SEO Checklist for Wedding Pros
How do we generate more leads by optimizing our website? Sara Dunn from Sara Does SEO came on Weddings For Real to share her three-step checklist for wedding professionals. Read more below about her top tips for search engine optimization, and listen to Weddings For Real episode 129 to hear more about the three-step checklist.
Sara Does SEO
Sara began working in the SEO and digital marketing space, and it is there that she found her passion and the need for SEO help in the wedding industry. At the end of 2017, she met a wedding planner at a women’s leadership conference. The wedding planner had paid tons of money for a new website, but her site was no longer ranking on the first page of Google. Sara worked with her to get her website back to page one, and that was the beginning of Sara Does SEO. Sara has been working with wedding pros for three years now and is here to share all her tips with us!
The way engaged couples search on Google is different than those that are searching for a plumber or electrician. It’s a challenge but exciting to learn the ideal customer for wedding professionals, and it's why Sara is so good at what she does. These three pieces of advice will get you results fastest. That’s not to say there aren’t other tactics that you could try, but these are quick ways to begin optimizing your website as a wedding professional.
Optimize Your Website
Step 1: Ensure that your most important keyword is used on your homepage.
A keyword is the word that people type into Google when they are looking for something. It can be one word or a phrase. In the wedding industry, it’s usually a phrase like “North Carolina wedding planner” or “Knoxville wedding photographer.” It usually has the location and a phrase about the service they’re looking for. When determining your keyword or key phrase as a wedding professional, Sara recommends a free tool called Uber Suggest. Uber Suggest tells you the monthly search volume on Google for a certain word or phrase. It will also recommend related keywords so that you can compare monthly search volumes. If there’s a similar key phrase with many more searches, you’d likely want to use that one instead.
Once you’ve determined your keyword or key phrase, it’s crucial that you include it on your homepage. Don’t hide behind something cute like, “I plan gorgeous celebrations…” Instead, Sara recommends starting with, “I am a Michigan wedding planner,” and then going into your creative language.
Talking with Sara about including key phrases on your home page reminds me of Donald Miller’s book Building a Story Brand. He talks about how if a cave man went to your website, would they immediately be able to know what you do, where you do it and who you do it for. This is crucial for so many reasons, SEO included.
Step 2: Check your blog to ensure you’ve written at least one blog post about a local helpful topic.
Most wedding industry professionals think about blogging real weddings and blogging helpful general advice. I see wedding planners write blog posts on topics like how to arrange seating charts or creative escort card ideas. However, when wedding pros want to get found for local searches, Google does not understand those blog posts were written in your location unless you explicitly include the location within the blog post.
The goal is to make your website the authority in your area. If you have existing blog posts with helpful content, it’s possible to take it and put a local spin on it. If you don’t think that’s possible, I recommend writing a blog post with local information. Some blog post title ideas include:
· How to Have a Destination Wedding in YOUR CITY and/or YOUR STATE
· 5 Tips for Outdoor Weddings in YOUR CITY and/or YOUR STATE
On the topic of blogging, blogging is important, but you don’t have to stress about publishing a new blog post every week. Sara recommends monthly blog posts. Sara recommended that it sometimes helps to write a few at a time when you’re feeling extra inspired, and then schedule them to post at later dates. Quality over quantity is key. Blogging is extremely valuable because the content is evergreen and blog posts can be shared over and over again as they become relevant again. A blog can lead to several Instagram posts, Instagram stories, Pinterest pins, and more.
Step 3: Do you have a couple links from other wedding vendors?
Links are important when we talk about SEO because Google uses links from other websites to yours, called backlinks, to understand your authority. Think about how you can get people to link to your website, especially if they are local. Some examples of links to your website could be from styled shoots and publications. For styled shoots specifically, I find that vendors tend to write blogs and often link to vendors’ Instagrams instead of their websites. If you find that to be the case for a styled shoot you’ve participated in, it’s easy to ask them to switch the links.
Another idea is to search your own business name and see what pops up. Sometimes someone may have written a blog post that includes your business name, but they didn’t link to your website. You can then ask them to link to your website where they referenced your company name. It’s a quick fix on their end that helps your SEO tremendously.
SEO Doesn’t Have to be Overwhelming
I’d like to extend a huge thank you to Sara from Sara Does SEO for these amazing and actionable tips shared in this blog post. As Sara explained so well, SEO doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and these three things are sure to set you on the right path towards a more optimized website. As Sara says, good SEO is good marketing. Sara hosts SEO Bootcamp for wedding pros occasionally, be sure to join her email list to stay up to date on her key offerings. If you’re looking for an all-around revamp of your wedding planning business, be sure to read about The Planner’s Vault. The Planner’s Vault is an online membership and education platform filled with templates, checklists, guides, webinars, and more just for wedding planners looking to level up their businesses. Learn more today!
