People living in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) have already started their holiday shopping in full swing. According to new Google and Ipsos research, 21% of people in the EMEA region began their holiday shopping as early as June.
Following the most successful holiday season in digital spending history in 2020, the retail landscape continues to shift. COVID-19 has created logistical challenges, resulting in delivery delays and product scarcity. But the potential release of pent-up demand, as well as people’s excitement about spending the holidays with friends and family this year, gives reason for optimism. Thinking of hiring an SEO consultant to help your business make the most out of it?
Here are the early retail trends and consumer behaviours you should be aware of to help your brand navigate the 2021 holiday shopping season:
There is a high level of demand, but people are feeling the pinch.
This year’s holiday shopping season has the potential to be very busy. Despite an increase in digital shopping in 2020, the festivities felt underwhelming, with many stores closed and people spending the holidays away from loved ones. However, the run-up to the 2021 holiday season paints a different picture.
According to Google mobility trends, footfall to brick-and-mortar retailers has recovered to pre-pandemic levels in many countries. And, with new Eurostat data indicating a significant increase in European household savings since last year’s holiday season, there is the possibility of pent-up demand waiting to be released.
Despite this increase in overall savings, some consumers still feel the pinch from the financial uncertainties and job losses of the previous 18 months. Combined with the pandemic’s effect on more cautious spending habits, it means that 46% of EMEA holiday shoppers plan to wait until gift items are on sale before purchasing them.
“While consumer confidence is high ahead of the holiday season, people will be picky about where they spend their money, so retailers must continue to provide true value,” says Pablo Perez, Google’s retail specialist for EMEA. “This holiday season, retailers who want to release pent-up demand should meet their customers wherever they can. They can keep track of people’s needs by using Google Trends and the Insights page in their Google Ads account.” They can do this by utilising search engine optimization services.
The holiday shopping season has begun much earlier.
While the start of the holiday shopping season has moved forward in recent years, the festive season was on people’s minds even earlier in 2021. In addition, 37% of holiday shoppers in EMEA say they will begin their shopping earlier this year than they did last year.
“With holiday shopping starting earlier each year, retailers must begin their festive campaigns much earlier to capture demand from these shoppers — and ensure they stay front of mind,” says Ruth Ballett, retail lead for EMEA marketing at Google. “This entails adapting messaging to meet customer needs and rethinking the best marketing channels to reach potential customers at any stage of their holiday shopping journey.”
Due to the challenging traditional holiday shopping last year during the pandemic, it is reasonable that people are starting to plan for the holiday season early. This year, they’re looking forward to seeing their friends and family again, and they’d like to avoid any potential disruptions.
COVID-19’s impact: From stock shortages to local support
The pandemic continues to disrupt people’s lives and shopping habits, with 37% of EMEA consumers expecting COVID-19 to affect how they shop this holiday season. Some of these effects, such as wearing a mask and social distancing, are smaller and more common these days. Others necessitate more extensive commitments, such as people becoming more aware of who they buy from — and when.
Expected scarcity as a result of supply chain issues
Pandemic-related supply chain challenges cause delivery delays and stock shortages for the holiday season. Many EMEA holiday shoppers are concerned about this, with 49% saying they will check online to see if an item is in stock before purchasing it.
“People are aware of the pandemic’s supply chain challenges and are using Google Search to understand product availability,” says Debadeep Bandyopadhyay, a Google research analyst overseeing search trends in EMEA.
“It’s natural for people to go online to find out where they can buy a product, which stores have it in stock, and when a product is back in stock. Demand for the new Playstation 5 demonstrated this at the end of last year. And, if the news of delivery delays for this holiday season holds true, we expect to see an increase in searches for availability of this year’s hot ticket items as well.”
More assistance for small businesses in the community
Another way the pandemic has altered consumer mindset and behaviour is it has made people more conscious of who they buy from. Smaller companies have had a surprisingly difficult time due to the pandemic, and campaigns such as “buy local, or bye local” have sprung up in response.
It is a topic that has been on people’s minds for the past 18 months, with 56 percent of EMEA holiday shoppers saying they will spend more money at local small businesses this holiday season.
What retailers can do to assist early holiday shoppers
There is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the upcoming holiday shopping season, from potential delivery delays and stock shortages to concerns about new restrictions. As a result, it is more important than ever for retailers to provide a frictionless and consistent experience throughout the purchasing journey so that customers know what to expect.
Given that the holiday shopping season is already underway, retailers must provide this now by focusing on:
Helpfulness: Retailers should put themselves in the shoes of their customers. They should consider what uncertainties may lead to an abandoned purchase.
Transparency: Be open and honest about any looming product shortages or delivery delays. People can make more informed purchasing decisions when they know what to expect. However, if a product is delayed or out of stock after they’ve already purchased and paid for it, it creates friction and reduces customer satisfaction and long-term brand loyalty. That’s not on anyone’s holiday wish list.
Consistency: While more people are shopping online this holiday season, they are not the only ones. Physical stores remain valuable because they provide convenience, immediacy, in-person experiences, and product trials. In an article about holiday retail strategies, Michelle Scruggs, performance media lead at Google, explains, “Brick-and-mortar shopping isn’t dead. People increasingly want the option of buying online, in-store, or even in a hybrid fashion.” To create a seamless omnichannel experience, retailers must ensure brand and product consistency across their website, stores, and other channels.
After reading this article, are you more concerned about how the festive holiday shopping trends affect search keywords on Google? Are you curious about how to utilise these trends to your business’s advantage? Fret not! You can hire an SEO consultancy, and soon, you can keep track of people’s needs by using Google Trends and the Insights page in their Google Ads account. Hire the right SEO company today for the future of your business.
The New Year has arrived! There are all the usual suspects: evergreens are glowing, Mariah Carey is singing, and me? I am hopeful that the coming year will be even better, more enjoyable, and more successful than the previous one.
The New Year is about reflecting on all that has gone well in 365 days and about looking forward! You can’t just go with the flow if you want to grow personally and professionally. You must choose a course of action. Here’s where resolutions come into play. They serve as a framework against which you can assess your progress. What exactly is the issue with resolutions? They are too unclear. People cannot implement them! The resolution to “prioritise SEO” strikes me as overly broad. We must also break it up! Instead, turn it into a list of actionable goals! And that’s indeed what we’re going to do here. We’ll make a series of smaller, actionable, concrete resolutions that will significantly improve the overall SEO of your website and potentially lead you to look out for SEO services in Singapore.
What you should remember
Remember this when setting goals for yourself for the coming year:
Expect no results on January 2nd — To do anything right, you need time, and SEO requires it more than most. Take it one week, preferably one day at a time, and keep in mind that you’re in it for the long haul. Best SEO practices accumulate and produce long-term benefits, but it takes time and effort.
Continue to ask yourself, “Why is that important right now?” — With so many things to do, you must carefully manage your time. When creating a plan for a day, a month, or a year, you must have a firm grasp on why dealing with this particular thing is necessary right now.
SEO is difficult, so don’t try to do everything at once! Work always has complexities. Doing SEO entails a plethora of tasks ranging from website auditing to link building. As a result, you must spread your SEO efforts so that you are not immediately overworked. Remember that you can do anything, but no one can do everything.
