Frequently Asked Questions About SEO
1. What is SEO?
Short for Search Engine Optimization, SEO refers to all the techniques that aim at improving the visibility of your website, namely the organic ranking of your website, also called as natural results in the search engine result pages (SERPs).
When we talk about SEO, we often talk about Google, for the simple reason that the market share of this search engine is most dominant among others.
As an SEO agency in Hong Kong, we’d help develop and implement SEO strategies and techniques aligned with the guidelines of Google to assist you to rank on the SERPs and therefore attract more traffic to your website.
2. Why do I need SEO in 2019?
There are more than 1 billion websites on the Internet and Google has indexed some 30 trillion pages. When internet users search on Google, the only way to make your page visible to them is through SEO. Yes, sound SEO requires time, knowledge and regular monitoring but it can quickly become your best ally, allowing you to attract potential clients.
3. What is better – SEO or SEM?
The two terms “SEO” and “SEM” are not always well understood, people even tend to confuse them. In short, SEO is used to improve the visibility of a website within the search results, which is accomplished by optimizing the content and technical characteristics of the website.
SEM or search engine marketing is a broader term, which refers to the paid form of advertising (to pay search engines such as Google or Yahoo) and helps to boost traffic as well as the leads and conversions for your website. With SEM, you have the ability to precisely control for which keywords you would want your website to rank and how much you are willing to pay for these results.
While many marketing tactics rely on you reaching out to your audience, SEO gives you the power to reach people when they are actively searching for information related to your products and services. SEO produces results over the long term, while SEM’s results are noticed quickly.
The ideal thing would be to combine the two strategies. SEO as a long-term job. The results will not be immediate, but they will last longer. SEM delivers tangible results in the short term, but is much more expensive.
4. Is content important for SEO?
Indeed, it is! Content is a key part of any SEO Strategy and one of the most important aspects of SEO. It’s always crucial to write quality and relevant content to attract your visitors. Your online content must always seek to meet the need of the internet users i.e. include the keywords that the latter will type on Google. The choice of keywords to include in any piece of content depends on the topic you choose to write on along with the most relevant and related search queries around it.
SEO content is based on foundations that have not changed:
- The content should be long enough
- It should include the keywords that are targeted
- The content should also include words/variations from the same semantic category (synonyms, related terms or often used together)
- The page should be optimized for SEO (H1, Title tag)
- Fresh content: You must, therefore, keep the content fresh by regularly publishing useful and “relevant” content
- The content should be unique
5. What is on page SEO?
On page SEO criteria are the set of internal elements of the website or web page that should be optimized to boost the general SEO of the website. They mainly involve fixing the technical and content pieces on a web page.
The different elements of on page SEO would include:
- Title Tag: The title of each page of your website appears, but also as a title in the search results, and in the navigation tab. It is, therefore, an important piece of information for the user, and especially for search engine robots!
- Heading Tag (H1): Heading tags are used to structure the content of a page. They are necessary for search engine robots to understand the meaning of a page more easily. Ideally, a page must contain only one <h1> tag that will represent the main title of the page.
- The content of the page: It must be optimized. This means, along with other factors, the content should include relevant keywords and its variations that deal with the topic
- Internal links: Internal links consist of the links established between the pages of your website. Internal links make it easier for robots to navigate within the website and improve the crawling process by Google bots and also help in improving the user experience.
- Images: They should contain an “Alt” tag. It is advisable to fill it with a very short description that explains what is the image about.
6. What is off page SEO?
SEO can no longer be limited to your own website: it will have to work hand in hand with outside elements to help optimise your website. Off Page SEO plays a vital role in increasing the popularity of your website, but it would be inefficient without a good On-Page SEO.
The different elements of off page SEO would include:
- The number of links that link back to your website/domain
- The popularity of the websites that link back to you
7. How to choose the right SEO agency in Hong Kong?
Choosing an SEO agency is always a delicate step. With the number of SEO companies to choose from, it may not always be an easy choice. You will commit in terms of time and money and you certainly do not want to go wrong. In fact, your website is important for your business and you want to see only good results. This is why you need to be well informed and find out all about the potential SEO company you’d want to hire, to get an idea about the kind of clients they manage and what they have achieved for them. Choose an SEO company that demonstrates actual results and showcases their successes.
