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There are many ways to create an SEO strategy as there are many factors to consider when implementing SEO marketing. However, follow these tips if you want to do SEO yourself:

1. Fully understanding your brand positioning and producing clear, concise content will help people to know about your business.
2. Websites are highly crucial for brands and businesses. Easily create one via WordPress; it also offers various themes and provides tools to help with SEO.
3. Ensure that your content and design (UX, UI) stick to your brand guidelines so that visitors will find your website approachable and, most importantly, easy to navigate.
4. Regularly run a website back-end audit to check up on page speed, stability, quality, image size, and alt tags (caption details). These factors will affect the chances of users finding your page in the SERP, especially in the Google Image section.
5. Create engaging content; remember to add in keywords or phrases that are frequently used in searches. Keep in mind Google highly prioritizes their users and will rank pages based on its users’ needs. Higher rankings on the SERP are directly linked to the functionality and usefulness of a website. Always write with the readers’ perspective in mind.
6. Include internal links (connecting pages within your website) and outgoing links (connecting to other websites) to your page. Backlinks (being referred via links on other websites) will also increase your business’s credibility and generally benefit your business.
7. Keep your website updated and regularly perform technical checks on the pages in your website to ensure they are accessible and running smoothly.

Tips: Google Search Console and Google Analytics are amongst the best free tools out there for marketers as it analyses your website’s capability accurately and provides solutions to improve your website’s quality and ranking.

An SEO strategy is the process of planning and implementing SEO in your marketing campaign. An SEO strategy aims to increase ranking in SERP and traffic (organic traffic) for a website.

Some examples of adjustments you can perform to improve your SEO ranking:

• UX & UI improvements
• Keyword research
• Enabling voice search function
• Comply with Google’s algorithm updates
• Ensuring no breach of rules when acquiring backlinks or improving rankings
• Analyse higher-ranked competitors and learn from their content and website
• Regularly update content and ensure that it is relevant to users
• Enable Snippets and Rich Snippets (data shown on Google results pages)

SEO typically involves three processes:

1. Crawling: Google accesses your website to collect data and digests your content. When Google search bots can clearly understand your content, they will properly index your website and increase your search probability.
2. Indexing: At this stage, Google analyses, understands and keeps the data and content found during the crawling stage in its system.
3. Ranking: This is the ranking of websites based on searches by users. The data kept in the index will be shown as results based on how relevant it is to the query.

• The ease of the whole process
• Increases web traffic
• Builds global brand awareness
• Stand out amongst competitors
• Increase business credibility
• No fees required since there is payment is not necessary for Google’s ranking
• Increases profitability in the long run

The average time it takes to see results from SEO marketing would be around 6 months. Suppose your website has never been adjusted to comply with SEO criteria and has never ranked. In that case, it will take at least 4 months to land on Google’s top 100 searches once you start the SEO marketing adjustments.

However, there are many factors to consider when it comes to Google’s ranking results (the website itself or the keywords users choose). Since competition varies in each industry (including the volume of searches and user’s objectives), there is no fixed timeframe for a business to place at the very top of the SERP.

Firstly, let’s look at these three types of SEO and how they play a part in your organic search strategy:

1. What is White Hat SEO?
   White Hat SEO abides by all Google’s search engine guidelines and constantly adapts to improve content for its users. It prioritises website quality, provides quality content, includes relevant backlinks, and regularly modifies its content to fit market trends. Besides, White Hat SEO gives visitors a smooth page navigation experience with fast page speed, accessible pages, and excellent UX and UI designs. Websites that use White Hat SEO will benefit in the long run since users can find helpful answers to their queries. It will take time to build and implement strategic White Hat SEO; however, when your website tops the SERP rankings, you will be able to attract millions of users to your site organically. Keep in mind the quality of your content and website must be maintained at a high standard even after ranking the SERP.
2. What is Grey Hat SEO?
   Grey Hat SEO falls right in the middle between White Hat and Black Hat SEO, prioritising ranking in the SERP more than the users. Even though it is not explicitly against Google’s principles, it may warrant a penalty from Google depending on what kind of method from Black Hat or White Hat SEO is being used. On the one hand, Grey Hat SEO can be beneficial when there is valuable content that is relevant to the users. On the other hand, Grey Hat SEO includes clickbait content, paid reviews, and irrelevant and excessive backlinks from untrustworthy sources or websites.
3. What is Black Hat SEO?
   Black Hat SEO is used when the sole intent is to top the SERP ranks as quickly as possible without complying with the search engine’s guidelines. This method can be done by spamming articles, plagiarising, duplicating other peoples’ content, or focusing solely on acquiring backlinks that may include linking to gambling and adult content or even websites that sell backlinks (Link Farms). The other two methods of Black Hat SEO that can boost your site’s ranking are content spinning and keyword stuffing. Whilst Black Hat SEO is not illegal; it does go against the rules of SEO. It can potentially get your site penalised by Google.

