Local SEO For Therapists: Read This First!

Forget everything you think you know about SEO.

It’s probably not helping.

SEO is complicated. The rules change daily. It’s highly technical. And there’s so much information out there it’s hard to tell what really works.

The biggest mistake I see therapists making is that they hear a few random tips about a specific part of local SEO and think they “get it”.

They don’t.

It’s good to know tactics, but only after you understand how they fit into the big picture because otherwise you’ll create an online footprint for your practice that misses key ingredients Google is looking for.

That’s why I put together this high-level overview of local search ranking factors, so you can understand how it all fits together and avoid focusing too much on the wrong elements of SEO.

NOTE: This article is about LOCAL SEO for therapists to rank better on Google Maps and searches that show local businesses. If you’re trying to rank nationally this content does not apply.


Overall Local Search Ranking Factors:

• Therapy Website (19%) - I think you know what this is.
• Original Content (17%) - Blog posts or articles.
• Inbound Links (16%) – The links on other websites that point to your website.
• Citations (14%) – Mentions of your practice's name, address, and/or phone number on other websites
• Google Profile (13%) – The information Google has on your My Business, Google+, or Google Places profile.
• Reviews (8%) – When people write online reviews about your practice on Google, Yelp, etc.
• Social (5%) – How big and active is your social network?
• User Behavior (4%) – How do Google users interact with your website and your practice’s listing in search results.
• Personalization (4%) – The patterns and preferences of any individual searcher using Google.

Where Does This Data Come From?
Each year, one of the most-trusted SEO companies (Moz) runs a survey where they ask 30+ of the most respected experts in Local SEO what gets a local business like your practice higher in the search results.

Google will never tell us exactly how they rank websites so this is pretty much the closest we can come to the real answer.

Your Practice Website - 19%
First and foremost, your website is a place for Google to confirm that the information they have about your business is accurate. Google wants your website to match what they know about your business name, location, phone number, products & services you specialize in.

Here’s a few examples of things to look for with your practice’s website:

• Include your practice’s city, and state prominently throughout the site in many different locations and in page titles. Don’t over do it!
• Make sure your practice contact information is included frequently on the site. It should match the address Google has for you.
• Include the therapy specialties and insurance carriers you accept for somewhere on your site. If your site doesn’t say “depression for adults” somewhere, why would Google show your site when someone searches for “depression for adults”?

Original Content - 17%
The most important thing any practice can do is to create unique content for your website and social media outlets.  Publishing an original blog post on your website every month with keyword-rich text, internal website links, and custom branded graphics is a great way for google to find you.

Here are a few things to consider while writing content:

• Gear your articles to keywords that you are targeting but do not stuff the article full of those keywords.
• Create short paragraphs with catchy headings that can be easily scanned by the reader.
• Take time and develop a great title that includes your keywords you are targeting.
• Finally, create great content that your user will enjoy and share!

Inbound Links – 16%
Inbound links are text or image links on other websites (not your own) that link to your site. Google looks at each link from another website to yours as a “vote” of quality for your site. It’s not easy getting links to your site – that’s exactly the point.

Here’s three things to know about inbound links to your website:

• Quality of inbound links is much more important than quantity of inbound links.
• Links from local websites will help you more for local search
• Avoid cheap overseas “link-building” services. The type of links they build will not help you in the long run.

Citations - 14%
“Citations” is SEO-speak for “mentions”, or “references to”. A citation is a mention of your practice’s name, phone number, and/or address on another website. Google assumes that the most popular local businesses will be mentioned the most across the web and each time they see your information the more comfortable they feel giving it to their users.

Here’s three things to pay attention to with your agency’s citations:

• Consistency is important – Try to use the EXACT business name, phone number, and address everywhere you list your practice online.
• If your practice moved and there are instances of your old contact information online, removing and correcting those instances will help SEO.
• Keeping business listings consistent can be tricky but there are services like Yext or our SEO service that can help.

Google Profile – 13%
Over the years it’s been called many things, Google Places, Google+ Local, Google My Business. They’re all the same thing – a profile that Google sets up for every business on earth. Google allows you to “claim” this profile to confirm, correct, and provide additional information about your business and the information you provide them can impact search rankings.

Here’s a few things to pay attention to:

• Use the same business contact information (name, address, phone) you use everywhere else on the internet.
• Provide as much detail as possible for every question they allow you to answer about your practice.
• Pay careful attention to choose the right categories.

Online Reviews – 7%
Google looks at the online reviews people give you as an indication of both the popularity of your practice and the quality of service.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Don’t make your own fake reviews or pay someone else to, it can get your practice blacklisted on Google.
• If you don’t ask your clients or providers for reviews, you’ll never get reviews.
• Don’t ask clients or providers to write reviews using a computer in your practice because it looks fake to Google.

Social - 6%
Seems to makes sense that a big and popular local business would have more Google+ followers and Facebook fans, right? Many SEO experts believe larger and more active social network accounts will help your local search rankings.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Don’t buy likes, fans, followers, etc.
• Don’t do social just because it’s good for SEO. Do it because you want to connect with local clients in a cheap and effective way and if there’s an SEO benefit then great.

User Behavior – 4%
There is good proof that Google watches how people interact with your website and your practice’s listing in their search results to understand your  popularity and the quality of your website. Google wants their top search results to be popular businesses with accurate contact information and a user-friendly website.

Here are some of the things SEO experts believe Google looks at:

• How many people search for driving directions to your practice
• When people click on the link to visit your practice’s website, do they often come right back and click on another practice?
• You don’t need the best website on earth, but if it’s hard to use, ugly, or looks really old people are going to hit the back button when they see it and Google will stop showing it.

Search Results Personalization – 4%
This refers to the fact that every Google search delivers a slightly different result based on the search history of the person doing the search.

For example, since you probably visit your own website a lot more than other local therapists’ sites Google will show it higher in the search results on your computer than for anyone else doing the exact same search.

This one’s pretty hard to do much about, so I think I’ll leave it at the explanation.

Wrap Up
I didn’t write this article to be everything you need to know for SEO for therapists – It’s just scratching the surface.

The key thing is to understand  that it’s a COMBINATION of factors both on and off your website. In fact, if your online profile is too strong on any of these individual factors it’ll probably raise some flags to Google.

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