Here are some critical mistakes most therapists make when deciding how to build their sites. You need to get these right with your massage site.

• Not designing the site to bring you new clients through great search engine rankings. Most folks don't think about this until after their site is created. Then they try to get better rankings. This is a big mistake. Your site needs to be designed from the ground up to rank well with the search engines. And the truth is that most web designers don't really know how to do this. Or if they claim they do, they often operate on old information. Search engines change quickly.

• Not making it so that you can add and change content yourself. Sites change, because you will want to add and change things, and because a site that is an effective marketing tool is not just a pamphlet on the web. Good sites have new content regularly, news items, specials, holiday hours, and more. You will be making changes to your site at least twice a month. You need to realize that if you cannot make those changes easily yourself, you will have to pay a professional to do it, month after month, year after year. And most of the time you won't do it because it will cost you too much. So your site will be way less effective as a marketing tool.

• Not having a promotion plan. You need a successful plan for promoting your site. Most web designers don't know how to do this well, and if you are doing it by yourself, you will also not have a tried and true plan and tools available to achieve this.

• Spending too much money on it's creation and other costs.

• Not having a community of web business support. This is very important, because building a successful web site takes time and work, and discouragement is very common. A strong community of supporters is extremely valuable.

Now, let's evaluate the three different ways to build your site and you will see that one way solves a lot of these problems, and will make your life much easier.

Option #1, Have A Pro Design It? Everywhere else on this site I have strongly suggested that you get a professional to design your materials (your business cards, logo, etc.). In this case, I actually suggest you don't. The cost can be very high. And if you want to make your site profitable and successful, then you must carefully watch costs. Additionally, the vast majority of web site designers know very little about correct web design for good search engine rankings. They are always more interested in how great it looks.

But the main reason I suggest you don't have a professional design it is because every time you want to make a change or add something to your web site, you will have to get them to do it, and pay them. And guess what? You won't do it nearly as often as you should. I can't stress enough how important it is to be able to make changes on your web site yourself.

And for all the money you spend, you will not get a proven promotion plan with it, or a great web community of supporters.

Option #2, Be A Jack Of All Trades And Make It Yourself? Does that mean you should learn how to make a web site yourself? Should you buy expensive web site software, learn HTML language, struggle with graphic design? No. You are a massage therapist, not a web site designer. If you happen to have a lot of skills in web design already developed, it might be OK. But do you have experience designing a site and individual pages that get good search engine rankings? Do you have an excellent promotion plan or a good web community?

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Note: For those determined to build their own site.

When you are ready to get a hosting company I recommend www.Bluehost.com as your web site hosting company. I use them for a couple different sites. They have a great package of features, and the price (at only $6.95 a month) is amazing considering you can host up to 6 separate web sites on one account for that price. They also win awards for customer service, which I have found to be quick and good.

You may also want to read this page where I interview a massage therapist who did a great job creating her own site - Massage Website Interview.

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Option #3, The Best Solution for Building Your Site

This is the best option. There are companies that provide you with an amazing array of do-it-yourself site building tools, that are an extremely good value for what they provide. These companies are focused on helping a person with no technical knowledge to create their own web site/business, while they handle all the technical aspects.

For one reasonable price, all at one location, they provide these things, and much more:

• Web domain name registration (and auto renewing of your domain so you don't need to think about it).

• Your web site hosting (where your site sits on the web).

• Premade templates (sample sites) for creating your own site look and feel easily.

• Quick and easy ways to change and add to content and pages yourself.

• Action guides and tools for how to create sites and pages that do well at the search engine.

• Automatic search engine submission.

• Promotion guides and tools that are proven to work.

• Web communities of other people doing the same thing you are.

Check out the video below of a massage therapists who has had great success with what I consider to be the best web building option for your business.

Basically my experience shows me that this is the best way to build a massage site that stands the best chance of being very profitable for you.

The very best of these companies is SiteBuild-It!. They offer all of the above items, and too many other great tools to mention here. One unique feature to SiteBuild-It! worth mentioning for a massage therapist is that they provide you with a full featured e-mail newsletter publishing tool.

I created this site with SiteBuild-It!. And even though I have the skills and software to build my own site, I greatly prefer using SiteBuild-It!. The business building tools and resources are invaluable to me.

I am not alone in my belief that this service is great for therapists. I have seen several other massage marketing sites recommend SiteBuild-It!, including Bodyworkbiz.com and Thebodyworker.com.

Are there draw backs to using SiteBuild-It!? Maybe. Your massage site may not be as graphically stunning as you desire. But you can have a very good looking site that is simple and clean (important).

Click here to learn more about SiteBuild-It! Take the time to read their site literature. It is long, but they give you all the details and some great advice.

If you have any questions about SiteBuild-It you can get answers from actual owners and users of SiteBuild-It! here: SiteBuild-It! Questions. You can also email me with questions since I utilize the service myself and have helped therapists setup their sites with SiteBuild-It! - Contact Galen.