Navigating the Competitive Landscape: SEO Strategies and Pricing in the Philippines
SEO or search engine optimization has always been a topic that most businesses in the Philippines have difficulty understanding and harnessing. By definition, SEO is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or web page in a search engine’s unpaid results – often referred to as “natural,” “organic,” or “earned” results. The visibility of a website highly depends on which top page of a search engine it appears on, as users do not tend to browse through each and every page of the search engine. The more frequently a site appears on the search results list, the higher number of visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. SEO targets different kinds of searches, whether it be local search, image search, video search, news search, or industry-specific vertical search engines. As an internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engine is preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML, and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.
Overview of SEO in the Philippines
Recent state of SEO in the Philippines: The services offered by local SEO experts are still at its infancy stage. Based on forums and blogs, most self-taught or learned SEO professionals are targeting foreign companies. The reason for this is low competition and higher reward. SEO professionals and companies that are vying for the big fish online marketing advertising budget do not have substantial case studies or search engine marketing background to justify spending on SEO. Local SME companies who may want to invest in SEO would only have a choice between hiring a self-taught SEO individual or outsourcing to an SEO company as the cost of an in-house SEO would be too hefty. The local SEO professionals can gain good experience and knowledge; however, applying white hat SEO practices may cause slower ROI and the client’s patience may wear thin. With current and upcoming applicants for call center and BPO companies, this job becomes an alternative revenue source for those who have better English proficiency, but they are in it for the short term. In the quality aspects, there are mentors like Jayson Mangaliman who holds SEO seminars teaching legitimate SEO practices and at the same time providing education to college internet marketing courses to eventually produce quality SEO Philippines. However, many companies are still hesitant to invest in SEO.
Per Click Service Market stated that in the Philippines, 97.3 percent of internet users are utilizing search engines as their main tool in using the internet. There is a lack of information that indicates online user behavior in using search engines. However, we can gather insight from global studies such as a study by iProspect which mentions that 85% of internet users begin their internet session at a search engine. Thus, we can conclude that search engine is also widely used in the Philippines as it is global.
Importance of SEO Strategies
SEO strategy is a very useful way of ensuring that your company gets sales and a good site. Moreover, customers will leave good feedback which can help you develop your business even more and get an edge over your competition. There are at least four things that a good SEO strategy can do for your business. First, an SEO strategy develops a very cost-effective way of getting your business aligned with your target audience. A well-defined strategy will help you understand the needs of the customers and what they are looking for. This allows you to align your business to the specific needs and wants of your customers, ensuring first-rate success by leading potential customers to long-term success with a front door of happy customers. SEO is an incredibly useful tool for building your brand. Brand building may be the most important tool of a successful business. The key to success goes beyond target customer acquisition. Keep in mind, it is said that it takes about 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. The trusted website Wikipedia states, “It takes 5 to 7 brand impressions before someone will remember your brand.” SEO is a very useful way for potential clients to find information on a subject and compare it to your competition. A high rank on a particular topic suggests to customers that you are, in fact, an expert in said subject, and they are more likely to seek your services.
Understanding the Competitive Landscape
From a tactical viewpoint, many organizations in need of SEO services have poured into Asian marketplaces, with the Philippines being a common destination. Due to globalization and technology, these services come from firms both within and outside the country, as the service can be easily executed through outsourcing. The increase in availability of SEO services is highly advantageous for buyers, as this increases their bargaining power. According to the text “Competitive Strategy” by Michael Porter, an increase in the number of competitors always discourages price increases, and the existence of a great number of competitive brands or companies intensifies the rivalry between them. SEO service firms must face the reality that price increases in their service will be highly difficult to justify and that their rivals will find it tempting to undercut their pricing. This is bad news for all firms, as it means a greater amount of cost involved for higher quality SEO services.
The industrial organization (I/O) viewpoint is a classic strategy for analyzing a firm’s competitive environment. This theory purports that the external environment is the only influence on a firm’s strategic initiatives and posits that within an industry, five forces determine its profit potential. These include the threats of new entrants, the bargaining power of buyers, the threat of substitutes, the bargaining power of suppliers, and the intensity of rivalry between competitors. At present, there is relatively no threat of new entrants into the SEO industry, exclusive of new entrants in the general internet marketing or advertising field. A study of the I/O perspective, particularly the five forces, will provide a clearer understanding of the competitive landscape within the SEO industry, beginning with the bargaining power of buyers.
