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Hypnotherapy Website Critique for Chad (Are you making the same mistakes?)
In a previous post, Chad Schultz requested feedback on his website, infinitme.com. I've started a new thread because I want to be sure that other members of HypnoThoughts who are developing do-it-yourself websites can benefit from the advice I'm about to give Chad. Some of this has been mentioned by others.
Hi Chad!
We're not friends, so I can't inform you of this privately, but you've just received my first HypnoThoughts birthday present. HappyHypnoBirthday to you!
And I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to give you your gift publicly so everyone can benefit from it. Because I suspect that most home-grown hypnotherapy websites are making the exact same mistakes that you've made.
I hope your shoulders feel broad and your ego feels strong, because I'm not going to pull any punches, Chad! :) This may be tough to hear, but this advice is potentially worth thousands of dollars, and I'd certainly charge you several hundred for this if you were a client.
Problem: The site is entirely you-centered.
Chad, I'm sure you're a lovely person, but as a visitor to your website, I don't give a rip about you or why you decided to put up a website. It's like explaining to me why you have a front door. "I decided it was important to have a front door, because without a door in the front of my business, it's more of a challenge for customers to get inside from the outside. Therefore, I have cut a hole in the wall, and framed it out, and..."
AAArrgh! Tell me how to hire you to help me STOP SMOKING! (or whatever it is that I've come to your site to do.) I've come to your website to accomplish a specific goal. Do not make it hard for me to accomplish my goal, or I'll go elsewhere.
And remember: you have TWO SECONDS to tell me (the visitor) that I have 1) come to the right place and 2) you can solve my problem. If I can't see that immediately, I'm gone.
Problem: The site is not optimized for search engines.
Most of the people you could help with hypnosis don't know they can be helped with hypnosis. They aren't looking for a hypnotherapist. They're searching Google for phrases like "stop smoking Des Moines" or "Seattle weight loss." Your ideal clients (depending on your specialty) want to get over a phobia, or do better on tests, or improve a relationship, etc., and they're looking to do it where they live. Yet on your home page I see not a single word about what hypnosis could do for me, or why I should care, or where you're located.
Your page titles and descriptions are not SEO friendly, nor is your page content (except for the FAQ.)
Problem: The URL is meaningless and SEO-hostile.
The URL is not geographically specific, nor is it related to any of the pains that your ideal clients will have. And, it looks like a mistake. Cutesy misspellings aren't recognized by Google as keywords. People don't search on Google using cutesy misspellings. There's no reason to choose a name like that except to massage your own ego, and generally, other people aren't going to pay you to massage your own ego (believe me, I've tried to get people to pay me for this, to no avail!) This is also why naming your business after yourself isn't a good idea unless you're already famous. Your friends and family already know your name--your ideal clients don't.
It may seem boring and un-sexy, but a URL like www.stop-smoking-cleveland.com would be a lot more meaningful, for both Google and your ideal clients (assuming they're smokers in Cleveland who want to stop smoking.)
And what if you offer a bunch of different services? Easy. Buy a URL specific to each of your top search terms and redirect those URLs to landing pages on your main site.
There is literally no point in having a website if it can't be found on Google by your ideal clients.
Problem: The site isn't targeted to your ideal clients.
Who is your ideal client? What pain are they in? What keeps them up at night? What other things have they tried to get over their problems? How much money do they have to spend? At what point are they in the sales process? How much does their problem cost them in time or money or heartache? I literally have no idea who your ideal client is after reading your site. And believe me, your ideal client will NEVER spend as much time reading your site as I have.
Problem: Confusing and weird fee structure.
I don't want to buy "challenges." I especially don't want to buy "advanced challenges!" I want SOLUTIONS to my PROBLEMS like smoking or weight loss or whatever it is you specialize in. Please rename your fee structure! And unless you never want to work for money again, remove the copy about hardship cases. If you want to work with hardship cases, go do some work at your local domestic violence shelter. The point of your website is to attract paying clients.
And please don't intermingle the fine print within your fee structure. You come across as wimpy and unprofessional. Put all that stuff on a Terms of Service page.
Problems: Other picky details.
I hope you find my perspective useful, and I hope my gift to you will also help other folks who are struggling to market themselves online and capture their share of search engine traffic.
Happy Birthday,
Kathleen
Hi Chad!
