Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Therapists | Ep 12: Instagram vs SEO: The Real Pros & Cons of Marketing as a Therapist

Released: 02/06/2026

Show Notes:

In this episode, Amanda discusses the essential marketing strategies for therapists, focusing on the pros and cons of Instagram marketing versus SEO and website-based marketing. She emphasizes the importance of choosing a strategy that aligns with individual preferences, capacities, and business goals, while also addressing the emotional labor involved in marketing. The conversation highlights the need for therapists to have a strong online presence, whether through social media or a well-optimized website, to attract clients effectively without experiencing burnout.

3 Key Takeaways:

1. Instagram can build visibility and trust quickly, but it requires consistent emotional labor and energy that may not be sustainable for every therapist.
2. SEO and website-based marketing attract high-intent clients and create long-term, passive growth, but they require strategic setup and patience.
3. You don’t need to do everything—choose a primary marketing strategy that aligns with your capacity, nervous system, and long-term business goals, then use other platforms as supportive supplements.

Connect with Amanda:

• Follow on Instagram: @amandakbcoaching
• Check out the Amanda KB Coaching website

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Sponsors:

• This episode is sponsored by Alma – learn more here
• This episode is sponsored by Jane – use code: AMANDA2MO for a 2-month grace period

Resources & Links:

SEO for Therapists Membership

Therapy Intensives Academy

Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Mastermind

Free Training: 3 Steps to Booking Your First Therapy Intensive

Free Guide: 3 Steps to Double Your Income

SEO Freebie

Just a quick heads up, everything I share in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It’s not legal advice, financial advice, or tax advice. Every practice and every state has its own rules. So if you’re wondering how something applies to your situation, make sure to check in with an attorney, accountant, or another qualified professional who can give you guidance based on your specific circumstances.

Transcript:

Amanda (00:02)
Hello, welcome to this week’s episode of Happy Healthy and Wealthy Therapists. I’m super excited about this topic for today because it is a question I get asked constantly from my one-on-one coaching clients that are therapists, from therapists inside my Therapy Intensives Academy community, which is a few different questions. Do I really need Instagram to grow my practice? Is SEO still worth it?

And what about AI search now? Does any of this even matter anymore? And so if you have felt confused, overwhelmed, or low key behind when it comes to marketing your therapy practice, this episode is for you. I want to walk you through the pros and cons of Instagram marketing and the pros and cons of website SEO and AI optimized search based marketing. Who each strategy is.

actually for and who it’s not for, what my personal experience has been and what I generally and genuinely recommend for therapists who want sustainable growth without burnout. So this is not an Instagram is bad episode and it’s not a SEO is magic episode either. It’s as you are coming to know me, it’s at a discernment episode. It is an episode in really thinking through and flushing out.

what is for you and why so that you can be intentional, you can have strategy, you can have a plan. So let’s start with Instagram because there are very real upsides and I think it’s important to say that out loud. Instagram can be great if you enjoy creating content, you like connecting with people in real time, you are comfortable being visible.

You want to build relationships and community and you’re okay with iteration and experimentation. In the years that I have had both a therapy Instagram account as well as a coaching Instagram account, there are so many different things that I have tried. So it is important to know that it’s okay to try over and over and over again. So some general pros is that there are some pretty fast feedback loops when it comes to

And again, this is maybe Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, whatever you do to market, primarily I’m on Instagram, but it’s a fast feedback loop of, that got a lot of engagement. That seems to perform really well. That one flopped. So you have a pretty good sense pretty quickly of what your audience wants to see more of. There’s also this strong parasocial trust that you can gain with Instagram because…

you are showing up and people are hearing your voice and they are seeing your mannerisms. So people get to know you pretty quickly if you’re showing up authentically. It’s also easy to humanize your work. There’s a very big difference between whether you’re a therapist, a coach, a service provider, you writing what you do on your website and people reading your words and actually people being able to hear your words. And again, see how you talk about things and see

what it would be like to relate to you as a human, now that they can see this video and this audio of you. So Instagram can really be powerful for referrals, launches, and thought leadership. So using Instagram almost as your networking platform. I don’t do a lot of networking in person and it’s not been the way I’ve…

strategically used Instagram before, but it does help me to know, I keep seeing these people’s reels over and over again. I know where they are. If I ever have a client who needs a referral in a state I’m not licensed in, I know a few people, not personally, but I know them just kind of from seeing them around that I can refer to. If you’re launching something, whether that’s therapy intensives or a coaching group or a therapy group or a course, whatever it is, people are used to seeing.

