SEO Tips for Small Business Online Business Growth | The Boutique Hub

It's. Hey, everyone, let me introduce myself. I'm Jeff. I'm one of the marketing strategists that works for the Boutique Hub. And I specialize in a variety of things. One of those things is search engine optimization and how to get your products and your boutique in front of the people that will shop with your boutique, the people that are looking for your products, the people that can come into your shop and shop for your products locally. And one of the ways, one of the most effective ways that we have found to get products in front of shoppers is with search engine optimization. The way that you title, the way that you title your products, the way that you describe your products, the way that you list where your products are available, the way that you register your boutique with Google, the way that you log your phone number on your homepage, the way that you display the images of your products online. All of those things make a difference when it comes to converting a person from an online searcher to an in store shopper. And that's the goal of search engine optimization. If we can convert somebody from a Google search to an in store shopper, we win. And so that's kind of what I want to talk to you guys about today. I'm one of the expert coaches that's going to be coaching in Module 10 of Retail Bootcamp and we're going to go in depth into search engine optimization. How to optimize your homepage, how to optimize product listing, how to create, create a title, how to research titles, how to research keywords. All of that stuff's gonna be discussed in Module 10 of Retail Bootcamp. So I look forward to seeing you guys in there if you've already joined. But let me just kind of go over some of the things that I wanna talk about today. And then at the end of this video, I'm gonna give you three tips that you can implement today that you can start using today to start getting your products seen on Google and by Google searchers as fast as you implement them. So basically, I want to talk about how search engine optimization or SEO can affect your business. How it can drive foot traffic into your store. There's this gap in the marketplace right now where people go online and they search for products or clothing and they want a local solution. They want to find somebody right down the street that carries leopard pants, but instead they're bombarded with Amazon searching, search engine optimization and eBay SEO, and all these online retailer SEO that take that foot traffic away from the local boutique. Now that's not a bad thing because we can benefit from that too. We can set up search engine optimization to draw traffic to our boutiques from across the planet. So that's a benefit for us. But at the same time, those people that are looking for a local solution, we want to give them that local solution. And so the first thing I want to talk about is how search engine optimization can affect your business. I want to go over the current statistics of search engine optimization. We what's going on on the Internet right now, what we're seeing, the trends that are occurring and why you need to be on board. The third thing I want to talk about is how search engine optimization is changing. And so it is changing. It's in the middle of a shift right now. It's going from kind of a desktop based tool to almost exclusively a mobile base. So we need to pay attention to that. And then I just want to give you three strategies on what you can do to up your search engine optimization game. So first, some of us may not even know what search engine optimization is. And if that's the case, basically all search engine optimization is, is how you use words, pictures, picture descriptions, paragraphs, titles, subtitles on your listings to get Google to recognize your webpage or your product listing or your advertisement. And so there's a very specific way to use titles and images and image descriptions to get, to get Google to recognize your listing. And that's, you know, that's what search engine optimization is. So for example, if a person in your city goes on Google and they type in leopard pants Atlanta, Georgia and you don't have a listing that says the best leopard pants in Atlanta, Georgia, your listing won't show up on Google. And so Google monitors those keywords and waits to see when somebody searches for those keywords. And when they do, when they do search those keywords, they show them your listing. And so that's, you know, that's in a nutshell, what search engine optimization does. And so if you want to gather local shoppers for the products that you, that you list, you have to take those things into consideration. You have to think, okay, what will my ideal customer search for when they're searching for this shirt or these shoes? What would they type into Google to find these shoes in our city? And so as long as you have that language in your product description, the chances of you getting that customer are a lot higher. Let's go over some of the statistics, some of the numbers surrounding search engine optimization and what's going on right now. It's kind of amazing, actually. 93%. 93%. Almost all online shoppers start with Google. 93%. They don't start with Facebook. They don't start with Instagram. Even though those things are unbelievably important. 93% of shoppers start with Google. So they start with a Google search on the product they're looking for. So whatever they type in, it could be a million different things. They could say. They could say leopard pants. Atlanta, Georgia. And that's their search term. That's the language we need to capture. 46% of those shoppers. 46% of the people searching for products are looking for local solutions. And so we can help those people by offering them local solutions to whatever they're searching for. And so that's why it's so important to include your city and state and phone number along with your listing. I'm sure you can imagine how important this could be for your boutique. If everybody in your city is searching for a certain product, if there's a certain trend and there's dozens of searches or hundreds of searches going on in your city, and your boutique pops up first on Google every time somebody searches that. It's a powerful tool. Now, 72% of the people searching for a local shopping solution end up in the store that they find. Okay, so we have 93% of shoppers, we have 93% of online shoppers, starting with Google. 46% of those people are looking for a local solution, and then 72% of that 46% end up in your store. And so if we can capture those people, if we can offer them a listing, if we can offer them a landing page, if we can offer them an advertisement that makes them feel comfortable, that motivates them to come into our store, that handles their anxieties, they know that our business is a legitimate business. They know that we take care of our customers. They see the reviews with our customers, and they know that we take care of people and that we are a legitimate business. And, you know, if we can harness that, 72% of people that are looking for a local solution and we can present a product to them that they're looking for, the chances of them buying is unbelievably high. It's more effective than. It's more effective than radio. It's more effective than tv. It's definitely more effective than the yellow pages or newspaper, and it's something you can do yourself. And once we, you know, once we train you on the basics, on the. On the general idea behind it, and on the, on the ways to do it. It's something that you can implement on each of your listings and each of your web pages. Now, as I'm sure you guys know, the retail industry is going through a major change. People are shopping a different way. The new generations shop in a way that previous generations didn't. And so the days of shoppers going through large retail stores looking for the product they want, finding the product they want and buying it are changing. People do their research online first. And so not only do they research the product, they. But they research your reputation, they research your standing in the community online before they come into your store. And so that makes everything kind of tie together. So somebody goes, somebody in Atlanta, Georgia searches for leopard pants in Atlanta, Georgia, and your listing pops up and you're number one. You're ahead of Amazon and you're ahead of an ebay store. And you pop up number one because you have a listing on your page that is titled. It has the title, best leopard pants, Most luxurious leopard pants in Atlanta, Georgia. And then the introduction paragraph talks about why those are the best leopard pants in Atlanta, Georgia. And so you pop up, number one, the person clicks on your link, your Google, your Google rank, your Google page, and it's taken to your page. Now, if they land on your page, if they land on your page and your page is disheveled and the images don't look good and the copy doesn't look good and it doesn't work or it doesn't open or has broken links, that hurts your reputation. And so those people are less likely. So not only do we need to pay attention to the search results, but we need to pay to what the person has presented when they get there, when they get to your page. Now, search engine optimization is going through a pretty, pretty significant change over the last several years. It's going to. Mobile. People do more searching and more shopping on their mobile device than ever before. In 2007, Apple released the iPhone, and that changed online shopping and online search forever. And so one thing that really helps your presentation to a customer is if your site is mobile friendly. If you're using a, you know, a hosting platform that is not mobile friendly, you have to wonder, you know, what does the person think when they can't see my products on their phone? Or how many, how many customers am I losing because my site's not mobile friendly? How many people come to my site but then leave because it's not mobile friendly? 88%. Currently, 88% of Google searches are done on a phone 88%. And so if you're not evaluating whether your site is mobile friendly, you should, and it's important. It's probably the biggest change in the last several years is just making sure that your site is optimized for mobile. So I just want to give you guys 3. I'm going to jump into it here and give you three strategies that you can implement right away to increase your Google rank on any product that you, that you decide to list. These are three simple strategies that work over and over and over again. And if you just keep these things in mind, your Google rank, your product listing, your visibility will instantly increase. So strategy number one is it's all about the headline. Okay? So when you title anything, you have to think, what is my customer going to search? What are they going to search like? Normally, I might not title a pair of leopard pants, you know, most luxurious leopard pants in Atlanta, Georgia. You might not think of that. You might not think that. But if you're looking for local shoppers and you're looking for them to buy out a big order you just made on leopard pants, that may be one of the title options you explore. And so make sure that your titles reflect something that you could see one of your customers searching. And if you're looking for local shopping solutions, tie in a local aspect. Now, the section directly below the title. So your listing is usually broken up into a couple different sections. The first section is the title. The second section directly below that is what they call an introduction paragraph. An introduction paragraph has to repeat that title. And so the way Google works is it not only indexes the title, but it also indexes the introduction paragraph. And so if you're trying to drive home leopard pants sales in Atlanta, Georgia, you'd want to repeat that exact same title in the introduction paragraph. That will dramatically increase your search rank in Google. And that's strategy number one. It's as simple as that. Make your title something that people search for and repeat your title in the introduction paragraph. Strategy number two is think local. Okay? So like as we discussed before, 46% of Google searchers are looking for a local solution. And so if you're searching for something and you're looking for a local solution, we want to, we want to, you know, we want to appeal to those local shoppers specifically. And so we want to let them know that we're local before they ever click on our Google on our Google listing. We don't want them to have to visit our website to know that we're in Atlanta, Georgia. We want them to know right off the bat in the Google search terms, in the big list of Google search results. We want them to know, oh, yeah, look, this boutique right here carries leopard pants, and they're in Atlanta, Georgia. Like, we want them to know. We want them to know that right away. And so think local, Keep it local. I mean, thousands of people right now are online on Google searching for the products that you carry. There's thousands of people online right now searching for the products that are on your shelves. I guarantee it. And.