Working with Therapists for SEO

I often get asked by fellow therapists to help with their websites and search engine optimization (SEO). Of course, I'm always happy to help and it usually starts with a conversation about what SEO is and what it isn't. There are always questions:

• What can we expect with an SEO campaign?
• How long does it take?
• What in the world is SEO anyway?

They're great questions. I've tried to answer a few of these with some previous posts, like this one that gives some tips and tricks for therapists working on their own SEO. 

Recently, I started working with a new practice. They're an online provider of therapy in North Carolina and so it presents some unique challenges and I thought we could answer some questions while using them as a bit of a case study. 

Firstly, it's critical to have a conversation about expectations. As a relatively new site, one of the biggest challenges that our case study site has is one of time. While age doesn't directly impact search rankings, older sites are more established and likely have more of the SEO signals already in the bag. It's more likely that there are links from other sites, more content that's internally linked, etc.

It can take several months to really ramp up and it's important to have that conversation. 

In terms of what you can expect, from a referral flow, some of that is determined by the popularity of a phrase or idea (e.g. a keyword) that we're attempting to target. We'll spare the details here, but we've found that we can help new small practices get to a regular referral flow of 3-5 clients per week within just a couple of months. There are a ton of variables that factor into that, of course but as a starting bench mark, we have seen that help clinicians build their practices at a healthy pace. 

With our case study, we began by noting the challenges of a new site for a new practice but still believe it's possible to build a steady, healthy referral flow within just a few months. We analyzed the site and provided a short report with some prioritized suggestions about where to start. 

The core of our plan was creating some keyword-specific landing pages on the site to target the first five keywords representing various areas of practice. For example, one area was in counseling for anger and anger management for people throughout North Carolina. 

The page uses specific terms that people searching for these services might use. We've just launched these new pages and, in fact, Google is still working to index them. But, we're looking forward to keeping up with the progress and we'll keep you posted.