Only use precise definitions. If you’re going to do something for a year, you should unquestionably know what you’re getting yourself into. Furthermore, having a detailed description will prevent you from making a million excuses about the meaning of the word “exercise.”
It’s not about the New Year at all — while we think of January 1st as the day of new beginnings, the reality is that there is never a wrong time to be better. That applies to everything: family, career, gym, SEO — it’s never too late or too soon to improve. January 1st is simply a symbolic starting point.
Know how to carry out each resolution. Following the “what” and “why,” the “how” is now required. There will be a “game plan” for each resolution idea on this list. Avoid making resolutions that you have no idea how to follow through on!
That’s quite a lot. But all of those points are non-trivial and, yes, a little boring, but necessary for completing the year with consistent progress.
With that in mind, I’d like to share a few SEO resolution ideas for 2021. It’s only five items because I believe that you should never bite off more than you can chew.
However, if those five things are done consistently throughout the year, they will add up and make a significant difference for any webmaster out there.
1) Make link-building a regular part of your day-to-day routine.
What exactly is it?
Real-world equivalent: “Meet new people” — making more meaningful connections is critical to your professional and personal success. As it happens, it’s also essential for increasing your website’s ranking and growth.
Link building is an activity that aims to increase the number of high-quality backlinks by forming alliances with other websites. Guest posting on websites that write about your specific niche, connecting to topical blogs, participating in discussions on forums, researching your competitors’ backlinks, and so on are all examples.
What is the significance of this?
Your backlink profile is one of the most important ranking signals. Having many websites that link back to your web pages can help you rank highly in a competitive environment.
Google ranks its pages using the PageRank algorithm, among other things. It means that the more links a webpage receives, the greater its “link authority.” Thus, the greater its chances of ranking!
Treat it as if it were social networking because that is what it is. The simplest way to get a promotion is by recommendation, and knowing a lot of people in your industry can lead to beautiful, mutually beneficial partnerships. “Mingling,” while frightening at times, is always necessary.
How should it be done?
Well, there are a slew of totally legitimate link-building strategies. But you’ll need to start by gathering a large number of prospects — websites that could potentially link back to you.
Sure, you may already be familiar with some niche blogs and websites, but you should also consider using link-building software. Create a project in Link-Assistant for your website, and the tool will scour the web for potential prospects.
Choose from a wide range of link-building opportunities.
From guest posting to researching your competitors to finding opportunities to participate in giveaways, enter your target keywords, and the tool will compile a massive list of potential domains with which you could collaborate.
Using the email module in the tool, you can immediately contact any number of your prospects using the provided email next to the prospect’s domain. Send them an email, say hello, tell them a little about yourself, and see if they’re interested in collaborating.
You’d be surprised how many people are willing to collaborate for mutual benefit! You will discover opportunities to spread the word about your products while they will receive quality content and a link back.
2) Conduct a monthly website audit.
What exactly is it?
Real-world equivalent: “This year, I’m going to start taking better care of my health” — a timely audit, like a timely visit to the doctor’s office, will save you money and time.
To be clear, running an SEO audit entails analysing your domain and all of the pages within it to determine its rankability. The audit scrutinises every page to determine overall compliance with best practices for ranking in search engines. You can also see any technical issues, from the most serious to the most minor.
What is the significance of this?
Things change quickly on the internet; Google is constantly rolling out updates, your content becomes outdated, pages stop working, and you begin to be penalised for something you barely remember doing!
Check-ups, like your actual health, should not be done on a sporadic, once-in-a-while basis. Instead, the responsible thing to do is to visit the doctor regularly. You can do the same thing here and should not wait for issues to arise. The best medicine is to avoid getting sick.
SEO audits, like doctor visits, are extremely easy to put off indefinitely. There are a million things to worry about, so it’s easy to put off a thorough website audit in favour of something else. SEO audits, like doctor check-ups, must be performed on a regular and precise basis.
How should it be done?
You can, of course, hire a digital marketing agency to perform an SEO audit on your website, but this is no longer necessary, and you can complete the entire task without much difficulty.
Using an SEO audit tool like WebSite Auditor, you can complete the entire process in a matter of hours rather than days or weeks.
Create a project for your domain and let the tool handle the heavy lifting. After finishing, you will receive a complete layout of your website. On the Site Structure > Site Audit screen, look for the alarming red signs in the columns.
Every red sign represents a specific problem that you need to address rather urgently. Clicking on those tabs, you’ll get an explanation of why those factors are dangerous and what you’ll need to do to fix them.
“Learn a new language” is the real-world equivalent. Search engine optimization is a broad topic that encompasses almost every aspect of website management.
There is a “best practice” approach for almost every task a webmaster may have to perform and to learn it takes a significant amount of time and effort.
What is the significance of this?
It is because SEO is constantly evolving! SEO, like a foreign language, is never truly “learned” once and for all. It’s a world that’s constantly shifting and mutating.
So, with SEO, you must constantly refresh your knowledge and learn new things. Make time for it; otherwise, you’ll fall behind!
Ranking factors in 2021 aren’t the same as they were in 2019, and they’re a lot different than they were ten years ago. Yes, conducting thorough keyword research is still essential for ranking. The “how” of it, on the other hand, changed dramatically. Search engines now understand synonyms much better and penalise keyword stuffing harshly.
It only takes one change to Google’s algorithms to render a large portion of your SEO efforts obsolete. It is why you should devote time to learning more about SEO.
How should it be done?
To begin with, don’t expect knowledge to magically appear in your head after reading a large book or enrolling in a 6-month course. I’d advise staying away from them in general.
In my experience, they are overwhelming, and people quickly abandon them. Instead, you can make SEO-related reading a regular part of your routine. Sign up for an informative SEO newsletter to gain SEO insights along the way.
It is impossible to read everything ever written about SEO. What you need is a steady supply of learning material and insights spread out over a month. Make it your weekend to read here and there, to put the concepts you’ve learned into practice for better absorption of the material — but take it easy!
You can still go if you go slowly, but if you try to take in everything at once and then get tired and stop, you haven’t done anything useful at all.
4) Begin with on-SERP SEO.
What exactly is it?
Real-world equivalent: “I’ll pay more attention to my appearance” — it’s all about changing how people perceive your website on the results page.
On-SERP SEO is a set of practices designed to make your website stand out among the other SERP results. It’s less about improving your ranking and more about controlling what Google displays about you on the SERP.
So, just like getting your shirts pressed and wearing a suit and tie, an investment in your appearance is an investment in yourself, and the same is valid for online space. It’s not just a matter of vanity but of standing out among your peers.
For example, it could be editing your content to make your page a Featured Snippet. That is the result displayed above the other organic results, and it provides an immediate answer to a user’s question.
What is the significance of this?
Did you know that for the first time in 2019, more than half of Google users conducted zero-click searches? It means that in 2019, most people are Googling something that doesn’t end up on any of the SERP’s web pages.
With the introduction of features such as the aforementioned Featured snippets, knowledge graphs, People also ask, and so on, the user has less and less reason to leave the results page!
Some would describe it in apocalyptic terms, but I don’t see anything to worry about.
