"SEO” is a dirty term to most, I know.

For those who are new to the term, it stands for Search Engine Optimization. 

AKA ‘tricking’ Google into ranking your business higher when people search for your niche. In this case, dog groomers!

The SEO industry is full of snake oil salesmen, con artists, scammers, and plain old fools who don't understand how Google works.

One of my close friends is an SEO expert. So I called in a favor.

Today, we’re releasing the secrets on how you can stand out from the your competition when pet owners are searching online for groomers near you. 

No fancy terms, no gate-keeping the secrets, just basic tactics you can use to increase your local visibility on Google! (You’ll want to bookmark this for later…)

Ready to get more clients on autopilot? Lets dive in 👇

❗ First off - Why should you care about SEO in 2024?

Let’s get one thing out of the way - Ads are EXPENSIVE! And you do NOT need them to get more customers.

There is an even better way to get customers - and it’s free!!

It rhymes with “Boogle”.

Yes, yes, you got me! It’s Google and they are the KING at driving traffic to your business. So getting to the top of Google’s search results is a big deal.

When a pet parent is searching for a new groomer in your area, YOU want show up first! But, how do we get there??

Well free guides (like this one) will give you 85% of what you need to get your search ranked up! Let’s talk about the first steps… The Setup.

🤔 How to Setup your GMB (Google My Business)

First off, if you’re a local grooming business owner and DON’T have a GMB yet - you need to head over to Google right now and get one set up. It’s reallllyyyy easy.

Here's the link to start → https://www.google.com/business/

If you already have one set up, that’s great. Pull up your business settings anyways. You’re ahead of the curve, but you can still follow the tips below to make sure your profile includes everything it needs to rank #1.

Ready? Let’s bark! 🐶

1. Get your primary service category set up correctly

For 99% of you reading this, your category should be set to “pet groomer” on your GMB. 

This will allow for people searching for your niche to find you when they search for relevant terms related to your industry.

2. Add every service you can think of under the sun for your grooming business

Note: Top ranking profiles often get stuffed with 100+ categories, so don’t hold back!

1. Basic Bath Service

2. Full Grooming Package

3. Nail Trimming

4. Ear Cleaning

5. Teeth Brushing

6. Flea and Tick Treatments

7. De-shedding Treatments

8. Puppy Grooming

9. Express Grooming

10. Aromatherapy Bathing

11. Hair Dyeing and Creative Grooming

12. Skin Care Treatments

13. Mobile Grooming Services

14. Seasonal Grooming Specials

15. Breed-Specific Grooming

These are just a start, and you should be adding a TON more. 

Here's a trick too - go and look up popular dog groomer GMBs in large cities and copy from what they have for their services! 

Feel free to add dozens of services so don’t hold back!

3. Get a physical address on the profile!

Yes, there are a number of you who are completely mobile.

But… Google does not like that. (Maybe they’re run by a bunch of Petco execs who knows 🤷‍♂️).

They won’t rank you as highly without a physical address on the profile. 

There are a number of reasons for this, but we wont get into the nitty gritty details here. 

Bottom line is you need a physical address on the profile to ensure that you rank well; even if you’re mobile. 

So what can you do?

Get a business location (this can be your house) and add it to Google. After - they will prompt you to prove that it is your business location. 

There are tons of verified businesses out of their homes - so it can be done. 

We know some of you might be nervous to put your home address on there for the GMB, but it will help ranking and your competitors are probably doing it. Just depends on how bad you want to succeed and rank in Google! 

And of course, if you have a physical storefront, use that as your location! 

Google will use this as your home base for where you will rank the best in your city/area.

4. Post regular updates on your GMB profile

This one is pretty easy.

1. Go to your profile

2. Click on the add update button.

Then just follow through the prompts by uploading a photo, and writing up a quick caption.

This can be anything from a simple update about the company, a new service you are trying out with customers, a seasonal discount, or some of your favorite work you have done for a client!

