SEO Basics

SEO is constantly changing and you must choose SEO courses and trainers wisely. However, some basics hardly change. Mastery of the basics is one of the ways you can tell if you are dealing with a competent SEO trainer in Singapore. Here are the SEO basics you should know:

Learn What Your Customers Are Searching For

It is impossible for you to optimise your website for SEO without knowing who your customers are and what they are searching for on Google and other search engines. The easiest way to learn about your customers is by creating buyer personas, which is one of the topics covered by SEO courses and trainers in Singapore.

For instance, if you run a hotel in Singapore, your customers are searching for phrases such as ‘hotels in Singapore,’ ‘place to stay in Singapore,’ or ‘accommodation in Singapore.’ Before undertaking complex SEO strategies in Singapore think about what the customers could be searching for and write them down.

Next, start searching the words and phrases you have written down to get what your competition is doing. This is important since the websites have already researched and optimized their title tags for SEO and you will get ideas on how to optimise the tags.

Learn All You Can About Keyword Research

Keywords are the lifeline of a successful SEO campaign, and doing keyword research can be a challenge, even for seasoned SEO experts. There are hundreds of keyword research tools available, some free while you have to pay for some, and they are part of the topics taught in SEO courses and trainers.

After getting the most appropriate keywords and phrases, you can then go on to assign them to the various pages on your site. With that said, it is worth the shot to create a map that links each keyword to a web page.  

Optimising Pages for Search

After identifying what your customers are searching for and the keywords you need to use to get more organic traffic, you need to ensure that your web pages are optimised to satisfy the customer. This is a move geared towards reducing your bounce rates. 

Optimising the pages includes providing a great user experience, by having a flawless user interface design. This revolves around the removal of unnecessary design elements such as opt-in boxes, pop-ups, and more that can irritate site visitors. This is another topic you should consider when choosing between SEO courses and trainers in Singapore.

Here are a few ways that you can optimise your pages for search:

• Create content that is in line with the user’s search intent
• Use short and descriptive URLs
• Come up with compelling meta titles and descriptions
• Create a logical structure by using headers and sub-headers
• Optimise your images and videos
• Set up schema

This is one of the topics covered by SEO courses and trainers in Singapore.

Ensure That Your Site Is Accessible By both Humans and Search Engines

When creating an SEO camping, you should know that you are working for two different customers; human readers and search engine crawlers that index your website. While we are seeing bots become more intelligent and human-like, there are still some subtle differences.

Your goal, therefore, is to ensure that your site is accessible to both humans and search engine crawlers. However, optimising your site for search engine crawlers can be difficult, and we recommend that you get an experienced professional to help you out. 

Here are ways that you can ensure that both humans and search engine crawlers can access your site:

• Improve the website and page loading speed
• Make your website mobile-friendly
• Install an SSL certificate
• Create a site map
• Upload a robots.txt file to your website
• Link related posts and pages

Moreover, you need to learn about technical SEO in Singapore and website structure to boost the chances of success. 

Build Backlinks from Other Websites

Building backlinks is critical for the success of your SEO strategy. For this reason, you need to spend resources on creating content as well as promoting and generating links to the content. Backlinks are one of the top three factors that have a strong influence on Google’s ranking algorithm.

Source: Gorilla 360

We have seen many link building tactics over the years, with some being more legit than others. However, the first thing you need to do is learn how your competitors are building their links. With that said, these are some of the proven link building tactics you can use for SEO in Singapore:

• Swipe links from inferior content
• Broken link building
• Guest blogging

When it comes to broken link building, we mean that you search for relevant broken pages that have links on other sites. Reach out to the sites linking to the broken pages and suggest that they swap the dead resource for a suitable alternative on your site. 

Organic SEO vs. Local SEO

Organic SEO, otherwise known as traditional SEO is distinctively different from local SEO. For starters, local SEO has a geographical component, and it is the practice of building relevant signals around a specific location. This means that only brick-and-mortar businesses get to use local SEO.

Organic SEO, on the other hand, revolves around a website. The website can be a business on its own which may or may not have a geographical location. It is for this reason that bloggers, digital marketers, and other internet-based businesses use organic SEO to improve their SERP rankings and thus increase traffic to their sites. 

