Updates to our website

When you are dreading that google slump, keep calm and massage on !

I normally write about the importance of keeping well with Sports Massage and regular massage. But today, I am putting on my ‘running a small business’ hat and am sharing my experience of having to ride out a storm in a digital world. We have updated our website to https://aucklandtherapeuticmassage.co.nz

Doesn’t sound like much, but in small business any storm, any change can come out of left field. But some of the battles we face are more related to the fact, that nobody can be an expert in absolutely everything. Keeping in mind, that keeping cost down is always at forefront of mind in small business, we all wear a million hats as semi- experts, with a Kiwi ‘have a go’ attitude. It’s part of the challenge. It’s part of what I enjoy about small business.

So being the IT and online marketing expert, as well as the business owner comes as no surprise. It becomes especially poignant though, when dealing with the many unknowns of dealing with Google to rank well in search results. Bar a few known truths, nobody really knows how that algorithm works. There are plenty of people out there trying to tell you, that they can put you on page one of Google today (who hasn’t had that phone call or email !?! ). However at the end of the day it really boils down to two things: Search terms and time. Which brings me back to our update to https. Our website is roughly 6 years old. Ancient really! But safety online was much less of a concern then and the organic traffic we have received has been really great. Hence we remained on http, the old version, up until now. About 20- 30 % of our new clients find us online. Our regular clients and referrals make up the rest, but even those clients use our website to book appointments online, meaning they still search for us, unless they bookmark our page. Google sees any change to the website address (URL) as a completely new site (bombshell!!). It will go through the same process of evaluating (‘crawling’) the site, once a sitemap is submitted, before listing it accordingly. Google maps works similarly, though at least it lets you make changes quite easily yourself. And then,ideally there is having to update every link to your website you have ever written, all social media links and all business associates. Yes. All of them. And then you wait. They call it sand boxing. That dreaded wait and see.

So…. what does it all mean ? I have been putting this off for such a long time, because everything I have read about it tells you, that it can take 6- 12 weeks (Yes, up to 3 months !!) to recover your position on Google. OMG. That awful feeling of not being able to tell, how it will affect the business. Will it mean a 20- 30 % drop in business ? Or even more ? What if we do not recover our ranking in 12 weeks ? How can we work with the unknown ? The answer is this: Keep calm and carry on! I got help from a WordPress specialist to install the SSL and now I am doing the rest (Google analytics and webmaster tools, social media etc) myself. I am slowly working my way through it. It’s week one and we have definitively seen less traffic. Google for business says 25% drop in listing on Google maps alone and it is only day 5. On the upside though, I have send a newsletter to all of our clients with the title ”Changes to our website’ , which at least does not qualify as spam ! 🙂 Let’s take a deep breath in and work through it.

Hopefully riding out the storm! In the meantime you can help us by refreshing your bookmarks to the new address https://aucklandtherapeuticmassage.co.nz or go straight to our booking calendar to book your sports massage with us.

Happy massaging as always 🙂

from Carmen and the team at Auckland Therapeutic Massage