SEO for Dance Studios
SEO (search engine optimization) is crucial in the day and age of technology and Google. Your website must be immediately visible and easy to find for new clients. This is a giant topic but this post will include a few tips and very basic information on how to improve your dance studio SEO. We do encourage you to do your research if you are serious about getting more traffic to your website and business.
Keywords
The keywords throughout your post are vital because they are going to describe the contents of your web page. That helps Google know if potential clients’ searches are relevant to your business. Here are some tips for making sure your keywords are working for you.
- When you choose a keyword for your blog post, make sure you are incorporating it into your title, URL, meta description, images, and the body of your text.
- Use long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are keywords with more than 3 words. They should be very specific to cut through the bigger websites that may come up. It is also a good idea to make sure it is location-specific. So instead of the keyword “dance lessons” where endless results will come up before your local business, go with “dance lessons in Orange County” to beat out all the other websites.
- When you are coming up with your keywords, think about what your clients are typing in when they’re looking for services. Think about what you would type if you were doing the same search.
Local Citations
Local Citations are any mention of your business’ name, address, phone number on another site. These show Google that not only are you a legitimate business but they bring in traffic directly from those sources. Here a few examples of different types of local citations:
- Your company’s Yelp, Google Maps, The Knot, and other business data platforms should stay updated. This is one measure Google uses to ensure you are a genuine business but it also provides future clients with a way to contact your business.
- Join business listings like your local chamber of commerce or directories for dance studios. There are also directories for businesses that are LGBTQ+ friendly and for businesses that provide senior discounts.
- Get involved with charities. A lot of times they will have a website where their donors are listed.
General Tips
It may seem obvious to a few but your content needs to be relevant and valuable. As you may have noticed, Google will prioritize companies they know are valid and high quality. If your content is consistent and of good quality, Google will recognize it and so will your visitors.
Update the meta descriptions of the pages on your website. This component is a quick view of the contents of the page within the search results. Yoast wrote an article on how to enhance your meta descriptions for SEO.
Alternate text is used to describe an image on your page. Search engines like Google cannot read an image so the alt text will tell it what the image is and how it relates to the rest of the text. An example might be “bride and groom ballroom dancing.” Beyond that, it is a tool for visually impaired individuals when they are using screen-reading software.
Hopefully, our fellow small business owners have learned a little something about SEO for dance studios and how to make your website function in a way that will help your business be seen. SEO is a giant topic that can be complex and hard to understand. There are thousands of articles on this art so with time and patience you can master it!