Doing online business in Taiwan? Having an e-commerce store? Understanding SEO will be crucial for bringing clients, and making your business profitable.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps your website or online store rank higher on search engines, and easier to get found by your customers, so it will bring traffic and profit to your business.
Want to know how to improve your SEO in 2022? Here are 6 SEO tips you must know for running a profitable online business in Taiwan.
Even if you are a beginner of SEO, you can easily understand this article as we keep the technical knowledge at minimum.
1. Increase importance of local content
In the coming year Google will be focusing more on localization of content. Helen Pollitt, SEO manager at iTech Media, observes that since 2021 there’s a trend of websites with country-specific content outranking those that used to be at the top but are more internationalized.
If you are a foreign business which doesn’t have a website dedicated for Taiwan, set one up now. Also make sure your content is adapted to the local context, as how well your content serves your audiences will affect your ranking (more explanation in the later part of the article).
If your website doesn’t have Chinese content, or you don’t have a Chinese content strategy, consider hiring a Taiwanese copywriter to help with your SEO and also selling better to local Taiwanese customers.
2. Write content for your audiences, not for ranking on Google
You may have heard of SEO tricks such as stuffing keywords in your website for a higher ranking, but this old trick will no longer work as Google has become more sophisticated.
Search intent, which means understanding the reason behind the search of your audience on Google has become increasingly important in ranking your website. The better you can understand the questions and needs of your audiences, and provide them a solution, the easier Google will recognize the importance of your website and reward you with a better ranking.
Stop producing a large amount of content of low quality just for the sake of SEO, but focus on producing quality content that provides value for your users.
3. Unique content ranks higher
Still relying heavily on stock photos? This may harm the SEO of your site.
Founder of Search Engine Journal, Loren Baker, points out that websites with unique images will see a large boost in image, product and normal search. This is because original images help Google Lens learn more about people, areas and products, thus Google will reward these sites with higher ranking. Using original images also resonate with younger users for their preference of unique lifestyle.
Articles of unique content will also rank higher than those articles that can be commonly found on the internet, so stop blindly producing content only with keywords of high search volume, and try to produce content for long-tail keywords which respond to specific needs of users.
Learn how content marketing can help you to win trust from Taiwan customers
4. Produce content of different formats
Google MUM is a major update in 2021 which aims to improve the efficiency of users finding answers to a question.
For example, you are new to Taiwan and want to understand how people prepare for Chinese new year. You may need to conduct several search, such as:
“Chinese new year tradition.”
“How to cook a family dinner for Chinese new year.”
“Chinese new year decoration”. etc.
According to Nayak, on average it takes 8 search phrases to get an answer for a complex question.
Imagine you are asking a local Taiwanese friend: “How should I prepare for Chinese New Year?”, she will provide you with all the information and details in one go: from cleansing your house in advance; to the food you’d need to prepare for the family dinner; to how much money you should put in a red pocket etc. She may even suggest stocking up food before the Chinese New Year as many shops will be closed during the period.
Google MUM aims at understanding the nuance of a complex question and to provide a solution to users as if they are asking a human, so that the users can get all the information within one search. Google will provide information of different formats: articles, videos, photos, infographics, podcast etc. to help users to quickly get answers to the question and reduce the number of searches needed.
How does Google MUM relate to your SEO? If you are trying to rank for a specific topic, providing information in several different formats will help you rank higher on Google, so you can include a short video in an article; making your own infographics or even your podcast etc.
5. The rise of other search engines
When we are talking about improving the SEO of our website or online store, we often focus on improving our ranking on Google. Although Google is still the dominant search engine, we shouldn’t forget about other search engines such as Bing by Microsoft, or DuckDuckGo which target users who are concerned about their online privacy.
Make sure your website or online shop is searchable on these engines, and if resources and time allows, try to improve your SEO on these search engines too.
6. Loading speed and mobile appearance
How fast your website or online store loads is a crucial factor in your SEO. The faster the loading time, the easier you can achieve a higher ranking on search engines, it also helps retain your customers on your site and reduce the chance of them leaving your site as they get impatient waiting for your site to load.
As many customers view websites or online stores on mobile, checking if your site is mobile friendly will help you to gain customers on mobile and also help improve your SEO.
I hope these 6 tips will help improve the SEO of your online business and get more customers. If you have any questions about SEO, need help in digital marketing and Chinese copywriting, drop us a line.
