Social Saturday: Keyword Research for Shelters & Rescues

We’ve been doing a blog mentorship with Have a Heart, Inc. in South Florida about setting up a MyShelterSite website and also maximizing their social media. This week, we attended an online GoTo Meeting about setting up the site (loved the interface!) which is free for shelters and rescues. We’ll be bringing you more about the setup of their new site but, for this week, we wanted to talk about keyword research for shelters and rescues.

We’ve been doing some keyword research, a way to figure out just the words and phrases that are being used most often in relation to a blog or site for a rescue or shelter. You can use these keywords as metatags but you can also work these words into both your titles and your posts and your social media.

We’ve done some keyword research here for Have a Heart but this would apply to other shelters and rescues, too (and the same skills can be used by pet bloggers).

First, we went to Wordtracker, a great resource for discovering what terms are being searched. Wordtracker comes in a paid version which has a lot of information and a free version with more limited information. (There’s also a free trial of the paid version but you’ll need to sign up with a credit card to get access.) We opted for the free version which gave us 20 free keyword searches. (If you have a Google AdSense or Google AdWords account, you’ll also find excellent keyword search tools there, too.)

Since Have a Heart., Inc. is a dog rescue, we wanted to search for the phrases related to adoption and rescue. Our first search was for the term “dog rescue”. It showed these results with the related phrases and the number of times these phrases had been searched in the last month, according to their statistics:

Next, we decided to try “pet adoption” and, as you can see, the numbers were quite a bit different:

“Pet adoption” had nearly three times the searches as “dog rescue” so we know that it would be more beneficial to have the term “pet adoption” show up in a post. You could still use the term “dog rescue” but, by using both terms, you’ll draw in more visitors.

Next, we tried some variation on the term “dog rescue” to see if we’d have better results. We tried “rescue dogs” but quickly saw that was picking up searches related to search and rescue dogs. We tried “dog shelters” which wasn’t as popular a term as “dog rescue”:

Next, we tried “dog adoption shelters” which showed better results:

Plural or Singular?

Next, we decided to move on to the question of terminology: dog or puppy? Dogs or puppies?

Like many search terms, the plural word “dogs” was more popular than the singular word “dog”:

And the same held true with the term “puppies” (although it had only 1/3rd as many searches as “dogs”):

Keyword Research Tips for Shelter and Rescues:

• It definitely pays to spend just a few minutes researching your keywords. You don’t have to go overboard but make a list of the top five keywords and keyword phrases that represent your site and try to use those in posts without seeming awkward or forced.
• Be sure to incorporate a location in your keyword use. You’ll see many searches like “dog rescues in maine.” Be sure to add your location in the forms that people will use to search for your area. For example, Have a Heart, Inc. is a South Florida rescue so they’d definitely want to include both Florida and South Florida in their keywords. Also, including specific cities or counties if those are common searches would be helpful, too.
• If you are a breed-specific rescue, be sure to do some keyword research on the breed name, too. Are people searching more for “Australian cattle dogs,” “cattle dogs” or “blue heelers”?
• Feel like you can compete with top keywords even if they’re not exactly your niche. Since “puppies for sale” is always a top search, rescues can write a post about why people looking for “puppies for sale in Chicago” should make their first stop at their rescue in Chicago.
• Be sure to incorporate these keywords in your social media as well. Next Saturday, we’ll look at turning this week’s keyword research into ways to better promote your shelter or rescue’s Facebook fan page!

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About Paris Permenter and John Bigley

DogTipper publishers Paris Permenter and John Bigley are a husband-wife team of full-time writers. The couple has authored over two dozen books and 2,500+ magazine articles.

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