50 SEO Tips For Vancouver

Marketing your business in Vancouver? You need SEO. So many businesses have transitioned to offering product delivery through web portals, and most people use Google as their primary vehicle for finding the products and services they need.

 

What’s more, Vancouver is a big place. Using SEO allows you to target audiences who are actively looking for your products and services, as well as the people who are near your business. This targeted approach can allow you to cut through the noise most Vancouverites are exposed to every day. 

 

So what is SEO? It’s search engine optimization, a set of tactics forming a holistic strategy that will boost your presence on Google and other search engines, all while improving your online presence in general. 

 

We’re going to look at 50 ways to boost your rank. Every action you take online can affect your SEO, so these tips will range from must-dos for great SEO, to ways you can improve your social media presence. It all comes back to one thing – getting you highly-qualified leads.

 

For ease of use, we’ve grouped these tips into nine categories. Each category will begin with a brief description of why that category is important to SEO:

 

The Basics

 

The basics are the fundamental activities you must take to ensure you’ve maximized your ability to rank well. Some take time, others take money, and while the first tip is absolutely free, taking all of these steps will vastly improve your chances of ranking, and we encourage you to do everything listed.

 

• Claim and Optimize Your GMB

 

Google My Business (GMB) is Google’s business directory. Bing has a similar directory (called Bing Places) – we mention it here because it’s also free to set up, but it’s certainly not as essential as GMB.

 

We have a comprehensive guide to claiming and optimizing your GMB in Vancouver. Here’s a quick synopsis: 

 

1. Claim your Google My Business.
2. Add professional quality photos.
3. Choose the right business category (look at what your competitors are doing if you aren’t sure).
4. Answer Q&As and Reviews, and make use of GMB Posts.

 

• Be Mobile Friendly

 

The future is here, and it’s mobile. Your site should be designed to reflect this – you want to load quickly on mobile devices. You’ll also want to make sure any forms on your website have as few fields as possible – you know as well as we do how painful it is to type using a phone.

 

• Update Regularly

 

This last tip may be the most important thing in all of SEO – so important, in fact, that the next section will be focused on the kinds of updates you can do.

 

Search engines want to be sure that your business is still active, and that your website is providing content their clients will find useful. The only way to accomplish both of these things is to continuously update your website with relevant content.

Content

 

Content is everything on your website, from product pages to blog posts. Content serves many different purposes, from telling search engines (and users) where in Vancouver you’re located, to providing you a wider array of keywords you’ll be able to rank for.

 

• Do Keyword Research

 

Of course, if SEO is all about ranking for relevant search terms, it’s essential to find which terms you actually want to rank for. There’s a specific type of SEO called “Local SEO”, which helps your business rank for terms like “seafood restaurant Vancouver” or “plumbers near me”.

 

One of the interesting things about SEO is that while you’ll want to rank for those keywords, they may not be the keywords you target initially. Keywords have two important qualities to consider: how often they’re searched for, and how hard it is to rank for the keyword.

 

Optimally, your keyword research will reveal keywords that have high monthly searches but low competition. As you can imagine, those keywords are rare. Brainstorm a number of keywords that are relevant to your business and to the City of Vancouver, and use keyword research tools to find the best ones to try to rank for. 

 

• Blog Constantly

 

Blogs serve a number of roles in an SEO strategy:

 

• They add content that users want to read to your website.
• They target keywords.
• They let search engines know what your site is about.
• They’re an easy way to update content on your website.

 

Queries are questions users want answers to, be they the directions to a specific location or who the best electrician in Burnaby is. Your blogs can serve to answer those questions – and you can easily tie a CTA (call-to-action) into all of your blogs.

 

What’s more, users who spend time reading your blogs are more likely to stay on your website longer – a good signal to search engines that your website is relevant to what they’re searching for.

