I’ve been out and about meeting lots of lovely new people recently at events around London, and I’ve been learning how to introduce myself. Sometimes others get in there before me – “This is Maddy, the SEO Queen” – which is wonderful for the old ego but sometimes I get hit with a bunch of reactions when I share what I do, to the point where I don’t usually use the letters SEO. Why?

Because there is so much confusion: what even is SEO? So, here I am to answer that very question. Whether you’re looking to launch your wedding business with a pop or trying to attract more bookings, SEO could be just the tool you need. But what is SEO and how can it help you? You’re about to find out…

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Keywords dominate many elements of nailing your SEO, but there’s more to it than that. You should also consider optimising your site speed, creating clear site maps and menus, categorising content effectively, tagging your images and creating epic content (hello blog posts!) as often as you can. Heck, you can even use social media for SEO.

But while there are many different strings to this particular bow, they do have one common purpose: getting your wedding business found. If you want to put your wedding business on the digital map, SEO is the way to go. Does Google know you exist?

What isn’t it?

A dry, dull and time-consuming exercise that you simply don’t have time for. Once your initial SEO is set up, ensuring that all new content you post is properly optimised takes very little time, especially when you’ve got the right tools to hand.

It’s also not something you should overlook. You don’t need me to tell you there’s a huge amount of competition in the wedding industry.

If you want to be on couples’ radars and push your diary closer to being fully booked, you need to make time for SEO. You want to ensure it’s your business that couples find when searching online.

Why does SEO get a bad rap?

From meta data to metrics, there is a whole host of terms and technical information piled onto the SEO table. As a result, SEO ends up feeling overwhelming and overly complicated. Surely it’s for the experts to understand, right?

Wrong! SEO isn’t something to avoid. In fact, it’s something you should be embracing with wide open arms. It has the power to bring couples and wedding enquiries flying into your inbox. That’s what makes it So Exciting Obviously!

But it does even more than that. With careful keyword targeting (more on choosing your keywords here!), it can bring in enquiries for certain types of wedding, whether that’s defined by style or budget or both. And what’s more exciting than getting paid to do what you love by clients you’d love to work with? If you want to learn how to do it yourself, then sign up to my waiting list to be in the first to know when my SEO course is open again for enrolment.

SEO terms made simple

SEO

Let’s start with the essentials: what is SEO? It stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It essentially means making it super clear to search engines what your website is all about, including what you do and who you do it for. Any rumours that SEO is dead are slap-bang wrong and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Think of the internet as a giant library, but there’s no librarian so it’s up to us to tell everyone what our site is about, and what they can expect from us.

And what happens when that library brings in a load of new books, or you update your website? Follow my tips to protect your search engine ranking when making changes.

Keywords

The keyword you choose is a hugely important factor. This is the search term (or terms) that you’d like to be found for when couples make a search. Some will be more competitive than others, so research is key and phrases can be best.

Meta description

This is a short description, typically around 150 characters, that provides an overview of the webpage or blog post to Google. It may be displayed beneath the title on search results, so add a call to action to encourage couples to click.

ALT tags

This is wording you can add to image files to help search engines understand the picture. This text will also be displayed if the image can’t be. You can get my full guide on how to tag images for SEO here.

Site speed

The core consideration for site speed is how quickly different pages load. People like websites that load quickly and search engines tend to rank those that do more highly. But how do you even know that, without hitting refresh and running a timer on your phone?

Enter my good friend Google Analytics, which tracks a ton of useful things, including your site speed. Check out the easy way to get it set up for your site with my no-nonsense guide to adding Google Analytics.

So, if you’re ready to give your SEO a boost, ping me a message to see how I can help you climb the rankings and reach more of your dream clients.

Until next time,

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