If you want a career in SEO in Singapore is a great place to start it. With one of the highest mobile penetration rates worldwide, there are countless opportunities in this country. However, many entrepreneurs are unsure about where and how to start their careers. More specifically, they don’t know if they are qualified for this type of job.
The truth is, you can get a job as an SEO in Singapore. The key is to know which skills can take you the furthest. In this article, we’ll discuss a few of the most important skills that you need in order to become an SEO.
Keyword research
If you want to master the art of SEO, then becoming great at keyword research is the quickest way to do it. Not only can you use this skill to generate more traffic, but also more sales. The most important part of keyword research is capitalising on long-tail keywords. They usually include more than 5 keywords and what makes them so effective is that they don’t have as much competition.
The best way to find long-tail keywords is to use tools such as Long Tail Pro or SEMrush. These tools offer huge databases and will give you access to keywords that are very profitable and low in competition. Just make sure that the long-tail keywords you choose have a monthly search volume that is below 2000. This will ensure that you rank on Google’s first page. Look for keywords that are informative and indicate commercial intent.
You can also learn how to spy on your competitors for their top-performing keywords. Look into which keywords are helping them drive the most traffic to their site. Create engaging content around these phrases.
Website audit
If you want to get an SEO, then you need to be able to demonstrate your ability to quickly identify problems. The more quickly you are able to point out a website’s issues and implement solutions, the better your sales results will be. This process is what is referred to as a website audit.
The best way to audit a website is to use a tool such as My Site Auditor, Seoptimer, and SEO site checkup. These types of tools will make auditing easy and straightforward. Once you find the errors, which in many cases involves missing title tags, descriptions, and dead links, you need to resolve them. And in the best-case scenario, you should see improvement within just a few weeks. This should result in an increase in the site’s search engine rankings.
Backlinks
SEOs must be great at building backlinks. One key piece of advice is to build backlinks as naturally as possible. Natural backlinks offer the best search results. You need to be able to get backlinks from forums, websites, blogs, social media platforms, and other outside sources.
You see, with each day, Google’s algorithm is getting smarter. So when earning backlinks, you need to focus on your target audience. What do they need and want? What type of content will serve them best? Here are a few ways to naturally attract quality backlinks:
Link to other bloggers in your industry
If you want to get more links, you need to be willing to give them. It’s essential that you link out to relevant blogs in your niche. You should also get in touch with them to let them know that you’ve linked to their content. If they find that your content is valuable and relevant, they will link to it. This method is also great for building strong relationships with those in your community.
Interlinking
Unfortunately, Singapore website owners who are new to blogging will often ignore interlinking. This is when you link one of your posts to another page or post on your website. The benefit of doing this is that the search crawlers will be able to deeply crawl your website and it will assign more weight to your inner pages.
Evergreen content
There are several things that you should keep in mind when creating content for your site. First, you should make sure that your content is highly informative. This will ensure that users find it valuable. You should also make sure that the content is evergreen–meaning it is something that will always be relevant and has a very long shelf life. This means that it will get more shares and links because its relevance never expires.
Blogger outreach
Another great way to secure quality backlinks is to reach out to bloggers within your niche. Sometimes the simplest method is to simply ask other bloggers to link to your content. Let them know that you have just written a post that you think they will find valuable and helpful. If they find that it will be useful to their audience, then they will be happy to link to it.
Upload the post to every social platform you can and create videos about posts that are the most popular. And always link back to the original post as this will help with your overall search rankings.
On-page optimisation
One of the keys to getting a job as an SEO is to become skilled at on-page optimisation. This is simply a matter of making sure that your web pages are properly optimised. On-page optimisation will give you the ability to increase your rankings for certain keywords. Here are the most important parts of this type of SEO.
Page titles: The title of your page, or headline, is the number one way to get to the top of Google’s search results. So you need to the main keyword. Also, it works best if the keyword is placed at the beginning of the titles.
Meta description: This is the description that shows up in Google’s search results along with the page title. For better rankings, you should include your main keyword along with other relevant keywords in the meta description.
URL: When creating URLs, make sure that they are short and to the point. They should not be vague or long, because users need to be able to instantly identify them. You should also include your main keyword.
Image alt tags: Believe it or not, your images can actually help to get you more traffic. So when you add blog images to your site, you need to include your primary keywords in the alt tags. Always include images in your post as they can help to get your audience’s attention.
Keyword density: Many SEO experts will tell you that your keyword density needs to be between 1 to 3%. So you should ideally use your main keyword at least once every 100 to 300 words. Don’t try to stuff too many keywords into the copy as you want to ensure that your content is of high quality and avoid being penalised by Google.
Meta tags: Ideally you should use 3 to 4 meta tags for every article. Using plugins such as Yoast WordPress SEO can help you to ensure that your page is full optimized.
Pay attention to Google’s algorithm updates
Google makes a whopping 500+ changed every year. Some of these changes are major while others are minor. However, all can have a big impact on a website’s ranking. Updates such as Hummingbird, Penguin, and Panda completely shook up the digital marketing community. So keep an eye on Google’s latest updates so that you can quickly respond. Sites like Moz keep close tabs on what changes Google is making. So follow this and other similar blogs.
