LaMarie Beauty — Product Page SEO Optimization

Overview

A production audit conducted by Kimberly Gehrmann (client-side technical lead) surfaced significant SEO gaps on LaMarie Beauty's product and service pages. Despite Yoast SEO being installed and connected to Google Analytics and Search Console, the plugin is effectively unused at the page level — product pages lack target keywords and location-specific metadata, causing poor search rankings for core service queries.

This issue is notable because SEO underperformance was the original reason Asymmetric was engaged to rebuild the site. The audit found the problem persisting on the rebuilt site.

See also: ^[1] | ^[2]

The Problem

Symptom: Poor Ranking for Service Queries

When searching for specific services (e.g., "Aqua Gold facial," "Diamond Glow facial") in an incognito browser from the Madison, WI area, the search result order was:

1. Competitor med spa pages (3+ results)
2. LaMarie Beauty homepage
3. LaMarie Beauty's Square booking link for the service
4. LaMarie Beauty's actual product/service page

The unique product page — the highest-value landing destination — ranks below the homepage and even below a third-party Square link. This is the inverse of the desired outcome.

Root Cause: Yoast Installed but Unused at Page Level

Kimberly's audit of the rendered HTML and plugin configuration identified two structural gaps:

The meta description field is being populated on some pages (e.g., Diamond Glow Facial), but without target keywords or location terms, it provides minimal SEO value.

Asymmetric's Counterpoint

Mark noted that macro-level indicators are trending positively:
- Site health score improved from 21 → 99
- Organic keyword count trending up
- Referring domains trending up
- Pages crawled in last 30 days up 278%
- Zero broken links, zero blocked pages

These metrics reflect technical health and crawlability improvements, but do not address page-level keyword targeting or local schema depth. Both can be true simultaneously: the site is technically healthy and indexable, but individual pages are not optimized to rank for their target queries.

Recommended Fixes

1. Configure Yoast Focus Keywords on All Product/Service Pages

For each service page (Aqua Gold Facial, Diamond Glow Facial, etc.):
- Set a primary focus keyword (e.g., "Aqua Gold facial Madison WI")
- Write or update the SEO title to include the keyword
- Update the meta description to include the keyword and a location signal

2. Add Local Business Schema to Service Pages

Extend the local business schema (currently homepage-only) to individual service pages. At minimum, include:
- Business name
- City/state (Madison, Wisconsin)
- Service type

3. Audit and Update All Product Page Meta

Pull a full list of product/service pages and audit each for:
- Focus keyword presence
- Meta description quality
- Location term inclusion

Yoast's bulk editor or a WP-CLI export can accelerate this audit.

Evidence from Audit

"When I dumped the plugins that the La Marie website is leveraging, I saw [Yoast SEO]. And it is installed, but it appears to be unused because when I actually looked at the HTML that is being rendered, the products and the services did not have those actual target keywords set."
— Kimberly Gehrmann

"The local business schema was only done on the homepage. And so references to locations such as Madison or Wisconsin on those existing product and service pages — the target keywords are not there. And so we're missing out on those SEO rankings."
— Kimberly Gehrmann

Action Items

Related Issues (Same Audit)

This SEO gap was one of several foundational issues surfaced in the same audit session. All Bookly development has been paused until these are resolved.

• ^[3] — broken native sync plugin
• ^[4] — 6–7s add-to-cart delays, unstyled cart sidecar, quantity update requiring page refresh
• ^[5] — 56% cache hit ratio driven by bot traffic