SEO For Therapists, Coaches & Practitioners

 What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

• SEO helps you discover the search terms typed into google, by people who might be your ideal clients.
• Once you have discovered those search terms (called “keywords”) you use SEO to integrate the keywords into your website, (or your Google Business Page, therapy listings, hashtags on social media or any other form of digital content).
• SEO helps ensure your website shows up in Google searches, made by people who are looking for what you offer.

How Can SEO Help Me Grow My Therapy Business?

I have been a practitioner offering somatic therapies and teachings to individuals and groups, since 2008. In 2019 I gained additional qualifications and so built a whole new website True Self Systems. In 2020 – what with the small thing of a large pandemic – my income crashed right back to just about zero. But I kept on writing optimised articles and blog posts for my website and steadily grew my therapy business using ONLY search engine optimisation (and recommendations of course, because I am good at what I do!).

Since July 2023 I have been a fully booked therapist with a large waiting list, working with the clients whom I can best serve.

DIY search engine optimisation takes time to work: I believe this means your business grows at a rate that is sustainable for your nervous system too. SEO can enable your client base grow in line with your growing confidence, which will also feed into creating increasingly great content.

SEO can help you grow your therapy or practitioner business if:

• You are (or are becoming) a good practitioner with the relevant skills needed for your offering – obvious but worth stating!
• You are willing and able to create good optimised digital content: this could be writing, videos or pictures.
• You have enough computer skills to navigate the internet: if you regularly use Instagram or any other online platforms, you are about 60% of the way to being skilled enough.
• You are comfortable with consistent, slow, steady, sustainable effort (and growth).
• You are able to sustain yourself through early days of low and fluctuating client numbers

How fast your business grows will depend upon how much time you devote to your SEO, how good your content is and how many people are searching Google for the kind of services that you offer.

SEO For Beginners: Who is This Course Suitable For?

This course might be suitable for anyone who searches on Google for the following:

• SEO for beginners
• How to do SEO step by step
• What is SEO?
• How to do SEO yourself
• SEO for therapists
• Digital marketing for therapists
• Websites for therapists or coaches
• Advertising for therapists
• SEO for small businesses
• SEO for artists

While the content is primarily directed at therapists, coaches and practitioners, it can be applied to the SEO needs of any small business. You can apply the SEO lessons to any of the following:

• Building a new website (I include brief information on choosing a web building platform, I do not teach HOW to use those platforms)
• Adding optimised pages or blog posts to an existing website
• Products you have already made but that are not selling (e.g. a video course!)
• A Google My Business page
• Your therapy listings
• Your social media postings (I do not teach social media marketing as I don’t use it)

You might NOT benefit from SEO if:

• You are already an established practitioner with a good word of mouth following.
• You ONLY serve a small niche, geographically local client base – e.g. local parents of infants under 2 – in which case it can be better to use posters in local cafes and a Meetup group.
• You struggle to apply yourself consistently to tasks that need tending to over long durations – you don’t do SEO once, it is an ongoing task like keeping accounts.
• If you would find it hard to create written content, though videos or other kind of imagery might be an option.

DIY SEO For Therapists, Coaches and Practitioners

The video course DIY SEO For Therapists, Coaches & Practitioners is part of the subscription channel True Self TV. A monthly subscription is around $10 (True Self TV is UK based, it is hosted on Vimeo OTT a US platform). You can also purchase an annual subscription to get three months for free. You can unsubscribe anytime, we care about data privacy so here is the channel privacy policy.

The channel also contains a whole host of somatic therapy practices, in case your nervous system needs some soothing to help you tackle the marketing for your therapy business! To discover more about the course you can either watch the trailer below, follow the link in the blue button to True Self TV to subscribe, or else stay on this page to find out more specifically what the course contains.

DIY SEO For Therapists, Coaches and Practitioners

The course currently contains 12 episodes and nearly 4 hours of video lessons. More content is added along the way as questions come in from subscribers, or changes occur on the internet (e.g. Google changes the algorhythms that impact search engine optimisation). I do my best to keep content up to date but please note: this course was launched in 2024 and I cannot guarantee at the time of purchase, that all of the teaching content will be 100% accurate to current conditions.

Course Content In Detail:

What Is SEO and Does My Therapy or Coaching Business Need It?

* Three reasons why your business might benefit from search engine optimisation.
* How SEO can help move your website to the centre of a bustling market place.
* Find out when you DON’T need search engine optimisation, so that you don’t waste your time doing something you don’t need to do!

Use SEO To Unite What You Do Best with Those Whom You Best Serve.

* Bringing grounding and embodiment to your search engine optimisation.
* Finding an embodied sense of the people whom you can best serve.
* The internet as a hive mind containing data on our collective concerns.
* Demo of an exercise to help you stand in the shoes of the people whom you can best serve.

A Guided Exercise To Find The Search Terms Unique To Your Therapy Practice.

* Grounding into your own body and breath.
* Your ideal client appear before you.
* Standing in their shoes and finding out what the questions that they have.
* Returning to your own shoes and noting down what you learned to inform your keyword research.

Three Types of SEO Keyword and Where To Use Them

* Learn the difference between head terms, mid terms and long tail keywords.
* Where to begin your SEO strategy.
* The difference between pages and posts.
* Identifying what does your web visitor want: to buy something or information?
* Generating content tailored to the people whom you can best serve – google is a confessional!

How to Do Keyword Research and Reaching Your Ideal Client

* Basic keyword research for free.
* Keyword research using keywords everywhere.
* Tracking trends in your professional field using Keywords Everywhere.
* Identifying keyword terms for new or niche therapies that are not well known yet.

Keywords Everywhere – Update

* New monthly subscription fees for Keywords Everywhere.
* How to use Keywords Everywhere for Tantra massage practitioners (or anyone selling potentially “restricted” items or services e.g. CBD oil).

Structure Your New Therapy Website Using SEO.

* Let each page or post on your website, answer questions asked by the people whom you can best serve.

How to Optimise Your Content.

In this video we get into the nuts and bolts of how you actually optimise your web content:

* How to optimise a web page.
* Optimise your Google Business Page.
* The importance optimising Google maps.
* Optimise your content on other websites (e.g. Eventbrite, Meetup).

Optimising New vs Existing Websites.

* Some notes to help you, if you have an existing website which you want to optimise.
* Some notes about which web-builder to choose, if you are making a new website.

Google My Business and Google Search Console

* Some notes on using Google products: Google my Business and Search Console. (An overview, detailed instructions are beyond the scope of this introductory course).

Getting Help!

A few ideas about where to get help from when you (inevitably) get stuck!:

* Using recommendations for help.
* Don’t panic!
* Using the platform Fiverr to get help.