What type of SEO should I opt for?

While there isn’t one best SEO type, there is one you should always avoid. Black Hat SEO will get your site ranking on the SERP fast, but it is a fact that it violates Google’s guidelines and will get your site penalised. Google itself is constantly updating and developing to prevent and catch those in violation of its guidelines. Google’s primary focus is to provide quality information that effectively answers its user’s queries. There are millions of new businesses and sites popping up online daily. Therefore, the Black Hat SEO approach will not benefit in the long run. As the saying goes, slow and steady wins the race. The ideal way to earn the top rank in SERP is with the White Hat SEO approach. With that said, the type of SEO to implement also highly depends on factors such as campaign objectives, budget, risk-tolerance, as well as duration.

Yes! With a thorough understanding of SEO, you can implement it yourself. Here are some tips on where to begin:

• Familiarise yourself with technical SEO terms and their application
• Research SEO tools
• Analyse competitors and leverage the information you obtain
• Understand Off-page and On-page SEO in detail. Learning to install add-on tools to your website, adjusting image sizes and layout for practicality, effectively using word counts, regularly conducting website audits and keyword research, making sure your pages are accessible to global users, carrying out local SEO, including internal links and backlinks, and so much more!
• Create engaging content for your website that will answer users’ queries
• Utilise tools such as Google Search Console, Tag Manager and Google Analytics to analyse results and improve website quality

Whilst you can highly benefit from doing SEO by yourself, there will be some limits in doing so. For example, some SEO elements may require help from specialists and developers to implement.

Tips: With a quick search online, you can easily find tips and tricks for an effective SEO strategy. We highly recommend reading up on articles that have been written by experts and specialists in the SEO field, such as Neil Patel, Moz or Search Engine Journal.

It is not necessary to do both at the same time; however, it will increase the chances of your site landing on the first few ranks of the SERP. While SEO is an unpaid method to generate leads, Pay Per Click (PPC) requires payment to work. Let’s dive into their respective roles and understand the difference between the two:

SEO: Process of improving website quality and content to rank higher on the SERP and thus, generating organic traffic when people click into the site. This is done without having to pay for a website to reach the target group.

PPC: Like SEO, it generates traffic via keywords and clicks. Your ad will appear when users search for businesses like yours. This method requires payment for each click, hence its name.

On their own, they can be effective at generating traffic. However, when PPC and SEO work together, it will tremendously attract more visitors to your website. Do note that once you stop implementing PPC, your online brand presence may decrease. Similarly, when you stop doing SEO, people or target groups may not be able to find your business. By having PPC and SEO working together, you will be able to expand the coverage of your business on online platforms. While we recommend doing both, it will depend on the value assessment of your business’ marketing investments.

Let’s start by taking a look at each definition:

On-page SEO is the practice of adjusting or developing the content within the website to improve search visibility and traffic, for instance:

• Creating engaging content with specific keywords included and optimising articles (title, headings, etc.)
• Adjusting articles titles so that they will appear with the voice search function
• Creating internal links by connecting related content & websites for users
• Adjusting the size of images for practicability and adding Alt tags to all images
• Planning the layout of the website, improving response times, and modifying back-end coding
• Ensure that the website have responsive layouts and is mobile-friendly

These are all factors that Google will take into consideration when ranking sites and pages. Listed above are just some of the many adjustments you can make to improve the quality of your website. We recommend getting a full-scale website audit to address any gaps in the website so that improvements can be implemented.

