How to Use SEO to Grow Your Pet Business Online

Intro

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial to many digital marketing strategies. Online pet businesses, such as pet supply stores, pet insurance providers, and the like, can benefit from a solid SEO strategy.

Fortunately, SEO is very accessible as far as digital marketing techniques go since simple optimizations can go a long way (read: the results are fruitful for the long game).

This article will cover everything you need to know about using SEO to grow your pet business online. We’ll start by reviewing the basics of SEO for online pet businesses before diving into some actionable tips and techniques for boosting your rankings.

The Basics of SEO for Online Pet Business

If you’re unfamiliar, search engine optimization (SEO for short) is a digital marketing strategy used to boost organic traffic to a website. This technique uses a variety of optimizations, both on-page, and off-page, that help you rank for targeted keywords in search engines like Google or Bing.

SEO aims to increase your business's visibility on relevant search engine result pages (SERPs). The idea is that potential customers searching for something related to your brand will discover your business more efficiently if your site appears higher on the page. The goal of many businesses isn't only to rank high but to rank high with content that converts.

SEO appeals to many online pet businesses because it is relatively cheap (vs. PPC) and can be DIY with a bit of research. Of course, it’s possible to streamline SEO efforts with the support of an SEO professional, but this requires a budget.

12 Ways to Use SEO to Grow Your Pet Business Online

Now that you understand the whats and whys of using SEO to boost your pet business online, let’s dive into a few ways to boost your site’s rankings.

1. Use Relevant Keywords

One of the most important aspects of SEO is to use relevant keywords that match the intent of your target audience. There are many ways to generate a list of keywords to target.

Thinking of the most logical search queries a potential customer may use when looking for your company is a great way to start.

For example, a pet business like Pumpkin offers cat insurance, so they use keywords such as “cat insurance,” “cat health insurance,” “best cat insurance plans,” and so forth.

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Another option is to use an SEO scraping tool to see what your competitors are ranking for. There are also plenty of keyword research tools for assessing keyword search volume, competition, and intent.

Typically, high volume and low competition are easy to identify as good keywords, but lower volume keywords are great, too, as long as they have the right intent.

Many long-tail keywords have low to moderate search volumes, but their intent is more logical than higher-volume terms.

2. Prioritize the User Experience

The user experience is a qualitative aspect that's very important for SEO. To optimize your user experience, you should think about conveying information in the most accessible way possible.

First, think about this from a visual perspective. Is your site easy on the eyes? Can you skim through and get the gist of the site? Do the colors complement one another?

From there, think about users navigating the site. Will they be able to find what they’re looking for? Will it be easy for users to take the desired action with little to no resistance? When enhancing your website's user experience to improve SEO, it's often beneficial to consider hiring a React.js developer to implement responsive and user-friendly design elements and interactions that can enhance the overall user experience.

3. Invest in Off-Page Optimization

On-page optimization, which is strategically using keywords in your article, is the most obvious part of SEO. However, off-page optimization is just as important. Off-page optimization is mostly related to the performance of the page (read: technical SEO).

When it comes to performance, you want to ensure that your site loads quickly and efficiently. Issues with performance are often red flags for search engines. There are plenty of plugins and tools you can use to optimize your website's performance. Explore the integrations and plugins available for the website builder that you use.

For example, page speed is a direct ranking factor for Google. Run your website through Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to learn everything you need to know about enhancing your page speed for optimal performance.

Thankfully, it shares everything you need to fix if it’s not up to par. Here’s an example of a failing score:

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4. Don't Keyword Stuff

Keyword stuffing arose after the concept of keyword density as an SEO hack ran rampant in the industry. Unfortunately, there's no perfect science for how often a keyword is used, and it's more important to use it organically throughout a piece of content. However, a good rule of thumb is to aim to use your target keyword once for every 100 words of text.

It's imperative to be mindful of keyword stuffing when using SEO content editors since many take a quantitative approach to SEO rather than a qualitative one.

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These tools can be great guides, but even some of the most powerful SEO tools encourage keyword stuffing. So take their advice with a grain of salt and remember to always write for your readers.

5. Optimize Metadata

It’s important to ensure your site's metadata is optimized for your target keyword. Search engines read metadata to understand and categorize your website.

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Some metadata you can edit include title tags, meta descriptions, alt text for images, and heading tags.

6. Keep Your Blog Up-to-Date

Another important aspect of SEO is keeping your blog up-to-date. The main way to do this is to consistently create new content relevant to your audience. Pay attention to trends so your brand can be a part of relevant conversations.

It’s also important to regularly refresh old blog content to ensure the information is fresh and accurate. For example, if you use statistics to support your content, make sure you’re quoting the most recent studies.

7. Optimize Images

Images play a powerful role in creating engaging user experiences. When done right, they also have a positive impact on SEO. There are two main things to remember when optimizing the photos on the website: compressing them and adding alt text.

Compressing your images is very important because it helps to maintain a sufficient load time on your website.

Adding alt text is another easy way to optimize your image. This process simply adds metadata for photos that explains the photo in a few words. Alt text makes it possible for search engines to recognize the images.

8. Create Landing Pages for Different Keywords

Many people automatically think about blog posts regarding targeting keywords with SEO. However, landing pages are another great piece of website real estate to optimize.

Pet Screening, which is a tool for pet policy management, is a great example of a brand that leverages landing pages for SEO. They have landing pages targeted towards relevant pet industry terms, such as “pet owners,” “assistance animals,” and more.

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9. Invest in Link Building

Link building is a very important part of SEO. Specifically, securing backlinks from authority domains is a great way to improve your site’s SEO. A great way to get high-quality backlinks is to write a guest post for other brands in the pet industry where you share your expertise.

Or you can participate in a mutually beneficial link exchange. Keep in mind that you don’t want to link to any site. The goal is to link to relevant sites in your niche. A link from chewy.com holds more SEO value than sallylovestobake.com.

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Conversely, it’s also important to link out to high-quality domains and link to your internal blog posts. This on-page SEO strategy provides context to search engines when they crawl your site.

10. Analyze and Iterate

Like any marketing technique, measurability is key. You can see what’s working and what’s not by tracking your results. It allows you to adjust your strategy to get the desired results.

Google Search Console is a phenomenal tool for tracking your SEO results. This is a free tool you can configure on your website to access insights on which keywords bring the most traffic to your site, how individual pages are performing, and more.

11. Setup a Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is an SEO hack that helps put your business on the map (no pun intended).

This tool from Google allows business owners to create a profile that'll appear in local search results related to their business. This profile doubles as a place to collect reviews, which is great for gathering social proof, so it’s a win-win.

For example, if you have a pet store, and someone in your area looks up “pet stores near me,” your Google Business profile will likely rank higher than your regular website.

This strategy is just one little way Google rewards businesses for using its tools.

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12. Backup Your Data

As your pet business grows and gains more online traction, it's not just about getting noticed. It's also about protecting valuable data you’ve gathered from increased online interactions.

Ensuring your website has a secure data backup plan is crucial, especially if you're hosting on platforms like AWS. To this end, consider investing in services like AWS data backup to keep your online assets safe from potential threats or inadvertent losses.

Final Thoughts

Many industries excel with the help of SEO, and the pet industry is no exception. By applying the SEO principles discussed in this post, you can quickly improve your rankings and drive more traffic to your pet business’s website.

As you optimize your site, keep the user experience at the forefront. Remember to provide value with all of the content you create. Keep your copy clear and to the point, and don’t sacrifice quality in the name of keyword stuffing.

So, are you ready to grow your pet business with the help of SEO?