I just wanted to share a few tips on how to bring in potential customers to your website, those who may be searching for someone just like you but going to your competitiors because they have spent a fortune on doing the following.

Okay, first of all I'd like to say that I'm not a web professional, but do have a reasonable knowledge of the Internet from my last job. My experience in this area is largely from running my website over the past year and a bit, and watching my website stats show massive increases in hits as a result of doing the following. In other words, I did this and it worked.

First golden rule for your website is to write loads of relevant content. The more you write about the topic you want people to be searching for you under, the more likely they will find you.

Second one I hear from marketing people (not tried this one yet) is to write your website so that the message to your customers is how to solve their problems. I'll leave the fine detail of this one to others, I recall someone else has already posted on this topic elsewhere.

Okay, so here's my thoughts on how to get the traffic in to your site - and I don't mean just any old traffic, as a result of doing all this I saw my email queries about my services multiply ten-fold.

The overall aim is to use other sites as a sort of funnel, to channel people in to your site, which you can do as follows:

1) First thing to do would be what they call Search Engine Optimisation - this is when you submit your site to Google, Yahoo, MSN and maybe some other websites, and they then find you more easily. Here are the websites to do that for the main search engines:

http://www.google.com/addurl/
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit (requires you to register with Yahoo, which can be done for free)
http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

One thing I’m not sure about is what happens if you have don't have your own domain (e.g. using a free web page on someone else’s site). These pages might not work as the programs that do the searching (called bots or spiders) usually go to the top level domain (e.g. exploreyoga.co.uk) and then 'crawl' over the whole website. Your page will be part of a sub-domain, it may help though, so give it a try.

You should also check out your website's "meta tags" - these are a hidden part of your website (i.e. not clearly seen by surfers) but they are what the spiders/bots use to find keywords to indicate your site's content. If you don't know enough about meta tags are or how to sue them, get a techie friend or do some research. You can find a tool to check them out here:

http://www.widexl.com/remote/search-engines/metatag-analyzer.html

2) List your website in Free directories - some are better than others. I found mine by searching "yoga directory free" in Google and checking every page. Some are useful, others are not, Therapists could check out terms like "free directory therapy" or more specific terms like the names of all your different therapies, and you'll find some good links. Some will let you link to your webpage, others only allow phone no.'s.

Now, as well as free directories specific to your cause you should check out general business directories, local directories and national directories (e.g. Yell and Thomsons, which offer free basic listings) - after all, if they get you one single customer they've been worth the typing to set them up!

One general one that I've had website hits from (another advantage of having your own website is you can see how people linked to your site) is http://www.uksmallbusinessdirectory.co.uk/business-listings.asp

Think laterally, if you're listed somewhere there are no competitors then you've got the advantage!

A big note is, don't limit yourself to national directories from the country you live in - the more sites that link to yours hte better your Google ranking is, so it doesn't matter if your links come from Brazil or Bratislavia, it's the number that can help you appear on the first page when someone Googles a relevant search prhase.

3) Online discussion forums - Try Googling "alternative therapist discussion forum” or some combination of terms like online forum, bulleting board, message posts and suchlike.

If you go into these and post a message, always have a 'signature' that includes your webpage. People will click on this and link to you. Not always nearby people, but I get the most hits on my site from one Yoga forum where I do a lot of posting. And if what you post has good content then people might decide they want to come as a customer because they 'connect' with what you're writing.

4) Blogs - a web log is a kind of online diary, you might have seen mine which is accessible through my website (see mine at http://scottsthotts.blogspot.com).

Why can that help? First, you can lead people to link to your webpage via this site.

Second, good content will again help you make a name for yourself and attract people, so every few days you should write something interesting about your thoughts or therapies.

Finally, Blogvertising is a fine art and you can read more about it online (just Google that word and see). I've not really looked into it or tried it to any great extent but it's what they're now calling 'viral marketing', a sort of hyped-up "word of mouth". Idea is, you check out similar blogs to yours (i.e. from other therapists) and post comments on their blog postings - maybe add something to their post, or just a comment about how wonderful it is. Then people browsing that site will link through to your blog, where you have a link to your website ... and voila, another potential customer. Of course many of them won't be, but if you don't try...

Hope that's helpful to some,

Scott

Last edited: 14-12-2006 12:10:05 AM

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Thanks for this post Scott, there's some great info here. If you don't mind I'll just expand on one of your points.

This is not entirely what search engine optimisation is about. To be honest you don't need to submit your site these days because search engines like to find websites themselves. Search engines like Google and Yahoo send what are called 'Spiders' which are little internet 'robots' which go out across the internet following links and indexing content.

