I need to create a website for my practice, Essential Massage Therapy (located in the Buffalo NY region) I am quite overwhelmed with researching what direction to take and quite frankly, I am not that adept at writing content...I currently advertise in local newspapers and fortunately, this keeps me busy ...my sessions run 2+ hours and I am available 7 days a week...I would like to increase my business to 4 clients per day...Please, any suggestions would be vastly appreciated. I am so glad that I came upon this website!

Julie has a great program to get you going!

I use something called Site Build it! for my clinic website. It is fairly detailed and time intensive but it will get results. Writing content is really just writing down what you would be saying to clients anyways all day long - explaining the different types of massage you do and various diseases and conditions etc. You can do it yourself or take a class or You can hire them to do your site for you.

I have the basics of what you need in a site to make it work.
http://thebodyworker.com/creating_a_website_that_works.htm

Basically - a domain name that clearly states what it is that you do and where you do it (what solution do you provide?)
-use keywords strategically through out your site and pages
-write as much content as you can so you can explain why you are different than all the rest. It shows you are an expert in what you do. I also have a section on my site on pathology where I am trying to collect articles from massage magazines on the various diseases and conditions so you can read them and then write your own articles on the different things.
- I also focus on having my sites make money for me while I work through adsense and other affiliate programs since so many people find my site that won't ever be clients it is important to make money with every visitor if possible.

I know it is a lot of information to sift through so let me know if you have any questions.

There are other systems too but I don't have any experience with them. I would actually like to add a section to my websites on all these other systems and let people review them!

Julie
(originally from NT - just made wings last night!)

Thank you Julie for the information you provide...I actually have reviewed Site Build It! and after reviewing other sites ( i.e. BodyWorksolutions) I will most likely go with SBI...Buffalo just had its annual Chicken Wing Festival :)

I built my site from scratch myself, it took me nearly a year from start to finish. But it now gets excellent comments from my clients, brings in new business and sites between number 3 and number 1 in Google for all my chosen keywords.

For me this has meant not just building the site and making it work, but writing and re-writing the content over and over until I am happy with it and it has all the right keywords in the text. I have spent what often seems like days building links to my site and adding it to directories.

I use Blogger to publish new content which is integrated directly in to my site and I've just started to use Twitter as a marketing tool, we'll see how that goes over the next few months.

It's been a hard slog but worth it as my business is thriving at the moment.

anyone work with this company? as a graphic designer (as well) i like what they have to offer. i haven't tried them yet...but plan on it soon. wondered if anyone tried them and got results.

http://www.bodyworksites.com

I'm a new massage therapist and I've tried to use the website builder on ABMP's website. I'm having a really hard time with this. I was wondering if you recommend a book or something else? Thank you. Steph

I have most of the details on how to create a website on my website at

http://thebodyworker.com/creating_a_website_that_works.htm

It isn't specifically about using any specific software but the details on how to use keywords and write for your website.

Julie
www.thebodyworker.com
www.massage-career-guides.com

where can i get pictures to use on my website? is it allowed?

You have to buy pictures or find royalty free pictures. I just use istockphoto.com. You can't just take a picture off any website and use it. There are copyright laws.

Julie

We're having a specific issue with building our WordPress site, which we're hosting through godaddy.com. My partner has been looking in vain for the button which is supposed to activate the ftp site. Any insights? She's been using a tutorial, and the button seems to have been moved, or maybe it's called something else now. I know, the best thing would be to call godaddy, but we both work full-time, so finding the time to do that is a challenge. Thanks, Julie or anybody else who can help! Laurei

Sorry -don't know what you are talking about really. You don't need ftp with wordpress so not sure what it has to do with that. Why do you need it?

Julie

Hmm. We've been divvying up the work. I've been focusing on the social media networking end of things, and my partner has been working on building the site. She's old school (html), so maybe she believes we need it. I do know that when I spoke with the folks at godaddy, they mentioned that ftp comes as part of the package, and I know that it used to be the way things were done back when I was building websites, and apparently some of the tutorials she's been using have also mentioned ftp. Aw shucks. I guess I'll just have to call godaddy and get some clarification.