To begin with, most of those features eliminate clicks that are unlikely to convert anyway: answers to specific informational queries.
Second, while it can be a problem, I believe it is counterproductive. On the contrary, we should try to capitalise on the opportunities presented by these features. It’s a chance to evolve! Now that appearances are so important, you can pull off a three-piece suit!
Being a source of the knowledge graph, a People also ask, or a Featured snippet almost guarantees you significantly higher engagement than your SERP competitors. Making no effort in that direction is essentially leaving money on the table.
How should it be done?
Determine which of your target keywords is eligible for a snippet. It’s somewhat simple to do this — Google your target keyword and see if there’s a featured snippet.
However, if you don’t want to spend up to three weeks on a single task, you should use a tool. In the Rank Tracker software, create a project for your domain and fill out the target keywords.
In the appropriately named module Target Keywords > Rank Tracking, you can see if any of the keywords you want to rank for have a SERP feature associated with them.
Then, look at how to organise the content on the page where the snippet is. Examine what makes their page more “snippable.”
In general, you’ll need the following to get into a Featured snippet:
create a list of information
employ structured data markup
Include a variety of neatly distributed keywords between headings and content.
In general, using structured data is a “best practice” approach. It’s one of those two-for-one deals: search engines like it and users like it.
It is simple: use WebSite Auditor to perform an audit, then navigate to Site Structure > Pages. You’ll be able to see which of your pages have structured data markup right away.
Remember to include the keywords you want to rank for in your page titles and descriptions! In Site Structure > Site Audit, you’ll be able to monitor meta description and title tags.
The On-page column has everything related to the titles and descriptions of your pages. When you click on those tabs, you’ll go to the pages that contain the potential errors. Typically, resolving those issues takes little to no time at all.
Remember to use about 160-170 characters in your page description for search engines, and try to give a sense of what your page is about.
Given the increasing importance of the SERP, we can no longer ignore the display of search results on the page. Implementing best practices is necessary to avoid getting lost in the shuffle of results.
5) Maintain your Google My Business page every week.
What exactly is it?
“Find more ways to express yourself,” says the real-world equivalent. It’s about opening up a new channel of communication with your users and clients.
Google My Business (GMB) is a Google feature that allows you to create a profile for your business, which Google will then display in response to relevant search queries. You fill out your company’s location, address, work schedule, and phone numbers.
In 2021, it’s essentially your business card. It’s what most people see when they look up your company online, and it’s what a large number of potential clients look at to form their first impression.
It’s also a place where your customers can leave you a review and rate your company. Your average grade is calculated from these reviews and displayed as a score ranging from 0 to 5 stars.
What is the significance of this?
GMB, like other Google features, is consuming more and more space on SERPs. Right now, having a properly filled-out GMB page is the most important thing to let users know where you are and how to contact you.
Assume you own an ice cream shop in Singapore. A user who searches “buy ice cream Singapore” will see a list — we call this a Local Pack — appear above the usual organic search results. As a result, you’ll see GMB businesses before anything else!
It is also the first place people go to express their dissatisfaction or ask questions about the service. That is why you should check your GMB page regularly.
How should it be done?
Sign up for Google My Business using the starting page! Claim your business and fill out the details. Upload a bunch of photos showing your products, services, and office building. You can also upload anything else you think might help a potential customer recognize your location.
Consider your GMB page to be yet another marketing channel, albeit an important one. It should be updated to notify your customers of all incoming sales and special offers. Use GMB to provide quality answers about your company, respond to potential criticism, and interact with users in a more face-to-face manner.
Something to consider for next year
When making New Year’s resolutions, you must remember that a year is a short period. I know it doesn’t seem like it, especially as we approach the year 2022. But, in reality, time flies by in a flash.
This year, focus on making visible progress, and don’t kid yourself: it will go by quickly! Every day counts, but stuffing yourself every day will exhaust you. If you see that you’ve made consistent progress throughout the year, you can begin working on setting new objectives.
You will base your goals on your newly acquired knowledge and lessons learned while working on your previous ones.
Conclusion
Resolution making is a hopeful act. In some way, shape, or form, it’s saying, “I want to be better.” Resolutions are only something you can make for yourself. It is you who has set a goal to improve yourself.
And, yes, most resolutions don’t go as planned, and you end up forgetting about them or putting them off until next year. But I believe that this does not have to be the case!
There is a way to set a goal for yourself and stick to it, and while a large part of it is to have the willpower and desire to do so, a large portion of it is setting the right goal. Using the principles I’ve described, make your SEO resolutions that you know you’ll be able to stick to! Engage your desired SEO services today.
Heard of the word SEO and wondering what it means? Well SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. SEO services are provided by many companies all over the world. It is a process of making your website more visible to the online digital world.
As it is used worldwide, the competition is tough as many people are using it to have higher chances of being more visible then other websites. There are many SEO consultants in Singapore that are known for being experienced in SEO which is one of the reasons why many companies are well known all over the world. However, do you know how to choose an SEO vendor that can provide excellent and reliable SEO services at an affordable price? How much is considered a reasonable price for your Search Engine Optimisation work? Let us share.
What exactly is SEO?
The answer as mentioned above is Search Engine Optimisation, in layman terms is basically a process that improves the chances of your website being more visible when people search for a certain keyword on Google or other search engines.The more visible your site, the more attention you will gain as more eyes will be able to see your site which will then attract more business for you.
How does Search Engine Optimization work?
Search Engines uses bots to go from site to site to collect information about those pages and put them in an index. The index is basically a giant harddrive that stores all the information it has collected and it makes it possible that it can pull up a website that you are searching for exactly.
It has complex SEO algorithms that analyze the sites in the index and takes into consideration the various different types of factors that determine the order in which the websites should come in based on our search.
Unlike paid search ads, spending money to get a higher search rank is not possible hence SEO services have to put in the effort and work to get a higher rank.
Why is SEO important for marketing?
Search engine optimization is a key factor when it comes to digital marketing as millions of people all over the world conduct millions of searches, with the same objective of finding a particular information on many things such as products or services and many more. Hence greater visibility and higher ranking compared to others can create a more positive impact on your site.
How Much Does It Cost For SEO Services In Singapore?
A benefit of hiring a professional SEO vendor is that they will be able to give you the right price estimate for your campaign. There is also the possibility of you doing it yourself which could save you your money but we strongly advise not to unless you have a full-time experienced SEO practitioner doing the work for you in your office.
Types Of Local SEO
Costs of SEO
Local SEO (Simple Keywords)
SGD$300 to SGD$500 per month
Mid-Level SEO Campaign
SGD$400 to SGD$900 per month
Comprehensive International SEO
SGD$2,000 starting price per month
What is the best price for SEO in Singapore?
There definitely are cheap SEO services in Singapore however the idea of cheap is different for everyone. Most SEO companies in Singapore follow the same method of how they charge, which is by having a monthly package, where they charge a fixed price every month for a number of keywords. The price increases as the number of keywords increase. The price also varies depending on the experience and portfolio of the company you have chosen.
