Digital landscapes often intertwine with our rich, diverse culture and lively markets. The Philippines is still the hub for thriving local businesses pursuing groundbreaking solutions that will act as a force of leverage. As the digital realm dominates the country, market players and consumers continue to navigate the intricacies of the digital channels for information and answers. With that in mind, SEO in the Philippines is becoming the center stage for online business strategies.
PART I: SEO in the Philippines
What is SEO?
SEO or search engine optimization is simply the process of obtaining organic traffic from the search engine results pages (SERP) to help your online content be more visible on search engines like Google, Yahoo!, or Bing. It is a broader strategy under digital marketing using relevant keywords, content creation (such as blog articles, dedicated web pages, videos, and infographics), and link building from other reputable websites to win high-ranking positions on search engine websites.
Google is the most visited website in the Philippines, with a total of 2,858,481,762 visits as of June 2023.
Source: SEMrush
So when do businesses need an SEO solution? The answer to that is simple: when they aspire to visibility, generate leads, and secure a prominent position in the online area through organic means, SEO strategy emerges as vital.
Understanding the Benefits of SEO
SEO in the Philippines and the context of startup businesses and small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), migrating online requires adapting as well. Understanding the nuances of the local market can be demanding and is an unavoidable route if you want to carve a niche in the digital landscape. SEO lets you deal with the intricacies of operating online and address the challenges of keeping up competitive rankings in SERP. To further elaborate, the common benefits of SEO include the following:
Increased Organic Traffic
The most significant advantage of SEO is to increase your website’s traffic by optimizing content and the website’s structure for higher visibility for your target audience.
Boost Conversion Rates
SEO attracts relevant and targeted traffic to your website. Users who are likely to find websites are seeking products or services they may offer. As a result, they are more likely to convert into customers.
Sustainable Long-Term Results
Unlike paid advertising, which demands a continuous budget, SEO efforts have a far more lasting impact. When your website is optimized, you continue to reap the benefits over time, providing ongoing value, and should the search engine algorithm change, the foundation remains intact.
Local and Global Reach
Whether you intend to target specific geographic locations or expand your global reach, SEO is an effective strategy to connect with your local or foreign customers through appropriate optimization.
ALSO READ: Can SEO Really Help Your Business?
Part II: Types of SEO
As we delve into the world of SEO, we must also uncover different types, as not all optimization approaches are equal. The methods we choose to employ can affect your online reputation, search engine rankings, and long-term success.
There are two known types of SEO we need to be familiar with: White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO—we must explore these two contrasting strategies before engaging with any SEO agencies in the Philippines.
White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO practices abide by their strategies with search engine guidelines and user experience. These techniques are not only suitable, but they also contribute to building a positive online reputation that can stand the test of time without the risk of getting penalized or much worse, banned by search engine websites. Let’s take a closer look at the aspects and how businesses can benefit from it:
Keyword research and optimization
White Hat SEO emphasizes the need to incorporate keyword research and optimization into the content. Identifying the right keywords and using them adds relevance to your website’s content to search queries, which drives organic traffic.
User-friendly website design
User-friendly websites act as a strong foundation of White Hat SEO, ensuring that the website has high responsiveness, better mobile optimization, and faster loading speeds to satisfy user experience.
Quality backlink building
White Hat SEO focuses on obtaining quality backlinks through organic means. They engage in quality guest posting, collaborating with different websites, and sharing valuable, informative content.
5 Characteristics of White Hat SEO:
Proper Keyword Research & Optimization
User-Friendly Web Design
Quality Backlink Building
Transparent Methods
Long-Term Focus
Black Hat SEO
If White Hat SEO aligns with search engine guidelines, Black Hat SEO, on the other hand, goes beyond what is permitted by search engines. They incorporate risky practices that seek to simplify or do some shortcuts to gain results quickly. However, it often leads to short-term successes with long-term consequences. Here are a few key elements that Black Hat SEO is known for:
Keyword stuffing
It is common for Black Hat SEO to resort to stuffing or spamming keywords unnaturally within their meta tags, content, and other elements to attempt to manipulate search engine rankings.
Buying links
Unlike White Hat SEO, which organically obtains links, Black Hat SEO acquires through purchasing links from low-quality, unreliable websites. The practice undermines authenticity and risks the authority of your website’s link, resulting in penalties on search engine rankings.
Reliance on bulky and duplicate content
Another known fallacious practice of Black Hat SEO involves using automated tools for generating content in bulk in a short time. They also resort to replicating content from other sources across multiple pages, which can hurt the website’s credibility. Genuine and original content are highly valuable factors for a better search engine ranking.
5 Characteristics of Black Hat SEO:
Keyword Stuffing
Buying Links
Reliance on Bulky and Duplicate Content
Spamming Clickbaits
Negative SEO Tactics
Part III: Types of SEO Services Offered By An SEO Agency
Now that we know the types of SEO, navigating further down the road requires us to understand the diverse strategies and services that are essential for propelling a website to the foreground of SERP.
