Wedding season is right around the corner, at least when it comes to your business. Even though summer’s still quite a few months off, busy brides and enthusiastic groomsmen are already planning their big day. Whether your wedding business is selling dresses online like Azazie, a brick-and-mortar catering service, or selling ebooks online on makeup and hair for a bride’s big day, there’s so much opportunity in the wedding business.
But one of the most important things to think about is your search engine optimization (SEO). After all, you’ll want to make sure you appear as high up as possible on Google rankings, so that anytime anyone’s looking for your services or products, you’ll find them. By following these tips, you’ll be well on your way to success:
1. Choose the right keywords
However fantastic your site is, and however enthralling your content, you aren’t going to get anywhere if you aren’t using the right keywords. For example, if most people are searching for “cheap wedding dress designs,” but your blog post is titled and features the words “discount dresses for weddings,” you’re not going to get far in terms of people visiting your website.
75 percent of people searching for anything on a search engine never scroll past the first page of results, so using the right keywords is–well, key. According to Entrepreneur.com, one of the best ways to know what people are actually looking for is by using “Google Keyword Planner, a free tool that will show you an estimate for any search phrase. (Although Keyword Planner is free, you may need to set up an AdWords account to gain access.)”
2. Remove anything that slows things down
Did you know that, according to HubSpot, if your website takes more than three seconds to load, you could be losing nearly half your visitors? According to goinswriter.com, if your site is slow, then the best solution is to get rid of things that might be slowing it down, such as “music players, large images, flash graphics, and unnecessary plugins.” You should also test your site speed with a free website speed tester like this one.
Take a look at the site for the movie People You May Know, for example. It loads fast–despite the fact that it’s got a trailer for the movie–but in large part because this is the only complicated part of the website. Otherwise, it’s daring font, a download link, and an option to submit your email for updates. So if your site is especially slow after testing, consider what you can get rid of to speed it up and get more visitors.
3. Link to other sites
It might seem counterintuitive to link to other sites–after all, you want people visiting your site, not someone else’s–but by linking to other sites, you’re going to be considered a more professional source. For example, if you’re selling beauty products, and you write a blog post about creating the most fleek eyebrows possible by including links to expert beauty bloggers’ sites, it’s going to demonstrate that you’re a professional who understands the importance of knowing as much as possible. Which in turn gives your readers the best information possible.
It helps that, according to studies, external linking is good for SEO in terms of data, too. So in addition to being a trusted source, you’ll rank higher on search pages. All in all, it’s a win-win.
4. Get in the rich answers box
Okay, so you know that thing that’s been happening recently, almost every time you’ve completed a search on Google, where a box appears at the top of the page, in larger font, with an article that seems to exactly answer the question or search you’ve just put in? Those are called rich answers, and these days, Google displays them for 19.45 percent of queries. So if you want one of your blog posts to appear here or your main page, there are some strategies to follow.
According to Search Engine Journal, it’s all about being very specific (think: a specific answer to a specific question), looking at Google’s automatic suggestions that appear when you start typing in some keywords, looking at related searches, and using entities instead of keywords in your content. To learn more about this, take a look at this guide from Moz.
5. Have a lot of content
Did you know that websites with a blog have 434 percent more indexed pages than those without? So if you aren’t constantly creating great content and posting it online regularly, then you definitely should be. Don’t forget to spread the word on your social media accounts, either, so that you can reach out to as many people as possible.
Juul e-cigarettes, for example, have a blog where they write about many different topics related to their product. By doing the same with your product, you’ll move up quickly in the SEO rankings.
As you can see, having great SEO is all about knowing the best strategies and implementing. What other strategies would you recommend to wedding business leaders?