,

3 Tips for Maximizing Your “Slow Time” in Private Practice

A graph with a magnifying glass representing how I take a close look at predictable trends in private practice data where we expect a winter and summer slow down.If you’ve been in private practice for long, you’ve probably realized that there are some predictable slow times.  It’s scary!  The first couple of years you’re in private practice you may even wonder if you’ll survive the slow down.  What if it doesn’t pick back up?  And aren’t people stressed during the holiday season having to travel and visit family?  Why aren’t they calling?

I just looked at data for my own private practice. We have two very distinct slow times per year. Those slow times are late May through the month of July and then late November through early January.  The specific metrics I was looking at in my own practice include website impressions (times we showed up in a search), clicks (when someone “clicked” on our site from a list of search results), calls and revenue.  In addition to my own experience, I’ve spoken to countless other private practice owners. Through these conversations, I’ve learned that, at least in the United States, these slow periods are very common.

The worst part? Those times where fewer people are calling are the same times of year when clients are more likely to cancel appointments or “take a break” from counseling!

So, what do you do during slow periods in private practice?

A yellow clock to represent the winter slow down in private practice. Fewer people book counseling appointments during the holiday season so it's a great time for therapists to learn SEO!I think our natural instinct is to cut expenses.  The first year I certainly reacted this way. I kind of panicked to be honest.  But then, I did some research and learned.   I realized that these slow downs were natural, to be expected.  I personally started using Profit First to better management my finances.

And now? When a slow period hits, I don’t panic. I can predict when things will pick back up.  Instead, I use the slow time to focus on what needs to be done to prepare for the next busy season.  It’s the perfect time for updates (SEO or design) to my website.  It’s a great time to overhaul the systems in my practice and tweak things so they run more smoothly.  I ask myself, what needs to happen so when the next busy season hits my business is ready to grow?

Slow times are perfect for focusing on SEO in private practice!

These slow times are my favorite time of the year to focus on SEO!  Why? Because I know that if we can use this time get a private practice website ranking better, that practice has the potential to grow really, really quickly in late January or February (or in late August or September after the Summer slow time).

So, even if your initial response is a bit of a panic, I encourage you to think about how to invest your extra time or even a little money in SEO during slow times.  Here are three great  places to focus your efforts:

Write and schedule ahead a bunch of blog posts

The word blog written in white on a table next to a cup of coffee and a keyboard. Blogging can help therapists and psychologists in search engine optimization for their private practice websites.Private practice owners always tell me they don’t have time to write blog posts.  I get it, we’re busy.  However, you’re bound to have cancellations in your practice this month.  So, use this rare gift of time your clients will give you.  Write ahead as many blog posts as you can!  They don’t have to be perfect.  Just choose topics relevant to your ideal clients, write at least 500 words and go with it!  But instead of publishing them all right away, schedule them to publish every other week at the same time.

This way, Google will consistently see you publishing this new content for awhile.  Come that busy month of February, it will look like you’re churning out all of this great content that new clients can read while they wait for their initial consult. However, in reality you’ll be busy returning phone calls, attending intake appointments and consulting with the other therapists in your practice!

Earn backlinks for your counseling website

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating that getting backlinks is one of the best things you can do for your counseling website.  But this is another time consuming thing.  So, use this slower time to focus on getting backlinks.  During the holiday season, journalists and others are suddenly very interested in talking about stress.  So….use that to your advantage.  Write some guest blog posts. Look for new directories or resource lists you can be added to. Act as a source for a couple journalists.  Maybe even offer to write a piece for your local paper.  If you put a little effort into earning some backlinks during this slow period, it will have a HUGE payoff in terms of SEO. Therefore, it can play an important role in helping you get to the top of Google before everyone suddenly decides to look for a new counselor in just a couple months!

Optimize as many pages of your website as possible!

A snowy scene with a cup of cocoa and mittens to represent the slow holiday season many therapists and small business owners see. Focusing on learning search engine optimization can be a great way to use the slow time this winter!I typically recommend that you optimize around 3-4 pages per month for Search Engine Optimization. In fact, when people want to optimize more I often remind them that slow and steady wins the race and by optimizing just 3-4 we can tweak our strategy after just a few pages.  However…slow times are an exception.  Right now, you want to do as much work as possible as quickly as possible so you are ranking well come January.

So, I recommend putting a very strong focus on optimizing right now.  In fact, that’s why we scheduled our first ever “Learn SEO in a Weekend” workshop for July 2-5!  We wanted to help people optimize a whole bunch of pages (our goal is for participants to optimize 5 in a single weekend!) right before the time when everyone would be looking.  Alternatively, you could purchase our “Top of Google” online SEO course right now and put aside time to walk through the course (it’s self paced so you access the modules as you have time) and immediately practice what you learn by optimizing your own page!  It takes time, trial and error to practice these concepts.  So, slower times of the year are honestly the best time of the year to learn SEO!

Of course, if you really are not interested in optimizing your own website (which I understand – many, many private practice owners fall into this category!), then you can use our Done for You search engine optimization services.  In this case, our SEO specialists will do the optimizing for you so you can still take advantage of the slow time.  In this case, I highly recommend you still focus on earning backlinks yourself while we’re optimizing your pages!

Fear not: Things will pick up

The truth is that people will always need counseling.  So, while things might be slow right now, they won’t stay slow forever.  Eventually, your ideal clients will start looking again. And when they do, the first place they turn will probably be Google.  So, use this time to stay calm and focus on optimizing your website.  Get ready for the busy time that is to come.  And take comfort in the knowledge that you are providing an incredibly valuable service that will always be needed.

Interested in working with us to get your counseling website ranking faster?

