Over the past few years, I’ve realized how important SEO is for growing my business. If that’s new to you, SEO stands for search engine optimization. Basically, it means doing what you can to make it easier for the right people to find your website online.
Since websites aren’t my area of expertise, I’ve invited my friend Denise Alvarez, owner of Stormlily Marketing and host of the How to Market Your Horse Business Podcast to share with you a few of her favorite SEO tips.
Denise has been instrumental in helping me serve my email list with weekly photography tips so I’m glad you get to meet her. Here’s Denise!
Hey there! I’m so honored to be here with you!
One of the common questions I get asked by horse business owners 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.
Today, I’m sharing with you 3 questions that will reveal how optimized your website is for SEO. This is inspired by my podcast episode, SEO Basics for the Equine Entrepreneur. Okay, here we go!
How would people search for you, or at least your services, online?
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 search engines that you’ve got what they need
Does each page on your website should have a title that’s clear plus a clear description?
Why it matters: Your title and description should clearly describe what the visitor will find on the page. It should also 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 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. Time engaging with your site is another thing that Google and other search engines pay attention to when they’re deciding what pages to show in search results.
Be sure to listen to the full podcast episode to hear two more important questions and more practical advice to help with your website optimization.
Plus, if you’re ready to dive in, I have a FREE SEO Basics Checklist for Horse Businesses to get you started. You can grab your copy here!
Whether you are just getting into your photography business or you’ve been doing it for a while, I hope you enjoyed these helpful tips!