SEO for Beginners: A Therapists’ Guide to Improving Online Visibility

SEO for beginners can seem confusing when you’re building your first therapy website. However, understanding a few basic principles can make a huge difference to how easily potential clients find you. And even if you’re not even sure what SEO is, don’t worry. We’ll start with the basics and build up from there.

There are really two parts to creating an effective website. The first is developing good SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), which helps search engines understand what your website is about. The second is making your website “sticky”, i.e., encouraging visitors to stay, explore your content and, hopefully, get in touch.

Lots of therapists choose a DIY website when they first qualify. Because of this, this article looks at some simple, practical steps to help make your website as effective as possible. We’ll concentrate on SEO for beginners here. And we’ll look at the other side of the equation, turning visitors into enquiries, in another article.

The first step to building your website is actually not to build it – yet!

What is SEO?

SEO stands for “search engine optimisation”, in other words, it’s how to make sure Google likes you. There are other search engines, of course, and SEO strictly applies to all of them. But they all have similar approaches, and Google provides plenty of help and support if you are working on this yourself, so I’m focussing there.

Search engines have an algorithm. This is a formula that tells them which websites to list, and what order to list them when people search. Ideally, you need to come up on the first couple of pages of results. Not many people bother to look further than that. The algorithm is, of course, a closely guarded trade secret (a bit like Colonel Sander’s exact recipe for fried chicken). But we can guess some of the key elements by the way websites perform.

I can’t turn you into a website expert in one article (or even two). But I can give some easily-implemented ideas based on what the algorithm is widely accepted to include.

SEO Starts With Research

Like most things in business, it starts with research. Before you write a single page, spend some time finding out what your potential clients are searching for. Think about what questions they’re asking and what problems they’re trying to solve. Once you understand their needs, you can create content that answers those questions. It’s also more likely to be found by search engines and clients.

How to Find Relevant Keywords

To optimise your website, you need keywords. These are individual words or phrases (called “long string keywords”) that appear frequently in your potential customer’s searches. They therefore need to appear on your webpage as well, so Google realises it’s relevant to the search.

There are many ways you can find relevant keywords. I’m going to look at how Google search can find some for you.

Research: What Keywords Would Your Clients Use?

First, ask a few people what they would put in a search engine if they were looking for your services. And/or brainstorm a couple of search terms you might use if you were a potential client. Then enter these in Google. There are a few things to look out for as you do this.

Firstly, as you start to type, Google will suggest some ways to complete your search term. Make a note of them as they can be added to your list of keywords.

Now hit search.

You’ll get a lot of competitors’ websites coming up. The ones labelled “sponsored” are paid-for ads, so ignore them. If you look at the ones immediately under that, you will see what ranks well without being paid for.

You can take ideas from these but never copy them exactly. Not only is it a breach of copyright, but Google doesn’t like duplicate content. In the end, both sites are likely to be penalised.

What Clients Want To Know

Scroll down the search results a bit and find the “others want to know” section. This should give you some ideas for more keywords and phrases.

Then look at the “related searches” even further down the page. This will give you up to half a dozen ideas for more keywords and phrases. You can click on them too, to get more search results, want-to-know suggestions and related searches. Go through the same process for each of them.

Are all Related Searches Relevant?

I tried this for “hypnotherapy for spider phobia” when writing this article. As you can see, one of the related searches was “Can spiders hypnotise?”. That almost certainly wouldn’t do as a keyword phrase for a page about reducing arachnophobia. The very idea is likely to freak out people who are already afraid of the little beasties!

But it might make an eye-catching blog title. And it could be tied into a plug for your services at the end. Something like “Whether spiders can hypnotise you or not, getting hypnotised may help you lose your fear of them”.

You can obviously spend an infinite amount of time trying out different keywords and following up on the various options. This would leave you with a very long list, since your keywords will be different for each page of your site. Keywords for a page about phobias won’t be the same as keywords for a page about quitting smoking, for example.

I’m assuming you haven’t got an admin team doing this for you. (If you have, why would you be reading this?). So, don’t let the possibilities become overwhelming. Decide on a time limit or a maximum number of keywords for each page. And remember that a little research is much better than none.

If you already have a website and you’re want to improve your SEO, tackle one page at a time. Start with the most important page. Set yourself a goal of improving one page each week, or month, until you have worked your way through.

Choosing the Right Domain Name

Your domain name is your web address: the part that starts https://

• Keep it concise and avoid using complex words or symbols.
• Avoid names that you have to spell out every time, or that people are likely to misspell when they search for you.

