The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer: Well, hello everyone and welcome again to the podcast and I'm really happy for you to get to know today.
Natalie Moore. Welcome, Natalie. Glad you're here. So excited to be talking with you today, Gordon. Yes. And Natalie's based in Cal. Where where in California are you? Los Angeles. Los Angeles. That's right. I just you know, I talk to so many people from all across, from everywhere. So, and Natalie, as I start with everyone, tell folks a little bit more about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed.
Natalie Moore: I.
Gordon Brewer: Happy to.
Natalie Moore: So my private practice journey actually started as a pre-licensed therapist, as an associate or intern as we called ourselves back then. I knew that I wanted to eventually be in private practice because it was gonna give me the flexibility to have work-life balance, and also to be able to work with my ideal clients with the ideal modalities that I wanted to work in.
So I found an amazing supervisor who could mentor me. The catch was I had to find all my own clients and I was in my mid twenties. I pretty much was trying to figure out life at that point. And then I also had to figure out how the heck do you get private practice clients as a therapist, right? So what do you do?
You go to Google and you ask. How do I find therapy clients? I actually remember the moment that that happened. I was at a laundromat doing my laundry 'cause I didn't have washer dryer in unit at the time. And I typed into Google search, how do I find therapy clients? And I don't know if you remember zine me.
This is, yeah,
Natalie Moore: yeah. No, them. Well, yeah. Yeah. Zmi, they're great. And I found some of their blog posts and I just started devouring all of their information. Just started reading every post, and I learned so much, and I was just telling you before we hit, before we hit record, Gordon, that I'm the kind of person who says yes and then figures it out later.
Mm-hmm. It was the same thing with private practice. I said yes to private practice knowing that if it was. Meant to be. And if it was important to me, I was gonna figure out how to do it. So I just started putting into practice the things that were recommended, marketing. Mm-hmm. Best practices. And I started to find that clients were actually finding me through my website.
And they were giving me feedback about why they picked me on my website. They said things like, I really liked your holistic approach, or You seemed down to earth, or I liked the way I felt when I was on your website. I felt comfortable, and so I started to lean into that a little bit more and just did a little more, a little more, a little more.
And I ended up developing a website that really spoke to my ideal client. I built my dream practice that way. I see mostly women in their twenties and thirties who struggle with, I like to call the peas, people pleasing perfectionism, pressure to perform and pretending like everything's okay all the time.
Right, right. I
Natalie Moore: love working with these women. I love helping them transform their lives, helping them live authentically, build boundaries, and. What ended up happening, Gordon, is that other therapists saw what I was doing and they started to ask me, Natalie, how are you doing this? How are you building a practice as an associate?
Right? How are you getting your ideal clients? How are you charging premium rates? And so I started telling them, oh, it's my website. Oh, it's SEO, oh, you gotta learn about keywords. Oh, you gotta learn about back links. And they're like, what is this? What is that?
Mm-hmm.
Natalie Moore: I just love helping people. So I was teaching them how to do their SEO, teaching them how to write specialty pages, teaching them how to do backlink outreach.
And then I realized, I was like, wait a second, I could actually turn this into a course. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So that's exactly what I did. I actually had a client cancel and I had an hour free, and I sat down and the curriculum just fell onto the page. And so not only do I see clients in private practice as therapists, but I also help other therapists build their dream practices too.
Gordon Brewer: Yes. Oh, that's, that's great. You know I think that's that's a theme that I hear a lot with my, the people that I work with in doing consulting and helping them in their practices is just really understanding. Okay. The number one, one of the, the biggest struggles that people have. It's really two struggles.
One is they don't have enough clients, particularly if they're just starting out and really having a lot of anxiety around, okay, I've gotta get more referrals, I've gotta get more people in. Or they're at that place where they're totally full and they've got too many clients, and what are they gonna do with all of that?
But I think you hit on something and I'm, I'm looking forward to our conversation about, you know, SEO and how, what are just some of the basics around that for people to understand? Like you said, people found your website and it resonated with them, so what would you say were the elements of that that you learned about that people that attracted people.
To your practice?
Natalie Moore: That's a great question. And whenever, well, let's first just define what SEO is. Mm-hmm. Because it is a technical term and a lot of people don't know what that means. So let me just mm-hmm. Start with a definition. So, SEO stands for search engine optimization. When we're talking about search engines, we're mostly talking about Google 'cause they have over 90% of market share.
