If you’re like most pet spa owners, you want to grow your business and get more customers. The way to do that is to drive traffic to your website. But not just any traffic. What you really want is targeted, qualified leads that are seriously interested in your services.
But if you’re not a marketing expert, how do you do that? How do you send qualified traffic your way?
Read on for our tips on how to get more website traffic for pet spas and how to make sure your website is ready for them when they arrive.
How to Drive More Online Traffic to Your Pet Spa Website
Luckily, there’s no shortage of ways to drive traffic and send it to your website. What we would say, however, is don’t pay for traffic or use any dodgy software that claims to send you thousands of visitors a day. Not only will it be highly unlikely that it’s targeted traffic, but many of these software programs use tricks that Google will most certainly not be happy with.
Instead, follow our easy-to-implement tips and watch your traffic grow organically and steadily.
1) Optimize your Google Business Profile
Google provides a free profile that every local business can claim. It’s straightforward to claim yours if you haven’t already and Google has clear instructions to help you.
Once you’ve done that bit, it’s time to optimize your Google Business Profile (GBP) so that you can benefit from it fully.
You can have a link to your website on your profile so you will get traffic from it if you set it up properly. Even better, a fully optimized GBP can help you appear higher in the search engines and you might get a place on local maps too, for higher visibility.
What do you need to do to optimize your GBP? Fill in everything and choose the right category for your business! There are different sections on your GBP where you can add your business details, contact information, and opening hours. That last one is also important because if you fill in your opening hours, you can be found when local customers search for “pet spa open now”. Don’t turn down any possibility of being found in search by customers that are specifically searching for what you do.
There are also sections where you can fill in your services, answer frequently asked questions, create posts with updates and offers from your business, and collect and answer reviews.
Each one of these sections must be filled in fully if you want an optimized profile. Think about what your customers want to know and ensure you give them every reason to contact you and book. Add business-related keywords and local keywords to your copy, at least in the titles of each section and the first paragraph, though do make it sound natural and write for your customers first over writing for the search engines. Google prefers to promote quality content that provides highly relevant answers for its searchers, so don’t keyword stuff or try to cram too many unnatural-sounding keywords and phrases in there. If you’re not a trained content writer, then try writing like you talk, just as if you were talking to one customer naturally, rather than the whole internet.
One really important thing to do with your business profile is to add quality images to it. Don’t use out-of-focus images or images that don’t show off your business at its best. Take great shots of the outside of your building and the interior. Even better, get some photographs taken of you with your furry clients and their owners. When trusting their beloved pet to a new pet spa, people want to be reassured. They want to see cute images of pets, clearly enjoying themselves and relaxed owners who trust you.
The most important thing with your Google Business Profile is to keep updating it and answering comments and reviews. People want to see a thriving, vibrant business on that page. They want to see recent reviews and a community feel.
Give that to them and you will get traffic back to your website. In fact, you might even get bookings directly from your profile.
2) Claim and manage your local business directories
In addition to your GBP, claim your listing on your local business directories, and just as with your Google Business Profile, fill everything in fully. While you want to drive people to your website, you don’t want to force them to click through to your site and work harder than they need to in order to get the information they need.
Many business directories offer some of the same features as your GBP, where you can fill in information about your services, create posts, answer questions, and request and respond to reviews. Again, take the time to add quality photographs, if you have the option. Cute animal photos catch attention!
It may seem like a lot of work, but it’s important that you update your business listings as consistently as you update your GBP and your website.
The more information about your business in these listings, on your site, on social media, and on your GBP and the more you’ll start to rise in the search engine rankings and get that all-important traffic back to your website.
3) Get more reviews on the top platforms like Google and Facebook
Get reviews anywhere and everywhere you can, but it’s particularly important to focus on getting them on your Google Business Profile and sites like Facebook. Both of these platforms have huge amounts of traffic hourly, and you can get a piece of that sent your way if your content is fully filled in and your reviews are recent and excellent.
Ask current customers to review you if they’re pleased with their latest visit. Send out surveys or email requests later asking people what they thought and if they’ll leave you a review. These are gold for marketing ideas and for continuously improving your business too.
Don’t forget to reply to your reviews, even any negative ones you get. People like to be thanked for leaving a review and potential customers like to see how you respond to any negative comments. Handle them politely and well. Move the conversation offline to a phone call, if possible, and do your best to resolve the problem. You may find your customer retracts the negative review or at least softens it, and you’ll give a much better impression to anyone finding your Facebook page or GBP.
Keep at it! Most people don’t tend to even look at reviews that are over four weeks old, and they certainly won’t consider any company that doesn’t have at least a four-star rating for their pampered pooch or feline friend. Make time in your schedule to chase reviews and to reply to them to keep your reviews current and fresh.
4) Be active and engaging on social media
While you can’t be on social media all the time, it’s important that you show up and interact with your followers consistently.
You can schedule posts from your website to post on your social platforms. This is a good idea, not only because it gives you fresh content on social media, but also because people will then click through to your website to read more.