The cost of an SEO can range anywhere from SGD$500 to SGD$4,500 per month. The difference in cost is attributed to the different factors such as:
Number of SEO Keywords
Difficulty of the chosen Keywords
Website Built and Quality
Local or International SEO campaigns
Add-ons such as Web Maintenance and Copywriting Services
There is no fixed price or standard rate that is being charged. If you ask any SEO consultant what the price of their SEO services are, they will all give you the same reply stating that it depends. SEO services pricing varies from company to company in Singapore.
Factors That Affect The Cost Of SEO Services In Singapore
Here is a list of factors that come into consideration when deciding the costs of the service;
Services & Benefits
The cost will largely depend on the services required and the benefits that are included in the campaign.
Not all SEO companies will provide you with all the services such as blog content, content distribution and more.
At the end of the day you should pick something within your budget.
The Experience
The greater the profile and knowledge of the SEO company the higher they may charge you, so why not go for a cheaper one as there are cheap SEO services in Singapore. However, are you willing to take a chance with a company with lesser experience and one that may not be able to guarantee you results? Invest your money in a good company that has a good profile and is a known company in the industry.
They may charge you at a higher rate as they are a professional company that has years of experience and knowledge of every aspect of SEO. Their rates may be higher but they are likely to provide better results than the cheaper option in a shorter period of time.
SEO companies usually provide results within 3 to 5 months. Wanting results in a quicker timeline will require additional costs
Guarantee
Results can never be 100% guaranteed as there are too many factors that come into play with search engine optimization, if a company informs you that they can give you a guarantee ranking it is probably a ploy as it is not possible. Remember this: No one can control Google’s ranking.
Custom SEO Pricing
Custom pricing packages could be an option you could explore that is based on the results. For example, as rankings in search engines are all about boosting your portfolio along with sales for your site, there is a chance that you could make a deal with your SEO company where they charge you only when they can show proof of results that your site comes at a higher rank. However not all companies have this option and those that do may charge an extremely high price for their SEO service that usually comes together with a contract that will last a minimum of a few years.
SEO Singapore : Generate More Traffic
A good SEO can help improve your business tenfold and a bad SEO can destroy your business along with your reputation and everything that you have spent your time building.
Think hard and plan out and choose the right SEO company for your business that fits your budget.Here is a list of factors that you should consider before making your decision;
Do not find a company just by looking at the price, a high price SEO company may not be as good as you expect it to be based on the fees.
Choose quality and experience over price
Seek reference from others and do your research
The SEO costs in Singapore varies from company to company and has many factors that affect the cost of it. Making the right choice of choosing the right SEO company is very important as it can make or break your business. Do your research and choose a company that will best benefit the business. This is especially crucial in this Covid-19 endemic period. On a side note, do read up our latest SEO tips on doing SEO during the Endemic.
So what is SEO link building? Link building is a process of getting other websites to link back to your website. All marketer and business owners would be interested in building links to drive referral traffic and increase their site authority. This can be done with SEO consultants in Singapore.
There is no doubt that creating great inbound links for your website is a daunting task. Although many website owners get their backlinks by spamming the blog comment section, this is neither necessary nor effective for their search engine optimization efforts. Although there is a lot of discussion about inbound link generation, there is very little discussion about specific ways to do it.
Fortunately, link building strategies are not as difficult to implement as many people say. Think of it as a social network, if you are a source of great content and present it to the right people, they will share it. With this in mind, we’ll help you get started using proven and effective techniques to help you build legitimate inbound links. Read on to learn how to use these links to brainstorm your SEO strategy.
Here are 20 SEO Link Building Strategies to help you double your traffic in just 6 months
1. Help another webmaster fix an error on their website
This would be those times where connections come in handy. When you find broken links on other sites, let them know, politely, and provide them with a piece of your own content that would be a suitable replacement for that broken link. Be helpful, friendly, and personal. This could be an opportunity to start building a relationship with the webmaster too. This is a key step in your SEO services!
2. Maintain steady blog with great content
Consistently creating great blog content that people naturally want to link to is one of the most trusted and authentic ways to organically generate inbound links. You should post content that is directly related to your industry and that is useful to your readers. In this way, they feel the need to share it. They can even link to it from their own website if they have one. Also, are you concentrating on long-tail SEO keywords to drive conversions? If you are only focusing on the short-tail for branding awareness, you need to re-think your SEO strategy!
3. Search for and monitor your competitors backlinks
Look for opportunities to obtain similar links. This is a great way to easily find high-value link opportunities. Research the competitions weekly or monthly to find new opportunities. You can take advantage of them while they are still fresh
You can use a link analysis tool such as Majestic and Ahrefs to get a list of the backlinks for one of your competitors. Afterwards check out what type of post is earning backlinks and benefiting from that off-page search engine optimisation services. This is an important off-page link building tactic in your SEO quest to reach page 1 of Google!
4. Link to other blogs on your blogs
The blog aims to be a social tool. The more links you have to others, especially when you do this in a consistent, opportunity-oriented manner, the more likely one of the bloggers will give back. In addition, you cannot cover everything on the blog. It makes sense to use the vast resources on the Internet to make your blog experience better and bring more rewards to your readers. A reliable SEO company would give this worthy tip to you.
5. Identify broken links through site-crawling tools
Some webmasters may link to your site but using an old or broken link. Something like this is natural as you change and update your websites over time. However, these inbound links are still valuable and you can still update them.
How you may ask, well you can start off by using tools such as Dead Link Checker, Link Juice Recovery tool, and Screaming Frog to scan for broken links on the website. Then, using the template that we will share later on to reach out to the webmasters with the correct link as a replacement. Are you getting a 100% score for your on-page SEO?
6. Write guest blog posts
Create and write a great blog post and compare it with your suitable blog. If someone accepts, they should be willing to give you an inbound link in the post. Guest blogs are a great way to promote your expertise and get quality white hat links. Not sure who to write to?
Well most media allow people to submit original articles on topics relevant to their readers. However, you should start directly with posts in your niche. If you are a brand agency, you can consult brand publications. Having said that, here are 5 big mistakes in Search Engine Optimization that you must definitely avoid!
7. Search for and monitor mentions of your brand
Contact webmasters about turning those mentions into inbound links only when it is warranted like when they are citing the data of yours as an example. This is called the link reclamations.
You can monitor brand mentions by setting up alerts using tools such as Mention or Buzzsumo and adding keywords that are related to your brand or products. Do make sure you exclude any mentions from your own website within the alert, which you are able to do in these tools settings.
Here is an email template on tip number 5:
8. Curate and publish helpful resource lists
Resource lists are good link bait and useful content for readers. If you create a comprehensive resource list, other bloggers will easily link to it in their own posts instead of repeating and curating all of this content themselves.
9. Write newsjack posts
A news jack is to capitalize on the popularity of news stories to drive sales and marketing success. If you’re the first blogger to comment on a news event, Google’s algorithmic “freshness” component climbs to the top of the SERP, others link to the content in their accounts story
10. Create case studies about your most impressive clients
If any of your clients look good in case studies about your business, you can actually bet that they will be linking to your website. However, you have to make them good, which means choosing companies that have seen the ebay results, are enthusiastic and know your products and services well. This means asking the right set of questions and laying out the case study in an attractive manner and comprehensive way.
