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One of the most versatile aspects of digital marketing is search engine optimisation (SEO) in Singapore. SEO is ever changing as Google constantly updates and introduces new mechanisms and implementations that may affect SEO performance. As a new year brings with it new SEO practices, it is important for us to integrate new practices with old ones, keeping our digital marketing strategies future-proofed and flexible. Here’s a guide of what you can expect in 2023 to help you best optimise these upcoming SEO practices.
SEO Guide For 2023
SEO can be too overwhelming since there is so much to learn, understand, and uncover. It is not strange why some people do not know where to start with SEO. This SEO guide will discuss the three pillars that make up the core of SEO in Singapore— on-page SEO, technical SEO, and off-page SEO.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO, or on-site SEO, is the process of optimising website pages to improve visibility and traffic in search results. It may content placement, image optimisation, title tag optimisation, meta description optimisation and more. Since on-page SEO is heavily focused on content and searches, we will explore the importance of content and how to optimise it.
Importance of Quality Content
Content and search engine optimisation (SEO) are always intertwined. A page without content will not be properly indexed and ranked by search engines. Relevant and useful content drives traffic to your site, encourages visitors to stay for a longer period of time, which increases your search engine ranking and adds real value to your business’ bottom line, benefitting it in a variety of ways.
Quality content generates higher click-through rates (CTRs). This is because people can find answers to their queries, making them more likely to click on your links. As CTR is an important factor that Google takes into consideration when ranking your site, a higher CTR translates to better rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
While quality content delivers many benefits, crafting it takes time and effort. Typically, it is recommended to engage an SEO company to help. Nevertheless if you would like to try your hand at it, here are some useful tips to get you started.
How To Optimise On-page Content
1. Create lengthier, quality content
Comprehensive content allows for more keywords. However, you cannot stuff random keywords into the content to make it significant. Inserting targeted keywords relevant to the entire context of the content helps search engines like Google to understand your content. The more search engines understand your content, the more they consider it relevant. Therefore, it is highly likely for search engines to pick up your content and deliver it to users’ specific queries. At the same time, high-quality content also allows viewers to remain on your site longer and get the information they require in one place.
2. Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are highlighted brief snippets or excerpts that appear at position 0 of the search engine results page (SERP). Its purpose is to provide quick answers to the user’s query.
Featured snippets are crucial for Singapore SEO strategies because they get more clicks on organic search result pages, increasing the website’s visibility and organic traffic.
To earn featured snippets, the content must have a direct answer or a summary of the content in one paragraph, be keyword optimised, and have a proper page structure.
3. Meta Optimisation
Meta tags are texts in the website’s source codes that describe what the content is about to search engines and visitors. There are three types of meta tags: meta title tags, meta descriptions, and meta robot tags.
The meta title tags are the first thing users see on search engine listings after submitting their queries. The brief description below the meta title tags is the meta description. On the other hand, meta-robot tags help with indexing by telling Google crawlers where the website page should be indexed.
You can optimise your meta title tags and meta descriptions by incorporating keywords, meeting the character limits, and ensuring call-to-actions (CTA).
Keyword Search Intent
Keywords help search engines understand what your content is about and provide inspiration for content topics. Maintain a reasonable keyword density in your content as Google penalises overuse of keywords. When crawling your site, tags and meta descriptions help Google rank your content properly. Ensure that these are enriched with strategic keywords and use alt tags to describe images.
How To Optimise Your Keywords
- Keyword Research
Keyword research is the process of finding the most popular search terms people submit to search engines, such as Google and Bing. Keyword research is crucial in SEO in Singapore since it helps marketers to determine the right keywords that target your audience. Furthermore, it also provides insight as to what your audience is looking for on search engines.
- Keyword Research Tools
Keyword research tools are your primary instruments when conducting keyword research. Various keyword research tools have different functions. Some tools provide monthly search volume insights, others can recommend keyword suggestions. There are tools that allow you to see the keywords your competitors use. Keyword research tools are crucial in SEO services in Singapore. An example of a keyword research tool is Google Keyword Planner.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Google Keyword Planner filters out popular keywords based on your location. This creates greater relevance with local customers.