Scheduling is an excellent idea and it does help you maintain a consistent social media presence, but there’s no substitute for actually being there live and commenting and interacting with your followers.
As a pet spa owner, there’s never a problem with what to post. There’s no shortage of cute cat videos on the internet and no shortage of people who want to watch them either. This really is a case of if you’ve got it, flaunt it. People want to see all the cat and dog pics. They want to see the before and after shots. They want to see you enjoy interacting with people’s pets and smiling with the owners.
With social media, you really can shine, so don’t neglect it.
Make sure you have a good balance of entertaining and informative posts, along with information on your services, so that people know what you offer. Cute animal pics are great, but you’re running a business and you need to send people to your website and get that traffic too.
5) Ensure your website has high-value content
We’ve shared some ideas above on what you can post but, on your website, upfront and center, you need to tell people what you do, how much you care, and why you’re the perfect choice for their fur babies. And you need to make sure that you tell people how to book and how to contact you.
Include blog posts as we’ve already mentioned before and after shots, but also talk about what you do and why it matters. Provide educational posts, such as how to clip your cat’s claws, or how to care for your dog’s coat. This content should be of top quality. It should answer your customers’ questions and be well-keyworded so that you help out your search engine rankings at the same time.
Don’t forget that content doesn’t have to be just written. Photos, videos, audio, and a variety of content formats, such as checklists can all form part of your content mix.
If you’re not sure what to write, ask your followers on social media and your current clients. See what questions they have and answer them.
6) Optimize your website with local schema and structured data
In addition to using keywords and optimizing your site for SEO, you can also add local schema markups and structured data. What this does is show search engine crawlers what your site is about. They can then more easily index it and provide snippets on your search engine listings with more information.
It sounds complicated, and it can be, so this one is perhaps best left to your website developer. It is well worth doing though, so don’t skip it.
If you want to work this out for yourself, Search Engine Journal has an excellent guide on what to do.
Google also has a guide for developers which you may find useful.
7) Ensure your website loads fast and is easy to navigate and read
Very few people are going to wait more than three or four seconds for your website to load. If it takes longer than that, many people will disappear off to the competition, and you don’t want that. Take the time to optimize your site and ensure it loads quickly. If you use WordPress, you can use plugins to increase your site speed and decrease the size of your images so that your pages load faster.
Your device should also work on any device or browser. More and more people are browsing and shopping on their phones than ever. If they can’t see your site or interact with it on their phone or tablet, you could well be losing customers.
As well as site speed, navigation and ease of use matter greatly for your website. Test it yourself and ensure you can easily navigate to each page and that there are no broken links. Get a friend to test your site too. Watch them look around and see how they browse, what they look at first, and how easy they find it to use. Ask them if there’s anything confusing or unclear. Make sure they can easily find your contact details and how to book.
One big problem with websites can be too many fonts and colors, which make it hard work to read the content. Another issue is creating big walls of text with very little white space. Instead, break up your text with headings, bullet points, quality images, and more, so it’s easier to read.
8) Leverage email marketing to engage prospects and send them to your website with a relevant CTA
Build your email list every chance you get. You don’t own Facebook or Twitter. You don’t own Yelp or your Google Business Profile. Relying just on these sites means you’re building your business on other people’s platforms and what do you do if, for example, Google decides to close Google Business Profile down next month or Twitter implodes?
The only way to be sure that you’re in control of your own business and your traffic is to build your mailing list and use email marketing to keep in touch with current and potential customers.
Offer a discount or a free item to encourage people to subscribe. Then email them consistently and keep them updated with what’s going on at your pet spa. You can then market to them whenever you like.
When you do, make a clear offer, tell them exactly what to do to get it, and give them a clear call to action to send them to your website.
9) Set local targeting parameters for your digital ads
Use geotargeting and local keywords when setting up your digital ads. With a pet spa business, you’re fixed in one place, unless you have multiple locations, so local marketing with geotargeted advertising will work particularly well for you.
Choose the areas that you want your ads to be shown and exclude any areas that you don’t serve so that you aren’t wasting marketing dollars on areas where you won’t get customers.
You can specify your local town, county, city, or state, depending on what areas you serve, allowing you to serve relevant local content right to the areas where your potential customers are.
This is a great way to send local traffic back to your website.
We’ve given you quite a laundry list of things to do there. The good news is that all of them will work to increase your traffic and get you great leads. The bad news is that this can be a lot of work.
However, we’re going to give you even more good news in the shape of Surefire’s all-in-one marketing platform.
Why not request a demo and see all our marketing software has to offer? You can manage your content creation, posting, and scheduling right from your dashboard, and you can post to social media and set up your email marketing without leaving our software.
It’s easy to update your directories and your Google Business Profile from our marketing dashboard, and you can even manage, request, and reply to your reviews.
Manage every aspect of your marketing with Surefire’s powerful marketing platform, and get detailed reports and analytics to show you what’s working and where you’re spending your marketing dollars for the best success.
Get in touch with our friendly team and book a demo today.