Search engine optimization (SEO) is about building your website to make it as easy as possible for your customers to find you on search engines like Google.
As a physical or online skate shop in a competitive market, you need all the help you can get to make sure skaters find your shop!
That’s where SEO comes in – A cost-effective marketing process that can have a huge payoff for skate shops.
There are various SEO strategies you can implement yourself to make sure your skate shop website caters to both users and the search engines your site needs to show up on.
Generally, the goal of an effective SEO strategy is not only to increase the number of people who see you online, but the quality of people who see you online. That means, people who are actually in the market to buy what you’re selling (like skateboards!).
This guide will explain actionable SEO tips catered specifically to skate shops to help them drive more online and in-store customers.
How can SEO benefit your skate shop?
SEO can make a real impact on the number and quality of customers who visit both your online and physical skate shop. Here’s a few examples:
Example 1:
Let’s say a new skater has just arrived in your city. They pull out their phone and search “skate shop” on Google Maps.
The first result that pops up is your shop. When they click on it, they see recent photos of your shop, good reviews of your shop, your open hours, and how to contact you.
The skater then goes to your shop and buys a board in person. This is likely the result of an effective local SEO strategy.
Example 2:
A skater is searching online for a specific product. Let’s say, a hoodie from a more niche brand or an old school deck that was made in limited quantity.
Being the on-trend skate shop that you are, you’re one of the few shops out there that has this product. You post the product for sale in your online web shop.
The skater then searches for “Alltimers Logo Embroidered Hoodie size M” or “Powell Peralta Cab Street Dragon Reissue Deck”. Your website or product page then appears as the first result on Google.
The skater goes to your site and orders the product from you instead of from the other shops that may have also listed the product online.
This is likely the result of an effective on-page SEO strategy.
Can you do SEO yourself?
Absolutely. If you know how to log into and edit your skate shop website yourself, many key elements of SEO are just a few steps beyond that.
Simple edits to your website can make a huge impact on how visible you are online.
Online visibility is especially important for skaters who may be visiting your area and who are not already aware of your shop through local word-of-mouth, etc.
The result of good website SEO is more online and in-store shoppers.
This alone should be more than enough motivation to at least try some of the SEO tips below.
Key types of SEO to consider
There are four key types of SEO that are especially relevant for skate shops.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO is about getting your website to rank better in search results through working on the actual pages of your website itself.
There are simple things you can implement on your site now to help both the individual pages and website as a whole to rank higher in online search results.
On-page SEO commonly involves things like content creation, keyword optimization, and using the best page titles, headers, etc. on pages.
On-page SEO is typically about reaching your target market online.
Local SEO
In comparison to on-page SEO, local SEO involves strategies to increase your presence in local search results and in places like Google Maps.
This can be particularly important for skate shops with a physical shop location.
Key components of local SEO include optimizing your Google Business info, implementing local keywords, local link building, and more discussed in the tips below!
Local SEO is typically about reaching your target market online, but then driving them to visit you in-store.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO includes strategies outside of your website which aim to improve your website’s authority.
The greater your website’s authority, the more trusted it is by search engines, meaning your site is more likely to show up higher in search results.
Off-page SEO includes things like backlinks to your website, social media marketing, brand mentions, and more.
Off-page SEO is important in building a good foundation for your site as a trusted resource.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is about the actual infrastructure of your website.
Your website should be well designed so that both users and search engines can easily navigate the site.
Key technical SEO factors include website load speed, if the site is mobile friendly, and if the site has a logical, hierarchical structure.
While some elements of technical SEO may require help from an expert, there are several things you can do yourself to optimize your site.
Want help putting this all together for your shop?
7 On-page SEO tips for skate shops
Some of the most actionable SEO tips for skate shops lie in the on-page SEO category. Here’s a few things you can likely do yourself with your skate shop website:
1. Create a content strategy and publish content
One of the most effective ways to grow your website is by creating a skate shop content strategy and executing it.
Content can include anything from blog articles (like what you’re reading right now) to videos (like a local skate video, etc.), or even photos (go take some skate photos at local spots, etc.)!
However, it’s one thing to publish content once, it’s another thing to come up with a content strategy that spans over a period of time.