RELATED: Keyword Research Guide: Identify The Right Keywords To Optimise Your Digital Marketing Campaigns
Voice Search
Voice SEO is the process of optimising keywords and keyword phrases for searches with voice assistants. Voice searches accounted for 20% of Google searches, 25% of Bing searches, and 10% of Baidu searches in 2018. Voice SEO will remain relevant as more people use mobile devices for web searches. It is ideal for small businesses to capitalise on this by registering Google Business Profile (GBP), to manage their presence on Google Search and maps. This is because location-based searches (e.g. restaurants near me) are one of the most common voice searches.
There are many benefits of voice search.
- Convenience
Through voice search, people can now look at something on the internet without physically typing their inquiries. For example, through Google Assistant, Google’s hands-free help, drivers can search for directions without removing their hands from the steering wheels or taking their eyes off the road. In addition, many devices provide hands-free voice search, allowing users to multitask.
- Increase the credibility of your brand
Brands with high voice search rankings are perceived to be more trustworthy. Afterall, Google is known for delivering relevant and credible search results. Voice search also improves your local SEO campaigns in Singapore. By taking into account the way people talk in their region and utilising keywords and phrases that match, boost in rankings and visibility is made possible.
How To Optimise Your Content For Voice Search
It is becoming increasingly important for all brands to optimise voice search and remain relevant in their digital marketing efforts.
- Focus on question keywords
Use ‘why’, ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘what’, and ‘how’ statements to target your customers more easily. As voice search only gives one answer, narrowing it down accurately ensures that your result is the one that appears. This can be done by evaluating common questions asked and optimising your content with the right question-based keywords.
- Use conversational tone
Since users leverage voice search in a conversational manner, create conversational content. Avoid jargon; instead, use words that are easier to understand or commonly used by regular people. And most importantly, stick with the brand tone. If your business branding is approachable, use words that are deemed friendly. Be straightforward and simple.
- Maximise your GBP
Remember to also maximise your Google Business Profile (GBP) listing, previously known as Google My Business (GMB). With GBP, there is a high chance your result will show up whenever a relevant ‘near me’ query is asked.
Video Search
Video SEO optimises your videos, allowing them to appear in SERPs for relevant keywords. Google introduced two new changes to Google search that would help videos reach a broader audience – clip markup and seek markup.
Click Markup and Seek Markup
- Clip markup
Clip markup manually marks important segments in your video with timestamps and labels to help users quickly navigate to specific points in a video.
- Seek markup
Seek markup requires indication of important segments in the URL structure so that Google can automatically and directly link users to those segments that are relevant to their searches.
Clip markup and seek markup allows different segments of your video to appear as search results, which is more intuitive for users to find what they are looking for. It differentiates your video and sets it apart from competitors with unique segments and labelling. Should your video contain content that is relevant to popular queries being asked, your chances of appearing on Google’s SERP is significantly enhanced. The higher your rank on Google’s SERP, the more people will click on your video, boosting your CTR. Ultimately, this translates to improved SEO and online visibility and presence.
How To Optimise Your Content For Video Search
- Engaging Thumbnails
Well, start with creating an engaging thumbnail. Thumbnails are the first thing a searcher will see, thus it has a major impact on clicks. Video SEO metrics and CTRs increase through captivating thumbnails. Ensure that your thumbnail is also relevant to the topic discussed in the video.
- Optimised Title and Description
After the thumbnail comes your video’s title and description. Your title and description should be engaging with the appropriate keywords targeted at users.
Unique descriptions set your content apart from other videos. You can also use the description to tell what the video is about. For example, you can include timestamps, which can help viewers know when to skip to most of the important parts of the video. You can also include related hashtags in the video description.
- Website content
Apart from video elements, take the time to also evaluate the content of your website. Make sure it is relevant to the video and optimised for SEO. At the end of the day. When both your written content and video are of good quality, you can boost rankings and search engine visibility.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO involves optimising your website and server, making it easier for search engine spiders to crawl and index your site. This helps to improve your organic search results. By optimising technical SEO, a website is assured to have certain technical characteristics such as a fast loading time, secure connection and responsive design, which search engines prefer. Aspects including UI and UX, core web vitals, the E-A-T system and mobile optimisation also influence technical SEO performance.
Importance of UI and UX for SEO
User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are common terms in web design and development.
- User Interface (UI)
User-interface (UI) measures the user-friendliness of a webpage, taking into consideration elements like ease of navigation and placement of buttons.
