So step two is pretty huge.
Step three is all about optimizing your pages for search, which we just mentioned. So you need to have a unique title tag and I’ll show you what some of these are, but a title tag should be unique for every page on your website. A lot of times people will just have a title tag that says, home, welcome to our site, or something like that, and you’re missing a huge opportunity to get in front of the search engine and say, hey here’s what our website is about. It’s about window treatments in Seattle, or you know, whatever it happens to be.
Your H1 one tag, which is a technical tag that needs to be in your website, it should basically almost reflect your title tag. It should be either the same or very similar in some sort of way.
Images, that should be named with your primary keywords, so instead of uploading an image that’s 1234.JPEG, it should be window-treatments-blue-.JPEG, or something along those lines. Your URLs should contain the page keywords. So when somebody comes to your site joesshades.com/draperies, you know, that’s easy. It’s in the URL, you know what that page is about. If you’re using a system like WordPress, that’s a pretty easy thing to do. But those URLs should contain those keywords it should be obvious, to anybody who looked at that URL, where they are on the page.
Internal links to other pages on your site. Internal links are big because it teaches the search engines what other things are related to each other on your site. And, it also keeps people on your site longer because they’re being drawn in, as you said, and every time that they click on another link to read something else that you’ve provided to them, you’re just solidifying your branding in their mind, you know, as an expert in whatever this thing is that they’re reading about.
So it’s a great way to advertise 24/7, really, by just creating content one time and having those internal links that move people around in your site. There’s also something called an XML sitemap, which if you’re using a platform like WordPress, these are created for you. Those need to be submitted to Google webmaster tools, which is now called Google Search Console, and then Bing webmaster tools, so Bing has their own version of that as well. But these are just maps of all the different links on your site, and they need to be submitted to the search engines, really for one main reason, and that’s so that the search engine doesn’t come to your site and have to stumble through every page to find all your pages or maybe miss some, if you could just hand them a map and say, hey here’s every page on our site that we want listed, makes it a lot easier and creating those are pretty simple.
So here’s a couple of different titles. I don’t know if you can see my cursor or not. The title shows up, up here, in this little tab. This is a screenshot of Chrome, so it shows up here , but on most of the browsers, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, they show up here in this little area here. And typically they’re cutoff, depending on how large your tab is, but you get around 70 characters or so, and here are some typical titles.
Joe’s Window Designs, or Home, or Welcome to Our Site. I mentioned those earlier, but an optimized title tag is something like, Memphis Window Treatments, Tennessee Interior Design, Shades and Shutters, that maybe a little bit long, it might be more than 70 characters, but a fantastic title tells the search engines exactly what it is that you do and it explains what this page is all about.
So here’s an optimized tag. I actually missed my arrow a little bit. It’s right up here, but this one is St Louis. Window Treatments, Shutters, Draperies, Blinds & Shades, so it works out perfectly. And, you know, those titles are hugely important when it comes to optimizing your site.
So then you grab that title, of whatever it is for that particular page, and put that in as your H1 tag, or your top heading tag. So for this particular page we’re probably going after Custom Draperies St. Louis, something along those lines. So you can see how those are very important and they really do go back to the search engines and say, here’s what this page is about, here are some key words which we have in place, you know, and here’s all the information you need.
All right, step number four, optimize for Google Maps.
I’m going to grab a drink.
All right, so Google Maps, hugely important. I mentioned that a couple times obviously, but you know, this actually draws your eye to it and, especially when they start to have the reviews, you guys can see these, when they have the stars or one of them has four or five stars and the other ones have one or two stars that makes the job a whole lot easier, when those map listings are optimized.
But getting into those maps sections can be a little bit difficult. It takes a little bit of time. So let’s talk about how can you get ranked in those Google Maps systems? Well, the biggest thing is to use Google My Business, which is google.com/business. Go there, claim your business, type your business name in. If you got more than one location, make sure you claim each location, and make sure that you claim all of those because they’re all going to start getting reviews from other places.
So one of the really cool things that Google does is, it will actually pull in reviews from Facebook and from being in some of these other places, and they’ll actually accumulate all of those different reviews into their one platform. So it’s definitely important that you get there and that you start to get those reviews.
The other driving factor in who shows up in that three pack is the amount of reviews that they have, and if you can start getting those and get 10, 20, 30 of them with a plan that works in a system that positively reflects those reviews on an ongoing basis. You’re going to be set. That’s a great way to do it. And then there are some on-page things that you could do, which I mentioned earlier, such as embedding a map on your site which talks back to Google Maps, which also talks to the Google My Business system.
So they all start to work together, and really kind of tell each other what you’re about and where you’re located, and that’s the big thing we’re after, are these main keywords like Memphis Window Treatments, for example.
So citations, I want to make sure that I mention this, kind of talked about it earlier. We talked about the NAP or the name, address and phone number. A citation is just a reference to your business, but it might not be a link. It might be a business directory, or something. It may be a Chamber of Commerce, where you’re in their business listing because you’re a member. Something along those lines.
So that, your name, address, phone number always needs to be the same. It needs to be spelled the same, said the same, everything needs to be exactly correct and it should match what’s in your footer on your website. So you really should have that NAP in your footer as well. I mentioned that earlier.
You need to be on a lot of the different major online directory sites, and we can get you a list of those if you need them. But the obvious ones are Yelp, Angie’s List, Citysearch, Yahoo Local. Facebook even counts as one of those, so definitely need to be on there. They need to always be the same and that will help you move up in those Google Maps.
The other thing, obviously, is getting the reviews. I probably mentioned that a couple times now, but you need to have a strategy in place that continually gets those reviews in a way that that number keeps going up. And here’s an example of a search for a couple different awning companies, and you can see our client, in this case, has 10 five-star reviews. The next one down has a six average of 3.2 stars, and then the next guys don’t have any. So if somebody was basing, just on this one thing, which one they’re interested in, you know the first one is the obvious choice, right? The third one doesn’t even have a website link. So I think they’re out of the running in the first place. So then it’s between those two, and the first one just makes more sense that most people are going to click on that just because of the amount of reviews that they have and the amount of positive reviews that they have.
