SEO guide · Chapter 2 of 6 · 6 min read
Find the searches you can win
A good first target is a search a buyer types, for something you genuinely sell, where page one still has room for a business your size. Search Console shows the searches you are already close on. Your customers and the live results show the rest.
Updated
You leave with: An opportunity table with each search marked build, review, backlog or drop.
Five reasons people search
The same topic can be searched for very different reasons, and the pages already ranking show which reason Google has settled on. Practitioners usually sort intent into four types (Ahrefs on search intent); for a small business we find five easier to act on. Buy and compare searches sit closest to an enquiry.
| Reason | What they want | Example | Page that usually fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy | To hire or buy now | aircon chemical wash tampines | Service page with price and area |
| Compare | To choose between options | best accounting firm for startups singapore | A fair comparison, or a how-to-choose page |
| Learn | To understand a problem | why is my aircon leaking water | A guide that answers it |
| Get help | Support for something they already have | how to reset a digital door lock | A help or FAQ page |
| Go somewhere | To reach one site | ikea tampines opening hours | That business's own page |
Where to look
Searches you are already close on
In Search Console's Queries tab, with Singapore selected, sort by impressions and look at average positions between about 8 and 30. Google already connects you to these. Treat the range as a starting filter and widen it if it leaves you nothing.
What customers actually ask
Read your WhatsApp chats, emails and call notes. Write down the questions people ask before buying, and the reasons they hesitate, in their own words.
Where people ask in public
Reddit (r/singapore, r/askSingapore), HardwareZone and Facebook groups show how locals phrase a problem, and what answers they found missing.
Services with no page
List everything you sell. A service with no page of its own never appears in Search Console, so you have to add it yourself.
Keyword tools, as estimates
Search volume and difficulty are modelled numbers. Ahrefs builds its difficulty score from how many sites link to the pages already ranking, and it ignores how strong your own site is, so a low score can still be hard for a young site (how it works). A page also tends to rank for many related searches, so one keyword's volume undercounts its traffic (Ahrefs' study). Use these numbers to sort a list. Let the results page decide.
Read page one before you decide
Search from Singapore in a private window, or set a tool to Singapore. Our SERP simulator shows how your own title would look there.
| Look at | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| The kind of pages ranking: service pages, lists, directories, forums, videos, tools | The format Google expects. Match it or pick a different search. |
| A map with local listings | Location drives this search, and a Google Business Profile matters. |
| Who ranks: businesses your size, or national brands and directories | Whether there is room for you. |
| An AI answer at the top | Some readers get their answer before the links. Your page needs something worth clicking for. |
| Dates on the top results | Whether recent pages are favoured. |
| What the top pages show: prices, photos, reviews, areas served | The minimum your page has to match. |
Three gates
Only call a search a priority when it passes all three.
| Gate | Question | Passes when |
|---|---|---|
| Offer fit | Can you deliver exactly what the search implies? | Your page can make a truthful offer. |
| Clear intent | Is the person choosing a provider, product or action? | The next step after reading is obvious. |
| Room on page one | Do the live results leave a realistic opening? | A business of similar size, or a weak page, already ranks. |
Your opportunity table
| Search | What they want to do | Offer fit | Page Google shows now | Impr. / position | What wins page one | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aircon chemical wash tampines | Book a chemical wash nearby | Strong | /services/chemical-wash | 140 / 14.2 | Map listings, 3 service pages, 1 directory | Review: add Tampines detail and prices |
| Strong / partial / none | URL, or none | Build / review / backlog / drop |
Worked example · rankrhq.com, Google Search Console ·
Our article was being found for a search its title ignored
One of our articles targeted “best AI SEO tools”, a search owned by sites far stronger than ours. Search Console showed 189 of its 261 impressions came from “keyword gap” searches, a narrower topic the title barely mentioned. Google had already matched the page to a search we could compete for, so that became the target. Chapter 3 covers what we changed.
What this does not prove
- Where a page is shown today does not predict where it will rank after a change.
Worked example · DataForSEO (Singapore) and the live Google results ·
Two searches we dropped despite the numbers
“Local SEO Singapore” gets about 260 searches a month in Singapore with a difficulty score of 1, which looks like an easy win. Page one is a map of local listings plus agency service pages. We sell neither a map listing nor that kind of service page for it, so it failed the offer-fit gate. Earlier, on 8 August, we dropped “how much does SEO cost in Singapore” for the third gate: page one was ten established Singapore agencies.
What this does not prove
- Volumes are Google Ads estimates and the difficulty score is a tool's model. The live results were the deciding evidence.
Common mistakes
- Chasing the biggest number on the list.
- Making a page for every way of wording one question.
- Using only Search Console, which never shows services you have no page for.
- Reading results from another country for a Singapore decision.
- Treating a difficulty score as the final answer.
Your 20-minute task
Fill in five rows of the opportunity table and mark each one build, review, backlog or drop.
Sources
- Google:Performance report: queries, pages and filters
- Ahrefs:Search intent
- Ahrefs:Keyword difficulty
- Ahrefs:What is traffic potential?
- Ahrefs:How many keywords one page ranks for
Ahrefs sells an SEO tool. We cite it for practical methods and check its numbers against the live results.