So really we're talking about Google and optimization is exactly what it sounds like. It's when you make something as good and as efficient as possible. So when you optimize your website for search engines, what that means is you're explicitly telling Google what your website is about so that Google has as much information as possible.
To rank you on their first page for as many key phrases as possible that are relevant to you and your practice. So for example, trauma Therapist, California. If you are a trauma therapist and you are in California, you wanna be gearing your website towards key phrases like Trauma Therapist, California Now.
You don't wanna be showing up as eating disorder therapist, Tennessee, if you're not an eating disorder therapist, Tennessee. Mm-hmm. So our key phrases have to match not only what our specialties are, what our location is, but it also has to do this magical matching up with the words and phrases that our prospective clients or ideal clients are typing into Google to try to find us.
So keyword research is the process of using specific tools to learn insights about what words and phrases our ideal clients are using to find us.
Mm-hmm. We
Natalie Moore: can't do SEO well if we don't understand the words and phrases that our ideal clients are using to try to find us. So keyword research is at the foundation of everything we do for our SEO strategy.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And that's yeah, it's I think one thing that a lot of people when they like your, like your own story about going into private practice and figuring it out as you went. I like to call it building the airplane as you fly it. So, I mean, it's just you you learn a lot doing that and that, that was my process as well.
I mean, it was just. Learned it along the way. But one of the things is, is that you can't just start a practice and just the whole field of dreams thing build it and they will come, well, no, you've got to build it. Then tell them about it. Then they will come. And you bring up a very good point about how are people searching for you, how are they gonna find you?
And that's a good you know, the one of the best ways I've found of doing that is just when you get a client. Okay. Tell me how you found how found me and what did you type in to find me? That's a great question. That's, yeah. Yeah,
Natalie Moore: that's a great question. Uhhuh. What I find is most therapists do not actually track where their referrals come from, which is a huge missed opportunity.
Mm-hmm. If
Natalie Moore: you don't know where your referrals are coming from, then you can't double down on the efforts that are working, and then you can't prune back the efforts that are a waste of time and energy. Mm-hmm. So, one mistake that I see therapists make with this a lot. Is where they'll have a Psychology Today profile.
Having a Psychology Today profile is a great strategy from a marketing perspective, 'cause it does bring in referrals. However, I see it misused where they treat the Psychology Today profile almost as like a fill in website. And then they use that link and they post it everywhere They mm-hmm. Post it, you know, to Facebook groups in response to referral requests.
They post it maybe in a newsletter. They posted a response for If somebody says, Hey, I really wanna refer clients to you, what's your website? Here's the link to my Psychology today. The problem with that is then once those people get client referrals through that link, they think Psychology Today is sending them all of those clients.
But Psychology Today, we don't know how many are coming from Psychology Today. We don't know how many are coming from Facebook or from word of mouth. Now, if we can ferret those things out, then you really know. Okay. Is this Psychology Today profile worth spending $30 a month on? How many referrals is it sending me?
Is it worth responding to? Referral requests in Facebook groups. Are people sending me clients that way? How is my word of mouth growing over time, right? Mm-hmm. If you use your Psychology Today profile, like a website, and you post it everywhere, you don't know where your referrals are coming from, so, right.
Your suggestion is really smart. If a client comes to you and you don't actually know what avenue they found you, you've gotta ask. Now, even if they fill out your contact form on your website, you might think, oh, they found me through my website. You don't know that they might've landed on your website as the last place before contacting you.
Maybe their doctor told them about you. Mm-hmm. And then they checked you out on your website. Maybe they found your Instagram profile, went to the link in your bio, and then went to your website. Right. We need to know where our client referrals are coming from again, so that we can put more time and energy into the ones that are working, and then take time and energy away from the ones that aren't.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yes. So with the, with the SEO in addition to kind of figuring out which keywords people are using to search with, what are some other steps that they should be taking with their website?
Natalie Moore: Let me see if we can take this in another direction because mm-hmm. I think the question that someone might have next, once I, you know, once they hear me talk about keyword research is, well, how do I do that?
How do I know what words and phrases people are using to find me? Because it, it's a highly technical process to do this keyword research and mm-hmm. The way that I describe keyword research is. It's kind of like playing darts. Imagine if you had a dartboard and you were trying to hit the dartboard and your eyes were closed and you're just throwing darts hoping that you land one, right?