Our services are meant to help you get your counseling website ranking well on search engines even faster.  As a private practice owner myself, I know how valuable our time is.  And I also know how short these “slow times” end up being! So if you want to maximize your time, let’s chat about which of our SEO services would be a fit for you.  We offer a wide range of services, but they generally fall into two categories: SEO training for DIY practice owners who want a marketing skill they can use for years and “Done for You” optimizing for business owners who know it’s worth the return on investment to outsource on page optimization.  Regardless which service you are interested in, you get started with three easy steps:

  1. Schedule a free SEO Consultation
  2. Meet with one of our SEO specialists for a Zoom call
  3. Choose the search engine optimization package that’s the best fit for your business!
/0 Comments/by
, ,

SEO & Story Brand

Do I have any other Story Brand fans out there?  If you haven’t read Donald Miller’s book “Story Brand” yet, I highly encourage you to pause for a moment and go purchase it on Amazon.  I’ve read through it 3 times myself, participated in a small group study where we went through it together, and created several versions of a brand script.  It’s just an all-around great book for every business owner to read.

*pausing now so you can purchase the book*

Ok, hopefully, you’re continuing to read because you’ve now purchased this wonderful marketing book.

In general, Story Brand has great advice for therapists.

Now, hopefully, I’ve made it clear that I REALLY like Story Brand and I think Donald Miller’s marketing advice is generally golden.  Some of my favorite things I’ve learned from Story Brand:

  • As a business owner, you are the guide in your marketing, not the hero.  Our customers are the hero.
  • Keep your messaging simple.  This is especially true on websites.  We want a client to be able to immediately tell what service we offer when they land on our website (Donald Miller calls this the caveman test), so I often work with SEO clients on simplifying their language in their writing, adding a clear call to action button and even simplifying the navigation bar so people can easily navigate a website.
  • Your website should have a clear, short statement explaining what you do “above the fold” or before someone scrolls down.
  • A website needs clear calls to action.  It shouldn’t be difficult for a client to figure out what to do next or how to get ahold of you.
  • Paint a clear picture of how your service will help the client.  On a website, it’s important to do this through having positive, outcome-based pictures.  Photos quickly convey how someone will feel after working with you.

Anyways, I could go on and on about all the things he got very right in his book.

There is one place I disagree with Donald Miller’s advice….

There’s just one place I disagree.  And I know I might ruffle a couple of feathers by disagreeing with such a genius marketer.  But I can’t help it….

At one point in the book (page 154 in my well loved copy), Donald Miller recommends that you delete half the content on your website. In fact, he says your website should have “very few words.”

*Gasp*

In fact, this is something I’ve heard Donald Miller repeats when he speaks and that he’s very, very critical of websites (like mine) with a large amount of content. As someone who helps therapists, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals with their SEO every single day, I disagree.  

Why do I disagree?

Because if you delete half the content on your website it will be much more difficult to get your website to the top of search engines.

Google needs your website to have enough content that it can figure out what your website is about. It can’t rank you for the searches your ideal clients are doing unless it realizes that you have information bout that topic!  You may have heard the phrase, “Content is King.”  This is SOOO

500 Word Minimum for Therapist Blog Posts | Simplified SEO Consulting true when it comes to SEO.  I’ve told you before that Google likes lots of content.

It is well established in the world of SEO that Google ranks sites with more words higher.

Google assumes that if you have the word “divorce” on your page you know what the word means.  If you have a paragraph about “divorce” on a page all about life transitions you may know a little about the topic.  But if you have a whole page with lots (500+) of words? Wow, Google now assumes you’re an expert. When someone is searching for tips for getting through a divorce, Google now understands that your website has the information that person is looking for!!

So, how do we stay (mostly) true to Story Brand while also getting great SEO?

Question mark and man to show how this post answers several questions about SEO & Storybrand for therapist & private practice websites.I believe it’s possible to both stay true to Story Brand and create a well-ranking website with tons of content.  We use your brand script to make sure we really understand your services.  Then, we sprinkle the phrases you’ve used throughout your site as we optimize.

Most importantly, we simplify your message by using your brand script when we write headings and subheadings on your page.  We know nobody reads big blocks of text on a website.  But they do scan the page.  Therefore, the subheadings are what people are most likely to read on your page.

We use this knowledge to our advantage.  Subheadings on your page absolutely need keywords in them. However, they also need to be written more carefully than anything else on your page because they are what your clients are most likely to read.  So, the subheadings should be very easy to understand and clear.  In other words, they should be written with your brand script in mind.

Can I still use the Storybrand wireframe and rank well on Google?

Absolutely!  I’ve seen several website that use the Storybrand wireframe and just add more content.  I also think it’s ok if your home page has fewer words.  That is, after all, the page most people will see.  I recommend people prioritize design & carefully chosen wording on their home page.  Then, you have some carefully chosen service pages explaining that you are an “expert” on treating your ideal clients.  These service pages should use Storybrand but will likely have more words on the page than Storybrand recommends.

So, don’t throw the recommended wireframe out just because you are adding more content to your site.  Just know, at least on some pages, you’re likely adding more words than a Storybrand professional would recommend.

Content still needs to be quality content

Now, I don’t want you to misunderstand me here and think I’m just telling you to go add a couple thousand words of text to every page of your website.  Content for content’s sake is not necessarily good. A huge part of what my staff does is help our clients strategically choose content that will both be very useful to your clients and improve your SEO.  And when you’re creating content, you still want to keep in mind the principles of Storybrand.

For example, I strongly recommend blogging regularly as part of your SEO Strategy.  You can write excellent, really informative blogs that provide some great tips to your ideal clients. In fact, I often assign my old blog posts as homework to clients or my client care coordinator will send out an old blog post for someone to read while they wait for their first appointment! However, I think you’ll write even better blog posts if you remember that even in those you’re setting the client up as the hero. In the blog you’re saying, “Here is a tip that will help you conquer your anxiety dragon. It’s a tool that will help you on this quest.” Not, “I’m so smart that he’s a magic technique that will solve your problems for you.”

