GET YOUR MASSAGE AND SPA BUSINESS ON THE FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE TODAY
IF YOU ARE A SPA OWNER IN PHNOM PENH, PLEASE READ BELOW OR CLICK HERE TO GET A FREE CONSULTATION
MASSAGE PHNOM PENH | GET MORE CUSTOMERS USING GOOGLE ADS
The fastest way to rank your spa’s website on the first page of Google and starting getting leads is to buy keywords through Google Ads.
Cost-per-click (CPC) for massage related keywords in 2022 varies depending on how many businesses pay for it. Since several keywords are required to drive enough traffic and leads, you can can end up paying between $100 and $300 per month for Google Ads.
With Google Ads, your competitors can also buy the same keywords and position themselves above you. Often, OTA’s like Trip Advisor/Viator are paying ads to get a dominant position on the first page of Google.
SEO FOR SPA | GET CUSTOMERS WITHOUT GOOGLE ADS
Our Phnom SEO services will help you ranking your websites higher on search engines like Google. Having as many relevant keywords on the first page and even on the top three of the search results page is important.
Travel Advisor/Viator, travel blogs are on the top of the search results for “phnom penh massage” on Google and are getting clicks
While Phnom Penh spas’ websites are visually appealing, they are not optimized for search engines, that is why none are ranking on the top of Google and that Google Ads is often used to drive traffic.
As of 2022, no spa’s website is ranking on the top 3 of Google for popular searches like “phnom penh massage” or “massage phnom penh“. Most of the clicks are going to platforms such as Trip Advisor/Viator.
In the long run, getting direct bookings from Google is more sustainable than paying for Google Ads. With SEO services, you can stay on page 1 for months or even years, increasing your business’s visibility and brand recognition.
SPAS IN PHNOM PENH | SOME NUMBERS
4 spas managed to leverage brand searches on Google to get significant traffic.
Only 7 websites managed to get organic traffic either through branded or from more general searches such as “massage phnom penh” and “spa phnom penh”.
Out of 12 websites, 3 do not get traffic at all or very little from Google search.
MASSAGE PHNOM PENH | A BRIEF INTRODUCTION
In July 2022, we listed just above 10 standalone spas in Phnom Penh with a website. This number does not include the luxury spas operating in some hotels.
Like in 2019, there were fewer spas and massages in Phnom Penh than in Siem Reap in 2022.
Few spas were forced to close due to the pandemic and a few spas were relocated from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh in 2021 and 2022.
SPA PACKAGES PHNOM PENH
In many spas in Phnom Penh you will find other treatments to complement your massage such as:
Swedish massage and anti-age facial
Body wrap with herbs and body massage
Body scrub with salt and aromatherapy massage
Foot scrub reflexology massage
Traditional Khmer massage and spa bath
PHNOM PENH SPA | FAQ’S
Where can I get a massage in Phnom Penh?
Most of Phnom Penh massages and spas are located in Tuol Tompoung or BKK1, or near the riverside around Street 174.
How much is a massage in Phnom Penh?
In 2022, prices of massage and spa services in Phnom Penh are affordable, but more expensive than in Siem Reap. A 1-hour khmer massage (without oil) is priced between 15 and USD 20.
What is the cheapest massage in Phnom Penh?
In 2022, the cheapest massage in Phnom Penh is a 1-hour foot massage for which you will expect to pay between 5 and 10 US dollars.
Page indexing and link indexing are important topics in SEO and are often overlooked and misunderstood by beginners. Indexing can be a critical step in link building and is also important for your website.
Before reading this post, we would suggest to read our blog what are backlinks to have some better context.
WHAT IS LINK INDEXING | INDEXING AND CRAWLING
For Google, the whole process starts by crawling: bots, called googlebots, crawling the web for pages. Google has different bots for mobile, desktop, video, photo, news.
After crawling the pages are rendered and finally, if content is worthy for Google, added to the index. The process is not as straightforward as it seems….
New content is indexed faster when linked to published content. That is why orphaned pages are difficult to index.
Google has two separate indexes (primary and secondary) which are the desktop index and the mobile index.
in 2016, Google announced that the primary index was switched from desktop to mobile. This was done to reflect the trend that most searches were now done with mobile phones. You can check this by yourself by looking at your website’s Google analytics.
A consequence of this change is that mobile search results are slightly different than desktop search results.