We're not friends, so I can't inform you of this privately, but you've just received my first HypnoThoughts birthday present. HappyHypnoBirthday to you!
And I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to give you your gift publicly so everyone can benefit from it. Because I suspect that most home-grown hypnotherapy websites are making the exact same mistakes that you've made.
I hope your shoulders feel broad and your ego feels strong, because I'm not going to pull any punches, Chad! :) This may be tough to hear, but this advice is potentially worth thousands of dollars, and I'd certainly charge you several hundred for this if you were a client.
Problem: The site is entirely you-centered.
Chad, I'm sure you're a lovely person, but as a visitor to your website, I don't give a rip about you or why you decided to put up a website. It's like explaining to me why you have a front door. "I decided it was important to have a front door, because without a door in the front of my business, it's more of a challenge for customers to get inside from the outside. Therefore, I have cut a hole in the wall, and framed it out, and..."
AAArrgh! Tell me how to hire you to help me STOP SMOKING! (or whatever it is that I've come to your site to do.) I've come to your website to accomplish a specific goal. Do not make it hard for me to accomplish my goal, or I'll go elsewhere.
And remember: you have TWO SECONDS to tell me (the visitor) that I have 1) come to the right place and 2) you can solve my problem. If I can't see that immediately, I'm gone.
Problem: The site is not optimized for search engines.
Most of the people you could help with hypnosis don't know they can be helped with hypnosis. They aren't looking for a hypnotherapist. They're searching Google for phrases like "stop smoking Des Moines" or "Seattle weight loss." Your ideal clients (depending on your specialty) want to get over a phobia, or do better on tests, or improve a relationship, etc., and they're looking to do it where they live. Yet on your home page I see not a single word about what hypnosis could do for me, or why I should care, or where you're located.
Your page titles and descriptions are not SEO friendly, nor is your page content (except for the FAQ.)
Problem: The URL is meaningless and SEO-hostile.
The URL is not geographically specific, nor is it related to any of the pains that your ideal clients will have. And, it looks like a mistake. Cutesy misspellings aren't recognized by Google as keywords. People don't search on Google using cutesy misspellings. There's no reason to choose a name like that except to massage your own ego, and generally, other people aren't going to pay you to massage your own ego (believe me, I've tried to get people to pay me for this, to no avail!) This is also why naming your business after yourself isn't a good idea unless you're already famous. Your friends and family already know your name--your ideal clients don't.
It may seem boring and un-sexy, but a URL like www.stop-smoking-cleveland.com would be a lot more meaningful, for both Google and your ideal clients (assuming they're smokers in Cleveland who want to stop smoking.)
And what if you offer a bunch of different services? Easy. Buy a URL specific to each of your top search terms and redirect those URLs to landing pages on your main site.
There is literally no point in having a website if it can't be found on Google by your ideal clients.
Problem: The site isn't targeted to your ideal clients.
Who is your ideal client? What pain are they in? What keeps them up at night? What other things have they tried to get over their problems? How much money do they have to spend? At what point are they in the sales process? How much does their problem cost them in time or money or heartache? I literally have no idea who your ideal client is after reading your site. And believe me, your ideal client will NEVER spend as much time reading your site as I have.
Problem: Confusing and weird fee structure.
I don't want to buy "challenges." I especially don't want to buy "advanced challenges!" I want SOLUTIONS to my PROBLEMS like smoking or weight loss or whatever it is you specialize in. Please rename your fee structure! And unless you never want to work for money again, remove the copy about hardship cases. If you want to work with hardship cases, go do some work at your local domestic violence shelter. The point of your website is to attract paying clients.
And please don't intermingle the fine print within your fee structure. You come across as wimpy and unprofessional. Put all that stuff on a Terms of Service page.
Problems: Other picky details.
- Don't mention IMDHA without first spelling out the full title that you've abbreviated.
- Make sure your logo is high-res (it reads as pixelated to me).
- If you specialize in medical or dental hypnotherapy, use the "medical" color, blue, for your website.
- If you specialize in medical or dental hypnotherapy, your website should resemble that of a doctor's office. You may even want to incorporate the cross icon that symbolizes medical stuff.
- Get a professional head shot. It should make you look like a physician (highly educated and very competent).
- If you specialize in medical or dental hypnotherapy, you may want to add a page for medical professionals and ask for referrals.
