How SEO is Amazingly Similar to Gardening

 

I recently read an article that made me chuckle.  It started off, "There are so many similarities between SEO and gardening..."

Of course, I had to read on.

In the article, Bernie Borges describes the stages of gardening and how they relate to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  It reminded me of my post last week about content marketing in which Marcus Sheridan said:

"Success in this business doesn’t happen overnight. Content marketing isn’t a chia-pet—water today, a vine jungle tomorrow."

Thanks for the nod to our industry, folks!  The two can and should work together!

Here is how Bernie thinks SEO and gardening are similar:

Planning
The beauty (and work) of a garden is how well it was planned. Will you use natives, do you want a vegetable garden, is your garden in the shade or sun, which types of plants, trees and shrubs do you want and where will they go?

SEO, says Bernie, also needs a plan. Persona analysis, i.e. identifying the personas of the people who buy your products or services, is a must to consider the type of content needed on your website. Keyword research is another must to determine which keywords need to be included in the website content. These two elements are the minimum planning required for a successful SEO strategy.

Preparing the Soil
Once you have a plan for the garden, the key step in successful plants is healthy soil. Your soil is the food for your plants so it must have key nutrients, minerals and organic matter to feed the roots.

Likewise, Bernie says a website must have a “healthy architecture” that will allow for search engines like Google to properly crawl and index its content so that it will score the website’s content favorably and retrieve its content when people search using relevant keywords. Important SEO architecture issues include the URL naming structure, URL navigation structure, the proper use of meta data, and efficient coding that is easy for search engines to crawl. There are other technical issues that can impact SEO, but these are the big ones.


Planting
Once you have planned the garden, prepared the soil and purchased the plants, it’s now time to plant! This can be hard work and you can expect to get your fingernails dirty, but the reward is right around the corner.

The SEO equivalent is the act of optimizing content, page by page. Bernie says that each page MUST be uniquely focused on one topic just like a plant is unique. Each page of content gets optimized with a singular keyword focus. Think of it this way. You want to make it easy for the search engine when it crawls your website to interpret the specific theme of each page so that it may get displayed in a search for a person interested in that topic. 

Fertilizing
Gardeners understand the importance of (always organic) fertilizer to provide nutrients to plants and maintain healthy roots. Those nutrients serve to stimulate growth, botanic beauty and protect against disease.

In SEO the fertilizer equivalence that gives a website content marketing strength is authority. And, Bernie says, authority is gained through a combination of longevity, and an abundance of relevant content, which other people link to and share through social media. Search engines determine the authority of a website by analyzing the quantity and quality of content and how much others link to it and share it. While low quality content is not effective, research proves that 50 pages is better than 20, 500 pages is better than 50 and 2000 pages is better than 500. This point illustrates that the more relevant content is present in a website, the more authority it is given by search engines which will result in more search discoverability and result in more inbound traffic to a website.

Pruning
Pruning is a task that many people don't know how to do properly. (Just ask the Grumpy Gardner with his Crepe Murder escapades.) But proper acts of pruning get rid of dead remnants in a garden to make room for new plant life.

In the SEO context, editing content to reflect updates in your business or industry is the equivalent of pruning. Search engines have the capability to assess the last date of content revision as well as the frequency. Algorithmically search engines assume that if you don’t periodically update your content or add to your website’s content you aren’t giving your website visitors a good experience. The result is your website will be scored lower and result in poorer SEO results. In other words adding and updating website content is a must for long term SEO success.

Ongoing Care
The best part of gardening is watching your plants grow and blossom.  The hard work is over, but you're never really done.  In order for a garden to thrive in the long run, a garden needs love, care and constant attention. Yes, constant attention.

Likewise, SEO requires constant attention. A quarterly crawl report should be performed to assess any technical issues. Periodic keyword research is advisable to learn of new ways your customer searches for your products. Observing the type of content your competitors launch is advisable. And, most important is a commitment to continually adding new content to your website throughout the year. No matter the industry, adding content is a must for effective SEO. New content can be in many formats, such as vertical industry solutions, white papers on unique topics, case studies, educational resources, e-books, blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc.

