Episode 166 5 Things You Can Optimize On Your Website to Get More SEO Traffic: Interview With Daniel Fava

Chris McDonald: Do you know that SEO is one of the most effective and helpful ways you can attract new clients to your private practice? Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or maybe you're just starting your holistic journey, understanding how to leverage SEO can make a significant impact on the visibility of your private practice.

So grab your notepad, get ready to fine tune your website. Let's explore five actionable steps to help boost your SEO traffic. We will go into demystifying SEO jargon, as well as practical tips tailored to the unique needs of holistic counselors. This episode is your roadmap to making your online presence as vibrant and transformative as your counseling sessions.

Without further ado, let's get our tech on. with today's episode. This is holistic counseling, the podcast for mental health therapists who want to deepen their knowledge of holistic modalities and build their practice with confidence. I'm your host, Chris McDonald, licensed therapist. I am so glad you're here for the journey.

Welcome to today's episode of the Holistic Counseling podcast. In our digital age, having a strong online presence is crucial for holistic counselors to connect with clients seeking therapy from a more holistic perspective. In today's episode, we are focused on. Five key aspects that can help you to optimize your website to not only climb SEO search engine ranks, but also attract the right audience.

Today's guest is someone I trust for my own podcast website, and his name is Daniel Fava. Daniel is a digital business consultant and founder of Private Practice Elevation, a website design and SEO agency focused on helping busy private practice Attract the clients they love so they can scale their business and create the life they desire.

Welcome to the holistic counseling podcast, Daniel. Thanks for

Daniel Fava: having me, Chris. How are you doing? I'm great. How are you today? I am good. I'm, I'm freezing here. I know my

Chris McDonald: hands are like, I have to put some gloves on today and I'm inside. It's like 20 degrees here in North Carolina. Yeah,

Daniel Fava: it's well, it's 14 here in Atlanta.

Ooh, yeah.

Chris McDonald: We're not used to this. No, not at all. So I wanted to start with how did you get started in helping therapists with their websites and with a CEO?

Daniel Fava: Yeah, so I started my business back in 2016 and back then it was called createmytherapistwebsite. com and it was really just a blog with just shared tutorials.

To help folks create a therapy website, use WordPress, get into SEO, stuff like that. I really started as like a freelancer and just really didn't really know what I was doing, but I always had this entrepreneurial bug. And at the time I had worked for about four or five years for a nonprofit here in Atlanta.

And I was oversaw their marketing and fundraising efforts. And I was like their website designer and then kind of, yeah, just really oversaw like all their web properties. But then I was just really wanted to. do something that was more my own thing, my own business. And my wife, she was a therapist, uh, at the time, uh, and still is.

And she started her private practice back in about 2011, 2012. And I helped her get her first website up online and start to like market her practice. And it was really a catalyst for her business. And it really helps her get some of those first clients when she first got licensed here in Atlanta. And so I did like a lot of soul searching.

It was like, what could I do for a business? I had all these ideas in a journal. Like, what could I land on? And I'm just passionate about websites. I'm passionate about online marketing and all that good stuff. And so I kind of went back to that story of my wife and her practice and decided, well, Maybe I can really niche down into helping therapists, you know, create great websites and then use online marketing and SEO to get clients.

So, uh, I started that blog and that website and started to really learn about therapists, mental health, and how do we market and really use my wife as an example. She was my guinea pig and still is. I always try out stuff on her website. And then it kind of just grew from there. And in 2019, I rebranded into private practice elevation because I wanted to go a little bit beyond websites and talk a little bit more about just the full picture of online marketing, scaling a private practice, and just how marketing can really fuel that growth.

And that's when I launched my podcast and really kind of made the full switch in the business itself, but also mentally to being a, uh, an agency. Uh, because I, I did some hiring and now we've got a team of about seven or eight of us now helping our clients just create awesome websites and get found online.

And so that's kind of where things are at now at Private Practice Salvation. And uh, yeah, we're growing and it's been, it's been fun.

Chris McDonald: I hired Daniel cause I had really bad experiences with some people. Be careful who you hire. I will give some advice on that. And I really appreciate you really have some good systems in place too.

