11 SEO Tips for Therapists, Counselors, and Private Practice

When my marketing clients first reach out about having a new site created, they're not often thinking about one of the most important ideas related to launching a new website: Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It can be really confusing and definitely mysterious. But it doesn't have to be. 

So here are 11 tips to help you understand SEO and get visitors to your site more effectively. 

1. What SEO Is and What SEO Isn't

Before we can get into the practical dos and don'ts of SEO, it's really important to have a basic understanding of what it is. This is where I see the most people getting lost or spending big money to SEO firms when they may not need to. I'm going to skip over the technical definitions and just say this: SEO represents the things you can do on the pages of website in order to increase the number of visitors that come from search engines like Google. We do this by trying to understand the problems that people are trying to solve when they search and then working to make sure our websites have best possible solutions to those problems. 

Perspective time: It's estimated that there are 5.6 billion searches on Google every single day. That's 5.6 billion problems – worldwide – that need solutions. Let's say you're running a mental health therapy practice. There might only be 100,000 searches that happen in your city total. Some of those are for best places to buy hammers, some are who was that actor in Con Air?, and a very small portion of those might be related to therapy. There is a finite number of problems that your website might be the best solution for and the amount of traffic that you can receive is going to be completely dependent on the number of people searching.

SEO is about figuring out how the people who are looking for solutions to their therapy problems are trying to find them and then working to make your site the most relevant. If they're looking for therapists near me, you're wise to include content on your website that pinpoint where you are. If people are looking for specific therapy approaches that you offer (e.g. EMDR), you'd better make sure that you have pages or blog posts about EMDR. 

SEO is not just about getting to the first page of Google - that's a pretty meaningless ideas without context. There's 5.6 billion different searches and 5.999999 billion are completely irrelevant to your company. When you create your content in such a way that your pages are the best solution the problems that people are searching for, you'll get to the first page of Google for the people that matter most to your practice. 

2. Pick One Problem You Want to Solve

Where do you even start with SEO? I'd suggest that you need to understand what problems people are trying to solve that are relevant to you and picking one specific problem that you want to be the best solution for.

Let's think about what people type in the search box as being part of a longer statement about the problem they have. For example, if someone searches for EMDR Therapists In Charlotte NC you can think of it as a longer statement, something like "My problem is that I want to find EMDR Therapists in Charlotte NC."

Let's say you are an EMDR therapist in Charlotte, NC. 

Let's also say that there are 100 searches on Google everyday for therapists in Charlotte. Of that 100, it's impossible to know exactly how many people will be searching for EMDR therapists. Some of those 100 searches might be for family therapists, or male couples counselors. Some might be generic like therapists near me. 

Only some small number of them might be for EMDR Therapists in Charlotte NC. But because these people are the ones that you're actually looking to bring into your practice, helping to solve their problem might actually be the best place to start. 

Be sure to pick something specific - those are going to be easier to target and rank higher for than more broad search queries. 

3. Don't Waste Google's Time - Be Clear and Direct

If people's searches are problems and websites have solutions, you can think of Google as a broker who wants to connect questioners with the best answers. So, another way to think about SEO is that we're trying to prove to Google that we've got what it takes to be the best solution to the problem of finding EMDR Therapists in Charlotte NC.  One of the ways we do that is to be aware of what we're saying. We want to be well-informed, concise, to-the-point, clear. 

So, we want to create a web page (notice I said page, not site... more on that shortly) that will be the place where we present our solution. 

On that page we're going to do a couple of important things. We're going to use a header at the top of our page that states something like EMDR Therapist in Charlotte NC. We might do that on one line or two, but we want to use those words specifically. Why these words? You could say that these are the key words that will let Google know what we're trying to answer. And, these keywords are going to show up in lots of places on our web page. 

The next thing we're going to do is we're going to add our text. We're going to write that text as clearly and concisely as possible. We're going to talk a little about what EMDR is, we're going to talk about our location in Charlotte, NC, and we might even mention why we would be a good choice. It might read something like:

Yetman Counseling is based in Charlotte, NC and has EMDR Therapists who can help you work through the concerns you have in an open and accepting environment. Our EMDR therapists are trained to help you with trauma processing and other concerns. 