Off-page SEO refers to anything that helps your site in terms of credibility and popularity and is done outside your website. This means that external websites are referring to your pages/website. Off-page SEO is entirely out of our control. You could be referenced by reliable websites or unreliable and irrelevant websites. However, suppose you receive untrustworthy or spammy links. In that case, you can inform Google by selecting the Disavow link feature on the Google Search Console.

Both on-page and off-page SEO are essential, and they cannot be done on their own. Off-page SEO is more difficult to control as it relies on external parties. It also requires more time and effort to produce quality articles so that other websites will reference them and create backlinks.

‘Organic Search’ are listings that appear at the top of the SERP without paying for their position. These unpaid search results that you see displayed on SERPs include titles and descriptions which have been optimised to broadly match the keywords you searched for. When a user clicks on a website, that particular website will receive organic traffic value.

When your website is in violation of Google’s guidelines and rules, your site will drop down in the ranks or lose its place entirely in the SERPs. That is a Google penalty. A common cause of penalties includes using Black Hat SEO and modifying a website using programmes or tools with the sole intention of climbing up ranks quickly in the SERP.

The two types of Google penalty:

1. Manual: This is the most severe type of Google penalty and occurs when Google decides that your site is not compliant with its guidelines. Penalties are given after a thorough inspection carried out by Google staff.
2. Google algorithm update: Google updates its system regularly to detect different ways a website can rank higher in the SERP without providing relevant content to its readers. To avoid getting penalised, keep your website up to date with Google updates and standards.

Examples of cases that may result in a penalty:

• Using programmes to produce articles that include excessive keywords, which makes them incomprehensible when read by actual human beings (article spinning to attract bots)
• Including paid backlinks or receiving low-quality spam links
• Hiding text or content in the back-end system, mainly consisting of keywords
• Poor-quality content, plagiarism, or irrelevant content

A system that Google utilises when selecting which websites to show on the SERPs. Factors for higher rank searches include the quality of website content and how broadly or specifically it relates to the user’s query.

Google algorithm updates (also known as Google updates) are maintenance done on Google’s internal system to accurately select and rank websites on SERPs. Each and every Google update contains minor adjustments that can affect the ranking of websites on SERPs. This is why SEOs always keep up to date with the latest Google algorithm update and try to adjust their websites accordingly to maintain their position in the rankings.

Examples of major Google algorithm updates:

• 2011 – Panda Algorithm focused on on-page SEO. From the quality of the website to its content, with particular attention the how accurate information was for Google users
• 2012 – Penguin Algorithm focused on off-page SEO, including websites receiving backlinks from reliable sources and being referenced by other relevant websites
• 2013 – Hummingbird Algorithm focused on keywords often included in users’ queries as well as the voice search feature
• 2014 – Pigeon Algorithm focused on local SEO or local searches within an area (using maps or locations) for users to find relevant businesses more efficiently
• 2014 – HTTPS/SSL was an update suggesting that websites change from HTTP to HTTPS for user security
• 2015 – Mobile Update or Mobilegeddon, focused on ensuring websites were mobile-friendly since there was an influx in mobile phone usage which made it essential for people to be able to access websites on their devices with ease
• 2015 – RankBrain Algorithm introduced machine learning to better understand the search behaviour of its users. This algorithm monitors search queries and then generates similar words or phrases for the user’s convenience. It analysed previous searches as well, which is why SEOs efforts must be taken to create articles that include quality keywords and related keywords
• 2019 – BERT or Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers was an improvement that concerns how words were being searched. Whether the words were in different orders or the exact words were used, but in different contexts, the system would be able to comprehend user’s queries and provide accurate answers
• 2020 – Core update focused on all the components of a website

Google algorithm updates are often done to screen for the best quality websites that are most accurate and relevant to people’s search. Therefore, websites that implement SEO need to keep track of these updates and modify their websites in order to rank well in the SERPs. You can keep track of the latest updates via Google Search Central.

