Coverage Of Spas And Salon Service

Much to my delight, some of our best performing articles on the Harper’s Bazaar website are guides to the best spas and salon services (hair, nails, massages, etc). We get a lot of organic search traffic to these pages as Google sees us as authorities in the subject – hurrah, as well as direct traffic, because readers see us as authorities, too – bigger hurrah.

Anyway, they generate decent referrals to beauty businesses, so today I thought I’d touch on what makes us want to cover these services, and how best to sell them in to digital editors.

Let’s get the obvious out the way: from spa/service to publication, brand characteristics need to align. So, in my case, I’m looking for luxury offerings. This means they should interest our readers, which is crucial. And as with anything recommended editorially, we try before suggesting they buy – demonstrating that we’ve experienced a spa/service first-hand is essential for ensuring originality and maintaining reader trust.

Perhaps less apparent is that, increasingly, we are looking for ecommerce opportunities here too, whereby in return for referrals we can make commission. A preferred bookings platform for Hearst is Booking.com, and we also work with Linkby which operates on a cost-per-click basis.

Category roundups are often the most successful way of covering spas and beauty services. Think: ‘The best UK spa hotels’ or ‘The best massages in London’ – which people are constantly on the lookout for. I appreciate many of your clients expect dedicated stories in return for complimentary press visits. But hopefully my insights in an August column titled ‘Getting featured in standalones vs roundups’ will help you relay that multi-destination guides often outperform single-destination reviews and, as they’re updated more regularly, the coverage offers better longevity.

That said, I’ve featured beauty services and spas outside of guides in various ways. For these occasions I think about the Google search we want to appeal to with an article. For example, a review on ‘natural lash extension’, ‘modern permanent make-up’ or ‘pregnancy massage at home’ are niche search terms that have great potential for features. Pitch away!