To truly have the best chance of growing your site’s online presence, you need to publish new content on a regular basis.
That’s where a content strategy comes in.
A content strategy creates a strategic approach to new content for your site.
7 Steps to create a skate shop content strategy:
- Define your business and content goals. What do you want your content to achieve for your skate shop?
- Identify your target audience. For example, if you want to appeal to local skaters aged 14-18, what could you create to engage them?
- Create a customer empathy map. This map helps you dig into what your target audience is saying, thinking, doing, and feeling. By clarifying these things, figuring out what content will engage them will come easy.
- Create a customer experience map. An experience map lays out the whole process your buyers go through when interacting with your business. You’ll figure out all the phases they go through and where content can ease the process to create more sales.
- Establish a content creation process. It’s one thing to dream about content, it’s another thing to actually create it. By having set processes in place for different kinds of content, you’ll have an idea how long it will take so you can set realistic content goals.
- Create a skate shop content plan. By knowing how long your creation process takes, now you can actually lay out how many pieces of content you’ll make over a period of time. Remember, consistency is key to content success.
- Monitor your content’s success. There are many tools to track how well your content is doing. This info will help you figure out what types of content make the most sense to invest in going forward.
See How To Create a Skate Shop Content Strategy for in-depth instructions!
2. Implement relevant keywords
Implementing keywords in your content and on your website is important. But, there’s a right and not-so-right way to do it.
The right way is to create your content and website for your audience first, and then implement appropriate keywords within the content where it’s natural to do so.
The wrong way is to fill your website, content, etc. with tons of keywords or repeat the same keyword over and over, otherwise known as “keyword stuffing”.
First, you need to do a little keyword research to get an idea of what keywords to use.
The good thing is, using fitting keywords often just involves a little common sense.
Think like someone who is looking for what you’re writing about or selling.
For example, say you own a skate shop in Charlotte, North Carolina. A keyword that you’ll likely want to have within your site is “skateshop in Charlotte, North Carolina”.
Google will scan the text on your site. When it sees that you include keywords like this, it’s more likely to refer your site to someone who searches for “Skateshop in Charlotte, North Carolina”.
However, keywords do get much more complex than this.
For now, just understand that different keywords have different “difficulties” in regards to whether your site will rank for them.
Therefore, using a keyword a few times on your site does not guarantee your site will appear in search results for that keyword shortly after.
To get more in-depth with keyword research, you’ll need to use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, or the SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool.
3. Enter alt-text for images
Alt text, or alternative text, is a text description that’s added to an image to describe it.
Alt text is important for SEO mainly because it helps search engines understand what the image is about and helps it recommend the image in image search results.
Alt text also helps search engines understand the image’s relevance to the surrounding content on the page that it’s posted.
Here’s some examples of good and bad alt text:
Good Alt-Text: A skateboarder doing a noseslide on a ledge in Valencia, Spain.
Bad Alt-Text: dude-skating-20177
4. Update old content
Updating or refreshing old, existing content on your site can have huge benefits for SEO.
Updating existing content shows search engines that you’re keeping your content fresh and relevant for users.
Search engines always want to show searchers the best, most relevant information. So, you need to make sure your pages are offering that!
When updating existing content, you should start with your most popular or highest performing pages.
Consider adding new information, keywords, updating statistics, and adding new media like photos, videos, or graphics.
5. Write meta descriptions for pages
A meta description is just a little summary of what a page on your site is about.
A page’s meta description appears in search results under the page’s title tag.
Here’s an example of a meta description for the “Skateboard Wheels” category on baselineskateshop.com:
In most cases, the meta description of a page can be edited directly in the “back end” of the page in a content management system (like WordPress).
Not only do meta descriptions help search engines understand what a page is about, they also contribute to driving traffic to your page from search results.
Your meta description should concisely explain what the visitor will find on the page as well as encourage them to visit the page.
6. Use clean URLs
A URL is the web address of a page on your site. So, it’s what you see in the top search bar of your web browser when you’re viewing a page on your site.
By default, pages are often assigned an auto-generated URL based on the title of the page.
Unfortunately, this auto-generated URL is often a jumble of words or numbers that may not be fitting to describe what the page is actually about.
