Category: Daycare SEO

Have you installed Google Analytics?

If you have a business website, you have surely pondered: How many unique people visit my site every day?  Every month?  Every year?  What pages on my site are getting the most hits and which ones are getting the least?  How are people finding my site?  What keywords are they using on the search engines?  How long, on average, are they staying on my site?  What pages have the highest bounce rate?

google-analyticsThese are all answers that you need to know in order to continually improve your website presence and increase traffic to your site over time.  The better website experience you provide to your viewers, the more time they will spend on your site.  The more time they spend on your site, the more Google notices.

Installing Google Analytics on your site is very easy.

First, you need to create an account with Google if you don’t already have one and sign in here:  http://www.google.com/analytics/.

Next, click on the Admin tab at the top of your screen.

Under the Property column, click on Tracking Info.  Then Tracking Code.

You’ll see a script on the next screen that you should copy and paste into an email to your webmaster.  Ask him or her to insert it into every page of the website.

Once it’s installed, you can revisit your Analytics control panel to verify that it’s been installed.  You should start receiving data on your visitors within a few days.

On a side note, if you plan to use other marketing channels like Google Adwords or other campaign management conversion tools, you may want to consider asking your Webmaster to install your Analytics tracking code via Google Tag Manager.  It probably isn’t necessary for 95% of the people reading this article but if you’re in that small bucket, go that route.

I launched my new website yesterday – why isn’t it showing up on Google?

Patient not ImpatientIf you launched a brand new site to a brand new domain recently, you are in for a bit of a waiting period with Google’s search engine.  Simply put, your new website simply doesn’t have enough authority to rank well yet for your keywords.  Google needs some time to verify that your site is not malicious and that there is relevant content on your site.  This delay doesn’t apply to our client’s that come to us with an existing site or domain that is at least a year old.  This is for the client that has no existing website or domain and is just starting out.  Be prepared for a 3 month, 6 month, possibly even a year delay to start seeing your site show up in the search results for your keyword phrases.

First, know that Websites for Daycares always optimizes our client sites with the client’s most important keyword phrases so there’s nothing “wrong” with your website.  We wish we could magically control Google’s algorithm to get your site out of the Google sandbox faster but this is unfortunately a penalty all new sites have to pay initially.  I hate telling my clients in this situation about this delay but the good news is that there are some things you can do to move things along more quickly.

1. Submit your local business to Google Maps / Places and do the same for Bing and don’t forget to incorporate your keywords with your listing!  They will send you something in the mail to confirm your physical location and once your listing is confirmed (may take a few weeks) this will help you get more exposure and hits to your site because your location will appear on their local results searches.

2. Look for established websites in your community that could offer you a link to your site from their site.  Look at your local chamber of commerce, getting an advertising link on your local news website, or submitting an article to a local magazine that will include a link to your site.  Do not get links from low-quality sites or pay for links from spam-filled directories.  This will hurt your site in the long run, not help it.

3.  Utilize social media!  Get that Facebook page created for your business and ask your local friends to like and share your new page.  Create posts on your new Facebook page and include a link to your website wherever possible.  For example, you could create a post letting people know you updated your school calendar and link people to that page right on the post.  The more visitors and hits you get to your site, the more likely you are to get out of the sandbox early.

Most important:  don’t give up and be patient – your site will start working for you very soon. You might also consider advertising (pay-per-click ads) with Google until you are getting more organic traffic in the coming months.  Set your daily or weekly budgets for clicks and this will help you get a jump-start on your site traffic.

Are you utilizing online reviews for your child care business?

Whether you have been in business for 5 months or 5 years, it is important that you share positive customer feedback with potential new customers.  Your website may include a Testimonials or Reviews page but your website visitors are going to know that you put those there and may not trust the reviews.  The best approach is to get your happy customers to talk about your business on 3rd party, social media sites.

???????????????????????At a minimum, you should be asking customers to review you on Google+ and Yelp.  Your reviews on these 2 websites will have a direct result on your search engine results because they rank very highly for local business and mobile searches.  If you have 10 or 15 5-star ratings with these sites, your listing is going to stand out on their search results against those with few or none.  Make sure you have a business profile page setup with both of these sites and customize it to the maximum extent possible.  Add a banner photo on Google+ and include details about your business.  Remember, most people will see this page or results before they find the link to your site so include the highlights and link to your website, of course.

Share the link to both sites with your customer base and also include it in your email signature, website, and social media pages.  It’s important to keep the reviews fresh and up-to-date so try to actively keep this a priority.

Once you have some established reviews on both sites, take advantage of the website widgets that you can add to your website.  This will allow your website visitors to read your reviews on those sites and also allow current customers another way to leave your business feedback.

If you utilize these sites and actively pursue positive feedback from your customers, your business will receive more traffic and conversions and ultimately more business!

Should you have any questions or need assistance friends, please contact me. I’m here to help you and as always, I would love to hear from you!

How to add a Facebook Like widget to your child care website

You have your Facebook page for your child care business created – but how do you let everyone who visits your website know that you have it and how do you get them to connect with it? Add a Facebook “Like” widget to your website!

A Facebook Like widget allows a business to feature their Facebook link, “Like” button and live feed on their own business website.  This means that someone can “Like” your Facebook business page directly on your business website, without having to leave your website.  It will increase exposure for your Facebook page and allow your site visitors to easily and quickly connect with your Facebook page. Once they’ve “Liked” your business page, they will then see your Facebook posts on their news feed – an excellent way to keep your business in front of your customers!

Here’s how you go about adding the widget to your website…

Facebook has recently updated their “Like Box” social plugin.  The newest scripts are HTML5 friendly – which means that any browser that supports it (desktops, mobile devices, tablets, etc) will be able to see this feature. You would start by going to this link:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/like-box-for-pages

Next, type in your Facebook Page link into the first box and if you have any specific height or width specifications, fill those in.  (I find the widget works best when you leave the defaults sizes.)  You can check/uncheck the boxes to add your live news feed, faces of people who like your page, etc. When you have your widget looking the way you want it, click on the “Get Code” button and make sure the HTML5 link is highlighted in the upper left corner of the pop-up window.  Now, what to do with those 2 pieces of code…

The first piece of code needs to be inserted into the HTML code of every page that you want the widget to appear on, right after the opening <body> tag.  If you don’t have access to this area via your website content management system, copy and paste this code into a .txt file and send it to your web developer to add.

The second piece of code should be pasted into the HTML code exactly where you want it to appear on your website.  Most popular website content management systems allow you to access the HTML code for your content area but again, if you aren’t comfortable doing this yourself, just send this code in another .txt file to your web developer and let them know where you would like it to appear.

Once it’s installed you should test on your desktop, smart phone and tablets to make sure it appears the way you want.  Then just sit back and watch your “Likes” increase on Facebook!