Content is only one part of good SEO strategy

Now, just because I’m talking about how I recommend adding more content to your website than Donald Miller recommends does NOT mean I’m saying adding a bunch of content should be the focus of your SEO Strategy.  First of all, content that isn’t carefully chosen isn’t helpful.

However, it’s also important to note that content is only one piece of the puzzle.  You also want to address technical issues on your site, have a secure website, make sure you’re using the type of words your ideal clients might use, build lots of backlinks to your website and so much more.

So please, know that you need to add content to your website if you’re created a website that follows Storybrand closely but isn’t ranking well. But also know that just word dumping on your website won’t alone get you great SEO.

Our SEO consultants love to work with Story Brand fans!

The truth is, my favorite new trend with SEO clients is that many are sending us their brand script!  This is so flipping cool.  It makes our day. Or week. Or month.

If you do the hard work of reading Story Brand and creating a brand script, it helps us clearly understand your message. This helps us be more clear as we optimize your page.  It informs everything from your meta descriptions to the internal links we place on your site.  Most importantly, we try to incorporate elements of your brand script when we’re writing subheadings on your page.  This way, your website does a better job of converting when people do a quick scan of your page!

Have your brand script ready and want to start focusing on SEO for your website?

You’ve read Story Brand, have a clear picture of how to describe your services and have even made some changes to your website. Now you’re just ready to get that website in front of more people while still maintaining a clear message.  That’s where we come in!

Search Engine Optimization helps you get your website out there in front of more people.  At Simplified SEO Consulting, we offer several options to help you do this.  If you’re the DIY type, we have online SEO courses including a comprehensive one that takes you step by step through our favorite SEO techniques.  We also have a 12 week SEO intensive if you’re looking for support and guidance to optimize your site. On the other hand, if you find your just too busy to worry about SEO yourself, our staff can optimize your site for you with our “Done for You” services.  Even with this option, you’re welcome to send us your brand script and we’ll do our best to incorporate the simple messages you’ve come up with as we optimize your site.

How to start working on your SEO

We help therapists, psychiatrists, counselors other small business owners (generally in the health and wellness industry) get their websites ranking well on google.  Getting started is easy!

  1. Set up a free 30 minute Zoom appointment to talk to one of our SEO specialists about which service is the best fit for your needs.
  2. Begin learning to do SEO yourself or working with our staff through a monthly “done for you” package.
  3. Watch your website begin moving toward the first page of Google.

/2 Comments/by

SEO for Telehealth or Online Counseling Pages

 

In this blog, I want to talk about how to get your online counseling pages ranking well on Google. Chances are that if your ideal client is looking for online counseling, then they are probably looking for a therapist on a search engine. We know that in general a lot of people these days are turning to the internet when they are looking for a counselor. Why? Because it makes sense. It is convenient and can be done anytime and anywhere. So as a counselor who provides online services, you’re probably interested in search engine optimization (SEO).

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

Online Therapist helping client during an online therapy session | SEO for online counseling pages | Simplified SEO Consulting

Unfortunately, you are often competing with larger companies that provide online counseling services. These companies invest a lot of time and money into their website and marketing efforts. If they’re able to be in a whole lot of different states, or every state, then they likely have done a lot of very targeted SEO work. It is important to know that your average client doesn’t know they need to look for an online therapist that is licensed in the state they live in. They’re going to search for online counseling. If you are in the United States, you need to have a license in the state the client resides in. Therefore, we have to do everything we can to tell Google two things: 1. You offer online mental health services, 2. You offer them where the client is located. The client doesn’t tell Google that they’re looking for services where they are located, so you have to. And it is a lot more work.

 
There are some local SEO techniques that we use when we are working with a brick and motor counseling office. For instance, putting the address on every single page. These things are nearly impossible or more difficult to do for an online counseling page. So our approach has to be different. It may take a bit longer for you to see the return on your investment. But with a little more time and effort, you can see your page rank better on Google.
 

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.

Photo of online therapist talking to client on a video call | SEO for online counseling pages | Simplified SEO Consulting

Consider where you are able or want to pull potential clients from.  For instance, if you are only offering online counseling in Texas, you may have a general page on your website called “online counseling in Texas.” Texas is a large state, and you would have some competition for online counseling in Texas. Therefore, you may also create separate pages on your site for online counseling in major cities or areas you want to target. For example, you may have an Online Counseling in Dallas page or Online Counseling in Houston page. I recommend creating several pages for different areas in the state you provide services in.
 

Make sure you are using original content.

You may be tempted to copy the page five times and change a few words on the page. Unfortunately, Google sees this as what’s called “duplicate content.” So, you are better off changing a lot of the content of your page. Try to make as many local references as possible. Therefore, if a potential client is searching in Dallas, TX, Google will know that you provide services there because you’ve written a wonderful page where you reference the city of Dallas and local places in that city. The pictures on your page should also reference the page you are writing.
 
For each of the landing pages, I recommend having at least 500 words to show Google that you offer services in that area. If I have a page on my website that mentions Dallas one time, Google will assume I offer services there. But, if I have a whole page dedicated to online counseling in Dallas, then they are going to put that page higher in search results.
 
If you are going to do one thing to boost your SEO, this is what you should do!
 

Second, create a series of blog posts all about telehealth or online counseling.

Here you can try to work in some of the references to your location. But the most important part of the blog posts is to tell

Happy client talking to therapist online | SEO for online counseling pages | Simplified SEO ConsultingGoogle that you have a really robust site with helpful information about online counseling. Basically, you’re telling Google that you know a lot about online counseling. You might create a blog series that answers the most common questions people ask about online counseling.

For example, you might write a blog “Does Online Counseling Work?” Then the next blog may be “Three Benefits of Online Counseling,” and so on. Within the blog post, you might give examples of references to the state you are targeting. For example, “if you live in the Dallas area and have a long commute, you might not have time to come into counseling every week.” Then in the next paragraph, I would use an example from somewhere else in the state you are targeting.
 