And I think that that's so helpful from the therapist and that I, I understand it's like, I know where it's going. So if I send a request, I know what's going to happen. And you know, things are done in a decent manner. I don't have to wait four weeks for one small thing to get fixed. So, yeah,

Daniel Fava: we try to do so much.

Oh, thank you. That's great feedback to hear and what we love to hear. And we definitely try to have lots of systems in place and processes. I've been doing this for a while, so it's kind of like anytime we receive negative feedback, it's like, okay, what needs to, what needs to change to make sure this doesn't happen again?

And that kind of means a new process needs to be

Chris McDonald: created. Exactly. So why is SEO an important tool for therapists and their websites?

Daniel Fava: So it's, it's really important because, you know, I always say that once a, once a website is launched and created, it's out there in the world, that's really kind of the starting point of your marketing.

Cause now you have a place that you want to send people to, you can send people to, uh, as a place that you can attract your ideal clients. And if you just put it out there and you just let it sit there, your website, just let it sit there. You're not working on it to add new content, optimize it. You know, people are not likely to show up.

Yes, you can get lucky. Sometimes people just have a, have the knack for creating some good content or maybe the competition is low in their geographical area and it works for them. And, and it, you know, it brings in those clients from what I've seen is. There's sort of this typical thing that happens where you put out a website, you create it, it helps you get those first clients and get started.

But then you kind of hit that point where you're ready to go to the next level and you don't have the consistency of new traffic and new clients coming to the website. So SEO is, it involves all those things. Things and that's search engine optimization. For those who aren't familiar. Oh, yeah. I should have made that clear.

Yeah. I always forget to define it. So it's just, it's helping search engines know what your practice is about the services that you offer and the clients that you're looking to help. And it can be a really great long term strategy. To allow you to organically get people into your business. It takes time, but it can be a great way to add people into your business, you know, month after month without having to do a lot once it's really set up and you've got a structure and a flow to it.

Chris McDonald: I think that's why I was so excited to start. I did that many, many years ago and, and it's just awesome to get referrals. And I feel like I didn't do much now because it's like, they find me through Google. It's like, Oh, wow. That's

Daniel Fava: pretty awesome. Yup.

Chris McDonald: Exactly. And it's not like, it's like, once you invest in this, then it's not like you have to keep going to tons of networking and really be like a brand new therapist out there.

It's like, Oh, this is really nice.

Daniel Fava: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It can, it can be great because once it's going, you can just kind of rely on that, but it does take some time to set up and. It

Chris McDonald: does. It's a long term, term thing for, for sure. So what about target audience? Is it important for a therapist to really be clear before they can use SEO on who they're serving?

Daniel Fava: Yeah, so I would say that, and that's really kind of step one, I kind of listed out five things that we can do to optimize our websites for private practice. Yeah, step number one comes down to keywords and your keywords really start with knowing your audience, you know, just like you, just like in the question you asked there.

And so when you're, when you're first starting out, you really want to think about. Who are the types of people that I want to attract and what are the specialties and services that I offer? And I really encourage people to really dig into their specialties because specialties really are keywords in and of themselves.

Oftentimes when we start looking at someone's website, when they're starting to invest in SEO, you know, they might just list their quote unquote services and those services might just be individual therapy, online therapy. Couples therapy. Well, individual therapy is not really the best keyword. It's very broad.

It's very general. But then we start digging into the services that they offer and we find out, oh, they, they offer anxiety therapy as well. They offer depression counseling. They offer premarital counseling. So those are sort of subsets of individual therapy and couples therapy. So you start to dig down into you.

What you offer and the specialties that you offer. So, you know, you can just start by brainstorming just a list of everything you offer, the types of people that you're trying to attract. And then you got to use some tools out there to really, to take a look at keywords. So doing what's called keyword research, one of the tools that I really like, it's free and it's super cheap.

If you even purchase it, it's called Uber suggest. ubersuggest. com and you can put in a keyword and it's going to show you the volume of how many people are searching for that keyword each month and the competition, which is on a scale from one to a hundred, like how many people are trying to rank for this specific keyword.

And that just gives you a sense, you know, like we don't want to write a bunch of content or insert a keyword numerous times into a page and then find out no one's actually searching that term or. Everybody's really trying to rank for that term. Then it becomes really hard to get that page to rank for that term.