- User Experience (UX)
User-experience (UX) accounts for factors such as website load time, potential technical issues and user satisfaction. Search engines are rewarding web pages that incorporate
UI and UX elements with higher rankings. Therefore, brands should ensure that their website meets the needs of users. They can outsource web design and development to SEO companies in Singapore that offer UI, UX and SEO services.
A webpage with a good UI and UX will attract more customers. An aesthetically pleasing design with intuitive features encourages user engagement and enables customers to navigate the site easily and obtain the information they require. Not only does this seamless experience quicken the customer journey buying process by guiding visitors to take specific actions, it also creates the perception of professionalism and competence, which increases trust and credibility. Good UI and UX keep users on your site longer and helps with overall customer retention. Users are more inclined to stay and explore their options. This creates a positive brand experience and improves your Google search engine optimisation.
UI and UX Strategies
- Optimise Images for SEO
Images play a crucial role in website design as it reflects the brand’s visual identity. The images must showcase your product or service, inform, convey a message, and add personality.
In the technical aspect, images must be sharp and clear, text overlay must be legible, and the loading speed must be less than five seconds. These things impact a website’s user experience.
- Incorporate icons and button labels
Your website’s content and information are much easier to understand, digest, and skim through with icons and button labels. Icons are visual scanning aids; therefore, they should be in the right spot. Otherwise, the users will get lost in the website, something you don’t want to happen.
Icons should be placed before their label and aligned with the label’s headings. Meanwhile, status icons must be at the far right or at the end of the line.
- Optimise your content
Create informative, relevant content with the appropriate keywords, title and meta tags. In this way, users get answers to their queries and domain authority and webpage reliability increases.
- Call-to-action buttons
Make your call-to-action (CTA) buttons visible and intuitive to enhance conversions.
- Optimised for mobile
This caters to a large audience, increases website responsiveness and improves page loading times – important aspects of UX and UI.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are part of Google’s strategy to improve the UX of websites. It consists of three components: loading times, interactivity, and visual stability, all of which impact your site’s SEO ranking. Core Web Vitals features unique benchmarks, including page loading speed and CLS score, that influence UX significantly.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
The first component is known as largest contentful paint (LCP), which revolves around the time spent for a website to load. Ideally, it should take a page 2.5 seconds or less to load.
- First Input Delay (FID)
The second component is referred to as First Input Delay (FID), taking into consideration how long your website becomes fully interactive. It should take at least 100ms for a webpage to become interactive for users.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
The third component is known as Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which is related to your site’s visual stability – movement of a visible element from one frame to another. Focus on achieving a score below 0.1 as much as possible.
Core Web Vitals serve as a guide to how well your website’s SEO performance is. It indicates the importance of fast load times, responsive interactivity without delays and stable visuals.
Core Web Vitals Strategies
- Analyse Core Web Vitas reports
Measure your site’s Core Web Vitals with Google Core Web Vitals report, and obtain information about your site’s performance based on status, metric type, and URL group. Knowing where you stand allows you to make the necessary improvements needed.
- Integrate Lazy Loading
Lazy loading loads the most critical elements of your site first for easy navigation, which improves your LCP and FID. No doubt, almost every site contains images. Compressing such images (without compromising on quality) improves loading time to boost your LCP score while proper dimensions for images and embeds positively impacts your CLS score.
All these combined enhance your SEO rankings and web visibility.
Learn more: A Guide To Google Core Web Vitals In 2021
- Optimise website fonts
Like images, fonts affect the loading speed of your website primarily because browsers need to download and load these fonts. If you don’t want your technical SEO in Singapore to take a hit, you should use fonts with smaller file sizes. Avoid using fallback fonts, as they can alter your website layout.
Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (E-A-T)
Expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T) influence SEO, thus determining the overall quality of a webpage. E-A-T ensures that Google returns accurate, truthful, and useful information to its users. When a content is deemed to have E-A-T by Google, it ranks higher. This then begets the question – how does Google constitute expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness?
When it comes to expertise, it is all about having a high level of knowledge or skill in a particular area.
- Expertise
Profession can play a part in expertise, for instance, an accountant writing about finances. Experience also accounts for expertise like a cancer patient writing about their experience with cancer.
- Authoritativeness
Authoritativeness is determined by reputation and credibility. Reviews, references and recommendations by experts are factors of authoritativeness. When others perceive your brand as the go-to for their queries, authoritativeness is established.