With that said, organic SEO can also be influenced by a geographical location, but it is not linked to a brick-and-mortar business. In traditional organic SEO, search engines are looking for valuable, trustworthy, and relevant content. Local SEO on the other hand, search engines are looking for trustworthy and relevant locations. 

Citations and Links

Links are often described as the currency of the internet since they lead to higher SERP rankings and increased traffic. This means that links are only used for traditional organic SEO. Local SEO, on the other hand, uses citations instead of links. 

However, citations and links are not the same. Citations are references for your name, address, phone number. Search engines regard that the availability of citations as proof of relevance and validity of the business in a specific location. 

Citations help businesses become relevant for particular searches that may relate to the business. Traditional organic SEO involves the building of links and has little need for creating citations. 

SEO Trends You Should Know About

As we have said, SEO in Singapore is constantly evolving and before you enrol for SEO courses, you need to know the current trends and what influences them. To stay on top of the trends, you need to read widely on SEO articles or hire a competent SEO professional to avoid wasting resources. 

These are some of the prevalent SEO trends you need to know about:

Mobile and Voice Search

Mobile search has been growing in popularity seeing that 90% of Singaporeans today use their smartphones to browse the internet. Moreover, consumers in 2018 spent three and a half hours a day on their mobile devices, which means that it has edged out desktops as the preferred access point to the internet. 

You should take note of mobile search since Google introduced the Mobile-First Index. This means that Google will predominantly use your website’s mobile version for indexing and ranking. 

Mobile device users have also started to use voice search to find answers on Google while on the go. It is safe to assume that we are going to see an in-tandem rise in mobile and voice search dominating SEO in Singapore. Read on how you can optimise your website for mobile and voice search.

Semantic Search and Intent Optimisation

Search engines today do not use the exact keyword string to return answers to a user’s query. Instead, they are looking at the context of the query and then they analyse the possible search intent to deliver the results. 

This is evident in Google Suggest results. You could use semantic search tools to help you cluster any search query into related entities and concepts. 

Content Diversification and SERP Marketing

Focusing on organic listings is getting old and SEO professionals need to optimise their websites for all other search items including quick-answer sections, videos and images. This is the concept behind SERP marketing. 

Content diversification, on the other hand, requires that you come up with quality content in various formats. On the bright side, you will have the opportunity to leverage more mediums and try a variety of tools.

You could also consider content collaboration to diversify your content. The benefits are huge the best on being getting natural backlinks, shares and trust. 

Structured Data

Google has been fast-tracking the use of semantic data by updating its initial guidelines and adding support for new varieties of structured data. This means that Google is interested in extracting more information from your site to improve your SERP rankings. 

You need to start adding a variety of structured data such as FAQ pages, fact-check and more. Once crawled, your FAQs will appear in an interactive snippet, and the user can click on the link to get more answers. When choosing SEO course and trainers, you need to consider if they offer this topic.

On-Page Optimisation

Despite the different turns, SEO might take over the years; on-page optimisation remains one of the most critical aspects of your online presence. The backbone of on-page optimisation is high-quality and relevant content presented in a way that is easy to consume.

Source: Backlinko

Make sure that you check and optimise the site’s loading speed and the user interface to ensure that the users have a great experience when on your site. 

Best SEO Training Courses in 2023 (Paid and Free)

It used to be the only way to kickstart a career in anything was to enrol for formal education and pay thousands of dollars in form of fees. University certificates carried a lot of weight when applying for a job. 

But things have changed. 

Even more important than that university degree is the experience and skill you’ve developed through hard work and initiative.  

That’s the modern way of learning, and the path you should be thinking of taking if you want to learn about SEO.

What’s an SEO Course?

An SEO course is a certified program that you can enrol for to study SEO or one of its many aspects.

While there are courses that tackle SEO as a whole, most of these courses solely specialize in either On-page or Off-page SEO, while some are designed to teach you how to conduct effective keyword research and get the most bang for your SEO buck. 

After you complete an SEO course, you may be awarded an SEO certification. Essentially, this is meant to show that you have the necessary training and skills in a particular aspect of SEO.

Why Should You Take an SEO Course?

SEO isn’t like riding a bike. 

It’s not instinctive. And just because you’ve acquired a particular skill set that doesn’t mean you’ll never have to learn about it again.

Much to the contrary, SEO is a complex set of rules, methodologies, and techniques designed to guide you through the process of fine-tuning your content and preparing it to be parsed and judged by the might power of search engines’ algorithms for ranking.

