Following the Learning Curve to MFT Web-Presence

Start with a Social Networking Website

Subscribe to a Therapist Referral Website

Therapist referral sites:

• www.aamft.org "Therapist Locator" free with clinical membership
• www.therapists.psychologytoday.com $30/month
• www.marriagefriendlytherapists.com/ $17/month
• www.goodtherapy.org $10/month
• www.networktherapy.com $129/year
• Search for your service and location to find other referral sites.

Determine the lifetime value of a referral.

Obtain a professional looking portrait in a digital format such as jpeg.

Choose a Specialty

Promote your specialty internally.

Develop your specialty externally.

Type out helpful handouts for your clients.

Build Your Own Website

• www.freeservers.com $0 – 8/month for example, www.hirschmann.8m.com
• www.godaddy.com $5 – 15/month
• www.sitesell.com $299/year

Have a Professional Build Your Website

• www.wisconsinwebwriter.com or call Karen Grupe at 920-693-2234
  www.relationship-therapy-milwaukee.com
  www.relationship-institute.com
  

Register Your Website

• www.google.com/addurl
• siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit

Tell the search engines your

1. location,
2. the services you offer,
3. the types of problems you work with
   www.google.com/accounts
   listings.local.yahoo.com
   [For #3) use words (keywords) people use to search for you service
   Try your service and location: eg. “marriage therapy milwaukee”]

Make Your Website a Cornerstone of Your Business

• Develop a name for your business
• Check the availability of your business as a domain name
• www.greatdomains4u.com for available domain names
• www.wisconsin.gov/state/byb/LLcompany.html to register you business name
• www.wisconsin.gov/state/byb/name.html to protect the name of your business
• (This is a good time to visit an accountant who supports small businesses.)

Get Your Website Noticed by the Search Engines

Get Your Website to the Top of Search Engine Searches

1. Submit your website to other search engines
   • www.zoominfo.com
   • www.infousa.com
   • www.dmoz.org
2. List your website on all of your therapist-referral sites.
3. Get your website listed on other websites.
4. Create a profile on the top social networking sites.
5. Play to the Web-Crawlers by using words that identify your service
   a. “Content is King” (Keywords help visitors find you site.)
   Season keywords naturally into your text and you handouts
   b. Use keywords in meta-tags and tags associated with web pages
6. Try pay-per-click advertising (sponsored links)
   • www.adwords.google.com
   • http://sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing/
   • www.facebook.com
7. See how searchable your website is www.website.grader.com
   

Turn Visitors into Clients

Engage the Visitors

1. Make your home page appealing
2. Present meaningful content to the visitor
3. What is unique about you and your services?
4. Actively engage visitors
5. Avoid blocks of text
6. Present a “call to action;” tell visitors what they need to do
7. Make yourself easy to reach