I have been looking at a lot of massage websites and find them to consistently making a lot of big mistakes. The biggest massage website mistake is to name your site the same as your business name. While that isn’t always a problem if you choose your business name wisely but naming a website massagebylucy.com or sunsetmassage.com is a really poor choise of using keywords properly.
The best domain name is one that tells what solution you provide and may include your location – deeptissuemassageaustin.com or massageaustin.com is a much better name for search engines to find you and for readers to easily tell what you do. This is one thing that will help you get on the first page of results for your keywords – massage, your town.
Most people don’t know how to optimize the website pages for the search engines. It takes a little bit of learning but is fairly straight forward. Use your keywords again to create file names for your pages – like www.massageaustin.com/deeptissue.html – deeptissue.html is the file name. You use those keywords over again in the metatags (description, title and keywords list). Metatags are things on the webpage that visitors don’t see but the search engines do. Actually they also will be the words that are listed in the search engine results so choosing these carefully can create a better listing that people are more likely to click on.
The home pages are also filled with info about massage therapists credentials and long lists of different types of massage that they do. The homepage is the page that most people will find first. You will have all of about 5 seconds to hold a persons attention. The first thing that people want to know when they go to a site is can you solve their problem. People are looking for a solution to their problem. Can you solve it? What people are looking for is an answer to their pain, stress or other condition. Talk about what solution you provide on the very first page. You can have an about me page with all of your credentials and experience but again remember that most people don’t really have a clue what all of the training and words mean. Take the time to explain them. Include in your about me page your philosophy on healing and why you became a massage therapist and what your misssion/purpose are in offering massage services.
My two other pet peeves are Flash intros and music playing on the website. Flash intros are cool but you lose so many people. Flash is more about you than about your visitor. The same with music. If I wanted to listen to music I would be playing what I want to hear at home. I usually have about 20 windows open and if music starts playing I am scrambling to find the window that is doing it and usually end up closing many other sites till I find the offender.
Put yourself in your potential clients shoes. What would make you make the call for the appointment for a massage?
You can learn more about building a successful website when you use Site Build it! to plan and create your website. They will teach you everything you need to know about getting your website to the top of the search engine results and get you a steady stream of new clients. They now even have elearning that will take you step by step through their system and the process of building a successful website. You will also learn how to have your website make you money while you are doing massage. Investing in yourself and your massage business is the key to creating a steady flow of new clients.
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I wholeheartedly agree with your comment “My two other pet peeves are Flash intros and music playing on the website. Flash intros are cool but you lose so many people. Flash is more about you than about your client”.
I try to keep my web pages as clean and about the client as possible. Even my “About Me” page is really about the client.
I’ve also noticed increased business since including a headshot on my about me page.