Why Businesses in the Philippines should Invest in SEO

SEO or search engine optimization is the practice of improving a website and all the elements connected to it in order to increase a brand’s search engine visibility, organic search traffic, leads, and revenue.

SEO has already been utilized by different businesses and industries around the world for many years or since the search engines were born in the 1990s. But in the Philippines, SEO is not yet fully utilized by local businesses.

There are already many agencies and professionals in the country who are providing SEO services but most of their clients are businesses from abroad. This only shows that our local business sector, especially in the provinces, still need to realize the power of SEO to achieve their business and marketing goals.

If you’re a Filipino who runs a business in the Philippines, whether it’s a hotel, resort, restaurant, travel agency, school, consulting firm or any other, here are 3 big reasons why your business should invest in SEO.

1. People go to search engines to find products they’re looking for.
People usually go to search engines to find the exact products or services they’re looking for, whether they are using desktop computers or mobile gadgets. On the other hand, they usually use social networks like Facebook to connect with friends, express themselves, play games, or even just spend time staring at the newsfeed doing nothing.

Of course, some people also use Facebook to find places and pages to connect with businesses and brands they need. However, Google and other search engines are still the places to go on the Internet to search for products people need.

If your business is not visible on the search engines, you are missing a lot of potential customers.

For instance, if I am from Metro Manila and I want to visit Tacloban, I’ll be using Google to search for restaurants in the city.

If I will search Google using the query “where to eat in Tacloban”, the following will be the result from my end:

You can notice that Google shows on the top of its search results page links from a blog (Lakwatsero), review website (Trip Advisor) and Calle Zaragoza (Google Review). That result gives a big advantage to the restaurants listed in the blog post of Lakwatsero, Trip Advisor, and of course Calle Zaragoza because they are the first ones that will be discovered by people who’ll search Google using the query “where to eat in Tacloban”.

How to get your business appear on top of search engine results pages? The answer is SEO. By having a website and blog for your business, optimizing your content, and improving what people talk about your business in review sites such as TripAdvisor and Google Places, your brand can be more discoverable on Google and other search engines.

2. Your competitors might already be using SEO.
What if your competitors are already maximizing the power of SEO to win your competition, and you’re still not? In this digital world, the Internet is already a significant arena for business and marketing competition. And if you’re not optimizing your brand for the search engines and the people who are using them, your competitors would take the bigger share of your market.

3. SEO is now more strategic and integrated.
SEO has already evolved into an strategic and integrated marketing campaign that generates long-term results. It’s not anymore all about short tactics to rank higher on search results but already more about making the business successful in the long run. Thanks to Google’s constant effort in updating its algorithm to focus on quality and value, SEO is now more about creating valuable content, building relationships rather than links, and making customers or users happy.

Final thoughts
SEO is a digital marketing strategy that can be implemented by businesses in all sizes. You don’t have to be a Fortune 500 business to harness the power of SEO. Though it may involve additional cost for your business, it gives better ROI that could make your business more profitable and stable.

If you like to learn more about SEO, you might be interested to read these 34 Actionable SEO Tips I shared in our company’s blog. If you need an integrated and strategic SEO service, we can also help you at Optixor, Inc.