As local businesses strive for dominance and to compete in digital channels with their target market, partnering with a reputable SEO in the Philippines is a strategic choice. With a wide array of SEO services, you can expect a tailored solution to address common obstacles and meet goals. Without further ado, let us shed light on each SEO service offered by every SEO company.
5 Types of SEO Services Offered By An SEO Agency
- On-Page
- Off-Page
- Technical SEO
- Local SEO
- E-Commerce SEO
On-Page
On-page SEO stands as the cornerstone for optimizing individual website pages and involves refining the website’s main structure, content, and other elements visible on the webpage. Hence, it is known for on-site optimizations. What it does best is to refine and align with the target audience and search engine algorithm to appear in SERP.
Off-Page
Off-page services go beyond the website’s domain to build authority and credibility across the digital landscape. Off-page encompasses link building or obtaining quality backlinks, guest posting, video marketing, and social media marketing. Anything that does not involve configuring your website’s structure or publishing content to your webpage falls under off-page SEO.
Technical SEO
If on-page SEO is the cornerstone, then technical SEO forms the backbone. Technical SEO is focused on ensuring that the search engine can crawl, index, and understand your website’s content and ensure your site’s performance on search engine websites. The common practices of technical SEO include improving mobile-friendliness, creating XML sitemaps, configuring URL structure, fixing duplicate content, and more.
Local SEO
Local SEO is another crucial service and strategy to help your business attract local customers from the immediate vicinity by improving your search engine ranking for location-specific inquiries instead of a global or national scale. Local SEO comprises essential elements such as optimizing your Google Business Profile, conducting local keyword research, improving NAP consistency for accurate information across directories, and establishing local citations.
ALSO READ: Is Doing Local SEO Worth It?
E-commerce SEO
E-commerce SEO is a specialized strategy for e-commerce websites for online retail stores to gain better exposure and visibility on search engine results. While other SEO services cater to any form of website, E-commerce SEO targets optimizing product pages and addressing the familiar challenges of e-commerce sites. It encompasses using high-converting keywords for products, optimizing site speed and mobile optimization, and implementing structured data markup. It is also concerned with building a strong internal linking structure for better user experience and SERP ranking.
Part IV: Current SEO Trends
SEO Trends of 2023
Video Marketing
Mobile-First Approach
Optimizing for Voice Search
Enhancing E-E-A-T Signals
As the digital landscape and search engines evolve in an unprecedented manner, SEO also undergoes a significant shift. Staying in the curve of trends is crucial for maintaining optimal online visibility and securing a decent spot in SERP. Here are a few current SEO trends in 2023 to watch out for:
Video Marketing
Many marketers are putting their bet on video marketing as a key component for successful SEO. What convinced them to invest and put such a good hope on video marketing? According to HubSpot Blog, an all-time high number of 92% of marketers reported that they get a good ROI on video content, up from 87% in 2022.
An all-time high number of 92% of marketers reported that they get a good ROI on video content, up from 87% in 2022.
Source: HubSpot Blog
One good reason is that YouTube and Google are linked, which makes up for a good strategy and opportunities. Many people are also flocking to video-centric platforms, which pressures search engines like Google to incorporate relevant videos to help answer queries.
Mobile-First Approach
The continuous prominence of mobile use in today’s world saw a turning point in marketing and advertising. According to Exploding Topics, 92.3% of internet users access the internet via mobile phone and 55% of website traffic comes from mobile devices. On the other hand, 85.95% of people on Earth have smartphones as of 2023, according to BankMyCell. Implementing mobile optimization practices helps ensure that your website and content are responsive and accessible through mobile devices.
Optimizing Online Shopping Experiences
Online shopping experiences are booming and continue to grow over time. The demand for constant improvement in online shopping through the use of AI technology and more well-rounded enhancement means top benefits for online consumers.
Yet many companies are still jumping on the bandwagon without giving priority to full optimization, which hurts the potential quality content that matches what the buyers’ needs are. In 2021, Google unveiled Shopping Graph, a real-time data set to help users find relevant key information about products, including prices, videos, and reviews. Better keyword optimization, visual content, and product information help take advantage of Google’s Shopping Graph.
Optimizing for Voice Search
While an excellent mobile site and e-commerce site are ideal, it’s not enough. The rise of AI-powered virtual assistants indicates that many can utilize these key features to find quality information online. In fact, according to Think with Google, more than a quarter of the global population is using voice search on their mobile devices. To leverage and take advantage of the opportunity, making your content easy to read is crucial for voice search optimization.
More than a quarter of the global population are using voice search on their mobile devices.
