How to use Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools and Social Media to track your SEO results
Online marketing for Yoga Teachers is essential in the digital revolution we are facing right now. Well written content - they say "content is king" as the headstand is said to be the king of yoga asanas and the shoulderstand is the queen.
What is SEO? It means search engine optimization. Good optimized titles and headlines that are relevant to the searcher will increase click-through by people who search for your product or service. This is called CTR (Click-through Rate), and it's perfect for your ranking and drives traffic to your website.
If impressions are high (that is, people see your page on Google but don’t click on it, this would mean your CTR is low, and you need improvement to make your content more relevant to the viewers.
Here are a few tips on making your ads or content writing stand out so that many people will click on it and not simply bounce off. A high bounce percentage isn't regarded as a good sign, either. All this data insight you can see in Google Analytics or Google Search Console. You don't have to study for a marketing degree to understand a few tips.
First, ensure that all your landing pages have a title tag (it's a bit like a newspaper, the catchier your title the more likely that people will be curious and read your blog), a readable URL: headline and description.
Furthermore:
· Make it relevant
As said before, the title should entice people to click on your website and browse its content. The longer they stay on your site and the more they read, the better! If this leads to a sale, even better, that is, you sell them a space on your next retreat or workshop.
Always include a KW (Keyword). Create unique descriptions for every page on your website. You can monitor your click-through rate (CTR) in the Google Search Console. You can also see what search terms people use to find you and if you feel that they are relevant expand on them a bit more.
· Make sure each page has only one H1 Heading. As mentioned before, it’s like a newspaper, the most important heading. Subsequent headlines should be H2, H3 etc. The H1 should be unique, and you should avoid duplicates.
When you write a blog
1) Have a beginning with a headline
2) A middle part that gives readers a value
3) An end part (call of action).
Introduce subheadings, be personal and overall be real.
As mentioned above, there are various tools to track your success. Google offers Google Analytics and Google Search Console free and even offers free courses to learn what is important and how to find information. Make sure you get a Google account and check those tools regularly.
Google Search Console and Google Analytics are a must and will tell you a lot about what people search for and how many times your website or page has been shown for a given Keyword, and where your audience is from. It even tells you if it is mainly women or men, the age and other demographic indicators. You submit your site to Google Search Console with a sitemap. Google provides all answers to your questions, what is a sitemap, how to create one and how to ultimately submit it. Google Search Console will tell you if there is an issue with your website and how to fix it (e.g. if you have a broken link etc.). It will tell you how many times your website appeared in a search result (impressions), how many times people clicked on your page, what your average position is, and even what keywords people have used to find you!
It also tells you who links to your website. Not only that, but it also tells you about your internal links. You don’t want spam sites linking to your site, and if that would be at some stage the case, you may have to add a non-follow code.
The same stands for Google Analytics; Google Analytics tells you where your audience is from. It tells you how many people came onto your website, how many people did you get organically coming to your site, and how many were referred or came through social or other means. How many of those users are new or are returning users, which pages do the users visit, how long do they stay on each page and if they went to another page or how quickly do they leave your website. If people leave your website too quickly, it might be because they did not find what they were looking for, and this means you will have to rethink your keywords or content. The better you make your website tailor-made to your audience, the better your user experience (UX) is, and the better your ranking will become!
Google even tells you if people search for you on the mobile or on the web more, which devices they use and which language they speak.
So, you can appreciate how important those analytical tools are, and it's worthwhile getting a basic understanding of them.
Other social media tools can help you research better who is visiting your website (e.g. Facebook pixel). For example, Iconosquare is an Instagram analytics tool that tells you when followers are most active, telling you when the best time is to post (14-day free trial).
Of course, it takes a lot of effort and continuous writing of fresh content to give your website the visibility and traffic it deserves; in the meantime, you might want to start with some advertising.
Google advertisement is the most effective and, in my opinion, more effective than Facebook, although Facebook is trying to improve enormously to make it more audience-specific. Google has got a different option, and one option is to pay per click, called PPC. Again, here, you will need effective keywords so that your ad will appear on the first page. A quality score calculates your ad rank, and the quality score again is calculated by google in how specific you are and how relevant your content and word are for people who search and how much you are willing to pay for this. You will be surprised, but people who are not relevant and have a bad quality score end up paying more than people whose quality score and relevance are high.
Getting a good Quality Score takes a bit of time and playing with lots of different KWs. Ensure that the page the searcher ends up on is the page you want people to end up on (it is also called a landing page). Again, an obvious CTA (call to action) is necessary to entice people to press on your ad. The CTR (Click-through Rate) is important, and as before, is the total clicks on your ad divided by the total impressions. You can also incorporate some negative keywords.
A negative keyword is something that you add to avoid getting the wrong person to come onto your website; Negative keywords let you exclude search terms from your campaigns and help you focus on only the keywords that matter to your customers. The quality score is calculated over time. So, the higher your ad ranks, the lower the costs eventually!
As you have seen, effective Keywords are the key and choosing them wisely. There are tools on the market that help you to see how many people search for this Keyword and how big the competition is. In the beginning, it is more advisable not to go for highly competitive keywords, such as “yoga classes”, since it will be challenging to beat well-established places out. Still, there is room for longer keywords and more specialized Keywords. So, as a rule, search for KWs with low competition but a high volume of searches.
It is said that the top 3 results on a search engine get 53% of all clicks!
However, as the last note to all of this, even if you get high traffic to your site, it will be useless if it does not convert into a sale and people book up on that workshop or yoga holiday.
Want to learn about online marketing for yoga teachers? I am holding a yoga business course in January. Please email me for more information.
I am happy to help for a minimal fee building your website and optimizing it together with you. Email me, and we can get together; I set up Google Analytics, and search console and provide you with the basic monitoring tools that will help you measure your growth.