Many factors are at play when it comes to earning a spot in Google’s website rankings. You will need an in-depth understanding of your business and figure out the kind of content you provide on your website. Conducting keyword research will help your business to find target groups that could bring you organic traffic. You can then run a thorough website audit and modify on-page and off-page SEO as you see required. Be cautious about link spamming and regularly check reports from Google Search Console and Google Analytics to adjust your website and its content accordingly. The entire process should be completed with the user’s best interests in mind.

Optimising your website with SEO takes time and requires constant updating. Additionally, you will need to regularly research and analyse your competitors that have successfully appeared in the SERPs to identify the best improvement strategy.

When a user takes the initiative to search for something, that is known as Search intent. It can be divided into 4 categories:

1. Informational: to look for information or recent news, e.g., searching for ‘a salad recipe’, ‘how tall is the Eiffel Tower?’, or ‘tips to help lose weight’
2. Navigational: to locate a brand, business, landmark, etc., or for navigational purposes such as Gmail login, Google drive, Facebook login
3. Commercial: these are searches surrounding a product, such as price comparisons or product reviews. For example, when there is an intent to purchase sunscreen, we may search ‘best sunscreen’ to compare products and find one that’s suitable
4. Transactional: made when purchase intent is the highest, to search for product prices or discounts.

SEO content is optimised so that it can be easily found on search engines such as Google. A well-written SEO content should provide relevant and useful information that will answer users’ queries and be clear and concise to better help Google’s system understand what your website is trying to convey.

Tips: How to write SEO-friendly content

1. Have a comprehensive understanding of main keywords and how they are being used in articles
2. Analyse your competitors’ websites and take note of their strategy to improve your website
3. Besides main keywords, include additional keywords that people would frequently use when searching for your products
4. Adjust and optimise the article’s title and description; you can check how your article will show on SERP using free SEO tools such as Mangools.

There are 3 main types of SEOkeywords, namely:

• Generic keywords: these are commonly searched for and usually have broad definitions, i.e., ‘delicious food’ or ‘digital marketing agency’. The competition to stand out with generic keywords is high due to its high search volumes.
• Medium tail or chunky middle keywords: keywords that are usually 2-3 words long with the intention of obtaining more accurate results. For example, ‘healthy delicious food’ or ‘digital marketing agency prices’.
• Long-tail keywords: more specific keywords as compared to medium tail or chunky middle keywords. For example, ‘delicious food, healthy, low calories’ or ‘digital marketing agency in KL, price’. They are also longer than other keyword types, as users tend to key in as many keywords to accurately search for what they want. This type of SEO keyword will give you the highest chance of gaining conversions.

A variation of SEO keywords is crucial when producing a write-up or any other content on your website. A well-written article will successfully be able to cater to each person’s search intent. Whilst widening the article’s reach is essential, remember to focus on the main point you would like to convey in the article. Avoid incorporating unrelated and irrelevant content that may be confusing to the readers.

Tips:

• Seed keywords or Head keywords are short-tail keywords that explain your business. It helps people understand what a particular page is about and acts as a baseline to effectively generate relevant long-tail keywords.
• Branded keywords are commonly used by potential customers to search for a brand’s business or products. The names are specific, i.e., ‘Primal Agency’, ‘Adidas’ or other keywords together with the brand, for example, ‘shoes Adidas’
• LSI keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing) are keywords that are semantically related to specific keywords or a topic. They can be in the form of a word or phrase that helps make the search easier and more relevant. For example, if the main keyword is ‘digital marketing’, the LSI can be phrases like ‘online marketing’, ‘online ads’, ‘social media’, etc.

A quick SEO keyword research can be quickly conducted without needing to purchase or using online tools. The Google search bar will automatically suggest popular searches related to the keyword you provide. Leverage these suggestions to plan out content on your website.

Google’s algorithm considers various factors when selecting which websites get shown on its SERPs. Factors may include site credibility, authenticity, content, and more. Your pages may still be new, and when Google’s bots have not crawled the content on the pages, it will not show your page as a result when people submit a query.