Our office is conveniently located in Charlotte in the Plaza-Midwood neighborhood. 

Click here to get started with an EMDR Therapist.

Think of the content on this page as being an elevator pitch – you've got 30 seconds, why should Google give you a second thought?

4. Think About Your Title

There are a lot of little details on your page that matters with respect to SEO. One of those is the title. I don't mean the heading at the top of your page. I mean your HTML title. See, in the code on every web page is a little section simple called a title tag and the text inside that tag is pretty important for helping Google understand that your solution to the problem could be relevant. You don't usually access this tag directly but, depending on the content management system you're using, you'll be able to set it somewhere on your site. 

You'll want to make sure that your keywords above are included in your title as well. In fact, you'd be wise to put your keywords at the very front of your title. 

But you can have other things in your title too. 

A very basic format for an HTML page title might be something like:

Page Keywords | Website Name | Business Location

So, for our example, it might look like this:

EMDR Therapist | Yetman Counseling | Charlotte NC

Notice the difference. The heading on our page (see tip #3) might feel like it serves the purpose of being a title for the content on that page, but the HTML page title is a technically distinct concept that is easily confused. It's good to know the difference. Both serve important SEO roles. 

Another tip: you'll know you've set your title when the text in your web page tab shows what you want it to show. 

5. What about URL?

Relatively useless trivia time: URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. You're welcome. For our purposes, when you visit a website, it's what you see in the address bar. 

The page you're currently on has the URL of:
https://bigheartmarketing.com/11-seo-tips-for-therapists-and-private-practices

The URL is another technical component that Google looks at when trying to determine where the best answer for a problem might be. And, most content management systems will let you edit this part of your site too. So, you'll want to make sure that your keywords are included in the part of the URL after your domain name. So, to stick with our example, the URL for the page we're hypothetically creating might be:

https://yetmancounseling.com/emdr-therapist-charlotte-nc

6. Domain Name

While we're talking about URLs, let's also talk about your domain name. This is another place that Google might look for your keywords but I'm going to go out on a limb here and make this tip a little counter intuitive. 

Don't worry about your domain name.

It's not entirely good advice but let me explain. You domain name (e.g. bigheartmarketing.com) is an important part of your site but it's relevant to your entire site, not just single pages. So, it can be really helpful to include keywords here that reference everything that you do, but you probably want to avoid getting too specific.

So, for example, if your target audience is located to a specific geographic area and you offer a wide range of services under a single umbrella term, then that could be the formula for a super powerful domain name. 

CharlotteCounseling.com would be a great domain name for counselors in Charlotte. 

PlazaMidwoodTherapy.com would be a great domain name for targeting people who live in the Charlotte neighborhood of Plaza-Midwood. 

But, chances are the best domains are already taken and you have to balance your SEO needs with the branding needs of your company. 

If you can get a domain name that can include your location, great. But if you can't, don't sweat it. There's enough SEO power in the rest of these tips to help you rank high regardless of your domain. 

And, for the record, don't buy a bunch of different domains and point them at the same site. It's actually counterproductive from an SEO perspective. 

7. Accessibility Matters

Internet standards have come a long way as it relates to creating the tools for website owners to make content that's accessible to people with differing abilities. 

Search engines are smart. And, if they have two solutions to a problem that are of equal quality, but one has made the effort to ensure high levels of accessibility compared to the other, guess who is going to be considered to have the best solution?

How do you make content that's accessible?

There are probably too many ways to mention here but there are a ton of great resources to help you with this.

One great place to start is The Ally Project's Website.

Here are a couple easy steps to take.

Images: Make sure when you add an image, you provide a meaningful alt description (this is another technical term - it's different than a caption but is a way of providing a description of the content of an image that you're using on a web page). Essentially, you're describing what's in the photo. Again, most content management systems will allow you opportunity to do this when you're uploading an image to your site, and if you're working with a design company or freelancer, make sure you express that this is important to you. It's an area that we overlook way too often. 