That's kind of like mm-hmm. Not doing your keyword research that's just throwing words all over your website, hoping that somebody finds you. Whereas doing keyword research is like having your eyes wide open and you're trying to hit that dartboard right in that center bullseye. Mm-hmm. So in order to do this, you have to use keyword research tools.
And I've tried pretty much all of them. All of the, mm-hmm. Popular ones on the market, and I've found that the best one for the therapists, specifically, the one that I like the best is called Mangos. It's got a funny name. We'll include the link in the show notes for people. Mm-hmm. Funny name. Mm-hmm. But it works really well.
One of the reasons why it works so well for therapists is because our licenses are state bound, right? Mm-hmm. There's a perimeter to where we can work, even if people are multiple licensed in multiple states or have one of these zpac agreements, there's still geographically bound and limited in some way, right?
And so what main goals allows you to do in their keyword research, which other tools don't do as good of a job, of is, it lets you target specific geographic regions. So I wanna know. How many people are looking for a somatic therapist in Los Angeles?
Mm-hmm. City
Natalie Moore: and Los Angeles County and California. As a state, I wanna be able to zoom in and out mm-hmm.
In my keyword research so that I can be as specific as possible and also find untapped opportunities. And so this keyword research tool, which I teach my students how to use in my courses and my coaching, helps you really narrow in on. Where's my ideal loc? Like client located? What words and phrases are they using to try to find a therapist just like me.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah. So yeah. So what what would be some of the key things you would type in maybe to find, you know, just to begin to look.
Natalie Moore: Yeah, that's a great question. So what you do is you just like when you're doing a scientific study, you gotta start with a hypothesis, right? You can't just start studying something.
You have to have an educated guess about something that you believe to be true. And then once you have that guess, you start to do some research to either validate it or invalidate it too, right? Figure out what to do next. It's the same thing with keyword research. We have to start with a hypothesis.
What do I think people are typing into to try to find me, right? Mm-hmm. Are people typing in therapy for men? Los Angeles. Okay. Right. Are they typing in holistic therapist near me. Okay. So we would start with what's called a seed key phrase. You would type in what you think people are looking for in an area that they might be searching, and then what Mangos is going to do?
So Mangos has a number of different features. One of their tools is a keyword research tool, so that's one that I use frequently. We would type that in. So let's just say trauma therapist, California, for example. Mm-hmm. We would type in trauma therapist and then we would limit the key word search to the state of California.
We'd hit enter. Now it's not just gonna give us data about that one key phrase. It's also gonna give us a bunch of related key phrases as well. So it might say things like EMDR therapist or trauma informed therapist or therapist for trauma or trauma therapy approaches, right? That's gonna show different variations of that key phrase.
And so what we wanna do is we wanna find the best opportunity. We wanna find something that has this. Perfect combination of high search volume, meaning that there are enough people looking for this thing that it's actually worth it to try to target that key phrase, but also something that has a low enough competition where we actually stand a chance to rank for it.
Mm-hmm. Okay? Mm-hmm. If something has too low search volume, then you might be able to rank for it easily, but nobody's searching for it, so why try, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And if something has very high competition. I like to say we have to fight within our weight class, right? We're not gonna be able to compete as a solo practitioner or even a small group practice.
You're not gonna be able to compete with the psychology. Today's the good therapies, the Yelps of the world, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. They just have too big of an ad budget that we just can't compete, but we're not trying to compete with those big directories. All we have to do is land on that first page and most of the time with.
Low to medium competition. Key phrases, we'll be able to find opportunities. Now, there are so many times when I do keyword research, either for myself or for a student or with a student, and we find that for something like trauma therapist, California. There will be a therapist on there who's not even in the state of California.
Mm-hmm. Or they're a generalist and they don't say anything about trauma. Or maybe they mention trauma once on a bullet point and a huge list of other things that they quote specialize in, right? Mm-hmm. Some people do the A to Z thing on their website. They try to rank for everything, right? Mm-hmm. We know it doesn't work that way.
We can really only be a specialist in so many things, right?
Gordon Brewer: Right, right.
Natalie Moore: And so I try to find those opportunities where, hey, they're not even in the state. So let's work on a specialty page to help you outrank them, or they're just listing the word once in this huge bullet list of all these things that they quote, specialize in.
Let's write a page very specific to trauma, and you can easily outrank this website. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So we start with that hypothesis. We do some keyword research. We find something where the key phrase has. High search volume, low difficulty. In terms of the competition. We look at the competition. Okay.
