Every pet spa wants to be easily found on Google Search in their local area, preferably right at the top. While you will be competing for spots with your competitors in your local area, the good news is that there is a lot you can do to build your online presence and get your business more easily found in the search engines.
Read on for our organic search best practices for pet spas and how to gain visibility in local search.
What is Organic Search / Local SEO?
Local SEO is the practice of optimizing your website and other platforms so that your business comes up in search in your local area.
If you search for Pet Spa + your local area on Google, you’ll see Google Maps listings showing your area, with red pins on the map for each pet spa. You may get one or two sponsored listings above that via Google Ads or Local Services Ads.
Underneath the Map Pack, you’ll see any paid ads, listed as “sponsored”, followed by the organic search results.
What factors determine your visibility in local organic search results?
Google Business Profile
Claiming your Google Business Profile (GBP) is the only way to get into Google Map Pack. You can’t buy your way in or get listed there via any other method. What you need to do is claim your GBP and then fill in every section thoroughly, with quality copy using keywords, local keywords, and related keywords.
If your profile isn’t fully complete then you really can’t gain a Local Map Pack listing, so pay attention to this and fill it in well.
You’ll notice when you claim your profile that you have to verify your business with Google. This is a very good thing as Google will now have proof that you have a genuine, legitimate business, and they will trust you and your content more, and potentially list you higher in the rankings and search results.
One other advantage of claiming your GBP is that if you use paid ads with ad extensions, you will benefit from a highly detailed and attractive listing that’s likely to grab attention. This ad will have a great deal of detail on it, including your opening hours, contact information, your star rating, and more. Potential customers can also click right through to your full profile to see all the amazing content and images you provide when you set up your GBP.
Business directories
You should aim to collect as many citations as you can for your pet spa as this helps you increase your visibility online. A citation is just a listing of your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) on a site that you don’t own, and business directories are ideal for this. There are hundreds of these sites online, and some of them are very large and reputable. Aim for these widely popular sites first, such as Yelp, Bing, and Facebook, but as long as it’s a reputable directory with a good reputation, get your pet spa listed! It really does make a difference. You can also find local directories which can help you get found in your local area.
Social media profiles
Your social media platforms also count as citations if you include your NAP, though that doesn’t mean you should attempt to be on them all just to gain the citation. Choose your social platforms wisely, by finding out where your audience hangs out. If you try to post on more than a couple of social platforms consistently, you may find you can’t keep up and you burn out, so pick the most relevant one and get good at that first, before adding another.
Don’t just fill in your basic business details, however. These platforms are ideal for posting quality, educational content to inform your audience and encourage them to buy.
Website design
Your website is where many people will find you, especially once you start driving traffic back to it, so it has to look the part.
If it doesn’t, it’s time for a refresh. It should be modern, attractive, and reflective of your brand. Not only that, but it should be fast-loading, easy to use, with excellent navigation so customers can easily find what they need.
Ensure your site works beautifully on mobile too. Too many people now shop and book using only their mobile phones that you could be missing out on a lot of potential bookings.
Benefits of appearing in organic search results
There really are so many benefits that we could be here all day, but we’ll stick to just four benefits that we know you’ll want for your pet spa.
1. Greater online visibility
It’s not complicated: the more places your business appears online, the more chances you have of being found and the higher your visibility.
2. Outrank your competitors
We know this is a lot of work, and it’s possible that some at least of your competitors won’t put in that amount of work. If you do, so much better for your business because you’ll gain rankings over them.
3. Drive more traffic to your website
As a business, you simply can’t survive without great leads and to get those, you need traffic to your website. The more visibility you have, the more leads you’ll send to your website. And if it’s newly refreshed and ready for your visitors, you’ll have an excellent chance of converting at least some of those leads into paying customers.
4. Educate your customers so they are more likely to buy from you
One of the most important things you can do for your pet spa is to post really informative, helpful content to educate potential customers and show them just how much you know. You’re establishing yourself as an expert by doing that everywhere you can online, and it works. The more people trust in you, the more likely they are to trust you with their precious pets.
Local SEO Tips for Pet Spas
Work your way through our top local SEO tips below and you’ll soon gain online visibility and, hopefully, a listing in the Local Pack!
1. Improve your Google Business Profile
We talked about this a little earlier when we said it was really important to fill in every section of your GBP, including your categories, Q&A, services, general business information, and the rest.
If you haven’t done that yet, go back and do it now. While you’re there, don’t forget to include keywords and local keywords in your copy. You should use SEO principles there just as you would anywhere else.
