SEO for Interior Designers: Get Found + Grow Your Design Firm
If you’re ready to boost traffic to your interior design website with organic search engine optimization (SEO) plus get a better understanding of the process, you’re in the right place. As a website designer, I get a lot of questions about SEO for interior designers and how they can use SEO to get found, rank higher in search results, and generate more leads for their firm.
Table of Contents
- 6 Tips from Google to Optimize Your Site for Search Engines
- Tools to Measure Your SEO Performance
- 6 Steps to Take Today to Help Your SEO (as an interior designer)
- How a Copywriter Helps with SEO for Interior Designers
- How a Website Designer Helps with SEO for Interior Designers
This article will walk you through the basics of SEO for interior designers, what Google looks for in a website and how I create a strong SEO foundation for my clients as their web designer.
I also get a lot of questions about “what I think” about the past SEO advice they’ve received. This one hurts my heart a little due to the fact that the must-do advice they’ve received is usually outdated and could hurt rather than help their design business.
Search engine optimization SEO is an intricate strategy to help your website get found by the right people. It’s one small piece of the puzzle in growing your interior design business. Unfortunately, there is a lot of bad advice that clients have been told will make or break their chances of having great SEO… usually at the expense of their website user experience or website design.
I’m here to bust those dated SEO myths and provide you with solid, simple-to-understand facts about SEO for interior designers.
To ensure this article has the most up-to-date information I’ve leaned heavily on the resources found on Google Search Central (formerly Google Webmasters), a website dedicated to helping you get your website on Google Search and help the right people find your website.
Fun Fact: As of January 2022, 91.9% of the world’s online searches were done via Google.
6 Tips from Google to Optimize Your Site for Search Engines:
Taken straight from Google’s Documentation on SEO, they’re clear and straightforward on how you help Google understand your site and help the right people find it via their search engine. Here is their list with a few summarized points:
- Be descriptive. Make sure each page and page title is clearly described.
- Be complete. Make sure it’s easy to understand what you offer.
- Be topical. Make sure your content is on topic for that page and your website as a whole.
- Keep your site up to date. Make sure the information on your website is relevant and up to date.
- Use text. Pictures are beautiful but Google needs text, too. Use thoughtful text throughout your website alongside your visuals.
- Get referrals. Leverage press features, industry collaborations, social media, and link/refer back to your website.
Once you’ve got the basics down, you’ll want to start measuring your performance.
How to Measure Your SEO Performance
Aside from nailing the basics mentioned above, one of the best things you can do to improve your SEO is to measure your performance. Knowing how your website is currently performing will allow you to know what steps to take to improve your performance. It will also help you track if the SEO efforts you put into play are paying off.
Using Google Search Console will allow you to measure your website traffic and search queries and highlight issues you may need to fix.
Using Google Analytics will allow you to track and report on your website traffic, including where your traffic is coming from, what pages are frequently visited, website visitors demographics, and more.
Combining Google Search Console with Google Analytics is important to get a full picture of your SEO performance.
Ubersuggest is another tool I use in my own business to simplify my Google Analytics and Google Search Console results. It also provides excellent keyword suggestions.
6 Steps to Take Today to Help Your SEO (as an interior designer)
Hiring the right website copywriter and website designer is key in ensuring your website is strategically optimized for SEO. But there are also some key steps you should be taking as a business owner.
Step 1: Create a free Business Profile on Google
This will help potential clients in your area find you quickly. Click here to set up your business profile on Google. Be sure to add your essential information, like operating hours, key services, service areas, website address, logo, project photos, and more.
Step 2: Ask clients to leave a Google Review
Once your Google profile is set up, reach out to your past clients and ask them to leave you a review. Once you receive a review, be sure to respond as the business owner.
Step 3: Update your Social Media Profiles.
On every social media profile, you own, utilize their profiles to the fullest extent. Fill in your about section, bio, website address, service areas, and more. This will help round out your digital presence and help Google better understand your business. Don’t forget the information consistent, too. Copy+paste is your friend here.
Step 4: Ask clients to leave a review on social media.
When asking for reviews, I’d start with asking clients for a Google review. But reviews on social media can be just as powerful. The strategy here is to get as many people talking about your business in as many places as possible… leading them all back to your website.
Step 5: Familiarize yourself with and lean on keywords.
A keyword or keyword phrase is simply a word or phrase is used to summarize the topic of a page on your website. Let’s say you live and serve the Loudoun County, Virginia area. A keyword you’d want to use would be something like “Loudoun County interior designers”.
When thinking of keywords, think about what you want to show up for on Google. What are your ideal clients searching for that brings them to your website? Pairing your location with your services is a great start. Then you’ll want to use those keywords throughout the page in the headings, paragraphs and even image files.
Step 6: Hire the right support team.
