I started this blog for 2 reasons. One was to return to writing, something I’d loved when I was younger, naive, had lots of free time even though I didn’t realize I had lots of free time. I’d dreamed of writing a fabulous memoir of my life, something that obviously is going to be compelling as a completely boring, thoroughly average 20-something that’s hardly had any actual experiences to speak of. Sure.
The other reason I started this little foray into writing was to boost the SEO for my fiancée’s new business venture, a golf simulator bar. It wasn’t showing up online, we weren’t getting any customers, and we were getting hounded left and right by SEO agencies, each one somehow sounding shadier than the last. He almost took the bait and signed with the first one we spoke with for a $200/month fee (a large discount only available if we agreed immediately) that I felt we just couldn’t justify when we didn’t really understand what they were even going to do for us.
I may have made the right decision to push back against that spending.
Instead of blowing our budget on one of the many SEO agencies or fraudsters that contacted us, I researched. One of the best skills I gained from my education was how to find information quickly. I dug into google search on every sales call as soon as I heard a word or phrase that sounded new to me, and gobbled up as much data as my brain was able to process. SEO, backlinks, GBP, authority, rankings, everything. I started up on reddit and reviewed people’s local SEO questions to grab onto every kernel of insight that might help. For about 2 weeks I dedicated a full-time job’s worth of my time toward improving our website’s search rankings in the hope that we’d see some measurable improvement in foot traffic and sales.
So what have I learned about SEO? It still doesn’t feel like that much. Search engine optimization is a process to improve how a website shows up online in search engines like Google, in the hopes that improving your search ranking and visibility translates to revenue. Speed, relevance to a search topic, and authority are the biggest drivers of this. And none of this is all that opaque, though it also can be surprisingly simple to work through if you’re suffering from ADHD, undiagnosed Autism, and an absurd aversion to spending your money. It just may take an alarming amount of time, effort, and energy.
First one I mentioned was speed. We’re using Square for our website. I’m not a developer or coder, I don’t think I can do much to address speed, other than hope Square’s up and running. I would just have to assume this was going to be ok.
Next up, relevance to a search topic. This is where I dedicated my first efforts. Alt text, keywords, and backlinks in the most general sense are really big at making your website more relevant, and without spending money on someone helping us, it was up to me to figure out how to improve all of this. Our website was pretty basic. It’s a golf simulator bar with a mahjong room. Why would we need a complex website? We had a Google Business Profile, was it really important to do much else? Wouldn’t we just show up when people searched us? I’d put the most important stuff on our website, we had a Facebook, surely that was fine?
No. Nothing was fine.
We were hearing from the few customers we had that weren’t our family and friends that they couldn’t find us online. When we tried to search for golf near us, not just our actual business name, we quickly saw that we were invisible.
First up was fixing our Google Business Profile. Logging in, adjusting the name of our business from the most basic, generic version, to one that included a description of what we were, a golf simulator bar. Filling in every blank, every optional section, making sure that our socials were listed, adding photos. Making sure our description and business categories included golf and bar. Updating our service area to include every adjacent city.
Then it was the reviews. We knew we needed to have plenty of positive customer interactions that were documented by reviews from those customers. We asked people if they’d be willing to write us a review. And then we replied to everyone that left any kind of comments. That activity reinforces that there’s activity, the business is open and we’re paying attention.
One of the weirder ones is adding posts to your GBP. It’s like a little status update on your official Google listing. Strange, but another indicator of life, a sign of activity letting Google know you’re alive and well and responsive.
Updating the website itself was also critical. The website needed more golf-centered content, more explanation for where this business was physically situated. Luckily, Square makes updating a website for SEO pretty simple, with the ability to just add alt-text and even an entire section in their dashboard for SEO basics.
We needed content and backlinks to improve our authority. We needed to be present and interesting when people near us were asking about golfing, particularly anyone asking about golf simulators.
I encouraged my fiancée to make sure to link to one of our pages every time he posted on socials. I got us listed on Yelp, added a Groupon, started reaching out to every golf-centered aggregator to try to get us added. Updated Bing, updated Apple. I started this blog, I added Stories to our website. I started replying to relevant questions on Reddit, Quora, and Facebook in a way that I could include our link and make it make sense. Someone wondering where to golf on a rainy day? I know a place, here’s a link. Someone asking about a mahjong class? I’m hosting one soon, here’s a link.
Then I learned about location landing pages. We have one location, why would this be a helpful thing to have location landing pages? Well, we are a niche product that serves a wide geographic area, and the people in various areas around us may have different, particular interests that would draw them into our golf simulator bar. If I were to add home pages for a few of the larger nearby areas around us, with content that resonated with those specific people, that may help them to find us. I started with our own city, built a little landing page that explained we were residents and our kids were involved in high school sports, and that we wanted to welcome local student athletes in particular to golf with us when they weren’t able to get a tee time to practice. I’m hoping to see some of those students soon so I can get a picture of them to update that landing page and further promote it.
So what has all this done, aside from push my stress level beyond the breaking point toward clinical anxiety?
We’re not invisible. Everyone that I’ve asked to search us out online, not by name, but by a general description of what we do and where we might be, has found us now. Number 1 on the golf simulator for our city, number 3 for the neighboring one, number 7 for just golf in general, beating out a traditional golf course. We weren’t even on the 10th page of search before, and all it took was sacrificing my sanity.
All I can do now is keep working at our SEO, take a chill pill, and book a therapy appointment. I can’t force customers through the door, but I can feel better that I’m going what I’m able to at least help them to know we exist. And we didn’t have to fork out $25k to do it.
-Farah
Tiles and Golf and Dogs 
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