SEO for your Wedding Business Part 1: Guest Post by Alison Wren

When reviewing your overall marketing and sales plan, it's important to keep Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in the forefront of your mine, as your placement on such search engines as Google, may make or break many of your efforts. Today, I'm welcoming Alison Wren of Wedding Business Success, a UK based web site dedicated to educating wedding professionals on sound business practices. Today, we're featuring the first part of a two part series on Search Engine Optimization. And without further ado, here's Alison:

“Page 1 on Google” – it’s the holy grail of most website owners, but how do you get there? Search engines decide who appears where by:

• scanning the contents of web pages (including code which isn’t visible) to determine the subject matter.
• judging how important/popular the site is – generally based on other websites linkingto yours.
  

Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is all about making sure search engines, like Google, can:

• find your website
• work out what you are offering
• display your site as high as possible on the page when people search for products or services like yours
  

So, if you have a new website, are about to get one or think you could be getting more out of your existing site, how do you ensure you get the best results from Google and the other search engines?

New Website
If you are having a new site developed, make sure it is done with SEO in mind. Discuss SEO with your web developer/designer and make sure they know how to develop search engine friendly websites.

Design and SEO are very different skills so good designers often partner with SEO specialists to ensure your website looks beautiful AND gets lots of visitors. You should still go through the steps below as it’s vital to understand the basics.

Step 1 – Understand the different type of search results
Take a quick look at a Google search results page – the links down the right (and often 2-3 at the top) are sponsored links where the website owner pays Google every time someone clicks on their advert. Google’s pay per click advertising facility is called Adwords and it can be a good way to drive traffic to your website. There may also be shopping links (Google Merchant Centre) and/or local results (Google Places) shown on a map. The rest of the links in the main body of the page are known as the organic search results.

Step 2 – Your Keywords and Phrases
Identify the key phrases your ideal customers are likely to use to find suppliers like yourself. For example “wedding florist Fort Collins”.

For most wedding vendors this is likely to include your location. Make sure you include all areas you cover, particularly if you are in a small town or suburb but near a much larger town.

Check your current position on the main search engines for those key phrases and also your business name. Make a note of who is appearing above you.

Step 3 – Monitor your web traffic
Make sure you have Google Analytics (or a similar website monitoring function) implemented so you can monitor your website visitor numbers (your website developer should have done this).

Step 4 – Assess your current position
Decide what your goals are. For example “ I want my site to appear in the top 5 search results of Google for brides searching for a wedding photographer in Mytown.” How far you are from your goals?

If your site isn’t even appearing when you type your business name, then it’s likely Google isn’t finding your site at all. It’s time to call in professional help.

If you are ranking well for your key phrases and Analytics shows you are receiving good levels of traffic from search engines – congratulations. You shouldn’t need to invest heavily in SEO, but keep monitoring the situation – search engines change their criteria regularly and new competitors start up.

If you are appearing in the search results, but not very high up, then your site will benefit
from SEO.

More from Alison soon!

Alison Wren is the editor of Wedding Business Success – a website dedicated to helping wedding businesses start up and grow. She is also the owner of leading UK based DIY wedding stationery specialist The Wedding Crafter which she set up 6 years ago having finally escaped from a career in IT. You can follow Alison on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/alisonpwren