Top 20 SEO Consultants & Experts in Singapore

The Top SEO Consultants & Experts in Singapore

While compiling this list of the top SEO consultants based in Singapore, we did not just look at the quality of their SEO services. We also considered customer support and the complementary services they offer. These consultants can provide you with wholesome digital marketing solutions. 

For more information or inquiries, contact them or their agencies. Compare their services and rates and make the best decision that will be in line with your business goals. 

Finding the best SEO specialist is simply a matter of paying attention to what is most important to them. Here is a compiled list of the top SEO consultants based in Singapore. 

Tom Koh – MediaOne

Tom holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computational Science from the National University of Singapore (NUS).

If you are a keen follower of digital marketing trends, you must have come across MediaOne. Tom Koh is the leading SEO consultant in the agency with over 20 years of experience in marketing. He also has over 10 years of experience in digital marketing that specialises in SEO. His agency specialises in the following:

• SEO
• social media marketing (SMM)
• search engine marketing (SEM)
• performance marketing / conversion rate optimisation (CRO)
• online reputation management (ORM)

In addition to this, Tom is a leading SEO trainer at MediaOne digital marketing courses. He teaches businesses/individuals how to plan and execute digital marketing campaigns.

He is also a consultant to New York-based Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb, the investment advisor to the Sequoia Group – a USD30 billion fund that invests in Acrobat (Google), Amazon, and Berkshire Hathaway. “I engaged MediaOne because it seemed to be the very authority in Singapore for SEO”, said Aaron Zhang of RCG. Tom actively consults for MNCs such as SingTel, ST Electronics, Maybank, TheHourGlass, CapitaLand, Hotel InterContinental, and many others.

Under Tom’s stewardship, MediaOne ranks #1 for the most competitive keywords in Singapore including:

• seo consultants singapore
• seo singapore
• seo agency singapore
• seo services singapore
• website design services
• internet marketing
• online marketing
• digital marketing
• content marketing singapore
• social media singapore
• web design singapore
• marketing singapore
• advertising singapore
• branding singapore
• facebook marketing singapore
• creative agency singapore
• websites singapore
• influencers singapore
• media agency
• marketing courses singapore
• consultants singapore
• branding singapore
• etc and thousands of keywords

MediaOne ranks for over 36,000 keywords – with its closest competitors barely squeaking near 2,000 keywords. This is massive proof of Tom and MediaOne’s prowess in the SEO arena.

MediaOne implements these highly effective, stable white hat solutions for all its clients to get them similar results.

The MediaOne office is located at 4B Craig Street, Singapore 089664. You can also call the agency at +65 6789 9852 or email: [email protected] to get a free SEO audit.

Wayne Quek – MediaOne

Wayne Quek is the Head of Operations at MediaOne who spearheaded the agency’s ISO-certified processes which has won the admiration of peers in the industry. He also heads the Search Engine Marketing arm for the Company responsible for clients like SingTel, Goldbell, Stratus, IBC Asia, and Economic Development Board Singapore.

Wayne has spent over a decade of media experience working in strategic roles in Global Yellow Pages, Webnatics, MDIS and Black Spartans.

Michael Leong – Dynamic Marketing

Michael Leong is a successful SEO consultant in Singapore. Besides helping businesses optimize their sites for search engines, Michael also managed to secure a better ranking for his own digital marketing agency.

Michael has been helping businesses improve their digital experiences to align with that of a 21st-century consumer. The results have earned him a spot with trending SEO consultants in the country. Contact his office at +65 6655 4744 for more details.

Jack Zeng – Clickr Media

He is an alumnus of Singapore Polytechnic. Jack has amassed much experience in the following:

• keyword research
• link building
• site SEO audits
• developing marketing campaigns
• using site analytics to tailor digital marketing campaigns to the needs of the client. 

He has been with Clickr Media for over five years and has made the agency a successful digital marketing solution provider in Singapore. Jack can help you to strategize, execute, understand the numbers, and optimize your site for success. 

Clickr Media offers a range of services including SEO, SEM, and digital marketing courses that beginners/professionals will find helpful in the management and development of their SEO campaigns. You can visit their office at 2 Alexandra Road, #06-04 Delta House, Singapore 159919, or call them +65 6566 9556 to book an appointment and free consultation.

Lily Chia – Atomz

Lily Chia is the founder of Atomz – a creative design agency. She also founded Carbon Interactive, a digital marketing agency in Singapore. She formerly worked as the senior manager of BizArts Creative, having served as the senior officer of the Singapore Economic Development Board.

Lily Chia has proved to be a competent SEO consultant. She is also a leader who can help  a  team of marketers and digital specialists with one common goal – steering your business to profits. Follow Lily Chia on Linkedin.

Sherwin Seow – Clickworkz

Sherwin Seow has been helping businesses in Singapore build targeted audiences and traffic using SEO and social media marketing strategies. Through his agency, Sherwin helps businesses climb the search engine ladder and conjure strategic plans to help them maintain their place in rankings.

He’s currently serving as the director of sales at Clickworkz and the business development manager at Lins Advertising and Marketing Ltd. Follow Sherwin Seow on Linkedin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherwin-seow-793aa514/?originalSubdomain=sg.

Jackie Lee – ClickTrue Media

Jackie Lee, CEO of ClickTrue media, holds over 12 years of experience in digital marketing. His skill is in performance marketing. He gets his clients to navigate the search engine landscape. Jackie is known for testing every his approaches to find out what works and what doesn’t before implementation. Their digital marketing approach means businesses that work with him get industry-tested marketing strategies that are bound to profit. Follow Jackie Lee on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackieleechoonyau/

George Foo – IH Digital

George Foo, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at IH Digital, holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing and finance. Ever since George realized his passion, he’s been partnering with businesses from all across Singapore in helping them with digital marketing. He has helped businesses in these ways:

• use SEO
• understand internet marketing
• comprehend web analytics,
• appreciate the role of media in modern marketing.

Follow George on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgefoo

Charanjit Singh – Construct Digital

Charanjit cofounded Construct Digital, alongside Alfred Lee (the current CTO of Our Better World). His goal was to offer quality services to Singapore clients. Being professional,  he would ground narratives by opting to tell the story of B2B brands through content marketing. Today, Construct Digital is a trending digital marketing platform in Singapore. Follow Charanjit Singh on Linkedin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charanjit

Terrence NGU – Hashmeta

Terrence NGU is the brain behind Hashmeta, an inbound and social media marketing agency. Terrence’s interest lies with two things – inbound marketing and social media. His skill is in the marketing field is to help Singapore entrepreneurs convert traffic into sales. Follow Terrence NGU on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/terrence_ngu

Nick Marret

Nick Marret, founder and former CEO of Arcade (a well-known creative agency in Singapore), quit the company to start a new creative and innovative company called Bounce. Nick figured that he’d start a company that takes a new approach in offering solutions that are completely off the wall – and that’s how Bounce was born. Follow Nick on Linkedin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-marrett-1917a312

Wynn Zhou – Digital M

Wynn Zhou is the founder and director of Digital M. For more than ten years, Wynn has been working with varied businesses to help them improve their SEO score. This was to get their website on the front ranks of Google and other search engines. Wynn has managed to get Digital M ranked on competitive search terms, including “SEO packages,” “Top SEO Agency,” “Cheap SEO Singapore, and “Digital Marketing Agency. 

Shane Liuw – First Page Digital

Shane Liuw is an SEO consultant in Singapore with a good focus on detail. This has been helpful in bringing traffic to a brand’s online presence. He has experience in the following:

• social media marketing
• SEO
• affiliate marketing
• online reputation management
• and email marketing services.

If you already have a website, they will do an SEO audit of your site. First Page Digital also seeks to deliver results in 90 days. If they fail to do so, they will do more work. Visit them at 144 Robinson Rd, #20-01 Robinson Square Singapore 068908 or drop them a call at +65 6270 2193.

