Search Engine Optimization (SEO) feels so good. Why? Because a search-optimized print website can help you meet strangers: qualified print buyers you have never heard of and who possibly have never heard of your printing business. They are ‘qualified’ because they likely have the intent to purchase and proactively contact you to learn more. It’s such a beautiful thing when these website visits turn into a profitable order for you. It’s the first step in what could possibly be a long-term mutually beneficial relationship.
One reason this experience feels so good for a print business owner is how much work is needed for you over months (and years) to make it happen. SEO is not super hard or expensive. But in a highly crowded and commoditized market, it takes effort and it takes time, especially when you are competing with larger, older, or more active competitors.
A weak metaphor for SEO is diet and exercise. If you eat right, work out, and take care of yourself, maybe you look more attractive to strangers. SEO is sort of like that: when prospective print buyers see your brand and say to themselves, “I’d like to get to know you a little better.”
Once your web page gets found by a stranger, SEO can greatly help to improve your customers’ experience as they navigate through your site. A pleasant experience ensures that they will stay longer on your site, take the desired action, and return again. Google and other search engines track this user behavior and reward your page with higher search rankings when visitors spend more time there without leaving.
To achieve a higher ranking in search results, you must work on your website content, https://nventmarketing.com/ppc/, and SEO strategy on a consistent basis. A few tips from a non-exhaustive list of to-dos include the following:
Design your URLs for search. Search-friendly URLs contain keywords that help describe the content of the page. For example, these URLs contain popular keywords that print buyers are searching for:
- com/products/books/
- com/products/direct-mail/
- com/products/signs/
Each month in the US, there are approximately 600 searches on Google for “book printer.” The average Google pay-per-click cost for this term is $4.50. There are 2200 monthly searches for “direct mail services” and Google’s PPC costs about $25 for this term. The monthly search volume for “signs” is 22,000, while “sign printer” is 250. Using free and paid SEO tools, you can better understand what your competitors and your target customers are doing online.
Write content that search engines can read. When designing your website, make sure you start with a solid structure for your content. This structure includes your headings, paragraphs, and links. Each page should have at least 350 words.
Block pages you don’t want search engines to index. There may be pages on your site that you don’t want search engines to index. These could be pages that add no value to your content. Don’t expose these web pages to web crawlers. Duplicate content issues will demote your ranking potential with search engines while also diluting your real content’s density,
Update your product and blog pages with fresh content. If your website has a blog, consider making room for some excerpts of the latest posts to be placed on all of your web pages. Search engines love to see the content of web pages changing from time to time as it indicates that the site is still active and current. With changing content, comes greater crawling frequency by search engines as well.
SEO requires optimizing your website for a great user experience and producing high-value content in your product pages and blog posts.
It requires a current and accurate understanding of your print buyer personas (how they think, how they learn, how they buy, and how they use your product). It also further requires continuous effort to watch, learn from, and position your brand against your competitors.
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Read David’s post from last month: https://printmediacentr.com/cookie-cutter-print-marketing-doesnt-generate-high-roi/
Read more from David here.
David Murphy is the founder and CEO of Nvent Marketing, a marketing agency specializing in digital marketing for the print industry. David has 30+ years of experience in the graphics and document print production industry. He has served as a board member and advisor to print organizations and associations including Sustainable Green Printing Partnership (SGP), Print Industries of America (PIA), Association for Print Technologies (APTECH), and Electronic Document Scholarship Foundation (EDSF). David was also awarded the Idealliance Soderstrom Society Award for Print Industry Leadership. David can be reached at dm@nventmarketing.com.