This also means that mobile search results reflect more quickly changes being made to your website.
Indexing is the process by which google extracts the most relevant information and adds them to the index. When you execute a search, Google displays the best information based on the index. The index is similar to a library where billions of web pages are stored and organized. Actually, Google’s index size is not as big as we might think….. As many pages on the internet are spam or do not carry useful information the goal for Google is have the best index possible and not the largest.
These information about indexing are now displayed on your google search console as pages discovered but not indexed. Content can be crawled and indexed later, or not….
GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE | LOOKING FOR INDEXING ISSUES
Google search console is a powerful tool to check if you currently have indexing issues with your website. On the left handside you will found the Index–> coverage section.
Pages that Google did not include in the index, are presented in different categories:
Redirect error
Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag
Crawled – currently not indexed
Page with redirect
Alternate page with proper canonical tag
Not found (404)
Discovered – currently not indexed
Soft 404
Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user
Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical
CAN MY BACKLINKS BE INDEXED?
The first thing to check is if the robots.txt file allows bots to visit the page. If robots are blocked from crawling pages with the disallow command, the message below will be displayed by Google mobile-friendly test. If a page is blocked, it can neither be crawled nor fetched by robots.
Once you have made sure that a page can be crawled, you have to check if this page does not have a noindex tag.
The noindex tag will prevent a page to appear on Google search results.
As you can see on the screenshot below, a page with the no-index can still be crawled and fetched by Googlebot smartphone.
HOW TO INDEX BACKLINKS | WHAT ARE INDEXERS?
Link indexing is a task that is getting more and more difficult in 2021 and 2022 for SEO agencies and freelancers. Numerous threads of complaints of low success rate can be found in SEO forums. What took days to index before can take weeks now. We experienced our first difficulties in indexing links back in February 2020 and it did not get better in 2021 and 2022, far from it….
To increase indexing rates, some people have developed indexers. Indexers are platforms built by a third party to force the indexing process. Few of them are free, and as expected, have a low success rate. In 2022, you can find more than 10 paid indexing services on the marketplace which have different indexing rates.
Indexers usually propose monthly packages to index thousand of links but can work also with a more flexible credit system if you have to index a small amount of links over few months. Sending a link to an indexer costs between 0.01 and 0.02 USD.
WHAT IS LINK INDEXING | INDEXING AND DEINDEXING
It is not because a link has been indexed that it will stay indexed forever. We noticed on few occasions that links were being deindexed by Google.
Few reasons can come to mind to explain this: either links were not well connected or Google finally considered that these links were not relevant and not worth being in the index.
It is also possible that the hosting platform where the backlinks are decided to add noindex tags. It was the case for the publishing platform Medium which started implementing the noindex tag in the first half of 2021.
DO BACKLINKS NEED TO BE INDEXED TO PASS POWER?
Getting webpages crawled and indexed is very important so they can appear on search results and start getting organic traffic and conversions.
For parasite SEO, indexing is a key step as the goal is to have your parasite showing up on the SERP.
For backlinks, is indexing as important as webpages and parasites?
As we discussed before, backlinks are important in SEO. One much debated topic in SEO forums and groups is if do-follow backlinks need to be crawled or fully indexed to count for SEO e.g pass power.
Many think that backlinks need to be fully indexed to pass power to the money website. A minority seems to think that getting backlinks crawled by bots is enough.
Finally some think that links crawled by bots counts for SEO but as not much as the ones fully indexed.
HOW DO I CHECK IF MY PAGES OR LINKS ARE BEING INDEXED?
If you do not want to wait for your links to appear on Google Search Console, Semrush or Ahrefs dashboards, you can check links one by one by performing one of the three searches below on Google:
http://www.link1.com (leads to broader results)
inurl:http://www.link1.com
site:http://www.link1.com
This technique is not always precise as sometime a link do not show up on google search but does on Ahref or Semrush.
When you want to check the backlinks of your money site or another page, you will notice some differences between Semrush and Ahrefs so it is good to use both.
Another index checker by Linkody is Index Checkr which has a paid version to check links in bulk for as low as $0.0011 per check.
HOW FAST MY NEW CONTENT OR LINKS CAN BE INDEXED?
Web pages can take few hours, days or even weeks to get indexed. Your content will be approved very fast if your website is Google News approved, . To speed up the indexing process you can request bots to visit your pages via Google Search Console but results are not guaranteed.
