Equinet Academy
BACKGROUND
Incorporated in 2023, Our Momento is a photography services provider based in Singapore. While they focus primarily on providing personalised photo services to couples, families, and graduates, they are experienced in photographing businesses in formal settings too.
CHALLENGES FACED
As a young business in a cut-throat industry, Our Momento face steep competition from brands who:
- Have a bigger team and have access to more resources
- Are more reputable
- Have been running search engine optimisation (SEO) campaigns for a longer time
To improve their brand visibility to a wider group of audiences, SEO strategies could be applied.
OBJECTIVES
- Increase brand awareness on Google by ranking high on the SERP
- Increase website footfall
- Increase enquiries and bookings
SEO CAMPAIGN
After attending Equinet Academy’s Search Engine Optimisation Course, Our Momento applied some of the strategies taught into their digital marketing strategy to improve their ranking positions such as:
- Optimising their website with On-Page SEO
- Building authority with Off-Page SEO
- Addressing Technical SEO issues
ON-PAGE SEO
Firstly, Our Momento conducted keyword research in order to identify trending search terms that their potential clients are keying into search engines. Using SEMRush and Ahrefs, two of the leading SEO keyword research tools, it was easy to identify some keywords that Our Momento can use to build and expand upon.
For instance, wedding photography is one of their main product offerings. Seeding “wedding photography” into SEMRush, they were able to generate a list of over 2000 keyword ideas.
Having this list of keyword ideas in their arsenal, Our Momento was able to start developing a website architecture and strategy that is optimised for SEO. These keywords were organised into key areas of their website including:
- Domain name and URLs
- Images
- Title tags
- Meta description
- Content
To start, it was important to conduct a quick audit of the existing website to ensure technical SEO and a clear website architecture was in place
URLs
They did an overhaul to ensure all URLs were keyword-optimised, short, meaningful, and easy to understand. This is important not only so they are easier to remember, but search engines would also be able to pick up on these keywords, displaying them as top relevant searches.
What was previously ourmomento.sg/category-weddings-and-more/wedding-photography/ is now shortened to ourmomento.sg/wedding-photography/ for example.
Images
As a business built and sustained on imagery, it was especially important that Our Momento implemented all of the SEO best practices for images. This included:
- Renaming all images to descriptive file names
- Making alt tags descriptive
- Saving all images specially for web usage
- Ensuring high quality of all the images
For instance, instead of WP-Fullerton-1394.jpg, this image file name was changed to be specific and descriptive, including the keywords “wedding photography” to help in its ranking.
Given the large amount of images that were on the website, they also introduced alt text for all images to help search engines better understand the content of each image. In addition to helping with ranking, it improved the accessibility of their website for users with visual impairments.
Title Tags and Meta Description
A title tag that is concise and appealing is important in telling search engines what the webpage is about while catching the attention of potential clients. Together with a meta description, the aim was to rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP) as well as increase Our Momento’s clickthrough rate (CTR).
Keeping in mind some of the best practices for crafting title tags and meta descriptions:
- Keeping the length of title tags and meta descriptions short
- Including the keywords
- Ensuring it is outstanding and persuasive
- Optimising for multiple keywords
- Structuring subheadings in a clear, logical manner
These were just some of the key considerations they took away from their time at Equinet Academy.
The strategy Our Momento implemented was to keep the title tags straightforward while adopting a more human and impassioned tone in the meta description to capture the delicate emotions of a wedding.
Content
Finally, header tags were also introduced to structure the content of their website more effectively. Header tags differentiate between headers and subheaders, serving many purposes including:
- Improving SEO of the webpage
- Improving readability for the audience
- Structuring content in order of priority and hierarchy for web crawlers
- Helping search engines to quickly understand and more accurately categorise the content
Simply by organising a huge load of information systematically, the improved user experience has made it much easier and more efficient, especially for first-time customers.
OFF-PAGE SEO
Externally, Our Momento worked to improve its SEO ranking through two ways to start, as suggested by Equinet Academy:
- Link building
- Local citing building
Link Building
Our Momento worked to acquire backlinks from other reputable and relevant websites.
Search engines view backlinks as votes of confidence from one website to another, influencing the authority of the website as well as its SERP ranking.
Local Citing Building
To increase the visibility of their business, Our Momento has their company details listed in local business directories including on Google. The business will show up in the local SEO results when a user searches with the right keywords. Not only does this direct them to the website, but it also builds on the brand authority as customers tend to perceive this as legitimacy of the business.
