Singapore Engineering Portal SEO is flopped!
Just yesterday I received an Google Alert telling me that about a press release on 5 Polytechnics in Singapore Launches Engineering Portal to Attract Students. This issue is very close to me (I was a Temasek Polytechnic student) because it demonstrates that the government related entities in Singapore are finally embracing SEO.
So its good news!
According to the press release, the project to set up the portal was awarded to a firm in Singapore because it was supposed to be able to add value by doing search optimization for the site.
…because they are able to provide Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services, something other web vendors in Singapore can’t. As SEO is one of our most important online marketing strategies, we need an SEO company with a proven track record to handle this project…
So I surfed on to the site.
Aesthetically, the whole website looks wonderful! Nice vibrant feel with a professional look… but as I dived into the HTML code behind, I was terribly disappointed and confused with the SEO job! Seriously!
There are so many things that can be improved - some of which are like totally obvious, like the title of the page, NO meta tags!, no alternate tags for images… and guess what? Wasn’t it just mentioned in the recent PubCon conference that we should stay away from Javascript menus?
That’s exactly what they had. Oh man.
Well, I’ll admit - the page has a pagerank of 5 - but its easy to get a PR5 because it is an edu.sg domain, and is probably linked in by many other .edu.sg domains. I have a page which I left totally empty in my university domain, and its PR3!
I’m just wondering, did I miss out anything here? Is there a “alternate SEO strategy” for .edu sites or something like that? Would an experienced SEO expert please help me out?
I really hope that the big entities start to realise that SEO is not only getting sites submitted to Google for indexing.
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Tan Kian Ann is blog marketer based in Singapore. He now works with individuals and small businesses reach out to the world using blogs. 
November 25th, 2006 at 9:08 am
Visit TIMMGuru
Here’s a quick SEO overview on the website http://www.engineering.edu.sg.
Besides the comments you’ve made, I found this a very serious error.
http://www.engineering.edu.sg and http://engineering.edu.sg point to different content.
This will definitely confuse the search engines whether it is PR5 or PR0.
The domain engineering.edu.sg was created on Dec 19, 2005.
http://engineering.edu.sg actually points to the same page as http://www.rp.edu.sg. And the engineering.edu.sg domain shares the same IP address(202.21.158.134) as rp.edu.sg and over 2,000 other websites. Very likely it is hosted on a shared server.
Probably, the pagerank value of PR5 is inherited from these PR6 polytechnic websites:
1. http://www.nyp.edu.sg
2. http://www.rp.edu.sg
3. http://www.tp.edu.sg
4. http://www.np.edu.sg
Google reported no backlinks. Yahoo reported 49 backlinks. MSN reported 6 backlinks. It is not good that after about 1 year, it still have no backlink reported by Google. This is something that must be addressed.
I cannot find them listed in the Google top 30 for the keywords: engineering education in singapore.
The PRLeap.com press release is ranked #1 and http://www.engineering.edu.sg is ranked #4 in Google for the keywords: engineering portal in singapore.
November 26th, 2006 at 8:05 am
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks Shi! Wow, your overview really gave me more affirmation. It unfortunate, that while the educational institutions realise what is SEO, they don’t yet embrace the technicalities behind SEO (based on this project).
Are there any courses on SEO in Singapore yet?
November 27th, 2006 at 8:28 pm
Visit rangga
“http://www.engineering.edu.sg and http://engineering.edu.sg point to different content.”
LOL!!
November 29th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Yeah man, I mean… they can’t even do a website proper - talk about SEO?
November 29th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Hey! I just realised that Blogopreneur came BEFORE the actual portal on Google.com, if you Google for “Singapore Engineering Portal”… because of this entry!
Oops.
December 6th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
Visit Alvin
Dear Kian Ann,
Just for your information, the Engingeering portal involves 2 stages. Stage 1 is to launch the portal in Oct 2006. The next phase is the SEO part, which will start only early January. That is why the site is not optimized yet. Hope this clarifies everything. Thanks.
December 6th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks Alvin. Yeah that pretty much clears it, however, shouldn’t SEO be planned right from the start of the website? At, least, the things like the Javascript menus could be communicated to the client and settled uphand right?
December 6th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Visit Alvin
You have a point, Kian Ann. However there is an SEO walk-around method to resolve the Javascript menu issue, which we will implement later when the SEO project kicks in.
December 6th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks Alvin! I didn’t know that! Really look forward learning from you through this example!
March 5th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Visit Nicholas
Hi Man, i dont think http://www.engineering.edu.sg and http://engineering.edu.sg point to different content. while if you using “http://www.engineering.edu.sg.” instead of “http://www.engineering.edu.sg”, it will be redirect to http://rp.edu.sg, noticed additional “.” after the URL?
March 5th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Hey Nicholas,
The issue has been fixed already. http://engineering.edu.sg used to be redirected to the RP homepage.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
Visit Rangga
LOL now they even use additional “.”
March 5th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Hey Rangga and Nicholas. I think it is not common that people put a period after a URL, and even though it would be good for them to still redirect the page back to http://engineering.edu.sg , I guess it is okay as long as there aren’t any incoming links to the address with the period at the back.