 

• Make Location Pages

 

The Tri-Cities are a defining trait of Metro Vancouver. There are a lot of businesses in Vancouver who sell to people in the Tri-Cities, and a lot of businesses in the Tri-Cities who sell to the rest of Vancouver.

 

The point is, most businesses want to show up for searches like “HVAC technician in North Vancouver” as much as they want to show up for “air condition repair in Port Coquitlam”. Creating landing pages for searches in those areas can help search engines understand that you do business in those places and help users in those areas find your business.

 

• Optimize Your Existing Content

 

While a lot of SEO is focused on creating and developing new content, it’s important to go back and optimize your existing content. Many of the tips you’re going to see here can easily be applied to pages you’ve already created.

 

• Focus on Headlines

 

Good headlines (and page titles) serve two purposes: they entice users to click on the link, and they let search engines know what your content is about. You want keywords in your headlines, but not too many – keyword stuffing can net you a penalty, and it certainly won’t net you any clicks. Keep keywords toward the front of the headline.

 

• Use Images

 

Images can be optimized for SEO (more on that later). They also attract the eye. Well-used images can serve to keep users on your page, break up walls of text, create emotional reactions, and highlight points you want to emphasize.

 

• Write Like a Human

 

You are a human, so that should be no problem, right? (Looking at you Web crawlers.) 

 

Seriously, what this really means is don’t focus on keyword stuffing, don’t copy-paste other people’s text, and don’t fill your articles with buzzwords and nonsense. Keeping things interesting and useful keeps users on your site and leaves you with articles that are more semantically-relevant to the terms you’re trying to rank for.

 

• Look to Other Businesses

 

When you find keywords you want to rank for, you’ll inevitably find content that’s ranking well for those keywords. One of the easiest ways to rank for those keywords is to create content that’s similar to what other businesses are putting out, but better.

 

By similar, I mean in style – if a how-to list is ranking well, you should probably make a how-to list, and if there’s video content ranking, videos might be the way to go. You know what better means.

 

• Stay Plugged In

 

Which keywords are relevant can shift pretty rapidly, so it’s important to stay on top of things. Tune into industry and local news, and do keyword research routinely. You should also monitor how well your site is ranking, and watch for changes in Google’s algorithm.

 

Navigation

 

These are the things – from how your site is laid out to how quickly things load – that make it easier for users and search engines to navigate your website.

 

• Use Descriptive URLs

 

Your URLs should always describe the page a user is on. Often, your URLs will simply be yourwebsite.com/page-title. Location pages might be formatted as yourwebsite.com/richmond or yourwebsite.com/fairview. 

 

Writing your URLs like this makes the reader’s experience more consistent, allows you to use keywords in your URL, and helps in situations when links are shared unformatted on social media.

 

• Optimize Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

 

Title tags tell search engines (and many social media sites) what to display as the clickable headline of a result. Meta descriptions tell them what to display below that headline.

 

Your title tag will often be exactly the same as your page (and URL) title. Your meta description should be a brief summary of the content you’re presenting.

 

This accomplishes a couple of things. You can think of your title and meta descriptions as your elevator pitch – it’s the first chance you have to get clients on board, so writing clean and engaging copy increases your click-through rate (CTR).

 

When your title and meta description match the content, you’re also less likely to have users bounce (click on the link to your page and immediately leave). High bounce rates are absolutely lethal to SEO, so doing this is an easy win.

 

• Mind Your Site’s Structure

 

Think of your website like the Metropolis mall – full of useful content, but very big. You want the pages on your website to connect in logical ways. This means no public-facing dead ends – if it’s searchable, it should be connected to other places on your website.

 

You should have a footer on every page that acts as an easy to use navigation bar – many sites employ a banner, too. Text content on your pages should link back to pages you want to rank for, like your home and product pages. You can also create pillar content that links to and from other content on your page.

 

Technical

 

Technical SEO is all the stuff that happens behind the scenes – the things that make your website load quickly or improve security.