selling on Instagram. So it’s a little easier in that way to kind of just see what kind of marketing you want to try out to see the methods that are working for people. And then again, a lot of people and a lot of us therapists especially are going to social media these days to share our thoughts, right? To share our opinions on here’s why this is wrong. Here are resources for this. I’m talking about this now as there’s a lot that’s going on in the country. And I know I’ve seen a lot of therapists

share their opinions on their platforms because they have very strong platforms of sharing what they specialize in and that they have openings, yes, but also what is trauma-informed care? How do we engage in self-care in the age of collective community trauma? So, there’s a lot of really great things about Instagram. It can be great for therapists who love teaching and storytelling. It’s a fantastic platform for that.

And I have absolutely used Instagram in my coaching business. It has helped me to connect with people. It’s helped normalize conversations around money and burnout, and it’s helped me build community. So it’s not something I’ve used as much in my therapy practice. My team and I are actually working on no longer prioritizing putting content out on my therapy Instagram, because we were just doing carousels just to maintain a presence.

But Instagram has never worked for getting me therapy clients. My website has. But my coaching account definitely has helped me to connect with therapists who do become my one-on-one clients, who do join my mastermind, who do join the Therapy Intensive’s Academy. And so it has been helpful. I will always, always say that. And so if Instagram does feel aligned for you, I’m not here to take that away. But we’re talking about the pros and naturally.

we have to talk about the costs because this is where therapists often get confused or tripped up or maybe even gaslight themselves. And so some real cons of Instagram marketing is that it does require constant output. Instagram is not a set it and forget it kind of platform. This is not passive marketing because if you stop posting, your reach drops. If you take a break,

momentum slows. And that’s not a moral failure. It’s not something related to your character or even to your content. It’s legit just how the platform works.

Number two, emotional labor is pretty high with Instagram marketing. Showing up, educating, responding, managing DMs, navigating comparison, that’s a lot when you already do emotional labor for a living. And so if that’s not something you feel like you have time or capacity for, Instagram marketing may not be for you. Number three, it can blur boundaries, especially when people start seeing you as accessible

or they expect some kind of free support in DMs. Even when I was a little bit more active on my therapy account on Instagram, there would be people who message for, are you accepting clients or do you have availability? What’s your rate? Do you happen to take this insurance? Quick questions like that are fine and trying to set boundaries around, please refrain from any other contact being through this email or this phone number. We could try that as much as we.

can honestly, but some people don’t respect the boundaries or some people continue to want to ask some follow up questions or now what happens when that client who reached out via DMs is your therapy client and what conversations you have to have around that. And number four, conversion can really be unpredictable. So you could be really good at the Instagram game and the Instagram algorithm. You can have high engagement, lots of saves, tons of followers and still

no one is reaching out to book a therapy session with you. And that’s confusing and discouraging for a lot of therapists. You may have heard the term vanity metrics, and this is ultimately exactly what I just said of like all these numbers on paper look fantastic, but they’re not leading to anything. So then a lot of people get discouraged, right? Of, well, then should I keep doing it? Is something wrong? Why does it not work anymore? Does Instagram hate me? And I know…

had some similar questions too with like, why is my follower growth not faster? Or why did so many people comment on that post and not join the mastermind, not join the program. And there’s so many different things out there, right? Like Instagram marketing, think tends to be a little more, if you’ve heard the term problem awareness of like, even educating people that there is a problem to be solved, even educating people that you have a solution to their problems.

But that doesn’t mean people are ready to take action. Like people aren’t going on Instagram like, gee, I hope I find a course I want to buy today. Whereas they are going to Google or AI of, you know, help me find a course, help me find a therapist, help me find a doctor for blah, blah, blah. So just because the numbers look great doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to be successful. And ultimately, Instagram favors a certain personality and nervous system.

