Get found by the people already searching for a therapist.
Someone types “EMDR therapist near me”, or asks an assistant the same thing, and picks from the handful of names that come back. This is the work of making sure your practice is in that set: local and AI search results, a page for every specialty you treat, and a site search engines can actually read.
- Free 30-minute review
- No setup fee, no lock-in
- You keep everything
- Your practiceEMDR · Anxiety · Trauma
- Riverside Counseling GroupGeneral practice
- Northside Therapy AssociatesCouples · Family
Illustration of the local map pack. Not a client result or a guarantee.
The kind of search this work is aimed at
- emdr therapist near me
- couples counseling that takes bcbs
- therapist for postpartum anxiety
- adhd assessment adults near me
- trauma therapist accepting new clients
- online therapy in texas
- grief counselor near me
- child psychologist near me
- emdr therapist near me
- couples counseling that takes bcbs
- therapist for postpartum anxiety
- adhd assessment adults near me
- trauma therapist accepting new clients
- online therapy in texas
- grief counselor near me
- child psychologist near me
The situation
Directories bring clients.
They also set the terms.
Most private practices get the majority of their inbound inquiries from a handful of directories. That works, and there is no reason to walk away from it. The catch is that on a directory you appear next to twenty other clinicians on the same page, sorted by rules you do not control, and the visibility stops the month you stop paying.
Your own site is the one place where a search for your specialty in your city can land on a page that is only about you.
Most practices are better off running both. The point is that only one of these is an asset you own.
What I do
Five areas, worked in order of what moves first.
Not every practice needs all of it. The audit decides where to start.
Why this is a specialty
Therapy marketing has constraints general SEO ignores.
Four of them decide almost everything about how the work is run.
You cannot run on reviews
Most licensing boards and professional ethics codes restrict soliciting testimonials from current clients. Review generation is the first play in almost every local SEO playbook, and for you it is off the table. Credibility has to come from specialty depth, credentials, and professional affiliations instead.
Search language is not clinical language
Nobody searches for a treatment plan for generalized anxiety disorder. They search for help with worrying all the time. Ranking means writing the page around the phrase people type, then earning trust with the clinical substance once they are on it.
The intent is local, even when the query is not
Google treats most therapy searches as local, whether or not a city is typed. That means the map pack decides a lot of it, and the map pack is ranked on signals that have nothing to do with how good your website copy is.
It is health content, so accuracy is the constraint
Search engines apply extra scrutiny to health and wellbeing content, which is why it gets written properly rather than generated in bulk. Everything stays inside general psychoeducation, cites real sources, and avoids diagnosis, treatment advice, and outcome claims entirely.
The first ninety days
A three month roadmap, not an open-ended retainer.
The audit comes first and you keep the findings either way. After that the work moves in a fixed order: fix the foundation, cover the queries, then build authority.
Audit, then fix what is blocking everything else
The crawl and the baseline come first, so there is something to measure against later. Then the structural work: nothing published on a site search engines cannot read properly is worth publishing.
- Full crawl, Search Console and Business Profile access, ranking baseline
- Findings written up as a prioritized list you keep either way
- Indexation, headings, redirects, canonicals, and page speed
- MedicalBusiness and Person schema for the practice and each clinician
End of month 1Site fully indexable, baseline recorded, profile claimed
A page for everything you actually treat
With the structure sound, pages start earning rankings instead of leaking them. This is the month the site stops being a brochure and starts covering the queries people type.
- Specialty, modality, and population pages written and published
- Directory profiles and citations corrected across the aggregators
- Google Business Profile rebuilt, categories and services set, posts running
- Internal linking so the specialty pages support rather than compete
End of month 2Every specialty you treat has its own page, live and indexed
Compound it, then read the results
Pages exist; now they need weight behind them. Links, entity clarity, and the first honest read on what moved — three months is the earliest point where the numbers mean anything.