As mentioned earlier, indexing backlinks is more difficult than indexing your web pages and SEO indexers are widely used for this purpose .We noticed that indexing issues on Google were linked to Google updates. SemRush has a useful tool called Semrush sensor which measures the SERP’s volatility and therefore an indication of Google updates (even non announced). If volatility is high, it is likely that indexing remains difficult so it is better to wait until the volatility index comes down to send links to your favorite indexer.
In this blog we will discuss backlinks and why are they so important for SEO in 2021. After some general considerations, we will focus on backlinks created by links insertion. If you want to read about other modes of acquisition I would recommend to read the article of Backlinkto about backlinks.
What are backlinks?
Backlinks are inbound links (hyperlinks) to a website or page. Hyperlinks were developed at the very beginning of the word wide web and used to navigate the web before the existence of search engines. Backlinks are also used by web crawlers to discover new content.
Why backlinks are important | Page Rank Algorithm
Crawling, indexing and displaying content in a relevant way is very challenging task and even if it is not perfect, Google is leading the way as the most used search engine today.
The page-rank algorithm patented by the future CEO of Google, Larry Page, was strongly based on backlinks to display relevant content on search engines.
If page A is very authoritative (has a high page rank) it will increase the ranking of page B on search results.
Although it is difficult to say how much of the original page rank algorithm remains in today Google’s algorithm, backlinks are still an important ranking factor.
What are Backlinks | Do-follow and no-follow backlinks
It is very important when doing link building to differentiate between a do-follow backlink and a no-follow backlink. Do-follow links contrary to no-follow, pass authority to the destination page and therefore increase its ranking on Google.
No-follow links were setup in 2005 by Google to fight against spam and ranking manipulation. In 2020, Google decided to change the reading of no-follow as a hint rather than a directive. It is therefore advisable to have a mix of do-follow and no-follow links in your backlink profile.
You can check if a link is no-follow by opening checking the page source code with your browser and look for the rel=”nofollow” HTML tag (it is placed after the attribute href).
Google recently introduced new attributes: rel=”sponsored” to be used for advertisements and paid links and rel=”ugc” for user-generated content links such as comments and forum posts.
As quoted by Google, “Links marked with these rel attributes will generally not be followed” but these links can still be crawled.
After a backlink campaign using quality do-follow backlinks, we always see an improvement of page ranking especially for long tail keywords. Backlinks can be directed to the homepage, a product page or a blog article.
Sometime you can see the attribute rel= “noreferrer” on a do-follow link. It just means that Google Analytics will not show any info about from the referral traffic, it will be classified as direct traffic.
You might see also the attribute rel= “noopener” which is used more as a safety net to avoid malicious attack on opening windows (target=”_blank”)
What are Backlinks |Profile and Contextual Backlinks
A profile page, like its name indicates, is a page with one of more link added on it. Sometime a link can be surrounded by a large amount of text up to several thousand words but there is no anchor text.
Depending on the page design, other links can be present (on the footer or menu) and therefore can dilute the power of the page.
A page with contextual backlink(s) can have many links with anchor text and in some cases, pictures and videos can be inserted as well. A blog is a good example of a webpage with contextual links in which visual content can be added.
Page containing two contextual backlinks and media (images and YouTube videos)
What are Backlinks | Backlinks indexation
Backlink generation is a tedious work but once a backlink is live, it has yet to be crawled and indexed by search engines. Indexation can be the bottleneck for backlink generation. It is a difficult task and a somewhat controversial topic which we will discuss in another blog post.
What are Backlinks | How to measure backlinks quality
When Google stopped using the page rank metric, other companies filled the void and developed their own metrics to measure domain and page authority. Link building providers are using these metrics to market their services, with the different acronyms below:
DA/PA: domain and page authority (Moz metrics)
DR/UR: domain and url ratings (Ahrefs metric)
TF/CF: trust flow and citation flow (Majestic metrics)
DA/PA are probably the most commonly used metrics on SEO marketplaces.
However, these metrics can be easily manipulated (you can find plenty of SEO services to artificially increase your DA/PA). It is therefore important to have more metrics to measure the quality of a backlink.
Additional metrics to look at are: number of backlinks and domains connected to the page, number of organic keywords for which the domain or subdomain are ranking for.
