How to Write Engaging Content for Your Private Practice Website to Boost SEO

Does your website content hook your visitors right from the get-go? Do they seek one answer but find it hard to leave after reading what you have to say? Do they “stick” to your site as your words powerfully capture their attention? 

Or do they flee almost immediately? 

Your content determines whether visitors will absorb your website. Whether they’ll consume, stay, and look around. Or not.  

Writing content that engages your audience is vital to keep visitors on your website longer. As they get to know you, so to speak, they’ll gain value, naturally build rapport, and be more likely to develop the trust and attraction that leads to contact or converts them into a client. 

Engaging content also boosts your search rankings. The search engines track how long people stay on your site and how often they return. These ticks — “votes” — support the conclusion that your site is high quality. These votes boost your rankings. 

So, how do you create content that woos visitors and search engines? 

Here are our top 5 tips. 

Understand Your Ideal Clients and Their Needs 

Where attention spans are fleeting — like on the Net — capturing interest has become an art form. A necessary one. But you have a distinct advantage. You know your tribe — your current and potential clients — better than most. 

But how do you dive deeper? 

How can you more fully understand the truth of their experience? 

As a therapist, you regularly ask your clients how they feel. You’ve heard answers hundreds, even thousands, of times. So you know, at least in general terms, how someone might experience a mental illness or challenging situation. It’s time to get specific. 

Become very present. Take in precisely what your clients say, how they shift in their bodies, and what relief or discomfort particular insights or aha moments provide. Looks for subtle and obvious clues and statements. Learn their challenges, triggers, and needs. 

Cement your understanding of how your ideal clients think, including: 

• Their pain points
• The mental traps that imprison them
• Why freeing themselves can be hard
• Precise and powerful language used to describe their experiences (the exact words and phrases they use)
• What questions they have (especially those they might feel ashamed or reticent to ask)
• The reasons why some people succeed in therapy while others find progress difficult
• Commonly dished out advice that is doomed to fail
• What works and what doesn’t 

You can also use online research as your ally. Explore your niche or niches in online forums, social media groups, or surveys that gather insights directly from your ideal clients.  

This information gives you a unique, informed way to “speak” to visitors. And being unique is critical for successful search engine optimization (SEO). As reported in Search Engine Journal, to get ranked, content should be “useful, unique, compelling, or high-quality.” 

Why? 

To be blunt, if you don’t add value to the conversation, there is no benefit to the search engines in promoting your site. 

So, use your unique wisdom when you create your content. By doing so, you’ll create pieces and pages that resonate deeply. Visitors will authentically feel like, finally, someone gets them! This will keep visitors engaged and hungry for more. 

This, in turn, will help search engines fall in love with your site. 

Create Content that Addresses Your Audience’s Pain Points and Questions 

It’s easy to create content aimed at speaking to the masses. Generalized pieces that share sanitized information and advice. This is not what you want! 

To engage your audience — to capture and hold their attention — you must address their pain points and answer their burning questions. 

By providing solutions to their challenges, your content will resonate and establish a deep connection with your audience. 

Like a great page-turner, people will read from top to bottom to extract the information. If you’ve linked between pages on your site, this will engage readers and they’ll flip from one to another. They’ll be more likely to bookmark your site and return. 

These behaviors are great for building a committed readership. They also tell the search engines that your site is the veritable bee’s knees. So, this provides SEO benefits, too. 

See, the search engines rely on searchers for their business model. They need people to return again and again. Google. Bing. Brave. We each have a favorite we use by default.

After someone types their keyword phrase, a search engine’s algorithm presents a results list. The engine’s job is simple: to provide searchers with the best possible results. In other words, to help people find what they need and quickly. 

Searches will feel satisfied when presented with a list of websites that best answer their query. Keeping searchers happy encourages loyalty to a particular engine. This makes their biz model work. 

So, when you provide great information that directly answers a searcher’s query, the search engines reward you. They push you up their results list (because you’re helping build their brand). 

