Keyword research is the first step for a strong therapy website SEO campaign. A detailed keyword research is the core foundation of a good SEO marketing campaign. Keyword research is also the foundation of a good On-page SEO of a therapist website. Without a good keyword research, you minimize your chances of ranking in search engines. On the other hand, right keyword research can help you gain organic visibility.
Through this post, you will get to know why keyword research is the foundation of a powerful therapy website SEO campaign, how to do and find keywords. So let’s start.
What are keywords?
A keyword or keyphrase is a word or a number of words which is used to search a query in search engines. These are the terms which are used by a user to get to a particular information. For example: therapist in Houston is a keyword. A keyword is the first step a user takes to start it’s online research.
Keywords are of many types. They are mainly categorized based on the search intent of the user. Overall there are 6 core type of keywords. These are information, navigational, commercial, branded, transactional, and local.
Along with that, keywords can also be divided into short-tail and long-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are generally terms which are searched in high volume like Therapy, Mental Games, etc. whereas long-tail keywords are those terms which are longer in length (4 words and above) and have less search volumes.
One major difference between short-tail and long-tail keywords is that long-tail keywords attract targeted audience leading to higher conversion rate.
Types of keyword
As I mentioned above there are 6 type of keywords, let’s look at each one of them one-by-one.
1- Informational
Informational keywords are those keywords which a user use to search informational content. What, why, where, etc. come under informational keywords. The intent of the searcher while using these terms is to find information. These type of keywords are used to create blog posts. Informational keywords can be placed in the long-tail keywords category.
By the very definition it is clear that these keywords help find information. Example for a therapist niche.
1 – Why I am feeling stressed out?
2 – How to keep my relationship going?
3 – Why I don’t feel going to work everyday?
These keywords generally ends with a question. All such type of keywords which ends in a question are all categorized into informational keywords.
2- Navigational
Navigational keywords are those keywords which are used by the user to navigate to a particular page or information. Login pages like facebook login, signup pages like Gmail.com signup are all examples of navigational keywords. Here the intent of the searcher is to navigate directly to a particular page.
3 – Commercial
Commercial keywords are those keywords which a user use to find information about a specific product or service. Example of such keywords are best therapist in New York, comparison keywords like therapist vs. psychologist, xyz therapy clinic review, etc. The intent of the searcher is to find the best product or service before making the final purchase.
4 – Transactional
Transactional keywords are those terms which a user use to do a transaction. The user already has the information about the product or service and want’s to complete a transaction. Examples of such terms are: buy, for sale, etc.
5 – Branded
Branded keywords are those keywords which a user use to search for a brand directly. The user already knows about the brand but search it on the search engine to reach its pages. Examples of branded keywords are website names like Facebook, Therapist Rise, Jordan shoes, etc. In these type of keywords brand name or its variation is included in the search term.
6 – Local
Local keywords are those keywords which a user use to find a product or service locally. The usually have a city, state included in the term. Example, therapy clinic Phoenix, Phoenix therapy clinic, etc. The intent of the searcher is to find local websites in the area.
How keywords help in Therapist SEO?
As you read above that keywords are phrases that a user use to search for information on search engines. Having these keywords on your private practice therapy website will help in driving more clicks to your website. Also, using the keywords, search engines crawlers will be able to identify your page context easily.
Adding keywords and related terms can help gain visibility for multiple terms in search engines. When you optimize your counselling website around those relevant keywords there are high chances that you drive clicks to your website. Adding keywords to backlinks as anchor text also help search engines to better understand the context of the page.
What is keyword research in SEO?
Keyword research is the process by which those terms which users are using to find information related to therapy are searched. Keyword research helps to find the market demand of a particular query. There are various keyword research tools and methods that are applied to perform keyword research.
Keyword research helps to find the keywords which a potential user is searching for. Doing keyword research helps in determining if there are enough searches for a particular keyword to target for.
Also, keyword research is the first step to building the website architecture.
How to do keyword research?
Now let’s see how to do keyword research for a therapist website. Keyword research can be done in two ways, Free and Paid.
Free keyword research methods for therapy website SEO
First, we will see the free methods which help in doing keyword research.
Google AutoComplete
Google AutoComplete is the first way that you can use to find relevant keywords for your private practice psychology website. Google AutoComplete is a feature provided by Google which automatically completes a phrase when typed in-to it’s search bar. Using this interactive feature you can brainstorm several keyword ideas around your practice.
What you have to do is go to the Google search bar and type in your main keyword. After you main keyword press spacebar. Google will automatically complete the phrase and will also provide you several related keywords suggestion.