Jon Ng – Novatise Singapore

Novatise is a trending agency in Singapore led by Jon Ng, a veteran SEO consultant. He is a guest blogger on SEO related topics.

He has also been involved in the development and execution of SEO strategies by tailoring them to the needs of the clients. Through his participation, Novatise has helped customers get proper online exposure. Jon specializes in SEO services such as link building, restaurant SEO, and e-commerce SEO.

Novatise has several digital marketing services such as:

• web design
• Facebook marketing
• article writing
• lead generation.

Novatise is located at Crasco Building, 11 Beach Road, Unit 03-02, Singapore 189675.

Terence Sim – iClick Media

Terence Sim has worked in the advertising industry for many years and relations with some of the leading brands. He has built a reputation as follows:

• SEO consultant
• digital marketer
• strategic consultant/trainer
• Certified Quality Management System Lead Auditor
• Certified Fire Safety Manager. 

Terence is also a WSQ ACTA trainer who is qualified to do a proper SEO audit of your site and provide consultant recommendations. He is also the general manager at iClick Media – a digital marketing agency. It specializes in a wide range of services including SEO such as link building.

You can get complimentary services such as:

• PPC re-marketing
• SMM
• content marketing
• social media management
• PPC bid management.

Their office is located at 246 MacPherson Road, #02-01, Betime Building, Singapore 348578.

Leonard Tan – PurpleClick Media

Leonard is a trending SEO consultant in Singapore. He left formal employment at Yahoo in 2006 where he was earning a five-figure salary to set up PurpleClick Media. He has won awards for his approach to SEO and digital marketing. This has allowed his agency to be one of those trending in the Asia-Pacific region.

He made it to this list for providing SEO recommendations on data-driven and cost-effective digital marketing strategies. They have also partnered with tech giants such as Facebook and Google to help businesses/ individuals meet their  objectives.

PurpleClick Media has won awards over the years for their SEO services including the Search Marketing Agency of 2017 in Singapore. For their services, you can visit them at 61 Science Park Road, The Galen #05-19 Singapore 117525. 

Jack Wong – Notion Age

Jack Wong is one of the co-founders and managing director of Notion Age Pte Ltd. He has many years of experience in the digital marketing and creative industry with specialization in SEO and SEM. He also delivers web design, email marketing, among other digital marketing solutions that help brands optimize their online presence. 

Notion Age is a full-service digital marketing agency specializes in the following:

• email marketing
• SEO
• CMS automation
• web design
• SMM
• SEM
• interactive flash microsite development
• creation of online marketing strategies.

They have experience in a wide range of industries including law, finance, healthcare, insurance, among others. For an in-depth chat with John Wong and other professional SEO consultants at Notion Age, visit their office at 331B Beach Road, Singapore, 199562. Call them at +65 6438 8303 to schedule a free consultation.

Jim Ng – Best SEO Marketing

Prior to starting his own digital marketing agency, Jim was frustrated with manually prospecting for leads as an insurance salesperson. That experience gave Jim an immense passion to develop a systemized process to generate leads for inbound marketing.

He fell in love with SEO and realized how a user with a search intent to buy will benefit companies and businesses to prosper with sales. Jim has been mentored by notable SEO consultants like Ruan Marinho. Ruan is ranked on the front pages of Google for competitive keywords like “Ubersuggest” and #1 for “New York SEO”.

Jim has SEO skills and walks the talk by performing SEO for his own agency’s site. He currently ranks on page #1 for the term, “SEO consultant Singapore”. This achievement was unlocked for a domain under 5 months.

Best SEO Marketing is a full-service digital marketing agency. You can visit their office at 30 Kallang Place, #03-18 Singapore 339159. Alternatively, you can give them a call at +65 9231 3757 for a free consultation.

Joseph Ho – E-Alchemists

In 2011, Ho founded E-Alchemists to provide SEO services in Singapore. Since then, he has grown the company into a one-stop online marketing services provider. Besides having extensive SEO skills, he delivers services in the following:

• web design and programming
• SEM
• SMM
• advanced knowledge in Google analytics
• Google Adwords
• CMS

E-Alchemists offer local SEO, web development and design, SEO copywriting and landing page optimization at decent prices. Contact E-Alchemists on +65 67171946 or walk right into their office situated at 55 Market Street #10-00 Singapore 048941.

This list can never be complete without a few honorable mentions:

• Ryan Lim – Founder & Director of Blugrapes
• Sandeep Bastikar – Founder & Managing Director of BrandNeu
• Neeraj Sundarajoo – CEO of Comwerks Interactive
• Redicka Subrammaniam – Founder & CEO of Interakt
• Kevin Suryadi – Managing Director of Interuptive
• Jimmy Tan – Founder of Manic Design

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Signs That You Should Hire an SEO Consultant in Singapore

• Your social media platforms are suffering. Most businesses after a while hit a plateau on their social media platforms. One sign of stagnant social media is a reduced number of content interactions and lack of new followers. An SEO consultant will be able to identify what is ailing your social media strategy and help boost your conversion rates.
• Your brand is too big or too small. There comes a time when companies are either too small to have an in-house SEO team, or they are too big to do the work themselves. You can hire an SEO company in Singapore to help optimise your website. They can train your team to handle basic work on the site. This will help you focus your resources and time on more critical business operations.
• You are paying too much for ads. Paid ads are an excellent way of increasing visibility for your ads. However, costs can increase significantly. This should be a concern if you are not getting much return on your investment. If you are spending a huge chunk of your marketing budget on PPC campaigns with nothing to show for it, consider hiring an SEO agency in Singapore.
• You have a local audience. Currently, customers prefer websites that offer products and services near their location. However, studies show that there is higher competition in smaller areas. An SEO consultant in Singapore will help you draft local SEO strategies that will you get more traffic.
• You are redesigning your website. When redesigning, it is important that you take great care with the technical elements. This includes old linking structures, navigation, old orphaned pages, etc. One wrong move could negatively affect your SERP rankings. Ensure that you have secured an SEO consultant in Singapore to ensure that everything goes smoothly.
• You have a poor online brand reputation. Your competition could be spreading false information, or you may have a disgruntled customer. These factors will negatively affect your reputation. Part of the work of the SEO consultant is to carry out online reputation management. 

With the above points, you will be able to tell if you need professional help or not. It all comes down to your willingness, knowledge, and ability. 

If you need professional input for your website, there is one aspect you should consider. Are they genuine? Looking at their website and their ranking, you will be able to tell if they are good at their job or not.

Customer testimonials will help you identify if the consultant is genuine or not. However, you should be wary of fake customer testimonials and reviews. If they are all positive, you could be dealing with a devious consultant.

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How necessary is hiring an SEO consultant?

You could have the best website or blog in Singapore, but what’s the purpose if you’re struggling to get heard? You need SEO to rank and gain online visibility, but how much you achieve can be attributed to your strategy and execution plan.

An SEO consultant is your guide in this. It’s their job to look at your marketing strategy and execution plan. They will poke holes at it to find out what you’re doing wrong. They also offer you solutions and suggest improvements to make.

Your SEO strategy is only good when it’s target-oriented. You’re not targeting random people online, but prospects that are most relevant to your line of business.

SEO is a long term strategy. You can’t be sure if you’re doing the right thing until you’re well-versed with the various analytical tools.

An SEO consultant will benefit your business in multiple ways. 

