SEO for Wineries
Your website is all set up and ready to go. Now you are just waiting for customer traffic to browse your products and access other information available on your winery’s website. But you are concerned; sales are not occurring at the pace you expected. Perhaps it is time to investigate SEO and how it can assist your winery’s growth.
SEO Strategies and Your Wineries
As the owner of a winery, it is important for you to have an understanding of how to effectively utilize the tools of the internet. There are thousands of other wineries with whom you are competing for online sales. Knowing what SEO is and how to employ its techniques will complement other aspects of your online and physical presence.
SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization. Whether on a smartphone or laptop, when customers are seeking information, they type a few words to initiate a search and Google will kick out results that its algorithm determines is most relevant to the terms they searched. Your website’s authority on the topic that is searched for will determine where your website will appear in the results. Know that about 90% of clicks happen on page one of search results.
Search engine companies have developed extensive algorithms to analyze searches and develop means to find resulting matches. Your first step in building search ranking is to determine the who’s and hows of your wineries SEO effort. Having a plan to build great content and understanding how search engines disseminate content is an important part of building meaningful traffic. 80 percent of consumers search online for products prior to engaging with a business and purchasing products. So, regardless of whether it is done in-house or outsourced, you need to be familiar with how effective website management impacts your business.
How People Search for Wine Online
Think of how a consumer might find your business through a search for products they’re interested in. For example, someone traveling to Walla Walla to visit wineries might search something like ‘walla walla wineries;’ or maybe they’re interested in a specific type of wine and type in, ‘rose walla walla.’ Maybe they want to view opinions for something like ‘who makes the best syrah in Walla Walla?’
Surprising no one, Google doesn’t actually know who has the best wine, but they are keenly aware of who’s website is most authoritative on the topic. Making a deliberate effort to rank for such terms is paramount to success in organic search, but most people set it aside because they don’t understand it.
While Google’s algorithm takes into account some factors that are uncontrollable from a site administrator’s point-of-view, many of the variables that determine a website’s authority and ultimately ranking, are well within grasp.
It’s also important to understand the difference between branded and unbranded search in improving your winery’s SEO.
Here’s an example of that: There are 600 people each month that search for “Nocking Point wine” and another 1,000 searches for “Leonetti wine.” As you might expect, each of those respective businesses ranks number 1 on Google for those search terms. Your winery should too.