- Get a glowing testimonial for each area of practice you specialize in. Get a head shot of the person giving the testimonial, and their full name, if they'll let you use them.
- Create a separate page for every area you specialize in (stop smoking, pain control, whatever) and optimize that page for search engines.
- Include more calls to action. The point of your website is to get people to hire you. You must tell them to hire you. Not contact you, hire you or schedule an appointment or schedule a 15-minute consultation or whatever you do to get people in the door.
I hope you find my perspective useful, and I hope my gift to you will also help other folks who are struggling to market themselves online and capture their share of search engine traffic.
Happy Birthday,
Kathleen
Tags: Hanover, HypnoThoughts, Kathleen, birthday, chad, critique, marketing, schultz, website
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Antonio on -
Chad since you are running Wordpress I would like to suggest that you turn permalinks With Permalinks you get friendly urls (.com/services instead of ,com/?page_id=10). Also for seo check out all in one seo plugin.
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Permalink Reply by Antonio on
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Chad I would ask Kathleen to review my site, but I don't she'd be as gentle on me as she was with you :D
Antonio
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Permalink Reply by Kevin Cole-NLPTrainingQuest.com on -
You're not invited to my Birthday Party, Kathleen... I honestly think you might make me cry...
P.S. For your Birthday gift, I'm going to purchase you a copy of "How To Make Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie...
Actually, here you go: http://pathologydocs.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/how-to-win-friends...
Happy Birthday! :-)
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Permalink Reply by Kathleen Hanover on
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Kevin,
I'm sorry you think I'd make you cry! You'd make me cry if you sent my invitation to your birthday party to someone else--and it didn't have your address or the date or directions to your party on it. ;)
That's kind of what happens with DIY websites created by people who are experts in their field, and don't know much, if anything, about marketing. They don't invite the right people to the party, and once those random people arrive (if they ever do) they're never told where the punchbowl and piñata are. So hardly anyone shows up at your party, and the ones who do don't stay for long (and they certainly don't buy any hypnotherapy services from you while they're there.)
People tend to remember things better when they're delivered with humor. I sincerely hope and believe that my advice will make Chad laugh more than cry...and I hope that helping him create a site that actually works to attract paying ideal clients will be the best gift of all. :)
And Antonio, everything I said about Chad's site can be used to improve your site, too. ;)
Kathleen
Kevin Cole-NLPTrainingQuest.com said:You're not invited to my Birthday Party, Kathleen... I honestly think you might make me cry...
P.S. For your Birthday gift, I'm going to purchase you a copy of "How To Make Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie...
Actually, here you go: http://pathologydocs.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/how-to-win-friends...
Happy Birthday! :-)
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Permalink Reply by Antoine Pruyssers on -
Kathleen, you have just inspired me bigtime. THANX!
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Permalink Reply by Jason Keen on -
Hi Kathleen,
If you get a chance I have a couple simple questions about using a local geographic reference in the URL.
1) Just how important is it?
2) assuming the rest of the (hypothetical) site is pretty well optimized with keywords (including the locale) how much of a difference will it really make in the way SE's read the site?
Thanks for effusing your awesomeness!
Jason
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Jason, if you're running a local business, Internet marketing can bring you all the leads you could ever want, if you use it for local marketing. It is MUCH easier to dominate Google search results in your local market than to dominate them nationally. Besides, if you're primarily running a hypnotherapy practice where you see people in person, there's no point in dominating search results 500 miles away from your office.
In some cases, the search engine will localize results for you. So you'd see a different set of results if you searched for "stop smoking" than I would, because your search engine may detect that your internet connection is in LA and mine is in NYC, for example. But it's best to be explicit about where your practice is located. I will often add a client's zip codes and city/suburb names to the web content (on a "Directions" page, for example) so the search engines can see that content.
I hope this helps!
Kathleen
Marketing and PR Opinionist
Jason Swart said:Hi Kathleen,
If you get a chance I have a couple simple questions about using a local geographic reference in the URL.
1) Just how important is it?
2) assuming the rest of the (hypothetical) site is pretty well optimized with keywords (including the locale) how much of a difference will it really make in the way SE's read the site?
Thanks for effusing your awesomeness!
Jason
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Permalink Reply by Jason Keen on
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Thanks for your prompt reply Kathleen!
