Using Online Directories to Grow Your Practice with Jessica Tappana | FP 108

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On this therapist podcast, Jessica Tapana talks about using online directories to grow your practice.

Are you using online directories and feeling frustrated with a lack of results? Which online directories actually boost your SEO? How can you connect with clients through your SEO without even interacting with them?

In this podcast episode, Whitney Owens speaks about Using Online Directories to Grow Your Practice with Jessica Tappana.

Meet Jessica Tappana

A photo of Jessica Tappana is captured. Jessica is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the founder and Owner of Simplified SEO Consulting. Jessica is featured on the Faith in Practice Podcast, a therapist podcast.

Jessica is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with experience in mental health working with individuals of all ages. She is also the Founder and Owner of Simplified SEO Consulting.

Jessica helps therapists and other mental health professionals get their websites to the top of Google. She and her team and provide “Done for You” SEO Services where they optimize pages for busy business owners or teach DIY mental health professionals to do their own SEO through SEO training.

Jessica first came up with the idea for this business when she was teaching others about SEO at Slow Down School in 2018, and teaching other business owners to optimize their own websites has remained a core part of her business.

Visit the Simplified SEO Consulting Website. Connect with Jessica on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Follow this link and use promo code “Faith” for 20% off any of Simplified SEO Consulting’s online, DIY SEO courses!

Follow this link for a comprehensive list of Therapist Directories you should consider joining!

In This Podcast

  • Benefits of online directories
  • Online directories for therapists
  • Boosting SEO
  • Jessica’s advice to Christian counselors

Benefits of online directories

1 – It provides you with high-quality backlinks. These are links from other websites that Google trusts that are sending people to your website.

2 – Google wants to make sure that your name, address, and phone number are consistent across the web. This boosts your business’s trustworthiness.

Online directories for therapists

Many therapists opt-in to online directories that are specific to therapists because they are hoping to attract real clients into their practice. Some therapists, however, become frustrated because this approach is not always successful.

[The online directory] is still doing you good because you’re still getting that SEO benefit. The problem with these therapist-specific directories is they’re not all really high quality in the eyes of Google. (Jessica Tappana)

Google appreciates consistency and trustworthiness above all else, and some of these therapist-specific online directories are not trusted by Google as valid sources. There are online directories that function just for SEO, such as:

  • Chamber of Commerce
  • Brown Book
  • Easy Local
  • Hot Frog
  • Judy’s Book etc.

There are all of these different directories that Google’s going to look at, and even though you will probably never get a client from these, if you can get on them for low cost it helps them raise your trust with Google. (Jessica Tappana)

This is because your name, address, and phone number will be the same across all these online directories. Google appreciates consistency and will rank your SEO higher because it finds you trustworthy.

Boosting SEO

If your budget is tight and you want to grow your SEO, consider:

  • Working from the visibility report
  • Searching for free directories
  • Applying and manually submitting
  • Keeping a list of all the directories that you have become a part of

Jessica’s advice to Christian counselors

Market your services in a way that is true to your values as a Christian. Marketing can feel salesy, but the tools of therapy deserve to be shared. It can help you to find people who would benefit from therapy.

Useful links mentioned in this episode:

Check out these additional resources:

Meet Whitney Owens

Photo of Christian therapist Whitney Owens. Whitney helps other christian counselors grow faith based private practices!Whitney is a licensed professional counselor and owns a growing group practice in Savannah, Georgia. Along with a wealth of experience managing a practice, she also has an extensive history working in a variety of clinical and religious settings, allowing her to specialize in consulting for faith-based practices and those wanting to connect with religious organizations.

Knowing the pains and difficulties surrounding building a private practice, she started this podcast to help clinicians start, grow, and scale a faith-based practice. She has learned how to start and grow a successful practice that adheres to her own faith and values. And as a private practice consultant, she has helped many clinicians do the same.

Visit her website and listen to her podcast here. Connect on Instagram or join the Faith in Practice Facebook group. Email her at [email protected]

Thanks For Listening!