What's currently ranking on the first page? What do I have a fighting chance to outrank? Mm-hmm. And then we do something called the skyscraper method.
Okay.
Natalie Moore: Have I intrigued you yet? Yes, you have.
Yes you have.
Natalie Moore: If you wanna build the tallest building in New York City. You don't just start stacking bricks until you stop.
You find the tallest building in New York City and then you build one a little bit taller, right? A few feet taller. Mm-hmm. And now you've got the tallest building in New York City. Mm-hmm. It's the same thing when you're creating pages on your website. You don't need to build the most perfect. Page, you just have to build something that's a little bit better than what's already there.
Mm-hmm.
Natalie Moore: Google Search has an imperative to provide the searcher with the best possible result. There's never a situation where you type something into Google and they say, sorry, we don't have good enough results for you, so we're just gonna give you a blank page. Has it ever happened to you, Gordon?
Gordon Brewer: Oh no.
Oh no. You get something. Exactly.
Natalie Moore: You get something, they give you the best of what they've got. Even if you type in trauma therapist California, and there aren't 10 good results they're gonna throw, they're gonna spit something out. Right. They're gonna give you the best option. Right now all we have to do as private practice practitioners is to give Google something a little bit better than what it has.
Mm-hmm. And if you do that and you're consistent with your SEO, Google has no choice. To rank you higher.
Mm-hmm. It's
Natalie Moore: a meritocracy, like Google doesn't really favor, doesn't have favoritism towards anybody. It's right. The algorithm is specifically designed to provide the best result, and Google's really good at its job.
So if you provide a better product, it's gonna rank you higher.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah. That's you, you know, I think that's one of the best ways I've heard SEO ever explained. So, I mean, that just, yeah, that's a, that is, that is a, a brilliant thing. You know, I know one of the other elements of SEO or getting.
Other pages that are pointing to your website. So what are your strategies around getting back links?
Natalie Moore: Amazing. So I'm gonna start with definitions because whenever I listen to a podcast and they're talking about things at a high level, it's exciting, but sometimes there's those things where it's like, ooh.
Talk to me like I'm a kindergartner, you know, and when, mm-hmm. SEOI try to talk to people like they're a kindergartner. Not to belittle them, but just to make sure that they absolutely understand the basics before we move on to advance. So let's just talk about what a back link is. A back link is any link on the internet that when you click on it directs the user to your website.
So for example, let's say you're giving a professional talk at an association in your area, and they put some. Landing page on their website saying, we've got Gordon Brewer coming in. He's gonna talk to us about X, Y, Z. Learn more about him at his website. Click here. Right, and somebody clicks on that link.
That is a back link to your website? Mm-hmm. Okay. Let's say you get featured somewhere, a local newspaper, a local, local magazine, and you write an article for them, and it's this beautiful article and at the bottom written by Gordon Brewer. Learn more about him at his website. Click here. Okay. These are examples of backlinks now.
Mm-hmm. Backlinks are like a vote. They're like another website, voting for your website and saying, Hey, this is a legitimate person. This is a legitimate practice. Websites don't just link to anybody. They link to people that they trust. It's like a thumbs up for your website. Another way I like to describe this is to say that backlinks are like the high school popularity contest of the internet.
Do you remember in high school? Yeah. That if you sat at the cool kids table with the cool kids, you became a cool kid by association. Right. Uhhuh. It was Uhhuh, this great social hierarchy that we had to deal with, well, maybe not great social hierarchy, terrible social hierarchy that we had to deal with.
Mm-hmm. The internet. Is the exact same way when it comes to backlinks. When high popularity, high relevancy pages link to you, you become high popularity and high relevancy by association. Mm-hmm. Now therapists, my coaching clients and students are always like, this sounds great. I wanna get these backlinks.
How do I get them? Okay. I teach a strategy that helps therapists get featured in major media outlets like. Huffington Post very well, mind Everyday Health Lives strong places like this. Mm-hmm. So that they are being quoted as those experts. If you're ever reading an article online, like Seven Ways to Build Stronger Communication with your Partner.
Right. 10 ways to mm-hmm. Help your kids, you know, get along better as siblings, whatever the article is. These journalists, they're good at writing. Mm-hmm. But they can't be an expert at everything. Right. They need to interview experts on whatever topic they're writing about so that they can weave in expert quotes, expert insights to back up the points that they're making in their article.