- Trustworthiness
For trustworthiness, legitimacy, transparency and accuracy comes into play. Content must be accurate and factual. Citing trustworthy sources also leads to high trustworthiness.
E-A-T Strategies
With a better grasp of how E-A-T is determined, certain steps can be taken to ensure all E-A-T requirements are met for a boost in SEO rankings, visibility, and customer loyalty.
- Backlinks
Building backlinks and having multiple sites, especially credible ones that lead back to you, establishes strong credibility. Earning backlinks is easier said than done. Your content must be high-quality, informative, and valuable. Other writers and content creators won’t bother to link your blog if they deem it invaluable.
- Accurate and up to date content
In addition, keeping your content accurate and up to date is important to take note of too. Outdated or inaccurate information will lower your E-A-T and will not perform well in SEO rankings.
Content related to health, medicine, and tech always requires the latest knowledge since tons of discoveries worth noting are made in these areas all throughout the year.
- Reviews
As mentioned above, reviews contribute to your brand’s perceived trustworthiness. Therefore, it is recommended to generate reviews and respond to them. Having many reviews, particularly positive ones demonstrates to Google and consumers that you are of high E-A-T.
Learn more: What You Should Know About Google E-A-T
Mobile Optimisation
Optimising content for mobile devices means tailoring your website to provide the best experience possible for visitors accessing the site on their mobile devices. Mobile usage has increased dramatically in recent years. Google reports that mobile device searches are now more common than desktop searches. In fact, 59.4% of websites are accessed using mobile devices.
Apart from the growing number of mobile users, mobile optimisation should be a core digital marketing strategy due to the benefits it delivers. It provides improved user experience by ensuring faster download speed and website load speed. This is possible because the code for a mobile ready website is structured in a way that makes it compatible with mobile. In this way, users’ time spent on a site is also extended with less technical issues. Mobile ready websites enhance mobile SEO, ranking higher in mobile-friendly search engines. Out of 200 retailers surveyed, 1 in 3 have not incorporated mobile optimisation. As such integrating mobile optimisation early gives you a competitive edge. You can visit an SEO consultant in Singapore regarding mobile optimisation.
Mobile Optimisation Strategies
- Mobile Responsiveness
Always ensure that your content is readable by using larger and legible fonts. Since mobile screens are smaller, readability can be a common issue. Users should not have to pinch and zoom in order to read your content.
Make your interface actions easy as well by incorporating easily spotted universal action buttons.These CTA buttons, labels, and icons automatically adjust their placement, depending on the screen size in a responsive website design. Besides these creatives, images and illustrations also adjust accordingly.
Viewing a page on a phone provides the opportunity for plenty of actions that can drive conversions including visiting socials or maps.
- Enable scrollable content
Scrollable content offers uninterrupted reading, making it easy to absorb information for the best experience.
- Pop-ups for mobile devices
Pop-ups have been widely used marketing strategies for many years. Besides capturing the attention of website visitors, it is an effective way to gain information from users.
Medium to large-sized pop-ups will appear normally on computers and laptops; however, they are too big for a smartphone or tablet screen. Besides the fact that pop-ups must fit mobile screens, they must be easy to close and non-obstructive.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO or off-site SEO refers to actions taken outside of your website to increase your ranking in SERPs such as social media and local SEO. It is all about improving user perception, popularity, relevance, trustworthiness and authority beyond leveraging your website.Multichannel marketing primarily capitalises on off-page SEO in Singapore.
Link Exchange
Also known as swapping backlinks and reciprocal linking is a method where two parties agree to exchange links in order to mutually boost their SEO and site authority.
Is link exchange a legitimate SEO strategy? Yes, as long as you don’t use it excessively, according to Google. Link exchange can be an advantage if you link to high-quality content or vice versa. Each SEO company in Singapore is extra careful with link exchange or backlink building.
Link Exchange Strategies
- Use links relevant to the content
You should not just exchange links with any other websites. As much as possible, link only to high-quality websites as they can impact your SEO. Moreover, ensure that the content you are linking is contextually relevant to your content. Otherwise, visitors will see it as unhelpful and drag the user experience.
- Find good SEO metrics
When looking for a partner, find a website with good SEO metrics as it indicates they are a high-authority website. Partnering with a low-authority site will not do you a favour as much as the high-authority one.
- Avoid link exchange with direct competitors
It is a no-brainer; you should avoid linking to your competitors. Yes, you may benefit from them through backlink building, but they can also benefit from you and eventually outrank you. You can’t guarantee they will receive reciprocal links from them, too.