- Off-page work through associations, health directories, and local partners
- Entity and AI-search pass so assistants describe the practice correctly
- Grid rank tracking across the service area, not a single city average
- The first honest read on what moved, what did not, and what changes because of it
End of month 3First real movement on tracked terms, with the data to prove it
The visibility review is free and takes thirty minutes. You leave with the prioritized list whether or not you hire me.
Book the reviewPricing
Three packages. Cheaper if you commit.
Quarterly saves 20%, annual saves 40%
Online Visibility Package
$197per month
Billed monthly
For therapists without a location: telehealth, online-only, or a shared room
- Technical and on-page SEO
- AI search and GEO
- Directories and citations
- Articles written and published
Local Visibility Package
$497per month
Billed monthly
For therapists with a location competing in a city or metro area
- Everything in Online Visibility
- Google Business Profile management
- Backlinks and reputation work
- Grid local rank tracking
Authority Package
$997per month
Billed monthly
For practices that want the fullest version of this, new website included
- Everything in Local Visibility
- New website built and hosted
- Multi-location management
- Market and competitor intelligence
Are you a group practice?
Past a handful of clinicians or locations, the work gets scoped and quoted against your practice rather than a package.
Not sure which one fits? That is what the review is for. I will tell you the smallest package that would actually move your practice.
Book a free visibility reviewFit
This is not right for every practice.
Worth reading before you book, so neither of us spends the call finding out.
A good fit if
- You run a licensed private practice, from an office or entirely online, and take new clients
- You have specialties you would rather be known for than general talk therapy
- You already get referrals from directories and want an asset you own
- You want the whole thing handled rather than a draft queue to work through
Probably not if
- You want a guaranteed number-one ranking by a specific date
- You want to write and approve every page yourself and just need a strategy document
- You are looking for a one-off project rather than ongoing work
- You need the inquiries to move inside a month, before any of this compounds
You pick the term
Monthly with thirty days' notice, or commit to a quarter for twenty percent off and a year for forty percent off. Nothing to sign beyond a scope of work.
You keep everything
Pages, profile, schema, documentation, and access. It all stays with you when the work ends.
No ranking promises
Nobody can guarantee a position, and anyone who does is guessing. You get the reporting to judge it yourself.
Handled end to end
Pages get written, published, and maintained without needing your sign-off on each one. Ask for review rights at any point and it switches over.
Questions
The ones that come up first.
Does AI search actually matter yet?+
It matters enough to build for, not enough to panic about. People are increasingly asking an assistant for a therapist rather than typing it into a search box, and those tools answer by summarizing sources instead of listing links. The practical work of being one of those sources is mostly the same work that makes you rank normally: clear structure, consistent facts about your practice, and unambiguous specialty pages. That is why it is in every package rather than sold as an add-on. Anyone quoting you a precise share of therapy searches now happening in AI is making it up.
Can you use client testimonials?+
No, and the restriction is not mine — it is in the ethics codes. APA Standard 5.05, ACA C.3.b, and NASW 4.07 all bar soliciting testimonials from current clients, and the ACA names former clients in the same breath. So the review-generation play that general local SEO agencies lead with is off the table before we start. Credibility gets built through specialty depth, credentials, professional affiliations, and clear writing instead.
I already get clients from Psychology Today. Why bother?+
Directories work, and there is no reason to drop them. The issue is that you are renting that visibility and competing with everyone else in the listing on the same page. Your own site is the one asset where you set the terms. Most practices are better off running both.
Do you write about clinical topics?+
Yes, and I publish them too. This is a done-for-you arrangement: topics, drafting, editing, and publishing all happen here, so nothing sits in your inbox waiting on you. Content stays inside general psychoeducation — no diagnosis, no treatment advice, no claims about outcomes — and it is built from your own pages and how you already describe your work. If you would rather sign off on everything, or just on certain topics, say so at the start and it runs that way instead. Either way you can pull or change anything at any time.
Start with the audit. Decide after.
Thirty minutes, no pitch deck. I look at where your practice currently ranks, who is above you, and whether the site has anything structurally in the way.