When it comes to getting your storage facility’s website found in search engine results, it’s important to have a search engine optimization (SEO) plan in place. SEO, in basic terms, is the process of getting traffic to your website through search engine results. It’s also how major search engines like Google find your website and rank it in relevant searches—say, for a search query like “self storage unit near me.”But before you get started with an SEO plan or work with an SEO firm to create one, you need to understand the terminology associated with SEO, as well as the tactics you should avoid.
SEO Terms to Know
Here are four important terms to be familiar with before you start crafting a plan to optimize your website.
Indexing
This is the process by which search engines access and read your website and store the pages it finds. Unfortunately, not every page of your website may be indexed. Search engines allocate a certain amount of resources for every website on the Internet, and since there are so many, not every page will make it into search engine results. But don’t fret. When you update or add a new page, search engines may come back and index some pages that hadn’t been indexed prior.
Ranking Factors
In order for search engines to rank the pages of your website in search results, they need to use a system that tells them where in search they should place a page. They look at analytics, such as the number of links leading back to specific pages (called “backlinks”), how long users stay on your website and its pages (called “average time on site” and “average time on page”), and how quickly visitors come to a page and leave (called “bounce rate”). No single factor will determine rank, but you should be cognizant of how each individual page of your website is doing regardless.
Meta Description
This is the short blurb of information you find under a website’s link in search engine results. These descriptions are beneficial for both the consumers searching for information and search engines trying to organize results for specific search queries. Meta descriptions only have 150 characters to work with, which means you need to write them concisely. For example: The meta description for this blog post is “Want to get your storage facility website started with SEO? Here are the SEO terms to know and tactics to avoid.”
Page Title
This is the specific and unique title given to each page and post on your website. Page titles need to be able to tell a searcher, as well as search engines, what’s on the page in fewer than 70 characters.
SEO Tactics to Avoid
Knowing some of the more important SEO terms can help you in the short term, but knowing which tactics to avoid will help you in the long run. Remember that these tactics only serve as quick solutions and could end up hurting your website for several months or even years. Here’s what you need to avoid.
Keyword Stuffing
This is when you take a specific keyword (or key phrase) and place it anywhere and everywhere on a page. In the past, this was an easy way to get a page to rank for a chosen keyword, but today, search engines will notice and rank a page lower in search or not at all because of it.
Duplicate Content
This is when multiple pages and posts on your website that have the exact same text. This tactic worked similarly to keyword stuffing because you would have the same keyword show up in more places more often with the end goal of getting your website to rank higher for that keyword. Search engines now have algorithms in place to seek this out and devalue websites that use duplicate content.
Bait-and-Switch
While an often-used marketing technique, creating a page that ranks well in search only to change the content contained within the page after earning a high rank will cause the page to fall in search results or out of search results entirely. Search engines want to provide searchers with the best content available, and if your link says one thing but the content says another, then you’re going to be in trouble.SEO is always evolving, so it’s important to stay up-to-date on terminology and what does and doesn’t work. For storage facilities, understanding these terms and knowing which tactics to avoid can help you have a better chance at finding the best SEO solution for your storage website. And as always, if you feel uncomfortable tackling SEO on your own, you can always hire an SEO firm to help you.