• They can offer you technical assistance. There are secret tools of the SEO trade that people hardly talk about. Some SEO techniques need to be executed correctly. In most cases, an SEO consultant will have thorough knowledge that can help you with the execution process for excellent results.
• They can help you focus on your primary business.  As a businessman, you could be losing a chunk of your time trying to optimise your site for search engines. Outsourcing this part of the job to an SEO consultant can help you save valuable time. 
• They can stretch out your profit margin and generate more revenue. The more prospects search and find your business, the more money you make. Hire the services of the most qualified person you can find to help you. Running an effective SEO campaign will help you crank up your number of sales. 
• They can awaken the power of your website. With a page one ranking, your customers will easily find you whenever they are searching for products or services in your industry. When customers are able to find you, they will visit your website. The more traffic you have, the more prospects you will collect and the more sales you stand to make.
• They will incorporate SEO into your marketing mix. An SEO consultant company will know how to effectively incorporate SEO tactics into your social media strategy, website, branding, and email marketing so that they can complement each other. This will help you reach your highest marketing potential.
• They can increase your social sharing with SEO. If you implement SEO in your marketing efforts, more people will be able to see your social media content. If what you are posting is useful, your followers will share it with their friends and family. This will in turn increase your online visibility. An SEO agency will help you optimise your social media content to increase your social shares and sales.
• They can get you free advertising. SEO makes sure that people can find you organically without having to spend money. A consultant will make sure that your content is well optimised, check that your title tags and meta descriptions are SEO ready. They will also make use of appropriate keywords and phrases.
• They will build trust and credibility. When people use certain keywords or phrases and they find you at the top of search results, psychology makes them believe that you’re the best. It’s only through good SEO that your website will be easy to find on the search results.

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What are some of the Traits Of an SEO consultant?

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Do you need a SEO consultant?

Before you take a decision that will affect your business and its operations, it is necessary to define your objectives. They will guide you on how to relate with your SEO consultant. 

There are multiple objectives to consider before hiring an SEO consultant and they should revolve around the following points:

• Direct marketing and lead generation
• Increase e-commerce sales
• Reputation management
• Improve search ranking
• Increase organic traffic to your website
• Improve customer service

Defining the objectives will help you measure whether the campaign was successful or not. The results outlined in the objectives will also help you estimate how much you should spend on SEO services. A competent SEO consultant will first ask about what you want to achieve, craft a proper SEO strategy and commence work.

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How can an SEO consultant help you?

If you’re wondering what exactly an SEO specialist can do for you, here’s a comprehensive list of ideas:

• Auditing websites for SEO.
• Finding SEO issues at the code level.
• Giving solutions on these issues and how to recover from problems if they resulted in penalties.
• Suggesting relevant keywords and how they should be implemented.
• Coming up with a strategic plan on how to beat your competition.
• Ensuring that both the tracker and the tracking code are in their most appropriate places.
• Identifying key areas of your website that need improvement.
• Run a technical SEO analysis of your website.
• Help business develop and implement tested link-building strategies.
• Come up with business strategies that build both the trust and reputation of your brand.
• Monitor changes as they come.
• Performance tracking and goal setting.
• Monitor KPIs, click rates, redirects, and bounce rates.
• Preparing a detailed SEO report.
• Running PPC campaigns.
• Writing effective SEO content.
• Staying updated on both black-hat and white-hat SEO strategies, while helping businesses stay within Google’s and other search engines’ standards and guidelines.
• Compiling SEO guidelines and presenting them to businesses and other stakeholders.

SEO specialists also have experience working with advanced SEO tools. They can tailor their SEO skills for e-commerce, analyse different types of data, and even fine-tune their websites and codes for SEO. 

SEO consultants also have a deeper understanding of search engines and how they work. They know what it wants and how to manipulate it for a prime ranking. The more your site ranks in the SERPs, the better it’s able to reach a bigger audience and earn your business more exposure. 

Content is the foundation of every SEO strategy. Factors such as topic, quality of the content, and keyword use go into the creation of good content. The keywords are the technical part of optimising your website as well as setting them up on the meta description and title. 

A competent SEO consultant can drive more traffic to maintain your site at the top of the SERPs. You need someone who understands SEO to the bone to beat your competitors and gain the much-needed exposure online.

An SEO consultant in Singapore will help you choose the best places to place your CTAs. They will also help in determining where to place your opt-in sign-up box, or how soon the opt-in should appear on the screen without disrupting the user experience.

An SEO specialist in Singapore integrates keywords and keyword topics to improve a website’s user experience and meet the search engine ranking guidelines.

Since it is a relatively new field, most SEO specialists in Singapore find it challenging to explain what they do. Moreover, search engines are constantly changing their algorithms and so SEO specialists must keep up which means that they have changing roles.

With that said there is a misconception that SEO is a one and done task where the specialists clean up and optimize websites, then focus their efforts elsewhere. There is much more to what SEO specialists do every day. In this article, we look at what SEO specialists do all day.

For starters, SEO specialists in Singapore work either in companies as in-house specialists or consultants, or they join SEO agencies. They offer a wide range of services including doing website audits to identify the problem areas that are contributing to their low SERP ranking, among other duties such as:

Keyword Research and Analysis

SEO specialists carry out keyword discovery through extensive research as well as prioritizing keyword targeting strategies for the main keyword verticals and long-tail keyword phrases. They are also involved with the identification of potentially low competition keyword targets that also have high profitability that will result in a higher commercial value. They will also research alternative search terms.

Website Page Optimisation

One of the major roles of an SEO consultant in Singapore is to execute on-page SEO mechanical elements which include text formatting and integrating the necessary structure, addition of H-tags, Meta tags, as well as images by utilising their skills of organising website content.

They also integrate short- and long-tail keywords, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords, keyword synonyms, keyword prominence, and stem keywords.

Keyword Mapping

Employees responsible for SEO in Singapore also assign, map or match keyword phrases to individual webpages to ensure that they have an organised on-site structure. By undertaking keyword planning and implementation, they help in curbing keyword cannibalization problems and to strengthen content silos.

Attain Higher SERP Ranking Visibility

Since Google is the most popular search engine, a majority of SEO specialists focus their efforts on attaining higher ranking visibility on Google. Basically, they try to achieve at least the top 10 ranking positions on the first page for the money keywords in the content.

SEO specialists in Singapore also help to generate new keyword ranking momentum from obscurity to the top of Google’s page one by focusing on improving the results in the knowledge graph card, the click-through rate, or on YouTube video carousel results.

With that said, there is also considerable traffic gained from other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo. The focus on Google is because it generates over 90% of the traffic to websites.

Local SEO and Schema Mark-up

The specialists are also involved in conducting local SEO marketing campaigns that include 100% complete and verified Google My Business profile, local city pages, Google Maps, and a consistent name, address, and phone (NAP) profile.

They also do online reputation management, acquiring local business reviews. The SEO specialists also work on applying local schema mark-up, microdata structure, as well as getting local business connections.

Complete Online Competitive Analysis

SEO consultants are also involved in reverse-engineering the competitor websites to determine their strengths and weaknesses and audience share. They also compare backlink profiles using tools such as semrush.com.

Improving the UX for Better Conversions

The specialists also optimise existing web pages to improve the website’s visitor experience, increase page views, click-through rates on SERPs, and visitor time on the site, as well as, minimise page abandonment. They also engage in discussions about the benefits of rich media and content.

Diagnosing and Resolving Technical SEO Problems

This includes identifying the technical SEO issues with the website such as 404 errors, crawl errors, server errors, canonicalization, duplicate content, slow website speed, pagination, Robot.txt files, broken links, incorrect site maps, missing alt attributes, slow website speed, poor URL structure and more.

Comprehensive Website Audit

They examine, test, and diagnose any visibility issues the website might have. After identifying the issues, the SEO specialists then document the benchmarks and the baselines. They will also check the Google indexing status, the website’s content inventory, traffic statistics, Moz’s domain authority factors, the efficiency of the HTML code, and slow website speed.

Copywriting Content

SEO specialists in Singapore are responsible for the content right from creation to marketing. This means that they must know how to write effective headings, Meta tags, and paragraph headings. On top of this, they must also be able to write or compose compelling and unique Meta descriptions, title tags, and heading tags that will result in high SERP ranking and induce clicks.

The specialist must also be able to write in a natural language using a conversational tone that is used by searchers in especially on voice search queries. To achieve SEO success using content, you need to know your audience, write longer content consistently.

The paragraphs should be short and precise with the incorporation of text formattings such as italics, bold, lists, and images. With that said, they should only stick to white hat SEO tactics since black or grey hat SEO tactics such as keyword stuffing and more are penalised by search engines.