Feel free to leave a comment below or share this podcast on social media by clicking on one of the social media links below! Alternatively, leave a review on iTunes and subscribe!

Faith in Practice is part of the Practice of the Practice Podcast Network, a network of podcasts that are changing the world. To hear other podcasts like Empowered and Unapologetic, Bomb Mom, Imperfect Thriving, Marketing a Practice or Beta Male Revolution, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.

Podcast Transcription

[WHITNEY OWENS]
Welcome to the Faith in Practice podcast. I’m your host Whitney Owens recording live from Savannah, Georgia. I’m a licensed professional counselor, group practice owner, and private practice consultant. Each week through personal story or amazing interviews, I will help you learn how to start, grow and scale your practice from a faith-based perspective. I will show you how to have an awesome faith-based practice without being cheesy or fake. You too can have a successful practice, make lots of money, and be true to yourself.

Hello, and thank you for listening to the Faith in Practice podcast. I’m so glad that you’re here today. I am thrilled to share this episode with you because I think it’s super valuable. It’s quick. It’s easy. Listen, and you’re going to get some tips plus learn about a new resource to help you rank higher in SEO and understanding online directories and how that helps with your SEO and your website. So you’re going to get a lot from this.

I interviewed my dear friend, Jessica Tappana who is the owner of Simplified SEO Consulting as well as owner of a group practice in Columbia, Missouri called Aspire Counseling. She has been a practice owner for many years and then started Simplified Consulting three or four years ago after she went to Killin’It Camp and started doing some SEO work on people’s websites. Then people said, “Hey, you should make a business out of this.” So she did. As she’s grown her business, she just sees the need that’s going on around her, creates features, ideas to meet those needs and that’s how the business keeps growing. I know that there are tons of competitors out there that do SEO, but I can tell you, I personally know Jessica, I know her authenticity and I know how important the work is to her.

So I want to encourage you, if you are thinking about doing SEO services, please check out the website. You can do a free consult with her group so that you can determine if it’s an appropriate place for you. But every person that I have sent to Simplified SEO Consulting has had a positive experience and has had improvement in their website development and SEO. Also I can say from personal experience, my practice has used the services at Simplified SEO, and we got double the number of viewers to our website within just a few months. So it matters.

I also want to give a plug here to the importance of friendship and being involved in communities. I know that being a practice owner can feel lonely. You could maybe connect with other people in your area, but other therapists maybe don’t have the business mindset, the growth, the desire to increase income in the same way that maybe other people do. So when I got involved in the Practice of the Practice community, I was able to find people that were like-minded, that really cared about the clinical work they were doing, but also cared about growing a business and having the finances they needed for their families.

I ended up being in a mastermind group for two years with Practice of the Practice. Actually that is how I met Jessica. She now is by far one of my best friends. Not only do we talk business, we can talk about family. I can run ideas by her and no one really understands that part of me quite the way that she does. So if you’re kind of listening right now, thinking I really wish I could connect with some other practice owners, people maybe that have a similar faith background in the way they make that a part of their business, or maybe just the idea that it’s okay to make money and run a business and how do you run a business, I want you to find people to connect with.

There are lots of ways to do that. I do have a free community on Facebook, that’s Faith in Practice and it’s other faith-based practice centers. We talk to one another, get to know each other. In fact, I’m also doing a conference. You’re going to hear more about this in the coming months, but I am doing a Faith in Practice conference. This is all God willing that COVID decreases by April, but it’s going to be in April, 2022. Another way for you to meet some other practice owners, I’ll be selling tickets for that likely the beginning of 2022. So I’ll of course tell you all about that on the podcast, but that’s another way to meet some other practice owners. That conference is going to be on Jekyll Island, Georgia. And if you’re not from Georgia, it is a beautiful island.