Therefore, before you publish a page live, you should edit the URL to create a clean URL.
Here’s an example of an auto-generated URL and a clean URL of the same page:
Original URL:
www.skateshop.com/skate.php?id=7985&edit=1
Clean URL:
www.skateshop.com/decks/polarskateco
By looking at the clean URL, we can see that the user went to the decks category of the site and then to the Polar Skate Co category from there.
Clean URLs make it easier for users to remember or share URLs and they help search engines better understand the content of the page.
7. Add internal and external links throughout your site
An internal link is a link from one page on your skate shop website to another page that’s also on your site.
For example, if you linked to the “skateboard wheels” shop category on your website from a blog article that’s on your site, this would be an internal link.
Internal links help build the “structure” of your website and they help search engines understand what your website and pages are about.
An external link is a link from a page on your website to another, different website entirely.
For example, if you linked to the Spitfire Wheels website from a page on your skate shop website, this would be an external link. (The Spitfire link above is an external link).
When a website uses external links to other trusted, authoritative websites, it helps show search engines that your site can be trusted as a valuable resource for visitors.
It’s a lot to take in… We can help!
7 Local SEO tips for skate shops
Local SEO can be particularly meaningful for physical skate shops that want to get local customers into their physical shop. Try implementing the following tips:
1. Establish your Google Business profile
If there’s anything that physical skate shops must do on this list, it’s setting up a Google Business profile.
Your Google Business profile is how to manage what your shop looks like on Google Maps or Google Search.
How to set up a Google Business profile for your skate shop:
- Create a Google account.
- Go to Google Business.
- Follow the steps to fill out all relevant information about your skate shop. Be sure to add info such as your hours, photos of your shop, a shop description, services, etc.
- Follow the steps to verify your business listing.
After your business profile is set up, your shop information should then show up in detail when people search for your business on Google Maps.
In addition, you can manage and respond to Google reviews of your business.
2. Encourage and monitor Google reviews
When people search “skate shop” in your immediate area, you want your shop to appear first in Google search results and on Google Maps.
The number and quality of Google reviews of your business are a known ranking factor for this. Therefore, a lot of positive reviews can help your business show up more often when people search for skate shops in your area.
Beyond this, people will naturally trust businesses with a lot of positive reviews!
Start by encouraging your customers to leave a Google review for your business. You can tell customers in person and explain that it helps you, put a sticker near your cash register that encourages reviews, or even give out business cards that encourage reviews.
If you receive a bad review, don’t worry.
What’s most important is that you always respond to all reviews, good or bad.
Responding to reviews shows customers (and Google) that you’re listening and caring for your customers and their happiness. This will ultimately encourage Google to trust and recommend your business more often.
3. Create an “About us” page containing business info
Many businesses forgo an about us page, which is like missing a low-hanging SEO fruit for your business.
About pages are your place to show customers why they should trust your skate shop. Skateboarders care about your involvement in the skate community, the brands you carry, and why they should respect you.
Not only can “about us” pages build trust with customers, they’re also a great place to include business info such as your location, hours, and contact info.
This info all helps search engines better understand what your business is about and what searchers it should recommend it to.
4. Create localized blog content for your site
When it comes to the websites of physical skate shops, a hugely overlooked opportunity to bring in web traffic is through localized blog content.
Localized blog content includes articles, photos, videos, and more that is specific to the area that your skate shop operates in.
5 local blog content ideas for skate shops:
- Create a “spot guide” to the skate spots in your city.
- Review your local skatepark with photos/video content.
- Host a skate contest or event and write a blog post about it.
- Highlight or interview a top local skater or skate crew in your area.
- Film a local video or montage and write about the filming process.
This type of content engages the customers in your immediate area. It’s often highly shareable on social media among your target customers and it can build your shop’s brand and reputation.
Beyond this, when people search for skateboarding-related topics or information relevant to your area, your shop (and website) is likely to show up.
5. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
As of 2023, 58.5% of global internet traffic was from mobile devices. Therefore, more than half of the people who access your website will likely do so from a mobile phone.
