Today, the Philippines as a developing country has been a market for outsourcing products and services from first-world companies. These companies have noticed the potential of SEO services due to the cost and quality ratio, which is very high compared to hiring an in-house marketing team.
This work will venture into the rise of SEO services in the Philippines and how it has unlocked possible success for numerous businesses ranging from multinational companies to SMEs. It will explore how the foreign market of outsourcing the SEO services to the Philippines has been successful and attest this to be a valuable form of investment for their companies’ online marketing campaigns. At the same time, local companies are now aware that SEO is very cost-effective compared to traditional forms of advertising. This has given them a chance to increase spending a portion of their advertising budget on online marketing, which was not happening before.
SEO today in the Philippines is increasing rapidly. Many Filipinos have taken notice of this marketing strategy and have provided services at a very affordable rate compared to outsourcing to a company abroad. So where did SEO in the Philippines start? How did this service become a third-world want to a first-world need? And what does the future hold for the Philippine SEO market? This topic will explore and aim to answer these questions by first tackling its history, the present services being offered, and future possibilities or enhancements that can potentially lead to increased sales in this specific type of online marketing.
When it comes to the topic of search engine optimization or SEO, especially in the Philippines, one is led to think about starting a website and increasing traffic possibilities. While the method of SEO was not introduced to the Philippines until 2004, this gave online marketing strategists a new tool to use in a third-world market, and who could blame them? Multiply the average Filipino’s salary by 10, then convert it to dollars, and you get their target market’s working salary. Foreign first-world markets can’t resist but to try and aim for any form of sales from their products and services.
Benefits of Philippines SEO Services
Increased online visibility The main goal of SEO is to increase the site’s visibility within search engines. True, there are other ways to do this with paid advertising like PPC, but those ads show up at the top of the search results and on the right side of the screen. Many users have said that they do not click on those ads, but rather the organic results that show up beneath them. A study done by Nielsen Q3 2012 corroborates this, showing that 85% of click throughs by users on search engines come from organic results while only 15% comes from PPC or other type of advertising. Now one factor of SEO is on-site optimization, by modifying a site’s content and meta data, but another important factor is improving rankings by link building. This is where SEO currently has a leg-up on PPC as having a presence in the search algorithms themselves gives a better impression in the minds of consumers. SEO can also help to create a more user-friendly site by rearranging links and the site architecture to make pages within the website easier to find and navigate.
Increased Online Visibility
Researching and comparing the product by reading several reviews and blogs about the specific product he/she would want to purchase, the average Filipino spends an hour of internet usage. Compared to another country, this would total to about 3 hours. The average Filipino’s lifestyle change is the opportunity and ideal market for a national or international entrepreneur carrying a product or service in the World Wide Web to target a Filipino audience. However, it may prove difficult due to the different types of websites that Filipinos use and visit. SEO would increase the chance or probability of a Filipino internet user to encounter a foreign product or service website. This can be done by making the website more visible to a targeted type of Filipino internet user, increasing the rank, and making the website appear more frequently in Filipino social network sites, online game sites, video streaming sites, and search engine websites. By increasing the presence of the specific product or service website to a targeted Filipino internet user, this, in turn, creates awareness and interest. At the same time, it acts as a primary step for point 2.0 to look to foreign entrepreneurs carrying a product or service. Filipinos in the Philippines and abroad have a chance to compare and consider purchasing a foreign product or service, even in their own concept of Philippine lifestyle.
A typical Filipino student’s lifestyle changes every holiday season. The trait is common for every student in the Philippines. It is common for Filipino students to end the semester or school year with the intention of doing nothing but to rest and relax. Most of the students would visit their relatives’ houses or spend the most of their time using the internet playing online video games and communicating using chat programs. Due to this common scenario in the Philippines, a change is eminent. This change would help those students who would rather spend more time playing games or chatting and less time doing academic work. Due to the global recession where earning a living is hard, it has also pushed many Filipinos to seek extra income using the internet. Think of the scenario where an employee has just finished his work and goes straight home to his computer, spending the rest of the evening using the internet. The second common scenario would be a student who would spend the whole day using the computer after spending a few hours in an internet café with friends. This is a common culture of Filipinos in the Philippines and abroad. It is well known that many Filipinos use the Internet. The most common activities for the current age group are social networking, console gaming, online gaming, video streaming websites such as YouTube, researching, and online shopping.
Targeted Traffic Generation
Overall, targeted traffic from search engines can provide a greater chance of success for the business. With more insight and cost-effective solutions to advertising, it can provide both short and long-term methods to increase the return on investment. This will help enhance the business performance through data-driven methods and a systematic approach, which will be of great benefit for any type of business looking to move forward in today’s modern market.
