How You Can Create a Professional, Flexible Website

This is a guest post by blogging and social media consultant Beth Hayden. Beth is the owner of Blogging with Beth, an online marketing company that specializes in helping women build their businesses using WordPress websites and social media marketing.

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A Guest Post by Beth J. Hayden

(If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.)

If you’re in private practice, you need a website.

There’s just no getting around it – in this day and age, you need a website to establish your credibility as a business owner, to let your clients research you before they pick up the phone to make an appointment, to draw in traffic from the search engines, and to have a place to publish great content so you can establish yourself as an expert in your field.

Without a website, none of this stuff happens.

When a therapist or coach – or anyone in private practice – is getting started, she may think she doesn’t need a web presence to promote her private practice. He might think he can get most of his new business from referrals, the Yellow Pages, or networking events.

But by ignoring online marketing entirely – which is what you would do by deciding not to put up a website – therapists and coaches are missing a huge opportunity to start building trust with their potential clients and to build authority by publishing great content. Building a website is now as critical as ordering business cards when you’re starting your practice.

So if you’re sold on the idea of building a website – and hopefully at this point you are – what platform should you use to build your site? As therapists, you have a couple of options:

1. A traditional HTML site. Here’s an example of a regular HTML site, or what I call a “static” site.  Sites like this can be very pretty, but unless you know HTML, you will need a web developer every time you want to make a change to your design or your content. Though the price of a static HTML can vary widely (I’ve seen everything from $250 to over $5000), you need to factor in the cost of ongoing maintenance. The biggest downside is the fact that you’ll be far less likely to regularly update your site, since changes will be expensive. And keeping your site exactly the same for months (or years!) will result in lower search engines rankings and far less traffic for you.

2. TherapySites. This service lets you create a very simple website using design templates. Here’s an example of a TherapySites website. The downside of this type of site is that you are very limited in your design options – there are some templates to choose from, but you don’t get to customize your template to reflect your business and your personality. TherapySites is also very expensive – $59 a month for as long as you want to have the site up! This service also gives you a lot of free add-ons that sound good – like website content that is pre-written for you – that can actually negatively impact your standing with the search engines and your clients.

3. Psychology Today. The grandfather of all therapist directories, Psychology Today, will let you create a basic profile so you can be found in their “Find a Therapist” section. Here’s an example of a Pyschology Today profile. But please remember – an online directory profile is not a website! With a Psychology Today profile, you have no control over the look and feel of your information, you can’t add articles or blog posts, and you don’t get your own domain name. I believe Psychology Today has created a cool service with their directory, and I encourage therapists to sign up – but I wouldn’t plan on using your PT profile as your only website.

4. WordPress – WordPress, which is known in most circles as a blogging tool, can be used to build a dynamic, content-rich website. By creating a “self-hosted” WordPress.org website, which means you’ll need to buy web hosting and install WordPress software at your own domain name, you get all the power of the world’s biggest content management system.  Tim Brownson’s website is an example of a self-hosted WordPress site.

When you use WordPress, you can quickly and easily put up new content (blog posts, articles, etc.) which means you can be your own publisher! WordPress makes it easy to publish new content, change the look and feel of your site, organize your content and archive old content so they can still be found by your readers and in the search engines. And because it’s so easy to publish new articles, you’ll be excited to put up new content, which scores you BIG points with the search engines. The WordPress interface is just as easy to use as Microsoft Word, and you can even add pictures, audio and video to your quickly and easily.

There are over 1,300 free templates available for WordPress, so you have tons of choices for gorgeous looks for your site. Or if you like a customized site design, you can hire a designer, and get any look you want – since WordPress is built using incredibly flexible Custom Style Sheets (CSS), the sky is limit when it comes to designing your site.

It’s a fact – you need a website. And your best option is to build a site that will grow with you as your practice grows. Building your site in WordPress not only gives you the freedom to publish great content (which will establish you as an expert and get you noticed online), but it gives you all the systems and tools you need to thrive in your business but developing a rich, professional online presence.

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Want to get started with WordPress today? Check out Beth’s Quick and Easy WordPress School to get your site up and running FAST!