Coming Up With New Content Ideas for Content Development

Other than being responsible for copywriting blog and on-site content, SEO specialists are also responsible for training and coaching people under them to write relevant, original, valuable, and unique content.

They ought to identify content gaps and suggest the best ways that they can fill it up. This will require research to know what the target audience wants and deliver it as soon as possible. They should also discuss Google’s quality guidelines and quality algorithm that will yield authority, expertise, and trustworthiness.

Web Development and Re-Design

Since the SEO specialist’s work revolves around the website, it is an added advantage if they have the skills and expertise to carry out minimal web re-designs and development. This means that they need to possess basic HTML coding skills, be privy to the terminology used by webmasters, and understand CSS, as well as the graphic design elements and the web page layout.

This is because they might have to make timely changes to the website when the IT personnel are not available or when it is absolutely necessary. For example, when Google updated the ranking factors SEO specialists had to act fast and make sure that the websites adhered to the new rules.

E-commerce Systems

An SEO specialist in Singapore ought to understand the key aspects of e-commerce websites such as shopping carts, photo galleries, online payment and processing services, storefront solutions, tax regulations to comply with the set laws, and shipping options. This will work for the SEO specialists who work in the e-commerce industry.

Analyse KPIs

The specialist must not only agree on key performance indicators (KPIs) criteria for website performance but also for evaluating the effectiveness of SEO campaigns. This could include traffic sources, ROI, and profits, the keywords ranking between positions 1 and 3 on search engines, as well as the audience share.

Creating URL Maps

URL maps are the blueprints and road map documents for information architecture that portray the hierarchy of content on a website. This includes making comparisons between the newly proposed website URLs and the old website URL when doing a website redesign. The URL maps ought to include a 301 redirect record.

Preparing Monthly SEO Reports

This includes preparing reports for the company or on-going SEO clients for project progress purposes. For example, tracking the highest traffic landing pages, changes in keyword ranking, acquired inbound links, linking domains, and traffic sources. With the reports ready, they can then compare with the reports of their competitors.

Digital Marketing Team Support

SEO experts have the responsibility of collaborating with the digital and local marketing team. The digital marketing team especially for SMEs, the social media team, freelancer or in-house content copywriter, social media team, and more.

Improve Existing Website Content

They should also be proficient with editing website content to improve readability. More so, they should also write valuable and evergreen content, content consolidation, update the content structure to make it easily scan-able by human and search engine crawlers using subheadings.

They also improve the content by leaving enough space, use of proper attribution, statistics or facts, eliminating of grammatical errors, bulleted lists. Essentially, the content should add value to the readers by staying on topic, purposeful, and relevant.

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How do you identify an SEO consultant?

• An SEO specialist should have an in-depth understanding of what SEO really is. The competition to get your site ranked at the top of search engine result pages is a fierce one. With everyone doing almost the same thing, you must develop a deeper understanding of what it takes to push your site up the search engine ranks to beat the competition.
• An SEO consultant should know how to work around On-page and Off-page SEO. On-page SEO is still of utmost importance and should therefore feature at the top of your priority list. Your SEO consultant must first begin by working on your on-page SEO and only proceed to off-page SEO after they’ve had the former perfected.
• An SEO specialist should be able to differentiate between white-hat and black-hat SEO. What you deem as white SEO may not be white at all. Not when the core update penalised sites that have been so focused on over-optimizing their sites. It’s not about gaming the Google system but adopting an SEO strategy with long term viability. Hire someone with a shallow understanding of how SEO operates, and they might bring you short-lived results. However, they could lead you to get penalised later when Google catches up with the not-so-clever manipulations.
• An SEO consultant should have ranked their own website or blog. An SEO consultant is not a title somebody just grabs, but one that is earned after working for it. The least one could do, is to use the consultancy he has on himself. 
• An SEO consultant must have maintained a top rank through all the Google updates. Google has been updating its algorithm ever since they first got into the business. They have released a series of major updates that have been affecting sites on a grand scale. Sites that adopted a long term SEO marketing strategy have been thriving with every update as opposed to those that took a more reactive or short-lived approach. If the consultant has maintained a top-ranking throughout the updates, then he is a true consultant. 
• An SEO specialist should understand the different levels of SEO. This occurs in three levels: Technical SEO, On-page, and Off-page optimization. A successful SEO strategy must include all three facets of SEO. Any SEO consultant who fails to weave the three into their SEO advice may not be competent enough to do your business justice.

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Questions you should ask yourself when choosing your SEO consultant:

Question 1: Should the SEO consultant be focused on the quality of my content?

It’s essential that the content on your website is of the highest quality. Why is this? Users are on the hunt for the most valuable information. They usually find this in content that is well-researched, well-written, and well-formatted.

Whenever you meet with a quality Singapore SEO consultant, you’ll notice that they are interested in the type of content that you offer. If your content is not up-to-par, they are likely to make suggestions about how you can make it better. They will encourage you to use H1, H2 tags as well as images when needed. More specifically, they discuss the importance of search intent, keywords, voice search, and rich snippets. If you want to know if a company is worth working with, pay attention to their attitude towards content.

Question 2: Should the SEO consultant be concerned with how mobile-friendly my website is?

When it comes to online mobile penetration, Singapore is at the top of the list. An SEO consultant understands that it’s not an option for your website to be mobile-friendly but a must. Quality companies will discuss how responsive your website is and how you could make improvements. They will encourage you to make adjustments so that your website responds well to not just mobile, but every device.

Question 3: Should the SEO consultant be concerned with how secure my website is?

Quality consultants will talk to you about HTTPS. Google flags websites as “not secure” if they are not HTTPS. Consultants will talk to you about possible canonicalization that could come with switching to HTTPS. They can also help you to avoid these issues.

Question 4: Is the SEO consultant focused on offering a great user experience?

The best SEO consultants understand the importance of pleasing the user. They will often spend a significant amount of time on how important a good site structure is. They want to make sure that your site is very easy to navigate. They will want users to feel as if everything is intuitive.

Question 5: Is the SEO consultant capable of increasing my page speed?

One of the main causes of high bounce rates is the loading speed of your page. In general, users expect your website to load in under 3 seconds.

Specialists will offer suggestions on how you can go about speeding things up. This is the first impression people have of your website. Considering the fact that high bounce rates indicate a bad user experience, Google takes this ranking factor seriously and so should your consultant.

Question 6: Does the SEO consultant offer tips for on-page optimization?

The best consultants will offer suggestions when it comes to metadata. They will encourage you to use schema. They will also suggest that you implement an internal link structure.

Question 7: Does the SEO consultant emphasize the importance of quality backlinks?

Quality consultants aren’t as much concerned with the number of backlinks as they are with the quality of them. In fact, they know that the wrong backlinks can get you into trouble. Speak with the consultants about how they view backlinks and what their strategies are to get them.

Question 8: How does the SEO consultant measure results?

You can tell a lot about the consultant based on the tools that they use to measure your results. For instance, one of the tools you should pay attention to is Google Analytics. They will also mention Adwords, Ahrefs, Google’s Mobile-friendly test, SEMRush, and many others.

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How to engage an SEO consultant in Singapore

One of the challenges you’re likely to face as an entrepreneur is hiring the right digital marketer. The process of vetting and hiring one is time-consuming in itself. If you make the mistake of hiring the wrong one, the effects are likely to cripple your business.

It’s important that you consider interviewing all the candidates you have on your list before settling on one.

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General rules to follow while interviewing an SEO specialist

• Give the interview a structure. A structured interview will ensure that you hold all the candidates you’ve listed to the same standards for a fair evaluation. You want to keep the interview short and ensure you have asked all the questions you had in mind. 
• Structure the interview to include four types of questions:
• Fact-based questions: These will help you take a detailed view of the firm’s mode of operation and track record to develop a rough idea of what to expect. 
• Knowledge-based questions: These are SEO specific questions that help you weigh in on the company’s level of consultancy and technical know-how. This will help you decide if they’re the right fit for your company’s marketing needs. 
• Behavioural questions: Walk through the professional experiences of the company in the past. How did they handle a certain situation or react when things failed to flow according to plan? 
• Situational questions: These help to evaluate the company’s ability to think through difficult situations. How did they whip up creative and effective solutions that allay the problem without hurting your business?
• Their level of consultancy in their specific domain. Try to focus on developing an understanding of their modus operandi. Dig out for more information on the strategies they employ to optimise your site and increase its visibility on search engines.

