Websites for your massage business

June 22, 2008 Julie Onofrio Massage Websites, News

Having a website for your massage business is one of the most important and easiest thing you can do to create a steady supply of clients for your massage business. With todays economy challenges, your ability to find clients depends more and more on how you differentiate your business and educating clients. One of the best ways to do that is by using a website and not just any old website – it has to be one that is content and information driven so that you can connect with your visitors and build their trust.

You can also find out how many people are actually searching for massage in your area by using Searchit!( just follow the directions and play with it a bit as it is a bit confusing at first) and using the first search brainstorming and then choosing the Google Keyword tool, the US Yahoo Keyword selector tool and the wordtracker search. Like ‘seattle massage’ shows

A website is one of your best methods of finding new clients because when they are searching for ‘massage your city’ they are already interested in massage therapy. They most likely already know that they want a massage and understand the value of massage or else they wouldn’t be looking for one. What they are looking for also is a solution to their problem and when they find your website that informs them of a solution to their problem you will get people coming to you rather than having to go door to door or doing direct mail pieces that are just going out to random people who may or may not be even interested in massage let alone want to get a massage. People who are searching for massage don’t have to be convinced that massage is what they need. They just have to find your website informative and professional.

To get found by a search engine there are many things you need to do with a website. If search engines and especially Google can’t find your website it isn’t doing anyone any good. To begin with you need to choose a domain name that reflects what you do and where you do it – like my clinic site www.massageseattle.net . Naming a website with those most often sought after keywords makes it easier for search engines and people to tell what you offer. Other names could work but you will need to put more into it to get found for your main keywords which will most likely be your city and the word massage.

Creating pages on your site using more keywords that people are searching for most often is the next step. The keywords are what make the internet work. Site Build it! will help you research what the best keywords for your domain name and site are with their keyword software called Brainstromit! It goes out and researches how many people are searching for the keywords and then checks to see how many people are using those keywords and determines the profitability potential of each of those keywords so you can then use the best keywords in your pages.

To create a page you choose a keyword such as ‘massage seattle’ and use that keyword in the metatags (keywords and description and title and file name of the page.) SBI! explains it all and will even help you create better pages using their page analyzer but if you are using other software you can do some of the same thing. Just start with naming the file name with the keyword -www.massageseattle.net/massage-seattle.html -the massage-seattle.html is the file name. Next put the keywords in the first few words of the Title of the page and in the keyword section, the description section and also in the headline of your page. That is one of the things that search engines look for. Also putting the keyword in a link from the page can help but may be more difficult to do sometimes.

So start with creating a basic 8 page or so website with all of the basic information like your rates and services, location and contact information as well as a bio about you and your work etc. This will be sort of like your basic calling card type of site. Once you get that information on there you can start putting your website address on all of your mailings and business cards as well as any signs around your office etc. Creating this basic site may be enough to even get you to the top of the search engines if you are in a small enough town.

If you are in a larger town where there are many more massage therapists competing for the top search engine results and there are many massage therapists to choose from the next thing you need to do is to use the website to educate potential clients about massage and what it is that you do. This is done by writing short articles on many various topics about massage. It doesn’t have to be a term paper or you don’t even have to know how to write. You just have to start writing down all of the things that you usually say to people when you are talking to them on the phone or in person. You can write about various diseases and conditions by going to the pathology and massage guide sections on my site www.thebodyworker.com and reading some of the best websites and articles on the topic and using that information for an article. Writing articles you can also write about a topic that you know a lot about or deal with most often in clients. Like I somehow always get people with headaches, computer stress and fibromyalgia. Even though I don’t actually think of these as my specialty, they are topics I have researched a lot in order to be able to work with these people more. As I wrote in my post a few days ago in “The Answer” – choosing a specialty or differentiating yourself from others will give you a path or direction for your marketing efforts. If you don’t differentiate your service the only thing you have to differentiate yourself from others is price and prices will always be lower by someone else. Working for less money than you need to make is one of the surest ways to burnout.

I only recently started building my massage practice again this month. I was only working 2 days a week for the past 2 years or so and I recently decided to add a 3rd day. My website always got me at least one call a week but for the past 3 or 4 weeks since I have been adding articles, I have been getting 4-5 calls a week. I at first thought it would take me 3-4 months to build that extra day and was almost looking forward to still having a free day during the summer (if it ever will get here already!) but now I am already booked for the next 2 weeks. My goal is to be booked a few months out like Paul Ingram of Vancouvermassage.ca. Paul’s main page says this:

Unfortunately, I am unable to offer my services to new patients. I no longer maintain a waiting list, because the wait is too long. However, my telephone consultation service is still available, and my tutorials published on SaveYourself.ca are valuable resources which, in many cases, are more useful than an office visit.

His article writing has been an inspiration. Even though I know that this is the basic premise of SBI! it can be done using any hosting if you know how to do all of the above search engine optimization.

My other site www.workless-playmore.com actually explains everything you need to do to get your website found by search engines and what you need to do to get the clicks and convert those potential clients into actual paying clients.