Google? Ranking? Keywords? How does this work?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Henxy on October 18, 2008 at 7:53am

I have had several phonecalls from people claiming to be from Google, selling a high position for a month.
I also have a few friends in IT, who say that Google don't sell search positions, only advertising.
Hmmm.

Permalink Reply by Jon Rhodes on October 30, 2008 at 3:05pm

This is a very wide question - there is so much to it! Here is a very brief run down of the main points.

The first challenge is actually creating a web site. Those free ones are not really any good in the long term as Google does not seem to respect them with high rankings. You can pay, or get a friend, or learn yourself.

The best way to get traffic is to rank high in the search engines for terms that actually get typed. Generally it is easier to get ranked highly for more specific terms, such as 'healing hypnosis', but less people will type that. It is very difficult to get into the top 10 for a term such as 'hypnosis', but if you do manage it, you will receive loads of traffic.

The best way to rank high in the search engines is to link build. You can submit articles to sites, with your link attached at the end. You can enter your link into directories. Directories related to health, or better still, hypnotherapy are preferable.

Personally I do not bother trying to get clients for my private practice on line. It is unlikely that you will get many new clients from your own website, due to the net being such a global affair. If you work hard you may get one or two hundred visitors per day on your site. Even with these figures, it is unlikley that any of them will live near enough to consider hiring you. It may be better to sign up to a few hypnotherapist registers as they have may already have good traffic built up, and regional sub directories within them. Don't spend too much though, because even these will probably not provide you with that many new clients.

The old fashioned marketing methods are probably the best. Contact your local newspaper and offer a free hypnosis session to a reporter to write about. Perhaps even approach your local radio station. They require far less effort, and will probably yield far superior results!

For a hypnotherapy practice, a web site is perhaps most useful for providing further information that you cannot fit on your business card. Put your web address on all cards, letter heads, everything. People can then check out your prices, location, specialisations etc. It is probably not necessary to put in all the work to get to number 1 for the term 'hypnosis'. You will probably have to work flat out for over 6 months to even get close, and will probably not really see much benefit.

People on the internet tend to want to keep things on the internet. You could record some sessions to sell on line. You can sell them to anyone in the world. That way you will fully exploit the true benefits of the net.

Hope this helps

Jon Rhodes
http://www.HypnoBusters.com

Permalink Reply by Jon Rhodes on October 30, 2008 at 3:10pm

Google certainly do not sell high positions, and they would not ring people either. They make enough money with all their autoomated proccesses! There are many companies that claim to guarantee you top 10 positions - avoid them all. You could pay for google advertising, which is done on a pay per click basis. But you would be paying for people in China, England, US, Australia etc to be clicking on your ads. Probably not good value for a local business!

Permalink Reply by Robert Dodge on October 30, 2008 at 3:38pm

Ah this old chestnut!

The best way to get your website high in the rankings is to select a domain name that used the word or phrases that your prospective client will be typing - so if you are a hypnotherapist who lives in Queens New York - your domain name would be queenshypnotherapy.com

so your location (If available) and what you do.

Or as I have mentioned in a previous post be a niche therapist and only deal with 1 or 2 specific areas of therapy then choose your domain name for the niche and then the location so as in the above example stopsmokinginqueens.com
or weightlossnowqueens.com

Do you see what I mean.

This will increase your rankings on search engines maybe even get you onto the first 2 pages of google relating keywords to location.
My practice domain is somersetanddorsethypnotherapy - so that covers 2 counties in the UK and what my profession is and I am usually on the first 2 pages of google.

Never pay anyone to lift you up the rankings - It is NEVER worth the expense.

Kind Regards
Robert

P.S If anyone would like assistance/advice with search engine optimization or website mainpage killer copy feel free to drop me a mail.RD

Permalink Reply by Teresa. on November 12, 2008 at 2:19pm

Hi Robert,have done this and show on first page of google but would be interested to hear the relation between hits and calls/emails from members.
If joe public has typed somerset hypnotherapy into google then they have a specific interest even if never can manage to make the call -but what percentage of hits do YOU expect to hear from ?