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What Should I Expect Of My Singapore SEO Consultant?

In our decade-long career as marketers, one thing we came to learn is that Singapore web owners don’t really care about their sites’ aesthetics – they just want customers.  

They can shell out a great amount of their hard-earned cash for a well-designed website, but at the end of the day, all they want to see is a flowing revenue stream – not a good-looking money pit.

Don’t get me wrong, a good website has to look professional and easy enough to both use and navigate, but without proper marketing, your once-so-excited client will NEVER get to like it that much.

Goes on to show how important an SEO consultant really is. Every web owner needs a steady stream of income to turn their online effort into a money generator, and SEO consultants just happen to be the right people for this.

But in a market filled with all kinds of SEO consultants, including effective and lame ones, how do you go about choosing the right one.

That aside, what expectations are realistic enough to have after hiring one?

White Hat SEO Tactics

You’ve probably heard or come across a blog post trying to justify how SEO is dead. In a sense, this could actually be true, and we could perhaps chalk everything up to semantics.

Not long ago, what people referred to as SEO is NOT the same as what is implied by it today. SEO was more of a black hat technique because search engines weren’t well developed. Their algorithms were working progress and there were a lot of loopholes to circumvent around some of their policies.

For instance, you could have used content spinners to churn as much content as you wished to have and stuff them with keywords, and the system would still pass it as great content and probably rank you high. Then along came the days of purchasing backlinks. Or the use of bots to generate blog comments jam-packed with links. One post could be re-published again and again and the system still wouldn’t recognize the ploy going on.

Such tactics are probably dead, which kind of makes the old-school kind of SEO dead of course.

Search engines continued updating their algorithms and making baby steps and subtle improvements to a point we can safely say their system is at near-perfection.

There might be a few black hat techniques that still work, but it’s just a matter of time before Google catches up and slaps you with a penalty.

The best way to tell if a company is privy to the latest SEO trends is to look at its own marketing effort. Do their blogging results reflect what they’re talking about? Or you could just be blatantly honest with them and ask if they abide by the updated Google rules.

Quality Backlinks

A professional SEO consultant should be able to help you acquire quality backlinks or at least be able to guide you through the process.

Start by reading thoroughly on the subject to find out what’s actually meant by quality link building.

Is the company clued in about on-site SEO and how exactly are they putting that into action. Check their site to find out if their on-page SEO is impressive enough. What about their site navigation?

Another way to look at it is to look at the authority sites they’re featured in. For a company that promises to get you a good number of quality backlinks, they should at least be in a position to get some for themselves.

Be on the lookout for liars. A company that promises to get you the topmost spot will be outright lying, a dead giveaway that there are more disappointments to follow, or the company is involved in some shoddy SEO tactics that are likely to come and bite you in the future.

SEO Takes Time

SEO takes time – nothing like an overnight success. Any company that promises you results within a month or two should raise suspicion.

SEO requires that you spend the necessary time doing all that’s required of you to become an authority or to even find a slot within the first few pages of search engines.  

A qualified SEO firm should create realistic expectations instead of hard-selling themselves to you. It’s also important that they have a good grasp of how your market operates. If you’re competing with giants, then they shouldn’t even try to convince you how you’re going to beat them. You might outrank them in a few keywords, but that’s just that.

How competitive are the keywords you want to rank in?

Highly competitive keywords take time to rank compared to the less competitive ones. Don’t overplay yourself by thinking you can achieve the topmost ranking in some of the highly competitive keywords. You should even count it as luck if you appear within the first few pages.

Goals are NOT Guarantees

Legitimate SEO firms work with goals. They can work with first-page placement goals, but that’s NO guarantee those are the results they’ll be getting.

That’s because results are generated by super-complex search engine algorithms. These algorithms are supposed to be fair to all, and considering your competition is also working hard on their side, then don’t expect to beat them in everything. In this competition, you win some, you lose some unless you’re operating in a less competitive field.

Search engines also make constant updates to these algorithms. What SEO firms do is test their system and make educated guesses on how to stand out from the crowd. They’ll then proceed to implement what works while eliminating what doesn’t.

Google is an independent entity, concerned about their reputation as with any other entity out there. No SEO firm has a direct connection with them.

SEO consultants may get certified by Google after going through their paid advertising programme, which is very different from search engine optimization.

But just because SEO doesn’t work with guarantees, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hold the firm you’re working with accountable. Speaking of which, a reliable firm should be able to walk you through the work they performed.

Openness and Transparency

Good SEO is done in a clear and transparent manner. The firm you choose has to walk with you every step of the way, taking your opinion and suggestion with the seriousness it deserves and educating you on some of the things you may NOT be in a position to understand.

That calls for the highest degree of openness and transparency. This is very important considering SEO doesn’t work with guarantees. Meaning you have to rely on the information of what the firm is doing behind the scenes.

Open lines of communication mean your inquiries will always be met with timely feedback. This is important because you certainly want to know how your money is being used.

One thing about SEO, despite lacking guarantees, is that everything can be measured. Meaning a reputable SEO firm will always have something to report. Website is ranked based on their valuable content, conversions, social media interaction, and link profile and adherence to the search engines’ hundreds of ranking factors.

As a client concerned about results, it’s the responsibility of the firm you’ve hired to update you on the progress made with regards to every single one of the ranking elements.

Client Education

SEO companies do this on a whim. You’re NOT allowed to pressure them into educating you on some of the things they’re doing, considering you might NOT be in a position to even understand some of them.

But that’s NOT to say the company shouldn’t even try. Plus there’s no harm in learning a few vital tools that will make it easy for you to understand some of the processes implemented by the firm.

Google analytics should be your friend in this. That’s because everything that happens to your website with regards to marketing can be measured with the tool. You can even use it to track finer details of the kind of changes your website is experiencing.

Google Analytics works on creating valuable data on the kind of audience visiting your site, and their geographical location, as well. Through the tool, you can also come with great content ideas or even make necessary adjustments to your marketing strategies for better results.

By understanding the role of Google Analytics and how to use it, you can easily keep track of what your SEO consultant is doing instead of following them in total darkness.

Account Management

A reliable SEO will link you with a point of contact or service manager. This is the person to contact or expect to hear from should anything arise.

Your assigned point of contact is expected to be up to date with the latest development in your industry. They’re the people to supervise and make sure your project is handled to the best possible standards.

They’ll research your competition and figure out an even superior strategy to beat them. To achieve this, they have to work with you to come up with a definitive marketing strategy that puts your business in an even more favourable position for SEO.

Point of contact also works to ensure your channel of communication remains open at all times. They’re also expected to help you understand the value of SEO and some of the challenges digital marketing firms undergo during service delivery.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is an essential segment of SEO. There’s no way the two can be separated.

SEO is all about creating demand, while content marketing is all about fulfilling that demand. SEO can only exist when you’re able to create substance through content marketing.

Your website’s landing page, blogs, about us, and product descriptions are all encapsulated in content. And its role is NOT only limited to ranking you higher but to communicate your message to your targeted audience, as well.

Content marketing also helps with brand awareness. It does this by introducing valuable link juice to your website, and it’s among the things the SEO Company you’re hiring is expected to keep working on.

It’s therefore realistic enough to expect quality content on your site, all working towards establishing strong brand awareness for your business.

Regular Check-ins

Regular check-ins are just as important as the face to face meetings in good SEO.

The check-ins can come in form of a detailed report on keyword rankings, website traffic, link building opportunities, and conversion rates. Carried out on a weekly or monthly basis, the reports produced should provide a detailed insight into all activities pertaining to your SEO assignment.

