What is SEO and How Does it Work?

As of January 2017, the total population of Singapore was 5.74 million. Of this, 4.71 million of the population has access to the internet, and 4.4 million are active on social media while over 70% of the population are active mobile social users.

These statistics are a clear indication that going digital is the most logical approach for businesses. This makes digital marketing and presence among businesses in Singapore very important. One way businesses and websites can maximize their online presence, is by using SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation which is a collection of activities that a business can use to improve their online presence, which makes them easier to be found on search engines like Google Singapore. It can be described as the quality control of online content and websites, which is tasked with making sure users are directed to the relevant pages.

How Does SEO Work?

To guarantee relevant results, search engines are continually changing their SEO requirements. However, there are two main approaches to SEO that a site or business can adopt to help them improve its ranking.

Onsite SEO

The first step is to optimise your website by carefully matching your site to the requirements of the search engines. There are many factors you have to implement, and each of them is essential to your online success. The most important are;

• Keyword clusters – the first step will be identifying a set of keywords that are related to your business and your site which are commonly used by users when they are looking for similar information, products or services.
• Match content and keyword clusters – once you have identified your keyword clusters, you have to optimise your current or new content to these keyword clusters. This means you place the keywords carefully and strategically within the material. There is an acceptable number of times by search engines to have the keywords, and there are also guidelines that should be followed when inserting the keywords.
• Website infrastructure – other than identifying keywords and carefully inserting them in your content, your website also needs to be optimised for SEO. Some of the features that could help your site get better ranking include the page loading speed.

Offsite SEO

Another critical element of SEO is offsite SEO. In the onsite SEO, all the components required are implemented within the site. In offsite, the elements are implemented on the site but, they are just as essential to the favourable ranking of the page.

• Active social media presence – Of all online activities in Singapore, social media is ranked second at 73% behind search engines at 74%. A vibrant social media provides a steady flow of visitors to your website. By having an active presence on social media, users who follow you can quickly check for updates on your sites.
• Back-linking – it is vital to make your website authoritative. Other than having quality content, another way you can build trust among your readers is having links leading back to content on your website from other sites. It is not easy to achieve this, but it is possible with the right quality of content.

By implementing the different elements of SEO, you slowly build a positive reputation with search engines. As your reputation grows, the ranking of your page improves. If your site is on the first page, more people are likely to see it and visit it. Simply put, SEO is the cost you have to pay to get to the front page of Search engines where more people can notice you and your business.

Oh, and in case you didn’t know why it is essential to have more people visit your site, the more people visit, the more business you have and also the value of your site grows.