As time goes by, search engine optimization (SEO) is becoming more and more important for businesses to tap into. If you’re not familiar with the concept or how it works, it may feel overwhelming and even intimidating to dip your toe in the SEO waters. But rest assured, there are some straightforward best practices that you can utilize to better market and promote your florist shop and attract more local business. Learn more below!

Keep Your Google My Business Page Up to Date

We’ve talked before about the importance of keeping your Google My Business listing current and how to do it, but it’s also important to your SEO that you keep this up to date. This will help shoppers in your local area find you. 

Doing this allows your business to come up on the map or in other areas of search results more easily, particularly when people search for businesses in your geographic location. In short, having a well-tailored Google My Business listing will help build brand awareness and visibility within your community. 

Have Useful Content On Your Website

For your website to rank well on Google, you should ensure that you’re including useful content. This includes web copy, blog posts, or anything else that your customers will find interesting or that they’ll be compelled to share. Refreshing content regularly and keeping up with a steady stream of new content helps with this, too. For instance, try to post blogs that cover seasonal topics or guides to certain flowers that customers will find useful in their search for a florist or arrangement. 

Use Long-Tailed Keywords in Content

Just having the content on your site isn’t enough – you also need to ensure that it’s correctly optimized to allow consumers to more easily find your site. Select and utilize the right keywords to be more visible on the web. For florists, in particular, using “long-tailed keywords” helps with this.

This means that it’s more than just one or two words like “florist” or “best flowers.” Instead, try utilizing keywords that are specific phrases. An example would be, “best florist in New York City,” or “flower farm partner florist.” These search terms will be less common and, thus, will have less competition. That means it’ll be way easier for consumers to find your site when they search the phrase.

Enhance the User Experience

Another thing that search engines examine that contributes to optimal SEO is what the user experience is like on your website. The better Google deems it, the better SEO ranking you’ll have. 

To give users this great experience, there are a few factors that come into play:

• Page Speed: Internet users are kind of impatient, so you want a page that delivers immediate results. Having that will actually earn you a better ranking than if your page is slow to load. 
• Simple Navigation: Make things easy to find on your website, because this is a big part of the user experience. You should have a simple and well-organized navigation bar that exists at the top of each page so that shoppers can jump around seamlessly.
• Multimedia: Long blocks of text are not appealing to consumers. Break up long-form content with appealing images, videos, or even infographics. This will help ensure that your site visitors stick around for a longer amount of time, as they’ll be more prone to interacting with your page.

What have you found are the best SEO tactics for your florist business? Any questions on SEO we can answer? Drop us a line below with your thoughts!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, it is the way websites like Google, Bing, and others find your website when someone searches content. This is important to you as a florist because your website can only produce sales if people can find it! SEO can seem daunting but if you follow these simple suggestions you can improve your SEO in no time.

Make Your Website Relevant

What keeps your website relevant? Quality content created specifically for your demographic. Yes! Your website just like your business, branding, and marketing should all be aimed towards a specific demographic! Are your potential customers looking for “budget-friendly flowers” or is “flowers with longevity” more important to them? Even simple phrases like “Delivery to the ‘your towns’ area” will help pull in traffic to your page. Make sure these phrases are used through your site as they will be what your customer is looking for when they search online.

Update Your Website Regularly

Another part of staying relevant for SEO is making sure your website is updated regularly. In the vastly growing world of digital marketing staying at the top of your game is critical. Make sure anything that involves a date on your website is constantly updated including copyright, date reminders, blog posts, and more! Regularly updated web-based content is one of the best pointers of a site’s relevancy in search engines.

Behind the Veil Metadata

This can be where SEO gets a little trickier and is the part where many become frightened. There are a lot of SEO opportunities tucked away in what looks like never-ending walls of coding. If you have a website design tool such as FloraNext doing this behind the scenes work can become a lot easier. When designing your website, each page contains a space between the tags to insert metadata or information about your page. These words that your webpage viewers can’t see are critical for your website to grab the attention of search engines.

