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SEO Trends in Thailand in 2023
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The different search engine optimization (SEO) trends in Thailand in 2023 have changed significantly since last year, the year before, or the start of the New Twenties (which is 2020). If you wish to establish a digital marketing presence in Thailand, knowing this answer is a must.
The 2020 trends were dictated upon by the COVID-19 pandemic and the numerous lockdowns that had Thailand citizens forced to spend more time online than offline, even when conducting business.
The Many Changes in Thailand SEO Trends Since 2020
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who has been the Thai PM since 2014, called for the Thai citizenry to stay home, leading to more trends involving stay-at-home shopping. E-commerce (or ecommerce) thus grew by necessity at the time.
The top SEO trends for Thailand in 2020 were zero-click searches, voice search, the BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) change in the Google search algorithm, and optimizing for intent (making your website answer common questions related to your industry to rank high on Google).
Since then, three years later, more changes have taken place and new SEO trends have emerged. There's a further emphasis on Google Discover to curate feeds personalized per user, the new core web vitals metrics, title tag rewrites, and everything else along those lines.
In 2023, Thai businesses should brace themselves for more Google SEO updates focusing on user experience or UX.
Thai Users are Discovering the Internet Through Google Discover
Google Discover isn't new. It was released back in 2018 (its previous version was 2016's Google Feed) and curates content shown to Google users based on their app and web activity as well as their interests.
It's been around for almost five years now and it's beginning to make waves on SEO trends in Thailand.
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Similar to Instagram's Feed But with Search Queries: The curation of Google Discover is akin to the UX of an Instagram user feed. It learns what content the users like then shows related content linked to such interests on the feed in the form of interactive articles.
Google goes beyond that by curating user feeds through search queries as well. This serves as another layer of personalization and user segmentation most digital marketers have taken advantage of from how social media groups its different users.
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A New Competitor against Organic Search: For most Thai brands and companies, their SEO bread-and-butter is to rank high on organic searches. However, a new avenue or door of digital marketing has opened for them with Google Discover.
You can get an edge on competitors unaware of Google Discover's value, particularly with how it drives a lot more traffic to your website compared to organic search. You can target both and have twin avenues for driving traffic.
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The Power of Personalization: Thailand users who get recommended things by Google Discover tend to be highly interested with websites and businesses like yours Users who have a customized Google Discover feed will tend to get fed with articles that appeal to their searches and tastes.
When they visit those sites, there's more engagement from them because they're highly enthusiastic about the topic in the first place. They're more likely to become leads that you can convert to sales because their interest with your specific content isn't incidental or coincidental.
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Personalized Ads to Interested Parties: Instead of trying to appeal to casual audiences that you need to sell harder to get your products or engage with your content, you can target niches better with Google Discover curation.
Organic search casts a wide net that captures several uninterested parties. The curated traffic of Google Discover also ironically curates users to your site. In the future, it might be possible to integrate promoted results into the algorithm to take advantage of its curated Thai user base.
In order for your website to get featured by Google Discover, your SEO needs to meet the following important requirements.
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Schema Markup: Your website should contain a code telling search engines in a precise manner what your site content is contextually. This should then give them more contextualized and informative results that Google Discover favors.
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Loading Speed: If your site page doesn't load fast, it's likely to get discarded by Google Discover or even the query-centric Google Algorithm of the 2020s. If you're a lesser-known website, assuage suspicions of being a spam site by having fast-loading pages with no suspicious redirects.
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Click-Worthiness: What is a click-worthy website? Or click-worthy content? It's content that doesn't lie with clickbait titles. What the titles promise the content should deliver when the articles are clicked, or else Google Discover won't discover your content.
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Focused Topic: Google Discover is yet another layer of disambiguation for the Google Algorithm. Therefore, to target niches better you need to make your website more focused and relevant on a single topic instead of spreading itself thin with multiple topics.
Google Discover should soon be used for the same SEO purposes as organic search this year. Marketers who haven't discovered Google Discover but have pages like blogs can get started on the Discover bandwagon by getting their articles into curated feeds of Thailand Google users.
Ranking Now Puts Greater Emphasis on Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals come as part of the package of the update for Google's Page Experience, with it rolling out in 2022. They're new metrics that give priority to UX through webpage analysis based on three search signals—Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This new user-centric metric does calculations on how long the main content of your webpage loads. It's related to the UX because LCP specifically measures when, say, a user from Thailand sees most of your page's most important content on the screen.
First Input Delay (FID): After loading the content, the FID checks how the visitors interact with content. As a UX metric, it checks engagement from the user to ensure that it's not just a visitor tricked by clickbait to click a link he thought was one thing but was actually another thing.
Depending on the clicked page, the engagement from the Thai user could involve interactions such as:
Scrolling
Filling in a field
Pressing a navigation button
Choosing an option from a menu
And any other interaction or action
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Getting your page to load quickly is a must and ensures a good first impression (after all, first impressions last). Being able to interact with the content without any delay further solidifies that good impression.
