Search Engine Optimization is a Blankety-Blank and it’s nowhere near as fun as dancing. That’s why we are giving you seven tips to make it easy.

1) Your Website

Your website needs to be optimized so that search engines find you. Your web developer should: make sure the titles of your articles/class names have H1 tags. In addition, you should easily be able to add Titles, Keywords, and Descriptions to all your pages in a little box called SEO. Most content management systems, WordPress or Drupal have that. I don’t know about free web builders like WIX.

2) Content is King

But only if you write it in the correct format and make sure that you can put keywords in the article. You need to have about 300 or 400 words to make an impact and mention that keyword about 6 times. Can’t think of what to write? Have a blog contest at your studio asking students to tell you why they love to dance at your studio!

3) Social Media

Social media doesn’t necessarily affect your rank but sometimes the social media interfaces get found more quickly than your website. The ones you must have a profile on include: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Make sure your website has share tools because getting people to share your content from your website to their profiles creates what is called “links” to your website. This helps search engines find you.

4) Create Videos and Post them to your YouTube account. 

Google loves YouTube. Why? Because they own it! Properly tagging your YouTube videos (i.e. in the title say, “Diane’s Academy of Dance, Stamford, Connecticut) and then have your Website Name and telephone number in the description makes it much easier for your videos to come up when people are searching for dance studios in your area.

5) Directories

Make sure you claim your listing in:

  1. Google Places
  2. Yelp
  3. Manta – You can post blogs here
  4. Yellow Pages
  5. Local.com
  6. Superpages
  7. City Search
  8. Patch – You can post blogs here
  9. Merchant Circle
  10. Map Quest

6: Get a site map

Your web developer can make sure that all your pages are automatically submitted to Google.

7: Spend a few $$ on Google AdWords Express

Some studios say AdWords Express works great, others don’t see a difference. Ad words Express is Google’s paid way to get to the top of your page. It is worth a try for $100/month. What do you have to lose but a Google Ranking?