Changing SearchMax Phrases

Overview

SearchMax is the proprietary system from WebHealer that is behind our success in gaining top listings for our clients on Google and other search engines. A key part is the selection of your SearchMax terms (key words and key phrases) that ensure we are targetting the right search terms that your potential clients will type in. These words are set when you first sign up with WebHealer but may sometimes need changing, due to factors such as a change of practice location or therapy area.

Whenever you feel your SearchMax terms need amending the WebHealer team will make those changes in consultation with you. To see your current SearchMax terms at any time, log in to your Admin Area, click the link on the left for SearchMax and scroll down to the Keyword Placement section where you'll see the top 3 phrases on the right.

These top 3 represent the most competitive terms that we can give maximum boost to. Further down is your others list of less competitive words. If the WebHealer team have just updated your SearchMax terms, this guide will help you with the following potential concerns.

• The SearchMax terms we have set are not quite what you were expecting
• What happens next? How long will it take for changes to take effect?
• Google Friendliness - What you need to do

Considerations when setting SearchMax terms

SearchMax terms most typically need changing due to changes of practice location or therapy focus. When updating terms the WebHealer team take into account a number of factors to ensure the new terms are of most benefit to you.

1. Top 3 for Valuable Searches The terms in your top 3 get the biggest "push" from SearchMax so it's important that these top 3 include the words that are most competitive, i.e. the ones that are hardest to rank at the top for and ideally the ones which are most frequently searched for. For example Leeds is more competitive than Headingley - unless your searches were related to cricket! Similarly some therapy terms are more competitive than others.
2. Combination Effect The words in your top 3 terms work in combination with each other. Repeating words across them doesn't really help, and you'll get the most benefit if they're different.
3. Actual Phrases Even though the words work in combination, you will do best if the top 3 terms are actual phrases people would search for. It's no good being No.1 for "counselling in headingley and leeds" if you are nowhere for "counselling leeds" or "counselling headingley". We would typically suggest "counselling leeds" and "counsellor headingley". The web is competitive these days and we recommend using the top 3 to focus on a few target phrases rather than trying to spread yourself too thin. We recommend each phrase be composed of only two or three words, occasionally 4. 
4. Postcode/Areas Our research shows that in general people tend to search for areas rather than postcodes so we suggest using actual locations in your top 3 and if you think a particular postcode is important having this in your extended list
5. Catchment Area Rather than just thinking about where you practice, consider your catchment area and include towns where people might travel from. This can be particularly important if your practice is based in a very small town or village but there are a number of larger towns or cities in your catchment area. We'd then recommend putting those larger and more valuable areas in your top 3, and if that takes up all of your top 3 phrases then add your actual location in the others list as it doesn't need the extra push. Searches including small villages are not typically competitive and a top 3 inclusion is therefore unnecessary and wasted. Also if you offer a therapy in a small village, say Nettleham which is a few miles outside of Lincoln, then anyone who is undertaking a search for "counselling Lincoln" is also a potential client who may be very happy (having been impressed by your website!) to travel to Nettleham rather than into Lincoln. To stand a chance of top placement for Lincoln though we need to put that in your top 3.
6. Think Local When people search for something they are fairly sure they can find locally, they tend to use search phrases that focus on their local area (their town, village, the nearby large town/village, suburb etc) as opposed to using larger areas like counties. This also applies to large cities. For example most people will not be prepared to travel across London to see a counsellor or reflexologist when they are fairly sure they can see one more locally. For this reason we steer away from including large areas like counties or large cities in SearchMax terms. There are exceptions of course. If you offer a very rare or specialist type of therapy then people will expect to have to look wider afield. Likewise in very sparsely populated counties, people may be used to having to travel for goods and services and may be searching more widely. Be aware that Google Search does not link up counties and towns. If you target Hertfordshire and someone searches for a service in Watford, Google will not list you. If Watford is a valuable catchment you need to target Watford. The same applies for London and areas within such as Ealing.
7. Online / Skype Promoting a therapy that is offered online (eg counselling via Skype) and/or by telephone is very difficult as you are competing across the whole English speaking world. The websites that will tend to gain the top places will represent a team or network of therapists with a large marketing budget and search engine consultants working hard for them. It is therefore very unlikely that your website will do well for these types of searches, certainly in the short to medium term. We recommend targetting more achievable terms that generate some enquiries for you than very tough terms that get no visibility on Google.

What happens next?

Please be aware that if your SearchMax terms have just been ammended by our team, the changes we've made won't be picked up immediately by Google. Google typically rescans small websites every few weeks and it is only when Google rescans that it will notice these changes and update its listings. This means that if the changes we have just made aren't quite right there's still plenty of time to modify them according to your preferences.

Google Friendliness - What you need to do

The SearchMax page also carries out a live analysis of how Google Friendly your content is. If your content is not Google friendly, then our work behind the scenes will be undermined and you won't get the full benefit of SearchMax.

The goal is to be in the green for all 3 dials at the top of your SearchMax page. If not then click the Read More button below each dial. In simple language it will tell you what you need to do get a green score. It's even better if you can get super green.