The thing about Georgia that’s, so is there’s ocean and there’s also mountain, there’s a lot to it. Jekyll Island is one of these little islands off the side, along with St Simon’s and Cumberland and a lot of others. So the conference is going to be right there on Jekyll Island. It is going to be limited to a hundred practice owners because we want to be safe and also really be able to get to know one another and invest in one another. So that’s another way that you could get to know some other practice owners. And like I said, I’ll be sending out more information about that. Or if you are not already on my email list, please join the email list. If you go to practiceofthepractice.com/faithinpracticeresources, you can jump on that list.

But other ways to get involved, I do run mastermind groups. I usually run a few a year. If you’re interested in joining a mastermind group, you can just shoot me an email [email protected] and would love to get you connected in that. So there’s lots of ways that you can get connected to other faith-based practice owners. And if you’re listening right now and you’re not really sure the best way to get connected, just email me. I would love to talk with you and get you to the right because it’s so important that you make those relationships. And like I said, I got a best friend out of it, so I’m very grateful.

All right. So I want to go ahead and get jumping into the episode. Jessica could talk about SEO all day long because she loves it and there’s so many aspects to it. But today we’re going to specifically focus on in a new feature that they’re offering through Simplified SEO that helps you look at online directories and how to maximize those directories to find benefits in your practice. She does have a promo code for a discount on her courses that we’re going to give to you at the end. So please listen to the whole episode because you’re going to get a lot of value from it. So this is the Faith in Practice podcast, episode number 108, using online directories to grow your practice.
[WHITNEY]
Hello. Today on the Faith in Practice podcast, I have my good friend, Jessica Tappana. How are you, girl?
[JESSICA TAPPANA]
I’m great. How are you this morning?
[WHITNEY]
I’m doing well. I always love an excuse to hang out with my friends while I’m having work time. So I’m really glad that you were able to come on the show today.
[JESSICA]
Absolutely. We’re pretty good at coming up with ways to use work and friendship all in one.
[WHITNEY]
That’s right. Well, that’s always a good thing to have. So we have lots to talk about today. So Jessica and I are good friends. We’re always talking family, business, all the good things. She starts telling me about this new idea that Simplified SEO has and I was like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. You have to come on the podcast. So that is how this happened. So she’s going to talk to us today about online directories, which ones are the most helpful, but also how you can use it to improve your SEO. So why don’t you go ahead and share with us the new things going on with that?
[JESSICA]
So back in May I officially moved my private practice office and when I moved it, I realized that I had done all of this work on my SEO and I had gotten my old address for my practice out all over the web. I started really giving a lot of thought to how do I, as efficiently as possible, make sure that I’ve changed my address in as many places as possible. We started doing a lot of research and looking at different ways to do it. So now we are actually offering what’s called, part of it is called list management services or local SEO through simplified that started out of a need that I had with my own business of just wanting to make sure that my private practice’s SEO was as good as it could possibly be despite having moved offices.

So essentially the basis for that is this idea that Google cares a lot about making sure that it’s sending people to valid businesses, that it really trusts and that the web really trusts. So there’s two components where being on directories helps. The first is that it gets you high quality back links and so links from other websites that Google trusts are sending people to your site, showing that they trust your website. So Google sees that as a good thing. But then the other thing is Google’s looking to make sure your name, address, and phone number, what some people call your NPA information, that your name, address, and phone number is consistent everywhere.