Philippine SEO services can also provide a cost-effective advertising campaign. The aim is to increase the website’s exposure on search engines, which will display an opportunity to provide links for a wide range of products and information. In most cases, an advertising campaign can be quite costly, providing the same results as SEO with less efficiency. This is due to the main idea of pay per click advertising. It is a way of buying visitors to the website rather than earning them. Although it is an effective method, it comes with a price. SEO provides an alternative that will help give a long-term advertising solution at a lower cost and higher return. Pay per click makes a great addition to SEO for a dual targeted traffic generation method.
Quality SEO efforts can bring traffic to the website and generate more leads for the business. By focusing on targeted traffic, SEO can filter unwanted traffic and increase the percentage of visitors who are actually looking to buy a product. This can help prevent wasting money and time on unproductive sales and increase the return on investment. The main idea of targeted traffic generation from search engines is to find out what people are searching for and provide them with your products or services. This can be done by using higher ranking keywords or finding niche keywords that have less competition but still bring sufficient traffic, thereby giving a higher chance of conversion. Furthermore, SEO can provide various insights into customer behavior using analytic tools. By finding out what exactly the visitor searched to get to the site and where the visitor is coming from, it can give a good understanding of the target market. Customer behavior is an important part of understanding business operations, and SEO provides a solid platform to gain more information on the customer.
Improved Conversion Rates
An additional benefit of SEO services is the simple and easy to use CMS (Content Management System). An optimized site should be able to assist the business goals of a website. This CMS approach makes it easier to implement change to the design of a web page without needing a programmer to write the code.
This easy to understand mix of data related to the keyword, the organic ranking, the paid rankings and the ROI analysis provides an in-depth view of your site’s performance in the major search engines. This information is essential for the marketing team as it offers a press release service to produce qualified traffic to a specific sale, event or special offer on your website.
When you have increased online visibility, targeted traffic to your website, and analytics to measure which marketing sources are the best and which ones are not worth your time or money, you will be able to make the most of your internet marketing efforts. If you know where your most qualified site visitors are coming from, you’ll be able to invest in future internet marketing campaigns (i.e. Pay-Per-Click, SEO, Affiliate Marketing etc.) that have a higher ROI.
Factors to Consider When Choosing Philippines SEO Services
When looking for a Philippines SEO services provider, another factor you should take into consideration is whether these services are tailored towards your business. The more customized the SEO services are to a business, the more effective they will be. Essentially, a customized strategy will lead to greater results for your business. One of the problems with using a prepackaged SEO service is that the results are uncertain and often lack the effectiveness of the research and strategies implemented. A prepackaged service can often be a cost-effective solution for a small starting website, but it is vital to understand that the results this will bring are nominal.
First, clients should take into account the expertise and experience of the Philippines SEO services provider. A veteran provider has a greater understanding of the SEO market and a better understanding of what SEO strategies are best for a website. This is crucial because SEO strategies are constantly changing, and a provider needs to be aware of these changes to offer the best service possible. A SEO services provider with a good amount of experience has developed a reputation within the market and can obtain a position as a leader in the industry. An experienced provider has the ability to go with an organized white hat SEO strategy. These are all important factors to consider when looking for assistance from a seasoned SEO services provider.
Expertise and Experience
Experience for an SEO service often is an indicator of their expertise. The rule of thumb is that the longer they have been around doing SEO, the more knowledge and the more reliable they are. This can be good, but don’t take it as a be-all, end-all. There are many newer services that are not run by amateurs and can be far more affordable than the larger firms. High cost does not always mean high quality, and neither does it mean that a more affordable service is low quality.
When taking a look at the expertise of an SEO service provider, it is always a very good idea to look into and make sure they have an internal linking strategy. Using this strategy should help improve your site’s popularity by getting it additional resources and internal links on your own website. Usually, this is a very low-cost and time-intensive process. A step that should help your site get off the ground and begin attracting more attention. A lot of high-quality SEO services should also offer some on-page optimization, and if they do not, you may want to consider using a different service. This involves editing content on your page to help with relevant keywords and also adding meta tags to help searchers find your website. Although it may not be as important as it was in previous years due to the fact that these are the things that are done before any link building, and link building is what affects the off-page ranking, it is still a very viable strategy to get your website a better rank.
Expertise Experience When you choose to work with an SEO service provider, it is important to consider their expertise in the game. There are providers in existence currently that have been involved in SEO for the last decade and have not stayed updated on the latest changes in search engine algorithms. This could have a negative impact on your site and the cost effectiveness of the SEO service. For instance, this past year, many of the old methods of building links have become obsolete due to updates in search engine ranking algorithms, which in turn led to a large number of sites that were ranked using primarily these techniques to plummet off the results. This can be a terrible thing for your site being linked to from these sites which have now been deemed spam, as it could possibly affect the reputation of your website.
