Most Singapore business websites target keywords by volume rather than intent, because agencies start with tools, not customer research.
Buying-intent keywords with lower volume consistently outperform high-volume browsing keywords for lead generation. Volume is vanity. Intent is revenue.
Technical SEO issues like slow page speed and missing structured data are extremely common and usually fixable in under a day.
If your SEO consultant cannot tell you how many customers came from organic search last month, nothing else in their report matters.
The difference between SEO that produces revenue and SEO that produces reports is research depth that most agencies skip.
Imagine spending $63,000 on SEO and getting 11 customers. That works out to $5,727 per customer. For a business where the average transaction is worth $800.
That is not a specific client story. But it is the kind of math that should not be possible if the SEO work was done properly.
The same 5 mistakes show up across Singapore business websites over and over again. I am going to walk you through each one. But first, you need to understand something that most SEO consultants will never tell you.
The SEO Truth in Singapore
Here is the part where most blog posts would tell you "SEO is important for your business" and list some generic tips. I am not going to do that.
Instead, I am going to tell you something that might make you uncomfortable: most SEO work done for Singapore businesses is theatre. It looks like work. It generates reports. It uses the right vocabulary. But it does not produce customers.
The reason is simple. Most agencies start with a keyword tool, not with your customers. They type your industry into SEMrush or Ahrefs, sort by volume, and hand you a list. That list becomes your "strategy." Nobody asks whether those keywords match how your actual customers search.
The thing most consultants will not tell you: the tool-first approach exists because it is fast and scalable. An agency can onboard many clients quickly using keyword tool exports. They cannot keep that pace if every strategy requires several weeks of actual research.
Tyler Ang
Digital Marketing Consultant
After consulting with 255+ businesses, Tyler discovered most do not need more traffic. They need someone to look at their business properly first. He built sportifate.com to 6,800+ organic users with zero ad spend, proving the research-first system works.
Book a free 30-minute audit. I will look at your business, your numbers, and your current marketing. You leave with a plan, even if we do not work together.
What you get from a 30-minute strategy call:
Full Platform Audit
A full breakdown of your current numbers across Google Ads, Meta, Search Console, and Analytics, showing where your money is going, what it is returning, and which underutilised areas could produce results faster
Biggest Constraint
The single biggest constraint holding your business back right now, identified from your actual platform data rather than guesswork
This is why the same 5 mistakes show up everywhere. Let me show you what they are, starting with the one that wastes the most money.
Mistake 1: Volume Over Intent
This is the most expensive mistake on the list. And nearly every agency makes it by default.
Let me show you exactly what I mean. Here is a representative example from the healthcare industry in Singapore, one of the verticals where I have done the deepest research:
Keyword intent comparison for a Singapore healthcare clinic (monthly search volumes are representative SG figures from DataForSEO / Ahrefs keyword tools)
Keyword
Monthly Volume
Intent
Converts?
"aesthetic clinic Singapore"
2,400
Research / browsing
Rarely
"botox price Singapore 2026"
390
Ready to buy
Yes
"aesthetic treatment"
6,600
Educational
Almost never
"chin filler cost near me"
170
Ready to book
Very high
Look at the difference. The top two keywords have high volume but low buying intent. Those searchers are browsing, not booking. The bottom two keywords have a fraction of the volume but are far more likely to convert. This is the gap most SEO strategies fall into.
Ahrefs explains Core Web Vitals optimization, a common technical SEO mistake
That was the most expensive mistake. But mistake number 2 is even more common, and you can check if your site has it right now.
Mistake 2: Wrong Question
Open your website in another tab. Go to your main service page. Read the first two paragraphs.
Does it talk about you and your qualifications? Or does it talk about the problem your customer is trying to solve?
If it starts with "Welcome to [Company Name], we are a leading provider of..." then you have this problem. Your customer does not care about your company history on the first visit. They care about whether you understand their specific situation.
Google knows this. Pages that match search intent rank higher than pages that are "optimised" for keywords but miss the intent entirely. A page targeting "renovation cost Singapore" that leads with a price calculator will outrank a beautifully written page about your design philosophy every single time.
Mistake 3: Ignoring Technical SEO
Nobody wants to talk about site speed, mobile responsiveness, and crawl errors. It is boring. It does not make for good Instagram content. But here is the reality:
A technically broken website will never rank, no matter how good the content is. Sites with strong content but failing Core Web Vitals commonly sit on page 3 for months. Once the technical foundation is fixed, the same content that was invisible can start ranking within weeks.