 

• Keep it Speedy

 

Honestly, we debated putting this tip in “The Basics”. Slow web pages can increase bounce rate dramatically, and send very negative signals to search engines.

 

Fortunately, Google wants your site to load quickly as well. You can use their PageSpeed Insights tool to find ways you can speed up your website.

 

Keep in mind that two-thirds of Vancouverites have smartphones, so a speedy, mobile friendly site is incredibly important.

 

• Use Structured Data

 

Structured data basically classifies certain elements on your website under certain categories. This allows search engines to better understand what means what on your website, something that can be difficult without structured data. 

 

For example, you can mark an aggregate review score on your page with structured data that classifies it under the category “Reviews”. Search engines may now add that review to the web page’s entry in the search result.

 

Google has a number of results it calls “Rich Results”. These are more visually appealing and/or informative results that tend to see higher CTRs. You can use Google’s Rich Results Test to see whether or not a page is eligible for these results. If it’s not, you can use their Structured Data Markup Helper to improve your structured data and increase your eligibility.

 

• Optimize Images

 

Image optimization warrants its own article – there’s a lot to know. You want your images to be responsive, you need alt-text, and you need captions. Rather than describe all of these things here, we simply want to point your attention to the fact that you can and should optimize your images for SEO.

 

• Get SSL Certified

 

At one time, SSL Certification could cost you time and money. Nowadays, you can obtain the certificate for free from Let’s Encrypt – just follow the instructions on their page.

 

Having a SSL Certificate can send positive signals to search engines and reduce your bounce rate – it may not affect your ranking dramatically, but it’s easy to do. 

 

Off-Page

 

While you can give your website a massive SEO boost by following the on-page tips we just gave you, some of the biggest ranking factors happen off of your web page. When other websites link to your site, if those sites are well-respected by Google, you can see a huge boost to your SEO.

 

• Build Links

 

The core of any off-page strategy is link building – finding well-respected websites, and getting them to link to yours. These websites should be relevant to your industry and/or your location – preferably both. 

 

Papers like The Province and The Courier are the ultimate authority websites – search engines know they’re constantly updating their site with well-researched, relevant content, so if they link to you, it’s a very good sign.

 

Not everyone can get links from those papers, though – in fact, such link building is notoriously hard. Getting onto blogs like Inside Vancouver can be a bit easier. Have a website you think you can get links from? Use this Authority Checker Tool to get an idea how useful the link might be (the higher the score, the better).

 

• Guest Post

 

You may not always be able to convince other websites to link to you directly – a lot of site owners understand the value of links to SEO, and they may ask you for money for links (which Google says is a big no-no). 

 

You will, however, find websites that are constantly looking for relevant content, and it’s completely acceptable for you to write content for these sites, then include a link to your own site in your bio. As a business owner, you’ll have insights into your industry and Vancouver that most other writers won’t have. This type of off-page SEO is resource-intensive, but it can be very successful.

 

• Skyscraper Content

 

This technique is pretty complex, but it can pay off noticeably. Rather than explain the entire thing to you here, we’ll link you to a very handy article about skyscraper content so you can learn the technique. It’s probably the most resource-intensive of the three link building techniques we’ve gone over so far, but it can be incredibly effective.

 

• Build and Clean NAP Citations

 

Name, address, and phone number (NAP) citations can be found all over the web – they’re references to the most basic information about your business. We have a comprehensive guide to Canadian citation building that we strongly encourage you to check out – it tells you exactly how to verify that your NAP is properly listed across the web. 

 

Cleaning up citations is especially important in Vancouver – some businesses tend to incorrectly list their city (for example, putting “Vancouver” when you’re actually in West Vancouver). That can lead to penalties.

 

Social Media

 

The link between social media and SEO is indirect, but important. When people are actively sharing links to your content on social media, it means more users will stay on your site for longer, which sends positive signals to search engines. The stronger your social media presence is, the more likely your content will be shared and consumed, so it’s an important part of a holistic SEO strategy.

