4 Things Every Therapist Needs To Know About SEO
As a former therapist and current website designer, I remember the feeling of complete and total overwhelm when I heard mention of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It seemed complicated and mysterious, but also extremely important. After working with hundreds of therapists to design better websites, I’ve learned a lot about what SEO is, what it isn’t, and how it works. In this post, I’m going to share the things that I tell my clients and customers when they ask me about getting website traffic from Google.
1. SEO helps you increase your organic, quality website traffic
The analogy I love to use is this: think about your website like a storefront. People can come in, look around, and hopefully buy something (aka start counseling services with you)! When you first launch your website, your “storefront” is located on a side street that doesn’t get much foot traffic. Your friends and family know it’s there, but potential customers aren’t going to easily happen upon your business.
SEO helps you move your “storefront” to a main street so you can get that precious foot traffic and more people can meet you, learn from you, and work with you!
Your website needs people looking at it in order to do what it’s supposed to do, which is to send you clients. Website traffic is essentially the same thing as “foot traffic” from my analogy; it’s the amount of people that visit your website. But our goal here is not to get anyone and everyone looking at your website. We want your ideal clients walking through your door, perusing your shelves, and purchasing from you.
SEO, when done correctly, will help your website reach new people (via Google or other search engines) who are a good fit for your services, automatically, so that you can spend less time inviting people to your website, and more time doing the work that you love doing.
2. There’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all
I offer pre-designed Squarespace websites, and a common question I hear from prospective customers is, “Do these websites come with SEO?” While it would be great if SEO was as plug-and-play as my websites, unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
SEO is all about optimizing your unique website to show up in search results for your unique clients. Without knowing you, your practice, or your ideal client, nobody can formulate good SEO for you. Good SEO is as nuanced and tailored as your therapeutic style, and it shouldn’t be any other way.
3. SEO (alone) won’t fill your caseload
A common myth among new private practice owners is that if they only focus on SEO, the client calls will start flooding in. Search Engine Optimization seems to have earned a “magic bullet” reputation in the private practice world, and I’m not here for it. Here’s why:
Back to my storefront analogy, let’s say you somehow start out on the busy main street and a bunch of traffic starts flooding in. These people won’t know what to do if you haven’t spent time clarifying your services, your messaging, your brand, and your visuals. Basically, you need to know your website works before sending more people to it.
Instead of laser-focusing on SEO, clarify your messaging and brand visuals, make sure your website design is current and easy-to-use, and invest in website copy that encourages people to work with you. Then, send people to your website consistently! Seriously: any chance you get, you should be sending people to your website. Work on getting your website traffic numbers up without SEO first. Then, when you’ve booked new, aligned clients through your website, you can be confident that your SEO efforts will pay off.
Let me be clear: I’m 100% in support of investing in SEO, whether you try to do it yourself or hire a professional. My point is that SEO is only a piece of the online marketing puzzle, not the whole thing.
4. You’re capable of implementing SEO practices on your own
I know SEO seems scary and intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Okay, I’ll admit, the higher level, super-technical stuff still kind of freaks me out. But you don’t have to know everything about SEO to have good SEO. There are super simple practices that you can start implementing on your own right now.
For instance, a few years ago, when I didn’t know much about SEO, I wrote a single blog post and I still get inquiries from people who found me through that post on Google. At the time, I really only knew the basics.
A great place to start learning more about SEO for your private practice website is my Website SEO Basics Workshop. This 45-minute video workshop will help demystify the process of establishing a strong foundation to start ranking in search results. In this training, I’ll walk you through the exact, step-by-step process I use to set up search-engine readiness on my clients’ websites.
If you’ve got the basics down, but you’re looking for ways to get to page one on Google, my Intermediate Website SEO Workshop will help you get there. For this workshop, I partnered with Kristie Plantinga of TherapieSEO to dive into some more technical SEO practices in a completely accessible and easy-to-follow format.
There are so many crucial pieces that need to be in place to successfully market your practice online, and SEO is one of these pieces. While everyone’s marketing strategy will look different, the goal is the same: to help you connect with the people who need what you offer. This is important work. You can do it.
