Worthwhile Digital Investment for the PNG Context: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

So now that the dust has well and truly settled post-APEC’s “Harnessing opportunities and embracing a digital future”.  The digital evolution for PNG businesses remains a looming transition for many senior executives.

What does digital integration really look like in practice in the PNG context?  And how can we go beyond translating our trendy digital flash-words into valuable gains for our organisations?

We’ll explore this throughout each publication of The Vantage.  But to kick off, one simple, digestible ingredient worth considering is the value of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

SEO is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic from “organic” search results on search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Need that in English?  It’s strategically ensuring your brand is easily found on google and other search engines as people look for solutions online. 

Results are generated and then ranked based on what the search engine considers to be most relevant to users.  The higher and more frequently your brand appears each time the viewer searches various terms online – your brand’s credibility is reinforced and becomes front-of-mind as the go-to solution provider.

How relevant is this for PNG businesses?  Well, more than 90% of people searching for solutions online in PNG, do it through Google.  So, even if you have a fancy new website, if your target audience can’t easily find you via the popular search engines – then you’ve hardly optimised the investment.  This is why VERGE ensures all new website builds incorporate up to 3 months of SEO.

Ultimately, we understand this in real terms as a PNG-based business because we’ve been investing in and actively working on our own SEO performance for more than a year now.  With a significantly positive outcome; 3 years ago most of our in-bound prospective leads were word-of-mouth driven, which is a great testament to VERGE’s reputation and common for PNG businesses that take pride in their reputation and quality of work.

Fast forward to our prospective leads today, VERGE now has an additional stream of in-bound leads purely driven by our SEO performance.  Consequently, we’ve landed local and international projects because our leads “found us on google”.

How can SEO benefit your organisation? 

  • By bringing in more customers: SEO focuses on making it easier for your targeted audience to find you online. This means SEO will bring in customers who are actively seeking to find out about your product or service.
  • By building brand awareness: When your organisation’s site appears on the first page of Google, potential customers are more likely to trust your brand when they search for an item rather than other brands that don’t have a strong web presence.
  • By beating your competition: According to Hubspot (see table below), over 60% of marketers recognise that growing their SEO and online presence is a top priority. Today SEO is widely considered a crucial step in any marketing strategy.