Top Five 2021 SEO Trends for Pet Stores
Even for pet store marketing agencies (that’s us!) that consider themselves SEO experts (we do), it is difficult to stay on top of the constantly shifting landscape of Google’s SEO. With new updates frequently being rolled out both on the platform and in conjunction with other technological advancements, it takes a team to stay on top of it and get the results that independent pet store owners are looking for.
If you’re a pet store owner and you think it’s important that you are ranked on the first page, or in the top three results, of Google in 2021, you’re going to find this article worth looking into. Let’s dig into the top 2021 SEO trends for pet stores, along with some action items to get you prepped and headed in the direction of growth.
1. User Experience
is Priority #1
Sometimes in the pursuit of a strong SEO strategy, we can lose sight of the fact that the number one priority is to serve your audience. Real, genuine, actual people. Don’t write for Google’s bots, write for the people that use Google. This will be a core theme throughout the trends listed in this pet store SEO resource, and we believe that it will be a core theme for Google’s search strategy moving forward.
Google will continue to place rising importance on “user-centered” metrics. What are those, you ask? Here are a few examples:
Page Load Time
Mobile Responsiveness
Interactivity
Content Stability
Google is looking to send people to webpages that they will appreciate being on. These webpages load quickly, optimize properly for any device, don’t have any breakdowns in interactive functions like buttons, links, or animations, and don’t have content that frustratingly shifts under your finger.
Sites that can deliver a quality experience will get the go-ahead.
UX Action Steps:
Make sure that your page is mobile-friendly. If you don’t have an updated, mobile-optimized website, take a look at some of our other Pet Store Marketing Resources and our Pet Store Websites Hub. We would also be happy to build you a new pet store website, so you can also contact our team here! To run a status check on your own website, head over to Google Search Console, and look at Mobile Usability, under the Enhancements heading.
Be wary of popups or ads on your website. Although marketers and business-owners love building their lists and generating leads, users overwhelmingly don’t - they are the most disliked type of ad according to a study done by Hubspot. Google’s search algorithms understand this and will hinder you on your quest for SEO greatness.
Improve your images across your website. Optimizing properly will help you get found, compressing properly will improve page load speed, and tagging properly will drive traffic to your site. High-quality, relevant images with custom file names and alt tags are small, technical pieces of pet store SEO that lead to long-term success.
2. Quality Content is
the Undisputed King
Content that fulfills the EAT principles will take you further on Google. As with all content that your pet store marketing team puts out, it should have purposes and it should be relevant. In order to create purposeful, relevant content, you have to understand your audience, what they value, what they want to learn or know about, what drives their online behavior, and more. Buyer personas and audience intelligence should be strong factors in your decision-making process.
QUALITY CONTENT Actions Steps:
Build your long-form content based on the EAT principles:
Expertise
Authoritativeness
Trustworthiness
Original data, original writing, and original imagery are going to drive more results than regurgitating or copying. Use data, statistics, and facts when crafting your content. and link to websites that are reputable and have high domain authority. These can help boost your content in the eyes of Google’s algorithms.
3. Local Seo Is Make-or-Break Important for Local Businesses
With billions of people using Google Maps every month to search for products and services, it makes sense that your Google My Business listing needs to be fully optimized to bring you the most eyeballs and traffic. Engagement and activity on your GMB listing are strong ranking signals as well, so don’t neglect it with updated photos, posts, events or promotions, products, and beyond.
Your listing should be fully complete, up to date, filled with details, and updated regularly. Why is it so important? Take a look at the example to the right. If I look for a pet store near me in the Houston area, clearly there are over a dozen to choose from. But who pops up first on the left? The one with the best pet store SEO strategy, that’s who!
And guess who gets the call, or the click for directions, or the website visit? The ones that are both closest and highest ranking. So it’s critical that your pet store shows up highly in Google Maps, and your GMB listing is a huge factor in making that happen. If not, you’re losing money. How much money will you lose in 2021 due to a faulty SEO strategy? Set up an introductory call with our team today to see how we can turn things around for you.
GOOGLE MY BUSINESS Action Steps:
Head over to your Google Business Listing, and get things up to date. Update your services, your products, your hours if necessary, and explore every other tab and heading in there. If it wasn’t important, Google wouldn’t have put it there! Don’t leave any stone unturned.
