Dear All
As well as blogging about my Hypnotherapy site, I will also be blogging about other things that interest me. Today I have decided to talk about my understanding of my Hypnotherapy Sheffield web site optimisation and ranking.
Before I set up my Hypnotherapy & NLP business in Sheffield, I worked in the Information Technology department of HSBC in Sheffield. Therefore when I left HSBC to setup my Hypnotherapy business, I decided to build my own web site from day one, as my skills base enabled me to do that.

Even though I worked in the Telecom department of HSBC, at one stage we only had one PC in the department that could be connected to the internet and users had to sign in a book when using it. Later certain individuals were given email accounts. Just before I left HSBC, there was a big expansion in their use of the Internet and if I had stayed on, I would have moved into the Internet Department within the telecom department. This was back in 2000.

I am not going to talk about how I built my Hypnotherapy Sheffield web site today, but I will focus on how I am trying to increase the ranking of my Hypnotherapy web site.

There are a number of different factors to take into account when trying to optimise your web site for top rankings. It is important to have as many web sites of a similar nature connecting to your web site as possible. Contact other like minded businesses and ask them whether they are willing to exchange web site links with you. Create a Links page on your site and add urls to the link page, with a suitable description. I contacted all of the Hypnotherapy Businesses in Sheffield, but not many of them were willing to exchange links, so I had to go further afield. "Hypnotherapy Sheffield" is a highly competitive keyword.

Repeating keywords through out your site is important. In my Hypnotherapy business, important keywords for me would be: "Sheffield", "Hypnosis", "Hypnotherapist", "Hypnotherapy", "Hypnotism", "Hypnotist", "Management", "Stress", "Weight", "Stopping smoking" to name a few. The more times that your keywords appear on a page or across a site, the better.

Meta tags used to be important, but less so now as many people abused them. Google looks at the keywords through your site. Google doesn't like hidden keywords or the same ones appearing in the same place on each page.

It is important to have a good page title and description, as that is what appears in the search engine. This is the title page and description from the home page of my web site.

Title - Hypnotherapy Hypnotherapist NLP Sheffield Worksop Rotherham Nottingham

Description - I am a hypnotherapist based in south Sheffield. I can do one to one sessions, provide off the shelf CD's for specific outcomes, or conduct personal development courses for your organisation.

I like to blog about things other than Hypnotherapy, but you have to be careful not to dilute the keywords throughout your site too much. However I get quite a few people searching for dancing and the Chesterfield canal, so it is a back door way of advertising my Hypnotherapy business in Sheffield.

It is important to keep exchanging additional web site links with other like minded businesses and improving the content of your web site for your keywords.

I understand that using titles H1 to H6 with your keywords in it, is also important.

"Hypnotherapy Sheffield" is highly contested in Sheffield. So looking for other keywords that may not be so highly contested, but bring you good traffic to your site is important. There are a number of free tools out there, that will help you to improve the ranking of your web site, so that you can decide what the best keywords are for your site.

My biggest concern is that when I search for information on the web site, that it isn't that good, because people are creating pages that can be found for their keywords and not for content value.

I am using Article base to add pages from my Hypnotherapy Sheffield blog, to attract more traffic to my Hypnotherapy Sheffield web site.

I tried using google add words, for my keywords: "Sheffield Hypnotherapy"," Hypnotherapy Sheffield", "Hypnotherapist Sheffield", "Sheffield Hypnotherapist"," Hypnosis Sheffield" and "Sheffield Hypnosis", but it tended to attract people who didn't want to put a lot of effort into finding a Hypnotherapist in Sheffield. Whereas people who found a Hypnotherapist in Sheffield, through my organic listing, were more likely to ring me.

I also add a nice picture to each page of my Hypnotherapy Sheffield web site.

Even though it is important to have a good ranking Hypnotherapy web site in Sheffield, it is also important to work on the word of mouth advertisement for your business.

I hope that this blog has been useful and I will have a follow up article, as the ranking of my Hypnotherapy Sheffield web site improves.

Until next time

Think positive

Best regards

Tim