The key to a successful interior design business is to bring in new clients. Gone are the days when businesses solely relied on word of mouth and referrals to bring in business. Today, with the exponential growth of the internet and people being online most of the time, it is important to use this medium to be found.
When you’re looking for something, you begin with a Google search, be it a store, restaurant, or anything at all. And, even if you have the most amazing website, if you’re not found on Google, then it really means nothing.
The key is to take a more active approach to grow your business. This is where SEO comes in and can boost the online presence of your interior design business exponentially.
The concept of SEO may be hugely daunting if you’re not tech-savvy. However, don’t panic, SEO is extremely easy to understand and can help your interior design business immensely.
In this article, we’ll discuss all the tips and techniques for SEO for interior designers so that you rank high on Google searches and improve the overall visibility of your business.
What Is SEO?
SEO or search engine optimization is the way of increasing the volume, as well as quality of traffic to your website via search engine results. SEO essentially has 4 components:
- Keywords: Keywords are basically the words and phrases that you enter into the search field, connected to the business. These words and phrases are what drives the person searching to your website and so they must appear constantly through the relevant pages of your site.
- Keyword Search Volume: This refers to the number of people using specific keywords for search results, which will throw up your interior design business.
While it may seem that the more the volume the better it is, however, this essentially depends on the objectives of your business. The focus may not necessarily be targeting keywords with the highest volume, as the keywords also have high competition levels.
So, your aim should be to find targeted keywords, which are relevant to your business and also have a lower level of competition, showing up within the first 5 to 10 (or the 1st page) results when someone is searching for them. - Incoming Website Traffic from the Organic Search: This is essentially the number of people who have clicked through from a result thrown by the search engine and visited your site.
- Conversion of Clients via Keyword Search: This is how many people found your interior design business via a search engine and became your clients.
So, what does this really mean for you as an interior design business owner? This means that you must create a website for your business that is easily found by partners and potential clients when they’re using search engines such as Google.
When looking for something, most of us don’t even scroll to the bottom of the search page results and it is highly unlikely that you will visit the 2nd or 3rd pages of the search results. This means that by using the right keywords, you can ensure that your business shows up right at the top of the search results, where it is likely to be seen.
SEO Tips to Boost Traffic to Your Interior Design Website
While SEO for interior designers may sound deceptively complex, it is important to learn the basics of SEO to ensure that you use it effectively to boost your business.
It is a lot more than simply shortlisting popular keywords and plugging them throughout your website. Just repeating the important keywords and phrases is just the tip of the iceberg and one of the steps to maximize SEO.
We have discussed some of the ways by which you can use SEO to boost traffic to your interior design site below.
Use Keyword Research Tools
Keywords are the foundation of SEO for interior designers, without which search engines will not be able to search the specific content. Keyphrases like “interior designer” help your business to stand out and you can use SEO tools like SEMrush, Google Search Console, Google Correlate, Wordtracker Scout and Keywords Everywhere to measure the keyword metrics and determine how they perform compared to others.
Optimize Headings and Titles
The title or the heading is the most important in SEO and so, you must integrate the main keywords in the title because when typed into the Google search, you want these keywords to come up. Optimizing the meta descriptions also plays an important role in determining whether people will click on the link.
Include Specific and Relevant Keywords in the Text
Make sure that you include the information about your interior design business on the main pages of the website including details such as company name, location, contact information, phone number, address, etc. These are the relevant bits of information that is picked up in a Google search and helps your business stand out from others.
Make sure to include these details in plain text on your website’s homepage and contact pages, which will enable the search engines to crawl your site easily and add your business listing into their databases. Avoid embedding the text in heavy images or animation as this can easily be missed by search engines.
Listing Your Company in Online Directories
If your interior design business is new, then a very important thing to do is listing your business in online directories, which will ensure that it comes up in local searches. Even if your business is an established one, check if it has a listing in the major directories and ensures that the information is updated. There are several online directories specific to the design industry and getting listed in these will help your business further.
Blog Regularly
Blogging about the topics on your website is an excellent way to ensure that you’re on Google’s radar and the better your website will rank. Set up your blog and post it 1-2 times a week. You can have many blog posts and publish them on various days throughout the month.
Posting on your blog regularly is an excellent way to boost your ranking and ensure that you’re relevant. This demonstrates that your site is active. Also, posting high-quality content on your site is an excellent way by which you can gain backlinks.
Update the Content Regularly
Ensure that your content is refreshed and updated. This will help you to be viewed as a credible and valid source. One way to improve your existing content is to add new information and keywords that will help to enhance your SEO immensely.
You can use tools like CognitiveSEO’s Content Tool that can help you to select topics and keywords which can be integrated into the content so that you’re ranked higher.
Use Keyword-Rich Anchor Text
This is essentially the text part of a clickable link that helps to link pages and connects your content both in terms of context and relevance. This is important for SEO if you want to provide context via any link that you want to reference in the content.
You can focus the reader’s attention on relevant topics that have been discussed on your website by highlighting specific keywords, which search engines take into account and give more weightage to.
Optimize Images
If you use large images, this will take your page to load very slowly, leading to a high bounce rate, which in turn can lead to a poor conversion rate. To prevent this from happening, you must compress the images on your site using compression tools, which helps to reduce the amount of high space occupied by your images, enabling them to load more quickly.
Increase Shareability of Your Site
Social media is an excellent tool that can help to build SEO and is great to drive relevant traffic to your page. Platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram, Imgur and Flickr are sites where people often visit for interior designing ideas, to hire designers, find vendors, etc.
You can include your links to media or social profiles you upload so people can locate you and share the link. Social media presence can translate into more traffic to your site and an increased ranking in terms of search engine results. Choose social media platforms that are relevant to your business and content.
Post Your Design Videos on YouTube
By themselves, videos rank quite well in search results and you can include links to your business site too. Since interior design is a creative and visual profession, displaying your work via visual media can help to improve your visibility immensely.
You can use videos as an effective way to provide walk throughs and 3D information about your work with interesting voice overs. This is a great way to stand apart from the crowd.
Encourage Positive Online Reviews
Generally, people looking for interior designers or any other contractor tend to look for recommendations and ratings of various contractors on websites like Angie’s List, Yelp, etc. However, avoid asking for positive reviews and never offer to incentivize or pay for them.
Ask clients who are happy with your work to post a review on sites like Google+, Yelp, etc. While the ratings and reviews don’t affect the ranking, positive ratings and reviews can affect the click rates, which in turn can affect your rankings in the long run.
The Final Word
In conclusion, SEO is a very important component that not only enables a search engine to find your website but also ensures that it is as close to the top as possible. Placed optimally, your company’s online presence can be more attractive, as well as functional for visitors.
So, SEO is very important for you as an interior designer to ensure that your website comes in search results, which in turn, can help the success of your business.
