You can be brilliant at what you do, have happy customers and provide an excellent service, but there is still a fairly important problem if local pet owners cannot find you.
When somebody needs a dog groomer, pet sitter, dog walker or trainer, they will often turn to Google and search for something very specific such as “dog groomer near me”, “dog walker in Bedford” or “pet sitter near St Neots”.
That is where local SEO comes in.
Local SEO, or local search engine optimisation, is about helping search engines understand what your pet business does, where you work and why your business might be relevant to somebody searching in your area.
You do not need to become an SEO expert to improve it. There are several practical things almost any pet business can do.
If you are looking for wider ideas too, have a look at our guide on how to get more clients for your pet business.
One of the easiest SEO mistakes to make is describing your business in the language you use rather than the language your customers use.
You might describe yourself as providing “professional canine coat care”, but your potential customer is probably typing “dog groomer near me”.
A dog trainer might specialise in positive reinforcement and behaviour modification, while the dog owner is searching for “help with reactive dog Northampton”.
Start by thinking about the services people actually need and combine those services with the places you cover.
For example:
You should not force these phrases repeatedly into your website. Instead, use them naturally when explaining what you do and where you provide it.
If you run a local pet business, your Google Business Profile is one of the most important parts of your online presence.
Make sure the information is complete and accurate, including your business name, telephone number, website, opening hours, services and the areas you cover.
Add good quality photographs too. For a pet business, genuine photographs can be particularly powerful. Show your grooming salon, secure dog field, vehicles, premises, team or, where you have permission, some of the animals you work with.
Keep the profile updated rather than creating it once and forgetting about it.
We regularly see pet business websites that explain their services beautifully but make visitors hunt around to discover where the business is actually based.
Your location and service area should be obvious.
If you are a dog groomer in Kettering, say so. If you are a dog walker covering Kimbolton, St Neots and surrounding villages, explain that clearly.
This helps potential customers quickly establish whether you can help them and gives search engines more context about where your business is relevant.
If you cover several genuinely important areas, it can sometimes be worthwhile creating useful individual location pages. These should contain genuinely helpful information rather than simply copying the same page and changing the town name.
Trying to squeeze every service onto one page can make it harder for both customers and search engines to understand what you offer.
Imagine a dog grooming business offering:
If some of these are particularly important services, giving them their own useful sections or pages can create more opportunities to appear when somebody searches specifically for them.
The same applies to pet sitters, walkers, trainers, photographers, pet shops and specialist animal services.
A lovely looking website is useful, but pet owners usually arrive because they need answers.
They may want to know:
Make those answers easy to find.
Your website should also work properly on a mobile phone, load reasonably quickly and make it very obvious how somebody can contact you.
If your current site is difficult to update, looks dated or simply does not represent your business properly anymore, take a look at our pet business web design service.
Trust matters enormously in the pet industry.
People are not simply buying a product. They may be deciding who is going to enter their home, walk their dog, groom their puppy, care for their cat while they are away or help them with a difficult behaviour problem.
Your website should help answer the question: “Can I trust this person with my pet?”
Useful trust signals can include:
Try not to hide the person behind the business. Independent pet businesses often have a major advantage over larger companies because customers can see exactly who they are dealing with.
Your own website should not be the only place your business appears online.
Relevant business directories give potential customers another way to discover you and can also help create a clearer online presence for your business.
SortedPets was created specifically to help pet owners discover pet businesses, services and charities across the UK.
Every business gets a full listing rather than a stripped-down basic listing, including useful business information, photographs, links and details about the services offered.
If your business is not already included, you can add your pet business to SortedPets.
Reviews can be incredibly valuable for a local pet business.
They give somebody who has never met you an insight into what existing customers think, and they can answer questions that your own marketing cannot.
A review saying that you were patient with a nervous dog, reliable while somebody was on holiday or particularly good with an elderly pet can be much more reassuring than simply telling people that you provide excellent service.
Make asking for reviews part of your normal process.
You do not need to pressure customers or ask for a glowing review. Simply make it easy for a happy customer to share their genuine experience.
A blog should not exist simply because somebody once told you that websites need blogs.
The most useful articles answer questions your customers genuinely ask.
A dog groomer could write about:
A pet sitter might answer:
A dog trainer could cover the questions they hear every week from owners.
Useful content gives search engines more information about your expertise, but more importantly, it gives potential customers another reason to find, read and trust your business.
Facebook and Instagram can be excellent ways for pet businesses to stay visible. Animals naturally create great photographs, stories and videos, and social media gives customers a chance to see the personality behind your business.
But your social media account and your website do different jobs.
A social post can disappear down somebody’s feed very quickly. Your website gives people somewhere permanent to learn about your business, your services, your prices, your location and how to contact you.
The strongest approach is usually to let the different parts of your online presence support each other.
If keeping your accounts active is one job too many, we also offer social media management for pet businesses.
Getting onto Google is only half the job.
Imagine someone finds your website after searching for exactly the service you offer.
What happens next?
Can they immediately see that you cover their area? Can they understand your service? Can they see photographs and reviews? Is there a clear telephone number, contact form or booking button?
If somebody has to search around the website to work out what to do next, some will simply go back to Google and choose another business.
SEO should therefore be about more than rankings. The aim is to attract the right visitor and then make it easy for them to become an enquiry or customer.
Local SEO can sound complicated, particularly when you are also busy walking dogs, grooming, visiting clients, managing bookings, answering messages and actually running your business.
Start with the basics.
Make sure your Google Business Profile is accurate. Check that your website clearly explains your services and location. Ask happy customers for reviews. Build useful pages around the services people actually search for and make sure your business appears in relevant places online.
A few sensible improvements done properly are usually far more useful than trying every marketing idea at once.
SortedPets is more than a directory. We are building a collection of practical resources and services specifically for independent pet businesses.
You can:
Whether you run a dog grooming salon, pet sitting business, dog walking service, training business or something rather more unusual, the aim is the same: helping the right pet owners find you.
