As a therapist, your website is arguably the most important tool to attract clients for your private practice. Chances are, you’ve written a ton in your professional life. But now that you’re attempting to crack copywriting for therapists you’re feeling…stuck.
As in: you’d much rather spend your day writing an academic paper (or even your thesis again) than staring at the Google Doc with your website copy 🤓
For therapists, writing copy can be nerve-racking and confusing. You may be wondering, How do I show people that I really get where they’re coming from and that I genuinely care? How do I write compelling copy? What about ethics?
Don’t worry! In this blog post, I (Haley, a psychology-driven copywriter and CEO of Slade Copy House), am going to help you understand strategies, techniques, and best practices to write copy that truly connects with your potential clients and makes them want to work with you.
But First…What Is Copywriting, Really?
I regularly work with therapists on their website copy and often hear from them that they don’t understand why writing copy for their private practice is just so. dang. hard. After all, it’s just writing words, right?! As a therapist, you’ve probably written many essays, academic papers, and theses to get to where you’re at today.
So, why is writing your website copy so, for the lack of a better word, excruciating? It’s because professional writing and copywriting for therapists serve completely different purposes and require different approaches.
Writing copy requires you to put your marketing hat on, think like your ideal client, and stay concise.
It’s about telling stories, connecting with people, and getting them interested in what you offer. You have to be persuasive but also genuine to convert your website visitors, which is very different from professional writing as a therapist.
7 Secrets of Psychology-Driven Copywriting for Therapists
1. Start with Researching Your Ideal Client
Before you write a single word of copy for your therapist website, you need to dig deep and understand who you’re trying to reach – their needs, their pain points, and what they’re looking for in a therapist. It’s not just about guessing; it’s about getting to know your audience inside and out.
To do that, you need to research your ideal client. Luckily, you’ve probably done quite a lot of research to earn your degrees, so this is not entirely new territory for you. Here are my favorite ways to research ideal clients when writing copy.
Forums and Social Media
People tend to share a lot online, which is pure gold for website copywriting. Figure out where your ideal clients go to share their thoughts and start browsing what they say. For example, maybe you’re focused on helping perfectionists overcome their tendencies. In this case, the Reddit r/perfectionism thread is a great place for you to gather insights.
Here’s an example of a Reddit post that dives deep into how this one particular person feels trying to overcome perfectionism. If your ideal client has perfectionist tendencies, you can get a ton of valuable information from this post, such as the fact that their current therapy sessions make them feel “directionless.”
Source: Reddit.
Surveys
If you have an email list or past clients that you could reach out to for insights, you can create a survey (Google Forms is a great free tool to do that!) and ask them to answer a few questions. Consider asking them about:
- What they’re struggling with
- What they want to achieve
- What’s holding them back
- What their ideal life look like
- What kind of solutions they’ve tried in the past
- What they’re looking for in a therapist
For privacy and ethical reasons, you can make this survey anonymous. Sending out an anonymous survey will also likely make your ideal clients feel more confident to open up.
Other Therapists’ Websites
The websites of other therapists in your niche can be really helpful for your copywriting research. Browse their pages and pay attention to the social proof and testimonials. You can learn a lot about how therapy has been able to help your ideal clients achieve their desired results and what was holding them back.
2. Harness the Power of Empathy
When it comes to copywriting for therapists, one of the most important things is to convey empathy authentically. As a mental health professional, you already have a knack for being empathetic – now you just need to infuse that into your private practice website!
Pretend that you’re in a therapy session with your ideal client.
What do you say to them? How do you make them feel seen, understood, and safe? Your therapist website is, in essence, a conversation with your potential clients. Write copy as if you’re talking to them, making them feel like they’ve finally found a judgment-free space to discuss their mental health.
3. Craft Compelling Headlines
In today’s world, attention is fleeting. Human brains have adapted to being constantly bombarded with an enormous amount of information. We constantly hear about our attention spans getting shorter and shorter and having only 0.05 seconds to make the right first impression, BUT…
This doesn’t mean that your ideal clients won’t pay attention to your therapist website.
It means that they’ve gotten very selective about the type of information they’re going to pay attention to.
Compelling headlines grab your audience’s attention and make them feel curious. When writing them, be clear and specific, use power words, and focus on the transformational benefits your therapy services provide rather than just the features. Here are a few examples of headlines I love ❤️
Source: Ahrefs.
Source: Nourishing NY.
Source: Infinite Love & Change.
