SEO – as many of you probably already know, it stands for Search Engine Optimization. In simpler terms, it’s the process of improving the website’s quality for search engines to like it and rank it high on their results pages (or SERPs). It involves optimizing the site’s content for certain keywords so that when search engines crawl and like what they see, they’ll show yours as the top search result – the goal of all businesses.
Additional reading: How can SEO campaign services help your business?
What is SEO and Why SEO matters
SEO – What Is It and Why It Matters To Work With A Reliable SEO Agency
Essential for greater visibility and searchability online, many companies have tried performing SEO DIY style. What they don’t realize is that an SEO agency in Singapore or elsewhere has spent an incredible amount of time, money, and effort to build the best and proven marketing strategies that work.
If this is your first time working with an SEO agency for their services, it’s understandable to feel quite overwhelmed with all the terms you’ve heard during the meeting. But continue reading and you’ll know what to ask next time.
Overview
Billions of people go online every day and start their online activities searching on a search engine. Whether it’d be a quick search for the nearest restaurant or the best place to get affordable furniture, people all over the world go online to get what they need and want. And with over 2.2 million searches happening per day, it means that your business has millions of opportunities to be found online.
Did you know that 75% of people search online through Google alone? If you combine that with the fact that your customers are already using search engines daily and that the first five Google results get the majority of clicks and impressions, it’d be unwise to choose to postpone doing SEO on your site.
With the help of the right digital marketing agency in Singapore, you’ll start to see your site climbing high in the SERPs. Now that you have a bit of an idea of what SEO means, let’s get to know more about its two categories in detail.
On-Page SEO versus Off-Page SEO: What’s the difference between the two?
The focus of on-page SEO is optimizing all of the parts of your website that are in your control such as the page structure, site architecture, content, headlines, and so on. On the other hand, off-page SEO involves variables that are not in your control such as the ranking factors that Google looks at. Although these two categories are different, both need to be done right if you want your SEO efforts to go well for your business.
image source Photo by Rucksack Magazine
On-Page SEO: Keyword Research & Selection
A fundamental part of the process is doing keyword research and selection. For your content to not only be great but also SEO-optimized, you need to select the keyword and include it in the headline and throughout the page’s content. This means that ideally, the target keyword should be selected before you start writing the content.
This is one of the on-page SEO factors that you’ll need to learn how to do yourself or with the help of an SEO agency in Singapore. Having keyword research knowledge means having an idea of what keywords you should be targeting and what you should let go of. Stay away from agencies that practice keyword stuffing because it’ll only hurt your rankings and your wallet later on.
On-Page SEO: Quality Content
In the past, posting the best-quality content was enough to make your website stand out from the crowd. Well, yes, it still is but it’s not going to be easy. If you find yourself at a loss for a topic to share this month, why don’t you get ideas from other content? You just have to make sure that yours is better, longer and you’ve done in-depth research to provide in-depth content information.
If you already have an idea, make sure that you grab the attention of your targeted audience. Do this by putting an exciting headline and follow it by including all the essential components of great content. With the aid of a digital marketing agency in Singapore, you can do this regularly by posting thorough and in-depth content every month and you’re sure to gain a following.
On-Page SEO: Website Structure
Providing a great user experience is necessary if you want your visitors to stay longer and browse other pages of your website aside from the homepage. Paying no attention to this area will only result in higher bounce rates, so make sure that users can easily navigate your pages. In addition to having a fast loading time, it would help if your site has a mobile-friendly design. Not only is this a ranking factor but when you optimize your website to deliver a great search engine experience, you’re making your site more accessible to Google which then ends up ranking it better. Make sure that the target keywords are not just present in the content but also in your title tags and meta descriptions.
image source Photo by Artem Sapegin
Off-Page SEO: Online Identity
It takes time to build a brand or a personal identity online but when you do, you’ll be earning the trust of search engines. But it’s not only search engines that use it as a trust signal, people too. Most often than not, people opt for brands that they recognize over others that they don’t. Even studies have been conducted and proven that this is true. When shopping, people often find themselves reaching for a brand-name product rather than a no-name brand because they trust the former. The same goes when searching online, users will click the site of a well-known retailer.
And the good thing about building your brand with the SEO agency in Singapore helping you from the start to finish is you avoid getting future penalties caused by Google updates.
Off-Page SEO: Backlinks
Many companies made the mistake before of preferring quantity over the quality of backlinks. It paved the way for link farms to proliferate, but Google grew smart and decided to put a stop to this unethical practice. A reliable digital marketing agency in Singapore knows that in order to build a quality backlink, their SEO specialists will need to reach out to the right sources to gain a solid link. Remember that aside from link farms, Google hates low-quality or spammy links. It might look promising to see the number of your backlinks growing monthly but if it came from repeat links of existing or spammy websites, then it’s not worth it.
Off-Page SEO: Anchor Texts
Did you notice that when you open a page and read the content, there are words or phrases in blue color and point to a link when you hover your mouse over it? It’s called the anchor text and it is defined as the visible, clickable text that websites use when they’re linking to you. This element matters as it's one factor that can determine the ranking that search engines will give to your page. Click here, this article and this site are just some of the most common examples of anchor texts and it helps when inserted in the sentence naturally.
image source Photo by Domenico Loia
In such a cutthroat environment, establishing a brand online and ensuring you show up in all of the first page results for all targeted keywords will help you survive in the world of business. It’s true that you can implement SEO yourself, but isn’t it a smarter move to put an effective marketing strategy into place faster in order to see results faster? Because they have worked with various other clients before, partnering with an SEO agency in Singapore is an investment worth considering. See the difference between a business that’s thriving and one that’s not.
