We believe periodic updates to the whole SEO effort are a good thing. Here are a few insights into recent events in the SEO world that you may find useful.

Get listed: Completing the registration process with getlisted.org is extremely important for your business.  It provides a central location for you to view and confirm your information with search engines and listing services.  Ensuring the accuracy and completeness of this information will improve your rankings on search engines as well as providing (potential) customers with detailed information on your business including hours, payment types accepted and even photos and videos of your business.

Confirming your information with search engines is important for local searches for several reasons.  For one, when an authoritative owner has confirmed the information it gets a higher priority for being verified information.  Secondly, confirmation of locations and keywords will improve your standing in local searches by providing Search Engines with an accurate location relative to the searcher’s estimated location, which is extremely important when doing a business search.  Finally, Google and Bing will indicate whether you are currently open for business, which is important information for someone that may be looking to obtain products or services at the time of their search.

Keywords, the evolution continues: In 2012 Google released an update called “Penguin” designed to remove any benefits sites might gain by “link farming” and other techniques designed to game the search engine’s algorithm.  The biggest side effect of this change for SpaBoom users is that it essentially deprecates the “Keyword” meta tag and its setting in SpaBoom.  In order to get Google to see these keywords now, you should make sure that they are incorporated on your front page in natural language.

Providing keyword rich front page content is Google’s preferred way of learning about your site.  The best ways to accomplish this will improve the information you provide potential customers and your Google Rankings, which was Google’s whole idea.  We suggest adding information such as popular services, written directions to the business and areas served, even practitioners’ names if they have a reputation from other activities.  You might also consider covering conditions or diagnoses that your services work for, or circumstances in which your services might be a preferable alternative or a complementary treatment.

As always, please feel free to give us a call at 800.940.0458 or Email with any questions. We’re happy to help!

Did you know that there are 165M handheld devices out there now? That’s a whole lot of smart phones and tablets serving to connect people with their world. And if you think about that number relative to say, 2 years ago, it’s a bit shocking.

Who knew that the internet and mobile accessibility would change how we connect, live and work so completely in such a short time? Well, in all fairness, Steve Jobs (may he rest in peace) and Mark Zuckerberg did, but we can’t all see their version of the future.

Since mobile accessibility clearly isn’t going away, we’ve got a great marketing tool for your business to reach out — a mobile app for your spa or salon. You’ll be able to easily connect with all of those device users, and make that connection work for your business.

What you’ll be able to do, out of the gate:

•     Promote specials and events directly to your clients

•     Promote your featured service or specialty treatments in a location that allows for purchasing on the spot

•     Offer up convenient booking or request appointments accessibility

•     Serve up easy blog article access

•     Make it convenient to purchase Instant Gift Certificates directly on the smartphone or tablet

Doesn’t that sound perfect, especially if you don’t have to do anything to make those things happen? Just know, we’ve got your app on the way! SpaBoom is getting set to deliver the best mobile spa/salon app around!

Why? Because our experience in the spa and salon industry makes us very good at knowing what spas and salons need. And our success with thousands of marketing campaigns helps us predict what consumers are expecting.

We are in the final phase of development and would love to hear any suggestions you have regarding feature requests for the SpaBoom mobile app, or what we’re fondly referring to as – Our little ‘SpaBaby’.

A few months ago we talked about the changes in the economy, right here. Since our holiday revenue review, we have continued to see growth and increases in revenue across the board with our spas. This is definitely something that every spa owner wants to hear so with that in mind, we talked to one of our many spa owners that have seen gift certificate sales increase exponentially in the last few months.

Ava Bella Day Spa in Little Rock, Arkansas uses SpaBoom’s Instant Gift Certificates to offer online gift solutions to their customers. This year, Ava Bella Day Spa sold more than $29,000 worth of online Instant Gift Certificates in February leading up to Valentine’s Day, with almost $10,000 worth of online Instant Gift Certificates sold on Valentine’s Day! DeeDee Helbig, the owner of Ava Bella Day Spa, is extremely pleased with her gift certificate sales.

Since we started using SpaBoom our gift certificate sales have greatly increased! I have sold $31,000 more than last year at this time! I tell every business owner I know about SpaBoom.

Ava Bella Day Spa started using SpaBoom in April of 2012. Since then, they have sold over $100,000 in online Instant Gift Certificates. DeeDee attributes the increase in sales to the unique opportunity of convenience and enhanced abilities her clients now have to access gifts and information whenever they want or need it.