Key Players in the SEO Industry
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a website web presence. As an internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. This is a very effective method because internet users trust search engines and having a presence in the top positions for the keywords the user is searching increases the website’s trust.
Market Analysis and Trends
So you’ve already expanded your business to the Philippines, assembled a kick-ass team, done your research on the Filipino market, and are ready to build your website. You know that you have a unique product, or are ready to offer a superior level of services. Unlike David, however, you may not have the resources to take on the marketing Goliaths in a direct head-to-head battle. Even if you did, would it be the best approach? The concept of market analysis and trends is integral to business planning, and it is all too often that decisions are made on anecdotal evidence, outdated information, or ‘gut feelings’ – all of which are recipes for a possibly disastrous campaign. Market analysis is essentially about gathering information and making sense of it, to understand whether a particular product or service would satisfy the needs of a group of consumers. In this case, Dave’s cupcake smorgasbord would be the product, and the consumers would be the businesses looking for web solutions. The aims are to: – Understand the current market for web design or similar services – Understand web-user and business behaviour when seeking such services – Identify who the competitors are and how they are positioned – Analyse the demand for the product and how it’s likely to change.
Identifying Target Audiences
To begin thinking about target audiences for search engine optimization, it is important to consider the client’s needs. Many SEO professionals immediately consider the audiences that their clients want to target via search marketing, and naturally so. However, it is arguably more important to consider the audiences that clients want to attract to their site. Search engine traffic can be highly targeted and an effective way to attract consumers already interested in the product. Alternatively, it can be a way to attract broader audiences and raise awareness. In some cases, it might be more beneficial for a client to attract a certain audience to the site and a different one to the product. SEO is not always about attracting more visitors to a website; it is about attracting the right visitors. These are all considerations that should be discussed with the client and can greatly affect the targeting strategy.
Effective SEO Strategies
Site and image links: Site links increase the importance of other pages of the site. Image links should have ALT tags, and the picture should not be irrelevant.
Quality content: Content should be related and relevant to the site. The quality and quantity of the content are very important. The content should not be duplicate, and copyright issues should be clear. Content with many grammatical mistakes will not have a long-lasting effect.
Search engine-friendly URL: Use URLs that are SEO friendly. The URL reflects the relevance of the site. URLs should not use query strings and session IDs.
Heading usage: The usage of headings can give a brief idea of the relevant content. H1 is for the main heading, and H2 and H3 are for subheadings, which can be helpful in describing the content.
Meta tag usage: The usage of meta tag keywords is very important. The keywords should be those on which the ranking of the site is desired and those that are typed by visitors to get the site of their interest. Meta tag keywords are added to get the site indexed on those specific keywords.
Appropriate use of title tag: The use of title tags can increase or decrease the relevance of the site. Titles should be an actual description of the site and should be understandable by anyone.
On-Page Optimization Techniques: On-page optimization techniques involve the steps concerned with changes in the site itself. It involves a number of measures, which include:
SEO strategies are considered an essential part of search engine optimization. In this article, you will get to know about the effective SEO strategies. Two main techniques are divided into two categories, which are on-page and off-page optimization techniques.
On-Page Optimization Techniques
There are many ways to optimize a web page in an attempt to get higher search engine rankings. Among the best ways to achieve this are to generate high quality content, meta tags, and structured URLs. Posting high quality content seems to be the lynchpin of any SEO technique, as a recent survey of 100 UK SEOs revealed. The benefits of high quality content are obvious. Users are far more likely to return to a website where they feel they have benefited from the content, with the upshot being that they are more likely to buy something or click an advert. High quality content also generates more inbound links from other sites, as other webmasters will be more likely to link to your page if you have something useful to say. This in turn can lead to an increase in page rank and therefore even more visitors from search engines. High quality content can also increase the conversion rate of visitors from search engines. Since users will be more likely to understand the benefits of your product after reading something informative, they will be more likely to buy. Creating a URL structure which search engines can easily crawl is also considered highly important. The general consensus is that a shallower the depth of a page in a website, the easier it is for a search engine to crawl it. Pages which are deep within a website (i.e. many clicks away from the homepage) often won’t get indexed. This is a problem for many websites. A high proportion of websites are hierarchical in nature, and most content is often many clicks away from the homepage. The most common method to overcome this is to generate many ‘landing pages’ which are essentially ‘doorways’ to the content. These can be effective if they are linked to from other sites, but the generation of these pages purely for search engine visibility may lead to indexation of the wrong page. A URL which includes the targeted optimization keywords and is close to the root directory is generally considered to be more effective. This is a simplification, as often it is not realistic to generate many pages at the root directory level, but in an ideal world this would be the case.