During this time, your point of contact is supposed to walk you through the changes and make necessary adjustments where possible. The regular check-ins also come as a good opportunity to ask questions on matters you need more clarification on.

Face to Face Meetings

This should come after signing up with an SEO firm. You want the company to schedule an introductory meeting so you can discuss your project in great detail before kick-off. While a conference call can still work for this, a face to face meeting is more preferable as it gives you time to develop a better understanding of some of the things being discussed.

The meeting can be organized at the beginning of your project or on a regular basis. The consultants should brief you on what the firm has been doing or what it intends to do, you’re still allowed to air your viewpoints on possible improvements.  

Your point of contact may be highly skilled. But that’s no excuse to brush off all your suggestions. If anything, the SEO team assigned to you should be working with you throughout the process. You’re free to come up with suggestions, and the team assigned to handle your project will pick out what works and what doesn’t. They’ll then improve on it and offer even more suggestions with the aim of making your project a success.

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How to Become an SEO consultant in Singapore (in 8 Easy Steps)

Learning SEO can be as complicated as hell.

You literally have thousands of pages to dig through and master the key concepts; dozens of tools to learn and understand; and, several things to experiment with and test out your skill before you can proudly take the title of an SEO consultant.

Optimising your site for search engines is one thing, but running your SEO campaign like a real pro, with utmost surety of what to expect with every little effort you apply, is another. The learning curve never gets steeper than this.

Plus, remember your competitors are also jockeying for a leg up over you. It takes a great mind and great skills, combined with years of experience and a deeper understanding of SEO tools and all it’s involved with to gain a competitive edge over every single one of them.

Luckily for you, we’re going to break it all down for you. We plan to take all the jumbled, complex mess surrounding SEO, and turn it into an easy-to-understand structure that you can easily follow and grow your skills progressively.

We’re going to turn everything into a flowchart – a checklist, essentially.

Some people are going to find this guide reductive, but consider this as a good start for someone that has never interacted with SEO before and is a little bit confused about where to start or what to do next.

Many SEO Agencies Are Not “White”

The world of SEO isn’t all white. Not all vendors of SEO services are the same. If anything, the unscrupulous ones are the majority.

We encourage you to take full advantage of this guide. Learn to identify vendors who sell SEO services that are nothing more than black magic and lies. And it’s not like they’ll even be ashamed to charge you a bundle for it.

Much of what is offered out there in the name of SEO doesn’t work. And companies pay for it because they don’t know better – they’re totally clueless about what SEO entails.

Apropos to this, familiarising yourself with the basics of SEO could save you a bucketload of your marketing money.

That aside, how can one become an SEO consultant in Singapore?

Now without wasting another minute of your valuable time, let’s dive straight in and get started;

Learn SEO Essentials

The first step to becoming an SEO consultant is familiarising yourself with the essentials.

The first item on the list of essential things to learn about SEO is HTML. An understanding of HTML should help you understand search engines and how they operate in the modern world. HTML also plays an important role in ranking sites.

It’s after you’ve mastered the basics of SEO that you can advance to more complex topics like mobile optimisation and link building.

• Understanding the basics of HTML

You don’t need to be a coding ninja to be an SEO consultant. But you need a basic understanding of HTML to understand certain aspects of it.

For a start, you need a basic understanding of SEO to understand how Google sees sites. Search engines, in general, are not as visual as humans. They’re designed to views sites in their crude form, where everything reads like code to them.

Failure to understand code means you won’t be able to see your site the same way search engines see it so that you can optimise it correctly.

Plus, understanding codes means you can solve a technical SEO problem all by yourself. Or we could just say that understanding the basics of HTML will make it a whole lot easier for you to optimise your site.

• Resources to Learn HTML

First head over to Sololearn, Codeavangers, or Codeacademy. With any of these options, you’ll have fun learning HTML. Sololearn is the recommended option of the bunch because it’s free.

Next, go ahead and read this book: Head First HTML and CSS: A Learner’s Guide to Creating Standards-Based Web Pages Paperback.

For more resources, you might want to check out is this course.

How Search Engines Work

Still, on the essentials of SEO, the next thing you want to learn about SEO is search engines and how they work.

Search engines have spiders (a fancy name for bots or automated programs) that they send out to go and find web pages.

After finding a webpage, they crawl through its web code (scan it).

They’ll then add the page to the search engine’s index (which is nothing more than a cached collection of different web pages).

These are the pages that Google presents to its users every time they run a search query. That means, they’ll be presenting a stored version of your site and not your real site. That also explains why search engines can process results within milliseconds.

As we speak, Google has more than 130 trillion webpages in its index. When an online user searches for something, Google just searches for it in its index and presents it to the user.

In other words, if your site is missing in Google’s search index, there’s no way you’ll be appearing in the search results presented.

You have to bear in mind that these pages aren’t randomly stored in the index. They’re stored in a particular order.

• Resources to learn about Search Engines and how they work;

Here’s a visual guide from Google that tries to educate you about the undercurrents of search engines and how they work (LINK; https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/).

Here’s a YouTube video by Matt Cutts touching on the same:

To find out more about how these sites are able to rank pages and present to the user in milliseconds, then you might want to read the rest of this article.

Important Ranking Factors for Search Engines

• Google has more than 200 ranking factors in their algorithm.

You don’t need to study all of them to able to rank your site. If anything, Google and other search engines are only interested in measuring three things, authority, relevancy, and quality. That’s like the foundation of all the ranking factors.

Relevancy is about how the results presented match someone’s search query.

For instance, if someone was to search for a top SEO agency in Singapore, then they should be presented with a list of reputable SEO marketing agencies in the country and nothing else.

Authority is all about how Google is able to trust the content on a webpage. It uses links to measure authority. The more the number of other sites that link to a webpage, the more search engines rate it as high authority.

Quality focuses on users’ interaction with your content. Where your content registers a high bounce rate, then the odds are good that its quality isn’t good enough.

Resources to Learn About Search Engine Ranking Factors

• Top Ranking Factors in Singapore by MediaOne.
• A detailed, visual guide by Searchengineland.
• The Definitive Guide to Google Rankbrain.
• Backlinko’s SEO Basics Guide.

These are just about the basics of all there’s to know about SEO. To this point, you’ve only covered a small section of what you’re supposed to learn.

Pick a Niche

An SEO expert who dabbles in everything will never be amazing at anything.

As a beginner, it helps to learn a bit of everything. Find out about what each field entails before carving out a niche for yourself.

There are two ways to go about it:

• Mastering One Specific SEO Skill

Instead of being an all-rounded SEO expert, why don’t you pick only one aspect of it and run with it?

SEO is such an overarching field. There’s so much to learn and experiment with before you can attain real mastery.

You should be aiming to become a T-shaped SEO expert, where your skills cut across all SEO fields, but your mastery is in one particular area.

Here’s an example of a T-shaped marketer. The above marketer has skills that cut across different SEO fields, but their true mastery is in site crawling.

• Mastering SEO for One Particular Industry

SEO takes a different approach depending on what industry you’re in.

For example, how you approach real estate SEO isn’t the same as how you approach e-commerce SEO.

In real estate, your focus should be on local SEO, while e-commerce SEO demands that you research the keywords that your customers are using to find your products or services and optimise your site for it.

The point is to establish yourself as the go-to SEO expert for a particular type of business. For example, you could offer SEO services to start-ups, jury firms, schools, and so on.

Create a System and Delegate

As an individual, you can only do so much.

Even with niching out, SEO jobs can be so overwhelming. It’s quite impossible to do everything by yourself.

You need to grow a team. So, start by creating a system first, after which you’re to work on delegating some of the duties.

As a T-shaped SEO expert, that means some people are better equipped to handle certain SEO activities than you. Not only does delegating those tasks to them free up your time, but it also works to ensure there’s maximum efficiency.

For example, if your efficiency lies in link building and keyword research, then it helps to bring on board a content developer.

