The first thing start-ups in Hong Kong need to know about SEO and other forms of digital marketing is that you cannot benchmark yourself against the local competition. Hong Kong is 10 years behind when it comes to digital marketing, and if you look at what your competitor next door is doing, you’re likely to do it wrong and keep playing catch up, rather than getting ahead.
The state of Hong Kong’s digital marketing scene surprised me when I moved here from the US in 2013. In Salt Lake City, Utah, where my firm MWI is headquartered, we have over 300 competitors. In Hong Kong there are perhaps 20 firms we count as credible competition. A quick search for “hong kong seo” will show you that within the top 30 results there are a fair number of firms for whom SEO and digital marketing are not the primary focus, along with various job websites. Given that, SEO firms should know how to rank their own websites, you would expect to find nothing but SEO firms listed in the top results for a search like “hong kong seo”, unless there just aren’t that many SEO agencies in Hong Kong to begin with.
Why are there 10 times the number of digital marketing firms in Utah, a small state with barely two million inhabitants, compared to Hong Kong, a world city with a population over seven million? I don’t know the whole answer, but I suspect it has something to do with the same reasons why Hong Kong suffers from a shortage of programmers and start-ups generally. There have simply been better opportunities elsewhere, and a culture that favours stable employment over risk. If, in 1999, I had the opportunity to go into banking or real estate and make the kind of money people have been making in Hong Kong for the past 20 years, I might not have started a digital marketing firm, either.
SEO firms should know how to rank their own websites, you would expect to find nothing but SEO firms listed in the top results for a search like “hong kong seo”
But as we see real estate in Hong Kong slowing down, and the financial industry starting to appear a bit more risky, we’re witnessing an explosion in tech start-up activity and investments. The financial management platform 8 Securities has just raised US$9m in a “series B” round of financing. The last-minute hotel reservation start-upHotelQuickly recently secured US$1.16m in “series A” funding. And there are many more.
If you are in charge of marketing at one of these start-ups, or are an entrepreneur putting together your small team where everyone is in charge of marketing along with everything else, there are some basics you’ll want to be aware of when it comes to SEO, because if your business is dependent on getting customers or leads online SEO can make or break your company.
First, understand that SEO is not complicated. You can do a decent job, without needing to go out and pay HK$40,000 per month to a firm like mine. Your challenge will not be finding the skills to get the job done, but the time. For that reason I’m gearing this brief tutorial towards the basic activities of SEO that take the smallest amount of time and make the biggest difference. This is not meant to be comprehensive, but will be enough to get you started in the right direction.
SEO is made up of three core activities; 1) on-site optimisation, 2) off-site optimisation, and 3) results analysis.
