New Registration - SpaGetaway.com

I'm very proud to announce that we've acquired the domain SpaGetaway.com. This new domain fits very well into our Vocav.com plans as many of our sites are prime Spa and Resort destinations. The listings and ad revenue from SpaGetaway will also give us a nice income stream along with the cross promotional possibility that the Vocav.com platform provides. While I'm not going to go into as much detail yet about this site as I have with some of the other sites we've discussed in our New Registration series of posts, I do want to talk a bit about what we are doing and how the development is progressing.

Headings

Actually, the first thing I want to do is ask for your opinion - we've got a rough draft of the site header and I'd like some input. There is both a positive and negative version that we are playing with and we want to really focus on the Resort and Spa market (thinking skiing, golfing, ocean/beach, etc.) as most of our listings will be destination spas, though we will also list day spas and more. So here they are. Click the thumbnail image for the full size version:

Planning

Besides planning a couple of spa trips, we've actually got a pretty good plan for how we will develop and market SpaGetaway.com... partially because the site name is pretty clear. It's a brand that's already built for us, but we will be providing some unique services that I think will really set us apart and be quite profitable. We plan to go all out with marketing as this is a name we would be proud to advertise on the radio or produce TV commercials... so pay attention the next time you hear a commercial for a spa getaway as it may well be ours!

Evaluating the Market

One thing I haven't really talked about is evaluating your target market. For example, did you know that spa traffic is being hit pretty hard through this recession? It's understandable, but it's something you should consider both before, during and after you've purchased a domain. What's interesting is that there is a definite spike in searches online as spa goers are looking for the best deals... and that benefits us. You also want to evaluate what other web sites are providing similar services, how they provide those services, research traffic comparisons (not perfect, but something to note) and who is ranking for what search terms.

When creating your site, you should also plan out the structure of the site to maximize your ranking on popular keywords and check your competition to see which keywords they rank for. For example, it would be advantageous to rank for the terms "Resort and Spa" as well as "Spa & Resort", but "Resort and Spa" gets nearly twice the searches, so you better believe that's the one I'm going to go after first.

Link Building

Finally, while I still need to do a full out post on Link Building, I just wanted to touch on one popular way to get one-way links to your site: Giveaways! What do people love to get? Free stuff! How do spas increase their traffic? Promotions! We can really drive links to our site by partnering with our Spas and helping them with their promotions. This is harder to do with certain products/services, but there are a number of "free gifts" and discounts that the spa industry is willing to throw out in order to bring people into the spa and we can help them with those promotions and, in exchange, we will be driving traffic to our site.

But more important than all of that is the Vocav.com platform. Imagine dozens if not hundreds of local geo sites deep linking with unique link text back to SpaGetaway.com. There are certainly problems and issues to be aware of with a linking strategy like that, but with proper planning we should be able to properly promote our SpaGetaway.com site, drive traffic across our network of sites and increase search engine rankings all at the same time.

Be sure to leave a comment about the rough draft of the header graphics. Be brutally honest! Do you prefer the "black on white" or "white on black" look? Thanks!