I am anxious to know what the current status is when looking at SEO in Malaysia? I am mainly interested in the companies that have websites running in Malaysia, with Malaysian audience as main target.

My own conclusion; if I visit a site for youngsters the sites are always pretty neat (except for the excessive usage of flash in some cases). When I look at many professional websites of Malaysian companies, I am always surprised to see the many xhtml errors, and other nr1. mistakes you can make. Still; these websites were probably made by webmasters or designstudios, but then I do not understand why they do not take basic seo into account.

Here in the Netherlands I am an web consultant (SEO/SEM/Usability/Architecture). Since I am planning to go live in Malaysia with my gf as expat for 1 perhaps 2 years, I was wondering what you guys think of one of my plans:

I was wondering whether Malaysian companies would want to let me audit them when looking at their current website. This I would do for free, but possible work at normal rates. In this case I want to send letters (paper) to the companies of which I think they could use some improvement; especially when looking at SEO aspects related to usability. I think althoug buying/selling online is not that common in Malaysia, it still is good to attract audience through website to your service or product.

Again, I know a lot of you guys are webmasters yourself, and I do not want to offend anyone. I also know there are many websites in Malaysia that are really awesome, but there are also many that simply do not deliver any clear message to their audience.

Any input would be welcome...

Regards,

Is what struck me when I first came to Malaysia. The enormous number of sites chock full of animated gifs (.gov.my) and flash, but not navigable, only fit for IE, and with no real content was at first amusing and eventually depressing. There are some jewels among the Malaysian websites, but they're few and far between.

It may be a cultural matter. Criticism is (to me) remarkable by its absence in Malaysian media. I don't mean name-calling, there's plenty of that. But factual observation, if it can be construed as not entirely flattering, is ... politically incorrect. 'Saving face' here is like 'preserving honour' was in Europe once upon a time. You just don't mention shortcomings. That can make it difficult to propose improvements.

I came to Malaysia meaning to have a holiday, but couldn't find a map - the government survey site didn't work at all. I wrote to them, among others, offering to fix it for free. No reply. I think using email was my mistake. I think your proposal of writing a paper letter would do better. Probably best of all would be if you could get a personal introduction somehow and talk face to face.

You might even be better off trying to arrange some affiliation with a native consultant. Part of Mahathir's legacy (I think it's him, someone will be quick to correct me if I'm wrong!) is a practice of forming partnerships with foreigners to do business with the aim of elevating local skills and eventually 'do without' foreign assistance. There's business law to enforce those partnerships, but I think the practice has been widely adopted as common business culture.

How were you planning to work for 1-2 years in Malaysia? No need to answer that one if it's not a water-tight plan, I'm not an immigration official!

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the another thing is..
they WON'T pay sum of money for SEO.

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most biz here are still running on brick-n-mortar basis... they don't see much of the need for good website that deliver the prospect. They just treat the website as a cost center.

usually their internal IT team will do up their own website and that why some of them failed with the design... IT ppl are capable in technical field and not designs... so they just stuff all the info into web minus the good navigation part... a classic example is what you already seen in the gov.my website... 90% of the gov web are done using cms system like drupal, mambo, joomla, etc.... navigation of those sites just $uck...

SEO are heavily priced for a job done with no immediate result... hence they will think many many times before adopting it...

however.. there are those new age entrepreneur who take advantage of the web...

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My partner and I will both be send to KL as expat (Visit Pass). She will work at a pharmaceutical company, I will work part time for a different co. Besides that I have my own small co, so I wouldn't mind doing some nice SEO/SEM jobs when I'm there anyways...

About SEO; As I am told here in Europe often; Asia still is some years behind when looking at online representation. This means there are still many chances for SEO/SEM experts within the following years, especially trained in the US/Europe.

I wouldn't mind giving free advice to companies when I'm there. Too me it's not about the money, it's about making sure the right people understand why it is necessary to invest in online marketing (on multiple levels).

my insight is Malaysians (especially businesses) are ready to accept the need of doing SEO for their company websites

I would think so, and it's about time I'd say

At the same time companies need to understand that there are many reasons to invest in SEM. Why there's of course the simple increase of product sales, it's also wise to build your brand online (with trust, and returning clients as a result).

I think it's very cool that all is still pristine here ...This gives us guys lots of opportunities...

I have been offering SEO services for the past 2 and half years. I would say, SEO is in high demand, but only with these conditions:

- Provide money back guaranteed
- Less than RM3000 budget
- Results in 3 months

Else, you would have a pretty hard time due to the ignorance of many Malaysian business owners.

We have another member here nicknamed - "Site-booster" whose an expat too and providing SEO service in Malaysia.

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well, there is no many SEM company in malaysia. Most of malaysian's conpamy didn't even realize how important seo it. as the result, most of big company website in malaysia didn't optimize for search engine (eg. too many flash... etc)...

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I have worked for some of government agency & established company for another web base system. I have talked about SEO with their IT department regarding their website. I'm surprise, most of them not aware or never heard about it. They more concern about how beautiful of their website or don't want pay to much for their websites. I think somebody can make money in Malaysia if you can convince them. and furthermore they even not know how to secure their web server. For examples, for Malaysia government agency, most all them using Linux as web server but they didn't know how to compile php. They just install 'everything' what is came from installation cd/dvd.

I was thinking that
malaysia SEO is better than
online advertising..

I've been developing sites for many years. From my experience, most company decision makers (not individuals) know nothing about SEO, XHTML, CSS etc ... and they still ask for full Flash design. Yes, we are years behind western countries.

But you can look at it another way, there's a big untapped market

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Actually, it does'nt mean they don't know much about the SEO but the thing is who cares about SEO. They really think if the web is clear and nice with the beauty flashy thing could attract more visitor than hired some SEO company to do the job for them.

I think Malaysian not ready for it yet. Even now, not every company thinks the web is so important to them. They still can make money without it.

absolutely correct.