Our Momento has also actively been garnering reviews on their Google My Business page. With their satisfied customers leaving them a high rating and a good word, it also builds on their trustworthiness as a business. Word of mouth is a highly efficient and powerful tool in growing businesses, and reviews by clients who have personally engaged Our Momento for their services will serve as an equally compelling word of endorsement.
TECHNICAL SEO
Mobile-Friendliness
As an imagery-based practice, it was important that the brand’s website be mobile-friendly. During the course, Equinet Academy shared a staggering statistics—there are almost 4,300 billion smartphone users in the world today. That is more than half the world’s population and it’s expected to grow further!
Our Momento optimised their website for mobile-friendliness, ensuring that it is responsive across all devices. In particular, they paid special attention to ensuring their mobile site is in line with Google’s mobile-first indexing guidelines.
Website Speed Optimisation
While a user-friendly design and experience are critical in keeping the user on the website longer, a quick loading time is also crucial in establishing a positive first interaction. Users don’t want to wait a long time for an image to load pixel by pixel. For a photography business, this is especially important as the large amount of images would typically take longer to load.
Through various techniques such as compressing images, leveraging browser caching, and minimising CSS, JavaScript, and HTML, Our Momento was able to reduce its loading speed to approximately 1 second or less.
Trust Signals
One of the first steps to signalling trust to users as well as to Google is by obtaining an SSL certificate. In other words, the use of HTTPS. This signifies that your website is secure and adheres to strict guidelines on data protection, encrypting all data transferred between the user and the website. Search engines favour secure websites, and Google Chrome would even mark websites with an SSL certificate as “Not Secure”.
While lightweight as a SEO ranking signal, it remains the ultimate stamp of security for many users. Our Momento got their SSL certificate immediately. Equinet Academy’s Web Design Course delves deeper into the use and advantages of HTTPS, for all who might be interested.
XML Sitemap
Finally, Our Momento created an XML sitemap and submitted it to Google Search Console. The XML sitemap helps search engines crawl the website better and index it more accurately.
RESULTS
Since initiating website optimisation and running their SEO campaign, Our Momento saw a significant growth within 6 months, with increased click throughs and traffic to their website.
This level of growth is credited to the knowledge of understanding and implementing the best practices of SEO. Through attending Equinet Academy’s Search Engine Optimisation Course, Our Momento gained valuable knowledge and confidence in making better and more accurate data-driven decisions to accelerate their SEO campaign.
Insights From Google Search Console
Before May 2023, Our Momento had days where there were zero click throughs (indicated by the blue line in the chart) to their website. The impressions (indicated by the purple line) obtained were also relatively stagnant throughout the months. Since May 2023 when they started running their SEO campaign, they have since experienced steady growth.
Insights From SEMRush
Before (Data from February 2023)
While some keywords came out ranking in the top 100, traffic was insignificant. On most days, Our Momento saw itself closing at zero clicks. It became clear that even ranking in the first 10 pages of a Google search wasn’t good enough.
After (Data from August 2023)
In just about 2 months since implementing SEO, Our Momento experienced an impressive 522% increase in traffic. A huge portion of this increase came organically, which also means the business incurred little to no cost!
They also saw some keywords ranking in position 1 while the remaining handful were achieving first page hits on SERP.
Data From Google Analytics 4
Comparing between two periods—February to May 2023 and May to August 2023, users on Our Moment’s website doubled. Organic and direct traffic both doubled. As brand awareness increased, so have website revisits as users came back repeatedly for quality and informational content.
Although engagement rate remains stagnant, the average engagement time has increased by 22%. This signals that users are staying on the website longer to digest and look deeper into the content.
While these are just some measures of determining the success of a SEO campaign, Our Momento has seen overall positive results. They experienced an increase in users getting in contact, WhatsApp enquiries, and ultimately bookings of their products and services.
GOING FORWARD
All of the above implementations couldn’t have been done in such a short period of time and seen such significant results without the help of an SEO specialist. With Equinet Academy’s recommendation, Our Momento engaged a reputable local SEO agency to assist and guide them along in the entire process. While Our Momento enjoys the fruits of its SEO labours, this only marks the beginning of their digital marketing efforts.
Moving forward, Our Momento will continue to strive to be one of the best providers of photography services by providing valued photography packages and informational content that guides and helps its customers to prepare, enjoy, and ultimately a good customer experience. Their SEO campaigns will continue and they hope to expand their efforts to include a more all-rounded digital marketing strategy such as venturing into some popular social media platforms and working with influencers to spread the word far and wide.
