SEO For Equestrian Services: How To Become More Visible On Google?
SEO stands for search engine optimization which means – if you have a website for your equine business, you will need to optimise it so that it shows up in search engine results.
Ideally, you want to show up on the first page of search engine results, meaning, the first page of Google. There are other search engines out there, but Google takes away more than 92% of all online traffic, so out of all search engines, Google is the most important one.
That being said, SEO should definitely be a part of your equestrian marketing strategy.
What is SEO?
Without making it too complicated – SEO (search engine optimization) is a bundle of online marketing techniques that will help your equestrian website show up for the phrases (a.k.a keywords) relevant to your horse business.
Example – if you have a riding school in Denver you want your website to show up in the search results if someone types in ‘riding school Denver’.
But, that is just one of many search terms a person can search for, that is relevant to your riding school business in Denver. Ideally, you want to rank on the first page for as many of the keywords (phrases) relevant to your equine business as possible.
What to do for the best search rank possible?
This is where it gets tricky because it is not just one thing you need to do. You need a good SEO strategy and an action plan.
In addition, if your website is not built on a CMS platform like Wix, WordPress, Squarespace or similar, you will not be able to do this by yourself.
How do you know which platform your website has been built on?
If you have built the website yourself, then you had probably used one of the CMS platforms.
If a web designer, or someone else, has done the website for you, ask them what platform they have used and ask them for the backend access.
You can also ask them to show you how to post blog articles and how to implement elements I will go through in the next paragraph.
Keywords
To dive deeper into search engine optimization topic, next thing we need to go over are keywords.
Keyword is any word or a phrase that people type in the search engines (Google). It is also important to take note that every keyword has something called keyword intent behind it. Keyword intent or search intent is the why behind a search query and if your article or a page do not match this, people will not find your content relevant.
Example of a search intent: a person has no idea what a horse is and is researching to learn more about horses as animals. They stumble upon your page where you are selling horses. Do you think they will find that page relevant? They won’t because they are not in the market to buy a horse, they are trying to learn more about horses as animals.
Simplified, in order for Google to recognize that what you have on a certain page will be relevant for what the person is searching for is by keywords. If you have a page you want to show up in search results when someone types in ‘riding school in Denver’, you need to have that same ‘keyword’ somewhere on your page. What the person has put in Google needs to correspond with what you have on your page.
So, the way you should produce content for your website is by researching what it is that people search for/type in and then try and match those keywords with the content on your website.
The way you should NOT produce content for your website is by assuming that a piece of content is interesting and then write an article about it.
Keyword research
Keyword research is the process of researching popular search terms people type into search engines (like Google).
The goal of keyword research is learning about keywords and then strategically including those keywords in your content.
The more the keywords you are using on your website correspond with search queries people type in (and the search intent), the more this content will appear relevant to Google.
8 tips for making your equestrian business website more visible
As said in the previous paragraph, to be able to implement the following tips, you will need access to the backend of your website.
1. Optimize the content on your website
This means that you need to strategically include keywords you have discovered during your keyword research, in your content.
If you do that your content will show up higher in search results because Google will see it as relevant – the keyword a person typed in Google corresponds with the keyword(s) you have included on a certain page.
You should do this for every page you have on your website.
2. Start a blog
Start writing blog articles that cover topics relevant to your equine business.
Not only will having a blog create a better user experience and generate credibility, it will give you the ability for internal linking and increase your visibility for certain keywords.
Keep in mind that each blog article needs to be optimized for a certain keyword that you have discovered during your keyword research.
Do not just write articles about topics you think are interesting.
3. Optimize title tags
A page’s title tag is displayed as part of the search snippet in a search results. It appears as the clickable headline and is meant to be an accurate and concise description of a page’s content.
Recommended length for title tags is 50-60 characters.
4. Optimize meta descriptions
Meta description is a snippet of text that appears in the search results under your headline.
A meta description should provide a brief summary of a web page. It is meant to give the user an idea of the content that exists within the page and how it relates to their search query.
Recommended length for meta description is 140-160 characters.
5. Add alt text
All images on your website should have ‘alt text’ description. ‘Alt text’ is a contraction of ‘alternative text’, which is a short written description of an image.
Think of it as a description that will tell you what is on the picture if you don’t see the picture.
6. Create separate pages for each equestrian discipline, leasing options, service…
The results you see on the search result page are the most relevant pages Google could find across the billions of pages on the internet. If someone searches for “riding school” or “trail riding” and your website only has one page for all your options, Google will probably pick a competing barn’s page completely dedicated to teaching how to ride or trail riding over your page.
If you create a separate page for each of your services, Google will not get confused over what a particular page is about.
7. URL structure
A URL is commonly known as a web address and is displayed in the address bar at the top of a browser.
Typical URL is shown in the following format: https://www.voxdigitali.com.
URLs should be short and to the point with hyphens (-) separating the words. For example: https://www.voxdigitali.com/equine-seo/
The best URL is the one containing the keyword the page is optimized for, separated with hyphens.
8. Open Google My Business account
This is especially important if you do business locally because you will start showing up in Google Maps which will boost your sales and website visits.
People will also be able to leave reviews which is a crucial factor when building trust and credibility with customers. You should also make a habit out of asking your customers and clients for reviews.
Here are the steps on how to open Google My Business account.
Final thoughts
We have tried not to make this article overly complicated, but truth be told SEO is the most complex part of digital marketing and, unless you spend at least a couple of months learning about it, you will not be able to make your pages rank.
SEO elements we haven’t touched on in this article that have a great impact on pagerank are backlinks and search intent.
A backlink is a scenario where one page on the internet references a page on your website and includes a clickable link to access that page.
Search intent is the why behind a search query. In other words, why did the person make this search? Do they want to learn something? Are they looking to make a purchase? Or, are they looking for a particular website?
However, if you try and implement a couple of tips from this article, it will have an effect on the visibility of your website.
Done for you
If all of this sounds too complicated and overwhelming, VOX DIGITALI offers tailored SEO services to equine businesses.
We can help you improve your ranking for more visibility and we will leverage it to gain more customers.
Equestrian businesses do not use SEO as a strategy nearly enough to win over potential customers.
If you decide to take your horse business to the next level, there is a huge room for expansion within the horse industry.
