Yesterday we received an e-mail from the sister of one of our client’s who owns a local catering business in Orange County. Check them out on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/ABOCatering
Below is the e-mail she sent us, and below that you can see my reply. I think it’s worth checking out because I often get posed this question by business owners. “I want people to find my site in search, so where should I start?”
The steps outlined here are instructive for anyone looking to get a solid footing in driving traffic to their website through search engines.
If you’d like a step-by-step instructional primer on search engine optimization, download my e-book the 7-step System for SEO Results by clicking here.
Hi Danny
I was wondering if you could suggest How my catering company could get higher up on google without paying a MILLION dollars casue I dont have much to spend I have to buy a building now as you know so I am a little tight on CASH. Let me know if you can help.
thanks
Chef Cassie
Hey Cassie,
Thanks for thinking of me.
There is no one-size fits all solution, but there are a variety of options you can consider depending on what your budget is. The more your budget, the better the results.
Your website is pleasant on eye at and your food photos look delicious. But there’s a lot of simple improvements you can make starting on your site.
1) First – the lack of any keywords on the website. Google uses these keywords to determine what a website is about, so they can place the site appropriately in the search results.
The most important use of the keywords in to place them in a web page’s title tag and in a “Heading 1” tag. I’ll use West Coast Flooring’s website as an example:
2) Second – Blog at least twice a week. You’ve got great photos and stories on Facebook – put these on your site. I have another client whose site we manage called Alchemy Fine Events and she posts photos of all her event decorations here: http://alchemyfineevents.com/
3) Third – Creating “depth of content.” For a great example of this I like to use http://www.laubergedelmar.com – If you click on any of the menu tabs, you’ll find that there are sub-pages on each with “related content:”
On the Spa page for instance, you see sub-pages like Spa Services, Spa Specials, Spa Products, and so on.
If you created pages like this for your food pages on your website and used the right keywords, for instance, you would have tremendous results. That’s because these inner pages can be optimized as well, and can drive a significant portion of traffic to your website – people don’t just arrive at your home page.
4) Fourth – Various odds and ends you can do, such as putting links to other pages within the text of your site, using keywords. Build in external links as well so you’ll rank higher – a good place to start is by filling out local directory profiles, on sites like http://getlisted.org. Guest blogging is another great strategy that Google likes.
Some other odds and ends like integrating social sharing into the site and Pinterest, and some other technical improvements such as a creation of a sitemap at http://
Most of this stuff is pretty simple and straight-forward, and much of it one-time improvements. It starts by identifying your desired keywords, and making some on-page and off-page improvements. Then it becomes a matter of creating content for the site, and building in links from other websites so that you rank higher and higher.
Hope this gives you a better idea of what might be feasible.
Thanks for writing in Cassie!
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