You have a nice website, yet you’re not getting the calls you want or need to have a profitable and sustainable business that provides the lifestyle you deserve. Why is that?
Just because you have a website doesn’t mean consumers can find you. Have you searched for interior designers in your metro area? Do you come up on the first page of Google or Yahoo? If not, you need to do some work. 80% of the calls go to the top three listings on the first page of the search engines.
List your site with the search engines. If you do this yourself, this can take many hours, but it is free. I really recommend outsourcing this to someone who does this all of the time.
Optimize your site for the keywords that people use to search for interior designers in your area. Keywords could be “interior designer new york,” or “kitchen designer San Francisco.”
Your website should be optimized with your keywords, in what are called anchor links within the text of your site. An anchor link is text that the search engines see that indicates relevance to a search by someone looking for your services.
For instance, one search term you might use to look for me is “value based fees.” If you’re looking for information about growing a more profitable and passion-filled interior design business, the link takes you right to another site we own. (Be sure to download the complimentary eBook!)
Make sure you anchor link keywords to secondary pages within your website. This is called “deep linking.” The search engines reward you for this because you have more content that makes the search on your site more relevant.
Here are examples you might use on your site:
- Interior design city
- Interior designer city
- Kitchen design city
- Bathroom design city
If you’re really on top of the game, your website address, or URL, should include the main keywords someone might use to find you. For example: http://www.interiordesignorinteriordesigneryourcityyourcompanyname.com.
If you don’t have a website address like this, you can register a new domain that uses this naming convention and forward it to your current website address.
Be sure to list your site on Google, Bing and Yahoo! maps. This is free, and extremely important to help you get found. These days, over 70% of all people who look for any service look online and view your website before calling you. If you’re not on Page 1, you’re not very likely to be found.
Add a blog to your website, and post articles at least once a week with the main keywords for your site. Search engines “crawl” the web every day looking for new content. Fresher content gets higher rankings in the search engines. If you don’t have a blog attached to your site, then at least update your website as frequently as possible.
I recommend a blog because you can update the site yourself. There are many qualified web developers who can set up a template for your site and teach you how to use it. You can even use a hybrid blog template that looks more like a website. Just search on Google for WordPress templates and take a look at the options available.
Every website or blog can be customized with your logo, branding and graphics.
Remember to write your content to appeal to the emotions of the potential client. Don’t use a laundry list of what you do. Tell your visitors how you improve their lives.
Use alt-tags for all photographs on your site. Alt-tags are the text you see when you roll your mouse over a picture or image.
Use similar naming conventions that I mentioned above. “Master Bedroom Interior Design NYC” is a good tag if you want your images to be found in the city of New York. Images are more likely to be found than your website.
Talk to your webmaster about your H1 tag (Title Tag), Meta Description and Meta Tags. These must be relevant to the keywords that your prospects use to search for you on the web.
If you really want to get found, use a video about your business. Few designers use videos yet, so you’re very likely to get a high search ranking if you use a video with keywords and your URL in the description.
Gail Doby, ASID, is co-founder and Chief Vision Officer of Design Success University. DSU is your shortcut to a more profitable and passion-filled interior design business. Click the link to get your complimentary copy of the Interior Design Fee & Salary Survey eBook now ($79 Value). This article was originally written for Decorati.
