In today’s digital landscape, your website is typically the first interaction your patients have with your business. But how do they find your website? Search engine searches generate 51% of traffic to websites according to Search Engine Journal, while only 5% of website traffic is generated by social media. Here are some statistics that show why SEO is so important for your private practice:
- 51% of all website traffic comes from search engines, with almost ¾ coming from Google
- 92% of searchers will pick businesses on the first page of search results
- 70% of customers visit a private practice based on information they found online
- 63% of consumers primarily use a company’s website to interact with a business
- 30% of consumers won’t consider a business without a website
WHAT IS SEO?
Many of our potential clients ask us "what is SEO for psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists?" The answer is pretty simple: SEO is 1) the process of your website pages being ranked on Google and other search engines for keywords (or queries) that people are searching for and 2) The process of ranking your Google Business location to be found on Google Maps (and other search engine maps).
We focus mainly on Google search results and Google map results because a majority of the searches happen on their search engine. If you're not ranked highly in your city, you are missing out on hundreds of quality leads for your psychology practice each year.
Why It Matters: SEO for Mental Health Professionals
The whole purpose of SEO is to position your therapy practice to be found by your potential patients and the things that they search for related to your services. Simply, therapist SEO is an organic way to get new patients for your practice.
SEO matters for your private practice because your patients use Google to find psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists like you in your city. Your top competitors are likely getting hundreds of leads each year from SEO. If you're not ranked for important searches in your city, you're losing business.
We view SEO as a competition. When your private practice works with TherapistX, we want you to be taking your competitor's market share of new patients. SEO is the foundational marketing strategy used to grow your private practice. Every other marketing tactic built out will compliment SEO.
How Does SEO Work for Psychologists, Psychiatrists, and Therapists?
To understand how SEO works, we have to understand Google's goal. Google wants the best content at the top. Here is their words on how their search algorithm works:
"Google ranking systems are designed to do just that: sort through hundreds of billions of webpages in our Search index to find the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second, and present them in a way that helps you find what you’re looking for."
SEO works by doing more than your rival mental health provider. Let's define what "more" looks like:
- Your website needs to be built with SEO top of mind. Here are just a few things your website needs:
- Your website needs to be secured by SSL
- Your website needs to be fast and easily navigable
- Your website needs to have pages built for each service
- Your website needs to have pages built for each location
- Your website needs high quality copywriting targeting important keywords
- You need to create content on your website targeting what your patients are searching for
- You need to make sure your Google My Business is fully optimized
- You need to build more quality backlinks to your pages than your rival therapists
- You need to build more quality citations to your business location than your rival mental health professionals
There are quite a few more things your private practice needs to take into account to be successful in SEO for psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists.
If you need help, we can help - we do this for a living! Contact us to discuss your strategy.
How Long Does SEO Take?
Many companies promise different things. In our experience, a SEO strategy takes around 12 months to implement. In some cases, psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists start seeing results in 4 to 6 months. It all depends on what your competitors are doing. Some cities are much more competitive, and your rival private practices spend lots of time and money on their strategy. In other smaller cities, other private practices may not invest a high amount of time and resources into their SEO strategy.
For us, it doesn't matter whether you live in a small city or a large city - We can build a strategy that will bring you get new patients.
4 Benefits of SEO for your Therapy Practice
SEO has major benefits for therapy practices who invest in these strategies. Let's review a few benefits:
Your Practice Grows
The most important benefit of SEO is that your practice grows. Patients who are searching for services just like yours can find your practice through a SEO strategy. Combined with our other therapist marketing strategies, SEO is a powerful tactic for growth.
Your Practice Gets More Social Proof
While bringing the right people to find your therapy practice online is the main component of SEO, it's important to also build up your online reputation. This can be achieved by getting an army of positive reviews from your loyal customers. When You combine positive social proof with being found online, you get new patients.