So that's really the starting point. Know your audience and do some keyword research to just get a sense of how many people are searching those terms each month. So what's your second element? So the second element, you know, once you know your keywords, you really got to focus in on your content and. I touched on this a little bit, um, you know, getting back to kind of your specialties and those specific services that you offer.

It comes down to really creating landing pages, specific pages for each of those specialties. In order to rank a keyword really well in search results, you have to have devoted pages for each of those because otherwise Google's going to see your website. And maybe you just have like one landing page that just says services, and it's got all these bullet points of, you know, services like couples therapy mixed in with anxiety counseling.

Well, those are two different types of people that are going to be searching for those two different types of services. So we need to speak directly to them because Google wants to get the best results to. You know, the answers to the questions that people are asking and help them find what they're searching for.

And so if you don't have enough content on your website to really explain that service, really expand upon that specific keyword, then Google's going to send them to somebody else's website. They're going to rank another website higher than yours. So as far as content goes, have a specific landing page for each specific service or specialty you offer.

I always say aim for about 800 to 1, 000 words on that page. Uh, sometimes that can be challenging for folks. Uh, so one tip that I suggest is create an FAQ section on each landing page, on each service page. Uh, so you can answer specific questions about that service. You can naturally repeat the keyword, you know, and so it's like, how, how do I know I need couples therapy?

And you can kind of, you know, answer that question. How much does couples therapy cost? And that's going to. It might be the same sort of question, just swapping out keywords on each service page for the questions themselves. But then you can really, you know, specifically answer those questions to those people who are landing on that page and get really into into the details about that service.

And that helps really create more content on. The page itself.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, that's really helpful. I think just being that helps you to be more clear too. Cause I know when I started out too, it was very vague. I didn't know what I was doing. I was like, I have a website. Here I am. Yeah. Nobody's coming to it. Okay.

But I think the more clear and it gets to the point where you really need to work on your content too, because I have the common theme I have now is my young adults will be like, Oh my God, that's exactly what I'm thinking and how I feel. How did you know? And that's

Daniel Fava: what you want. Yeah. And that can take a little time to develop.

And especially if you're new and you're just starting out in your practice, like you're getting to know your clients and the people you love working with. And, you know, so I encourage people to just to keep like, maybe at the end of the day, you kind of just write down some of the things that your clients said or how they describe their situation.

Uh, and then you can use that in your, in your copy later on. Or if it's in the, if it's in the budget. You know, hire a copywriter is always, I highly encourage people to do that.

Chris McDonald: That's helpful too, because sometimes it can give a different perspective than what you have about it and give a little more details.

And because sometimes we just don't have the time to

Daniel Fava: do these things. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. A copywriter will do research for you and really get into the pain points and the head of your ideal clients. And it's always helpful when you can hire out.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. Yeah. So that brings me to the question too, is should therapists hire someone for SEO?

Or do you think, is this something doable that therapists can learn on, on their own?

Daniel Fava: Yeah, I think it's both. It's really for me and kind of how I see, you know, even my own business growth and development, I think that you have to pay attention to kind of where you're at in your own business. You know, like, do you have the budget to hire somebody to do it?

Yeah, they're likely going to do a better job just because they are. They're in that world every day, you know, day in and day out. They know the nuances of SEO and it's such a big topic. You know, and the same thing with website design and development. Like, you know, we're going to know a lot more about WordPress than if it's your first time setting up a WordPress website.

So if you can hire out, it's great to hire out. But I think if you're just starting, it's also really good to learn some of this yourself because then you're going to know. The terms that an agency might use as you work with them, you might know more about, you know, the starting point of where your website is at related to SEO, the work that you've already done as you kind of get into learning to use keywords and put them in the right places.

It's going to give you just a little bit more familiarity with, with all that goes into SEO. Um, it also could be a wake up call to say like, wow, I really don't like doing this and, uh, I don't want to do this long term. Yeah, yeah, so like, you know, you get to that point and you're, you're starting out and you may be bootstrapping some things and just trying to save some money.

