So you’ve started a backyard business and you’ve heard a rumor you need a website for people to find you — now what?
It’s not enough just to throw a site up and hope that people will flock to your URL to see what all the fuss is about.
There are literally billions of sites out there and more coming online every hour.
If you want to be found online and become a successful Backyardpreneur you need content and a game plan for potential customers to find that content.
If you want your website’s content ranking to rise in Google’s search results it needs to answer the search intent of the user and you need to follow best SEO practices. This means finding the right keywords to target, making your content unique and better than the competition, building internal links to show your authority and constantly updating your content to stay current with industry developments.
If you’d prefer to watch the video version of this post you’ll find that below. Otherwise read on!
9 Tips for a Backyard Business to Write Content that Ranks Faster
Tip 1| Answer The Search Intent With Quality Content
Why do we type a question in Google?
Simple, we have a question on our minds and we’re looking for an answer.
If, for example, you have a small business making hand carved signs in your backyard shed, you’ll want people looking to purchase hand crafted signs to find you.
That doesn’t mean creating a product page and stuffing it with some keywords you’ve discovered for your business and waiting for the customers to roll in.
If I’m looking for a hand carved sign for my front door step I want to know why I should choose one of your signs? What makes yours better than the competition?
Sometimes I might not be ready to purchase anything — I just want to know a bit about hand carved signs and how they’re made.
Understanding the difference between someone that’s ready to purchase and someone that’s just looking for some information is what search intent is all about.
The challenge with writing useful content for your site that will rank is understanding the intent and writing content for visitors that may be at different stages of their journey.
Don’t ignore the informational content. You might not get a sale today, but by providing a helpful answer to someone’s question there’s a great chance they’ll come back and visit your site when they are ready to purchase.
Tip 2| Target Keywords That Are Less Competitive
It would be great if you could just write a great article on your area of expertise and wait for the grateful public to flood your website to read your inspiring words.
Unfortunately it isn’t that easy.
If you’re starting a new business or launching a website for an established business you have to build your credibility.
The best way to do that is to avoid competing directly against the biggest players in your industry, by targeting less competitive long tail keywords.
What do we mean by a long tail keyword? Let’s look at our wood carving business
as an example.
The keyword “handmade wood signs” is going to be highly competitive. The first few searches will bring up big players like Etsy and Amazon. It’s hard if not impossible to outrank them.
If you target a keyword like “handmade wooden signs in Lewiston New York” you’ll find you’re competing with local business owners like you and have a much better chance of outranking them in the search engine results pages (SERPS).
How do you know what long tail keywords to look for in your industry? There are a ton of great online tools that can help both free and paid. Here are some of the best:
Tip 3| Create Titles and URLs With Targeted SEO Keywords
We’ve talked a lot about using keywords to build your content, but they’re just as important when you’re writing the titles for your blog posts or creating your URL names.
Back to our handmade wooden signs example.
If I’m writing a post based on the keyword “handmade wooden family signs for Christmas” that keyword needs to be in my blog title and in the URL.
There’s little chance of ranking and being found if I just use the title “Signs for Christmas”. You’re not selling cheap generic signs, you’re selling handcrafted masterpieces for your Christmas Business Idea — you need to sell that!
The first title is SEO optimized, the second is not.
Think along the same lines when creating the URL or permalink for your post.
If your title and URL describes what your post is about it will be easier for potential visitors to find you and easier for Google to know what your post is about.
If you want any chance of ranking in the search engines it has to be clear what the intent of your post is and what questions it answers.
If you’re having trouble coming up with titles for your posts here are a couple of tools that can help:
- The Hoth Free Title Generator
- Content Row Headline Generator
- Sumo’s Kickass Headline Generator
- Tweak Your Biz Title Generator
- SEOPressor Blog Title Generator
Tip 4| Use Lists to Highlight Important Content
Did you know 55% of visitors will spend less than 15 seconds on your page no matter how good the content is?
If you’re going to make an impact with them in such a short time you need to make your content skimmable.
You can do this by highlighting important points, keeping your paragraphs short and by including bulleted lists.
These lists stand out and indicate to your site visitor that they’re important highlights they’ll want to review if they only have a few seconds.
Here are some other key reasons to include bullets in all your content:
- They keep visitors on the page longer
- It’s a great way to draw attention to important points
- Lists make it easier for visitors to navigate your page
- They’re a great way of summarizing important information
- Helpful for SEO
Tip 5| Deliver Content in Bite Size Pieces
If you’re the owner of a small business selling hand carved signs out of your garage office you probably know that people like products that stand out for all the right reasons.
The same applies to content.
Content that attracts readers is easy to read and easy to follow.
The last thing a visitor to your site wants to see is a wall of text or rambling sentences.
If that’s the first thing they see they’ll bounce right off your site and find one that’s easier on the eyes.
It doesn’t matter how valuable your content is at that point because they’ll never read it.
Instead, break your paragraphs up into one or two sentences and keep them short. There’s a much better chance they’ll stay on the page if you do.
Tip 6| Images and Videos Can Increase Your Ranking
So you’ve just written a great piece of content that’s SEO friendly and you’re ready to publish — well not quite.
Every post you create should include images and/or videos that enrich your content.
The web is a visual first medium. You only have a few seconds to catch a visitor’s attention and nothing does that better than visually appealing images and helpful videos.
They enhance your user experience and that means you have a better shot at turning them into repeat visitors and eventually customers.
The video below does a great job of explaining why images and video are so important in a unique and entertaining way.
Tip 7| Include Image Alt Tags for All Images
Another key SEO tool that every content creator should be using are image alt tags.
Basically they’re a written description in the background of your image that explains what the image is about.
Why is that important?
For one thing it makes your site easier for search engines like Google to crawl, but that’s not the main reason.
Visually impaired visitors use screen readers to scroll through the content on your page. Without alt tags they have no way of knowing what your images are about.
Including alt tag descriptions signals that your site is inclusive and helpful to all visitors. That’s good for business and good for your search engine rankings.
Tip 8| Link Building Helps Build Authority and Improve Your Rankings
Your wood carving business may be your focus, but it won’t take off without customers and in today’s world that means a well established online presence.
You build an online presence by publishing helpful content and lots of it!
Even that’s not enough though.
A great blog article without any incoming or outgoing links is what you call an orphan page. It might be out there, but without any other content linking to it no one will ever know.
By linking to other relevant pages on your site you show the search engines that you’ve covered your area of expertise in greater depth. In other words, you’re an authority on the subject.
If you keep interlinking your articles as your site grows it will only help to establish your site’s authority and that will help it rise in the rankings.
As your site becomes more visible in the search engines external sources will start linking back to your pages. That will build your authority even more and push your rankings even higher.
The higher you rank the easier it will be to convert visitors into real paying customers over time.
Tip 9| Linking to Helpful and Relevant External Content Will Improve Your Ranking
As far as Google is concerned, the number one reason for writing a blog post should be to provide true value to visitors.
Obviously you want to grow your business, but that should never trump quality content.
You want your articles to be real resources that cover every aspect of your visitors’ original question.
Your own great content is part of that, but so is enriching your article with links to quality external sources that reinforce the message you’re trying to get across.
I can’t emphasize the term QUALITY external sources enough here. If the link you want to include isn’t from a high authority, trusted source don’t include it.
Linking out to questionable sources with little established authority will hurt your own articles’ search engine ranking, not help it.
Now that you’re armed with these tips for a backyard business to write content that ranks faster you can start building a great site that drives more customers to your business. Enjoy the ride!