Now, these articles we, we know we have a 24 7 news cycle, right? There's constantly content being pumped out, articles. Being written, hundreds, thousands of articles being written a day, and every article needs a few experts to back up their opinions, right? Mm-hmm. So these are expert sources. Journalists need to have lots of expert sources in every topic that they write on, so that every time they're writing an article, they've got somebody that they can reach out to.
Mm-hmm. To get expert quotes. Mm-hmm. They've got tight deadlines. So really they need you more than you need them.
Mm-hmm. And
Natalie Moore: so if you can build relationships with journalists where you become their go-to expert for quotes, you will get your website mentioned. Right. If they say, you know, for example, let's say I give a quote about how to set boundaries in your relationships, right?
Mm-hmm. X, Y, Z boundary tool says Natalie Moore, owner of space for growth therapy and coaching, right? And my name gets linked to my website. And this is from Cosmopolitan Magazine, self Magazine, Conde Nast, right? These are big publications and they're linking to my website. So because I'm getting linked to my website, this is called a backlink.
That's a strong indicator to Google. Wow, this is an expert. This person knows what they're doing. Otherwise, these big publications would not be linking to her.
Right.
Natalie Moore: Backlinks are the number one indicator of relevancy and authority for your website. Mm-hmm. So you can be doing all the things right with SEO, but if you're not getting back links, you're missing a huge opportunity.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Yeah. There used to be, I guess it's still in, existence. And I get, I, I know Ike used it a little while. It is called Harrow. Mm-hmm. Help a reporter out and it's a, a free. Website that you can go to. And if I remember correctly, Natalie, it's journalists looking for experts in different topics.
And so you get an email every day when you sign up for it, and it lists what your ex expertise is in. And it might be something like just a phone interview. It might be just kind of a. Invitation to come on a t daily TV show or something of those lines. But that is a great backlink you know, generator for people.
Natalie Moore: I've gotten an update for you, Gordon.
Gordon Brewer: Okay.
Natalie Moore: So Harrow help a reporter out actually rebranded and changed their name and their user interface to something called Connectively that was around Okay. For maybe a year or two. Mm-hmm. And then they actually shut it down.
Gordon Brewer: Oh, okay.
Natalie Moore: So it doesn't exist. This is recent.
This is very recent. Doesn't, well, good. I'm glad we talked about this. Yeah, I'm glad we talked about it. And actually, even before that shift happened, it, it used to be this best kept secret. 10 years ago. Yes. Yes. I had maybe an eight. I'm dating myself.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah.
Natalie Moore: No, I, I, I appreciate you bringing it up because actually it's important to talk about the things that don't work anymore, because therapists might be listening to other podcasts or reading other articles that tell them to use helper, reporter out, and then they can't find, help a reporter out.
We gotta talk about this. Mm-hmm. Stuff, right? Yes. It's important.
Mm-hmm.
Natalie Moore: So help a reporter out back in the good old days when it worked really well, was a great source for getting connected with journalists and getting those back links. I actually used to track my success rate with it, and I had about an 80% success rate.
What that means for every 10 responses that I gave to journalists requesting quotes, I would get quoted in about eight out of 10 of those opportunities. That's a huge success rate. Mm-hmm. So I used to. Teach to use all the time now. Something happened where it became very oversaturated with sources, right?
It's one of those things where it's like, mm-hmm. If it's got a lot of journalists and not that many sources, then you're in a good point, good spot. But if it's so many sources and not as many journalists, you're getting crowded out. So my success rate plummeted. I also think that a lot of people started using Chad GPT for their responses and started getting things in really quickly.
Right. And maybe people hadn't quite caught onto that yet. So I noticed that my success rate with Harrow plummeted. So I started look, so even before it changed to connectively and even before it officially shut down, I started looking for alternatives because backlink strategy is a huge part of my SEO plan.
Mm-hmm. And I needed, I needed to keep getting those backlinks to keep my website up and running and to keep generating referrals from you at the rate that I needed to. So I found a, an alternative. It's called Quoted. We'll include it in the show notes 'cause it's spelled funny. Everything's spelled funny these days, right?
Oh, oh yeah. They ran outta real words, so they had to start making words up and changing spellings on things. So we'll include that. I use quoted, it's actually a much better platform than Har ever was. Okay. Harl always kind of looked like a Craigslist type thing, right? With
Gordon Brewer: Yes.
