How to Make Your Mental Health Website Work for You

There are over fourteen million results on Google for mental health and/or substance abuse services. Last month, several million searches were completed using these keyphrases. How do you capitalize on this and how can your organization effectively compete?

First, hire an expert. Do not try to do this without a website developer/ designer that is an authority because this is a project that absolutely has to be done professionally. Interview two or three and ask questions, and most importantly the developer should ask you questions as well. If they don't then the liklihood is that they are not very experienced in the marketing of sites. Good designers are a dime a dozen; to get meet the goals for the site the designer must also include a comprehensive marketing plan.

Here are some fundamental principles that should be discussed and will aid in your decision of hiring the best designer for your needs.

1. How will internet searchers locate your mental health and/or substance abuse site? The designer should ask who your target market is and what words or phrases would a searcher use in order to find you. They know that your site must be optimized towards what searchers are typing in. Google Adwords will provide statistics on how many people typed which phrases, and thus, should be utilized to determine which will provide the best results for your site. A designer who is also a marketeer will then assist in the determination of the most effective keywords. They will help to find the ones most applicable to the message you want to get out, and then look at the supply and demand.

When you concur on the keywords, a skillful designer create your site to "scream" with a couple of them. Search engines give extra weight to the phrase if the font is bold and larger than the rest. tags are the most effective coding tool to implement for these words and phrases. Search engines will penalize the site if the font color code matches the background color code. Attempting to pack too many keywords or excess repetition of the same keyword will dilute the power of the keyword. A talented designer will follow the proper guidelines and know where to draw the line.

2. Your site is found, what happens next? Your mental health and/or substance abuse website has one specific aim -- causing your visitors to take another step. Whether your desired outcome is a contact form for an evaluation or a referral, or to purchase your products online, every inch of this valuable real estate must lead to this goal. An astute designer will ask what the key mission is and will create it out to promote the action. Visitors must feel that "AHA!" moment when they click on your site. Your site not only requires the correct terminology, it must be engaging visually.

If your site doesn't look professional or pleasing to the eye at first glance, it's perceived value will be low. To capture and retain the attention of the visitor, provide interesting information that they will value. This not only builds your credibility, but also gains trust. Use dramatic pictures to fascinate and/or create emotion, and add some scrolling or scripting code to present a professional and high-tech appearance. A gifted designer will take your objectvies and construct a site that will create impact.

3. Your team effort has now resulted in a captivating mental health and/or substance abuse site. If you have hired the right designer, they will be willing to see you through these next steps of online marketing. The inital step to assess the site's effect is to examine the site statistics. How many "hits" did you receive last week? How many were unique visitors? How did they find you? Look at "exit pages"… which pages made visitors click away? What length of time did the visitor stay on each page (called "stickiness")? What was the number of visitors to your "contact us" or "shopping cart" who did not make contact? What are actions will you take to remedy it? The proper designer will recommend actions and assist with continuous upgrades.

A designer that has marketing skills make subtle updates at no additional cost as a part of the contract. The designer will help you to increase your site's popularity score. The more sites that have a link to your site (called a backlink), the higher your popularity score, which is one of the most heavily weighted search engine parameters. Your designer should suggest several ways to carry out this task. First, social media and a blog will help to generate traffic and thus increase the score.

In addition, you will need to write articles about mental health and/or substance abuse that will be distributed to thousands of content-hungry sites and publishers. Your URL in the byline counts towards your popularity. Your articles must be statistically different and shuffled in the Internet. SubmitYourArticle.com is the most successful and efficient vendor available.

The designer should suggest that you consistently add subtle changes to keep the site fresh. Each time a search engine spider "crawls" your site, it looks for variations. Stagnant sites are not rewarded, minor changes in an effort to fake "freshness" are penalized. The finest designers will accomplish this balancing act. Search engine algorithms are kept top-secret to keep the information from being exploited. The best designers are affiliated with several forums and they will notify you that they are. The SEO and Design Forums were created to keep designers on the cutting edge of the latest developments in their field.

To obtain the best outcome for making your website into a powerful marketing tool is to understand all of the components and to have a professional assist you. There are a plethora of good web design/ development firms available. However, to achieve the desired goal you have to separate the wheat from the chaff and find a great one. Ask the right questions and pay attention to the questions asked, then follow these basic principles and you should be able to find "The Best"!


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