Source: Think with Google
Enhancing E-E-A-T Signals
E-E-A-T (which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust) is all the more important and a continuous basis for assessing the general quality of every webpage. While it’s not the newest topic and trend in SEO, it is the most significant evaluation signal to consider. If your website fails to provide a positive experience, show expertise, demonstrate authority, and be trustworthy, your website will never perform. Thus, most marketers and SEO agencies periodically update websites and content to align with Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines.
Part V: SEO Reminders for SEO Success
3 Common Mistakes To Avoid When Investing SEO in the Philippines
Investing in SEO services in the Philippines comes with a guideline to avoid pitfalls and wasting your business investment.
3 Common Mistakes To Avoid When Investing SEO in the Philippines
- Forget to Set Clear Goals
- Expect Instant SEO Results
- Failure to Track Results
Forget to Set Clear Goals
The lack of well-defined goals or objectives means conducting SEO strategies without direction and focus. It drains time and valuable resources for inefficient and suboptimal results. Setting clear goals is crucial to provide you with a roadmap for SEO efforts, which helps you achieve measurable results. Communicate your business goals and expectations when you engage and work with an SEO agency.
Expect Instant SEO Results
It’s often common for businesses to fall into expecting immediate results from their SEO efforts. However, SEO is a long-term strategy that takes some time and consistency to produce positive outcomes. It doesn’t fix problems overnight. Expecting instant results leads to frustration and hasty decision-making that undermines and harms your SEO campaign.
Failure to Track Results
SEO requires tracking and measuring results, such as key performance indicators (KPIs), which lets you identify areas for improvement. A regular view in metrics lets you adjust strategy to align with search engine algorithms and user preferences. Neglecting to track and measure results can lead to negative consequences that can slow your progress to achieve optimal results.
4 Things To Do Before Engaging With An SEO Agency
4 Factors Affecting The Cost of SEO Services
- Evaluate Your Budget
- Conduct Your Research
- Assess Communication
- Understand the SEO Process
Taking the right preparatory phase will help ensure a successful collaboration. Before you engage with any SEO agencies in the Philippines, consider these actions:
Evaluate Your Budget
Once you have the goals in mind, determine how much you’re willing to invest for a suite of SEO services. However, you shouldn’t also put all your eggs into one basket. What it means by this is you should carefully choose services that align with your financial resources rather than sticking and not considering all other available choices. Remember, a quality SEO is a considerable investment to take.
Conduct Your Research
Not all SEO companies are equal. Of course, some are “better” than others in terms of reputation, pricing, track records, etc. A thorough research is the key to finding the right agency for you. Look for a transparent company with a positive track record. When you have found one, ask for their strategies and their experience in the industry.
Assess Communication
Effective communication is the key to a successful collaboration and partnership between the agency and its client. When finding an SEO agency in the Philippines, evaluate how they respond and interact with you. Do they provide regular updates and answer your queries promptly? An ideal SEO company keeps its clients informed about their SEO progress.
Understand the SEO Process
Ask the agency about their process and have them outline it and explain how they can achieve your goal. It is not enough to get swayed by positive reputations and cheap services. Understanding their methodologies will give you insight into their expertise and approach.
Always choose an SEO company that understands what your business is all about and what it needs. Ensure you always proactively engage and see if the agency asks the right questions about your business. Regardless of the cost, an ideal SEO company will help your business find its strength and provide the best solution you need the most.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Can I do SEO on my own?
Yes, you can do SEO on your own, but it can be challenging and time-consuming. It involves improving your website to appear higher in search results.
Can I learn SEO in one day?
No, you can’t learn SEO in just one day. It takes time to understand and apply SEO techniques effectively, requiring you to read a lot of materials and do trial and error.
Is it worth hiring an SEO expert?
Yes, hiring an SEO expert can be worth it because they have the expertise to improve your website’s visibility in search engines, which can lead to more visitors and potential customers.
Which SEO should be avoided?
You should avoid “black hat” SEO techniques, like keyword stuffing or buying backlinks. These can get your website penalized by search engines.
Why do people fail at SEO?
People can fail at SEO if they don’t have a clear strategy, are impatient, use the wrong keywords, or implement improper techniques. Consistency and staying up-to-date are essential.
What happens if you ignore SEO?
Ignoring SEO can lead to your website not showing up in search results, which means fewer visitors and potential customers finding your site.
How long will it take for SEO to work?
SEO takes time to show results, often several months. It depends on various factors, including your website’s current state, competition, and the quality of your SEO efforts.
Conclusion
SEO in the Philippines is a dynamic and evolving field. With the right SEO strategies, businesses can harness the power of SEO to expand their digital presence, engage with their target audience, and ultimately, drive growth and revenue. By understanding SEO, investing in the right SEO tools, and staying up-to-date with the latest SEO trends, you can effectively increase your online visibility and drive success for your business in this vibrant and competitive market.
Contact OOm Philippines at (02) 8283 3168 and let our SEO team help you with your SEO needs.
