SEO For Printers: The Ultimate SEO Cheatsheet

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn’t as scary as you might think.

In a nutshell, SEO is simply the process or steps you can take to make your website rank higher in the search results. The ultimate goal is to make it easy for website visitors to find answers to their questions and make it easy for search engines to find those answers for your visitors through the content on your website.

The following guide will walk you through how the websites provided by Marketing Ideas For Printers (MI4P) have already been built on a solid SEO foundation. If you’re looking to bump up what’s already there, keep reading, and you’ll discover some additional tips on how you can take your SEO to the next level.

How Your MI4P Website is Positioned for SEO Success

Your MI4P Website is Responsive

Because a responsive website is compatible with all devices, whether it’s a desktop, mobile phone, or tablet, having a responsive website means you have a website search engine’s love and [BONUS!] you avoid Google’s Non-Responsive Website Penalty.

Your MI4P Website is Properly Formatted

All of the content on your website is formatted to include Heading tags (or H tags), skim layers, and keyword-rich titles and subheadings.

By doing this, your website provides a basic description of the content for search engines and helps increase the visibility of your content.

Your MI4P Website Offers Image Alt Tags

Alt tags are basically descriptions of images.

Since search engines can’t see images, they read the alt tags in order to index them. By assigning alt tags to the use of your images, you’re setting yourself up for faster and more accurate indexing which will ultimately boost your website’s accessibility. The image library on your website allows you to add alt tags to any of the images.

Your MI4P Website is Protected from Broken Links

To avoid hurting your website’s ranking, each month, we run all of the content your website is provided through a broken link checker to ensure no speed bumps pop up that might keep search engine robots from indexing your web page effectively.

Your MI4P Website Sets You Up to Tell Your Unique Story

The Website Builder and the Control Center of your website make it easy to customize your website content to tell your unique story.

You’ll want to ensure you do your due diligence to customize that content to your specific print business, but we make it easy with a great launching point.

Pro Tip: For optimal results, be sure to add plenty of local references to your content.

Your MI4P Website Comes Equipped with SEO Settings

Each web page on your site has specific SEO settings allowing you to update the Page Title and Description with keywords you want to rank for.

Pro Tip: Page titles should be no more than 60 characters and let readers know what the content is about. Use your best page-specific keywords here. Page Descriptions should be no more than 140 characters, should give a general description of the content, and could feature a call to action if preferred.

Your MI4P Website Links to Other Authority Sites

The provided content on the websites offered by Marketing Ideas For Printers links to other relevant and high-authority sites.

This helps to boost your website’s ranking and increases your overall visibility online. Web pages that link to authority sites include the Greatest Treasures pages, Popular Graphic Arts Software, What’s New, Ideas Collection, and more!

Your MI4P Website Uses Social Sharing Buttons

Much of that great content mentioned above comes with social sharing buttons.

That means if a reader enjoys your latest Ideas Collection tip, they can share your content to their social media channels with just a click, which will ultimately drive more traffic back to your website.

Your MI4P Website Comes with Frequently Updated Quality Content

With frequently updated website content, you’ll gain more visibility from search engines, increase your traffic and conversions, and avoid high bounce rates.

How frequent, you ask? From twice a week with blogs and What’s New links to once a month for Ideas Collection tips, you’ll have a constant stream of updated content that you won’t even have to think about.

Your MI4P Website Uses a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate

The benefits of an SSL Certificate are two-fold:

1. Google ranks sites higher that use an SSL Certificate, and
2. It improves your site visitor’s trust in you because you are providing a secure service.

Good news! The cost of the SSL Certificate is included as part of the Base Website package meaning it’s one less thing you have to worry about.

Your MI4P Website is Search Engine and User-Friendly

Designed with an eye-pleasing layout and easy navigation in mind, your website is easy-to-use for your visitors and easy to index and crawl for search engines.

How to Take Your SEO to the Next Level

With an excellent SEO foundation firmly in place, you could stop there.

But, for those of you who wish to go even further and continually refine their SEO, below are some tips we’ve put together to help you out.

Before you dive in, though, remember that playing the SEO game is often two steps forward and one step back. A change that all the “experts” recommend could have a negative effect on other best practices, so the goal is to find the best combination that leads to the biggest net positive change. In other words, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to perfect your SEO.

Create and Submit Sitemaps

An XML Sitemap can boost your SEO by informing Google about any changes to your site quickly and speeding up search engine indexing.

An HTML Sitemap works by helping to make navigation easier for your user which, in turn, enhances their experience and increases your SEO.