It shows up across the web. It makes you look much more or valid as a business, whereas it doesn’t look very trustworthy If one place lists your phone number is this and another place lists this and your address is listed. I’ve now been in three different addresses in the times I’ve had my private practice. If those three different addresses are showing up all across the web, it’s hard for Google to trust that I’m a real business and trust that the information on any one given website is actually accurate. So online directories help us with both of those things.
[WHITNEY]
Yes. I had not thought about those things as far as like the specifics there, but I had recently been thinking what if I was to leave my space? What would happen with my SEO? And I get that question a lot from people. So I’m glad that we’re bringing up this topic. You used to term, was it map or nap?
[JESSICA]
NAP? Like I’m going to take a nap.
[WHITNEY]
Nap. That’s funny. That’s funny because I was thinking map because of Maps, but that’s okay, NAP.
[JESSICA]
I think one thing with SEO is there’s all these acronyms and people say them and throw around and make SEO so much more complicated than it is. So if you hear somebody just being like a NAP is important for local SEOs and you’re like what are they talking about? All they are saying is it is important that the name, address, and phone number to be the same in multiple places online. But we throw these terms at it. And I feel like that’s across all elements of SEO. I still have conversations about SEO with really techie people and wowed by how many terms they use because they make it more complicated. It’s just name, address, and phone number.
[WHITNEY]
Oh, nap name, address, phone. Of course I say a nap is good for anything that I’m doing.
[JESSICA]
Clearly naps improve everyone’s life. So naps, that’s always a good thing.
[WHITNEY]
Okay. So there’s so many directories out there, which ones are the ones that we should be thinking about as therapists. I know some improve SEO and then some are for other reasons. So can you help me navigate this?
[JESSICA]
So as far as which ones are worth your time and in some cases money that I think is a really important question. I’ve heard people say it really adds up when I’m trying to list myself on all of these directories, which ones are worth it. A lot of people start with Psychology Day because it’s the biggest. You don’t get full credit for that as a backlink. So I’m actually not on Psychology Today. I’m on Therapy Den, which I know you are as well. But so there are therapists specific websites like Therapy Den, like goodtherapy.org, Therapy for Black Girls, Andreas. I believe that the DBT Lenahan Institute has one. So there are all of these different therapist-specific directories. I actually have a whole a whole blog post I wrote a while back on it.

Whitney, your group helped me because I said what are the Christian therapist specific directories? And there are several and I went through and I looked and I checked the domain authority for them and tried to make sure that I was putting decent quality ones on there. We have several Christian specific directories that we’ve listed on there. So there are all of those directories, all the therapists specific ones. And when we get on those part of it is, of course, is hoping that we get actual live clients directly from the directories. Some people get really frustrated. They’re like, man, I’ve been on these directories for ages and have hardly gotten any calls. It’s still doing you good because you’re still getting that SEO benefit. The problem with these therapists specific directories is they’re not all really high quality on eyes of Google.

Some of them haven’t been around very long. Also some of them take a really long time. I know we were talking about that it can take time to manually submit to all these therapist specific directories. It can take a while. And then some of them have fees. Of course that adds up if you’re on a whole bunch of online directories with these. So there’s those therapist specific directories. Then there’s the type of directories that are really, I think of as being just for SEO. So those are ones, there’s a ton of them, but chamberofcommerce.com, Easy Local, Hot Frog, I mean Judy’s Book, all of these different directories that have been around that Google kind of looks at. And I know it changes day by day where different directories stand and stuff, but they’re all of these different directories that Google’s going to look at and even though you’ll probably get a client from these, if you can get on them for low cost, it helps raise your trust with Google because Google is seeing like, hey, in these 40 different directories, every single place Whitney’s practice is listed with the exact same name, address, and phone number. Clearly that is the name, address, and phone number of Whitney’s practice.
[WHITNEY]
This makes sense. I like this. Do you have that list somewhere, the ones you just told me?
[JESSICA]
I do. It’s a long list. So we can actually run what’s called a baseline visibility report and it gives you a lot of information, but one of the things is it will specifically tell you, and I’m actually pulling ears up right now, it’ll specifically tell you all of these different directories, are you on them? And you get a nice, lovely green check mark that, yay, green check marks. Are you not on it, which is a big red X or there’s a little yellow thing. That means like, hey, we may have found your listing, but it’s not consistent with your information that you’ve given us. So people can run those baseline reports from there. You can go and individually, submit to each of those directories or of course we make it easy. And I like to say, SEO is a big investment in time and or money, which direction you decide to go.

