How to Market Your Hypnosis Web Site

You can have the best web site in the world, and it is highly likely that nobody is interested, unless you take steps to market your site. What many people who first enter the world of web business don’t realize is that a lot of hard work is required in order to create a successful web site.

If your hypnosis site is simply a marketing tool for your practice, then you probably don’t need to market yourself quite so extensively. It may be enough to add your details to some local business directories, and some hypnotherapist registers that have local sub directories. Including your web address on all your stationary, such as business cards and letter headings is also very useful. If you keep good records of your clients (which you know you should do!) then you could send them birthday and Christmas cards (or at least Christmas if the birthday thing is too difficult to organise) with your phone number and web address on it. It’s amazing how well this very simple tactic actually works.

It is probably a waste of your time and resources going much beyond this, as you do not need to appeal to masses of global visitors, as you are unlikely to get a booking from the other side of the world, although I have experienced this on occasion.

If you want online fame as a clinical hypnotherapist, then it may be prudent to become a hypnosis affiliate. This is where you direct traffic to someone else’s site who is selling hypnosis products. You can even display them on your site. They can automatically track any sales you generate for them, and give you a percentage. Somewhere around 20 to 40 percent seems standard. Best of all, these are usually free to join, and easy to set up. In less than an hour you could have a proper online business, rather than simply limiting yourself to an online advert of your services. The best and most successful websites seem to be the ones that offer something to the world, and is a resource in its own right, rather than merely an advert for an offline product or service. That is why most newspapers now offer online news content, – nobody would want to visit an advert for a newspaper!

Offering online hypnosis products also gives you an incentive to aim for a larger reach of visitors, since you can now sell products to people anywhere in the world, at any time of the day, even when you are asleep in bed! Not only will you be promoting your services, but you will also be making money from your promotion tool – your web site. You have an extra online business to top up your income. It will now be worth your while putting more time and resources into marketing your web site, as any visitor from anywhere around the world is a potential customer for your hypnosis products. Also your visitors will have an interesting array of products to peruse, not just you banging on about what a great hypnotherapist you are!

Another way to monatarise your site is to add adverts. Google Adwords seems to be the runaway leader in this field. It is free to set up an account, and quite easy to set up. Once you have been approved, which might take a day or two, you are given a code, which you simply cut and paste on your site – and that’s it! You will now get paid every time a visitor clicks on your adverts. Generally the more visitors you attract, the more clicks you are likely to achieve.

Here are some other top ways to get the traffic rolling in.

Content is King
You’ve got to give people a reason to return to your site. Even better, a reason to recommend your site to others. If you have good useful content, preferably unique and unusualy, then this is far more likely. You may wish to write some useful articles, add interesting pictures, or even give away some free samples of your products. Regularly updating your site (once or twice a week) will also help fuel interest in return visits. Return visits are essential for sites selling products, as most customers will not buy on their first ever visit to a web site. It often takes a few visits to persuade them to part with their hard earned cash.

People who run related sites and blogs may also link to your content if they feel it would benefit their visitors. As we will discuss in more detail, these links can drive traffic to your site, and help you in your search engine rankings.

Start A Blog
You could even start a blog about yourself or your practice. Google’s ‘Blogger’ is free and easy to set up. The beauty of blogging is that you can easily update information regularly, giving people a reason to return to see new updates. There is a good tradition in blogging of being a little more informal, and giving your business a ‘human voice’. This is especially important for hypnotherapists, as we all know the power of establishing rapport.

Link-Link-Link
Search engines have many algorithms when ranking a web site. The most important of these seems to be the amount of links pointing to a site. The more and higher quality links that are pointing at your site, the more likely you are to rank high. The higher you are ranked, the more likely you are to attract visitors from the search engines. Google awards web pages with a Page Rank (PR for short). This is a rank from 0 to 10, with 10 being highest. The higher the Page Rank of the page that links to you, the more the search engines will increase your ranking. One link from a well respected site, such as the BBC, may be worth 100 links from virtually unknown, low PR sites.

You may be able to swap links and recommendations with other hypnotherapist friends that you may have, or enter your details on directories, preferably ones related to health in some way.

Article Submissions
Submitting articles is a very good way of marketing your site. You simply write an article and add a link or two to your website(s). A well written article can persuade interested people to click on your link and visit your site for further details. There are generally two types of article submission sites – general and niche.