I totally understand the need to target the local market. What I'm not sure about is why using local reference in the URLspecifically is so important. Shouldn't I be able to do just as well by optimizing the site content? Or is the effect of having the local city name in the URL really that big? Again, I'm asking assuming that the rest of the content in the site - including headings (h1, h2 etc) and the copy is very well optimized.
Based on your advice I'm about to go buy a URL with the name of my city in it and then go through the hassle of updating everything that mentions my web address. So I want to make sure it's really going to be worth it.
Again, your knowledge and time MUCH appreciated!!!
Jason
Kathleen Hanover said:Jason, if you're running a local business, Internet marketing can bring you all the leads you could ever want, if you use it for local marketing. It is MUCH easier to dominate Google search results in your local market than to dominate them nationally. Besides, if you're primarily running a hypnotherapy practice where you see people in person, there's no point in dominating search results 500 miles away from your office.
In some cases, the search engine will localize results for you. So you'd see a different set of results if you searched for "stop smoking" than I would, because your search engine may detect that your internet connection is in LA and mine is in NYC, for example. But it's best to be explicit about where your practice is located. I will often add a client's zip codes and city/suburb names to the web content (on a "Directions" page, for example) so the search engines can see that content.
I hope this helps!
Kathleen
Marketing and PR Opinionist
Jason Swart said:Hi Kathleen,
If you get a chance I have a couple simple questions about using a local geographic reference in the URL.
1) Just how important is it?
2) assuming the rest of the (hypothetical) site is pretty well optimized with keywords (including the locale) how much of a difference will it really make in the way SE's read the site?
Thanks for effusing your awesomeness!
Jason
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Permalink Reply by Joe Homs on -
Guys, take it from me. Kathleen just gave you all a HUGE gift. I have charged at least $500 to clients for the critique she just gave Chad. That's just to start. Helping them implement each of those suggestions (more like rules) with specifics gets charged at $150/hour.
Kathleen, you are welcome at my birthday party (or any party) any time. People like you are extremely rare. Thank you very much.
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Hi Jason,
Please don't go to all that hassle on my account. If you're getting the number of hits and conversions that you want, then stick with what works.
But if someone hasn't registered a domain name yet, or has a site that isn't performing at all, or Google Analytics tells them that most of their traffic is coming from Botswana (and their office is in Burbank) then perhaps localizing their URL would make sense.
Keep in mind, I'm not the authority...your visitors are. They are totally in charge. They will tell you if something is working for you or not. You have to test, test, test, and keep optimizing. SEO is a process, not an event.
Kathleen
Marketing and PR Opinionist
Jason Swart said:Thanks for your prompt reply Kathleen!
I totally understand the need to target the local market. What I'm not sure about is why using local reference in the URLspecifically is so important. Shouldn't I be able to do just as well by optimizing the site content? Or is the effect of having the local city name in the URL really that big? Again, I'm asking assuming that the rest of the content in the site - including headings (h1, h2 etc) and the copy is very well optimized.
Based on your advice I'm about to go buy a URL with the name of my city in it and then go through the hassle of updating everything that mentions my web address. So I want to make sure it's really going to be worth it.
Again, your knowledge and time MUCH appreciated!!!
Jason
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Thanks for the high five, Joe. :)
Kathleen
Marketing and PR Opinionist
Joe Homs said:Guys, take it from me. Kathleen just gave you all a HUGE gift. I have charged at least $500 to clients for the critique she just gave Chad. That's just to start. Helping them implement each of those suggestions (more like rules) with specifics gets charged at $150/hour.
Kathleen, you are welcome at my birthday party (or any party) any time. People like you are extremely rare. Thank you very much.
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Permalink Reply by Jason Keen on
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Kathleen,
I went ahead and got a better url. I ultimately figured if there's an opportunity for improvement I should take it!
Your knowledge and your time are most valuable and appreciated.
Thanks again for your help!
Jason
Kathleen Hanover said:Hi Jason,
Please don't go to all that hassle on my account. If you're getting the number of hits and conversions that you want, then stick with what works.
But if someone hasn't registered a domain name yet, or has a site that isn't performing at all, or Google Analytics tells them that most of their traffic is coming from Botswana (and their office is in Burbank) then perhaps localizing their URL would make sense.
Keep in mind, I'm not the authority...your visitors are. They are totally in charge. They will tell you if something is working for you or not. You have to test, test, test, and keep optimizing. SEO is a process, not an event.
Kathleen
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