It’s fairly difficult to get an online counseling page ranking well.

Our top 3 tips to boost the SEO results for your online therapy pages

First, do some keyword research related to online counseling services.

In another blog post we talked about keyword research for therapists and shared the general trends (in the United States) for keywords related to telehealth or online counseling. However, it’s important to know that people use very different terms depending on where they live.  If you’re licensed in New Jersey, you may target a different keyword for your online services than if you’re licensed in California and may need different terms yet if you are located in England, Australia or Canada.  And if your private practice has clinicians licensed in multiple states, you’ll want to do some keyword research in each state you are marketing your online therapy services.  You may find that you need to use different keywords on each state’s landing page (see below).

So, where do you find out which keywords to target for online therapy in your area specifically? There are a LOT of different keyword research tools out there you can use, but you’ll specifically be looking for one where you can choose the specific area you are researching. You can read about our favorite keyword research tools here, but there are a lot of different ones out there that may work.

Next, create a landing page for each geographic area you want to target.

Make sure you are using original content.

Write blog posts that truly help your online counseling clients

Get started working on your SEO for online counseling

Does either of these situations sound familiar?

1. You have a beautiful website that is easy to navigate, has beautiful pictures, and has text written to speak directly to your ideal client. The problem? Nobody can find your site.  If you search for counseling in your area or even specify your niche (ex: “help for postpartum depression in Manhattan”) your site doesn’t show up until the 5^thor 6^th page.
2. You’re starting to show up on the first couple pages when someone searches for “Counseling in Chicago, IL.” The problem here? You’ve looked at Google Console and realized that nobody’s actually clicking on your website. Your website still isn’t leading to new counseling clients.

Rewriting Your Meta Descriptions Can Help

The good news is that meta descriptions can help in either one of these situations.  If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a “meta description” is the small little snippet of information underneath a website’s title (also called the Meta Title or Page Title) on Google Search results. It’s usually 1-2 sentences about the page. A meta description has two main purposes and therefore helps accomplish two main goals.

Goal #1: Improve your Search Engine Rankings

First, a meta description tells Google what your page is about.  It’s like a tiny summary of your page.  Therefore, search engines pay attention to what is in a meta description when trying to decide where your page should be listed in the search results.  This is the reason we put keywords in a meta description.  You can monitor your progress by monitoring how well your mental health website ranks for specific keywords your ideal clients are interested in or simply by looking at the number of “impressions” (times your website showed up in search results) on your Google Console account.

For more information: You can read this blog post for more information on choosing the right counseling keywords to target or this post on monitoring your keyword rankings & SEO progress.

Goal #2: Move People from a Results Page to Your Site

The second job of a meta description is to convince a potential viewer to click on your website.  Sometimes I think this is actually the harder to accomplish of the two goals.  Therefore, it’s important to carefully craft meta descriptions to encourage potential clients to make the transition. They will go from seeing your site on a list of search results to actually clicking on your page.  The percent of clients that do this are measured by the Click Through Rate (CTR). You can find your CTR on you Google Console account.  So, if the changes you are making to your meta descriptions are effective at accomplishing this goal, you’ll notice the Click Through Rate increasing.

Both purposes are equally important.  It is critical that you show up when someone does a search looking for counseling help. However, it doesn’t do much good to show up if potential clients don’t click on your page. Or, go to your website and learn how you can help.

Are you looking for more guidance on writing the perfect meta descriptions?

Next Step: Begin Writing Quality Meta Descriptions!

So, of course, the next step is to begin writing fabulous meta descriptions! If you’re interested in learning more about how to do this, you can read my 5 Tips for Writing the perfect meta description for your mental health website or sign up for my Free 7 Day E-mail Series that devotes one whole day to this topic.

If you’re struggling to write your own meta descriptions and want some help learning how to implement all of the SEO tips I’ve been writing about OR you’ve just decided you want someone else to do your SEO for you, please reach out today.  I’d love to schedule a quick SEO Consultation to see if my services are a good fit for your website.

Meta descriptions are a powerful tool to help your website take off and move up the pages of Google.

Have you been working on your own Search Engine Optimization for a couple of months and just aren’t sure if it’s worth the effort?

Or have you been paying someone else to do “SEO” for your private practice website but have just been told to be patient and wait a few months to see results?

Maybe as you’ve looked through this page you’ve found yourself wondering how you’d even know if the money you are spending is giving you a good return on investment?

You Want Results

Imagine that whoever answers phone calls for your practice is keeping busy with double the calls you have coming in right now. At the end of each call with someone new, you ask the question, “Where did you learn about our services?”  Time after time you either hear, “I just did a Google search” or “My doctor told me about you so I looked up your website.”

Your services are easy to find, because you show up on the first page when potential clients use a search engine. You (or someone you designate) are keeping an eye on how your website ranks for search terms your ideal clients are actually using.  You feel confident that when algorithms change and your site starts to crawl you’ll catch it quickly  and make changes to keep your site showing up.  Why? Because you want to serve more clients.  You know that by making it really easy for clients to find you when they are looking for services you provide online, you are expanding your reach and making a bigger impact on your community.