So, how can I get my website to show up on Google?

1. Go to Google Search Console (GSC) and verify your website or URL
   • For first-time verification, select add a property, then website type, and upload the files such as the HTML, Meta Tag, and Google Analytics Account
   • The 3 ways to verify your website on GSC:
     1. Upload HTML file to root folder or server
     2.  Upload Meta Tag to the website’s header section
     3. Connect the website’s GSC with Google Analytics
   • If you want a particular URL to be shown on Google index, you can submit the link and press the request index. You can read more information about it here
2. Creating internal links that connect pages that are not ranking will inform Google that both pages are related
3. Creating backlinks for the website or particular page by posting the URL on popular and credible pages

Tips: Google has crawler bots, also known as Web Crawlers/ Web Spider, that constantly crawls the web to collect data and keep the system updated. Therefore, it is not typically required to submit your website’s URL for Google indexing.

Backlinks are part of off-page SEO. A website that contains many backlinks can help to increase its SERP rankings. Keep in mind that spammy, irrelevant, and suspicious backlinks will potentially get your site penalised by Google.

Google’s priority is its users; therefore, its algorithm will not display sites that contain low-quality backlinks and irrelevant information that will not accurately answer users’ queries. Sites that include backlinks from gambling sites or suspicious sites will be considered as low-quality and be affiliated with other low-quality websites. Therefore, while having lots of backlinks can rapidly increase your ranking in the SERPs if the backlinks you’ve included in your sites are irrelevant to the users, this approach can do more harm than good in the long run.

With that being said, there are also other ranking factors to consider, such as on-page SEO, good user experience, fast page speed, simple and intuitive menu navigation, and meaningful content.

Relevancy, credibility, and authority. These are the main factors that account for a good backlink. To determine whether your site contains high authority backlinks, the links’ origin should be trustworthy and relevant to your content. For example, if you have a marketing website, you should obtain backlinks from other credible marketing sites rather than apparel websites.

Besides, you will need to check whether the hyperlinks you receive are from trusted and relevant websites because they can affect your site’s ranking. Look for a site’s DA (Domain Authority) score to check if the site is credible and of authority, with higher scores corresponding to higher quality. Other factors to look out for include:

• The site’s traffic volume.
• The number of site visitors.
• The flow of internal and external links.

Keep in mind that incorporating backlinks (off-page SEO) is just one of several ways to improve your ranks on SERP. You will also require on-page SEO to rank highly.

Tips: As mentioned, you can check a website’s credibility by looking at the DA (Domain Authority) score, which ranges from 1-100 (read more about DA at Moz.com), with higher scores corresponding to higher quality. The DA score of each website is calculated from machine learning by Moz, not Google. As the DA score is calculated using multiple factors, the score can fluctuate with time. Therefore, we advise avoiding determining the quality of backlinks from the DA score alone.

Here are some tips for effective ways to earn high-quality backlinks:

• Create content with the readers in mind. Address pain points and provide solutions. Engaging, informative, and educational content that can answer users’ queries will have the highest probability of being shared.
• Write novel pieces on topics, so readers will find it fresh and continue to engage with your website.
• Focus on statistical information or research data, simplify, and organise it well. By providing reliable information, people will use your site as a reference, providing you with quality backlinks for free.
• Visual components are equally as important when it comes to creating content. Including graphics in your article will help to increase the visual appeal of your write-up and, most importantly, make it easier for the readers to comprehend. For example, infographics can be used to summarise data or to help readers visualise the statistics. If readers find them useful and relevant, they will reference these graphics and provide quality backlinks to your site.

Tips: Remember to add ALT tags to the graphics in your website so that people can discover your site through Google Image Search.

If you suspect a backlink to be suspicious, low-quality, or irrelevant, you can disavow a link from your site. This essentially informs Google that those links are not from your site, which can help your site avoid getting penalised by Google for having bad quality backlinks. However, you will not be able to fully control the kind of backlinks you receive from other sites.

