What Every Small Business Owner Needs to Know About SEO - Part 1
SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. Today most businesses with websites understand that search engines, like Google, are key to reaching customers. In this series, we’re going to start at the beginning and help you solve the mystery of SEO.
In pre-interet times, we could pay to have our business listed in the Yellow Pages or other hand-held catalogue of phone numbers and addresses, and these were alphabetical. Remember the days of AABC Moving and Storage? Or AAA Law Firm. But other than manipulating the alphabet, there weren't many ways to tweak your position in that book. Unless you paid extra.
Few customers use Yellow Pages anymore. Especially in larger centers where the internet is reliable and wifi can be found everywhere. Today, if I'm looking for a specific service, I'll boot up my web browser and type it into the search bar.
Let's try an exercise. Open your web browser and type Greek Food into the search bar. I just did this and there are 964 million results. Yup - that's million. And only 12 of them are on the first page. All the rest are buried. So how does a regular Greek Food business make their way into that top 12? It's easier than you think.
First, make sure you have the words Greek and Food on your website - all over the home page, to start. You've probably heard experts toss around terms like keywords and keyword phrases, and this is essentially what they're referring to. Think of it this way: What will your future clients type into their search bar in order to find your business? People are interesting - someone might type in 'good food' or 'yummy food' - but if they're looking for Greek food, they will eventually work it out that they need to type the word Greek as well in order to find a Greek restaurant nearby.
Secondly, think local. Do people living more than 100 miles away from you really need to know about your restaurant? If yes, by all means make sure you have good reviews on TripAdvisor and Yelp! But for the most part, your Google presence will need to be local. And even people living out of town will include the local reference in their search. So, second part of our exercise - type Greek Food Squamish. This time there are only 328,000 results but at the top of the page is Carte Diem Greek Food Truck.
Did Carte Diem pay for that position? No. They're there because they are the only Greek Food Truck in Squamish. But also, they have the word Squamish all over their website. 11 times on the home page. And it's in their browser title. Note too, the word Greek is on their home page 18 times.
Another thing to know about Local Searches, Google will automatically give you listings from your neighbourhood. So if you're sitting in Squamish when you do the search, you won't even have to type in Squamish. Carte Diem will be at the top of the page.
Google is canny. They want their index pages to give the user the most relevant, and current, information possible. The algorithm Google uses understands that people looking for food will be more interested in local food.
I've decided to title this article Part 1 because it is such a big part of your SEO strategy I wanted to use my entire word count. We'll move on to more SEO tactics in other instalments.
What have we learned?
1. Make sure you have the right Keywords and Keyword Phrases on your website, specifically on your home page
2. Make sure your locality can be found on your website if local search is important.
What if I service more than my local area?
This is a good question, especially in the lower mainland where a business might service all the towns - Burnaby, Vancouver, Coquitlam, etc. And the solutions are many! They can include listings on various websites (Chamber of Commerce, Downtown BIA, other business listings), writing content for the different areas, making use of your blog, making use of your social media, making use of landing pages. I'd suggest starting with one local area first, work your way to the top of Google, then move on to other local areas. Your Google Map / Google Business Page is important as well.
Goodwin Studios began in Squamish in 2002. For years we could be found at the top of Google for any search with the words web design Squamish. This is no longer true, as the centre of our operations is temporarily located in the Tri-Cities area. We do continue to serve Squamish however.
So let's type Web Design Tri-Cities into google. There are 10 million 600 thousand results. But guess what. If you scroll past the ads, Goodwin Creative is number three on the map.
Of course there are many more SEO tips to share, but these are some of the most important. Keywords, Keyword Phrases, and Local Search Terms. Remember this for Part II because we're gonna be referring back!
Warning - do not do this, even though it seems very clever.
When search engines first began, their algorithms were very simple. And keywords were a huge part of how they worked. Web developers and business owners would try to influence their ranking by putting hundreds of keywords in out of the way places - such as the footer. This is called Keyword Stuffing. Today, a website will be removed from Google altogether if any keyword stuffing is found. And they'll find it! Even if you make the words the same colour as the background, so as to 'hide' them, a robot doesn't see colour. They see text, and they'll see that you have the words Greek and Food 300 times (greek food, yummy greek food, greek food truck, best greek food, greek food for the holidays, greek food is good, greek souvlaki food ….). Google will also see that the words aren't being used in any kind of useful or productive way - such as in a blog post. You'll be banned. I'm not sure there'll even be much of a notice unless you have a Google Web Console set up. So don't do it!
Find a good web service that will help you get your content optimized for SEO. Write Goodwin Creative today!
