It's not enough just to have a website if you want to use the internet to increase your client numbers. You need to get your website the highest ranking as possible in the main search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo. Not many potential clients will go to page 50 of the search engines to find you if that is where your website is renked.
A search engine ranking on the first five pages can be a good start and then, once that is achieved, aim to be on page 2 and if possible page 1.
So how can you do this?
Firstly, you want your website to appear in the first few search engine pages for words or descriptions that are applicable to your business. These words are called "keywords". So if you live in Ipswich your keywords could be "ipswich hypnotherapist" "ipswich hypnosis" etc. You wouldn't want to appear in the search engines for car tyres. The use of keywords helps the search engines to decide which sites are relevant to someone who is searching the internet.
If you are a hypnotherapist in Ipswich and a potential client types in "ipswich hypnosis" in Google you would want your website to have a good ranking for these keywords.
As stever has said in one of his marketing tips, a way of helping this happen is to include keywords in any links you add to your blogs or other postings your keywords. For example:-
(I used the chain link symbol at the top of this blog writing facility to acheive this)
When a search engine like Google finds such a link it will remember that for the keywords "ipswich hypnosis", your website is relevant.
Now, what will also help is if you include in your descriptions on your website those same keywords again eg. "ipswich hypnosis". The search engines like to see consistency between keywords you have said are important to you and the use of those keywords in the descriptions/words/phrases that you have used on your website.
One of the main keywords I have noticed that tends to be missing or buried in a therapist's website is the "location". Sometimes it is relegated to a "contact" page within the website.
If your website does not mention your location at least once, and I would try to mention at least 2 or 3 times, then you could be missing out on a higher ranking for the keywords that are important to your therapy practice.
Remember that there are thousands of websites that compete for a high search engine ranking for the keyword "hypnotherapy" but far fewer will compete for "your-location hypnotherapy" eg. "ipswich hypnotherapy" as stever as suggested.
Best wishes
Steve Harold