CLS is a layout visual stability metric. The layout should be as stable as possible to get a good CLS grade and more recommendations on search by the Google algorithm.
It's bothersome UX-wise for a user from Thailand to press a navigation button on a local news site but instead click on an advertisement. Most Thai user complaints tend to root from that and many news websites are guilty of this layout shift.
In grading CLS, more than 0.25 means it has poor CLS and less than 0.1 is good. If it's between 0.1 and 0.25, your site requires improvement in terms of CLS.
With that in mind, don't focus on such metrics too much either. Ensure that the UX and overall site experience remains solid for your organic results while dipping your toes in Core Web Vitals as its metrics get more nuanced down the line.
Core web vitals were released in June 2021, which impacted the mobile experience ever since. Then, last February 2022, the new rollout for the desktop page experience happened, leading to its double impact on both PC and mobile users in Thailand in 2023.
The Tag Rewrites Trends Will Persist in 2023
To those hoping that tag rewrites are a passing fad instead of a persistent trend, tough luck. It has become a new way for Google to enhance or level up its traditional organic search. Title tag rewrites didn't go as smoothly as all the other SEO trends with its updates.
The Badly Received Tag Rewrites Update: Google has currently decided to replace a site's title with text from another website page or with its H1 tag. Many webmasters complained about the decision. However, Google is likely to stick with the tag rewrite.
Write Better Titles to Avoid Rewrites: The whole point of this is to encourage webmasters to write better titles. In 2023, they're projected to further refine tag rewrites down the line. It's important to contextualize your web content with titles as far as search engine results pages (SERPs) are concerned, since the results use those titles.
Make Sure Your Title Fits the Content: If the UX is compromised and your Thai website comes off in any way like clickbait, the algorithm should figure it out in short order and punish your website in the SERP rankings accordingly as "irrelevant".
Prevention is Better Than the Cure: If Google decides that a site's title should be rewritten, the ranking of the page will doubtlessly be influenced, usually for the worse. It's best to write your title and tag properly from the start to prevent a Google rewrite.
Warning – No Way to Undo Tag Rewrites: There's no way to undo a site title rewrite once Google has decided to do it. However, you can prevent that decision from happening by improving upon the title and tag itself so that Google is less likely to change it.
Content Marketers Should Make Helpful Content
Aside from seeking new SEO trends and avenues to score big organic SERP results, you should also create quality content that's also helpful to your Thai users.
For instance, it's imperative that you write content for each marketing funnel stage based on user intent, from query to sale. The helpfulness of your contextualized relevant content with strong search signals will also affect its rankings.
Proofread Your Content: Users want well-written pieces of content. No typographical or grammatical errors. No outdated links. No broken page links. No missing or broken image links.
Helpful Content: Because Google is being used more and more to aid in school research, practical advice, and DIY life tips, contextual content that's practical or helpful have increased visibility.
Question-and-Answer Machine: More and more web content, articles like this, and blog entries are deliberately ranking hard on user questions with relevant content. If they rank high on common questions, that's a big deal.
Appealing to Ordinary Folks: Many people are typing questions about services, products, problems, or situations they're researching. Ordinary Thai folk don't type keywords but whole questions.
Taking Advantage of This Helpfulness Search Signal: Get high ranks on questions about your product in order to push your Thai customers to the buying decision phase.
The Goal of Helpful Content in SEO: The goal of SEO for helpful content is to have your content rank high in that Thailand user's journey from inquiries to buying your product, service, or solution.
A Roundup of Top Content Marketing Strategies for SEO in 2023
Learning SEO trends is one thing. However, how do you use them to your advantage SEO-wise? Let Marketing Ignite give you the top marketing strategies you can use for optimization purposes then.
Helpful Content: As discussed above, make helpful, education, or practical content to expand the top of your sales funnel.
Schema Markup: Get the chance to earn a featured snippet from Google by adding schema markup to your website.
Be Mindful of Content and Keyword Gaps: You should understand your content and keyword gaps in the user journey from query to buying decision.
Professional and Detailed Content: Check to see that all the ALT tags are optimized while you're adding images to your site to ensure a clean layout and high LCP/FID/CLS scores.
SEO Trend Anticipation: Core web vitals and Google Discover aren't the only trend in Thailand SEO you should watch out for. Even writing blogs about up-and-coming SEO trends will help your website tremendously.,
Paid Search Keywords: Yes, even in 2023, you can still make use of paid search keywords for leverage and to help mold your content strategy. Specifically pay for keywords with a lower keyword difficulty score that you're not ranked for.
More Multimedia Elements: Another trend to watch out for is an increase of visual aids to aid UX. On that note, add as much video content to your blog articles and webpages.