So of course to individually submit to all these and then regularly check them to make sure it stays updated and your information stays accurate versus we have a service where we can put your information on these directories for you and help keep it current. And you can after a given see if it’s on there. Now that visibility report is on our website and I think you’re going to link to that in the show notes to specifically, our Faith in Practice page where people will be able to get that visibility report and I’ll email you as soon as we’ll get off here. But in addition to getting that visibility, or once you have that visibility report, there are other things on it. It’s looking at Google My Business, which we don’t have to talk too much about because I know you talk about that a lot and the importance of keeping Google My Business up to date.

They talk about data aggregators, so if you submit your information to data aggregators, they stay active on there for about a year and the data aggregators send your email or send that NAP information and your website information out to like hundreds of websites. There are pros and cons to using those. So I don’t necessarily automatically put everyone’s information on data aggregators because I don’t want to overwhelm people by down that rabbit hole right now. But the important thing that’s on there is this huge list of directories that Google trusts and you can see which ones you are already on and which ones you’re not on. It’s always weird when you find that you’re on one you didn’t realize you were on, because your information did get picked up usually by a data aggregator. So it is possible to be somewhere that you don’t know you are listed. But yes, then the choices do you have the time, the hours to put in or if you have a marketing assistant, like I know you do that has the time to go down and submit to each of those directories or does make sense for you to outsource to someone like us to submit and help keep those up to date. But there’s a very long list of them.
[WHITNEY]
This is such a good resource. I love this. So people can go to the Simplified SEO website and find this feature you’re calling it the baseline? Say that again.
[JESSICA]
So they can go simplifiedSEOconsulting.com/faith, is the page to welcome Faith in Practice listeners specifically. And then it is our baseline report for online visibility. It’s looking at different factors with what we call local SEO and local SEO just means anything you’re doing to tell Google where you’re located and where you’re relevant. So if we have a physical practice like you and I do that we want to show up, show Google that we’re really relevant in the specific city where we’re practicing. So when people search for trauma therapy near me, our practices will show up in our relative areas. On the other hand, if you have an online only practice, then you’re a little bit more to do the local SEO standpoint, but then you want to work on local SEOs for each state that you are in so that Google knows that you’re relevant in the state that you’re licensed in. But in this case, we have the physical address. So we want Google to know where that is and know that we’re really relevant anywhere in that area.
[WHITNEY]
This is great. Do you want to share anything from the baseline, the data there that you feel like, oh, listeners would benefit from hearing about this in Whitney’s practice? Or you can just send it to me later?
[JESSICA]
So if you don’t mind me sharing, I will tell you that specifically on the directories portion you had two listings present out 46 that were checked. And I think that’s interesting because I know that you worked on SEO and I know that you have great SEO. You’ve had some fantastic advice over the years I know and a really awesome marketing that helped you. So the good news there is that, that means that even though you’ve worked on SEO, here’s this other huge opportunity that you have for your practice to go down this list or to submit and you can get on a whole lot of other directories. I think that, yes, CEO’s an evolving field and one minute something is really relevant in the next minute something else seems more important. But is one of those things where it’s like, you work really, really hard at first to get ranking. You have to put a lot more effort in early on.

But even afterwards there you want to kind of keep an eye on it and every now and then go, well, what else can I do? So even if you already have great SEO like I’ve already, obviously had really good SEO for my business, this is one of those things that then I have done, my practice was the first Guinea pig. We had a couple Guinea pigs and I of course, made my practice a simplified first client for this. Because I’m like, even though I have good SEO, because the field’s constantly changing, because honestly more people in my local area are getting really aware of this stuff, we have to keep thinking what we need to do to stay ranking well. And one thing, this is one of those things that long-term I want my practice doing is staying relevant on all of these directories.
[WHITNEY]
This really does speak to the importance of what you just said, keeping up with things but also the fact that, I even have a marketing director and this is her job and we still have aspects that we’re missing and we still can get ahead. So I’m excited that you’re sharing this with me, but it also shows to listeners the importance of this feature and that it can really make a difference. And even a practice that’s done tons of SEO work can still find benefit from it. And just as we’re talking, I just want to give this plug to Simplified SEO. I remember we were on, I was on a walk one day, which is when I like to talk to my friends because my baby is entertained in a stroller. While we’re walking, we were talking about SEO and I was like bragging a little bit about how my SEO had improved and I think I said something like, oh yes, we have about 500 people a month coming to the website. This is awesome.