Incorporate Keywords and Metadata to Boost SEO 

Keywords and metadata? 

If your mind is spinning, that’s okay. Let’s explain what these terms mean. 

Keywords and phrases are the specific words or phrases people use when searching for information on a search engine. They’re what people are looking for. 

By creating content that answers the questions posed by relevant keywords and incorporating these words and terms into that content, you increase the chance that your page and site will appear in search engine results for those specific queries. 

This seems like a natural process. After all, it’s hard to write about depression without mentioning the word, depression. But it would be almost impossible for you to rank for such a popular term. Instead, you might include long-tail keywords — specific, longer keyword phrases — like “therapist for depression,” “how to treat depression naturally,” or “why does depression happen in children.” 

You can also select keywords that boost your local SEO success. If you have a face-to-face practice, this is a great idea! To learn more about using keywords to achieve this goal, check out the Implement Local SEO Strategies to Attract Local Clients section of another of our SEO-focused articles. 

This raises a question: How can you find keywords or phrases that attract visitors? 

There are a variety of ways. Some are intuitive, others research-based. Here are 7 approaches; a mix is best. 

1. Understand your ideal client: By identifying their needs, interests, and (likely) search behavior, you’ll come up with keyword ideas.
2. Brainstorm relevant topics: List topics linked to your biz and expertise. Consider common questions you’re asked in practice, phrases you hear people use, and conditions or challenges your clients experience.
3. Use keyword research tools: Use free or paid keyword research tools. Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs, for example. These tools provide valuable data on search volume, competition, and related keywords. Enter your topics or seed keywords into these tools to generate a list of potential keywords.
4. Analyze keyword metrics: Review the metrics provided by the keyword research tools to assess the potential value of each keyword. Look for keywords with a healthy search volume and relatively low competition. Consider long-tail keywords that are more targeted and less competitive.
5. Consider “user intent”: User intent refers to the intent behind each keyword searched. Are searchers seeking to book a consultation, to find information, or to locate specific solutions? Create action-oriented content by using keywords that are engaging to readers — like learning about an answer or booking a consultation — can boost engagement and practice success.
6. Analyze competition: Assess competition for each keyword. Look at the websites that rank for particular keywords and assess their authority and content quality. Unless you have a well-established and high-ranking site, you’ll find competing against the most prominent players hard. Consider targeting keywords with less intense competition to improve your ranking chances. Again, ranking for the keyword “depression” will be impossible. But ranking for “depression therapist Hood River, Oregon” is achievable.
7. Refine and expand your keyword list: Based on your analysis, refine your list by selecting the most relevant and valuable keywords. Expand your list by considering variations, synonyms, and related terms. 

Once your keyword (or keywords) is chosen, naturally incorporate these into your website’s content, including in your headings, subheadings, and body text. This signals to search engines that your website is a valuable resource for searchers seeking information related to those keywords.

Also, keep an eye on trends, changes to search behavior, and evolving topics in the therapy field, and continually update and optimize your keyword strategy.

Tip:

1. Always test and optimize. 
2. Monitor the performance of your keywords using your chosen analytics tools. 
3. Make adjustments as needed. 

Next is metadata. 

Metadata is data about data. It helps the search engines work out what your site and its pages are about. 

Meta titles and meta descriptions summarize your web page’s content. These elements appear in search engine results pages (SERPs) and are crucial in convincing searchers to click on your links. 

For example, let’s look at hypothetical meta elements for content about the causes, symptoms, and treatment for depression in teens. 

• Meta Title: Teen Depression: Understanding Causes, Symptoms & Treatment
• Meta Description: The in-depth guide on teenage depression: causes, signs, effects. Discover resources, treatment options & how to support your struggling teen. 

Be succinct. Search engines offer limited space for listing information. Aim for up to 60 characters in your meta title and up to 160 characters in your meta description. 

