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What does SEO look like in Practice?: A Case Study of Riverstone Books

Small business owner learning about the importance of SEO for local stores
You might be asking: but if my business only serves the community it’s based in, why do I need an online presence? Why should I even care about SEO? These are great questions.


“Even for businesses with a local customer base, online visibility is essential” (Kosaka, 2019). Think about where you go when you are looking for something locally. Especially in a post-COVID world, consumers aren’t walking around discovering businesses. But they are spending time scrolling around the internet. “86% of people use the internet to find local businesses” (Kosaka, 2019).


So, it is important to have an online presence and SEO helps you get noticed when consumers are searching for you. Last week we talked about creating a consistent SEO practice to compete with overwhelm. This week let’s dig in a bit deeper and look at how a small business is using SEO to its advantage.


SEO Case Study: Riverstone Books


First, a little bit of background information. 
Riverstone Books is a small, independent bookstore located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The bookstore has a loyal customer base that has supported it through the pandemic. In November of 2020, Riverstone launched an updated e-commerce site. The new website let patrons know if the book they wanted was on the bookstores shelves or if it would need to be ordered. This new feature is incredibly helpful if you want to browse the store without leaving your house. Though, even if I have books on order behind the counter I have been known to take a lap around the store. I love that new book smell, don’t you?


Ok, back to the website. 

User Experience on Riverstone Books’ Website

Riverstone’s website is relatively easy to use. The home page contains information about the store’s COVID policies, hours, upcoming events and best seller lists. One aspect that is a bit confusing, is how to browse for, or search for, books. The SHOP button at the top of the page bring up a pull down menu. To decrease confusion, the SHOP button should lead directly to the e-commerce page. Contrary to my belief (almost every time I visit the website…), the SEARCH bar at the top of the home page searches the website,  NOT for books. It would decrease bounce rate (how quickly visitors leave your site), if the SHOP button went straight to the e-commerce store and the SEARCH bar was moved further down the page and clearly labeled. would decrease bounce rate (how quickly visitors leave your site).


Tools and Strategy Used

Riverstone Books is a small business, as mentioned above, and without speaking with the staff it is difficult to know what tools and strategies the store is using. 


Thanks to the Site Audit and On Page SEO Checker tools with Semrush, we can see a few things that Riverstone Books is doing to help its SEO. 

Fast Loading Pages

I’m sure you have been waiting for a website to load and decided to go somewhere else instead. We all have a very short span of patience when it comes to waiting on pages to load. 99Signals reported that “the probability of a bounce increases 32% when the page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds. If your site takes 10 seconds to load, the probability of a bounce increases to 123%.” (Mallya, 2020). Sure, 10 seconds doesn’t seem like a long time, until you are waiting for a page to load. 


Riverstone’s average page load speed is 0.12 sec. No waiting around to find your next read!

Metrics

According to SEOQuake, Riverstone's website is not using Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a tool anyone can add to their website. The free version provides more than enough options for the average small business owner. 
Do you have questions like: 
  • “Is your target market visiting the site pages you want?” 
  • “Why do mobile users leave faster than desktop users?”
  • “Did your social media campaign drive more traffic on Facebook than the one on Instagram?”

(Tatalias, 2020).

If those questions sound like ones you have had, Google Analytics can help you find the answers. Riverstone Books could benefit from using this free tool as well!


Now, as always, there are…

Things to Improve

As it is in all things, there is never an end to SEO. There is always something we can do to improve. That’s why we call it an SEO practice. 

Alt Text

Each of the images on the website should contain alternative text. Adding alt text to images, not only aids in the accessibility of a website, it also lets the search engine crawlers “see” the images. “Adding alt text to images is one of the best practices used by SEO professionals to optimize images for the web.” (Ofiwe, 2021). Writing good alt text can be as difficult as writing good copy in other areas. 
It’s helpful to follow these alt text best practice tips from HubSpot:
  • “Describe the image, and be specific.”
  • “Keep your alt text fewer than 125 characters”
  • “Don’t start alt text with ‘picture of…’ or ‘image of…’”
  • “Use your keywords, but sparingly”
  • “Don’t cram your keyword into every single image’s alt text”

(Becker, 2018).

Meta Description

What is a meta description? It is “an HTML attribute that provides a brief summary of a web page.” (HubSpot, 2020). Though meta descriptions aren’t used in site rankings, they are GREAT for click-through-rate. And we want searchers to click-through to our websites! 


Riverstone Books does not have a meta description set for its website. So, Google pulls a snippet from the webpage to display on the search page. Here is what Riverstone’s looks like on a Google Search page:

If Riverstone were to add a meta description to its website, it would appear on a search page instead of the snippet. The meta description could provide information to the consumer that explains more about the store like this one from White Whale Books:

If you want to know more about meta descriptions check out this video from HubSpot:


SEO is a Practice

Keep it up! Change things if you need to! Keep this checklist handy as a good place to start. 

Ready to understand your digital presence? Visit my website to find a package that is right for you.



References

Becker, B. (2018 September 28). Image Alt Text: What It Is, How to Write It and Why It Matters to SEO. HubSpot. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/image-alt-text.

The Drew Barrymore Show [@thedrewbarrymoreshow]. (2020 November 12). New Book College GIF. [GIF]. Giphy.com. https://giphy.com/gifs/thedrewbarrymoreshow-drew-barrymore-new-book-the-show-SJesxNYrGyXVhAZzDL.

Google Analytics Academy. (n.d.) Google Analytics for Beginners. Google.  https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/course/6.

HubSpot. (2020 July 13). How to Write Effective Meta Descriptions and Link Text for SEO. [Video] YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwvID8YCB1A

Kosaka, K. (2019, August 15). 6 small business SEO tips FOR Time-strapped Entrepreneurs. https://blog.alexa.com/small-business-seo-tips/.  

Mallya, S. (2020 June 14). Semrush Site Audit: 10 Most Overlooked Features. 99Signals. https://www.99signals.com/semrush-site-audit-overlooked-features/.

Ofiwe, M. (2021 March 16). Alt Text: What is it and How Does it Work? SemRush. https://www.semrush.com/blog/alt-text/.

Tatalias, S., & By. (2020, April 28). Leveraging Google Analytics for Small Business. Bounteous. https://www.bounteous.com/insights/2020/04/28/leveraging-google-analytics-small-business/.  

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