Off-Page Optimization Strategies
Guest posting is also a link building technique, but it differs from article writing. In guest posting, the article is written for the owner of the blog or website who permits the guest to post on their blog/site. A successful guest post allows the author to link the post back to their site in a suitable place within the guest post.
However, some SEOs discourage directory submissions because paid directories are general/regional/niche-based and may host similar websites on the same IP/hosting/shared hosting service. This can make it look like your site has duplicated content, which could incur a search engine penalty. Another ethical method of building links is article writing and submission. This involves writing an article about a topic related to your website and getting it published on a well-established site or an article directory with high traffic. This technique provides more value for the reader, as the article will be informative and not a typical cut/paste 250-character article.
According to Mahendran (2010), as written in the Search Engine Journal, the primary off-page SEO strategy is link building. It is described as the process of getting links from other websites to point back to your site. He states that the links act as ‘votes’, which is a strong signal to the search engines. The more votes a web page has, the more it becomes seen as an important and authoritative source, resulting in higher search rankings. The quality of the link also plays a role in increasing search engine rankings. The quality is determined by various link building techniques, one of which is directory submissions.
Off-page optimization strategies according to Raphi Mahendran:
Content Marketing and Link Building
An effective way of getting your content out there on other websites is to “pay” for a guest blog post. The payment here is the content that you will provide. Some websites will charge a fee for posting this content, and others will post it for free if they feel it is good enough to engage their users and increase their own readership and advertising revenue. This is very similar to article marketing, the difference being that the SEO has complete control over the content and anchor text because it is on his/her own site. A few articles can be placed on article directories; however, in general, this is also a way of acquiring inbound links from guest posting on other websites.
A piece of content connected with a website is a must-have for an SEO campaign. However, not just any piece of content and not just any website will do! The best content will be useful, interesting, and engaging enough that not only will other people want to display it on their own website, but they will also want to link to it. This has been termed as ‘linkbait’ by SEOs.
Local SEO and Geo-Targeting
Local SEO can happen on any site, but it’s most helpful for smaller businesses with a local audience.
Local SEO covers both PC and mobile internet access, meaning you never miss out on a potential customer. The behavior to search for products on PC with an intention to go and buy them at local stores is also increasing.
Local SEO is focused on providing results that are relevant to a searcher based on their current location. Imagine someone is searching for a good and reliable restaurant while they’re on a walk. It would be much more beneficial for the user to find a list of restaurants in their area than a big list of the greatest restaurants. According to Google, almost 80% of local searches on mobile phones resulted in a purchase on the same day. If you’re a bricks and mortar store, this is a real opportunity.
For many businesses, small and local is beautiful. If that’s you, local SEO could be a game changer. It can help you to be more visible to customers in your area, and that means more footfall to your door.
Pricing Considerations
Company B does not offer fixed rates for their SEO services and only offers a proposal after an evaluation of the client’s website. It is not uncommon for a company like this to turn down clients with low budget capabilities after realizing that they cannot make much profit taking that client’s website to the first page on Google. A positive from this, SEO companies like depending on the success of their previous clients to fish in similar clients and they often overdeliver in terms of performance. This might actually lead to them doing more work than they have been paid to do. On the flip side, the company may find no competition and decide to take a handful of money from the clients doing the least amount of work possible. Considering both of these scenarios, it makes the overpriced or second look client regret their decision to use that company, even though the results may have been decent.