You started your design firm to design, not get lost in the world of SEO. Hiring the right people to support your business in areas like this is key. Start with a copywriter who is skilled in SEO for interior designers. They will do keyword research for you and implement it into your website copy. Then a website designer (who is also skilled in SEO for interior designers) can take those words and turn them into a beautifully designed (and optimized) website.
Remember, SEO is a long-term strategy. When you’re ready to start a blog, have your copywriter write the posts and your website designer publish them. When you’re ready to upgrade your portfolio, have your copywriter write the content and your website designer add them to your site.
Next up, I’ve included a few key points on how a copywriter and website designer can and should help you with your SEO.
How a Copywriter Helps with SEO for Interior Designers
A copywriter is someone who writes the words on your website. They have the innate ability to get to the core of your brand and write copy that connects and converts your ideal clients. A great copywriter will also have SEO knowledge to help your website get found by the right people on Google.
I asked Katie Boyce, a skilled copywriter for interior designers, for her take on SEO for interior designers. Here’s what she had to say:
No matter how stunning your portfolio is, Google traffic is driven largely by text. This means, there are a lot of opportunities to optimize your website words to perform better in search results.
Here are 3 key SEO tips from copywriter, Katie Boyce:
1. State the Obvious
Location keywords are incredibly important for service-based industries, both for Google and your website readers. They want to know what you do and where you’re located, so make sure this info lives somewhere obvious on your site.
2. Don’t Make Assumptions
I start every client consultation by saying, “Explain your business like you’re talking to my 5-year-old, Isla”. This helps break through some of the industry jargon we often use. It also ensures you don’t make assumptions about what your readers already know.
Often, we’re so close to our own businesses, we leave out important details that really set us apart in the industry. A copywriter can help you zoom out to get a clearer picture of your unique skills and offerings, so you can position them effectively.
3. Know Your Audience
Any good SEO strategy rests on the answer to the question, “Who is your audience?”. Without this information, we can’t make educated guesses about their search habits, and it’s difficult to select effective SEO keywords.
A copywriter will walk you through the process of honing in on your specific target audience so you can tailor your website words specifically for them. This not only helps with conversions, but allows you to guess what they’re typing into Google. Then, you can position your website as the perfect response to their questions.
How a Website Designer Helps with SEO for Interior Designers
A website designer is someone who designs your website. As a brand and website designer for interior designers, I also create my clients’ branding (logo design, color palette, typography, etc.) and develop their website on WordPress. I blend beautiful designs with effortless tech that’s SEO-friendly.
Since building my first website in 2011, following SEO best practices has become second nature. Here are a few of the key components I implement for new clients when building their website:
Simplifies the user experience (UX).
The websites I build focus on helping your target audience get the information they need in order to take the action we want them to take. A great user experience is when your website visitors’ experience is smooth and effortless.
Creates a clear site structure.
Before diving in, I’ll outline the pages on your website and ensure they’re organized in a clear and strategic structure. We’ll make this evident with a clear navigation menu and calls to action throughout.
Keeps it mobile-friendly.
The websites I create are designed strategically for desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. Nowadays, it’s an absolute must to have a mobile-friendly website.
Uses clean URL structures.
Every website page is assigned a unique URL permalink. For instance, my about page is katieobrien.com/about which is a great example of a clean URL structure. Learn more about SEO Friendly URLs here.
Uses proper hierarchy for headings.
Headings (or H1, H2, H3, etc) help organize the content on a website. This is helpful for the user experience but it’s also essential for Google to know how to read the content on your website pages.
Optimizes images for SEO.
Before uploading images to a website, I ensure they’re the right size and format. If keywords are provided, I then rename the image files utilizing keyword phrases. After uploading them to the website, I create descriptive ALT tags. Read more about how to optimize images for SEO.
Checks page speed.
Using PageSpeed Insights, I run a performance analysis report which will highlight opportunities to improve the load time of each page.
Installs Yoast SEO plugin.
Yoast SEO is a search engine optimization plug-in for WordPress websites. This plugin helps your site meet the technical SEO standard but also provides great insights and suggestions to optimize your content for SEO.
Creates redirects where needed.
When a client already has an existing website but the site structure and/or pages are changing, there are likely going to be URL changes made. Rather than these old links dumping into a 404 page, it’s important to set up the proper redirects to the new, relevant page(s).
Implements technical SEO strategies.
Ensuring that my clients use a great website host, has an SSL certificate, sitemap, and great cache tool are just a few technical SEO best practices implemented.
Set up Google Analytics & Google Search Console.
Last but not least, I link my clients’ Google Analytics account to their new website so they can track their website traffic, search queries, and more.
Once you have a strong foundational website in place, you’ll want to move your focus on adding regular, relevant content to your website and then promoting that content through social media and email marketing.
For interior designers, this content will most likely come in the form of a blog and blog posts and/or your portfolio and project pages.
My best advice is to pair up with a skilled copywriter and website designer so you can focus on what you do best. If you’d like to discuss an SEO-friendly website for your business, click here to get in touch.
Question on SEO for interior designers? Pop them below!