General article submission sites will accept articles about any topic, be it business, environment, or entertainment. Some of these types of sites have a high PR, and attract lots of visitors. Usually people are able to take your article and post it on their sites or blogs, with your link included. They benefit from free content, and you benefit from another link. The higher quality, unique, and more useful an article you write, the more likely it is that someone will pick it up and post it on their site or blog. The real beauty of this system is that in 10 years time, an article you write now might still be generating you extra links to your site.

Niche article sites are article submission sites that only allow for article submissions for a particular topic or field. The advantage of these is that the search engines prefer links coming from sites that are related to your site. The search engines may not give you much link credit for your hypnosis site, when an automobile site links to you. It can also confuse the search engines as to what your site is actually about. This is important to avoid as you need to rank as high as you can for terms that are related to your business. It’s no good having car enthusiasts visit your site, as they are likely to quickly leave, unsatisfied with what they have found. There are several hypnosis article submission sites on the net. If you wish to expand on this, then there are also many ‘alternative health’, and ‘heath’ article sites that are closely related to hypnotherapy.

Finding these sites can be a little timely, but is worth it. A little tactic I have discovered to speed this up is to type into the search engine phrases such as “hypnosis submit article”; “hypnosis add article”; “alternative health submit article”; “complimentary health submit article” etc. Repeat this in all the main search engines. If pushed for time, I would recommend you at least do this in Yahoo! I have found that this search engine yields the most positive results for this tactic.

If you have some well written articles about your field floating around the net, it can also help build up your credibility, and show you as an expert, which can help you in the long run to convert visitors to your site into customers.

Participate
There are several fairly large hypnosis and alternative health social networks across the web. Most of them allow you to create a profile page about yourself, and a link to your site. You can usually post a picture of yourself, which I think is a good idea to do if you want further online ‘fame’. A face to go with the name will make you far more memorable, helping your long term web presence.

There are also forums related to health and hypnosis, and niche forums such as weight loss and IBS forums are also worth participating in. Check out how many posts are made. A very busy forum might be worth more participation than a relatively quiet one. Most forums allow you to add a link to your site in the ‘signature’ at the end of the post. Every post you make will then add a link to your site. If you post some good honest and useful free advice (not just an advert for your services), people may warm to you and respect your knowledge, and decide to visit your site and use your paid services.

A word of warning. Check out the rules on any social networks and forums. The rules differ as to how much you can promote your site. A few do not allow you to add links to your signature, or indeed anywhere on the site. Some require you to make a certain amount of posts first, and some don’t mind whatsoever. Be sure to find out as it can tarnish your image and bruise your ego when you are banned from these public sites. As long as you ‘play ball’ you should have a good experience of the social side, and will probably also learn more about hypnotherapy when you give out advice and share ideas with other hypnotherapists.

Newsletters

You could add a form to your site where people agree to receive a newsletter every now and then, perhaps weekly or monthly. This is a great way of building and maintaining a solid customer base. Once you have built up a big list of recipients, you can Email them all with details of new products and special offers. Often it is useful to offer an incentive to join the news letter list. It might be a free E-book, audio session, or a discount. This will help ensure that more people will actually choose to ‘opt in’. One word of warning – never use free services for your email lists. They are usually blacklisted for being abused by spammers.

I hope this quick guide will help you with your online success. There are many other ways to market your hypnosis site. You are only limited by your imagination. If you have the resources and know how, you could make videos that promote your site, and distribute them on video sharing sites such as YouTube. You could hold competitions, giving away some products as a prize. Experiment and try and capture your visitors’ attention. Put yourself in your visitors’ shoes, what would make you want to keep visiting a site?

The online world can be ‘cold and cruel’, but it can also be exciting and challenging. It definitely requires some hard work, but in my opinion it is well worth it. It has given me a lifestyle where I no longer need to work in paid employment. I can choose the hours to suit me. If I want to take a week off, I can do, whenever I want. If my wife (who is a teacher) and child are on school holidays, I can now join them. If I want to do a little work later in the evening, I can. It took me 2 years of very hard work to get to this position, but it was well worth it.

The benefits don’t stop there either. I find it extremely humbling and rewarding when I receive an email from someone several thousands of miles away, detailing their progress because of the help they have received from one of my products. I always like to respond to these correspondences. Without the internet I would never have had the chance to meet and help this person. I can now offer therapeutic help to anyone in the world, and I am very gratefully to be around in this exciting technological era of the internet.