All your efforts to make your website as convenient, enticing, and customer friendly as your digital store will help to increase traffic to the site. But the truth is, you’ll need to do more than that to get new visitors to the site, reports Bruce Wright in the September issue of Floral Management magazine.
In a story that drew on expert advice gleaned in July from the Society of American Florists’ Reinvention Summit, Wright shared tips on what florists can do to make better headway with search engine results. Among the tips shared:
1. Focus on SEO.
“The success of your website depends mightily on what you do to achieve search engine optimization (SEO),” Wright explained. “And that in turn is all about understanding the complex algorithms used by the search engines (and especially the dominant search engine, Google) to rank results.”
One challenge? “Those algorithms are constantly changing,” Wright added. “Some of the factors they rely on are technical. Unless you are quite tech-savvy, they really depend on your website’s architecture as set up by your provider. How well does the page load? Is it set up in a way that’s easy for the search engine to understand? Is it fast, responsive, and secure?”
In the past, website designers have tried to trick the search engines with fraudulent techniques such as doorway pages (using multiple, relatively empty pages to attract traffic) and keyword stuffing, Wright added. “But search engines are constantly being refined to sniff out these strategies, and in the end will detect and even penalize them in the rankings.”
“While you may rely on a professional service to keep track of all these factors, it helps to be aware of them and to work with your provider,” he explained. “Some of the elements that search engines respond to are present in code, underneath the surface, not immediately visible to you or to the user. Nonetheless, they tie in with your own specific offerings and expertise. Every image on your website should be ‘tagged’ with a unique description that is specific to your brand.”
2. Be consistent.
SEO is also influenced by off-page factors: florist directories, review sites and your own social media accounts, among other factors. “On a basic level, all of these should be as congruent as possible,” Wright explained. “Is your business information consistent and accurate across listing sites, including the name, address and phone number, and the full URL? This is why you need to claim your Google listing: A customer should not find inconsistent information on your website, Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Yelp.”
Even your business name and URL can easily be listed differently in different locations (with or without an LLC, for example, and with or without a prefix for your website address such as http:// or www.). The advice from experts featured at the Reinvention Summit: Check your social media pages today to ensure they are “identical in every way possible,” Wright noted.
There may well be dozens or scores of such references to your business online. “If the task is daunting, consider hiring a third-party service to do the job,” Wright suggested. “And remember, when you are speaking to the press, to check that they refer to your business and website in a consistent manner. Consistency in all of these online listings benefits SEO.”
Read more in the September issue of Floral Management magazine.
Mary Westbrook is the editor in chief of Floral Management magazine.
