Once a month, I have the pleasure of bringing my spa marketing manager, Delia Taylor, into the fold of my Spa Business Mastery podcast and accompanying blog here on my website to detail various marketing tips, advice, and pain points we frequently field from spa owners just like you.

This month, her and I sat down over Zoom to discuss why your spa business needs SEO marketing.

What is SEO and SEO Marketing?

Oftentimes, when discussing marketing it can be all too easy to default to social media marketing.

However, there are a multitude of platforms that your spa’s marketing needs to take advantage of in order to reach its full potential. 

One such method of spa marketing is search engine optimization. Defined as “the process of improving your site to increase its visibility for relevant searches”, search engine optimization is, simply put, the act of organically ranking higher in Google (and other search engines!) searches.

While it’s likely that many spa owners have heard of SEO and what it can do for their digital marketing efforts, it can often come across as “too complicated” upon first listening for the majority to truly take on board what SEO can offer them and their spa business. 

As Delia further explains, “Essentially, SEO is how Google or any other search engine ranks your website in its search results pages. When somebody comes to type in their question, whether it be something like ‘Spa in my area’ or queries related to specific skin concerns or treatments, you want your website to be on that first page of search results. On that first page of results you will first see paid results (which is in an entirely different ballpark than SEO) and then your ‘organic’ results, which, in this case, means that they were achieved without paid advertising for their placements. Anything after that first page of results is unlikely to be found.”

SEO marketing is the act of doing the due diligence over time to achieve those coveted rankings, expand the number of keywords that your website ranks for, and maintain those rankings once they are achieved.

How Does SEO Work Exactly? Why Does Your Spa Need SEO Marketing?

While the nuances of SEO can seem daunting at first, its core process is more straightforward than one may think.

How SEO works goes like this:

• Regardless of which search engine is being used, automatic crawlers known as “spiders” crawls each page of your site at lightning-speed in order to index each one for it to appear in search results based off of each page’s relevancy 

• These “spiders” take note of your:

  • Titles, including your H1, your H2, and your H3 (titles, headers, and subheaders)

  • Keywords, both short-tail (no more than three words) and long-tail (full sentences are phrases). Because short-tail keywords are more general (like “acne treatment”, for example”) they, on average, receive more traffic; long-tail keywords (like “best microneedling treatment in Vancouver”, for example”) yield more conversions in general due to their specificity 

  • Description tags, which describe the purpose of your site

Even the order of your website’s menu can be a vital part of SEO that can help a search engine’s “spiders” more successfully index your website based on relevancy. Many spa owners that I chat with both in my spa owners-only Facebook group, Spa Business Mastery, and during my private coaching sessions face challenges with SEO marketing, especially when doing it themselves. 

When done correctly, spa SEO marketing:

• Improves the quality and quantity of traffic from unpaid search results

• Improves brand relevance to both existing and potential consumers (Google LOVES relevancy!)

• Improves your website’s rankings ahead of competitors 

When done incorrectly, spa SEO marketing:

• Can mistakenly target the incorrect keywords due to a lack of spa owner research and/or know-how

• Can skip keywords that are ripe and ready for you, whether it be keywords that can display your industry authority, your specific treatments, or specific product lines and other offerings 

• Can be ineffectual due to lack of optimization, meaning that time spent creating service descriptions, pages, and blogs may be circling the drain

How to Start SEO Marketing for Your Spa Business

There are three core components of SEO optimization done right.

They are:

• Expertise: Does each page give your audience what they want to know about your brand and/or offerings? Is your information accurate and up-to-date?

• Authority: Do other spa industry experts use your site as a source of information-sharing? Are reputable sites linking back to your website, which, in turn, position you as an authority within the industry?

• Trustworthiness: Does your site include negative reviews, customer complaints, or an insecure website? To successfully optimize your SEO, it is recommended to get those under control before embarking on any spa SEO marketing efforts in order for Google to index you highly in terms of your site’s trustworthiness. 

Whether You Are Looking to Outsource Spa SEO Marketing or Are Seeking Advice on How to Start It Yourself, Kirsten Foss Coaching Is Here to Help

Want to show those “spiders” what your website is all about? Listen in on part two, “The Spa SEO Checklist”, next month, when Delia and I will be outlining our non-negotiables for successfully optimizing your spa business’s website for SEO.

In the meantime, you could join one of the many spa owners just like you who have chosen to outsource their spa business’s SEO marketing to the digital services portion of Kirsten Foss Coaching, Virtual Spa Business Management.

Book your “Get Acquainted” call today to learn what my team can do for you.