SEO For the Win - A Method To Conquer
Let's Understand the basics of SEO
SEO is SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
SEO is the practice of including content on your Website to attract and engage potential consumers so they keep your brand or product top of mind. It improves your site’s visibility to search engines and people searching and brings search traffic to your site.
SEO will help your Website show up more often in relevant searches.
SEO also helps with search rankings organic search rankings and helps your site rank higher than your competitors.
Content Marketing
Content marketing uses articles, newsletters, videos, podcasts, blog posts, and other media, so potential customers want to be a part of your business. This approach establishes expertise promotes brand awareness and an impression to remember.
SEO is not only about search engines, and it’s about the practices that improve your site’s user experience and usability. When your site comes up in the first few positions of a search, the user’s trust is built, and the Website is trusted.
Organic Search
An organic search is a term for search engines when results are naturally generated and not influenced by a search provider. Organic search traffic comes from consumers finding business links in search engine results, and an organic search focuses on unpaid rankings in search results.
Paid Search
Paid search traffic is accomplished from a consumer searching and clicking on a link in an advertisement or sponsored listing from a business that has paid for to appear in the top search results. A paid search focuses on paid rankings.
Search Engines = Google, Bing, Yahoo
A simple way to think about search engines is they are answer machines. Search engines like Bing, Google, and Yahoo provide searchers to search the internet using keywords, phrases, and questions.
Although the market is dominated by a few, there are many search engines that people can use. The consumer or searcher asks a question; the search engine finds the answer. Their whole purpose is to discover, organize, and present the most relevant results from what’s out on the internet to the questions asked.
A Search Engine works by crawling, indexing, and ranking.
Crawling
It is the action of scouring the internet for content. It is performed by a Google search and other search engine bots (robot), and it looks over the code content for each URL. A bot performs automated, repetitive, pre-defined tasks that replace typical human behavior, and they are fast and efficient.
During the discovery process, crawling sends out spiders or crawlers to find new and updated content on a webpage, image, video, blog post, personal websites, business websites, social media, or anything on the internet with public access.
During the process, Google search and other search engines send out a team of robots (known as crawlers or spiders) to find new and updated content. Links discover content.
Bots start by getting a few web pages and then follow the links to find new URLs to find new content and add it to the massive database of discovered URLs. The storage can then be drawn on when a searcher seeks answers that the URL’s content can provide.
Links
Internal linking helps search engine optimization by assisting them to discover, crawl, and index pages on your site. Anchor text for your internal links tells Google search and other search engines what to expect when your link is clicked. External links are hyperlinks that point to another website. Pages rank better when there are both internal links and external links pointing to relevant content so it can be discovered and indexed.
Indexing
As the bot crawls, the internet indexing organizes the content found in a vast database to be drawn on later when needed. Once a page is in the index, it’s in the running to be displayed due to searches needing answers.
Ranking
Placing the search results in order of relevance ranking gives better visibility as consumers search for your product or service. The higher website rankings are, the more relevant the search engine believes the content is.
It is vital that the information on our web pages is accessible to crawlers and that it can be indexed and achieve a high ranking. Otherwise, it’s invisible, and this is one of the essential pieces of the SEO puzzle.
Search engine optimization works because search engines use their algorithm to rank different web pages making sure only relevant results are returned to answer questions asked by the consumer.
Ranking Factor
Ranking factors are the criteria applied by search engines during indexing. The search engine evaluates pages to determine the best order of relevant results to return to answer the consumer’s question. Understanding ranking factors is necessary for effective SEO.
Did you know that there are over 200 Google ranking factors?
Page Speed
Page speed is a critical ranking factor. Page speed is how fast content on your web page loads. Page speed is measured by page load time or the time it takes to fully display the content on a specific web page Page “time to first byte” (how long it takes for your browser to receive the first byte of information from the webserver).
Where Do Keywords, Keyword Ratio, and Keyword Research Come In?
Reasonably simple to remember a keyword is a focus word, and it tells about your product on your Website. Keyword phrases are also used. What keywords do you want your brand, business, or product to be known for and discovered through?
Keywords are essential because when a search is sent out, search engine bots look at the words on each website page. If keywords are used too often, the indexer’s algorithm can’t determine if the keyword is important because the algorithms see the exact words as equally important.
