SEO for Counsellors and Psychotherapists
Coming from a healthcare background myself, I understand that helping people is your primary concern – not building websites or writing blogs! Unfortunately, the only way you can reach the clients who need your help is through good SEO.
You’ve probably noticed that when you look for a local counsellor or psycotherapist near you, you’ll often find that:
- the websites look pretty much the same
- the text on the website is almost identical
- there’s little to distinguish one therapist from another!
And that is the problem.
Search engines need to be able to spot the differences within a website to be able to rank them – how can you tell which one to put first if they all arrive at the finishing line with the same score?
By using SEO, good website design and copywriting that is specifically about you and the clients you serve, you can help more people with higher Google rankings.
How I can help you rank higher on Google
I can help you identify what sets you apart from your fellow counsellors and therapists and use this as the basis for optimising your website.
Understanding your core message allows us to find the right keywords and phrases for your website. These can then be best placed across your website’s copywriting, blogs, on-page SEO and images for optimal impact.
I can also identify where your website is performing weakly in terms of design, functionality, lack of information, etc and correct these issues for you.
Moving forward, I can maintain your website’s performance with WordPress management, and identify new SEO opportunities such as blog writing, and other marketing strategies.
I’m often asked ‘how much does it cost to have SEO for my therapy website?’ and you have an option of selecting one of the packages below, or you can bespoke which is £99 for the website and SEO audit plus £30 p/h for implementation of recommendations.
For a website to rank well...
It needs to be the following:
- Quick to load
- Easy to use
- Obvious where to find information
- Use clear and consistent messaging
- Be accessible for disabled visitors
- Easy to make contact
- Answer the most common questions asked by your clients
- Be up to date and relevant
Common problems
When auditing websites for counsellors and psychotherapists I often find:
- A focus on design rather than information
- Very few words about what you have to offer
- Template designs that are 99% the same as many other websites
- Difficulties using the website
- Pages are slow to load
- Website hasn’t been updated for several years
- Incorrect contact details
What I can do
I can help your website perform better by:
- Auditing what’s working well and what’s going wrong
- Technical SEO
- On-Page SEO
- Content-based SEO
- Website redesign
- Copywriting/copy editing
- Creating a bespoke strategy for your website
Bronze
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Website and SEO audit with report
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Keyword research and analysis
-
Technical SEO changes to website
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On-Page SEO (main pages only)
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Image-based optimisation
Silver
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Everything from Bronze package
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Copywriting/editing (main pages only)
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Blog post optimisation
-
Simple web design changes
Gold
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Everything from Bronze and Silver
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Website design/functionality changes*
Want your therapy website to reach more people?
Simply fill out the form below and I’ll be touch soon to get started.
FAQs about SEO for your website
This is where I take a deep delve into all aspects of your website and how it is performing. By seeing what the issues are, identifiying opportunities and assessing your performance, I can then make a full report to you with recommendations and create an action plan to boost your website’s search rankings.
That’s absolutely fine. You can opt for my Bespoke service where you pay for the website audit and report, and then you can decide which recommendations you want to implement yourself and which ones you prefer me to do.
If you decide to do everything yourself,or even outsource to someone else, that’s cool.
When a potential client uses Google to find a counsellor or therapist near them, they will type in or speak a phrase like ‘counsellors in London’ or ‘psychotherapist specialising in autism’.
These are what we call keywords. Google’s job is to match your website with what your clients are searching for, so we use keywords throughout a website to help Google do that.
I will find out about you, your dream clients, your specialities, and location to find the right keywords for your website.
These will be changes to the website that occur on the ‘back end’ like installing plugins, setting up redirections, setting up Google search console, etc.
These are changes made to a page to improve it’s performance for Google and other search engines. Meta descriptions, headings, anchor text, linking between pages and other websites, etc.
Images actually pull a lot of weight when it comes to SEO. If a photo or image is too large it may slow the website loading times down, alt text is a mandatory requirement under the Equality Act (2010) but also helps Google to understand it’s context and better understand the page, etc. So, by optimising your images we can boost your website’s performance and Google ranking.
Anything that isn’t a blog post or other content like landing pages, etc. These are the home, about me, services, etc pages of your website.
Often, to improve Google search rankings, changes to the words on your website might be needed. You might not have enough words currently (or too many!), you haven’t written with the audience in mind but focused on what you have to offer, it’s lacking in keywords, etc.
As an experienced copywriter and editor, I can take your words and rewrite them using SEO best practices.
Copywriting is a time-consuming task requiring research, writing, and editing to get right.
Most websites for counsellors and psychotherapists fall in the 8 – 12 main pages range, however if you have a mammoth website I will need to charge more for additional pages.
This is the on-page SEO for blog posts but may include some additional tweaks like minor rewrites of certain sentences to improve keyword density, etc.
This could be something like altering the header or footer, changing the colour scheme, changing fonts, moving sections of a page around, etc.
If you require a redesign, you will need to opt for the Gold package or pay bespoke pricing.