Learn More: How To Develop An Effective Local SEO Strategy in Singapore
Local SEO: Google Business Profile (GBP), Reviews and Ranking
Local SEO in Singapore is the process of optimising how and where the results of your website appear in search engines. The results of your searches for products and services may vary depending on where you are located. This is the work of local search engine optimisation. Companies that invest in this area of marketing are shown repeatedly on maps and in SERPs. Therefore, many SEO agencies in Singapore deliver local SEO services as part of their SEO package.
Local SEO helps you gain greater visibility among locals as your business is targeted at users who are near you. In fact, 70% of local searches resulted in an in-person visit. Moreover, local SEO optimises your website to rank higher in Google Maps and attracts more customers through your GBP. Without a local SEO guide for 2023, you are competing for space in the search results with other businesses from all over the world. Consumers could potentially miss you out completely in such a competitive and over saturated landscape. The local SEO guide also considers the importance of E-A-T.
After implementing local SEO into your digital marketing strategy, the next thing you need to do is understand how to use it in the best possible way to achieve the best results. An SEO agency in Singapore can help you with this task.
Local SEO: GBP Strategies
- Fill out your GBP profile
Firstly, optimise your Google listing (Business Profile) by entering all of the information requested on your GBP account dashboard. The information will appear in the Google Search Knowledge Panel, Google Maps, and Google Search local results for greater online presence.
- Encourage Positive Reviews
Source: Search Engine Land
Secondly, get your customers to leave positive reviews for your business and reply to them. This optimises your GBP listing and encourages more local clients to purchase from you. 85% of customers believe online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
- Ensure Information Consistency
Last but not least, ensure that your GBP business information, such as an address, contact number, and email, is consistent with what’s on your website and social media accounts. It will be harder for people to find your local business on search engines if all your business information on the internet is inconsistent. Some people even see it as a red flag.
Social Media
Today, social media is omnipresent. Almost everyone uses social media to stay informed, entertain themselves, and communicate with others. Social media platforms enable businesses to reach a wider audience and target diverse segments of the population. Despite its non-direct contribution to SEO and ranking, social media certainly has an effect on it. By sharing content and links, brands gain exposure, which positively impacts CTR and eventually SEO or search engine optimisation in Singapore.
[Insert pull quote: As of 2022019 and 2020, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 1475 minutes a day]
Social media allows for extensive content distribution. Not only is your brand sharing the content, but anyone who comes across the post and is interested might share it. When your consumers do the sharing for you, your brand reaches all sorts of people with different demographics. This habit of sharing gives you the opportunity to gain backlinks, a huge part of SEO and marketing strategies in Singapore. People tend to overly depend on SEO to get traffic, forgetting that social media is efficient in that aspect too! Staying active and posting new content everyday gets people interested in your business with a higher chance of them clicking to your website. With the amount of people on socials, getting traffic to your website through social media should be effortless. As of 202219 and 2020, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 1475 minutes a day. This also means you get greater visibility on your brand.
Though brands are increasingly implementing social media into their SEO strategy, simply creating a social media profile and posting is not enough. Certain approaches are required to fully reap the benefits of social media.
Social Media Strategies
- Content must be shareable
Afterall, sharing is the heart of social media. Sharing can be made easy with social share buttons, compelling and persuasive CTAs and valuable content that users might deem useful.
- Include all relevant information
Another core of social media is ‘stalking’. It is the norm for consumers to ‘stalk’ brands on social media. Your profile influences how customers perceive you. Thus, do have your business title, description and brand message ready in your social profile.
- Incorporate visuals
Visuals are highly relevant to social media where attention spans are shorter and most are seeking entertainment. When it comes to images, optimise them for social and SEO by sharing high resolution files that are not pixelated or using relevant file names with keywords for SEO.
Conclusion
These are some of the essential trends and guides on how you can navigate SEO in Singapore effectively. They bring plenty of opportunities for your business, and are sure to revolutionise digital marketing. With the start of the new year, there is no better time than now to start planning and strategising. Try integrating these techniques into your campaigns to kickstart digital marketing in 2023 the right way!
At OOm we are a full-fledged digital marketing agency offering a suite of solutions including SEO services in Singapore. Contact us today and we will start optimising your digital marketing strategy and SEO for the better!
