Any small business hoping to thrive in 2020 should prioritize digital marketing – yes, even day spas. We’ve moved past the era of classified ads and phone book directories, and with 3 out 5 people in the entire world connected to the internet, businesses must learn to follow their audiences. Today, 86 percent of all consumers turn to the internet to look up local businesses.
But let’s face it, most people are busy and tend to go for what’s most convenient – even more so someone looking for some much-needed R&R at a day spa! They probably wouldn’t scour through page after page on Google just to find a good massage. That’s why businesses are always after the top spots on search engines, and that’s why search engine optimization is such an important component of one’s digital marketing strategy.
In this day spa SEO guide, we’ll teach you the basics of local SEO. When you’re done, you should be able to walk away with concrete steps for conquering search engine rankings, building better brand visibility, and driving up foot traffic to your website and your spa.
What Is Local SEO?
Search engine optimization is the practice of improving one’s visibility on search engines like Google or Bing. This often involves optimizing one’s website and social media pages with relevant keywords, authoritative links, and online citations. At the end of the day, SEO helps you build brand visibility online.
Local SEO is pretty much the same thing, only it’s targeted at potential customers in a specific area. For small businesses, local SEO can help brands establish themselves as authorities in their communities, as well as drive foot traffic to their brick and mortar shops. For day spas, local SEO turns a casual Google search for “massages near me” into a potential customer.
Why Do You Need Local SEO?
While traditional marketing can still be effective, there’s no denying the power and convenience of local SEO. Here are three things local SEO can do for your business:
Drive Up Foot Traffic
According to Safari Digital, seventy-two percent of users who did a Google search visited a shop within four miles of where they were. Like we said before, consumers are often looking for the nearest, most convenient option – and this is especially true for folks in search of a day spa. They want to relax and take a breather from the hustle and bustle of their busy schedules, and finding a spa right around the corner means they can start their mini vacation pronto.
But without a great local SEO strategy, consumers won’t know you’re out there. Your site will be relegated to the bottom of the Google search barrel, where users barely ever take a peek. Local SEO puts all your business information – your address, phone number, location, and services – on the map, so to speak. When more customers know you’re out there, you’re more likely to get more people to visit your website and your spa.
Score More Local Reviews
One of the key focuses of local SEO is a brand’s Google My Business page. Think of it as an online classifieds listing that appears when people search for certain keywords associated with your spa business.
Consider the last time you looked up “cafes near me” on Google Search or Maps. Remember those businesses that come up first? Notice how they’ve got all their information laid out neatly, from their address to their phone number to their business hours. That’s what a GMB page does.
If you scroll down on each listing, you’ll find customer reviews. With an updated GMB page, your business is more likely to turn up on local search results. And when your business is easier to find online, it is also much easier to get to, experience, and review. But reviews aren’t just good for your image – we all know how important customer reviews are in the spa business – they also drive up your SEO ranking. Basically, Google rewards businesses that do well!
Maximize Your ROI
SEO probably won’t replace traditional marketing just yet, but it can greatly reduce marketing expenses – saving you a ton of money that could go into improving other areas of your spa business. Unlike posting flyers, getting TV or radio spots, and boosting ads on social, SEO doesn’t cost much. For the most part, all you need is someone who can stay on top of all your SEO needs, from website management to content creation to campaign planning.
Your Day Spa SEO Guide
So you’re ready to give local SEO a shot. Here’s how you can get started:
Step 1. Getting Started With Keywords
Keyword research is the backbone of any successful SEO campaign.
First things first – what are keywords and why are they important? Keywords are the words or phrases that people input into search engines to find what they’re looking for. So someone looking for nearby spas will input keywords like “aromatherapy massage” or “best spa near me”.
What businesses need to do is harness the right keywords that’ll lead users to their site or online listings. Most SEO professionals will turn to Google’s Keyword Planner for this. The keyword planner will help you pinpoint the most relevant and most searched keywords. When narrowing down your keywords, consider the SiL format, or “services in locations”. For a day spa, that might look something like “Swedish massage in Florida”.
Note that there are two types of keywords too: foundational keywords, which are the words and phrases that describe your business, and long-tail keywords which are – you guessed it – longer and more specific. A foundational keyword can be something like “day spa in Palm Beach” while a long-tail keyword can say “best deep-tissue massage in Palm Beach 2020”. Try to make a list featuring both foundational and long-tail keywords.
Step 2: Set Up Your Google My Business
Next to keyword research, most SEO professionals will argue that optimizing your business’ Google My Business (GMB) account is the most important step you can take to up your local SEO game. Here’s what you need to do to make the most of your Google My Business page:
Set Your NAP
No, we don’t mean you should go to bed. NAP stands for name, address, and phone number. When you create a GMB page, these are the first three things Google will ask you. It’s important to keep your NAP consistent across the whole wide web. So whatever you put into your GMB page should be the same as the information that appears on your website and other citations online (more on this later).
When it comes to your business’ name, DO NOT try to add relevant keywords – it’s bad business practice and goes against GMB guidelines. Instead, stick to the name that can be found on your website and your storefront. Next, Google will ask for your business address. You’ll also need to place a location pin on a map so that your business turns up on Google Maps searches. Lastly, fill in your phone number and website url!
Pick A Category
When picking your GMB categories, you might be tempted to list as many related terms and services as possible. Resist this urge. Google suggests using “as few categories as possible” – instead, aim for specific categories that represent your main business. Take it from Google themselves: “Select categories that complete the statement: ‘This business IS a’ rather than ‘this business HAS a'”.
