5 Tips To Get Your Pet Sitting Company To Rank at The Top Of Google
There are many factors that will either help or hurt your SEO. If you want a full, up-to-date guide that covers every detail of how to make your website soar to the top of Google’s search results, check out the The SEO Workbook by Jason McDonald.
But, if you want 5 things you can do that will get you most of the way there, just follow the steps in this blog. These tips will give you a solid foundation of good SEO practices you can build on.
SEO Basics
First, let’s get the basics out of the way. If you have not done so already, create a Google My Business page for your company, and submit your website to Google Search Console. This will let Google know you want to be seen on their search engine.
Next, install Google Analytics. Although Google Analytics will not improve your SEO directly, I recommend installing it so you can track how many visitors are coming to your site. This way, you can see where your traffic is coming from.
Be sure you have high quality pictures of smiling people with happy pets featured on your website. I see way too many dark photos of sad dogs on pet sitter’s websites. Happy people with happy pets sell. Be sure to take advantage of this easy win.
Put related keywords in the file name of your photos, update the Alt-Tag with related keywords, and keep file size of your photos below 300kb so they load quickly and don’t slow down your website.
Use a good quality host like Siteground, and invest in tools to speed up your website. Users will bounce in seconds if your website is too slow to load.
Lastly, don’t ever try black hat SEO (sketchy or sly tricks). Some tricks might get you a short term boost, but your rank will only suffer in the long run.
Have The Right Pages, With The Right Titles, Headings, and Links
The keywords you use in the titles of your webpages make a huge difference when it comes to SEO.
I see a lot of companies that don’t rank well in their town because they don’t have their town’s name in any of their webpage titles, or they don’t have their address in their footer.
Only put one H1 tag per webpage, but be sure you have an H1 tag on each page. Put your most relevant keyword there. For example “Vacation Pet Sitting Service” on your pet sitting page, or “Mid-Day Dog Walking Service” on your dog walking page.
One of the biggest and easiest wins is to:
- Structure your website with pages related to what you want to rank for
- Put relevant keywords in the titles and H1 tags
- Add relevant keywords and photos to your pages
- Then link those pages together in a way that shows google which pages are important
Google pays close attention to how pages are linked within your website. When you link a page on your website from the top menu, on your main page, in the footer, and from other relevant places—google will consider those pages to be more important.
The most important pages on your website should be no more than 2 clicks away from your main page.
Here is an example page structure for your website to get you started on a solid foundation.
- Main Page of your website
- Title: Dog Walker and Pet Sitter Agency | Your Town’s Name
- A page that describes your pet sitting service
- Title: Pet Sitting Service | Your Town’s Name
- Links to this page: In the top menu, from your main page, in your footer, and links from related blogs on your site, link from FAQ page.
- A page that describes your dog walking service
- Title: Dog Walking Service | Your Town’s Name
- Links to this page: In the top menu, from your main page, in your footer, and links from related blogs on your site, link from FAQ page
- About Us Page
- Title: About Us – Dog Walker and Pet Sitter Agency | Your Town’s Name
- Links to this page: In the top menu, in your footer, link from Service Area and Testimonials page, and links from related blogs on your site
- Testimonials Page
- Title: Testimonials – Dog Walker and Pet Sitter Agency | Your Town’s Name
- Links to this page: In the top menu, your main page, in your footer, link from About Us Page, and links from related blogs on your site
- Contact Us Page
- Title: Contact Us – Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Agency | Your Town’s Name
- Links to this page: In the top menu, above the fold, in your footer, link from About Us Page, and links from related blogs on your site, links from FAQ page – make this the #1 call to action on your site.
- Service Area Page
- Title: Service Area – Dog Walker and Pet Sitter Agency | Your Town’s Name
- Links to this page: In the top menu, in your footer, link from About Us Page, and links from related blogs on your site, links from FAQ page.
