"I have found that CourseTrends is simply capturing another audience of golfers that we were missing before and the financial rewards have been simply remarkable." - Rick Reid, Blackthorn Golf Club |
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USING S-E-O TO EARN M-O-N-E-YOnce the Internet started picking up speed and Web sites became a standard for businesses, the next big wave of refinement (and consultant hocus pocus) was SEO. Search Engine Optimization is discussed like it is a great mystery, understood only by a fortunate few, but it is based on simply giving search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing what they need to know to find you. In the same way that a golfer looks for a particular shoe size, color and style for footwear, the search engines are looking for categorized information to use as they decide who gets mentioned first in their search results.The way that the relevant information is coded into a site is just a little more complicated than the typical business owner has time to learn, so a whole crop of high-priced consultants have emerged, ready to “boost your site to the top of the rankings” using their typically expensive secrets. While this email doesn’t offer the space to describe the coding portion in detail, let us lay out the basics so you can speak the language when SEO comes up in a conversation, be it with your fellow golf professionals or the company bidding to build or improve your Web site. CREATE CONSISTENT KEYWORDSIn the same way you need a focused business model, you need to know the ten or so words and phrases that communicate the essentials of your course. The primary one, of course, is “golf” but it should be used in phrases with your town name (“Pittsburgh golf”) and your specialties (“golf lessons”). Other key golf lingo (“tee times” or “pro shop discounts”) and F&B amenities (“Tri-City weddings”) round out your top ten. When you nail them down, your site manager can embed them in your header and meta-tag sections throughout your site.POPULATE KEYWORDS IN CONTENT AREASMake sure that the keywords you have identified are mentioned at least twice on the homepage and at least once on all other pages. If you picked a nearby large city instead of the actual city your facility is located in, make sure you explain the facility’s distance and relationship to that larger city. Example: “ABC Golf Club – best Pittsburg golf, only 15 minutes from downtown Pittsburg.”NAME YOUR PHOTOSIt sounds simple enough. But, this is often one of the most overlooked elements of SEO. Instead of using default image names such as 001.jpg, name each photo with specifics including keywords. These are often referred to as ALT Tags. Example: if it’s a picture of Hole #4 at ABC Golf Club, your ALT Tag should be “ABC Golf Club Hole #4 – best golf in Pittsburg.”CREATE A SITE MAPThere are online programs that will help you map your site. Search engines like this element because it helps them reference your site in an orderly fashion that also reveals your substance. (This helps the search engines rule out simplistic sham sites that some online entities generate in high numbers to make themselves seem more impressive than they are.)JOIN GOOGLE PLACESNot to harp on Google utilities and sites, but the biggest name in search has a soft spot for sites that use its products. Adding your site to Google Places not only boosts your significance in their algorithm, it also provides folks who find you in a search easy access to your physical location.REGISTER ON SEARCH ENGINE DIRECTORIESAlthough Google is the big kahuna of search engines, you need to register your site with the other players like Bing and consumer-driven sites like Yelp.com. Each site has a fairly simple utility for adding listings, so simply log on and provide everything from your physical address to your course hours.ADD BACKLINKS TO YOUR SITEOften referred to as “reciprocal links,” these can have a positive impact on your overall SEO. Ask business partners, vendors and even customers to link to your site. Make sure that if you’re part of the Chamber of Commerce or Better Business Bureau that they have links to your site as well. Press Releases, News Articles, Blogs and even Facebook are great places to post links back to your site as well.APPLY GOOGLE ANALYTICSOnce you have your SEO processes in place, it’s important to track and measure your results. Google Analytics is the ideal tool to use. Google is the 800lb gorilla of search engines, so it makes sense to have their analytics embedded in your site. Your programmer/site manager should be able to activate Google Analytics with a line of code pasted into every page that is invisible to every visitor except Google, which helps.Despite what some consultants would have you believe, applying SEO principals to your site isn’t rocket science, but they can definitely cause your site traffic to lift off. Just be sure to get a Web-savvy partner to apply the concepts properly and you’ll be on your way. For a free survey of your site’s SEO potential, click here and our CourseTrends team will get in touch with you about scheduling a review. Visit www.coursetrends.com or email us at requests@coursetrends.com to learn how we can help you with your SEO. |
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