When I learned about SEO and blogging and how to focus my keywords, I went from the bottom of page 4 to the top of page 1 in six weeks and so I mean, the competition in most areas for counselors is really low! (Before we go any further, if you still need to set up a website, I have a full tutorial How to Create an Amazing Website)

Blogging 101

Blogging helps: 

1. Establish that you are an expert

2. You rank higher in Google

I just got a very honest email from someone, she said, “I want to start blogging, but I don’t know how to start without feeling that I am doing a term paper.  What should a therapist blog about?”

Here are a few tips:

• Think about your ideal client
• Who is connected to that person?
• What would help that person?

Blog Examples

For example, if you help kids with behavioral issues and their families, here are some blog posts you could do:

•  A step-parent’s guide to discipline
• A parent’s guide to behavior issues
• Seven things most principals get wrong when they talk about kid’s behavior
• A new teacher’s guide to classroom management (how to get “that kid” to settle down)
• 9 Unexpected ways to help middle schoolers calm down
• Why screen time isn’t that bad

I could go on and on, but you get the point.

Here are some videos that will really help you in your blogging:

How to find keywords to blog about

How to post it in WordPress

Here’s a link to the hosting I use for my WordPress website.

More on Blogging

Transcript from the video:

How’s it going? I’m Joe Sanok, from practiceofthepractice.com where we help counselors that own private practices to market and do business better. Also, I own becomeaconsultanttoday.com where I have a daily podcast teaching people how to level up and become a consultant beyond just their private practices.

So today, I’m going to show you how to quickly write a blog post and want to do because a lot of the people I consult with don’t know how to write blog posts, and they don’t know how to do it quickly. They think of it as a term paper. It’s going to take them weeks to create.

I wanted to just show you how to write a blog post really quickly, and I’m going to be showing you a few techniques within WordPress to get that into WordPress quickly. But I’m going to drive over. I was thinking about how to write a blog post and so quickly, I looked into How to Write a Blog Post within my adwords, how frequently it’s a search.

Blogging Tip: Listen to Google

So we know that according to Google “How to Write a Blog Post” gets searched 18,100 times per month, and it also has low competition. So the keyword I’m going to focus on is How to Write a Blog Post and so the title of this is going to be How to Write a Blog Post Quickly. All right. So I know I’m going to have an intro with a little bit of a story there, but first, I want to have my headers and so “Brainstorm your key points.” That’s going to be one.

Add video to your blog

Second, I’m going to do “Add some video if possible”. We’re going to have, before that, maybe, “Focus on your keywords”. We’re going to say, under here, I’m going to say, “Use numbers/bullets”; “Add some video”.

And then, “Use short sentences”. So I’ve got, let’s see. “Why you should be blogging?” so we’ll have that. So we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So we have five really quick – excuse me. I’m just drinking my coffee here.

So let’s start with our intro. I’m going to write something like:

You know when you are on Facebook and you click on an article that seems somewhat interesting?

What do you do?

1. You click on it
2. You scan the article
3. You go back and read it

That’s how people read online now.

All right. So my intro kind of outlines how people read online. So now I’m going to actually copy this over, go over to WordPress, to add new. Usually, I do the whole thing outside of that, but I’m going to put it in here. So see the numbers didn’t come over. That’s why I was kind of worried about that.

How to write a blog? Format correctly!

So each of this I’m going to turn into a header 1. All right. I’m going to have this, “Add video” be under… I’m going to do “Be engaging with key points”.

All right. So now we’ve got just kind of the basics of it. So, “Why should you be blogging?” So now we’re going to do:

Blogging does a number of things to help your counseling private practice:

1. Increases your trust and authority by demonstrating what you know
2. Helps clients to connect with your content and ultimately with you
3. Builds a sense of your voice as a counselor

So what I’m going to do is underneath each of these points, I’m going to put maybe this much and then maybe an extra couple of sentences or a paragraph, and I’m going to have this full article live both on Practice of the Practice. That’s going to go live actually after Psych Central. It’s just going to be on Psych Central.

So I’m going to put all sorts of just either numbers or bullets so people can scan this quickly to really read through and understand before they read the whole thing, if they want to read it. And so what this is going to look like, let do a preview here for you, is it really starts to just kind of fill in. And so because I just used numbers there, it looks kind of funny there. So I’m going to actually change these to be bullet points rather than numbers. So let’s change those to be bullets. That’s going to look a little bit better.

Focus on your blog keywords

So I’m going to save that and then, under keywords, let me just quickly show you how to do this. I’m going to go to YouTube. I’m going to go to my Practice of the Practice channel. I know have a video on How to use keywords. Let’s just go to my channel, and we’re going to How to use Google Keyword Planner. And then pause that. Share. Embed. We’re going to copy that. We’re going to bounce back here. Go to text. Go under my, let’s see. “Focus on keywords”. Plug that in there. So a video is going to pop up right there on “Focus on Your keywords” and show people exactly how to do it.

So for the full post, you’ll be probably watching this within a blog post, and so that’s kind of the quick way that I’ll do it. It’s probably going to take me 15 more minutes to fill in the rest of this content and then be done with this blog post.

So hopefully, that was helpful for you. You guys are awesome. Go over to becomeaconsultanttoday.com or practiceofthepractice.com and you can learn more about marketing, business, and your counseling or consulting private practice.

Have an awesome day. Talk to you later. Bye.