Algorithms
Algorithms are processes or rules, and there are algorithms everywhere. A receipt for chocolate chip cookies is an algorithm or method to “build” the cookie so we can have it to eat. The algorithm used by search engines is a set of instructions given to the search to index and return searches.
The algorithm can change daily, and Google will change them daily and might even release updates every 24 hours. Because the algorithms are tied to the content on your web page through keywords, it is essential to keep your content and keywords current and updated.
As a business owner, you want to have consumers end up on your Website by using a particular word or keyword phrase that describes your product or brand. When you think about keywords, try to think about how your potential customers think, what keyword or phrase will be in their minds, and stay in their minds.
If you use the wrong keyword or phrase in your keyword research, you won’t get potential consumers to visit your site when the key is to drive traffic to it. Too many keywords in your Website may make the readability clunky and unpleasant.
If a reader finds the content hard to read, so will the search engine. Keywords should be used naturally and not by keyword stuffing, and Keyword stuffing, even if the words are relevant keywords, will negatively impact Google rankings.
SEO In Advertising and Pawnshops
As a pawnshop owner Bing, Google, and other search engines want to provide consumers the best answers possible. Search engine optimization is built on your Website, providing the best results by using more data points.
Data points can be things like are you a local or national business, is the search news related, is the search to buy, sell, or loan on something?
The bottom line is you want your pawnshop to use search engine optimization to drive traffic to your store (directions), to drive phone calls to your store (calls), to fill out a web form or chat form to gather customer information for future marketing efforts (lead engagement), to purchase something from your retail store or online service (customer loyalty.)
When a potential consumer sits down and searches for an item or service, the traffic to your site is organic traffic if the traffic to your site is human instigated.
Once the search engine detects that a potential customer gets the answer they need from your site, this is called conversions.
SEO Strategy Coupled with Google Ads, Map Pack, and Content Marketing
A story to make it real. You have a customer who has a beautiful Breitling Submariner in their safe. They are thinking about selling it, but they have no idea what it is worth. They have never shopped at your store, and you have never met them. As a pawnshop owner, you want their business, sight unseen.
About a month ago, you wrote a blog post about a Breitling Submariner watch as part of your content marketing efforts. You posted the blog on your Website and linked it to Facebook. You were careful to include keyword-rich anchor text without overdoing it and made sure specific keyword ratios were perfect. You have worked with Pawn Leads to work on your Website’s SEO, keyword research results, and site rankings, all hoping to generate more traffic to your store.
Pawn Leads explains that bringing up your organic rankings will take some time.
When the potential customer searched, the answer was provided because the search results could pick up on the grammar, the question, that the Breitling is a product, and that a price was needed. Pawn Leads keeps up to date on SEO myths and answers and understands that SEO advice becomes outdated quickly. You trust the leadership of Pawn Leads and have already seen results.
Google Ads
The potential shopper sees in their results a shopping ad in google ads. These Google ads you paid for by pay-per-click (PPC) allowed you as a pawnshop owner to bid on keywords for a chance to show ads in Google search results. You only pay when someone, like this potential customer, clicks on your ad to visit your site or when they call your business.
Your rankings are affected as potential consumers click on the Goggle Ads, and Google Analytics shows you that these ads are working. The amount of money you have spent on Pawn Leads out of your marketing budget has been well spent.
Map Pack
Part of your SEO Strategy you worked on as a pawnshop owner is to use Google Ads and other tools to help promote organic search results and increase search volume to your site. You spent some time thinking about how to answer the question, “Is this a national or local service?”
When your potential customers search for a pawnshop near them, the MAP PAC will return results about pawnshops near them. The pack includes three businesses that Google believes the best match what the searcher is looking for based on relevance, distance, and prominence.
Because you have this as a part of your Website, your online visibility is increased dramatically. You have a better chance of having top-ranking pages. Your potential consumer calls the store and makes an appointment to come in for an appraisal of their watch.
You’ve trained your team to have anyone who calls in or visits the store as a result of visiting your Website fill out a web form before they come in so that you can gather customer information for lead nurturing. This information will help with future marketing efforts (lead engagement). As a pawnshop owner, you know that customers want to be involved in converting into long-term customers (customer loyalty.)
The potential customer got the information they needed, came to the store, had the watch appraised, and sold it to you. You were able to turn around and put it on your retail shelves for a reasonable price.
Pawn Leads Understands SEO Can Be Overwhelming
Pawnshop owners have a lot going on. Most pawnshop owners have similar goals, to run an honest business, support and help their community members, and build their business to profit.