Link Appropriately

Links leading to other locations on your website are a great way to add SEO value to your page as they may potentially pull in customers searching another website like your own. Try creating relevant, similar, and useful links within your text. These links could be additional information in your blogging text to other knowledgeable sources or a shout-out to a local business or artist that has helped provide additional products for your store like candy. Instead of adding “click here” links, try writing out the name of the destination instead.

Use Your Alt Tags

Alt tags are sort of like Metadata as they are behind the scene text. This text however is associated with visual imagery. Make sure you always label your visuals including imagery and video. Both of which are major selling points in the floral world. Alt text allows search engines to find your page just like the above techniques.

Hopefully, these 5 tips can help you at a little extra boost to your online sales. Regardless of what tips you take make sure to always watch your online traffic to see any increases or decreases in traffic so it can go towards a more effective marketing plan in the future.

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

Today’s consumers rely heavily on the internet for everything, and shopping for flowers is no exception. That’s why your online presence must be strong!

Search engine optimization should focus on customers in your direct vicinity. Local SEO is important, perhaps even more so than general SEO, because your direct source of reliable income will be the customers nearest to you. so optimizing your online presence that will prioritize them should be the first step for your business SEO.

So, search engine optimization, as its name suggests, allows your business website to be easily seen at the top of search results, thus increasing your online visibility. The best way to go about your first steps of SEO is through Google My Business.

Florist Tools For SEO

For starters, Google My Business is a free tool that Google provides that helps business owners manage their online presence across Google’s services, particularly Search and Maps. It helps you organize information about your business, and complements your website if you have one. Optimizing your Google My Business listing is important since 90% of organic searches are from Google itself. GMB also seamlessly connects Local Search and Maps, saving you the effort of optimizing for two of the most useful Google services for businesses. But most of all, what makes it really attractive as an SEO tool is the arsenal of tools it has to manage your online presence effectively.

How to Start with Google My Business

So, to start with Google My Business, you’ll need a Google account. It’s best to make a separate account for your business, or use the one you want to be associated with your business. Proceed to google.com/business and click on the “Start Now” button at the upper right corner. From there on, fill up the basic information about your business.

Google also lets you set up the service area so that they can set it up for Local Search and Maps. There are five ways to verify your listing, so you can choose which way is easiest or most convenient for you. Putting up your store’s operating hours helps people know when you’re also available.

Image via Shutterstock

Google My Business Profile

After dealing with the basics, we should go over to the rest of your business’s listing. Go through your business profile and fill up as much information as you can, because anyone can “suggest an edit” to your listing for missing information, so getting accurate information the first time is crucial.

Upload as many images and as high-quality as possible; according to Google, businesses with photos see 35% more clicks to their website and 42% higher requests for driving directions in Maps. These images should showcase as much of your business as possible so that people can easily spot your business when they go past it. 

After your listing goes live, people going through it can also leave reviews about your business. In this case, you should try to be as responsive to all reviews as possible, whether the review is positive or negative. This way, people will see that you care about how satisfied your customers were after availing your services.

Thank customers for leaving positive reviews, encourage them to come back and maybe even drop an offer for a new service. For negative reviews, aim to resolve the issue, and get back to them if you have done something to fix it. Each response is a mark of sincerity for your dedication to customer satisfaction.

Continue to update Google My Business

Google My Business also lets you publish posts, which you can use for announcing events, offers, new products, and more. It can be useful to get new information related to your business out to prospective customers. What makes it such a great feature is that these posts appear alongside your listing in the Google search results page, so you can put out announcements that might entice customers. It’s a terribly underrated and underused feature of Google My Business that you should check out.

Further Optimizations

As with business, improvements for GMB will always be available at any point down the road. Luckily, it also offers tools that help you know which parts of your listing might need optimizing. GMB Insights is a nifty tool that shows how people have interacted with your listing. 

The Insights panel in the Google My Business dashboard tell you (1) how many views your listing had, (2) how and where people find your listings, (3) what people do with your listings, and many more. You can work around with the information you get there to know which parts of your listing might need improvements. You might need to update information around your listing, work on places where your listing is falling off, and make good use of the ways that people interact with your listing the most.