Natalie Moore: It never looked that official Uhhuh with their emails, whereas quoted it.
Has options to create a detailed profile for yourself. You can have hashtags for all the topics that you're an expert in. It's searchable in both directions, meaning you can search for journalism, opportunities to get quoted in. And also journalists can search for you and seek you out. Mm-hmm. And say, Hey, I, I need quotes on this article.
Can you help me out? Right. So it's Right. Kinda like a dating profile. Yes. And a person can start the flirting. Right. It's kind of like that.
Gordon Brewer: Uhhuh. Yes. Uhhuh.
Natalie Moore: And I've found that I have a particular strategy and pitch template and ways of following up and everything, ways of optimizing the profile that I teach my students.
I find it's very successful and it is a really great platform for not only finding those opportunities but also. Nurturing the relationship with the journalist. One thing I didn't like about Haro was kind of like a wham bam, thank you mam situation where mm-hmm. They put out their request, you provide them the quotes, you never hear from them again.
Right. Right. I had to track down my own articles to see if my quotes were getting used. Yes. I actually, yes, didn't think that Harrow worked. Mm-hmm. And I was getting quoted, but I didn't know, and it wasn't until I learned how to track down those articles and realized, mm-hmm. Wait a second, I'm getting quoted.
This is working. Mm-hmm. Whereas with quoted.com, the new platform. You actually have a messaging feature back and forth with the journalist where you can ask follow up questions where they can provide you with the link to the article. They can tell you that you were quoted. You can say, Hey. Mm-hmm. Thank you so much, great article.
Please keep me in mind for future topics, you know, future articles, please reach out. So I don't know about you, Gordon, but for me, I like to nurture those relationships because then I see it as this is a mutually beneficial relationship. I'm helping them out with their. Article, they're getting quotes.
Mm-hmm. And they're helping me out 'cause I've got the back link. And instead of having to pitch myself to somebody new every single time, I prefer to have those established relationships where they know they can trust me. They know that if I say, Hey, I'm gonna get you these quotes by the end of the week, they know that I'm going to get the quotes right.
Mm-hmm. If we schedule a phone interview, they trust that I'm gonna show up to the interview and vice versa. So it really cultivates those relationships better.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. That's great. Spell, spell how they tell folks how they spell that.
Natalie Moore: Q-W-O-T-E d.com.
Gordon Brewer: Okay. That's what I thought. I've, I, when you, when you mentioned that I had had not rec, I had not, I just did not know.
And so you taught me something about Harrow because that, like I said, didn't know that it had gone away. And so that's, that's good. But you know, that is, you know, another, another thing too is, you might wanna speak to this a little bit, is just responsiveness. When, when, like, like you mentioned with quoted, is being able to get back to people quickly if they're contacting you.
That's not necessarily SEO, but that is just a huge thing in terms of getting clients and getting referrals is just is, is just responding quickly.
Natalie Moore: Absolutely, absolutely. And I'll speak to them on a few levels on one level. Quote, it actually tracks your responsiveness and your response speed and will post it on your profile.
And so journalists who are considering reaching out to you for a quote can see what your responsiveness rate is, and if it's good, then they're more likely to reach out to you. But if your responsive rate. Responsiveness rate is poor, they're not gonna wanna reach out to you. 'cause they're gonna realize, mm-hmm Oh, by the time they get back to me, my deadline's already gonna be passed.
Right?
Yeah.
Natalie Moore: So even from that perspective, it's important to be responsive, but more importantly, when you're building relationships with. Anybody, you need to be responsive when you're building a relationship with a journalist for the first time. You need to be responsive. They're working on tight deadlines.
Mm-hmm. They're only gonna be interesting and interested in developing relationships with folks who, if they say they're gonna get something in by a deadline, they actually do. So that's really important. Yeah. I prefer to. Under promise and over deliver versus over promise and under deliver. So for example mm-hmm.
I had a journalist who I did, I actually did direct outreach with this journalist. I didn't find her through quoted. I reached out to her directly 'cause I saw that she was. Getting pub. She was publishing articles in Huffington Post, which is a great place to get quoted, by the way, because not only is it a high authority website, but they also syndicate their articles, meaning their articles show up on Yahoo and MSN, and Buzzfeed and all these other places.
