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The year 2022 has been a year of change. With industries making a comeback post the Covid pandemic, many changes have ushered in and many new trends have gained traction. In the context of digital marketing too, many new trends are on the rise in 2022. Every SEO agency wants to learn about these trends and incorporate them into their work. One such trend that has been observed in the world of Search Engines is the use of SEO by Search Engine Marketers (SEMs). Before delving deeper into the details of this new trend, here are some basics for the uninitiated.

There are about 3.12 million eCommerce users in Singapore. Why just eCommerce sites? Singapore is increasingly being known for its digital audience and the SEM market continues to grow year in, and year out.

SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is a way of improving the positioning of your business website when search queries related to your business are keyed in on Search Engines like Google or Bing. On the other hand, SEM, which stands for Search Engine Marketing, employs paid marketing strategies to improve the visibility of websites in search results. SEO and SEM are often confused and even used interchangeably. However, the reality is that from a practical viewpoint, the two are completely different. SEM entails marketing to consumers as well as search engines and, therefore, it includes SEO.

Search Engine Marketers using SEO – The trend in 2022

As for the trend being observed in 2022, a new report published by Semrush disclosed that the number of searches related to ‘opening a small business’ has witnessed a huge surge.

Now, this shouldn’t come across as a surprise, considering the long Covid lock down the whole world went through. As a matter of fact, this trend perfectly reconciles with the global post-Covid scenario. Now, even if we safely assume that not all of these searches would have translated into action and just a small percentage of them saw the light of the day, we could still arrive at the following definitive conclusion:

All the new businesses that have opened in the past four years or so would either be based fully on the digital model or, even if they are offline businesses, they would still be trying to capitalize on the immense potential of the online platform.

Many SEM trends are on the rise in Singapore. However, four of the most-revered trends include:

• Voice Search Optimisation
• The use of Artificial Intelligence
• Mobile-first indexing update
• Video Advertising to boost sales

With such valuable data published in the form of a report, any SEO agency would try to draw actionable insights from it. The insight that most Search Engine Marketers drew from this trend was to ramp up their SEO efforts. If “Why SEO” is what you ask, read on to find out.

SEMs deploying SEO – The rising trend of 2022

The main reason why Search Engine Marketers are deploying SEO strategies in 2022 is that most of the businesses being opened are small businesses. Quite obviously, they would have limited capital to invest in their digital marketing efforts. To understand how this fact led Search Engine Marketers to conclude that they need to work in the direction of SEO, consider the following differences in SEO and SEM tactics:-

1. The significance of SEO lies in the fact that it helps a website rank organically, as opposed to SEM strategies that employ paid tactics to gain visibility on the search engines.
2. A business owner does not pay anything to the search engine when a user clicks on an organic listing that ranked due to SEO. On the contrary, with an SEM tactic in place, an advertiser pays the search engine every single time the user clicks on an ad.
3. As opposed to SEM tactics, which are known to drive immediate results, SEO delivers cumulative results by adding value to your business over time. This will leave lasting results.

These three major differences between SEO and SEM when viewed from the standpoint of a small business would lead anyone to conclude that it is prudent for small businesses to invest in SEO strategies. The same was concluded by Search Engine Marketers and thus the trend of deploying SEO gained traction in 2022.

The verdict

As the owner of a newly opened small business, one must consider working on SEO tactics to gain consistent and lasting results over time. To chalk out a comprehensive SEO strategy for your business, it would be wise to get in touch with a renowned Singapore SEO agency and seek their expert assistance. An SEO agency in Singapore that is results-oriented would implement the right SEO strategies tailored to your business’ needs and bring about a noticeable change in your website’s rankings and traffic.