Hi everyone,

I know I'm going to sound like an ignorant techn-phobe here, but that's because I am!

I've reached the conclusion that in order to promote my psychotherapy & counselling practice I really need to have my own Website now, and a way of coming up on Google etc. when people are searching for a therapist.

I have absolutely no idea how to go about this though. When I try and find out information about it I get confused by the jargon.

Can anyone advise where I might go to find out more information (in very user-friendly layperson terms); also how to set up a website - I'd like it to look as professional as possible, but without it costing a fortune; also how one gets the Googles of this world (they are called "Search Engines" right??) to list my details. The key words I can think of that people will be using are "Counsellor" "Psychotherapy" plus location, i.e. "Kent/Sussex borders". Also I'd like to offer links on the website, such as to the BACP (British Assoc. of Counselling & Psychotherapy) for example. And for it to have different "pages" such as About Me, Who Comes For Counselling & Psychotherapy, Contact Me, etc.

If anyone can advise how I can begin with this I'd be muchly, muchly grateful.

Many thanks

Amber
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Hey Ambs!

If you have some website software, such as Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver, it's quite straightforward. You can open the software, choose a template, and basically fill in the gaps. You can build the site without it being published anywhere, just on your computer. When you're ready, you can press the publish button, and upload it to your FTP.

But what's an FTP? You need buy some webspace AND a domain name - many companies do this for a reasonably cheap rate. I assume the site wouldn't be majorly huge, so a cheaper webspace / domain deal would suit you well. I can't give any exact prices, but you could definitely get something decent for £50 / year. You will probably then get access to something called an FTP server, which is basically your literal space on the internet, you can move files and folders to and from here quite easily.

You could of course pay someone copious amounts of money to design it for you, but you can get something decent enough in Front Page.

As for being listed in search engines, I don't know much about this. You can add something called a meta tag to your site (this is what I've done with one of mine), and Google trawls the internet for these tags. It's a free way to get your search engine listed - OK, so it may not be at the top of the list, it may not even be listed, but there's a chance! You can pay money to get to the top of Google etc, but this can cost quite a lot.

Good luck, if you want any more help or advice, send me a PM!

Ambs - my son has done this, and he reckons it wasn't worth it for him.

His advice is, get your website sorted, and your pages will come up automatically (when people search) in the main part of google - no real need to pay for extra advertising space.

If you go to the webmaster page(s) on google's site, it will have useful information about making your website one that will stand the best chance of coming up.

Hope this is helpful - fairly minimal I fear!

This is Maggie's son posting...

OK lets break what you require down into the seperate parts:

1) The website. By this I mean the actual content. The pages, words and pictures.

2) Some webspace to put your website on. You get this by renting space on a companies servers. This does not have to be expensive. Mum will email you with the hosting company I have used (and would recommend).

3) The domain name (ie: the actual website address - example www.mywebsite.com). You can often buy this through the company you buy your webspace from.

That is the basics. Once you have these three, you'll have a site on the internet that people can look at.

Getting listed on search engines is the next level, along with many small improvements and tweaks you may want to perform

I'll give you a little background on Google:
Google has software which trawls the web and catalogues the entire web. Google then displays lists of relevant websites when someone makes a search. The general idea is to make your own website as relevant as possible to your chosen field. The topic of SEO (search engine optimisation) is a complete black art I'm afraid, but its basically a set of tweaks and improvements to try and get your website listing higher on Google (and others!).

Seperately, you can pay Google to list your website (on the right hand side of their page) when someone searches for a particular term (or terms) - this is what Maggie is referring to when she says it wasn't worth it for me - I found Google adwords very expensive for what it gave me. However getting higher rankings in Google's organic (ie the normal) listings through SEO are indeed very 'worth it'.

Let me know if you need more advice.

Chris (tall, dark...)

Hi tall dark Chris, and tall dark Oddball, and Maggie (tall, dark? Don't know, haven't had the pleasure of meeting you in person yet! )


Thank you all very much for your replies. It sounds like it will be a bit time consuming to get it all sorted out, but at least I have some direction now as to where to start! Yay!!! Very many thanks to you, and especially for putting it into middle-aged-woman-speak!!

I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks, and hope you are having a lovely weekend.

Amber
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Having met Maggie in person, I can confirm she is neither tall nor dark.

Ambs

I did my Maxim website using some online software package thingy (sitemaker I think it is) and I still know nothing about HTML or anything like that. I had to put certain keywords in a box and the software thingy did all the rest.

It's really easy to use and I got a website up and running in a day. Not sure if it looks professional enough for your needs (take a look, the URL is in my siggy - see what you think), but it was really easy to do.

Hi Amber

I designed and created a website with no prior knowledge of the process using the tutorial and free software from here:

http://www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/nvu1.shtml

Never got around to buying a proper domain name or hosting for it, but what I did based on the tutorials above worked OK - I did it over several early morning insomnia sessions , starting each tutorial by doing what they suggested with their own text and layout, then thinking about how mine ought to look and behave, based on what I'd learnt each time. It was certainly a useful introduction to the art of website design, and if I were to have a go at doing mine again with a more sophisticated package, I'd have a much better idea of what I was doing, although I don't think the software is good enough to produce a really professional site.

If you use BT as your broadband provider I think they also have a website design package linked into the service that you can customise to fit your needs.

Finally, lots of people advertise themselves as capable of designing and setting up websites for anything, basic ones with one or two years support and hosting are about £250.

Good luck!

Hazel

This is uncanny! I was up until 4.00am this morning working on my new website, care of Sitemaker which Janexxx recommended! Hubby woke and discovered me missing from our bed, and came down to find me sitting at the computer enthralled with my design - albeit bleary-eyed. Insomnia can be so useful sometimes, can't it!

Thank you so much for recommending the site Jane, it's so easy to use isn't it. I really can't believe what I've been able to achieve, and it's already looking really good.

I'm a bit confused about whether I need to use the hosting company which Maggie's Chris recommended, or whether Sitemaker does the hosting thing as well. Also I need to get to grips with registering a domain name. But I've learnt so much more than I knew yesterday, so thank you all so much for helping to point me in the right direction - really appreciate you taking the time and giving me your advice.



A very tired but happy Amber
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Sitemaker will host, but its not a very catchy domain name. I bought a couple more, they're quite cheap, and its easy to assign them to your site, so any of them work and get you to the same place.

Glad you found it useful.

Oh, so it's not like I have to have multiple websites then if I have more than one domain name? I think it would be useful to have one which includes the name of my town, then another including the name of the county. Is that likely to get it selected and listed more do you think? I'm thinking that people will google in prompts like "counsellors in Sussex" for example.

I don't seem to be able to upload my pictures onto the site though, despite following the instructions. Did you have any difficulties with this?



Amber
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Ummm...

I could give you loads of techo-sounding advice...



But all I'm gonna say is...




LET ME DO IT!