Search engines are designed to help users find what they are looking for quickly and efficiently. The same is true for individuals looking for RV and boat storage facilities. A robust online presence is a valuable source for your business to gain new customers. One of the best ways to increase your visibility is through search engine optimization (SEO), which is the process of improving your website, so you show up higher in the organic listings. In this article, we’ll go through some of the most crucial SEO areas to ensure your storage facility isn’t buried on the second page of Google.
1. Review Your On-Page Content
On-page content is the most crucial aspect of your SEO strategy; page content defines the page. Google uses this content to determine what searches your page should show up on for a specific search term.
What counts as good content?
Good content makes it clear to search engines what the page’s topic is and gives users exactly what they are looking to find. These two objectives align closely, meaning all of the following points are helpful content for both users and search engines.
Using a boat storage facility as an example, here are some of the things you would expect to have listed on your facility’s location page:
- The name, address, and phone number of the boat storage facility
- A map and directions to get to your facility from nearby locations
- Information clearly explaining you’re a boat storage facility, including details on the types of boats that can be stored
- Key features and benefits, e.g., indoor/outdoor boat storage, 24/7 CCTV monitoring
- Reviews
- Photos
All of these may seem obvious, but you would be surprised how often the basics are overlooked.
2. Improve User Experience
There are many user experience factors that also have an impact on how well your site will perform in search results. These are less about the page’s content and more about giving users an enjoyable/safe/friendly experience on your site.
Google favors sites that provide a better user experience, so there’s much overlap between what helps you rank and what creates a good user experience.
Below are some examples of the most common factors that will affect your rankings on Google:
- How mobile-friendly it is (responsive)
- How secure it is (HTTPS/SSL)
- How safe it is (no malware)
- How fast it is (load speed)
- How efficient it is (page element loading)
One of the best ways to get a quick overview of this area’s performance is to use Google’s PageSpeed insights tool. It is free to run an audit of your page and see some of the issues that may be affecting your performance.
These are all things you should be doing to improve your site’s experience for your users. However, with search engines using these signals as ranking factors, there’s even more of an incentive to improve your site’s user experience.
3. Build Quality Links
Backlinks are likely what comes to mind for most people when they think of SEO. After the on-page content, links are possibly the next most important ranking factor.
A link (or backlink) is when another site links to your website. Google uses these links to help work out how important your content is.
There are two aspects to consider here:
- The number of links to your site or a particular page
- The quality of those links
Number of Links
This is relatively self-explanatory. All else being equal, having some links is better than having no links. The more quality links you have, the better. Which leads to their quality.
Quality of Links
Another way to think about the quality of a link is to think to yourself, “How hard would it be for another site to get this same link?”
There are many ways you can get lots of links quickly. For example, hundreds of directory sites out there will link to any site for free, without any verification or extra hoops to jump through. However, these links have a low value in Google’s equation.
Getting your RV and boat storage facility mentioned by the local press is more challenging, but doing so will make the link more valuable and a more prominent ranking factor.
Building quality links is one of the key ways to improve your website’s performance in the search results.
4. Optimize Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
These are aspects of your page that are almost entirely for search engines. Most users won’t see them when they’re on your site.
Users will only see this information in the search results. The ‘page title’ is usually displayed as the main blue link, and the ‘meta description’ is shown as the text underneath.
Google will sometimes change your page title and often create a meta description to make them more relevant to a user’s query.
Your page title affects your rankings and should be highly relevant to the searches you’re targeting. In the image above, the page is trying to rank for “Cheap RV storage in Palo Alto” and related terms.
Meta descriptions don’t affect rankings, but users read them and often decide whether to visit your page based on the content contained here, so they should be relevant and enticing.
5. Review Your Site Structure
How your site is structured impacts how search engines understand your page’s content and which pages are essential to reveal to users.
If you own multiple RV and boat storage facilities in multiple locations, the way the site is laid out should be made clear. Your approach to this will depend on how many facilities or services you have.
Here’s an example of how Public Storage structures its locations.
You can see they layout their site in an easy to understand the structure:
Locations / Country / State / City / Storage Facility Page
If you have multiple pages related to self-storage, you would want these pages to be part of your site’s Self Storage section.
For example, consider the following URL www.site.com/self-storage/storage-unit-sizes.
Making it clear to users and search engines that these pages are children of the main Self Storage page is critical.
Taking this approach will help users and search engines understand your site better and, as a result, should improve your performance in the search results.
Summary
So there we have a breakdown of some of the most important areas to review to improve your storage facility’s search engine performance.
SEO is constantly evolving, and it’s essential to stay up to date with the latest changes. Ultimately, the search engines want to provide the best solution to the user’s query, so you should be focusing on providing the best content and user experience possible.