Adding more videos and images to your site also assist in favorable user behavior metrics from your (Thailand) user base, which includes the following:
Lower bounce rates
Increased time on site
Higher conversion rates
Increased pages per visit
Making Quality Content for SEO in 2023
Webpages have always been making quality content to optimize their sites for Google. So what is quality web content as far as SEO in 2023 is concerned? What it means in 2023 is the following:
Basic Text Quality Check: It's proofread text content with no typos and grammatical mistakes. In terms of UX, it should be readable with no garden path sentences. Using short paragraphs for readability is also a must.
Complete Elements with No Broken Links: In terms of multimedia elements, you should also have video and picture links that have no errors or broken links. Those ruin the UX and give you poor scores on engagement and core web vitals.
Needs Met: The Google algorithm has become smart enough to tell if your content is quality content or if it's clickbaity, irrelevant, and poorly composed. The search engine rates pages based on the needs met (NM) of the page.
Write for the UX: Write your text to cater to the user experience. Thai users define what quality content is based on what they engage on, so err on the side of caution and maintain grammar and spelling checks on top of readability.
Contextuality: Your content's contextuality or how it caters to target audience needs will make or break it in terms of being seen by the algorithm as quality, relevant content for the traffic driven to it.
Your webpage should do the following things to be considered by the algorithm as high-quality.
User search intent and the purpose of your website should align together.
The content should be written with trustworthiness, authoritativeness, and expertise in mind.
Offer engaging, readable content that captures the Thailand user's interest at every stage of the sales funnel.
Be like Wikipedia and add sources or citations for your material. Put in certifications, testimonials, and reviews for good measure.
2023 SEO Needs to Be More Integrated with Digital Marketing
This section might seem like a redundant, commonsensical thing to call a recent "trend". You might be thinking, "Well, of course SEO will be more integrated into digital marketing strategy. It always has, right?" Not necessarily.
More Than Meets the Eye: There's more to SEO integration in 2023 than meets the eye. Let's dig deep beyond surface level understanding of the concept and observe current changes in the digital marketing landscape.
Looming Inflation and the Price of Advertising: Advertising prices are going up and the inflation woes of the world (not only Thailand) are right around the corner. It's only natural for digital marketers to allocate their efforts to Google SEO to really stretch their budget cost-effectiveness.
SEO Trends are Key to Appealing to the Thai Market: As the rise of CPAs continues with no end in sight, it pays to focus on SEO trends, the user experience, organic keyword strategy, and new avenues or metrics to explore and rank on as Thailand itself becomes more and more digitized.
Know Google’s Algorithm Updates: Google's Algorithm is dynamic and forever evolving by design. As of now, Core Web Vitals is the key ranking factor for the algorithm released back in June 2021. Its implications on the mobile and desktop page experience are far reaching even two years later in 2023.
Google Discover, Core Web Vitals, and Tag Rewrites: Pay attention to SEO trends like Google Discover, which personalizes Thai (and otherwise) Google user feeds to their interests like an Instagram feed. There’s also Core web vitals are new SEO metrics to appeal with and the tag rewrites update that can make or break your SERP rankings.
The Many Ways SEO Can Integrate with Digital Marketing in 2023
Integrating SEO into your overall digital marketing strategy is also an upcoming 2023 SEO trend. Here's how your company should go about it in light of the current state of digital marketing in 2023.
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By Public Relations: Reputation management online is all the rage in 2023 for good reason. What spills over in Google will also spread in social media. SEO has a huge impact on your company's brand awareness and public image.
Therefore, plan your digital marketing and execute ownable (positive) content on your website to ensure it's organically visible to the search engine. Make the context of your site useful and constructive instead of toxic and negative.
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With Content Teams: Marketing teams should make effective content based on SEO impact. This ensures that websites are able to reach a wider audience or target a specific (Thailand) market segment.
They can do this by planning content topics and researching ownable, relevant keyword targets. The SERP outcomes your Thai company should be gunning for is driving higher traffic, increasing user engagement (like improving UX by paying attention to core web vitals), and boosting your lead conversion potential.
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Through Web Developers: SEO best practices should be observed by Thai companies to appeal to Thai netizens as guided by SEO pros like us here at Marketing Ignite. We'll teach you how to implement the latest SEO trends in 2023 from the very foundations of your web design and web development.
We regularly cooperate and collaborate with the developers to guarantee that your website functionality, structure, and content are dynamically updated and optimized for present-day Google search algorithm changes.
We also help in the monitoring and analysis of your website metrics and analytics SERP-wise to provide clues on improving your SEO for the future.
Marketing Ignite Makes the Dynamic Nature of SEO Work for You
With those new huge trends in Thailand SEO, your business now has a plethora of chances to rank high in SERPs and gather the right demographics and leads as the pandemic restrictions ease up and more people are logging off from e-commerce activities.
We at Marketing Ignite will guide you through these trying times when there will be an inevitable drop-off in online shopping as shopping malls, restaurants, and outdoor establishments reopen for the public. The good news is that e-cash and online transactions have become part of modern culture, so they're here to stay.