Do you want your website to show up in related search results? Of course, you do!
What you’re really asking is for your site to be “search engine optimized,” also known as SEO. So, let’s break down SEO into the basics and figure out what you can do this week to optimize your website and get found by your ideal customers.
Welcome to the show notes! Remember, this is a brief summary from the How to Market Your Horse Business podcast. You'll want to listen to the entire episode for all the good stuff!
One of the common questions people ask is how to get their website to be the first one to show up when someone searches for their services on Google. What they don’t realize is that they are really asking about SEO.
SEO stands for search engine optimization and, of course, you can get extremely technical when it comes to this. For most businesses, though, you need to just focus on the basics from the get-go.
Then, as you cover those well, you can dive into more of the detailed work of SEO such as writing regular and optimized content (because Google does check to see if your website has been recently updated when analyzing it for SEO) and doing even more detailed keyword search.
The good news is that anybody can make sure that their website is optimized at a basic level which is going to help the common search engines such as Google, Safari, or Bing to know if you are a fit for the search that somebody is doing online.
Basically, that means when your website is optimized, then you are giving Google all the cues needed so that when somebody searches for "riding lessons in Springfield Missouri" just by example, then you show up in the search results.
Your potential clients, customers, and students are out there doing these same types of searches. So, when you optimize your website, you're helping them find you!
Here are 5 questions that will reveal how optimized your website is for SEO :
How would people search for you, or at least your services, on Google? Why it matters: When you know what terms people are using to look for the services and products you offer, then you can intentionally use those words and phrases on your website. That'll cue Google that you've got what they need.
Does each page on your website should have a title that’s clear as well as a “meta description” that clearly describes what the visitor will find on the page? Why it matters: Your title and description should confirm for the person doing the search if your business meets what they were searching for and it should also draw your potential website visitor in to actually click on your website.
Is your site secure? Why it matters: Google specifically has said in recent years that it will prefer sites that are secure over sites that aren’t when it displays search results. (Of course, their reason for doing this is to help protect the end-user and not send them to websites that aren’t secure.)
Is your website easy to navigate? Why it matters: When your website is easy to navigate, that means when the right person does land on your site, they’re going to move around a little and spend some time on your website, clicking on things, etc. That’s another thing that Google and other search engines pay attention to when they’re deciding what pages to show in search results.
How fast is your website? Why it matters: Site speed is another element Google has started to weigh more heavily in recent years. Basically, we’re all impatient, right? If a website takes even a few seconds to download, we’re often just hit the back button and go to the next website in our list of results.
Here's a bonus tip for you! Be sure that you use the free Google My Business option that’s available to you. That’s how you can help be sure the information in that little sidebar when someone specifically Googles your business has the most accurate info.
Of course, you'll want to listen to the full episode to dig into each one of these questions and learn more about why they matter and how you can apply them to your business!
Links mentioned in this episode:
My Marketing Services (Because sometimes you just don't want to DIY anymore!)
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