getting serious - keywords & "depression treatment"

well, i'm going to get serious about blogging now. there's lots of things i want to talk about - and hopefully, you'll have something to say about it, too!recently, i have been working on my web site. i decided to have it hosted by site-build-it (SBI), a hosting company that offers tremendous support to its users but also makes them sweat bullets as they build their sites.

one of the things that this site is very keen on is to use the right keywords - those keywords that we think our users will use to search for our web site. this poses an interesting dilemma for me. on the one hand, i want to attract as many visitors as possible to my site, and on the other, i'd like to follow the other advice given by SBI, which is to be as natural as possible. those two seem to conflict (the story of my life!). (does that remind you of the advice "just be yourself!" when you go to an interview, all dolled up, with that "natural" smile pasted on your face?)

for example - i'm interested in talking about how people deal with depression. ok, in november 2005, 729 people searched for "deal with depression" in yahoo. that's not really very much, considering that 599686 people searched for "angelina jolie". now unfortunately i have nothing to add to the body of knowledge about angelina jolie. so let's see how people search for the word "depression". and it turns out that 748219 looked for "depression treatment" (more than for angelina - that's interesting ...) here's my problem. the term "depression treatment" isn't really something i use a lot.

(((((( sidebar: the idea of "treating" people doesn't sit well with me. they origin of the word "psychotherapist" is interesting. originally, there is the ancient greek word "theraps", which is an attendant. from that derived the word "therapeuein", which is that which an attendant does - and soon what this attendant did was apparently administer treatment - which THEN quickly came to mean "to treat, to cure". (here i imagine someone bringing a glass of water and an aspirin). so, to be honest, if i want to be etymologically correct (i.e. stick to the word origin), i have two choices: i can go with the "attendant" or i can go with the "treatment". for now, i feel more comfortable with the word "attendant". i don't feel comfortable with the connotation of authority that goes with the idea of "treatment". stay tuned for further developments on this idea ... )))))))

sooo ... what do i do? do i talk the way i usually talk or do i start talking keyword talk? i hope that this blog will help - kind of be a bridge between the keywords and me. let's see ....so for today we have

keyword - depression treatment

isabella's words: depression is something that i'm very familiar with, both personally and professionally. people who deal with depression speak a language that i understand. i remember how surprised i was when i found out that there were people who had never thought about suicide. oh, and how very surprised i was when i realized that there have been (and still are) times in my life when the word "depression" applied to me, too (and how very, very surprised i was that the word "manic depression" or "bipolar" applied to me even more - but that's a different story). so i have a bit of an ambivalent relationship with depression. on the one hand, i totally get it - i know the feelings of confusion, paralysis, panic, dread, darkness. on the other hand, not having wanted to be "one who is depressed" for such a long time, i am also very familiar with the coping mechanisms - the denial, the escape, the numbing, the "beating it down" and "pulling up by the boostraps". by some lucky turn of fate, it seems like this ambivalence works quite well for my clients. it often allows me to sit and listen for a long time (yes - often; not always; perfection still eludes me). and when it comes to the time when we have a conversation, it allows us to talk about different ways of looking at depression - one of them, by the way, being the connection between creativity and depression.

isabella mori
counselling on vancouver
www.moritherapy.com