11 Crucial Website Optimization Tips To Boost Your Google Rankings

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good morning or good afternoon if you're joining us from the East Coast we're really excited about today's webinar and thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to join us we'll be getting other way here in just about one minute allowing some of the other attendees to log on we'll be right back with you thank you again wonderful thank you again for taking the time out of your morning or afternoon to join us for yet another one of the webinars in a series of SEO tips we are on a mission here at foot traffic of demiss to find SEO for dispensaries and we're really excited about today's webinar in today's webinar we're going to be sharing 11 crucial website optimization tips to boost your Google rankings how to implement these new and now boosted um optimization uh tips so your dispensary can really rank in those SEO uh consumers so for today's webinar we're going to be covering once again the 11 tips for optimizing onsite elements to rank higher on Google how to monitor the effects of your optimizations the metrics you need to monitor to continually improve your site the easy way to get started with SEO a little bit about myself my name is Ed wardo Silva I am your host for today's webinar I bring with me 18 years of marketing and sales experience and I'm super excited about joining this industry is thriving industry a little bit about foot traffic traffic is a digital advertising agency solely focused on the dispensary and cannabis Market we have been in business for over five years SEO digital advertisement and that's our core Focus before getting started let's just touch on a couple housekeeping items we're going to be covering a lot of content so I ask you to put those cell phones face down on your desks also take a moment if you're joining us from the zoom interface for the webinar to familiarize yourself there is a Q&A button on either the top of your screen or on the bottom we have panelists live here that will answer your questions throughout the webinar and then finally be sure to stick around we have special offers for the attendees that are joining us here today special to this webinar so that we will cover towards the end so let's get right into it I can't understand the value of SEO right I can't understate it I should say search engine optimization is crucial for getting traffic to your website and scoring sales for potential customers if you don't set your website up properly and actively optimize it you are likely losing sales to your competitors 68% of online experiences began with a search and 53% of all website traffic comes from organic traffic search that's more than half of your website traffic think about how many times you've run a search on Google today the reason you found the results you did is because of SEO the links you clicked rank for SEO and your searches because the pages were optimized for particular keywords using Google to find what we want is easy so it's no surprise that cannabis consumers use Google to find the spensor in the yub if you want to show up when they type in in their query then you need to optimize your search and your website in a way that will appeal to Google and consumers so what does this mean well that's what we're going to be covering here today our 11 website tips will help you appeal to both not not only Google's algorithm but also the consumers themselves this works because Google wants to provide Searchers with the best experience part of that is showing them search results that are relevant authoritative and trustworthy by following our tips you can show Google that you meet those parameters for your desired keywords I literally want to hammer down why SEO is important so before starting our tips let me just jump into a case study so you can better understand it we've worked with this multi-state medical dispensary chain for over a year now we've helped them optimize web pages by doing all of the things that we're going to be covering here today so there are no secrets with an investment of $122,000 over 12 months in SEO practice with foot traffic this retailer has seen a staggering increase in organic surge traffic when we started working with them they had approximately 91,000 visitors now they're getting upward to 438,000 that's an increase in tra traffic of over 384 year over-year 11% of those people are actually converting which has boosted their revenue by about $5.5 million across those 12 Monon period once again this is a chain of multiple dispensaries but we have seen incredible growth for single store operations as well this is totally achievable when you follow foot traffic dispensary optimization strategy which focuses on a implementation schedule let's jump into tip number one consistently research and track keywords if you want to succeed with SEO and score that organic traffic you need to do your keyword research as a main part of your SEO strategy the words that people enter in into the search box matters the way they phrase the terms and put words together impacts the results that they will get in order to show up for the most relevant searches you want to have an understanding of the terms and phrases that people search for when they're looking for the products that you sell some basic keywords include your location While others are more generic terms like the dispenser near me to get this Insight you will want to use tools like ARS or sem RS rush to see what people are searching for and these keywords platform let you see how many times people use particular keywords what sides show up for these keywords how hard it is to rank for them and much much more you will also want to take a look at the current keywords that lead people to your site and to do this check out your Google analytics to see how people find you with this information you can further optimize your site to attract more visitors you can also find holes in your SEO strategy maybe there are popular keywords that you aren't ranking for maybe your position on the search results page is a little low to boost your ranking you can use the data you collect from your keyword research to better optimize your web pages and even add additional pages to capture more keywords tip number two make sure your url structure in higher key makes sense when you create your website and add pages to your site it's important to think about the URLs for each page and how they will fit together each of your URLs should have the Page's keyword in it and should make it clear what kind of content someone is going to find for example your location page that lists your dispensary or different dispensaries may have the URL youy dispensary.com dispensary for Slash and your location then each of the dispensary locations would have their city name in the URL as well so if you have a Santa Clara dispensary as an example the URL might be your dispensary.com dispensaries slca for California SL Santa Clara just looking at the URL you pretty much know what you're going to get yourself into this is important because he highlights how relevant your pages are and makes it easier for the Searchers to understand what may be on that page you will notice that the Santa Clair example still had dispensaries in the URL that's because the locations page would be the