8. Why should you partner with Bruce Clay APAC for SEO in Hong Kong?
Optimizing your website with the help of a sound SEO strategy requires time, tools and skills that you probably may not have in-house. For SEO to work efficiently, there will be several factors that will have to be taken into account and actioned. These aspects include but are not limited to: Do you know the latest changes in SEO that took place last week, yesterday or a few hours ago? What are the basic trends of SEO? Which sites will be affected? These questions are tricky to answer and only an experienced SEO agency will be able to help you get the right answers for them.
Bruce Clay is one of the top SEO agencies in Hong Kong and has been optimizing websites since 1996, which is before Google was even a website. If you are interested in what Bruce Clay APAC in Hong Kong can do for you, why not fill in our enquiry form and we will run a free SEO audit for your site!
9. What to expect from SEO in 2019?
It cannot be repeated enough: SEO is in constant evolution! This requires a constant watch to be aware of the latest algorithms and techniques to apply. The best SEO practice nowadays is to understand internet users, understand their searchers intent, what attracts them and what they need.
- Voice Search Will Continue Growing
Google reports that 55% of teens and 40% of adults use voice search daily; and, the ratio of voice search is growing much faster than type search. Further, according to Comscore, 50% of all searches online will be voice searches by the year 2020. That’s going to be huge.
Now, with more and more devices utilizing voice search, there are important things to consider.
How does this impact search terms?
How do you optimize your website to rank for voice searches?
Does voice search matter in your industry?
- RankBrain Grows More Powerful
Google released RankBrain in 2015, a machine learning technology to help deliver its search results. The goal of RankBrain is to better interpret search queries and serve the most relevant search results. This has been a lifelong goal of Google Search.
RankBrain can take sets of data created by humans to help establish a baseline, and then can apply machine learning to determine the best search results based on multiple factors over time.
In 2019, we expect Google to use this data and power to make changes on the fly at an even more rapid pace, meaning it is becoming even more important to stay on top of your website and optimize it in real-time.
- Create Exceptional Content
Technical optimization is also important, but it’s not the real key to your SEO success in 2019. A website that is perfectly optimized, but publishes content that has nothing to do with the expectations of users, will have very little chance of reaching the top of the SERP (and especially to stay there for a long time).
If you know your target audience and offer them an interesting, enriched and personalized experience, your efforts will not go unnoticed. This approach represents a double challenge: you can improve your ranking, but also the quality of the traffic you attract and therefore your conversion rate. In the long run, this allows you to develop a community around your brand and gain credibility.
10. What are the types of SEO techniques?
The different SEO techniques are numerous and can be classified into three different categories: White Hat, Gray Hat and Black Hat. Colors represent the degree of appreciation of search engines for the techniques you use for your SEO. The study of these three categories is quite long, but here is a summary.
- White Hat SEO:
It consists of using techniques that respect what search engines advise you to do for your SEO. By using them, you will not be penalized. These normal, and especially legal, techniques that help you generate more traffic are those that are most appreciated by search engines.
- Black Hat SEO:
These techniques are totally against the rules of the search engines and above all, they are prohibited!
- Grey Hat SEO:
The Gray Hat SEO is sort of a technique that consists of practices between the Black Hat SEO and the White Hat SEO. These are the ones we are not sure of. Grey Hat SEO seeks to optimize sites using various techniques, while respecting Google’s algorithms. Grey Hat SEO thus ensures to respect certain ethics and qualities.
If Google thinks you are using Black Hat SEO techniques, your site’s traffic is in danger. The best thing to do is use only White Hat SEO or Gray Hat SEO techniques to create a solid reputation with Google and ensure success in the long run. Being ranked one or two days before being discovered and banned by Google will not get you anywhere.