Don’t overthink it, the quantity of the updates is more important than the quality.

The goal is to post 2-3 of these per week to keep Google satisfied long term! 

And for anyone wondering - no this is the secret trick to getting your profile ranked up higher. But it does account for about 10% of the SEO effort that we have seen in the past 6 months and should be done on a regular basis.

🌐 How to Optimize your Website for Local SEO

This section is a bit advanced. Feel free to skip it if you don’t want to mess with changing up your website.

First things first, we need to do a bit of keywords research. Keywords are what people are searching for in Google. 

For you guys - its pretty simple. 99% of you will be targeting pet grooming services.

Keep this keyword phrase in mind, we’re going to be seeing a lot out of here!

If you’re not a website wizard, there are tons of free resources out there that you can use to navigate your website no matter what it is built in.

First off - edit your H1 title on the home page of the website to have some form of those keywords in it. The formula we are going to be following is: “Adjective + keyword phrase + city name”

An example of this would be: “Leading Pet Grooming Services in Orlando Florida” 

Obviously switch up that H1 for your city, but you guys know to do that! 

Then, we move on to meta (of SEO) tags.

This is going to get a bit more complicated here but bear with me, this is as bad as it gets. 

I cannot get into the specifics of how to update each one of these on Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, Webflow, GoDaddy etc… but I can give you the formula for success again. 

Again - hit up YouTube for any help here. There’s an entire industry devoted to teaching people how to do this! 

So, for a meta tag, this is your formula: “Adjective + keyword phrase + | Business Name Here”

Notice a pattern? 

Local SEO is all about hammering that keyword phrase so Google comes along and look at the site and know what you are offering your customers! 

For the meta description - just write up a quick description for the business with the keyword phrase and the city name inside! Here’s and example:

“Find expert pet grooming in Salt Lake City at Lucky’s Groomer. Book today for professional care that makes pets shine!”

See how we got the keywords in there? Perfect! 

If you can follow just these three easy steps, you’ll be ahead of 99% of the competition and on your way to the top of the ranks!

🌎 A Real Life Example

Okay, remember how I told you guys I had a close friend who was an SEO expert?

Well I had him record a full video for you guys walking through a real life grooming business.

Lets see what they missed, and how you can use these techniques too to boost your online presence!

📋 A final recap…

1. Get those keywords established

2. Optimize your GMB

   1. Add the primary service category

   2. Add in a TON of services

   3. Post regular updates!

3. Change the home page H1 to include the keyword and the city!

4. Change the meta description and meta tag on the home page to also have the keyword phrase you are targeting!

5. Never stop learning!

👋 A quick thank you to my friend Todd

Up until now, this should cover the basics of SEO for your grooming business.

But there is SO MUCH MORE to SEO than just that. 

There are things like backlinks, keyword clusters, domain authority, internal linking structure, citations, service pages and much much more. 

Good news though! My buddy (the SEO expert) is available to help!! His name is Todd and he has an entire professional SEO team that does this everyday for local businesses. If you want to reach out to them, their contact info is listed below… (tell them The Daily Groomer sent you!)  

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://www.cascadewebsolutions.co/

Twitter: @_toddanderson and @nickhancock8

💭 We Want To Learn From You:

🙃 In the community:

We’re back at it every Monday with our virtual workshops! (It you haven’t joined one yet, you’re missing out on free education from some of the top groomers in the world!)

This past Monday, Dana Chavez-Rey went live with her kitties on “An Introduction to Feline Anatomy & Physiology”. Andis sponsored this workshop so you know it was a good one! If you missed it, you can check out the recording here.

We’re hosting these every Monday for Daily Groomers who can’t make it to all the fancy grooming shows and industry conferences.

We know you’re busy so we made these virtual and free!  

This upcoming Monday at 1PM EST, Amy Hillis will be presenting in our virtual class on “How We Reduced Turnover by 113% and Kept It That Way”.

If you care about keeping your groomers around, RSVP now so you don’t miss this event!