Write blog posts that truly help your online counseling clients

Aim for writing really useful content.  Think about common questions your clients ask about online mental health services. What information can you include in your blogs that will make new clients more comfortable with your telehealth services?  Perhaps you can write a blog post on your experience as a mental health professional highlighting how you’ve still developed great therapeutic relationships online.  Or write a trouble shooting guide. We’ve had practice owners write really helpful blog posts with screen shots introducing clients to their online platform. If you do this, you can send new clients a link to this blog post before their first appointment.
At Simplified SEO Consulting, we’re big believers that blog posts should be for more than just SEO. Therefore, I encourage you to think about how you can write blog posts about your online services that will really support your SEO strategy AND will be truly useful.  There’s no doubt that good, helpful content is much more valuable than content thrown up just for the purpose of SEO!
 

Get started working on your SEO for online counseling

These are just a few SEO tips, but if you are ready to get serious about your SEO, there are a lot of other things that you can do! Specifically, if you are watching this and want to know more, please reach out to me and my team of SEO specialists at Simplified SEO Consulting. You can do this by following these easy steps:

  1. Book a free consultation,
  2. Speak to one of our SEO specialists to find which service is the best fit for your online counseling practice,
  3. Start ranking better on Google and get more online counseling clients!

Other Services offered by Simplified SEO Consulting

Simplified SEO Consulting is proud to offer you a variety of SEO services designed to meet your unique needs. We offer the popular Done for You SEO Services where our team of SEO specialists will go to work optimizing your page. We also offer SEO training packages, and an opportunity for you to learn SEO in a weekend at one of our intensive training sessions for those who want to learn SEO themselves. Additionally, we also offer Simplified SEO alumni packages and maintenance packages to keep you ranking well, and à la carte SEO services for those of you who just need a little guidance.  Contact us with specific questions or book a free SEO Consultation to figure out which service is best for your online counseling business!

photo of Jessica Tappana SEO specialist and founder of Simplified SEO Consulting

About the Author

My name is Jessica Tappana and I am the founder of Simplified SEO Consulting. My team and I help therapists online or in-person get to the top of search engines. I also own my own group counseling practice in Columbia, MO.  In the past couple years, I’ve worked with a lot of therapists who offer some or all their counseling services on the computer (even pre-Covid). My team and I have worked on a lot of online counseling pages. Along the way, we have learned quite a few lessons, and I want to share a couple of those with you.

/0 Comments/by

How Does Bounce Rate Affect SEO?

iThere is so much data thrown at you in the online world we live in. As you dive into SEO, it can be overwhelming to learn what exactly all the numbers mean. What are meta descriptions, alt texts, and keywords? How do you know what to track and then how do you track it? Well, I am here to demystify what a bounce rate is. And how it works with SEO to help you get more clients.

What is a Bounce Rate?

Simply put, the bounce rate is how many people only go to one page on your website. For example, they go to the home page and then don’t continue on to a service page. This is problematic for obvious reasons. We want people to look at your service pages and of course, schedule an appointment with you!

In the SEO consulting work we do, we track the bounce rate of counseling websites we work with. If a bounce rate is too high, we know it’s time to make a change.  Often, it means we need to make your site easier to navigate. We want potential clients to be able to find the pages they need to to learn more about your practice and how to work with you.

How do I know what it is?

Photo of Google Analytics computer screen showing the bounce rate | Bounce Rate and SEO on a counseling websiteYou can find the bounce rate for your counseling website in Google Analytics by going to the home page, and there on the main screen is a percentage. This percentage is your bounce rate!

The bounce rate for your overall website is what we look at most often. We want to be sure that no matter which page someone finds first, they continue to stay on your site to see ALL you have to offer.  However, we’ll occasionally check to see if one page of your website has a particularly high bounce rate (an indicator we want to change the content on it) or low bounce rate (what’s going well & how can we duplicate it?).

In general, we’ve heard to aim for a bounce rate between 50-70%. However, in our work we’ve noticed that with a little effort most of the counseling websites we work on can stay under 60%. At this number, a large amount of people are staying on your site to read what you have to stay. It also factors in that there will be some people who know exactly what they’re looking for and don’t go to multiple pages.

How do I know if my Bounce Rate is too high?

There are a number of things that can impact bounce rate. For example, if you have just started blogging and don’t have internal links built in, people might find your blog and not know how to navigate to the other pages on your site. Or maybe they got the content they desired and then left the blog post.

A therapist who offers online counseling services and used Done for You monthly SEO packages to improve the search engine optimization for his online small business.

To check whether this is why your site has a high bounce rate, you can check the individual page bounce rates in Google Analytics as well. This is done by going to the audience tab, and clicking all pages, then bounce rate. This way you can see what the bounce rate is on each individual page. Thus, you will know whether it is a hugely popular blog post skewing your data, or whether you need to work on making your page easier to navigate.

3 SEO Tips to Reduce your Bounce Rate:

1) Have an attractive and easy-to-navigate website.

If your site looks good and is easy to move around, people are more likely to click through it. Especially, to find the information they’re dying to know. One place to start is by looking at your menu bar. Your menu bar helps potential clients find the information they are looking for about your private practice and move quickly throughout your site.

2) Offer quality content that leaves people wanting more.

If your copy (the words on your website) is strong, potential clients are going to want to keep reading and learn more about your practice and who you serve! Strongly written copy that has been SEO optimized will help you convert website viewers into paying clients!

3) Use internal links and calls to action to keep people moving on your site.

Internal links are links that go from one page to another on your website. This helps people easily navigate and find what they are looking for. For example, if you wrote an amazing blog post about anxiety, include a link or two to your anxiety service page so viewers can learn more about how you can help them through anxiety treatment.

Calls to action help website viewers know what to do next. If they find themselves on your website wondering how to book with you, then your website isn’t doing its job! Make it easy for people to work with you, and you’ll get more calls.