You can create and submit an XML and HTML sitemap to Google Search Console. Here’s a great place to get started with this.

Set up a Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools) Account

This helpful tool will give you just the information you’re looking for regarding which keywords you’re currently ranking for and are popular on your site, what web pages are indexed, and a list of internal and external links on your site.

To learn more and create a Google Search Console Account, start here.

Add Custom or Featured Pages

Just as having a blog provides web crawlers with more pages to search and gives your content more opportunities to show up in a search query, the same can be said for custom and Featured Pages on your website.

In addition to these pages simply being more content, custom or Featured Pages allow you to have completely unique content on your website which search engines love. To create a custom or featured page on your website, check out this webinar. (You’ll find information on the Featured Pages at the 19:00-minute mark and custom pages are covered at 28:26.)

Periodically Test Your Website’s Loading Speed

A website that takes too long to load means your visitors will quickly click off your site giving you a high bounce rate and hurting your chances of increasing traffic to your site.

As Sal, the Search Engine Optimization expert suggests, use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to identify items that are slowing down your page(s) and make adjustments as needed.

“Pay special attention to the images listed in the report. Those of us in the printing world usually want “high quality, high image resolution,” and high image resolution is the opposite of what search engines like to see. Make sure your website images are at the web-friendly 72 pixels per inch measurement, and not the 300 pixels per inch images found in the world of printing.”

Submit Your Website Information to Online Directories

Improve your local listings and your website’s visibility by submitting your business information to the appropriate directories.

Use Google Local Listing and other directories, such as Bing Places for Business, Yahoo Local Listing, Yelp, Foursquare, and your local directories. Here’s a list of 50 free websites to list your print business to get you started.

Have an Active Presence on Social Media

You can boost your organic search traffic and rank well in the search engine results pages (or SERPs) by creating and maintaining an active presence on social media.

Search engines use your social media pages to help rank you in the search results, so create branded company social media pages (if you haven’t already) and work to provide useful content to your readers. (Need social media content in a snap? We can help!)

Use Google Business Reviews

Nothing will bring in more print business through your online door than trust.

Positive reviews not only increase trust for your prospects and customers, but Google loves to display reviews within the search results. Start asking customers to review you by creating and sending a link following every order. The more reviews = the better search results. Here’s the play by play on how to create that link.

Begin a Paid Ad Campaign

Although it might seem like you’re playing for the wrong team creating digital ads, the reality is that the formula for the best SEO isn’t print + print.

It’s print + digital.

You can start small and invest in digital ads as your budget allows, but begin with Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ad campaigns. Google lists some best practices here.  If you’re looking for help getting started with Facebook ads, try this guide for beginners.

Set Up a Google Analytics Account

Google Analytics will provide you with knowledge of what SEO tactics are working and what areas still need work.

By frequently reviewing these in-depth insights you’ll be able to see what pages are ranking the best, what keywords people are using to find you, your daily or weekly website traffic, bounce rates, and more. Armed with this information, you can create better campaigns and tweak things as you go for maximum results. If you want to set up a Google Analytics account, start here. Once you get your tracking code, we can help you the rest of the way.

Fine-tune Your Keywords

Gone are the days of stuffing your content and web pages with keywords. (Yay! Writing for humans and not search engines won out!)

Although keywords are still important to your SEO, you could say that the placement of those keywords should now be your focus rather than the frequency in which you use them. If you want to drill in and find some untapped keywords for your website, there are tools you can use like Google’s Keyword Planner or Keyword Tool Dominator. Also, another helpful resource that will help you sort out all of this keyword stuff is this helpful SEO Learning Center guide.

Request Backlinks from Authority Sites

Backlinks are created when one website links to another.

Your goal for increasing SEO backlinks is to get other websites to “link back” to your website’s content. This is why having high-quality, useful content is so essential. When another website links to your website from within their content, it’s like having another business vouch for you and increases trust not only from your readers but from the search engines as well.

Backlinks don’t always magically appear. You may have to begin asking for them. Here’s a helpful resource on “How to Ask for Backlinks Without Begging” that has some helpful sample outreach text as well.

Remember to Make Your Website the Destination

Lastly, and most importantly, remember that your website needs to be the destination in your marketing if you want people to go there.

If you’re sending out direct mail and email campaigns but asking people to call you or email you, they’ll bypass your website completely. If you’re promoting content on your social media channels that never take them back to your website, your SEO is suffering because of it.

Whatever marketing touches you put out there, whether on social media, through email marketing, direct mail, or paid ads, make your website the final destination for the best SEO results.