Common technical SEO issues found in Singapore business websites
Issue
Impact on Rankings
Fix Difficulty
Slow page speed (above 3s)
High
Medium
Missing or duplicate meta tags
Medium
Easy
No structured data
Medium-High
Easy
Mobile layout issues
High
Medium
Broken internal links
Medium
Easy
No XML sitemap
Low-Medium
Easy
Most of these take a developer a short amount of time to fix. The ROI is enormous. But agencies rarely prioritise them because technical work is invisible to clients. You cannot put "fixed 47 broken links" in a flashy report.
Ahrefs walks through a technical SEO audit for beginners. These are the issues hiding in plain sight on most websites.
Mistake 4: SEO in Isolation
It is surprisingly common for Singapore businesses to have separate agencies for SEO, Google Ads, and social media, none of which communicate with each other. The SEO agency targets keywords the Google Ads agency is already paying for. The social media agency creates content that duplicates what the SEO agency has written.
The result: paying three times for overlapping work and getting a fraction of the results.
SEO does not live in a vacuum. It connects to your Google Ads strategy (which keywords to pay for versus earn organically), your content strategy (what to publish and when), and your sales process (are the leads actually converting?). When these are siloed, money leaks through the gaps.
Mistake 5: Rankings Without Revenue
This is the mistake that ties all the others together. And it is the one that lets agencies survive for years without delivering results.
Here is how it works: an agency shows you a report. Rankings went up for 15 keywords. Traffic increased 23%. Impressions are up 40%. Everything looks like progress. You feel good. You renew for another quarter. But traffic without conversion tracking is just a number on a screen.
But nobody asks the only question that matters: "How many new customers came from organic search this month?"
If your SEO consultant cannot answer that question with a specific number, something is wrong. It is not hard to track. Google Analytics, call tracking, form attribution. The technology exists and it is not expensive. The reason most agencies do not track it is because the numbers would expose the fact that their strategy is not working. That is why research-first SEO consulting starts with tracking from day one.
Why These 5 Mistakes Keep Happening
Go back to the scenario from the beginning. $63,000 spent, 11 customers. How does that happen? Because all 5 of these mistakes compound. The agency targets high-volume research keywords. The content talks about the company instead of customer concerns. The technical foundation is slow and broken. The SEO strategy has no connection to other marketing channels. And nobody is tracking which customers actually came from organic search.
Each mistake on its own is fixable. But together, they create a system that looks like it is working while producing almost nothing. Rankings go up for the wrong keywords. Traffic increases but does not convert. Reports look impressive but revenue stays flat.
The fix is not complicated. It starts with research-first strategy: targeting keywords by buying intent, not volume. Content that addresses customer problems, not company credentials. A clean technical foundation. Connected channels. And revenue tracking from day one.
Audit Your SEO Strategy
You do not need to hire anyone to check whether these mistakes exist on your site. Here are 5 things you can do in the next 15 minutes:
Open Google Search Console. Look at your top 10 keywords. For each one, ask: is someone searching this actually ready to buy, or just browsing? If more than half are browsing keywords, your strategy has a targeting problem.
Read the first 2 paragraphs of your top 3 service pages. Count how many sentences start with "We" versus "You." If "We" dominates, your content is talking about the wrong person.
Test your site speed at PageSpeed Insights (Google's free tool that scores how fast your pages load on mobile and desktop). If your mobile score is below 50, technical issues are holding your rankings back regardless of your content quality.
Check if your SEO and Google Ads are targeting the same keywords. If they are, you are paying twice for the same traffic. One channel should own each keyword.
Ask your SEO consultant (or yourself): how many new customers came from organic search last month? If nobody knows the answer, nothing else matters until that tracking exists.
The Bottom Line
SEO in Singapore is not complicated. It is just done badly most of the time. The agencies that thrive are the ones that can scale fast, and scaling fast means skipping the research. That gap between what agencies deliver and what businesses actually need is where the money disappears.
The difference between SEO that produces revenue and SEO that produces reports is the few weeks of research most agencies skip.
If you read this and recognised your own situation, you are not alone. Most Singapore businesses are in the same position. The good news is that every one of these 5 mistakes is fixable. And fixing even one of them can dramatically change what your organic search produces. Book a free strategy call and I will show you which of these five mistakes are on your site.
If you want to see exactly where your site stands, I offer a free 30-minute SEO audit. No pitch. I will show you your top 5 keyword opportunities, your biggest technical issues, and whether your current strategy has a targeting problem.