Here’s a few tips to make sure your skate shop website is mobile-friendly so the homies can check out your site from the spot:
- Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool. This should help you identify any key problem areas of your site.
- Simplify the navigation menus on your site. You want it to take as few steps as possible for users to find the categories and products they’re looking for.
- Compress image files and make sure images are responsive to screen size. You can use a free image compressor like Optimizilla.
- Make sure the theme and overall design of your site is responsive to different screen sizes.
- Test your website on multiple devices yourself. Get out your iPhone, iPad, and computer to see how things are showing up on each.
6. List your shop with local business directories
When you list your skate shop and website with business directories, you’re often creating a backlink to your website.
Backlinks are important for building trust with search engines, which ultimately means they’re more likely to recommend your site in search results going forward.
Local business directories to list your skate shop with:
- Google My Business
- Yelp
- Yellowpages
- Angie’s List
- Better Business Bureau (BBB)
- Local.com
- Citysearch
- Foursquare
- Manta
- Superpages
- DexKnows
- Whitepages
- MerchantCircle
- Thumbtack
7. Get involved in local community events
Getting involved with local events can actually have positive impacts on your business and website’s SEO efforts.
Primarily, backlinks or brand mentions of your business on other websites can positively impact your own site.
Community events may involve skate-related events, but also think outside the box for business events such as:
- Small business association meetings
- Networking events
- Conferences
- Training seminars
- Group classes
Events like these can help your business get featured in news articles, spark collaboration ideas, or have your business shared on social media.
Just want to get more sales for your shop? We have a few ideas…
5 Off-page and technical SEO tips for skate shops
Off-page and technical SEO helps establish the “core” of your website as a trusted source that Google wants to recommend to searchers. Don’t be scared off by the term “technical” SEO, many of the tips below are simple to implement!
1. Earn high-quality backlinks to your site
Backlinks are when another website creates a link to your website from theirs. Backlinks are especially valuable for SEO because they’re essentially like a “vote” from one website saying that what stuff you have on your site is good/valuable.
However, not all backlinks are created equal.
High-quality backlinks are links that come from respected, trustworthy websites that are relevant to the topic of your site or page. In addition, the text of the link itself (called the anchor text) should ideally contain relevant keywords to what content it’s linking to on your site.
Generally speaking, high-quality backlinks can be difficult to earn but worth the effort for your site.
4 Tips to earn high-quality backlinks for your skate shop website:
- Create good content that other sites want to link to – This is kind of common sense, but other sites (especially quality sites) are only going to want to link to pages on your site if they offer value. Create good content!
- Utilize your personal relationships – Especially in the skate business, it’s about who you know. If you have contacts with industry leading sites like Thrasher, Jenkem, The Berrics, or even other key skate shops in your region, reach out to them and discuss linking to your site or content.
- Look for brand mentions of your shop – If you find that a publication or site has mentioned your shop in their content, reach out to see if they can include a link to your website when mentioning you.
- Do collaborations – Brand collaborations can be an excellent way for skate shops to get backlinks from major skate brand sites. Reach out to see if you can do a collab for things like apparel, board graphics, social media, or more with brands fitting to your shop.
2. Integrate your website with social media
Social media plays a major role in many skate businesses today. Integrating your website with your social media can be a key factor in driving your followers to check your site and buy some gear.
While social media isn’t a ranking factor for websites, it can positively impact SEO by driving traffic and engagement to your site and encouraging other sites to backlink to yours.
3 ways to integrate your skate shop website with your social media accounts:
- Place links to your website on your social media accounts – This is super simple but it shouldn’t be overlooked! Link to your website from your social media bio, about section, etc. so customers can easily transition from social channels to your site.
- Add social media links to your website – In contrast to the tip above, you’ll also want to include links on your website that direct users to your social media channels. Once users are following you, your shop and brand will be in their feed and on their mind next time they’re in the market for something.
- Create social content that drives followers to your site – There’s many ways to drive followers from your social posts to your website.
Some of the most common strategies to drive customers from social media to your website include:
- Discount codes offered on social channels that can then be used on your site.
- Photos/videos/articles that are teased on social channels while followers are directed to your site for the full article.
- Linking directly to products/product pages on your site within social photos/videos of those products.