parent page for each individual location basically all of the locations would Branch off from that page that's your site hierarchy a logical and userfriendly site hierarchy makes it easier for Google to crawl and index your website so that it can feature it in search results it also makes it easier for customers to navigate your website which is really really important if people go to your website get frustrated and leave Google sees that and will knock you down in ranking this is called a bounce rate and ideally you want this to be as low as possible because it means that people are just going to one page on your website and then leaving without taking any action it's an indication that there's something wrong it could be that your site isn't userfriendly or that it doesn't have the right information in the right place to help visitors convert into customers you want your site to make sense so that people can easily play place an order tip number three make sure that you use tags and ALT text and that they are also relevant to keywords when you look at a well optimized website you will notice that there are different headings the text in the headings has a tag associated with them so that they will show up in that larger that tag also tells Google that the words are important each of your pages should feature these heading tags and your headings should help identify the kind of information a visitor will find on your website missing heading tags is one of the most common SEO mistakes and it's such an easy one to fix Altex is a descriptor that is a fixed to your images it doesn't show up unless there is an issue with your images or if someone is using a software to make the pages more accessible for the visually impaired your alt text should describe the image and feature your keywords when appropriate both of these things help provide Google with more insight into what's on your web pages and they can make it easier for visitors to read and enjoy your site tip number four set metadata descriptions for each of your pages a meta description is a short blurb after a link on a search engine page it's the first glimpse of content someone sees when they run a search and it can actually be crucial for getting them to click on your link your meta description is limited to 160 characters it should include the page keyword word and give some information about what people will find on a particular page in a call to action you need to set this for each of your pages for example live pure and elevate your mind body and soul with pure options visit our Michigan cannabis dispensary for the best cannabis products in the Wolverine State Michigan cannabis dispensaries was the keyword in the description tip number five create relevant content and maintain consistent and accurate contact info across the board page and blog content helps you capture more keywords and is a great way to educate your audience it is generally recommended that you have a few hundred words on each of your pages remember you're right writing for people not just Google here so make sure that what you're writing truly provides information and adds value incorporate your keywords as appropriate but don't overuse them because that can actually get you in trouble with Google plus it's just not that user friendly in terms of contact information you need to verify that your name address and phone number are the same across the board they should be the same on every page and on every listing site including that of your Google my business profile otherwise you're going to get d by Google accreate consistent information helps your trustworthiness with both consumers as well as Google so always check it tip number six avoid bloat and improve your page speeds how fastes your page loads can impact you in two ways first people people are going to wait around most people will bounce right off your page if your page does not load within 3 seconds and second if your page takes too long to load Google will penalize you remember Google just wants to make Searchers happy if it sees people keep leaving your site and that it takes forever to load they are not going to keep recommending your site as a search result and your ranking is going to drop Google page speed insights can help you see whether you're you need to improve your page speed if your site is taking too long to load you can enable compression optimize your code and remove unnecessary elements and reduce redirects among many other things our next tip will help you on this as well tip number seven optimize and compress your images to increase your page speed and to make for a more pleasant brows experience you will want to optimize every image on your page and compress them so that they load properly and quickly you don't want people waiting around for your images to load or a laggy website we live in a visual culture make sure your site looks good and that your images show up right every single time tip number eight install schema to help go classif your web pages a website schema is an integral part of its SEO strategy when added to a web page schema markup creates an enhanced description known as Rich snippet that appears in search results making effective use of schema markup can improve the visibility of your organic search results and boost clickthrough rates to your website schema matters because it tells search engines that your data means something instead of just what it says as we have mentioned numerous times already in today's webinar Google just wants to provide Searchers the best results that means they rely on search intent to uncover what a Searcher is truly looking for do they want information or are they ready to buy when you use schema you show Google that your page is about what your page is about so that the search engine can then use that information to determine how you will rank for certain queries Google's structured data markup tool can be used to generate a schema markup that is specific to your website this tool will generate the HTML code that can then be copied and pasted directly into your sites code after building this you can then use Google's structured data testing tool to see what your markup will look like in Google's search results tip number nine make sure you look good on all of the devices I can't understate this over 80% of Searchers are on mobile today more and more people are using their phones to run searches specifically local Searchers and nearby Searchers and responsive mobile design prioritize speed and convenience encouraging your visitors to stay on your website for long as possible if you want to show up in these search results and rank well with Google your site needs to look good on smartphones otherwise Google just won't prioritize your website remember Google wants it's users to have a good experience if your website is difficult on a phone it won't rank well tip number 10 create a linking strategy that helps showcase your pillar content when you're creating content you should be linking your pages together when appropriate for example let's say you did a blog post on merine and you happen to have an educ page on tpin your merine post should link back to your tpin page which is considered the pillar content this is called internal linking and he helps Google see how your content relates to one another and he makes it easier when he crawls