11. Volunteer to be the subject of a case study
Currently, companies are looking for customers who are willing to be the subject of a case study. By volunteering your time for one of your major vendors, you will be getting a backlink from the case study once it is published. This would be an actual big deal for your company to grow too.
12. Do some outreach when you have big news or a great piece of content
When it gets media attention and is published in industry publications, it can help build a brand, increase specific expertise, increase credibility, and of course, get backlinks from authoritative sources.
First, create a dedicated page for your story on your target website. Then contact some reporters and/or publications, and you can see who really values your story. Be sure to provide the context of your request, follow their rules, write a compelling subject line in the introductory email, and provide help instead of boasting.
13. Write book reviews
You can provide a comprehensive review about another author’s content, there is a very good chance that the authors and others will link to it.
14. Send out a joint press release when your news involves another company
This will help you reach hundreds and thousands of other related websites that are a press release about just your company. It may not have linked to your website but it will give you a chance to reach a larger number of people and get more backlink as a result of doing this.
15. Conduct free webinars, and post archived copies online
If it helps and has lots of information, your attendees will absolutely share it. One of the easiest ways to do this is to convert your PowerPoint presentation slides to a SlideShare presentation and embed the presentation into your blog post. It will also be included on the landing page of the seminar, and anyone who has already finished and is about to sign up for the webinar can check out the presentation.
To get better opportunities from backlinks to these archived webinar pages, affiliate with other companies, brands or influencers for the webinar. The two well-coordinated brands not only give powerful presentations, but also spread the audience after the webinar.
16. Write press releases about interesting company news
Turning your PR strategy into an inbound one will create opportunities that were not there before and carve out a place for your company, building a meaningful mindshare in the process with your target audience by turning it.
Once you have written a good press release, post it up on your website and then push out your releases to one of the big newswires to get more coverage about it.
17. Create shareable templates
Templates are things that people will find useful enough to link to, it is a free tool. Before creating a template, you have to think about what kind of template would be best to make people’s job easier and simpler.
A designer might create a library of downloadable business card templates to which others could link it over and over again. Bookmarkable content is often the kind of content that gets lots of inbound links.
18. Do something funny
By doing something funny, it will spread like wildfire (viral). Think about funny inside jokes in your industry or company and capitalize on it with some humorous content that can be linked by the others. Create a meme, short video or a tweet that captures the joke. Be careful on how your audience understands and how they would reply so it will not be taken as an offensive joke. Sharing an example of an SEO meme created by iClick Media.
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19. Create compelling infographics
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People absolutely love sharing infographics. People who create the source of an infographic directly will be able to connect to the original source. You can also share the design with the cited sources to increase the likelihood of inbound links, and make the infographic embed code easily accessible.
It is okay if you are not a designer. Anyone can create a professional looking, high quality infographic by using free infographic templates online. Before creating an actual infographic, you will want to come up with a topic that can actually be visualized and that relates to your industry. For advanced infographics, consider creating video-based SEO infographics. 🙂
Sharing an SEO infographics here:
20. Create other form of visualcontent
Visualization of cartoon content, including charts and graphs, is an important part of your visual content marketing strategy, and is a great way to get inbound links. Others will probably skip the fuss to create their own visual content and link you instead because they take time and money to create. You can create your own graphics using free online design tools, even if you are not tech-savvy.
That is all we got for 20 SEO link building strategies for you. If you can’t seem to be doing all of this alone, you can contact any SEO company in Singapore. They will be able to provide you with all this information and work under their SEO services. Do take your time to search for the right seo consultants in Singapore as there are plenty of them. Find the one that is suitable just for you! Remember, the cost of the SEO should not be the sole factor in your decision-making process. Consider also their portfolio, their experience, their SEO methodology, and etc!
Are you looking for some tips and tricks on how to promote your business presence online? Or understanding how the engine works online?
Let’s take a look at the 20 most asked questions about SEO. You’ll learn strategies and understand how some SEO services work and what SEO consultants in Singapore can do.
1. What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)optimizes a website’s content to appear higher in the search engine results pages (SERP). The use of keywords assists the business in improving its search results on SERP, allowing good visibility online.
It is important to be specific about who your business is and what you have for them such as your USP, products, and services offered, and many more.
Rather than a paid media where you have to pay to advertise your business, SEO is an earned media where someone shares and publishes content about your company without you having to pay for it.
2. How Does SEO Work and how does it benefit?
To put it another way, when someone searches for anything, search engine optimization helps a website appear at the top of a search engine’s page. It provides internet visibility that can be easily found in order to generate online visitors and send people to your homepage.
Also keep in mind that rates vary based on who is delivering the Search Engine Optimization services, such as hiring an SEO consultant or hiring a company to advertise your website.
Although SEO services supplied by firms might be costly, you are paying for their
Expertise
Experience
Efficiency.
As a result, you can be assured that your money will be well spent, as these experts will undoubtedly assist your website in rising above the competition. If you are looking to hire an SEO consultant in Singapore, do check out our blog on What To Expect When Hiring an SEO Consultant from Singapore. As a result, you can be assured that your money will be well spent, as these experts will undoubtedly assist your website in rising above the competition. If you are looking to hire an SEO consultant in Singapore, do check out our blog on What To Expect When Hiring an SEO Consultant from Singapore.
3. Is SEO Necessary for My Company?
Isn’t it true that it’s never a bad idea to give anything a shot? Simply said, if you want to increase visitors to your website, you will need SEO. Many firms are moving and marketing their presence online as the digital world evolves.
Online audiences are more targeted, and you may reach a larger audience.
There are a variety of SEO consultants in Singapore. iClick Media, for example, offers Search Engine Optimization services targeted to your company’s marketing objectives and goals, employing highly effective and consistent SEO techniques to ensure that your website is highly rated.
4. Is Social Media Helpful In Increasing The Rank Of My Website?
Social media marketing can be helpful depending on the way you are promoting your company.
They become brand advocates when you offer high-quality content or information that resonates with your target audience. This will result in them reading and sharing the articles with more people.
Although social media has no direct effect on SEO rankings, the links posted on various social media platforms assist to build brand awareness through shared media. Usually most marketers would want to learn Do-It-Yourself (DIY) kind of SEO and here’s 1 interesting blog article to share with you – 6 Do-It-Yourself SEO in 2020.
It is essential to utilize social media to promote your business in order to build a stronger online presence since it has the ability to drive visitors to a website, which affects search rankings.
5. How do I know what kind of Keywords That People Are Searching For To Identify Businesses Like Mine?
Keywords are crucial since they are what people are looking for, and the information you give must fit into that category. It’s tough to imagine what search terms consumers might use to locate your business online.
As a result, be sure to investigate what you think your target audience is looking for and whether the SEO keywords you include in your post are related to your brand, product, or service, as well as the keywords they employ.
Engaging agencies that offer SEO services can essentially help your website to:
Grow
Increase traffic
More brand awareness
Spreading through word of mouth
Increase revenue
6. How Long Does It Take To Rank on Google?
Google rankings are based on the most suitable or requested query being searched for. Thus, the content posted has to be understood by your target audience.
If you are still struggling with your rankings in Singapore, finding SEO consultants can help to analyze, identify and provide relevant solutions to improve websites and also search engine results performance.