It is important to get a rough idea about the organic traffic on the domain or subdomain and to know about the geographic origin of the traffic. For all these metrics, we recommend to use Semrush.
How do I check backlinks to my site?
With time, on top of backlinks created by you or a SEO agency, you have probably earned few backlinks you did not know about. It is not uncommun especially if you have unique content on your site that people are linking to you.
The first option you have to check backlinks to your website is to look at the links section of your Google Search Console. However you will find out that not all of them are there.
Another option is look up for backlinks using Ahrefs free backlink checker. However, the free version is limited to the top 100 backlinks.
For a limited time, the backlink analytic section of Semrush is free with no limitation in the number of backlinks. You can access it by clicking the image below. You can also with these tools analyze the backlinks of your competitors as well.
You have probably come across the term parasite SEO in forums wondering what it was all about and maybe you saw these peculiar webpages ranking on the page 1 of Google ahead of very authoritive websites.
What is parasite SEO ?
Parasite SEO, also referred sometime as parasite hosting or barnacle SEO, is the process of ranking a page attached to a domain, taking advantage of its high authority on Google and hence able to rank with some keywords relatively easily without having a website.
How can I use a parasite page ?
As a landing page for affiliate marketing.
As a buffer page to increase organic traffic to your website.
Parasites are not all equals in the eyes of Google. Some can rank higher than others and some live longer. Third party metric from Moz, Semrush, Ahref or Majestic can give some hint about the potential of a parasite.
Domain authority, trust flow, number of inbound links (backlinks) and organic traffic can be indicators. However you will sometime see pages which are ranking very well with a low authority and not many inbound links.
Do keywords ranking change with google regions when using parasites?
Yes. Like with a normal website, keywords ranking depends on the google region. We noticed that a japanese parasite was doing better in google.jp compared to google.com. It is our experience also that a parasite hosted in France was ranking better in google.fr regardless the language used (French or English).
NO INDEX META TAG, THE PARASITE KILLER
Sometime parasites are short lived as they get quickly being taking over or blasted by spam. Site owners can take some measures such as making the page not public. However the real killer is the noindex tag which will prevent the parasite page to be displayed on Google search results.
Can a parasite can also be a backlink?
It depends if some links can added to the page and if these links are marked as do-follow or no-follow. For a backlink to work and pass some SEO juice links have to be do-follow. Of course it is better if link can be contextual e.g surrounded by relevant text. Therefore parasites can be integrated in a link-building campaigns.
Does parasite SEO work in 2021?
Parasite SEO is nothing new and has been around for more than 10 years. Every year people are asking if parasite SEO is still working. So yes, parasite SEO still does work in 2021 but it is probably more work then few years ago like many aspect of SEO in general. Will it still work in 2022? Probably yes.
You will see some parasites more on the first page of Google than Bing. For the same queries, it is looks like Bing does a better job as filtering results so parasite SEO is probably a less effective strategy on Bing.
Best Parasite SEO Platforms
Thousand of domains are available to do parasite SEO , the most famous ones being Medium and Google Sites. Some web 2.0 like Tumblr can be used as well. Some social media platforms like Instagram can be used as parasite as well.
Can onpage SEO be done on a parasite hosting ?
It actually depends on the parasite platform. Some basic onpage can be done on Google Sites with tags (H1,H2, H3). Videos from Vimeo and Youtube can be embedded as well. In some platforms, on page SEO can be limited and in for some not possible at all.
Is barnacle SEO a black hat or a white hat technique?
Create a story on your medium account or on a google site connected to your gmail obviously belongs to White Hat SEO. It is considered Black Hat SEO when a website is hacked and pages published and pdf uploaded on the server without the consent of the owners.
Barnacle SEO pro’s and con’s
Pro’s
Can rank on page one of google even for some competitive keywords in a matter of days or weeks.
Most of the time good parasites ranks by themselves and do not require link building.
Most of them are free.
They can be used for any niche.
Con’s
Life span: some parasites can be taken down at any time by the platform owner or by a third party.
It is our experience that some parasites like Medium are not stable in the SERP: being on page 1 for few weeks and then gone completly before coming back to page 2.
It is time consuming to manage and maintain a pool of parasites.
This online reputation management case study is looking at the impact of a social media backlash on website and other entities when online reputation is actually not managed. Results will be updated as the story unfolds.