There are Several Ways to Measure the Results of SEO Work

Several times over the last few months I’ve heard a similar story.  A private practice owner has a website they like but it’s not showing up very well on Google.  Few people are finding their website.  So they see an add for SEO services.  The company makes their services sound top notch and the practice owner, knowing very little about SEO themselves, agrees to their fees.  They’re now spending hundreds of dollars a month for vaguely defined “SEO services.”  They don’t notice much a of a difference in calls coming in and when they search for “Counseling in _____” they’re still on the 10th page.  But they’re told to be patient. SEO takes time to work.  Trust us. But they don’t trust their SEO provider anymore.  In fact, they have no idea what they’ve spent money on and aren’t even sure they’re much better off than they were when they started.

It doesn’t have to look like this!  Whether you are learning to do your own website optimization, keyword tracking, or paying a Search Engine Optimization specialist, there are several ways you can measure the return on your investment.

Keyword Tracking and Your Rankings

Do some keyword research, and come up with a list of keywords that you’d like to rank for. Now decide on some method for tracking these keywords.  I started with just using a good old Excel sheet.  Across the top I listed about 20 keywords I wanted to rank well for.  Over time I added more and more to that list (I now track over 60), but if 20 is a pretty good number of keywords to start with.  Then about once a month I would add a date to the lefthand side and manually track each of those keywords writing down what page they showed up on and if they were at the top, middle or bottom of the page.  This was pretty time consuming, but effective.

There are also paid keyword tracking tools you can use.  My favorite is the Brighter Insight tool from Brighter Vision.  My main reason for loving this tool is that it’s really affordable ($15/month if they are managing your website or $20/month if you aren’t already a BV customer).  Some parts of the tools work better than others, but the keyword tracker works really well.  It gives you a quick picture in graph form of if overall your rankings are increasing or decreasing.  Then it lists out all of your keywords and the exact position you rank for.  You can see exactly when they ran the search (it happens automatically every day) and a snapshot of what the results looked like.

Lastly, you can just look on Google Console occasionally.  This way, you see exactly what searches people are actually running and what your average position is.

Ask New Clients who Call

In my Mid Missouri private practice, we ask every single new client where they heard about our services.  A very large portion tell us they found us through a Google Search which re-affirms the worth of having a well ranking website as part of our marketing plan.  However, I’ve also found that they often look at our website when they were referred by someone else.  It’s common to hear, “My friend recommended you guys, so I searched for you online and looked at your site.”  Or, “My doctor told me about a couple of places and I looked at your website first.”

If you want to track your progress by asking new clients, here are a couple questions you may choose to either ask in an intake call or include on your intake paperwork:

• May I ask where you heard about our services?
• Have you had a chance to visit our website yet?
• Do you mind me asking what you typed into Google when you were looking for a therapist?

Just Look at your Number of Intakes

One of my former SEO Consulting clients recently told me that in the months since I first started teaching her to optimize her private practice site their monthly intake calls have tripled!  She attributes this largely to the effort she’s put into optimizing her site.  And that makes sense to me, because she went from being on the 10th page in a competitive, large metropolitan area to the first page of Google for several keywords.  However, I will caution you here that there are other factors that impact the sheer number of intake calls you get each month.  For instance, are you also reaching out and building relationships with new referral sources?  It is a slower (or faster) time of year?

Ultimately, this is what we want to see happen as a result of marketing efforts, right?  The goal is to fill your practice with your ideal clients. Just last week I sent out a series of e-mails to current Simplified SEO Consulting clients saying, “Hey I can tell from my side of things that your site is getting a lot more visitors.  But the big question…are those visits resulting in more calls?”  If any of those practice owners come back and say that no, despite a huge increase in traffic it’s not resulting in more calls and ultimately more clients we’ll need to re-evaluate.  Are our efforts getting their website in front of the wrong people and we in fact need to target different keywords?  Or does their website need a change to be more appealing once visitors are on the site?

The number of intake calls is a key performance indicator all practice owners should be keeping an eye on and it ultimately does reflect the impact of all marketing efforts combined.

SEO Consulting with Measurable Results

If you’re ready to get serious about your private practice website’s search engine rankings, let’s set up a free consultation today.  Together we’ll come up with a way to track and measure the results of our work before we ever get started.  I believe it’s critical that we know if you’re getting a good return on your investment so we can change tactics if you aren’t seeing results.  I also promise that you’ll know exactly what service I’m providing.  If you participate in 1:1 SEO training sessions, you’ll be able to describe very specific steps you’ve learned you can take to improve your website’s rankings.  Or if you choose one of our Done for You SEO packages, you’ll have a list of the specific steps I’m taking to improve your SEO for each page I’m optimizing.

You can get measurable SEO results and feel more confident in your company’s online presence. But you have to take the first step to invest in your company’s future by developing your own SEO plan, and there’s no better time than the present.

I look forward to helping your website move up through the ranks of Google search results like I’ve helped so many other private practice owners before you.  Schedule your free pre-consulting call today!