FAIRLEE, VT – “Have you Googled your farm
lately?” was the opening question by Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund’s
Communication Manager Kelly “The Optimizer” Nottermann. The query was a
homework assignment for farmers attending her SEO (search engine optimization)
workshop at the 2019 Vermont Grazing and Livestock Conference. The mission for
savvy farm marketers: Be on page #1.
Nottermann knows what she’s talking about, as she has held various marketing, writing and social media positions in New York and Vermont for companies including the Williston Observer, Japan-Link Translations, Data Innovations, Quinlan & Company and most recently the global media agency Gelia as a senior social content strategist. Her clients included Caterpillar, Dana Inc., Honda Motor Corp. and currently her husband’s family farm website for Snug Valley Farm (www.snugvalleyfarm.com) in East Hardwick, VT.
Using her computer, internet access and quick
wit, she showed the positive attributes of being on the first page of a Google search
and the key words and phrases that bring customers to your virtual farm site.
She detailed the definition of SEO as “the process of affecting the online
visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results –
often referred to as ‘natural,’ ‘organic’ or ‘earned’ results. In general, the
earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page) and more frequently a
website appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive
from the search engine’s users. These visitors can then be converted into
customers.”
There’s a joke that says if you want to
successfully hide, go to the second page of Google. Nottermann led farmers
through a fascinating look behind SEO marketing strategies and how search
engines work. “Google has over 200 ranking factors, mysterious algorithms, user
queries and fetch-data to determine who goes to the front page. Think of all
these as spiders, crawling around and building nests of indexes and providing
search users with the most relevant ranked lists of websites,” said Nottermann.
“It’s important because 97 percent of consumers use the internet to search for
local services, like farm-based enterprises, and 55 percent of all ‘clicks’ go
to the first three search results. You want to be there.
“The spiders generally recognize truth and
appreciate real websites and Google pages that have some history to them,”
Nottermann continued. The basic do’s for farmers is to write natural content
useful to readers, fill out description fields for videos and pictures, use
keyword “rich” words on your website and work on getting coverage outside of
your site and about your farm (local news articles) – like this article! She
suggested not filling your webpages full of keywords that make no sense that
will confuse the SEO spiders and don’t duplicate content in multiple places.
She opened Google and other platforms and
showed farmers how to populate with your “free” content and location. “There
are four game-changing moments that really matter to your potential customer: ‘I
want to know’ moments, ‘I want to go’ moments, ‘I want to do’ moments and ‘I
want to buy’ moments. You have to customize your marketing platforms to capture
one or all of these,” said Nottermann.
The presentation implored farmers to take
some DIY steps: “Create or update your Google places account; make a list of
keywords relevant to your business; regularly update your website (and avoid
letting it die a slow and painful death); if you create video content, take
advantage of YouTube and include keyword rich descriptions and titles; sign up
for Google Analytics to monitor traffic; and check your social media sites and
make sure you’ve fully filled out the ‘About’ page with information and links
to your website.”
Nottermann offered farmers a free e-book resource titled “How to Increase Your SEO Traffic in 30 Days” (offers.hubspot.com/how-to-increase-website-seo-traffic). If interested in connecting with Nottermann on specific questions or on future events, she can be reached at the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund at kelly@vsjf.org or 802.828.3753.