Online Reputation Management | Timeline of the story
On April 9th 2021, Vice Asia published an article entitled “These People Were Arrested by the Khmer Rouge and Never Seen Again”. This piece was about the work of a colorist from Mayo Co Ireland named Matt Loughrey (ML) whose main business is to provide image restoration services online.
According to the artist, his goal was to humanize the victims of the Khmer Rouge Genocide by colorising some black and white archive pictures. He said this work was commissioned by the victims’ families. These pictures are the property of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh.
One day after the story was published, a social media backlash started on Twitter by a tweet from John Vink, showing original S21 photos with the altered ones: 3 of the photos were altered beyond coloring as Matt Loughrey added a smile to the victims.
A growing list of URL’s carrying negative stories started to appeared online from local to international newspapers with very high authority domains such as Reuters, BBC, CNN, New York Times.
Publications continued even after Vice pulled out their story on April 11th and published a weak editorial on April 12th. The peak of publications was reached on April 12th. Vice issued a stronger apology on April 16th.
Note: It is worth noting that none of these stories linked directly to the My Colorful Past website so did not act as backlinks.
What Is Online Reputation Management?
Online Reputation Management, also known as ORM, is part of digital marketing efforts for a brand, business, or person to put a positive spin about their products or services online. Reputation management can be integrated in a long-time SEO strategy to monitor and manage the properties that define an online reputation.
How to perform an Audit of Your Online Reputation?
A ORM’s audit is a bit different that a normal SEO audit: the first step in a e-reputation audit is to list all assets that belong to the brand or the person. These assets or properties can be one or several websites, a Web 2.0 like Blogger, a YouTube channel, a Facebook or Instagram account, a publishing platforms like Medium.
URL’s that affect the person or the brand in a negative way have to be listed as well. It can be helpful as well to look at the main website and analyze its strengths and weaknesses.
Business destroyed by social media
In extreme cases such as a social media backlash, the negative impact of social media on business is very strong and it explain how can a reputation can be ruined by social media in days.
Online Reputation Case Study | Free ORM Tools
It is important when following a developing story like that to track the different assets online and look closely at the evolution of the SERP to see what Google is rewarding: i.e what urls will be displayed on page 1 and look at their evolution with time. We will use Google Alerts to be informed about the latest news as well as Google Trends.
We also used Social Searcher to keep up to date with the mention of Matt Loughrey on the different platforms online (web and social media). To check the domain authority and the type of backlinks we will use the Moz Bar. SERP tracking is done with serprobot.
Online Reputation Management |Digital Assets
Here is the list below of Matt Loughrey’s assets (along with the Moz domain authority DA) we found including the main website around the brand my colorful past based exclusively on the business of image restoration .
The website itself has a limited content with a poor onpage SEO. In addition its is build around WIX which is not an advantage for SEO. The instagram page ranks actually higher than the website.
This list is to be expected for an visual artist composed of a website and several accounts on social media as Facebook, Instagram and Youtube.
ML lost quickly his facebook and Twitter account on 12.04.2021 so just one day after the blowback. He managed so far to keep his Instagram account but comments are limited comment and pictures related to this story and other controversial pictures such as the one from Czeslawa Kwoka, a young victim of the concentration camp of Auschwitz were removed.
Online Reputation Case Study | Effect of Social Media Backlash
Two things ca potentially works on opposite way and influence the ranking of the main website and other assets on the page 1 of Google:
During a social media backlash, highly authoritative news’ websites are quickly ranking on the first page pushing down the main website and other assets to page 2. It is likely as well that URL’s carrying a positive story will be pushed down as well.
On the other hand, social media signals can potentially boost the ranking of a website with a search “Matt Loughrey” as this will be mentioned thousand of times during a short period of time and people will visit the main website. As expected as visible on Google Trends below, the search “Matt Loughrey” peaked after the Vice story and faded within a week.
Google trends evolution before and after Vice publication
In most cases, the stories were published with no link to ML’s website so no backlinks were created.
Online Reputation Management | Findings (updated)
MONTH 1
The main website went up on the page 1 of Google following the social media backlash from #5 to #3.
Matt Loughrey reputation was seriously impacted with up to 8 negative stories on page 1 with the query “matt loughrey”.
ML lost both his Facebook and Twitter accounts. All content was removed from his YouTube account.
SERP is not stable yet:Reuters and New York Times stories are doing the so-called Google dance.
