SEO - Search Engine Optimization.... I need help.

Who is hosting your site? I use Wix and they have SEO tools built into their interface. Other than that, google is your friend.........

what's your site

djtaso said:

what's your site

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I would love to see the site too.

What kind of audience do you want to attract... weddings... anybody at all that needs a dj... what's your sites purpose. It can't be everything.

LittleTreeGuy said:

I think I should focus my website more to wedding gigs. The rest of the gigs in my small town I feel like I'm doing well managing with social media and word of mouth, along with some in-person meetings with local organizations that need a DJ from time to time. (Again, my town is small, so this is doable for me).

In short - I'm constantly working to scour Facebook for wedding related groups that I can advertise on and keep an eye on, but my main goal is to be searchable/findable by those folks not in my town, but within an hour or two... without having to pay hundreds of dollars a month for The Knot / Wedding Wire. Maybe that's not a realistic expectation, I'm not sure... but that's what I'm shooting for.

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The problem starts with your homepage honestly (by the way... get rid of the music lol.. no one wants to be at work, checking your site, and music blasts). The reason I say your homepage is because none of the text on there has the most crucial keywords... your name... your dj company... the word dj... the location you're at... and what you specialize in. SEO analyzes all of that so that you're relevant to what people are searching for. I had to go to your about to find out where you're from/based out of... and even that I had to search for amongst all the text. I'd condense the categories on the header and just keep home, weddings, private/corporate events, contact us, client login, reviews. Your about should be integrated on your home page in some form, as well as on your wedding page.

You simply need more text and subject lines. That's a starting point. You then need more photos relevant to the events you do and tag them with keywords in the descriptions. Lastly, get a facebook page, a youtube page, and most importantly, a google business page, and link everything together. Google likes those, especially the business page. I literally searched dj forbes waynesburg pa and you didn't come up... this is likely to the fact that aside from your site not having the info I searched for... there's no business profile that exists, which is the first thing google will analyze when providing recommendations.

I don't pay anything for SEO, marketing, wedding sites, lead generating sites etc... and while 90% of my business is word of mouth, I still get a healthy amount of online leads. I found most online leads are either searching new jersey wedding dj (where I somehow are top 2 pages in the whole state), or they search venue + dj to find dj's that have been at the venue before. Because of all my videos, this helps me pop up a lot.

If I were you, I'd drop everything except the weddings. Advertising $75/hr is going to get you nothing but trouble. Also, on weddings, do you provide ceremony sound? Is it an extra charge for another system?

Jeff Romard said:

In smaller markets you need to be the Mr Everything most of the time if you want to work a lot of dates.

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I don't disagree with you. I was just asking him what his goal of the site was. His response indicated he has no issue attracting the smaller community/private events. From there, I laid out a game plan of how the site can best be used to attract the wedding inquiries.

This is similar to me, and how I'm a greek dj... but don't need my site to serve the purpose of attracting the greek clientele in my area. The tri-state greek community already knows who I am for the most part... hence while other greek dj's are literally labeling themselves as greek dj's and plastering it all over their site (thus alienating potential non-greek clients), my site makes no mention about being a greek dj (except in only one spot, so I do show up somewhat for the online searches). If I wanted to grow further in the greek events, I would for certain be emphasizing that further.

To take it one step further... I've now removed sweet 16's from my site (or at least hidden the section from the site). My goal is to solely market to weddings. I've been labeled a sweet 16 dj for a long time... but I'm trying to change that perception. In fact 80% of my events for 2022 and and 85% for 2023 are weddings. I don't need to attract anymore sweet 16's than I do already, and therefore my site has fulfilled it's purpose in the sweet 16 world, and now time to phase them out.

I'm far from an expert on SEO, but essentially Google is just trying to predict the most relevant results for people. To be the most relevant result, you've got to be the likely thing they are looking for.

Is it possible that you start ranking organically for "DJ" in your area? Certainly possible, but I think you will get much better results from treating your marketing effort like hand to hand combat. The likelihood of you convincing Google to show your page over something like WeddingWire or The Knot's DJ pages when someone types "Wedding DJ Waynesburg PA" is low. It is literally their business to rank high on stuff like that. Can you do better? Sure, but it's a matter of effort for return.

I'd pick an event or two where you can go and introduce yourself and hand out some business cards. Go to a chamber of commerce event, a BNI group, if you can find something industry related that's even better. But most wedding industry networking is going to happen after the busy season which if your area is anything like mine is right now. So I tend to see wedding vendor networking take place in January - March.

Make sure you're on instagram, weddings are a visual business. Follow wedding planners in your area. Like the stuff they are posting, and comment from time to time. See who they are following and follow them too. Most planners tag all the vendors at the events they do. Make sure you're posting some wedding related content on your own insta and hope they follow you back. If they do send a quick note like "Hope you're having a great season, I'd love to catch up for a coffee when the rush dies down." - They don't know if you're busy or not, look busy!

As a side project you're limited on time, I know that. But you'll have way better luck driving traffic to your site through those initiatives rather than hoping Google will give you a boost as a small business.

I agree with Taso's comments about your site as well, there is some room for improvement there. But even if your site isn't the best one out there, if people have met you, interacted with you, like you... you'll keep driving results.