I get the same two questions I’ve been getting since I began my career:

What Does an SEO Agency Do? A Lot, Actually.

A lot of business owners don’t understand what goes on at an SEO agency, meaning as far as they know, I (and the rest of my team) juggle hats all day.

First, let’s clarify what SEO even is. SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is the process of increasing a web page’s search rankings in order to increase online visibility.

Here’s why hiring a legit SEO agency is so important to any business: 93 percent of online experiences begin with a search engine, and 47 percent of people click on one of the first three listings.

Now, I say a “legit” SEO agency because in the online world there are two general types of SEO: black-hat SEO and white-hat SEO.

White-hat SEO gains search rankings based on actual hard work and data. Black-hat SEO involves shady methods that can get you to the top, but not for long—and these tactics are usually damaging to your long-term presence (more on that later).

What goes into white-hat SEO? Well, there are more than 200 factors that go into what makes a page rank high on the search results page, but the ones that matter the most (and the ones white-hat SEO revolves around) are:

Whether or not your website is secure (HTTPS vs. HTTP)
Whether or not your website is mobile-friendly
How fast web pages load on your site
Whether a web page has the correct schema markup (type of website code)
The quality of your web pages’ content
The length of your web pages’ content
Presence of social signals that point back to your website
Presence of quality backlinks that point back to your website
Whether or not you have optimized images on your web pages
The search intent of the user

How do we influence all these factors? Strategically.

WebSITE STRUCTURE ANALYSIS

While Google and the other major search engines (who don’t really deserve mention, though I know Bing is trying really hard) stress that they want you to design your sites for users rather than search engines, let’s face it – it needs to be structured properly for the engines to read if you ever want to get those users. Things our web team looks for include:

HTTP or HTTPS – The “s” at the end of HTTPS means your website is secure. You need a secured site even if you don’t take credit card payments online because Google gives secure websites preference in the search results.
Analytics setup – We look for existing analytics tracking, and if there is none, we install it so we can better track where your leads and sales are coming from. This helps provide the most meaningful results for you.
Robots.txt – This is the file that is used to prevent search engine crawlers from crawling and indexing pages on your website that you want hidden from public view.
Site errors – These send signals to search engines that your site is not trustworthy and thus not worthy of being a premium listing spot. Common errors include 4XX errors, duplicate page content, duplicate title tags, missing title tags, and crawlers blocked by Robots.txt.

Indexed pages will show up in search results and can drive organic traffic to your site.
Sitemap – Your XML sitemap is a list of all the pages on a website that you want a search engine to index (not to be confused with the robots.txt which tells a search engine which pages not to index).
Page speed – User experience is important for search engines – they know that users are impatient. This is why site speed if a factor in how well your website ranks.
Meta elements – Duplicate title tags, meta descriptions, and site content can all negatively impact your site’s search engine rankings and click-through rate. Ensuring your meta elements are optimized will better your chances of being found on the SERPs.
Conversion rates – we look for bottlenecks in the user experience and content that might be throttling leads. For example, we will A:B test different contact forms or links to find out which ones work the best for your company.

Ultimately, your website content is the most important thing you can have—it’s what will attract visitors and convert them to leads. So once we get an idea of the content you already have, it will help us decide how to structure our plans for your website moving forward.

How Do I Find the Best SEO Company for My Needs?

We also perform a keyword analysis to find the best opportunities to rank higher and connect with more customers.

OFF-PAGE ANALYSIS

Much of your SEO success takes place off your website, on review sites, industry blogs, online directories, and more.

The good part about that is that if you’re really popular online or have lots of stellar reviews from past customers, it’s easy to rank really well for your treasured keywords. The bad part of that is most small companies aren’t that popular and many may have more negative reviews than positive, no matter how good their services are.

OPTIMIZING CODE AND SITE STRUCTURE:

Sometimes your site code and structure is in a good place and only needs a few minor tweaks. (Let’s be real—there’s ALWAYS something else you can be doing to outperform your local competitors.) When the SEO team at Vietnam SEO optimizes your site code and structure, you can rest assured knowing you have experts handling the job. But more importantly, we will:

Structure your site’s navigation so it’s easy for people to find exactly what they want
Clean up the code in your site so it runs faster
Eliminate errors Google picks up when it crawls
Add an XML sitemap so Google’s crawler can quickly visit the different pages
Add internal links to pages within your site so users can flow to the places you want them to go

OPTIMIZING ON-PAGE CONTENT

Content is king. When it comes to maintaining your website, it’s not a one and done job. You don’t just create landing pages, put them live, and that’s that.