- Your Team Page
- Title: Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Team | Your Town’s Name
- Links to this page: In the top menu, in your footer, link from About Us page and Testimonials Page, and links from related blogs on your site
- Your Team Page
- Title: Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Team | Your Town’s Name
- Links to this page: In the top menu, in your footer, link from About Us page and Testimonials Page, and links from related blogs on your site
- Pet Sitting FAQ
- Title: Pet Sitting Service FAQ | Your Town’s Name
- Links to this page: In the top menu, in your footer, link from Pet Sitting Service Page, and links from related blogs on your site
- Your FAQ pages are a great place to link out to your other relevant blogs
- Be careful not to seem too stringent in your policies in your FAQ pages
- I put every one of our procedures, relevant to clients, at the bottom of our FAQ, a great place for keywords.
- Dog Walking FAQ
- Title: Dog Walking Service FAQ | Your Town’s Name
- Links to this page: In the top menu, in your footer, link from Dog Walking Service Page, and links from related blogs on your site
- Your FAQ pages are a great place to link out to your other relevant blogs
- Be careful not to seem too stringent in your policies in your FAQ pages
- I put every one of our procedures, relevant to clients, at the bottom of our FAQ, a great place for keywords.
- A blog that describes how many visits to book for dogs
- Title: How many dog sitting visits should I book? | Your Town’s Name
- Links to this page: In your footer, link from Pet Sitting Service Page, and links from related blogs on your site, links from FAQ page.
- A blog that describes how many visits to book for cats
- Title: How many cat sitting visits should I book? | Your Town’s Name
- Links to this page: In your footer, link from Pet Sitting Service Page, and links from related blogs on your site, links from FAQ page.
- A blog that describes how much your service costs
- Title: How much does pet sitting cost | Your Town’s Name
- Links to this page: In your footer, link from Pet Sitting Service Page, and links from related blogs on your site, links from FAQ page.
More About Link Structure
Once you have all of your main pages created, linked together, and filled with wonderful, keyword-rich (but not stuffed) content—go though your blog and link your entries to other relevant pages on your website. Also link blogs to other relevant blogs on your website.
Lastly, wherever it makes sense to do so, add outbound links to other pet related websites. These could be vets, groomers, dog trainers, animal behaviorists, YouTube channels, or pet stores that you recommend.
When you link to other high-authority pages which are related to pet sitting and dog walking services, it sends a signal to google that you know the best services to recommend.
They Ask, You Answer—A Mindset to Better Content
Once you have your website structured, the next best way to rank on google is to have content on your website that helps your users solve a problem. One of the methods we use is whenever a client asks us a really good question, we write a blog about it.
We set up our pet sitting website so clients can read through our content and get their questions answered before they even call us or fill out our contact form. While this is just good marketing, it had a profound impact on our SEO also.
Use SEO Software To Optimize Your Keyword Usage
The right keywords make all the difference, and the best way to figure out which keywords are right for your business is by using the tools available from SEMrush.
This software crawls the top ranking websites across the entire internet, and gives you access to data about which keywords are ranking well for various searches. Even better, their software will tell you when you have the exact right amount of keywords on each of your pages.
You can try SEMrush free for 7 days, and they offer one-on-one training to get you started. The people at SEMrush will guide you through the best tools to use, and how to optimize your website for the search terms you need to rank for.
Every couple of years, I sign up for SEMrush’s Guru level service plan. Although it is pricey, this plan has the keyword optimization tools that really make SEMrush valuable. As of 2021, the price is $229 for one month.
That might seem expensive, but it saves me from having to spend that amount on ads every month, because now I show up at the top of google for pet sitting and dog walking in my town.
User Experience Software
HotJar gives you visual feedback about how users are interacting with your website. The insight it provides is incredibly helpful. Plus, a good user experience is one of the top things Google cites as important to page rank.
People click on the darndest things. Plus there might be some features or links on your website that don’t function like you might have planned. So, whenever I am building a website I install HotJar.
HotJar will slow your website down while you have it installed, but I recommend using it so you can visually see how your customers navigate your website before they either contact you, or bounce from your site.
It is the best tool I’ve found for being able to tell where people get stuck in your website, before leaving to never be seen again.
Since HotJar does slow your site down, remove it from your website when you finally get your website user experience work finished.