If you tend to be a little bit more introverted or depending on your flavor of neurodivergence, if you are chronically ill or simply you value your privacy, Instagram can feel like a constant uphill battle. And as someone who is introverted and neurodivergent and values their privacy, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about how I want to show up.

on Instagram and there are always ways where I feel like I’m supposed to be doing more or doing better, but ultimately I have found Instagram marketing that works for me and not how do I replicate what seems to be working for other people. So again, Instagram is not bad inherently, but it is energy intensive. And so when the therapists I coach are talking with me about, so should I do it or not? I always start with saying, well asking.

Is it something you even like? Is it something you even want to do? Because if not, there’s so many other options out there. If you want to do it, absolutely. Let’s talk through strategy. Let’s go through what you’re going to post, ⁓ who you post it to, what are the calls, action, all that stuff. I’m happy to dive into that stuff. But if you do not want to do it, right, then you’re not going to do it consistently. If you struggle with some of these cons and the cons are not worth the pros for you, then maybe it’s time to consider alternative options.

So that’s where a lot of therapists know me for website and SEO stuff. So let’s talk about website-based marketing. So SEO is search engine optimization. A lot of it is around Google, but obviously we know there are other search platforms, search engines out there like Bing or honestly, there’s so many, I’m not even gonna try to name them. And nowadays we have AI informed search. And so here’s the biggest pro.

hands down. People are already looking for therapy on Google and in AI searches. They’re not being convinced they might need help. They are actively searching for an EMDR therapist near me, a couples therapy intensive, a trauma therapist in Portland. And that really matters, right? When people already know what they want and they are looking for it.

So there are some major pros when it comes to website-based marketing as your primary platform. Again, these days with AI, you might’ve heard search everywhere instead of just like search engine. So a little bit different, which means it’s helpful to have a social media platform, a YouTube channel. You don’t have to be super active on all of them, but primarily you can have a huge digital footprint by having a really good website.

So some major pros around that is that you get high intent traffic, right? These are people who are looking for therapy and they’re looking for a therapist and they probably found you because you are using some phrases that are drawing them in, in terms of a queer or nor divergent affirming therapist, in terms of a therapist who specializes in working with poly and E couples. Whatever you do, people found you because they were looking for you.

and website-based marketing truly does become passive marketing because it works while you are offline. I continue to say more than 90 % of my therapy clients these days find me from Google or even ChatgyPT. And a lot of this happens. I get bookings for consultation calls.

The calls don’t happen on the weekends, but the bookings happen on the weekends. The bookings happen at night when I am not marketing myself. And so this doesn’t require daily output. You are not reprimanded or punished because you didn’t post a blog every day or every week. Anything you do on your website just compounds over time. And this really supports whatever it is you’re doing as a therapist, if that’s private pay or if that’s intensives, it supports your efforts.

really beautifully because our whole purpose, every single therapist I have ever talked to has this similar pain point around, I am working too much and I’m not making enough or I would love to make more. And so when you have a really good website-based strategy of how you are marketing your practice, then it really supports those goals of solidifying yourself as an expert and an authority in the field.

showcasing exactly what you do and how you do it and making yourself easily visible for your future clients. And this big question of, well, isn’t SEO dead now because of AI and I keep hearing about AI optimization. No, no, no, SEO integrates really well with AI search tools because AI search tools are pulling from websites. They are pulling from search engine data.

So again, in my own therapy practice, the majority of my therapy clients have come from my website, not from Instagram, not from word of mouth, not from putting my business cards in coffee shops or anything like that. They are people who are going to Google, going to chat GBT or whatever AI they use, and they know exactly what they’re looking for and they find me. So SEO has allowed me to take more time off generally and especially from marketing my therapy practice.

When people ask, what do you do these days to market your practice? I’m like, I literally don’t do anything. Number one, because I have a team of virtual assistants and they help with writing the blogs, making sure those all get formatted and posted, posting our Google business updates. Like they literally do everything. I’m not out there marketing my practice right now. And I haven’t in a very, very long time. So I take more time off of marketing my practice. I also get to have a lower caseload because I specialize in intensives.

