Vaginal Steaming and SEO

It would appear that a new trend has emerged in the birth industry! While doing search engine optimization for a client's website I found a striking result in the Google keyword tool. It's pretty crazy. Between December 2014 and January 2105 searches on Google for the terms "vaginal steaming" and "vaginal steam" more more than tripled, and "belly binding" almost doubled. This shift in search behaviours represents a massive increase in interest and awareness. Further research shows that roughly 15% of those searches are taking place in California!

Not even sure what vaginal steaming, belly binding, and mother roasting are? Here are a few blog posts to get you started.  First, an OB perspective on vaginal steaming (she is suspicious, but open to the possibility), an holistic perspective on vaginal steaming (honoring it as an age-old remedy), the tradition of mother roasting, and a great pinterest board on belly binding.

We can likely thank Gwyneth Paltrow for a large portion of this increase in traffic, since it was revealed that she indulges in routine vaginal steamings at an LA spa.  While she is not using it for postpartum healing, the awareness generated from this publicity is likely to spill over into more mainstream awareness of this practice and the traditions of mother roasting.  This massive spike in traffic will likely calm down over the months to come, but it is a great example of the power of social media on consumer awareness of health options.

Have belly binding and vaginal steaming practices taken off in your community?  Just one of the endless cool things you can discover if you learn how to use SEO on your website with my The SEO Birth Plan eCourse for birth pros!

To learn more about trending keywords and other important factors that can influence how your site shows up in search, check out my SEO course!