Company A offers a package for P15,000 with projected P10,000 earnings after six months. Doing SEO for too long, the company has established some level of trust with their clients. Because of this, the company can afford to take less profit from their SEO services by cutting back on the basic services that they offer and giving you the bare minimum instead. This SEO model is based upon the premise of taking something off the bottom but adding something else on top.
Factors Affecting SEO Pricing
Some companies will approach SEO with a mindset of ‘how cheaply can we do this and still avoid too much damage.’ Not approaching SEO at all might have been a better idea. In the modern age of SEO, there are no quick fixes. It is an investment into a long term marketing strategy. If the business fails to adopt that mindset, it would be better off avoiding SEO altogether, as the money saved here would outweigh the damage done to the site if it were to employ cheap SEO and have to later rebuild that site from scratch. Time spent without investing in an effective SEO campaign is likely a better idea for companies not ready to make the commitment. A break even point analysis can also be made to confirm if SEO is a good investment for the company.
Pricing differs between SEO pricing Philippines, with price being determined by the quality and quantity of work the agency intends to put into the campaign. The more established an agency is, the more it is likely to charge for its services. A good SEO campaign involves a lot of work, and a lot of work involves time. Modern and effective SEO is a complex process involving numerous areas such as content production, link building, pay per click, online PR, and social media; the list goes on. All of these activities require considerable time and skill, and as such, they don’t come cheap. This also links to the quality of work. ‘You get what you pay for’ quite sums up the results of a cheap old black hat SEO campaign. A high quality campaign from a reputable company with a proven track record will surely cost you, but the results will be much more effective and long lasting.
Pricing Models and Packages
Fixed Price / Project-based SEO This model is quite similar to the monthly retainer, but the buyer knows exactly what they are getting with regards to a set amount of service. This is often good for smaller projects, but large projects will require multiple fixed price quotes resulting in sporadic and often unorganized SEO effort. This can limit the level of success for a campaign, so this model is often best avoided for businesses that are serious about making SEO a large source of traffic and revenue.
Monthly Retainer Most SEO agencies offer a fairly standardized SEO service with a set amount of work paid for each month. This allows customers to see what they can expect for their investment. It also allows companies to budget and plan for SEO. A large number of clients prefer this model and feel comfortable knowing they are investing a set amount for a relevant increase in rankings. The downside to this is that it makes SEO somewhat of a commodity as customers might compare $$/link from one company to another. Any comprehensive and competitive SEO will take a fair amount of time, and this means that target hours will often be exceeded. This, in turn, will lead to the need for some leeway with customers or an increase in the set hourly rate, neither of which are particularly great.
Pay for performance SEO Often touted as the Holy Grail of pricing models (though I tend to argue with this statement), is a variance of the price-based model as the customer pays for the service when the agreed goals are achieved. This is best avoided as it is notorious for being highly unpredictable and often using unethical SEO practices. This is a blanket statement and not always true, but this is what the client has in mind when he hears about a pay for performance SEO campaign.
Similar to pricing models in other service industries, SEO services are available in several different packages, with the main differences being the amount of service provided and the length of time the service will be provided. These are way too generalized, further pricing structures need to be defined to help both customers and SEO companies organize and budget for SEO services.
Evaluating the Cost-Effectiveness of SEO Services
This can also be applied to branding efforts where a cost can be given to the value of a customer remembering a particular site in the long term. This method is a strong contrast to variable cost effectiveness by comparing money spent to random increased traffic with no specific outcome. In order to determine the cost-effectiveness of SEO services, we need to evaluate the return on investment and measure the impact of SEO.
Simulation of the accountability through SEO efforts is one that provides clear goals and cost of achieving the goal. An example would be a sales website that wants to increase sales by 25% in 12 months. The sales increase can be directly attributed to organic SEO sales by using web analytic software to track referral sources, and an SEO campaign that costs $1000 a month can be easily judged to be effective if it increases sales by more than $1000 in the same time period.
The cost-effectiveness of SEO services is most times based on the ROI principle. The service which yields the highest return on investment is generally judged to be the most cost-effective, however this is dependent on one’s judgment of return on investment. Before deciding on the end, it is important to identify the goals and the measurement used to identify completion of these goals. Then a cost can be attributed to the achievement of these goals.
