These days, no matter what business you’re running, you need to have a strong online presence. And when it comes to any wedding-related business–whether you’re a florist or a wedding planner–this is even truer. So many brides spend hours in front of their computer or on their phones, getting inspired by Instagram and Pinterest, and that’s where you’re going to find your potential customers. That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is so important. This is a fancy term for your site coming up as soon as possible when a customer looks up something online related to your business. So whether they’re Googling cheap wedding dresses or invitation designers, you want them to find you first.
So if you’re ready to up your SEO game, read on.
1 Use Local SEO
If you’re a brick-and-mortar store, then Local SEO is your best friend. It’s likely you’ve even used it yourself, which goes to show how useful it is. For example, if you’ve ever broken your phone screen, and get it fixed, you’re going to Google shops where you can fix it. But if you’re based in the Bay Area, then you aren’t going to Google shops in Chicago. In fact, the first results that come on Google will be shops that are near you, and that’s what Local SEO is.
According to bluecorona.com, Local SEO works like this: “Local SEO helps businesses promote themselves online to local customers within a geographic area. The difference between local SEO and organic SEO is the intent. Google can (pretty well, too) pick out search queries that have ‘local intent,’ meaning the searcher wants search engine results with local companies.”
And not only will your business’s site be one of the first to show up, but statistics show that you’ll probably get an in-person visit pretty soon. Local searches result in 50 percent of mobile visitors to visit stores that very day! To learn more about optimizing your site for Local SEO, follow these tips.
2 Optimize for mobile
Another important SEO tip is making your site accessible on mobile. Even better is making it mobile first, which means designing your site as a mobile site from the get-go. That’s because Google has now started prioritizing these sites. As explained by SEO experts at Moz.com,
“Mobile-first indexing is exactly what it sounds like. It just means that the mobile version of your website becomes the starting point for what Google includes in their index and the baseline for how they determine rankings. If you monitor crawlbot traffic to your site, you may see an increase in traffic from Smartphone Googlebot, and the cached versions of pages will usually be the mobile version of the page… a site with a better mobile experience would potentially receive a rankings boost even for searchers on a desktop.”
It’s no surprise that this is happening. After all, Google wants to make searches more useful for everyone–and considering that 69 percent of consumers worldwide aged 18-39 use mobile devices to research products before they buy, it’s time for you to step up your mobile optimization game. To learn more, check out this guide.
3 Share on social media
Getting on social media is important for any business–and even though it doesn’t necessarily have a direct impact your SEO, it does something SEO can’t: gets to your customers in a new way. In a way, social media is the new SEO, according to social media guru Neil Patel, and if you think about how much time we’re all spending on Instagram and Facebook, it’s no surprise. And in the wedding business, this is especially true. If you’re a wedding dress designer like Azazie sharing photographs of happy brides wearing your dresses, your customers will find you faster than if they were Googling every single ecommerce dress designer worldwide. As explained by Kissmetrics,
“This works in a couple of ways: First, if you’re active on Twitter, it’s entirely possible that people will discover your company’s new content distribution app after searching for content marketing-related tweets with Twitter’s search engine. Likewise, brands that lend themselves to beautiful visual content can benefit from making their content visible on Pinterest and Instagram by using hashtags and properly categorizing their pins. Moreover, as mentioned in point #1, if someone wants to check out your company, they’re likely to open Twitter and Facebook and do a quick search to see what kind of presence you have on each channel.”
So if you don’t have active social media profiles already, get them. And don’t forget about Instagram: 48 percent of newlyweds use it for inspiration every day!
By using these strategies, your wedding business will do better than ever. What other strategies do you use to connect with your customers?