The very best way to get listed in Google is not to submit your site to Google, but to make sure that there are a few other websites that are already in Google that are linking to you. You can do this in a variety of ways. If you have any friends who have established websites then ask them to link to you. You could also request link exchanges with sites that are already in Google, and then you could submit article to article directory sites and make sure your articles link to your website. Submitting a press release to one of the prwires should also get the likes of Google visiting your website.

What Search Engine Optimisation is really about is making sure that each of your web pages is created in such a way that it stands the best chance of getting a high ranking in the search engines.

For each page your create you need to decide what your major keywords are for that page (your keywords are what you expect people will type into the search engines in order to find you). Remember that unless you're a famous person or famous brand name, people will not be typing your name or your company name into the search engines. They will usually be looking for information about a subject that interests them (such as "How to give a good massage"), or looking for a service like "Massage therapist in Newcastle". So you need to make sure that your pages provide that information and that they are optimzed in such a way that search engines like Google will know what your page is about, and serve it up if people are searching on that subject.

You can do this in a number of ways.

First there's your Meta Tags which provide information about your page to the search engines. However there's only one meta tag that is vitally important and that's your TITLE tag. Whatever is in your Title tag will be displayed in the blue bar right at the top of your browser, and also when Google display search results, it's your title tag that usually forms the link people will click on.

Then there's the content on the page itself. Make sure your keywords appear in the headline (which is often the same as your title tag) and also appear a few times within the body of your article. However don't over do it. Having your keywords appear too many times on your page is known as 'keyword stuffing' and if Google suspects you're keyword stuffing then you will be penalised. Having your major keywords appear 2 to 3 times within the body of your article should be enough.

Anyway, that's the basics of Search Engine Optimisation. It's a huge subject and if you search on it in Google you will come across thousands of articles, subjects and books all about that subject.

What's great about search engine optimisation is that, if done correctly it allows small companies to easily compete with big corporations in the search engines, and often win.

Googles organic search results are currently impartial to who you are, or what your turnover is. Google just wants to provide the most accurate search results so that people can easily find what they're looking for. So if your web site meets certain criteria (such as having a good link popularity*) and you're pages are well optimised, then you have just as much chance of getting to the top of Google as companies that are making millions a year.

*link popularity, which Google calls your Pagerank, is increased by having more and more sites linking to you. The more sites that link to you the more Google will see you as being a well respected and popular website and therefore will more likely give you a higher search position. So it's very important to have other sites linking to you. They should also be sites that are relevant to the subject of your own site.

Last edited: 14-12-2006 11:55:05 AM

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a few more tips

it's true that only the search engines themselves know how their algorithms are configured, however there are a number of truisms that are worth bearing in mind

1. algorithms are designed to favour government, educational and not-for-profit websites over commercial sites
2. the relevance of a site linking to yours is a determinant in the 'value' of that link. eg a highly trafficked porn site linking to a kinesiology site won't do you much good; a highly trafficked government health site, speaking about kinesiology, and linking to the same website will have a much higher value, and will reflect on your position in the search engines
3. content is king - the more relevant, unique and interesting content you provide, the better your chances of being linked to [often without your knowledge in blogs]; think about how you can provide a unique user experience, a survey, forum etc that people might find of general value

that's all i have time for right now ...

cameron

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thanks guys..... very interesting and useful info........... I shall be trying it out for myself

Marcie

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I also heard somewhere that the more you add or change content on your website, the better Google & other search engines like it. Is this true? (Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick!)

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Yes it's true, it certainly can be a factor. Google will often rank websites that frequently add new content higher than websites that haven't changed or added new content for months or especially years.

I would certainly recommend adding some new content to your site at least once a month.

If you don't have a website that you can easily update yourself then I would recommend getting one. There are lots of great open source (free) content management systems (meaning you can easily add and manage content yourself) available such as Joomla - http://www.joomla.org which although would require someone with technical skills to set it up for you, once it's been setup Joomla will give you almost all the functionality you could ever need.

Andy

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Andy, I have a website, it's not simple to manage but OK. Trouble is its only 10mb and now I find I want to add stuff I can't, it's full. So I am looking for an host that doesn't cost the earth. What is Joomla all about? I just had a quick look, but I'm still not sure. I'm not all that familier with the jargon.

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I did some bits & bobs on my site last night, and added & changed a few things, in the parts that I can. The person who made my site for me (my son!) gave me the facility to be in control the 'diary dates & news' section of the site, but I've no idea how it's done. I'm not very techy either!

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