They will give company owners professional advice and ideas on how to increase natural traffic and improve ranking positions in order to attract more people to click on their website. For most SEO practitioners, I would recommend that they read the Beginner’s Guide to Link Building in 2020 before they push on further. This can help give them a good idea about off page SEO before they dive deep in.
7. Should I focus on SEO, PPC advertising, or both?
Unlike SEO services, PPC also known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) which is a different type of digital marketing method as compared to SEO. PPC increases online exposure by putting content in front of the target audience through social media platforms such as pop-up ads but you will have to pay to advertise.
The advantage over PPC would be advertisers will have to pay the publisher a fee each time a viewer clicks on their advertisement.
For SEO, one page might possibly occupy high-ranking positions in the Google SERP if your content is appropriately optimized.
The advantage is that the Return on Investment (ROI) for SEO increases over time.
Both are effective as SEO with PPC helps you to up your rankings on Google’s SERP. PPC and SEO will work together to reduce competition and strengthen your company’s image.
As a result, combining the two techniques, will also optimize your marketing ROI and increase the reach of your target audience.
8. What Are Google’s Important Ranking Factors?
Google’s algorithms use more than 200 ranking strategies to categorize websites depending on how relevant and trustworthy their pages are. Google’s ranking systems are built to filter through large amounts of websites in seconds to provide the most relevant, helpful results, and offer them in a way that makes it easy to find what you’re searching for.
Here are some important ranking factors to consider.
1. Quality of content
2. The freshness of the content
3. Mobile friendless for accessibility
4. Efficiency in loading the page
5. Schema Markup to comprehend specific texts
9. How does a Google Penalty work?
When Google identifies unknown functioning or a breach of the Search Engine Optimization standards, it imposes penalties. There are two types of penalties given by google:
Algorithmic
Manual
To prevent yourself from getting a penalty, stay away from link schemes and minimizing the use of keywords will help otherwise, seek advice from your personal SEO consultants and agencies.
10. Why isn’t my Website Ranking on Google?
It’s crucial to remember that a newly created website will not rank highly within a day since Google prefers relevant sites with established authority over time, thus it takes time for a website to perform organically before ranking higher.
The following are some of the reasons why your website is not visible:
It might also indicate that the material on your website is irrelevant or of poor quality and that it does not correspond to the keywords typed by your target audience.
The website may not be recorded in the SEO system, and it is now obstructing search engines.
There has been a violation of Google’s SEO guidelines, resulting in a manual penalty.
As previously said, SEO is an earned media, and you must earn your way to the top of Google by demonstrating that your website is appropriate and deserving of that position. We recommend that you digest this – 5 Big Mistakes in Search Engine Optimization before going further down this article.
11. Why Has My Organic Traffic Dropped?
There are many possibilities that might cause a rapid drop in organic traffic, including a drop in ranks, changes to your website, decreasing relevance for your content, or Google adjustments. These are some situations that no one has control over.
If the content uploaded has been consistent and relevant but your online traffic continues to decrease, it could possibly mean that a new competitor has entered the market and has overtaken your website visibility.
12. Is there a difference between On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, and Technical SEO?
Using SEO services and hiring agencies will help you to handle your SEO campaign as they know the right keywords to use and will incorporate them into your content. Investing in on-page SEO and technical SEO will help to optimize your page to influence the rankings on Google.
On-Page SEO involves coding, in this case, HTML. It helps optimize web pages in the search for specific keywords to improve traffic. Any changes on the page will be visible to readers where they can see whatever changes made. It optimizes the rankings shown and the main purpose is to allow other pages a higher chance of appearing in the search results.
Off-Page SEO cannot be controlled such as how far your information will spread and who clicks on your website but every link received can be known that your website has quality.
Technical SEO helps improve the technical parts of your website to boost the rankingin search engines. It optimizes everything at the back end and makes the website function more efficiently in terms of speed and digesting content for the search engines to comprehend better.
On-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO
Technical SEO
Quality content
Content Marketing
Content management system
Content length and readability
Social media
Page speed
Keyword optimization
Reviews
Mobile accessibility
Meta Data
Influencer marketing
Robots.txt
Title Tags
PR
Fully qualified URLs
13. What is a suitable PageSpeed score?
More than half of your audience is going to leave if your page takes more than 3 to 5 seconds to load. As a matter of fact, speed is important but improving your PageSpeed score beyond a certain point can be incredibly challenging with cost and time.
The average page speed score can go up to 8 seconds but a good score would be below 3 seconds to prevent long waiting time.
14. What are some Technical SEO problems?
Although technical SEO can help your website to operate more efficiently, here are some common technical SEO issues that may occur without you knowing:
No HTTPS Security
This occurs when your website is not secured, thus this problem has to be resolved immediately as it will drive people away
The site is not indexed
Ensure your website has been recorded onto Google to allow your website to be visible online when searched.
Slow Page Speed
As mentioned in question 14, if your page loads slower than 3 seconds, users will leave. To fix this, one of the best options is to clarify with your SEO agency or web developer to solve this issue.
Poor quality links
Poor links will result in poor user experience and it will shun people away. Having high-quality links gives off a good image to your target audience that you deliver excellent quality content.
15. How Long Should a Page of Content Be?
The most optimal level for SEO would be between 600 to 1000 words per page. The ideal article length should be between 1000 to 2,400 words. It should not be too short as less than 300 words can be considered less while more than 4000 can be too long and your audience will gain nothing from reading it.
It is not only important to learn which keywords to use to maximize SEO but also to learn how to categorize and split your paragraphs. If they get too long, divide them into sections and insert a few pictures for aesthetic purposes so as to not bore them. Splitting of paragraphs also helps to create suspense in the readers, making them stay longer on the page.
16. What should I do to produce SEO-Friendly Content?
It is always crucial to conduct keyword research on the topic that you wish to talk about.
The length of the keyword should not be a one-letter word as information generated can be vague.
Buzzworthy and catchy titles can create a huge impact as it increases your chances of ranking up.
Paragraphs should be short and simple, sticking to 2 to 3 sentences and not more than 5 lines.
The use of different features such as bolding, underlining, italics, bullet points can be a game-changer. This helps to give your audience a summarised view of the important parts of that paragraph.
An SEO agency is always up to date on the current trends. Furthermore, if they discover that your business is well-suited to current trends, they will advise you on them and assist you in putting them into practice. As a result, as part of your digital marketing plan, you should engage SEO consultants or agencies in Singapore.
17. Will Duplicate Content impact my website’s ranking?
Duplicated content occurs when a unique website address (URL) appears in more than one web address.
It can cause content management system (CMS) difficulties as Google is unable to readdata that is considered similar to others once they do not detect any changes in it.
This will, however, impact your rankings in the web pages as duplicate content is considered bad for SEO.
18. Definition of Link Building?
Link building contributes in important aspects that are helpful, natural, and high of excellent quality such as the content you have and this helps to increase the search engine rankings of that particular page.
Without backlinks, your website may not receive the full potential for it to rank well in the search engines, thus, they are important to have when it comes to ranking your website.
Under Search Engine Optimization (SEO), link building is also known as a hyperlink that links relevant web pages to your website.