Are you ready to get serious about SEO for your counseling website?

As an SEO consulting service for mental health professionals, we offer services that will help get your counseling website to the top of Google. Our monthly SEO packages help private practice therapists fill their schedules with the clients of their dreams and our SEO training services help practice owners optimize their own websites.

To begin working with Simplified SEO Consulting:

  1. Book a Free Consult.
  2. Talk with one of our SEO Specialists.
  3. Begin ranking higher on Google.

Climbers scaling a mountain | our SEO consultants help therapists, counselors, psychiatrists & psychologists learn how to improve the SEO for their mental health website and fill their private practice.

SEO Consulting Services offered at Simplified SEO Consulting

As an seo consulting service for therapists, getting our clients to the top of Google is our favorite thing. We offer a free seo consultation over Zoom, because we want to make sure to match you with the right service.  It’s important you get the best possible return on any investment you. make on your page.  Through talking to us, you’ll be able to figure out what service is the best match.  For busy practice owners who just don’t have the time (or desire) to work on their own Search Engine Optimization & are ready to outsource, we offer monthly “Done for you” SEO packages. However, some practice owners are more the DIY type and want to be hands on with optimizing their own website.  We offer several SEO training options including a self paced online SEO course specifically designed for counselors, psychologists & psychiatrists as well as in person SEO training in our “Learn SEO in a Weekend” workshops.

/0 Comments/by
,

3 Reasons Why You Should Track Your SEO Data

Lately, I am having more conversations with private practice owners about why they should track data on their website. So, we wanted to take the time to discuss how and why you should track data related to your website. The short answer is that tracking data allows you to see if your website is doing the four things your website needs to do to help you grow your practice.  But to dive in a little deeper, here are three ways tracking your data can help:

1. To Track Return on Investment (ROI) 

The first reason to track your website data is to understand the return on your investment. When working on your SEO you need to know your investment is worth it.  A lot of people pay for marketing with Facebook Ads, Google Ads, or SEO. But, they never really track whether or not that’s helping their SEO. You want to spend your hard-earned marketing dollars where it’s going to make the biggest impact.

So, when it comes to assessing your ROI and if SEO is working, we look at:

Illustration of a man sitting at a laptop looking at his SEO data surrounded by the words analysis, index keywords, site architecture, content, ranking, and traffic |  Simplified SEO Consulting

Where are your clients coming from?

In my practice, every time a potential client reaches out we mark it in our system. My assistant and I use a Google spreadsheet to track all calls that come into my practice. Without using identifying data, we use initials, we mark where they heard about us.

For example, my staff record if the inquiry comes in via phone call or email, who spoke to them first, whether they are a paying client, and any relevant notes (if they are looking for therapy covered by insurance). If you are invested in anything, and by anything I mean time/energy/money into marketing/SEO marketing, then you want to be tracking where your calls are coming from. This will let you know if your efforts are turning into paid calls.

Use an SEO tracking tool

I highly recommend using a tracking tool that tracks things like your Google rankings, your Google Search Console data & your Google Analytics data. For our consulting clients, we begin our monthly planning calls by reviewing the data. In fact, our staff check your rankings data every single time they begin to work on your website. Why? Because we want to make sure your investment is working.  Have your keyword rankings increased? Are your Google clicks going up? Have more people clicked on your website? You want to know that what you’re doing is worth it.

There are several different SEO tracking tools you can use.  We have a custom SEO dashboard our clients use. However, there are several out there. For instance, if you use Brighter Vision you can ask about their Brighter Insights tool which is what we used to use for all of our clients.  SEMRush or Moz both have tools to track your progress as well. At a minimum, look for a tool that has “position tracking” or ranking data and shows you how you rank for each specific keyword you’re tracking. If that was all you had, you could find the rest of the data in Google Analytics or Google Search Console.

2. To Track Data On What Happens When People Visit Your Website

The second reason to look at SEO data is to see what happens when people click on your website. We can see how many clicks your website gets, but are those potential clients calling you?

Through Google Analytics, Google Search Console & an SEO tracking tool that looks at your rankings, we want to answer the questions, “What pages are people staying on when they visit your counseling website?” In other words, what pages are they navigating to, and what pages are they staying on the longest?  Or, are they even staying on your website once they arrive? Again, if you’re working with us, you have access to this information and we will help you look at it and understand what it means.

One last thing to look at to determine if people are finding what they need on your site is to consider the bounce rate. The bounce rate is how many people only look at a page on your website and then go to another site. We would prefer fewer people bouncing off and more people staying on your website.

We believe in transparency and want to make sure that our SEO services are worth your investment.  In fact, we look at this data with you every single month during your planning call when you participate in our Done for You monthly SEO packages. 

3. To Track Data On Any Changes in Search Engine Rankings

Illustration of a man and woman looking at her SEO data increases on a red bar graph | Simplified SEO Consulting

Search engines are finicky things. In fact, Google is constantly changing its algorithm.  Therefore, having good SEO today doesn’t mean you’ll continue to rank well tomorrow.  Therefore, we want to track website data so we can see if there is any big changes in how your website ranks from month to month.

By tracking data regularly, we have the opportunity to catch and rectify any decreases in SEO. Occasionally Google changes its algorithm from an SEO standpoint. If this happens, and it affects our SEO, you have to go back and fix your website to rank better.

Just last year, Google changed its algorithm. Anybody with big pop-ups on their website that covered most of the page didn’t rank as well as they previously did. This hurt a lot of private practice owners. A lot of therapists had been told that they needed to have a big pop-up to join their mailing list, etc, and they no longer ranked well. 

If we track your data, we can see when that sort of thing happens. This will alert us to when we need to make some SEO changes. There are lots of other reasons this might happen. For example, I have found some coding errors on certain websites that we’ve been working on. These come up when we go to index a certain page. When we find these coding errors, we let you know and give you screenshots that you can send to your website designer. When we are looking at the data we can find these errors and fix them. If you aren’t tracking the data, you won’t know that your SEO has decreased and you won’t be given the chance to fix it.

