Victor Mari C. Baguilat Jr.

SEO AND SEM

1. I chose a company that I founded in 2017, which is called Kandama Social Enterprise. It is a social enterprise
incorporated in the Philippines that aims to expand the market for handwoven fabrics by turning them into
fashionable couture garments promoted that is promoted through live events overseas such as Paris Fashion Week,
New York Fashion Week, etc. and sold in specialty boutiques and brick and mortar stores in Melbourne, New
York, Paris, BGC, Quezon City, etc.

One of the important projects of my company is the advocacy campaign called “Save the Weave” campaign, which
aims to increase awareness of the importance of preserving the dying tradition of hand weaving. This campaign
includes activities such as University and school tour, speaking engagements, workshops, etc. As a social
enterprise, this campaign is important in conveying our advocacy of empowering indigenous women and
preserving heritage.

Upon searching the query “Save the Weave” in Google, our website is ranked 7th in terms of organic search but an
article published by the news agency Rappler about Kandama’s save the weave campaign ranked higher, at 3rd.
Upon clicking the link, the landing page is the home page of the website, which has nothing to do with the Save the
Weave campaign of the enterprise, altogether.

One of our bestselling products are “Filipiniana” dresses. Unfortunately, the query “buy Filipiniana” does not show
my brand in the first page, instead the first two results are a fashion magazine article about where to buy
Filipiniana and the link to the website of our competitor in the North American market, which is based in Toronto,
i.e., vintagallery.com.

“Buy Filipiniana” is an important keyword, because based on what we discussed in class, the people with this
query most likely already have intentions of actually buying, so they are easier to convert as opposed to someone
who just searched a broad keyword such as “Filipiniana”. However, upon checking in Google Trends and Google
Keyword planner, there is a wide disparity between the average monthly searches of “buy filipiniana” and
“filipiniana” as shown below. But I am most interested, which I found in Google Keyword, in the keyword
“modern filipiniana” because it is a more specific and accurate depiction of our products.

Fig. 1. Google Keyword result

Fig. 2 Google Trends result

In order to improve its ranking on the said keyword, the company should improve on the following: first, its
content about “modern Filipiniana” should be enhanced because according to the 2019 Periodic Table of
SEO Factors, “efforts to develop in-depth, high-quality content would be rewarded” 1. Second, the company
should also work on its architecture by improving the URLs it uses, the page load speed and crawlability.
Last, it has to work on the links, because “[t]he higher-quality and more relevant the sites that link to (our)
own are, the better it is for (our) SEO” 2. Also, it was mentioned in class that one of the biggest mistakes in
SEO is “not doing off-page SEO”3, which pertains to the back links from credible websites.

2. According to Hub Spot, “there are three main elements of a paid search campaign: keywords, ads, and landing
pages… So paid search really comes down to managing, matching and optimizing these 3 things.”4

To create a perfect Ad and conversion experience, the company should optimize its Ad by making sure that the ad
copy contains the key word in the query, the display URL is related to the query, and that the two description lines
of 35 characters each are relevant. Also, putting extensions such as contacts extension, location extension, lead
form extension in the ad copy is also effective in optimizing the conversion experience of the customers.

Figure 1 shows that the competition for the key word “modern Filipiniana” is low despite the high average monthly
search volume of 10k to 100k. Given this low competition, it is reasonable to bid for the low range bid price of Php
1.98, however, if we are aggressive and if we want to ensure that we get the most visible spot, the company should
bid for the high range bid price of Php 16.81.

3. No. According to our class discussion, one of the common mistakes with SEM is that the landing page does not
match the ad copy and keywords,5 hence, for the key word “modern Filipiniana”, both the landing page and ad
copy should carry it. Since “[l]anding page experience is a key piece of the Quality Score calculation and affects
(our) Ad Rank and CPC, [t]he content on the page should be well-matched to the ad copy and the user’s search
query.”6 Moreover, the landing page of kandama social enterprise should also incorporate other experience factors
such as clear navigation, quick page load and site speed, transparency about what the social enterprise does and
how to contact it, and it should lead with an explanation of the product or service being advertised before asking
users to fill out and submit forms to join its mailing list. For better content, a video can also be added in the landing
page.

1
Search Engine Land. “Periodic Table of SEO Factors 2019”. Third Door Media, Inc.
2
Ibid.
3
Sessions 3&4: Hayati, B. “Common Mistakes with SEO and SEM.ppt”. July 16, 2020
4
Hubspot Beginners Guide to Paid Search, p. 14. 2019
5
Sessions 3&4: Hayati, B. “Common Mistakes with SEO and SEM.ppt”. July 16, 2020
6
Search Engine Land. “Periodic Table of PPC 2019”, Third Door Media, Inc.