Choose a domain name that

• reflects your therapy practice,
• is easy to remember and give out on the phone, and
• is short enough to fit onto business cards or small print ads if you intend to use them.

Having said that, your domain name doesn’t have to be your business name. HypnotherapyInMytown might be better than FlowersHypnotherapy, especially if you provide primarily an in-person service because it highlights your location. My own therapy site domain is simply my name, debbiewaller.com.

This is partly a lack of imagination to come up with anything more exciting! But it’s also useful because if my service changes (if I add additional therapies, or move to a new town as I did a couple of years ago, for example) it’s still relevant. My training is yorkshirehypnotherapytraining.co.uk because that’s what people search for when they look for hypnotherapy training in my area.

It used to be considered “better” to have the .com domain. These days, that doesn’t really apply and having something that includes .uk might help Google place you geographically. Obviously, this is less important if you’re going to work internationally online.

Writing SEO-Friendly Website Content

At last, we come to it! Content refers to the blogs, articles, or sales pages you have on your site. The stuff clients look at when they visit you.

• When you come to write these, you should try to include as many of your keywords and phrases as possible whilst still writing in plain, easy-to-understand language that your clients will respond to. Write for people and don’t try to pack in as many SEO tricks as possible at the expense of readability.
• Break content up into short paragraphs and use subheadings so anyone skimming down the page can find what they need easily.
• Put the most important words and phrases in your page titles, headings, and subheadings – this helps to indicate to Google that they are important.
• Make sure your contact link is prominent at the top of the page as well as the bottom – and part way down as well if your page is more than a few paragraphs. Some clients may need educating about what you can offer, but others will have already made up their minds you can help and don’t want to wade through a long article before getting to the nitty-gritty of how to book.
• Update your content regularly. Many businesses set up a website then forget about it, or even go out of business and abandon it. Google wants to provide a good experience for searchers, and being sent to abandoned or out-of-date sites isn’t a good experience. Knowing that yours is being updated tells Google it is still in use and relevant. These changes don’t have to be huge, just log in now and then to reword a couple of sentences or change an image.
• Use AI if you like for ideas about developing content, but never use it exactly as it is. Tweak it to sound like you, so it appeals to the clients who will respond well to your approach. And run it through a plagiarism checker (there are free ones online) since there are some indications that AI can borrow material without crediting it.
• Videos are popular at present and placing them “above the fold” (i.e., so they can be seen when the page loads, without having to scroll down) is best. Short videos have the least impact on the loading time of your page.
• You can either upload videos to your web hosting account or host them on YouTube for free and embed them on your website. How you do this will depend on what system you are using to design your website, but there are usually help pages available to give you a guide. Sadly, covering all the available systems isn’t an option in an article of this length.

How to Write Web Page Meta Descriptions

We’re getting slightly technical now, and I don’t intend to go too far with it since this is a beginner’s guide. Your page description is the line or two of text that comes up under your site name on a search results page. It’s also what is likely to come up if you post your link on social media.

You can’t fully control what appears here, but you can stack the odds a bit.

If you don’t specify a description, then Google is likely to grab a few words from your page. As they cut off after about 155 characters this could be a part sentence which makes no sense by itself. It’s better to provide them with what you’d like to appear, even though they don’t always use it.

Somewhere in the system that you use to create your web pages, there will be a box called “Description”. Use the help pages to find it if it’s not obvious. Put a short snappy phrase or sentence in here that tells people what the page is about and encourages them to click on the link.

Should you Hire SEO Services?

This is purely a personal opinion, but I would never employ someone who cold-called me via text, phone, or email saying they could improve my SEO. If they’re not getting enough work from their own website, what makes them think they can get me enough work through mine?

If you decide to hire an expert to look over your site and improve your SEO, please find someone through recommendation. Facebook or Supervision groups are good places to find recommendations.

SEO is a complex process and can seem overwhelming. You can’t become an expert after reading one short article but you do have to be proactive in getting people to your website. The simple and basic approaches mentioned here will get you started on helping prospective clients find you more easily, and get your practice off the ground.

Further useful information

This article is about what to put on your website to encourage visitors to use it
https://hypnotherapytrainingblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/therapy-website-essentials.html

Disclaimer
The information and ideas shared on this blog are based on the author’s professional experience, research, and training. They are intended for educational purposes and to support reflection and professional development. Therapists should always apply their own professional judgment and consider the needs of individual clients when using any techniques or suggestions discussed here.
While every effort is made to ensure the information is accurate and helpful, no responsibility can be accepted for any loss, damage, or difficulties arising from the use or misuse of material contained in these articles.