Permalink Reply by Robert Dodge on November 12, 2008 at 2:34pm

Good Evening Teresa,

Because I have a niche and only tend to deal with people who suffer from panic attacks the conversion rate is quite high - but you still get the occasional person who will just view and leave.
That is why you have to hook them with a fantastic headline and the offer of something or value for Free - maybe a free tips booklet or Relaxation MP3 or CD something that will allow you to gain either an email address or contact details.

Would it be possible to have your website details and I if you do not mind offer you some suggestions that may help in your conversion rates.
Regards
Robert

Permalink Reply by Craig Eubanks on December 3, 2008 at 5:44pm

This is a very different question and is in the realm of CONVERSION.

Simple Internet Marketing Formula:

TRAFFIC + CONVERSION = PROFIT

Getting on the front page of Google will bring you traffic. But is it traffic that is going to buy or just tire-kicking?

And then you have to CONVERT the traffic into paying clients. And that is a much longer conversation.

Cheers,

Craig Eubanks
HypnosisMarketingTips.com

Permalink Reply by Craig Eubanks on December 4, 2008 at 12:08am

Hi James,

You ask some good questions, and frankly each would be better by itself as each question involves different answers. I suggest you post them separately if you would like more in depth answers.

How do you get your website on the 1st page?

Fast Way

Use Google Adwords to get your ad on the first page.

Slow Way

Use Search Engine Optimization techniques based on highly targeted niche keyword phrases

This is a million dollar question. No joke. Being on the first page of Google is the holy grail of SEM (Search Engine Marketing). It is why millions of dollars and millions of man hours have been spent on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) every year since Google took over as top search engine.

And while there are fundamentals of SEO that all websites should use, the truth is SEO is a moving target. Google constantly tweaks and changes their algorithms because so many people are trying to 'game' their way into a top spot.

As a hypnotist, it is not in your best interests to be playing around with SEO. It's not how you make your money, it's tedious, and requires a lot of learning about how Internet search works.

But, if you are technically inclined already, and comfortable with tweaking your website and keyword research, I suggest you read the following article, "the beginner's checklist for small business SEO"

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-beginners-checklist-for-small-busine...

How many clients are found online a month?

I'm sure you mean hypnosis clients, but even that is a very broad and general question.

A better question would be: "If I were to be in the #1 spot in Google organic search results for the phrase "Stop Smoking Hypnosis... how many visitors would I get per day on average? And, how many of those visitors could I expect to sign up for my ___________________ (newsletter, free consulatation, seminar, etc.)?"

This question can be estimated based on existing data for keyword search queries, adwords estimated clicks, adwords cost, and other known factors out of existing search data. There are techniques to estimate these answers. And you can use Google's keyword tool to get a lot of the data.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Who has more money... Internet clients?  Newspaper clients?

This is the kind of question that really can only be answered by testing. Run the same ad in both media and measure the responses you get.

It's very difficult to answer this with even an estimate because it will depend on many factors such as

* Where you live
* Who your target market is
* What service are you offering
* What are the demographics of your market (age, sex, income, education, etc.)

So for Hypnotist A who lives in Silicon Valley and does performance enhancement for golfers... chances are the Internet would be a great place to get clients

But for Hypnotist B that lives in rural Oklahoma and does stop smoking... the Newspaper would be a better choice.

The definitive answer is always TEST and let the market tell you which media it prefers. ALWAYS let the market tell you, by testing.

WOM has always worked great for me but the Internet is new to me

I assume WOM = Word of Mouth also known as REFERRALS.

If you're are getting referrals... you are getting the best type of advertising possible. NOTHING is more powerful than another human being saying your service is great. Do everything in your power to build systems around getting referrals & testimonials.

And as far as the Internet being new... it is new. The web browser is barely 10 years old. And much of the technology we are using here on Hypnothoughts is less than 2 years old.

