Do you have a website for your interior design business? Then you most likely have come across the term “search engine optimization” (abbreviated as SEO) at some point. In a nutshell, SEO is a method for increasing the likelihood that your website will appear in the top results in Google or other search engines when someone searches for particular words or phrases. Taking time to fine-tune your website’s SEO can make all the difference between your listing being seen or lost in the later pages of search results. Local SEO in particular can be invaluable to marketing small businesses that operate within a city or region.
Define your niche
The media is full of stories of individuals and companies boasting millions of online hits or followers. From a local business perspective, however, you’re looking to attract your ideal client, not the world at large. You want to tailor your SEO to make it easy for those potential clients to find you. That involves several steps.
Think local
Most prospects are going to be looking for a designer near their home or business. You want to be sure that your website and your Google Business Profile specify your firm’s location. Essentially, you want to optimize your local SEO.
Think like a client
What words or phrases is a client likely to use in a Google search? What attributes of your firm will appeal to your ideal client? Those words and phrases should be part of the keywords for your website. This way, the search engine can match what the prospect enters with what is featured on your website.
Know your competition
If you enter the name or web address of one of your competitors into Google, you can see what keywords they are using to attract prospects to their site. Some are likely to be similar to yours—for example, “interior designer” and the name of the city you’re located in. But how can you distinguish your firm from the competition? What keywords or phrases might a prospect be looking for that could help your listing rise to the top? Instead of focusing on what competitors are doing and trying to keep up, look for things that they’re not doing, and take advantage of these niches.
Content matters
Understandably, interior designers load up their websites and social media pages with wonderful images of their projects. Unfortunately, search engines don’t search images—at least not visually. They are looking for words and numbers that match other words and numbers. Images can be optimized by making them smaller and therefore faster to load, and by using captions and other text descriptors that are built into the backend of the images, such as alt text. But if you want to draw prospects to your website, you really need to include quality written content as well.
As with keywords, you want to make sure that the content on your website includes words and phrases that are going to match with those prospects may be using to search for designers. Those could be content that describes the projects you’re showcasing, a statement of your interior design philosophy or business process, descriptive captions or tags you add to photos, or a blog. Be sure to include contact information to identify your firm to local prospects and make sure that information is linked with your business.
Once you have a collection of content, make it a web, by including links in each article to other content on your website. This helps search engines figure out the relationships between your content and how your site is structured.
Search engines are also checking to see how current your website is. Refresh the content periodically. Add a new project, post a new blog or design tip, or update information about projects, clients or personnel. If the search engine does not detect any recent activity, it may assume your firm is no longer in business and no longer relevant. Try to keep a consistent schedule to your blog posts, whether it’s daily, weekly, or monthly.
Track and be tracked
You can use a tool like Google Analytics to get valuable information. This includes how many people are entering the keywords you have on your site, how many see a link to your website, and how many click on that link to go to your website. If you’re not seeing much activity, try using other keywords. Sometimes, Google Analytics can be a source of keyword ideas, so don’t ignore what’s already working.
Another way to increase traffic to your site is to have your website address posted on other websites. Those could be social media pages, designer directories, other blogs, or online referrals or reviews. The more of those backlinks the search engine finds, the higher your listing will appear in relevant searches, so long as your link appears on reputable websites. Keep in mind that if you’re leveraging local SEO specifically, you may want you t
Get help
You can find lots of DYI information online about how to improve your website’s SEO. However, if all this sounds way too technical for you, get help from someone with local SEO expertise. Getting the SEO right can make a big difference in getting your website and firm noticed.