Hey, wedding business beaut. I know what you’re thinking…it’s all well and good being told you need to start getting into blog SEO for your wedding business, but how do you actually start? You don’t have time to take an SEO course, and if you don’t know how to do it effectively it’s discouraging to even try. I’ve got you covered! This is your super simple guide to dipping your toe into the SEO storytelling world. It takes 5 minutes to read, and once you’re finished you’ll be ready to produce your first Google-optimised blog and take the wedding industry by storm. Let’s do this!
Blog SEO For Your Wedding Business: Need-To-Knows
In case you’re wondering what I’m going on about when I talk about blog SEO, keywords and optimising, let’s break it down before we get to the nitty gritty.
SEO = Search Engine Optimisation
In other words, making your blogs as attractive as possible to search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves…does he still exist?) so that when your dream clients and couples go there to look things up for their wedding, your website pops up near the top of the list of results.
Keywords = phrases that signal to search engines what your blog is about
A keyword doesn’t have to be just one word. The keyword for this blog is ‘Blog SEO for your wedding business’, and I use it in strategic places throughout so Google gets the hint…when you go tip-tapping away asking questions about the subject, the idea is that you’ll find this blog and get your answers.
Optimisation = strategic use of your keyword within your text
The trick is to use your keyword enough times that it’s clear to Google what you’re talking about, without wedging it awkwardly into sentences and making it sound like a robot wrote your blog (and if it did, I’m not judging but you better be sure you edited it afterwards!). I’m going to show you how to do this in a sec.
3 Steps To Brilliant Blog SEO For Your Wedding Business
Before I start, I want to offer a little disclaimer: SEO is a huge and complex topic and I can’t possibly cover everything here (besides, this is a free guide so I can’t give up all the goods). There’s also an important distinction between SEO for your website as a whole, and blog SEO. This guide focuses on blog SEO only, and while I can’t promise you’ll know everything there is to know under the sun once we’re done, I can promise you this: these 5 steps are more than enough to get you going with successful SEO blogs that WORK for your wedding business.
Step 1: Choosing A Keyword
There are lots of ways and means of finding keywords, but realistically you don’t need to be getting subscriptions to crazy-advanced tools or reinventing the wheel. Keep it simple.
- Use your expertise in your corner of the wedding world, and consider what people might sit down and type into Google. I’ll give some examples below because this can be hard to get into the flow of!
- Actually Google some bits and bobs yourself, and see what comes up. Do the search results answer the question you asked, or show web pages that are relevant to what you want to find?
Example keywords
For a creative-boundary-pushing wedding florist: couples looking for what you offer might search for ‘unique wedding floral designs’ or ‘wild wedding ceremony arch’ or even ‘modern wedding bouquets in Surrey’
For a high-end wedding cake maker: your dream clients might type phrases into Google like ‘wedding cake with bows’, ‘four tier white wedding cake’ or ‘texture wedding cake designs’
For wedding jewellery, accessory and garment designers: consider keywords such as ‘non traditional engagement rings’, ‘unique wedding veils’ or ‘bespoke reception dress’
Making sense?
Step 2: Implementing The Keyword (aka ‘optimisation’)
Now you’ve chosen your phrase you need to pepper it throughout your blog, following these rules…
- Choose 1 keyword for 1 blog. You’ll likely rank for multiple keywords within a blog, but just pick one and focus on it. Additionally, don’t intentionally use the same keyword across multiple blogs (or web pages if you can help it) because your pages will fight with each other for Google rankings
- Use the phrase naturally in sentences. Don’t stuff it in there for the sake of it, and if it’s feeling awkward to weave in then consider rewording it. I considered ‘blog SEO for wedding businesses’ as my keyword for this blog, but it’s a little harder to make flow than ‘blog SEO for YOUR wedding business’ so I tweaked it
- Pop your keyword into your paragraph text 2-3 times for a normal 750-1000 word blog, and into some of your headings. Make sure to use it once in the title and in the first paragraph of your blog. If you’re au fait with Alt Text for your images, use it there too – but if that’s a bridge too far, stick with the basics for now! Finally, edit the URL of your blog so it also contains your keyword (e.g. this blog is sogocollective.com/blog/blog-seo-for-your-wedding-business)
Step 3: Giving Your Blog LIFE!
Simply publishing a blog and setting it free into the wilds of the web will only get you so far. The SEO’ing you’ve done will begin to work, but as this is a sustainable, long-term approach to marketing you also need to give it a little push to start the snowball…well, balling.
Once your blog is published, shout about it! Post about it on your socials, link people to it in your stories, take snippets from it for weeks to come to create captions…and always, always tell people WHY they should read it. Why will they enjoy it? How does it help them?
If you’re a Pinterest girlie, create some Pins that link directly back to your blog as well. This is basically a search engine double whammy, and wedding businesses do beautifully on the platform.
Do you have a mailing list? Tell them about your blog too, including a link or button taking them there within your email.
Remember: not everybody sees everything you put out, so it’s almost impossible to mention it too many times.
Bonus tip…
If you’re using a WordPress website I highly recommend using the Yoast plugin – the free version is absolutely fine and it’ll help steer you in the right direction. Just remember not to get too caught up in pleasing the plugin, especially when doing so interrupts the flow of your text or encourages you to ‘stuff’ keywords in there.
Final note from me…
Getting started with blog SEO for your wedding business doesn’t need to be daunting. It’s been built up by the big-time SEO pros to be something scary and complex, but in reality we can all do it and it works a treat for wedding businesses like yours.
Don’t let a lack of know-how get in the way of you showing up in the right places and getting those all-important dream client eyes on your website. Don’t let your competitors get all the attention, and don’t let your gorgeously created wedding designs go unseen!
If you don’t want to go it alone, pop me a message through my contact form and let me know that you’d like some SEO support – you’ll be the first to get a glimpse at my new SEO Storytelling services, which will be linked directly here as soon as the web page is ready! (Which leads me nicely onto my final point…even if not everything is perfectly ready for your blog, get it out there anyway and edit it/add links later!).
Happy SEO’ing!
