News & Reviews

What is your Googleability? June 2009

Do you feel like your spa/salon is the needle in the online haystack?
I don't know about you but I use the internet for almost all my research these days. Apart from word of mouth recommendations from trusted friends or colleagues, I look for information and reassurance via company web sites. So if I was thinking of visiting a spa or salon for the first time, would I look it up on the internet before going? Most definitely yes!

But what if I didn't actually know where I wanted to go, except that I wanted to have a day out with my girlfriends within an hour's drive of London? How would I find the spa I was looking for? Why, I would use google, of course!

Google has become such a phenomenon over the last 10 years that it is now a commonly used verb in our everyday language. Google is a search engine like no other. It powers 9 out of 10 UK online searches. But how do you get yourself noticed on google? How can you stand out from the crowd of the thousands of spas and salons in the UK and be on the first page of a google listing? Well, that is where Search Engine Optimisation comes in.

Search Engine what?
For those of us who are just starting out in digital marketing, it's enough to get our heads around the design and build of our web sites, let alone a lengthy technical term that sounds like it might belong in a car mechanic's manual. Search Engine Optimisation is not something you should leave solely to your web designers and then thankfully forget about though. There are various things that you can do as well which I intend to cover over the next few months. One very important part of the process of Search Engine Optimisation is creating web pages that are deemed highly relevant to a particular search term. No-one knows their product better than you so I think it's important to take an active role with your web designers and contribute to this process to optimise your Optimisation.

The google oracle speaks
So, what if I knew nothing about spas but I wanted to have a day out with my girlfriends at a spa within an hour of London that had a pool that we could lounge by. OK, so I type in "spa with pool near London" into google. Here are the top three listings that I get:

• Hotels.co.uk: Kensington Close Hotel, London
This came up because the pool was mentioned in a guest review, otherwise known as user generated content. So this shows the value of being listed on other sites as well as inviting people to leave comments to improve your google ratings.

• Urbanpath.com: Sanook Spa, London
This came up because the pool was mentioned in a negative guest review about the hotel which was given a 2 out of 5 rating. As above, this is user generated content within another site. Sanook was chosen by urbanpath.com to be on that site and didn't have to pay for the privilege but here you see the pitfall of a negative review on a highly visible level.

• Vonessenhotels.co.uk
This came up because the page about Cliveden mentioned their magnificent pool. Well Done Von Essen! That is a perfect example of relevant search engine content found within the body copy of a web site. Exactly the kind of copy you are responsible for writing.

Content management is key
I finished off last month's marketing tips by saying that I would strongly recommend that you have a content management system attached to the backend of your web site that enables you to update and/or amend pages as and when necessary. This is equally important for Search Engine Optimisation because there is a lot you can do when writing or editing the copy for your site to improve its google ratings. You don't just write copy for a web site once. It's a live marketing tool so it needs to be constantly updated. Next time I'll take you through the process of doing just that.

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