SEO for Therapists: The How-To Guide to Powerful SEO for Private Practices

SEO. You may recognize the term. You might have even read about it some place or been told SEO for therapists is good practice (it is!). But what is SEO really and why does it matter?

What Is SEO and Why It’s Important for Your Therapist Website

SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it is just what it sounds like. Businesses just like yours optimize their websites to get found on search engines. But why would you want to do this? And why is private practice SEO so crucial?

Let’s take a step back.

When a person visits a search engine — say Google, Yahoo, or Bing – they expect relevant responses to their search. If they receive them, the search engine is deemed helpful. If not, the person will invariably flee into the arms of another search engine eagerly standing by.

The relevant responses are how search engines create loyal consumers and, most importantly, profits. “Web crawlers” and complex algorithms have been constructed to scour the cyber world and rate webpages; to collect, collate, and present the best results to a searcher. All in a matter of seconds.

This is your opportunity to improve your own business because good private practice SEO practices enable you to attract quality traffic and supercharge your success. In essence, it’s how you get found online, for free.

—>PSST. Even more important than being found, is being found by the RIGHT person. Have you taken our Ideal Client Quiz yet? If not, click here to get started! <—

Let’s take a look at this in action.

The search term (also called a keyword) for this example is “help with depression.”

Google has used its search engine powers of deduction to return the results in the picture below. Notice that they are all relevant, yet something stands out. Look closer and you will see the top four results are adverts, the first one being from Sierra Tuscon. The remaining results are known as “natural results”; Google has offered these as the most relevant results without charging the sites in question.

The latter is prime real estate and why SEO is critical for therapists like yourself. When the search engines deem your site helpful and relevant, they rank you higher, thus enabling your business to grow, profits to increase, and you to support more of the clients who need your skills and experience.

Private Practice SEO: The Virtual Nuts and Bolts

Ok, so you know you need SEO. What comes next?

There is simple information you need to know, but first you’ll need a professional website. Without a website, your therapy practice growth is stunted. Period.

With 26% of Americans almost constantly online, 58% earning over $50K and sitting in the lucrative private paying clients bracket, and 72% of Internet users using cyber searches to attain health information within the past year, you must give them a way to find you. Once you have a website for them to find, SEO help comes next.

Picture credit: Pew Research

Targeted keywords

A keyword phrase is simply a search term. It’s the text typed into the search box, the ‘what’ someone is looking for. As in the earlier example, the keyword phrase “help with depression” showed results which revolved around depression. How does a search engine decide what is relevant to your search? Part of this answer lies within keywords.

So with this in mind, how do you find relevant keywords, and how do you use them?

There are many ways to identify helpful keywords for your practice. The first is to consider problems that your current and potential clients experience. The next step is to brainstorm how clients would phrase these challenges when they’re searching online. Let’s look at some possible examples:

how do I help my depression           how can I have a better relationship with my husband
anxiety signs and symptoms           why do I feel so down
how to stop stressing                       how can I improve my sleep

There are free online tools for your keyword brainstorming, including:

www.LSIGraph.com
Google’s keyword tool — sign up to Adwords to gain access

Tip: When identifying your private practice SEO keywords, remember the greatest number of your clients are likely local. Add your town or city into your keyword terms. For example, our client Jennie Mazza Jones has used the term “child therapy in Clinton, NY” with great success as it notes her geographical location and how she can help.

Smart keywords + a professional website = perfect private practice SEO

You’ve got your keywords and your website ready… How do these two pieces now come together to form the perfect private practice SEO storm, whipping up success and profits?

The first step is to sprinkle relevant keywords through each page on your site. Every page should have:

1) A name – You’ll see this in the address bar
2) Content about that specific page – It must be relevant to the title of the page
3) Metadata – Each page has a small snippet of information designed to inform the search engines of its focus

(At Brighter Vision, we’ve had many clients say they don’t have the time, willpower, or skill to implement private practice SEO and keywords. Yet this is a critical component you mustn’t miss. If this is the case for you, we need to chat.)

The second step to perfect private practice SEO is blogging. The search engines love new content and you must give it to them. (They’re funny like that.) While this may sting, SEO for therapists is not optional for those who wish to succeed in private practice today. It is truly a necessity. The good news? Blogging allows you to combine your expertise with being discovered, to build rapport and solidify digital relationships, and to drizzle magic SEO dust onto every page. In effect, it allows you to tick off multiple marketing boxes in one fell swoop.

What about if you’re worried about your writing skills, finding interesting topics, or finding the time to blog? Don’t be, you are not alone. Because blogging is such an important piece of your strategy, we’ve got you covered. Our article Blogging For Your Private Practice… It Really is That Important, Here’s How You Can Start will guide you through the easy steps to regular online writing.

A speedy website

When you visit a website but it’s s…l…o…w… what do you do? Chances are you click away – most people do.

When your site runs at a snail’s pace, you will experience a high “bounce rate” (i.e. visitors won’t stay, clicking away after visiting only one page). This tells the search engines that – excuse the term – your site sucks in some way. This can plummet your visibility on search engines. After all, why would Google or Bing recommend a site people don’t like? This can’t be overlooked.

Link to yourself, not other people

Take a look through our Brighter Vision website. You’ll notice that, where appropriate and helpful, we link to internal pages instead of sending our visitors to other sites. This offers our visitors value and, in return, they are likely to remain on-site longer. This gets a big thumbs-up of SEO approval and is an approach you should incorporate in your ethical private practice SEO.

A mobile-friendly site

Times have changed and the vast majority of cyber content is now consumed on smartphones. If your site is still ‘old school’ and hasn’t yet digitally adapted to include the new tools on the block — desktop or laptop, tablet and phone — this acts as a large thorn in the search engine’s side. Because searchers want mobile-friendly viewing, search engines do too. Remember, Google, Bing, Yahoo want their consumers to hang around, too.

Social sharing

Ah, social sharing… There is untold beauty to be found in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest and it’s a two-pronged approach.

Once you write a good blog, share it with a teaser sentence on your social media. As people click and visit your site, the search engines notice the increase in traffic and may promote you more in searches. And when someone has already shown interest by following a link, they are more likely to read the complete article and remain on your site longer. All great for private practice SEO!

Have you noticed social media sharing options at the bottom of blog posts? Include ways for visitors to share your interesting posts on their own social media accounts. Encouraging promotion and viral possibilities always makes good SEO for therapists.

With the success of your website and private practice depending on your SEO techniques, it is time to harness the benefits of our digital world. These approaches and techniques will help guide you toward greater rewards, financially and professionally. And we’re here to support you along every step of your digital journey.

At Brighter Vision, we provide all of our therapists with high quality Search Engine Optimization so that your potential clients can find you online. And we do it all for no extra cost.

If you’re struggling with getting clients through your website, contact us today to see how we can help!

About Perry Rosenbloom

Perry Rosenbloom is the Founder of Brighter Vision, the worldwide leader in custom therapist website design. His connection to therapy and therapists runs deep: His mother-in-law owns a private practice in Jacksonville, FL, his father-in-law is in recovery and just received his 30 year chip, his Uncle (who he never met) died at a very young age due to drug use, and the heroin epidemic has hit his hometown very hard. With so many connections to therapy and therapists, he is immensely proud to be able to help support them in their work and enable them to be successful business owners.