Google seems to give preference to stories coming from Irish newspapers as they tend to stay longer on page 1.
Vice Asia apologized for the story but not ML.
MONTH 2
The main website is still on the top of Google page #1 taking both position #2 and #3.
Matt Loughrey reputation is still seriously impacted with half of page 1 covered with negative stories.
Facebook and Twitter accounts are still closed. Instagram is active again. YouTube still has no content.
SERP is much stable than last month with three very stable pages from Ireland always on page 1. We can confirm Google gives the preference to stories coming from Irish newspapers.
Matt Loughrey still did not apologize and no reputation management was done.
MONTH 3
The main website starts to go down and now ranks at #3 and #4 in google.com. Instagram account stills ranks on position with the request “Matt Loughrey”.
7 out of 10 results of page #1 are covering negative stories.
Matt Loughrey still did not apologize and the petition on change.org is still online and ranks on page 1.
MONTH 6
The main website ranks now at #3 on google.com, still riding on the initial boost from the original social media backlash.
ML’s Instagram account still ranking #1 with the request “Matt Loughrey”. 5 out of 10 results of page #1 are negative stories. Interestingly enough, although ML’s facebook account was disabled 6 months ago few days after the Vice publication, it has been indexed again by Google and ranks on page 1.
To this day, Matt Loughrey did not apologize and operates via its website and Instagram account.
We are continuing our SEO case study series (previous ones were about luxury spas and restaurants) with an analysis of the hospitality business in Siem Reap. This blog was updated in December 2021 almost 2 years into the covid-19 pandemic.
BRIEF MARKET SITUATION ANALYSIS
Siem Reap has witnessed a explosion in the numbers of hotels in the past 20 years alternating periods of undersupply and oversupply. In 2002, only 47 hotels were registered (guesthouses not included) which at the time was not enough to accommodate the growing numbers of tourists visiting the temples of Angkor.
Fast-track to 2012, this year saw a ”siem reap boutique hotel fever ” and the next few years saw more constructions leading to an oversupply and to a drop in the daily rates.
At the same time, long time established luxury hotels like the Raffles and Amansara were faced with more competition. Accommodations geared towards backpackers expanded as well with both private rooms and dorms.
In 2019, you could find all types of accommodations in Siem Reap: small villa hotels, boutique hotels, container hotels, capsule hotels, private bungalows or villa, luxury tents with a price ranging from USD 2 in a dorm to several thousand dollars per night in the most luxurious hotels.
In July 2019, hotels are still being built but many are closing down. At the same time, the tourism is down in temple city and this trend is expecting to continue all through the the year. At the time of writing, 728 properties were listed on Booking , 768 on Expedia, where as 3027 are available on Agoda. Many hotels are also listed on AirBnB….
Looking at the same platforms in december 2021, we found only 273 properties on Booking, 724 on Agoda which shows partially the impact of covid-19, the real number being likely lower.
SEO VS SOCIAL MEDIA
You are probably using social media like facebook, instagram or twitter to keep your audience up to date with images and videos. You are likely to be satisfied with the many likes you have but is your social media bring you new bookinks every month.
People seeing the posts are most likely not looking to book a boutique hotel in siem reap for their holidays.
When people go on search engines like Google and are type booking boutique hotel in siem reap there is actually a search intent and they will visit only teh webpages which are on the page of results. This is where SEO works and give you visibility on many keywords on the first page of Google.
With almost 1000 restaurants listed on Trip Advisor, Siem Reap is becoming a popular food destination in South East Asia with a broad range of cuisine for all budgets. You can find Khmer, Thai, Indian,Chinese, Korean,Japanese but also French, Mexican, Italian,Turkish and Greek restaurants.
With so many restaurants, visitors have a hard time making a selection especially as most do not stay very long (3 nights in average). To make the search even more difficult, businesses are often relocating due to soaring renting prices and from time to time , some are closing down their operation.
GOOGLE OR TRIP ADVISOR ?
Instinctively, many visitors are turning to Google Search and Google Map to find the best places to eat in Siem Reap. Trip advisor listing and local web directories are dominating the top search results like “restaurant siem reap” or “best restaurant siem reap”.