The system you create is meant to make sure that everyone involved in your projects reads from the same script.

Continue Learning

SEO moves fast.

With search engines making thousands of updates in a year, you should learn to refresh what you know about SEO and make necessary adjustments to the strategy you use.  

Some of these updates are minor and have little to no impact on your overall SEO strategy. Still, it’s advisable to keep your fingers on the pulse of these changes to get a sense of where SEO is headed.

You’re not chasing algorithmic changes, but trying to get a sense of what search engines are trying to achieve.

That demands that you follow other SEO experts and network with them to learn from what they’re doing.

So, how do you network with other SEO experts, especially here in Singapore:  

• Start attending meetups
• Start attending SEO conferences
• Follow them on Twitter and LinkedIn
• Join SEO-related Facebook groups
• Read their blog posts and subscribe to their email list
• Watch SEO videos
• Listen to their podcasts,
• And so on…

Choose what works for you and run with it. The trick is to apply the Pareto principle. For 80% of the time that you spend doing SEO stuff, spend 20% of the time trying to learn SEO and expand your horizons.

Practise, Practise, and Practise some More

You’re not an SEO consultant simply because you’ve been reading about it. You need to put everything you’ve learned into real use. And that’s where this section of this handy guide comes in handy.

You need three things to practice SEO.

1. Create Your Own Website to Work on

We suggest that you set up your own website and use it to put everything you’ve learned into practice.

Plus, practicing SEO on your own site gives you’re the freedom to implement changes freely.

You don’t need permission from anyone to change a title tag or make some little tweaking on your HTML files and so forth.

When you want to change something, you go ahead and change it with no one to question your authority. It’s that simple.

What you’re doing is testing every concept you learned or picked along the way. You find out about something; you test it on your site. You get to learn in the process, and if it doesn’t work, you figure out how to improve it or perfect it for results.

You have the freedom to do all this on your website and not somebody else’s.

In other words, running your own website will help you become a well-rounded T-shaped SEO marketer.

Source: Moz

Learn all you can about SEO, then apply everything you learn to the site you create.

This is what will make you go from an SEO newbie to a real consultant, with something to show.

Take on Client Projects

Your site is for testing the ideas you picked along the way. Now that you know what works and what does, how about you risk it all with a client’s site.

Here’s the thing: Much of what you know at this point puts you miles ahead of a lot of other SEO ‘consultant’ out there. Believe me, most of them don’t get this far.

For the first client you land, don’t overcharge them or anything. If anything, let them pay whatever they’re comfortable with. Or you could just do it for free by taking it as some internship.

This should also prevent them from expecting much from you or expecting you to perform some miracles.

Work Somewhere

This is an option you’d want to consider if you still feel like your skills aren’t good enough. Find an agency near you and work for them or under someone as you learn from them and what they do.

You can apply everything you learn from the agency to your blog. Keep learning every step of the way until you’re able to master almost everything.

Patience is a virtue

You can’t grow from a total novice to an expert SEO consultant overnight.

It takes time to grow your skills.

According to K Anders Ericsson, you need not less than 10, 000 hours of practice to earn the right to the expert title.

The point is, your journey to becoming an SEO expert is a long one and takes years.

You need to keep on learning and applying whatever little knowledge you pick along the way to become an expert.

Don’t worry or throw in the towel when things fail to work in your first attempts. Give it time instead and keep on working on improving your skills. Eventually, you’ll get to understand what you’ve been doing wrong.

The 5 Keys of SEO

The next step to becoming an SEO consultant entails mastering five key points, as listed below:

• Keyword research and Identifying

The first step to running an effective SEO campaign is doing thorough research on the keywords that you wish to rank for. You have to begin by finding out what search terms prospective clients are querying into search engines first before you can figure out how to rank your site for them.

Choosing the wrong keywords means you’ll have a hard time ranking your site for them. You’re also at risk of directing the wrong audience to your site, and consequently ending up with a high bounce rate that will see to it that your search engine position tanks even further.

• Content Marketing

SEO and content marketing are joined at the hip. There’s no way you’re getting ranked without content.

It doesn’t matter how perfect you’ve optimised your site and worked on all the technicalities affecting SEO. You need content to rank, and that’s about that.

To learn about content marketing and how to apply it in your SEO campaign, here’s an article you might want to read: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-content-marketing.

You might also want to consider reading this: Your complete Guide to Content Marketing in Singapore.

• Optimising Content for SEO

SEO isn’t just about populating your site with relevant content. You have to make sure that you’ve optimised your site for a list of relevant keywords.

It also goes beyond stuffing your content with relevant keywords.

You have to take your time to learn and understand how to optimise your site for the keywords you singled out.

• Technical Optimisation

People hardly talk about technical optimisation, despite it being one of the most crucial segments of SEO. This is especially true for big websites such as Amazon, with thousands of web pages.

If your website is big enough, packing thousands of pages, here are a few resources you might want to dig in to develop a better understanding of technical optimisation and how to go about it.

1. Chapter 5 of Beginners Guide to SEO: Technical SEO
2. Technical SEO Backlinko
3. Technical SEO in the Wild
4. SEO Audit

• Link Building

There’s no way around this: search engines now consider link building as a huge part of their ranking process. And it’s not like they’ll scrapping it off any time soon.

The only option you’ve got to win in the SEO game is coming up with an effective link building strategy.

Mind you; not all links are the same. Google will only rank you when the sites linking back to you are high-quality enough.

As an aspiring SEO consultant, the next thing you want to master is how to build backlinks. How do you reach out to other sites or position yourself as a link magnet?

Here are a few resources that you may want to check out:

1. The Definitive Guide to Link Building
2. Key Rules of Link Building
3. Link Building Strategies: Your Complete Guide
4. More than 100 Links
5. 7 New Strategies for Getting High Quality Backlinks

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Ultimate Guide to the Real Cost of SEO Services

Hiring an SEO agency is necessary for the long-term success of any business, as discussed earlier. Now let’s shift gears and talk about factors to consider when choosing an SEO agency and how to compare their prices and services.

Tips For Hiring an SEO Agency

Hiring the right SEO agency for your business can be a daunting task due to the plethora of options available in the market.

However, you need to be careful when hiring an SEO agency since not all of them can fit your business.

Always keep in mind that the main aim is to appear at the top of SERPs. Therefore, to achieve your goals, you need to hire a competent agency.

Here are factors to consider when hiring an SEO agency.

SEO Knowledge

SEO is not a task for amateurs; it requires a high level of expertise and knowledge to get high conversion rates. Therefore, when hiring an SEO company, look for one that has proper SEO knowledge.

To determine the level of expertise of an SEO agency, ask them about the amount of time they’ve been in business and the qualification of their team members. You can also ask them about the strategies they’ve put in place to keep up with the latest SEO trends.

Another way to determine their level of expertise is by looking at their previous records. Consider hiring a company with a history of boosting website traffic and rankings on search engines.

Here are other questions you should ask to determine the level of expertise of an SEO company.

• Has the company ever received any awards?
• Which other clients does the company serve?
• Does the company demonstrate thought leadership?

Below is a graph showing the type of SEO services offered by most agencies.

Photo credit: Bruce Clay

Cost

Cost should be your topmost consideration when searching for an SEO company. Knowing the amount of money you are willing to spend on SEO services will help you choose the right company. It will also help you avoid straining your finances.

If you do not have enough money for SEO, you need to reconsider. This is because hiring a cheap SEO company may not give you your desired results.

However, this doesn’t mean that all companies that charge less offer sub-standard services. Some companies charge less as a strategy to attract customers but render high-quality services.

Therefore, you need to conduct thorough research before settling on any company. Also, consider the payment model that the agency prefers to find one that matches your preference.

Photo credit: Bruce Clay

 

Customer Service

An excellent customer service translates to the success of any business. A competent SEO company would go out of its way to establish a strong relationship with its customers.

Additionally, the firm should also make an effort to understand their clients better: their ambitions and current SEO position. It should then put the right measures in place to help them achieve their goals.

