The #1 Reason = Research
It may sound obvious to some of you reading this, but based on the feedback I’ve received from 100’s of therapists the #1 reason why Therapists fail online is because they didn’t do their research.
When I say that therapists did not do their research I mean that they did not establish what potential clients looking for their services were typing into Google Yahoo and MSN.
Think about it. When you do a search for anything online, usually the most relative pages to that search are displayed.
So doesn’t it make sense to create pages on your blog that at least have a title that matches what people are searching for and then create content for that page that expands on that title.
Let me explain. For a moment let’s assume that you’re a psychotherapist practicing in Manhattan, New York City. You might want to create a series of pages around the following search terms:-
- New York Psychotherapist
- New York City Psychotherapist
- Manhattan Psychotherapist
- NY Psychotherapist
- NYC Psychotherapist
These terms reflect what we think people are searching for but without thorough research we can’t say this for sure.
So before we start creating pages with these titles we need to establish that people are using these search terms to find the services you have to offer in the geographic location that you practice in.
To find out what search terms prospective clients are using to find your services is not really too difficult.
There’s a FREE Keyword Research Tool from Google that actually shows you the number of searches that were made for any given keyword phrase.
The results below are from April 2009.
Now the example above confirms that there are prospective psychotherapy clients using these search terms to find the services you have to offer.
If we hadn’t done our research then we would just have been guessing.
So the takeaway is:-
- Do your research to establish what search terms prospective clients are using to find your services.
- Create blog posts or pages that use these search terms in that title.
- Create blog posts or pages that expand on the title of the page.
Make sure you use this stuff it could really have a dramatic effect on your business.
Until the next time
Gary Graye
