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It’s a wild time in our country right now. You may be seeing fewer clients right now. And you’re probably having to adjust to seeing clients online. It can be so stressful. 

You’re managing all of this while wondering what your ideal clients are struggling with. If you’re blogging (which we really hope you are!) you may be curious to know what people are searching for. 

Choosing SEO Keywords to Attract Your Ideal Clients

 

middle age man sits at his computer wondering what SEO keywords to use to reach his ideal clients on Google. He gets help from a member of the Simplified SEO Consulting team.

I wanted to take a moment and address this question. Oftentimes what we assume our clients are searching for, isn’t actually true. Remember, your client may not know all the clinical mental health language you do. Therefore, you really want to put on your thinking cap and think about what your clients are saying to you in your current or previous counseling sessions. What are they struggling with and what is the language they use when they talk to you. For example, it’s less likely that a client would look for something like How CBT can help with anxiety during COVID-19. It’s more likely that they would google: At home help for anxiety. 

The Effect Readability Has on Keywords and SEO

In my last blog, I talked about the importance of readability. While we’re writing we want to imagine we’re talking to our 13-year-old nephew at a barbeque about what we do. Basically, we want to remove the big technical terms and replace them with more approachable language. We do this because our clients, although they may be well educated, wouldn’t be searching google for complicated mental health language, especially if they are in crisis. This concept applies to choosing blog or service page topics as well. 

Tips for Choosing Topics to Write About

 

female therapist works in her at home office writing blogs after researching seo keywords that her ideal clients are looking for. She learns tips from members of the Simplified SEO consulting staffNow more than ever, it’s important to not only reach our ideal clients but speak to the needs of the populations we help. So many people are struggling to cope with the changes that social distancing or stay-at-home orders have caused. Their lives are not the same as they were just three or four weeks ago. So, I want you to think of 3 clients you have seen in the past month. What are their pain points? How has the Coronavirus affected their lives? For example, we know lots of people are struggling with social isolation and depression right now. But they don’t typically say “social isolation” instead they use more colloquial terms such as “cabin fever” or “stuck at home.” Go ahead and write these things down in the language that they would use to tell you about their problems. This is a great starting place for a blog topic or service page.

If you’re struggling to come up with these pain points I have an idea. Look at social media or news outlets and see what people are saying about COVID-19. When I did this I found that some of my friends were worried about their jobs, others were concerned for elderly family members, and my Mom friends were worried about their children’s education while homeschooling. Another good place to get ideas is on news shows. I watch the Today Show and their entire 2-hour show is dedicated to COVID-19 right now. 

Researching the Needs of Your Ideal Client Will Make Writing Easier

I encourage you to take the time to do this research before writing a page or a blog. Give yourself time to get some great ideas about the state of mind your ideal client is currently in. After you do this, I think you will find you have a ton of great material to write about. 

Also, if you haven’t seen it already, Jessica posted a wonderful video to our Facebook page giving even more suggestions about things to write about. In her video she shares more places you can look for ideas! To visit this Facebook live post, click here. 

Lastly, please remember that the Simplified SEO staff are always here to help you. Our goal is to help connect you with your ideal clients so more people have access to quality mental health care! We believe that this is even more important during this national emergency. So, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us and ask questions. We would love to hear from you!

Begin SEO services and rank better on Google

 

male therapist hold an online therapy session with his ideal client. He learned how to optimize his webpage with help from a member of the Simplified SEO Consulting Team who helped him rank better on googleIf you’re interested in our SEO services, we’d love to connect with you. At Simplified SEO Consulting we have a variety of options to help get you ranking better. To begin optimizing your private practice webpage, please follow these simple steps:

  1. Book a free 15-minute video consultation with a member of the Simplified SEO Consulting team,
  2. Speak to an SEO specialist. During your free consultation call, we will answer your questions and determine which SEO package would best serve your needs.
  3. Begin optimizing your webpage and see it rank better on Google!

Other Services offered by Simplified SEO Consulting

Simplified SEO Consulting is proud to offer a variety of SEO services designed for mental health professionals and private practice owners. We know you’re busy, so you may not want to optimize your own website. Therefore, we offer the Done for You SEO Service package. With this package, our team of SEO specialists will do the SEO work for you. Also, we offer alumni packages and al la carte SEO services. If you are interested in learning to do it yourself, we can help you learn the tools you need to rank better. We offer SEO training packages including our “Top of Google” online course and 12 weeks of online video training. Or, if you are just beginning your website journey (or considering a redesign), we offer an SEO Strategy package as well.

Reach out to us to ask any questions, or book a free SEO Consultation to decide which option is best for your private practice. We look forward to hearing from you!

Business is slower than usual. You took your counseling practice online, but your caseload took a serious hit.  Clients are canceling appointments. Or, if you’re like me, you have college students who returned to their homes out of state and now you can’t see them through Telehealth.

You may have some downtime in the upcoming weeks.