And considering search engines are always updating their algorithms, and releasing new rules and guides, that makes SEO a never-ending learning curve. 

Meaning, as an SEO marketer, you have to keep on changing your approach by adapting to new search engine guidelines and rules. Failure of which your marketing efforts will soon be rendered obsolete.

So, why should you enrol for an SEO Course?

The question most of you are asking right now is that, “is it really necessary to take up an online SEO training course?”

Well, one approach you could take is to start self-educating yourself about it. However, there’re benefits that comes with signing up for a reliable SEO training course – and which you’ll never get from relying on free resources. 

Let’s break them down. 

Tested and Proven SEO Strategies

The good thing about taking an SEO training course from a reliable trainer is that their content will always be up to date. The reason being, they’re in the field and, as such, know what works and what doesn’t.

The problem with free resources is that much of the information they contain is outdated. It’s a long shot working with them, considering most of the strategies provided have yet to be tested. 

A reliable SEO training program will only focus on what works in the current scenario as well as what SEO practices need to be followed.  

Access to Premium SEO Tools

Theoretical knowledge in SEO won’t get you that far. You need practical exposure with any new lesson you soak up.

Speaking of which, the only way to gain the required practical knowledge is by taking up real projects. You have to implement everything you learn and monitor the generated results.

Now, much of what you’ll be doing involves using SEO tools – which by the way don’t come cheap.

Imagine spending hundreds of dollars per month just to experiment with these tools. 

The good thing with signing up for a paid SEO training course is that you’ll be given access to various SEO tools (without paying extra for them). You get to work with all these tools in real-time and gain practical experience. 

Guidance from a Practicing SEO Expert

It’s one thing to teach something but quite another to implement that knowledge on a real-time project.

Just because someone teaches how to code, that doesn’t mean they can code.

Well, SEO Experts that set up training courses don’t do it because they have a masters degree in teaching. 

They do it because they have mastered the skill through many years of learning and working on different projects. 

They have experimented with different SEO techniques to know what works. Their expertise is not set on guesswork, but on making calculated moves based on what they have come to learn and understand over the years. 

Get Certified

You’re not doing all this to just become skilled and have nothing to show for it. With many of these courses, you’ll be given a certificate or digital badge that you can link to a professional networking site such as LinkedIn and increase your credibility, as well as your chances of getting hired (if you’re hunting for a job, that is).

These reasons are compelling enough to make you consider taking up an SEO training course.

There are so many reputable SEO training programs that you might want to sign up for today and get the ball rolling.

How to Pick the Right SEO Courses and Trainers for You

Having given you a background on what to expect from SEO in the modern age, you need to pick SEO courses that are in line with your objectives. This is crucial since going from the basics to becoming an SEO professional takes time and money.

The objective of any SEO course ought to help you get all the resources needed to optimise a small or medium-sized website for search engines and to create a basic strategy to increase traffic to the site. Ideally, you need an SEO course and trainer that answers these questions:

• What is keyword research?
• How do search engines crawl and rank websites?
• Which are the free SEO tools and how are they used?
• How do links influence SEO?
• Where keywords should be placed on a web page
• How does a website’s architecture influence SEO?

These are some of the basics that you can expect to learn from SEO courses and trainers in Singapore. However, you should choose one that provides answers to questions involving more complex SEO practices.

These questions include:

• What is link building and how is it done?
• What is link baiting and internal linking?
• What are the free linking tools and how are they used?
• How does social media marketing affect SEO?
• What is a content strategy?

SEO courses and trainers that address these issues should provide you with a firm foundation about SEO. 

Online SEO Courses and Trainers or In-Person Training

The choice between in-person and online training largely depends on your preferred learning style. Online training offers you more flexibility and it is structured to be taken by people with a busy schedule that need to learn SEO in a short time. 

In-person SEO training, on the other hand, is preferred by people who need a more interactive learning experience or people who have a dedicated time for learning. This mode of learning tends to be the best since you will be more focused when you have a person in front of you. 

The Best SEO Courses and Trainers in Singapore

Good content alone will not mean that you will have a successful website, for this reason, you need to learn from the professionals with a good reputation and have run successful SEO campaigns. Your best options are short SEO courses and online SEO trainers. Here are the best SEO courses you should consider: