SEO in Bangladesh: Current State, Importance, and Future Prospects

SEO is becoming an essential tool for Bangladesh’s thriving online businesses.

But what exactly is the current state of SEO in Bangladesh? Is it important enough to implement in your business?

Let’s explore the state of SEO in Bangladesh SEO and the edge it offers businesses. 

Analyzing the Current State of SEO in Bangladesh

To get a full picture of the present condition of SEO in Bangladesh, we have to look at it from three different perspectives: the adoption of SEO as a profession, the awareness among business owners, and the challenges faced while implementing SEO.

The Adoption of SEO as a Profession

Bangladesh’s government supports its thriving freelance community of over 1 million.

Much of Bangladesh’s freelance workforce uses their digital marketing expertise to generate income. Within this group, a certain skill stands out: Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

To find a ballpark number of SEO experts in Bangladesh, we turned to Upwork, where most of the Bangladeshi SEO freelancers work. We found more than 10,000 Bangladeshi SEO freelancers there.

We also searched on LinkedIn, and it gave out 37000+ results. These 37k people are not freelancers but are earning their living through SEO as their profession working for different companies.

So, without any doubt, it’s safe to say that, Bangladesh has nearly 50,000 people who use SEO to earn their living. Also, with the rise of the demand in the global SEO market, the number will keep increasing, which we can say for sure. 

Also, the incentives provided by the government, the need for a larger workforce by the SEO agencies, and the availability of SEO courses further support and encourage the youth of the country to take up SEO as a profession.

The Awareness and Implementation of SEO Among Large Enterprises

Before we analyze the demand for SEO as a service in Bangladesh, let’s take a look at the monthly traffic of several giant companies. 

*The data has been collected from SEMRush

As you can see for most companies, the majority of their traffic (more than 80%) comes from organic search. This doesn’t happen overnight without making any SEO effort. 

So, as a digital marketing strategy, SEO is also popular among the giant business companies of Bangladesh across industries, even among companies that use paid ads for brand exposure.

The Common SEO Challenges In Bangladesh and Their Solutions 

Even though SEO is a widely used marketing strategy in Bangladesh, there are some specific obstacles that SEO experts and business owners have to face here. For example,

Resistance to Change

As of 2024, the SEO industry is unpredictable and volatile because of constant search engine algorithm updates, evolving user behavior, and the inclusion of AI.

When one of these new changes occurs, it more or less makes the previously effective strategies obsolete. This requires businesses and SEO professionals to adapt continually. 

However, business and agency owners often resist new strategies due to a lack of understanding, resource constraints, or a focus on short-term gains. This resistance can lead to falling behind the competition.

Possible Solution: To overcome these challenges, businesses and agencies should stay up-to-date with what’s happening in the industry. 

Also, it’s crucial to conduct regular SEO audits and develop new and flexible strategies that can help mitigate the impact of algorithm updates. It’s best to always emphasize long-term benefits when implementing SEO strategies. 

Expectation Management

Many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and startups in Bangladesh are not fully aware that organic marketing, particularly SEO, is a long-term investment. 

Unlike paid ads, which can deliver instant results, SEO requires time to build momentum and achieve sustainable outcomes. This impatience for immediate results poses significant challenges for SEO professionals working with these businesses.

Possible Solution: To address the impatience for instant SEO results among Bangladeshi SMEs and startups, SEO professionals should focus on demonstrating the value of SEO through regular reporting and analytics. 

Also, it’s best to combine short-term tactics like paid ads with long-term SEO efforts to get the maximum outcome. 

Underestimating Technical SEO 

Even when SEO is flourishing as a marketing strategy, technical SEO, a crucial part is underused and undervalued. A large number of businesses do not understand its importance and they are reluctant to spend money for a technically sound website. 

This leads to a mediocre result even after a perfect on-page and off-page strategy.

Possible Solution: SEO influencers in Bangladesh should publish technical SEO case studies and arrange workshops, podcasts, or other mediums to build awareness about the importance of technical SEO.

SEO agencies can offer free technical SEO audits which will alert business owners about the issues and the benefits of technical SEO. 

Setting the Bar Too High

Like many parts of the world, SEO service providers in Bangladesh, often brag about their ability to deliver exceptional results. 

These promises include unrealistic standards such as guaranteeing top rankings on Google or promising a spike in organic traffic within a very short time. 

Sometimes agency owners resort to black hat SEO techniques to achieve such unrealistic results which later gets penalized by Google, ultimately undoing all the legit SEO efforts.  

As a result, it leads to a loss of trust among business owners in SEO as a viable digital marketing strategy.    

Possible Solution: SEO service providers should always be honest and transparent about the outcome that they can achieve. Also, it’s best to use white hat SEO techniques that are ethical. The outcomes achieved through white hate tactics are permanent and don’t get penalized by search engines. 

Quantity Over Quality  

Instead of focusing on quality, both business owners and service providers focus on the quantity of content and/or links to reduce costs. This quantity-over-quality approach often backfires, as search engines penalize websites with low-quality content or unnatural link-building practices.

When these tactics don’t work, the business owners waste money on a wasteful SEO campaign.

Possible Solution: Prioritize creating high-quality, relevant content and ethical link-building practices. Focus on creating valuable content that engages users and naturally attracts backlinks. 

Also, emphasize user experience with a user-centric website design and monitor engagement metrics to continuously improve. 

Because of these misconceptions and bad SEO practices, SEO is not as popular as it should be among SMEs and startups. There are a lot of improvements to be made to get the best outcome while implementing an organic marketing strategy.

The Importance of SEO For Businesses In Bangladesh

As a small or medium-sized business owner with a target audience in Bangladesh, should you use SEO in your marketing strategy?

Yes, you should, and here’s why- 

Reaching Your Target Audience

With the recent digitization of Bangladesh, everyone has a smartphone in their pocket and when they need anything, they look for it on the internet. 

So, as a business owner, it’s a must that you have a website for your product or service. But even if you did, what are the chances of it coming up among your competitors when people look for your product or the service that you sell?

That’s where you need SEO. 

By optimizing your content for the local keywords, the search engines will display your product or service on the first page. When that happens, it’s guaranteed that you will get traffic because statistics show that 95% of all search traffic goes to the first page of Google. 

So, without being on that first page of Google, you are losing 95% of people who search for your product or service.  

Now, you can say that ads can take you to the top of the search engine result pages. Well, here’s another stat for you, 82% of people ignore online ads.  

It’s up to you what you will do with these stats.

Brand Awareness

As a part of the organic strategy, you will have to cover different keywords with various search intents. As you cover more and more keywords of the same topic, you will slowly build topical authority. Once you do, you will be considered a subject matter expert.

When that happens, your website will easily rank for that niche or sub-niches and will be prioritized.

Why does this happen?

When someone searches for something, Google needs to use a certain amount of resources to bring out the answer. So, Google wants to keep the expenses to a minimal level.  

That’s why when Google knows that your website covers a lot of topics about, say for example: “smartphone batteries” when someone searches anything about smartphone batteries, your website will pop up.

As more and more people search for smartphone batteries, your website pops up every time, establishing your business as a brand among your target audience.   

Cost-Effectiveness

Compared to paid ads, the cost of SEO is significantly lower with a much higher return on investment.

As you may already know, the cost of running ads is a continuous process and you must spend money to get results. When you stop spending money, the sales stop coming. 

But for an SEO campaign, there’s an initial cost for industry research, content creation, and optimization. Once these initial steps are done, there’s only a minimal cost for maintenance.  

So, SEO campaigns only have an initial cost and as the campaign progresses, your cost reduces and traffic increases.

That’s why, SEO has a higher return on investment than paid ads. 

