MFM#59 Why an amazing website isn't enough

When starting a private practice (or any business), building a website is a logical first step in marketing. It is tangible and provides a sense of progress. It is an important step toward establishing a private therapy practice. Every therapist should have a website that speaks to their ideal client, demonstrating that they understand them, work with people just like them, and how their approach to therapy can support them in healing and moving forward. 

At the same time, having an amazing website on its own is not a growth strategy for a therapy practice. A website is necessary infrastructure, but on its own, it wont fill a caseload.

A website’s primary role is to convert interest into enquiries and appointments, not to create it. It should resonate with prospective clients, give them a sense of what a session with you will be like, build trust that you can help, and give them the confidence to take the next step and make an enquiry. But your website can only do this once your ideal clients have found their way there. If no one is visiting your site, even the most beautifully written and well-designed website cannot generate enquiries on its own. In practice, your website is where people land after discovering you elsewhere. It is rarely the place where discovery begins.

Helping people discover your website

Proactive marketing activities that help your ideal client discover you and visit your website should be a close second to building your website. The challenge with marketing is the lag between starting proactively marketing and seeing enquiries and appointments. A lot of time is often spent building a website and getting the content just right, and it definitely shouldn’t be rushed. Your website is a critical piece of the therapy marketing puzzle and filling your caseload with clients you love working with. The frustrating thing is that once your website is finished and launched, you feel ready and excited to start seeing clients, but unfortunately, this doesn't happen without proactively marketing your practice to attract ideal clients to your website. 

The priority marketing activities I recommend to get ideal clients to your website:

• Google Ads
• Building relationships with referrers
• Directories
• Instagram
• Search Engine Optimisation

I think combining all these marketing activities is a great approach to proactively drive traffic to your website. Do you have to do all of them? No, you don’t, you could fill your practice just with Google Ads or referrer relationships alone. But as I wrote about last week, it’s also important not to put all your marketing eggs in one basket (read that article here), as you want your clients coming from a few different sources. So if you’re not feeling like Instagram or social media is your thing, that's totally okay, just focus on Google Ads, referrers, directories and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) instead.

SEO should always be included to ensure Google doesn’t penalise your ranking (where you appear in Google search results) for missing the SEO technical basics. But relying solely on SEO to grow your practice is incredibly difficult. Ranking at the very top of Google for mental health search terms is extremely competitive. You are often competing with large group practices, directories, and well-established brands with extensive websites. As a solo therapist, you generally don’t have the time, capacity, or desire to produce the volume of website content required to compete at that level, and that is completely okay. You do not need to be number one on Google to fill your caseload. SEO tends to work best as a background contributor, rather than as a standalone practice growth engine.

It is also worth being cautious about anyone who promises fast or guaranteed “top of Google” results using special strategies or new tactics. Google is quite transparent about what improves rankings over time: helpful, relevant content; a good user experience; a clear site structure; and gradually built trust and authority. There is no secret shortcut that overrides these fundamentals, especially in competitive niches like mental health. Good SEO is a consistent, unglamorous,  long-term effort.

So, if one of your goals in 2026 is to grow your practice and fill your caseload, tick off building a website that connects and builds trust with your ideal client, and ticks off the SEO basics, and then get stuck into proactive marketing activities. The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll start getting ideal clients to your website and generating enquiries and appointments.