A Note About Google AdWords and SEO

When people are working on SEO and still doing Google AdWords, we’ll look at your Google Analytics data. This will sort out your paid searches versus your organic searches, which would be the SEO portion. We’ll look at how long people are staying on the website from each of those. When we look at Google Analytics we want to see the following: low bounce rate, more pages per session, and longer session duration.

Essentially, this tells us the quality of the search traffic coming to your page. But, if we find that one is yielding better results, that might give some clue where to invest your time and money. For instance, if you are getting a ton of traffic from Google AdWords, but people are not staying on your page long or looking at lots of pages, then it may be time to consider investing in our SEO services, rather than investing more money into AdWords.

Begin optimizing your website with Simplified SEO Consulting

Illustration of SEO team at a desk tracking SEO Data on their computers | Simplified SEO Consulting

If you are ready to learn more about tracking the data on your website and ranking well on Google, please follow these simple steps:

  1. Book a free consultation,
  2. Speak to one of our SEO specialists to find what service is the best fit for your private practice,
  3. Start ranking better on Google and get more clients!

Other SEO Services offered by Simplified SEO Consulting

Simplified SEO Consulting is proud to offer you a variety of SEO services designed to meet your needs. For busy practice owners, offer the popular Done for You SEO Services where our team of SEO specialists will optimize your page for you. On the other hand, if you are the do-it-yourself type or still in the bootstrapping phase of private practice, we also offer SEO training packages. Our latest SEO training option is the opportunity for you to learn SEO in a weekend at one of our intensive training sessions for private practice owners who want to learn SEO themselves.  Contact us with specific questions or book a free SEO Consultation to figure out which service is best for your business!

photo of Jessica Tappana SEO specialist and founder of Simplified SEO Consulting

About the author:

Jessica Tappana is a therapist, group practice owner & an SEO expert.  Jessica is passionate about helping therapists and their ideal clients find one another. She believes quality mental health care can change the world.  Her group practice has grown primarily through great SEO. Now, her group practice has seven clinicians and one virtual assistant. In addition, Jessica still sees around 10 individual therapy clients a week herself. However, most of her focus has shifted to helping other therapists around the world get in front of their ideal clients on Google.

/0 Comments/by
,

Where to Fit Internal Links

You’ve heard that internal links (any time you have a link that sends someone from one page of your site to another) are great for SEO.  But you aren’t sure where to fit them into your website.  Sometimes, they seem to fit in naturally.  For instance, on an anxiety page you may mention that anxious people also often feel depressed and be able to link to the depression page.  But sometimes you just can’t figure out where to fit in an internal link.

2 Sections to Include on Most Pages of Your Website for SEO

There are two important sections that we often add to websites when we’re optimizing websites for our “Done for you” clients. These sections serve multiple purposes, but one purpose is that they give us space to include valuable internal links!  Feel free to add these two sections to your own website or to do a hybrid option.  For instance, some people will kind of combine them into a single section.

#1: A Direct Call to Action Section

A lot of therapists include lots and lots of fun content about why depression stinks, how A therapist with a client in a full private practice | SEO tips and tricks | SEO Consulting Serviceyou really want to feel better from depression, and how counseling can help with depression. However, we often need to include some sort of call to action to encourage people to take the next step from reading and digesting this information to actually acting.

For example, at the bottom of a page about depression counseling, I would encourage you to have a direct call to action that says: “Begin depression counseling in Tulsa, Oklahoma.” This should be in an H2 subheading.  Then describe exactly how they would go about beginning depression counseling.

Two Benefits of a Call to Action Section

It is really important to have a section with a very direct call to action.

First of all, you’re able to use some great keywords in a subheading. For example, take the above example of a section titled, “Begin Depression Counseling in Tulsa, OK.” You now have ‘depression counseling’ and you have ‘Tulsa, Oklahoma’ in a higher level (H2) subheading. Those are great keywords and Google will assume they’re important since they’re in a subheading.

The second benefit is that this section invites the client to move beyond simply reading your page and actually book an appointment with you. You’re very simply spelling out the steps that they need to take to begin depression counseling. So many people looking at your website are flooded with emotion or in a hurry when they are taking a quick look at your website.  If we make it super clear, then the minute they have read enough to know you are “the one” they can easily scroll to the bottom to get started.

*Note this does NOT replace having a clear “Start now” or “Contact us” button at the top of the page as well!

Example of a Call to Action

You don’t have to keep living with these symptoms, when you’re ready to get started, we’re ready to get started! Here are the steps you need to take:

  1. First, contact us through our website – here you will include an internal link to your contact page.
  2. Next, it is to meet with one of our caring therapists – include an internal link to your therapists page.
  3. Then, it’s time to begin healing – Or whatever the outcome is going to be-no link, just paint a picture of the outcome.

Other Mental Health Services Section

Pieces of the puzzle | SEO course | SEO marketing for therapistsAnother addition you can include on many of your website pages is a small section at the bottom of the page our SEO team often call the ‘Other Services’ section. So, the subheading might read: “Other mental health services offered by ABC Counseling Center,” or something like that. I recommend including this on all of your service pages and on many blog posts as well. For example, we’ll have a paragraph mentioning that we know that mental health is complicated, so depression counseling isn’t the only thing that we do at ABC Counseling. We also offer anxiety treatment, common meditation training, couples counseling, etc. Then, you can include an internal link back to each of those services.

This section gives you a chance to include a BUNCH of internal links. These internal links are really good for SEO. However, it also has the added benefit of potentially encouraging people to check out other pages on your website, which decreases your bounce rate and tells Google that people must find this website valuable.