There are a few types of links such as:
Editorial
Resource
Acquired
Reciprocal
Low-quality links will result in spammed blog comments and paid links entering your website and it can eventually be unhealthy to your site.
The advantages of link building will allow you to form good relationships, referral traffic, and brand awareness as well as building.
19. Does getting more links benefit me?
When it comes to Link Building, it is all about quality otherwise your ranking stays stagnant. Getting more links may seem like an easier chance of ranking higher but if the quality of content does not make sense or is not relevant, the quality of links will eventually decrease. Links are not purchasable and are considered a form of violation so do avoid being penalized by Google.
20. What Is PageRank?
PageRank is an early Google feature that has slowly become the measure that SEOs are drawn to. Pagerank is a ranking algorithm for websites that allows you to appear first in search engine results.
Apart from organic traffic, there are others such as PPC, referrals, and direct traffic, and PageRank is essential since it improves visibility and traffic.
So, do you have a better understanding of how SEO works now?
That brings us to the end of the 20 most often asked SEO questions. This will give you a good sense and beginner’s idea of what the SEO world looks like and how hiring SEO companies and specialists may help you.
Looking for SEO Self-Help For Your SEO DIY? Here are 5 SEO Trends of 2021 to share
SEO consultants
Have you ever heard about SEO Consultants in Singapore or in other parts of the world for that matter? Being an SEO consultant means that you are responsible for a lot of things like planning, implementing and managing your clients’ overall SEO strategy. The company and SEO consultant’s main goal is to attract targeted audiences from search engines like Google or Bing, and try to turn them into customers. This usually requires a lot of planning, strategising, creativity and execution. A professional and experienced SEO consultant will help you stay competitive in the digital marketplace, stay relevant with the trends, help you find potential customers and more. Most importantly, they will help you gain brand recognition. There are many SEO consultants out there who claim that they can move the mountains for you. However, what is important is that you must ask the right questions and sieve out whether the SEO consultant is really what he said he is.
Some of the Search Engine Optimisation consultants’ job scopes include:
Keyword Research & Analysis – prioritise keywords and phrases
Know Client’s Company Industry Trends – always be informed on industry trends
Improve Existing Website Content – be competent in content editing and update content every now and then
Keyword Mapping – it assigns phrases to individual web pages so it will be organized
Continual Process Improvement – there is a need to keep improving content engagement as time goes by to cater to suitable audiences
Web Re-design & Development – it is crucial to have a understanding of web development and web design (Technical SEO)
You may wonder what does SEO even mean? Well, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of improving the quality and quantity of a website’s traffic from search engines. SEO services increase your website’s visibility for when potential customers search for products or services related to what your company offers. All of these work, as it uses a very complex algorithm to determine which website would be most appropriate for you.
Two examples of SEO services are, On-page and Off-page. On-page SEO are SEO strategies and execution or implementation that happen on your company’s website. Whereas for Off-page SEO, it happens off your company’s website. Both strategies are aimed to make your website friendlier and more trustworthy to attract potential customers.
Moving on, we will be talking about the top 5 SEO trends as of this year. The top 5 trends consist of voice search, video marketing, influencer SEO, Google’s BERT and lastly, featured snippets.
Voice Search
Voice search SEO is the optimization of key words and phrases by voice assistants. It focuses on the user’s natural language and delivers answers accordingly. Some examples of voice search are Google home, Alexa, or Siri. How it works is that users will summon the device, ask a question and the voice search device will read out the answer.
It is important for companies and businesses to use the voice search optimization strategy as more people are starting to use search devices. This will also allow you to reach out to more potential customers.
If you are on the road, you can just say “Hey Google. What are the opening hours of SAFRA Toa Payoh?”. Google will be able to tell you the answer based on the SEO done on SAFRA’s website.
Video Marketing
Video marketing SEO is about producing video content that is discoverable in search engines of video platforms or social media platforms. You may now wonder how videos help? Users are more likely to click on a video thumbnail as compared to a search result.
Google also prioritises search results that have a video above those without. It is also more likely for you to outrank search results if you display video content. You not only earn traffic from potential customers, but you will also get backlinks. Backlinks is a link created when one website is linked to another, it is also considered as inbound links.
Nowadays, iClick Media helps our customers with a lot of their photoshoot as well as video production. Here’s an example of work done for My Brother SG – a project headed by NUS, and supported by World Health Organisation (WHO), Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and Ministry of Health (MOH).
Influencer SEO
Influencer marketing focuses on delivering your brand message to a targeted group of influencers rather than potential customers. By doing this, you are relying on influencers to be more known and seek customers. You may be wondering how this works. Well, when influencers create content with relations to your brand, they are helping you to create backlinks for your website. It increases your chances of having other people receive and share these links. There are not many influencers compared to consumers, so it takes time to look for someone who will reach the right target customers.
Here are some examples of Influencer Marketing. Hayley Woo has an instagram following of about 221,000 people! Here is an image of her promoting a handbag for ToryBurch.
Google’s BERT
BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. What it does is it analyzes context and brings a much deeper understanding of the relationships between every term and sentences.
Google’s BERT is an algorithm that can be used in many applications. One of Google’s missions is to organize all content on the web so they can deliver the best answers to consumers. That is why Google BERT is important for the search experience.
BERT understands what consumers are looking out for and what web pages would help, so it will connect the user to the website. Therefore, BERT gives Google a better understanding of search queries.
Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are chosen search results that will be showcased at the of Google’s results. It is used to answer users’ enquiries immediately so they would not have to scroll through different websites. How featured snippets work is that they come from pages that are ranked top 10. So the higher your content, the higher your website will get a featured snippet. Since Featured snippets are at the top of the results page, they offer visibility to users and boost brand recognition for your company. Not only does your brand get more recognition, it also has an increase in keyword rankings.
Here is an example of an SEO snippet work we did for LegallySmart. When you google for ‘property lawyer fees singapore’, besides us dominating the #1 position over the last 3 years, we also showed other information such as the actual fees of the lawyers on the SERP itself!
Of course there are more SEO marketing strategies to use. The 5 trends that we listed are the popular ones as of 2021. SEO consultants are responsible for a lot of a client’s overall SEO strategy. Being an SEO consultant is not the easiest job in the world. They require a lot of knowledge, researching, branding, formatting and much more. If you would like to do SEO yourself and you want to learn basic SEO, check out this blog post on 6 Do-It-Yourself-SEO.
SEO consultants also have to keep up with the trends and find what is the most suitable SEO strategy for their client’s brand and company. By keeping up with the latest trend, they help their client to stay relevant and seek customers. If you would like to learn more about Search Engine Optimization and how it all works out, feel free to continue to browse through our channel as we have an article fully explaining it.
Over at iClick Media, our chief SEO Consultant is Mr. Terence Sim. He has more than 12 years of experience managing and executing SEO for many big brands from the FMCG industry, healthcare industry, government sector, SMEs and many more! Read more about him below!
When it comes to deciding your Domain Name for your company website, it may not be as simple as you imagine. However, SEO Consultants in Singapore have the tips and tricks you may need to take into consideration when buying your domain name.
What is the importance of a domain name when it comes to SEO?
