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.

#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.

#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!