We need to be able to nourish our mind, body and soul in order to have a sustainable business. This is why I want to share the importance of website SEO so you can organically attract your tribe!
Let’s start off by answering these questions: what is website SEO?
“SEO (search engine optimization) is a set of processes aimed at improving a website’s visibility in search engines, like Google, with the goal of getting more organic traffic. SEO is about fulfilling users’ search needs by creating relevant, high-quality content and providing the best possible user experience.”
And secondly, what is organic traffic?
“Organic traffic is the number of website visitors that come from unpaid search engine results (as opposed to paid results).”
I have a deep desire to help Holistic Entrepreneurs get in front of their ideal customers. The reason I am so passionate about this is because I have struggled with chronic pain since 2015 and I know the importance of holistic healing. I know that doctors and western medicine can only get us so far. There are many people out there who need healing for many different conditions. If you are able to help even one person (I’m sure you will help more than that!) in their healing journey, that will light me up!
I want people to heal and in order for that to happen they need to find the right person to help them through their healing journey.
This is why I am so passionate about website design, blogging and SEO. Let’s get you in front of the people who are actively searching for the services you provide.
You can either put money into paid advertising or put time into growing your audience. Both ways work it just depends on which investment you are able to make.
When you are starting out in your business, most of us have time over money. But either way, get started with whichever way works best for you. But what I do advise is, even if you are spending money on ads from the get go, make sure you do invest some time into blogging and SEO. Take advantage of building an audience so you can scale your business in the future.
And if you only have time to spend in the beginning, then it’s no brainer. Let’s get your blog up and running and optimize a website that’s authentic to you!
We are going to get into the basics of SEO and how blogging can help you grow your business. But I do want to address one thing that might be in the back of your mind. Do you have to blog? The answer is no, you do not have to blog in order to use your website as a marketing tool. You do have to optimize your website for SEO though. Blogging is just going to keep your website active and have more pages for search results to pull from when people are searching for what you are selling. It’s essentially increasing your odds of ranking! As a holistic entrepreneur, I am sure you have a lot of value you can share. Each blog post can represent a health tip or anything that’s going to help your audience learn or heal.
Of course you can get down to some nitty gritty details when you are planning out your SEO strategy. However, we are going to focus on basic SEO to keep this simple and get you started!
There are a few things you can do yourself to optimize your website without hiring an SEO expert.
One of the ways search engines determine what your website pages have on them is through keywords. You want to strategically add words and phrases that your ideal clients are searching for. This way search engines can match their search query with the keywords you have added on your website. I will show you where to add these in a second.
The purpose of search engines is to connect the search query with search results that are accurate. This is the whole purpose of Googling something, right. So if you think about this, you can guess how important it is for the content on your web page to match the keywords you are adding to it. Imagine if you went to a website thinking it’s going to provide you with certain information, but it had nothing to do with what you searched for! I can bet a pretty penny that you will leave that page as fast as you can say fail!
This is why the content you add to your website is so important. Because not only do we want it to be what people are searching for we also want it to provide value and give them the answers.
A little tip: if you do get someone onto your website and the information you provide isn’t what the user was looking for, they will leave real quick. And this is going to reflect badly for your website SEO. This is why providing value and writing for your audience is the number one thing to focus on always!
If you want to learn how to do keyword research I have a blog that shares 4 ways to do SEO keyword research.
Now, when you have your keywords and phrases you want to add them to certain places on your website. Here’s where you want to add your keywords on each page of your Showit website:
In the image above you can see where to add your Page Title and Meta Description for each page. You can also add “alt text” for each image on your website. The image alt text is a description of what the image is. Think about it, Google cannot actually see your image, it can only determine what it is through the description you provide, which is your alt text.
You can also optimize your images before uploading to ensure the sizing is correct. I like to size my images at 3500 px width for banner images or any image that is the full width of the website. Smaller images throughout the website I will size down to 2500 px width.
HTML tags are going to determine the hierarchy of the text on your page. Your HTML Tag options on Showit will be:
The “H” is for Heading tags and they are in order of importance. So your Heading 1 tag is like the Title of the page. It’s the most important tag that tells Google what that page is about. You should only have one Heading 1 tag on each page.
You can have multiple H2 and H3 tags on a single page. These are going to break up the text for Google with subtitles. Of course, H2 is more important and then H3 is a subtitle within H2.
The Div tag is used for specific styling. For example, if you use bullets or numbered text it will be tagged as Div.
Nav tags are used for your navigation links. So all of the links that are in your top navigation menu should each be tagged Nav.
P is going to be used most often, and this is for all paragraph text throughout your website.
Like I mentioned earlier in this post, there is a lot more to advanced SEO but if you can even just get started with this basic SEO setup you will be starting off on the right foot.
Now that we have talked about optimizing your website for basic SEO let’s get into how you can attract organic traffic as holistic Entrepreneurs.
Remember that keyword research we talked about? It’s so important because you want to use words your ideal clients are using. And it doesn’t end with using them to optimize the main pages on your website. You are going to use keywords for your blog posts and you’re going to use keyword research to come up with blog post ideas.
There’s no point in writing something that no one is searching for. Image all of the time and effort that goes into each blog post and the shame it would be for no one to see it!
You want to be strategic with the content that you are writing. Answer the questions your clients are searching for through blogs that provide value. You will not only be getting in front of the right people but you will also be helping them. Always remember, write for your clients and not for search engines. The more time people spend reading your posts the more Google will trust your content and continue to share it.
If you are just starting out and are serious about using blogging as a marketing strategy then I recommend posting a blog minimum once a week. But the most important thing is that you are consistent with your posting schedule. So do what is realistic with the time that you have. It’s much better to post once a week consistently than post 3 posts one week and then not again for a month.
Determine how often you will be blogging and come up with your blog titles and topics in advance. If you want to post once a week then come up with enough blog post topics for the next 6 months. I like to have the titles written out with the keywords/phrases in advance. This way when I sit down to write I can pick a title that I feel inspired to write about at the time.
Have at least 4 blog posts written and published before launching your blog. And from there I do recommend having a few extra blog posts written and ready to publish on hand. You never know what each week will hold and if you rely on writing weekly it’s safe to say there’s a big chance you will miss a week. And honestly, the payoff is so great with blogging that it’s just not worth taking that chance. Have a few extra blog posts on hand at all times and then write weekly. Or some people will sit down and write 4 blog posts in the beginning of the month and have them scheduled ready to post weekly. Do what works for you just be consistent.
I don’t recommend you sit back and wait for your website to start ranking months down the road. You should actively be promoting your blog posts to drive traffic to your website. The best part is, when you do this you end up making your life so much easier by repurposing your blog posts to create even more content!
One thing I really want to emphasize is that growing organic traffic is a long-term marketing strategy. It can take anywhere from 6 months to a year for your website to start seeing real results. But don’t let that scare you! The time will go by either way so if you enjoy writing and you want to use your website as the powerful marketing tool that it is, then it’s worth the wait.
Your organic traffic and leads will have a snowball effect over time. In the beginning it might feel like you are doing so much work and not seeing results but it takes time for your website to build authority and start ranking. But when it does, your posts will be showing up in front of your ideal clients. Meaning you won’t be throwing spaghetti at a wall, which is how I often feel with social media. The right people will find you. And that is so valuable for your business!
Especially if you want to scale your business someday, imagine how much easier that will be when you have consistent organic leads and traffic.
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