks to a web site or web page and tagging them to social bookmarking sites. These sites are popular and convenient ways to store your favourite sites. You can also share your link with friends and send them to search engines. Other users can also easily find your web site via tags on these social bookmarking sites.

These sites are usually free - you can submit your site and can share your links to the others for free. Normally in these social bookmarking sites you can save your link publicly but you have the option of saving these links privately.

You have to be aware that some sites are NoFollow while others are DoFollow. Of course, it's better if you submit your site to the DoFollow social bookmarking sites. So that your bookmark may be crawled quickly by the major search engine. Submitting to NoFollow social bookmarking sites means not that they don't have any value. However, the NoFollow sites might increase your your site's Yahoo backlink score.

Be Creative
There are millions of web pages on the net and visitors will only click your bookmark if it is interesting to them. So make your bookmarking title more interesting - be creative, so that the user are attracted to your bookmarking title.

Social bookmarking allows you to share your link in a professionally way to the other users. Normally, Social bookmarking is the a place where thousands of user can create their personal account to add their bookmarks. It is ideal if the social bookmarking site allows you to insert keywords so that other users can easily find links related to their specified bookmarks.

Laying down roots

Social bookmarking lays down the roots for establishing and promoting the value of your website, article post or video. Users are also able to vote for a bookmark. So the more votes you get for your bookmark, the more valuable it becomes. Thus, Social bookmarking gives a resource credibility. Most of the social bookmarking networks will also highlight those profiles with the highest votes.

Once you register with a social bookmarking site you become a part of that community. You and all other members are there for the same thing for which you signed up. It is essential to develop a close relationship and communicate with the other users.

Fiverr.com is one of the places where you can buy social bookmarking service for only $5. So go over to the site and open a free account. Then buy my Gig 100 manual social bookmarking for $5.

Author Bio:
kash2u is a seller Social bookmarking service provider at Fiverr.com. He provide manual social bookmarking at Fiverr.com for only $5.

The new Apple iPad 3

Updated 10 March 2011: A friend pointed out that the new iPod is not called the iPod 3 - it is simply the "new" iPod.

The "New" iPad 3 is finally here with an amazing display: 2048x1536 resolution, 44 per cent greater colour saturation and 3.1 million pixels — in the same 9.7-inch space.

It also has a 5MP camera with ƒ/2.4 aperture and a five-element lens allows you to take clear photographs and 1080p HD video.

Prices start from £399. Now are you kicking yourself for buying the iPad 2.


Launch of the iPad 3


Official video

SpareOne - the mobile with self

One of the interesting mobile phones to debut at this year's World Mobile Congress at Barcelona is the SpareOne mobile phone . The phone is powered by a single AA battery (based on Energizer® Ultimate Lithium AA battery, included with phone) and the manufacturers claim that the phone if unused, will last for 15 years. It also has an amazing talk time of 10 hours.

However, I a not sure whether the phone's talk time will last for 10 hours as claimed after 15 years because no one has left it lying around unused for 15 years.

I am just kidding - this is one amazing invention and you wonder why no one else thought about it before. Of course, the SpareOne is a no frills phone, meaning no touch screen, no internet and no camera. However, it has a built in torch and can automatically transmit it's location, making it a ideal spare phone to keep in in your car or house for use in case of an emergency or natural disasters.

This could be a great phone for use in rural areas and for those who love outdoor activities with limited access to recharging points.

The phone starts shipping this coming March.

The amazing iPad 3 concept

Not sure whether this is a true Apple concept as we all know how secretive they are with their product launches.

Found this video on YouTube of a concept featuring border to border display.

LG Optimus 3D Max review

A hands-on review of the LG Optimus 3D Max.

But do you really need 3D on a mobile phone? Anyway....

Nokia's 41 MP sensor camera phone

I believe that the phone I have been dreaming about is finally here.

The Nokia 808 PureView comes with a crazy 41 MP (Yes! that's right) Carl Zeiss lens with Xenon flash. It also records 1080p Full HD video (with LED video light) with up to 4 x lossless zoom.

Apparently the 808 is also has the world’s first device to include High Amplitude Audio Capture which allows you to record distortion-free audio at levels of up to 140 dB.

The phoen has a built in 6 GB internal user memory which can be expanded up to 48 GB with an external microSD memory card to store all the pictures and videos.

The phone has a talk time of 11 hours and stand by time of 465 hrs, though I guess this is if you decide to use the mobile only for making and receiving calls, in which case, you do not need this phone.

Check out the full specs here.

Perfect bathroom upgrade for the geek

I was in the bath today morning and looking around I realised that our bathroom is desperately in need of a complete makeover. Looking for inspiration I went to the Ikea website and even though I am a big Ikea fan, there was nothing exciting. Anyway I somehow reached a site and scrolling down the home page the words rechargeable LED mirrors, caught my eye.

I was definitely curious and I found out that these interesting bathroom mirrors from HiB have built in LED lights and require no electrical installation. The mirrors include a rechargeable battery pack which can be easily removed from the side of the mirror and charged with the supplied mains adapter.

I found out that a single charge will give an average battery life of around a month since the mirrors use energy efficient LED bulbs. They are safer and cheaper alternatives to the standard wired-in illuminated mirrors and what a great way to instantly transform the bathroom.

Buffalo Drivestation 1Tb

In September 2010 I bought a TOSHIBA Ultra Slim External USB Hard Disk with a huge 500GB storage.

Well, It's taken more than a year but the Toshiba is almost out of memory as well.

Looking around, I came across the Buffalo Drivestation 1Tb USB2 External Hard Disk Drive on Play.com for £79.99 with free delivery.

Yes, I bought it.

Nothing fancy as you can see from the pictures and not that portable either. Furthermore, I need an external power source as well. However, I am not complaining.

I just plugged it in and my PC recognised the drive immediately. So far it has been reliable and file transfers between the Buffalo and my PC is quite fast. Now I want to see how fast it takes to fill up 1 Tetrabyte of storage.