In order to consistently drive organic traffic to your website, you need to constantly be creating new content AND optimizing existing pages on your website. The SEO team at Vietnam SEO will:

Remove or rewrite duplicate content
Place keywords in your page titles to help Google rank your pages
Add well written, keyword rich copy to underperforming landing pages
Create new landing pages to draw in other visitors
Add images, format text, and change colors to move more visitors to convert

OPTIMIZING OFF-PAGE FACTORS

Your off-site presence is just as important as your on-site factors—which is why we will work to:

Use local SEO tactics to improve your position in the search results for local terms
Find directory listings of your business online, verify them, and update them to make sure they contain accurate information
Seek out new, valuable directories to add your site to
Submit press releases about new services your company is offering and other newsworthy items we come across
Discover noncompetitive blogs in industries similar to yours for whom we can write guest posts in exchange for links

CONTINUED ANALYSIS

Search engine optimization is more than just making these changes to your website. What’s the point of making changes if you don’t analyze the data. At Vietnam SEO, we track, test, tweak, repeat! #TTTR That’s our motto, and we’re sticking to it. Throughout this process we will:

Monitor rankings, traffic, and conversions on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis
Use the data we’ve gathered to determine which of the above items will help your site the most

Good question. An SEO partnership is long-term, so you need to be sure of who you’re picking. Remember those black-hat techniques I mentioned at the top of this article? You’re going to want to avoid those.

Not all SEO companies or content marketing firms live up to their promises of more traffic, better rankings (Note: rankings aren’t the real measure of success), and more leads. Avoid any SEO company that promises anything like the following:

Overnight rankings
Doubled traffic
Instant leads
Search engine submissions
X amount of backlinks
Any sort of ROI projections



Signs of Black-Hat SEO

A red flag should go up anytime an SEO expert makes certain claims or promises about results in X amount of time. The SEOs that give our industry a bad name are famed for what we call “churn and burn” practices, which often involve gaming rankings by:

Buying a ton of links from random, crappy websites
Using a computer program to generate hundreds of pages of garbage
Using duplicate or scraped content
Submitting fake press releases in order to spam links

I won’t say these things don’t work, because in some cases they do. The problem is they’re locked in a never-ending cat and mouse game as Google slowly shuts them down, one by one.

If you haven’t used black-hat SEO tactics on your site, don’t start. But if you have, we recommend working with a trustworthy SEO company that can help clean up your website. Don’t risk the chance of getting a Google penalty.

A word of advice—do not do business with anyone that insists on retaining copyrights to any and all meta data they create, edit, or analyze for you.

If they retain or have this right assigned to them, they can legally bar you from using it, or totally strip your site should you choose to leave them for another company. With Vietnam SEO, everything we work on throughout our relationship is yours now, and yours forever.

What to Ask Any SEO Company Before Hiring Them

Before you hire anyone, make sure you look at SEO company reviews. If numerous people have had issues with a vendor, there’s something going on. Ask up-front for examples of reviews and case studies that prove success. You should also additionally ask the following questions:

What’s in my current contract? Re-read the contract. What does it include? When does it end?
What’s the process if I cancel? Sometimes you won’t gain access to your website or you’re tied into a contract you didn’t know had an end date.
How will we communicate and how often? Set expectations early, otherwise you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.
Do I have full access to my site and Analytics/Adwords accounts? It’s helpful to know who has FTP access, CMS access, Analytics access, and AdWords access.
Will I own my website? Many SEO companies have website ownership clauses built into their contracts. For example, some will build “free” websites, but if you leave your contract early you lose all rights to it (We, of course, don’t do this. When you buy a website from us, it’s yours from day one).
Do you provide guarantees? A good SEO company doesn’t. Because of all the moving parts and because each website is different, it’s impossible to guarantee results. If you talk to a company that does, you need to back away as quickly as possible!
Have you done work like this for companies similar to mine? This is crucial. Different industries have different nuances and SEO requirements, which means you need to find an SEO provider that knows your specific industry backward and forwards.
What contracts and options are available? How do I determine the right budget? It depends on your starting point, goals, competitive landscape, and internal capabilities. No one size fits all—there are no cookie cutter solutions, at least not from the best companies.
What are all your fees and payment options? Be sure you know every single aspect of how you’re going to pay for what SEO costs. Otherwise, you might have work withheld because you “didn’t pay.”