It depends. Disavowing links may either increase or decrease your ranking in the long run. As Google’s Algorithms constantly updates in real-time, your ranking may fall if you report multiple backlinks back-to-back. However, it should be said that a drop in ranking is way better than receiving a penalty from Google.

Since there is no one way when it comes to whether or not to disavow links, the decision to report falls entirely on you. It’s hard to tell if this action may affect your ranking or not. With that said, disavowing links too often should still be avoided as it may be regarded as a suspicious action to Google. Removing damaged links only once or twice a year would be sufficient.

Both dofollow & nofollow links provide information to Google on the association between your website and the website you are linking to. The definitions of dofollow and nofollow links are:

• Dofollow links allow search engines to access one website from another. The origin site passes the authority to the destination site via backlinks. This helps Google study your content and observe the association between the two websites. If the origin site is credible and has good authority, the destination site will also be considered as a quality website. Google values links that can be helpful to the readers so that they have access to additional relevant information.
• Nofollow links are links that do not pass authority on to their destination site. This is due to the destination sites being irrelevant or of low quality. Google does not crawl nofollow links, so it will not impact search engine rankings.

Tips: For a smooth user experience, your website should include both internal and external links. Readers will find them useful and spend more time on your site to seek out more relevant information that may interest them.

SEM (mostly considered as PPC) requires a fee. Businesses have to pay to land a spot on the top rankings in Google’s SERP. On the other hand, SEO focuses on developing and improving your website to organically rank on the search results pages without having to pay. Another key difference is the amount of time taken to observe results. As SEO requires constant development, naturally, it will take more time to climb up the ranks in the SERP as compared to SEM. Additionally, using SEO does not guarantee your business a spot at the top.

Tips: PPC, a form of SEM, is done through Google Ads Search. Using this Google tool, you can calculate your expenses, buy keywords, and submit your ad with ease. However, to get on the first results page, you will have to conduct your own research and analyse your competitors’ bidding strategy.

Google Ads (previously known as Google Adwords) is an advertising platform that allows you to promote your business online and attract potential customers. Due to Google’s massive number of daily users, the most sought-after Google Ads campaign is Google Search Ads. Businesses worldwide are leveraging Google’s broad reach to increase their chances of connecting with its users.

There are 5 types of Google Ads:

Type 1: Search Ads

Search Ads are Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, which means that businesses will have to pay once a user clicks and enters the website. They are advertisements that show up on Google’s SERP and are positioned right at the top with the label ‘Ad’ next to it. You can choose particular keywords that you find most beneficial for your business and purchase them. When users type said keywords into Google’s search bar, your Ad will be displayed for users to see.

Type 2: Display Ads

Display Ads, technically known as Google Display Network (GDN), and more commonly known as Banner Ads, are clickable ads that are stretched across a particular section of a website. These ads will direct users to your website. Google will automatically display your ads on their partners’ websites. Therefore, there is no need for you to directly contact the website. Display ads are mainly used to showcase a brand or to build brand awareness.

Type 3: YouTube Ads or Video Ads

Advertisements that pop up during a YouTube video are known as YouTube Ads or Video Ads. There are both skippable and non-skippable formats:

1. Bumper Ads: non-skippable videos that last up to 6 seconds
2. Non-Skippable Video Ads: non-skippable videos that last up to 15 seconds
3. TrueView Ads/Skippable Video Ads: videos that are more than 15 seconds long, which can be skipped after the first 5 seconds

Besides these types of advertisement formats, there are also graphic advertisements on YouTube such as Display ads, Overlay ads, Supporter Cards, and Mastheads.

Tips: For more information on YouTube ad formats, visit:

• https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2467968?hl=en
• https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2375464?hl=en

Type 4: Shopping Ads

Shopping ads are advertisements that include a list of products, accompanied with their respective pictures, so users can compare them all at a glance. Besides Google’s search page, shopping ads can be displayed on partners’ websites, Google Display Network (GDN), and YouTube. It resembles a shopping catalogue, as users may see the product image and price. These ads are also clickable; therefore, customers can be directed to the website itself. This type of advertisement is suitable for e-commerce or retail businesses. However, not every business with a website is eligible to have shopping ads.