There’s no way around this.  Many of us may very well have gaps in our schedule in the upcoming weeks. Hopefully, if things last too long, we’ll start getting calls as people realize they need to prioritize their mental health. But in the meantime…you have downtime.

As business owners, we have a choice.

I know you feel anxious about the future of your business.  I am worried about both of mine as well. But I also know we have a choice. We can focus all of our energy on those anxious thoughts, or on trying to avoid those anxious thoughts. OR, we can accept our anxiety and choose to be productive despite it.

I’m investing in my business during this Covid-19 virus outbreak.

Picture of a cell saying "coronavirus" representing the downtime that private practices are having. Work on your SEO for private practice during the downtime with Simplified SEO consulting

Hear me out. I’m selectively, carefully investing in my business.  I’m thinking about how I can use this time to best set my business up for the future.  So, late last week I met with a business coach for a 1:1 session. We left with a whole list of things I’m going to work on during this time!

In truth, you’re seeing part of my list of how to invest my time. I’m writing more blog posts than I have for a while. Blog posts I hope are helpful to you!  Other things on my list include working on another e-course (this one on blogging for SEO so stay tuned!), redoing my ideal schedule to be more realistic, fine-tuning my leadership skills, etc.

SEO is one thing you can invest your time into right now to improve your business.

I can’t even tell you how often I work with motivated, intelligent business owners who just don’t have the time to invest in SEO!  Well…now you can use some of those canceled session times to invest your time in that thing (your website) that you’ve known for a while you needed to get to.

The most efficient way to improve your search engine rankings during the Covid-19 outbreak.

hispanic woman working on her SEO from her home during COVID-19 outbreak. Begin SEO services with Simplified SEO Consulting now!My staff and I are experts and we know what we’re doing when it comes to optimizing websites. So, the most efficient thing you could do would be to hire us to optimize some of your pages while you add more blog posts and/or service pages and start building backlinks!  We’re doing the in-depth on-page SEO that we’re really good at.  Meanwhile, you’re doing additional things that are 110% necessary for a good SEO strategy but we often see therapists struggle with.

So, most efficient strategy = Outsource on-page SEO to us + write content (blog posts & service pages) for your site + Build Backlinks

Outsourcing + Building Backlinks:

If this is the option you’d like to go with, we’d love to help.  We can take the on-page optimizing part for you….For April only, if you sign up for at least a 3 page “Done for You” package, we’ll do a quick optimization of a 4th page FREE as long as the 4th page is a blog post relevant to Telehealth or Covid-19. We want to support other mental health businesses during this time and hope this additional page will help you really get the highest ROI this month. Also know we’ll be providing you tons of information about those other two pieces of the puzzle (what and how to add content & building backlinks) through our Facebook lives.

And then, we can help you with the backlink building part as well…We have written blog posts on building backlinks that are available for anyone to read, but this is also a topic we’ll tackle on an individual basis during on boarding meetings and are always discussing on our closed Facebook page.

The DIY option: Invest your time in optimizing

Now, while I love optimizing pages for you, the simple truth is that I believe EVERY mental health professional has the capacity to learn how to optimize their own site!  You just may be lacking the time.  So….if you have the time to invest right now, I recommend trying your hand at optimizing yourself.  You may even be surprised how much you enjoy it… I used to be so intimidated by this stuff and now I get excited every time I go to optimize a new website or page, because it’s like a giant puzzle. So…if you’ve ever thought about learning to optimize your own site, now might be the time!

This is especially effective for people who have a lot of time to sprint during this stressful period.  If you really have time to devote to learning to optimize your own website, I recommend considering our online courses.  In fact, you can use the code “Covid” to get 15% off ANY of our online SEO training courses right now!  Anyone with a paid package for the month of April (even our alumni package or our smallest Done for You package) will get a different code for 25% off any of the courses!

But where should you start?

If you feel overwhelmed easily, just start with our “SEO First Steps” course.  It’s priced at only $97 (before the discount) so you just get a feel for how much of this work you want to do yourself. I’ll walk you through the basics of keyword research, what content to add to your website and how to make sure Google knows all of your pages exist.  Then, you can move on to the next three steps in our “Moving the SEO Needle” course.  But if you’re ready to just jump in with two feet and confident you’re going to put the time in to optimize your site, you may just jumps straight to our “Top of Search Engines” course.

Lastly, if you are looking for more support and want to really learn this stuff in depth, schedule a 30 minute Zoom consult and we’ll talk about our 1:1 training options as well. 🙂

Get Started Optimizing Your Therapy Website:

woman at laptop drinking a cup of coffee working on her private practice's website. Begin SEO services with Simplified SEO consultingIf you are ready to begin optimizing your website yourself or have the Simplified staff help you, please don’t hesitate to reach out. This is a great time to work on your website & ensure it reaches more people. To being SEO services for your private practice, please follow these steps:

  1. Book a free 15-minute consultation with a member of the Simplified SEO Consulting staff,
  2. Speak to an SEO specialist. During your free consultation call, we will help you determine what service or package is the best fit for your private practice,
  3. Work on your SEO and see your practice’s website rank better on Google!

