[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.5.6″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”]So you may have heard about this thing called SEO or Search Engine Optimization. It sounds confusing and way less interesting than Social Media. You start Googling and researching but still have no idea how is even impacts your wedding business.
The thing is, it’s pretty important and for the most part not as confusing as it may seem. In reality, most of you are serving your local areas so do not need a website that competes on a global scale. So a lot of the information out there, while it’s accurate, is just too much for what you need.
So, what is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization or SEO in a nutshell is how easy your website can be found on a search engine for what you do. So this helps your website show up on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) when future brides and grooms are searching for exactly what you do.
To make this concept a little easier, let’s think of what Google wants to achieve. One of their main goals is to provide information that matches exactly what someone is searching for. Those results should not only be able to provide the information accurately but also be provided quickly to the user.
For example, when you’re googling something like ‘how to make a wedding seating plan’, you don’t want to have to click on 5 different google results to find what you’re looking for. In addition, you don’t want to head on to that site and spend the next hour trying to find the right page or wait for the page to load.
How does Google know?
Well, Google has these little bots called crawlers that go through your site to identify what your site is about. They also pay attention to how quickly pages load, whether images show up quickly. They will also look for red flags that look like spam, i.e. popups everywhere.
Google also has access to data when people land on your site. So they know if people land on your site and then just click right off again or if your site takes them to broken links.
Note here that Google really doesn’t care about whether your branding colours are perfect or whether you have chosen the best photos for your image gallery. They care about the content on your site and the quality of user experience. Those branding factors do have the value when it comes to your ideal clients choosing you down the road. From Google’s perspective though, they’re not important.
Why is SEO important for wedding professionals?
Essentially, Search is another way for people to find your business. Plus its largely location-based, so if I’m searching ‘wedding photographer’ on Google, the results that show up are going to be close by. In fact, there are between 1,000 – 10,000 searches in Ontario every month for ‘wedding photographer’. If you’re near the top of the search results, even on the low end that is a lot of views each month for your website. That could make a huge difference for how many leads you get into your website and then how many weddings you book each year.
Different types of SEO techniques
When it comes to SEO, I’m going to be honest with you and let you know that there are many companies that have some sketchy ways of doing things. These can work well in the short term but in the long term, they put you at risk for having your site blacklisted. Remember, Google is very smart so even if you figure out how to cheat the system now, it doesn’t mean it will always work.
One example is that people used to put pages and pages of keywords on hidden pages on their site. Google now recognizes this as keyword stuffing. It worked a few years back but now it’s a technique that can get your site blacklisted.
Another thing to note is that SEO is not something you’ll see results from instantly. SEO is something you have to continuously work on and results will only be visible over time.
Different Types of SEO
When it comes to your SEO, there are a number of ranking factors that search engines use to determine where your site should rank. There are 5 main categories that are taken into consideration:
- Technical – this includes things like whether your site is mobile-friendly, whether there are any broken links, whether your site is even crawlable & duplicate pages
- On-page SEO – this includes title tags, meta descriptions and URL structure
- Off-page SEO – this includes links to your page and quality of those links
- Content – this includes the keywords you’re using and how much competition there are for those keywords. Search Engine Optimized blog posts are great for this!
- Usability or UX – this includes the bounce rate, image sizes & bounce rate
How to get started
As mentioned before, SEO is a huge project that should be updated continuously. I’m all about quick wins though and these are the things I would recommend starting today that will have a positive effect on your SEO.
- Setup a Google My Business Listing
- Scan your site for broken links and fix those
- Setup Google Search Console
- Change your Primary Title Tag to include your business name, location & what you do
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