If you’re in charge of marketing a local pet business or veterinary hospital that serves a specific community, I have a question for you.
How often do people say they found you online?
The shocking truth is, sometimes when a locally-based pet business asks me to help optimize their website and boost traffic, I discover that I can’t tell where the business is physically located.
For example, you’d be amazed at how many veterinary practices, dog grooming businesses and doggy day cares don’t list the following basic information on their websites (except maybe on the About Us page, buried at the bottom):
- The physical address
- The towns or region they serve
- Driving directions and a map
If this sounds like you – we can fix this problem immediately! 🙂
Here are 3 quick and simple ways to significantly improve your pet business’s search engine results and drive more people to your door.
1. List your physical address, phone number and primary email address on every page of your website.
Include this information on the masthead of every page, in the footer that appears on every page, on your About Us page, Contact Us page, and in your back-end code (Page Title and Meta Description).
This ensures that people always know where you’re located and how they can contact you, which is critical if you rely on local business. It’s also great for people using a GPS or mobile phone to locate you. Plus it helps search engines “identify” you as a local resource, and you’ll rank better in search engine results.
2. Make sure your service area is clearly identified.
Include on several pages, “We serve the following towns:” and list them. Then, if people from those towns are searching for what you offer, they’ll find you in Google, Bing, etc.
If you’re located in a major city, list the city and perhaps also the neighborhoods of your customer base.
3. Provide driving directions and a map.
By providing directions and a map on your Contact Us page or About Us page, your customers will easily get to your location and avoid the frustration of having to call you and tie up your phone line.
These are the easiest ways to improve your pet business or veterinary practice seo (search engine optimization)
This is just the beginning of what you can do to optimize your website for local search engine traffic. I’ll provide more ideas in my next posts. But if you do these 3 easy things for starters, you just may leap ahead of your competition in search engine results. Because again, many many companies never do this — as simple as it is.
Are you already doing this and it’s working? Or have you ever had a hard time online finding a pet business in your community… and then discovered it was right down the street? I’d love to know what your local search experiences have been. Do share. Thanks!
Until next time,
Here’s to a prosperous pet website!
Pam