3. Establish a proper website structure
You might have noticed that brands like Supreme and Palace have trendy website designs that show off their product selections like a gallery.
While website designs like these can look cool, the reality is, designs like these generally aren’t that practical for those running a local skate shop.
Ideally, your website structure should be as intuitive as possible for customers who come to your site.
You want the least amount of clicks possible for the customer to find what they’re looking for among a range of various types of skate products.
For example, let’s say one of your customers wants to buy an Anti-Hero deck.
With a good website layout, the process they should go through when they get to your homepage should look something like this:
Homepage > Skateboards > Decks > 8.25” Wide > Anti-Hero > Add to cart.
In a matter of 5 clicks, they found what they were looking for and added it to their cart.
To create a website structure like this, everything just needs to be categorized appropriately.
In the case of skateshop websites, this usually means several main categories like clothing, skateboards, and shoes, and subcategories within them.
For example, under the skateboards category, you’ll likely have subcategories for decks, trucks, wheels, bearings, and hardware.
For clothing, you’ll probably have t-shirts, hoodies, pants, shorts, accessories.
Finally, all your individual products should be listed under the appropriate subcategories.
With a good website structure, not only do customers easily find what they’re looking for, but Google can scan your site more easily to better understand what you’re selling.
4. Add schema markup to your site
Schema markup can help you influence how your site and web pages appear in Google search results.
For example, schema markup can help your business display various pages or info directly in search results such as the links to decks, completes, wheels, etc. shown below:
By displaying this information, you can generate a lot more clicks to your site as searchers can directly access key pages they’re looking for right from the search results.
The easiest way to add schema markup to your site is to use a site plugin. If your site runs on WordPress, try AIOSEO or Schema Pro.
Plugins like these can automatically generate the schema code which Google will scan and use to generate these snippets in search results for the relevant pages of your site.
If you want to create schema markup and paste it into your site pages yourself, see this guide.
5. Improve your website loading speed
If your site loads too slow, not only is it annoying, but it can cost you a lot of visitors (and sales).
Around 40% of consumers say they’ll wait no more than 3 seconds for a page to load before leaving a site.
3 Tips to improve the loading speed of your skate shop website:
- Choose a good website hosting provider – Many businesses make the mistake of purchasing the cheapest web hosting provider/option they can find. This often results in your site being hosted on overloaded servers and ultimately slow load times for your site.
- Compress images – Images are a big component of your site and oftentimes those high-res skate photos have a pretty big file size. This big file size has to be loaded when visitors enter your site, so make sure you compress and optimize them so they load faster. Use a site like Optimizilla to compress your image files without sacrificing their quality and then reupload the smaller image file to your site.
- Cache web pages – Caching your site will save a current version of it with your host and that version will be shown to users until the version is updated. This means the page won’t have to be rendered every time someone enters the page, saving on load time. You can use a plugin like W3 Total Cache to do this for your site if it runs on WordPress.
How long does it take to reap the rewards of your SEO efforts?
This is the big question that many shop owners want to understand before making an investment in SEO.
It generally takes anywhere from several weeks to several months to see improvements in search rankings and traffic from your SEO efforts.
Many factors impact when and how much impact your SEO efforts will have.
Things like how competitive the keywords you’re trying to rank for are, the quality of your site content, backlinks and more all impact how effective your SEO efforts will be.
Why is it worth it for skate shops to invest in SEO?
In comparison to other advertising methods, SEO is a relatively low cost investment which can have massive, long-term benefits for your business over time.
Your skate shop’s online presence is one of the most important factors in influencing growth and awareness among your customer base.
An effective SEO strategy can position your shop at the forefront of search engines when your target customers search for the skate stuff that you sell. SEO is one of few marketing strategies which enables small businesses to compete directly with major businesses online and actually beat them.
A big part of the growth and success of skate shops is making sure their products are seen by the right skaters. SEO helps their business do that online.
We bring your skate shop to the next level
Get SEO help for your skate shop
If you need help implementing the SEO strategies above, reach out to The Skateboard Agency to speak with an SEO expert.
SEO resources for skate shops
The following websites offer some of the best SEO resources to reference when working on your site: