SEO for Garden Centers

SEO for Garden Center Owners

In digital marketing there are 2 fundamental truths:

1) a quality list is your most valuable asset

2) Google is boss.

“Social may be sexy, but search still pays the bills.”
– Tom Pick

SEO isn’t sexy, and it always seems to be getting in the way of web design and content writing. But attention to SEO is what takes your digital from “meh, I think we have a blog in there somewhere,” to “hell yeah my blog makes me money!”

SEO is a technical rabbit hole that just keeps going. In this article, I’m going to break down what you need to know as a GC Owner or Manager

The Power of Content:

Google’s mission is to direct searchers to what is most useful to them. By useful, it means that it will prioritize sites that answer people’s questions in the clearest, most engaging way possible. Bring on the value of blogging.

The hidden value of a blog is that, as long as it’s written to answer your customers’ questions, it accumulates useful content to your site. With each post, you answer more potential questions that potential customers could search for. As they search and click, your site’s reputability goes up and you’ll rank higher and be found easier the next time.

Paid digital marketing, which is the science of renting eyeballs in the hopes they’ll take the action you want, is essentially the same as traditional mass media advertising. You’re buying a quick blast of attention that is based on an event or product and will quickly fade when you stop spending throwing money at it.

Content is cumulative. As your site becomes more useful, Google ranks it higher, more people find it, and your reputation grows. It starts so small that it has very little impact to start, but the growth is cumulative and stable. Unlike pay-to-play marketing, content builds your traffic consistently over time.

Types of SEO:

There are 2 buckets:

Onsite SEO:

Alt tags on your pics, H1 headers, URL structure, sitemaps, backlinks, and the list never ends. These are the structural components of your site that Google looks for. I won’t get into detail, but it’s all important and, if these elements aren’t in place, you’ll have a tough time being found.

Here’s a tool you can run to score your Onsite SEO: SEO Site Checkup. If the score pops up at under 60%, talk to someone about some tweaking.

Here are some Onsite elements that really, really matter:

– Site Speed: Do you know the #1 way that consumers decide whether or not to trust your business at first encounter?  Site speed. A slow website tells people that you aren’t organized enough to have a fast one. The biggest culprit: uploading pictures that aren’t downsized.

– Responsiveness: With over half your customers viewing your site on mobile, a non-responsive web site is leaving big money on the table. Open your site up on your phone and click to every page. Make notes of anything hard to read to get fixed.

– Keywords: 10 years ago, keywords were everything. Google has evolved, and it’s gotten a lot more complicated. But keyword planning, especially for H1 tags (header titles), and to drive content is still important. If you write an article on harvesting potatoes, but don’t include either of those keywords, Google will ignore you when a potential customer searches for it.

Offsite SEO:

This is everything that Google and other search engines take into account, and which happen off your page. A trusted, useful website is part of a circulatory system of backlinks, social media, and reviews.

“Local SEO,” which is vital for brick-and-mortar businesses like ours, is defined by your Offsite. Local SEO is how your searchers find you via maps, look up reviews, and get directed to you when they’re nearby and searching for your products

– Backlinks: this is when another (reputable) website links to you. They’re invaluable, because they tell Google that another organization is vouching for you. These largely accumulate when you have quality content that other groups (Garden Clubs, etc) want to drive their peeps to.

– Directories: From Yelp to Yellow Pages to the contact page of the local Garden Club, you need to be on as many directories as possible. Each one gets you better found organically (by people searching), and ads to the backlink total.

– Google-My-Business: A directory that deserves special mention, “GMBs” are the boxes that appear on the right side of the Google search when your company appears. It has all your info, maps, reviews, etc. This is a critically important page to have present and properly formatted.

 

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