SEO… the copywriting buzzword of the decade. What the hell is it, anyway? Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of making your website rank well on search engines like Google and Bing. 

SEO & Keyword Research Basics For Wedding Pros

Here’s how SEO works: when an engaged couple types in “wedding dj near me” into a search engine like Google, a page of results will pop up. Which lucky DJ shows up in the No. 1 spot, and why? The DJ with the best SEO ranking. Admittedly, it’s a bit complicated and there’s definitely some tech magic happening behind the scenes, but a good part of SEO has to do with your on-page content, A.K.A. the words on your website. 

Search engines learn what your website is about by crawling, or reading, your content. When someone types in a question that’s relevant to what you’ve written about on your wedding business website, Google thinks, “Oh! I’ve got the perfect website for them!” and serves your site in the results. A key part of Google’s matchmaking process comes from keywords — words or phrases on your website that engaged couples are looking for. This is why having a well-written website is so important for the success of your business. 

Keyword research requires a good bit of skill and some pretty fancy tools to do well — I should know, I spent two years running the content department at an SEO agency. But as a wedding florist or honeymoon travel planner, I’m guessing you don’t have tons of free time to learn SEO on your own. This is why if you hire a wedding website copywriter who is worth their salt (ahem, like moi) they’ll include keyword research in the work they do for you. 

Google Trends: The Free SEO Tool Every Wedding Vendor Should Use

Still, there’s plenty the novice wedding pro can do to improve their SEO on a budget. One of my favorite, user-friendly and totally free SEO keyword research tools is Google Trends. 

Google Trends has two features that are incredibly helpful for wedding businesses: you can see regional and seasonality trends for a single term, and you can compare several terms to see which is most popular. 

Google Trends & Seasonality

The wedding industry is seasonal, and using Google Trends can back up many of your assumptions about when to sell or advertise or write about a product or service. Let’s say you want to blog about how to plan a bachelorette party, but aren’t sure when to publish the post. Google Trends shows that U.S. bridesmaids are searching for “how to plan a bachelorette party” in late December, January and June. This data confirms logic: if spring and fall are popular times to get married in the United States, and most people host a bachelorette party a few months before the wedding, it makes sense that American bridesmaids are searching for tips in the winter and summer. 

Google Trends & Keyword Comparison

The comparison tool is also incredibly useful if you’re unsure what term to use when naming your wedding business or writing your website. For example, if you’re unsure whether to call yourself a wedding planner or an event planner, pop it into Google Trends first and you’ll notice that most people are searching for wedding planners over event planners who specialize in weddings. 

Get A Free SEO Review

I want to know — does this information make you feel more empowered to do some of your own keyword research, or more insecure? No shame in either answer — I’m here for ya! If you’re feeling empowered to tackle Google Trends on your own but want a pro to double-check your work, or if you’re feeling totally overwhelmed and want a pro to give you some suggestions, I’d love to help. Hit my inbox.