It's also an education piece, but then, you know, I always want to see people get to that next level where, okay, this isn't my favorite thing. Uh, I know enough about it to be dangerous, but let me hire somebody to help me get to. That next level actually reminds me of a client of ours who we just started working together.

We're going to be working together for 12 months to redesign his website and do all the SEO. But he's actually one of my former SEO course students. We have a mastermind class slash online course for SEO, which will be launching soon. And so he went through that course about a year ago. And so I know he's done a lot of work, but that was exactly what he said to me when he reached out and he was like, I feel like I've gotten to the end of what I can do.

So I need to kind of hand this over because I want more consistency in my clients and, and yeah, I'm not sure exactly how to get there. So, you know, it's time for me to invest

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Plus, they guarantee payment within two weeks of every appointment. You support your clients. Alma supports you visit helloalma. com to learn more that's helloalma. com. So what are some other elements that you recommend? Yeah.

Daniel Fava: One big thing that we see a lot. So when we work with clients, we always start with an SEO assessment and that means we go into their website.

We're reviewing their content. We're reviewing technical stuff on the website, how it's set up so that Google can crawl through it. We often see. Say about 95 percent of the time we are flagging, this will get into a little bit of technical stuff, but how you use headers on the website. So if anyone's familiar with, you know, maybe they've built their own website or done some work on their website, you have like an H1 and H2 and H3 when you create those sub headers throughout the page.

And oftentimes, especially with like Squarespace websites. People will just use an H1 header just because it makes something big. So they might want big text, and as far as design goes, throughout their page. So they're using a number of H1 headers. And that's just a tag that's applied to the header that gives it a style.

Gives it a size, gives it a weight of the font. And so you really want to make sure that The way that your headers look on your page is like the glossary of a Wikipedia page. You know, if you search for something in Wikipedia, you see the outline of the content. And so you should have just one H1 on each landing page.

And that's really where your main keyword goes right there, front and center at the top. And so Google will see that. And that take, it takes a big signal from that about what the page is about. And then we want sections throughout the page. that are broken up with other subheaders. So don't use H1s for that.

Use an H2. And then if you also have something under that, you know, let's say one of those sections is our services, like it's on your home page. It says our services. So the text our services could be in an H2. And then you start listing like little blurbs about your services. And then the titles of those services could be H3.

So you're like, you're creating this hierarchy to the structure of the content that number one, it helps people. the page and scan things quickly to see what they're interested in, get where they want to go. And then the other part of it is it helps Google see what your page is about more quickly as well.

So you want to take a look at those, how you're, you're using those header tags on your content to make sure that you don't have a bunch of H ones and things are all in like different sizes and all over the place. It's technical and it takes a little time to make sure that those are right. But that's often the first thing that we do when we're optimizing websites.

Yeah,

Chris McDonald: so there is a learning curve if you want to do some of that stuff on your own. Yeah, a little bit. So what are the other elements?

Daniel Fava: Yeah, number four, the fourth thing I have on my list here is internal links. So internal links are links from one part of your website to another page on your website.

And this is something to just kind of keep in mind as you are creating your website. And as you're, if you're blogging, you're writing articles and you make mention of other topics, you know, let's say you're writing specific blog posts that has to do something, you know, maybe it's like boundaries in relationships or, or communication for couples or something like that.

And so you, you make mention of maybe couples therapy in that. article somewhere. And so you want to hyperlink that text couples therapy to your specific landing page. And you're like, we talked about, about couples therapy. And so you're linking those pages together. And what that does is it can help people stay on your website a little bit longer.

You know, maybe they come to your website through that article, but then they're really ultimately interested in couples therapy. So they can click on that link easily and they can go there. Um, but it also lets Google know what pages on your website are the most. important. And so we're trying to pass authority to those pages to say, you know, those services that you offer, those are really the most important pages.

And so you want to think about ways to link pages together. Oftentimes, too, if you are talking about your practice in the third person, or maybe you've got a group practice, highlight that text and then link it to the homepage. And so we're letting Google know This is the name of the practice. We're also just sending authority to our own page and trying to just keep people on the website longer.

