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Search engine optimisation, better known as SEO, is important for your business. Whether you run a small-scale business or a large one, without SEO your business is bound to suffer, ie; if you have a website.

If you want a growing pile of visitors to click onto your website, you will definitely need to use SEO. The job of a typical search engine, such as the widely known Google, is to locate the most applicable websites, based on what the user is looking for.

In simple words, if you are not making use of SEO on your website, your website won’t get the ranking on the first page, and let’s face it, no one has the time to scroll through the search engines pages, apart from what’s in front of them. If you want to stay ahead of the competition, it’s time for you to up your game and engage in SEO.

Let’s look at the top 4 reasons why your business needs SEO.

Visibility: Now your business seriously needs visibility. The idea behind staying visible to your audience is to make sure they know about you and the services you offer. When you use SEO, you are telling your audience directly about what you do. A customer is never going to buy anything from you until they trust you. Thus, the more you optimize your products, the better your chances of the customer finding it.

Branding: When you become visible, your brand becomes recognized. Branding is crucial if you want to bring your product to the front. By utilizing SEO, you’re making sure that your brand becomes more recognized by the visitors on the search engines. Besides, staying on the first page is probably the best way for you to brand your product and services.

Credibility: According to the searchers, your website’s ranking is heavily dependent on SEO. With a better ranking, you will receive more leads, which naturally leads to a certain type of credibility. Afterwards, Google will take its time to crawl your website and finally you’ll be able to see results after some time. Invest your time and money in SEO so that you can rank on the first page, because it will definitely make you seem more credible to users.

Generates more Traffic: This by far is the most difficult thing, and is the most important part of running a business. Although traffic won’t earn you money, but it definitely will attract the users to visit your site, talk about it. If your website, content, images and everything else is optimized, Google will provide you with a good rating for your website. Once your rating is good, more audience will visit your site, look at your services and products. And this eventually increases the chances of earning more money.

This is by far the most difficult step to accomplish, and definitely the most important part of running a business. Although traffic won’t earn you money, it will definitely attract users to visit your site and spread the word about your business. If your website, content, images and everything else is optimized, Google will provide you with a good rating for your website.

Once you have established a good rating, more users will visit your site, view your products or even engage in your services. This eventually increases the chances of earning more money.

Internet marketing in Malaysia, in particular, SEO is becoming more popular and widely used by many businesses. Besides SEO, social media marketing and pay-per-click also allows one to market their business online.

Understanding the importance of SEO is important for your business. Learn more about it, talk to the representatives of digital marketing and see how they can help you. You can find out more about the digital marketing companies in Malaysia through the search engines.

Online businesses are facing a lot of pressure due to the tight competition in the market. All of them are competing with each other to achieve their daily market share. One of the best things about an online business is that your customers and client can belong to any part of the world. This brings up the need for a successful digital marketing strategy.

In this article, we will focus on the top 3 signs you must look out for that say it’s time for you to redo your digital marketing strategy.

1. When the Google Ranking Goes Down

All of us wants to stay on top of the search engines results so that more and more traffic is snared to our website. This is where a successful marketing strategy is required. However, with time, your rankings will go down, causing a loss of conversions and revenues. So, what’s the reason behind this?

Most search engines will rank your website depending on the structure, security, and usability of the website. Your website could have a very good rating, but a time comes when the search engines will want your website to be responsive to mobile devices. Failure to do this can lower your site’s ranking.

Secondly, you should update your website’s keywords every now and then. The related site pages should be updated on a regular basis. Finally, you as a businessman should make sure that the search engine optimisation campaign in Malaysia, or wherever you are, does not stop. It should be an ongoing process.

2. Loss of Conversions!

When your website drives traffic but fails to make enough conversions, it is time for you to redo your conversion rate optimisation initiatives. This can be done by tracking the visitors on your website, and checking out what they need. You can also consider updating the content, the shopping cart and navigation in some cases.

3. Flat Lining Social Media Channels

Did you know social media plays an important role in the online marketing of your business? According to some researchers, social media will be about 25% of online marketing spend in this year. This is a loud call out to all businesses that have neglected their social media channels: it is time for you to revisit them. Be responsive, talk to customers, answer their queries, and stay proactive. You can also try guest blogging, and repost on the responses.