According to Zipdo, a well-executed SEO campaign, the ROI is 275%. That means, that for every $100 you spend for SEO, you get $275 back.  

As far as cost-effectiveness and ROI are concerned, the numbers that SEO brings to the table are insane!

The Impact of SEO With Other Digital Marketing Strategies

SEO alone can be considered a complete digital marketing strategy. However, the true potential of SEO can only be achieved through combining it with other digital marketing tactics.

For example, Bangladeshi businesses that do not prioritize SEO, follow one or more of these strategies:

• Paid Ads
• Social Media Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Influencer Marketing

Businesses that use social media, email, or influencer marketing can easily implement SEO because these marketing strategies are a part of off-page SEO tactics. SEO professionals use these platforms to promote organic link-building, contributing to brand awareness.  

Now, as for paid ads, you can use them to fill the gap SEO leaves at the initial stage.  

SEO is great for building your brand and getting organic traffic, and sales. But it may take years to reap the benefits of SEO finally. 

That’s where PPC comes in. 

Paid advertising delivers instant results, providing immediate sales and brand exposure. If you launch an ad campaign while maintaining SEO efforts, you get a boost while building your brand. As a result, you get sales all year round. 

This is why, most brands implement a mixture of paid and organic marketing strategies. They use paid advertising for an instant boost in sales and at the same time they work on SEO to establish themselves as a brand for long-term growth. 

But this approach requires a lot of budget right off the bat which is why large enterprises usually embrace it.  

The Future of SEO in Bangladesh

The future of SEO in Bangladesh seems promising because of multiple trends that position it as a crucial marketing strategy. Also, because of this brighter future, there are many opportunities for growth for both business owners and service providers. 

Predicted Trends

• More Emphasis on Local and E-commerce SEO: After the Corona pandemic, there was a growth in e-commerce businesses in Bangladesh, which is still on the rise. So, SEO experts with local and e-commerce SEO expertise will have higher demand.

• Social Media, Affiliate, and Influencer Marketing: Because of the rising number of f-commerce businesses, affiliate marketers, and influencers, SEO will be integrated into such tactics to get more out of them. 
• AI Content Creation: Like the rest of the world, the AI revolution is starting to grow in the SEO community in Bangladesh. SEO professionals are and will use AI to keyword research, create content, and perform SEO audits more and more in the future.   

• Short-Form Video Content and Podcasts: With the growing popularity of social media users and influencers, the demand for short-form videos such as YouTube shorts, and Instagram reels will gain more popularity. Also, the use of podcasts will be popular among Bangladeshi influencers.

• Growth in the SaaS Industry: To keep up with the growing global competition, the growing SaaS industry will adapt to a dynamic marketing strategy which will include SEO.

Opportunities For Growth

• Competitive Edge: Most Bangladeshi small businesses do not take advantage of SEO along with other marketing strategies. Because of this, as a business owner, you could implement SEO techniques with other marketing strategies to get ahead of your competitors.

• Lack of High-Quality, Multilingual Blog Content: Even though SEO is popular in Bangladesh, the country’s business owners neglect high-quality, multilingual blog content. So, there’s a demand for high-quality blog content in both Bangla and English. 

• Career Growth: SEO experts in Bangladesh already earn a decent amount of salary. But with the growing demand for SEO, there are constantly new job openings and lucrative job offers.

• Rising Demand in the SaaS Industry: Because of the global competition, the Bangladeshi SaaS industry is adapting SEO strategies. This is why they have a huge need for expert and experienced SEO consultations. So, SEO professionals with SaaS product expertise will have a greater demand. 

Choose VizibleSEO as Your Marketing Partner

With the current state of SEO in Bangladesh on the rise, VizibleSEO could be the perfect partner for your business as we follow the best SEO practices and do not promise undeliverable outcomes. 

If you are looking for an SEO agency that will bring out the full potential of your business organically, give us a call today!