You can also add some sort of FAQs right at your listings. Called Q&A, this section lets people ask questions about your business that you can answer. The questions stay in your listing, so you should endeavor to answer common questions that you think most people will ask. People can also drop their own questions, so you should also check it from time to time.

Of course, do not forget about updating the information in your listing whenever it changes. Keeping your listing updated is ever so crucial in this fast-paced world, and missing a beat will also let you miss a lot of potential customers.

Image via Shutterstock

Keeping up with the trends of the business world can be daunting. It wasn’t until 10 years ago or so when the world became ever so dependent on the Internet for a lot of things. Businesses who wanted to be in the forefront of this era took advantage of this traffic, and Google has given businesses with the Google My Business tool to help ease the difficulty of keeping up with things like search engine optimization.

Not only does it help in your first steps in local SEO, it’s relatively easy to set up and greatly enhances your online presence, especially in Google’s most used services Search and Maps.

Florists, how has Google My Business helped increase your business’s visibility? Please share your comments, thoughts, and suggestions below!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

What is SEO, why is it important, and why should florists care?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO refers to the process used to improve a website’s position on search engine results pages (SERPs) on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Having an SEO strategy for your floral business can help draw customers to your website and grow sales and revenue.

Working on SEO can sound like a headache, and there are a lot of myths about SEO, but once you understand the basics you will be on your way to starting your own SEO strategy. Let’s take a minute to review the basics of SEO and understand how search engines like Google rank your business website.

What Are Search Engines?

Web search engines are the software systems we and our customers use to surf the Internet. The top search engines are Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Google commands the largest share among the three, with consistently over 90% market share globally in 2018.

The goal of a search engine is to provide the information you or your customers are looking for and ranking them in order of quality and relevance. There are hundreds of factors that are involved when search engines rank websites in an organic search.

Image via Shutterstock

SEO Components to use on my Floral Website

Here are some important components to use on your floral website that will help rank your website higher on search engines.

• H1 Tags: These are the larger headers that should contain your targeted keywords, ones that closely relate to the page title and are relevant to your content.
• H2 Tags: This is a subheading and should contain similar keywords as the H1 Tags.
• Keyword Density: This is the number of times that the keyword your customers are searching for that appear on your website.
• Meta Description: This is the description you provide search engines in your <meta> HTML tags. The meta description you use for your website should also include the keywords you want your target audience to search for.
• Backlinks: This is when other websites link back to your website by providing your website URL. The more backlinks you have, the better your opportunities are to be higher ranked in your keywords.
• Software Provider SEO Tools – Tools that can help increase SEO rankings like Local Pages, testimonial/review pages, partner pages, etc.

How Does My Floral Website Get Ranked

First off, as with all search engines like Google, they implement a web crawler/algorithm, that goes around the web. It “crawls” around the web, catching keywords to determine the topic and understanding the content of the page and seeks out links in the page, then checking if that linked page is a “reliable” one. 

It can be concluded that if a page links to a reliable page, it has a reliable source and is thus relatively reliable too. It gives a score to this page from that linking. The crawler then goes through all the links in that page and does that scoring until all links are exhausted. After that, the algorithm gives the page its PageRank in that specific keyword. The higher the PageRank, the more likely it is for the page to appear in the first parts of the search engine results pages.

on a side note, Google search results may show some variances depending on browsers and devices.

Image via Shutterstock

When Can My Floral Website be #1

Getting placed on the first page of a Google search doesn’t happen overnight or in a few days, but you can passively accrue traffic to your website by being present in the top 5 searches for your keywords. Your SEO strategy needs to be a continuous process by staying on top of your SEO strategy and make sure that it is up to date.

Your SEO strategy Not only needs to be focused on your current customer base, but potential Customers will be able to find you and your business easily when looking up relevant information that pertains to your business. A good rule of thumb to keep on top of your SEO strategy is to research the tactics used by your competitors.