The online marketing strategy of the food businesses in Siem Reap is quite different than the one of the luxury spas : restaurant owners especially at their early stage of operation, are relying heavily on Trip Advisor to bring customers, either by using a free or a paid listing. As far as free listing concerned, being on the first page 1 is clearly an competitive advantage, but the most difficult is to keep your ranking as competitors will not have any problem writing negative reviews to put you down. Although not all restaurants have a website, they do not take advantage of what SEO can bring to the table (no pun intended)…
We found out that few restaurants (3) used Google Ads pay-per-click campaigns to drive traffic to their website which is much lower in percentage than luxury spas. Consequently the Cost-per-click (CPC) for many keywords is under USD 0.5.
A SEO audit conducted on several websites showed that many websites are not SEO friendly and unless they pay for ads they are not visible on a search done with search engines.
If the restaurant is famous, some traffic will come to the website because potential customers are typing the restaurant’s name on Google but if the site is not optimized organic traffic will be non existant.
Many opportunities exist for restaurants in Siem Reap to improve their website traffic. With a good SEO work, it is possible to outrank competitors and even Trip Advisor. It is also a more sustainable approach that paid ads on Google . Because they work in different ways, SEO can be complimentary to a free or paid listing on Trip advisor.
Website traffic is a pretty general term in online marketing and refers to the number of users visiting a website. It is measured daily (or monthly) by the number of unique visitors and number of pages view.
Google Analytics is the tool of choice which will give you many insights about the visitors to your website and classify web traffic in several categories as we explain below
Traffic to your website will depend on your SEO and overall marketing strategy and can vary greatly even from businesses in the same industry in the same physical location.
Direct traffic
This traffic is acquired by users typing directly your website url into their internet browser. It is usually is not very important for most site.
Referral traffic
Referral traffic refers to traffic coming from another website linking your content (it can be a specific page or your homepage). Google Analytics includes in referral traffic the one which is coming to other search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Qwant and others….
Organic traffic
Organic traffic is very important as it is coming from users looking for specific keywords on a search engine. This type of traffic is probably the most relevant is more likely to convert into sales as it is done with an intent. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is key to improve this category of traffic and it always start by a in-depth SEO audit.
Social traffic
As indicated it is traffic coming from social networks such as Facebook or Instagram. It is an important source of traffic but it might not convert as many sales as the organic traffic.
GET YOUR SPA BUSINESS TO THE FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE TODAY
IF YOU ARE A SPA OWNER IN SIEM REAP, PLEASE READ BELOW OR CLICK HERE TO GET A FREE CONSULTATION
SIEM REAP MASSAGE | GET MORE CUSTOMERS USING GOOGLE ADS
You can rank very quickly in Google by buying keywords through Google Ads.
To drive traffic to their websites, 4 spas are paying for Google Ads (also known as pay-per-click campaigns) in 2022 which is similar than 2018 but with 80% less tourist. We expect to see more spa paying for ads in 2022 and therefore increasing CPC ( Cost-Per-Click).
In 2018, the CPC for massage related keywords in 2018 ranged from USD 1 to USD 1.5. Since several keywords are required to drive traffic to your website, you will have to pay $200 to $300 per month for Google Ads.
With Google Ads, your competitors can also buy the same keywords and position themselves above you if they pay more. Companies like Trip Advisor/Viator always pay ads to be at the top of Google’s search results. More than 90% of people do not click on Google Ads and prefer to go down the page to organic results.
SEO FOR SPA BUSINESSES | GET CUSTOMERS WITHOUT GOOGLE ADS
SEO services in Siem Reap can help you get customers without spending a lot of money on Google Adwords. In digital marketing, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which helps websites rank higher.
You should appear as many relevant keywords as possible on the first page and even within the top three which get the bulk of the clicks.
On Google, you’ll often find Trip Advisor, Viator, and Travefish at the top of the search results for “siem reap massage”. These are very authoritative websites trusted by Google that is why they tend to rank higher than non-optimized websites. With SEO however, it is possible to place your website ahead of them on the page results.
Siem reap spa’s websites are visually appealing, but are not optimized for search engines, which is why they rank on the bottom of page 1 or page 2.
More than 10% of the massage spas in Siem Reap do not have a website and rely on Facebook and Trip Advisor to attract customers online.
In 2022 and since we first published this blogpost at the end of 2018, there is not single website ranking on the top 3 of Google with popular searches like “siem reap massage” or ” siem reap spa“.
The long term advantage of receiving direct bookings from Google is that it is much more sustainable than paying for Google Ads or Trip Advisor. With SEO services, your site can stay on page 1 for many months, even years, and increase your business’ visibility and branding.
SPAS IN SIEM REAP | SOME NUMBERS
Only 3 spas and 1 in particular managed to leverage brand searches on Google to get significant traffic.
Out of 20 websites, only 4 are getting traffic from Google searches “massage siem reap” and “spa siem reap”.
Out of 20 websites, 5 do not get traffic at all from Google.
SPAS IN SIEM REAP | A BRIEF INTRODUCTION
With more than 2.5 million visitors a year in 2019, Siem Reap, gateway to the temples of Angkor, saw a surge in the number of siem reap massage shops and spas in the last 5 years alone. There has been also a shift from cheap to more expensive massage treatments in luxury spas.
In October 2018, we listed about 15 standalone luxury spas in Siem Reap and possibly another 15 in high-end hotels. In 2019, we listed less spas in Phnom Penh than in Siem Reap and the trend is still the same in 2022.
Many treatments are offered in these spas: Khmer, Ayurvedic, Balinese, Swedish, Thai, hot stone, foot, herbal hot compress massages. Available also are body wraps with aloe vera, avocado, mango.
MARKET SNAPSHOT | SIEM REAP MASSAGE
End 2018 – March 2020
Few luxury spas in Siem Reap found it difficult to find customers offered deep discounts (30 to 50%) in a permanent basis. Others relied on travel agencies to fill out their bookings.
Trip Advisor is a good source of booking but the competition is fierce with close to 150 businesses alone listed in the Spas & Wellness category in 2019. It it also very difficult to stay on the first page because of the inconsistency of Trip Advisor review system. Your visibility will be drastically improved if you join Trip Advisor Experiences (Viator product) but comes with a 20% commission fee…
March 2020 – December 2021
The pandemic had a dramatic impact on massages and spas in Siem Reap and on the whole hospitality industry. Few businesses tried to stay open following safe practices (temperature checks and the use of hand sanitizer upon check-in), but finally all spa venues shut down due to the lack of customers by the end of March 2020. All of them stopped their digital marketing activities as well.
After Cambodia opened to vaccinated travellers in November 2021, few massage shops opened, relying heavily on word-of-mouth amongst locals and Facebook advertising.
January 2022 till now
Many massages and spas reopened and in June 2022, we listed more than 20 standalone spas in operation in Siem Reap, which is close to the number of spa businesses before covid. However, the big difference with 2019 is that the number of tourists in Siem Reap is now less than 10% to what it was before covid!
In 2022, more than ever, a responsive website with well-researched content and a solid digital marketing strategy including SEO will be critical to getting customers online.
SPA PACKAGES SIEM REAP
It is quite common among the spas in Siem Reap that spa packages with good value for the money are offered mixing different treatments:
Traditional massage and facial
Body wrap and body massage
Body scrub and body massage
Foot massage and facial
Traditional Khmer massage and spa bath
SIEM REAP SPA | FAQ’S
Where can I get a massage in siem reap?
Most of Siem Reap’s massage and spa spots are located within a 3 km radius around Pub Street, where tuk tuks can take you between them.
How much is a massage in Siem Reap?
In 2022, prices of massage services in Siem Reap are quite affordable, and are down from 2019. A 1-hour khmer massage is usually priced between 10 and USD 15.
What is the cheapest massage in Siem Reap?
In 2022, the cheapest massage in Siem Reap is a 1-hour foot massage which is priced between 4 and 6 US dollars.
what is traditional Khmer massage? (Khmer massage description)
If it is your first time in a spa in Cambodia, it is likely that you did not experience traditional Khmer massage before but that you are familiar with Thai massage.
Both massages are not using oil but the technique between Thai massage and Khmer massage is quite different. Thai massage is based on yoga stretches where as Khmer massage uses more trigger and acupressure points. Usually the massage therapist uses more strength for Thai massage than Khmer massage.
It is usually quite difficult to find a Thai massage in Siem Reap.
what is a day spa?
A day spa is different from a beauty salon if it has facilities like a sauna, steam room, or pool.
Day spas do not offer overnight accommodation. This is the difference between a destination spa and a day spa.A destination spa may offer similar services, including diet and exercise plans, wellness instruction, fitness coach or yoga classes.