FUN FACT! Slade Copy House wrote some of these headlines (and websites!). Peep our full portfolio here 👋
4. Keep. It. Simple.
As a therapist, you have rigorous education and a lot of knowledge to share with the world (and your potential clients). It can be tempting to try to fit everything you know on your therapist website, but I urge you to prioritize simplicity and clarity.
Your website should be easy to read (or more so, skim).
If you pack it with complicated language with little to no white space, you’re going to lose your ideal client’s attention. In turn, a clutter-free website enhances user experience, conveys professionalism and trustworthiness, and makes it EASY for your website visitors to understand who you are, what you do, and how they can become a part of your private practice.
5. Tell a Good Story
Mental health copywriting doesn’t need to be clinical (in fact, it shouldn’t be). At its core, therapy is a narrative journey where people explore the depths of their experiences, emotions, and identities – and this is what your therapy website needs to convey. How can you do that? Well, this is where the art of storytelling comes in.
The human brain is wired to love a good story.
When you hear (or read) a good story, your brain releases a powerful chemical cocktail of oxytocin, dopamine, and cortisol. Dopamine makes you respond emotionally to the events of the story, cortisol focuses your attention on the narrative, and oxytocin makes you feel empathy.
The result? You get hooked. In fact, your website visitors will remember stories up to 22x more than facts or figures alone – which means that they’ll remember your private practice! While there’s no one right way to write a good story, we share five things you can do in this article.
6. Optimize for SEO
Once you create your private practice website, your potential clients need to be able to find it. Optimizing your website for SEO will help your therapy website come up higher on Google Search and other search engines. This way, more potential clients find out about your services and how you can help them.
To get your new website SEO optimized, there are a few things for you to do:
- Keyword Research: Identify the terms and phrases that potential clients are using to search for your services. Focus on relevant keywords related to your specialty, the location of your private practice, and the services you offer.
- Optimize Page Titles and Meta Descriptions: Use your target keywords strategically in page titles and meta descriptions to improve your website’s visibility in Google Search.
- Create High-Quality Content: Content is king! Write blog posts, articles, and FAQs that provide valuable insights, tips, resources, and other mental health content.
- Optimize Images and Alt Text: Optimize images on your website by using descriptive file names and adding alt text that includes relevant keywords.
- Optimize URL Structures: Use descriptive and keyword-rich URLs for your website pages to improve their visibility in search results. Avoid long, complex URLs!
- Build High-Quality Backlinks: A backlink is a link that directs to your therapy website from another website. Google uses backlinks as a measure of a website’s authority, credibility, and relevance. Getting backlinks from other mental health professionals and reputable websites in your niche will help your website come up higher in search queries!
Remember that optimizing your therapist website for SEO is an ongoing process! For best results, keep regularly posting high-quality mental health content or hire an SEO Blog Writer.
7. Ditch the Jargon
One of the most important things when it comes to copywriting for therapists is to think like your client. Remember that effective copywriting is always easy to understand.
While professional terminology may be second nature to you as a therapist, it can often alienate or confuse potential clients who may not be familiar with specialized language.
So, when writing your website pages, avoid industry jargon and use clear and straightforward language. If there’s a complex concept or topic you need to include, break it down and simplify it as much as possible to bridge the gap between you and your potential clients.
Copywriting for Therapists FAQs
Why is copywriting important for therapists?
Your website copywriting is how you connect with your potential clients and educate them on why they should choose your mental health services vs. other therapists. Good copywriting doesn’t simply explain what you do. It also makes your prospective clients resonate with you and your private practice and shows them why and how your services can truly transform their lives.
What pages should you have on your therapist website?
Most therapists should have at least a Home, Services, About, and Contact pages on their websites. I also recommend having a Blog page to regularly publish high-quality content to educate your audience, build trust, and improve your rankings in Google searches. Depending on how you run your practice, you may need more pages (for example, a sales page for your course or program).
What are some common mistakes on therapist websites?
As a copywriter who often works with therapists, the most common mistakes I see are lack of clarity, overuse of jargon, lack of testimonials or social proof, unclear or missing Calls-to-Action, poor storytelling, and not paying attention to SEO. Working with a freelance mental health copywriter can help you avoid these mistakes!
How do therapists stay ethical when writing their website copy?
When writing your website copy, the best practices always include transparency, honesty, confidentiality, and informed consent. Writing ethical copy is important for all industries, but especially if you’re a therapist or a mental health professional.
Hiring a Copywriter for Your Therapist Website: Yay or Nay?
Hiring a freelance mental health copywriter is a fantastic way to get website copywriting off your plate and walk away with an optimized, storytelling-rich website for your private practice. At Slade Copy House, therapists are some of our favorite clients to work with! Learn more about our copywriting services 🥳
