I’ve written a number of articles about SEO in Singapore.
This next one’s slightly different. It’d shed light on a small experiment I began running around March 2017.
As someone who relied on word-of-mouth for business, I’ve never done SEO in Singapore for my own blog. I’ve helped numerous private clients but never bothered tackling my own space because I’m limited in the number of new cases I can take (I’m not an SEO agency Singapore, but a private consultant. So my own time is required to plan and execute for clients).
As discussed previously, certain SEO companies in Singapore leave the technical aspects of SEO to overseas vendors, effectively acting as the middle-man. When that happens, we lose quality control over the standard of search engine optimization work is done.
Who assesses the link profile? Who gauges the link velocity? Who plans the link network and schema? Does anyone even know what the previous 3 questions even mean?
Leaving all technical details to outsourced vendors means the knowledge lies with them. My hypothesis was that this created a relatively weak local SEO competition. Weak local SEO competition should mean it’s easier to beat.
I needed to test this.
To test this hypothesis, I needed to go after the toughest competition in Singapore.
I eventually settled on the medical niche and SEO Singapore itself.
Medical terms are some of the most competitive in the country. Words like “Invisalign Singapore”, “Dermatologist Singapore”, “Acne Treatment Singapore” etc. They constantly attract AdWords bids of over $10 and the money aesthetic clinics, plastic surgeons, orthopaedics, eye centres and dentists pour into digital marketing is OBSCENE. It’d be a good area to test my hypothesis.
data pulled directly from Google Keyword Tool
The 2nd test area is “SEO agency Singapore” and “SEO company Singapore”. These keywords trigger nearly 700 searches every month on Google and signal clear buying intent. Thus, it’s not surprising bids up to $30+ (the most expensive industry in Singapore!) are commonplace on Google AdWords. This makes sense. After all, this is the area in which SEO agencies have the BIGGEST INCENTIVE to do well in!
3 questions to answer were:
My choice for the medical niche was a brand new website, doctorXdentist. It’s a not-for-profit blog targeted at raising health awareness in Singapore. I found that a very noble cause and offered to market it pro-bono (Dr Ethan is a really cool guy too). He also found me at a time when I was planning this experiment, which was perfect.
I started ramping up the SEO around March. Here are the results.
Domain age is extremely important in the Google SEO ranking algorithm, so I myself was surprised it ranked top 10 for multiple keywords WITHIN 3 MONTHS.
With that out of the way, I could spend a little more time on optimizing my own blog.
AskNateWang.com was set up in late 2015. But I never really did anything for it apart from sharing advice and marketing that through social media. I had to relook at all my previous posts and pick which ones I wanted to rank for “SEO agency Singapore” and “SEO company Singapore” among others.
Here’s a snapshot of the results 3 months after starting the experiment.
Once again, this test proves it’s possible to beat industry giants who’ve spent TENS of THOUSANDS of dollars on SEO over 10, 15 YEARS. And it’s possible to do it in a matter of months.
I think my biggest takeaway from these set of tests is the confirmation that SEO has changed a lot since 2015. Methods that worked back then no longer work now.
The game is a lot more technical these days, so simply outsourcing doesn’t work well anymore. It’s always best to have an extremely high level of expertise in-house to lead the overall strategy.
I’d probably stop these 2 experiments here but might have another one lined up for the finance industry (another insanely competitive space) if I can find a good partner.
Yep. It is possible to bring down competitor websites with anti-SEO. My blog’s already been targeted twice in 3 months. I’m sure it’d be an even bigger target with the release of this article.
This is just one of the reasons why I hesitate revealing too much information. I fully expect my SEO rankings to be hit, or the blog hosting to get overloaded, but I guess it’s just something I have to live with.
For the ones thinking of hiring me to do against your competitors… I’m sorry, but that service isn’t available. I don’t think this world needs more negative SEO going around.
Caveat: This post ITSELF is actually the final step of the experiment in ranking for the SEO Singapore industry space.
