Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a fundamental to getting your business found online. SEO is what allows your website to be discovered by search engine users when they look for products, services and information online. This blog article provides an overview of what SEO is and why SEO is important to equine businesses.
What is SEO Marketing?
What is SEO marketing? SEO stands for search engine optimisation. Put simply, it is what helps your website to appear in search engine results (e.g. Google) when people search for relevant keywords. Ideally, you need your website to appear on the first page of results for your target keywords. This is because around 70% of search engine users will click on a result that’s on the first page, and a whopping 95% of Google Search traffic goes to websites that appear on the first page (Source: HubSpot).
It’s Not Just About Keywords!
On a very basic level, SEO is about making sure the right keywords are present on your website. If you own a business that sells riding hats, you will want to ensure that keywords such as “riding hats”, “peaked riding hats”, “jockey skull caps” are present on your website.
However, do not be fooled into thinking that SEO is only about keywords, or that stuffing keywords into your website like hay into a hay net will do the trick. Keyword stuffing, as it is known, can actually be detrimental to your SEO and there is a huge list of other things that come under the umbrella of SEO. Our article, How Does SEO Work?, covers some of the other aspects of effective SEO.
Why is SEO Important?
SEO may seem like a bore, and for many equine business owners it’s yet another task to add to the endless to-do list! However, SEO is vital to any business that wants to get found online.
3.5 Billion Google Searches a Day
Read that again: 3.5 Billion Google Search queries are made every day, with Google taking 70% of the market share for search engine queries (Source: HubSpot). When people want to do or find something, be it shopping, booking a holiday or table, learning a new skill or getting directions, they turn to Google. Therefore, it makes sense to make sure your website can be found easily.
Room For All
Many small and medium-sized equestrian brands know just how competitive today’s environment is. With vast marketing budgets, high-profile press coverage and sponsorship deals with the world’s top events and riders, the biggest brands can seem unbeatable.
However, SEO can and does allow smaller businesses to compete against their much larger competitors. No, it’s not easy, but here at Purple Horse Marketing we have helped our clients compete with and even outrank their seemingly much larger competitors in Google Search. With the right strategy and given enough time, SEO can work really well for small and medium-sized businesses.
Your Website is Your (Online) Shop Window
Many equestrian businesses (ours included) do not have a physical premises to sell from, so all of their leads or sales come from the internet. For those businesses, getting discovered, converting new customers and generating repeat business all has to be done online.
For premises-based equine businesses (e.g. riding schools, rehabilitation centres, tack shops and competition venues), getting found online is key to bringing people to your physical premises. In today’s environment, it isn’t safe to assume that “everyone knows we’re here” because as people move away or leave the sport and new ones come in, they won’t automatically find you.
SEO doesn’t just