You can also check out your reviews and respond to them. Yes, even the negative ones. Be calm and courteous every time, and if you do get a negative review, try to get them to talk to you off the internet. You don’t want a public row happening right on your GBP. It really won’t look good.
This is important because people want to see how you respond to both kinds of reviews. They want to get an idea of what it would be like to book your service and to meet you in person, so give the best impression you can.
Following on from that, check whether anyone has asked any questions or comments, and make sure you respond to them too for the same reasons. It’s also good to keep regularly updating your GBP with new posts, images, before and after shots, and offers, just as you would on your social media.
2. Be active on social media and add posts to your Google Business Profile
Just as we said above, both your social media and your GBP need consistent updating on a regular basis. You can’t afford to have weeks and weeks where you don’t post at all. This puts off many potential clients as they want to see a highly active page with a lot going on, great images, and great content.
However, you can help yourself by scheduling social posts and by sometimes posting the same posts on both your social platforms and your GBP.
3. Maintain consistency when it comes to your brand information
We mentioned your NAP earlier when gaining citations for your business, but one thing you must look out for is that everywhere you post your NAP, you must be consistent.
You can’t add your area code on some sites, but not on others, or use abbreviations sometimes but then write everything out in full on other sites. Everything must be the same wherever you post your NAP.
Customers can become confused if there are too many differences in your NAP between different sites and they can start to wonder if these listings are all for the same business. That really can put them off and have them looking at your competitors instead.
Additionally, Google is very keen on an accurate NAP as they want to be sure that you are the same business and a genuine, real business at that. If they can’t be sure, they may lower you in the rankings, which you definitely don’t want.
4. Claim your business on local business directories and optimize your presence there
We talked about claiming your business directories earlier too, but it really is important to optimize these listings just as much as you would your Google Business Profile.
Again, you need to post consistently, add quality images, and everything people could want to know about your pet spa, including your contact details and opening times.
You can also encourage reviews on many business sites and you need to keep doing that consistently and responding to your reviews on your directories too.
5. Optimize your website
You can’t afford to forget SEO when it comes to your website. You need to do your keyword research first, and then include your main keywords in your URL, title tags, headers, meta description, subheadings, alt text on images, and naturally throughout your content.
Don’t forget to include local keywords too, and any related keywords that might help Google establish what your pages are about, such as dog shampoo, nail clipping, and similar keywords.
Internal linking within the different pages of your site can also help with SEO as it’s easier for Google to crawl your site and index more pages.
6. Add location pages to your website
Create a page for every pet spa location and include local keywords in your URLs, your headings, and in your copy to show that these pages are specifically about those areas. This can really help you to be found in your local areas.
Even if you don’t have multiple locations, you could still create a location page just for your one location to get in your local keywords on a focused page.
7. Create local content
You can include this content on your local pages if you want to, or create a page specifically for this.
You may want to share any pet-related events in the local area, link to adoption sites, charities, and anything else that relates closely to your pet spa.
This will show you as the caring person you are, who really wants to help animals and to help your pet owners too. And it’s great for adding local keywords and aiding visibility.
8. Make your website mobile friendly
Check your website and ensure everything works on mobile. Seriously, the sheer volume of people shopping via mobile now means you will be missing out on important traffic and potential new customers if this isn’t in place.
Not only that but Google expects that every site now works on mobile, and if yours doesn’t, they may lower your ranking.
9. Engage your local community
As well as sharing local content, you can link to other related local businesses, events, and more to give them some free publicity and build relationships in the community, and you can ask them to link back to your site to improve your relevancy and authority search signals.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform demo
It should be clear by now that we weren’t joking when we said local SEO can be a lot of work. But we’re not going to leave you without a solution.
You don’t have to do everything manually and take hours of your time updating individual sites, directories, and social platforms. Instead, you can use our professional business intelligence marketing software to do so many things for you, in seconds.
With our marketing platform, you can update over 80 business directories and your Google Business Profile all at once with just a few clicks. Not only does that save hours of time, but it also ensures maximum consistency of your NAP.
You can also jot down ideas, write, and schedule your content, emails, and social media posts right from our dashboard, without having to go to each individual site and log in.
Manage your paid ads, request, remind, and respond to your reviews, and so much more. You really don’t have to feel you’ve got to do everything yourself the slow way.
You can get highly detailed analytics, statistics, and reports showing you how your marketing is performing, either overall or just one aspect of it. That allows you to keep your eye on what’s working and allocate your budget in the right places.
Why not book a demo and see what our software can do to gain your pet spa great online visibility?