So, if for example you run a day spa, just choose the “day spa” category. Since you run a walk-in shop rather than a mobile masseur business, you don’t have to include the category “massage therapist”. Simple, right?
Write A Short Description
Let customers get to know your business with a brief but info-packed description. Try to stick to 100 to 200 words, focusing on relevant information like your products and services, as well as your “edge” above your competitors. Here, you can add some keywords from your research – just make sure you follow Google’s guidelines.
Add Your Hours And Other Relevant Information
Don’t let customers down by posting misleading business hours. And if you change your hours, make sure to keep this part of your GMB updated!
Don’t Forget The Photos
Last but not least, provide several high quality photos that show off the interior and exterior of your shop. Spa-goers want to make sure their prospective spas are clean, serene, and have a good ambiance. After all, people in search of a good massage want to relax! Photos of exteriors, on the other hand, help customers find your shop right away.
Step 3: Optimize Your Website
Think of your website as an extension of your brick and mortar spas. It’s where potential customers can learn more about your products and services, as well as schedule appointments. But more than just a digital storefront, a website is a great opportunity to increase your brand visibility online. All you need is a thorough SEO strategy. Here’s what you can do:
Check Your NAPs
Remember those NAPs we talked about earlier? You need to make sure the NAP on your website is exactly the same as the ones on your GMB and other online listings. It just makes it easier for search engines to find you and deliver this info to potential customers. Most folks add their NAPs to their websites’ footers and contact pages.
Outside of your website, there’s a thing called NAP citations, which are online mentions of your business on places like blogs, directories, even social media. It’s always a good idea to do a NAP citation audit, checking to make sure all your NAP information is the same across the web.
Optimize Your Homepage
You might be wondering why we mentioned keywords in the first part of this guide. Now is the time to put those keywords to use. Google will always show local results first, even on non-location specific entries. That’s just how the search engine works. To rank better on local searches, it’s important to optimize your homepage according to your location.
Use the most searched keywords relevant to your business in everything, including your homepage’s title tag, meta description, headline, and copy.
Optimize Your Services And Local Landing Pages
A services page is a great opportunity to inform site visitors about everything they can expect from a visit to your spa. It’s also an excellent way to increase your ranking on search engines. By optimizing your services page with the right keywords, anyone searching for things like “Swedish massage near me”, “Thai massage near me”, “foot massage in my area” and the like will likely find your site right away.
Local landing pages, on the other hand, are great for businesses that hope to tap into nearby markets, as well as brands that have more than one branch in a city or state. If, for example, you run a chain of spas located in Miami, Tampa, and Jacksonville, you can create separate landing pages for each location. Your urls should look something like this:
- namastedayspa.com/miami
- namastedayspa.com/tampa
- namastedayspa.com/jacksonville
What kind of content should you include in a local landing page? You can put your local NAP, your business hours, and some information about the types of services you offer at that location. When writing content for your landing pages, you can optimize each page by inserting relevant keywords.
Create Content And Build Links
There’s a saying that goes “content is king”. In this hyper-connected world, most people turn to the internet to learn about something that interests them or research products and services they might want to avail. As a brand, you want to fill this need for content by providing users with relevant, informative, and useful content. In doing so, you establish your brand credibility, drive traffic to your website, and improve your search engine rankings – especially if you use the right keywords in your content.
Next to content, link-building is another effective way to rise up in search engine rankings. Google and other search engines take note of websites that have a lot of backlinks from credible sites. Backlinks are like “votes of confidence” from authoritative sources that your website is credible too. To build backlinks, you can look into influencer outreach, blogger reviews, and PR campaigns.
Single Page Applications: SEO-Friendly Or Not?
If you don’t have a website yet and are working with a web developer to consider your options, have a conversation about the use of single page applications. We’re going to get a bit technical here, so bear with us.
Single page applications are essentially web apps that, among other things, enhance the overall user experience. The single page application approach creates a faster, more dynamic website because it doesn’t reload the entire page when a user clicks on a page element. SPAs are built on Javascript frameworks and deliver a more seamless user experience. Why does this matter? Because a good UI and UX keeps customers on your site.
However, one major problem with single page applications is that they’re not the most SEO friendly of applications. Simply put, it just requires a lot of extra work for search engines to index sites built on Javascript. Plus, remember that search engine “crawlers” rank individual web pages. A single page application combines multiple web pages into one app, making things more complicated for the likes of Google and Bing.
There is a workaround to the single page application problem – server side rendering. We won’t get into the super technical details of what server side rendering can do for your website, but essentially, it makes your site SEO friendly. If all of this sounds way too complicated, you can also choose not to use single page applications – especially if you’d like to keep your website relatively simple and minimalist.
Ready To Learn More?
Local SEO is just the tip of the iceberg. Getting more foot traffic – whether for your website or your physical shop – requires a larger, more comprehensive digital marketing plan. From social media community management to email marketing, you can learn more about tapping the right audiences with the Spa Success Mastermind Program.
The eight-week program is developed by multi-award winning entrepreneur and consultant Nancy Reagan. It covers everything you need to know about running a day spa, from operational systems to client relations to scaling for success. Nancy also offers a mentorship program, one-on-one spa consulting and local SEO services.
Nancy has been in the business for 25 years, collecting award after award for her businesses, including the Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce Business Person of the Year award and the Spa of the Month award from Les Nouvelles Esthetiques. With Nancy, you and your spa business will be in good hands.