I have a client who is a landscaper. Obviously, his business is local. He paid some good money to have someone build a website for him but has gotten only 7 leads from it in the past year.
He asked me to do a makeover and include SEO (search engine optimization). Besides the fact that the website looked overly busy and confusing, there was one BIG mistake. Most of the text was embedded in images!
Why shouldn’t you embed text in images?
Search engines search for text. They can’t read what’s inside an image.You can attach text to an image — it’s called “alt text” — and search engines read it. You can also use keywords to name your images and search engines read that, too, because alt text and image names become text on your web page. But a page with only images is a red flag. Search engines favor content and that means text. So, a big image may look nice, but it won’t do much for SEO. And SEO is what gets your website at the top of a web search by a potential customer.
My assumptions were all wrong!
The landscaper gave me some landscaping terms to start with. One of them was “pavers.” Do you know what pavers are? They are stones used to pave a pathway. I suppose they are also the people put put them in the ground. I thought, “Who would search for pavers?” If I wanted a paved pathway, I’d looked for “paved pathways” or “paved paths.” But in his state, in the last 12 months, here are the average number of searches per month:
- Paved paths: 10
- Paved pathways: 10
- Pavers: 27,100
Wow, was I wrong! Here’s another one. I thought that if I wanted a landscaper, I’d search for “landscaper.” But here are the average searches for landscaper and landscaping in the last 12 months in his state:
- Landscaper: 4400
- Landscaping: 49,500
BIG difference, right? I also discovered a term that he uses on his website that gets 720 searches per month but has low competition, so we’ll continue to use it. And I’m not going to tell you what that term is — it’s our secret! But that’s the point of doing SEO research — to find secrets that give you an edge over your competition. There are LOTS of landscapers in his area, so he needs to be highly competitive.
How to find keyword search numbers
In this short 4-minute video, I show you exactly how to research which keywords are getting the most searches.
There’s more to marketing a local website than SEO
There are many other ways that a local business can capture traffic. It’s important for you to understand that even an online business can benefit from local marketing. For example, a coach may have local clients. And many people like to support businesses in their local area. Here are some other techniques you can use:
- Local pages from Google, Yahoo and Bing: I explain these in my post, “Online marketing for offline (physical) business“
- Reviews on social media localized apps, such as Yelp
- Your email list
- and of course, offline marketing
Have you done keyword research? Which tool did you use? How did you apply the information you got and what were the results? Leave a comment!
4 replies to "Why you need to do your SEO research — my big surprise!"
I like the pavers research. I don’t do a massive amount of keyword research anymore, but I have been caught out like that before.
Not sure I totally agree on the images, they are growing in importance and there are a LOT of very highly ranked sites that are predominantly image based.
I’ve had 4 posts go truly viral i.e. over 100k page views and every one was image based. It’s because they are ranking highly in Google images and that can be just as useful at time. Google can’t read Video either (unless it’s transcribed) but that blows away everything for SEO purposes, especially on mobile devices.
Tim, I’m having 2nd thoughts on images, too. Of course, I’m not saying to not use images, just not to put all of your text inside them. For example, not to make an image of the word “Landscaping” and use that instead of text plus an image of a garden.
My 2nd thoughts relate to the fact that when you insert an image, you have both the image file name and the Alt text to use for your keywords and I’m not sure that’s not better than plain text. After all, you have 2 opportunities for keyword text instead of 1.
If I were you don’t have the alt text be exactly matching your keywords. Instead, do some research and that describe the image (many times they are synonymous to the keywords). Next, if you are doing a local service or local seo, make sure to geotag your images with the lat and longitude of choice. Finally, check to see if specific niche keyword is on the image and geographical market/location are next to each other.
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