As a pet care provider, your products and services are oriented toward animals. But until dogs and cats develop opposable thumbs and learn how to read, you need to ensure that their humans see — and click on — your website.
One of the best ways to do that is using search engine optimization, or SEO, to boost your site’s rankings and make it visible to as many people as possible.
Learn more with these quick and easy SEO tips for a pet care website.
Separate Service Pages
If you offer separate services — for example, dog boarding, dog grooming, and dog accessories — dedicate a page to each. Cramming them all together won’t do you any favors, and may even slow your load times.
For one thing, Google won’t be able to understand what that page is about if it’s not focused. That means it won’t rank that page (or your site) as highly as if you had separate pages describing each of your separate services.
Visitors may be confused, too. At the very least, they will have a harder time finding the information they’re looking for. They may well abandon your website for one that’s easier to navigate.
Titles and Descriptions
When your website pops up in a Google search, there are two key factors that determine its “clickability.” One is the page title, and the other is called the meta description.
The page title is the bright blue link that appears above your URL. This should contain the keyword you’re trying to rank on, as well as short, snappy descriptors of what the page is all about. That should be fairly simple since you will already have discrete pages for each service you provide.
Titles should be about 65 characters, while the meta description will be slightly longer, at 160 characters. This is your chance to convey what the page offers in conversational, compelling prose. Doing so may increase your click-through rate (CTR).
Blog About the Dog (or Cat!)
When written and optimized well, blog posts can increase your site’s appeal to both human visitors and search engines. Google places a high value on content that is updated frequently, and that provides good information to readers.
So what should your blog be about? Anything that positions you as an expert. The best dog vitamins, how to toilet-train a cat, the latest and cutest canine fashions, pet safety tips for summer…you get the idea. Above all, your blog posts should be informative and accompanied by great images.
Be A Social Media Star
Promoting blog posts, discounts, new products, or contests on your social media profiles is also key to great rankings — and more customers. Pet lovers make up a huge percentage of active social media users, so it’s crucial for your business to have a presence on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and more.
Social media marketing can be tricky, so it might be wise to outsource this, and your SEO efforts in general, to a professional digital marketing firm.
Conclusion
If your website isn’t optimized for the search engines, it might as well not be up and running at all. Use these tips to get started.