To start, you will need to be an e-commerce business that supports online payments (having SSL that protects sensitive customer information. Or simply put, a website starting with http://). Additionally, your business will require a privacy policy, contact information, and a returns/refund policy. Your business will also need to verify its website account on Google’s Merchant Center. Over at the Merchant Center, you will be able to find guidance to effectively manage how your business will appear across Google’ platform.

Tips: Shopping ads are essentially online billboards, which means they are more likely to capture people’s attention successfully. The visual component present in Shopping ads is more appealing and informative at a glance, resulting in higher clicks as compared to other types of ads.

Type 5: App Campaign

App Campaigns, a type of advertisement on Google’s platform, are mainly used to encourage people to download applications. There are 3 types of App Campaigns:

1. App installs: ads that encourage people to download an application
2. App engagement: ads to encourage users that have installed your app to engage with a targeted landing page
3. App pre-registration (for Android users only): ads to build brand awareness and generate buzz before the launch of an application

App Campaigns can appear on Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, Google Display Network, and Gmail.

Tips: Click for more information about App Campaign and Mobile App Install.

The structure of Google Ads can be split into 4 levels:

1. Account
2. Campaign
3. Ad Group
4. Ads

Facebook Ads is a form of advertising that utilises the Facebook platform to promote a brand, products and/or services. Facebook Ads are highly customisable, as you can set your advertisement goals, demographics, interests, and behavioural data and limit your expenditure according to your budget.

Tips: Business Manager is a Facebook tool that can help you manage your advertising activities effectively. You can organise and plan out your advertising schedule with this free tool rather than launching the ads directly through a mobile phone or the platform. You can also select the destination platforms for your advertisement (Ads placement), for example:

• Facebook Feed
• Facebook Stories
• Facebook Marketplace
• Facebook Messenger Inbox
• Instagram Feed
• Instagram Stories
• Audience Network

Besides that, you are also given the option to decide whether to run your ads on PC or on mobile.

1) Selecting your audience

Facebook collects statistical and behavioural data of its users that includes their basic demographic (age, gender, etc.), location, and their profile information (what they frequently interact with, interests, etc.). With data like so, advertisers are able to gain access to data to create a targeted audience group for their products/services.

2) Connecting with your audience in a controlled way

After setting the target audience, there’s no guarantee that your ad will work to its max potential. There are several other factors to consider so your ads can be optimised to reach your audience. For example:

• Advertiser Bid: This will be your budget for bidding, essentially the amount of money you will spend on Facebook ads. Facebook’s algorithm will display the ads of the advertiser with the highest bid, considering that the goal and quality of other ads are all equally the same. However, this does not mean that advertisers should always put in a high bid. Observe the market and adjust accordingly to effectively manage your marketing budget.
• Ad quality and relevance: The relevance score ranges from 1-10. The higher the score, the better quality and the more relevant your advertisement is to your target audience.
• Estimated action rates: This will show you the probability of your ad performing as it is expected to. The rate is calculated and analysed based on past ad performances, and the rate increases with more engagement the ads get (clicks, likes, comments, shares, etc.).

These 3 factors will act as indicators to show how valuable your advertisement is to your audience. As the rate is calculated by Facebook’s advertising algorithm, you will not be able to assign an estimated action rate for your ad. However, you can increase the score by improving your ad’s overall quality or providing the best advertising by directly promoting through Facebook Messenger to your target group.

Tips: The two options for Facebook biddings are automatic bidding and manual bidding. Automatic bidding is when Facebook’s algorithm automatically places a bid for you by comparing your bid to other advertisers. Manual bidding is when advertisers themselves can manually set the bid amount.

The structure of a Facebook ad can be divided into 4 levels:

1) Facebook Account: Advertisers will require an account to create ads to promote their brand, products, and/or services. Account details and advertising budget can be customised with this account.

2) Campaign: There are three categories of Facebook campaign objectives; advertisers will set the most suitable objective for their ad. 