 

• Be Active on Multiple Platforms

 

The first step is simple – don’t just hang out on Facebook. Make accounts on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn – wherever your customers are hanging out.

 

Now, this isn’t to say you need accounts on every platform – not every company needs to hop on the latest TikTok dance craze. You’ll quickly learn which platforms you thrive on – focus on those.

 

• Use Analytics

 

Social media platforms grow by encouraging businesses to post content (and advertise with them). To do this, they all offer free analytics so you can determine what content performs best at what times. Use these analytical tools – they can help you determine what content and platforms to focus on, and map out the growth of your social media presence.

 

• Crosspost Automatically

 

Time is money, and having to go from one platform to the next to post the same content can be cumbersome. If you find you’re constantly posting the same thing from one platform to the next, you can automate the process using IFTTT – all your posts will be made automatically, at the same time, and on whatever platforms you choose.

 

• Caption Your Videos

 

Captioning your videos is important because:

• Many users want captions.
• Search engines can’t understand what’s being said without captions.

 

We’re mentioning this in the social media section because short videos play extremely well on Instagram and other visual platforms. You should also post these videos on YouTube and add them to your site (when appropriate). Closed captions are the key, here – open captions aren’t indexable by search engines.

 

• Use Social Media Buttons

 

This is super easy – Hootsuite has a guide to how you can source social media icons, while ShareThis provides a simple tool to generate buttons that users can click to share your content. Use these buttons on any page you want shared.

 

• Engage in Social Listening

 

Social listening is what we call the act of monitoring how your company is being talked about online. This can help you figure out who is talking about your company, where they live, and what they’re saying – and that data can help guide your content creation and targeting. Hubspot has a guide to some of the social listening tools you can use – this is definitely a task that benefits a lot from automation.

 

• Run Contests

 

Contests are an easy way to increase your followers and up engagement. You can also use them to get people to sign up for email lists and other marketing – all of which can bring more people to your website more often, a boon for SEO. Contests can range from giveaways to discounts – just be sure you’re following the Terms of Service of the platform you’re using.

 

• Engage with Your Fans

 

British Columbians are pretty active on social media (though not as active as some other provinces’ citizens). One of the things that makes social media so attractive is the ability to interact meaningfully with content creators. When Vancouverites post a picture at your business and tag you, put it in your Instagram story! Tag them back if they’re amenable! When you interact with your fans, you can quickly increase engagement.

 

• Collaborate with Influencers

 

When you’re trying to build a following, it can be useful to collaborate with people who already have one. There are a lot of rules governing how influencers can work with you, and different influencers will have different rates. It’s useful to find an influencer who is known in Vancouver and is tied to your industry. DailyHive has a list of 10 Vancouver-based influencers to get you started. Contact them (or their agencies) to figure out how you can collaborate and set rates. Some influencers will even work in exchange for products and services.

 

• Be Active in Local Groups

 

Local groups are very popular on Facebook – groups like Vancouver Buy and Sell Fast. These groups are often fairly well-moderated, so you can’t simply join and spam advertisements. Look for groups that are tied to your industry – if you can’t find any, make one yourself. Be active and helpful, and many moderators will allow you to advertise your own business occasionally, especially if the “advertisement” is just a link to a helpful bit of content you’ve created. Try to follow the 90/10 rule (90% other people’s content, 10% yours).

 

Customer Management

 

Customer management is key to SEO because it helps you ensure your content is properly targeted, which increases the time users will spend on your site, and it reduces bounce rates. It will also increase the number of purchases customers make and decrease abandoned carts – both of which are important for SEO and your bottom line.

 

• Use Customer Lists

 

Customer lists are just that – lists that contain information about your customers. Their name, address, phone number, average spend, number of visits, and other demographic/psychographic information can be kept in these lists. While you could write this information down on a literal list, CRMs are a huge boon for this kind of information. Efficient data gathering is one of the biggest benefits of online marketing, and managing customer data with lists is key to business growth through marketing.

