If you’ve been in business for a while, you’ve probably come across the acronym S.E.O. What you may not realize is just how important to your business success those three little letters can be!

So today we’re going to take a bird’s eye view of SEO, what it is — and how to improve yours — so your business can reap the rewards.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Translated into non-techie speak, this means: 

“Making changes to your marketing and website to encourage your business to come up in Google search results.” 

When a prospective client types the search ‘Dog trainer near me’, the goal of SEO is for your business to appear in the top three hits – or pretty darn close to the top of the page. You can find a more detailed overview of the SEO basics here.

What is a SERP?

If you start to dig into SEO, the next snazzy little acronym you’ll see banded about is S.E.R.P.  This stands for Search Engine Results Page – the helpful list of websites or pages that match the search term put into the search engine (Google or otherwise).

Here’s an example SERP for the search term ‘Dog trainer near me’

What is a Map Pack?

And finally, the last SEO term for now: the Map Pack. Nothing to do with an old-fashioned, paper-based tool for finding your way, and everything to do with having your business found in Google Search Results.

If a prospective client searches for ‘Dog trainer near me’ on Google, and Google sees there are local dog training businesses in the area, it displays the Map pack — essentially, a small map with the top 3 local businesses listed. Since this displays ABOVE the other search results, getting in those top 3 Map Pack spots can be highly beneficial.

These results may or may not be the same as the listings in the general SERP results… but in either case, having your business show up in that prime search real estate can mean many more clients clicking through to your website, and in turn, many more sales leads. 

So, let’s explore how you can aim to rank…

The two types of SEO

SEO comes in two types. On-site SEO and off-site SEO. 

• On-site is the stuff you do to your own website to make it SEO friendly. 
• Off-site SEO is stuff you can do that isn’t done on your own website. 

For now, we’ll stick to on-site SEO.

On-Site Search Engine Optimization

To be found by a search engine, your site needs to be understood by the bots that crawl around the internet cataloging websites and their pages. For that to happen your site needs to have specific things in place. Here are the biggest factors that help make your site SEO friendly:

• Clean code and fast load times
• Proper use of text formatting
• Correct use of keywords

All gobbledygook? Let me translate…

What is ‘clean code’?

Code refers to the computer code language that was used to build your website (hopefully you haven’t had to rummage in there)! 

Clean code is code that doesn’t have any redundant code – extra bit and bobs scattered through it that serve no purpose but slow the whole process down. The more excess code there is, the longer a site will take to load and the more chance of errors occurring.

Having clean code is one of the reasons why cheap or free WordPress themes – or free websites – aren’t such a great deal. You might save money, but the cost is that search engines (especially Google) can penalize your site because it has messy code or loads slowly. And if the search engines don’t like your site it won’t show in the SERPs. Ouch!

What is ‘proper text formatting’?

You’d think that text is text is text. What more is there to say? Well, to search engine bots, the way you format your text gives them oodles of information about the hierarchy of importance for text on your page.

It’s super important that you use the correct ‘tags’ for your page titles and paragraph headers. Don’t worry, in WordPress it’s pretty easy to do correctly! 

If you created your website yourself, you might have noticed the option to make text H1 (heading 1), H2 (heading 2), H3 (heading 3)… H6 (heading 6).

Heading one (H1) is for your page title – and it should only be used ONCE per page. The others are for your main headings and subheadings. Ideally, think about if we stripped out everything except your headings — would what you have left look like an outline? If so, then you’re on the right track! 

By doing this you’re ‘telling’ the crawler bots what the main topic of your page is, and the relative importance of each paragraph of text that follows. 

This not only applies to your main pages on your site, but also to your blog, if you’re optimizing your blog posts for SEO (hint: if you’re not, you should be).

How to use keywords correctly

If you’ve ever wondered exactly what a keyword is, you’re reading the right post! 

Google helpfully gave this definition when I searched for ‘definition of keywords in searches’

(As a quick aside, the phrase ‘definition of keywords in searches’ contains the keywords ‘keyword’ and ‘searches’. If you leave out the word ‘searches’ you get all sorts of other meanings – none of which apply to this post.)

Keywords also come in a couple of flavors: short keywords and long tail keywords. 

Short keywords are, well, short. As Google puts it:

Think “dog training,” “puppy school,” or “dog obedience.”

In contrast, long-tail keywords are:

Examples of long tail keywords might include “how to train loose leash walking,” or “teach my dog to come when called.”

You don’t need to get bogged down in the minutiae of whether to use long or short tail keywords, just understand that they have slightly different functions regarding how searchers use them.

For example, the search ‘dog trainer near me’ is pretty broad and will probably throw up plenty of dog trainers that might not be to the searcher’s liking.

But the search phrase “reward-based dog trainer for puppy classes near me’ should give more targeted results.

So now you know exactly what a keyword is, what’s the best way to use them?

Don’t compete with yourself

That might seem like a very weird statement, but in SEO terms it’s easy to inadvertently try to rank for the same keyword on two separate pages – and then Google doesn’t know which is the most relevant. So be sure to pick ONE unique keyword phrase per page or per blog post.

If you have many keywords and phrases you’d like to rank for, the best way to include them on your site is to create blog posts around the topics. 

If the thought of writing a regular blog piques your interest, know that blogging can be awesome for SEO. 

Keywords to boost local SEO

While we’re on the topic of keywords, it’s important to remember that if you want to appear when someone types ‘Dog trainer near me,, you need to provide clear indications of where you are throughout your website. Having your location and service area details clearly written on your website will help, but creating blog posts around local events, locations, and businesses will help even more.

Some blog post ideas to consider, for example, might be:

• Best local walking spots in <city state>
• Best dog-friendly cafes in <city state>
• Local pet store reviews
• Your favorite animal-related local businesses
• Case studies that include place names or local businesses
• Success stories that include place names or business names

This is just one way of improving your local SEO – but know that local SEO has it’s own nuances that you’ll also want to pay attention to.

Use tools to help

Keywords don’t have to be complicated and if you have a WordPress website there are plenty of tools out there to help you. Here at Click & Repeat we recommend the plugin RankMath (their basic version is free) but there are plenty to choose from.

Once set up, all you do is tell the plugin what keyword or phrase your page or post is targeting and it will analyze your content and tell you whether:

• your keyword appears frequently enough
• your headings are structured correctly – and whether they contain the keyword phrase
• your URL or title needs changing to be optimized

That’s probably enough tech-talk for one blog post! We’ve covered the basics of what SEO is, how sites appear in search results, and how to make your website SEO friendly. 

Next time we’ll look at other ways you can improve the chances of your website appearing in the SERPs – so keep your eyes peeled for ‘SEO Optimization for Dog Trainers.’