Yeah,

Chris McDonald: that's good to know. Then that sounds like a pretty simple thing to do too. Yeah, and it's

Daniel Fava: something that you just keep in mind as you're creating content. You're just like, Oh, I mentioned this page. Or sometimes you think about articles you've written that could go on to those specialty landing pages.

link those together. And that's something we do often as well. If someone has a lot of blog posts and they're categorized, we can pull those blog posts into those specialty landing page to create a new section that says articles related to couples therapy. And then we're getting that couples therapy keyword on that page one more time in an H2, like we just talked about.

And now we've got blog posts on that page that you link over to the blog section. Uh, so it's, it's creates internal links. Is there anything

Chris McDonald: that therapists need to do so they show up locally? Cause I know, especially if you're only licensed in one state and you know, maybe or maybe you're just all in

Daniel Fava: person.

Yeah. So locally it's always easier when someone has a physical location. I will say like, it's definitely challenging, um, you know, cause we're, we're running into this new world that we're living in where, where people have made the switch to online and they're either just staying or they have. Both in person and online that they're offering.

So I say, if you, if you are offering in person therapy, focus on the town that you are based in, the town that your Google business profile is, has your address listed there. Um, and if you don't have a Google business profile, that's kind of step number one for local SEO is get that set up. Yeah, so you really want to focus in on that town and you can add that term.

To the end of some of those, those headers and sub headers on those service landing pages. So it could be couples therapy in Atlanta, Georgia. And then somewhere on there, if you are offering online as well as in person, you can have like a sub header that just talks about, you know, come for couples therapy to our in person office in Atlanta.

Or online therapy as well. You just want to make it very clear throughout the content that you offer both. And it is also good to have a online therapy landing page like devoted to just online therapy in such and such state. If you offer in multiple states, then you'll want to have a page for each state that you offer if you're trying to rank for those keywords.

Kind of going beyond that to some people, well, they want to, you know, let's say I use my wife and she's my guinea pig. So she, her address is in Atlanta, the city that she's also kind of like in or on the border is called Sandy Springs. And so we have a page on her website that talks about the areas that she services or the towns that she services.

Atlanta is really what we're focused on for her main. Her homepage, her service pages, her, you know, about our therapists, our therapists in Atlanta page. So that's all really focused on Atlanta, but we have a landing page that talks about the different towns that she serves. And so we are in the process of creating a landing page for Sandy Springs, a landing page for Buckhead is another.

area that's close by as well. And so that helps Google and users to her website know that she sees clients from these different areas. She's kind of centrally located, and we're kind of making mention of that throughout the website, you know, like serving the greater Atlanta area, stuff like that. You could say, like, our office is located in Pacific town, but we serve the greater blah, blah, blah area.

You know, if you're close to a larger city. So those are some of the

Chris McDonald: ways. Yeah, that's helpful. Cause I think that can be confusing because if you have an office in a smaller suburbia, but you're close to a big city, what,

Daniel Fava: what do you do? Yeah. It's challenging because a lot of the times when you do the keyword research, you'll see more volume, obviously for someone who's searching for couples therapy, uh, to use an example of another.

client of ours, we were focused on, he's in Orange County, California. So we started our SEO process and work focused on, you know, couples therapy in Orange County, because that term was getting maybe like 400 searches each month, but the people that it was pulling in, they weren't really, they weren't actually going to drive out to where he specifically was.

And so. We kind of switched it up and we just focused on his little small town of, uh, Tustin, I think it was. And then, oh, it took a little time, but he was starting to get people who were like, oh, I know exactly where you're located. Like, oh, I drive by there every day, you know? And so while the term, you know, couples therapy, Tustin, Might not get as many search terms as couples therapy, Orange County, because it's a smaller pool of people and searches.

Um, it is actually still pulling in people, you know, maybe they're not actually using the keyword Tustin. Maybe they're just using couples therapy, but you need that mention of the location to help Google. Pair your website with somebody who's searching in that geographical area.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, that's, that's helpful too.

I'm taking notes here, Daniel, because I'm learning stuff already. I've been studying the SEO stuff for a long time, but there's always more to learn.

Daniel Fava: I think. Yeah. Yeah. And another part too, just to keep going on the local SEO front is. There's other ways too that we can just let Google know where you're located.

