I am not sure that buying someone else’s domain or website is cheaper. Maybe that is not actually what you meant. Hypnosis.org cost $70,000 I think. That is out of reach for people.
THINKING LIKE A BUSINESS OWNER
Yes that is true, not everyone has $70,000. But as a Business Strategy, if you wanted the number one spot for a keyword and you knew you could instantly monetize the traffic to make $100,000/year… I’ll be you could find a way to borrow the $70k.
This is actually an entirely different level of thinking in business. You are in effect buying the traffic upfront.
Now, the real reason I use Hypnosis.org as an example was to show the for very generic words like golf, travel, coffee, hypnosis it is VERY DIFFICULT to get highly ranked. So it is smarter to just buy the traffic at one of the top positions (assuming you have a way to monetize it).
GO FOR THE LOW HANGING FRUIT FIRST
And I also pointed out that it IS POSSIBLE to get ranked for keyword phrases like “San Francisco hypnosis” and “hypnosis pain relief san francisco”
Example (traffic counts from Google)
Hypnosis – 32877 daily searches 17,900,000 competing sites
San Francisco Hypnosis – 16 daily searches 1,130 competing sites
So for SF Hypnosis, there are approx 500 searches a month. If I could get 20% of those to my website (100 / month) and convert 2% of those into clients (avg value of client $1000) then this is worth
If I wanted to, I could be on the front page of Google for San Francisco Hypnosis in about 1-6 months.
But it would involve more than just SEO optimization. I would use Social Media, Social Bookmarking, Article Marketing, Blogging, and Online Press Releases.
Fact is, there is no way I’ll make the front page of Google for “hypnosis” because I’m competing against sites like Wikipedia and Ask.com. Plus these people are just looking for information, they are not ready to buy.
(Note: I could be on the front page of Google today for both of them today using Adwords.)
KEYWORDS CAN INDICATE BUYERS
Another important thing to understand is the words people search on indicate where they are in the buying cycle. A rule of thumb is, 3 or more keywords means they are looking to buy.
Example:
Hypnosis
Hypnosis CD’s
Hypnosis CD’s Stop Smoking
People who search on hypnosis could be looking for anything related to hypnosis from a wikipedia entry to where to take a class. And you really don’t have anyway of knowing.
But someone looking for hypnosis stop smoking CD’s… pretty good chance they are looking to buy. This is why it’s important to choose your keywords wisely when thinking about your webpages and SEO.
I know you say Hypnotists shouldn’t do SEO. Is it still good for hypnotists to learn how to make their page have the basic elements to get good organic search engine placement?
Excellent question. And I realize I wasn’t clear on this with my last post (Keywords and SEO for Hypnosis Websites part I)
KNOW SEO BASICS
I’m not saying be ignorant of SEO. As a business owner it is yet one more thing you need to understand at least at a meta-level.
And if you write articles it is smart to know how to use keywords in the title (the headline), the body, for images, and link tags. It’s smart Internet marketing.
YOU ARE A HYPNOTIST NOT AN SEO EXPERT
My advice is this: You don’t need to know the technical issues of SEO because they change constantly. Learn the basics so you can use it when you write CONTENT, and so you can speak with web developers, but do NOT spend hours of time on it.
Here’s why:
80% of people who search on a term click on results on the first page of search (10 total results)
17% click on the second page of results
3% click on page three or lower
So the cold hard reality is, only the front page of search really matters. And it is VERY DIFFICULT to get on the first page, even for long tail keywords unless you really know what you are doing and bust your ass for a period of time to get there.
This is something you can OUTSOURCE.
MOST EFFECTIVE USE OF YOUR TIME
But, if you put that same energy into:
Most Burning Question:
I have a question… we are told to use keywords (hypnosis)!! in headers in content etc. What I am confused about is that at the same time we are told that because of the number of hypnosis sites (already ranked on first page with those keywords)we need other keywords to be distinguished and noticed. Then should we be using hypnosis on every page?????