Your Services Become More Thought Out
One of the side benefits of a SEO strategy (the process of creating a new website and ranking for keywords) that we've seen working with mental health professionals is that they start to fully think out all of their service offerings. Writing things down is a powerful way to cement ideas into practice. We have seen many of our clients add to their current offerings or add completely new service offerings once they saw gaps in their services.
Your Expertise is Showcased
A SEO strategy can take the form of many things. Video, podcasts, and content are all forms of SEO strategy. Once our therapy clients start thinking in terms of how their patients think, they start producing amazing content that showcases their high level of knowledge and expertise. One way to differentiate your practice is by showcasing your expertise and why your practice is different than Joe Schmo therapist down the street.
Types of Mental Health Professionals We Build SEO Strategies for
Counselors
We work with counselors to help them grow their practices. SEO is a great strategy to consistently bring in client inquiries who need your services each month.
Psychologists
Psychologists are great clients for us because they often offer a number of different services for patients, which make them perfect candidates for SEO. Also, each new patient brought in by a psychologist has a high value.
Psychiatrists
Like psychologists, psychiatrist's patients have a high value. Each lead brought in by SEO that converts increases revenue significantly, making psychiatrists a great client for us to work with.
Therapists
Therapists who invest in a SEO strategy grow faster and more stable than those therapists who don't use SEO. We love helping therapists grow their practice practice.
Treatment Centers
Treatment centers need high-end SEO strategies because of the competition levels. We provide proven SEO strategies to take your treatment center to the next level.
We are a Top Private Practice SEO Company
We work with many different types of mental health professionals and have the results to show we mean business. We would be more than happy to provide you with an honest overview of your private practice and how our SEO strategy, combined with our other services, can grow your private practice. We are your X-factor for bringing you new patients andreaching your financial goals.
Need some help on your SEO strategy? Contact us for a free consultation - We are a top therapist marketing company that works with therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. we look forward to speaking with you!
Learn about our process
The Problem
Growing your private practice can be a struggle for even the most talented practitioner. Many practices rely on word of mouth, which can take years to build and is inconsistent for referrals.
Also, some private practices have discovered the power of internet marketing and are taking away your potential patients. SEO is the process your competitors are using to get seen for searches your patients are making. To put it plainly: Mental Health Marketing and Behavioral Health Marketing can be confusing.
Our Solution
SEO is the solution to growing your private practice. But not just any SEO strategy will make the cut. After years of refining our process, we use a proven method to grow our client's private practices.
Learn how SEO fits in with our full process for growing private practices like yours, Read about our process here.
Here are a few of our tactics to grow your practice:
- Competitor Research
- Web Design
- Copywriting
- Search Engine Optimization
- Google Advertising
- CRM Setup
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Branding
- Consulting
After Amy’s website was built, she started a 24 month SEO campaign. Amy’s strategy targeted two main areas: Google Search listings and Google Map listings. In 24 months, Amy now ranks for over 1600 keywords on Google – Important keywords like “eating disorder psychologist”, “therapist miami”, “psychologist miami”, “psychologist near me”, and many more of Miami’s most competitive keywords. Amy’s previous site generated very little organic search traffic, she saw a huge jump of local searchers visiting her website. Amy’s Google Maps location was not being found by potential customers previously, but after 24 months of optimization 227 quality local leads brought new opportunities to Amy’s practice. Finally, Google Search yielded 302 quality leads, while previously her website was not generating any leads from Google. In total, 529 quality, local leads were generated in Amy’s 24 month SEO campaign (These organic campaigns will continue yielding leads for many months and years for Amy’s business). Amy continues to use our SEO services as we’ve only scratched the surface of potential!
“BartX are true professionals and a pleasure to work with. They have really helped my business grow and I am definitely seeing results. Anthony Bart, the owner, is a great guy and he knows his stuff!” – Amy Boyers
FAQ About Psychologist, Psychiatrist, and Therapist SEO
Below are some common questions our psychologist, psychiatrist, and therapist clients ask us about SEO: