I’m Leo, CEO of applemint.
applemint is a digital marketing agency founded in 2017.
I recently had a chance to share my company’s SEO method in Taiwan and thought I should also share it in my blog.
I’m a type of guy who does not like inefficient sales so I have been acquiring clients through SEO.
How do I do so?
I aim keywords such as “digital marketing Taiwan”, “Taiwan SEO”, “Taiwan ad agency”, “Taiwan website” in Japanese.
The results?
We get 2-3 inquiries a month so we get around 24-36 inquiries a year.
The companies who contact us through our SEO-ed blogs are very likely to convert to our clients so that is how we have been acquiring clients.
Wanna know our methods?
Let me share with you 5 tips.
Contents
Tip1: Understand your audience purpose
Needless to say, we all know good contents are a key to SEO.
what is a good content?
Good contents satisfy the needs of search engine users.
For instance, when I aimed keyword such as “SEO Taiwan”, I began by thinking what kind of information users need.
My answer was that they are either looking for technical SEO skills or companies who have technical SEO skills in Taiwan.
So I wrote 2 versions:
1. SEO companies to avoid in Taiwan
2. effective SEO methods in Taiwan
You may wonder why I wrote “SEO companies to avoid in Taiwan”.
From my past experience, I know that stories depict negative matters like “failure” and “What NOT TO DO” tend to get better CTR.
Better CTR usually helps the content to rank better.
In this blog, As I mentioned earlier, I am just going to write about effective SEO methods in Taiwan but some of you may want to know about which SEO company to avoid in Taiwan so let me briefly explain.
If you see the any of the following characteristics from a SEO agency in Taiwan, I suggest you NOT ask for SEO help:
1. No contents/blogs written in the website.
2. Emphasis on internal optimization (less focus on contents writing)
3. Claims they have a special tool to improve SEO
4. Claims they will do a thorough research on keywords
5. Not-so-mobile-friendly website
6. website is not HTTPS
If you wish to know more in details, just contact us or I might write another blog about SEO later.
Let me continue on with other tips.
Tip2: “selections” and exhaustive information
let’s say you are searching for a cafe in Taipei.
How would you Google? You will Probably search “Cafe Taipei”.
Let’s actually Google to find out which website comes on top (as of Feb.6th, 2020)
Do you see any patterns?
Let me circle the pattern in red line then.
As you may notice, if you “select” and “recommend” cafes in Taipei for users, it is likely to rank in top.
This is very effective especially for local search such as “cafe”, “restaurant”, “bar” and other business who have physical stores.
This happens due to exhaustive information.
For example, Google knows that people who are looking for cafes in Taipei want to know and compare many cafes.
How?
Google has been accumulating past search query data for decades.
The tendency of exhaustive information ranking high is true regardless of what language you Google.
Let me Google “cafe” “Taipei” in Chinese and Japanese.
You may not be able to read but you do notice the numbers.
Most of them are contents that help users select and recommend their favorite cafes in Taipei.
So if you need traffic from users that are interested in Taiwan, you might want to write contents about local search because local searches tend to be searched more often.
If you do decide to write something about local information, I suggest you make a “selection” for them.
Tip3: Expertise and Trustworthiness
People are looking for reliable information with expertise.
Let me define expertise first.
Let’s say you are writing a content about cafes in Taipei.
The expertise may mean basic information such as operating time, what type of coffee they serve, and what coffee bean they are using.
My thought is that you do not need to be too nervous about expertise.
Just write contents that supplement your theme and be coherent.
Regarding trustworthiness, there are two things applemint has been conscious of doing for the past 3 years.
1. Be neutral
2. make sure to cite URL for your source of information.
In addition, SEO expert Brian Dean says it is better be back-linked by highly authorized websites.
I would say it’s better but not necessary.
Just make sure you use reliable information and cite the source.
Conclusion~why companies do not want to SEO~
Let me summarize what I just wrote before I wrap up.
There are 3 points you want to be aware of when doing SEO in Taiwan.
1. Understand searcher’s intention
2. Exhaustive information
3. Expertise and trustworthiness
Also, if you see any of the following characteristics from a SEO agency in Taiwan, you may want to reconsider your decision:
1. No contents/blogs written in the website.
2. Emphasis on internal optimization (less focus on contents writing)
3. Claims they have a special tool to improve SEO
4. Claims they will do a thorough research on keywords
5. Not-so-mobile-friendly website
6. website is not HTTPS
There are tons of information about how to SEO in Taiwan but nobody really gets serious about it.
I would like to share my story to end this blog.
Why help other companies?
As I mentioned, exhaustive information is a key to rank high.
Let’s say you own a cafe in Taipei and you want to your cafe to be exposed more.
You decided to write a content about cafe in Taipei.
You start planning and find out that…….you need to introduce other cafes to rank high because Google wants exhaustive information and selection of cafe.
This is one of the reasons why many people do not write contents to get more traffic from organic search.
(or maybe they are just busy operating their stores)
So is SEO just content writing?
One of the most important aspects of SEO is content writing.
internal optimization may be just as important as content writing yet the most time-consuming and the easiest way to rank high in SEO is content-writing.
Now, when a SEO agency write an estimation to the client and write “content writing” as one of the items, the client might think, “why is writing a blog content so expensive?”
I can understand.
It’s just a blog, right?
Well, people who can write good contents actually go through a series of practices and numerous trials.
When applemint gets a SEO project, we really care about the quality of our contents.
For those who cannot afford a SEO agency to write contents, we actually teach them how to write contents.
so there it is!
Good luck with your SEO in Taiwan
Click to contact applemint.
