If you’re a mental health professional with your own private practice, then you know how important it is to get your website seen by potential clients and/or patients.
You may have heard about SEO in conversation when talking about marketing your practice or designing your website. But you may be wondering what does it mean? And why is it important for my Private Practice?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, helps to increase the ranking of your website on a search engine (like Google, or Bing) and improve its visibility to searchers (your potential client/patient) who are actively looking for your business, product, or service.
So, let’s break it down further. If someone was searching for a “Psychologist” on Google, what is the likely hood they are going to find your Private Practice? Well, it’s not very likely. There are hundreds and thousands of “Psychologists” worldwide. How are you going to differentiate yourself from others and ensure your client finds you?
What would you want for your Private Practice?
Using SEO principles and methods, can help improve conversions, increase your ROI and help you achieve your business goals.
Scenario one
Your site provides mental health services and receives:
1000 visitors to your site
0004 enquiries for a counselling session
Scenario two
Your site provides mental health services and receives:
0400 visitors to your site
0040 enquiries for a counselling session
Analysis of scenarios
Which scenario do you think involves SEO? And which scenario would you want for your business?
Well, at first glance, scenario one looks promising as it has a significantly higher visitor rate. However, the quality of the visitors by analysis of the conversion to enquiries seems incredibly low. Telling us that perhaps the visitors didn’t find what they were looking for on your website, or who were not suited to what your service offers.
In comparison, scenario two may have fewer visitors, but the conversions tell us that the visitors are targeted and are active potential clients. It should then be no surprise to learn that scenario two is inclusive of SEO and scenario one is not.
Now you know SEO is valuable for your Private Practice, how do you apply it
There are several ways, let’s take a closer look at each one and we will summarise them at the end.
Get to know your potential client
The more you know who your potential client/patients are, what they are looking for, what are their pain points, how do they want to be serviced, what solutions they are looking for, what type of content do they want to engage with, the language or words they are using, and the keywords they are searching for, the better you will be able to utilise SEO strategies more effectively.
Discover the power of keywords
Your potential clients are surfing the internet using specific keywords that may or may not be related to your Private Practice and services. Keyword research provides you with specific search data that can help you answer questions like:
- What are people searching for?
- How many people are searching for it?
Knowing what keywords to use, and you easily implement them into your website and content.
Create a FAQ page
Get to know what questions your potential clients are asking. What are they curious about? Create a FAQ page and include these questions. Don’t forget to use the potential lingo or phrases they are familiar with. Remember, you want a match to what they are searching for, for what your website covers.
Know your business goals
In addition to knowing your potential clients inside and out, it is equally important that you have clearly defined what your business goals are. Why do you want visitors to come to your website? There is no point in driving thousands of users to your site if their goals don’t match yours. In fact, this can do more harm to your credibility as a reputable resource of information.
- Do you want them to sign-up to your newsletter?
- Make a booking directly on your website?
- Download a product offering?
- Phone enquires/calls?
- Contact form submissions?
Create a niche for your Private Practice
The more focused your service is (having a niche), the easier it will be to rank those services.
When creating a website or writing content for your blog, consider your niche. Create, design and write specifically for your target audience.
If possible, write at least one blog post a month around your niche. This will help increase your ranking and visibility.
Always have your potential clients experience in mind
What is it like for a user to navigate on your site, not only will this improve your rankings, but it will also have a positive effect on your user experience. When a user has a negative experience, they will likely jump off your site within no time and won’t want to come back, even though you may have been able to provide them with the service they were looking for.
Things to consider and investigate:
- Is it appealing, and does it look good. Is the font easy to read?
- Are the images clear, visible, of good quality and relatable?
- Are there smooth transitions between pages and links?
- Is there down time, or do I come across a lot of broken pages or links?
- Is my site easy to navigate? Clear headings, identifiable menu items, social links, share buttons etc.
Quick shortlist of ideas to help you succeed with SEO
- Provide clear, relevant, engaging, and easy-to-navigate content
- Keep page titles clear and relevant
- Include relevant and strong key words in your content
- Make sure your site is free from any 404 errors or broken links
- Ensure your site is secure. Use a secure socket layer (SSL) which you will see in your URL prefix (https://)
- Create blogs/articles that are original, and relevant to your niche
- Optimise your images
- Create links within your pages
- Sharing of content onto social media platforms can have an impact on how you rank
- Page speed is important, along with a positive user experience.
- Use alt attributes to describe images, so that Bing can better understand your content
- Make your location, address and other contact information clear on your website. Google will often prioritize ranking websites that it believes to be local to your site visitor.
- Set-up a profile account with “My Google Business”
- Get listed on various directories
How and when to apply SEO
It may seem overwhelming, and yes, there is a lot of investment, either with time or money if you are outsourcing your SEO. You don’t have to cover every aspect of SEO all at once. Doing it in stages, can help to manage time and costs.
Ideally, you want to incorporate SEO right at the beginning, when you are first designing your website. If you are starting your website from scratch, cover at least a page per month.
Already have a website and want to optimise your site to meet SEO standards, look at all the relevant aspects (content, graphics, images, links etc) one page at a time. Then add more features as you progress, like adding a FAQ page, or blog.
Is SEO that easy?
To put it simply, no. There are a few you should take not of before diving straight in. BUT if you are willing to put in the work, and commit to the process, then the rewards will pay-off.
In the meantime, here are a few things you should take note when investing in SEO
- SEO is not instantaneous. It takes time to implement, and it takes time to see any kind of ROI. Adjust your expectations and plan for long-term.
- If you are not tech-savvy, or don’t have much experience with copywriting or marketing, SEO may be a bit challenging to set up and maintain.
- SEO consultants or firms can be used to set up SEO, however, it can be a large initial and recurring investment.
SEO support for mental health professionals
The basic principles of SEO are clearly identifying who you are, what are your services, highlighting where you are based, and providing your user with value and a great experience.
If you are looking for help with creating, designing, and writing content for your website with SEO in mind, or if you would like to optimise your site, Grey Matters Marketing would love to help you.
Send us a mail or complete our online submission form and let Grey Matters Marketing discover how we can help you and your business grow.
Interested in Marketing your Private Practice, read our blog “Four Easy Strategies for Marketing your Private Practice” for more helpful information.