Then you said, oh really? I think we have easily over a thousand people come to our website every month. I’m sure you have even more now. Yes, you’re shaking your head. Yes, we have more now. But I remember being blown away that you said that and I was like, what? There’s no way. Over a thousand people? Anyway, so then I got on the Simplified SEO website and did the course, you can probably say the name better than I can, it’s like the 12 week course where you walk people through the steps. My marketing director took it and within three months we were at over a thousand people a month hitting the website. I was like, oh, this is how she does it. So SEO makes the hugest difference.
[JESSICA]
It really does. And it feels so, I think that it’s one of those things, I think marketing in general, you and I were talking about before, it feels so odd to us, so foreign because that’s not what we went to school for. But I like to think of it as a puzzle and with each piece of the puzzle that you put in Google sees the picture of who you’re helping a little bit better. And there are always more pieces though. Unfortunately, we think we have the whole picture and then there are five more pieces that we discover we need to add in there. But yes, it is possible to learn it and I think it really comes down to each of us as a practice owner to make a decision. We want to outsource because we just don’t have the time and we need it to be done well and we want it to be done awesome.

Do we want to have somebody like a marketing director come in-house, that’s focused on learning? Every morning I’m checking, Google definitely has figured out what my work revolves around because on the like news suggested articles, it always has a nice plethora of SEO related articles that it’s suggesting to me. So do we have, do we want to bring someone in-house that can focus on that or do as a practice owner want to learn it? A lot of people act like there’s no way that most business owners can ever figure out SEO. And I disagree. I think that if you’ve gotten through grad school and you have the determination, you can learn to do this. It does make sense for your practice and time. It always did for me, but lately, the last probably six months or so, a lot more of my own private practice’s SEO actually I’ve outsourced because even though I know that I can do it, I’ve just decided like it is worth it for them to do the basic optimization of my blog posts just to help keep our SEO up.

Now, obviously, there was no way I was going to take hours to submit individually to all these directories. When we moved, I was like, what is the fastest, most efficient, most effective way to do it? But yes, it’s not, it is complicated. There are over 200 factors. I don’t want to say SEO is not complicated. But I don’t want that to intimidate people into not thinking about this as a marketing strategy, because every piece that you work on makes the picture that much clearer. Every thing that you do brings your SEO that much better and you don’t have to do all 200 factors on Google.

In fact, we have about eight to 10 ranking factors that we typically focus on. We know that if you do these eight to 10 things on therapist websites, it usually gets the results are looking for. And then we have these others that we pull in when it’s not getting those results. We have over the last, last few months made it just really easy to like pivot whenever we need to and be really responsive. But my point is, it sounds complicated, but picking one thing at a time to work on, going through our course step by step, working with one of our staff, these sorts of things, it is possible to learn, at least be an informed consumer, even if you are outsourcing.
[WHITNEY]
So let’s say someone’s listening right now and maybe they’re a newer practice owner or solo owner and they don’t really have the funds to invest in a ton of different resources. What would you say are the couple things they could do to increase their SEO through online directories?
[JESSICA]
I mean they could get that visibility report and then you can one by one go through and adding those directories. Specifically of course the more limited your are the more you want to be looking for the directories, which there are plenty. Time’s not free, but sometimes we have more of that time than money. So using that time effectively, making sure that those, and then, if I was to do it over again, so that’s what I did early on. I went and tried to manually submit to a lot of directories. What I wish I had done was to keep a list of everywhere that I had done it. It would’ve taken more time to create such a list, but when we moved locations, I did not have such a list. So I couldn’t remember every free directory I had managed to find.