your website and indexes it plus it helps provide visitors with easy access to related content so that they can keep learning and engaging with your site when you link link Pages like this you need to consider the the words that you hyperlink these words are the anchor text they should relate to the content that you are linking to so in our previous example you could link the words tping to your other page when linking Pages be sure not to use keywords you're trying to rank for as your anchor text on another page continue with our example here you would not want to link the word mercing on your blog post to your tping page since you want your blog post to rank for for the term Mercy tip number 11 provide a secure browsing experience for visitors you know that little lock icon on your browser's address bar yeah that one that icon that indicates whether the site is secured or not if the site isn't secure in addition to an unlocked icon a visitor's web browser may actually give them a big flashing red warning because dispensary websites allow for customers to order online and input their personal information it's vital that they are secure no one wants to input their personal information on an unsecure site ideally your site should run on https and have an upto-date SSL or TSL certificate this is something that your developer should be able to help you with but if you need help please reach out to us here at foot traffic we'll get this done for you no problem the last thing you want is to the last thing you would want is a little pop up on Google or Mozilla or Safari telling potential customers that your site isn't secure and that they shouldn't trust you in addition to helping put customers at ease these security measures also put Google at ease they want to recommend safe websites after all so let's say you implemented some of these tips how can you tell whether they're working for you or not first to be clear about your goal for most dispensary it's twofold to get more people to their website and to increase their sales from organic track next you need to set up the right tools to help you measure whether your efforts are paying off you will want to install Google analytics on your website if you haven't already this is something we do for every single one of our customers and we can certainly help you get it set up properly so you can start tracking everything you want to track you may also want to use an SE tool to track your keyword rankings so you can see if you're gaining traction with your Desir keywords once you have this set up you can establish a Baseline and start measuring in your improvements you can also Implement Revenue attribution which is the act of measuring how much of your sales can be attributed to a different marketing channel Revenue attribution is something that we offer to all of our customers it's it's not standard in the Cannabis industry but we believe it should be if you want to know whether your ad spend is actually driving sales then you need to create a system to measure the effectiveness of each of them so once all of this is set up and running you will want to pay close attention to the following metrics total website visitors unique website visitors new website visitors obviously the number of purchases amount of revenue from the sales conversion rate time on each page the amount of pages per every visit the bounce rate The Click through rate keyword rankings and finally but not least domain Authority once again the easiest way to get all of this started and measuring is by working with the industry-leading SEO agency fo traffic so when you are working with foot traffic there's no need to learn about everything SEO and I'll be honest it is a dense topic that can be hard to explain and at the end of the day there are there's one goal scoring more organic traffic to your site so you can increase your sales and let's be clear this isn't just any traffic this is relevant traffic these are people who are are interested in buying cannabis and once you have them on your website all you need to do is convince them that they are in the right place the right dispensary to purchase from if you are ready to boost your visibility and make it easier for the interested customers to find your website we can help you as part of our SEO service we create unique strategy for each dispensary we work with there's no cookie cuty formula we take a look on what's working on your website and what's not and if you don't have a website yet we actually create them and optimize them for every single one of our customers who need them when we first started our agency this was our main service and it still remains one of the most important and created revenue for our clients today to help you increase your Revenue we have a special deal for all the attendees here today today we're offering new clients 20% off their first month of SEO when they sign up for a thre Monon package SEO is a long gain so you do want to invest in a long term in order to see the most Optimum results and speaking of results as part of SEO Services we offer reporting on key metrics so that you can see how much organic traffic your site's getting and how many of those visits are leading to sales this is crucial information for determining the effectiveness of your strategy and it's part of our mission we believe that dispensaries deserve transparent reporting and clear data about Revenue attribution so they can actually allocate their budgets more accordingly so let's get you set up on a plan today go to foot tr. mecall we'll put that over here on the chat window for you and let's set up a call and get started and if you want more information about this service or any of the other service offerings that we have it's the same exact link so let's check and let's get started understanding what your dispensary needs and making you some money let's turn over to questions from our audience here today uh any questions and once again you can enter those questions here directly on the Q&A all right so how long does it take to see results our great question question we get just about every single conversation we have about SEO right so SEO is all about the longterm effect right it's not a battle it's a war you got to be ready for the longstanding uh investment of time and energy you T typically start seeing results within the first three to six months to really benefit from it as you saw from case study you really want to start investing and continue doing it why is that Google changes its algorithm often and generally without notice so if you're not ready for it guess what you get dinged so all of the work you do start dwindling down and that's how Google became the leader in all search in the world right they make up 93% of all search in the globe so it's really important to play by the Google rules and that's exactly what we help you with by a lot lot of new content generating reviews for you making sure that the entire strategy is mocked up not just your website wonderful thank you so much once again for taking the time to join us today I really hope you found this helpful and once again do click on that link that we provided schedule a call with us even if you just have some basic questions we'll get you started today and answer all of those questions have a wonderful rest of your day thank you again for your time ]