People also search for
Second method that you can use to do keyword research is by using another feature provided by Google. It is called “People also search for”. When you type in a keyword and press enter, People also search for feature comes after the search results in the bottom. Using this feature you can find secondary keywords to target.
In the People also search for feature some words in a phrase are kept in bold by the Google. These words in bold are the related terms which Google find relevant to your main keyword.
People also ask
This is also an interactive feature which is again provided by Google. In this feature, Google provides you list of questions which users are searching for. You can use this feature to find keywords which can be used in FAQs or converted into full blog posts.
Answer The Public
Answer The Public is a freemium keyword research tool provide by Neil Patel. This tool can help you find questions, PAA, related keywords, keywords in alphabetical order. A very handy and interactive tool to get keyword ideas.
To get more free ideas you can do the same steps on other search engines like Bing, Duckduck Go, etc. Bing also has the same autocomplete, and related keyword section at the bottom. You can also use it to find additional keywords for your psychotherapy/counselling website.
Paid keyword research methods for private practice website SEO
Now let’s look at paid keyword research methods. In paid keyword research method for therapy website, paid seo keyword research tools are used. These keyword research tools have huge database of keywords that they collect over time. There are several keyword research tools that are available in the market. The most popular ones are Ahrefs, Semrush, Mongools, and Ubersuggest.
The main benefit of using these paid keyword research tools is that they reduce the time consuming process which free methods take, provide more number of keywords with metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, trend of the keyword, etc.
The process to do keyword research is almost similar in all tools. For this guide, I am using Semrush to demonstrate you how to do keyword research for a local therapy website using a paid SEO tool.
To start our research we need a Seed keyword to start our research. Seed keyword can also be said as primary keyword and are categorized in short-tail keywords. You can take the main practice as the main keyword. Here I am taking, couples therapy Houston as main Seed keyword.
We will do this whole research process to find keywords for a therapy website which specializes in Couples Therapy Houston.
To start doing keyword research using Semrush firstly go to Semrush’s Keyword Overview tool and type in your Seed keyword and press enter. You will see a similar screen like the one below.
Semrush will show you keyword search volume, keyword difficulty, it’s search trend, search intent ,and CPC of the Seed keyword. All this data for the location you select and device type. In our case, location is United States and device type is Desktop.
This data is for the Seed keyword. But that’s not what we are here for. We need related keywords which can be used to add to optimize for the main keyword. To find them you will need to scroll down a little bit. You will find a similar screen like this one.
Semrush is providing all the keyword variations of the Seed keyword in the form of Keyword ideas. Click on View all and collect all the keywords. These are the variations of your main keyword which users type into Google’s search bar and find the information. Examples of such keywords are:
1- Houston Couples Therapy
2- Couple Therapy in Houston
3- Couples Therapy in Houston Texas
These keywords and there variations will be added to the page targeting “Couples Therapy Houston”
Now we have completed the first part of our keyword research process which is finding keyword variations of the Seed keyword. Now the second part of this keyword research guide is finding other keywords. These keywords will be used to create service pages on the website.
To find such keywords, we will be using the reverse engineer keyword research process. We will be going to the websites ranking for our Seed keyword. After that we will check what are the other keywords these websites are ranking for along with our main keyword. To find the ranking website’s list in Semrush scroll down after Keyword variations field. You will find the ranking websites.
Now to find the other keywords you will need to go to each website’s organic ranking report. I am showing you organic report of the second one in the list (heightscouplestherapy.com).
To go to the organic research page, right click on the website’s URL and click on open link in new window. On the new window scroll a little bit and you will get to see the Top keywords tab for which this particular URL is getting impressions, traffic per keyword, and ranking position status. Again click on View all.
On clicking View all keywords you will get list of all the other keywords this website is ranking. These are the keywords that you found out using your Seed keyword.
So for you main Seed keyword “Couples therapy Houston”, you have found other keywords like:
1- Marriage counselling Houston
2 – Couples counselling Houston
3 – Relationship counselling Houston
4 – Relationship therapy Houston, and many others.
Now repeat the above steps with each of the ranking websites. You will have a good list of keywords to target.
After all such steps, if you want to deep dive more, you can repeat the same steps that I showed you above with our first Seed keyword. To repeat you can repeat the same steps with all those keywords that came up in the research by considering each keyword as a Seed keyword separately.
Final Words
A strong foundation is the base of a powerful SEO marketing campaign for a therapy website. By properly doing the keyword research you can build that foundation. These keywords are later put at various places on a private practice website to improve its On-page SEO.
You can use this guide to find keywords for your private practice therapy website. I have tried to be as detailed as possible regarding the research process. I hope you find this guide useful.