SEO. Now there's an acronym that sends a lot of people reeling - including me! It stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is one term I've come to be friends with over the past few months while crafting our website. We were so excited yesterday to have FINALLY released our website to the public!
Haha ok. Seriously, though, building up a nice looking website is a lot of work! Even though we've been working on building it for months now, it still has a long way to go. Content needs to be added, pictures need to be uploaded, and most importantly, our Search Engine Optimization needs to be continuously built upon - it's all very extensive to me, a non computer-savvy person.
Our journey began with me browsing through a lot of other people's stationery sites. They were gorgeous. I decided I wanted a website, so that our company could look more professional and more reputable online. I talked to Steven about it, and we decided to opt for a website that not only featured our work, but also gave us the capabilities to actually capture the sales online.
We knew we had a plan ready for action. We teamed up with
Volusion, an online hosting/e-commerce solution. They offer pre-designed templates, hosting, domain name services, and a lot of fantastic features that would help us to keep track of our website's performance and our business intelligence all in one convenient location. We found our perfect template, bought our host name, plan, and domain name and then we were off to build! In the meantime, I set up a little
Etsy shop that could start drawing some orders while our website was down.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is where I was first introduced to SEO.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization - is making sure your site pops up to the search engines when someone goes to Google and searches for something related to your work. It's something that has to be built up through many different avenues so that your website shows up higher on the search list, without having to pay someone bookoo bucks to feature it at the top.
Since I am also a member of Wedding Wire, I am able to take advantage of their online education center. I attended several webinars on the subject and learned several ways of increasing your visibility to those search engines!
Here are a few tips I've tried to follow:
1. Monitor where you stand: http://www.seositecheckup.com helps me to see where my weaknesses and strengths are.
2. Keep up with those keywords: Load up with keywords, but don't stuff them in there! Don't want to look like a spammer. For my business page, I loaded up on a lot of words about San Antonio Wedding Invitations, Custom Invitations, Handmade Invitations, the various materials I used, etc.
3. Link back to yourself: There are links within your page that lead back to you and your website link is on other websites that have very reputable, well built up SEO. When you're super connected to sites like WeddingWire.com, theknot.com, etc., you have a better chance of looking reputable to a search engine.
4. Have a sitemap: Lucky for me, Volusion has this built into their sites. I would have no idea how to set this up otherwise.
5. Have a search friendly URL: Don't be www.adfjkl_1243_kald_.com please... no one will know what the heck that is. Also, we were advised to keep it short - something people will not hate typing. We originally were going with wildflowersandlaceinvitations.com but look how long that is! We chose wildlaceinvitations.com instead. It also helps to have keywords IN your URL! Clever.
7. Image Descriptions: Search engines don't look at the pretty pictures, they eat text. So write something in the image description place and make sure it has some keywords! ;)
8. Content: Fresh. Fresh. Fresh. Update it regularly, keep it original, and keep it interesting to your clients!
9. Social Media Love: Share content from your website on social media platforms - the links help give you more SEO lovin'.
10. Link to Others: Make online friends and link to them, they will return the favor and everyone is a happy camper.
Well, there is my informative post of the week. I hope I didn't bore all of you readers out there. I'm also hoping if you are a small business owner interested in getting your piece of real estate on the world wide web, this helped you just a little bit!
Happy creating!
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