Imagine, for a moment, you are walking through a town you’ve never been to before. Now, imagine your husband and infant daughter are in the car a block away, impatiently waiting for you to find some diapers. You’re frantically searching for a diaper store but coming up empty; it’s all gourmet dog food and fishing stores. You finally give in and buy a couple t-shirts that should do the trick until you can find a Target or Walmart somewhere, and head back to the car.
You get the folded up t-shirts on and throw out the used diaper in a nearby trash can when you notice something inside the door the garbage can is next to: A diaper store. You look up and around the door, only there’s nothing there. No Signs, no banners, nothing to signal this door could possibly open up to be anything, let alone a diaper store. Inside, you ask the owner why his store is unmarked, and he answers, “I didn’t know I had to put signs up. I paid a lot for the store and thought everybody would already know I was here.” That’s obviously backwards thinking for a brick-and-mortar store, so why do so many business owners think the internet works that way?
Your Website: Not the Field of Dreams
Many people have this perception that their website is like the movie Field of Dreams: “If I build it, they will come.” False. Google actually can find you with its vast reach but the onus is on you to tell Google what in the world it is that you do. This is the essence of Search Engine Optimization. Without a clear message about what you do, shaped for your target audience, nobody is going to find you.
Go down the candy aisle at your local grocery store. Heck, go down any aisle at the grocery store, and you’ll notice that every candy bar, bag of chips, and tofu package is clearly labeled with what the product is, who makes it, and just what you can expect to find inside.
Use this approach when building the framework of your website. Your website needs to be the candy bar wrapper: it needs to fully explain everything the search engines (and consumers) need to know about your business and the people within it. It needs to sell your business and use every single piece of code to its benefit to fully explain what you do. And just like any good piece of marketing, it needs to use the right words to do it. The words that are physically on your site are what Google uses to determine what your company does.
SEO for Collision Repair Websites
Our business began as specialists for collision repair websites, and that industry provides a perfect example of why it’s so important to choose the right words to put on your site. Almost every body shop exclusively uses the keyword “collision repair” on their website because it’s a bit more aesthetically pleasing than “auto body shop.” Unfortunately, the American public searches for the term “Auto Body” almost 10 times more frequently. So, all these companies were spending tons of money on brand new websites only to find that they could only reach 10% of all searchers. A good Search Engine Optimization campaign will take this into account and deliver the maximum amount of relevant and useful traffic possible.
So take a look at your site, does it pass the new-to-town or candy-bar-wrapper tests? Ask us for a Free SEO Report today and find out for yourself!