Make a note in your calendar to update photos and make posts weekly. These photos can be of just about anything, including customers or pets, inside your pet store!
Don’t forget to answer FAQs on your listing, and turn on Messaging on the Google My Business mobile app to stay as open and available as possible for your customers.
4. COVID-19
Is Still A Factor
Somehow, this bears repeating in realms beyond just pet store marketing, but COVID-19 is still having an impact on the United States. In the early response to COVID-19, Google made some quick and immediate changes that are still ongoing.
They created a COVID updates tab on Google My Business listings, they allowed for businesses to have specialized hours, service offerings, or even temporarily close.
The post-COVID-19 world is still largely a mystery. There are numerous factors that remain TBD, and there are difficulties and circumstances that remain in the unforeseeable future. Regardless, moving forward, our team at Pet Engine Marketing recommends that you have a few of these action steps prepared for developments both good or bad.
COVID-19 Action Steps:
Understand your communication strategy in case of an emergency or crisis. Providing timely, useful, relevant information is more critical than providing content that ranks highly or includes your target keywords.
Be prepared to quickly update your pet store’s marketing assets. This includes, but isn’t limited to, your GMB listing, your pet store website, your pet store social media platforms, and Yelp. Your customers or partners will need to find critical information quickly.
Think about the ways that you can help, whether it’s through mitigating the spread of COVID-19, providing convenient and safe ways to shop for your pet store customers, or providing discounts and other helping hands where necessary.
5. Updates to
Long-Form Content
There are numerous updates and increasingly popular updates on Google’s platform that will continue their trend into 2021. We’ll touch on a few of them here:
Long-Form Content Means LONG-Form Content
According to the SEMRush State of Content Marketing Report, long-form content of over 3,000 words get 3x more traffic and 4x more shares. They also achieve 3.5x more backlinks than articles of standard 500-1500 word length.
Long-Form Content Action Items:
Want your pet store to rank higher in search rankings?
Start developing longer content while maintaining your quality and properly organizing your content.
Focus on those EAT principles of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
Use your various H1, H2, H3, headings, and subheadings to make content more scannable and structured. Because scannable for humans equals scannable for bots, in the form of snippets!
Google Will Continue to Promote Snippets
Snippets show a brief piece of information that you can find on a webpage and are a great way to rise quickly up the rankings on Google. Rich snippets include images, reviews, product prices, and other metadata. Structuring your data and content makes it easier for Google’s bots to create these snippets.
The only drawback for this is that, while you can rise in authority and rankings, it can actually decrease your click conversion because users think they get all they need right there on the search engine results page (zero-click). You can mitigate this by using language that builds curiosity, drives action (clicks), and above all creating relevant content for people that are searching for it!
Snippet Action Items:
On your next pet store SEO article, make sure your data is structured with the proper headings and subheadings!
If you link specific products or shopping links (you should), ensure that the images have the appropriate alt tags.
Video, Youtube, & Google Are Mingling
For those that don’t know, YouTube is owned by Google, and Google, as much as possible these days, wants to keep people on its property (See: snippets and zero-click). They’re like the opposite of a grouchy grandpa on the patio!
Video is going to continue to flood the search engine results page and increasingly overtake long-form content. It’s a trend that is relatively new, so there’s room to grow here and an opportunity to get seen and placed at the top.
Like other parts of pet store SEO, your keywords and your listings are crucial.
Video Marketing Action Items:
Start planning for more video in 2021. Repurpose some of your most popular long-form content like tips, tools, and advice into video content.
Create fun videos that have a purpose! Staff interviews, customer testimonials, product features, educational webinars are all useful and relevant for various customers within the pet industry.
Optimize your video platforms: your YouTube listing should be up to date, crammed with local and non-local keywords, and fill out our channel name and description. Titles, metadata, and video thumbnails are important too! Just look at the above example.
Conclusion
The experience that users have on Google and on your website are the driving factors regarding the top five 2021 SEO trends for pet stores. All of them, from optimized websites to local SEO to pet store video marketing are all geared towards providing the easiest, the most relevant, and the most useful results for users.
It’s increasingly difficult to game the system when it comes to pet store SEO. If you’re looking for a pet store marketing agency to partner with you to do it right, reach out to us for a free marketing audit and introductory call. We’re happy to help and we would love to grow with you next year.
