Advertising and Marketing Strategy for Canadian Clinical Counsellors FAQ

Clinical counsellors generally advertise online using google ads or listings in high domain authority sites like Psychology today.

Psychology Today is less useful than it has been in the past since it changed it’s linking strategy, but is still a good source of referrals for counsellors. Make sure your listing there is keyword rich, containing your credentials spelled out, your areas of practice in direct, specific wording, any languages you speak, any specific populations that you work well with so that people searching on their platform for any of those things will return your listing in response. 

Some free options to advertise are to:

1. Run a group with a niche topic, language group or population and send emails to your colleagues. Even if your group doesn’t fill, you may get invidual referrals in the process and people now know who to refer to. 
2. Make sure your web address is linked on your professional association website directory. These are authoritative back links and boost your own site’s credibility in search engines. 
3. Check your professional association for inexpensive advertising resources like eblasts or newsletters at reduced rates. 

This is very frustrating, I know! If you do counselling related to substance use or fertility, you will be unable to advertise those services on google ads in many countries. Instead, write blog content on these topics that respond to common client questions. Make sure you refer directly to the things people looking for your counselling services would ask a search engine. If you have an additional degree or certification, such as being a certified midwife or registered nurse in addition to providing counselling, you can advertise those credentials, usually without running into issues. Here’s a link to a video the explains the areas of practice you won’t be able to advertise and why.

You will likely get a lot of offers from directories and website which offer to list your practice in their directory for a yearly fee. Here’s a good way to check if it is worth it for you. Visit www.moz.com and go to ‘free seo tools’ then select ‘domain analysis’. Put in the website URL of the potential advertiser. Then open a new browser tab and do the same for your own website. If the potential advertiser has a significantly higher domain authority (DA) number than your own website, then it will benefit you to be linked from them, depending on what they charge. If their DA is lower, it’s not worth it. (See also backlinks on this page).

Focus on what is unique about your credentials, experience or lived experience that a client might be looking for. Do you speak a language they might be more comfortable in? Do you both occupy the same cultural group? Are you a retired engineer who is now a counsellor? Mention these things directly in what you write about yourself on your website using words like – “Clinical counsellor who speaks such as Farsi” “Gay clinical counsellor” “clinical counsellor who is a Buddhist”. 

When writing about your clinical counselling services, use empathy and imagine the search from your client’s perspective. Think of the kinds of clients who will find you a good fit for them, socially, clinically, financially. Then imagine what that person will put into a search engine if they were looking for someone like you specifically, but did not know your name or any jargon about counselling or counselling training. Use those words in your description.

Put specifics and spell it out on your site, about which plans are likely to cover you. You can do a search to compile a list. Put yourself in your client’s shoes. If they are searching for ‘counsellors who accept blue cross’, then make sure you come up. Search engines will scan your site for the words “I accept blue cross plans that cover Registered Clinical Counsellors”. Saying that you ‘accept many insurance providers, contact your own provider for details’, is not specific enough to work from a search engine perspective.