This is the story of one of my first website builds. At the time, I gave SEO very little thought. I cared about aesthetics and always prioritized UI/UX best practices, not realizing it didn’t matter how the website looked if no one was going to see it.
I made several mistakes. I did my due diligence: I gave the images descriptive names, used H1 and H2 headings, optimized my images and set up lazy loading. But it didn’t occur to me to use descriptive keywords, or to put myself in the shoes of someone searching for this type of business. I put very little thought into the SEO, and didn’t realize the impact until I got feedback that the website was hard to find in search.
Lost in the sandstorm
The business was Sauna Ora, located in Whitianga, New Zealand, a very popular tourist destination where I was living at the time. The area was already saturated with other sauna businesses and a million different tourist activities, so it was no wonder the website wasn’t coming up unless someone searched the business name. It was getting lost in the sandstorm.
That meant missing out on sign-ups from its target audience: visitors who would never know the business existed, because they were only passing through.
How I fixed it
My first step was to think about the main attraction for someone visiting Hahei or Whitianga, which is the famous Cathedral Cove. So I worked it into several places on the page, along with some images.
I rethought the wording of the H1 and H2 headings, kept them under 60 characters and made sure the keywords were well placed. I added informative, valuable and easy to digest content on sauna and contrast therapy, so the site offered quality content and not just a booking button.
I also completely rewrote the meta description, this time with much more thought, and focused on the SEO of the third-party booking platform I’d set up for the business, which had its own separate URL.
Where it is now
Sauna Ora is now a thriving business with a perfect five star rating across more than 80 Google reviews. It’s continuously booking out and now expanding, all in less than two years.
The credit is owed to the owner, a very hardworking builder with the drive and passion to build something like this. But I’m happy to have contributed to such an amazing project.
If you or someone you know has a business that needs a little extra push to get found on the Google Search Page, check out my rates and services and get in touch!
