Blogging for Therapists: 5 Tips For Blogging In 2024
Due to the current mental health crisis, therapy is a hot topic. People want to hear more from therapists than ever before, and for the entrepreneurial therapist, this is an opportunity to make a name for her, him, or themself.
Blogging is one of the oldest digital marketing strategies out there, and there hasn’t been a better time for therapists to blog than now. Although blogging has been around for decades, how you should blog has changed, especially since Google released their Helpful Content Update in August of 2022.
Google tweaks their algorithm daily, but every so often, they’ll release a major “core” algorithm update that shakes up the SEO landscape. The Helpful Content Update was one of those, and we’ve noticed that some blogging approaches are now working better than others.
So if you’re interested in blogging for therapists, you’re in the right place. I’m here to share my top, timely tips so you can run a therapy blog that will bring in traffic and convert aligned clients.
What’s changed about blogging for therapists?
Back in the good ole’ days of SEO, you could get away with some pretty crazy stuff. From sketchy link building strategies to stuffing keywords in low quality content, SEO professionals found it easy to “game the system” to get ranking on Google.
Over the decades, Google has gotten smarter. Now, instead of focusing on sneaky optimization techniques, we have to shift our focus by creating content that is “people-first.”
This might seem obvious to you–of course you want to create content that benefits people! But trust me, that wasn’t always the case.
To run a successful therapy blog today, fully settle into this concept of helpful, people-first content. If you do, Google will reward you.
X blogging for therapists tips
Increase your traffic and prep potential clients on your therapy blog with these tips.
1. Focus on quality over quantity
If I had to guess, I would reckon that you’re not a professional content creator. You likely don’t have multiple employees dedicated to editing videos, posting on social media, writing blog posts, and more, which means that you don’t have the luxury of creating tons of content every month.
But that’s not a bad thing.
In this podcast episode I recorded with Dr. Cassidy of Holding Space for Therapists, I discuss taking a “quality” approach to marketing and how that approach matches the private practice business model.
Let me explain.
About 80% of our SEO for therapists clients are private pay. Therapists make this choice for many reasons, but one of the top reasons is this: therapists want to decrease their caseloads to avoid burnout. By nature, this is a “quality” over “quantity” approach to your business. So it makes sense to take a “quality” approach to your marketing, right? But what does that look like?
A quality approach to marketing means creating less deliverables that take more time. Why? Because those deliverables are really, really good. Like mouth-wateringly, Helpful Content Update-y, sort of good.
Why not create one blog post per month that exceeds all of Google’s quality criteria rather than ten mediocre posts? One, well written blog post will stand the test of time. True story: blog posts I wrote years ago still bring in thousands of people to my website every quarter, making them a lasting marketing asset in my business.
TikToks and Instagram reels lose virality within days, but blogging is forever, baby.
2. Share your perspective
A pillar of the Helpful Content Update is a concept in SEO known as E-EAT, or experience, expertise, authority, and trust. Experience is the newest letter in this acronym, and its addition is great news for therapists!
You have experience in mental health. You’re the professional that Google dreams of: you have professional experience and expertise, and that will naturally come through in your writing. Talk about what works and doesn’t work for your clients. Show Google that you have expertise in a niche topic. Over time, those efforts will also help you prove those last two letters: authority and experience.
This concept of E-EAT is why the primary focus of our work with therapists is making them a subject matter expert in the eyes of Google. I won’t bore you with the more technical strategies we take to optimize for E-EAT, but much of this work is done through content creation.
When writing, talk about your experience. I guarantee that a Bustle copywriter making $50 per article can’t compete with your Masters degree and thousands of hours in session.
3. Choose people-centric topics
Since most aspiring bloggers don’t know where to start, they write about things that interest them.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the correct approach if you want a blog that people can find.
Instead, choose topics that interest potential clients, i.e., topics based on your clients’ questions, thoughts, feelings, and symptoms. To elaborate…
What questions do clients ask you in session?
What sorts of thoughts plague your clients?
What sorts of feelings do your clients grapple with and why?
What are some of the symptoms that brought them to therapy in the first place?
Asking yourself these questions is an excellent start to generating topics, but there’s a more efficient way to identify people-centric topics: keyword research!
Keywords are the words or phrases that people enter into Google; they can be anything from “coffee shop near me” to “Kim Kardashian’s net worth.” We use keyword research tools to check the amount of times people are using those keywords. So instead of guessing, we can verify what questions your potential clients have and how often they’re searched.
Although I recommend Ahrefs, you can use free or low cost keyword research tools like Answer The Public, Surfer SEO’s Keyword Surfer Google Chrome extension, Scout Suggest, and more.
4. Structure for scannability
Does anyone really read anymore?
Don’t count on website visitors to fully read your content. That’s pretty depressing when, according to a study from Orbit Media, bloggers spend just over four hours on one blog post 😩 But that’s our reality.
Cater to your audience’s low attention span by making your content scannable. Use LOTS of headings, short paragraphs (even one sentence per paragraph is fine), short sentences, lists, quote blocks, etc. to chunk up your content so readers can navigate to the information they need the most.
On top of that, avoid jargon. In fact, write at a 6th to 8th grade reading level. Do you need help simplifying your writing? Try the Hemingway App–this is a favorite of mine.
5. Add content that isn’t text
Blogging is a primarily a text-based medium, but you can add lots of fun stuff to a blog post.
Embed videos, link to podcasts, and maybe even try your hand at some structured data (like a table displaying interesting statistics) using ChatGPT. Just ask it to “make a table” and list out the data! Google loves this kind of content, plus, visual/audio formats are sometimes preferred by website visitors.
Always remember that your goal is quality. Make your content bookmarkable, shareable, and bingeable. When you hit publish, you should feel confident that you put together one of the best resources out there for a given topic, and that often involves resources beyond text.
Ready to start blogging for your therapy practice?
There are plenty of ways to create content for your blog.
We offer fully written pieces or a “done-with-you” approach to content using content briefs. Get access to our Investment Guide for more information on our blogging services.