Crafting compelling meta titles and descriptions with relevant keywords increases the likelihood of searchers clicking through to your site. Again, this action tells the search engines that someone has “voted” for your site. When they read your high-quality content and stay on your site for longer, this also acts as a vote. When they visit additional pages on your site, this acts as a further vote. Each vote serves to improve your SEO results. 

By incorporating keywords and optimizing your metadata, you improve the visibility and discoverability of your website. When search engines recognize the relevance and value of your content (including because of your visitors’ actions), they are more likely to rank your pages prominently in search results, driving organic traffic to your site. 

Craft Headlines and Subheadings that Grab Your Audience’s Attention 

Do your headlines halt people in their tracks? 

Do they persuade searchers to stop what they’re doing and click on and view your content? 

If not, there’s room for improvement. 

Crafting compelling headlines and subheadings is the first step to success. Just like an attention-grabbing headline on a magazine cover, if it doesn’t hook attention, it’s not achieving its aim: eyeballs.

Because attention is a crucial aspect of SEO — because it directly influences the searcher’s experience and search engine rankings factors like the votes we just talked about — you need to invest time and effort here. 

Your headlines and subheadings: 

•  help people and the algorithms assess the relevance of your content
• pique the interest of searchers; your potential visitors
• lead to higher click-through rates (CTR), which positively signal the search engines about the relevance and quality of your content
• should contain relevant keywords that help search engines understand what your content is about, improving your chances of ranking for those keywords
• increase the share-ability of your content on social media platforms, leading to more backlinks, which are a critical ranking factor for the search engines 

Your subheadings can improve readability, making it easier for users to scan your content and find the information they want. This can lead to increased time on the page and lower bounce rates (when visitors “bounce” away from your site after visiting a single page), both of which are positive signals to the search engines. 

Tip: If you’re struggling to create headlines that convert, try AmInstitute’s headline analyzer.

Use Impactful, Unique Visuals to Boost Engagement 

While we’ve been talking about content for SEO in terms of words, visuals are also important. Diagrams, images, infographics, and videos make content more engaging, understandable, and shareable. 

Quality visuals increase visitors’ time on your site because they boost engagement. They draw people in, encouraging them to continue exploring your content. 

Visuals can reduce bounce rates. Visitors who find your content visually appealing and informative are less likely to leave your site in a rush. 

High-quality visuals can also be a powerful tool for attracting backlinks, as other sites may link to your content because of its unique, informative visuals. 

Search engines also consider image optimization as a ranking factor. Properly tagged and described images can appear in image search results, providing additional avenues for site traffic. 

By creating impactful visuals that describe your content uniquely, you’ll stand out from the crowd and make a statement, one that can attract and capture attention. 

Quality visuals, then, are an essential tool to have in your engagement and SEO toolkits. 

The engaging SEO takeaway 

Creating engaging content and successful search engine optimization might feel like an overwhelming and unachievable goal. And, yes, it is a detailed field. But they fit hand in glove. 

And remember, most therapists aren’t experts in either field. Nor do they have the financial resources to pay for a content creation process and SEO teams. Often, they don’t dedicate time to learn how to write engaging content. So, if you can master the foundations of writing interesting content correctly, you can move the needle. You can boost your engagement, rankings, and success. 

With this in mind, focus on these five content marketing strategy foundations: understand your ideal clients and their needs, create engaging content that addresses your audience’s pain points and questions, incorporate keywords and metadata to boost SEO, craft headlines and subheadings that grab your audience’s attention, and use impactful, unique visual elements to promote engagement.  

As well as pleasing the search engines, you’ll create valuable content for real, live people; people searching for insights, answers, and help. 

About Jocelyn Van Saun

Jocelyn is a Marketing Manager at Brighter Vision. When she's not creating and sharing content for our network of therapists, she loves spending time outdoors - rock climbing, trail running, hiking, camping, mountain biking, and skiing!