As a pawnshop owner, you can do some things to conquer the SEO method and win.
Pawn Leads - A Method
Step 1:
Go to https://business.google.com/ and make sure your Pawn Shop is listed on google.
Step 2:
In your Google My Business (GMB), be sure to have all of your services listed, pictures, and represent your brand as well as you can.
Step 3:
Start getting 1 Google Review a day. Ask customers and friends to give you a review to start. Then, ask each customer. One Review a day, and you are well on your way. Consistency wins with reviews. This is probably the best thing you can do to drive business to your pawn shop over anything else.
Pawn Leads software can help ease the process, and if you would like to like a demo, sign up for a 7-day free trial.
We can work together to help with getting your SEO up and going, fine-tuned, and organic ranking up.
Step 4:
Make sure your Website has ways to get your leads engaged so they convert. “Click to Call,” “Direction Button,” “Web Form Button,” and a “Chat Widget” will all help Google detect your drop-off rate.
Step 5:
Please take a look at our Website and make sure it represents your pawnshop, product, and brand when your Website is visited. Google will pick up this data based on intentions and help you rank higher.
Step 6:
Building your Website with landing pages and several service pages will help develop content and increase your efforts in content marketing. Create sub-service pages for bullion, coins, rounds, and diamonds. Make sure the pages have your local city, names determined through keyword research, and clear images.
Step 7:
Content marketing includes blog posts and consistent content. Blogs perform well with 1,000+ words and offer quality answers to questions using a good balance of keywords. Blogs take time to write and are time-consuming to ensure they are current and updated with links that make sense for national and local searches. Connections fuel your ranking power, and these users may not find you if you don’t optimize for local search.
SEO Myths
An SEO strategy can cost a lot of money. Using Pawn Leads designed with pawnshops in mind, it was understood that pawnshop owners need to have a marketing and SEO strategy that makes sense for their business.
Search engine optimization is essential for your pawnshop but doesn’t get caught up in some misnomers.
SEO management is not a one-time event.
After spending the time and money to increase your website visibility and improve organic search results, an owner has to have an SEO strategy that mains and updates their SEO.
A good SEO plan is continually be monitoring, analyzing, and fine-tuning your approach, and it is a continual process.
SEO is necessary to help potential customers find your Website and increase the qualified traffic that comes to your site.
Business owners may think that the more keywords, the better. This is not the case. High keyword density will not improve organic page ranking, and search engines don’t give you a good grade for how often you use a keyword you identified in your keyword research.
If you saturate your webpage with duplicate keywords, you may get a search penalty. Sprinkling a few well-researched keywords placed appropriately on your pages is part of good content marketing.
Taking the time as a pawnshop owner to understand the characteristics of your potential consumers will help you with keyword research.
You want to include keywords your future customers will use to find you.
Making sure that the internal and external links and link building is essential. The quality of the link is more important than the number of links, and the links need to be high quality.
When someone searches for your product, they want to have helpful information. If the link is irrelevant, it seems like your site is a waste of time. Make sure you reach out to find out the few quality leads you should use.
Your site speed is essential. Nothing is more frustrating than waiting for a page to load.
Speed is also important for page ranking.
Find an SEO plan that works best for your pawnshop. There is not a one-way approach. Working with Pawn Leads, you will be able to identify a strategy that works best for your business and improve visibility.
Potential customers who search and visit your Website want to be involved.
By engaging them in some action (lead magnets), visitors will have a good experience. The type of content used in content marketing makes a difference, and interactive content increases engagement and visitors’ time on your Website. This improves your site ranking factor. Some of the ranking factors become obsolete because Google changes its algorithms frequently.
Pawn Leads offers experts regarding pawnshops and how to get potential consumers to visit your site and convert to paying customers. Pawn Leads was built with pawnshops and small businesses in mind because the owner and co-owner are both business owners.
Pawnshop owners are busy people. Offering the Pawn Leads automated marketing platform Google Ads, SEO discovery and search engine optimization, and dedicated marketing support (flyer creating, holiday marketing, etc.), Website Builds, Text Pay, 2-Way Texting, Bulk Messaging, Web Chat, Call Tracking, Call Recording, Auto Text Response to Missed calls, and more will give you an excellent SEO campaign. Signing on by using a small portion of your marketing budget will make your Website strong in about 3 to 6 months.