 

• Create Customer Personas

 

Now that you’ve got a list of Vancouverites who use your business, you can create customer personas. These are groupings of customers who interact with your business in similar ways, usually divided into various demographics. You can get some pretty incredible insights from personas – you might find that your best customers tend to be women in their mid-40s who live in Kitsilano. You can then use that information to target your content and social media posts to that persona.

 

• Keep Contact Info Visible

 

There may be nothing in the world that frustrates us more than not being able to find someone’s contact information easily on their website. If you’re not going to do this to benefit your business, make things easier for your clients, and to reduce bounce rates – do it for us. Every single page should have a footer with contact information – think back to those NAP citations. Include your hours of operation, too. Please.

 

• Use “Contact Us” Forms

 

“Contact Us” forms are supremely useful. You can add an option to opt in to mailing lists near the “Contact Us” form, and you can readily assist customers who use it – what’s more, it keeps them on your website, which can send positive signals. 

 

Keep your forms incredibly simple, with as few fields as possible – name, email, and then a space for what they want to contact you about. Remember – mobile friendly is the name of the game.

 

• Create an Incredible “About Us” Page

 

The “About Us” page is the first thing we check on most new websites we visit, and we’re not alone. You should reserve some of your best copy for the “About Us” page – it’s both an elevator pitch for your business and a way to personalize it. “About Us” pages with an “Our Team” section are really useful for local SEO – faces of people who live, play, and work in and around Vancouver send a very positive “we’re a local business!” message.

 

You should also talk briefly about your core values, philosophy, and mission – these things can help you get loyal, repeat customers.

 

• Simplify Buying

 

You should make buying your products as hassle-free as possible – this can reduce the number of abandoned carts, send positive signals to search engines, and (most importantly) increase your sales.

 

Making site navigation simple is a huge part of this – a banner that points to product categories, a filter to narrow down products, and a search function can all help. Allowing customers to create accounts and save payment information for one-click purchasing is also incredibly useful. Between the point someone adds something to their cart and the point they checkout, there should be as few pages as possible.

 

• Manage Customer Carts

 

WordSteam has an excellent article on ways to combat shopping cart abandonment which we highly encourage you to check out. Some of the things they mention fall into simplify buying, and we’ll touch on remarketing in “Online Advertising”, but there’s one tip they don’t mention: send your clients emails when they’ve abandoned their carts to remind them to empty or purchase.

 

• Use Surveys

 

Surveys are an effective way to find out what customers love about your business, and what you can improve. There are free survey websites like SurveyMonkey, but to get the most out of survey providers, you’ll need to pay. The costs are usually quite reasonable, and you can get some pretty useful insights about what Vancouverites want. Consider running a contest tie-in to encourage people to take your surveys – just remember to keep the survey results anonymous.

 

Reputation Management

 

How often do you buy from websites with an aggregate review score of under 3-stars? Almost never? Fancy that – neither do we.

 

Review signals – the quantity, frequency, and types of reviews you’re getting – are a very important ranking factor. As you can imagine, you want these reviews to be positive – while a low review score may not directly impact your ranking, it certainly decreases the number of people who will visit your website, which in turn, can seriously hurt your rank.

 

• Encourage Your Customers to Review You

 

Increasing the quantity and frequency of reviews is fairly simple – ask your customers to review you. You can do this in a number of different ways – email them once products and services have been received, ask them face-to-face, or via text message. While you can do all of this manually, review management software does it for you – we’ll talk more about that next.

 

• Use Review Management Software

 

Review management software can help you reach a number of different review-related goals. First, these softwares will automatically prompt customers to review you, by text, email, or both. You can write the copy – the customer is then asked to rate your business and (optionally) write a review. 

Review management software can use a number of features to improve your average review score, too. One way of going about this is to direct positive reviews to your GMB, while negative reviews get sent directly to your client services team for review. You’ll also want your review management system to be easy to set up. As it so happens, we offer review management software that does all of the above – check it out!