Staying on top of the competition is very important. These 3 signs are a warning signs for you. Look out for them and if you find any one, or all of them are present, it is surely a sign for you to revamp your digital marketing strategy. Remember, it’s all about who gets the lead on the search engines. Don’t get lost in the pool of companies on the third page of Google searches. Work hard and stay on top. If you need help in this regard, look out for a professional and a reputed Internet marketing company in Malaysia. Talk to them and get ahead of the competition.

With 2018 now in full swing, we’ve had time to reflect on the many digital prediction articles – including our own – trying to make sense of where digital marketing is heading this year.

Whilst it might seem that every year is the year of mobile, the breakthrough of artificial intelligence, and a giant leap forward for voice search, the reality is that when we return to work in January, we continue right where we left off in late December. No breakthroughs will happen overnight. There will be no sudden overhaul of digital marketing, no magic, no machines taking over the world.

Rather, I hold up my hands and acknowledge that any prediction highlighted below will most likely be a slow process of change over months and years, rather than a sudden event that will revolutionise the industry.

With the caveats and formalities out of the way, below are some of the most prominent predictions for 2018 and beyond.

1. Keywords Fade: Audiences Invade

The overlaying of audience targeting has slowly shifted from a ‘best practice’ to an absolute essential. Gone are the days of launching marketing activity by plastering some keywords to a few generic ads and expecting results.

Keywords are not going anywhere in 2018. However, their importance will continue fading as consumers expect more and more personalised messaging.

Ads must be tailored to each individual at the right time in their purchasing journey. Therefore, digital agencies must continue investing effort in identifying, segmenting and overlaying audiences, to then produce the specific advertisement that targets the right people at the right time.

As such, audiences will continue to grow in importance – even more so than in 2017 – especially with the introduction of further audience segmentation such as in-market for search, household income, and similar users.

2. We’ll Favour More Transparency

As far as public perception goes, 2017 was somewhat of a difficult year for digital marketing and social media platforms. As such, transparency will become one of the most crucial elements of online marketing in Malaysia.

Before customers come to your business, they are increasingly reading reviews, searching for your social media platforms, looking at your company values and stalking you via all Internet avenues to get as much information as they can about you before approaching your business for goods and services.

Digital marketing is catching up with this trend, as various platforms now allow you to leave reviews about brands on their social media pages, for example.

As such, companies should be investing in their “behind-the-scenes” marketing strategy – be more transparent, be more human, and you will be rewarded. As this trend gains pace, be prepared to jump on the bandwagon.

3. The Focus is Hyperlocal

Digital marketing platforms are making it easier for small businesses to compete with big brands – Google Posts rolled out to all businesses last year, whilst Facebook Local gives customers more localised experiences, for example.

With all these advancements, and small businesses increasingly stepping up their Internet marketing in Malaysia, global companies will be drawn into the challenge of competing locally.

Creatives and messaging must appeal more the specific environments they serve, whilst geo-targeting should be used regularly.

4. Press on, Amazon

Amazon could become the new Google in many ways. Don’t call me overdramatic; again, I am not saying this will happen overnight – in fact, this is a trend that has been going on for years, but is likely to reach its peak in 2018.

A Kenshoo study found that 56 per cent of customers started their product searches on Amazon, suggesting a lower percentage did this through Google. Furthermore, with 63% of Amazon advertisers expected to increase their investment in 2018, this could only accelerate Amazon’s growth.

As such, there is the potential for big brands to adjust their strategies and budgets more appropriately moving forward. Based on the 56% figure highlighted above alone, businesses will need to take more aggressive steps to make bigger and smarter investments in Amazon’s marketing programs to gain a competitive advantage.

5. Bitter Twitter

Contrary to other social platforms, Twitter is struggling to expand its user growth, and 2017 was no different.

Last year, Twitter tried to shake up the platform by doubling its famous 140-character limit, yet the positive impact resulting from this change is yet to be seen. On the contrary, some users have argued that by expanding character limits, Twitter has lost one of its key distinguishing features from other social media platforms.

Even more, brands are no longer as precise in their messaging as they once were. This change may therefore turn out to have further negative impact on user growth, and Twitter is likely to continue receiving a smaller piece of the pie.

Instagram, on the other hand, is growing at a remarkable rate. Since introducing their latest tool in 2017, Instagram Stories has become more popular than their rival Snapchat.

As such, we expect more users to continue shifting platforms in 2018. Further, with Instagram showing better user engagement for B2C companies than any other social media platform, this will help it become the go-to digital channel in the months to come.