Therapist Marketing

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The Ultimate Guide to Therapist Marketing

51Blocks specializes in working with professionals in clinical therapy by providing authoritative digital marketing solutions for new patient generation. 

 

 

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Psychologists, like other service providers, face one major challenge-acquiring new clients.

While word of mouth remains an essential source of new leads, prospects are increasingly turning to Google to search for their mental health needs and end up calling the first psychologist or two on the search results.

To build your client list, you need to be on the first page of Google search results. 

SEO for Therapists

Search engine optimization is one of the most effective digital marketing channels for local therapists to invest in because most individuals looking for therapists spend time online searching for and learning about counseling services. 

How does Google work?

Generally, Google is an index of content. Although they’ve added different products to their system throughout the years, their primary service and source of revenue is the search engine. Google looks to deliver the best search result possible for a user’s query. SEO creates and optimizes the best search result for keywords that your ideal target audience is searching for. 

Bots

When you create a web page, you create content for two audiences; potential clients and search engines.

When a potential client enters a keyword on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo, Google deploys bots or spiders that crawl the search engine’s massive index. These bots crawl the text and code of pages, assessing the pages on multiple content marketing factors such as;

The bots sort all the relevant results through Google’s algorithm in order from best to worst.

Think like Google…

SEO for psychologists can be quite complex, but when you feel stuck, think like Google. Google is not in a position to verify your therapy practice unless they are to contact you, schedule a session, sit down with you, and probably pay for your service. Instead, they consider hundreds of ranking factors for content marketing to verify that your brand is real and trustworthy. You should optimize your website for these ranking factors.

SEO narrows down to two main things: content and backlinks. But first, let’s talk about the core of SEO, keywords…

Looking for more information?

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Keywords for Therapist Marketing

Keywords are the bread and butter of SEO for counselors and psychologists.

The first step in your efforts to climb SEO ranks and increase your brand visibility is to identify your dream customers’ keywords in their search queries.

Long-tail keywords, which are typically longer and more specific, have a greater impact on search results. Given that the search is specific, the person searches using those long-tail keywords as their search questions know what they are looking for precisely and are ready to take action now.

For example, the phrase “therapist” is not a long-tail keyword for SEO. When you search “therapist” on Google, you’ll get a mixture of search results; how to become a therapist, how do therapists get clients, the average salary for therapists, and other results. From the mixed results, it is clear that Google isn’t confident in what the searcher is looking for. 

However, if you search “therapist for anxiety in Arizona,” the search results will be all websites of anxiety therapists practicing in Arizona.

Your target audience knows exactly what they are looking for and want mental health services as soon as possible. This audience is also more like to convert.

Long-tail keyword phrases are also easier to rank for in search results.

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Finding the right keywords

Keyword research is essential for an effective therapist SEO strategy for any business. It helps you establish the need for SEO and compelling content for your therapist’s website. 

Target keyword phrases should be a few words that convey your web page’s or blog post’s message or main topic. But, how do you determine the right SEO keywords? It’s simple you can use a keyword planner or use the information about your private practice to; 

Check out the competition

Visit the sites of your top three competitors or other practices in the same field as you. Read through their website’s content and note the topics they focus on and the SEO keywords they use.

Search those SEO keyword phrases on major engines like Google and observe whether their websites come up on the first page of search results.  Suppose they are ranking high, that’s a clear implication that the terms they use are working. Use this chance to jot down some keyword phrases you could use as well for your SEO.

Conduct keyword research

Do your homework on keyword research to find therapist page SEO keyword phrases that are;

Generating more patients for your practice through strategic digital marketing!

Content Strategy for Therapists

After gathering your keyword list, create content for those specific keyword phrases. Ensure that different keyword phrases have dedicated pages in your web pages. 

You have to generate quality content to beat the serious competition you face, with 4 million blog posts estimated to be published per day.

Here are a few SEO tips for creating amazing content to get page one rankings;

 

  • Sprinkle keywords throughout your content.
  • Answer every question and cover every topic possible; the more topics you touch on, the better your content will be.
  • Add images and ensure that the file names and alt text of the images are keyword phrases that attract website visitors.
  • Include natural variants of your keywords.
  • Add keywords to your meta tags and title tags.

Choosing title tags

A title tag helps Google algorithms understand what each page on your website is about. 

Title tags play a significant role in your page SEO strategy. 

Here are some tips on Title tags;

  • Title tags should be a maximum of 70 characters long, including spaces.
  • Keep it relevant to your private practice.
  • Don’t duplicate headline tags.
  • Place keywords in order of importance, from most to least.

Backlinks

Links back to your website from another website area give a significant authority signal. The more backlinks you have, the more search algorithms will trust your site. 

When building links for your website, they should be high quality and essentially be one or all of the following;

  • Local- if you can get a link from a local business organization or directory, that helps verify your services.
  • Authoritative- your website needs backlinks from a website with a lot of authority. Authoritative sites are ideally older and have domain extensions like a .org.
  • Tropical- build links from websites relating to therapy and counseling. Consider listings on therapy directories like Psychology Today.

It’s hard to acquire dynamite links that incorporate all these qualities, but you can start by building links with any of these qualities and climb the ranks in therapy pages.

Remember, the anchor text and surrounding words you use when linking to your website help establish context. Incorporate the appropriate keywords for your specialty in the URL of your website.

Let’s take a look at why local SEO is critical for psychologists.

Therapist Marketing Strategy

Brand Awareness

My business needs more personality & a stronger brand presence for my audience.

Check out our services that help achieve a strong brand presence.

Local SEO

I’m trying to increase my organic visibility in search rankings & maps. 

See our local SEO options that will help drive more new traffic & organic leads. 

 

Lead Generation

For over a decade we have served clients from across many verticals. 

See which niches we serve and how we can help your business.

Reasons psychologists should invest in local SEO strategies

How Do Psychologists Get Clients?

Search engine optimization for therapists is the process of driving quality traffic to your site with the intent of converting that traffic into a new client lead.

The SEO tactics used by every other mental health therapist aren’t that different from other industries. But, there are a few differences.

Generating Reviews

Reviews on Google and other third-party review sites are great indicators of your local mental health therapist practice. However, unlike other local services, asking for client reviews is a little less natural, and in most cases, therapists prefer not to ask for reviews entirely. 

The trick to asking for honest feedback from clients without explicitly asking or inciting is to be outstanding in delivering your services. Understand client’s expectations and make sure that you go above and beyond them. This will increase your chances of generating quality reviews for effective SEO for therapists.

Testimonial Limitations

It is similar to reviews, finding a client who’s willing to share a story about your counseling services in a blog post or video testimonial on your therapist website. Client case studies can be powerful but have limitations in most cases. Even if you are lucky enough to find someone willing to offer a testimonial or case study for your site, they often won’t disclose enough detail about their mental health to be useful for your site’s SEO.

 

Most therapists understand the importance of search engine optimization when driving the right kind of website traffic to their therapy site. 

But with the multiple factors that affect SEO for your private practice website, it can be quite confusing and daunting to get your therapy website rank well for keyword phrases related to your brand. 

With these different factors, it’s easy to feel like your customers will never find you in search engines. However, if the website content is created well, with search engines and target clients in mind, you can see success with your SEO efforts.

It all starts with a call!

In order for us to put together the best campaign for your business, we need to take the time to understand your business, website, and industry.