Winning website

-
We have a website for our rental property and I created it a couple months ago now. I know it's a solid website with the correct information and it looks good. But I've since learned that there's also a whole other side to a website as well. SEO.

Our website address is lazyladygulfshores.com. It's not a super long website address, but most people aren't going to type it in. Most are either going to click to it from somewhere else like social media or they're going to Google something and possibly find it that way. The challenge is getting our website to rank very high for more general terms since most people aren't going to type "lazy lady gulf shores". That's where SEO starts to come in. I'm learning that there are all kinds of things you can do to help your pages rank better. For example, you can change your title tags (the name of your web page), you can change the meta tags (the description that you see about your web page in search), you need to have enough text on your web pages, and you need to make sure that you're writing in a way so that you're focused on certain content that's interesting to those looking for your place. The list of things that you can tweak is long, but you don't have to do it all at once either. You can chip away at it and see what gains you get in search by doing them.

I'm already seeing some improvements and I hope to see more as I keep doing it. One really good resource for SEO has been Neil Patel. This is a great resource that walks through things to change on your website.

Popular posts from this blog

Are you thankful?

-
Are you thankful? How do you show it? Do you write a note? Do you tell someone? Do you make a list? How do you express thankfulness? It always is good for me to think about and express thankfulness to others and God. Never have I gone through the practice of giving thanks and been disappointed. Thankfulness gets the focus off of me and onto others and God. Having meals brought to us in the past week after our new baby has brought the idea of expressing thankfulness to others into focus for me again. I wrote a few thank you notes to those that brought meals and it just feels good to do that. Plus, the act of receiving thanks is good for others as well. I ask our kids quite often when they're whining, "Are you having a thankful heart?" And sometimes I ask them to tell me one thing they're thankful for. It's good to get in the habit of being thankful.
Read more

Sending notes

-
I haven't been big on new year's resolutions lately, but I do like the idea of challenging myself in areas where I'd like to get better and setting goals for myself. Something that I've been thinking about doing is sending a note to someone different every week of the year just to say thanks or I'm thinking of you or praying for you. It wouldn't be hard to do and I know it's good for me as well as I think most people appreciate a little note. The other thing I've been thinking about along those lines is sending video notes. I heard this on a podcast recently. Since we don't see people as much these days it's easy to just record a video on your phone and email it or use a service like Loom to record your video and send a link or use an app like Marco Polo. It seems like this would feel even more personal than a note... though I haven't done it yet. So maybe send a note today to someone that's helped you out recently or maybe to someone who
Read more

Choose your own adventure

-
Do you remember the "Choose your own adventure" books? You would start the book and then as the story progresses the characters face forks in the road and you get to choose which way they go... which results in going to a specific page and continuing to read. I've been spending a considerable amount of time on marketing automation in the last month and these books from my childhood remind me of how marketing automation works. The big difference though is the customer doesn't realize he's choosing his own adventure as he navigates the communications we set out before him. He's simply making choices based on the marketing that we're putting out there and then based off of what he chooses we choose for him the next communication he receives. As I'm building this out I'm starting out with a pretty blank slate. There's a lot we don't know, but as we get more information from prospects and customers it will become clear who they are and what
Read more