The Home Page on your massage business website
The home page is where most people will land on through search engines or directly through your URL. It is one of the most important pages that you will have on your site. You have about 5 seconds to get someone’s attention. If people found your page through the search engines they won’t know anything about you and they won’t really care much about you. They are still thinking about themselves and are looking for an answer to their problem (which is why they were searching in the first place). The issues that usually bring people to look for massage are some kind of pain or stress. They want to know if you will have the knowledge and experience to help them with it. They want to know if it will be worth spending their money on you. They want to know if you can handle their situation.
They want to know – What is in it for me?
The way that you tell them is through writing content so your home page will have to address and ease their fears and peak their interest so they will read more about you or call to make an appointment.
Your home page will need to answer the question: What solution do you provide? Start thinking about that and create a one or two sentence ‘slogan’ for the headline and topic of your home page.
People don’t want to know about the benefits of massage or the history of massage. They want to know what you can do for them! They don’t want to know how many years of experience you have or what training you have until they understand what is in it for them. It will take time and will also require testing the wording on the homepage to see what works best.
When a home page starts with something like “Welcome to my Website” – it is really about you. People would rather see something that indicates that you know what you are doing. If you say something like “If you are stressed out, you have found the right website” this is a sales pitch which you want to avoid on a website. The goal in writing content is to inform and educate people. People will know when they are being sold to and will be more skeptical.
Your homepage will link to 5-15 pages creating your main navigation structure. The Main pages will be: your ‘about me’ page, your services/fees page, your contact/location page and then you will add pages about different types of massage, or different diseases and conditions that you work with or specialize in such as pregnancy massage, car accidents, work related injuries and sports injuries.
About Me Pages
Your ‘About Me’ Page is the second most important page on a website. After you create an attractive and engaging homepage, the next page you want people to go to is either your massage services page that lists the fees and services you offer or your ‘about me’ page. People want to know who you are!
You still want to start your about page with a short paragraph talking about ‘what solution YOU will provide for readers/potential clients’.
Creating your ‘about me’ page for your massage business website is where you will tell people just that – everything about yourself that is related to your business. It is the second most visited page on websites. It is like looking at the dust jacket of a book to find out who the author is and what they look like. People want to know if you are capable of handling whatever problem they have. Your main goal with your ‘about me’ page is to create credibility and build trust with potential clients.
A good place to start with is why you chose massage as a profession. This really works because massage therapists go into massage because they want to help people or because massage helped them heal from an injury or condition. The people searching for a therapist want someone who wants to help them, someone who is knowledgeable about their condition. People will relate to your story! The ‘about me’ page is very important. Take time to make it truthful and compelling. Here are some suggestions for your ‘about me’ page:
- write from your heart
- have a picture of yourself doing massage
- write about your very first massage experience and how it helped you
- write about how often you get a massage yourself especially if you get one every week and be a model for your clients
- write about why you went to massage school
- write about what it means for you to be doing massage
- write about why you like doing massage
- write about your own healing experience with massage
- write about your expertise
- talk about what problems you can and have solved with massage
- include the steps they need to take to contact you
- don’t be afraid to brag or show off – this is about you!
- use the ‘about me’ page to link to your other best or most popular pages
- write about what sets you apart from others
- write about your philosophy on health and healing
- write your mission or vision statement
The Services Page
Create a page about your massage services including your rates for each service. List every type of massage that you do and explain it in a brief paragraph. I also recommend that you have a link that takes the reader to a whole page on each type of massage that you do. Most people don’t really know about the different types of massage. Deep tissue massage is often confusing for people because of the name and the idea that deep tissue is – well deep. There are many different ideas on what makes a deep tissue massage. You need to communicate what your idea is and be clear about the depth and pain levels. People don’t even really know what basic Swedish massage is. Write about why you do that type of massage and what you use it for. It is also another opportunity to create pages with good keywords that people may be searching for – things like ‘deep tissue massage’, or ‘spa massage your city’.