Over 80% of Singapore business websites target keywords their customers never search for, because agencies start with tools, not customer research.
Buying-intent keywords with lower volume convert 8-12x better than high-volume browsing keywords. Volume is vanity. Intent is revenue.
Technical SEO issues like slow page speed and missing structured data affect 70-85% of Singapore business websites and are 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 3 weeks of research that most agencies skip.
Last month, a clinic owner in Singapore showed me his Google Analytics. He had been paying an SEO agency $4,500 a month for 14 months. Total investment: $63,000.
Total new patients from organic search: eleven.
That is $5,727 per patient. For a clinic where the average treatment is worth $800.
When I audited his website, I found the exact same 5 mistakes I see in almost every Singapore business that hires an SEO agency. 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 Uncomfortable Truth About SEO in Singapore
Most SEO strategies start with a tool export, not with customer research. This is the gap.
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 20 clients a month using keyword tool exports. They cannot onboard 20 clients a month if every strategy requires 3 weeks of actual research.
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.
Tyler Ang
Digital Marketing Consultant
After consulting with 100+ 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.
Every month you run ads, post content, or pay for SEO without knowing what is actually working is another month of budget leaking, and in one conversation I can pull up your Google Ads, Search Console, and Analytics to show you exactly where the hole is and which underutilised areas deserve your attention first.
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
Mistake 1: Targeting Keywords by Volume Instead of 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 real example from the healthcare industry in Singapore:
Keyword intent comparison for a healthcare clinic
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
The clinic I mentioned at the start? Their agency had them targeting the top two keywords. High volume, impressive-looking reports. But those searchers are browsing, not buying. The bottom two keywords have a fraction of the volume but convert at 8 to 12 times the rate.
Ahrefs explains how to do keyword research from start to finish. This is the process most agencies skip.
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: Writing Content That Answers the 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 Because It Is Not Glamorous
Technical issues are invisible to visitors but determine whether Google can rank your pages.
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. I have seen sites with brilliant content stuck on page 3 because their Core Web Vitals were failing. The moment we fixed the technical foundation, those same pages jumped to page 1 within weeks. Not months. Weeks.
Common technical SEO issues found in Singapore business websites
Issue
How Common
Impact on Rankings
Fix Difficulty
Slow page speed (above 3s)
73% of sites
High
Medium
Missing or duplicate meta tags
68% of sites
Medium
Easy
No structured data
85% of sites
Medium-High
Easy
Mobile layout issues
41% of sites
High
Medium
Broken internal links
52% of sites
Medium
Easy
No XML sitemap
34% of sites
Low-Medium
Easy
Most of these take a developer less than a day 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: Treating SEO as a Standalone Channel
I once met a business owner who had three different agencies: one for SEO, one for Google Ads, and one for social media. None of them talked to each other. The SEO agency was targeting keywords the Google Ads agency was already paying for. The social media agency was creating content that duplicated what the SEO agency had written.
He was paying three times for the same work and getting a third 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: No Connection Between Rankings and 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 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.
What Happened to the Clinic Owner
Remember the clinic owner from the beginning? $63,000 spent, 11 patients.
After I audited his site, we found all 5 of these mistakes. His agency was targeting high-volume research keywords, his content talked about the clinic instead of patient concerns, his site loaded in 6.2 seconds on mobile, his SEO had no connection to his Google Ads account, and nobody was tracking which patients actually came from organic search.
We rebuilt the strategy from scratch. Three weeks of research. New keyword targets based on buying intent. Technical fixes. Content rewritten around patient questions. Revenue tracking from day one.
Within 4 months, organic patient enquiries went from roughly 1 per month to 3 per week. Same website domain. Same industry. Same competition. Different strategy.
The results after rebuilding the strategy from scratch: same domain, same budget, different approach.
How to Audit Your Own SEO Strategy Right Now
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. 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 about 3 weeks of research that 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.
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.
Clear Next Step
A clear next step: the lowest-hanging fruit that will move the needle fastest
Honest Assessment
An honest assessment, because if you do not need me I will say so. This is a strategy session, not a sales pitch