SEO Services for Therapists & Mental Health Professionals

Simplified SEO Consulting provides SEO services for therapists.  We offer “Done for You” monthly SEO packages where we optimize several pages each month for you as well as SEO Training services.  We believe in going really in doing in-depth SEO Services that truly work.  If you are a mental health provider and are ready to get your page to the top of Google, schedule your free 30-minute consultation today! We’ll answer any questions you have and see if any of our SEO Services might be a good fit for your practice.

Successful young woman in a big city | SEO Consulting for small business | monthly SEO packages

/0 Comments/by

Getting High Quality Backlinks: SEO Tips & Tricks

Backlinks for Therapists

Earn Quality Backlinks from their counseling websites | SEO Services for therapistsMason here to add my two cents on what exactly high quality backlinks are and how to go about getting them. At this point, perhaps you know what a backlink is. A backlink is a link from someone else’s website to yours. These help Google know that you are an authority as well as that the content you are putting into the world is worth putting at the top of the pile.

I like to think of the internet as the wild west. Backlinks are one of the best ways to get yourself seen! Not only are backlinks great for SEO, they also get you in front of new audiences. You never know who you might reach as you build your backlinks.

Here are my top three tips to get high quality backlinks:

Podcasting for High Quality Backlinks

Maybe writing is simply not your thing. Are you burnt out and associate writing with your time in school?  Perhaps you are SO ready to be done with writing for a few years? Podcasts are a wonderful way to get high quality backlinks without having to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. Most podcasts have shownotes, in which they link to the website of the person they are interviewing. Therefore, think about what you specialize in and look for podcasts which cover that topic! Image of a microphone | Use podcasts to gain high quality backlinks | SEO for Therapists

The podcast world is booming, and is a great way to get in front of new audiences and build those high quality backlinks. Most podcasts have forms or contact emails you can use to pitch yourself easily. For example with just a laptop, earbuds, and a microphone you can record a podcast episode in as little as 30 minutes!

Contact local organizations or businesses with resource guides

Are you working on reaching a certain population in your community? Perhaps you love working with the LGBTQ community or other diverse populations. For example, many LGBTQ centers in communities or universities have resource pages where you can list yourself as an inclusive provider. Also, when backlinks come from nonprofits or universities they are higher quality. This helps you rank even higher!

In addition, perhaps you focus on supporting new moms and could reach out to local hospitals or birthing centers to be listed as a resource on their website.

Create a Google alert for your business name

Google Alerts is a service in which Google will send you an email letting you know when a phrase has been used. This gives you the opportunity to see where you might be mentioned and not linked! You can then email the owner of the website which adds a high quality backlink with minimal effort!

More About High Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are something we talk about often at Simplified SEO Consulting because they are an important part of any good SEO plan. If you want to learn more about high quality backlinks and why they matter as well as Jessica’s top 3 tips for writing a guest blog post, check out these posts!

Therapist teaching someone about Mental Health | SEO Tips related to blogging | Simplified SEO Consulting

Want to Learn More About SEO for Therapists?

Are you intrigued and want to learn more about SEO? Do you see the potential for SEO transforming your private practice counseling agency? Check out Simplified SEOs 7 day email course to learn more and begin to implement now!

Running a private practice is hard enough without having to worry about ranking on Google. Here at Simplified SEO we love helping therapists improve their SEO through SEO training and comprehensive done for you SEO Services. Our team of SEO consultants are ready to help you fill up your private practice with your ideal clients.

Book your free consultation today and learn more about how Simplified SEO can help you get high quality backlinks.

About the Author:

Mason Aid | SEO Specialist helping therapists and counselors | Monthly SEO packages for small businessesMason Aid is a Mental Health SEO Specialist at Simplified SEO Consulting.  They offer copywriting services for therapists including writing blog posts tailored to the unique needs of your practice.  In addition, Mason provides “Done for You” services for busy therapists needing a monthly SEO package that will save them time.  Mason has years of experience with Square Space websites and works with most of our Square Space and Wix clients.  In their off time, Mason is an advocate for the LGBTQ community and is teaching employers, teachers and mental health professionals how to be more inclusive of the LGBTQ community.  In fact, Mason is in the process of launching their own podcast on this topic!

 

/2 Comments/by
,

Your Counseling Website: The Four Things It Must Do

When I’m talking about Search Engine Optimization with therapists and other private practice owners, I emphasize that there are essentially 5 things that your website must do in order to bring you more clients.  I want to go over each of those briefly today, because if your website does one or two of these but doesn’t do all four it’s not (yet) bringing in new clients.

Graph showing Growth of a small business after starting a monthly seo package from Simplified SEO Consulting.#1 Your Counseling Website Must Show up in Search Engine Results

This one might seem kind of obvious since you’re reading this on a private practice SEO Consultant’s blog, but it’s critical.  If people are searching for a therapist online and your site doesn’t show up, you aren’t even in the running for their business!  So, it’s pretty important.  The first couple months I work with a new SEO client, this is without a doubt our biggest goal.

#2 Convince Potential Clients to Click on Your Website

Once you’re showing up on the first or second page of search engine listings, it doesn’t do you much good if nobody’s actually clicking on your site. After a couple of months working on SEO with private practice owners, we start paying really close attention to their “click through rate”. That measures how many people actually click on a website after it shows up in search engine results.  If you’re showing up on the first page for a keyword people are searching but nobody’s clicking on your website, all you can really do is adjust your meta data.  If this is you, I recommend reading my blog post with tips for writing the perfect meta description.

SEO for a Private Practice Website. Learn to Write a Meta Description.

#3 Convert Potential Clients

Once someone is on your counseling website, it has to speak directly to their need. And make them believe that you are the right therapist for them.  This is why I encourage that people focus on developing a great website before even beginning to think about SEO.  A lot of therapists start with websites they design themselves, but this part is so critical that I usually recommend working with a website designer.

