Digital Web FAQ

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is a process of ranking your website with a particular search engine. The most popular search engine is Google.

In traditional business in the good old days, you have the Yellow Pages phone book where people will browse that thick yellow book to look for companies. In relation to the digital world, you may view that Google is a directory listing just like Yellow Pages phone book, but in the digital sense. So in the past people want to search for a service, product or company, they may go to physical Yellow Pages phone book, these days they visit Google on the internet.

Just like Yellow Pages which run for profits, so is Google. In the past as long as you have a telephone number, you can collect phone books, of which one is a Yellow Pages book. Yellow Pages have users and reach, therefore they can ask companies to advertise with them and list them on their book. In the digital age, Google had to have users too right? Therefore Google started by getting people to search for things (not only companies) and use them as a search engine to find the things they want; literally anything people want to search for.

Therefore fundamentally, Google has to provide users with the best search results so people will continue to use them to search for anything. So what is the best result for a search by a user? It must reflect as close to what the user want; the intent of the search. And Google want to present the best website to the user. And Google has many criterias for a website to be deemed fit presenting to the users. So Google will rank each website and present to the user accordingly. If Google think you website can presents better for the user’s search intent, it will put you first. If not it will position you later.

The meaning of optimisation means making the best of a situation or resource. Therefore to optimise search engine, you are the trying to make the best to get to rank on page one, if not rank first on Google search, when someone searches for a certain word on the Google search bar. This is also known as organic search.

We explained about Yellow Pages phone book and Google in the previous FAQ. SEM stands of Search Engine Marketing. This is how search engines like Google makes money. Drawing back to the example of Yellow Pages phone book, where in the past you can pay money to get listed or premium listing, likewise you can pay to get yourself known on Google.

When someone searches something on Google, Google presents the website by ranking them (organic search results). But Google also display advertisement right on top before those organic search results. Just like if you pay money to advertise on Yellow Pages phone book, you will appear more prominently than others. However Google’s advertising model is more complicated than Yellow Pages. Because many people want to adverise on Google, you have to bid for the top spots to be seen.

The Google Ads appears in front of the organic search. Putting them in more prominent places are logical since companies paid for the space. In the bidding exercise, if your bid is higher, you get to rank first on advertisement. There are different bidding strategies which we will not cover here.

A keyword is a word (or a string of words) that a user types on the search engine (e.g. Google) search box. Why is it important? You have to know what keyword(s) that your potential customer types on the search bar to find your products or services.

There are however more important keywords than others. For example, when a user types “camera”, the user is probably just browsing the internet looking for ideas, for fun or some preliminary research. If the user type “Nikon camera”, the user is now more serious in getting to know a particular brand of camera. If the user types “Nikon D700”, the user is looking at a particular model of Nikon. Now, which has a stronger buying signal? The latest. These are what is known as buying keyword while “camera” is a generic keyword.

Knowing keywords means you can plan what are the keywords you want to go after to rank on SEO or to purchase on SEM. 

Google Analytics is a tool provided by Google for you to track what happens when people search on your website. It helps you to understand how the user move around your website pages. If basically tells you the performance of your website for conversion.

When a user comes to your website, you want to convert him/her into a lead or sale. Therefore you want to know at which page/point did the user drops out of your website. Which page does users land onto and stays on to read. And at which point will the user click that button to contact you or purchase your product. 

Users can come to your website from various sources. It could be through marketing campaigns that you run or offline activities or word of mouth from customers. You can input codes to track where users are coming from too by proper set up.

Google Analytics is a powerful tool to use because the more you know about how users behave on your site, the more your know where you should improve your website for better conversion. 

Facebook marketing refers to marketing of your Facebook page to either retain your existing customers (on Facebook or off Facebook) or attract customers who are using Facebook.

In the past you may do advertisement on the TV. Now the internet is the new TV. Treat Facebook as one of the channels on TV like Channel 5 of the Singapore TV Station. You can choose to advertise on Channel 5  similar to doing an advertisement on Facebook. Similarly you need to create your ad for both cases.

The difference? Compared to conventional TV advertising where you cannot choose who you want to reach out to, Facebook allows you to target the audience you want to reach out through the audience insights of the Facebook Manager. Your old advertisement agency is the new Facebook Ad Agency that can help you run your ad.

A domain name is the name of your website. It is like the address of your physical home property. But your physical property needs a place to rest its pillars. And that physical property is akin to the host. Therefore domain name and hosting are 2 separate things. You can buy a domain name from one party and have it hosted by another. Of you can buy and have it hosted by the same company. 

Content marketing is the creation of texts, designs, videos or audios to promote a brand, product or service. Short term content marketing drives sales. Long term content marketing promotes a brand. We see there are 3Es in content marketing namely, Engage, Educate and Entice. 

To engage with customers is to get them more emotionally involved. It could be asking for opinions or something inspiring or funny. To educate is to provide information and learning; value adding to the customer. To entice is to get the customer to take an action; typically to promote a sale.

Website have browser cookies installed tracks your preference and liking as your browse the internet. If you have browsed for cameras, that information that is stored on your device. Advertisers will then be able to push advertisements related to camera for your attention, thinking it might be able to capture your attention. 

UX stands for User Experience while UI stands for User Interface. In website design and development, UX is the experience a user gets while interacting with your website. It is not about the visuals but the overall feel of the experience of using the site. UI on the other hand is more of the website’s interfaces looks and functions.

But we ask you not to dwell too deep into this. There is no point having a beautiful website that does not convert. For that matter, an ugly site does not convert well too. So be it UX or UI, the most important is to balance beauty and functions so the website can convert you sales and leads. That’s just business. 

In the past, we were only familiar with the term “target audience”. This is when we further breakdown the audience that can potentially buy our service or product into demographics like gender, age, income, religion, marital status etc.

A customer persona is a representative/ imaginary character of your target audience. It carries more details of your target audience. Similar to identifying target audience, you have the demographics, but you also have more description of what this audience preferences are like his/her interest, hobby, behaviour patterns, motivation, goals etc. In short it is a more detailed version of your target audience. 

Why is there an increase use of customer personas? This is because in this digital age, tremendous data of individuals are collected (can be via self-input or tracked). One can be very targeted to get their message effectively across was individuals can be categorised into their interest, hobby and behavioural patterns. The copyrighting can be crafted in such a way that it is like directly talking to him/her. This makes selling very effective.