 

• Respond to Every Review

 

Responding to every review accomplishes a number of goals. First, it shows customers that you really care. Reviews are public, so you’re signalling both to the customer that you’re responding to and potential clients that you’re willing to engage with them. That can encourage more people to leave reviews.

 

Responding to positive reviews makes everyone happy. Responding to negative reviews gives you the opportunity to turn a 1-star rating into a 5-star rating and make things right with the customer. Obviously, you’re not going to turn every negative review around, but the fact that you’re willing to put in the effort can give other potential customers a sense of security. Should something go wrong, they know that you’ll be willing to try to make it right.

 

• Check Multiple Platforms for Reviews

 

Checking GMB-based reviews is pretty standard – you should be checking your GMB every day anyway, so it’s easy to know when you’ve been reviewed. You should be actively monitoring other channels for reviews, too. Yelp and Facebook are two of the most important sites to monitor. There are also industry-dependant websites that can be good to check in on – a restaurant’s reviews on DoorDash, for example, can be a big influence on sales.

 

• Get Testimonials

 

Testimonials are an incredibly effective way to show your potential clients what other clients love about your business. Testimonials tend to be particularly effective for home-based services (plumbers, electricians, and the like)  and B2B companies. While text testimonials are effective, nothing’s better than video testimonials – those are much harder to fake, and they also give a face to a name. Remember, of course, to use closed captions on video testimonials to make them indexable by search engines.

 

Online Advertising

 

Online advertising is tangentially tied to SEO – while some people see them as two separate online marketing strategies, they’re at their best when used together. Online advertising can help you gather demographic and psychographic information to guide your content creation. Perhaps more importantly, it encourages people to visit your website. Not to sound like a broken record, but more visits, longer visits, and more interaction all send positive signals to search engines.

 

• Run Pay-Per-Click Ads

 

PPC ads form the backbone of most online marketing strategies. These are advertisements that run on platforms like Google and Facebook, for which you pay every time someone clicks on the ad. The free analytics provided by those platforms will then give you an idea of how your advertisement is performing, who is clicking on it, and more. 

 

• Optimize Your Landing Pages

 

PPC ads will always be linked to landing pages. You want those landing pages to be as simple as possible. An easily filled form with as few fields as possible (name and email address with nothing else is often best). You should have a hero image/video, and straight-to-the-point copy with a bold CTA.

 

You can have multiple different landing pages for different ads, making only small changes between the landing pages. This is known as multivariate testing – most things stay the same, but one thing gets changed. This can give you an idea of who is responding in what way to which ads, and that can help you improve your marketing and targeting.

 

• Keep Things Consistent

 

Your advertising, landing pages, and website should all follow the same style guides. Imagine clicking on an ad done in greyscale, only to be greeted by bright pink font on a green background – you’d immediately assume you’ve been scammed, or clicked the wrong link. Unless confusion and subverting expectations are a core part of your marketing strategy, keeping colours, images, and text consistent from point to point is key to reducing your bounce rate.

 

• Remarket

 

Remarketing puts cookies to good use – you’ll find which customers have been to your website before, or who have items left in their cart, and then you can send advertisements created to encourage them to return to your site. Most PPC platforms incorporate remarketing automatically – you can read Google’s About Remarketing to learn more. Getting repeat clients isn’t just great for SEO – it’s key to improving your sales.

 

There you have it – 50 tips that will definitely benefit you. Implement all of these tips, and you’re sure to see your rank increase, especially if you hadn’t been doing any of them before.

 

Obviously, doing all of this takes a lot of time and energy – if you can do it all yourself, kudos to you. Of course, you have a business to run, so here’s another tip for you: take advantage of our SEO Vancouver services. We’ve got several free articles to help you boost your ranking in Vancouver, and we know the Metro Van market quite well. Pour over our resources, implement what tips you can, or hire us to handle everything for you.