A practice page with no person on it
Clients choose a practitioner. An anonymous practice site loses to a directory profile with a photograph and a paragraph.
Guide
Local SEO for therapists
Therapy is chosen differently from every other service in local search. Somebody looking for a therapist is usually anxious about the search itself, is reading to decide whether they can bear to make the call, and will choose a person rather than a practice. That makes the therapist’s own page the most important page on the site by a distance.
8 steps
Free to read, in the order it pays to do it. Nothing to sign up for and nothing to download.
The competition is directories. Psychology Today and its equivalents hold a profile for almost every practitioner and they rank for almost every search. The way past them is not to out-write them on generic content; it is to be findable on the two things they flatten: the specific modality you practise and the specific difficulty the client is living with.
Teletherapy complicates the geography in a way it does not for any other local trade, and it is worth being deliberate about.
What therapists are actually competing for
These are the shapes the searches take. The words in brackets are whatever the searcher puts there, which is usually a town, a neighbourhood or a brand.
- therapist near me
- cbt therapist [city]
- emdr therapy for trauma near me
- therapist that takes [insurance]
- online therapy [state]
- anxiety counselling [town]
The work, in the order it pays to do it
- 1
Build a page per modality you actually practise
CBT, EMDR, ACT, psychodynamic, couples, family. These are searched by name by people who have already read about them and decided, which makes them the highest-intent searches in the field.
- 2
Build a page per presenting difficulty too
Anxiety, trauma, grief, burnout, relationships. Somebody searching their difficulty is earlier in the decision than somebody searching a modality, and reaching them first matters more here than in most trades.
- 3
Make the practitioner page the centre of the site
Who you are, how you work, what a first session is like, your training and registration. Clients pick a person. The directories have a paragraph; you can have a page.
- 4
Be explicit about fees and insurance
Whether you take insurance, which plans, whether you offer a sliding scale, what a session costs to the client. This is the single most common reason a prospective client closes the tab, and directories usually get it wrong or leave it blank.
- 5
Separate in-person from online clearly
Teletherapy is limited by where you are licensed, not by how far somebody will drive. Say which jurisdictions you can see clients in online and which locations you see in person, because conflating them wastes enquiries on both sides.
- 6
Set up the profile carefully, or deliberately not at all
If you practise from home, hide the address and set a service area, or consider whether a profile is appropriate at all. This is the one trade where a visible address can be a safeguarding problem rather than a ranking one.
- 7
Handle reviews with the confidentiality they need
Many professional bodies restrict soliciting client testimonials entirely. Where they are allowed, never confirm somebody is a client in a reply. Where they are not, build trust through the writing instead.
- 8
Write the "what happens in a first session" page
It is the fear that stops people booking. Answering it plainly converts better than anything else on a therapy site and is almost never written.
What usually goes wrong
No fee information at all
The most common reason a prospective client leaves without enquiring, and directories rarely fill the gap correctly.
Online and in-person mixed together
Produces enquiries from people you are not licensed to see and misses the ones you are.
A home address on a public profile
A safeguarding issue before it is an SEO one. Hide it and use a service area.
How to tell whether it is working
Rankings are not the measure. These are, and all of them come from accounts in your own name rather than from a report you have to take on trust.
- Enquiries that name a modality or a difficulty, which tells you which pages are working
- Search Console impressions for modality terms, where the intent is highest
- Whether your own name now outranks your directory profile
- First sessions booked, split between online and in person
If you would rather not do it yourself
Everything above is work you can do without hiring anybody, and the profile half of it is worth doing whatever else you decide. If you want it done for you, this is the service that covers it, and we scope it on a call before anything starts.
Other guides
Questions about local SEO for therapists
Can a therapist outrank Psychology Today?
Not on generic terms. On the specific modality you practise, the difficulties you specialise in, and your own name, routinely. Those are where directories are thin and a real page is not.
Should I show my address?
Not if you practise from home. Hide it and set a service area, or consider whether a Business Profile is right at all. Safeguarding comes before visibility.
How does teletherapy change the SEO?
It widens your reach to wherever you are licensed rather than wherever people will travel, which usually means a state or country rather than a town. It needs its own page and its own clear statement of where you can practise.
Can I ask clients for reviews?
Check your professional body first, because many restrict it. Where it is not allowed, the writing on the site has to carry the trust instead, which is why the first session page matters so much.
Book a call with us
A 30-minute call in your working hours. Tell us what you sell and where, and we will tell you what we would do first and what it involves. Prefer email? Send your website through the form and the Passieon Team will reply within two working days.