Are you sure people aren't hitting the site in the numbers you want?
A lot of the time people assume that if they can get people to look at their website, they'll automatically convert to customers, but that's rarely the case. In fact, if you can convince one out of every ten visitors to your site to book an appointment you're doing better than most.
Search engine optimization is important, but what you put on your site and how you organize it is just as important. Ideally you want to find a web designer who's competent and who you trust, but great results can still be had putting your own together.
A couple of tips:
1. Take advantage of free material. The web is chock full of it.
Open Source Web Design - Download free web design templates. for example, has something like 2000 free website templates by professional designers. All of them can be downloaded and modified.
2. Start a blog. Blogs (short for web log) are loved by search engines, which attempt to rank sites based on relevant content. While backlinks are important, nothing replaces quality content in getting your site higher in organic rankings. Just shoot for one or two posts a week that have something to do with your business or industry. Your site will show higher in rankings and, as a bonus, your clients will be drawn back to your site more frequently, and will come to trust your expertise (which means more referral business and more bookings). Check out
http://www.wordpress.org for more info.
3. Use Google. Google Analytics (
Google Analytics) is a free tool you put on your site that shows you everything visitors to your site do; what they look at, for how long, where they go when they've finished a page, how many come, take one look and leave, etc. It's invaluable for figuring out what works on your site and what doesn't. They also offer AdWords (
Welcome to AdWords) which is a paid service that puts your ad up next to relevant google searches. You decide how much you pay when someone clicks the ad (you only pay when someone actually clicks it, not when it shows) and you decide how much you want to spend a month. Those two together are a great way to increase your traffic and to make sure your traffic converts to customers.
Any of these could really be their own post, but this should get you started, at least.