Links: When you're creating text links, make them descriptive. Don't just say "Click Now" - give some context. "Click here to learn how you can improve your SEO."

Same goes for buttons. "Click here" makes sense for people who are reading and seeing the full context but for people who may not have the ability to do so, click here is a meaningless reference. Instead, say something like "Contact Us," "Make an appointment," or some other descriptive language.

Headings: When you're creating content (like the article you're reading right now), make sure you structure it well using headings. Headings do more than just serve as titles for sections. In the context of accessibility, they help people using screen readers navigate your content and understand what the various sections are about. Yes, using headings well is great for SEO in general but it's essential for helping  

8. All the Other Technical Bits

The truth is there are tons of ways that search engines assess whether your solution to a problem is worthy of being front page material. A lot of those ways are wrapped up in the technical details of creating a website – which is a really good reason for having someone like BigHeartMarketing.com around to help work through some of the more complicated technical bits. 

Here's a list of SEO considerations things that are important for different reasons but without getting to far into the weeds, make sure you give some thought to them:

• Meta-Descriptions
• Web page loading times
• Mobile-first/Mobile-responsive design
• Overall web page usability

These items have some varying degree of impact on your web page's reputation and should definitely be something you pay attention to, even if you need to hire someone to help.

I've said it already but Google is smart! They have complex assessments that happen to determine the quality of your presentation, not just the quality of your content. So you have to pay attention to both – both are important aspects of optimization. 

9. Social Signals

If people are coming to your website from social media, it's generally a good thing. We don't exactly know how it's measured, but there are lots of conversations about social signals and how that impacts your site's reputation in search engine terms. 

Essentially, my advice here is this. Share your content to social media. Share links to your website on social media. Don't worry too much about how many people are liking or following. Just share it. At the very least, it's going to be a reminder to you to create good, shareable content that people will want to read or engage with in some way. It will help you be mindful and intentional about what you're putting out into the world. 

10. Produce, Analyze, Repeat

Make sure that you have some means to analyze the traffic coming to your site. Primarily, this is going to involve something like Google Analytics but site builders like Squarespace also have traffic tools built in.

Whatever tool you use, learn how to use it to analyze the effectiveness of your content. SEO is a dynamic, circular process that involves optimizing your content to ensure the most traffic from the content you produce. 

Beware, however, it's not Search Engine Perfection..... it's optimization. There's a point where you have to be aware of diminishing returns. The truth is some content is more niche and there's a finite number of people who are ever going to engage with it. Spending your time pouring over the same content may not net you any additional traffic. 

Instead, research what people are searching for in your field. There are plenty of ways to do that including Google's Keyword Tool and similar services from other companies. But one of the easiest is to simply search. If you search EMDR Therapists Charlotte NC right now, and scroll all the way to the bottom of the search results, you're going to see a section called Related Searches. This can be an easy place to start your research about how to create content for your site. 

Some of the related searches when I performed this search were:

• Affordable therapy charlotte nc
• depression therapist charlotte nc
• Charlotte counselors

You can use this to create pages on your site that speak specifically to those keywords. If you have opportunities to provide therapy at a reduced rate, speak about that, using the keywords Affordable Therapy. You might even provide a resource list or blog article about affordable therapy options.

The concept here is that you can find out what people are searching for that's relevant to your company/practice and begin to create content specifically designed to be solutions to people's problems. 

11. SEO Is Not Everything

Don't be too hard on yourself. SEO takes time. It takes refinement. It takes work to figure out how you can show up on the first page of Google's search results as the best solution to a person's problem. 

And for the vast majority of us running real-world companies, SEO doesn't replace networking, meeting people, referrals from happy clients, etc, etc. SEO is an important part of internet marketing but it shouldn't be thought of as the be-all-and-end-all. It's a tool that you can spend some time refining. But it's a long game; there are no shortcuts. 

So, be patient and continue to get out in the community and let people know that you're a great company, that you can help solve their real-world problems, and, by the way, you have a website they can check out.