So one backlink can easily turn into 10 backlinks. So that's an aside. Mm-hmm. So she, she works for Huffington Post and she had, I believe it was eight storylines or 10 storylines that she was working on at the same time that were all mental health and relationships related. And so she sent me an email and said, can you comment on any of these?
Mm-hmm. And
Natalie Moore: so part of me wanted to say, yes, I'll provide comments on all of them. Right? But then I knew I probably didn't have the bandwidth. 'cause I like to be detailed in my responses. I wanna give something that's really. Helpful.
Mm-hmm.
Natalie Moore: And so I said, I told myself, you know what, don't, don't over promise.
And then under deliver, just pick three. Pick three that you have the most expertise on, and that you know you can get in by the deadline. And so I got her, her three, and then I also offered her, here's some experts in these other areas that I believe would be really great people for you to reach out to.
And I gave some recommendations. Of colleagues who are specialists in that area. Yeah. So I didn't wanna leave her hanging on all the other quotes. Right. And I think journalists really appreciate that human connection. Mm-hmm. Of, Hey you, you gave me what you could. And then you also provided some alternatives as well.
Gordon Brewer: Right. The, an image that just came to me is just thinking about SEO, particularly back links in terms of doing a good job of connecting the dots so that you have lots of dots connected and lots of threads coming in and, I know I know we've gotta be mindful of our time here, ma, Natalie, but do you wanna say a little bit about, you know, if, if a person is getting started with a website about the importance of the name of their website and also how that relates to SEO and, and also just about creating content for your website.
I, at least in my experience, the more content you have on your website, the more credibility it's gonna have, and also gonna help with SEO.
Natalie Moore: Amazing. So to answer your first question, are you referring to the URL, like the so-and-so dot com or.net?
Yes. Okay. Yes. Mm. Mm-hmm. So
Natalie Moore: this is actually an SEO factor that has also changed recently.
So the funny thing about SEO is that it's always changing. It's a moving target. Mm-hmm. And so if you wanna know about SE, you really have to keep track or work with someone who stays on top of things who can update you. So. The url, it's the.com, right? Mm-hmm. If you are going to do some online shopping, you've gotta type in amazon.com, right?
Mm-hmm. That's
Natalie Moore: the URL. Every website has one. It's kind of like an address. If you wanna go to an address, you've gotta type it into your, your. You know, Waze or your Google app to get there. Mm-hmm. It's just the same thing. It's a digital address. It takes you to where you wanna go. Okay. So every website has to have one.
Now, the exact words on that URL used to be very important for SEL. So if you were a therapist in Los Angeles, some people would buy the, in A URL. When you buy it, it's called buying a domain name. Mm-hmm. I know there's a lot of work, there's a lot of gobbledygook. But anyway, just. Just to move past that, it's called a domain name.
Now, a lot of people thought, okay, I want to take advantage of this SEO opportunity. So if I'm a therapist in Los Angeles, I'm gonna buy the domain name instead of making the domain name. My name like natalie moore.com. I'm gonna buy los angeles therapist.com, and that's gonna help me rank for Los Angeles therapist.
Okay? This was a good short term strategy at the time when Google's algorithm was. Prioritizing the exact keywords in the URL. What ended up happening was. People found out that that was a good strategy, and so they took advantage of it. And so people were buying all of these uls therapist, Los Angeles, Los Angeles therapist, therapist LA LA therapy, and then they were just creating these short-term landing pages, like a one page ad basically for themselves.
And then they were connecting all these websites together. Now that created a lot of spam on the internet and. Google doesn't like for the internet to be spammy. It wants to direct people to really helpful resources that are, that are rich and robust. Mm-hmm. And so Google decided Google's agro, you know, the people, the geniuses of Google who create the algorithm decided, okay, we need to deprioritize this from an SEO perspective.
'cause people are taking advantage. So actually that's not a high ranking factor anymore. Sure. Having a keyword or two. It doesn't hurt you in your URL, but what I tell people is much more important. 'cause that's more of kind of like a short term approach. It's a little myopic. We wanna look bigger picture.
It makes more sense to have your URL to be very branded to you or the name of your practice. So my practice name is Space for Growth Now. Space for growth.com unfortunately was taken, but I found A URL. That's your space for growth. Okay. Very close. We're we're gonna take it. So you want your URL to be very branded.