The parallels between gardening and SEO are fun to review, and probably puts SEO in a whole new light for gardeners, and vice-versa. In fact, Bernie said, "the next time we hire an SEO implementation consultant I’m going to look for someone who is an experienced gardener."  Call us, Bernie!

Interested in learning how to master social media and drive more traffic to your website?  Download this e-book.

 

*Images courtesy of Longfield Gardens and Sustainable Seed.

 Katie

Garden Media Group

Marketing Agency Review for Lawn and Garden Businesses

In the business of marketing, there are countless theories as to how best to promote and brand a business, product, or services. Some say advertising. We of course say, “PR’s the best!” Others say SEO, search engine optimization.

Each of them works in some way, but the most effective way is actually the combination of everything. But rarely does a budget allow for a huge marketing spend, so rarely do they work hand in hand. So if we had to choose, we would suggest using public relations to build your brand and then incorporating SEO services to create a killer team. It’s time that PR and SEO got together to hit a home run for your garden business.

The reason that both SEO and PR techniques should be used together is due to the fact that they are both designed to help a business grow. Sure, they both focus on different techniques, SEO focuses on building a business’ online visibility on search engines and PR strives for building your real life brand person by using media attention to grow a business, but used collectively you can get more bang for your marketing buck.

Here’s how:
Optimize press releases for SEO
Press releases are still the bee’s knees in the PR world. But before writing your next release, make a list of keywords that would bring relevant search traffic to your website. When writing the release, use keywords throughout the entire story, especially in the title and the opening paragraph. This will allow your information to be released to the media and still be found on a search engine.

Press Release for Each Target
For the same story, alter the press release for who you are targeting. Newspaper columnists, bloggers, and social media news outlets/individuals digest information differently. Catering to each subgroup allows multiple ways for the story to be found as well as improves SEO opportunities.

Selective Pitching
Of course you want media and bloggers to pick up your story and ANY pickup is great for exposure. But when pitching your story, go after the high traffic producers. A story in a small community newspaper is nice but an article in a major publication will be found easier in search engines, as will your business.

Quality Content
Company blogs are a fantastic way to drive traffic to your website and for SEO purposes. Creating new and relevant information sends new attention to search engines and provides the opportunity for more links back to your website. Blogs also provide the chance to be found and promote interaction with your audience.

Social Media Tie In
Need something to put on your social media sites? Post your press releases and media hits on your websites and share a link to all of your social sites. This gives a chance for fans or followers to remember why they “liked” your page in the first place, your products and services. It also allows for brand exposure to more people and the opportunity to go viral. For an even bigger impact, find a way to connect to the day’s or week’s “hot” social conversations by including those keywords into the description of your posted story.

In the end, it’s a blend of both public relations services and the content that is created and targeted SEO keyword research that will take your brand to the next level.

Want to get build your reputation?  Call us.

5 Ways to Reinvent the Press Release With SEO

In 5 Ways to Reinvent the Press Release With SEO, author Venessa Bugasch writes on PRNews that pictures, video and other multimedia really do tell 10,000 words – or at least 80% more search traffic than text-only releases.

She says creating your own video is easy. We say it’s YouTube quality, not Hollywood. At the very least, add visuals – images, charts, logos - that support your product, message or campaign.

Here are four more tips from Venessa:

1. Choose the Right Keywords
Search engines think like your audience. Before you begin to write, know the keywords or phrases that will drive them to the news release and motivate them to click through to pages on your Web site. Do basic keyword research on sites like Google AdWords, Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery.

2. Use Your Heads
Use one to two keywords in the headline and subhead. Search engine spiders read left to right, so take that into account as you compose your headlines and your first paragraph. Use no more than 200 characters in the summary or subhead.

3. Optimize From the Top Down
Spiders also read from the top down. Using keywords in the first two paragraphs makes a much bigger impact than using them lower down. As you write, think in sound bites, like 140-character tweets.

4. Don’t Over-Link
As with keywords, don’t overdo anchor text, as it causes confusion and dilutes the impact of the links themselves. Offer two to three links for a 400-word press release.

These are great and practical tips, don’t you think?I appreciate an expert who can pump me up and help me change the tire! Thanks, Venessa Bugasch! She's senior VP of global marketing at Cision - our PR tools provider. Follow her: @vanessabugasch.

Suzi
Garden Media Group