Florists, Do you have a SEO strategy in place? What do you do to increase your SEO? Please share in the comments below!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

Floranext Website Feature – Local Pages

Using Floranext website feature – Local Pages – Can increase your Search Engine Optimization ranking!

What Are Local Pages? 

Local pages are a valuable tool to show your customers the areas you serve.

You can use them simply to show the cities/towns you deliver to, or you can go more in depth and create pages for local businesses or facilities you deliver to frequently such as hospitals, funeral homes, or churches.

Why Should I Use Local Pages? 

Local pages are good for your ranking in Google, Bing and other search engines. The pages are optimized to be search engine friendly.

Use these pages to get more user visits and purchases on your flower shop’s websites.

Any potential customers searching for flower delivery to the location of one of your local pages have a much greater chance of finding your Floranext florist website.

Schedule a Demo Today!

Search History/Google Accounts

Google will harvest as much information as it can. Any content you view in-browser will be cached and may inform your first results, which means sites you visit frequently will show up on top of your SERP.

Any Google accounts you’re logged into—Gmail, Google+, Youtube, etc.—may also affect your SERPs as Google will use this data to bring up search results.

Geographic Location

Did you know all websites you visit can tell where you are located, thanks to your IP address? Search results consistent with your location will most likely be given top priority. Your location information is stored in a cookie in your browser, and this information will factor into all your Google searches. (Cookies are little files stored on your computer that hold information specific to you, like saved passwords.)

Keyword Search

When searching on Google it is important to be consistent with your keywords, however there can still be some slight variation considering the number of search options on Google from content, video, and images. Any minor change in search terms could change your SERP completely.

Google Ads

We all have seen the Google Ads in SERPs, these are pay-per-click ads that can appear on the upper, side or lower page of Google search page. As the position of these ads changes on different devices, it could also affect your SERP results.

Google Data Centers

Every time users do a search on Google, there are data centers across the nation working to process the search result. Google search will gather results from the Google data center that is nearest to the user’s location. Although Google data centers do not affect your floral website search results that often, there may at times be differences in SERP depending on location in between updates.

Image via Shutterstock

So What Are We to Make of All This?

With so many moving pieces, is it even possible to get accurate search engines results? The answer is mostly yes, but sometimes no. Your floral website results should not vary that much from device to device, though fluctuating between a few stops is perfectly normal.

Checking your search engine results daily is not recommended for the many reasons explained above. Google will rank you according to the quality of your website, so make sure you update regularly and work on getting your results organically high on SERPs regardless of the minor fluctuations.

• Engage with social media
• Use backlinks
• Encourage your customers to leave reviews
• Consistently write blog posts
• Update products and content on your website

Image via Shutterstock

How do I see Accurate Results?

The word accurate is used loosely here—remember, the goal is to have a website rich with quality keywords, links, and content. Although search results can be the same for most, they will be slightly different for some. If you want to check your floral website results you can do the following:

• Use a different browser besides the one you use daily
• Go “incognito” on Google Chrome (hold Ctrl + Shift + N)
  • Note: Incognito mode may still draw on location information
• Log out of all your Google accounts, clear your browser cache, cookies, and history
  • Note: This will delete any stored passwords you may have!

In conclusion, there is no magic wand to prevent Googles algorithms from affecting your floral website results, but the most important thing is to be vigilant and give Google what it wants to see. There is no way any of us can control what cookies and history are stored on other users’ devices, however keeping a quality website is more important to raise your organic rankings.

Do you know your Florist SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) for flower shops is a way of increasing traffic to your online store by placing your website on the first-page of search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc).

Having an organic search result of 3, 2 or 1 will guarantee you more clicks and orders, considering your floral website is user-friendly and appealing. Here are some common myths and facts about florist website SEO!

Myth or Fact #1 – Companies can guarantee my floral shop placement on Google

Myth! No company has an in with Google or any other search engine, and no company can place you first – SEO takes time and work. Companies will often tell you that for a small fee and my floral shop can list number 1 in my organic search results on the first page. There is absolutely no way to guarantee your placement. 