Moreover, the company needs to have good communication ethics. Be sure to ask them the communication channels they use and how often they will contact you. A good agency should give you plenty of options so you can choose a convenient one.

Also, before hiring a company, ask them about their maintenance policy. As you already know, SEO is a continuous process, and so you need to update some strategies regularly to achieve your objectives.

Additionally, ensure they tell you how often they will be carrying out the maintenance practices. You should also ask them if you are required to pay a maintenance fee to prevent misunderstandings in the future.

To get information about a company’s customer service, read online reviews to see what other customers say about them before deciding.

 

Strategies Used By The Company

When hiring an SEO agency, first inquire about the strategies they use to obtain results. A good SEO firm should be open with their clients about their strategies and give a detailed explanation about the process.

They should tell you about the tools they use for keyword research and how they’ll analyse your results. If they can’t give you all this information, consider it a red flag and avoid them.

Also, be careful about companies that promise you results within a short time. This is because SEO is a strategy that takes a bit of time to see results. Such companies could be using black hat tricks which can result in penalties.

The company also needs to employ innovative approaches to achieve results for your company. Avoid companies that use link-building as their only SEO strategy. This is because your company needs other strategies like on-page optimisation, faster loading time, and an enjoyable user experience to stay ahead of competitors.

What SEO Services Should Your SEO Agent Offer You?

After hiring an SEO agency, you need to understand the kind of services to expect from them. Below are some of the services offered by SEO agencies.

Content Audit

A content audit is one of the most important aspects of SEO since it ensures your content matches the searcher’s intent. If your content matches the searcher’s intent, it will rank high in SERPs.

Therefore, after hiring an SEO agency, ensure they conduct a detailed content audit and give you a report. Study the report keenly to know what’s working and what you need to change. Also, consider implementing the suggestions on your website.

During a content audit, your agency should look out for things such as:

• Missing pages
• Voice search optimisation
• Duplicated content
• Poorly targeted keywords
• Inconsistencies in the company name, email address, and phone number
• Poorly ranking content

Keyword Analysis

Keyword research is essential for any SEO strategy. Therefore, your SEO agency should identify trending keywords in your niche that can help drive website traffic.

Your agency should keep the following factors in mind when performing keyword research.

• Keywords frequently used by your competitors
• Keywords that will yield a high return on investment
• your target audience
• Choose between long-tail and short-tail keywords
• Keywords that are likely to appear in the response box
• The number of keywords to use to generate traffic

Off-page Optimisation

Off-page optimisation is among the top services that an SEO agent should offer you. This refers to factors outside your page that affect your ranking in search engines, such as your backlink profile. A backlink profile refers to the number and quality of websites linked to your site.

For instance, a fashion blogger may link to the website of a fashion store when talking about a certain piece of clothing that people can find in that particular store.

Other off-page optimisation practices include:

• Creating shareable blog content
• Encouraging bloggers to link to your website content
• Creating an optimised Google My Business profile
• Monitoring your brand’s mentions across all social media platforms

Website Monitoring and SEO Reporting

A good SEO company stays consistent in website monitoring and SEO reporting. Google console is an example of a tool that an SEO company can use for website monitoring. The tool informs you if Google stops crawling or indexing your website.

There are different types of SEO reports you can expect from your agent. They include competitor analysis, keyword research, link audit, and traffic and conversion reports. You can receive them either monthly or weekly.

Factors Affecting the Cost Of SEO

After determining the types of SEO services you need, most people ask how much they cost. The fact is that SEO costs vary depending on many factors. Some of the factors are discussed below.

Type Of Service Provider

SEO charges differ according to the type of service provider. A freelancer charges different from what a company may charge.

Generally, an SEO company charges a lot due to its credibility and consistency in delivering results. Moreover, companies have several costs to incur like rent and other expenses.

On the other hand, freelancers offer their services at affordable rates since they have fewer expenses.

The Geographical Location of Your Business

The location of your business plays a major role in determining SEO costs. If it is located in a region with many businesses in the same niche, the cost will increase. This is because your SEO company has to work harder to boost your business’ rankings in SERPs.

It needs to ensure your content is of better quality than that of your competition. It also needs to work tirelessly to obtain many quality links from other websites.

The number of locations your business operates in is also another determinant. If your business operates in several locations, you’ll need to create different pages for each location. The more pages you create, the more the SEO cost.

The Strength of Your Competition

You need to consider what your competitors are doing to determine how much money to spend on SEO. This is because your competitors’ efforts determine the amount of effort you’ll need to put in. As you already know, the more effort you put in, the higher it costs.

First of all, you need to know if your competitors are active on social media. If so, determine how strong their social media presence is. You also need to know the quality of their website content and how often they publish it. 

If they are using link building strategy, try to find out the sources of the links and their strength.

Time

The cost of SEO is directly proportional to the amount of time spent creating and optimising pages. The time you choose depends on the amount of money your company can afford for marketing. If you are on a tight budget, but you want your company to perform, consider hiring an SEO agency for a certain number of hours.

Although paying for a certain number of hours may be convenient, you may not get the desired results. Therefore, it is advisable to pay for more comprehensive services like monthly contracts. Paying for such services will allow the agency to work continuously on your SEO strategies, thus optimal results.

Link Acquisition

Backlinks to your website determine ranking in the SERPs. Getting many quality backlinks makes your website rank higher for relevant keywords in your industry. This is because these backlinks show that your site is trustworthy.

To acquire these backlinks, you may need to pay the site owners. The higher the quality of the link, the higher the price. Additionally, the more links you acquire, the more you pay.

However, if you need to cut down on the cost of acquiring links, use the following strategies.

Request your friends and business partners link to you: If any of your friends have a blog or a social media profile, ask them to mention your company and link to you. However, it’s important to keep in mind that relevancy matters. So, for your links to be valuable, look for friends or business partners in your industry.

Create quality and relevant content: Quality and relevant content will attract people to your website. As a result, many people will link to it.

Ask Social media influencers to mention and review your website: Some people trust what social media influencers tell them. Try reaching out to social media influencers with a huge social media following and ask them to mention your business. You may end up getting backlinks from some of their followers.

Current Rankings

Your current position in the SERPs greatly determines SEO cost. If your website is highly ranked, the cost of SEO will be significantly low. This is because the SEO agency only needs to employ strategies to help you maintain your position. Maintaining takes little effort making it cheaper.

On the other hand, if your website is poorly ranked, your agency must work harder to improve your rankings. Therefore, they will charge you more for these efforts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is SEO worth it?

Yes, SEO is worth it. An effective SEO strategy can generate a better return on investment than other forms of paid advertising. 

However, because of the ever-changing dynamics of themarket, it may be difficult to determine what the ideal return on investment for SEO looks like.

Is SEO needed monthly?

Monthly SEO packages are the most popular in the marketing business. This is because industries, clients, and websites keep evolving and agencies need to implement these new ideas without time restriction.

Is SEO better than Google Ads?

Adwords produce results faster compared to SEO. This is because it is easy to create campaigns, and you will begin receiving visitors immediately. On the other hand, SEO takes a lot of time, especially if your website is new. However, the results, in the end, are worth it.

How do I get SEO certified?

To get SEO certified, you need to complete a course on SEO successfully. It indicates that you have received the appropriate training and possess the essential skills to deal with SEO.

There are various options for obtaining SEO certification. You can either take an online SEO course or attend physical classes.

How does SEO affect my business?

Small business owners can utilise SEO to build fast, sturdy, and user-friendly websites that rank higher in search engines. As a result, they will be able to attract potential consumers and increasing conversion rates.

 

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It’s a Wrap

These are some of the realistic expectations you can have towards any SEO firm you’re planning to trust with your marketing needs. You can test the company to find out if they know their stuff, and if they’re competent enough to deliver on their promise.

Do you still need help with SEO even after reading this? Well, go ahead and call MediaOne today for a free consultation on how they can help get your brand in front of potential customers for more business.