SEO is tricky! Search engine algorithms pull in thousands of data points from every site to determine who ranks where - and the criteria are different for different types of searches!

If your potential customer is searching from your town, your website needs different qualities than if you’re trying to reach customers across the country.

That’s why it’s important to have your website focused on the self storage industry. If you’re following SEO practices aimed at an international shoe brand, you’re going to be wasting lots of time and money chasing views and clicks that can’t possibly buy your product.

So, how does StoragePug ensure our websites show up in front of your potential customers?

We’ve got a lot of experience making websites for self storage businesses. We’ve learned what SEO steps will result in you getting more rentals, and which won’t.

At StoragePug, we focus our efforts on getting your website to rank well in local searches because self storage renters are going to come from an area near you in almost every circumstance.

Metadata is data about data. Metadata tells the search engines how to interpret the words you’re using on your web page.

Meta titles, meta descriptions, and other metadata are very important for SEO because, without them, search engines won’t know how to classify your site.

StoragePug ensures all our websites have appropriate metadata including in the source code, optimized for the keywords your potential customers are using to find storage.

We use meta titles, meta descriptions, appropriate header tags, and appropriate alt text for all our images. Following the search engine’s best practices increases the SEO strength of your website and ensures that the search engine will display your site as an option for relevant searches.

For this step, we need your help! At StoragePug, we optimize your Google Business Profile, and this is the single most important step in getting your business to rent self storage units online. However, there are best practices we ask you to employ when it comes to the upkeep and maintenance of your Google Business Profile.

Google accounts for the vast majority of searches, and Google answers local-shopping-oriented queries by pulling from nearby Google Business Profiles.

That means when someone searches “storage units near me” or even “RV parking,” Google is going to look for your GBP first, even before your website. Your GBP information will show up in the local pack of results, which gets the majority of clicks.

Your potential customers will also be shown your GBP if they’re looking for directions to your business, your phone number, and your website.

When we build your website, we’ll use quality photos that can then be used by your GBP to show potential customers how appealing your storage facility is!

Anyone that sees your Google Business Profile has a high-percentage chance of ending up on your website. This is one of the major ways you’ll funnel online customers into rentals.

StoragePug builds quality content for every website we make. Content lets search engines figure out what your website is for (when accompanied by metadata). Good content also convinces visitors that they should rent storage or parking with you!

We want your input for the content, as you know your facility and community better than we do. However, even if you can’t help us, our content writers are experts in marketing your facility - both to customers and to search engines.

StoragePug knows the right keywords to use, the best structure to convert visitors, and what pages are going to get you clicks. We’ll put your location in headers to be sure the search engines know that you’re a good result for searchers in the area.

Content is the best way to communicate what you offer to your customers. Content is also necessary to do well in SEO. StoragePug provides content that does both.

At StoragePug, we tackle the most valuable parts of SEO to try and get your website on the front page of those vital local searches. There are separate SEO services that will offer to manage your pay-per-click ads, “optimize” your metadata, run your social media, or even maintain a blog for your business.

We’ve got a separate article that tackles whether or not you need self storage SEO services, so if you’re considering hiring a secondary team, you may want to check that out first.

That being said, StoragePug doesn’t do every little thing possible - we try to focus our energy (and yours) on the optimization steps that will directly benefit your website and business. Here’s what we don’t do.

New businesses can get a boost by investing in pay-per-click advertising. This is because search engine algorithms will take a while to find, rank, and value your new website - or an old website that wasn’t performing well.

Pay-per-click advertisement can also be beneficial if your website is getting crowded out in a super-competitive market. If you’re in a large metro area, PPC ads can get you in front of potential clients.

However, PPC ads receive far fewer clicks than the local pack - PPC ads get 19% in total, while the local pack receives 44% of clicks. If you’re not generating the online traffic you’re hoping for, PPC campaigns can help.

StoragePug is constantly trying to keep our websites in line with the newest and most accurate SEO research. We will go back and update old websites if they aren’t performing well. We’re happy to update the content of your website when you add new services or services!

However, we don’t make a habit of tinkering with perfectly good Search Engine Optimization. Ranking on Google (or Bing, or any other search engine) takes a long time. You can rank as quickly as three months, but more often it takes six months to a year to get on the front page of organic search results in your area.

That means changing things often doesn’t have much effect - or if it does have an effect, you won’t notice it for six months. After six months, you may have changed your SEO again! We’ve found that doing SEO right the first time produces better results. All it takes is patience.

Blogs aren’t super useful for local businesses. Blogs are informational, which is a different type of search than a local shopping search.

That means you’re going to be competing for a more global audience than you are with your local business. This means you’ll be going up against the biggest names in the business when you try to get your new blog content to rank.

That’s still possible! But it’s going to take a lot of time and effort. That time and effort could be worthwhile if you generated a lot of business. But if someone in a different state reads your blog, finds it super useful, and wants to do business with you - you can’t exactly ship them a storage unit or parking place.

Self storage businesses can benefit from a blog, but usually only if they’re competing in a lot of markets and have a significant budget to dedicate to it.

If you’re a small local business, a blog can still help your customers - which is great, and you should do that if you can! Just don’t expect it to bring you a lot of SEO weight or to translate directly into rentals.

So there you have it! That’s how StoragePug approaches self storage SEO. We dedicate our efforts to the proven value-driving aspects of SEO and don’t waste time trying to build you a massive blog following.

If you have any questions about our SEO approach, your website, or anything else, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at help@storagepug.com!