Comprehensive Guide on How to Secure SEO Jobs
With virtually all aspects of business accelerating towards a digital model, experts predict that demand for B2B and B2C marketing services will continue to increase steadily in 2022 and beyond. Consequently, demand for quality SEO services to help the websites rank high in search engines and generate revenue will double.
Already, there is a significant increase in SEO jobs across the globe, especially in developed and developing countries. Like other careers, you need to have certain skills and expertise to be recognised as a professional in this industry. Here is a comprehensive guide on how to get an SEO job.
How to Become an SEO Specialist?
One of the roles of an SEO specialist is to optimise websites for search engines and users. They implement changes on the website to enhance its crawlability and visibility online. Surprisingly, most renowned SEO experts didn’t attend a 4-year college program to master this craft even though there are facilities that offer SEO courses.
Here are the common steps that most people take to become SEO experts.
- Enrol for one or more SEO courses learn how to optimise their websites independently
- Join a marketing agency to learn the ropes and gain experience
- Scout for SEO clients online
- Become SEO certified by taking online courses
- Working for companies as an in-house SEO professional
What Skills Does an SEO Expert Need to Have?
SEO is dynamic, and so are the expectations of clients. Google algorithm updates inform most SEO strategy changes. Most of the SEO strategies that worked three years ago are now null and void.
As an SEO expert, it’s imperative to nurture the core SEO skills to increase your competitiveness in the job market. Apart from SEO, it would be best to have certain digital marketing skills such as copywriting and web design to offer holistic service packages.
Here are the primary skills you need to qualify for an SEO job.
- Ability to carry out keyword research to identify ideal keywords (low competition and high-volume keywords).
- Basic HTML skills
- How to use keywords in a webpage and blog post
- Advanced copywriting skills
- Hands-on experience in creating and optimising visual content such as infographics and videos
- Ability to create a quality backlinking profile through guest post outreach and guest posting
- Ability to merge Google algorithm updates with SEO trends
Mastering the above seven skills will place you miles ahead of other job applicants who only can do one or two tasks. Note that clients gravitate towards experts who can perform a wide array of SEO tasks to save them time and money spent that would have been spent on multiple SEO service providers.
Learn How Google and Other Search Engines Work
SEO experts are constantly looking for new information on how search engines such as Google work. The search engines have bots that crawl and index trillions of website pages in seconds.
Whenever someone types a keyword or query on Google, the bots analyse the search intent and present websites with the appropriate content. The same case applies to voice search question-based queries; the bots scour the indexed pages to find the most accurate and relevant answer to the question.
252,000 websites are created globally every day, and 175 websites are developed every minute. Since most of the websites are in the same niche or have similar content, the search engine algorithm uses various factors to rank the websites based on relevance and adherence to the recommended SEO practices.
In the past, SEOs would beat the system by using blackhat SEO strategies such as keyword stuffing. Not anymore – you have to put in the work to create quality content that is engaging and relevant to the audience to win a top spot in the SERPS. The same case applies to other strategies such as backlinking. Your backlink profile has to be natural, and links should be from sites relevant to your niche.
It would help if you learned everything about search engines architecture and how they rank websites to offer SEO services. Otherwise, you will struggle to optimise website pages after an unprecedented algorithm update such as the recent Core Web Vitals takes effect.
Master the 3 Primary Website Ranking Factors
Google relies on 100+ factors to rank websites. Trying to optimise every website for all those factors can be time-consuming and unnecessarily tedious. Before you get bogged down with title tags, meta description, alt text, page speed, and other technical SEO factors, make sure that you have a clear understanding of the three primary website ranking factors, namely:
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Authority
First, a backlink is one of the ranking factors you cannot afford to ignore as an SEO service provider. Google perceives links from authority sites as votes of confidence that the website is trustworthy and deserves to be ranked highly.
Concisely, the more high-quality backlinks you get from authority sites, the higher the website is likely to rank. Two primary factors that you should consider when sourcing for backlinks are:
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- Authority: The power of the linking web page or website power. Ahrefs measures site authority using two metrics: URL Rating and Domain Rating.
- Relevance: The relevance of the website content to the linking page. For example, if a post about how to lose weight has two backlinks, one from a computer software blog and one from the physical fitness website, the second link is more relevant and impacts the SEO of the blog more than the other link.
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Utility
Google is now more than ever focused on providing the most accurate results to users. The bots have refined their ability to match search intent with SERPs. The website content should match the search intent to get a top spot in the search engine results pages.
To be recognised as an SEO expert, you should be able to do keyword and competitor analysis to identify the best topics to cover in blog posts and website content.
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Relevance
Relevance is closely related to the previous factor, utility. It refers to how well a website page resonates with a search query. For example, if someone types “how to lose weight fast,” Google will not display websites about computers and cryptocurrencies.
But that’s just a surface-level overview of relevance. There is a plethora of factors that should be considered when creating content. Ideally, the content should match what the audience wants to see when they search on Google and land on your website.
One way of ensuring that your content is optimised for search intent is by asking yourself “why” someone would use a particular keyword.