And so part of our work when we work clients and do some of our monthly SEO work, we build what's called, you might see if you do some research called business citations. It's basically a business listing. So just like you have a psychology today listing, there's hundreds of free. Local business search websites out there that you can list your business on.

And so that all creates signals to Google, sees that your business name, your address, your phone number, or your website. It's consistent throughout the internet at all. It gives Google those signals. So hopefully when somebody's searching in your area, you'll show up. So that's kind of off what's called offsite SEO, off page SEO.

It's work that we could do off of your website separately to kind of help give those local signals to let Google know where you're located.

Chris McDonald: Can you talk about Google reviews too? Cause I know we can't ask clients ethically, most of us in our field, but is that helpful though, to get colleagues to

Daniel Fava: review us?

It is. It really is. Yeah. So back to that client. I just. spoke about in Orange County. That was one thing that he has really in the last six months gone after. He's got a lot of referral sources and he's a professor at a college. So he, he knows a lot of people professionally that he could reach out for those character references and reviews.

And so I think he reaches out to maybe three or four each month. And so he's been really adding a lot of reviews to, to Google and his Google business profile has just been every month. It's. I don't know the, I don't want to just throw out a number, but it's, it's exponentially increasing the number of people who are looking at it.

And he's, he's at the point he's got a wait list now. Like he's, he's not really taking on many more clients. And so he really took that part seriously and it, and it really helped. And it was, it was really kind of fun to watch because with SEO, there's all these different levels. It's like, okay, I got my content, right?

What can I do next? Okay. I can start doing these business citations off of my website. What can I do next? Let me get some more reviews. All these little things that you can. That's why it takes time, but you know, you can, you can just build upon and build upon. And so that's what he's done. Other folks that I've spoken to, they maybe wait until a client has moved on, they're closing their file.

And then, you know, and if it was a good experience at that point, they might say, Hey, if you're comfortable, you know, here's a link to our Google business. If you want to write a review, no pressure that also works really well for when you're working with parents because it's not the actual. Child that's reviewing you, you're the parents might be more, a little more easier to ask for a parent to review your services if they've had a great experience.

So those are just different ways like to keep in mind, but yeah, you can reach out to your referral sources, other colleagues, maybe you're in a group practice, you know, and you can all review each other's a Google business profile. I think

Chris McDonald: that's important for our listeners to consider that and really help each other out, other therapists and do it for each other, you know, it is making that intention.

I like that goal of, you said that maybe for a month just to, yeah, who can I ask? And, but then you're helping the other person too. Yeah. Exactly. I was going to ask about the holistic realm since, uh, a lot of my listeners are in the holistic counseling or thinking about it. Is there any unique aspects to SEO that they should

Daniel Fava: consider?

You know, I was, I was thinking about that and I think really the, the approach is really similar across the board. You know, each business is, it's similar practice and steps that we take to optimize a website and it really, it really comes down to, to knowing those services that you offer, uh, and knowing what.

Your clients are looking for, there might be more, you know, specifics and nuances to the different services that you offer that's not typical for a regular just talk therapy. So you might want to just dig into that and I'm not, I'm not too familiar with, with the space myself, so I can't really speak to the specific terms, but I know that for some of the clients we've worked with.

You're looking at like somatic therapy and some of those things that it's very specific, which is great. And Google likes specificity. So going with that, but, and what we did see is that people were using those terms. And I think people are, are becoming more and more well educated on these different things that they hear about and they want to learn more about and find out if they can find, you know, somebody nearby to, to work with on those things.

Some of the terms might take a little more time, but. I think people are getting more, more educated on just those specific modalities that, that people are offering. Yeah.

Chris McDonald: And I think it is growing. It's changing. I think things are shifting a lot. Like you said, somatic is definitely one that is becoming more common.

And cause I know for me, I've done a lot of research on keywords for like holistic counseling, holistic therapy. It's not growing as fast for those terms, but I think we're going to get there, you know? Cause I get clients that come to me and specifically because they see. That I have the very specific things on my website that they're looking for a more holistic approach.

And yeah, they're out there. Those clients are out there. I want to let

Daniel Fava: listeners. Yeah, they're definitely out there. And, and I think that that's kind of also, my mind kind of goes to like, you know, content, like just making sure that you, you've got content there. If you're not writing blog articles, get started on that because that can add, it could add new keywords to your website.