Other SEO Services offered by Simplified SEO Consulting

Simplified SEO Consulting is proud to offer a variety of SEO services designed for private practice owners. We know you’re busy, so you may not want to optimize your website. So, we offer a popular Done for You SEO Services. With this package, our team of SEO specialists will optimize your pages for you. Additionally, we offer alumni packages and al la carte SEO services. If you are the do-it-yourself type, we can help your site rank better as well. We have SEO training packages that will teach you the skills you need to get your website ranking well including our “Top of Google” online course and 12 weeks of online video training. Or, if you are just beginning your website journey (or considering a redesign), we offer an SEO Strategy package as well.

Contact us to ask any questions, or book a free SEO Consultation to decide which service is best for your private practice.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, our counseling clients need us more than ever during this unusual Covid 19 era.  As therapists, psychologists, counselors, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals: We need to be part of the solution for how our community makes it through this crisis.  We can be leaders. Maybe not the type of leader that stands behind the president or governor or mayor during a press briefing.  But a different kind of leader. The one who silently helps calm the storm.

Here are some of the ways I’ve seen therapists helping provide this leadership:

Lead an online support group for those impacted by Covid 19

I’ve seen this done in several different ways.  Some therapists are offering pop up support groups over Zoom. Others are leading virtual yoga sessions. A friend of mine started a Facebook support group where she’s posting regularly throughout the day. One thing she’s doing that’s great from an SEO standpoint is sharing the relevant blogs she writes. This gets her “social shares” and just sends traffic to her site which Google sees.

Update your Google My Business (GMB) listing

The way I did this was to write a “post” announcing that we’re moving to online counseling sessions. It’s a way we show that we’re being leaders by following public health officials guidelines. This also provides helpful information to anyone who’s looking for you online and sees your listing.

Updating your GMB profile is always a good idea, and GMB has made this easier during this unusual time by creating a special category for Covid 19 related updates.

Write Blog Posts About the Mental Health Impact of the Coronavirus

I am so grateful I’m seeing so many therapists doing this! And we’re certainly doing it at my practice as well. As a social worker, I believe it’s our duty to share our skills during this time. And blogging is a great way to do that. We’re able to get some of our information out there!  Additionally, it can help just with brand awareness.  People will come to associate our practice with positive things (helpful information).  Lastly, but of course most relevant to my daily work, is that it helps with your search engine optimization.  You can target important keywords such as “anxiety treatment” or “help for anxiety” in your Covid 19 blog posts. But it also just helps to send people to your site which can happen when the new blog posts are shared on social media like we mentioned above.

Consider Facebook Lives

Some (or many) of us find this sort of thing intimidating. But truly, it’s a way you can be a resource to your community. Consider going live on your business page to discuss the topic you write a blog post about a few hours after it’s live.   Again, this gives you a chance to serve your community and to be associated with being helpful.

Offer Online Therapy Services

I saved this one for last because most of you are already doing this or in the process of transitioning to online therapy services. There are a few exceptions I know such as play therapists. But most of us are moving in this direction. And while we may be thinking of it as how we’re going to keep our business afloat, it’s also an act of service for our community.

Through helping our communities, we’ll help our businesses through the Coronavirus Outbreak

I’m a big believer that it’s possible to build a business while staying true to your values.  For me, helping my community is an integral part of my values.  I’m worried about the impact all of this will have on mental health.  But we can help. In fact, I feel like it is our ethical obligation to do something to help right now.  If you’re feeling too overwhelmed and looking at my suggestions thinking, “I don’t think I am up for ANY of those right now,” then help by being an example.  Even taking care of your own mental health is being a leader right now.

This is one of those times that if we apply our values of wanting to help our communities maintain decent mental health through this stressful time, it will also help us keep our businesses afloat.  There will be some people who see you and reach out now.  Others will reach out later.  And others will just begin to associate your name with positive emotions and may think to refer someone to you in the future.

My point?  Helping others right now is our moral obligation right now AND as an added bonus will help us.

Search Engine Optimization for Businesses During Covid 19

We believe as a therapist, counselor, psychiatrist or other health professional, you have a gift to give your community. It can be a bit scary to wonder where that steady stream of new clients is going to come from.  SEO has been a very effective marketing strategy for my private practice, and right now we want to use it to help you reach a wider audience right now.  We believe with better SEO you’ll better serve your greater community by sharing hope and helpful information.  Furthermore, we know showing up better in search results will help you continue to bring in new clients.

Getting started with our Search Engine Optimization services are easy: 1) schedule a 30 minute pre-consulting Zoom call with one of our staff members 2) Develop a plan for improving your Search Engine Rankings and 3) Provide helpful resource for your community by getting in front of more potential clients!