Customized Strategies
SEO efforts should always begin with keyword research. It’s by analyzing and selecting keywords that an SEO can begin to develop a strategy. This is because keywords are the most important method by which a site will be found in search engines. A site that sells outdoor clothing might choose to target keywords such as “Buy Fleece Jackets Online”. It’s important to target keywords that people actually search for. A site targeting obscure keywords will get very low levels of traffic. Keyword targeting should run in line with on-page optimization. On-page optimization is the process of editing site content and code in order to rank for specific keywords. This will involve editing Meta tags and, in some cases, changes to the body text. A good on-page optimization strategy should always be strongly focused on a set of keywords and should ideally try to rank for the selected keywords and no others. Off-page optimization will come next, but the site owner should be aware that the quality of the on-page optimization can have a large effect on the results of an off-page campaign. High CPC keywords can be very difficult to rank for, and sometimes changes to keyword focus can lead to a change in strategy. Always be prepared to re-evaluate.
An ideal SEO strategy for any site is one that takes the nature of the site into account and which always keeps the goals of the site in mind. This means understanding the purpose of your site and the way that purpose can best be fulfilled. A website that is designed to sell one product will require a different approach to an affiliate website or a site that is using AdSense to generate revenue. The site owner must start by clearly defining what the purpose of the site is and what they hope to achieve from their SEO efforts. A clear goal is something that an SEO can work towards and will be able to measure progress against.
Transparent Reporting
An end report is the cherry on the cake in an SEO campaign. Often overlooked and undervalued, a comprehensive report is a failsafe way to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign. The standard report should give an overview of the work completed and a detailed analysis of the traffic, ranking, and ROI data. It is commonplace in the industry to use a ranking report outlining the progress for specific keywords which the client has agreed. An outdated method to prove the effectiveness of an SEO campaign, it is widely unknown if the basic data is manipulated to show greater results than achieved. This can be one of the most complex challenges to an SEO, proving end results often with complex data in an ever-changing online environment.
Transparency is essential in any business agreement. A reputable SEO company will provide a potential client with a free quote, an in-depth analysis, and a fair understanding of the work involved. Starting with the basics of what you would expect from other offline sales channels, a quotation should be broken down into the specific activities the client wishes to undertake, how much these will cost, and the expected outcome. An ethical SEO company will also suggest to the client an insightful way to measure ROI using their services. This may be in the form of increased revenue, higher rankings, or the attainment of additional goals such as increasing brand awareness. An experienced SEO company will offer clear medium to long-term objectives.
Cost-Effectiveness
With that being said, it’s best to find SEO companies with rates that are page independent. This can mean paying on an hourly basis or finding rates that serve an individual service, i.e. $75 for an optimized page. A slightly different method is a total cost of a project with an understanding of what the project entails. An example could be an agreement of $1000 for 25 keywords in a 6-month span. This method has more flexibility in that it’s understood not all goals are achievable due to competition or market changes, but if something is not accomplished, a goal can be shifted to another without extra cost.
Cost-effectiveness is another important factor to consider with SEO services in the Philippines. To put it simply, some offshore SEO companies in the Philippines have packaged pricing in a tier that includes a set price for X number of optimized pages. In other words, they try to classify pages and use a base rate, which is not the best method. Why? Because if they are truly doing things optimally, there should be very minimal on-page or off-page work for future pages. It’s also not cost-effective if the price increases with the more pages on your site. While that may be considered cost-effective, it’s not the best solution because if you made an investment of $300 on 3 pages and the increased rate for another page was $125+, you’d likely be better off just making sure that 4th page is highly optimized with the initial work done on it. This presents the best solution: investment in the initial work of a page and minimal costs in the future if done correctly.
Conclusion
A concrete SEO company can provide a long-term partnership in helping companies scale search rankings, increase visibility, and placements through organic search. This will be crucial to companies that are dependent on online marketing for revenue. With the current situation and the rise of the global cryptocurrency market, it is a prime opportunity for cryptocurrency companies to invest in quality SEO work, with the hopes of getting search traffic for related keyword phrases of their services to increase sales and ROI on their consumers. A crypto marketing agency is bound to benefit heavily from the quality service that a Filipino SEO company can offer, at a fraction of the cost in comparison to other countries.
Over the past couple of years, the Philippines has now been recognized as one of the premier destinations for offshore SEO services to English-speaking countries. In comparison to other competing countries, the Philippines offers an environment that is very appealing to foreign companies. With the power of the English language, a common trait amongst Filipinos, the Philippines can offer the same if not better comprehension and implementation of SEO tactics in comparison to native English-speaking countries that offer the same services. The economic labor cost in the Philippines is a lot lower in comparison to developed countries. This means that companies can save a lot in operational costs and overheads if they were to outsource their business to the Philippines.
The demand for SEO services has been on the rise ever since companies learned to take advantage of the internet as a resource for company communications and transactions. A lot of these companies depend on the internet as a source of revenue through sales and expanding their business through online promotions. SEO has now proven to be a high ROI solution to this goal, and a lot of companies will be shifting their online marketing budget to it due to its attraction of free organic traffic.