Myth or Fact #2 – Florist search results are composed of Organic, Local, and PPC 

FACT! What does this mean? 

• Pay Per Click (PPC) – Are ads that you pay for. Once someone clicks on your ad, you will be charged the agree amount. 
• Local Results – derived from your Google My Business profile
• Organic Results  – Is the natural placement listed on a search engine results – methods such as keywords, back linking and writing high-quality content can all improve a site’s ranking.

Myth or Fact #3 – Local Results are another type of search 

Fact!  Local search results are super important – you have seen the map on Google . Local search narrows down searches to a particular geographic area. These results are above the page and take a lot of space and are super appealing to the consumers as it shows them what they need in their area. Get on this map if you are not currently on it https://www.google.com/business/

Myth or Fact #4 – My flower shop ranks first on Google

Myth and may be Fact! OK this may be a trick answer but more often customers think they are first when in reality they are not. What, you may ask?

Well, it’s an easy secret revealed that many do not want you to know. On Google look over to your top right right:

• Personal Results – the person icon is selected by default – this will show you personalized results
• World/Global Results – the globe icon will give you the results that most of the rest of the world sees

Myth or Fact #5 – Content on my florist website is not important

Myth! Content which means text is super important, search engines indexes words and you want them to pick up on your keywords. Be a writer and add text! Search engines love to see wordy About Us pages and full descriptions of all your wedding and sympathy work, pages for the towns you deliver to, florist tips, and more.

Myth or Fact #6 – My florist website is cute and popular, so it lists higher

Myth! A cute website does not make sales, some customers list number 1 and still have poor ordering traffic on their website, consumers like simple and easy. 

Myth or Fact#7 – My floral mobile site is not really that important

Myth! Consumers use their mobile device more than any other device for online shopping. Websites that are suitable for mobile versions have priority on Google. Please make sure your floral website provider is equipped for all mobile and tablets devices.

There are many facets of SEO, however knowing these general basics will give you a upperhand on understanding how it works. It is good to have your website provider help answer any other questions you may have. Remembering that SEO takes time and requires patience however you will get there.

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

Floranext is excited to launch two new florist website themes and some innovative florist Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools!

These tips are most helpful for Floranext customers BUT non-Floranext customers can take advantage of the SEO tips if their website providers support! 

New Florist Website Designs

• Accent Colors – choose colors for theme, switch up accent colors for holidays, seasons
• Header and Footer Chooser – choose what information to include in header, footer
• Testimonial Page Builder – easily add testimonials from customers
• Partner Page Builder – create links to local partners for mutual SEO benefit

Local Florist SEO Tools

Our flower delivery location pages allow you to create specific pages for the places you deliver to frequently, giving a boost to your local florist SEO.

• City/Town Pages – highlight cities and towns you deliver to
• Funeral Home Pages – showcase funeral homes where you deliver funeral flowers
• Hospital Pages – create hospital pages where you deliver get well, new baby flowers
• Event Location Pages – showcase your floral event portfolio for specific wedding/event locations

Find these new options in Admin > Website > Content > Local Pages

Florist SEO – Content Pages

• Testimonial Pages – create pages with customer testimonials
• Partner Pages – link to your local partners (wedding photographers, bakeries, etc.) – have them link back for SEO benefit

Find these new options under Admin > Website > Content > Pages

Florist Websites – Photo Galleries

Create beautiful image galleries to showcase your wedding, event, and everyday floral designs.

Find this on any content page under Website > Content > Pages – Add Photo Gallery 

Florist Themes – More Screenshots

Change accent colors – these update header, footer and some on page elements.

We hope you like our new florist website improvements. At Floranext we are innovating to help flower shops succeed online and offline. Have good ideas for us – let us know!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here!

Schedule a Florist Website Success and SEO Consultation

The Floranext Success Team offers new customers a free 30 minute consultation:

• How to rank highly on Google, Facebook
• Use social media to promote your flower shop
• Get great reviews on Yelp and other review sites