Plus, new Internet technologies roll out at near light speed. It's tough for even us Internet Marketing guys to keep up (and I was once a Network Engineer and System Admin for Silicon Valley tech companies).

It is easy to be overwhelmed with how to market your business online. It's okay, when you first look at the Internet we all go through this.

That's when it's important to go back to the fundamentals of time-tested Direct Response Marketing, and then realize the Internet is in reality another form of MEDIA.

I advise all business owners to read the classics of Direct Response Marketing & Advertising. There is a list on my blog, you can find it here:

http://hypnosismarketingtips.com/advertising/7-essential-direct-mar...

Once you understand the basic principles, you then apply those using Internet Technologies such as websites, blogs, email autoresponders, video, podcasts, rss feeds, etc.

There is one area where the Internet is very different, and one that all businesses need to understand... and that is the social aspect brought about by web 2.0 techology. It has allowed 'communities' to build, such as this one, where conversations happen and people share with each other.

Social media sites are the largest growing part of the Internet. You will need to understand how you and your business can join the conversation as part of your marketing.

And this is a much longer discussion than just a simple answer. For now, just be aware of the impact Social Media is having... especially for the under 30 age group.

I would love to learn how to get 1 or 2 clients a week from the Internet (Any ideas?)

Yes... tons of ideas. It's what I get paid big bucks to do for businesses.

But, you need to have more of a strategy than I want 1 or 2 clients a week.

Let's start simple, with the basic Internet Marketing Equation:

TRAFFIC + CONVERSION = PROFITS

In your case, you need to pick one or two techniques for getting traffic, because you can't know if you can convert traffic without having some traffic.

I suggest you test running Google Ads in your local area. This is an inexpensive way to get traffic and you can have your ads up in less than an hour.

http://adwords.google.com

There are entire strategies to using adwords. You can learn most of what you need in two books:

The Ultimate Guide To Google Adwords by my friend Perry Marshall


Google Adwords for Dummies by Howie Jacobson


I know the authors of both of these books and they are experts at Adwords and at Internet Marketing, and they are also
both excellent teachers.

And if you read these books, they will both cover techniques for Converting traffic into paying clients.


Cheers,

Craig Eubanks
HypnosisMarketingTips.com

Permalink Reply by Craig Eubanks on December 4, 2008 at 12:14am

To be clear on this... you can target Google Ads by city, state, or country. You can also target Google ads by language.

And, you can use Google Site Targeting to shows ads on specific websites or blogs, or types of websites based on content, or by types of websites based on demographics.

So, no need to worry about people in China or England unless you choose to show your ads there.

Cheers,

Craig Eubanks
HypnosisMarketingTips.com

Permalink Reply by Ed Lester on March 29, 2010 at 8:06pm

James, you need to tweak your 1st question slightly.

What do you want to be on the first page for? What search terms?

"hot dog vendors in nyc" ?

It sounds like I'm making fun but I'm not at all.

The truth is when you define what exactly you want to rank highly for, the next step is to find out who is currently capturing those search rankings. You can then reverse engineer them or follow your own strategy. It's not as hard as you think and well worth investigating.

Search engine traffic, adwords, other ppc, banner ads are online marketing channels. Offline you've got hundreds of channels. The key is to find out where your potential clients are hanging out and target those channels.

To save you too much effort, I'll give you a clue. It's Google.

All the best

Ed Lester
The Art of Optimism

Permalink Reply by Pattie Freeman CH.t, MST on March 29, 2010 at 11:10pm

I myself had great luck woth my websites and woth them recieved many calls that turned into clients. I do believe about the niche theory and also the using of Hypnosis there are so many its hard to get to the top page but using it with your state or town sure helps. Take a survey with your friends or clients I always as How did you heatr about me? or where did you find me? They will even tell me what they googled to find me so that is interesing also.

Permalink Reply by Adrian Tannock on October 1, 2010 at 5:43am

If anyone wants to exchange links between websites, please message me (via hypnothoughts, or my email) :-)

info@lastingchange.co.uk

Cheers,

Adrian