Brighter Vision is one super affordable option for therapists wanting a designer to help make a nice looking website.  I also recommend focusing on writing excellent website copy (the words or text). Marissa Lawton helps therapists write compelling content or you may want to research the Storybrand framework. One other option is that we do offer copywriting services as an add on to our “Done for You” services.  Having a well designed website with plenty of excellent content is an important step in preparing your website for SEO work.

#4 Attract the RIGHT Clients

Lately I’ve had a couple SEO clients who ranked relatively well but weren’t getting calls for their ideal clients.  For instance, a private pay practice was getting lots of calls for people looking for Medicaid.  When this happens, we look at both the website text and also which keywords are best to target.  Often we find that your ideal clients are searching for different phrases than you first thought they were.  That’s where keyword research comes in really handy!

Balancing Rocks. Learn to balance getting to the top of Google and converting clients.

Improve Search Engine Rankings for Your Private Practice Website

If you have a website that you love but wanting more clients to see it, you may be ready for SEO Consulting services.  Whether you’re wanting to learn to do your own SEO work or wanting someone else to optimize your counseling website for you; Simplified SEO Consulting would love to help. Please reach out by e-mail or simply go ahead and schedule your free consultation to talk about how our services might be able to help you.

/0 Comments/by

How Can Meta Descriptions Help my Counseling Website?

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 5thor 6th 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.

Picture of a page title and meta description for a counseling website.

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.

Picture of a compass to show how an SEO Consultant can guide you to a website that ranks on the first page of search engines.

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.

Picture of airplane wing. An SEO Consultant can help your counseling website take off. SEO training and monthly packages available.

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

/0 Comments/by

All Backlinks are Not Created Equal: Using Trust Flow & Domain Authority to Get Quality Backlinks

How popular are you on Google?  How trusted is your website?  Does Google know about all of the high quality material you’re putting up on the world wide web for potential clients to see?  Maybe…maybe not.  Part of the answer may lie in how many high quality backlinks you have.  Google will trust your site a LOT more if they know other trusted, well established, credible websites trust you as well.

Reminder: Backlinks are Important for SEO

If you’ve taken my 7 day e-mail series, gone through my SEO training, listened to me on therapist podcasts or basically had any other interaction with me as an SEO consultant, you know backlinks are an important part of SEO. Maybe you’ve even read my blog post on how and why to get backlinks.  Hint: If you haven’t, go over and read it now…

But just as a reminder: Backlinks are IMPORTANT.  In fact, I’ve frequently heard that getting backlinks from reputable sites is the single most important thing you can do for your website’s SEO!

However…Some Backlinks Help Your Website’s Ranking Better Than Others

It’s better to have a few high quality websites that Google already trusts pointing to (or “voting for”) your website than to have a TON from low quality websites.  Why?  Because Google places more weight on “votes” from websites they already trust.  I spoke to a private practice owner the other day who only had a couple of links to her site so far.  However, her site was ranking shockingly well!  We did a little investigating together and found that the few links she had were from high quality sites with a high trust score and domain authority.

So…How do I know Which Websites Google Trusts?

You’re interested in building backlinks to your website, so you decide to approach other blog authors in your field about writing guest blog posts.  How do you decide which websites to reach out to?  One way would be to check the domain authority and/or trust score of the websites you’re interested in reaching out to.

What the Difference Between Trust Flow Score and Domain Authority?

While both are useful measures of how helpful a backlink from a specific site would be, they are slightly different.  Based on my understanding so far (and admittedly, I’m still learning more about the nuanced differences), I’ll share my simple explanation.

A website’s trust flow score increases as a website gets more backlinks from quality websites.  Here, the quality of your backlinks makes a difference.  So a website that has a lot of quality backlinks pointing to it already has a high trust flow because it’s trusted by high quality sites.  It’s important to note that links from low quality sites will actually reduce your trust flow score.  Therefore, if you have links from low quality, spammy sites, you’ll want to disavow those links.

On the other hand, it’s my understanding that a site’s domain authority is a little more comprehensive measure of a website’s quality.   The Domain Authority takes into account the external links, internal links, popularity, what anchor text is used to link other sites to the website and the relevancy of the other sites pointing to that one.

Free Resources for Checking a Website’s Quality

You can check a website’s domain’s authority  using this free SEO tool.

Here’s another free tool where you can check a website’s trust flow and citation flow.

When All Else Fails…You Can Count on These to be High Quality Links

The best backlinks are those with both good trust flow and a high domain authority.  But I find it can be a pain to check both each time I’m reaching out to someone about a backlink. I generally just look for good, relevant sites.

In general, you can count on certain types of websites to be more trusted than others.  Web addresses ending in .gov or .edu should pretty much always be high quality.  One great way to get a .edu backlink is to reach out and ask to be added to resources pages for students at a local university.

Small Business SEO Consulting Services for psychotherapist group practice owners. Simplified SEO Consulting.

Are you ready to come up with a plan to improve your small business website’s online presence? My SEO Consulting services can help!

Are You Ready to Get Serious About Your Website’s Search Engine Ranking?

Are you ready to get serious about your small business website’s SEO?  I help small businesses rank better on search engines.  I started my SEO Consulting services with psychotherapy group practice owners, but I do work with other small business owners as well.  The best way to rank quickly is to hire me to do your website’s on page optimization while you work on getting as many backlinks as possible.  I’ll offer you tips and you can even hire me to do some research for you.  I’ve found that the best approach to increasing your search engine rankings though is for me to really focus on the on page work while you invest time and energy (not money…please don’t make Google mad by paying for backlinks) into getting quality backlinks.

If you’re just wanting to learn more about search engine optimization, you can check out my free SEO e-course.  On the other hand, if you’re ready to work together, you can schedule a free 30 minute SEO consultation.  We’ll talk about your website and develop a plan to help get your small business in front of more potential clients.  I’ll help you figure out if my monthly SEO packages are what you’re looking for, or you might excel at doing your own SEO with a little training.

/0 Comments/by