New businesses in Thailand have snowballed to 85,000 in the last year as claimed by the Bangkok Post. This clearly shows that new competition has arrived in wave after wave. That’s why many entrepreneurs have turned to search engine optimization (SEO) to stay afloat. But how do Thai companies maximize a digital marketing model that involves a lot of intricacies? The answer: crafting a local SEO checklist in Thailand!

What sets SEO apart is its promise of organic growth. Using the best SEO practices, you can boost the chances of turning that traffic into profit-generating actions. Ashir Kapur, the global online marketing manager for Servcorp shares in his testimonial for Marketing Ignite the extent of this SEO-driven benefit. He says that “Servcorp has experienced lots of organic growth in the Thailand market through white-hat/best SEO practices implemented by the Marketing Ignite team. One of the best SEO Agencies in Bangkok, Thailand I have worked with. I would recommend Marketing Ignite SEO services to anyone”.

Boosting local SEO in Thailand will have you face nuances unique to your business location. And right now, it’s most likely looking like a tall order, right? Well, you’re in luck because we’ve prepared a list of all SEO checklist essentials! Starting from the basics to the most overlooked elements, continue reading to know what it takes to craft an impactful SEO checklist.

Don’t know where to start with your SEO checklist? Before venturing deeper into lesser-known SEO elements, let’s first equip your campaign with tools to make your approach a cut above the rest.

Based on gs.statcounter.com’s July 2023 - July 2024 chart, Google remains the top digital marketing arena in Thailand. As of writing, the platform dominates with its 97.53% share of the country’s search engine market.

Amidst the competition and constant algorithm changes, monitoring website traffic has been more valuable than ever. And with that, Google Search Console (GSC) offers such a feature and more! Do you wish to know which keywords are driving the most traffic? GSC offers data-rich analytics. Want to know which web pages are hindering your ranking? GSC gives you an idea about the pages Google has indexed. For all those reasons, installing GSC is your first step toward ranking high in local SEO in Thailand. But then again, that doesn’t mean you should place all your eggs in Google’s basket.

Based on the same chart from gs.statcounter.com, Bing comes second in Thailand with a 1.45% search engine market share. Accordingly, Bing offers Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) to help you kickstart optimization. Like GSC, this tool boasts similar features ranging from sitemap submissions for better indexing and detailed performance insights.

If you’re still somehow unconvinced by this point—installing these platforms is free! All you need to do is verify your website domain, and you can now crash out these tools from your SEO checklist in Thailand.

An article by MediaCat stated that 67% of Thai consumers claimed the internet is where they often notice ads. If you’re itching to know how people can reach your website, Google Analytics is the tool to install. Why? At its core, Google Analytics offers real-time monitoring of user interactions across diverse platforms. That makes this tool a must for tracking your progress in dominating Thailand’s local SEO. And trust us when we say that its technology ideally complements GSC. Try linking them to access SEO-related insights while using Google Analytics.

Plugin installation is another crucial step in your SEO checklist in Thailand. If you didn’t know, plugins help streamline time-demanding tasks without—but preferably with—deep technical knowledge. From an objective standpoint, All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is one of the best choices for a WordPress SEO plugin. AIOSEO caters to a wide range of users by offering beginner-friendly and expert-level optimization options. For one, AIOSEO has advanced features to help you create a smart XML sitemap. With a sitemap, you not only enhance user experience, but you also help search engine crawlers index your pages better. AIOSEO also has a broken link checker as a free feature. That means you don’t have to subject yourself to the hassles of checking every web page manually for unresponsive links. With a starting annual price of $49.60, this plugin seals the deal for being one of the most versatile and affordable plugins in the market!

Another promising tool is SEMrush. Many use it for competitive keyword research. SEM Rush has tools to help you analyze your competitors’ websites and uncover top-performing keywords. When used with AIOSEO, you can also determine high-value phrases to complement your main keyword. For these reasons and more, plugins are the answer to a more hassle-free optimization.

Once you have all the right tools ready, it’s time to place a compass on your SEO Thailand checklist. And by that, we mean understanding your campaign’s key performance indicators (KPIs). An SEO campaign is like any business venture. Hence, you’ll need makers to know where your website stands in the grand scheme of things. Aside from tracking sales, you’ll know your SEO effort’s worth through keyword rankings, backlink accumulation, and your website’s organic growth.

The truth about keyword relevance is that it doesn’t focus solely on your chosen set of keywords. Search engines appreciate the beauty of linguistics too! That’s why the concept of latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords matters. While not a direct factor for ranking high on local SEO in Thailand, LSI keywords aid search engines in grasping contextual relevance. For a simpler breakdown, LSI keywords are terms and phrases marketers like you can use to expand your main keywords’ context.

Notice how we placed the phrase “Local SEO Checklist” at the beginning of this blog’s title tag? Our experience with SEO has proven time and again that keyword placements matter.

For instance, rewriting title tags has been an SEO trend in Thailand since 2023. One of the smart ways to approach this tactic is to place your keywords at the start of blog titles where they can best help your blog rank high. Applying this concept to content writing, your primary keyword should appear from the get-go... and by that, we mean within the first 150 words of your blog. It also helps search engines rank your blogs and pages better if your headers have target keywords.

But if you really want a lesser-known tactic, try adding keywords with your geolocation to your URLs. When users see these in URLs, it signals that the content is tailored to their needs. That, in turn, helps your page rank higher in location-based searches. Aside from that, you should also have your URLs embody these simple ABC adjectives: Accurate, Brief, and Content-relevant. So, opt for highly descriptive keywords while committing unnecessary words. To avoid errors, stick with lowercase letters and structure the URL to mirror your website. By doing all these, you help improve your pages’ click-through rate on SERPs.