I had found the directories a lot of times by looking at my competitors back links. There are some three backlink checkers. They’ll show you just a portion of your competitors back links. It doesn’t show you all of them. But then I found kind of what directories my competitors were on. I remember going through that really early and learning SEO and being like, I’ve got to find more free places to get back links from, and that was a good strategy. But definitely keeping that would’ve been a free thing that would’ve been a little bit more time and would’ve been nice than when I moved to be able to quickly make sure. There are ways without a list I was able to check back links and that sort of thing, but ultimately I just decided it was worth my time just to outsource that for my practice.
[WHITNEY]
So today Jessica’s being generous. If you do the simplifiedSEOconsulting.com/faith, you can get 20% off of any of their services at simplified SEO. The other thing I really love —
[JESSICA]
Any of our courses. So that includes that search engine, one you had mentioned, but also several others.
[WHITNEY]
Awesome. Well, I thank you for doing that. And just to also let there are some free resources that she has. She has an email list I’m on there and she sends out what it’s like once a week, maybe, or every other week, just tips on SEO to help you build your practice, simple things that you can do. A lot of them are cost free or just a minimal cost. So it’s totally worth being on the email list. I want to encourage y’all to go to our website and jump on that. And then if you are interested in getting some services through Simplified SEO, you can schedule a consultation call and one of her reps will get on there and let you know kind of how your website’s doing. I send people there all the time. I can’t tell you how many people in my masterminds and in my membership communities have used Simplified SEO. I mean, I can honestly say I haven’t heard of one person who came back and said that didn’t help.
[JESSICA]
That’s what we like to hear. I mean, but it is, whether you’re somewhere you want to use the 20% off and try to do it on your own with the course, or you want to just look at all of our free blogs or you want to get on with work with us, outsource to us, I think the big thing is just knowing that this is doable. SEO is something that you can do and directories are one of the many, many, many things that you can do to try to improve your SEO. But sometimes it’s kind of of a low hanging fruit and I just think that if we can set aside this, like, okay, beginning on that, if we can set aside our preconception that each directory is meant to get us a bunch of clients and instead say each directory that I get on is laying one little brick of the foundation for building up my business then it can be just a really effective strategy, however you decide to go about it.
[WHITNEY]
Well, Jessica, we’re going to have to wrap it up here, even though I feel like I could talk to you about SEO all day long. So I do want to ask you though, when I ask everyone that comes on the show, what do you believe every Christian counselor needs to know?
[JESSICA]
It’s okay to market your services as long as you do, so in a way that’s really true to your values as a Christian. So I think that it can feel icky and salesy and we need to kind of get beyond that because the gifts that we have to help people with, the tools that we’ve been given deserve to be shared and marketing is how we can make sure that we’re not just sharing it with anybody, but that we’re sharing it with the type of clients that really will benefit from our services and getting in front of the right people. So view marketing as a tool to helping people into doing what you feel called to do when you came into this field.
[WHITNEY]
That’s always important for us to remember. There’s always so many options and things for us, especially entrepreneurs. So remembering why we do this and the importance of those values is always important to go back to.
[JESSICA]
Yes, and if it feels icky, I mean, ask yourself why it feels icky. Maybe process with something, with somebody, are you doing something that goes against your values? Are you doing something that feels like you’re misrepresent yourself? If the answer is no, then it might just be feeling that way because you’re not used to marketing, but give yourself that, check in and say what is underlying this? And if you’re doing something that’s with the best of intentions of getting out there and helping more people and staying true to yourself, then that’s what it’s all about.
[WHITNEY]
Well, Jessica, thank you so much. You’re always willing to come on and share so much information. So I appreciate it. And I am looking forward to looking at my report and talking to the marketing director soon about that.
[JESSICA]
Sounds good. Thanks for having me on.
[WHITNEY]
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