Work with Our SEO Company to Grow Your Business

So if you’re trying to choose the best SEO company (or best local SEO company), you have to ask yourself—how do I want to appear on the web? Do I want people to think of my company as a scam because my marketing people are a scam? Or do I want my site to be a reflection of my business? If you’re interested in the latter, contact us and our SEO experts today.

Best SEO Services in Singapore by Stridec

Stridec is a proven SEO agency that have helped many recognised brands and major corporations, as well as small and medium-sized businesses, achieve stellar SEO performance to drive their growth objectives, bringing them more traffic, customers and revenue in the process. Our team of Singapore SEO experts and consultants have years of experience with business SEO service and know exactly what works and what doesn't, so that you can get the SEO results that you desire in the shortest time possible.

If you're in need of a credible and results-oriented Singapore SEO agency to bring your online presence to the next level, Stridec is the right SEO partner for you. Talk to us today.


Why is SEO important for your business

Of all the digital marketing activities that you can pursue for the growth of your business, SEO is the only one that delivers long-term return on investment (ROI), as it is the only instrument that increases the authority of your brand and market value for your asset (i.e. your website) over time.

And the best part is:

The value increases over time, so the more sustained your commitment to SEO, the better your results in the long run.
SEO gives your business credibility

It has become a societal norm in today's world that whenever someone needs a product or service, the first action would be to "Google for it".

The cool thing about being visible to users whenever they search for a product or service related to your business and your website shows up among the first few search results, your brand is instantly recognised as an authority in your industry or field of expertise.

This association immediately makes you and your business more credible and trustworthy than other competitors, even if they are more established than you.

Such a perception cannot be forced or faked, and can only be earned through a disciplined SEO process to get your website onto the first page of Google search.

Now, imagine that the top search results related to your trade are all throwing up your competitors' websites, and grabbing the lion's share of all the search traffic. How would that make you feel?

If you don't want to lose any more search traffic and potential customers to others, take action on performing SEO for your business now.
SEO lets you achieve more with your money

Many times, you may be tempted to take short-term actions such as running PPC ad campaigns such as Google Ads to generate immediate traffic and eyeballs to your website.

However, with cost-per-click (CPC) constantly on the rise, you'll end up having to pay more and more to sustain and meet your lead generation or customer acquisition objectives.

Moreover, the majority of clicks for any search terms still land on organic search results, rather than paid ads.

On the other hand, with the right strategy and disciplined execution, SEO allows you to generate more leads and sales over time without incurring additional costs.

A strong ranking at the top positions on Google search results will give you the most bang-for-buck for your digital marketing budget.

Therefore, SEO is the holy grail and ultimate digital marketing strategy for creating an automated and everlasting funnel for continuous traffic to your website.

Best SEO Singapore Agency with Proven Results

When it comes to search engine optimization, results don't lie.

We believe that the best way to prove our SEO prowess is to demonstrate the ranking results of our own website on Google search.

We walk the talk and are ourselves ranked on the first page of Google search results for a good chunk of seo related keywords including:

seo singapore
seo service
seo services
seo marketing singapore
best seo singapore
seo agency
seo company
seo company singapore
seo consultant singapore

But wait, that's not all...

As an established e-commerce consultant in Singapore and across Asia, we are also ranked at the top of Google for e-commerce related keywords like:

ecommerce agency
ecommerce consultancy
ecommerce seo company
ecommerce consulting
ecommerce marketing agency
ecommerce solutions provider

What this means is…

We know exactly what works and what doesn't when it comes to SEO.

Hence, we are ruthlessly efficient about our SEO approach so that every action we take will produce the maximum results and move you up the search rankings faster.

This ensures that you get ahead of your competition and dominate your market in the shortest time possible.


What Makes Us Different from other SEO companies?

Unlike other SEO agencies, we know what works and what doesn't when it comes to search engine optimization, because every recommendation or action that we provide our clients, we tried and did it to ourselves first.

We are also very particular about the long term stability and sustainability of your website's ranking performance.





Read more: Vietnam SEO company