Getting Your SEO Ready for 2022

BY WILL HANKE

There’s a saying in the Midwest where I live: “Make hay while the sun is shining.” For many window treatment business owners, this year has been a spectacular season of “making hay.” Leads have been plentiful and many have experienced record harvests. And as often happens this time of year, we look toward next year— planting the seeds now that will result in an even better 2022.

One of the best things we can do in this downtime is to get serious about our search engine optimization (SEO). Pages and product information that you update now will put you in position for more leads next year. Remember, changes you make to a website won’t register with Google for up to six weeks, so you’ve got to plan ahead and “send them the right signals” about your site before the selling season starts up again.

Review Your On-Page SEO

The simplest way to start with your SEO is to get your page titles and descriptions in order, dispersing city and municipality names throughout. Make sure you use all 70 (or so) characters for each page and write a two-sentence description that explains what each page on your site is about.

As a bonus, make sure each page has a custom heading tag, commonly called an H1 tag. While it’s a small change, Google tends to give more weight to heading tags and titles than most other items on your page.

To figure out your current tags, download a free tool called Screaming Frog. Plug in your website and run the report. This will give you the head start you need to optimize those titles, descriptions and headings.

Get People Talking About (and Linking to) You

In the world of SEO, links are very important. Every link from another website to your website is like a vote for your business— and the more votes you have, the higher Google will rank your business listing.

Getting links is neither fun nor glamorous, but the benefits can be tremendous. One easy way to get more links to your website is to start creating content that people want to link to.

For instance, an article on the top 10 window treatment projects your company did in 2021 would be a great promotional piece that would get some engagement on social media as well.

Secondly, consider guest blogging. In this tactic, you reach out to other industry influencers and ask if you can post a wellwritten piece of content on their website. They get free content, and you get a link in the article footer back to your site, which is a win-win.

Optimize Your GMB Listing

For our clients, we’re seeing cases where 60% or more of their leads are coming from customers engaged with their Google My Business (GMB) listing. A vast majority of these leads came from customers that never visited our client’s website. While your website is very important, your GMB listing might be even more important nowadays.

To get started, make sure you’ve claimed your listing (Google. com/business) and then fill out as much information as you can.

If you want to get a leg up on the competition, geo-tag your pictures before you upload them to your GMB profile using a tool like GeoImgr.

Diversify Your Content

Even though I’m an old-school SEO guy, I’ll admit it’s very important that you don’t keep all your eggs in the Google basket. Creating content that is fun for you to develop and reflects your brand will help you get you more views over time.

As the second-largest search engine, YouTube cannot be ignored. The addition of video to our business arsenal has really helped us increase the number of people who see our brand. The same is true for any window covering company. Giving tours of your workroom, creating how-to videos and even posting video testimonials can really improve your overall reach.

Another growing platform for content is podcasting. Our podcast, Marketing Panes, has reached more than 10,000 people that we may not have reached with more traditional means. Podcasts are easy to make and are a great way to add some personality to your business.

Most importantly, you need to be where the customers are, whether that is YouTube, podcasts or your website. Having content across multiple platforms will only help your business grow.

Be the Go-To in Your Local Area

There are a lot of things you can do to create digital dominance in your local market. One way to make an impact on the local market would be to advertise on social media, being very specific about the demographics you are targeting. Include details such as the age and interests of the audience you want to focus on more relevant customers and to increase your reach.

Additionally, you could consider targeting your local community, nearby city or region. Always include a call to action in your advertisements and be specific about what you are trying to say. Be sure to monitor your results/ metrics and keep experimenting to find what works for you.

Implementing these tactics late in the year will set you up for a fantastic start to the year and will have long-term effects on your company’s success overall. V

Will Hanke has two passions: supporting our U.S. veterans and helping window treatment and awning businesses tell their story online—providing them with increased exposure, more customers and higher revenues. For more than 24 years, he has helped mom-and-pops, startups and multimillion-dollar companies with their digital marketing strategies.

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