Your domain name will impact traffic to your website, rankings in search engines and ultimately the profitability of your business. This in short, is the role of an SEO agency to help boost your company sales and business success. Very often, we may go about not knowing what to expect from customers or the market. Setting up your website and digital marketing in a strategic way will help to keep a company surviving in the competitive online market and will go a long way.
This article will focus on one of the ways SEO companies will use to help strategize your business’ online presence – that is, finding the best solution for your domain name.
Simply, a poor domain name will not be generating much traffic on site. However, there are other factors that are affected on a more technical level when you don’t strategize buying your domain name. There may be companies that are new or will open in the future with the same or similar domain name pulling traffic away from your site and cause confusion for customers. New companies overseas using the same domain name as you have may change their domain name structure, changing the worldwide rankings. Therefore, it is important in order to remain relevant in our online presence to do what is necessary to protect and keep our rankings high, website traffic flowing and sales going.
There are two types of strategies that are most commonly used when buying a domain name. Defensive strategies such as buying all variables to your domain name so that there is no chance for competitors or squatters to, frankly, just mess with your brand. The difference between defensive domain registration and strategic domain registration is in purpose and alignment to a goal.
SEO consultants in Singapore use strategic domain registration to improve traffic, rankings and sales to a website. Some of the strategies used to achieve this goal are; firstly, buying your Plural Domain. So often, businesses lose out from customers visiting the wrong website which could be in a name of another business. It is important to have ownership over the plural domain of your domain name so that you eliminate any confusion for customers. Next, buying TLD (top-level domains) of your domain name is also important. TLD are such as dot com, dot org, dot net which all rank better worldwide than using “dot com dot country code” (in simple terms..).
Buying all variants can help to protect yourself from any new website developed in the future that decide to want the same domain name as you, and again, help to improve your overall traffic, ranking and sales. It is also a good option to have another web domain if ever your business needs another avenue online under your company name.
To add as extra advice for anyone in the Tech industry who wants to take their domain name into another level of exclusivity, buying gTLDs (Generic top-level domains such as – dot io or dot pro) will also help to improve your business and its speciality. In most cases, for SMEs and all other businesses, simple but educated strategies to buy your domain name will breed the best results for your company which SEO consultants in Singapore will be able to guide you on.
Nothing is worse than having miscommunicated expectations from the business that hires SEO consultants to help them succeed. A highly experienced SEO company ought to be able to provide a realistic idea of what to expect from hiring them. They should not give false hopes or unrealistic results. Some consultants promise quick results, but in reality, SEO takes time.
Knowing what to expect means you can hold the consultant accountable without making unreasonable demands based on the unclearly-defined expectations. When the foundation has been set, any business that acquires SEO service can anticipate the following expectations from the SEO consultants in Singapore.
Expect SEO Firm to:
Find the Best Keywords Just because a particular keyword or key phrase is the search term your business should focus on does not mean it actually is. Professional consultants have access to different tools that enable them to perform keyword analysis to find out the most effective keywords. Some keywords may perform better than the others, and an experienced SEO company will know how to figure this out. Generic keywords may deliver a good amount of traffic, but you should target traffic that turns into ready buyers. Businesses can expect the SEO firm to take the keyword suggestions and formulate a list of specific phrases that will turn searchers into customers.
Use Acceptable Practices Search engines like Google make use of complex algorithms to determine how a website ranks on SERPs. Although the algorithms are not disclosed, Google openly shares which search engine optimization strategies are acceptable and which techniques violate their guidelines. Those tactics that don’t adhere to their rules are commonly referred as “Black Hat” while the techniques that follow their guidelines are known as “White Hat.” You should expect the SEO firm to only use practices that abide by the rules to avoid the risk of getting penalised or banned from the search engine. It is very tempting to resort to black-hat techniques to get ahead but it’s also a big risk that can affect your website.
Optimise Your Website An SEO expert knows that there are three tiers of SEO, such as technical, on-page and off-page optimisation. Expect the consultant to perform on-page optimisation to help increase traffic. On-page optimisation involves placing keywords you want to rank in the title, heading, and the content of your web pages. The SEO company will likely request some changes on your existing website to implement on-page optimisation. Sometimes, you may need to redesign the entire website to integrate SEO and improve its overall performance. Moreover, the contents of your site must be well-written and informative to provide value to your visitors, not just for the sake of inserting keywords on it. This is why on-page SEO also involves professional copywriting. Track Results An SEO consultant is expected to monitor the performance of the campaign to determine whether the techniques are effective or not. Ranking and link-building reports are important metrics, but of course, you need actual results. Conversions and click-through rates are key performance indicators that can inform you what results the SEO campaign is producing. If a visitor performs the desired action, this is where a conversion happens. For e-commerce websites, this can mean sale while for service-based businesses, it comes in a form of a phone call or email. An SEO services provider is expected to track results and present to the client.
Do you know what to look for in an SEO company in Singapore? Many businesses think it’s easy to find an SEO firm that can perform techniques to improve their website traffic and ranking. But when it comes to outsourcing your search engine optimisation strategy, you should have sufficient knowledge in distinguishing an expert from a trying-to-be an expert.
So if an SEO consultant promises you the world – an extremely high ranking overnight or a few days, you should stay away. SEO takes time. Never invest your money in something that will not give quality results or put you at risk of getting penalised for implementing bad practices. When you know what to look for, you can find the right SEO company that can help you achieve your goal.
Here’s what you should look for in an SEO firm:
Do their clients share positive reviews about their work?
Check out the consultant’s website and look for the testimonial page. A reliable SEO company will share the testimonials from their previous clients as proof of their successful works. If there is no testimonial page, you check the homepage of the site for some feedback or you can conduct a research to determine if there are any bad comments about them. Their social media channels are also great sources to find out their capability. If you come across positive reviews from previous clients, you can communicate with that individual and make enquiries.
Does the SEO company charges a reasonable cost? Some SEO packages cost more as they include several approaches to ensure the success of the campaign while others are priced fairly. A comprehensive SEO technique, complete with good blog posts, link building and technical, takes time. Many consultants offer a comprehensive SEO strategy at a reasonable price. You can do a comparison of pricing from different consultants to figure out which one is realistic. If a consultant tells you they can perform several SEO works for cheap, you should be careful and don’t commit right away. Watch out for too good to be true offers, chances are they will not give you the desired result and will just waste your money.
Can they explain to you their process?
Although one tier of SEO involves technical, Google SEO also involves on-page and off-page optimisation, which are not that difficult to explain. A good SEO consultant will be able to explain clearly and properly their processes and the steps they are going to implement to help your site increase traffic and search rankings. If the process includes link building, they must discuss with you the ways to do it, such as social sharing and infographics. They should explain to you how these tactics work. If they can’t explain their practices, chances are, they don’t know what they are doing.
Do they perform SEO on their own page?
A reliable SEO firm should have an easy-to-navigate and easy-to-read website full of valuable contents related to SEO. How can you expect a company that provides SEO services to generate good results if they don’t implement what they offer on their own website? It doesn’t make sense, right? The company should be practising overall best SEO techniques for themselves if that’s what they are selling. If the SEO company in Singapore have a well-optimised website, then you can expect considerable results from their service.