For example, I just did a nine hour intensive this past weekend and I only saw two therapy clients in the hour long model in the week before that. So a total of 11 hours of therapy and I still made about like $4,700, $4,900 off of that. So generally I get to work fewer clinical hours. I am allowed to and able to and have capacity to offer these higher ticket services within my therapy practice and it has helped me to scale

without constantly being visible, right? So I have not had to worry about marketing and filling my practice again in a very, very long time. And this doesn’t happen overnight, right? You might’ve heard SEO is a long-term game and that depends on what long is to you. That depends on so many different factors. I’ve seen people who have made some small and easy SEO tweaks and gotten like four consultations booked in the next week or two.

And I’ve seen some people where it takes six months before things really start to kick off for them. But when it works, it works consistently. And again, you do not have to do really much of anything outside of, you know, blogging. But if you have a virtual assistant, then your virtual assistant is helping you with blogging. But SEO and website-based marketing is not perfect either. And I think it’s important to also name that. I’m super biased around it, but…

there are some real cons. So generally it is slower. It is not instant gratification. There does take some strategy that some of it is a little bit of a longer term game. Again, that’s all dependent, but that can be really hard if you are in financial urgency. If you need clients yesterday, it is hard to…

you know, work on putting some blogs out and doing your keyword research and looking at how to AI optimize your pages and your blogs. That is genuinely hard if again, what you need is more money now. So right, then we look at the alternatives of, well, maybe I post a reel and that goes viral and I get all these consultations from it. Maybe, and again, maybe not, but just to name it is hard that website-based marketing can feel slower, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.

I didn’t know what I was doing when I first started all of this. Most of the therapists I talked to inside my coaching programs have no idea and had no idea, but now we do. And now it feels so, simple. So it is something that you can learn and it takes some time to learn too. SEO and website-based marketing also requires some strategy. You can’t just throw up some blogs without intention. That’s not going to work. You really need throughout your whole website, your…

homepage or about you page or service and specialty pages, your blog pages, any clear positioning. You need to know what are the right keywords that your ideal clients are searching for, right? How do we send that like bat signal to them and how do they find you because of that bat signal? You need to know a thoughtful structure.

because we can’t, again, just throw words on a service page. There has to be ways that we engage someone on our website and ways that we paint this picture of what could be different and ways that we invite them then to work together. And there does need to be consistency over time. This is a little bit different than having to post X amount of reels or carousels a week in order for the Instagram algorithm to not hate you, but.

you do still have to do some consistent practices when it comes to SEO and websites. So some consistent blogging, whatever consistent means to you. And sometimes there are ways that I tell people part of my strategy is in the summer when things are slower, generally, not quite with intensives. Intensives tend to be busier in the summer, but in slower periods, that’s when you can do two blog posts a week if you have the time and capacity or if your team has time and capacity.

But just because eventually your practice is full and now you don’t have to worry about it, that doesn’t mean if you stop posting two blogs a week that now again, your website’s gonna be shown to less people. But what is important is to have some amount of consistency that you still are blogging, you still are posting some Google business updates, just maybe not at the same frequency you were. Because you also don’t wanna drop dead to the internet and the Google and AI bots that are scanning everything.

SEO and web-based marketing, it’s also less relational, right? It is not replacing community. Like that’s not the goal of it, even though a lot of people that are attracted to website-based marketing and resonate with my message of being an introvert and not wanting to put themselves out there. Like that doesn’t mean we hate people, we hate connection, but this is a matter of replacing that visibility labor.

Right? Because that is the very real part of outreaching to people, recording ourselves, doing all these things. So that’s what we’re replacing with SEO. But it’s important to name that like, yes, it literally means you are more isolated because you’re not going out there and networking. You’re not showing your face outside of uploading a photo of your headshot. So if you thrive on interaction and feedback, SEO alone can feel really isolating.

So who each strategy is for. So this is what I am helping therapists to decide when I coach them is Instagram might be for you if you enjoy being seen, you like fast feedback, you want to build a personal brand, you have capacity for consistent content, you’re okay with unpredictability. If you can navigate some of those things, if ultimately you have the goal of

Here’s how I want my brand to be. Here’s how I wanna show up authentically. I’m okay with a lot of trial and error it can feel like, especially as algorithms change all the time, it seems like. And some of you have heard of this phrase shadow banning. I’m not ever sure if I am or not. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m okay with some unpredictability knowing that I also have strategy. So if you’re okay with those things, Instagram marketing can be great for you.