I. To your practice, and if you can get the variations of that URL, like the.net. the.org org, mm-hmm. Things with a dash in them can be helpful to kind of own those digital properties on the internet. So that's answered to question number one. Question number two about content. Yes, Google recently had something called the helpful content update to their algorithm.
It's the biggest algorithm update they've had in a long time, and what it focuses on, it's well-named. They want information on the internet pages, on the internet to be helpful. Makes sense. Mm-hmm. Right. We go to the internet. Mm-hmm. To solve a problem, we go to the internet because we have some goal in mind.
We need those pages to help us. So what this means is instead of having a very bare bones website that just. Basically is like a business card. We don't want your website to be a digital business card anymore. That used to be good enough 10, 15 years ago when you were building a practice, it's not good enough anymore.
Your website actually needs to help the person who's on it. They need to walk away with some kind of. Tidbit about like if you're a couples therapist, you need to have blog posts on there that teach them about couples therapy. How do you know couples therapy is working? Can couples therapy make things worse?
Mm-hmm. What types of couples therapy are most scientifically validated? What are five things you can walk away from? From, you know, reading this post that's gonna help you right now, give you some quick wins in your relationship while you're waiting for that first consultation with the therapist. Right?
Right. People have to feel that they're being helped not only so that they build a relationship with you and feel that, you know what? This is the person who can help me reach my therapy goals, but also from an SEO perspective, so that you're not showing Google, that you're an expert in couples counseling or whatever it is.
Sorry, you're not telling Google that. You're an expert in these things. You're really showing Google, Hey, I'm an expert in these things and look, I've got the content to back it up.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah. Oh, this is such great stuff, Natalie. And I know again, we gotta be mindful of our time and I really appreciate you.
This has just been you, you've done like I said, you've done such a great job of explaining SEO and how all this works, and I hope that the listeners are finding this really helpful. You've got some things resources for people. Why don't you say some things about that?
Natalie Moore: Yes. So I know that SEO can feel overwhelming and it can feel like you have to be this techy person to do it for your therapy practice, but I have developed a six week coaching program called the SEO Roadmap for Therapist, and it really is that, it's a roadmap.
It tells you step by step. What you need to do to rank your therapy website, number one on Google, are the key phrases that your ideal clients are already typing into Google to try to find a therapist just like you. Mm-hmm. And we've got a link that's gonna be in the show notes that takes. Your listener directly to that link so that they can learn more about the course.
It's a live course, so I know a lot of people will, they'll buy a digital course and they're so excited about it, and then life gets busy, right? Mm-hmm. And then it just collects dust and they never get back to it, which is why I love running live courses, because it also creates the accountability of, Hey.
There's gonna be people there at this time. Mm-hmm. I need to show up. Mm-hmm. I need to be present. And it also gives an opportunity to ask questions in real time as they're coming up. Have you ever been on, in a digital course and questions come up and you're like, I'm confused. I need to know the answer to this now.
Right, right,
Gordon Brewer: right. Because
Natalie Moore: the, the. Information builds on itself. The way that I have the course structured is the information builds on itself. So I tell people, if you've got a question, ask me now. I don't want anyone to be confused until we move on to the next step. Mm-hmm. So I've got. A maximum participant count of 10, so that we've got a small enough group where we can be supportive of each other, know each other's names, ask questions, get that feedback, and we even do some live feedback.
If somebody says, Hey, I'm really struggling with my website. I say, let's. Let's do a share screen. Show me your website. Mm-hmm. Let's go through it. What are you struggling with? Let's work through this now in real time. So I really want people to walk away from the course feeling like they've gotten along with the step by steps of how to do SEO, but also feeling supported and getting all those questions answered.
So there isn't any overwhelm. No needing, no needing to be a techie to get it done and get it done. Right.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah, that's great. And we've got a link set up that'll be, you'll find here in the show notes, but it's practice of therapy.com/seo roadmap and that'll get you to the landing page to find out more about that.
That course. And well, Natalie, thank you for being on the podcast and there's, I know, I hope that we can get you back on here because there's so much more we can talk about. We didn't even hit on AI yet, so I mean, that would be a whole other thing that's I'm sure is gonna be a hot topic here in the future and how that affects SEO and.
All of that sort of thing. So hopefully we'll get back. Well, let's get it on the books, Gordon. Yes. Tell tell folks your website again so that they can find it. Your space for growth.com. Okay. And again, we'll have links here in the show notes and the show summary. So thanks again, Natalie, for being on the podcast.