Know-How to Apply the 4 Pillars of SEO
To most people, SEO is an unending puzzle with many moving parts. Understanding how to organise the pieces is essential to becoming an SEO expert. Here is an overview of the 4 pillars of SEO that you should know.
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Keyword Research
Keyword research entails finding words and phrases that the target audience often uses to look for information related to your industry on Google. The target keywords identified are then used to optimise content to increase its visibility and discoverability by search engine bots.
The research will present thousands of possible keywords, use the following three factors to weed out the unnecessary ones.
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- Keywords with traffic potential – Words or phrases that have the potential of channelling organic traffic to your website.
- Keywords with business value – Words or phrases that can attract qualified leads/customers.
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- Keywords that are not too competitive and difficult to rank for
Ahrefs Keywords Explorer is one of the most reliable tools for keyword research.
Photo Credit: Ahrefs.com
It offers additional information about every keyword, such as;
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- Clicks: Monthly number of clicks that a keyword gets on SERPs
- Keyword Difficulty (KD): Estimate the difficulty of ranking a particular keyword on Google’s first page.
- Search Volume: Total average number of people who use a keyword per month.
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Ideally, the best keywords have a high business value, decent traffic potential, and low-ranking difficulty. You should do keyword research, present reports to clients, optimise the content using the keywords, and monitor the results achieved.
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On-Page SEO
On-page SEO refers to all processes done on website pages to improve their ranking and generate more traffic from search engines. It entails;
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- Optimising the content for search intent and voice search
- Usage of keywords in the content
- Writing compelling meta titles and meta descriptions
- Adding descriptive alt tags for visuals such as photos and infographics
- Create a robust internal linking structure
Each process should be done with great precision to avoid sending the wrong signals to the search engine bots.
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Link Building
We previously mentioned that backlink is a power website ranking factor. The best SEO experts create stellar content and actively take part in link building. They reach out to authority websites relevant to their client’s niche for backlinks.
High-quality backlinks enhance ranking, crank up organic traffic and referral traffic. Check out this article for simple link-building strategies to get you started.
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Technical SEO
Technical SEO entails optimise the website’s technical elements to enable search engine bots to crawl and index the pages efficiently and accurately. It also aims to increase user experience.
This form of SEO involves the following.
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- Monitoring and improving page speed
- Identifying and removing external and internal broken links
- Use of canonical tags to prevent duplicate content
- Inclusion of Hreflang tags in multilingual content
- Improving crawl efficiency by optimising robots.txt
- No-indexing of shallow or thin content
Most of these tasks require specialised skills and expertise. It’s, therefore, recommendable to enrol for an SEO training course to learn how to do them correctly.
Focus on a Specific Niche
The mantra, Jack of all trades, master of none, makes a lot of sense in the SEO realm.
As a new SEO expert, it’s easy to get tempted to prove you can do everything that pertains to optimisation of websites. Soon enough, you will realise there is a limit to what you can do at a given time.
Don’t cut yourself too thin by not having a specific niche. Offer quality SEO services consistently to your clients to enhance your credibility in the market. Here are two ways of niching down.
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Master One Specific SEO Skill
SEO is not only dynamic but also broad. Even the most experienced SEO experts learn new concepts every day despite being in the industry for years. The best strategy is to become a T-shaped SEO expert.
Who is a T-shaped SEO expert? This is an expert who has a good grasp of the various SEO processes but has mastered or excels in one specific area.
Experts not only in the SEO industry but also in digital marketing are doing so and excelling.
For example, Marie Haynes is a renowned SEO expert who focuses on algorithm consultation and Google penalty recovery. She doesn’t offer on-page SEO, create content or build links for her clients. Instead, she focuses on auditing websites that experience traffic drops and resolves the issues identified.
Offer SEO Services to One Industry
eCommerce SEO is different from real estate SEO even though both involve optimising the website content.
The top priority for a realtor may be to have an optimised Google My Business Profile and get listed in industry-specific directories. On the other hand, the eCommerce goal may be to optimise the product pages and create an email list.
Offering SEO services to one industry is a sure way of growing and getting a firm footing in the industry. You will focus all your energies on learning the SEO requirements of websites in the industry instead of trying to offer services to websites in multiple industries.
The point is, you can establish a profitable and sustainable SEO company by focusing on one niche. The niche selected should be not only lucrative but also interesting to you. If possible, settle for a niche that you are conversant with to shorten the learning curve.
Never Stop Learning
To become an SEO expert, you need to constantly look for new information about SEO to hone your skills and expertise. Stay abreast of the SEO trends and technologies to stand out from the crowd. Attend conferences and other networking events to exchange ideas and learn more about the industry and job opportunities available.
Start your journey of becoming an SEO expert by enrolling in the MediaOne Marketing SEO Course. The course is offered by an SEO specialist with more than ten years of experience in the industry, Tom Koh. Contact us today for more details.
The Takeaway
It’s not difficult to get a job as an SEO in Singapore. However, you must be willing to put in the time and effort that it takes to learn the most important skills. Sure, the learning curve may seem steep, but once you get the basics down, the sky’s the limit.