• Awareness
  Focuses on generating interest and expanding your audience. Examples from this category include Reach and Brand Awareness objectives.
• Consideration
  This objective helps to create more engagement or helps familiarise users with your brand. Six examples from this category include Traffic, Engagement, App Install, Video Views, Lead Generation and Message objectives.
• Conversion
  Conversion drives potential customers to the advertiser’s website to complete an action or transaction. Examples include Conversion, Catalog Sales, and Store Visits objectives.

3) Ad Set: This is where the advertiser sets a target audience, placement, budget & schedule, and bidding.

Audience: This is created from the demographic data of target groups, including age, gender, education, status, interest, and behaviour. You can narrow down the scope of the target audience by location by specifying the area and distance.

Using Custom Audience Targeting, you can customise to create your own audience for your ad campaign. It is possible for you to create an audience made up of only your website visitors in the past 30 days and target them with your ads. Using existing data, you can also target similar audiences for your ad campaign (lookalike audience with similar demographics, interests, and behaviours to your custom audience). The similarity can range from 1% (highest similarity) to 10% (lowest similarity).

Placement: The advertiser gets the option to select where the ads will be displayed. Platforms that Facebook allows you to display ads on includes:

• Facebook: via Facebook Feeds, Instant Articles, In-stream Videos, Right Column, Suggested Videos, Marketplace, and Facebook Stories
• Instagram: through Instagram Feeds and Instagram Stories
• Audience Network: displaying the ads through the applications of Facebook’s network, including Native, Banner, Interstitial, In-Stream videos, and Rewarded videos
• Messenger: via inbox message and sponsored message

Budget & Schedule: The advertiser can set the budget from the beginning to the end of the advertising process. It can be a daily budget or a lifetime budget.

• Daily budget: the budget for the campaign each day
• Lifetime budget: the budget for the entire run-time of the campaign

Bidding: There are two ways to bid, lowest cost bidding and target cost bidding.

• Lowest Cost: focusing on the outcome with the lowest cost
• Target Cost: focusing on the outcome with the cost according to the budget you’ve set

Tips: You can have several ad sets in your campaign to test each set or each target group and find the most effective strategy.

4) Ad: The ad is what users will see. The visuals or text ad that the advertiser delivers to the target audience in the form of a single image, carousel, or video. There can be many advertisements in an ad set.

An influencer is a person who has influence over a number of people, known as followers, on online platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. They provide engaging content for their followers to engage with. KOLs or Key Opinion Leaders are people who have influence in a specific area, where they have the power to guide or convince an audience.

The difference between an influencer and a KOL is that the latter has a specific follower base. While influencers are more widely popular, KOLs are likely to be more convincing to an audience due to their knowledge of a specific subject.

Digital PR is a promotional strategy used by marketers to increase their online brand presence. Typically, in the form of online content to communicate with prospective customers, staff, co-investors, business partners, bloggers, influencers, and the press media. Digital PR content is highly effective in increasing backlinks, improving SEO, and helping to grow a brand’s image.

Public Relations (PR) focuses on promoting a business and keeping related people up to date with the latest updates and news. Advertorials (Ads) focuses on promoting a brand and its products/services. They are also used as a form of engagement to increase brand awareness and attract potential customers. The key difference between the two is the purpose of the content put out. Ads are generally paid for and more visually appealing than PR content.

Good and quality content should be original, relevant, concise, and engaging. Audience-friendly content has a higher probability of getting shared around by readers and referenced to by other websites. Readers should be able to get a clear and concise understanding of the content and feel satisfied with the information and message conveyed by the article.

There are millions of daily users on social media. Utilising the social media platform will immediately gain your business access to communicate with people from all over the world. From an advertising point of view, social media is the ideal platform for new brands or businesses. Social media platforms constantly keep users’ feeds updated with the latest trends to create an engaging and entertaining platform. With that said, excessive social media usage may lead to adverse health effects and potentially lead to social media addiction. Additionally, users may potentially be exposed to excessive and misleading information on social media. In this context, the fast rate of content sharing on such platforms would also cause adverse effects. Therefore, people should read any content carefully and thoroughly before sharing it on social media to prevent the spread of misleading and untrue information.