SEO or website-based marketing might be for you if you want more sustainability, if you prefer writing over performing, if you value privacy and boundaries, if you want clients actively searching for your services, you’re building a private pay or intensive-based website. All of these reasons are, I mean, quite honestly, I think every therapist needs to have a good website, not a one-page

thing that comes with your EHR or not just a directory page or not just this tech platform you partnered with, they’re little like one page bio on you. If you are a therapist, whether you’re taking insurance, private pay or doing intensives, my opinion is you need a website. It is honestly doing a disservice to your ideal clients. If you are not findable, if you’re not visible, right? It is such a good feeling when you connect with perfect fit clients.

but you can’t have all perfect fit clients if you are not visible to your perfect fit clients. And so here is the thing most therapists miss. You do not have to choose just one forever, but you do need a primary strategy that matches your capacity, your nervous system, your season of life, and your business goals. And that might change with time. If you’re feeling

super overwhelmed with a lot of things and you feel like you should do Instagram marketing, maybe even want to, but you do not have the time to film content or you don’t have a VA to help you make the reels or the graphics and you’re doing all that yourself, then maybe this is just not the season to do that. But you could do that in the future. Or maybe you are interested in all of the SEO and website-based stuff, but you don’t want to do it all yourself. So you decide to hire that out. All of that is totally okay. We just need to choose

One, to be our base and to start with. So it doesn’t have to be about how do do everything at once, but with my capacity, my nervous system, this season of life and my business goals, which one do I start with and which one do I see again, do the pros outweigh the cons. So here’s what I generally recommend, especially for therapists who are tired. Number one, build a strong website foundation first. Have

clear messaging, have pages that actually convert, have SEO that works, and then if Instagram feels aligned, to use Instagram as the supplement, use it as the relationship builder, as the visibility amplifier, not your only lifeline. Because relying again solely on Instagram often means that you always have to be on, your income depends on your energy,

and breaks can feel risky. So I want therapists to have marketing that supports their life, not consumes it, not makes it more stressful. And quite honestly, this has worked for me at least once, where again, my primary strategy is my website. And one time that someone said explicitly, granted it could have happened more time than this, someone went to my website because they found me from my Google SEO keywords.

They went to my website, they read about my intensives. They were like, this sounds perfect. This sounds like what I want to do. ⁓ but I see on this website, there’s a little icon that links to the Instagram account. Let me check that out. And then this client checked out my Instagram account, saw a couple of my reels in my posts and connected with my energy and was like, I like how you explained these things. And that’s what made them book the therapy intensive. Right? So yes, the website was how they found me.

But actually, maybe I guess you could say Instagram converted them or at least made them more sure about reaching out for a therapy intensive. So having both is helpful. But again, that’s my strategy of the website is how people find me. Ideally, it’s what’s converting them to. But my Instagram is a supplement. It is not my main thing because it being my main thing for my therapy business would not work.

So if you’ve been feeling behind because you’re not doing Instagram right, I wanna gently remind you there is no one right way to market a therapy practice. There is only what works for your body, what works for your values, and what works for the kind of practice you want to sustain. Now, this week, I am so excited because I am dropping two episodes because I interviewed a therapist.

who shares her experience with Instagram versus SEO marketing. And it’s so relevant and it pairs so well with this episode. So please go listen to that This is a therapist who I have coached in my Intensive Program and now we’re doing some other work to help her scale beyond just therapy. And so

If you want help building marketing that doesn’t burn you out, whether that’s SEO, messaging, or deciding what to stop doing, that’s a big part of the work I do with therapists. I’m gonna link some resources in the show notes, again, around if you’re looking for support with SEO and website-based marketing, because that’s a lot of what I do. And wherever you’re at, I hope this episode gives you permission to really choose marketing that actually fits you. And with that,

Please go ahead and listen to the next episode with my guest, Liz, where she shares her experience with this. Thanks for joining today.