It can answer a specific question that's going to pull in the right client. And, and again, it just, it takes time. So it's, you know, start, start now, get content on your website, continue. And you'll, you'll find those clients will find you.

Chris McDonald: Did we get through all the five? We've

Daniel Fava: got one more. One more. One more, one more quick one.

So I want to make. Just mentioned about, um, images and how images play into SEO. One thing that you can do, there's a couple of ways to optimize. First is optimizing for size. So oftentimes what happens is people will upload a file, a image that's huge. Like, and to me, that's like maybe 2, 500 or 3, 000 pixels wide.

Like you download it from a stock photo website at the largest size. And then you just put it up on the website. Well, the website has to work pretty hard to show that image because it's got a lot of quote, unquote, weight to it at the file size is large and like the actual pixel size is large. So that can slow down your website and a slow website.

Uh, you're gonna. You're going to lose some, some Google juice there because Google looks at user experience. They want to make sure that they're providing the best user experience. So they don't want to send people to slow websites. So pay attention to how you're using images. If you're uploading an image and it's just kind of showing up in like a little blurb on your website, that is maybe like 400 pixels wide, something like that.

You want to resize those images before you upload them to, you know, to the right size that they're being used for. And there's different tools you can use. Canva has like an image resizing tool you can use. And then the other thing you can do is name each file to what the page is about and include a keyword.

So if you've got a couples therapy page and you've got a few images on that page, rename the file of those images to, you know, couples therapy dash one couples therapy dash Atlanta. Dash two, you know, stuff like that, uh, that just gets the keyword in the file name. And then the other thing is the alt text.

The alt text is, is a description of the image that is used for screen readers for people who are visually impaired, but Google also does look into those and it doesn't carry a huge amount of weight, but it's an extra place where we can include a keyword. So you can describe the image that you're uploading and.

Just try to work the keyword into that description of the picture, you know, so it's like two, two couples walking down the beach and smiling at one another. This image depicts how couples therapy can impact a marriage, you know, something like that. And so you're putting that into the code and it's another place for Google to see those keywords.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. So if, if therapists are interested in learning more about SEO, so you have something coming up

Daniel Fava: soon. Yeah. So I'm, I'm hosting a free live webinar on February 8th. That is going to be kind of an introduction to SEO. Uh, we're going to get into how to do keyword research a little bit more. Four different things that you need to have in place, kind of the four different categories of SEO and what that means, and then just different tips and tools to really assess where you're at now so that you can start to create a SEO strategy for the future.

So, yeah, so it happens on February 8th, and if people want to check that out, it's at privatepracticeelevation. com slash SEO workshop. That's all one word, or if you go to privatepracticeelevation. com, you'll likely see it. Pop up on the website, we'll be posting about it. And

Chris McDonald: that's where people can go if they're interested in your services.

Daniel Fava: Yep. Absolutely. Yep. PrivatePracticeElevation. com.

Chris McDonald: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Daniel. Yeah. Thank you for having me, Chris. It was great. Yeah, it's been great. And that brings us to the end of another episode. Be sure to tune in next Wednesday when another episode drops. And have you been wanting to integrate breathwork into your sessions, but are unsure how?

Are you needing more continual education credits? Shifting from traditional talk therapy to using more holistic modalities can bring feelings of uncertainty and fear, and this is understandable because I've been there. But I'm here to tell you that this is within your scope of practice, and I have found breathwork to be one of the most powerful holistic modalities therapists can use in session.

And now I'm offering you a recorded training that you can watch on your own schedule so you can be prepared to facilitate breathwork with your client safely. and ethically so you can help them deepen their healing. So join me on this journey as we delve into breathwork techniques. You will earn 1. 5 credit hours by completing this course.

Go to hcpodcast. org forward slash breathwork course. That's hcpodcast. org forward slash. Breathwork course. And once again, this is Chris McDonald sending each one of you much light and love. Until next time, take care. Thanks for listening. The information in this podcast is for general educational purposes only.

And it is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are giving legal financial counseling or any other kind of professional advice. If you need a professional, please find the right one for you. The Holistic Counseling Podcast is proudly part of the SiteCraft Network.